Under the Radar 20th Anniversary Festival Unveils Full Programming

Under the Radar has revealed the lineup of productions for the 20th Anniversary festival, reimagined for the second year as a citywide event, and the largest edition of the festival to date. Inviting audiences into—and supporting artists with—a vision of artistic abundance and collectivity, UTR and its vast network of partner institutions respond with fortitude to a moment of scarce infrastructure for experimental work. From January 4-19, 2025, work from today’s boldest artists will be presented throughout the city and across the stages of wide-ranging arts institutions. Long known as their own hubs of culture-shifting art, these organizations join together in this celebration that brings disparate works and practices into dynamic conversation.
 
As the festival expands this year in its programming, it also broadens its vision: both who’s creating it and how it engages artists. Artistic producer, former Soho Rep Director, and Radical Evolution Co-Founder Meropi Peponides and theater artist Kaneza Schaal recently joined UTR founder and artistic director Mark Russell and producers Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype to collaborate as Co-Creative Directors; this new creative leadership structure brings the pluralistic presenting and producing ethos at the festival’s core into its internal approach to imagining and guiding its future.
 
Artists participating this year include Aakash Odedra, Ahamefule J. Oluo, Alaa Shehada, Alex Tatarsky, Amir Reza Koohestani, Andrew Schneider, Ann Liv Young, Anne Washburn, Benji Reid, Christiana Kosiari, Cynthia Oliver, Dan Daw, David Herskovits, David Neumann, Faustin Linyekula, Godfrey Reggio, Ian Kamau, Irina Kruzhilina, Jaha Koo, Jenn Kidwell, John Fitzgerald, Jorge Andrade, Joseph Keckler, Julie J, Khawla Ibraheem, Marc Da Costa, Marcella Murray, Margarita Athanasiou, Matthew Niederhauser, Nile Harris, Omar Offendum, Robert Shenkken, Ronnie Burkett, Sasha Molochnikov, Stephanie Dinkins, Sujin Kim, Taibi Magar, Tania El Khoury, Theater in Quarantine & Sinking Ship, Viola He, and Wakka Wakka.
 
Institutional venue partners are The Apollo, ArtXnyc, BAM, Baruch Performing Arts Center, Chemistry Creative, The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Flea, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Japan Society, Joe’s Pub, NYU Iris Cantor Theatre, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Mabou Mines, New Victory Theater, New York Live Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, NYU Skirball, Soho Rep, Onassis ONX, Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), Performance Space New York, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and 59E59 Theaters. See below for a schedule and descriptions of all performances.
 
Among the many new elements of this year’s festival is a robust slate of family-friendly programming, aimed at including young people—so often left out of arts programming considerations—in the critical discussions and artistry abounding and flourishing at UTR. 2025 also marks the first year UTR has commissioned new work from artists (Nile Harris, Jenn Kidwell, and Alex Tatarsky). With these first steps toward self-produced programming, Under the Radar puts into practice its intent to serve in partnership with like-minded theaters as a collaborative commissioning agent for premiere productions this year and in the years to come.
 
Artist/theater relationships shepherded by UTR include a collaborative partnership with Harris and co-writer Malcom-x Betts, production agency Ping Chong and Company and The Chocolate Factory Theater. UTR has also acted as a crucial fulcrum in the making of Kidwell's production with The Flea. This model seeks to both facilitate the inclusion of fresh perspectives and the ongoing innovation of the modern theater under extraordinary circumstances.
 
Mark Russell said, “This festival looks to the future of the international/national performance/theater world. It reflects the vitality and abundance of contemporary theater happening in New York City, and around the world. Though this is our 20th year, it is also the beginning of a new Under the Radar, re-imagined and re-energized for today.”
 
Kaneza Schaal said, “New York City is a place of entry points and cultural exchange. At its best UTR is exactly this, a festival full of entry points for artists and audiences, and robust cultural exchange. There are so many New York Cities, often they don't meet. To have a NYC festival, it inherently must have many different anchors. I am excited to grow the fabric of UTR into that possibility.”
 
