Tag Archives: arts

Wa Na Wari plans ‘competitive bid’ as Central District home hits market

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“Stunning 1909 Craftsman” homes hitting the market at $1 million in the Central District aren’t that unusual but the real estate listing for a new property that went up for sale over the weekend is.

The glamour shot for 911 24th Ave includes a distinctive “HOOD CLOSED TO GENTRIFIERS” sign in the front yard. A closer look reveals the house is the home of Central District Black arts and community space Wa Na Wari.

“Inside, the light-filled living and dining room provides plenty of space for entertaining, with a gorgeous wood-burning fireplace and classic hardwood floors that are sure to delight,” the listing reads.

The organization tells CHS that all is well with the nonprofit and the sale is part of the process of settling the estate of the house’s longtime family ownership. Wa Na Wari plans to launch a competitive bid for the house, the longtime home of co-founder Inye Wokoma’s grandmother, Goldyne Green. Continue reading →

Now open: Black Arts Love ‘amplifying and uplifting’ on Capitol Hill

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(Image: Black Arts Love)

(Image: Black Arts Love)

The overhaul of Pagliacci’s Pike/Pine pizza headquarters has made new space for black art and community on Capitol Hill.

Black Arts Love — “a welcoming community space that is inclusive to all that support our mission of amplifying and uplifting black artists” — is now open in the 400 block of E Pike neighboring the Seattle pizza maker’s slice bar and “Center for Excellence” that opened in a 2020 overhaul of the company’s Capitol Hill headquarters.

The new venue is a mix of arts, retail, and community gathering from an organization that has grown through prop-up events and the leadership of founder Malika Bennett.

Bennett has said she created Black Arts Love out of a response to police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in 2016: Continue reading →

Capitol Hill literary nonprofit Hugo House ready for new chapter after years of conflict over diversity

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Hugo owns its ground floor “condo” space in the mixed-use building developed on the corner it has called home for decades (Image: Weinstein A+U)

Delgado (Image: Hugo House)

By Kali Herbst Minino

Hugo House, Capitol Hill’s literary nonprofit offering writing classes and events at its space across from Cal Anderson Park, has announced Diana Delgado as its new executive director. Delgado is Hugo House’s first permanent executive director since Tree Swenson, who resigned in February 2021 in response to a letter demanding her removal based on racial equity concerns. The new role begins in May, and Delgado will be managing a Hugo House that now employs about 15 people.

One of her first goals, she tells CHS, is to find ways she can make changes within staff culture, where she believes community starts.

“I’d like to begin with my staff and the people that we work with in trying to understand what our values and goals are together so we can move forward in solidarity,” Delgado told CHS.

It’s an appropriate time to re-establish those values and goals. Delgado is joining Hugo House at a moment of recovery in the writing center’s history. Continue reading →

In the spirit of 60 Minute Photo, you can now drop your film at this 14th Ave coffee shop

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It has been more than a decade since 60 Minute Photo, the last dedicated photo shop on Capitol Hill, wound up its final roll and made way for demolition and redevelopment on 14th Ave. One of the businesses that survived that 14th Ave change has added a new element that might be of interest to neighborhood shutterbugs.

There is now a new Moody’s Film Lab drop box inside the street’s Porchlight Coffee and Records shop. The box joins a collection point at Sonic Boom in Ballard as the brand new photographer-run company’s first as it grows a boutique drop-off and by-mail film development, printing, and more business in Seattle. Continue reading →

CHS /film-on-the-hill/ | Will The Nightmare Emporium Film Festival return from the dead on Capitol Hill?

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/film-on-the-hill/ is a new monthly or so Capitol Hill film column. Have ideas for future editions? Let us know in the comments.

By Kyler Knight

The Make Believe Seattle: A Genre Film Festival just finished its run on Capitol Hill. While the festival is a testament to the city’s pandemic recovery return to an exciting indie film exhibition scene. There will be room for more like The Nightmare Emporium, a collection of horror anthology short films which ran around Halloween for three years in Seattle’s Central District and Capitol Hill. From 2017 to 2019 the festival gave local filmmakers the chance to watch their short films on the big screen with an audience of like-minded horror fanatics and lovers of indie cinema.

How do these kinds of projects experience a resurrection — and come back from the dead?

While participating filmmakers were more or less given free reign to make their short films however they liked, there was one condition in order to tie all the wildly disparate narratives together: each short film had to utilize a specific prop like a baseball, a knife, or a pair of handcuffs. But these weren’t just random props per se. Narratively speaking, these were artifacts hand-picked from a decades-old collection of strange relics by the Nightmare Emporium’s host, a sinister Shopkeeper played by Mark Waldstein. Between each short film the Shopkeeper would set the stage by dusting off one of his oddities and presenting it to the viewer like the Creepshow Creep or the Crypt Keeper in Tales From The Crypt.

