Under the Radar, Featuring What to Send Up, Constellations, and More, Begins January 8

The 16th annual Under the Radar festival kicks off January 8, filling the Public Theater, La MaMa and other venues with cutting-edge work from around the world.
In case you missed their earlier, limited runs, the 2020 festival offers New York theatregoers a chance to see The Movement Theatre Company’s critically acclaimed production of Aleshea Harris’ What to Send Up When It Goes Down, as well as Amir Nizar Zuabi’sGrey Rock, a play about a Palestinian man who dreams of launching into space.

Grey Rock

Grey Rock

The lineup also features overseas hits like Selina Thompson’s salt., in which two artists retrace one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle—previously seen at London’s Royal Court,—and the Wang Chong-helmed Constellations, Nick Payne’s Broadway play re-imagined by the Beijing-based Théâtre du Rêv Expérimental with live video (and a live hamster!).

READ: Aleshea Harris’ What to Send Up When it Goes Down Will Return Off-Broadway

Other 2020 UTR offerings, at the Public Theater, include Susan, Ahamefule J. Oluo’s darkly comic musical portrait of his mother (January 8–13); Australian theatre company Back to Back’s The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, in which five activists with intellectual disabilities hold a public meeting to start a frank and open conversation about our past and present (January 8–19); Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang’s virtual reality experience To the Moon (January 8–19); Mexican artist Héctor Flores Komatsu’s Andares, woven from ancestral myths and traditional music, which looks at the realities faced by indigenous people (January 9–19); TMTC’s What to Send Up, a community ritual created in response to the deaths of Black people as a result of racialized violence (January 10–19); Josh Fox’s deep dive into misinformation and propaganda in America post-9/11, The Truth Has Changed (January 11–19), and Chilean director and puppet artist Aline Kuppenheim’s collaboration with Guillermo Calderón, Feos, an adult work about desire and love between two people with physical deformities, (January 15–19).

READ: 6 Can’t-Miss Shows at the Public Theater’s 2020 Under the Radar Festival

In partner venues, UTR will co-present director Constellations, at La MaMa (January 9–12); Jess Thom’s take on Samuel Beckett’s Not I in a theatrical experience that explores neurodiversity, at BRIC House (January 10–19); and Suguru Yamamoto’s The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood, at Japan Society (January 10–14).

The UTR + Joe’s Pub: In Concert will also return as part of the 16th annual festival, featuring artists exploring the intersection of music and theatre. The slate includes Rizo, Lucy McCormick, Ryan J. Haddad, and Daniel J. Watts.

Rounding out the lineup is UTR’s Incoming! Series, featuring in-process works from The HawtPlates, Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Kameron Neal, Ty Defoe and All My Relations Collective, Maiko Kikuchi, nicHi douglas, and Piehole

For the complete lineup visit PublicTheater.org.