A Guide To Under The Radar 2013, From Director Mark Russell
12 photos
<br/><br/>Did you get to see <a href="http://thedebatesociety.org">The Debate Society</a>'s <em>Blood Play</em>? <strong>I did! I loved it. Is this their first time in Under the Radar?</strong><br/><br/>Yes, and we knew about this show and helped give it some finishing funds, we call them, to help get it on its way, and then of course it premiered at the Bushwick Starr, and it had a great run there and they extended it, but that theater only has 60 seats. I'm so happyâwe had already committed to bringing it back, beforeâI was more worried they were going to bad review it at Bushwick Starr, or something. But they're working on it; it's going to be a revised production, and I'm looking forward to bringing them to the Public Theater.
<br/><br/>This year we have a couple things from Australia, for God's sake. It might be because I went to Australia... [Laughs] But I knew these things before I went to Australia, but they came together really well. <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=618">Fleur Elise Noble's<em> Two Dimensional Life of Her</em></a> is actually one of our theme pieces all the way through, and there's barely any actors in this piece. It's projections of images that this artist, Fleur Elise Noble, has drawn and animated. <br/><br/>And basically these puppets take over the stage and burn it down. It's an amazing piece. And it's so simple and yet so sophisticated. It's one of my favorite pieces in the show. And we're also having it because we don't have to worry about actors getting tired or losing their voices. We're running it several times a day during the festival. And it's only about 40 minutes long.<br/><br/><strong>Is it in a theater?</strong> Oh yeah, it's in the Shiva theater, which will later turn into our main club, once the shows are done. Almost every night during the festival, we turn the lobby in Shiva theater into a club: music, some performances, and cheap drinks.
<br/><br/>The other Australian piece that I'm really excited aboutâwhich is maybe sort of one of our main, keystone, touchstone piecesâis the <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=610">Back to Back Theater's <em>Ganesh Versus the Third Reich</em></a>, which is about the god Ganesh coming back through history to find Hitler and reclaim the swastika. I mean, if you go to Japan all of the temples are marked by a Swastika, and you go, "Whoa, what's with that?" And it's because it was such a great image, somehow. Hitler liked it. <br/><br/>But it's more than that. Back to back came a couple of years ago <a href="http://gothamist.com/2008/01/13/opinionist_unde.php">with <em>Small Metal Objects</em></a>, which was almost a site-specific piece, that we did at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. They're perceived as having intellectual difficulties. And they're dealing with Down Syndrome and Asperger syndrome and other things. But it gets into being about their identity as well. <br/><br/>They do work with a director who seems more like us [laughs] but which director could actually... I don't know, you know, the whole profession of being a director is suspicious to me. And this is a lot about their power struggle between, uh, a "regular" person and this company, creating this piece. It's a play within a play. It's a really strong piece. Visually, also really gorgeous.
<br/><br/>And we have the <a href="http://gothamist.com/2011/04/01/natalia_koliada_belarus_free_theatr.php">Belarus Free Theatre</a>, which, we have a lot of people kind of coming back, in an interesting way. The festival is in its ninth year, and now people are beginning to return. And I believe in a kind of commitment to new artists but also to artists that we still find really vigorous and interesting. And being a home and a platform for those people. And the Belarus Free Theatre... We went through hell and back with them a couple of years ago. And we're bringing them this year to bring this piece that they made called <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=611"><em>Minsk 2011, A Reply to Kathy Acker</em></a>. <br/><br/>And it's about basically what's happening in Minsk now, not just in 2011. I think it still continues. And certain things like, the police were cracking down on demonstrations, so people began to do, almost happening demonstrations; everyone would show up at the same place, sort of like a flashmob demonstration, and start clappingâand people would get arrested for clapping, and then the next one would be their cell phones would all go off at the same time. Just to protest this really repressive regime that's there.
<br/><br/>Maybe our secret weapon show, the one that will surprise people the most, I hope, is <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=608">Edit Kaldor's <em>C'est du Chinois</em></a>, which is all in Mandarin, with no supertitles. Edit Kaldor is an artist; I think her background is Hungarian, but she lives in the Netherlands. And she's made a piece about some Chinese immigrants from the Netherlands, and they come out and start talking to you and teaching the audience Mandarin. But as you learn Mandarin, you also learn the dynamics of the family and their family as it rolls out. All this happens in about 60 minutes, and by the end you know a lot of Mandarin. It's pretty interesting. You understand what they're saying. It's a beautiful piece.
<br/><br/>Another group that we had way back was Pig Iron Company. And we had Toshiki Okada, and they have been working on a piece together. And this is that piece; it had run in Philly in September. And now they've been working on it, and now it's coming to us. And this is <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=619">called <em>Zero Cost House</em></a>, and it's about utopians, and utopian visions, and also a response to a catastrophic event, in this case, the tsunami, and it's really quite beautiful. And the Pig Iron, who had worked with clowning and other technique, and Dan Rothberg's combination of directorial vision along with Toshiki's text is a great intermesh. Dan directed Toshiki's premiere of <em>Enjoy</em> here with the Play Company a couple of years ago. It was really strong. So we're excited about this, it's the first sort of international collaboration we're bringing in.<br/><br/><strong>I <a href="http://gothamist.com/2010/01/10/opinionist_under_the_radar_2010.php#photo-1">loved <em>Chekhov Lizardbrain</em></a>. </strong>Well you know the guy who played <em>Chekhov Lizardbrain</em>, James Sugg, is the sort of star of this one. He kicks it right through the roof at the end. He plays this gentleman who's gotten everyone to retreat to an island and he's declared his own country.
