Walking down Lincoln Avenue one afternoon in 1969, he wandered into a doorway where he found a group of actors in rehearsal for a play. Thinking he was there to audition, Chicago City Players director June Pyskacek asked him to join in. He did and sometime later, when the group was tossing around various new names for their company, Wallace suggested Kingston Mines, a small town in Illinois where his grandfather and father had once worked. It stuck and the Kingston Mines, in addition to launching the mega hit “Grease,” was an essential part of the off-Loop theater landscape in its formative years.