Kevin Laibson's SIDECOACH Returns To The Stage For Three Nights Only

Ice Factory Festival's late night art-comedy arm, Fridays on Ice, is back with a special end-of-summer edition, and it's taking up a little more room this time around. This coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Fridays on Ice is taking over the entire New Ohio stage - no longer will these genre-bending comedians be restricted to the apron of another production's set. This weekend, we're filling the whole space with weird.

Each night features two bills: the 8pm is a salon-style variety show featuring some of New York's cagiest impresarios of the comedy and cabaret scenes, and 9pm is SIDECOACH, the acclaimed unscripted collaborative spontaneous performance project from the crazy mastermind producer of Fridays on Ice, Kevin Laibson. SIDECOACH is some of New York's top improvisers creating a completely disposable theater piece under Laibson's direction - sidecoaching, if you will. By addressing the players as they create a scene, Laibson acts as a liaison between the audience and the performers, highlighting and heightening the relationship between the two.

The performers get to literally hear and respond to what the audience is observing, and the audience gets to hear the performers address and adjust their process as it goes. The play being created is in response to everything that is happening in that room at that moment, and the everyone in that room gets to experience every part of it, however they want to do so.

Laibson, former artistic director of The Peoples Improv Theater and current head of improvisation at Atlantic Acting School, developed the show as a means to demystify the act of improvisation for first-year students. It quickly gained attention as its own form, and the show has been featured in festivals all over the country, on the Improv Noise podcast, and in master class form at several colleges.

For more information, check NewOhioTheatre.org.