Next Act Theatre will be living out of a suitcase next season, and we all know how much fun that is. But there will be a big payoff in the fall of 2011 when the mid-sized stage company moves into a larger home in the same neighborhood as its current Third Ward space, the Off-Broadway Theatre.

The new venue will expand Next Act's seating capacity by half to 150 and give the group a highly visible street level presence, which it has been missing in its second floor theater on the southeast corner of Water Street and St. Paul Avenue. For the transitional 2010-11 season, Next Act will shrink its subscription series from four shows to three, shorten the length of its runs from five weeks to four, and move in with In Tandem Theatre at that company's space, the Tenth Street Theatre, on the west side of Downtown. Next Act will resume its four production subscription seasons in its new space in the fall of 2011.

An understanding of the quirks of Downtown geography is necessary to map the new theater's location. Water Street is one of downtown's major north-south thoroughfares, but immediately south of the Water Street Bridge, it makes a sharp turn east and follows the Milwaukee River to the harbor.

Although the street is positioned east and west at that point, the new Next Act address will be 255 S. Water St. Company leaders wanted the troupe to stay in the Third Ward, and the location is technically in the Fifth Ward. But an actor with a strong arm could almost throw a baseball from the front door of the new theater into the Third Ward. The Broadway Theatre Center, the home of the Skylight Opera Theatre, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and Renaissance Theaterworks, is about two blocks away.

Next Act will lease 11,000 square feet -- it rents 8,250 square feet at its present site -- in a cavernous industrial building that was formerly occupied by Transpak Corp., which packages, warehouses and ships freight. The structure is owned by Lighthouse Development Co., which is redeveloping multiple buildings on about 5 acres of land into what it calls South Water Works.

The overhead cranes that once traversed the new theater structure are gone, but the long rails on which they moved are still in place, according the David Cecsarini, Next Act's producing artistic director. The building has a 36-foot ceiling, and that height presents one of the new venue's challenges -- reduce the playing space to a much more intimate scale.

But the new home has no pillars, a theatrical sore thumb that Next Act has had to accommodate for the 10 years it has performed in the Off-Broadway Theatre. The obstruction-free space in the new theater will improve sight lines, allow greater production flexibility, and expand seating by 50 percent while retaining a cozy ambience. Just as in the Off-Broadway, no customer will be further than six rows from the stage.

Cecsarini says the new theater's configuration will be very familiar to Next Act patrons, with the deep thrust stage being retained, and seating wrapping around its three sides. Administrative offices and a rehearsal hall will be housed under the same roof, and all of the fixtures, technical equipment, furniture and seats in the Off-Broadway will be moved to the new site.

"We're even taking the doors and door frames with us," managing director Charles Kakuk says. "We've got the stuff. We are building out the shell."

Next Act's change of address is primarily motivated by the end of the lease at its current space and a doubling of the rent if it stayed in the Off-Broadway for a final option season. The company has successfully navigated through the treacherous economy and currently has a surplus of about $80,000.

The Next Act leadership and board wanted to lock in an affordable lease to ensure the company's continued financial health. The South Water Works lease is for 15 years with an additional five year option.

Cecsarini and Kakuk have calculated the cost of constructing the new theater inside the industrial building to be about $800,000. Adding an additional $150,000 for moving and other expenses, a $950,000 fund raising campaign has recently begun, and it has reached about one-third of the goal. That includes a $100,000 matching contribution from David and Julia Uihlein. .

Much of the labor involved in building the new space will be done by Cecsarini, Kakuk and volunteers from Next Act friends and the theater community. That formula worked well when the Off-Broadway Theatre was constructed. "We painted every square inch of this place," Cecsarini said while sitting in the current theater's lobby.

The new lease and construction will begin in January.

The 50 additional seats on sale for every performance will enable Next Act to compress its production runs from five to four weeks and still have more tickets available than in the past. That will reduce costs and allow the company to expand its practice of renting its performance space to other groups.

Next Act will have offices and a rehearsal hall in the Third Ward's Phoenix Building at 219 N. Milwaukee St. during the coming transitional season. It's temporary performance home at the Tenth Street Theatre, in a church basement at 628 N. 10th St., is similar to the Off-Broadway Theatre, and the company won't have to alter its style and esthetic.

The Next Act subscription season at Tenth Street consists of Joel Drake Johnson's "Four Places" Sept. 16 to Oct. 10; "Big Boys" by Rich Orloff, Jan. 20 to Feb. 13, 2011, and Melanie Marnich's "A Sleeping Country," March 24 to April 17, 2011. The company will also present John McGivern in a new version of his "Home for the Holidays" for five weeks at the Milwaukee Rep's Stiemke Theater during the holidays.

While Next Act's 2009-10 season is completed, several more activities are booked at the Off-Broadway Theatre before the company leaves. Pink Banana Theatre Company will mount its annual festival of one act plays Friday through June 5; the Next Actors summer youth program will stage its annual show July 24, and the fifth annual Milwaukee Comedy Festival will run July 29 to Aug. 1.