New Ohio Hosts

MISSED CONNECTIONS: A Craigslist Musical
U.S. Premiere

Written by Bill Richardson, Veda Hille, and Amiel Gladstone
Directed by Phillip George
Choreographed by Amy Hall Garner

Based on real Craigslist Ads – "Your Personal Ads Set to Music"

"Online is a lonely town, even though it's where so many of us live. At home, in cafes, we hunker over our devices, sitting adjacent to others who are likewise engaged. Ironically, what so many of us are after, as we make our way on parallel paths through the digital underbrush, is connection. I am here. Are you there? I saw you today. Did you see me today? I want what you have got. Missed Connections: A Craigslist Musical is a fond and funny and tender musical about online longing and about the many near-misses, and occasional hits, that bind us.” – Bill Richardson, Co-Author

Missed Connections was developed and premiered at the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, BC, 2012. It was originally produced in a 20 minute version by Theatre Replacement as a co-commission with PuSh and Theatre Conspiracy, Vancouver, BC, 2009.

"This show is intoxicating, wildly creative, wonderfully witty, and just downright fun."
- Nicole Fairbairn, The Scene in Toronto

"Offbeat and entertaining, with a refreshingly high sophistication in the writing with delightfully tuneful music." - The Toronto Star

"A blissful musical destination to observe all things beguiling and bizarre… Delightfully silly and enormously entertaining." - Steven Berketo, TorontoStage.com

"TERRIFIC" and "Two parts absurd hilarity and one part potent loneliness"
- The Georgia Straight

New Ohio Presents

PRODUCERS CLUB 2016

Producers Club is our free-floating, ad hoc, instant-gratification, impulse-driven pop-up program. We invite familiar and new-to-our-orbit companies into the New Ohio for a couple of days to flex their muscles, share their current thinking, and test their next great idea. The stakes are low, but the bar is high!

All shows 7:30 PM
All tix $12

Sept 27-28
Sinking Ship Productions presents
A Hunger Artist

What begins as a nostalgic celebration of a lost art form—and its most famous practitioner—becomes a darkly funny trip into the very question of what it means to suffer, and what it means when suffering becomes a public spectacle. In this inventive adaptation of Kafka's tragicomic story "A Hunger Artist," actor, puppeteer and Sinking Ship co-artistic director Jonathan Levin gives a playful and startling performance as the only person who remembers an artist whose act was simply… to hunger.

Sept 30-Oct 1
F*It Club presents
Tales from the Club: Stuff Nobody Likes

Three cautionary tales on the mundanity of life from three acclaimed playwrights, facilitated and hosted by the grand dame of drag, Tipsy von Tart.

Oct 4-6
Theater Reconstruction Ensemble presents
How to Hamlet, or Hamleting Hamlet (oh god, not another fucking hamlet)

Norman A is a ghost. Norman B is a scholar. Norman C, a king. And Norman D, a grave-digging clown. They have gathered in the great hall at Elsinore, where the Normans E and F are sowing in their sowing closet, to collectively answer that age old question: How to Hamlet?

New Ohio Hosts
Page 73 Productions

ULTIMATE BEAUTY BIBLE
World Premiere

Written by Caroline V. McGraw

Directed by Stephen Brackett

Danielle, Lee, and Tiffany have scaled the masthead of Crimp magazine, gaining access to the best the city has to offer—nightlife, men, and the beautiful baubles showcased in every issue. But when workaholic Danielle is forced to face her mortality, she begins to wonder what it's all worth. In this dark comedy, questions of romance, sex, ambition, and loyalty spin Danielle and her friends out of control as they consider the possibility of life without each other.

Page 73's mission is to help the most promising playwrights receive their first New York City production. They have launched the careers of some of America's most important playwrights including Quiara Alegrí­a Hudes, Samuel D. Hunter, Dan LeFranc, Heidi Schreck, Jason Grote, George Brant, and Clare Barron.

New Ohio Hosts
Vertigo Theater Company

STREET CHILDREN

Written by Pia Scala-Zankel
Directed by Jenna Worsham

"An affecting and saucily funny new play"
- Charles Isherwood, New York Times

Set in NYC in the late ’80s, Street Children explores the romantic idealism, shattered dreams, and high cost of living experienced by the LGBTQ youth of the Lower Hudson piers. The story follows the intertwining journeys of three young characters who are reeling in the aftermath of their beloved street mother’s cruel murder. Ultimately, they must choose between the thrills and camaraderie of life as they know it, and the safety and stability of a quieter existence—albeit one potentially defined by isolation and ostracism.