Meropi Peponides said, “I’m delighted to be diving into work at Under the Radar with such an expansive, inspiring and boundary-pushing roster of artists. This incredible group brings perspectives from all over the world to be in conversation with our global city, and includes New York artists who are making some of the freshest work in the city. I can’t wait to welcome audiences to our many partner venues in January.”
 
In addition to performances, UTR will host the Symposium at The Commons located in NYU's John A. Paulson Center, an annual gathering of international performing arts leaders, as well as a festival hub at ArtXnyc to feature pop-up performances, live music, and more. Programming for both TBA.
 
Last year, Mark Russell and festival producers Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype took an immense leap to evolve the beloved festival after The Public Theater—the festival’s home of 17 years—announced that for financial reasons it could no longer host Under the Radar. The organizers convened many of New York’s most vital performing arts organizations and the multiplicity of their artistic leaders’ distinct visions to grow UTR into a citywide phenomenon. This format saw UTR carving out necessary space for artists and audiences and adventurous, experimental work throughout the city. The result “mingled International Artists with local ones in pursuit of
‘the global downtown’” (Alexis Soloski, New York Times), and was deemed “gloriously defiant” with “much to celebrate” (Sara Holdren, New York Magazine).
 
Under the Radar 2025 Mainstage Programming
 

Blind Runner

Amir Reza Koohestani (Iran)
In partnership with Waterwell
Presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse
January 4th to January 24th, 2025
Between the confines of the prison and the freedom afforded by a race, Blind Runner presents a poetic vision of struggle, of mutual aid, of the freedom towards which we rush headlong.

Cuckoo

Jaha Koo (Korea)
Presented by Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
January 16th to January 18th, 2025
In Cuckoo, the South Korean artist Jaha Koo gives touching insight into the tragedy of a lonely life in a thoroughly technologized society.
 

The Dan Daw Show

Dan Daw (UK/Australia)
Presented by Performance Space New York
January 12th to January 17th, 2025
A show about care, intimacy and resilience, about letting go and reclaiming yourself.
 

Dead as a Dodo

Wakka Wakka (US & Norway)
Presented by Baruch Performing Arts Center
January 8th to February 9th, 2025
An ever-shifting underworld comes alive through Wakka Wakka’s award-winning puppetry in this mesmerizing musical odyssey.
 

Shuji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Kim Sujin and Project NYX (Japan)
Presented by Japan Society
January 15th to January 18th, 2025
Theater is a bewitching castle where reality and fiction, magic and the mundane, and lies and truth come and go. What's true - and what's a lie...?
 

Find Your Eyes

Benji Reid (UK)
Presented by Factory International at NYU Iris Cantor Theatre
January 9th to January 12th, 2025
Pioneer of hip hop theater turned award-winning photographer Benji Reid mixes Afro-futurist imagery with hard-hitting stories for a unique show that unfolds before your very eyes.
 

The Horse of Jenin

Alaa Shehada (Palestine/Amsterdam)
Presented by La MaMa in association with GOH Productions
Originally Produced by Troupe Courage (Amsterdam)
With 55B Productions (NY)
January 9th to January 12th, 2025
A solo comedy performance about survival and freedom.
 

A Knock on the Roof

Khawla Ibraheem (Palestine)
Presented by New York Theatre Workshop
January 11th to January 19th, 2025
An unforgettable new play about obsession, survival and everyday life in Gaza.
 

Little Murmur

Aakash Odedra Company, Lewis Major Projects, and The Spark Arts for Children (UK)
Presented by New Victory Theater
January 10th to January 19th, 2025
Solo dance and video projections paint a moving portrait of growing up with dyslexia, recommended for kids and adults ages 8+.
 

Little Syria, In Concert

Omar Offendum
Presented by Joe’s Pub
January 12th
Genre-spanning - Hip-Hop, Arabic instrumentation, and ងakawātī oral storytelling - work reimagining life in Little Syria, the former Lower Manhattan neighborhood that was once a vibrant cultural hub for Middle Eastern immigrants like Ameen Rihani and Kahlil Gibran.
 

