The Public Theater Launches 2011 Under The Radar Festival 1/5

By: Charlie Piane Jan. 03, 2011

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Executive Director Andrew D. Hamingson), Producer Mark Russell and The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP President and CEO Sandra Gibson) will begin performances for the 2011 UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL on Wednesday, January 5. This highly-anticipated 12-day festival, running through January 16, is committed to tracking new theater from across the U.S. and around the world. Tickets are $15 to UNDER THE RADAR shows at The Public, and $15 to $25 for shows at partner venues. For more ticket information, please visit www.publictheater.org or www.undertheradarfestival.com.

Now in its seventh year, 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. This year artists include JoAnne Akalaitis, David Greenspan, Richard Maxwell, Barry McGovern, Suzan-Lori Parks, Daniel Kitson, Reggie Watts, Chay Yew, and many more.

In a triumphant display of courage and conviction, the Belarus Free Theater, who recently escaped repression and jail in their home country, will present their latest work, BEING Harold Pinter, beginning on Wednesday, January 5. An additional performance of BEING Harold Pinter has been added for Thursday, January 6 at 7 PM, and as a last minute festival entry, the Belarus Free Theater will present another piece, ZONE OF SILENCE, on January 15 and 16

New to the festival this year is THE FESTIVAL LOUNGE. Located at the Chinatown Brasserie (380 Lafayette Street), THE FESTIVAL LOUNGE will offer a place for patrons and artists of UNDER THE RADAR to come together, create new connections, and exchange new ideas. The lounge will also feature live musical acts as well as a DJ. A cash bar will be available. THE FESTIVAL LOUNGE will be open Thursday, January 6 through Monday January 10, and Thursday January 13 through Sunday, January 16 from 9 p.m. until late night.

COMPLETE LINE UP FOR UNDER THE RADAR (JANUARY 5 - 16, 2011):

Ameriville
January 5-16 (Running Time: 90 minutes)Written, Created and Performed by UNIVERSES (New York)
Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz, Gamal Chasten, William Ruiz (aka Ninja)
Directed and Developed by Chay Yew Wed. Jan 5th 7:30pm| Thurs. Jan 6th 2pm & 7pm| Fri. Jan 7th 7:30pm| Sat. Jan 8th 7:30pm
Sun. Jan 9th 7:30pm| Thurs. Jan 13th 7:30pm| Fri. Jan 14th 7pm| Sat. Jan 15th 7:30pm
Sun. Jan 16th 2pm & 7:30pm
An explosive fusion of storytelling and the infectious rhythms of jazz, gospel, and hip-hop, Ameriville puts the state of the Union under the microscope - race, poverty, politics, history and government, examining our country through the lens of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. New York based UNIVERSES is an ensemble of multi-disciplinary writers and performers who fuse poetry, theater, down home blues and Spanish boleros, creating their own inimitable brand of performance.
Correspondances
January 7-16 (Running Time: 50 minutes)
Kettly Noël (Haiti/ Mali) and Nelisiwe Xaba (South Africa)

Fri. Jan 7th 7pm| Sat. Jan 8th 4:30pm| Sun. Jan 9th 9:30pm| Mon. Jan 10th 7pm
Wed. Jan 12th 9:30pm| Fri. Jan 14th 9:30pm| Sat. Jan 15th 1pm| Sun. Jan 16th 7pm
Two women finally meet after a long period of correspondence. They come together for a raucous conversation on diverse subjects - ranging from the mundane to the profound. With text in English and French, Correspondances is a lively and sophisticated dance-theater piece that exposes the intimate fabric of friendship while exploring themes of race, culture and gender.
Diciembre
January 5-15 (Running Time: 75 minutes)
Teatro en el Blanco (Chile)
Written and Directed by Guillermo Calderón