UNLIMITED BY FORM AND CONVENTION Vertigo Theater Company strives to make provocative theater accessible to all walks of life. Vertigo was formed to foster a diverse collaborative community that challenges and nurtures creative artists. We develop and produce new work that exposes the audience and the artists to experiences beyond their comfort zones.

New Ohio Theatre Presents
Blessed Unrest

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Adapted by Matt Opatrny from the story by Charles Dickens
Directed and Choreographed by Jessica Burr

"Inspired and inventive...this adaptation resonates as much today as in 1840s England." - The New York Times

Ebenezer Scrooge is about to get a wakeup call.

Six actors play thirty-seven characters in this raw, physical and darkly comic story of a man grappling with his life of isolation, and choosing to enact positive change in the troubled world around him.

Blessed Unrest is an experimental physical theatre ensemble generating original work since 1999. Their awards include the 2014 Caffe Cino Award for Sustained Excellence from the NY Innovative Theatre Awards, four additional IT Awards, and the LPTW Lucille Lortel Award. They create safe environments where dangerous things can happen, producing dynamic, disciplined, and exuberant new works for the stage with their diverse ensemble of artists. They teach their methods at universities across the country and tour internationally with original bilingual plays created with overseas partners including Teatri Oda of Kosovo.

New Ohio Theatre Presents
George & Co.

HOLDEN

Directed by Anisa George
Written by Anisa George in collaboration with the Ensemble

The hit of Ice Factory 2015 returns!

HOLDEN is a tragicomic piece, plumbing a darker dimension of J.D. Salinger’s famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye. A few obsessive super-fans have taken up residence in Salinger’s private writing bunker. Unbeknownst to the reclusive author himself, their mission to get Salinger to publish once more spirals into a larger excavation of violence in America and the male imagination.

George & Co. was founded in 2009 as a platform for original performances and films that grow out of collaborative research and spontaneous play. It creates complex hybrid works that cross-breed contradictory aesthetics and artistic disciplines, while digging into impenetrable messes of culture, history and identity. George & Co. was nominated for Best Ensemble at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for its production of The Seer and received a Theater Communications Grant (TCG) to collaborate in Buenos Aires, Argentina with the company LindaLinda.

Holden was originally presented as part of Ice Factory 2015, a program of New Ohio Theatre.

New Ohio Theatre Hosts
Flux Theatre Ensemble

Marian, Or The True Tale of Robin Hood

Written by Adam Szymkowicz
Directed by Kelly O'Donnell

In this hilarious new take on the classic tale, Robin Hood is and has always been Maid Marian in disguise. Robin/Marian leads a motley group of Merry Men (many of whom are women) against the greedy Prince John. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, who will stand for the vulnerable if not Robin? Modern concerns and romantic entanglements clash on the battlefield and on the ramparts of Nottingham Castle. A play about selfishness and selflessness and love deferred and the fight. Always the fight. The fight must go on. Marian is the first play to come out of Flux’s bold FluxForward commission program.

Flux's shows operate using a Living Ticket, a new ticketing model pioneered by Flux in 2015. No financial transaction is required to attend a Flux performance; instead, attendees donate as they choose, guided by a transparent budget and inspired by Flux's goal of providing a living wage for all staff and artists. Marian, Or The True Tale of Robin Hood will be the third Flux mainstage production produced under this model.

Flux Theatre Ensemble produces transformative theatre that explores and awakens the capacity for change. As an ensemble-artist driven company, Flux believes that long-term collaboration and rigorous creative development can unite artists and audiences to build a creative home in New York.

Hailed as one of "8 Young (and Mighty) New York Theater Companies" by Backstage, Flux Theatre Ensemble is a twenty-time New York Innovative Theatre Award nominee, including wins for Jane the Plain, Ajax in Iraq, and The Angel Eaters Trilogy. NYIT has also awarded Flux the prestigious Caffé Cino Fellowship Award for "consistently producing outstanding work." In 2016, Flux was named a Fractured Atlas' Arts Entrepreneurship Awards Honoree. Flux is the proud recipient of two NYC Fringe Festival Awards (2007 Village Voice Audience Favorite Award for Riding the Bull; 2008 Outstanding Direction Award for Other Bodies), received a Citation for Excellence in Off-Off Broadway Theatre from the Independent Theater Bloggers Association, and is one of Indie Theatre Now’s “People of the Decade.”

