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When the St. Mark's Playhouse on 2nd Avenue and St. Mark's Place in Manhattan closed its doors, the building was next used as a movie theatre. Then, in moved the retailer Gap. And now, it is a pizza joint. Such seems to be the common fate of alternative, off-Broadway theatre in New York City. On April 16th, the movement lost one of its best-loved proponents, Lynn Michaels, reports the Web site TheatreMania.com.

Michaels was co-founder and artistic director of the Open Space Theatre Experiment, a non-profit organization dedicated to producing the plays of theatrical luminaries such as Bertolt Brecht, Eugene Ionesco, and Henrik Ibsen outside of Broadway's gaudy marquees.

In 1969, Michaels and her husband, painter and designer Harry Baum, opened the St. Mark's Playhouse in a space that was once a union meetinghouse. In the 70's she initiated the Open Space Experiment and started producing shows in a converted hat factory in Soho, a run-down area of town in those days. The space also hosted festivals of new plays.

Her productions were known for their lack of pretension and emphasis on both craft and experimentation. She valued the spirit of creativity and independent thought, often producing shows that confounded and enticed critics with a mix of salient social themes and strange, experimental artifice.


www.TheatreMania.com