A co-production of Fundacion Teatro a Mil and Teatro en el Blanco. Wed. Jan 5th 8pm| Thurs. Jan 6th 4:30pm| Fri. Jan 7th 9:30pm| Sat. Jan 8th 1pm
Sun. Jan 9th 7pm| Mon. Jan 10th 9:30pm| Wed. Jan 12th 7pm| Sat. Jan 15th 9:30pm
Hatched from the brilliant imagination of writer-director Guillermo Calderón, comes this haunting and politically charged black comedy about a near-future war in Chile. Taking place on Christmas Eve 2014, the story is set in Santiago, a city surrounded by Peruvian forces. A young solider Jorge returns home to celebrate Christmas with his pregnant twin sisters. The sisters' deeply opposing views on the war come to a head when it is revealed that Jorge is planning to go a.w.o.l. First seen at TeatroStageFest 2009.

Jump
*January 11-15 (Running Time: 60 minutes)
Performed and Composed by Nora York
Directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
Written by David Greenspan
(*Not open for review)

Tues. Jan 11th 7:30pm| Wed. Jan 12th 7:30pm| Fri. Jan 14th 10pm| Sat. Jan 15th 2pmIn 1905, while performing in Victorien Sardou's melodrama La Tosca, the renowned French actress Sarah Bernhardt jumped from a balcony in the final scene, sustaining an injury that some believe contributed to the loss of her right leg.
In this kaleidoscopic music-theatre exploration of the life of Sarah Bernhardt and the story of Tosca, acclaimed stage director JoAnne Akalaitis joins forces with musician Nora York and playwright David Greenspan to examine the making of art and the passion that inspires it. Jump interweaves Bernhardt's autobiographical writings, scenes from Sardou's play, and arias from Puccini's Tosca with York's original song inventions.
Too late! antigone (contest #2)January 6-15 (Running Time: 55 minutes)
Motus (Italy)
Devised and Directed by Enrico Casagrande & Daniela Nicolò
With Silvia Calderoni and Vladimir Aleksic

Thurs. Jan 6th 2pm| Sat. Jan 8th 9:30pm| Sun. Jan 9th 2pm| Tues. Jan 11th 7pm
Thurs. Jan 13th 9:30pm| Sat. Jan 15th 4 pm & 7pm

Sitting on the stage of the Newman Theater, the audience witnesses a woman and a man in a desperate multi-level power struggle. Silvia/Antigone/Haemon faces Vladimir/Creon in a merciless set of challenges that amplify both power games between fathers and sons and those of contemporary "New Dictators" who also try to tame the disobedient ones. Motus, one of Italy's most adventurous theater companies, investigates Antigone with its take-no-prisoners theatrical style.

Suzan-Lori Parks: WATCH ME WORK
January 5-16 (Running Time: 75 minutes)
Conceived and Performed by Suzan-Lori Parks
Free and open to the general public
Wed. Jan 5th | Fri. Jan 7th | Sat. Jan 8th Fri. Jan 14th | Sat. Jan 15th | Sun. Jan 16th

WATCH ME WORK is a performance piece, a meditation on the artistic process and an actual work session, in which Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks works on her newest writing project in the main lobby of The Public Theater. The audience is invited to come and watch her work and/or to share the space and get some of their own writing work done. During the last fifteen minutes of the performance she will answer any questions the audience might have regarding their own work and their own creative process.

Watt by Samuel Beckett
*January 6-16 (Running Time: 55 minutes)
Gate Theatre, Ireland
Performed by Barry McGovern
Directed by Tom Creed
(*Not open for review)

Straight from Ireland's acclaimed Gate Theatre is an exciting new work by leading Beckett interpreter Barry McGovern, directed by one of Ireland's rising directors, Tom Creed. Watt is the extraordinary story of an itinerant character who walks one day from a train station to the home of a Mr. Knott whom he will serve. The bizarre adventures of Watt and his struggle to make sense of the world around him is told with verbal elegance, immense pathos and fierce humor.

