Many downtown festivals premiere new works during the summer. HERE has its "American Living Room Series" focusing on young directors, Soho Rep focuses on new plays with its "SummerCamp" series, and lets not forget the The New York Annual Fringe Festival which premieres more than 100 new works each year.

The Ohio Theatre calls their summer festival, "The Ice Factory" and this weekend will feature The Breaking Light by New Dramatist member Sander Hicks. What makes the Ice Factory different, more specifically Breaking Light different is not many of the new works feature actors currently starring in independent films playing in town. Breaking Light has two of them: James Urbaniak and Sean Gullette.

Urbaniak, a downtown regular, can be currently seen playing a literary genius/garabage man in Hal Hartley's "Henry Fool". Urbaniak's previous appearances have been with companies as diverse as Target Margin (Mamba's Daughters, The Scarecrow), Tiny Mythic, and Richard Foreman - where he won a 1995-96 OBIE for his work on Foreman's The Universe.

Gullette has also been receiving rave reviews for his performance in the critically acclaimed film, Pi, in which he plays a man obsessed with number patterns and chaos theory.

Breaking Light revolves around Calculatrice, a young Marketing Director, who unveils Shitballs, a candy for a new generation. Bourgeois kitsch morality and the GD Confectionery leadership are thrown into a tailspin, so the executives search for a new motivational speaker. The most effective turns out to be a Marxist, who, with Calculatrice, leads a factory workers' revolution "springing from the husks of information society rhetoric." The Breaking Light is directed by Richard Nash-Siedlecki (Exiles, Hicks' Sealove, Manager) who is an artistic associate of the Soho Think Tank.

The Breaking Light opens July 23 and plays through July 25 at 7PM at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster Street. For reservations or more information call (212) 966-4844.

-- By Sean McGrath