UNDER THE RADAR SYMPOSIUM

9:45AM WAITING ROOM OPEN ON ZOOM

10:00–10:50AMSYMPOSIUM SESSION ONESPEAKERS: Mark Russell, Lisa Richards Toney, Shanta Thake, Oskar EustisKEYNOTE ADDRESS: Marc Bamuthi Joseph

10:50AMBREAKOUT ROOMS: SESSION ONEINTRODUCTION: Kelly Kerwin

11:20AMCOMING ATTRACTIONSINTRODUCTION: Jon GrenayARTISTS: Tania El Khoury, Roger Guenveur Smith,Anna Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders, Héctor Flores Komatsu

11:40AMDIANE RODRIGUEZ TRIBUTESPEAKER: Olga Garay-EnglishTRIBUTE VIDEO: “In the Boardroom Where It Happens” from Theatre Communications Group

11:45AMBREAK

12:00PMINTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE GROUP PANELINTRODUCTION: Alicia Adams and Diane RagsdalePANELISTS: Guillermo Calderón, Ligia Lewis, Eiko Otake, Annie-B ParsonMODERATOR: Olga Garay-English

12:45PMBREAKOUT ROOMS: SESSION TWO

1:15PMREVERSE KEYNOTESPEAKER: Kristy Edmunds

1:25PMFINAL REMARKSSPEAKER: Mark Russell

1:30PMSYMPOSIUM SENDOFFFROM ANOTHER TIME: CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR! with David Byrne

I T I N E R A R Y

EST Time zone. Times subject to change.

UNDER THE RADAR SYMPOSIUM

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH, Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at The Kennedy CenterMarc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In pursuit of affirmations of Black life in the public realm, he co-founded the Life is Living Festival for Youth Speaks, and created the installation “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” for Creative Time. Joseph’s opera libretto, We Shall Not Be Moved, was named one of 2017’s “Best Classical Music Performances” by The New York Times. His evening length work, /peh-LO-tah/, successfully toured across North America for three years, including at BAM’s Harvey Theater as a part of the 2017 Next Wave Festival. His piece, “The Just and the Blind” investigates the crisis of over-sentencing in the prison industrial complex, and premiered at a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in March 2019. Bamuthi is currently at work on commissions for the Perelman Center, Yale University, and the Washington National Opera as well as a new collaboration with NYC Ballet Artistic Director Wendy Whelan. He joins Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, and a star-studded cast in HBO’s screen adaptation of “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehesi Coates, premiering in the Fall of 2020. Formerly the Chief of Program and Pedagogy at YBCA in San Francisco, Bamuthi currently serves as the Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at The Kennedy Center.

OSKAR EUSTIS, Artistic Director, The Public TheaterOskar Eustis has served as the Artistic Director of The Public Theater since 2005, after serving as the artistic director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI from 1994 to 2005. Throughout his career, Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new work that speaks to the great issues of our time and has worked with countless artists in pursuit of that aim, including Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Richard Nelson, Rinne Groff, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Lisa Kron. He is currently a professor at New York University and has held professorships at UCLA, Middlebury College, and Brown University. SHANTA THAKE, Associate Artistic Director/Director of Artistic Programs, The Public TheaterShanta Thake oversees the growth and development of Public Works, Mobile Unit, Under the Radar, Joe’s Pub, The Shakespeare Initiative and Public Forum. Previously, she spent 10 years as the Director of Joe’s Pub, the intimate cabaret venue which hosts over 700 shows annually and is consistently hailed as one of New York City’s most prestigious venues for both emerging and established artists. In addition, Ms. Thake is the co-producer of GlobalFEST, North America’s world music festival and non-profit organization whose mission is to foster cultural exchange and to increase the presence of world music in diverse communities nationwide. Ms. Thake received a BA in theater as well as a degree in management from Indiana University and currently lives in Brooklyn.