<br/><br/>Another one we've been investing in and have developed through the Under The Radar programs is <em><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=609">Hollow Roots</a></em> from Christina Anderson and Lileana Blain-Cruz. It's a text that I thought was so poetic and so powerful, that we started talking to Christina and had some readings here at the Public. And now they're bringing this full-on production here. It will be its premiere. <br/><br/>Christina Anderson is just an amazing poet, and this is about a black woman who is looking for someone with a neutral identity. And it sort of progresses like an indie movie, like<em> Lost in Paradise</em> or something. You know, that sort of spooky texture that sort of independent movies have, Wes Anderson movies, and it's like that but on stage, in a monologue. And I also sort of think of it as Black Identity 2.0. It's not just a solo Black Identity play. Which we've had a few of. [laughs] It takes it another step.
<br/><br/>Elevator Repair Service is doing <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=613">a preview of their new show, <em>Arguendo</em></a>, which is all about this Supreme Court case which is dealing with whether dancing naked is an exercise of free expression or not. So they're going from the Supreme Court minutes and animating it. And it's pretty amazing.<br/><br/><strong>Is it every single word of the minutes?</strong> Yeah. Interruptions, everything ... it's really awesome. Whether there's going to be go-go dancers involved, I just don't know.
<br/><br/>Then we've got one I'm really excited about seeing how it lands here is the Leev Theater Group's <em><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=615">Hamlet, Prince of Grief</a>. </em>It's a thirty-minute, one-man Hamlet, in Iranian [Farsi], with supertitles. But it's a guy at a desk working with household objects to tell his story, which is like the story of Hamlet, and it's one of the most powerful 30 minutes I've seen, it really kicks you in the teeth.<br/><br/><strong>How did you find this one?</strong> Through videotape. And, you know, the director, Mohammad Aghebati, landed on my doorstep one day, and said, "I want to have a meeting with you." And I meet with almost anybody. And it was very exciting; he showed me his work, and I love this piece. I thought it was really powerful. And it references situations in the Middle East, but not directly. It's not didactic, it's not necessarily going to be about the problems in Iran. But it's a great take on Hamlet.
<br/><br/>Then there's Taylor Mac, <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=620">who's also going to do a work in progress showing</a> of his project that he hopes at some point will take 24 hours. He's doing the 20th century abridged concert of the history of popular music. This is sort of a sampler of that, it won't take 24 hours, it'll take 90 minutes. But I'm in love with Taylor Mac, as is the world, and it's great. It's one night only. One reason we do these things, in this festival, sometimes, is to build support for them for the future. Not like Taylor Mac needs any kind of audience building, but I really want to see this project happen.<br/><br/><strong>You want to see this on Broadway.</strong> I could see it on Broadway! A 24-hour piece, yeah. I could see it on Broadway, or at the Delacorte.
<br/><br/><strong><em><a href="http://gothamist.com/2010/10/10/opinionist_gatz.php">Gatz</a></em> was 8 hours. Now you've got Nature Theater of Oklahoma doing an 11-hour show. Taylor Mac's show could be 24 when it's finally all together. How far is this all going go in terms of duration? Is there one-upping element to this trend now, like, "Eight hours is NOTHING! We turn it up to 11!"?</strong> I hope not. I don't know why we're being hit with this string of endurance pieces. But <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=616">Nature Theater of Oklahoma is such a different experience</a> than <em>Gatz</em>. It's sort of just pure joy for eleven hours. And the story is just this woman's life, this person, that Pavol Liska, the co-director of Nature Theater, called up. She works with him, and he said, "Tell me your life story." <br/><br/>He thought it would be two hours long, he'd tape it. And she just started going, and sixteen hours later, she was up to the age she is. And so, he decided that this text is going to be his work of the next probably ten years. Liska and co-director Kelly Copper are making this mega opus out of this sort of banal story of someone's life from Connecticut, growing up and going through everything. <br/><br/>But it's not a catastrophic life; it's a pretty nice life. And yet... you get into this place when you're watching this musicalâbecause the first part of it is set to ukelele music, with a large castâand you get into sort of running your own life story up against her remembrances of her life story, and it turns into this sort of communal reminiscence and understanding of the present, that is pretty powerful, and really special. And after I saw it for 11 hours, I could have gone for another 24. And this only brings us halfway through, so eventually we will get there. <br/><br/>A lot of this is theater artists playing with time, which is one of the few things that they can do in theater, and with Nature Theaterâespecially if you go through the whole marathon experience that we're doing on Sunday, and then the next two Saturdaysâthey feed you, they take care of you. There's ice cream, aerobicsâit's a whole experience! And you're going through it with all these people, and by the end of it you know the person next to you pretty well. It's fab. And I think creating a community... it's hard to get that out of, you know, an HBO series.
<br/><br/><em><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=719">ToasT</a></em> is another work in progress by Lemon Andersen, who did <em>County of Kings</em> a few years ago. And this is a reading of a play that he's written based on the oral histories of toasts, or storytelling, that was passed down inmate to inmate in prisons from the '30s through... this one is set in Attica just before the riots. And there are lots of characters in the black community and the inmate community, like Stagger Lee, Jesse James, Dolomite. And so, Lemon has done a lot of research and pulled these characters together, and this history together. It's going to be a powerful play when he's finally finished with it. It's not done yet, and this is just a reading, but this is something we're investing in for the future.