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The writer draws on personal experience to suggest that theatres, as a building type, are particularly vulnerable to ill‐advised alteration. He describes the peculiarities of design and construction which distinguish theatres from other types of public buildings and sets out a number of ways in which theatre operation can be damaged or even destroyed by seemingly unimportant interventions. The role of the Theatres Trust in protecting theatres not currently in use as such is detailed and justified, pointing out that many theatres have, in recent years, been returned to their designed use after decades in other employment. The importance, in this context (and having regard to modern theatre economics), of low‐cost reversibility is emphasised. Finally, comments drily on the psychology of theatre operators and theatre purchasers.

This chapter discusses the Learning Theater, a flexible library space that permits substantial patron involvement in designing dynamic environments to meet diverse learning goals.

We use a case study method to describe and discuss the Learning Theater.

We found that many challenges associated with designing and building a radically different library space to support patron learning goals can be resolved by eliciting patron input in all phases of the process.

We offer three lessons for other libraries intent on developing dramatically new kinds of library spaces: engage the community of users early and throughout, new spaces require robust communications to convey the possible set of uses to the community, and a flexible infrastructure and a responsive staff are key to meeting demands for unanticipated uses.

Our experience in developing the Learning Theater as part of the library education program suggests that libraries can share greater control of new flexible facilities and partner in the creation of intellectual properties to make best use of those facilities in more powerful ways than has typically been done in the past.

This chapter is about quantum storytelling and improvisation and how to use quantum storytelling as an improv theater for social change. Quantum storytelling, in its fore-caring, is about producing an ethics of care where none exists. In the quantum storytelling theater for change, we envision a stage with human and non-human actors (animals, plants, quantum wave/particles) and ways to collapse waves of quantum potentiality into new possibilities for human survival, for posthumanist survival.

We will assert that this happens through improvisation: something called “quantum storytelling with improv.” Our example for this chapter is a theater company we created in Las Cruces, NM, called “Veterans Theater” in which improv is the performance approach. Boje teaches in the belly of the beast (the Business College) at New Mexico State University, a course called “Leadership Is Theater in Society” that uses improv. It is not only about improv but it is also based on Theater of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979, 2002) and Improvisation for the Theater (Spolin, 1983); it also draws from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970) and Rules for Radicals (Alinsky, 1971), both of which call on improv as a process for social change. Improv is a vital leadership skill in complex polycultural systems, which is the future of business. Leadership theory is dead. Get over it! Or, resurrect it with improv!