UNDER THE RADAR PARTNER VENUES
Bonanza : A documentary for five screens
January 6-16 (Running Time: 70 minutes)Berlin (Belgium)
Robert Moss Theater: 440 Lafayette Street, 3rd Floor
$15 tickets at publictheater.org or 212-967-7555
Pick up at The Public Theater Box Office: 425 Lafayette Street

Thurs. Jan 6th 7pm| Fri. Jan 7th 7pm & 9pm| Sat. Jan 8th 3:30pm & 8:30pm| Sun. Jan 9th 2pm & 8:30pm Mon. Jan 10th 7 pm & 9pm| Wed. Jan 12th 8pm| Thurs. Jan 13th 8pm| Fri. Jan 14th 7 & 9pm
Sat. Jan 15th 3pm & 9pm| Sun. Jan 16th 4pm & 7pm
This unique theatre-film event by Antwerp based multimedia collective Berlin brings to life an intimate documentary portrait of an abandoned mining town in Colorado. Unraveling somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, the lives of Bonanza's seven remaining inhabitants are projected simultaneously on five screens underneath a scaled model of their town. The citizens lead oddly charming and independent lives, but their individual quest for solitude and spirituality is undermined by feuds, litigation, gossip and murder. A brilliant blend of film and theater, Bonanza is a captivating portrayal of a small American town - a microcosm of the world.

Being Harold Pinter
January 5-16 (Running Time: 75 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
Belarus Free Theater (Belarus)
Adapted and directed by Vladimir Shcherban
Produced by Nikolai Khalezin and Natalia Koliada
La MaMa: 74A East 4th Street
$20 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710

Following their stunning performance of Generation Jeans at UTR 2008, Belarus Free Theatre returns to UTR with Being Harold Pinter, which incorporates transcripts from Belarussian political prisoners with excerpts from Harold Pinter's lifetime of writings. Creating visually striking images with simple means and underscoring the fierceness of Pinter's words with the intense physicality of the actors, Being Harold Pinter blurs the boundaries between art and reality, delivering a poignant contemporary commentary on violence, oppression, freedom and human dignity.

Dutch A/V
January 5-16 (Running Time: 55 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
By Reggie Watts / Tommy Smith (USA)
La MaMa : 7A East 4th Street
$20 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710
Wed. Jan 5th 9pm| Thurs. Jan 6th 4:30pm| Fri. Jan 7th 9pm| Sat. Jan 8th 9pm| Sun. Jan 9th 9pmMon. Jan 10th 9 pm| Wed. Jan 12th 9pm| Thurs. Jan 13th 9pm| Fri. Jan 14th 9pm| Sat. Jan 15th 9pm
Sun. Jan 16th 9pm

Infused with sonic landscapes performed live by Reggie Watts, Dutch A/V is a live-edited environmental film that seeks to replicate the first hand experience of being a flâneur in another city. Reggie - with collaborator/playwright Tommy Smith and Seattle journalist Brendan Kiley - traveled to Holland and shot over 26 hours of footage, exploring its cities using spy-glasses that recorded everything they saw and heard. Dutch A/V seeks to re-present this footage using projection technology and stereophonic sound, turning the interior space into portals to a foreign landscape thousands of miles away.

Living In Exile
January 6-16 (Running Time: 80 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
By Jon Lipsky
Directed by Christopher McElroen
La MaMa: 66 East 4th Street
$25 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710

Jon Lipsky's Living in Exile, directed by Christopher McElroen (Waiting for Godot in New Orleans) and featuring T Ryder Smith, is a radically intimate two-character retelling of Homer's Iliad performed in a private living room. Eloquent, moving and often violent, Living in Exile is a meditation on the costs of prolonged warfare, imperialist culture shock, and the citizen-as-spectator. Actors and audiences will experience the play in the same intimate setting: an American living room. Seating is extremely limited. A Project of Christopher McElroen and The American Vicarious.

Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good)
January 6-8 (Running Time: 80-120 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
Gob Squad (UK/Germany)
La MaMa: 66 East 4th Street
$20 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710

Thurs. Jan. 6th 7:30pm| Fri. Jan 7th 7:30pm| Sat. Jan 8th 2:30pm & 7:30pm

It's 1965 and everything is just about to happen. Gob Squad take the hand of the King of Pop himself, Andy Warhol, and take a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York City, back to where it all began. Gob Squad set themselves the task of reconstructing "Kitchen" and other Warhol films. How can they get it just right? How do they know if they're going wrong? How did people dance in 1965? What did they talk about? Had feminism happened? Or was it yet to begin? Gob Squad's Kitchen becomes a journey back in time and back to the future again.

Show Your Face
January 10-11 (Running Time: 75 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
Betontanc and Umka LV (Slovenia/Latvia)
La MaMa: 66 East 4th Street
$20 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710
Mon. Jan 10th 7:30pm| Tues. Jan 11th 7:30pm

An empty snowsuit is transformed into a contemporary everyman on a dark odyssey through the 20th century in a world without hope. Based on a comic strip, this award-winning collaboration by avant-garde Slovene physical theater troupe Betontanc, Latvian object theater masters Umka LV, and the Slovene pop-electronic group Silence combines puppetry, physical and object theater, and live music for a truly virtuosic performance.

The Walk Across America for Mother Earth
January 15-16 (Running Time: 120 minutes)
Presented in Association with LaMaMa
Presented by La MaMa and Talking Band
Written by Taylor Mac
Directed by Paul Zimet
La MaMa: 66 East 4th Street
$20 tickets at lamama.org or call 212-475-7710

Sat. Jan 15th 2:30pm & 7:30pm| Sun. Jan 16th 2:30pm & 7:30pm
*Preview Performance Not For Review
Runs through Jan 30
The Walk Across America for Mother Earth combines Taylor Mac's exuberant theatricality with the richly scored work of Talking Band to tell the story of a nine-month protest walk from New York to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Eighteen and eager to flee his suburban conservative upbringing, Taylor joined this group of political activists, aging hippies, baby hippies, punks, anarchists, dykes, radical fairies, men, women, senior citizens, and children on a nine-month walk across the United States. Re-told and re-imagined by Taylor, Walk asks its artists and audiences to take a second look at how the idea of community sometimes fails to unite us, and sometimes brings us together in the most surprising ways.

Vice Versa - Based on c*ckand Bull by Will Self
January 6-15 (Running Time: 45 minutes)
Collectif idil! eldi (France)
Dixon Place: 161A Chrystie Street
$15 tickets at undertheradarfestival.com

John Bull is a decent guy, a rugbyman, and has suddenly discovered a strange looking gash growing behind his knee. Seeking help from his doctor Alan Margoulis and his charming secretary, Bull enters an absurd and sensual journey with his new appendage. Freely adapted from the novel of Will Self, the enfant terrible of British literature, Vice Versa is a surreal and comedic look at the confusions of the sexes, its ambiguities and pitfalls.

Your brother. Remember?
January 5-16 (Running Time: 60 minutes)Zachary Oberzan
Dixon Place: 161A Chrystie Street
$15 tickets at undertheradarfestival.com

Your brother. Remember? splices and dices home videos, Hollywood film footage, and live performance. As kids in Maine, Zachary and his older brother Gator loved making parodies of films, most notably Jean-Claude Van Damme's Kickboxer, and the notorious cult film Faces of Death. Then 20 years passed. Zack returned to his childhood home to re-create these films, shot for shot, as precisely as possible--but now seen through a twenty-year lens of emotional and physical wear and tear. Born in Belgium or America, the simple childhood desire for love gets confused with fame, drugs, & ambition. But with Mr. Van Damme in their corner, Zack and Gator step into the ring one last time for a title shot at redemption.

Vision Disturbance
January 12-14 (Running Time: 70 minutes)
New York City Players
A new play by Christina Masciotti
Directed by Richard Maxwell
Performed by Linda Mancini and Jay Smith
Abrons Arts Center Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street
$18 Tickets at Theatermania.com or call 212-352-3101

Wed. Jan 12th 8pm| Thurs. Jan 13th 8pm| Fri. Jan 14th 8pm

Two lost souls in Reading, Pennsylvania converge: Mondo, a Greek immigrant whose eyesight suffers from a grueling divorce, and Dr. Hull, the retina specialist who treats her. Vision Disturbance is the first production in New York City Players' new program dedicated to staging the work of playwrights early in their careers. Under the direction of Artistic Director Richard Maxwell, the award-winning New York City Players have been making theater since 1999 and have toured to over 20 countries.

