Two years ago Dexter Bullard turned down a job many would have killed for. The artistic director of the Next Theatre, Harriet Spizziri, was retiring, and the first person she thought of to replace her was Bullard.

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“And frankly,” continues Bullard, who’s now just shy of 30, “the audience at Next was almost twice as old as me. I am trying to make theater for my generation.”

So Bullard founded Plasticene, a small gypsy theater company meant to be everything Next was not: portable, low budget, and unencumbered by a board of directors and a conservative subscriber base.

Doorslam focuses on four white-collar working stiffs–all dressed identically in black pinstripe suits, white shirts, black shoes, and dark gray hats–who with frantic, comic exaggeration undergo the daily rituals of upper-middle-class life: getting up, getting ready for work, reading the paper, hobnobbing at the coffee machine.

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/ J.B. Spector.