Ohio Theatre to close on 31 Aug 2010

The Ohio Theatre, part of New York's downtown theatre scene for 29 years, will close on 31 Aug 2010. The new landlord has issued official notice and no further negotiations are scheduled. Located at 66 Wooster Street, the theatr was one of Soho's pioneering performance spaces.

The not-for-profit theatre company Soho Think Tank runs the space under the direction of Artistic Director Robert Lyons. Lyons says, "It's where Tony Kushner produced his first play out of college, where Philip Seymour Hoffman made his professional acting debut, where Eve Ensler performed Dicks in the Desert, a decade before writing The Vagina Monologues. The Ohio Theatre has been an incubator and platform for New York's most exciting and innovative theatre artists for almost 30 years. Its closing emphatically punctuates the end of an era in Soho, and stands as a high profile casualty in the relentless decimation of the lower Manhattan theatre landscape."

In the meantime, the current season continues, including preparation for Ice Factory 2010, as well as plans for a MAJOR dance party some time this summer.

As for long-term goals, Soho Think Tank has begun discussions with some of the core theatre companies of the Ohio Theatre community about forming a coalition to secure a new space.