News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Monday December 29th 2025
In the Heart of the Beast Theatre Company Talks With Community About Its Future and “Home”
BY CORRIE ZOLL
Over the past winter, HOBT decided that it was time to start a conversation with our community about the future of our organization and our home in the Avalon Theater. We appreciate that The Alley is here to help us have that discussion.
The discussion is not new. The Avalon was a distressed building three decades ago when the community worked together to make the building into a home for HOBT. Now the building is 30 years older, and needs a level of care and investment that HOBT has been unable to provide. As the building continues to age, an inability to meet its increasing needs could threaten the ongoing existence of the building, of the organization, or both.
Though the issue is serious, we do not consider it to be a crisis. HOBT estimates that we have two to five years to work toward a long-term solution. We have time to make a decision that best serves the many communities that will be affected by it.  More than a year ago, the HOBT board began to explore various scenarios. The possibilities were divided into two groups: “Stay” scenarios in which HOBT invests in continuing our time in the Avalon Theater, and “Go” scenarios in which we find another home. … Read the rest “In the Heart of the Beast Theatre Company Talks With Community About Its Future and “Home””
To be puppeteers in the Heart of the Beast”¦
BY STEVEN LINSNER
Poet, writer, performer, painter, musician and videographer; 1952-2005
To be puppeteers in the Heart of the Beast”¦
”¦is to find ourselves in the great world Beast made of families, races, ages, sexes, classes, corporations and nations, people, (and creatures!) all different, working out a way to live together.
”¦is to work puppets. To hold life in our hands, to sense how we are all like puppets””worked by instincts, voices, and forces above us and below us.
”¦is to carry and protect something very old like a heart within us, a secret, a promise. Like carrying a flickering candle through a dark place. Like carrying a family in a horse-drawn wagon.
”¦is to travel the roads of history and loss, in search of something like a new heart: new communities, new families, new work, new holidays.
”¦is to tell the story of people who live in the heart of the beast””as courageous and resourceful as they really are.
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