Complex sentence: The ASF began in 1972 as a summer-stock theater project in Anniston; its first performance was in an old high school auditorium, before a single critic and his wife; the critic considered the performance very poor and predicted that the ASF would not survive.
Split into simpler sentences: The ASF began in 1972 as a summer-stock theater project in Anniston. Its first performance was in an old high school auditorium, before a single critic and his wife; the critic considered the performance very poor and predicted that the ASF would not survive.