Pulling theater out of a hat

"It's kind of a mystery to us still how this all works, including creating new works," van Reigersberg says. "Even when the ideas are complex, we want to make something that's challenging and unusual and unprecedented, yet that you can follow. We don't ever want to be artsy-fartsy and beyond the audience's comprehension. We're riding that fine line between experimental and accessible."

Somehow, the trio learned to split responsibilities and run a business, for which they had little or no training. "Dan did the marketing. Dito did the fund-raising. And I did the finances," Bauriedel says. "And somehow we watched this company grow from a $15,000 budget to a $500,000 organization that can easily spend $750,000."

The partners have been able to hire three full-time business staffers to run the office in Chinatown, though the delineation of their overall contributions remains clear. "Dan is the idea person. Dito is the people person. And I'm the spiritual person," Bauriedel says.

Pig Iron averages one production a year. The next piece, beginning in workshops, brings together Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and a morgue, possibly for the first time.

"Shakespeare was trying to make the play a comedy but he wanted to write Hamlet. The play is really obsessed with sex and death, so we're going to do something visual with that," Rothenberg says.

"We're trying to make Shakespeare not so boring," he adds. As if there was any chance of Pig Iron failing to do that.