Phobophilia
January 5-10 (Running Time: 50 minutes)
Presented by HERE2boys.tv (Quebec, Canada)
HERE: 145 6th Avenue (1 block below Spring, enter on Dominick)
$20 tickets at here.org

Wed. Jan 5th 6pm & 7pm| Thurs. Jan 6th 6pm, 7pm & 10pm| Fri. Jan 7th 6pm, 7pm, & 10pm
Sat. Jan 8th 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, & 10pm| Sun. Jan 9th 1pm, 5pm, 6pm & 7pm| Mon. Jan 10th 6pm & 7pm
Twenty-four spectators are led to a secret location to witness a peculiar interrogation. Phobophilia unfolds through a complex meshing of sound, action, ritual and video projection. Using its micro-cinema of Cocteau-inspired projections shown on an elaborate, ever-shifting pop-up book, Phobophilia is a surrealist and dreamlike examination of fear, pleasure, voyeurism and the visual archive of war. Transdisciplinary artists Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard are 2boys.tv. Since 2002, this award winning art duo has created and presented a wide repertoire of collaborative multidisciplinary cabaret works, performances, videos and installations in clubs, galleries, museums, theatres and festivals around the world.

Daniel Kitson's The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church
January 6-16 (Running Time: 90 minutes)
Presented by St. Ann's Warehouse
Daniel Kitson (UK)
St. Ann's Warehouse: 38 Water St. DUMBO, Brooklyn
$25 tickets using (code UTR until Jan. 16th ) at stannswarehouse.org or 866-811-4111

Runs through January 30
Introducing American audiences to another remarkable British talent, St. Ann's will present the U.S. Premiere of Daniel Kitson's The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church. In this singular 90-minute monologue, the celebrated comedian and theatrical storyteller tells the tale of a man whose suicide is perpetually deferred by all the goodbye letters he must write-and the responses some of them provoke. Among the many critics who lauded the piece in its 2009 Edinburgh Fringe First-winning run at the Traverse Theatre is The Independent, which said, "Kitson creates a remarkably sympathetic biography of a nobody. The Interminable Suicide is an ingeniously simple and hopeful piece of work."
# # #
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets for UNDER THE RADAR shows at The Public Theater are on-sale now at The Public Theater Box Office at 425 Lafayette Street; online at www.publictheater.org or by phone at 212-967-7555. Tickets are $15 to UNDER THE RADAR shows at The Public, and $15 to $25 for shows at partner venues. Seating for all UTR shows at The Public is general admission. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Latecomers are seated at the discretion of house management. Tickets for partner venue events should be purchased directly from the venue.
For more information, visit www.publictheater.org or www.undertheradarfestival.com

The LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust provides leadership support for The Public Theater's year-round activities.

The 2011 Under The Radar Festival is produced by The Public Theater, festival producer Mark Russell.
Under the Radar is a component of the Devised Theater Initiative, a year-round program of The Public Theater dedicated to creating sustainable pathways for the development and production of devised work. Under the Radar and the Devised Theater Initiative are made possible with the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Under The Radar is also supported by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and is held in conjunction with APAP Conference NYC 2011.

The Public Theater gratefully acknowledges the following partners for their additional generous support of the 2011 Under the Radar Festival:

Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Trust for Mutual Understanding
Culture Ireland, Etant Donnes: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, a program of FACE
Select Equity Group Foundation SEG Voices, The W Trust, The Jim Henson Foundation
New York State Council on The Arts, a state agency,The British Council, National Performance Network, The Friedman Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Generous support for individual productions will be available online at www.undertheradarfestival.com.

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