Chelsea on the edge

This is the tale of the Chelsea Theater Center of Brooklyn, once housed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and of its socio-economic mileau. On the cutting edge theatrically, the Chelsea earned prestigious awards and a loyal audience--but it rarely found funds to finish seasons as planned. In 1965, when Robert Kalfin founded the Chelsea, there were few not-for-profit theaters in New York. During the next ten years, new theaters opened, funding sources decreased, and costs rose. Many theaters became cautious. Not Chelsea. Glenn Close, Frank Langella, Christopher Lloyd, and Meryl Streep were among the artists who worked for minimum salaries to be part of the Chelsea experience. Critics often said the Chelsea stretched the boundaries of theater. Spectators subscribed to seasons before they knew what Chelsea would produce. But not everyone supported the Chelsea experiment. Artistic and political values, creative work and pragmatic business practices, one artist and another-- all clash on these pages.