Arts A Q&A with the guy who’s out there painting the exterior of Annex Theatre’s new digs…
posted by on August 29 at 16:15 PM
…who, it turns out, happens to be Chris Comte, a frequent Slog commenter. We’d never met. He’s the facilities manager and communication coordinator for Annex.
Annex was sort of homeless there for a while. How does it feel not to be homeless anymore?
Well, we’ve been at CHAC for the last two years…
Yeah, but as a theater company you’ve been sort of couch surfing. Is it nice to have a place all your own?
It’s a bigger space and we’ll have more control over it. We can do more programming. Our schedule can be more flexible. The opportunity came up [after their CHAC lease expired] so we decided to see if we could come up with more money to take over this space and managed to do so. We’ll be doing Spin the Bottle [a late-night salon Annex has been doing for years] the first Friday of September, so that’ll be our first show in the space.
Who painted that big logo?
That was made by our graphic designer, Scott Robertson.
Why so much black?
Because it’s cheap and it’s easy, it’s easy to keep clean. Eventually we want to put up an actual marquee, but there are a lot of other things we want to do inside the space first. As facilities manager I wanted something that looked clean and unified.
You think this new location—Pike and 11th—will be good for Annex?
Oh I think it’s a great location. I mean, look at it. It’s one of the most active corners on Capitol Hill right now. There’s going to be a lot of people moving into the neighborhood in the next few years and they’re going to be looking for things to do.
Are you wearing sunscreen?
Nah, I never wear sunscreen. Well, maybe put a little on the tattoos. But that’s it.
You forgot to mention "patron of the arts and all-around stand-up guy."
Comte!!! I dream of the day when I run into other Slog commenters and get to have an awkward conversation about it.
In other news though, Wear Sunscreen. Skin cancer is gross.
Fortunately, my mongrelized genetic make-up gives me pretty good protection from most cancers, including melanomas. Heart disease, however, is a different matter entirely.
And didn't we-all talk about doing a SLOG Meet-Up a while back? Nothing ever came of it, but I still think it's a good idea.
And thanks for the props FB.
Check out Annex's upcoming season at www.annextheatre.org!
COMTE - I remember that! It was about to go off, at Kincora or something, and i went under the knife and was OUT for a while and assumed i had missed it. Let's fire that up again if for no other reason than we can ALL MEET FNARF! C'mon folks, you know you want to.
I nominate Mr. Poe to put it together since he seems to have a lot of free time on his hands. Come to think of it, if we had Poe and Fnarf in the same room there might be a spontaneous supernova.
And BTW, here's what the building looks like now.
A definite improvement.
So, if the Annex was homeless, does that mean it was in Fremont for a while, like the rest who were kicked out of Downtown by the Mayor?
In fact Will, we did do a show, Paul Mullin's "An American Book Of The Dead: The Gameshow", along with a late-night "Principia Discordia" in Fremont at the old Empty Space Theatre back in 2004.
Before moving into CHAC in 2005, we also did shows at Theatre Off Jackson, at The Rendezvous, at the now-defunct Union Garage, at Seattle Mime Theatre, and at Richard Hugo House, hence Mr. Frizzelle's reference to "couch surfing".
When I moved here from Pittsburgh I heard there's a lot of alternative theatre and the freak scene is alive and well at places like Pony.
Lucky for me my condo is about four blocks from this cool nightlife. I'm going to check out the Annex with the guys from my software project carpool!
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