Robert Lyons, The Ohio Theatre

Seems like this has been a long goodbye. A couple years ago, it seemed like the Ohio was closing, and then it didn't close, and now it seems like this time it's for real. Is it for real? How do we know we can trust you? There's no more rabbits to pull out of the hat on this one. This is the one. And I agree, it has been a long time. We kind of had the rug pulled out from under us two years ago, and we have just been scrambling to postpone. At first the attempt was not just to postpone, but to see if there really was a way to save the theater at that location. So the first thing was to buy some time—let's create a window of time to go out to the city and everybody else, and say, this is my situation, what can be done?

And I would say after about a year of that, it became pretty clear there wasn't a mechanism by which we were going to save the space. I would say the second year was really a matter of wanting to go out in some kind of controlled way. A lot of people wanted to do one more show at the theater. I really believe this last year has been one of the best seasons. It's been a great season, and we end with The Ice Factory, our signature festival. At least we go out on our own terms. So that's kind of the way it played out. That's what seems to be happening.

How long has it been open? I have documentation of the Ohio Theatre back to 1981.

How long have you been the artistic director? I've been there since '88.

And what was it before '81? It was actually a theater called the Open Space. So the space has been a theater even past that. But they closed the Open Space sometime in the late seventies, and then it reopened as the Ohio Theatre approximately in '81. I talked to the former landlord, who was also the founder of the Ohio Theatre, and he kind of is a very vague—he's 91 now—[laughing] so his memory of exactly how that sequence went down is a little vague.

Do you know what it was before it was a theater? I'm told it was a textile factory.

Okay. And why was it called the Ohio Theatre? Well, the former landlord—there's two, it's William Hahn and Charles Magistro—Charles is from Ohio, and I guess he was feeling homesick, or something.

And your play is called Nostradamus Predicts the Death of SoHo. Can you elaborate on that, because I thought SoHo died already?[Laughs] Well, the title doesn't really say that it's dying right now, just that it was predicted by Nostradamus. That title is somewhat of a strange thing. That title has been knocking around my head for about five or six years as the play I wanted to write, although it wasn't clear to me what the play was. And then about a year and a half ago, well, somewhere in this process near the beginning, I thought it would be a good time to write that play. But the way it came out is much more—the title is much more metaphorical than literal. Nostradamus doesn't appear in the play, nor is there an explicit subject of the history of SoHo and how it used to be this. It's functioning on more metaphorical level: the issues of living in New York, what do people do here, and how do we get by, and how do we live with post-9/11. So it's really more about living in New York than the history of this neighborhood, but it just kind of came out that way.

Yeah, because this is a movie we've seen before in other neighborhoods, with Tonic. The Zipper Factory comes to mind. The Culture Project.

Yeah. Obviously these are all very different entities, but it's part of a larger trend. Do you see new places rising up to balance out the loss? I wish I did, but I don't. You have to give a lot of credit to someone like Kristin Marting [HERE], who figured out how to buy her space, back when she did, I guess it was now ten years ago, maybe more. So people who figured that out, kudos to her. I have a lot of respect for Kevin Cunningham at 3LD (3-Legged Dog Art and Technology Center). But that is one of the new spaces that's come up in the last, I think it's four years. With a long term lease. I know he's got his own financial issues I think he's working through that in a very systematic and smart way. So I do think 3LD will be here for a while, but I'm not getting the sense that there's a lot of new spaces about to open up in Manhattan.

If you broaden this question, obviously things are happened further out in Queens, in Long Island City a little bit, and in Brooklyn, but even that's getting pushed further. We're now from Williamsburg to Bushwick, so that kind of frontier keeps being pushed further and further away from Manhattan. I saw something today about how many wealthy people live in New York, I don't know what the source was on this, it was something like 600 to 750 thousand people who are considered wealthy live in the city, and I think the pressure of that much wealth and the small piece of real estate is driving artists out. There's nothing new to that observation, I think we're all familiar with that.

