When the Ice Factory Festival opens its 20th season tonight, no one will be happier than Robert Lyons, its artistic director: That's because he'll finally get to see the shows.
The Obie Award-winning fest is an annual leap of faith for its leader, who doesn't bet on individual productions but theater companies whose work he's admired in such tiny performance spaces as Dixon Space, the Brick and Bushwick Starr.
Lyons has a good eye: Over its two decades, the festival has introduced such now-established companies as Elevator Repair Service ("Gatz"), the Foundry Theatre and Rude Mechanicals.
Jess Chayes
Set on a Metro-North train, the Assembly's "That Poor Dream" explores class consciousness via a Dickensian lens.
So even if you haven't heard of the Assembly, Sightline, the Mad Ones, CollaborationTown, Built for Collapse and Anonymous Ensemble — all players in this year's edition, in Greenwich Village — odds are you will.
Or maybe not.
"Sometimes you bet on somebody, and it doesn't pay off," Lyons concedes. "One time we brought in a group that turned out to be presenting a red-nose clown show. They thought that they could walk through Soho dressed as clowns and bring an audience in. I was deeply embarrassed by that."
But the fest must be doing something right: It's still thriving, even though summer is suddenly a hot time for competing theater festivals, Lincoln Center's among them.
And, Lyons says proudly, there isn't a single one-man show in the bunch. Indeed, this year's edition is heavy on collaborative pieces.
Typical is "Untitled Biopic Project" (July 10 to 13), billed as "a hallucinatory meditation on '60s folk rock culture." It was collectively created by the Brooklyn-based troupe, the Mad Ones — named after a quote from Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" — which enjoyed great success with its "Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War."
Joe Curnutte, the troupe's 30-year-old co-artistic director, describes the piece as "a bit of a fever dream," with "psychological thriller elements that meet a folk-rock biopic."
The rest of this year's entries seem equally obscure at first glance. The Assembly's "That Poor Dream" (tonight through Saturday), inspired by Dickens' "Great Expectations," explores class consciousness and is set entirely on a Metro-North train. Sightline's "My Machine Is Powered by Clocks" (July 3 to 6) uses time travel as a thematic element. CollaborationTown's "Help Me To Make It" (July 17 to 20) deals with a family's emotional conflicts over many years. Built for Collapse's "Red Wednesday" (July 24 to 27) is an "operatic, multimedia spectacle" concerning three generations of an Iranian family. And Anonymous Ensemble's "I Land" (July 31 to Aug. 3) invites its audience to "spend an evening on an island far from your daily lives — an island inhabited by your inner life."
"What keeps the festival very much alive for us is that we're jumping into the unknown with the artists, and seeing what comes out," Lyons says. "I don't know what they're going to unleash."
For both him and adventurous audiences willing to take a chance, there's only one way to find out.
The Ice Factory Festival runs tonight through Aug. 3 at the New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher St. Tickets, $18 ($15 students and seniors), at 888-596-1027 and at newohiotheatre.org.
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