A lot of Cincinnati theater artists are going to try to lure us out of our comfort zone this season.

        We'll be tempted by adventures in gay theater, Gen X and Y theater, and the provocative — even scary — thoughts of contemporary African-American women playwrights.

        The idea is to create an alternative. And it's suddenly so strong that over the summer a loose collaborative of small theater companies (Know Tribe, Performance Gallery, Queen City Off-Broadway, Women's Theatre Initiative) came together to create Cincinnati Alternative Theaters. Everyone is invited to their coming-out party, 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Gabriel's Corner.

        Wait a minute. Alternative theater? Isn't that where naked people shout swear words at you?

        No! answers Cincinnati's theater community. Producers and directors have a lot to say on the subject. “Alternative,” it turns out, is one of those terms defined by its community. It can range from avant garde to brave, small steps away from the mainstream and toward the unknown.

        “Alternative is defined differently by everyone,” says Lyle Benjamin, artistic director of Queen City Off-Broadway, who operates upstairs at Carol's on Main in a tiny space dubbed Plush. “I define alternative as hip, cool, something people want to go out and see. And I want to attract a mainstream audience.”

        Queen City's season opens next month with a revival of 12 Angry Men, a classic that debuted more than 40 years ago.

        Alternative? Well, this version would be better titled “12 Angry Whatevers,” Mr. Benjamin laughs,because women characters have replaced some of the gentlemen of the jury, one of whom is a Czech-born phone sex operator.
       

A thrill ride

        A look at the city's 2002-03 theater schedule shows a lot of theaters beyond the four members of the collaborative pushing the “we don't do that here” envelope. The largest theaters are included.

IF YOU GO

There are plenty of opportunities to step slightly off the beaten track in 2002-03. Consider:     August     Through Aug. 24, The Script Amoeba Project, SSNova. www.ssnova.org     September     Sept. 21-Oct. 20, Havana is Waiting, Playhouse. 421-3888, (800) 582-3208, www.cincyplay.com     Sept. 27-Oct. 5, Goddesses and Guys, Performance Gallery. 333-8482, www.performancegallery.org     October     Oct. 3-12, Execution of Justice, Miami University. (513) 529-3200     Oct. 11-26, In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe, Know Tribe. 300-5669, www.knowtheatre.com     Oct. 12, Style Without Substance, 20/20, SSNova. 621-4700, www.cincinnatiarts.com     Oct. 18-19, Performance and Time Arts series fund-raiser, Contemporary Dance Theatre, College Hill Town Hall. 591-1222, www.cdt-dance.org     Oct. 24-Nov. 17, Jesus Hopped the "A' Train, Cincinnati Shakespeare. 381-2273, www.cincyshakes.com     Oct. 24-26, Promenade, Studio Series, College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, 556-4183, www.uc.edu/www/ccm     Oct. 27-Nov. 12, The Gimmick, Cincinnati Shakespeare     Oct. 30-Nov. 3, Anowa, Miami University     Oct. 30-Nov. 2, The Credeaux Canvas, Ensemble Off-Center. 421-3555, www.cincyetc.com     November     Nov. 1-3, InterMedia 2002, Weston Art Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 977-4100, www.cincinnatiarts.org     Nov. 8-16, I've Got Feathers But I'm Not a Chicken/Magic to Do, Queen City Off-Broadway. 681-2043     Nov. 14-23, Lebensraum, IF, Aronoff Fifth Third Bank Theater, 241-7469     Nov. 15-16, Performance and Time Arts, Contemporary Dance Theatre, College Hill Town Hall     December     Dec. 5-22, The Santaland Diaries, New Edgecliff. 961-6534, www.newedgecliff.com     Watch for New Edgecliff season announcement.     Dec. 13-21, The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, Queen City Off-Broadway     January     Watch for Playhouse alteractive announcement in November. The Monday night series will continue January through March.     Watch for Performance Gallery updates.     Jan. 16-25, Pretty Fire, Know Tribe     Jan. 24-25, Performance and Time Arts, Contemporary Dance Theatre, College Hill Town Hall     February     Feb. 1-March 9, An Infinite Ache, Playhouse     Feb. 7-9, Drag Queens on Trial, Xavier University, 745-3205     Feb. 12-15. Tape, Ensemble Off-Center series     Feb. 13-28, Trust: An Evening of One-Acts, Know Tribe     March     March 14-15, Performance and Time Arts, Contemporary Dance Theatre, College Hill Town Hall     March 22-April 20, The Love Song of Robert J. Oppenheimer (Rosenthal New Play Prize), Playhouse     April     April 2-5, Breath, Boom, Ensemble     April 3-13, Mystero Buffo, Xavier University     April 25-26, Performance and Time Arts, Contemporary Dance Theatre, College Hill Town Hall     May     May 8-10, The Shape of Things, Studio Series, CCM, UC     May 8-17, This Is Our Youth, Know Tribe     May 17-June 15, The Syringa Tree, Playhouse     May 22-June 15, In the Blood, Cincinnati Shakespeare     June     Watch for an announcement of the summer production by Women's Theatre Initiative, 604-8545     June 12-28, Corpus Christi, Know Tribe

