MadLab's Mission

MadLab provides an artistic haven for the creation and experience of original works.

Who Are We?

We've been called a "Generation X-troupe with ambition and taboo-shattering imagination" (The Columbus Dispatch). Our work has been cited for an "amazing display of theatrical creativity" (The Other Paper). MadLab has been recognized for "highly experimental, multimedia new works and adaptations and its effective outreach to hip, young audiences" (The Columbus Dispatch). Most remarkable of all, we're in Columbus.

Morphing from our roots as a nomadic theatre/ performance art company that staged innovative shows in the basement of a hair salon, an alley in the Short North, a vacant warehouse, and a hotel conference room, MadLab today is the most adventurous arts facility around - Columbus' "premiere alternative space", according to Columbus Alive. The company transformed a downtown garage into a permanent space, which has been the home of MadLab's own productions - American Way, Grand Guignol, Comrades' Christmas Carol, and the play festival Theatre Roulette. And we've hosted the likes of hip-hop and Japanese noise art, mixed-media performances and theatrical runs by other companies, exhibitions by local artists, and high-voltage dance events. In the pas year alone, MadLab has presented artists of all stripes from New York City, Chicago, Argentina, Sweden, Great Britain and many other national and international ports of call - all while maintaining an emphasis on providing an affordable venue for the most exciting and daring artists Central Ohio has to offer.

As a producing entity, MadLab creates live performances for people who may not think they like theatre, as well as for those who do. Incorporating environmental, experimental, and technological means, MadLab's goal is to create work that challenges, stimulates and often confronts the audience's preconceptions of what constitutes "theatre".

As a performance venue and gallery space, MadLab firmly believes in planting one foot in the future, while not ignoring the lessons of the past. It realizes that expression must be allowed in an environment where it is able to evolve and adapt freely to cultural changes in order to remain engaging, accessible and relevant. Whether the work is sacred or profane, cerebral or libidinal, this complete freedom is the goal of MadLab's performance space. Such freedom may entail the introduction of performance styles that may be pigeonholed as "underground", "fringe", and yes, even "weird." By the very fact of its public expression; however, all the work at MadLab is an attempt to anticipate some aspect of the future of performing arts. All of it fuels the imminent arrival of that avant-garde art that seeps into the mainstream, without such infiltration ever becoming the overriding goal.

MadLab challenges itself to present provocative works that push buttons and boundaries; it's a vital force in the growth of our cultural maturity.