"a few quote-ables"...

These are just a few of the note-able comments and stories
we received from our prodigious 19 Commentators
during our recorded interviews... 

​SCOTT MANNING
On TLH’s final production – Kiss Me 
“Jerry really, really had a passion for British and Canadian plays and playwrights. It really brought Theater LaB back to its roots. We had done some larger scale productions in different venues after Alamo closed, but this brought it really back to that tiny postage size stamp of a stage. I mean, the audience was literally less than a foot from these actors at any given time. And I think it really hearkened back to the experiences when he would go to those tiny little 50-seat London pub theaters and “this Is never coming to Houston for Houston audiences. Jerry and Theater LaB was bringing something special to Houston audiences that they had never experienced before.”

“The first time I ever showed up to Theater LaB to take in a show, I thought the neighborhood was nice and quaint and I saw Thespian Park right across the street, which I thought was beautiful. And then the anticipation, waiting outside the theater to get in and then realizing it was such an intimate space and it was really, really exciting. It was something I hadn't experienced before.”

“So something that was really special about Theater LaB was Jerry traveled to fringe festivals all around, I mean everywhere. And he brought in a lot of specialty acts from the different fringe festivals that he experienced around the globe. In 2015, Jerry actually took a chance, a dream of his was to get the opportunity to take a show to a fringe festival, which he finally did, after all those years of supporting it and bringing all these artists in, Jerry got to take one of his artists to Winnipeg. And that's where TLH produced Steven Brinberg in his musical “Simply Barbra” to the 2015 Winnipeg Fringe Festival, which was sold out incredibly quickly and was a roaring success.”
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“The really cool thing about working at Theater LaB is sometimes you just never knew what was going to happen for a very small theater that was putting on tiny, tiny productions. That meant we often had surprise visits from the playwrights. And one in particular that I remember was we were producing Vanities the Musical in 2015. Once again, I think Jerry was after these rights for 15 years. Jerry had seen it at Second Stage in New York and we finally had the opportunity to do it. We were in the middle of our run and Jerry got, I think it was either an email or a text message earlier that afternoon and the playwright, Jack Hefner had come into town and he said, “Hey, I'm in town. I see you're doing my show. I'd love to come.” So as a surprise for not only the audience but our performers, we got Jack Hefner in and we didn't announce it to anybody, we didn't tell anybody, it was so typical of the kinds of theatrical spontaneity that was TLH.”

LINDA PHENIX
Being a part of the TLH family –
“And it was like I didn't know that I was going to have a friendship out of Theater LaB as well. And that's been an important one. And just as an artist who finally had to leave dance, it was just too hard to do. And it was painful. Theater LaB was that bridge for me where I could keep being an artist and quite frankly, move on to being an older artist. And for that, it changed my life”.

On my first time visit to 1706 Alamo -
“The first time I came to Theater LaB was as an audience member and I think the show was called The Illuminati came with a friend and Ed Muth I think directed it. And he had given me a little playbill, but it had on the outside of it what theater LaB used to look like, thank God, because when I turned on Alamo Street, it was like, I'm kind of in a neighborhood, I don't know if I'm in the right place. And so I drove up and we parked and there was this very plain but clean looking white building and I thought there's going to be a play in here. And it was fantastic. So it was, how can I put it? I loved the idea that I was going into this little First Ward neighborhood into this small building. It felt, I'm not sure if this is the right term for it, but offbeat subculture underground ish. And that really appealed to me.”
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On Boygroove from the Edmonton Fringe Festival –
“So, Jerry loved pieces from Canadian Fringe festivals. He would go and find these incredible pieces and I was really fortunate to direct two of them. One was Boy Groove, it's actually the second thing that I directed at Theater LaB and it followed the Big Bang. That was when I slipped into directing without even knowing it. And I thought, well will Jerry invite me back to direct? And lo and behold, he did the next season and he had this incredible piece Boy Groove based on obviously boy bands. It definitely looked like it was inspired by N Sync. And I had this yummy little cast of four guys, really good actors movers, so energetic. And I had to also choreograph four numbers. Now this is a middle aged white woman trying to do boy band choreography and I had all these videos trying to figure out how to do it and then I just was going to count on those four cast my cast members of four guys to make it work. And they did. And there's one kind of funny story about that. I videotaped myself a lot doing that choreography. I couldn't remember, it wasn't modern dance, so I just couldn't remember what I was doing. And there was one time where I looked at one of the videos, I just thought, oh my God, I can never do this again. It's too painful watching a middle-aged white woman trying to do boy band choreography. But my husband was like, oh my God, that's hilarious.”  