        Certainly the Playhouse Shelterhouse celebrates the beyond-the-mainstream with Havana Is Waiting and The Syringa Tree, plays born of homelands Cuba and South Africa.

        “Alternative is kind of like a thrill ride,” defines New Edgecliff's artistic director Michael Shooner.

        “You don't know exactly what's going to happen. Hopefully once somebody's tried it — maybe with a little gentle urging — they'll develop a craving for it. They'll want to think, to question pre-conceived ideas.”

        So the “alternative” debate rages on, starting with what is it?

        Is it traditional work in a small, funky and off-the-beaten track space?

        “Alternative could mean going to a building you've never been to before,” says Regina Pugh of The Performance Gallery, which debuted in June in the East End.

        The Performance Gallery re-opens its doors on Sept. 27 for Goddesses and Guys, which includes a collaboration by actress Jenny Timm and flautist Christina Jennings and, representing the guys, thrash musician Nathan Singer. A preview will be on the program at Saturday's party.

        Certainly that qualifies New Edgecliff. Mr. Shooner, who has not set his season and isn't part of the collaborative, likely will move to The Artery in Newport.

        Last spring the theater had a huge success there with a collection of Joyce Carol Oates' monologues, I Stand Before You Naked. By the end of the run, it was selling out the 60 available seats.
       

Stretching boundaries

        What about plays that ask questions we've never considered?

        IF Theatre Collective will resume after a year off with a two-play season. The first one, Lebensraum, asks this intriguing question: “What would happen if the German Chancellor woke up one morning and decided to make restitution for the Holocaust?”

        What about work that stretches our boundaries in established theaters?

        Playhouse in the Park will make some theatergoers uncomfortable with this year's Rosenthal New Play Prize winner, the dark and mysterious exploration of science and religion The Love Song of Robert J. Oppenheimer.

        Where do university theater departments fit?

        While there has been little exploration of new theatrical forms in public performances, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music has offered the Cincinnati premieres of Marisol, a rare regional venture into Latino magical realism, and lesbian-themed Stop Kiss.

        This season includes the Cincinnati premiere of playwright/screenwriter Neil (In the Company of Men) LaBute's The Shape of Things, while Xavier University is planning Drag Queens on Trial.

        “Alternative programming at CCM Drama is in many ways the core of what we do and who we are,” says drama department chairman Richard Hess.

        Is “alternative” about geography?

        “Alternative is an elusive term,” says Playhouse producing artistic director Ed Stern, “which every community defines itself.”

        Certainly Cincinnati and New York don't have the same definition.

        “A lot of people think theater itself is alternative,” says Jay Kalagayan of Know Tribe, the only member of the collaborative who is under 30 years old. “How many screens did you say it's on? What do you mean there's only one start time per night? Wow. That's weird.

        “And affordable — that's alternative,” says Mr. Kalagayan. Tickets for companies in the collaborative are in the $15 range.
       

No new ideas

        D. Lynn Meyers, artistic director of Ensemble Theatre, says flatly that Cincinnati doesn't have alternative theater, which she defines as “presenting new ideas in new ways.” (That is, in ways other than “the well-made play.”)

        And, Ms. Meyers asks, what is it an “alternative” to?

        Ms. Meyers notes that some of what Ensemble has produced “is an alternative to what most Cincinnatians see.”

        That will continue this year in the theater's three-entry Off-Center series squarely aimed at Generations X and Y.