S P E A K E R S

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS CONT.LISA RICHARDS TONEY, President and CEO of APAP Lisa Richards Toney became President and CEO of APAP on July 1, 2020. Ms. Richards Toney brings more than 20 years of experience leading a range of small and large arts and humanities organizations, managing change, and building stability. She most recently served as Executive Director of the Abramson Scholarship Foundation, where she increased funding and steered the foundation through a period of change management in programming, finance, development, and governance. She also improved the scholar experience by curating innovative professional development opportunities in financial literacy, professional visioning, and mental health awareness while utilizing professional networks to build exposure for scholars pursuing careers in the arts. As Deputy Director and later Interim Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, she worked tirelessly on behalf of the diverse resident artists and arts organizations of the District of Columbia. Her additional leadership experience includes Director, Writers and Schools at the Pen/Faulkner Foundation; Director, Literature to Life at The American Place Theatre, where she presented performances at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and The Library of Congress; and the first Executive Director of the Debbie Allen Dance Academy.

Ms. Richards Toney currently serves as the Strategic Planning Chair of the Mosaic Theatre Company of DC and Co-Chair of the DC Chapter of Jack and Jill of America’s Jumoke Black History Festival. She was previously a booking and producing consultant for cellist Okorie “OkCello” Johnson, consultant for the Reel to Reel Filmmaker’s Project for the Prince George’s County Arts Council, and provided tour management and planning support for Moving Forward Dance Company/Dana Tai Soon Burgess. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Drama and English as a Presidential Scholar from Spelman College, a Master of Arts Degree as a John Beinecke Scholar in Arts Education from New York University, and was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study Black Dance in London, as well as a Vilar Arts Management Fellowship with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

SPECIAL THANKSTeresa Eyring and Theatre Communications Group

COMINGATTRACTIONS

TANIA EL KHOURY ROGER GUENVEUR SMITH

HÉCTOR FLORES KOMATSU ANNA MARIA NABIRYE & ANNIE SAUNDERS

CULTURAL EXCHANGE RATE The cruelest of borders are invisible to the eye and present in everyday life. The death traps set within a moving body of water and the concealed militarization of faraway border villages.

Cultural Exchange Rate is an interactive live art project in which artist Tania El Khoury shares her family memoirs of life in a border village between Lebanon and Syria. One marked by war survival, valueless currency collection, brief migration to Mexico, and a river that disregards the colonial and national borders. The audience is invited to immerse their heads into one family’s secret boxes to explore sounds, images, and textures of traces of more than a century of border crossings. Cultural Exchange Rate is based on the artist’s recorded interviews with her late grandmother, oral histories collected in her village in Akkar, the discovery of lost relatives in Mexico City, and the family’s attempt to secure dual citizenship.

BIO: Tania El Khoury is a live artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and is concerned with the ethical and political potential of such encounters. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is an active collaborator. Tania’s work has been translated to multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across 6 continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is a 2019 Soros Art Fellow and the recipient of the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award.

Tania holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research and publications focus on the political potential of interactive live art. Tania is currently a festival guest curator at Fisher Center Bard College.

She is associated with Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a co-founder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon, a research and performance collective aiming at questioning our relationship to the city, and redefining its public space.

CONTACT: Ania Obolewicz at Artsadmin, ania@artsadmin.co.uk

TANIA EL KHOURY

HÉCTOR FLORES KOMATSUIX-KIK: BLOOD, MOON, SISTER Ix-kik: blood, moon, sister brings together three indigenous women (Zapotec, Tzotzil, and Raramuri) and a live musician into a living, theatrical tapestry where the feminine territory of native Mexico is evoked through body, music, and poetry. Ix-kik reveals and intertwines the voices of both present and ancient women, their hidden song an echo of both womanhood and humanity. From the Mayan prefix “ix” [pronounced “sh”], referring to all that belongs to the feminine, and “kik,” blood, moon, or sister. With: Luvia Lazo, Nicté Valdés Cházaro, Beatriz Cadena, and Tania Chan. Directed and devised by Héctor Flores Komatsu. Makuyeika Colectivo Teatral, a theatre ensemble dedicated to creating original works about the narratives and theatricalities of Mexico’s peoples, particularly the voices of those least heard of, touching with keen, artistic sensibility themes of great social, cultural, and human value.

