Covid Safe(r) Seating

After hearing from many community members, and in an effort to more closely align with our values around equity and access, we are creating more accessible seating for our 24/25 Season. This is specifically to create risk reduction and access for vulnerable community members through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

This season, we’re thrilled to not only meet those needs but also to set a new standard for safety. We’re partnering with the Pacific Northwest’s own Clean Air Events to introduce premium Far-UVC clean air technology which safely inactivates 99.9% of airborne pathogens and will be used at our opening night performances. We are proud to provide this cutting-edge technology that represents a significant advancement in air purification, safety, and used here in application as a world’s first. Our goal is to receive grant funding for permanent installation.

In addition, audiences can expect:

  • Thursday night performances will offer COVID Safe(r) Seating, with the back 1/3 of the 300-seat theater blocked off as a mask-required section.

  • The accessible section can accommodate ~20 audience members, allowing more space between seats.

  • Performances with non-traditional seating (Timothy White Eagle - Indian School and Paul Budraitis - I Love That For You) will offer Wednesday dress rehearsal tickets for attendance at a discounted rate. E-mail boxoffice@ontheboards.org for tickets.

  • The theater offers 2 HVAC systems with MERV 13 filters, and Brisk Box portable filters will be placed throughout the designated section.

  • We have an in-house Aranet reader and will share data as the season progresses.

  • There is a separate, mobility device-accessible entrance for those who prefer to avoid our raucous lobby while accessing their seats.

  • There will be a mobility device-accessible bathroom available that is not used by the general public.

Note: Artists with shows that have non-traditional seating have agreed to make their dress rehearsals Covid Safe(r) and therefore available for attendance at a discounted rate.

Read more about our COVID-19 policies here.

The Javaad Alipoor Company

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Covid Safe(r) Performance: September 12, 2024 | 8pm
West Coast Premiere

Internationally renowned British-Iranian artist, Javaad Alipoor, takes you on a wild ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and murder mystery podcasts. This interdisciplinary work sorts through the tangle of digital information about the mysterious murder of an Iranian pop icon to reveal the limits of search engines in this post-colonial world.

Mouthwater Festival

Vanessa Hernández Cruz

October 10, 2024 | 8pm
Presented in partnership with Velocity Dance Center

Mouthwater Festival is a 3-week, city-wide fringe festival of Disability arts, with 26 events including meals, movement workshops, parties, artist socials, and performances! This is a mask-required show with heightened air purification. Tickets can be purchased on a sliding scale through Velocity Dance Center. Far UVC may not be available for this performance.

Timothy White Eagle

Indian School

Covid Safe(r) Dress Rehearsal: November 13, 2024 | 7pm*
Avant Premiere

Timothy White Eagle, a Seattle-based visual and performance artist, returns to OtB to present a deeply personal performance about displacement and identity, tracing the impact of America's history of cultural genocide. Through it, he confronts trauma, celebrates resilience, and emphasizes the importance of reclaiming Indigenous experiences.

*This is a non-traditional seating performance, Covid Safe(r) dress rehearsals tickets are available for attendance at a discounted rate.

Juni One Set: Degenerate Art Ensemble with Senga Nengudi and yuniya edi kwon

Boy mother / faceless bloom

Covid Safe(r) Performance: December 12, 2024 | 8pm
West Coast Premiere

Threading mythology and autobiography, while drawing from the diverse lineages of queer, anti-colonial, and care-based artistic practices, Boy mother / faceless bloom tells a story of transformation, transgression, and the formation of new transcestral lines.

Paul Budraitis

I Love That For You

Covid Safe(r) Dress Rehearsal: January 15, 2025 | 7pm*
West Coast Premiere

Berlin-based theater artist Paul Budraitis returns to Seattle, his once long-time home, to share this intimate, honest, and deeply moving performance. It’s a community offering that invites the audience to notice what death can teach us in hopes of generating more life from the lives we are already living.

*This is a non-traditional seating performance, Covid Safe(r) dress rehearsals tickets are available for attendance at a discounted rate.

Shamel Pitts | TRIBE

BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon

Covid Safe(r) Performance: February 6, 2025 | 8pm
West Coast Premiere

Deeply inspired and infused by the spirit of Afrofuturism, this contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk combines dance, original sound, video projection, and light design in a tale of vitality and tenderness, darkness and light, personal growth and collective empowerment. Co-created by the award-winning movement artist Shamel Pitts and his Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE, it marks the final installment in the BLACK Series triptych.

Dynasty Handbag

Titanic Depression

Covid Safe(r) Performance: March 27, 2025 | 8pm

This hilarious reimagining of the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic stars Dynasty Handbag - the peerlessly subversive, wacky, and dystopian alter ego of LA-based artist Jibz Cameron. The performance wields animation, soundscapes and a stunning video backdrop by filmmaker Mariah Garnett to address issues of class, mortality and runaway consumer-driven climate disaster.

Miguel Gutierrez

Super Nothing

Covid Safe(r) Performance: May 1, 2025 | 8pm
Commission

How can a dance speak to the overwhelming and constant grief that undergirds our lives? This is one of many questions raised in the latest work by the award-winning bicoastal multimedia artist, Miguel Gutierrez. Thinking about movement in both the dance and geographic sense of the word, Super Nothing engages with our ideas about place/home, time, history, and the strengths and failings of “community.”

dani tirrell

Leviticus or Love and to walk amongst HUMANS! Book II

Site-specific outdoor performance at Kubota Gardens: May 29 - 31, 2025
Commission & World Premiere, presented in partnership with CD Forum and Velocity Dance Center

Seattle’s legendary dancer/choreographer dani tirrell brings the club to heaven in the second installment of the widely acclaimed Leviticus or Love project. Centering around Black and brown bodies leaving this world and entering the "afterlife," this performance transforms the Kubota Garden into a divine landscape to imagine what utopia would look like if Black bodies were free to imagine.

NW New Works 2025

Covid Safe(r) Performances in the Merrill Wright Mainstage Theater: June 13-14, 2025

NW New Works returns by popular demand to showcase the most daring, cutting-edge performances in our region once again!

Subscribers receive early access to secure their seats!