New Ohio Theatre Kicks Off Ice Factory Festival 2017

Artistic Director Robert Lyons presents the 24th annual Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival. Ice Factory 2017 takes place at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. Ice Factory 2017 will present seven new works over seven weeks, running today, June 28, through August 12.

Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 7pm. Tickets are $20, and $16 for students and seniors, and can be purchased online at NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 212-352-3101. For info visit NewOhioTheatre.org, Like on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/NewOhioTheatre and www.Facebook.com/IceFactoryFestival, follow on Instagram (www.instagram.com/newohiotheatre) at @NewOhioTheatre, and for up-to-the-minute festival updates follow on Twitter (Twitter.com/NewOhioTheatre) at @NewOhioTheatre.

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.

This year Ice Factory is expanding its programming to 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. Lyons says, "This is another example of how the New Ohio is expanding our audience's expectations about what they might see when they walk through our doors." 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.

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ICE FACTORY 2017 PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:

June 28 - July 1
FERNANDO - Written by Steven Haworth and directed by Jamie Richards.

A desperate art scholar and a passionate museum curator navigate a bizarre and bloody, sexually-charged love triangle with a terrifyingly brilliant dead artist. Or is he? A dark romantic farce. A psychosexual thriller. Set in Madrid and the international art world.

Steven Haworth's plays have seen productions and been in festivals Off-Broadway and across the country including Abingdon Theatre, Zoo District, Open Fist, Project III, Ashland New Play Festival, First Look Festival, Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival, the NEWvember New Plays Festival and Stage Left Theatre's Leapfest. Steven is the former Associate Artistic Director of the Project III Ensemble.

Jamie Richards served as Executive Producer of Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she produced premiers by Arthur Miller, David Mamet, David Ives and many others. She has developed and directed plays for EST, Williamstown Theater Festival, New York Stage and Film, Playwright's Horizons and Primary Stages.

July 5 - 8
A FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY* - Created by anecdota with music by Rima Fand. An Archive Residency first-look showing.

"How does it feel to realize you're going to become a footnote in history and a trivia question subject forever?" Dr. Sally Ride: "Gosh, that's quite an honor!"

It's 1983 and America is sending its first female astronaut into space, breaking the ultimate glass ceiling. A rollicking, genre-bending meditation on being an "American First" that looks back to ask how far we've traveled and how far we've come.

anecdota creates original live performance works inspired by (too) little-known (true) stories of women who dared to shape history. Led by Erica Fae & Jill A. Samuels, their production Take What Is Yours was a Critics' Pick in The NY Times, supported by Ms. Magazine, and nominated for a Henry Hewes Design Award. Fae's feature film To Keep The Light won the Fipresci Int'l Critics' prize, among other festival awards. Samuels' interdisciplinary work has appeared at over sixty festivals, venues and sites.

July 12 - 15
TRUE RIGHT - Created by Bess and George, written by Adin Lenahan, Gemma Kaneko and Brittany Allen, and directed by Gemma Kaneko.

A reimagining of Shepard's True West-featuring George and Jeb Bush, as played by two ethnic female bodies. Without changing their hair. Part satire, part political inquiry, and part karaoke swansong, this piece aims to locate the soul of a dying Moderate conservatism and determine if it's worth saving. But in a fun way.

Bess and George make work for and about the overlooked Other, with special emphasis on our own box: women of color, in peril and empowered. Their pieces mine history and science to give context to the often-surreal present day. They appreciate the line of philosophical inquiry where science and the surreal can coexist, and to this point enjoy non-chronological storytelling, abstractions, intelligent satire and giving their audience gifts.

With Brittany K. Allen, Adin Lenahan and Gemma Kaneko. Brittany K. Allen is the 2017 recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship at the Lark Play Development Center. Gemma Kaneko currently writes about baseball for MLB's Cut4, and is at work on her first novel.

