The good news: Cincinnati does have alternative theater that's a walk on the wilder side. But to catch it you have to be alert.

        The best way to hunt down experiments is to check flyers in restaurant and gallery windows in Over-the-Rhine (usually taped up at the last minute.) And make SSNova, 2260 CentralParkway, Brighton, and the Dance Hall, in North College Hill, regular stops.

        The bad news: The top names in local experimental theater — Mark Fox, Tony Luensman and Sarah Mann — are taking the year off.

        Mr. Fox and Mr. Luensman, the masterminds of Saw Theatre, which specializes in remarkable puppetry performances, spent last season reinvigorating their collaborative vision by working individually on visual art projects.

        Mr. Fox is finishing a residency in Prague and doesn't expect Saw to have a local performance before summer 2003.

        Ms. Mann is always a name to watch for, whether she's enlivening productions at Know, SSNova, Arts Consortium, Playhouse's alteractive series or producing and performing her own work.

        She's one of the artists in Joe Barnett's The Script Amoeba Project that continues through next weekend at SSNova.

        “Alternative theater, performance art, they get a bad name because of (artists) who think they don't have to be clear,” Ms. Mann says.

        She demonstrates clear communication in her work, but we won't see anything in the coming year.

        She's occupying herself with a long list of tasks.

        First, to get some bookings, particularly in schools, for The Weighting Game, which she and Jennifer Dalton wrote and premiered at Gabriel's Corner earlier this summer. Game explores eating disorders, particularly as they relate to adolescent girls.

        She's part of the Ministry of Entertainment, started by Marc Siemer and Joe Gressis, which focuses on video and has finished its first short subject, The Day America Called in Fat to Work.

        And she has a new idea.

        She is loathe to say much about it, but she notes she is most likely to pick up the dramatic gauntlet “when people have preconceived ideas, when they think they know about something, That's when I write about it.”

        The topic intriguing her has to do with women and relationships and she's thinking of calling it Recreational Use.

        “Now I have to write it,” she laughs.

        She has no stage commitments beyond this month and doesn't plan to sign on to any projects “unless someone calls with something I can't refuse.” She hopes that doesn't happen. “I need to do some writing and time gets away from me.”

        Ms. Mann has great hopes for the future as younger performing, visual and video artists “are beginning to find each other.”

        A School of Creative and Performing Arts grad (1986), she moved on for college and her early 20s and returned home in the mid-1990s.

        “I love it here,” she says. “There's a huge core of people who make art and poetry. There are so many resources. But I think some of it's about letting go of pre-conceived ideas of what success is.”

        “I never would have guessed it would all work out this way but I couldn't be happier. This is a great way to live art.”

        Dance Hall is the home of Contemporary Dance Theater. You also will want to try at least one line-up of its Performance/Time/Art works-in-progress series.

        Season opener is an Oct. 18-19 fund-raiser that will include Bill Donnelly, Judith Mikita, improv group Kinesphere, musician Betsy Lippitt, poet and fashion warrior Terri Ford and an “all-star poetry team” from the University of Cincinnati English department.

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