The Satori Group's Artifacts of Consequence Playing This Weekend

I was hoping to have finished writing up a long interview with director Andrew Lazarow about this today, but as that looks like it won't quite happen, let me just throw it out there: the Satori Group's Artifacts of Consequence opened last night at the Little Theatre on Capitol Hill, and you should absolutely go see it. It plays Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., tickets $12-$15.

First of all, the play itself is amazing. Written by Ashlin Halfnight and debuted by NYC's Electric Pear Productions only this last April, Artifacts of Consequence is a bit of a love story wrapped in philosophical conundrum: namely, what are the products of a culture that are worth preserving?

Set in an underwater museum and research facility in some sort of likely post-apocalyptic future, the story follows a group of people whose jobs it is to determine what products from contemporary society are worth saving with their limited resources. The NY Times called the play "deliriously imaginative," and that's a fair summation.

The second reason to go see it is the company itself. Satori Group is a company of eleven theatre artists who moved to Seattle en masse a couple years ago. They're unusually rigorous and devoted to their work. While Artifacts is only the second show they've produced in Seattle (the first was last year's Tragedy: a tragedy), they've actually workshopped out a half-dozen or so more. The interview with Artifact's director and company member Andrew Lazarow will go much deeper into the company's process, but for my money, Satori Group should be a model for contemporary experimental theatre companies.