Publically dormant since November, Strawshop has been scrambling to secure a facility for its plays that is comfortable, affordable, and large enough to house the company’s growing audiences.  Strawshop received a grant from the Boeing Theatre Initiative to produce a series of plays based on the radical lives of real people.  The series—under the title Biograph—was launched with Brecht’s Life of Galileo last fall, which Strawshop produced in collaboration with students and faculty at Seattle University.

The series has since been on hiatus while Artistic Director Greg Carter has attempted to find a home that Strawshop’s audience could count on for at least a year.  That has proven difficult.  In 2007/08, Capitol Hill has lost all three of its primary rental venues capable of holding 100-150 patrons: Richard Hugo House (which ended its rental program), Freehold Studio Lab (who left Odd Fellows Hall after a prohibitive rent increase), and Capitol Hill Arts Center (who will move out of its 12th Ave space in June).

Strawshop’s answer for the next two parts of Biograph is a rental agreement with the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway—the newly renovated home of drama at Seattle Central Community College.  Located on Harvard Ave around the corner from the Egyptian Movie Theatre on Pine Street, the Erickson was the home of Strawshop’s summer fundraiser in 2007 (featuring “Awesome”) and is available for two plays in summer 2008.

The next chapter of Biograph is Leni—a two-woman dialogue based on the life of the pioneering German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.  Alexandra Tavares and Amy Thone (another 2007 Stranger Genius) play two parts of the same character in the Seattle premiere of this play by Sarah Greenman.  Directed by founding Board member Rhonda J Soikowski, Leni plays July 11-August 9.

Tracking the Presidential Election, Strawshop will remount its innovative look at the writing, drawing, and music of American folk artist Woody Guthrie in the fall.  A play for puppets and actors, This Land was the inaugural production of Strawberry Theatre Workshop in 2004, just as the Kerry/Bush campaign was speeding to its conclusion.  Fueled by Guthrie’s enduring faith in people and the promise of American democracy, This Land again promises a cathartic way to celebrate political change.  Directed by Greg Carter, This Land runs just four weeks, September 4-September 28, and will followed by an Election Night Hootenanny at Northwest Film Forum, November 4.

Scheduled for 2009 are three additional Biograph works: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill (a fantasized final club concert by Billie Holiday); The Elephant Man (the trials of the legendary John Merrick); and Breaking the Code (the infamous downfall of Alan Turing, British war hero and proud defender of personal choice).

Strawshop’s dedication to providing dignified wages for actors, directors, and designers is undermined if the company can only do work in venues where capacity is too small to break even or conditions are too compromised to ask more than a token price at the door.

The fact that Strawshop is finding quality facilities tied to colleges is perhaps a sign of the future.  As traditional infrastructure is removed, the organizations that are in the worst position to replace it—growth organizations like Strawshop or the newly announced New Century Theatre Company—are trapped in the underclass.  Shared facilities and co-producing relationships (like the one that created Galileo) may be a viable answer.  Unfortunately, spaces like the Erickson are available on a very limited basis, and may remain so unless the schools involved see a clear benefit to the collaboration.

The region’s declining business market for mid-range professional theatre (high-lighted by the closure of the Empty Space Theatre in 2006) threatens to leave Seattle as a two-horse town—where theatre is performed either by the five major regional houses, or is performed by volunteers.  Seattle hasn’t added to its inventory of living-wage resident theatre companies in more than thirty years (Seattle Children’s Theatre, 1975), and yet a dozen companies who aspired to backfill the market have come and gone.

In the midst of clarifying its space issue, Strawshop has been busy solidifying its business future.  This spring, the company nearly doubled the size of its Board, worked to recruit corporate sponsors for its pay-what-you-can outreach performances, and secured funding from Cornish College and 4Culture to complete the Biograph series.

Biograph is Strawshop’s next foot forward—offering roles of lifetime for some of the great actors in its community; reviving neglected lives from forgotten history.