Tacoma Beer Week 2025: Tacoma Arts Live in the Living Haus

*Katie Lappier, CEO of Education and Programs, and Josh Knudson, CEO of Management and Operations, are the Co-CEOs of Tacoma Arts Live. Photo courtesy of Facebook*

Tacoma Beer Week 2025: Tacoma Arts Live in the Living Haus

The allure of a closing curtain lies in the certainty of its return. However, for many theatres in America in the last couple of years, the curtains being drawn will never again rise. Since 2020, theaters, especially community theaters, have not thrived. In just one day, the world changed when COVID-19 hit the stage. Theaters shut down, and everything was done remotely—classes, lessons, and even performances. While the economy bounced back, theatres didn’t. Post-COVID, many theatergoers shifted priorities, scared of contracting something sitting so close to others. If you remove passionate theatergoers who helped to sponsor and keep a theatre running, it will be difficult for those theatres to try and remain open. Tacoma arts groups are struggling to keep the curtain up, including Tacoma Arts Live, Tacoma’s longtime non-profit arts organization formerly known as the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts. Since Peaks & Pints hosts fundraisers as our Tacoma Beer Week 2025 events, we’re pouring it forward for Tacoma Arts Live, or TAL, at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 6. Living Haus Beer from Portland, Oregon, will drive up and host a plant swap while TAL performs several micro-performances during the fundraising event.

The chain reaction of theaters closing is much more than a domino effect on other theatres. It directly impacts our community. Theaters often serve as cultural hubs for their communities, hosting performances, educational programs, and other events that foster creativity and a sense of belonging. Their absence leaves a void in the cultural landscape. And it diminishes opportunities for people to engage with the arts and for emerging performing talent to flourish. This can lead to a loss of identity for communities that once prided themselves on their vibrant artistic performances.

The Tacoma Armory is one of the largest indoor spaces in Tacoma. It offers a giant floor for festivals, conventions, sporting events, and other highly attended programs, plus the Roosevelt Room, an intimate theater space with classic elegance befitting the historic location.

Tacoma Arts Live

Founded in 1979, TAL is deeply connected to the community and recognized for presenting world-class artists, events, exhibitions, and cultural celebrations for 95,000 arts enthusiasts a year. Located at the historic Tacoma Armory, an innovative cultural hub, TAL delivers exhilarating events, inspiring productions, and essential educational and entrepreneurial programs for 50,000 students annually in the South Sound. Fueled by curiosity, creativity, and collaboration, TAL leverages its unique home as a venue for innovation, commissioning artists from around the globe to create new, dynamic, immersive exhibits exploring the intersections between art, science, and the environment and Accelerating Creative Enterprise (ACE), its small business incubator. TAL collaborates with community partners and neighborhoods to realize their artistic visions. Learn more at TacomaArtsLive.org.

TAL seeks sponsors, donors, and patrons to help it produce bold, new theater works and find innovative methods to refresh existing plays. Peaks & Pints hopes our Tacoma Beer Week fundraiser for one of Tacoma’s anchor arts organizations will spark philanthropy and ticket sales as we donate proceeds from our draft sales on Thursday, March 6.

Living Haus Beer

Peaks & Pints met Conrad Andrus during the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference in Portland, Oregon. He gave us a tour of former Culmination Brewing, where he was head brewer. Since then, we have bumped into this talented gentleman on numerous occasions — inside his former home at Culmination and other breweries and beer festivals. During the pandemic, Andrus left his five-year brewing job at Culmination to join head brewer Mat Sandoval at Modern Times Beer’s Belmont Fermentorium, a Portland location for the San Diego brewery, where we bumped into Andrus again. Our subsequent encounter should be at Living Haus Beer Co. This brewery replaced the closed Belmont Fermentorium that Andrus and Sandoval opened recently with former pFriem Family Brewers’ head brewer, Gavin Lord, who brews his Hetty Alice Beer in the same building. Many Pacific Northwest beer fans know that space at Southeast Belmont Street and Seventh Avenue housed the beloved The Commons Brewery before Modern Times moved in. Both breweries brewed some exceptional beer, but the space had challenges, and both shuttered. The Living Haus trio transformed the space into a sleek, modern brewery and taproom while keeping the character of this building, which dates back to the 1930s.

Instead of hiring an interior designer, Living Haus Beer decided to take a DIY approach to the interior. The space is now much brighter and more inviting. Plenty of greenery, including hundreds of live plants, within the brewery blends well with the nearly 100-year-old brick and restored wood. It’s clean yet quite inviting.

Pouring It Forward Tacoma Beer Week 2025

As part of Tacoma Beer Week, Peaks & Pints will host Tacoma Arts Live and Living Haus Beer on Thursday, March 6. TAL will offer free mini-performances throughout the night while audiences sip on Living Haus Beer. Living Haus will also host a plant swap. The brewery invites the public to bring plants or clippings for trade and grab mature clippings from plants growing in its tasting room in Portland. Peaks & Pints will donate draft proceeds from the Tacoma Beer Week 2025 event to Tacoma’s beloved arts organization.