BILL McDONALD
On my first time visit to 1706 Alamo -
“I remember meeting Jerry over at this small building that he said was his family's grocery store but had recently been a nightclub and it was all boarded up . And he walked me through and told me about his plans, which is the amazing part about Jerry. He can see things when nobody else can. That was my first exposure to Jerry and to the building that would become Theater LaB Houston.”

“The theater scene in Houston at that time was not easy to get into. It was a tight-knit community, though I had some friends here, I had done some work at Stages Repertory Theater, but it did not tolerate any kind of feel of a person who might be a maverick, a person who might have a different idea. I think one of the things that is challenging about Houston is you have to make money. There are other places that encourage arts just for art's sake, and arts to fail and arts to try things, and arts to explore our humanity and reflect on what's going on. TLH and Jerry always provided a safety net for his artists. The only time Jerry would say no is and Jerry seemed to have a second sense about marketing, Jerry would say, no, we're not doing that. It won't work and, he was usually right.”

“ Jerry allowed his artists a lot of leeway to make creative choices. Jerry has two or three levels of genius that I've never quite figured out. One, he's sort of an idiot savant about what's going on before it happens in the art scene. Jerry is a voracious reader. He reads plays more than anybody I've ever seen in my life. Jerry likes adventurous ideas. Those things you don't find when you do art for a long time. In many people, most people say no. Instead of what Jerry would say was, well, tell me why and why can't we? And those are gifts to a person who works in the arts scene. Bill was not smart enough to see it when he was 34, but Bill has had a longer lifespan now. And I realize that there are people who tell you what you can't do, and there are people who can tell you what you can do or you can try. Jerry is also very forgiving of failures, when Jerry brought me over and started the theater, the style, the intention, and the literature that was picked were very different than what was happening in the art scene.”

“I believe Jerry's choices were rebellious by nature. I believe that TLH brought in a different type of crowd who were tired of seeing Murder on the Oriental Express or Noel Coward, though there's nothing wrong with those things. It struck a chord in the community that frankly surprised the fuck out of me. Pardon my French, because also, when I was running the lights, I would often work the door as well, which when it was raining, was a ton of fun. Lemme tell you that because there was no overhang for the lobby doors. But nine times out of 10 in a season, they were usually sold out for most of the shows. And one of my favorite memories is watching Jerry run through that tiny space, a big, tall man trying to shove chairs into a place where they should not exist. Thank God the fire marshal couldn't find the place or was afraid to run over the chickens. I'm not sure which it would've been, but I remember him coming out specifically Jerry coming out, one evening while it was raining and saying, we have to hold. I have to find some chairs. And I'm thinking, Jerry, I'm getting wet and I have to go run lights…But I got to look at the cute cops. So that was fine.” 
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ANDREW EDMONSON (Houston Arts Journalist)

On The NEA 4 - Karen Findley, Tim Miller, John Fetch and Holly Hughes
"Some arts administrators ran away from programming those controversial artists. And there was a series of artists, the National Endowment for the Arts - the  and one was a gay artist, Tim Miller. And I remember going to see his work and he talked so incredibly movingly about the AIDS crisis and what it was like to be a gay man and to have friends who were ill and who were sick. And it was like you were standing on the side of the shore and they were going out to sea and you wanted to rush and to get them and to bring them back to safety and how powerful it was to hear his work. And what was all to Theater LaB's credit was Jerry brought two of the NEA 4 artists to Houston to perform.They were viewed as everything that was wrong with American culture. But I think that they deserved a platform. And that's what Theater LaB did beautifully. It wasn't a place where you were to go get to hear a Neil Simon play. It wasn't a place where you were going to go get to hear an A R Gurney play about life in the suburbs and someone's husband being an alcoholic. You were going to go and hear Karen Finley talk about the most intimate aspects of her experience and sexual aspects of that experience. And nobody was going to censor her. And it was great to have a place like that where those voices could be heard."

