Under the Radar Festival to Return in January

In January 2024, the Under the Radar Festival will be reimagined as a new, city-wide annual festival of theater and performance emerging from New York and around the world that incisively speaks to our moment. Rather than being tied to a single host institution, this iteration of Under the Radar is curated in collaboration with an array of New York arts organizations and curators, each harnessing the community-building, connective, celebratory nature of the festival format to introduce some of today’s most innovative voices to wider audiences. The festival sets an example of how ​​collaboration can get the American theater through this moment of existential crisis: reinvigorated and ready to create a theater that can embrace diversity, risk, and reinvention.

The festival features presentations from Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company with Nile Harris’s this house is not a home; Fisher Center at Bard and The Invisible Dog Art Center with Tania El Khoury’s Cultural Exchange Rate; Japan Society with Yu Murai and his company Kaimaku Pennant Race’s Hamlet|Toilet; La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club with Motus’ Of the Nightingale I Envy the Fate and John Jarboe’s Rose: You Are Who You Eat in collaboration with The Bearded Ladies Cabaret; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with Jessica L. Hagan’s Queens of Sheba in partnership with Factory International and Soho Theatre, Inua Ellams’ Search Party, and Pan Pan Theatre’s The First Bad Man; Performance Space New York in collaboration with Mabou Mines with Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey’s Open Mic Night; New York Live Arts | Live Artery, with Albert Ibokwe Khoza’s The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu and Dynasty Handbag’s Titanic Depression; NYU Skirball with William Shakespeare's As You Like It, A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal; St. Ann’s Warehouse in association with Irish Arts Center with Luke Murphy’s Volcano; and Theatre for a New Audience and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s presentation of the Soho Rep and NAATCO National Partnership Project’s production of Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s Public Obscenities. These visions collect in a prism of forms and styles, asking—with risk, community, outrage, and joy—what it means to be human at this time in the world. 

Mark Russell, in collaboration with festival producers Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype, continues to evolve the legacy of the beloved festival. St. Ann’s Warehouse presented the inaugural Under the Radar in 2005. When Oskar Eustis assumed the role of Artistic Director of the Public Theater, he invited the festival to be a part of his inaugural season, in 2006. Under the Radar quickly earned the reputation as one of the most significant and adventurous festivals in New York, known for providing a breakout platform for many artists. On June 1, 2023, the Public Theater announced that for financial reasons—in the midst of near-ubiquitous hardship within the American theater—it could no longer produce the Under the Radar Festival, after 18 editions, 17 of them at the Public.

Many in the worldwide theater community mourned the recent closure of the festival, emphasizing the unique place Under the Radar held for experimental artists—along with the audiences who cherish and are curious about their work. Now, Under the Radar reemerges with the enthusiasm of New York City’s most adventurous presenters and artists, bringing together special programming beneath Under the Radar’s banner. The Festival’s resurgence speaks to the importance of collaboration as part of the solution for the theater world in its post-pandemic crisis while uplifting the historic impact of experimental work on New York City culture. 2024’s Under the Radar doubles down on the roots of the original festival as a community gathering space with additional programming addressing challenges ahead of an imperiled industry in need of substantial change. These events include a Symposium/Gathering (January 12) in collaboration with IPC (International Presenting Commons), CIPA (Creative & Independent Producer Alliance), NYU Skirball, and HowlRound discussing the obstacles facing American artists and the presentation of international work; Coming Attractions at Chelsea Factory (January 13), connecting artists pitching new work with consultants; a series of encounters with new works-in-progress; and the 7-day Atelier for Young Festival Managers New York. 

In a tumultuous era for the performing arts, Under the Radar is a bold new proposition for a festival founded on inter-institutional collaboration, a testament to the vitality of New York’s cultural organizations, and work continuing to be made worldwide under challenging conditions. By engaging numerous leaders in the arts and the visionary organizations they run as curators, Under the Radar welcomes a kaleidoscopic understanding of today’s boldest work.

