The Public Theater's UNDER THE RADAR Festival Presents INCOMING! at Joe's Pub, 8/23-24

INCOMING! The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival will present new work at Joe's Pub, The Public Theater's most intimate performance space, on August 23 and 24. INCOMING! offers emerging talent the freedom and flexibility to experiment with new material – sometimes for the first time – in front of a live audience. This year's lineup includes Obie winner Edwin Lee Gibson's Five ' Til, the Brooklyn-based theater company Lilac co's Drusi Is Coming and playwright Christina Anderson's Hollow Roots.

The INCOMING! initiative at Joe's Pub was created as an avenue for developing new material by artists looking for a safe, intimate performance space to debut work. "The Under the Radar Festival is proud to join with Joe's Pub in presenting the INCOMING! series," said UTR Artistic Director and Producer Mark Russell. "This is a forum where artists can develop new material in front of an audience. Sometimes a deadline is the best thing you can give an artist. INCOMING! is a deadline and a place for outrageous failures and new revelations! All live at one of the best rooms in the city. These are going to be some exciting performances."

Like Under the Radar, INCOMING! takes artists out of their comfort zones and challenges them to be ambitious in an environment known for its commitment to originality and innovation. "Joe's Pub is thrilled to work with our Public Theater colleagues to present these works-in-progress while keeping our prices low to encourage adventurous theater-goers, promote community engagement and support up-and-coming talent," said Joe's Pub Director Shanta Thake.

Tickets for all INCOMING! The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival @ Joe's Pub are just $10. The next Under the Radar Festival (UTR 13) will be held January 9-20, 2013 at The Public Theater. Artists that have debuted at INCOMING! followed by works produced at the official Under the Radar Festival include Lemon Andersen's County of Kings and Dael Orlandersmith's Stoop Stories.

INCOMING! The Public Theater'S UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL @ JOE'S PUB:

"Five ' Til" by Edwin Lee Gibson
Friday, August 23, 9:30pm, $10

Obie Award winning actor, Edwin Lee Gibson (The Seven) brings his commentary on capital punishment to Joe's Pub in the blues fairytale, Five ' Til. In a notorious state penitentiary in Huntsville, TX, cause and effect have come home to roost. Dante Wallace sits five minutes from execution for the murder of Kenya. What happens when a capital punishment case becomes about convicting someone rather than someone who is guilty? Five 'Til frames the complexity of a worst nightmare scenario into a "karmic tale" of how vengeance is far more powerful than a lethal injection. A lucid hallucination set to music, the play is a blues fairytale that captures both pain and joy in the stylistic traditions of Negro spirituals and soul. Edwin Lee Gibson has starred as Raqmaan in the NaRa Films feature Blood First (2012 release). He has also just completed his academic work, Freedom Initiative, which utilizes the canon of the late August Wilson as a means for revisiting and reimagining the American-African experience, post slavery, in the United States.

"Hollow Roots" by Christina Anderson
Saturday, August 24, 7:30pm, $10

In Hollow Roots, a woman traverses a nameless urban landscape plagued by a question: can a person of color have a "neutral narrative"? A spare and intimate setting evolves into a vivid world painted in detailed observations and marked by memories, music, history, candy, maps, and circumstance. Tapping into the rich and complicated genre of one person plays by writers such as Wallace Shawn and Spalding Grey, playwright Christina Anderson (Good Goods, Inked Baby), director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights) and performer April Matthis (Lear, The Sound and the Fury) interrogate the concept of cultural identity and ask "Can someone live a life unaffected by one's race or gender?"

"Drusi Is Coming" by Lilac co
Friday, August 24, 9:30pm, $10

Drusi Is Coming is the latest episode by Lilac co in the jinx series continuum. Lilac co has made new theater in Greenpoint, Brooklyn since 2005 (stjohnstheatre.org) including a feature length independent film "love is black water" (to festivals us/euro fall 2013). Since summer 2009, all work by lilac co. has been developed at the 94 Norman Avenue storefront space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. "The work, written and directed by Sean Edward Lewis, recalls literary experiments such as those of Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carol, Antonin Artaud and David Lynch. As audience to their work one can dwell, rather than be directed what to think about, be that a narrative progression, or a character's "inner" psychology. The work affects feelings and ideas actively, if not immediately, LSJ creates not merely physical spaces, but imaginary, emotional, and intellective states an audience passes through." -Thom Donovan, FANZINE. Written by Sean Edward Lewis. Directed by Colm Dee and Sean Edward Lewis. Company manager Daniel Clare Pomorski. Sound and video by Michael King.

Visit www.joespub.com for a complete list of shows and to purchase tickets. You can also book over the phone at 212-967-7555 or in person at The Public Theater Box Office (1 PM to 6 PM) located at 425 Lafayette Street, NYC.

JOE'S PUB at The Public Theater, reopened October 4th, 2011 from a top to bottom renovation, debuted in October 1998 and quickly became one of New York City's most celebrated and in-demand showcase venues for live music and performance. With its genre-blind booking and vast diversity of interests, the stage at Joe's Pub gives voice to a world of varied and stellar artists. Joe's Pub is open seven days a week, regularly hosting as many as three shows a day. Dinner and drink service is available during every performance. In addition to its reputation of presenting internationally known stars, Joe's Pub has also developed into a premier showcase stage for up-and-coming musicians and emerging artists from a variety of disciplines.

UNDER THE RADAR is an explosively diverse festival of new theater from around the world and the U.S. that spotlights artists ranging from emerging talents to masters in the field. Located at The Public Theater as well as partner venues, UNDER THE RADAR offers a crash course in theater that is exciting, independent, and experimental, created by some of the most dynamic artists working today.

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Patrick Willingham)was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, and productions of classics at its downtown headquarters and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day onstage and through extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 42 Tony Awards, 151 Obies, 45 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. The Public has brought 54 shows to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In 'Da Funk; On the Town; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog/Underdog; Elaine Stritch at Liberty; Take Me Out; Caroline, or Change; Well; Passing Strange; the Tony Award-winning revival of Hair;and this fall, the rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and the 2010 Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice.

Mark RusselL (Director, Under the Radar Festival) created the Under the Radar Festival in 2005. The festival moved to The Public in 2006 and became an integral part of its season. From 1983-2004, Russell was the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122 (P.S. 122). Russell is now the Director of the Devised Theater Initiative at The Public Theater.