New Ohio Theatre Hosts
Third Space

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT

Written by R. W. Fassbinder
Directed by Benjamin Viertel

When a new model, Karin, enters the home of famous fashion designer Petra von Kant, Petra's world -- and career -- rocket to manic heights. But in the midst of Petra’s euphoria, her submissive assistant, Marlene, senses a threat. When Karin becomes a superstar, leaving everything behind, Marlene is left picking up the broken pieces. What Marlene does with those pieces will dictate the rest of her life. Featuring an all-female cast, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant delves into the tortured connections between desire and power in an industry driven by consumption.

Third Space is a creative company co-founded by Benjamin Viertel and Bryce Cutler generating performances with the audience's experience at the center of the event. Third Space is a collective of Carnegie Mellon University alumni and colleagues, and creates work that reacts to the world at large - fostering discussions of current topics in engaging an audience and community into healthy action and debate. Recent productions include the award-winning webseries [Blank]MyLife, which Snobby Robot called, “wholly earnest…deeply personal and nuanced work,” the U.S. Premiere of Marius von Mayenburg’s Fireface which the New York Times called “inventive and sophisticated,” the award-winning Grindr The Musical, which will tour Italy in 2017.

New Ohio Theatre and Piehole present

SKI END

Created by Piehole
Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad

An Archive Residency world premiere
in collaboration with IRT Theater

An abandoned ski shop becomes the center of the universe, as a group of 30-whatever urbanites finds itself stuck in a flood-damaged building with a makeshift skate ramp, dead birds, and the tattered banner of a final blowout sale. From these clues they ritualistically reanimate a bygone world of Ski, until they incite a cosmic force. Rising from the ruins of economic and environmental dread, Piehole’s Ski End examines chronic patterns of apocalyptic despair and what it takes to face The Sublime.
READ MORE...

PIEHOLE investigates the process of collaboration and collective authorship to create live events. Driven by an ongoing pursuit of surprise, delight and beauty in unexpected places, Piehole encourages agency in one’s thinking, perceiving, and feeling, as well as an expanded sense of potential realities. Since 2008, Piehole’s work has performed in theaters, galleries, and hotel rooms in New York, Philadelphia, and Prague, and has been praised for its "beauty and gratifying weirdness" (The New York Times).

New Ohio Theatre and Our Voices present

SOOT AND SPIT

Written by Charles Mee
Directed by Kim Weild

An Archive Residency world premiere
in collaboration with IRT Theater

What drives a single person to create nearly 20,000 works of art? Celebrating the life of James Castle, one of America's great outsider artists, Our Voices presents the world premiere of acclaimed playwright Charles Mee's soot and spit. Born profoundly deaf, Castle never learned to read, write, sign or speak. His art was his language. Bringing his world to life through bluegrass, dance, and multi-media displays of his works, soot and spit enables its audience to experience the “other”- and rejoice in the unquenchable creativity of the human spirit.
READ MORE...

OUR VOICES creates innovative theater that exalts diversity, engenders understanding, provokes empathy and offers an alternate way for society to organize itself. They actively investigate themes of otherness in society whether they are culture, language, gender, sexual orientation or ability while cultivating an inclusive experience that more accurately represents our shared humanity and the world in which we live.

New Ohio Theatre Presents

ICE FACTORY 2017

2017 is the 24th season of our OBIE Award-winning summer festival of new work.

Every summer we invite the most exciting downtown companies to present their latest projects in an environment of generosity, dialogue, and inspiration. ICE FACTORY is a place where artists can take risks, try out new ideas, and
bring their projects to a new level.

Plays introduced in Ice Factory have gone on to garner Drama Desk nominations, OBIE Awards, Audience First Awards in Edinburgh, Off-Broadway productions, commercial runs, and national and international tours.

New Ohio Theatre Hosts
The Shelter

THRESHOLD: Three New Plays

Written by Morgan McGuire, Jacob Marx Rice, & Maiken Wiese

The Shelter presents three new plays from our 2017 Threshold Fellowship playwrights. These thrilling works of theatre, each on the threshold of greatness, explore sexuality, the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, and the American black experience through time. LENI & JOSEPH by Jacob Marx Rice (directed by Anna Strasser) and THE OTHER KIDS RAN AWAY by Maiken Wiese (directed by Kat Yen) will be presented in repertory as workshop productions. tselem by Morgan McGuire (directed by Jenny Beth Snyder) will be presented as a free staged reading.

The Shelter is more than a theatre company. We are a community. The core of our community is our weekly Shelter Sunday workshop— the creative home to some of theatre’s most exciting writers, directors and actors. Shelter Sunday is a vibrant and galvanizing playground for our artists. It breeds collaborations and creative collisions, and it’s also the epicenter for our play development and production process. Since 2009, Shelter Artists, along with our all-volunteer staff, have created and staged over 100 world premieres.