January used to be a fallow period with few new theatrical openings as the industry recovered from the holiday frenzy. That is not the case anymore, with simultaneous festivals jostling for the attention of adventurous audiences.
Prototype, for example, offers contemporary music at the intersection of theater and opera through Jan. 18, while the Exponential Festival presents two dozen productions — scrappy, inventive, questing, some just plain bizarre — at various Brooklyn venues through Feb. 7. More focused is The Fire This Time, which puts on new 10-minute pieces by early-career playwrights of African and African-American descent (Jan. 23-31 at the Apollo Stages at the Victoria, in collaboration with Frigid New York).
It’s safe to say, though, that Under the Radar, founded in 2005, is the marquee event of January. With over 30 shows at 24 venues this year, the festival, which runs through Jan. 25, has come out with its biggest edition yet.
If anything defines Under the Radar, it’s a distaste for boundaries. The event is often associated with “downtown” as both a place and an experimental state of mind, but venues from Lincoln Center to Pregones/PRTT in the Bronx now offer programs bearing the U.T.R. stamp. Theater, dance, music, video? The festival likes to check as many boxes as possible. It also shuns the misconception that rule-breaking is for the young — participants like Mabou Mines have been challenging theatrical conventions for decades.
Below you will find a small selection of shows at Under the Radar that caught our attention — some with runs that extend beyond the festival proper. Be sure to book early as many venues have a small capacity.
‘12 Last Songs’
Presented by the Quarantine company of Manchester, England (not to be confused with the local Theater in Quarantine), “12 Last Songs” is a part-installation and part-live theater program that explores the nature of work over 12 hours — yes, audience members can leave and re-enter. The high-concept unscripted event is customized for each of the 12 cities where it takes place by involving local workers who do a paid shift in public view. (Jan. 17, La MaMa)
‘All That Fall’
The director JoAnne Akalaitis and the Mabou Mines company are teaming up for this Samuel Beckett one-act radio play, which first aired on the BBC in 1957. Akalaitis has preserved that original production’s disembodied staging, with a diorama of an Irish village, designed by Thomas Dunn, brought to life by lights as well as recorded audio. Obviously Bruce Odland’s sound and Jennifer Tipton’s lighting will do some heavy lifting. (Jan. 8-18, Mabou Mines)
‘Below’
The Irish button accordionist Danny O’Mahony and his love for traditional music appear to be an unexpected subject for the experimental Dublin company Brokentalkers — their satire “Masterclass,” here last year, was a collaboration/confrontation with the transgressive New York performer Adrienne Truscott. In addition to O’Mahony’s own playing, the show features sound design and composition by the Icelandic music whiz and former Björk collaborator Valgeir Sigurdsson. (Through Jan. 18, Irish Arts Center)
‘Birdie’
One of the filters when searching for shows on the festival’s site is “Tech Forward.” That includes this production, in which three men are filmed moving hundreds of tiny models; news clips and the occasional Hitchcock reference also figure. The Barcelona company Agrupación Señor Serrano looks at modern migrations through the use of live video — not a new approach, but a mesmerizing one when done right. (Jan. 14-18, Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center)
‘Dream Feed’
Another musical entry in this year’s slate comes courtesy of the HawtPlates, which appeared on Meshell Ndegeocello’s critically praised album “The Omnichord Real Book” and whose members include Kenita Miller-Hicks, a Tony nominee for the recent revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The trio promises a psychedelic-leaning exploration of dreamscapes. (Jan. 9-25, Here)
‘The Ford/Hill Project’
Conceived by the actor Elizabeth Marvel and the director Lee Sunday Evans, this show juxtaposes the testimonies of Anita Hill (against Clarence Thomas, in 1991) and Christine Blasey Ford (against Brett Kavanaugh, in 2018) at Senate nomination hearings for the Supreme Court justices. The text is drawn, verbatim, from transcripts, and knowing that confirmations soon followed adds to the sting of the women’s words. The cast reunites Marvel and Amber Iman from a short run at the Public Theater in 2024, and they are now joined by Jon Michael Hill and Josh Hamilton. (Through Jan. 11, La MaMa)
‘In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat’
The Spike Lee regular Roger Guenveur Smith wrote and performs this tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom he was friends in the 1980s. He draws from his memories for this hourlong show, which features vivid sound design by the protean musician Marc Anthony Thompson, best known as the force behind Chocolate Genius, Inc. (Through Jan. 18, New York Theater Workshop)
‘Ulysses’
Unlike the epic “Gatz,” a live performance of “The Great Gatsby” in its entirety, the latest literary excavation by the Elevator Repair Service company is not an exhaustive rendering. Yet this abridged adaptation of the James Joyce work, directed by John Collins with codirection and dramaturgy by the cast member Scott Shepherd, “somehow manages to reduce the novel’s more than 260,000 words to 2 hours and 40 minutes with much of its humor, pathos and bawdiness intact,” as Jesse Green wrote in 2024 of the company’s earlier iteration of the show. (Jan. 13-Feb. 15, Public Theater)
‘The Visitors’
This Australian import zooms in on what went through the minds of Aboriginal elders as they watched British ships first enter what is now Sydney Harbor, on a summer day in January 1788. Who are these newcomers? What kind of reception should they get? Created by a First Nations playwright (Jane Harrison) and director (Wesley Enoch), the show focuses on a turning point in the history of that island continent, but the issues it brings up are likely to feel very much of the moment for audiences in the United States. (Jan. 21-Feb 1, Perelman Performing Arts Center)
‘Watch Me Walk’
A founding member of the experimental company Nature Theater of Oklahoma — she was a standout in their production of “Romeo and Juliet” — Anne Gridley sets out to explore her life since being diagnosed with the neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. A bitingly funny trigger warning before a work-in-progress performance in 2023 may give an inkling of the overall tone: “I am a cripple with a gimp rising and my walk is not a character choice.” (Jan. 14-Feb. 8, Soho Rep)
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