Source Space Survives
A deal has been made to keep D.C.'s Source Theater space open. In doing so, the company will die and the space will live on, which is as it should be.
Theater companies are transient, and should remain so. Theater is an ephemeral art form, and often the creation of a permanent home (something that many, many small companies aspire -- wrongly, in my opinion -- to have) dilutes the art in favor of the pressures of paying the rent.
As the recent frenzy of re-urbanization in America drives up real estate values and squeezes out the cultural institutions that made the real estate so valuable in the first place, we need to keep an eye on our remaining physical assets. Converting a building into a suitable performance venue is expensive and time-consuming. Fire codes, lighting requirements, occupancy permits, zoning issues... it's a royal pain.
And so, much as Seattle's CHAC has decided to eschew in-house theater production in favor of a rental model, the Source will serve as an asset that multiple theater companies can use when they need to. In the end, the arts community is better off, because it takes mere minutes to start a theater company (and minutes to end one), but years to build and develop a usable performance space.
Incidentally, it's important to keep this in mind as we debate the future of ConWorks.