Loss

Ian Kamau with Roger McTair (Canada)
Presented by The Apollo
January 9th to January 11th
A multi-media orchestration of memories, Loss is an exploration of grief in Afro-Caribbean communities, and an immersive experience towards healing shared with the audience.
 

Marie Antoinette

Ann Liv Young (US)
Presented at Chemistry Creative
DATES TBA
Marie Antoinette is an eating experience which immerses you in severe mental health challenges.

Murder Room

Anne Washburn (US)
Presented at ArtXnyc
January 10th to January 18th
An ever-evolving constellated interactive look at the current vexing/exhilarating state of American Theater as told by practitioners and observers using the form of the cop-show evidence board. 

My Body, My Archive

Faustin Linyekula (Congo)
Presented by Live Artery | New York Live Arts
January 8th to January 11th, 2025
Choreographer and dancer Faustin Linyekula unearths the histories of the women in his family lineage as an assertion that archives of the body cannot be experienced alone.
 

OLD COCK

Written by Robert Schenkkan (US)
Directed by Jorge Andrade (Porto)
Presented by Mala Voadora, Portugal in association with Twilight Theatre Co. and Peacedale Global Arts at 59E59 Theaters
January 8th to January 19th, 2025
An outrageous political satire that reminds us how easily stories can be corrupted and cautions us to watch out for fowl play.
 

The Search for Power

Tania El Khoury (UK/Lebanon)
Presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center and Co-Produced with the Fisher Center at Bard
January 9th to January 19th, 2025
The Search for Power is an installation performance featuring the artist, the historian, and the audience.
 

Show/Boat: A River

Target Margin Theater
Adapted and Directed by David Herskovits (US)
Presented by NYU Skirball and Produced by Target Margin Theater
January 9th to January 26th, 2025
Obie Award-winning Target Margin Theater, in collaboration with NYU Skirball, presents a daring reimagining of the seminal musical Show Boat, now re-envisioned as Show/Boat: A River.
 

SpaceBridge

Irina Kruzhilina (US)
Presented by La MaMa in association with En Garde Arts and Visual Echo
January 7th to January 11th, 2025
SpaceBridge connects a group of Russian refugee children who fled due to their families' anti-war stance and now reside in NYC shelters with their American-born peers to build a more welcoming world.
 

TECHNE

Curated by Onassis ONX
Presented by BAM and Onassis
Part of BAM’s Next Wave 2024 and Emerging Visions
January 4th to January 19th, 2025
Techne immerses viewers in stories of evolution, endurance, and unlocked potential featuring work by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio (The Vivid Unknown), Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser (The Golden Key), Margarita Athanasiou (Voices), and Stephanie Dinkins (Secret Garden).
 

Temporary Boyfriend

Malcolm-x Betts & Nile Harris (US)
Presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater & Ping Chong and Company
January 11th to January 13th, 2025
With deviating aesthetics of proximity and estrangement, this improvisatory duet locates the relationship between two men within ephemeral histories of gay Black brotherhood.
 

The Things Around Us

Ahamefule J. Oluo (US)
Presented by La MaMa
January 9th to January 12th, 2025
The Things Around Us is a solo, live-looping, music and narrative performance by Ahamefule J. Oluo featuring trumpet, clarinet, everyday objects, and darkly humorous true stories about other people.
 

Wonderful Joe

Ronnie Burkett (Canada)
Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
January 7th to January 12th, 2025
Master puppeteer Ronnie Burkett’s Wonderful Joe finds magic in the mundane, offering a love letter to imagination, hope, and filling broken hearts with gold—even when the world seems broken.
 

The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux]

Sinking Ship Productions and Theater in Quarantine (US)
Presented by New York Theatre Workshop in association with Lucille Lortel Theatre
January 4th to January 26th, 2025
Trapped in a time loop, space traveler Egon Tichy faces his own worst enemy—himself—in this virtuosic fusion of live performance and real-time cinematic sleight-of-hand.
 
Under the Radar 2025 Under Construction Programming
 

A {room} of one’s own

Viola He (US)
Presented by Onassis ONX
January 10th to January 14th, 2025
Through voice loops, motion capture, and audio-visual fragments within projected scenes, A {room} of one’s own externalizes the expedition of imagination and solitude. Presented in rep with RUNWAY.
 

