was turned into a tearoom offering ice cream, cold lunches, and lemonade, which Henning's wife and daughters staffed. Henning also tried to improve the quality of theatrical circuits that came to perform at the opera house, but frequent cancelations and financial difficulties once again threatened to close Tibbits. A number of solutions were proposed for the theatre. Some suggested that the building be used as a Town Hall and council room. Others proposed a beer garden with variety shows. Thespians who wanted the original purpose of the building to be preserved favored the establishment of a stock company to manage the finances. None of these ideas came to fruition however, and Henning sputtered from one year to the next barely making ends meet. If the diversity of productions during the Tibbits Era was broad, it was even more so during the Henning years. Theatrical productions included such genres as Irish comedy, combination plays, repertory companies, drama, opera, and operetta. Comedies began to shift toward vaudeville-type performances in which "the performers became more important than the play", with play reviews focusing more on "the actors' songs, dances and acrobatic skills rather than on the play itself" Uncle Tom's Cabin companies continued to tour, trying to outdo each other with the most sensational stage elements. Set designers pushed the limits with special effects creating a rainstorm on stage with actual water and even pushing the safety limit by lighting part of the stage set in "The Streets of New York" on fire. Such efforts were part of a theatrical movement toward "naturalness" and "realism" on stage. In "The Police Patrol", a scene depicted the interior of a police patrol barn with horses in stalls. Once the police alarm sounded, the horses were harnessed and dashed off stage in a matter of seconds. Such was the extent to which performers pushed the element of Realism. The number of lectures hosted at Tibbits picked up during the Henning years in part because for a time, the YMCA sponsored various lecture series. Topics ranged from the problems of the working man hosted by National Assembly of Knights of Labor representative R. F. Trevellick, C. E. Bolton's "Russia and the Romanoffs", a lecture by Robert McIntyre on military life in the Post Civil War South, George Kennan's "Camp Life in Eastern Siberia", topics ranging from love and marriage to prison life, Paul B. DuChailler's prohibitionist lecture,