NEW YORK CITY: New Ohio Theatre has introduced that it’ll shut up store on the finish of the present season on Aug. 31. The closure will mark the top of the theatre’s packages, together with Ice Factory, Now in Process, Theatre for Young Minds, New Ohio Presents, and New Ohio Hosts. The Archive Residency program (in partnership with IRT Theater) will conclude in spring 2024 and the NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival might proceed independently.
“We had a hell of a run,” stated founding inventive director Robert Lyons in an announcement, who has been with the corporate for all of its 30 years, together with at its former house on Wooster Street Soho. “We think theatre organizations have their own natural lifespans. This is a perfect moment for new ideas, new energy, and new models for the indie theatre scene.”
The theatre cites Lyons’s intention to step down as inventive director, the shifting panorama and dynamics of the sphere, and elevated monetary pressures as contributing components to the choice, in addition to a need to step apart and make house for the following technology of theatre-makers.
Lyons will proceed to work with collaborator Daniel Irizarry on bringing their September 2022 present My Onliness to Warsaw and past. They can even proceed to tour their earlier mission Yovo. Both performs have been included in My Onliness and Others, a set of Lyons’s performs revealed by Mercer Street Books in fall 2022. Lyons can also be embarking on a brand new programming initiative with the Stissing Center within the Hudson Valley: Downtown Upstate, which can convey indie NYC productions to upstate efficiency areas.
The theatre’s present 74-seat house at 154 Christopher St. within the West Village will stay a house for nonprofit theatre. The constructing’s landlord, Rockrose Development, is accepting proposals in the same course of to the one which introduced New Ohio Theatre to the house 12 years in the past. At 154 Christopher, New Ohio carried out a floor-to-ceiling renovation together with the set up of a sprung stage, grid, risers, HVAC system, and dressing room rest room.
“We’re proud to have stewarded this space for 12 years and to be able to hand it off a dramatically improved, turn-key theatre,” stated board chair Margaret Grossman in an announcement.
Lyons based Soho Think Tank (Ohio Theatre) on Wooster Street in 1994 as a hotbed of downtown theatre inspiration and experimentation. Through a wide range of growing, presenting, producing, and internet hosting packages, Ohio Theatre fostered long-term relationships with NYC theatre artists and unbiased theatre corporations. In 2011, the group moved to the historic Archive Building within the West Village the place it continued to help the following technology of indie theatre artists.
“I am deeply grateful to all the theatremakers who have shared their amazing talents with us over these many years,” stated Lyons in an announcement, “and for all the audience members who brought their hunger for exciting new work.”
Over the final 30 years, New Ohio has produced work that has gone on to garner Drama Desk nominations, Obie Awards, Audience First Awards in Edinburgh, Off-Broadway productions, and nationwide and worldwide excursions. Striving to function an important hub of the unbiased theatre group, New Ohio has been awarded two Obie Awards for Sustained Excellence. As of 2020, New Ohio had an approximate finances of $265,000.
Related