Ars Nova Unveils Lineup For 16th Annual ANT Festival in June

Ars Nova has revealed the lineup for ANT Fest 2024 featuring 16 shows that will premiere at Ars Nova and stream on Ars Nova Supra. Running June 10–27, 2024, this festival of all new talent showcases new work from New York's most adventurous emerging artists. Tickets go on sale today.

Now in its sixteenth year, ANT Fest is a prime destination for an eclectic mix of brand new shows from some of the most intrepid new voices in New York City and, through its open submission process, offers this wide range of early career artists a point of entry onto the Ars Nova stage and into the greater New York City arts community.  Since its inception, ANT Fest has increasingly provided a crucial first step toward an extended artistic relationship with Ars Nova:

Rags Parkland Sings The Songs Of The Future began as a one-man song cycle, created and performed by Andrew R. Butler, in ANT Fest 2010. Following subsequent concerts and workshops, the 2018 Ars Nova world premiere went on to win the 2019 Lortel Award-winner for “Outstanding Musical.”

The Underground Railroad Game, created and performed by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, was first seen in New York in ANT Fest 2014. Following its 2016 Off Broadway premiere, the Ars Nova production went on to win an OBIE for “Best New American Play,” tour internationally, and be heralded as “one of the 25 best new American plays in the past 25 years” by The New York Times.

In March 2024, James Harrison Monaco, who was a part of ANT Fest in 2012, premiered his Ars Nova commission Travels at Ars Nova.

On Sunday, May 5, (pray) by nicHi douglas received three 2024 Lortel awards for “Outstanding Musical,” “Outstanding Director,” and “Outstanding Ensemble.” douglas was part of ANT Fest in 2017 and was a member of many of Ars Nova's programs while developing her Ars Nova commission (pray), prior to its award-winning world premiere at Ars Nova last Fall.

Notable ANT Fest alumni also include Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley, Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Deepali Gupta, Ryan J. Haddad, Jeremy O. Harris, Raja Feather Kelly, Jo Lampert, Joél Pérez, Matt Rogers & Bowen Yang, Charly Evon Simpson, Whitney White, Dustin Wills, and Ellen Winter, among others.

ANT Fest 2024  plays June 10-27, with performances Monday – Saturday at 7:00pm. Mix and mingle with Festival artists after every performance at the ANT Fest Lounge, with hot food, cold drinks, and sick beats. All tickets are Name Your Price through Ars Nova's What's Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price ticket initiative. Audiences can name their price for tickets to all ANT Fest performances, starting at $5, with all proceeds going directly to the shows' artists. All ANT Fest shows will also be available to stream live and on-demand on Ars Nova Supra, Ars Nova's streaming platform, with a cancel-anytime $15/month subscription. Tickets for ANT Fest are now on sale at www.arsnovanyc.com. Performances take place at Ars Nova, located at 511 West 54th Street in Manhattan.

Please visit arsnovanyc.com for more information.

ANT Fest 2024 Lineup

June 10 at 7PM

House Fire Flag Father

From Gemma Soldati and Scott R. Sheppard

Father is gone. Daughter is here. Mother is quiet. Flag is folded. Rules are made. Flag is flown. Daughter is home. Flag is sewn. Fire is lit. Rules are broken. Mother is quiet. Flag waves. Daughter cries. Everyone laughs. All go home.

June 11 at 7PM

SUNFACE, (or music-for-robots)
From Mikey Rose
A cyber-folk concert and celebration of humanity that follows SUNFACE, a misfit, malfunctioning robot curious about "how to human" in a fully robot world. 

June 12 at 7PM

Tourist Trap
From Elijah Guo and Dylin Taylor

Grace, Deborah and Shu-Ling are trapped in Times Square. Will they find the World's Largest Applebee's before it's too late? In Tourist Trap, three Asian-American mothers reckon with identity crises, a creeping sense of dissociation…and a seedy, off-brand Elmo who won't leave them alone.

June 13 at 7PM

Website Evangelist: Eulogy for a Laptop

From Alex Beige
Join Archbishop Beige, of the recently formed Website Evangelism movement, in celebrating the joyous intimacy of websites alongside the more somber offering of their only begotten laptop to the realm beyond. A night of pseudo-Catholic mass reconciling loss, misplaced internet intimacy, & generational trauma into a laptop-puppet show.

