In the helter-skelter of summer theater festivals, the cool curatorial heads of Ice Factory always provide a welcome breeze, and this year they are among the first major players to return to live performance. Each production in the fest's 28th edition runs for a single week; see below for details. Spectactors are invited to come to the theater up to an hour before curtain time to experience and participate in Endless Loop of Gratitude, a sound installation that allows participants to record their thoughts about things that make them feel thankful.
July 21–24: As the Sun Sets
Dow Dance's multimedia performance, choreographed by Caleb Dowden, explores questions of radical Black love in predominantly white spaces. Dowden performs the piece alongside Imani Gaudin-County, Andy Guzmán and Jai Perez.
July 28–31: A Grave is Given Supper
This self-described "Narco-Acid Western," drawn from poems by Mike Soto, concerns a pair of lovers in a U.S.–Mexico border town ravaged by a drug war. Claudia Acosta directs the multimedia madness, which involbes video, dance and a performance by Elena Hurst.
August 4–7: Herstory
Two women collaborate on an unusual project of artistic reconnection to meet the conditions of an inheritance left to them by a dead artist. In Tandem Lab's Gisela Cardenas directs co-creators Laura Butler-Levitt and Heather Hollingsworth in this original two-hander inspired by the character of Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest and written for the stage by Javier Antonio Gonzalez.
August 11–14: My Onliness
Playwright Robert Lyons and director Daniel Irizarry pay tribute to the Polish auteur Stanislaw Witkacy in a dystopian fantasia about a mad king, a writer and a musical master of ceremonies. The music is by Kamala Sankaram, who is in the cast of six along with Irizarry, Cynthia La Cruz, Gabriel Silva, Rhys Tivey and Alexandria Wailes (who is in charge of the show's thorough ASL interpretation).