MARY HOOPER
"I had been working at Stages. I was an original company member at Stages and before that I worked at Equinox Theater, which you might remember. And as funding kind of dried up for that kind of theater, which was progressive, kind of controversial theater, I looked around and the only place that was really doing that at that time IN 1993, was Theater LaB. And the first thing was the logo, which was Shakespeare with the Circle and the slash And I thought that's probably the place for me. Not that I don't love the classics, all actors love the classics, but I was looking for somebody who was doing something progressive and something exciting and maybe something just a little bit dirty. And yeah, the first time I drove down Alamo Street and went to see a show because an actor friend of mine said, Mary, you've got to come see my show. And I asked him how he liked working at Theater LaB and he said, it's cool. And I am driving down the street and it is kind of an old Mexican neighborhood and everybody's got their Christmas lights up and I thought, I think this might be the place for me."

ED MUTH
On my first time visit to 1706 Alamo -
“I drove down the street and saw the building and I kind of said, that looks like a little garage or something. It really didn't look like a performance space. But as I got closer and after I kind of explored the space with you, I realized your vision that it would be a place to create a theater space. And that was my, as soon as, I guess what I'm trying to say is I love the concept of a small theater space, something that's small and intimate, doesn't seat more than 75 people. You could rearrange it any way you wanted with each production, which is one of the miracles of Theater LaB. And the way TLH did each production in that building was a surprise. The building is like a little box that you go inside of and you're not sure what the present is going to be, but the present is always something worthwhile. It was a theater experience to go to Theater LaB. I don't remember which critic said it, but Theater LaB was the hottest ticket in town and the most interesting and different place to go see theater in Houston. It was an artistic bloom, an artistic blossom in theater.”

“TLH was a great moment in theater history that won't happen again. My Theater LaB experience gave me an additional PhD in theater. It combined my academic experience with the real world work. It made me a better person and it made me a better artist and it made me a better director. And I learned how to build many different relationships. I honestly wish that Theater LaB continued. It was the best place for me to do what I needed to do in the theater.”

“I met the producer Jerry LaBita. And just for a second about the producer and director, it's an extremely complicated relationship because we both want to succeed and we both want the best product possible. And sometimes there's conflict, but we were always able to resolve and work it out. But art is not an easy path. Sometimes it has some bumps on the road that you've got to smooth out. So that relationship for me was significant. Not to mention, I don't know where he found all these wonderful plays. He found plays from Canada, he found plays from Great Britain. He found plays with American playwrights that weren't being produced. He did stuff outside the box and brought it into the theater box here in Houston. Mr. LaBita was just masterful at that kind of stuff. I used the word Mr. LaBita because we had a very professional relationship. He called me Mr. Muth, I called him Mr. LaBita. And for us, that was a special kind of combination. It made us very intimate, yet very personal and professional. Can't stop saying how wonderful that relationship was, had a bump or two, but it always was worth the time and the efforts.”


CELESTE ROBERTS
“You knew you were doing a show and were a part of theater that no one else in this town was doing. And that was really exciting because as an actor you're drawn to a variety of different works as well. And so getting to do something that hadn't been seen -was the first of its kind, was really, really fun to be a part of.”

“So it was just a really tiny building, right? Painted white, very nice. And a parking lot there. But you did it. It was at that time, prior to the neighborhood now being probably gentrified, it was a little, what we call sketchy. You're like, oh, huh, okay. And yeah, that was your first thought. And I know I'm not the only one. Right. The minute we got into that parking lot and we went, this is it. Is this the right address? Let me check. No, back then you didn't have the phone. Right? Let me get my MapQuest sheet out and look to see if I'm in the right spot. So you did, and then you walked in and there it was with the chairs and the shiny black floor and Jerry LaBita and the director sitting there and some lighting and you went, ah, okay, this is a theater. Yeah. But the first reaction was a bit like, Ooh.”