Speaking to Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, the festival’s founder Danny Cork said the idea for The Nightmare Emporium snowballed from what was originally a personal project. Continue reading →

2023 return of the Seattle Moisture Festival a reminder that Capitol Hill won’t have the Broadway Performance Hall forever

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(Image: Moisture Festival)

(Image: Moisture Festival)

As Capitol Hill hosts a new film festival this weekend, a familiar neighborhood visitor is also ready to take the stage. Seattle’s Moisture Festival kicks off its 2023 edition Thursday on the stage at the Broadway Performance Hall.

Moisture Festival presents high energy comedy/varieté shows featuring a rapid succession of acts showcasing comedy alongside awe-inspiring physical and mental dexterity, with amazing moments of strength and delicate beauty to make audiences laugh, wonder, shake their heads in disbelief and truly appreciate how live entertainment can exhilarate and bring real joy. A live show band propels each performance. Varieté has its roots in the Music Halls of 19th century England, cabaret in Europe and vaudeville in America. Because of the talented artists currently working in this genre, it is still fresh, exciting and tremendous fun for the audience.

Much of the opening weekend is already sold out — but the Moisture Festival’s stay on Broadway is a long affair with weeks of performances on tap through April 16th — that weekend, the Libertease burlesque shows join the lineup. Continue reading →

New Make Believe Seattle film festival will bring ‘the mysterious and fantastical’ to Capitol Hill screens

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Aliens Abducted My Parents

The long-running SIFF Seattle International Film Festival will return in May with screenings across the city including on Capitol HIll. In the meantime, a brand new film festival will debut this week in the neighborhood.

With screenings at SIFF Cinema Egyptian, Northwest Film Forum, West Hall at Century Ballroom, and Queer/Bar, The Make Believe Seattle Film Festival is a very Capitol Hill event.

“Genre film festivals thrive in highlighting the truly indescribable – telling stories that refuse to be contained within typical cinematic categories like comedy or drama, but that exist in the murky boundaries in-between,” Make Believe Seattle film programmer Kasi Gaarenstroom says about the new festival. “These stories push narratives and beliefs and are a catharsis to many that may not see themselves in mainstream media.” Continue reading →

Casting call: Seattle seeks first members for new Film Commission to bring more movie and TV projects to city

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I’ve never seen Sleepless in Seattle

Last year, the Seattle City Council created a new commission hoped to help attract new film, television, commercial, and streaming projects in the city.

Now the Seattle Film Commission is looking for its first members:

The Seattle Film Commission will be a diverse, 11-member group of film industry professionals representing 11 film-related disciplines. Continue reading →

After a pandemic pause, Seattle nomadic arts venue Love City Love is back with a stop on First Hill

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Thanks to a CHS reader for sending in this picture of the sign

Love City Love is back on the move with a new home on First Hill as the nomadic Seattle arts, music, and community venue awakens from a pandemic-induced hibernation.

“We’re moving forward and things are coming back,” founder Lucien Pellegrin tells CHS. “That was the only reason Love City Love paused. We would have been marching along the whole time.”

In appropriate fashion, the latest Love City Love incarnation will celebrate its opening with a Valentine’s Day party on February 14th.

As usual for the venue and its ability to make new gathering spaces in buildings slated for demolition or redevelopment, the terms of Love City Love’s stay on Seneca Street will be indefinite. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Intiman Theatre begins 50th year with partnership to stage exploration of race, class, and politics in Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’

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The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (Image: Intiman Theatre)

One year ago, Intiman Theatre was preparing for its first production in its new home on Capitol Hill. It begins its 50th season in February with a partnership to stage a powerful exploration of race, class, and politics.

Intiman Theatre and The Williams Project are co-producing The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window by Lorraine Hansberry and directed by Ryan Guzzo Purcell. This production marks the first time that Hansberry’s play will be professionally produced in the city of Seattle. The show is scheduled to run from February 7th to 25th at Harvard Ave’s Erickson Theatre as part of Intiman’s residency at Seattle Central College.

“In a lot of ways, it’s a play about the struggle between idealism and practicality,” said  director Ryan Guzzo Purcell. “How do you live your values and your ideals, and particularly, when you’re no longer young and in college?”

The Williams Project is a Seattle-based theater company that specializes in producing lesser-known works and re-imagining classics. Their mission is to create productions that are accessible to diverse audiences and to give a platform to underrepresented voices in the theater community. Continue reading →