Over the past several years The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City has distinguished itself as one of New York's important venues for adventurous theater, dance, art and multimedia performance. Productions such as Tere O’Connor’s Rammed Earth have won major critical praise and drawn sold-out crowds to Long Island City, a previously unthinkable destination for cutting-edge performance. Artistic Director and co-founder Brian Rogers answered our questions about how The Chocolate Factory has been able to produce such sweet stuff.
Maybe there’s an obvious answer to this question, but why is the theater called The Chocolate Factory? Before we moved to our current building in LIC, we rented part of a much larger space called Repetti, which was founded by my friend Sam Farnsworth. That space happened to be the former Dryden & Palmer confectionary company, hence the name. When we announced our opening to the world, we were lucky to receive a good amount of advance press and the name seemed to stick, so when we chose to move to our current facility, it made little sense to start again from scratch. Our current space was actually a hardware store.
Do you own the space? Unfortunately, no. We have a long commercial lease (through 2019) which is something of a coup. We would love to purchase the building if we can make it happen. The real estate market is not our friend. We have started to very gingerly broach the subject with our landlord, and he has been supportive, if noncommittal.
Frankly, ownership is the only pathway to stability for organizations like mine. Long Island City is already off the charts (in terms of cost) and we will simply not survive in the real estate market of 2019 unless something happens for us very soon.
Not so long ago it was unheard of for the mainstream press to review shows outside Manhattan. Did opening a theater in LIC give you pause? Strangely, no. I did worry about finding audiences for the work, which thankfully has not really been a problem. Setting up shop in Queens has given us, oddly enough, a certain amount of cachet. Nobody else is doing this in Western Queens. We are a big fish in a small pond, in a way. In terms of mainstream press, like the Times, we get far more attention now than we did when we were an off-off company working in Manhattan, grasping at straws.
How do you describe the kind of work you seek out to present at The Chocolate Factory? We present multidisciplinary work, which means we try to avoid emphasis on one discipline over another. I tend to get very excited about artists who are working among or between several disciplines, who in their own personal way are trying to redefine what it can mean to come to a theater and watch a show. I am also drawn to work that embraces technology in interesting ways. Mostly I am just looking for work that interests me personally, or that I feel is trying to do something new with the form.
I love seeing productions at The Chocolate Factory but after about 40 minutes those metal folding chairs make my ass numb. Any chance of getting some pillows for delicate souls like me? I’m with you 100%. We have been lucky to receive funding from the city for various capital projects, and in 08 will be looking to completely overhaul our audience seating. Comfort is on the way! (Our 2007 dollars were used to upgrade our lighting, sound and video packages, so we’ll be getting up to par in those areas very, very soon).
You’re creating a show to be presented in the spring; what’s that about? Well we’re just getting started, so it’s hard to say. I am spending a lot of time thinking about real estate. I am living in the center of a sort of unprecedented redevelopment project; and it leads to all sorts of thoughts about disposable architecture, false notions of privacy and home, the ways in which a chunk of land is re-used and repurposed many, many times over a period of years. I am also getting a bit obsessed with ghost towns, the idea of abandoned architecture. We are just starting to collect material, so we’ll see. In April we’ll be showing it in progress.
What else do you have in store this season? We are remounting Tere O’Connor’s Rammed Earth (which was one of the big highlights of our Fall season – it sold out its run practically before it opened) for APAP; are presenting the premiere of NTUSA’s (if you are not familiar with their work, you should hightail it out here because they are amazing) take on Moliere’s Don Juan; are co-presenting (with Dance Theater Workshop) the premiere of a new work by dance artist Eleanor Bauer; and several other really exciting dance/theater/music/hybrid things. And we’re about to announce some really great projects for Fall ’08.
Have you ever declined to let a performance group use your space only to regret it? Honestly, no. The opposite is absolutely true, however. There are artists I wish I could have disinvited after the fact (I’ll be polite and decline to name names) and frankly, I have disinvited a few over the years. We approach our work with visiting artists as a more or less equal partnership. We don’t have the resources or the patience to deal with issues of respect or entitlement from anyone. Life is too short. That said, 95% of our experiences with artists have been wonderful.
What’s the worst crisis you’ve weathered at the theater? Money is a constant worry (though less so than in previous years). Like most small arts groups I know, we have learned to function on the edge of financial ruin and not blink. But the worst has got to be the sporadic torture imposed on us by the MTA (those people are my mortal enemies) – by canceling 7 train service to and from Manhattan on weekends, with virtually no advance notice, for weeks at a time. This happened a lot in 05 and 06; and it very well may happen again, who knows. As you can imagine, losing the 7 causes a lot of confusion for folks trying to get here from other parts of the city (and to be honest, 90% of our audience comes from Brooklyn and Manhattan). We have managed to make it work, but it’s a huge strain on time and resources, and has definitely impacted our business in a negative way.
It’s hard to name favorites, but what shows at The Chocolate Factory come to mind as the ones you’re most proud of? I will exclude my own projects – because that seems a bit unfair – but I am enormously proud of Tere O’Connor’s Rammed Earth; Yanira Castro’s fetus/twin; lower lights collective’s DRAWN (people still talk about that show, 2 years after the fact).
What neighborhood do you live in? Long Island City – half a block from the Chocolate Factory. I’ve lived here since 1997.
Pros/Cons of the neighborhood? I love my neighborhood – it feels like a small town in many ways, and is full of artists, arts-friendly people, and small business owners with whom we have great relationships – but I worry about its future. I live in a construction zone and in ten years I won’t recognize the place. It has done wonders for the value of my home, but it is also displacing many of the things that give the neighborhood its unique character, including the artists who live and work here. People like me cannot afford to live here anymore, and that’s a problem.
If you could change one thing about New York what would it be? The cost of real estate, and the re-casting of the city as a playground for the rich.
What’s your favorite place to grab a drink in New York at the moment? That’s not fair! I love all the LIC places equally, like children. We are regulars at Dominie’s Hoek, Domaine, and Lounge 47.
Where – other than The Chocolate Factory – did you see the best performances in 2007? David Neumann’s most recent show at DTW was astonishing. Really one of the best things I’ve seen this year. Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s No Dice at Soho Rep was also pretty great.
What’s the most memorable and/or crazy experience you’ve had or witnessed in New York City? My nephew was born during the big blackout a few years back. My sister-in-law was in the maternity ward, in labor, ready to go, when the outage happened; she had to literally “hold it in”, for hours.
