Theres now gonna be a lot more room in Pocket Theaters pockets.
For those who are keeping tabs on which small but vital theater companies are operating out of which venues: Pocket Theater has more room in its pockets now.

You know Inscape Arts, that humongous high school-type building that used to be the old INS building where Satori Group put on intense and challenging productions such as reWilding, Microdramas, Returning to Albert Joseph, and Spookhaus for the last three years? Well, Clayton Weller and his Pocket Theater will be taking over the theater space in there—the LAB@Inscape—lights, sound equipment, chairs, and all. Weller's company will take over the space on June 1 of this year and will operate as The Slate Theater.

Satori is (and has been for a while) adopting a project-based model, they don't want to program a space, and so they don't really have much use for LAB@Inscape anymore. Clare Strasser, Managing Director for Satori, told me that the company wants to be able to put more resources into its projects, and "especially into the artists who are working on them."

Strasser said it was important for Satori that the space remained a resource for Seattle theater, so, when they knew they weren't going to renew their lease, they started looking around for other companies who might be interested in assuming the lease. Weller popped his head up, said hi, and now he's got the space to fill.

Pocket and Satori will host a party on April 1 to celebrate the transition, look back on old times, and look forward into the future. You should definitely go, if only so you can wander into that weird room on the west side of the building and wave at that creepy/cute line of maneki-neko sculptures and check out all the b-movie fantasy posters. But mostly you should go for those first reasons I mention, and to celebrate a theater company making an effort to keep theater spaces theater spaces.