The festival runs June 30 - August 14, 2021.
The 28th annual Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival opens tonight, with live in-person performances, featuring seven new works over seven weeks, June 30 - August 14, 2021, at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City.
Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 7pm ET (Liminal Archive performances at 7pm & 8pm). Tickets are $20 and $17 for students and seniors. Purchase at http://NewOhioTheatre.org. Special closing night benefit performance of My Onliness on August 14.
Check New Ohio's website for the most current information on Covid restrictions. Currently, to attend a performance you must show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test (72 hours) for admittance into the theatre. Masks are required for all audience members. However, performers will not be masked.
ICE FACTORY 2021 SCHEDULE
June 30 - August 14
Endless Loop of Gratitude
Ongoing Sound Installation
Created for New Neighborhood by Broken Chord, Jackson Gay, Steven Padla, Riw Rakkulchon and Ashley Thomas
Endless Loop of Gratitude is a solo, interactive sound installation that opens one hour prior to the start of each Ice Factory performance. Participants are invited to record their own reflections on gratitude or read the words of another person who is not present. In a culture that can reduce the most profound feelings to blithe hashtags, this interactive installation invites participants up to the microphone to reflect on the people, places, and events that have impacted their own lives: what are you really grateful for?
June 30 - July 3
The Extremely Grey Line
A 23.5° Tilt Production
Co-written by Kate Pressman and Elizagrace Madrone
Directed by Estefania Fadul
Featuring Sam Gonzalez, Julia Hall, Elizagrace Madrone, Alejandra Venancio and Layla Wolfgang
Come take a ride on the Extremely Grey Line - a site-specific show led by psychopomps, designed around the streets of New York which are also the graveyards of New York which is also the life of New York. Audience members can choose which experience they’re signing up for when they purchase a ticket to The Extremely Grey Line - on bicycle, on foot, or sitting inside the Underneath (although, of course, the Underneath is only available to those with the PROPER Covid documentation).
July 7 - 10
Kim Loo Gets a Redo
Written by and featuring Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel
An Original Piece Inspired by Real Women
Combining reimagined 1930 & 1940 show tunes, original music, percussive tap dance, spoken word, and personal reflections, this genre-bending work celebrates the lesser-known history of the Kim Loo Sisters, the first Asian American act on Broadway. A deeply personal response to the rise of hate crimes against the Asian community, Kim Loo Gets a Redo shifts the historical paradigm to the AAPI perspective, explores the erasure of AAPI women both past and present, and reclaims agency lost.
July 14 - 17
Liminal Archive
Al Límite Collective
Producing Directors: Leah Bachar, Monica Hunken and Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li
Audio Design by Benny Woodard, Leah Bachar and Jessica Daugherty, Scenic Design by Monica Hunken, Lighting Design by Hao Bai, Projection Design by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li and Dramaturgy by Tom Walker
Featuring Leah Bachar, Shan Y. Chuang, Sanam Erfani, Monica Hunken, Ann Treesa Joy and Philip Santos Schaffer
This immersive theatrical experience guides audiences through the intimate moments of isolation experienced by artists as they traverse the unknown during the early days of the pandemic. Liminal Archive began as an open-source platform, providing a cultural exchange for international artists to collaborate together during a lockdown and mass uprisings, and it has collected more than 40 artworks, including music, digital art and theater. Al Límite has curated these offerings into a 40-minute odyssey of live performances, projections and audio journeys where we venture through the past, the present, and find our way together into the future.
July 21 - 24
As the Sun Sets
By Dow Dance
Choreography by Caleb Dowden
Featuring Imani Gaudin-County, Andy Guzmán, Jai Perez and Caleb Dowden
What does radical Black love look like in a racist world? How do we find love when we have to fight to simply exist? This dance/media work explores how Black people continue to find happiness and joy even in the predominantly white spaces of Sundown Towns, where their very presence makes them unsafe. A kinetic, visual representation of Black stories celebrating how radical Black love has and always will flourish, even in the midst of violence.
July 28 - 31
A Grave is Given Supper
Poems by Mike Soto
Directed by Claudia Acosta
Featuring Elena Hurst
in partnership with Teatro Dallas
In this Narco-Acid Western two lovers converge in a US/Mexico border town during a raging drug war. Anchored by a series of surreal and interlinked poems, infused with rituals of love and loss, this multimedia work incorporates video projections, dance and a Nortec soundscape to explore the complicated desires of people living in the borderland.
August 4 - 7
HERSTORY
In Tandem Lab
Created and directed by Gisela Cardenas
Created by and featuring Laura Butler-Levitt and Heather Hollingsworth
Written by Javier Antonio González
Art Design by Peiyi Wong
A female artist leaves an inheritance to two young women with no apparent relationship to her or each other. But on one condition: they must create something together. Excavating the artist’s drawings and short stories, captivated by revelations about their previously unknown past, these two women emerge from isolation in the act of giving life to another woman’s story. This new work asks: how can we start telling the stories written in our genes and passed from one generation to another? Inspired by Shakespeare’s female characters.
August 11 - 14
My Onliness
One-Eighth Theatre
Text by Robert Lyons
Directed by Daniel Irizarry
Composer Kamala Sankaram
Director of ASL Alexandria Wailes
in partnership with IRT Theatre
Featuring Daniel Irizarry, Cynthia La Cruz, Kamala Sankaram, Gabriel Silva, Rhys Tivey and Alexandria Wailes
A Mad King performs his royal power as an act of martyrdom in a desperate attempt to impress a mysterious petitioner while the Master of Ceremony orchestrates songs of torture, truth, and tenderness. (The poor Writer is simply collateral damage!) Is this a glimpse of our dystopian future? Or just the structure of human consciousness? An homage to Stanislaw Witkacy and his theories of “pure forms in theatre.” Performed with fully integrated ASL interpreters.
A new collaboration between Daniel Irizarry and Robert Lyons, following the international success of Yovo (NYC/Poland/Cuba).
Special Benefit Performance August 14 at 7pm celebrating our return to live theatre! Includes post-show sunset song and toast on Pier 45. Tickets are $30/$50/$100.
Videos