Risk-Taking Theater in Risky Times

Far from the jazz hands and high kicks of Broadway, two stalwart downtown theater festivals open this week with productions that range from Wagner's Ring Cycle to the predictions of Nostradamus.

This summer, the undergroundzero festival will present work from six countries – Italy, Spain, Romania, Australia, Germany and Ireland – so that non-commercial New York theater groups can connect with productions from abroad, where experimental theater is in higher demand.

Productions include "The Ring Cycle: Part 1", an imagining of Wagner’s  opera as a professional wrestling match (yep), and a 'one-man epic puppet show' from Australia called “The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik."

Festival director Paul Bargetto says the productions are put together mostly on a volunteer basis where there is never enough money, especially for labor.  "My only regret is that I wasn’t born rich," he says. "This is a kind of work that doesn't have a properly funded system to support it in the United States."

Across town, the 17th Annual ICE Factory Festival gets underway on July 7th.  It's the festival's final run at the Ohio Theater, which will close this summer after 29 years of producing experimental theater. 

As a way of celebrating the theater's run, five of the six shows in this year's festival are by companies and individuals who have produced in the space before. They include the Drama Desk-nominated Samuel Buggeln, the TEAM, and the theater's own artistic director, Robert Lyons.  Though he says any thematic connection was purely accidental, the play that will close the theater is Lyons' own "Nostradamus Predicts the Death of Soho."

The theater is in talks to move to another space, most seriously at the 3-Legged-Dog, which escaped its own eviction proceedings last week.  For the next few seasons, performances presented by the Ohio will be under the name "Ohio: Interrupted."

"Interrupted" is certainly better than "finito," but undergroundzero's Bargetto says that's not good enough.  "We need to become politically active," he says, to face what he calls a "tremendous crisis." 

Political organizations like A.R.T./NY and the League of Independent Theater fight for political representation (read: funding), but ultimately both directors feel that offering unique and innovative work is the best way to fill seats and pay the bills. 

And though it might not be a means for more funding, The Ohio's Lyons says another adage keeps the office going: "no cry babies."