The office of Ron Lasko – which is also his apartment – resembles a bunker in its lack of light and cramped dimensions.That seems appropriate since, as the publicist for the New York International Fringe Festival (which opens today), he has spent the past few weeks weathering a nonstop bombardment of press inquiries.

Foremost among these are the roughly 3,000 requests from reporters and critics for tickets to the festival’s 194 attractions. And then there are the producers of those attractions, wondering how to best entice said reporters and critics.

The affable Mr. Lasko, 34, appears to take it all in stride from the safety of his Lower East Side headquarters, which sit in a tenement a couple doors from an old synagogue and across from the landmark Katz’s Delicatessen. “The festival is very structured at this point,” he said. “I look back on that first year, in 1997, and I have no idea how we ever made it happen. I literally worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week for a good two months.”

Mr. Lasko, who heads the cheekily titled outfit Spin Cycle, has run press for the Fringe since its inception and is, along with artistic director Elena K. Holy, the only remaining figure among the event’s founding personnel. And if the annual happening has aged him, there are no signs to be seen in his lineless baby face, or dark, close-cropped hair.

He first approached the founding artistic directors after attending a “town hall” meeting in which the latter announced their plans to launch a sprawling theater fest – something common to cities as far flung as Edinburgh and Adelaide, but never before seen in New York City.

“I said, this sounds exactly like the type of thing I want to be involved with,” he recalled. “The first year was so much about passion. And I think they were excited that here was a press agent who was passionate about what they were doing and didn’t look at it as crazy.”

These days, Mr. Lasko needn’t do much to tip buckets of ink on the Fringe: The preview features appear automatically in the dailies and weeklies, and the swarm of critics that descends on the 17-day artistic donnybrook is so thick that each show is pretty much guaranteed at least two reviews. That wasn’t always the case.

“From the beginning, we were so interested in press, we allowed press to dictate, in some ways, the way the Fringe was going to work,” he said. “Someone would call and ask how many shows there were. I knew approximately, but I’d say 146. Then, we’d try to get 146 shows.”

Since the Fringe’s debut, the once-dormant summer calendar has become packed with theatrical pageants, all aping the Fringe’s model and hoping for similar success – a circumstance that makes Ron sigh heavily (albeit, while smiling). “I think they think that because it’s a festival it will get attention,” he said. “But unless it’s bigger than the Fringe, it’s going to pale by comparison. I keep telling people: Do a festival in January and you will get press. No more summer festivals!”

Another potential advantage of the winter months: no chance of a blackout.

“Last year’s blackout was one of the worst crises to happen to the Fringe,” Mr. Lasko admitted. “As soon as the blackout came, we knew the minute the power came back on, there was going to be 50 times as much work as there would have been at the time. It was just chaos.”The two days of lost performance time caused the festival to chart its first-ever deficit.

This year’s extravaganza overlaps with the Republican National Convention and there is a hefty contingent of politically oriented plays.”It’s the year of politics,” Mr. Lasko said. “Last year it was the September 11 shows. There’s always one or two niches every year. You get the naked plays; one year there were a ton of them. One year there was nothing but wacky titles.” Now, hold on. This is the Fringe we’re talking about. There are wacky titles every year. “But there were a lot!,” he insisted.

Mr. Lasko hails from a Cleveland suburb, son of a factory worker and a housewife. From age 7 to 19, he appeared in children’s musicals at Lake Erie College’s community theater program. By the time he got to Kent State, he began directing (about 30 plays before graduating). “The moment I took my last exam, I was in a Chevette. Seven hours later, I was a New Yorker. I haven’t really been back since.” A stint at a talent management firm taught him he had an affinity for publicity, leading him to a job at the public relations company The Ziesler Group and, finally, Spin Cycle.

Many of Mr. Lasko’s client shows resemble the Fringe in that they are scruffy, edgy, low-budget and take place below 14th Street. That’s the way Mr. Lasko prefers it. “I like the independence of working with young artists, and the challenge of seeing these careers grow. I’m not one for writing memos. That whole corporate infrastructure of the Broadway world holds no appeal. If I’m going to be in that environment, I’d rather work in a bank.”

Spin Cycle will keep the Fringe spinning at top speed until Aug. 29. And then, surely, comes a holiday.To what placid sanctuary does Mr. Lasko retreat? “Do I have to admit this? I usually go the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.” The interview was here briefly interrupted while this reporter picked himself up off the floor. “It’s the first two weeks of September. I go for fun,” Mr. Lasko said. Fun? How, possibly, is that fun? “To watch other people suffer.”