NEW YORK CITY: The weather outside might be getting colder, but the January festival programming is just heating up. The Public Theater announced the lineup for its Under the Radar Festival, which runs Jan. 7-18, on Thursday. That joins the announcement a few weeks ago of offerings at Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival, which runs Jan. 2-17.
Some highlights from American artists at the 11th annual Under the Radar Festival, which has an international scope, include Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950’s, a durational piece that will culminate in a six-hour presentation on Jan. 25; Daniel Fish’s A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which uses audio recordings of the late David Foster Wallace; and Reggie Watts’s Audio Abramović, in which the self-proclaimed “vocalist/beatboxer/musician/comedian/improviser” channels the work of performance artist Marina Abramović.
The Public is also launching the Devised Theater Working Group, in partnership with LaMaMa, and the eight works from this initiative will be presented as part of the festival’s INCOMING! Series.
“The eight companies of the inaugural Devised Theater Working Group (DTWG) represent a generation of artists that is wildly diverse in their theater practice,”UTR Co-Director/DTI Director Meiyin Wang said in a statement. “From real-time film to the spoken word, from absurdist comedy to sci-fi concerts, these artists are creating new notions, visions, and rhythms of theatre.”
COIL also has some exciting projects up its sleeve, with an anticipated return of The TEAM’s RoosevElvis, which premiered at Bushwick Starr last year. Other theatre offerings in the multi-disciplinary festival include Mike Iveson’s musical Sorry Robot, the Wooster Group’s Andrew Schneider’s YOUARENOWHERE, and The Blind Date Project, starring Bojana Novakovic.
For a complete list of Under the Radar’s programming, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com. For a complete list of the COIL Festival’s programming, visit www.ps122.org/coil-2015/.
