The Speakeasy's Back Room Lounge
A Community Crossroads for the Arts

by Laura Lee Bennett
Free Press Contributor


Located just up from street level on Second and Bell, the Speakeasy Cafe occupies a space that was once a warehouse for Sur La Table, and before that a taxicab port. The creaky wooden floors and sloping ramps, as well as the loud thudding and rolling from countless dropped cue balls upstairs at the 211 Club, attest to the building's age and charm. Once inside, though, you find yourself in the "Belltown Computer Patch"-Belltown's own neighborhood cyber cafe. The language of the Internet is spoken here.

The atmosphere may be offputting at first. On any given night, the bank of computers on the lefthand wall of the cafe is filled with people intently surfing the net. It is Seatlle's premiere cyber cafe, and it may be the only place in town where cyberspace and the more traditional aspects of a community center successfully coexist. If you continue to look around the room, you'll see people reading the paper, eating Italian sandwiches and drinking espresso; people smoking, drinking wine, reading, talking. In the area called the Living Room, someone might be sitting at the grand piano, or standing absorbed with the art that hangs from the walls. And, if you're really paying attention, your listening gaze will wander toward the true heart of the Speakeasy phenomenon: the Back Room.
Seated in The Back Room is
David Russell & Tina LaPadula.
The Back Room is the brainchild of playwright/musician David Russell and actress/photographer Tina LaPadula. Over the last two years at the Speakeasy - billed by its owners as an "information trading post" - these two have balanced the Internet activity in the cafe by carefully cultivating interdisciplinary performances in the Back Room. "We saw that people [in the various arts communities] were in very small camps, and we thought it would be nice to break down those barriers," says Russell. This was even evident by the myriad contacts the two had with local presses, TV, and radio: there was a different reviewer or calendar contact for each "act" - one for dance, one for film and video, one for music, one for poetry. Russell and LaPadula decided they wanted to try to break up the cliques. "We're trying to give...a macro view of the arts. We want to build a larger sense of community."

Thus the Back Room space - complete with proscenium, movie screen, cloth-covered high-backed stools (risers were too bulky), and full sound and light systems - has become host to a number of first-time events as well as ongoing, regularly scheduled events.

An example of the former is last October's festival of East German "Indianerfilme," westerns filmed in the unlikely locales of Yugoslavia, Romania, East Germany, the Soviet Union, and Cuba - films never seen before on this side of the Berlin Wall. The screening of two of these films, Die Sohne der Grossen Barin (The Sons of Great Bear) and Apachen (Apaches), sparked a lively dialogue after the show on the portrayals of Native Americans in popular culture. Jens Wazel, producer of the Wild East Goes West project, praises Russell and the rest of the Speakeasy staff for being so "accomodating," and credits them in part for the series' success across the US. He plans to return to the Speakeasy this year with another East German film fest. Stay tuned for his website, which will be at http://www.speakeasy.org/wildeast/.

The physical dimensions of the space have also compelled artists to try their hand at short works designed within constaints similar to those used in On The Board's 12 Minutes Max series. Three Knocks and a Whistle, for example, a quarterly weekend series curated by Russell, LaPadula, and choreographer Crispin Spaeth, brings ten-minute monologues, musical works coupled with dance, and film and video shorts to the scene. the success of Three Knocks in particular attests to the fluid exchange of ideas and resources possible when artists start talking. Russell says that the artists often sit around afterward and give each other constructive feedback, in effect creating an artists' cross-cultural workshop.

Still other groups use the Back Room for civic events (for example, an open discussion forum with Jim McDermott), children's classes (Puget Sound Community School's monthly sleepover), and offbeat retreats, such as April's four-day CIA Film Festival and Fundraiser, featuring "the greatest compilation of documentary and video tape on the CIA and covert operations ever shown in one place."

Every month there are changes to the Back Room calendar (for example, May and June introduces Cold Water Waltz, a multimedia presentation of film, live music, and silent-movie-style acting on the sinking of the Titanic). But the following organizations call the Back Room home; you can find them there come rain or shine:

Other arts groups that perform at the Back Room on an ongoing but less frequent basis:

Russell and LaPadula are unflagging in their philosophy; they are always open to new ideas, and to individuals and organizations who "are committed to excellence and prepared to self-produce," Says Russell, "Basically, we want to tell them: 'Here's the room, we like what you do, here are the parameters. We trust you.'" Most of all, as curators and as artists, they want to develop lasting relationships with the artists and groups who use their space. One-night stands sometimes do happen, but they are not encouraged. You will not see, for ecample, big name acts coming to town and bumping performers out of their slots in the Back Room's calendar.

In the world of the Internet, a community has formed which presumable does not recognize gender, race, handicap, or creed - only mind. Often I envision that world as one huge, dark continent, rippling with mystery, danger, tropical fever; runners carry torches from village to village, lighting the darkness. Those runners are the purveyors of the Web, but they are also the local heroes, diehard artists and activists who do not see the death of communication and community through cyberspce. Instead, they insist on creating a venue (village) that allows communication in one of its most powerful forms: performance.

David Russell and Tina LaPadula are two such torch-bearers. Russell points out that the Speakeasy's symbol on the Internet is a radio tower - a beacon in the dark night, something that radio and TV were "supposed to be."



Sampling Seattle's Relaxed and Intimate
"Cross-cultural" Performance Venues

  • Speakeasy Back Room, 2304-2nd Ave., David Russell, Tina LaPadula,
    curators (206) 726-3927. Checkout the Speak Easy on-line calendar.

  • New City Theater, 1634-11th Ave. (at Olive). Alternative opera, music,
    readings. May 13 is Colleen McElroy and Charles d'Ambrosio; June 9 is Chris Mazza
    and Stacey Levine. Contact Matthew Stadler (206) 323-6800.

  • Red Sky Poetry Theater, Seattle's longest-running open mike venue,
    currently hosts readings every Sunday evening at the Globe Cafe on Capitol Hill,
    14th Ave. E. near Madison. In May they play host to Small Press Fest, readings and
    discussions from the likes of Subtext, Point No Point, and Real Change. Contact
    Elliott Bronstein (206) 547-4585.

  • Sit and Spin, 4th Ave. at Bell, primarily books musical acts in its back
    room, but hosts a "Fuckall" open mike the first Wednesday of every month. "Not
    always refined, but definitely entertaining." Contact Todd Harmon (206) 441-9484.




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Contents this page were published in the May/June, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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