A first look at the lineup of this year’s Under the Radar festival

Just two years ago, Under the Radar was about to go under. The annual showcase for experimental theater from across the country and around the world had been a staple at the Public Theater every January since 2006. But budget cuts for the Public’s 2023–24 season brought the axe down on that tradition. Theater fans decried what seemed like the end of an era, and another sign that New York was becoming inhospitable to noncommercial work. 

But then something wonderful happened: Instead of going under, the festival went wide. A number of theater spacesincluding La MaMa, Lincoln Center, New York Live Arts, NYU’s Skirball Center and St. Ann’s Warehouse (where the festival started in 2005)joined forces to present Under the Radar’s 2024 programming in venues throughout the city. And the good news continues this year. During a time when downtown theater has been contracting in New York, the 2025 Under the Radar festival, which runs from January 4 through January 19, is actually expanding. 

Not only does this year’s season, produced by ArkType’s Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne, feature more productions and more institutional partners (such as BAM, New York Theatre Workshop and the Apollo), but it is also broadening its leadership and its mandate. Founder and artistic director Mark Russell is now flanked by co–creative directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal, and the festival is commissioning and producing new work for the first time. “This festival looks reflects the vitality and abundance of contemporary theater happening in New York City and around the world,” Russell says. “Though this is our 20th year, it is also the beginning of a new Under the Radar, re-imagined and re-energized for today.”

Under the Radar is giving Time Out‘s readers an exclusive first look at the shows in this year’s Under the Radar feastand there’s a whole lot of great stuff to choose from. There are 23 productions in the festival’s principal Mainstage series and eight more in its developmental Under Construction wing, plus three special events. You can find information about all of them below in the full list of festival offerings. 

On the American side, the options include new work by Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play), Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle) and the innovative puppet-theater troupe Wakka Wakka (Made in China); a fresh provocation by the brutally confrontational performance artist Ann Liv Young; a clown deconstruction by Alex Tatarsky; and a radical re-envisioning of the classic musical Show Boat by David Herskovits and his Target Margin Theater (Remember This Trick). 

Promising selections from international artists include the Benji Reid’s Find Your Eyes (U.K.), Dan Daw’s The Dan Daw Show (Australia/U.K.), Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind Runner, Khawla Ibraheem’s A Knock on the Roof (Palestine) and Jaha Koo’s Cuckoo (South Korea). 

Visit Under the Radar’s website for tickets, performance schedules, event descriptions and other information.

Under the Radar 2025 Mainstage programming: 

Blind Runner
Amir Reza Koohestani (Iran)
Presented in partnership with Waterwell 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 trueand 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-spanninghip hop, Arabic instrumentation, and ḥakawātī oral storytellingwork 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
January 9th to January 19th
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 goldeven 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 enemyhimselfin 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 forand withan 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 
January 8th to January 18th
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
January 9th to January 17th
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.

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
Date 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 heartcome pay your respects to one of New York City’s last downtown spaces devoted to experimentation, risk, and revelation!