As the audience settles into its seats in the Music Hall of the Carnegie Library of Braddock, Karla Boos, in the character of Jean Rhys, stands on stage, brooding.

Ms. Boos is playing a writer who is alone with her own demons in "After Mrs. Rochester," a play by Polly Teale.

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Quantum Theatre's Scott Nelson prepares for the production of "After Mrs. Rochester." Click photo for larger image.

The audience is entering a hall that has not been used for a professional theatrical production in more than 45 years.

When Ms. Boos says the air has changed in the Music Hall, she isn't talking about the ventilation.

The place feels different now that there is a set on the stage, this one for Quantum Theatre's production of "After Mrs. Rochester."

Theatergoers are in the audience, actors are on the stage and using the entire hall for the show. Tickets are being sold at the entrance and there is even a concession stand near the stairs. It's a professional theater again. Something that hasn't happened, as near as John Hempel, of Braddock's Field Historical Society, can determine, since at least 1961.

The story of the Music Hall, its abandonment and its rebirth are linked to the fortunes of the Carnegie Library, of which the Music Hall is a part.

Andrew Carnegie built the library, the first of the 1,679 libraries donated by Mr. Carnegie, in 1889. The Music Hall was part of a 1893 addition to the building, which, fittingly enough, is on Library Street, but the Music Hall doors open onto Parker Avenue.

The funding ran out in the 1960s. In 1961, it was taken over by the Braddock School District, which ran out of money for the library one day in 1974, when the building was closed for the night and didn't reopen until it was rescued by preservationists in 1982.

The years of neglect did their damage. And, though there have been extensive renovations to the Music Hall, including restoration of all the plaster and decorative molding, there is still a lot of work that has to be done.

The floors of the house, where the audience sits, have to be refinished.

The seats have a marvelous mechanism, so that, when the bottom of each is raised, the back tilts, giving more aisle room, but they have to be updated. They need widening for the expanding girth of modern audiences and padding to the cushions.

"I don't remember the seats being quite so hard when I was in high school," said Tony Buba, of Braddock Hills, a filmmaker and Braddock native who was honored before the Oct. 6 performance with a reception.

The auditorium is being used these days. The Ben Fairless School held its student concert there in the spring. The Woodland Hills Alumni Foundation held its cabaret in the hall, and, for the past few years, there has been an annual gospel festival on the stage.

"It's acoustically perfect," Ms. Boos said of the Music Hall.

Ms. Boos, 44, of Squirrel Hill, checked out the location for the show after being contacted by Vicki Vargo, executive director of the Braddock Carnegie Library, whose brother is a friend of a friend of Ms. Boos'.

Quantum Theater is not based in a theater. It uses unique spaces such as warehouses for its productions, most recently, Mellon Park, to stage "The Crucible." Ms. Boos said she went to Braddock to see the library, knowing she wanted the company to do a production of "After Mrs. Rochester" but not having a space for it.

"I decided on the play and was looking for the place," she said. "I walked in and said, 'Oh, my God.' "

The play tells the story of the life of Jean Rhys, an author who essentially locked herself away from the world for 15 years before publishing her novel, "Wide Sargasso Sea," at the age of 76.

"People thought she was dead," Ms. Boos said.

The Braddock Carnegie Library and Music Hall had been slated for demolition before being saved.

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Quantum Theatre is making use of the Music Hall in Braddock's Carnegie Library for the production. Click photo for larger image.

"This play is a metaphoric match for this library," Ms. Boos said.

"It's great to have this space used," Ms. Vargo said. "I think it's brought a lot of people here who normally wouldn't come to this area or this building."

Braddock Mayor John Fetterman said the show proved what he has been saying all along: "If you give people a reason to come out to Braddock, they do."

The use of the stage also has brought some professional insight into the renovations, which currently are stalled but might be revived if the library can match a $20,000 grant by December.

Ms. Boos said the stage was too low for theater, which meant the set designer had to raise its floor two feet. Other than that, she said, the hall is warm and inviting and the perfect size.

At the end of the show, when the lights come up and audience members rise to their feet as the performers take their bows, there's a sound in that hall that was once lost to the years: that of many hands clapping in the Music Hall of the Carnegie Library of Braddock.

"After Mrs. Rochester" runs through Sunday For tickets, call 412-394-3353.