I walked into the office of Theatre Puget Sound with one simple question: Why was their slogan for Live Theater Week "See Your Life on Stage"? It's a terrible line. People flee to movies, galleries, and theater to escape their lives, not see them reproduced. The slogan might as well be: Theater—It's as Boring as You Are.

The TPS office looked like any other but felt as tense and busy as a war room. "Sorry for the disarray," said Noel Franklin, one of the three staff members, apologizing for a nonexistent mess. "We're in the middle of a lot." A lot, in this case, means preparations for Seattle's second annual Live Theater Week. The first was a modest affair, but this year they've engineered a bigger campaign, with ads and bus placards and a Free Night of Theater, where people can sign up online for free tickets to the 5th Avenue (currently running Stephen Sondheim's Company), ACT (Steve Martin's The Underpants), Open Circle (H. P. Lovecraft adaptations, see review on the left), and 36 other participating theaters. (It's on October 19—see www.tpsonline.org for more information.)

The point is to raise the profile of the city's performance scene, to usher nontheatergoers through the door and show them what they're missing. The assumption being that they are, in fact, missing something, that there's a proscenium-shaped hole in their hearts that needs filling. That they choose to spend their evenings at movies or concerts or home playing Parcheesi because... Well, that ellipsis is the tricky part. Theater mandarins finish that sentence: "because they've been seduced by the baser pleasures of movies and Parcheesi." Populists say, "because most theater isn't worth the time and money." According to TPS Executive Director Karen Lane, it's "because they don't feel invited."

"Live Theater Week is about more than just getting butts in seats," she said intensely, sitting on the war-room couch with a cup of coffee. "I hate that phrase 'butts in seats.' It limits the relationship we have with the public to a ticket sale. If all we do is try to sell them a ticket, we are shirking our responsibilities as nonprofits." What other responsibilities do theaters have, other than to, you know, do theater? Lane smiled. "We have to get rid of our elitism. We have to reach out, to build bridges." Ergo: See Your Life on Stage.

But what does "build bridges" mean? Lane answered with more questions: "What's the point of putting a show up if the audience is just going to be 15 of the cast's friends?" and "How come people don't talk about theaters like they talk about sports teams? Why do we say our Mariners and not our Seattle Rep?"

I don't know, but the Free Night of Theater is a good place to start. Free days at museums—from the Smithsonian to MoMA—are usually full. Lane may see that as the mere equivalent of "butts in seats," but you don't know you've built a solid bridge until a stranger volunteers to walk across it.

brendan@thestranger.com