A TOAST TO HORSE TRADE
By Randy Anderson

I’m taking my last pull on a cigarette. I cautiously watch the pedestrian traffic before expertly littering the butt in the curb of the street with a flick. I’m standing in front of the Under St. Marks Theater in the heart of the east village. It’s 7:55 on an autumn night in 2000 and I’m producing another show at Horse Trade. The sounds of a three piece improve jazz band is dancing its way onto the streets from the belly of the subterranean performance space. It’s a postcard of bohemian bliss.

This experience is not unusual. In fact, it’s happening almost every weekend at one of the Horse Trade’s three theaters. I’ve been producing, performing, directing and watching plays in these exceptionally “downtown” theaters since 1999.

I happened into the Horse Trade offices the same way many new theater artists still do, by knocking on the door and asking about a place to put on a show. What I found was much more than stale rental office, I found a group of people working to build an artistic community. And with the exchange of a handshake and a reasonable amount of money, I had a canvas for three spring nights at the turn of the century.

In the following years things began to change pretty fast. The theaters kept getting cleaner. More lights were appearing on the grids. The Kraine underwent a dramatic audience re-configuration. Air-conditioning happened! Each time I stopped by to set up another rental, I was shown a new design and told about a new feature. The contracts got bigger, then smaller, then bigger, then “just right”? Things were happening and it was exciting to be around the energy. At this point I had begun to frequent the theaters, watching other artists’ work and discussing their shows in the low glow of the KGB bar. Before I knew it, I had more than a place to mount my shows, I found a community of theater makers.

Horse Trade became a home base for me and my theater company. From 1960’s style protests pieces, to straight plays, to alien “portal openings”, we kept coming back. And eventually, so did our audiences. There were other artists, lots of friends and sometimes you could even pull people off the street. But my favorite audiences came from Midtown and Wall Street. It was always a joy watching the suits from our corporate day jobs descend or ascend into a theater they would never have seen had we not been making their photocopies and soliciting their support. And it didn’t take long before you could catch a glimpse of them passing bottles down the isle during a show soaking in the booze, the art, and the environment. Because here in these quintessential downtown theaters, they too could experience, if only for an hour, that bohemian bliss everyone writes home about.

Happy 10th Anniversary Horse Trade! You’ve made a lasting impact on the New York theater scene. Thank you for being an artistic vessel for artists and audiences alike.

Randy Anderson is Co-Artistic Director of The Beggars Group. He has produced numerous productions at Horse Trade since 1999. The Beggars Group is currently co-producing a new play called Glass Houses with Horse Trade for their 10th anniversary season.

10/3/2008