Madi Distefano is waiting in front of The Khyber. She's not looking to drink. Or bartend. Or throw a theatrical potluck to raise funds for her Brat Productions.

Not tonight.

Distefano, one of underground theater's driving engines, goes upstairs, past the second-floor danceteria and back room, through to the third and fourth floors where owner Stephen Simons' brother David used to live.

It's hers now, the new offices of Brat, a righteous place that she and her company can feel comfortable in. Even if she's gone (more on that later).

"Let me turn on the light so you don't break your neck," says Distefano, not knowing how often I'd stumbled on The Khyber's steps in the dark without a problem. Along with a mummy's tomb tucked between two windows are posters and postcards from Brat's past on the pumpkin and lime walls — the tortured Spin Cycle by John Lumia, the ghostly 24-Hour The Bald Soprano — and cardboard props like martini glasses from Naked Cocktail and clapboards from Max in Hollywood, Baby! Head up a vertigo-inducing set of steps and you find not only Distefano's personal office overlooking Second Street, but an outdoor smoking lounge. Here, too, in a walk-in closet, are old Brat wardrobes: "bellhop jackets, kimonos."

Brat did have another home, the Wolf building at 12th and Callowhill, where Pig Iron Theatre resides. "We were its oldest tenants," says Distefano of her eight-year tenure in the space renowned for artist lofts. "But once the building went high-tech I couldn't afford it."

Enter Stephen Simons and David Frank. The Khyber duo's long been connected to Distefano. Soon after she arrived 12 years ago from Boston, she stopped at The Khyber to see that town's Bullet LaVolta. The next day, drink ticket in hand from the night previous, she asked for a beer and a place to apply for a job. She worked at City Tavern. She hung out. She played The Khyber with her bands (Cornfed, Park & Ride). She bartended. "For a second. I'm a terrible bartender. No. I'm a great bartender. I just kept giving away my shifts for acting gigs."

She stayed pals with The Khyber. They've sponsored Brat, placing their ads in her show's programs and often opening their space for shows like Anger Is My Meat: a rock deconstruction of Shakespeare's Coriolanus as well as "Bratwörst" fundraisers. "Bar tales, bar plays — these things don't rely on sets or props but rather a really good actor telling an interesting story." Brat's specialty lies both in those drunken tales and the white-trash gender-fuck spectacles with heart like Moby Dick Rehearsed and Grease and Desist -- reconceptions of theater traditions to suit her lo-fi aesthetic and budget.

One lunch led to another and Simons and Frank gave her a deal she couldn't refuse. "And I love it," she says. "I never had a stove or a bathroom. They don't charge me rent on theater space when I do events — which saves like $1,500 — and they get great karma for supporting the arts. And beer sales."

Since 1996, Brat has been, like The Khyber, punk rock, striving to reach new young audiences who couldn't care less about theater. "That's why we do rock 'n' roll theater, free theater, street theater," says Distefano.

For the upcoming Free Night of Theater (and a few days after), Brat has several shows on tap, including Distefano's one-woman, Barrymore-nominated Popsicle's Departure, 1989 (Oct. 20) as well as This Lime Tree Bower (Oct. 22) and Matt Pfeiffer's one-man Fringe show Tadhg Stray Wandered In (Oct. 23) — all on The Khyber's second floor. Next up, in February 2006, is Brat's Causeway series, featuring local theater artists and socially relevant themes. Also in 2006: a larger, multimedia version of Eye-95, the white trash musical that started Brat.

On top of it all, Distefano will soon be traveling to star in Lost in Yonkers, a co-production between Walnut Street Theatre and Florida's Coconut Grove Playhouse — and there's even been discussion that the company may look for a new artistic director: one other than her.

"It's amazing that, though we're a small nonprofit, Brat has broken through the $100,000 mark," says Distefano of Brat's annual budget. "Amazing mostly because, I'm an artist. Not an administrator." She believes it's in Brat's best interest to get somebody business-oriented to bring it to the next level.

It's a concern that the company is so much a Distefano thing. But Brat's a decade old. Her daughter, Frances Cole, is turning 11. Her acting's turned a corner. "I'm growing into my type — I mean, I was 35 even when I was 18 auditioning for ingenue roles. I was no delicate flower. But now I am that age and type. I struggle as a businessperson. I'm an artist in full flower. I want to pass Brat on."

Razing the Bar: Tavern Tales on Tap, Oct. 20-24, free, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-627-2577.