Northwest Film Forum has formally vacated the Little Theatre on 19th Avenue for a new cinema in the Pike/Pine corridor, and a fledgling theater collective is rushing in to fill the vacuum. In a city where tiny theater companies proliferate and small performance venues are hotly pursued and closely regulated, Washington Ensemble Theatre is making a gutsy move by claiming a theater of its own before staging its first production. But WET, composed of 11 recent MFA and BA graduates of the illustrious University of Washington drama department, seems to have some high-profile friends behind the scenes.

WET's inaugural season includes the October premiere of Laura's Bush, the racy new play by Pulitzer finalist Jane Martin, the very likely pseudonymous playwright. (Martin's 2001 play Good Boys comes to ACT this September under the not-entirely-coincidental direction of UW drama professor and former Actors Theatre of Louisville artistic director Jon Jory.) This absurdist political satire is about a librarian who, upon realizing the First Lady has been blinking Morse code distress signals in all of her public appearances, hatches an elaborate rescue plan; the play will receive concurrent productions in San Francisco and New Jersey leading up to the election in November.

Adam Rapp's slacker play Finer Noble Gases, directed by ensemble member Marya Sea Kaminski, will come to WET in December, and the season will wrap up with the original projects Next Tuesday in February and Handcuff Girl Saves the World in May.

The Little Theatre opened its doors under the WET aegis for the first time last Monday for a neighborly "Friend-Raiser." Additional events are sure to follow in the coming months as the collective resolves its pending nonprofit status and assembles a board.

annie@thestranger.com