New Exhibition Room opens.

[8/16-LitBos] Popularly known as the Board Alley Theater, it is built by the Tontine Associates in a converted stable on today’s Hawley Street. The opening night performance is more a variety show than a play, with exhibitions of acrobatics, singing, and ballet offered. The first theater in Boston, it presents what are billed as moral lectures because of the existing ban on theatrical productions. Its name, according to Walter Muir Whitehill, results from “A lingering Puritan prejudice against the supposed wickedness of the stage caused Boston theater operators to choose names that implied intellectual elevation.” It operates until June 1793 and the building is torn down thereafter.