What are the particulars of the Ohio ending? We had a very idiosyncratic situation. Previously we had landlords who wanted us. They founded the theater, they appreciated the arts, they're not real estate developers who bought the building. He's a retired architect, he loved the architecture of it. He bought it in the late seventies when it was pretty cheap. I think those kind of people—the kind of eccentric landlord who's not necessarily a real-estate developer and sees everything in terms of maximizing profit—I think those people are dying off. Though Charles [Magistro] hasn't died off, but they got older and eventually the financial pressure of the building became too much. But that generation of people who owned buildings in Manhattan, in that way... I just think there's less and less of that. Once the real estate developers come in, there's not very much negotiation about art and the importance of art. That level of talking about real estate, without the city coming in a serious way and providing some kind of buffer between those forces, I think this is where the city really needs to step up.

So this was a situation in which there was a new landlord, and he said we're going to have to raise the rent, and it was astronomically higher than you can pay? Exactly. I mean, even those last two years we survived there, it was double the rent we were paying before. Even that was a fraction of what he wants, and he expects to get, which is why we're leaving.

Did you try to get assistance from the city? In some ways, yeah. I definitely reached out to DCA (Department of Cultural Affairs) and the people you would think of. Certainly, we reached out to community boards and City Council. The problem is, there needs to be a mechanism by which the city can intervene in a situation like this. In this case it's private property, and once this guy bought it, it's his building. The city has to come up with a policy where they come up with the difference between what an arts organization can pay and what the market value of the space is. Listen, he'd love to have us here if we could pay that big amount.

How much is it that he wants ultimately? I don't know. It's probably like $45 to 50 thousand dollars a month.

There was a huge outcry when Tonic closed. There were sit-ins, people were arrested. Were you on some level disappointed there hasn't been as much of a willingness to protest this? I have somewhat mixed feelings about that. I don't feel disappointed, that's actually pretty clear. There's been tremendous support: emotional support from the community, people reaching out, and people asking how they can help. So in no way do I feel like that this event is going unmarked by the community. But, again, during that year when I was like, "What's going on, what are our options," at this point—and maybe this is what point in my life I am—organizing and leading a protest without a viable plan of action—you know, a goal that feels like, if we do this, we can achieve this—then it's really symbolic or it makes everyone feel better but it doesn't really change the outcome. For me, I wasn't really interested in that, working up a steam about it. I'd be happy to lead a charge if there's a crack to go through, but I don't just want to lead a charge into a brick wall. I feel like my time is better used figuring out post-Wooster Street than leading some kind of satisfying but ultimately ineffectual protest.

And you are continuing the SoHo Think Tank somewhere else? Well, yeah, we're going to 3-Legged Dog. We have a three year residency there, under the banner "Ohio Interrupted," and we'll be continuing some of our programming. He's got his two spaces over there, so we'll be doing some of our programming there. We'll be doing Ice Factory 2011 there. He's also offered us some office space there, so that's where we're moving in September.

And the Ohio Theatre on Wooster Street will become a Duane Reade, thus making Manhattan a little more like... Ohio. Uh, probably. I think he has more [laughs], I think it will go to the highest bidder, I'll say that. I don't think he cares that much what's there, as long as the tenant's rent is the maximum. But yeah, I always say it's going to be like The Sunglass Hut or something, I can just imagine that used space filled with sunglasses, or something ridiculous.

One last question. Looking back, what strikes you as your favorite or most memorable moments? There's a lot of them! But, probably, one of my favorite ones—it really comes to mind—was when we had the Václav Havel Festival around New York. We were one of the venues, and I directed one of the shows at the Ohio Theatre, Protest, and Havel came to see it. He really loved it, he hung out afterwards, we were hanging out in the lobby having a beer, and I just thought, "This is really quite an amazing moment." [Laughs] He was talking about the play he was working on, and asking me what I was writing, and I was just thinking, "Well this is just like a conversation I've had a hundred times with a hundred playwrights, but I'm actually having it with Václav Havel in the lobby of the Ohio Theatre." That was certainly a high point, I would say.