Says Under the Radar Festival Director Mark Russell, “Festivals are celebrations. They mark harvests and other moments of abundance or recognition. Under the Radar is a festival that each year celebrates the vibrancy of new theater, in New York and internationally. At this moment, even in very challenging times, there is still innovative work rising from communities around New York and in far-reaching parts of the globe. Under the Radar aims to spotlight this work for audiences—not only those ‘in the know,’ but from a wider stretch of communities, diverse in all respects, that could benefit by engaging with these creative leaders.”

Tickets for all Under the Radar programming will go on sale November 1 at UTRFest.org.

Under the Radar 2024 Events (Partial Listing)

The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu

Albert Ibokwe Khoza (South Africa)

Presented by New York Live Arts | Live Artery

A healing ritual of movement, sound and sheer physicality, The Black Circus wields theater as a weapon to counter centuries of dehumanizing spectacle.

Cultural Exchange Rate

Tania El Khoury (Lebanon/US)

Presented by Fisher Center at Bard and The Invisible Dog Art Center

An interactive live art project in which artist Tania El Khoury shares her family memoirs of life in a border village between Lebanon and Syria.

The First Bad Man

Pan Pan Theatre (Ireland)

Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

The real story at this book club isn't the novel, it's the funny, profane, and worryingly confusing cast of characters that showed up to read along.

Hamlet:Toilet

Yu Murai and his company Kaimaku Pennant Race

Presented by Japan Society

Notoriously iconoclastic and scatological director Yu Murai's Hamlet | Toilet runs the Bard's highbrow tale of existential woe through the poop chute.

Of the Nightingale I Envy the Fate

Motus (Italy)

Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

An ancient story finds raw, exquisite life in this intense and challenging one-woman retelling of the Greek Cassandra myth.

Open Mic Night

Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey (US)

Presented by Performance Space New York and Mabou Mines

An experimental theater piece about the end of an experimental theater, Open Mic Night says goodbye to what it is at its beginning.  And things only get stranger from there.

Public Obscenities 

Shayok Misha Chowdhury (US) 

Presented by Theatre for a New Audience with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Soho Rep, and NAATCO 

A bilingual play from the visionary writer-director Shayok Misha Chowdhury about the things we see, the things we miss, and the things that turn us on.

Queens of Sheba

Jessica L. Hagan (UK)
Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Through laughter, tears, song, dance and sisterhood, the powerful Black Queens of Sheba upend misogynistic and racist narratives to share their own story.

Rose: You Are Who You Eat

John Jarboe (US) in collaboration with The Bearded Ladies Cabaret

Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

In this true story of gender cannibalism, singer and performer John Jarboe charts a wildly original path toward self-actualization, giving whole new meaning to the phrase "you are what you eat."

Search Party

Inua Ellams (UK)

Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Playwright and poet Inua Ellams opens his archives for an interactive peek inside the creative process where you decide what he chooses to share.

this house is not a home

Nile Harris (US)

Presented by Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company

A gingerbread minstrel, Dimes Square vape fiends, and a beloved children’s movie cowboy  howl frenzied rants of Afropessimism from within a brightly colored bounce house.

Titanic Depression

Dynasty Handbag (US)

Presented by New York Live Arts | Live Artery

All aboard queer alt-cabaret artist Dynasty Handbag's surreal Titanic, where that sinking feeling in your gut is for the global disaster.

Volcano

Luke Murphy (Ireland)

Presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse in association with Irish Arts Center

Erupting with passion, intrigue and beauty, this futuristic dance theater - part mini-series, part sci-fi - offers audiences multiple paths to its experience.

William Shakespeare's As You Like It, A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal

Cliff Cardinal (US/Canada)
Presented by NYU Skirball
It's Shakespeare like you've never seen it before, but playwright Cliff Cardinal just needs to do a little housekeeping before we start.