Merely days after returning to Seattle in late Feb ‘04, fresh from a few years in my hometown of Tel Aviv, my dad suggested we attend a special one night only aerial ecdysiasts extravaganza hosted by Tamara the Trapeze Lady and held in the main ConWorks theater stage.

Oh, man. The space was amazing but the crowd was what really sealed the deal. Loud, rowdy, cheerin’ hooting’ hollerin’ n’ altogether whoopin’ it up for the performers and the unaware.

Since then, I’ve done my best to attend the shows that promised to involve the zaniest performers and wildest audiences. ConWorks hasn’t let me down yet.

Of course, I’ve avoided quite a bit of their duller, more standard gallery fare programming, and the financial and artistic management upheaval that went down a few years ago knocked some of my enthusiasm a notch or two down. But for an artistic mixed-media space, it’s pretty hard to beat.