Allen Haines:  

Life Young Allen was an easily misunderstood child. His reticence was mistaken for coldness, but he was capable of great compassion. After witnessing a particularly horrible Pennsylvania mining disaster once, he could not even finish a second helping of waffles. Even then, he had visions of grandeur, and modeled his life after his teenage idol, Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, but because Allen himself has been known to have some reasonably profound insights. Man, he reasoned, was not a “thing” apart from nature, but was involved “in nature” and could not observe his own existence without first pretending to be indifferent and then quickly running around to the other side of the room in the hopes of glimpsing himself. Mr. Haines’ professional life began after he was ejected from both Bucknell University and New York University, the latter for setting fire to the Dean’s trousers while grabbing his face and shouting, “Aha! Got your nose!” He quickly found employment in the theatre, ending ...Expand for more