“As actors at this small theater in the middle of the first Ward 60-seat theater, there were actors from the big houses telling us that they would trade places with us. They wish they were doing the kind of work we were doing. And that really always struck me as how fortunate I was to be a part of Theater LaB Houston.”

RON JONES
“The first time I drove up Alamo Street, that was indeed the beginning of the adventure because I didn't know what to expect at all. Jerry had told me a little bit on the telephone, and when I drove down the street, it was a little intimidating because I heard that there was decline on that street, but there was music coming from the homes, Salsa music, and it was celebratory. And so I thought, okay, fine. And then you brought me to your space and you showed me your space. And I was like, okay, you're going to open a theater here.” “And you said yes, and you told me your plans for it. And I thought, this is wonderful, this is terrific, and I can see it all. And I was happy to be a part of it.”

“But I think what made it compelling to work at Theater LaB was that you were doing unique things, things that were different from what was being done, plays that were different from what were normally being done in town. And that created an exciting atmosphere.”
“Jerry as a fearless leader because he was, he's asked me about that first show in the past. And it all came about because you led everybody in such a fearless manner and you brought to that play and really everything else you did there a sense of purpose and a sense of, in some ways, abandoned and a sense of excitement. And that's what I remember about the first show and about working there the first time, that sense of excitement, that sense of dedication that you had, that you try to Jerry had, that Jerry had that sense of dedication and gave everybody a true sense of belonging and the sense of being part of something that was new and exciting and innovative debate.”

“Well, NO, Shakespeare, that's one of the things I remember most of all was coming, walking in the first time and seeing Shakespeare's head with a line through it that was irreverent. And that's one of the things that I liked most about the, was the fact that it was very often irreverent and that sense of doing something different, doing something new, doing something unique, making its own place in theater in Houston, that to me was one of the things to rumor most about Theater LaB Houston.”

“It indeed shook things up. People did not know Jerry LaBita, they did not know Theater LaB. Well, hell, they partly knew Ron Jones. So it was a time for us to come in and do something that was brand new. And yes, it really produced shock Waves around the theater community because this was brand new. Who were these people? I think that there was a sense of, I don't know, discovery for a lot of people. I mean, this certainly was for me, this was a wonderful discovery for me. This was something brand new for me. And it was really the first time that I had worked on a new theater in its inception. So that was hugely exciting for me. But yes, Theater LaB was a new entity, it was an exciting entity, it was revolutionary, and it brought things to Houston that it had never seen before. So yeah, it made a huge impact on the theater community in Houston.”

“Because I believed in you(Jerry) and I believed in your ideas, and I believed in your expertise and your knowledge about the theater. And those were things that made me comfortable. And so sure, I said, yeah, let's embark upon this. So there was this sense, and I mentioned before, this sense of abandonment, there was that you just said, let's do this. We can do this, and we can do this despite what other people may think and whether they know us or not, we can go out there and make a difference. And I think that's what happened.”

“We just all kind of teamed up together and we thought, alright, we'll take a chance. We'll go out here, we'll see what happens. And it doesn't make any difference if we fail, we are taking a chance. And as it were, because I think that you led us in a direction to do it the right way. We were able to make that difference. And people, and as I said earlier, I think it changed the theater community, but it also changed the minds and hearts of theater goers because people came to Theater LaB that had been to theaters all over town, perhaps some more stage ones. And they were awakened. They were introduced to something brand new and something that they loved. And so they came back to Theater LaB time and time and time again. They went to their other theaters of course, but they came back to theater LaB over and over and over because they wanted to see what was going on. They wanted to see what was happening. They wanted to see what was fresh and awakened before that phrase ever came into being.”
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JOEL SANDEL
“When Theater LaB presented the season of Britannia Theater. I mean, every one of those experiences and my roles in them was just so really wonderful in their own way. Blood Brothers this wonderful musical that's sort of a cult favorite in London. It ended up being just this phenomenal show. And there are people today that I talked to that say it's the best musical ever done in Houston.”