        Most eagerly anticipated is the spring production of Kia Corthron's hit Breath, Boom about coming of age in a brutal girl gang.

        As Ms. Meyers looks over the season as a whole, she says, “I don't think a lot of it would have been produced here five years ago.”

        Of the playwrights and work that will debut here this season, enough burst on the national consciousness in the early 1990s to call up the adage about our Queen City.

        Ten years late comes an explosion of nationally hailed work that will be brand-new here.

        “Mood rings got here 10 years late, too,” Ms. Meyers laughs.
       

Time for change

        Ms. Meyers definition of “alternative” is shouted down by a lot of voices, including the quietly polite one of Michael Burnham, faculty member in CCM's drama department. He has acted, directed, taught and observed the Cincinnati theater scene for more than three decades.

        During that time he has mentored a lot of the people who are starting to make waves, including Brian Robertson of the Performance Gallery and Matthew Pyle, artistic director of Know.

        To Mr. Burnham, “alternative” is not so much a matter of subject as it is of scale.

        “It's pushing a little beyond what's acceptable to the mainstream. It's making magic out of what you have.

        “When an audience is judging how you did it, rating sets and costumes instead of thinking about content, that's mainstream,” he says.

        This year, Mr. Burnham will direct Maria Irene Fornes-Al Carmines rarely revived, absurdist musical Promenade in the CCM Studio Series and, for Know, the premiere of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi. Mr. McNally's play invited quite the fuss when it debuted a few years ago, because it puts forward the hypothesis that Jesus was homosexual.

        “To do the Jesus play in the basement of a church,” Mr. Burnham ruminates. “Any way I can be a part of that I will. That's a city not being afraid to talk to itself.”

        Cincinnati's social unrest, almost everybody agrees, is the answer to the question “why now.”

        “Cincinnati is going through tremendous change, it needs change,” Mr. Benjamin says. “Art brings people together in the same place at the same time. What can happen? Change can happen.”

        Mr. Benjamin hopes to take Jeff Shelby's Curfew on a mini-tour of Cincinnati recreation centers in October.

        Until now, Mr. Shelby's drama, inspired by his passionate response to the 2001 civil unrest, has played only in Over-the-Rhine.

        Alternative theater, asserts Mr. Burnham, “grows here. It's making art out of the soil of this place, in reaction to what's here.”

        Cincinnati Shakespeare producing artistic director Jasson Minadakis agrees. This year's new Cutting Edge series (marketed as “for mature audiences only”) is intended to bring new theatergoers in and start necessary conversations.

        Jesus Hopped the "A' Train takes on the judicial and prison systems; Bent is a harrowing examination of gay prejudice set in Nazi Germany; In the Blood is about an illiterate, homeless woman and welfare.

        Cincinnati today, he says, “calls for a contemporary voice, and a diverse voice.”
       

Future unknown

        It's much too early to predict how long it will take for an alternative scene to find its artistic and financial footing — particularly during a tough economy.

        “The hardest thing is going to be creating the momentum and maintaining the momentum,” says Mr. Benjamin. “I say we're going to have to move at a sprint for two years.”

        And certainly it's much too early to predict where it will go from here.

        Many of the artists embracing the beyond-the-mainstream are middle-aged, which may explain why the work they're choosing is filled with exciting ideas, but told in traditional ways in some familiar places.

        Mr. Kalagayan dreams about alternative theater helping to expand the population of theater artists here. If it thrives, he says, “CCM artists might stay in town longer, artists might move to the city.”

        Which leads to the biggest question about the near-tsunami of “alternative” theater in Cincinnati: How to persuade audiences to search for the unfamiliar on a Friday night?

        There are no ready answers.

        Take the risk, urges Ms. Meyers, “to join a collective experience that takes you to new places. You just have to trust it.”

Related stories:
African-American writers take risks
Hunt down theater's wild side
Universities foster experimentation

Theater's alternative face
African-American writers take risks
Hunt down theater's wild side
Universities foster experimentation
After the divorce, friendship grows
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
In the swing with Margie French
KENDRICK: Alive and well
This flamingo display has legs
Vote for your favorite American Idol
Raitt, Lovett bring Riverbend back to roots
DEMALINE: The arts
GELFAND: Classical music notes
KIESEWETTER: Television
MARTIN: Foodstuff
Whole lobster needn't pinch your pocketbook
Get to it