BIO: Héctor Flores Komatsu is an international theatermaker, based in México and the US. Artistic Director of Makuyeika Colectivo Teatral, and fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. HFK founded Makuyeika after a yearlong journey across México conducted as an inaugural recipient of The Julie Taymor World Theatre Fellowship. Original creations: “Andares”, The Game (based on the Popol Vuh), and the upcoming Ix-kik. His critically-acclaimed work has performed all over México, in the United States (Chicago Shakes, The Public’s UTR), China, Germany, Chile, and more. He’s worked with Peter Brook as an apprentice in Battlefield, as an actor in The Valley of Astonishment, and most the Spanish-language premiere of The Suit. Graduate of the University of Michigan (BFA Theatre Directing). Has trained with the Suzuki Company of Toga, Japan, interned with Théâtre de la Ville - Paris, and facilitated theatre workshops in prisons and favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Fragment: performance: https://youtu.be/gevgj7YcHRIClick on the CC button English captions.

CONTACT: admin@makuyeika.co, makuyika.co, hectorfloreskomatsu.com+52(777)363 4155

ROGER GUENVEUR SMITHOTTO FRANKOtto Frank is the latest solo written and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith.It is inspired by the father of diarist Anne Frank and features live sound design by Marc Anthony Thompson. An intimate meditation on the negotiation of loss, Frank speaks to his daughter from beyond her time and his own, addressing our present moment. BIO: At The Public Theater, Smith and Thompson have presented the Obie Award-winning A Huey P. Newton Story, the Bessie Award-winning Rodney King, Frederick Douglass Now, The Hendrix Project, Juan and John, Christopher Columbus 1992, and Iceland.

CONTACT: Steven Adams, steven@altaglobalmedia.net, 213.210.4876

UP IN ARMSUp in Arms is a transmedia performance project that removes the boundaries between process and product, utilizing performance, visual art, and social practice. Created by Ann-Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders, participants are invited, two at a time, to re-embody and re-create the iconic 1971 portrait of activists and friends Dorothy Pitman-Hughes and Gloria Steinem. In doing so, the artists create a space for meaningful dialogue around racism, feminism, and friendship.

The project consists of multiple engagement points: the intimate portrait and dialogue experience for two friends, colleagues, or family members, the documentation of that process (which is edited into a multimedia live performance by the artists as a part of the engagement), and the resulting “Final products”—the footage, audio and portraits—which comprise a visual art installation. Using the materials generated through residency and installation, the artists are compiling a book project, the Up in Arms Handbook for Intersectional Collaboration.

The work is bespoke to each presentation and can be made for digital, live, timed, socially-distant audiences and participants or a combination of the above.

“Bridging history, media, action, and introspection, the resulting alchemy is an artistic process which cracks you open, reflects your humanity back to you while encouraging you to feel the complexities of your racialized body in relationship to another. Or put more simply: this project promotes the healing and repairing of relationships that have been decimated by white supremacy.”–Nicole Brewer, Founder, Conscientious Theatre Training, Yale School of Drama

ANNA MARIA NABIRYE ANNIE SAUNDERS

AN

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ANNA MARIA NABIRYE & ANNIE SAUNDERS CONT.Annie Saunders is a director and live artist. Her company, Wilderness, has presented The Day Shall Declare It in a disused warehouse in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District with Los Angeles Performance Practice and in London with Theatre Delicatessen in the former BBC Studios and the Bush Theatre. The company has also presented work at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, REDCAT, the 14th Factory, The Broad Stage, the San Francisco Playhouse and the Getty Villa. She is a core performer with Lars Jan’s Early Morning Opera, and has appeared in Holoscenes, The Institute of Memory (TIMe), and Abacus. She was a participant in the 2017/18 Devised Theater Working Group for next-generation performance-makers at The Public Theater in New York.

