The Show Goes On
When a new wave of Southern theaters lit up downtowns in the first decades of the twentieth century—vaudeville playhouses in the early 1900s and movie palaces in the 1920s—no expense was too great. Intricate plasterwork decorated opera boxes and prosceniums, crimson velvet curtains and matching seats adorned auditoriums, and orchestras and Wurlitzer organs played scores for silent movies. But as TV rose to prominence in the second half of the century and ticket holders relocated to the suburbs, these once-grand show places fell on hard times, threatened with becoming adult movie houses, storage spaces, even parking lots. Today many of the South’s cherished theaters are in the midst of a resurgence that’s bringing both long-overdue updates and a newfound respect for the role a theater can play in the life of a community (something viewers don’t experience streaming Netflix at home). Atlanta’s Fox Theatre has even developed a foundation to
