Downtown theater!

THE GREAT SPACE RACE Marting, head of HERE, relaxes in a room of her own.

Photograph: Beth Levendis

For decades, downtown Manhattan has been a center for Off-Off Broadway. Outsider artists flock to its bohemian stages, from the revered (La MaMa E.T.C., P.S. 122) to the ragged (UNDER St. Marks). But with real-estate prices forever climbing (despite the mortgage crisis), venues are struggling to survive. Collective: Unconscious—which moved from its original Ludlow Street location to Tribeca in 2004 due to rising rents—closed its Church Street space last month; two-year hot spot Mo Pitkin’s shuttered last October; and Rififi closed last Thursday.

This, of course, is nothing new. In the late ’90s, the Lower East Side was a hotbed of alternative venues, including Todo Con Nada, Surf Reality, Expanded Arts and House of Candles, all of which were gone by the ’00s, along with the New York International Fringe Festival’s original headquarters, the Present Company Theatorium. Ironically (not to mention unwittingly), the Fringe’s success has contributed to the change in the downtown landscape. This week marks the fest’s 11th anniversary, but the venues that currently house its productions—university spaces and Off Broadway theaters—are distinctly different from the seedy stages of yesteryear. Spaces with air conditioning aren’t necessarily a bad thing…unless they come with an overhead so high no independent artist can think of treading their boards except during the Fringe.

“Off-Off Broadway is now Philadelphia,” semi-jokes Ron Lasko, the Fringe’s publicist. While he says gentrification has done a lot of the damage, he admits the festival itself is also to blame. “It’s such a great financial bargain that many indie companies are quite content to produce their new work the Fringe [for a $550 fee] instead of seeking out costlier venues at other times,” he says. “When a showcase costs $20,000 to $40,000 to mount, there’s little room for experimentation.”

“There is absolutely a crisis happening in the scene,” says David Johnston, program director for NYC Performing Arts Spaces, a nonprofit organization focused on the relationship between real estate and the performing arts. “Last year we lost the old Bouwerie Lane Theatre, home of Jean Cocteau Rep, as well as the Actors Playhouse and the Independent Theatre on MacDougal.” Producer John Clancy, a founder of the Fringe as well as the executive director of the not-for-profit organization League of Independent Theater, worries that downtown venues may disappear if no one steps in to help preserve them. “We must honor the neighborhood’s history,” he says. “Downtown theater spaces have been central to the identity of this city. It’s where revolutionaries, artists and working-class people come together.”

Not all the news is dire. A number of downtown staples are staying put, though luck has as much to do with their perseverance as pluck. Erez Ziv, managing director for Horse Trade Theater Group, which runs the Kraine, Red Room and UNDER St. Marks, credits his “great landlords” for their sweet rent deals. The Spiegeltent, a temporary performance spot, returns to the South Street Seaport for a third year. The venerable Dixon Place is moving from its dreary Bowery digs to a swanky, two-stage space on Chrystie Street this fall. And last month HERE Arts Center unveiled its revamped complex, which the company now owns. “Before we bought, we were paying $25,000 in rent a month,” artistic director Kristin Marting recalls. “Now our monthly overhead is just $11,000.”

Of course HERE was able to come up with the $1.7 million down payment plus another $2 million for renovations due to its storied reputation. But not many companies find themselves in that position. For most, the options are few: Leave the area or leave the biz.

“A theater is a business, pure and simple,” says David Michonski, the CEO of Coldwell Banker’s commercial division, which handled the Mo Pitkin’s sale. “Unless steps are taken to make sure theaters can survive and prosper—either by public subsidies for their creation or zoning that requires they be part of the urban landscape—they risk being overwhelmed by other businesses.”

So what’s the solution: Grants? Government assistance? Private gifts? Clancy and his League are trying to ensure that all of the above happens. “A company without a space is like a football team without a field,” he says. “It’s important that we not give up this geographical battleground.”