"I do have very strong feelings about everything I did at the LaB. I don't really have a clear favorite because every play that I did had an element that is a favorite of mine. The sweetness of Hushabye Mountain, the just audacity of Eat the Enemy, the fun and camp of Charles Busch's Die Mommy Die. But if I were pushed to make a choice, I would say Blood Brothers I think that would be the one. If I had to go to a desert island with only one Theater LaB show to my resume, it would be Blood Brothers because I think that was kind of a perfect production and everybody in it was so great and everybody loved it and I loved doing it. It was so much fun. 

“And this is the other thing too, about when Theater LaB came into being and we had small theaters, but nothing in that way. I mean, this was small in a new, truly, truly intimate way. And people who only ever experienced big box theater, they go into a little theater like that and they will talk to you after the show. They'd never been to the theater before. It opens your eyes, it makes you live and feel in the moment in ways you didn't know possible in a theater because you're not removed, you're there, you're with the people on the stage. Oh my gosh. Just magical times.”

MARK ROBERTS
“That was one of the great things I think about Theater LaB was there was such a variety of such a large variety of plays that Jerry would select, but they had such interesting characters and there was always something. And I was very much a character actor. I was never a leading man type, but because of the types of plays that Jerry selected, I was very fortunate in that they frequently played to types that I could really grab onto. And I had an opportunity to be cast in those roles because they were such strong characters and it just had so much depth that you could really focus on. And I didn't just have to be the pretty boy that everybody cast me for.”

“I remember thinking even those are larger spaces than any of these. I mean, theater LaB is probably the smallest, but they don't really train you for what you're going to actually be working in for the most part. They train you to work in traditional classic type theater. And then when you get out at least early on, there's a good chance you're going to be working in something that's very small or even a converted grocery store as with the case in Theater LaB.”

“I felt like I did a lot of my best work at Theater LaB and I think it had to do with the atmosphere. It was things that you wanted to do. The plays were interesting. They weren't being done at other theaters and that's not to say that other good work wasn't going on, it's just that these particular plays, you didn't have that opportunity necessarily anywhere else.”

DEBORAH HOPE
"Theater LaB's mission was to produce shows that had never been produced in Houston before. They were going to be brand new to this area, which is innovative in itself because usually it's, you think about just get asses in the seats. A show that everybody's going to love. This was, you've never seen this before. You might've heard about it, but this is a new playwright. It's a new show, edgy. I think Jerry LaBita was very careful about making sure that they were also edgy and had something to say, not just entertaining, which we did not have at the time."

"Although there were some that did make people uncomfortable, that was wonderful. But they wanted to kind of make the city grow up. I think it was in its infancy when I came as far as Theater went. And because of Theater LaB, because of Jerry LaBita, it just grew up. So the city grew up along with the theaters because we reflect life. Art reflects life. So people would, oh, I've heard about this. Beirut, you did Beirut. Nobody had done that before. That was mind blowing. There's so many. And then there was the funny ones, the Box Office of the Damned, which I think I saw that three times." 

"Talking about how Theater LaB had these very edgy shows. I know that Jerry had said that after some shows he would have audience members who would call up after the fact to say, I was offended. I had no idea that you were going to be talking about that. Or there was going to be nudity. Very few nudity shows, I have to say. But there's still, it was put out into the flyers that this is for adults only. Theater LaB was never for children. It was always for adults. And he had that in his programs and his flyers. Well then he would get these calls after the fact. I had no idea. I didn't know. So it was Jerry's very brilliant idea to put a huge sign on the front door so you could not miss it to go in the front door. You would have to have seen that sign saying, WARNING, this show is for adults only! Sensitive play-goers should NOT attend. No one under 18 admitted. Most people would be very appreciative. Oh, thank you very much. Then some people would say, yeah, then I don't want to see an adult show. And they would go, who would not want to see an adult show though? But anyway, beside the point, so audiences knew what they were getting into. Jerry knew what was happening and was very respectful of people to let them know that you haven't seen anything like this before. And again, not meaning that it's sexual or it's naked, people running around, but it's just something that we have not approached in this city yet. So that was, I think that was a very smart thing on and funny thing on his part to do."

