Welcome to the UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL 2023!

This year events at UTR consider our complicated time on earth and its environment, which include the social storms of the internet. They unearth ancient stories with new perspectives. You may see a visual/performance palindrome of the progress of civilization, a life-size Moby Dick, an interactive carnival midway, King Leopold the 2nd on a ladder, James Joyce’s bawdy sexts, Anne Frank’s father at Spalding Gray’s desk, Antigone and her brother under a blanket fortress, and Adam and Eve at Applebee’s. We celebrate the tenacity and brave vision of theater makers, who encountered huge challenges and setbacks over the last three years, and now can share their work with New York audiences.

This year’s Festival is about ‘collaboration.’ The work you will see over the next three weeks is all created through intense collaboration - theater-makers reinventing how they create work together to reflect their core values, which then are embedded in the work you will see. We mirror this act of collaborative creation with our partner theaters, through these relationships we are able to support these stunning productions.

Under the Radar is also about ‘resilience’. Creating live art has been extremely difficult during this time – the artists you will see this year have made it through, believed in what they had to say, and knew it needed to find its audience here, in New York City. Sustained by hundreds of backstage heroes, the artists are ready to meet you, the Public Theater/UTR audience, one of the most resilient and adventurous on earth.

Magic will happen.

M