Opening night at O'Flaherty's

Photos by Stacie Joy 

Feb. 16 saw the debut of O'Flaherty's, the new gallery-performance space at 44 Avenue A at Third Street. (We first reported on this here.)

And what an opening it was: An enthusiastic crowd packed into the theater space to take in the first performance in a series titled "O'Flaherty's gelitin O'Flattering" featuring the Vienna-based performance group gelitin. 

The four members, all in their 50s, painstakingly created a live sculpture based on the statue "Laocoön and His Sons."

Presiding over the festivities was artist, curator and owner Jamian Juliano-Villani ...

The group members, wearing flesh-colored stockings, smeared themselves with petroleum jelly before slathering their bodies in plaster ...

... throughout the spectacle, Juliano-Villani's friend and business associate Ruby Zarsky strummed a guitar from an elevated position in the back of the theater, the former UCBEast (and Pioneer)... 

Afterward, the crowd snapped up the merch...

O'Flaherty's is hosting three more performances by gelitin — all different, and on Feb. 25, March 2 and March 4 — and screening the U.S. premiere of the group's film, "Stinking Dawn." Go here for details and showtimes. 

As previously reported, O'Flaherty's had a year-long run at 55 Avenue C at Fourth Street (we covered the opening here), culminating with a GRAND finale late this past summer. 

Upright Citizens Brigade Theater closed UCBeast in February 2019. The comedy venue opened in September 2011, and UCB took over part of the expanded Two Boots empire — the video store on Avenue A and the Pioneer Theater around the corner on Third Street.