Photo Flash: DEAR DIARY LOL Comes to New Ohio Theatre Festival!

Illustrious alumni will guest-curate this summer's 25-year anniversary edition of Ice Factory 2018, New Ohio Theatre's Obie Award-winning festival. Ice Factory 2018 will present eight new works over eight weeks, June 27 - August 18, at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City.

New Ohio's Artistic Director Robert Lyons says, "Over the years many emerging companies have presented their work in the Ice Factory. Today, many of those companies have become quite well-known, as they continue to thrive and grow and receive their just recognition. In honor of our 25th anniversary, New Ohio asked a few of our illustrious alumni who they think is moving the new theatre dial these days. Our guest curators are Elevator Repair Service, Pig Iron Theatre, the TEAM, Half Straddle, New Georges and Second Generation. Ice Factory 2018 is their answer."

Time Out New York calls Ice Factory "one of New York's best curated-festivals," and The New York Times says the festival's "an annual celebration of the weird, the wild and the unexpectedly wonderful." New York Magazine praises the Ice Factory as "New York's #1 Summer Theatre Festival," and The New Yorker says, "The Ice Factory Festival has a fine record for presenting intellectually challenging and artistically daring fare."

Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 7pm. Tickets are $20 and $16 for students. Purchase at NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 212-352-3101. For info visit NewOhioTheatre.org, Like on Facebook at /NewOhioTheatre, follow on Instagram at NewOhioTheatre, and for up-to-the-minute festival updates follow on Twitter at @NewOhioTheatre.

This year's Ice Factory programming will once again include "Fridays on Ice," a late-night performance salon that includes artists creating work not usually seen in downtown theatre spaces, but more typically found performing in nightclubs, bars, and private apartments. Produced and curated by Kevin Laibson (formerly of The PIT), each evening is individually hosted by an impresario of this alternative storytelling community, and features cutting-edge micro-works by some of NYC's cagiest short-form theater-makers. Performances start at 10:30pm, and tickets are $15 ($5 if you also saw the 7pm Ice Factory performance that night). For info on artists as it becomes available, visit NewOhioTheatre.org.

New Ohio Theatre strengthens, nurtures and promotes a community of independent theatre artists and theatre companies by curating and presenting new work in New York City. With its Ice Factory summer festival the New Ohio offers emerging and established companies a prime forum in which to develop their work. Ice Factory prides itself on maintaining extraordinary aesthetic diversity along with an unequaled standard for intelligent, imaginative theater.

June 27 - 30

NUMBNESS - Conceived by Daniel Irizarry and Laura Butler Rivera, directed by Daniel Irizarry, and written by Sylvia Bofill, Elia Chaqui, Daniel Irizarry and Elif Nazçek. An Archive Residency first-look showing, a program of New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater.

Imagine a world in such chaos there is nothing left to feel. NUMBNESS, a new visceral tragicomedy about the unfelt by One-Eighth Theater. More info at oneeighth.org.

July 4 - 7

(Guest Curator: Elevator Repair Service)

ONE SMALL STEP - Created by the Saint Fortune and directed by Gavin Price.

Saint Fortune journeys through the Sixth Dimension to travel back in time to a moment of great ambition, the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing. What they find there will change the course of alternate history forever. Utilizing an immersive sound & video design, ONE SMALL STEP invites us to consider the possibilities of other dimensions, while encouraging responsibility and care towards the one world we know.

The cast includes Emily Craver, John Gasper, Natalie Mack, Emily Pacilio, and featuring Jack Frederick. More info at stfortune.com.

July 11 - 14

(Guest Curator: Half Straddle)

THE OPERA IS ALWAYS ON THE TABLE - Written by Hanna Novak, co-directed by Hanna Novak and Tina Satter, and musical direction by Zach Phillips.

THE OPERA IS ALWAYS ON THE TABLE is a response to Sophocles' Ajax as filtered through personal family history. The classical trope of the "fallen hero" is both meditated on and subverted through the eyes of a pre-teen girl as she and her mother attempt to navigate a tragic loss, both together and apart. Told through a series of conversations and songs, the play considers the mythic and mundane elements of girlhood and family.

July 18 - 21

(Guest Curator: New Georges)

MADONNA col BAMBINO - Written by Sarah Einspanier, music by Deepali Gupta, directed and developed by Caitlin Sullivan.

Merry (with an E) is Christine's surrogate mother. Mary (with an A) is Christine's biological mother. Kristine (with a K) is Christine's biological mother's surrogate daughter. Martha is Christine's friend. Martha is having a baby. She can't decide on a name. A play about family (in many forms) with no yelling.

Featuring Nyahalé Allie, Beth Griffith, Narea Kang, (rebeca) Rad and Ching Valdes-Aran. Scenic & Costume Design by Cate McCrea, Lighting Design by Isabella Byrd and Sound Design by Caroline Eng.

July 25 - 28

(Guest Curator: Pig Iron Theatre Co.)

DEAR DIARY LOL - Created by Antigravity and co-directed by Francesca Montanile Lyons and Michael T. Williams.

DEAR DIARY LOL is an ensemble-driven comedic theatre work born verbatim from the real-life tween-teen diaries of the show's actual creators. Antigravity's devising ensemble invites you to cringe, laugh and cry at their most earnest desires, deepest fears, secret shames, and terrible poetry written as coming-of-age girls in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Created and performed by Antigravity Performance Project with Alicia Crosby, Jessica M. Johnson, Francesca Montanile Lyons (Lead Artist), Jenna Strusowski, Megan Thibodeaux and Michael T. Williams. More info at antigravityperformanceproject.org.

August 1 - 4

(Guest Curator: the TEAM)

THE HOLE - Written by Zhailon Levingston and directed by Rod Gailes OBC.

A riff on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, THE HOLE explores the relationship and personal struggles of two inmates in solitary confinement. We see them grapple with love, and the choice to either choose life and grow up, or succumb to the pressures of THE HOLE.

August 8 - 11

MADAME LYNCH - Created by The Drunkard's Wife, written and directed by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin. An Archive Residency first-look showing.

MADAME LYNCH is a new spectacle with music that takes its jumping-off point from the story of Eliza Lynch, an Irish prostitute, who through fate and machination became de facto Empress of Paraguay in the mid-19th century. Lynch was later reviled for her supposed part in fomenting the war in which 90% of Paraguay's male population was killed, but this show is concerned primarily with Lynch's other legacy: her doomed project of bringing European high culture to the inhabitants of a country that neither understood nor desired what she offered.

Sets by Yung Oh Le Page, Video by David Pym, Lights by Christina Tang, Costume and Props by Normandy Sherwood, Chelsea Collins and Admiral Grey, and Confectionary by Kristin Worrall. More info at thedrunkardswife.com.

August 15 - 18

(Guest Curator: Second Generation)

LOVE - Written and performed by Vichet Chum and Laura Gragtmans.

Two people meet, and the sky cracks open. LOVE is an exploration of love in its myriad of forms: the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the mysterious and all the spaces in between. With original music and spoken-word.

New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning theatre under the leadership of Robert Lyons, Artistic Director, and Marc Stuart Weitz, Producing Director. The New Ohio serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting bold work from today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. From their home in the West Village's historic Archive Building, the New Ohio provides a high-profile platform for downtown's most mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For info visit NewOhioTheatre.org.