December 18, 1983

THE proud citizens of Nebraska had come from all over to gather at Pershing Auditorium and honor Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney, their present and past heads of state. For this occasion, much like the last 22 years of football Saturdays at Memorial Stadium during which Osborne and Devaney have directed the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, nearly all of the citizens appeared in red. Scarlet, to be precise. They demonstrated their devotion in polyester and suede and silk. Dinner tables - row after row, the length of the arena floor - were filled with scarlet jackets, scarlet ties, scarlet sweaters, scarlet skirts and elegant scarlet dresses. There were about 3,200 admirers, including a governor, a senator, a congressman, a mayor, members of the Board of Regents, Bob Hope, the recorded, reverent voice of President Reagan, and 80 former players. ''The greatest panorama of Nebraska football lore ever assembled,'' the toastmaster told the crowd, and no one disagreed.

''In a good performance there is electricity between me and the audience,'' observes Natalia Makarova. ''I am almost like a magician,'' she says. ''I think about what I can do to thrill them. You know almost immediately if the audience is with you. All is up to you. When I feel that everyone is holding their breath waiting for me to move, I find it so inspiring. It helps my spirit. Sometimes you don't understand why that electricity isn't there. Sometimes your nerves go against you.''

Farce, it's said, is a dying form; and the reason for its disappearance from our stages is not hard to find. It cannot easily breathe in a permissive atmosphere. People don't often cram their lovers under beds or their mistresses into closets these days: they're more prone to introduce them to their spouses with a ''By the way dear, there's someone I'd like you to get to know.'' And that is bad, very bad for farce, which thrives on fear and dismay and worse. Ideally, it requires a sort of bug-eyed brinkmanship between panic and disaster.

In 1899, when the Bayard Building, the only New York City structure designed by the noted Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan, was completed at 65 Bleecker Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, its Greenwich Village setting was one of the city's most desirable commercial and residential areas. Regarded as a skyscraper at the time, the 13-story office building represented a contrast to other structures of its era with its open interior construction and organically ornamental cornice and facade.

WASHINGTON THE images of the past week tell the story. The battleship New Jersey firing its 16-inch guns into the Lebanese hills, the debris in the truck-bombed American compound in Kuwait, the concrete highway dividers being placed around the State Department in Washington and in front of the United States's Mission to the United Nations in New York. Violence is being answered not only with force but with anger, frustration and worry. With its massive firepower, the United States has tried to demonstrate that it cannot be run out of Lebanon. But the frantic efforts to protect Federal buildings against the possible spread of suicide bombings to this country contain another message: that the United States Government at home and its 260 missions overseas are vulnerable to terrorism.