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NYC experimental theater festival Under the Radar to return in 2023
By
Steve Smith
Published Nov 3, 2022
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By
Steve Smith
Published Nov 3, 2022
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Following two successive years of darkened stages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and its omicron variant this year, the premier experimental theater festival Under the Radar is set to return to the Public Theater and five partner venues throughout New York City in 2023.
The festival's 18th edition, announced Thursday by the Public Theater, will involve 36 artists and companies from around the globe, presenting audacious new work in the Public Theater's various spaces, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Chelsea Factory, La MaMa, New York Public Library, and NYU Skirball Center. Along with its full slate of polished dramatic presentations, the festival will stage concerts by theatrical musicians like Eszter Balint and Julian Fleisher, as well as first glimpses of works-in-progress.
That the festival is only returning now, after many other theaters and presenters were more or less back to business as usual for much of the past year, has everything to do with timing. Alongside other similarly bold offerings like globalFEST and PROTOTYPE, Under the Radar is scheduled to take place in January, when mainstream competition is light, but New York City is filled with curators and impresarios drawn from across the country and around the world to annual conferences.
That avant-garde solidarity has transformed New York City's performing-arts calendar. But in January of this year, uncertainty about fast-rising omicron variants prompted massive cancellations.
"It was a really heavy wave, and we hadn't staffed up by that time," said festival director Mark Russell, "So I could have brought companies over here from the U.K. for instance, and then my own staff would be sick and couldn't run the show. And I just couldn't imagine facing that."
Belgian company Ontroerend Goed focuses on climate change in the palindromic "Are we not drawn onward to new erA."
Courtesy Public Theater
Seven days ahead of the scheduled start, Russell pulled the plug. Fortunately, neither the participating artists nor the Public Theater faced financial hardship as a result of cancellation.
But the delay clearly has made Russell and his fellow presenters that much more eager to get Under the Radar back on track for 2023. Some events scheduled for last year's festival, such as English playwright Jasmine Lee-Jones's provocative "seven methods of killing kylie jenner," now top this year's marquee.
Of course, time has hardly stood still since January 2020, when the festival was last mounted in person. Russell acknowledged that while the outside world isn't entirely absent in Under the Radar, none of the festival's presentations refer explicitly to the COVID-19 pandemic, or to specific instances of social injustice or protest.
"Theater isn't that explicit, usually," he said. "The news does that better."
Still, Russell detected what he describes as a certain line of resilience running through many of the festival's offerings.
"You're going to feel that these artists have been through a lot," he said. "You have been through a lot. And we're coming together in rooms to celebrate getting through that, and looking towards the future."
Actors, puppets, video, and an oversize whale take the stage in Yngvild Aspeli's 85-minute adaptation of "Moby Dick."
Christophe Raynaudde Lage
Even now, though, the thought of getting together in rooms might give pause to some potential audience members. Some are ready to be done with vaccination checks and masking; others still feel insecure about public gatherings without barriers of some sort. Under the Radar, Russell explained, will cater to both constituencies.
"We're using the strictest protocols that we can get at the Public, especially for our artists and our production crew," Russell said. "We are not checking vaccinations at the door, and wearing masks in the theater is encouraged, but not demanded. But there are a couple performances of each where we are mask-only, so that some people that feel uncomfortable still can come and see shows."
Asked to play favorites and pick a few must-see performances, Russell doesn't hesitate.
"You need to start the festival at BAM with 'Are we not drawn onward to new erA.' It's very hard to make work about climate change and the climate disaster we're in and these people, they come from Ghent, have managed. And it's an anagram, both in its title and also within the show itself. It's really an ingenious, beautiful thing. 'seven methods of killing kylie jenner' is a great piece, really funny and dark at the same time."
Russell continued, "'KLII' is King Leopold II, embodied by Kaneza Schaal, the brilliant director-actor. She's in full regalia cross-dressing as Leopold, and goes off in many different directions. And then you need to see 'Moby Dick.' Now, that's a story everyone knows, and also an impossible book to put on in the theater. But this company, which comes from Norway and France, has done a puppet version of it, and it'll be at the Skirball Center with a 60-foot whale."
But as much as any given show might move Russell, it's the entire package that means the most. Affordable tickets, convenient scheduling, and venues in relatively close proximity mean audiences can attend multiple shows on any given evening, and compare notes in lobbies and nearby bars.
"It's a transient community," he said. "It's a beautiful thing. And it makes it so that the artists can see each other's work. That's important in this world."
The 18th annual Under the Radar Festival runs from Jan. 4 through Jan. 22, 2023, at the Public Theater and five partner venues. For a complete schedule of events, visit publictheater.org/utr23.
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public theater
new york city
Under the Radar Festival
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Steve Smith
Steve Smith is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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