June 14 at 7PM

Planet W: A New Science-Fiction Musical

From Matt Coakley, Franco Giacomarra and Marc David Wright

A small-town couple on the verge of ending their first adult relationship is abducted by a race of zany Aliens hellbent on destroying the Earth! Can the star-crossed lovers save their relationship AND the fate of humankind in time? Planet W blends the concept albums of 1970's rock music with the mythic characters and stories of superhero comic books and classic American musical comedy.

June 15 at 7PM

Where We Meet

From Kate Eberstadt and Molly Rose Heller
A musical experiment. A solo experience exploring quantum physics. A refugee camp. Where We Meet challenges the boundaries of reality. Can we use music to reach those we've loved and lost?

June 17 at 7PM

GERALDINE!
From Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper
An oddball musical featuring a cast of thousands but performed by two dedicated weirdos and an electric piano, GERALDINE! is the story of a resident at the Lakeview Shalom nursing home whose crush on her home health aide leads her and the other residents into the sea where they find a new lust for life and, just possibly, a new hope for the world.

June 18 at 7PM

Good Person
From Brett Ashley Robinson
In this raucous, solo buffoon performance, our host, Patricia!, dares the audience to examine the intricate layers of being 'good' in a world teetering on the edge of chaos. Good Person is an audacious, unapologetic romp through society's contradictions made for queers, good black girls, and anyone afraid of their own rage.

June 20 at 7PM

Mx. Piggy Makes an OnlyFans
From Tank
After five years of radio silence, the artist formerly known as Miss Piggy is back on a stage and they have a lot to say — chiefly about their love life, coming out as non-binary, and their attempt at making an OnlyFans.

June 20 at 9:30PM

SHOWGASM: ANT FEST Edition
Hosted by Chloe Troast
Ars Nova's untamed monthly variety-show-meets-party is guest-hosted by one of our favorite comedians, Chloe Troast (SNL), and features a who's-who of the weird and wonderful — performing comedy to burlesque and everything (and anything) in between.

June 21 at 7PM

The Galas
From Justine Gelfman and Joan Sergay
Welcome to The Galas, a chaotic, comedic, centuries-spanning two-hander about the performance of raising money for scientific research. We need your generous support. Donate now. and now. and now.

June 22 at 7PM

Night T.V.
From Allisha Edwards and Fernanda Brigneti
A dark comedy sketch show disguised as bubble gum pop, this comedy duo channel surfs the late night programming with a bizarre take on familiar TV tropes. 

June 24 at 7PM

The Jordan and Avery Show in Concert
From Jay Adana and Jess McLeod
Jordan and Avery are a pair of broke-ass not-quite-30-somethings who make comedy songs on Youtube and are being evicted from the apartment they share. After a video they make about it goes viral, the friends attempt to navigate their newfound success and process the years they'd spent and all they'd lost trying to find a way out of hardship.

June 25 at 7PM

Homofermenters, Or The Park Slope Co-op Play
From Madison Fiedler and Francesca Sabel
We're all heroes when we work the Cheese Shift at the Park Slope Food Co-Op. It does seem like the Cheese Shift Leader maybe faked her death, but we're all too polite to ask. Part satire, part slasher, Homofermenters follows the Friday 6AM cheese shift as its members navigate joint ownership, the collapsing planet, widow-twins, and how to cut through a human-sized wheel of parmesan. 

June 26 at 7PM

THIRD SEX: 1930s transvestite leider
From Adam J. Rineer and Jason Aguirre taken from the translations by Erica Kastner & Thomas Gurinskas
A found text song-cycle/punk cabaret based on the short stories, articles, poems, and personal essays of Das 3. Geschlecht, a transvestite magazine published in five issues from 1930-1932 in Berlin before n*zis burned its publishing house to the ground. THIRD SEX brings these forgotten trans and queer narratives to life through music inspired by the antifascist krautrock movement, punk, and experimental.

June 27 at 7PM

swearing in english
From Ema Zivkovic and Katie Spelman
Everyone is lying all the time. In more than one language. Lulu, an “illegal” immigrant, schemes their way through existing in America. They might dance for you, they might yap at you, they might perform drag for you, but by god, they'll make you know their name.

A complete lineup follows and can be found at www.arsnovanyc.com/ant-fest-2024/. 

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