| Beautiful 1920's vaudeville and movie theater located at 5th and Washington in downtown Olympia, Washington.
Currently run by the Olympia Film Society, it functions as the heart of a healthy art-house film community as well as playing host to live music and performances like "the Transfused".
Movies are shown in pairs as double features. Films are staffed by volunteers who recieve free passes to future events for their time. On weekends, live events are scheduled, most of these being Capitol Theater Backstage events, where live music is performed from the front of the stage facing towards the back of the theater. This allows for a crowd of up to about 400. Larger events are performed full stage in the normal theater orientation, and for standing crowds can accomodate 1000-1200 people.
In August the theater is the primary venue for the Olympia Film Festival, which runs 10 days and is one of the largest self-sufficient film festivals in the country. The film festival started in 1984 and has grown continuously ever since. One event which has exploded in recent years is "All Freakin' Night" where 5 (vaguely) horror films are shown starting at midnight, with verious goodies provided for folks who stay until the end. This became a sellout event in 1999 and an additional spring AFN is being planned.
In the 2001 earthquake the theater was damaged and has been closed. It is scheduled for reopening in April 2001.
(this is not a cut and paste node!)
(personal theater angst moment):
This is it. The heart of something you can't hope to understand and clearly don't want to. This is why something you call ugly is really beautiful.
This is the big black empty space behind a band I've never seen before and will never hear again. It's $5 to get in and it was $5 last week and believe it or not next week I'll pay the same. And that is the healthy part of your teen angst life and that is a wonderful thing which you will recall fondly, in the words of Bilbo Baggins, until the end of your days.
I remember the shocking moment when I discovered that in other cities, like Seattle, you don't run an art-house theater with volunteers who work for passes. And I remember All Freakin' Night when we stumbled over to the Reef after the longest Werner Herzog film ever and watched our friends enjoy 6am happy hour.
And yet all you can think about is how much you hate the fashion and how excluded you are by the hipsters who you would never want to be friends with anyway. Oh well. It's your loss, kid. | 