BECKY UDDEN
“Theater LaB brought in so much that we would not have seen otherwise. I'm thinking about, well I'm at an age when names escaped me, but I just know that the things that Jerry found in his theater travels around the world and that he brought to Houston were always completely different from anything else anybody was offering. And then also things like the first production of Assassins Stephen Sondheim. So you could see big Broadway shows in a postage stamp. So such interesting repertory. And I think it helped open the theater audience up to more diverse, to more diverse offerings.”

STEPHEN FOX (Houston Architectural Historian)
“I think when want to put the experience of the building (1706 Alamo) in a broader historical perspective, I would say it relates to the patterns of growth of Houston, which is that Houston has grown exponentially over now almost two centuries. And it gives it a kind of different pattern, different dynamics from other towns or cities that may have had spurts of growth.” 
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“And because there were these buildings, this real estate, this opportunity, it made it possible for more kind of opportunistic uses to come in subsequently. So, where there may no longer have been a kind of economic demand or market for a grocery store, still you had this building that was usable for something because it was a big space, it wasn't a house divided up into little rooms. It could lend itself more flexibly to different uses. And Gerald came along with the kind of cultural vision and was able to convert the grocery store into a theater.”

LIN CHONG
On being a long time First Ward resident -
“It is the highest concentration of working artists in the state of Texas and it's an arts district Houston, a city of Houston funded district. I think that culturally rich, historically rich, and proximity to downtown all help to keep First Ward interesting, vibrant, quirky, and just, it's a good mesh of having homes and neighbors, both commercial and residential.”

“The First Ward is located just north of downtown Houston. It was established in 1840 and was the first of the original four wards of Houston. Today there are six wards and today's boundaries of First Ward have slightly changed from its original boundaries. Roughly it is 45 on the East I 10 in North Sawyer Street and in the West and Washington Avenue on the south. So, its proximity to downtown Houston made it very appealing to my husband and I because we come from downtown Kuala Lump in Malaysia. When we moved to our new country and our new home, we wanted to replicate that a little bit of reminiscing how we lived back home.”

JOHN DUNN
“And I cannot put my finger on why. And maybe that speaks to the history of the building being this mom and pop grocery store and having all this history. So, when the building was knocked down, I went and I drove down the street just to see what might be left. And I got out of my car and I looked among the rubble and I found a piece of concrete with several layers of black paint on it, which I assume it's a chunk of the stage and I'm going to continue to believe that. I think I potentially have a piece of Theater LaB stage in my possession.”
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“And so there are a lot more new theater companies that have come up and are presenting work, but it is still not that same curated thing. Nobody's bringing in one-man shows from Edinburgh, no one's flying to the West End to find this wacky show about some weird concept and just saying, wow, that's great, I'm going to bring that to Houston. And I think we are missing that in Houston now, and I'd like to see it back again.”

ROBERT DONAHOO (Theater Critic)
“We have talented people here who have the ability to put on first rate work and could do it anywhere if the opportunity presented itself. So I am a big fan. I'm a big promoter of the theater in Houston”.

GREG RUHE (Alamo Street resident and puppeteer artist)
"I didn't know that Theater LaB was on my street, so that was a really pleasant surprise once that came about. I would like to tell you though about Alamo Street. When I first saw it, I must admit that I was not enchanted by Alamo Street. In fact, I was probably more than mildly terrified. To back up just a little bit, I had been living in the Heights for a number of years and I was paying way too much to rent a house, and I was living beyond my means. And one day out of the blue, a friend of a friend called me up and said, Greg, I work for an organization called Avenue Community Development. This organization would buy up lots in the first ward. The CDC would also purchase homes that were going to be torn down in a nearby neighborhoods such as Montrose.And when I pulled up Alamo Street, my heart sank. I mean, I'm sure that the street in 1998 (when I was looking) was a lot different than Jerry's childhood home and memories. The street was in really bad shape. Most of the houses needed to have drastic repairs and renovations. There were old junk cars lining the streets, potholes everywhere, chain link fences, barking, menacing-looking dogs, yards with trash in them."

