New Co-Creative Directors and Dates Announced for Under the Radar Festival

Under the Radar, the NYC-based festival celebrating experimental new theater and performance works from around the world, announced its return as a citywide festival, January 4-19, marking its 20th anniversary. Artistic producer, former Soho Rep Director, and Radical Evolution co-founder Meropi Peponides and theater artist Kaneza Schaal join festival founder and artistic director Mark Russell as co-creative directors.

Full programing for Under the Radar will be announced this fall, but a selection of its 2025 programming has been announced. Offerings for the 20th edition of Under the Radar Festival include playwright and performer Khawla Ibraheem’s A Knock on the Roof, directed and developed by Oliver Butler, following one woman’s routines of survival and everyday life in Gaza, in a co-production between New York Theatre Workshop and piece by piece productions; choreographer and dancer Faustin Linyekula’s search for a family archive shattered by history in My Body, My Archive presented by Live Artery | New York Live Arts; The Onassis ONX-curated TECHNE, a multi-part experiential program of large-scale immersive artworks by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio, Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser, Margarita Athanasiou, and Stephanie Dinkins, presented by BAM; ’70’s Japanese avant-garde playwright Shuji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, in an all-female take by director Kim Sujin and Project NYX, presented by Japan Society; Aakash Odedra Company’s Little Murmur, a dance theater show about life with dyslexia, and UTR’s first work for young audiences and their families, presented by the New Victory Theater; and the annual Under the Radar Symposium presented in partnership with HowlRound Theatre Commons, The Simons Foundation, and The Onassis Foundation.

Last year, the Public Theater, the festival’s home of 17 years, announced that it could no longer host Under the Radar for financial reasons. The organizers convened many of New York’s performing arts organizations to grow UTR into a citywide festival.