Plays About Lena Dunham, Vampire Cowboys and More Set for New Ohio Theatre's 2014 ICE FACTORY FESTIVAL, Running Now thru 8/2

Artistic Director Robert Lyons presents the 21st annual Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival. Ice Factory 2014 takes place at the New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. Ice Factory 2014 will present six new works over six weeks, running from today, June 25 - August 2, 2014.

Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 7pm. Tickets are $18 and $15 for students and seniors, and can be purchased online at www.NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling the Vendini ticket line at 1-888-596-1027.

For info visit www.NewOhioTheatre.org, Like them on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/IceFactoryFestival and for up-to-the-minute festival updates, follow on Twitter at @NewOhioTheatre.

New Ohio 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 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.

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ICE FACTORY 2014 PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:

June 25 - 28
The Upper Room - Presented by Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking, co-written and co-directed by Jeremy Bloom and Brian Rady, with music by Catherine Brookman (Broadway revival of Hair). For info visit RadyAndBloom.com.

With The Upper Room, Rady&Bloom tackles extreme devotion and the very real dangers of global warming and sea-level rise. Scored with new vocal and electronic music by composer/performer Catherine Brookman, The Upper Room incorporates tropes of play, choral concert, and congregation. Quirky small town characters and zany supernatural tales resonate sharply in contrast with an earnest spirituality, and the suffering of our ailing planet.

Rady&Bloom is an ensemble-based theater company emerging from traditions in chamber and literary theater, the adaptation of non-theatrical sources, and theater-as-ethnography. They have received commissions from The Cell residency, festival programs with Ars Nova and the Drama League, and the Planet Connections Artist's Grant. A current Archive Residency Company.

July 2 - 5
Too Many Lenas 3: Let Them Eat Cake - Presented by CARROLL SIMMONS, created and written by Carroll Simmons, and directed by David Bernstein. For info visit CarrollSimmons.tumblr.com.

A coven of Lena Dunhams share a name, a career, and a web of domestic rituals in a constant state of extreme self-dramatization. But when the strain of being "themselves" for a living takes its toll, they must redefine what it means to be successful before becoming the ultimate cliché. A fevered parody of a generation's obsession with "relatable" stories exploring the fundamentally human desires buried beneath the ironic artifice of contemporary web-series realism.

CARROLL SIMMONS is a pop-up performance collective that deals in non-linear imaginative portraiture and deadpan shapes with a signature style of absurd and irreverent physical theater. Their work has been presented at the Public, Ars Nova, HERE, La MaMa, Irondale and the Culture Project.

July 9 - 12
Feather Gatherers - Presented by The Drunkard's Wife, created by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin. For info visit www.Facebook.com/TheDrunkardsWife.

Enter the Devil, dressed as a Devil. A visionary tale of... seduction & abandonment! orphans & bassoons! shakers' utopias! orgone energy! ecstatic dancing! A Stravinsky vaudeville set in a fictional 1960s Serbia, channeling Yugoslavian Black Wave film to renovate Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat." Powered by an all-star band.

Normandy Raven Sherwood is an artist who creates experimental plays and theatrical environments. The Drunkard's Wife is an eight-piece theatrical-musical crew (led by God Is My Co-Pilot's Craig Flanagin) that plays raucous Balkan no-wave parade music, sung in a variety of living and dead languages. Think "a village wedding and the 1968 Paris student riots rolled into one."

July 16 - 19
The Incredible Fox Sisters - Presented by Live Source, written by Jaclyn Backhaus, and directed by Tyler Mercer. For info visit Live-Source.org.

The Fox sisters have a dirty secret they're ready to share. They've been talking to the town peddler, Mr. Splitfoot...who's been murdered, dead and buried for five years. Don't believe them? Join the séance and witness for yourself their infamous spiritual powers. Based on a true story.

Live Source is a New York-based group of theatre and film artists challenging the ways multidisciplinary theatre is created. They use classic and bold original texts to unearth contemporary themes, employing innovative design and technology in constant play with highly stylized performances.

July 23 - 26
Galois - Presented by Second Generation Productions, written by Sung Rno and Aaron Jones, and directed by Victor Maog. For info visit www.2g.org.

Evariste Galois was a math rockstar. He was a genius of abstraction, but a fervent revolutionary; brilliantly cerebral, yet madly in love; a gifted prodigy, yet unappreciated by the establishment. He discovered a branch of mathematics as a precocious teenager, and died at 21 in a duel over a woman. This is the chaotic, rock & roll expression of his contradictory passions.

2G creates contemporary Asian American theater that reaches across cultural, generational and ethnic boundaries, cultivating the next generation of Asian American dramatic arts by identifying and nurturing a vibrant community of actors, directors and writers, and connecting with new and underserved Asian American audiences.

July 30 - August 2
Untitled Vampire Cowboys Project - Presented by Vampire Cowboys, written by Qui Nguyen, and directed by Robert Ross Parker. For info visit VampireCowboys.com.

In a seemingly utopian future, a young lady with unique abilities sets out on a murderous path to keep that world intact. What she doesn't realize is if she fails, the world will go to hell...literally. A new sacrilegious action-adventure play by "the pioneers of geek theatre" utilizing VC's trademark stage combat, multimedia, and puppetry to create a new comic book for the stage.

Vampire Cowboys are an OBIE Award-winning pioneer of geek theatre, crossing diverse genres and theatrical styles to create an explosively eclectic aesthetic rooted in today's pop vernaculars. A current Archive Residency Company.

New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning presenting venue that serves Manhattan's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting the boldest, most innovative work of 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. New Ohio Theatre nurtures, strengthens, and promotes this community; as we reestablish the West Village as a destination for 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 www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

Pictured: Cast of Too Many Lenas 3: Let Them Eat Cake. Photo courtesy of Carroll Simmons.

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