There are a number of such unusually located works scheduled for this year: Raw Dance will stage a show in United Nations Plaza, timed to the San Francisco Pride parade, to celebrate romantic relationships of all stripes; “The Odyssey” will be performed on Angel Island in May; Home Theater Festival, a three-year-old local effort to encourage theatrical productions inside people’s homes, will return in the spring; and Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love,” done by Boxcar Theater as part of a yearlong homage to the playwright, will be performed in a motel.

“The pluses largely have to do with being inspired by the space,” Mr. White said. “What can we do with all of these different vaults, what can we do with these hallways.”

Bay Area performers taking theater out of theaters is nothing new, of course — in the late ’60s and ’70s, thanks to influential countercultural groups like the Diggers and the S.F. Mime Troupe, there was an explosion of experimental work.

But with a stagnant economy and a decline nationally in audiences for traditional dance and theater, there is renewed interest in performances outside darkened black- box theaters. Unusual spaces are also popular with patrons of the arts, who give grants for “creative place-making” — art that can reach broad audiences and help revitalize downtrodden neighborhoods like the Mid-Market area in San Francisco.

Some companies, like We Players, founded in 2000 by Ava Roy, exist only to do site-specific work; Ms. Roy has put on “Hamlet” on Alcatraz Island and is raising money for an Angel Island production of “The Odyssey,” Homer’s classic, in May. Other groups have normal theaters, but also perform in less traditional places because they like the news media attention and younger demographic that experimental productions attract.

“We were looking for marketing gimmicks and that became site-specific work,” said Nick Olivero, founder of Boxcar Theater, which has put on shows on Baker Beach and in museums and once recreated a speakeasy for a theatrical version of the board game Clue.

“A lot of artists, especially dance artists, have been priced out of theaters,” said Ryan T. Smith, one-half of RawDance, along with Wendy Rein. They have inhabited a storefront in the Westfield Mall as well as performed as salad-tossing diners in the restaurant Orson.