Rented storefront back rooms doubled as experimental performance spaces

Evidence

The Store was also a theater. Beginning in late February 1962 and continuing through March, Oldenburg used his store’s cramped back rooms (home to previous proprietors) to stage an ambitious series of “real events” that, not unlike Star Spangled to Death, dealt with what he called America’s “consciousness.” Oldenburg compared these happenings to newsreels and staged them as matched pairs with a repertoire cast. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 231

Categorization

• XREF: Direct example for the reader’s core thesis: cheap rent (a rented storefront’s cramped back rooms) made the density of invention possible.