Night Side Songs

Words and Lyrics by The Lazours
Directed by Taibi Magar (US)
Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in association with American Repertory Theater and Philadelphia Theatre Company
January 14th to January 19th, 2025
A communal music-theater experience performed for—and with—an intimate audience that gives voice to doctors, patients, researchers, and caregivers to meld the realms of the well and the sick.
 

Nothing Doing

Alex Tatarsky (US)
Presented at Chemistry Creative, co-commissioned by Under the Radar and Playwrights Horizons
DATES TBA
A series of riotous freak-out sessions that offer a generous peek into the conjuring of new material from a clown obsessed with unstable fictions -- from the self to the nation-state, baloney as both nonsense language and lunchmeat.
 

Rich with History and other stuff you say at a haunted house

Marcella Murray, David Neumann, and Tei Blow for Advanced Beginner Group (US)
Presented by Mabou Mines
Co-commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts and Mabou Mines; Co-produced by Advanced Beginner Group and Mabou Mines
January 8th to January 16th, 2025
Somewhere between the cargo hold of a spaceship and a craft services table, a film crew setting up a shot immerse themselves in a dance of multiple takes through haunted spaces, ideas, and interactions.
 

RUNWAY

Christiana Kosiari (Greece)
Presented by Onassis ONX
January 10th to January 14th, 2025
A solo piece on a treadmill that never stops, a race against the corrosion of time. Presented in
rep with A {room} of one’s own.
 

Seagull Variations

Written by Eli Rarey, created and directed by Sasha Molochnikov (Russia)
Presented by La MaMa in association with En Garde Arts
January 17th to January 19th, 2025
A poignant story of freedom and destruction, Seagull Variations centers on an artist’s struggle to survive censorship, the realities of creating both art and a life far from home and the personal cost of resistance.
 

Turn. Turning. TURNT.

Cynthia Oliver (US)
Presented by Live Artery | New York Live Arts
January 13th, 2025
Cynthia Oliver's Turn.Turning.TURNT. is a trilogy of tumultuous dance works negotiating the discord between time, play, and an uncertain future.
 

We come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism

Jenn Kidwell with Brandon Kazen-Maddox, Jordan McCree & the blackening (US)
Presented by The Flea Theater
Dates TBA
We come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism is an anti-capitalist ritual comedy in which performers and audience together explore value, labor, and currency.
 
Under the Radar 2025 Additional Programming
 

Under the Radar Symposium Keynote and Discussion Forum

Conceived and Produced by Under the Radar
Presented at NYU Skirball Center & John A. Paulson Center at NYU
January 9th, 2025
Conceived of and produced by UTR's Festival Producers ArKtype and Co-Creative Directors Mark Russell, Kaneza Schaal and Meropi Peponides, the second annual Under the Radar Symposium convenes more than 350 arts presenters, producers, service organizations, funders and artists in alignment toward a bold new vision of theater space as a tool for social growth and cultural excellence. The Symposium's key model is rigorous small-table discussions, empowering creative professionals to actualize emergent paths toward a stronger sector of national and international performing arts. The day starts with a series of open-to-the-public keynote speeches, presented by luminaries in the field TBA.
 

Coming Attractions

Conceived and Produced by Under the Radar
Presented at ArtXnyc
January 11th and 12th, 2025
Coming Attractions consists of six conversations between an artist and a supporter of their work, discussing projects in development or ready for touring. Coming Attractions is open to professional presenters and producers, as well as the general public. The intention is to present an innovative, informal, fun, and human pitch session. Conversation pairs to be announced.
 

Soho Rep is Not a Building. Soho Rep Had a Building
 (A funeral for 46 Walker Street and a celebration of life for the thriving future of NYC experimental theater)

Presented by Soho Rep
Dates TBA
To honor the death of Walkerspace (1991-2024), join a celebration of life that only Soho Rep could throw, filled with wry wit, ridiculous raconteurs, and so much heart—come pay your respects to one of New York City’s last downtown spaces devoted to experimentation, risk, and revelation!