New walking tour of East Village Bohemia mixes performance with history.

Following the rash of closings of East Village and Lower East Side Theatres, several downtown artists have taken matters into their own hands and created a new walking “performance-tour” of their neighborhood. East Village Safaris - a unique blend of guided tour, shopping excursion and interactive theatrical experience – is designed to provide the urban adventurer with a historically accurate account of The East Village and its vital role as the capital of the world’s Bohemian counterculture.

The founders – Robert Prichard, Sara Delphine, Reverend Jen, Tom Tenney and William Lee - describe their tour as a multi-site specific theatrical experience. The streets and a day glo, graffiti covered wagon carrying a boom box provide the stage. The guides are local performance artists. Curtains do not drop between acts during the performance tours, instead the wagon leads the audience to the next scene, meeting interesting characters who further the story along the way.

Each tour ends with the tourist being left off at one of the remaining local theatrical venues, just in time to catch a show.

Robert Prichard, proprietor of the recently closed LES theatre, Surf Reality, says: “Our theme is simple; while our country is undergoing a sea change in values and culture and as one NYC neighborhood after another is strip-malled by large corporate concerns, we at EVS resist those unfortunate trends by celebrating and promoting the venues, cultural events, and businesses who contribute their unique goods and services to our particular quality of life that is Bohemia.”

Intermission features the opportunity for patrons to shop and dine at local businesses. The guides will steer people to the choicest dining locals, the hippest bars and the coolest places to shop. EVS tourists will see first hand how a vibrant and vital community that continues to nurture artists, musicians, poets, writers, film makers, activists, radicals and philosophers struggles to preserve it’s counter cultural ideals and Bohemian identity.

East Village Safaris will make its maiden run on Wednesday, August 20th at 5 PM. Those interested in taking part should meet at the cube in Astor Place. Admission: $10 per person. The tour will continue every day at 5pm through August 26th, and continue once a week – Sundays at 5 – throughout the fall.

East Village Safaris
Weds-Tues @ 5 PM, August 20-26; Every Sunday @ 5 after 8/21
Meet at Astor cube
$10    
212.673.4182
www.eastvillagesafaris.com
www.howlfestival.com