Former Odd Fellows tenant Freehold Theatre returns to the Hill to perform Julius Ceasar at the Broadway Performance Hall. Freehold relocated to Belltown in 2008, shortly after the Odd Fellows Building was sold and rents increased in the building.

Since leaving, Freehold spokesperson Kate Gavigan says that they haven’t burned any bridges. “A large number of our students are from Capitol Hill and it isn’t unusual for us to have shows [on Capitol Hill].” Before leaving in 2008, Freehold had been on the Hill for 17 years.

The Capitol Hill performances on Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday at 5:00 PM will conclude Freehold’s Engaged Theatre tour which focused on communities with little or no access to live theatre including correctional facilities, juvenile detention centers, and veteran’s hospitals. CHS is hoping Capitol Hill isn’t included in that list and, instead, makes a nice finishing point on the tour.

“We keep coming back to Shakespeare because his characters are complex, conflicted, contradictory human beings, in worlds that are every bit as challenging as our own,” said Gavigan.

Freehold wasn’t the only theatre displaced when the Odd Fellows sold. Macha Monkey, a performance troupe, also relocated along with Freehold after rents nearly doubled. This 2008 Seattle Times piece documents the transition arts groups faced in the wake of the building’s sale.