"Honestly, I had not hear of Theater LaB. I was kind of like living in a bubble, doing my own thing. I had come from just a recent internship at the Alley Theater, and then I started my own theater company. I was so busy creating theater, honestly, I wasn't seeing theater. But of course, that changed once I was in the neighborhood. Shortly after moving in, I noticed this very dapper, enthusiastic gentleman driving repetitively past my house. At first, I was like, well, why is this guy going past my house so many times? And every time he drives by, he has the biggest smile on his face and he's waving so enthusiastically. I was like, I think he thinks he knows me. Do I know him? And so after many, many drive-bys like that, finally one day I was working in the garden and here's somebody saying, Hey, hey. Like three times, Hey. And I finally, I look up and I realized they're talking to me, and it was this gentleman sitting in his car right in front of my house, and lo and behold, it was Jerry LaBita."

GERALD (JERRY) LaBITA - Founder and Producing Artistic Director
How did Theater LaB Houston get it's name...
"So that's a great question. How did Theater LaB Houston get its name? Okay, so we sort of started out with the proverbial cocktail napkin sort of thing, the concept and what I wanted to do as a theater company, it sort of started that way and we had lots of conversations. I knew exactly what I wanted us to be, and that was having gone around the country to New York City,Los Angeles and to England and Toronto and other places and seeing contemporary theater as it was performed. That's the theater I wanted us to do. And it is what we did. But in our early discussions with people that were helping me putting the theater together, Jerry Kinney, Maryanne Prentice, and others we would sort of get together and have dinner and just talk about a wide range of topics. And one of them came up, what are we going to name the theater?"

"I was really, really interested in calling it a contemporary theater. And then we could use ACT as a shortage for 'a contemporary theater'. And one night Jerry Kenny said, oh, I think we should call it Theater LaB Houston. Because really what we're doing is - we're sort of experimenting with theater. It's theater that hasn't been in town and it's a LaBoratory type thing. And I was like, yeah, okay. And he said, I think it would also be interesting if we took Theater LaB, Houston, and for LaB we spelled it Capital L, small a, capital B, like your last name. And I was like, I don't know. But anyway, eventually it became a board item and the board ruled on that and that's how Theater LaB came to be. And especially when we first opened, people would come in and go, oh, this is Theater La B Houston, and I would go, no, no, it's not Theater La B, it's Theater Lab Houston. So that's how Theater LaB Houston got its name."

How did you find plays that you had not seen or read...
"A good example is how I successfuly reached out to Eve Ensler in May 1997 who was performing her new play - The Vagina Monologues for our very first Fringe Theater Festival. And a funny story talking about how I met people. So I read about The Vagina Monologues in several periodal articles, and The New York Times Review and thought, okay, this is great. I'd like to pursue this. Had no idea how to get in touch with Eve Ensler - Right? Well, she's doing the piece at this little Off Broadway, probably Off Off Broadway theater. And I'm reading the review and it said that the last Sunday matinee was coming up and I thought, I'll just call the box office that Sunday and say, I'm so-and-so from Houston, could you have Eve Ensler call me about performing her show in Houston, Texas. And sure enough, Monday  the next morning she calls and says, hi, it's Eve Ensler I'm looking for Jerry LaBita and so we started talking and that's how we got her down here to perform her new show and the rest as they say - is theater history." 

What was the deal with the No Shakespeare logo in the lobby...
"It came about because we would have these sessions where we would talk about how are we going to market Theater LaB, how are we going to say to people in few words or just with an image, this is what Theater LaB's all about. So Jerry Kenny, who was doing our graphic design at the time, came to one of the Board meetings and said, look, how do you guys like this? And it was great because it said in no words we're a no Shakespeare company. And I do appreciate and love Shakespeare. But you know what, Houston had plenty of theaters at that time that were doing Shakespeare. We did not need to be another new theater in Houston doing Shakespeare. And it was just a visual that said, we're Shakespeare free! So the No Shakespeare logo was in our lobby for the whole 20 years, we were on Alamo Street, it hung there. It was made of glass and when we first got it and hung it I thought how long is it going to take before I drop and break it! It is happily residing at the Ideson Library at the Houston History Research Center with a huge selection of the TLH's archives." 
hplarchives.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/941
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