16th Annual ICE FACTORY Summer Festival of New Work Begins 7/8 In NYC

Artistic Director Robert Lyons proudly presents the 16th annual ICE FACTORY summer festival of new work. ICE FACTORY 2009 opens July 8th, presenting six New York premieres in six weeks, and wraps up August 15th. All performances are at the Ohio Theatre - 66 Wooster Street (between Spring & Broome) in Soho. Performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7pm. Previous ICE FACTORY shows have gone on to Off-Broadway, the Joyce, PS 122, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Walker Art Center, et al. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students/seniors via SmartTix at 212-868-4444 or http://www.SmartTix.com. Trains: R, W to Prince St. or 6, C, E to Spring St. For more information visit http://www.SohoThinkTank.org.

In the ICE FACTORY festival, Soho Think Tank presents works by emerging and established downtown companies, as well as exceptional national and international groups. Ice Factory prides itself on maintaining an extraordinary aesthetic diversity along with an unequaled standard for intelligent, imaginative theater. The festival offers companies, including the Foundry, Elevator Repair Service, Les Frères Corbusier, Jane Comfort, New Georges, Pig Iron, the Rude Mechanicals and Big Time Action Theatre, a prime forum in which to develop their work.

SOHO THINK TANK strengthens, nurtures and promotes an aesthetically and culturally diverse community of independent theatre artists and theatre companies by producing, presenting and programming new work at the Ohio Theatre, in Soho.

ICE FACTORY 2009 - 16TH ANNIVERSARY PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

July 8 - 11
A Wonderland
Anonymous Ensemble
Written and directed by Eamonn Farrell. Music by William Antoniou.

Alice, a talented urban dreamer approaching middle age, is caught in a quagmire of diminishing potential, corporate insignificance and the mirage of celebrity. This is Lewis Carroll deconstructed by the mind of a modern, mature songstress on a journey of self-identity. A befeathered spectacle; a psychedelic, multimedia/music-fueled trip down the rabbit hole.

Anonymous Ensemble has been making rock theatre in NYC for seven years and has been seen in Brisbane, Berlin, Oslo, Edinburgh, throughout NYC and soon, London. They're best known as creators of the revolutionary, episodic, rock epic, The Best.

July 15 - 18
Lavaman
Aztec Economy
Written by Casey Wimpee and directed by Matthew Hancock.

A shy comic illustrator in Queens quietly expresses his repressed aggression in an unpublished graphic novel, Lavaman, featuring the daily life of a retired volcano and an alcoholic tombstone. An evening of extreme recreation with his rock-and-roll roommate and his day-trader buddy cracks open his sweet façade with an eruption that incinerates everything in its path. A hardcore punk rock mini-epic of friendship, repression and brutality. With video animation.

Aztec Economy is a Brooklyn-based company that presents small-scale live performances with an emphasis on original work. Resent performance spaces include The Tank, The Brick, Monkey Town, Marfa Lights and the Ohio Theatre. (www.newyorkisdead.net)

July 22 - 25
Babes In Toyland
The Little Lord Fauntleroys
(In their own version of Victor Herbert's Musical Extravaganza Recession Spectacular - Live Onstage! - And totally inappropriate for children.)
Directed by Michael Levinton and José Zayas. Libretto based on Glen MacDonough's original 1903 Broadway script. Musical direction by Rodney Pallanck with Kate Marvin.