Theater resurging on Capitol Hill

Given half a chance, theater people can turn a concrete bunker into a playhouse.

A bunker is pretty much what you get today if you enter the storefront marked Balagan Theatre at Pike Street and 12th Avenue, on Capitol Hill.

Be patient. The fledgling troupe is in the early throes of creating this new home in 3,000 square feet of raw space, within a new condo-retail complex.

They didn't even have time to build proper dressing rooms before last weekend's opening of their first show at the site — the Caryl Churchill play, "Cloud 9."

But the Balagan tribe has ambitious plans for the facility, which is another sign of a surprisingly robust resurgence of fringe theater on Capitol Hill.

A district long hospitable to hip and young, gay and straight, artists and dreamers, Capitol Hill sheltered the Empty Space Theatre in its fabled 1970s and '80s heyday. Since then, it has never lost its theater mojo entirely.

But as the city prospered from dot-com riches in the 1990s, fringe theaters found it tougher to stake out turf. Capitol Hill rents rose, occupancy was high and the city cracked down on fire-code violations in small venues.

Now there's a frenzy of condo-building across Seattle, displacing many low-budget arts outfits.

Yet within a few blocks of Balagan Theatre alone, you'll find affordable, well-produced shows at the newish Capitol Hill Arts Center and Lee Center for the Arts (at Seattle University), the recently transplanted Annex Theatre and such ongoing live venues as Richard Hugo House, Odd Duck Studio and the Oddfellows Hall building, home to Velocity and Freehold and other spaces.

"It's thrilling for us to locate here," says Jake Groshong, coexecutive director of Balagan Theatre, a company that only began in 2006. "It's like we found a place at the epicenter of fringe theater."

And the cost? "We looked at a bunch of places around the city. And the rent here is unbelievably affordable given the location."

Well-chosen opener

Though Balagan is the new kid on the block, "Cloud 9," Churchill's lusty, seriocomic exploration of class, race, family dynamics and erotic identity, is selling nicely.

Some pacing is off in Mark Pinkosh's staging. And some performances (especially those bending genders) are thumpingly broad as actors tackle characters who start out the play in 19th-century colonial Africa, then time-travel to modern-day London.

But there are strong turns by Samara Lerman (as a sexual rebel, and later an in-flux academic); Lee Morris (as a pair of confused husbands); and Juniper Berolzheimer (as a pair of repressed grandmothers).

And given the Balagan's new location (next door to a gay-community center), the work is well-chosen. If not so provocative as it once was, Churchill's 1979 script still incites laughter and thoughtful discussion.

As Balagan settles into its new digs, it is being cheered on by neighbors.

"It's good for us to have them here, and I want to see more theaters," says Matthew Kwatinetz, arts activist and producing artistic director of Capitol Hill Arts Center. "Let's make the Pine-Pike Corridor the new Off-Broadway! It's tough running a small theater, but we've got a bunch of people here who are working hard at it, and are very smart about it."

Culture's appeal

But why Capitol Hill, and why now? "There's incentive for condo-builders and developers up here to fill their empty spaces with cultural amenities," Kwatinetz suggests. "But as time goes on, we may lose groups once developers can get in higher-paying tenants."

The cruel irony: A lively cultural scene usually helps lure in upscale renters and condo buyers. And that raises property values. We've seen it before: Belltown's hearty fringe drama scene in the early 1990s was squeezed out by gentrification. And the pattern is being repeated now in the South Lake Union area, as new condos and office complexes multiply.

Kwatinetz wants to enlist Balagan in an effort to sustain Capitol Hill's theater boomlet. With civic arts officials, artists and arts producers, he is taking part in Creative Conversation, a project initiated by the national advocacy group Americans for the Arts. The program brings together "emerging arts leaders" in the city, to brainstorm policies that will help preserve arts activity in Seattle's swiftly changing landscape.

"We need developers to realize it's great to invest in cultural amenities," says Kwatinetz. "But building ownership also is a very big key to preserving culture — ownership of buildings by arts groups, or entities like the city and county."

Currently Groshong and his Balagan comrades are busier with here-and-now concerns such as building dressing rooms and classrooms (for acting classes), than with the future.

"Just for us to be up here on Capitol Hill," says Groshong, with the ardor of many a young theater hand, "is so exciting."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com