This morning, Theater Schmeater artistic director Douglas Staley sent out a press release saying the company would start looking for a new place to make theater.

Which means this run of The Twilight Zone: Live! will be your last chance one of your last chances to see a show in the subterranean venue that, in Seattle, has become synonymous with the term "basement fringe theater." (This summer's Game Show will be the final production in Schmeater's current space.)

The recent departure of the Brocklind's costume shop upstairs is the issue. In a subsequent email, Staley explained that the theater and the store had "a symbiotic relationship" because they had different business hours, so there were never noise problems. Now the upstairs space is going to house a restaurant and bar, and the theater ceiling is already so low, it can't build in sound muffling (which probably would only be marginally effective anyway).

"We are already at about 8'2" at the bottom of the cross supports," Staley wrote. "Putting in a ceiling and bringing down all of our lights means some of them will be maybe less than 7' from the floor. That precludes using any risers for the audience, or casting anyone over 5'6". Our light designers make miracles but that really is more than I could ask for."

But the future isn't all gloomy. He added:

We don’t have any debt, we have some cash, and, I think the good will of the theater community. Hunters Capital (the new owners of the building) is helping us out by letting us stay for awhile to give us time to determine our future, which is invaluable. They don't like seeing us go, as one of their goals is to restore buildings and keep the hill an active thriving part of the city. Next time you go by the place notice how good the building looks. There is no one to blame, unless you want to blame the pour guy who designed the building in the 1920s and didn't plan for a theater and restaurant to live in the same building at the same time in 2013. That, or the theater gods are telling us it's time to move on, to evolve into our next manifestation. I’m thinking it's a little of both.

I saw The Twilight Zone: Live! last weekend and it was a fun, light diversion full of folks who were clearly big TZ:L! fans, hooting and hollering and getting all boozed up throughout the three episodes. (One was about some astronauts whose ship crash-lands in a hostile environment, the second was about a small town living at the mercy of a psychic boy who can kill you with his mind if you think unhappy thoughts, and the third was about a drunken Santa Claus who experiences a Christmas miracle.) If you ever had a soft spot in your heart for "the Schmee," see the show and pay your respects.

I'll be sorry to say goodbye to that basement stage and the two concrete support columns in its center that have bedeviled set designers for over 20 years. Like all theaters, it saw some successes and some failures, but we've had some good times together.

Good luck in your search for a new home, Theater Schmeater.