The theater in the former Life World space in Gowanus.
Photo: Samantha Brooks
At the opening-night party of the newly relocated Life World, organizers worked the room, running lights, cleaning spills, and selling T-shirts to an audience packed with grubby fellow artists, including Eugene Hutz, the Gogol Bordello front man; Jonathan Daniel Brown, a filmmaker; and Alex Tatarsky, an experimental clown. The crowd packed onto a roof deck, lounged on vintage sofas in the lobby, and filled out the 2,000-square-foot theater, dancing spontaneously to looped beats by the artist-musician hybrid Lumberob. Between acts, comedian Caroline Yost grabbed the mic to announce, “Life World is back, bitches.”
And it is. The venue was founded by Yost and other comedians, artists, and theater obsessives in Gowanus in 2021. Their mission, per the filmmaker Alex Bliss (also a co-founder), was to show art that was “commercially unviable” — which is still the plan for the new Bushwick space. This Friday, the comedian Richard Perez is stepping off a national tour to do new material here. An indie zine fair opens on Saturday. And on July 3, there are plans for a hot-dog-eating contest where contestants will be judged for their “creativity” as they eat a single hot dog.
The new space is more than a black box. There’s a stage, foyer, a lobby with couches, and a roof terrace. Adriane Quinlan.
The new space is more than a black box. There’s a stage, foyer, a lobby with couches, and a roof terrace. Adriane Quinlan.
The rules of the new venue are the same, too. Life World exists to show live performance, and organizers consider it uncouth to post video of what happens there, which is an ethos that in the past has freed John Wilson to show clips that HBO cut from his show, while director and actor Caveh Zahedi screened material that couldn’t be streamed because of litigation over his divorce. Perez tried out a show at Life World that he called “I Have to Do This,” which got that name because Life World asked him to develop an act for its space. (Though it was more a request than an order.) Meanwhile co-founders Julia Mounsey and Peter Mills Weiss tested their own material here, including what became “Open Mic Night” — an homage to the DIY venues that had helped them hone their art and had been dying off year by year.
A handmade sign by the comedian Edy Modica hanging over the space that the crew later decorated to look like a rec room.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan
Flyers and props for shows at the old Life World space hang on a bulletin board at the new one. Adriane Quinlan.
Flyers and props for shows at the old Life World space hang on a bulletin board at the new one. Adriane Quinlan.
“There was nowhere else to go that’s a good place to completely fail,” said Weiss. But the city is not super hospitable to the artistic need to fail. Back in 2021, co-founder Sarah Wilson had been lucky to find Life World’s original home: The space was above a canning factory in Gowanus and rented for around $2,000 a month. The person renting it out was “an eccentric,” she said and wanted the group to build a spaceship. There were other downsides to such a benefactor: When a Department of Buildings inspector came by in 2023, they found the certificate of occupancy was for a warehouse, not a venue. “There’s a real-estate problem for artists,” said Mounsey, who pulled the story of Life World into the show she put on with Weiss.
A show in the old space. Wilson wanted a name that was “flat sounding,” she said, a blank canvas for a performer to reinvent. “Venue names can be over the top.”
Photo: Alex Bliss
The closing of the original venue was not surprising. The reopening was. And the co-founders all thank James Belfer, a filmmaker who had started investing in theater before coming by Life World in 2023. He had backed Oh, Mary! and felt the next Oh, Mary! would come from a free, experimental space like Life World. So when it closed, he started organizing — filing paperwork to become an LLC, recruiting backers (including himself and his brother Adam Belfer). Then there was the problem of scouting a suitable space. Bliss, the filmmaking co-founder, remembered touring a meatpacking plant. “There were 50 guys working, huge dangling carcasses, meat everywhere, and the broker in a suit was saying, ‘And this could be the green room …’”
The new theater is at the end of a loading doc on the second floor of a warehouse at 563 Johnson Avenue, where other businesses include a warehouse for kitchen supplies and another for men’s suits.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan
The new green room is the size of a studio apartment and came furnished. The second floor was last used by a movie and photo studio that even had a stage and LED lights. Turning it into a venue only took 48 hours — a fairy-tale ending. But not if you ask Weiss, the theater vet. “When it requires intercession from a funder to make a DIY space happen,” he said, “how fucked is your city?”