[title]
A paradox: Off-Off Broadway theater can be hard to find because there’s just so darn much of it. New York City has about 200 Off-Off venues, where countless young, hungry and scrappy companies mount shorts runs of their shows. Given the vastness and diversity of the offerings, it’s a challenge to figure out which troupes are a good match for the kind of theater you want to see.
That’s where the good folks at Theatre Development Fund come in. Best known as the force behind the beloved TKTS booths, which offer discounted tickets to Broadway and Off Broadway productions, TDF is also an excellent resource for Off-Off theater, thanks to OffOff@$9: a free program that lets you buy tickets to a hundreds of shows for just $9 apiece (plus a $1 service charge). You can register for it here.
To make things even easier, TDF is now taking the additional step of curating a sampler pack of some of the city’s most accomplished Off-Off companies. On March 20 and March 24, the organization will team up with Baruch Performing Arts Center for the first edition of Performeteria, a buffet-style interactive festival. In various playing spaces throughout BPAC, on regular stages and in hidden nooks, 15 local theater and dance companies will offer site-specific, 10-minute tastes of their work. Tickets, as usual, are just $9.
Here's the full lineup of the groups scheduled to take part in Performeteria, with links to recent shows of theirs that Time Out has reviewed:
Both nights: Blessed Unrest, The Fire This Time Festival, Kinesis Project, Lesser America, The Pumpkin Pie Show
March 20 only: The Assembly, The New York Neo-Futurists, Rady & Bloom, Talking Band, Theater Breaking Through Barriers
March 24 only: Dramatic Question Theatre (DQT), Flux Theatre Ensemble, Ma-Yi Theater Company, New York Deaf Theatre, Project: Theater
To help keep things moving along, audiences will enter on a staggered schedule each night, at 7:00pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm and 9:30pm.
Tickets are on sale now. Dig in!