Following our December 9 report about the possible closing of downtown's venerable Ohio Theatre, we were pleased to read in yesterday's Times that the theater has worked out a brief extension for its home at 66 Wooster Street. Artistic director Robert Lyons and the building's new owners, Zar Property NY, have agreed to a one-year lease, though one that contains a mutual opt-out clause at the end of June--meaning that either party could withdraw from the agreement at that point. So for now, then, the theater is guaranteed six months in its longtime Soho location.

"We've bought some time," said Lyons, when we chatted with him earlier today. But with a higher rent, Lyons noted, the theater's "old business model is over. We have to reinvent the business model." (Despite its large size and Soho locale, the theater has been a relatively affordable rental for theater companies.)

Photo via konoa.com

Before 66 Wooster Street became the Ohio Theatre and various apartments, it had a former life as a textile factory. Theatrical legend has it that before the first performance--in what was then called the Open Space--the cast and crew went down on hands and knees, armed with magnets, pulling decades of dropped pins and needles from the floorboard. Many years later, the Ohio is on pins and needles again. The building that houses the Ohio is being sold, and in a few weeks or months the Ohio Theatre will almost certainly cease to exist.

Robert Lyons, artistic director of Soho Think Tank, a nonprofit group that administers the Ohio and produces the OBIE-award winning Ice Factory Festival, describes the situation: "In one way or another, our days are numbered. It's just a matter of what that number is. We're trying to finish the season lined up through June. We could possibly still be here in the summer for Ice Factory '09. It could all end as soon as the end of January." While Lyons is currently in talks with the building's prospective buyer, he dismisses the idea that the Ohio will have any long-term future. "That doesn't seem like it's in the cards," he says. If the new owner allows the current season to finish up, audiences can bid farewell to the Ohio through its remaining scheduled shows, among them Target Margin's 10 Blocks on the Camino Real, Eisa Davis's Angela's Mix Tape (produced by New Georges), and Clubbed Thumb's annual Summer Works festival.