July 19 - 22
TEAR A ROOT FROM THE EARTH - Music by Johnny Walsh with Qais Essar and Gramophonic, lyrics by Johnny Walsh, book by John Bair, and directed by Marina McClure.

American and Afghan music traditions blend in a participatory rock concert with a live theatrical narrative about three generations of an Afghan family as they deal with the repetition of foreign intervention. Presented as a series of excerpts from a new musical in development, this piece features world-renowned Afghan-American rabab virtuoso Qais Essar and the critically-acclaimed Americana band Gramophonic.

The New Wild is a multidisciplinary art lab that tells stories essential to our time. For Tear a Root from the Earth, The New Wild has brought together Johnny Walsh and his Americana band Gramophonic with Afghan-American composer Qais Essar and a diverse team of performers, artists, and designers. The project is presented in ongoing partnership with the Embassy of Afghanistan and has been developed with the support of Dartmouth College, Vox Theater, the Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Kennedy Center.

July 26 - 29
THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS SAVE THE WORLD! - Conceived by The Anthropologists and directed by Melissa Moschitto.

Aldous Huxley commandeers a quit-smoking group. Doomsday survivalists take on a NYC blackout. Russian war-robots hack the future. Stories of people with the capacity to change themselves, and the world, for the better. But "yes we can!" doesn't always mean "yes we will!" Part screwball comedy, part American nihilistic bravado.

The Anthropologists is dedicated to the collaborative creation of investigative theatre. Rooted in research and community engagement and shaped by contemporary dance and physical theatre techniques, they're committed to exploring current social topics in order to break down and unleash cultural discoveries. Founded in 2008, The Anthropologists have performed at HERE, Dixon Place, The 14th St. Y, The Berkshire Fringe and beyond, and will premiere their newest work this fall as Guest Artists at University Settlement's The Performance Project.

With Michael Ables, Mark Cisneros, Mariah Freda, Jean Goto, Sam Gonzalez, Marianne Hardart, Brian Demar Jones, Brianna Kalisch, and additional cast members to be announced.

August 2 - 5
YELLOW CARD RED CARD - Written by Melisa Tien, directed by Tamilla Woodard and choreographed by Joya Powell.

In this play-and-sporting-event-in-one, four female soccer players in a small Muslim town in Central Africa prepare for a championship that will determine the future of the team, and the trajectory of each girl's life. Incorporating movement based on the games and practices of a real-life Cameroonian girls' team, this hybrid work explores what happens when young women in a socially and culturally restrictive environment begin to recognize their own agency.

Melisa Tien is a New York-based playwright, a member of New Dramatists, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting. Director Tamilla Woodard is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, a New Georges affiliate artist, and cofounder of PopUp Theatrics, a partnership creating site specific and immersive productions. Joya Powell is an award-winning choreographer, educator, and Founding Artistic Director of Movement of the People Dance Company.

August 9 - 12
DANGER SIGNALS - Created by Built for Collapse, written by Nina Segal and directed by Sanaz Ghajar. An Archive Residency first-look showing.

A woman gives a lecture about the brain. A woman bakes a cake. Fuck that. War is coming. A woman puts on a large hat and pushes a sharp object through an eye socket. Chalk dust falls from the ceiling. Two monkeys talk about the ways the brain processes pain. Becky and Lucy. Dr. Walter Freeman. Count backwards from ten. Becky and Lucy. Becky and Lucy. War is coming, always. A multidisciplinary fantasia about the ways we cope.

Built for Collapse is an award-winning theater company committed to building multi-disciplinary work that challenges theatrical form. They develop each project through a highly physical process inspired by found texts, visual art, and pop culture to create a live collage of the world and its stories. "An ambitiously subversive young troupe" (Time Out NY), they have developed work nationally and internationally with The Drama League, NYTW, BRIC Arts | Media House, Ars Nova, 3LD, Prague Film and Theater Center, and others.

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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.

Pictured: Melis Aker, Ahmad Maksoud, Jessica Batke. Photo by Marina McClure.

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