Annie Saudners has also devised and performed original work in the UK with Neil Bettles (Frantic Assembly, Thickskin) and Gemma Fairlie (RSC) on Full Stop, a co-commission for the Lyric Theatre, Watford Palace, Greenwich Festival and Latitude. She holds an MA in literature and critical studies from the University of London, and trained at the Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts, the American Conservatory Theater and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She worked for ten years as a creative activist with Eve Ensler’s V-Day.

CONTACT: North America: Octopus Theatricals, Sophie Blumberg, sophie@octopustheatricals.com , 917.922.3645 UK/Europe: Artsadmin, Nicky Childs, nicky@artsadmin.co.uk

Engagement History: Up in Arms h as been developed with residencies, performances and live events at The Showroom Gallery, Toynbee Studios, and no.w.here space. London, UK, MANA contemporary, Jersey City, USA, The International Women’s Film Festival, Dortmund, Germany, The Association of Austrian Women Artists, Vienna, and online for the WOW (Women of the World) Global 24 Festival.

BIOS: Anna-Maria Nabirye is a multi-disciplinary artist who performs, collaborates and initiates projects across fiction, documentary, theatre, screen, visual arts and fashion. She is interested in amplifying the stories of marginalised peoples with an emphasis on Black Women in the western Diaspora. As a collaborative artist/performer she has co-directed/devised Ruptures (London Film Festival/Home), Hold Your Ground - Film and Video Umbrella & The Paper Man (Improbable Theatre). Her own projects include Motherhoody (With Jess Mabel Jones, Albany 2019), Up in Arms currently in development (with Annie Saunders), No Word For A Pier in Lusoga (De La Warr Pavilion), Strong & Wrong (Brighton/Edinburgh Fringe( & AFRORETRO; a creative entity which tells stories of the diaspora through upcycled fashion and textiles (commissioned by Royal Court, V&A, SBC, Brighton Museum and awarded Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Projects residency). Recent acting roles include Mephisto [A Rhapsody] (The Gate 2019), Les Blancs (National Theatre) and Macbeth/Boudica/A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Globe), Informer, Collateral (BBC).

Anna-Maria has developed relationships combining roles as actor, collaborator, and co-director with; Half Moon YPT, Imongen Knight, METIS - Zoe Svendsen, Noor Afshan Mirza and Brad Butler. She is currently working with LPO creating a communication programme for their Junior Artist mentorship for underrepresented musicians.

INTERNATIONAL

ALICIA ADAMS (Speaker), For over two decades, Alicia Adams has been presenting work from national and international arenas at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As Vice President of International Programming and Dance, she produces the distinguished international theater series World Stages each year. Since 1997, Alicia has curated and produced major international festivals including most recently Artes de Cuba, an unprecedented festival in 2018 that brought together 400 Cuban and Cuban American artists. She also curates the Center’s Contemporary Dance programming and annual Lunar New Year Celebration. Active in the performing arts community, Alicia has served on numerous boards and planning committees including the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts, the Caine Prize for African Writing (UK), Africa 95 (UK), the All Roads Project of National Geographic, the International Society of Performing Arts (ISPA) the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), the National Dance Panel of the New England Foundation on the Arts, the Advisory Council for Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Circle World Arts. In 2011 she received the APAP Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award for exemplary service to the field of presenting. She is also an elected member of the Cosmos Club. In 2013, Adams was awarded the Insignia of Member First Class of the Royal Order of the Polar Star by the Swedish government. In 2014 Adams was awarded Insignia of Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the Finnish government.

GUILLERMO CALDERÓN (Panelist), Playwright, theater director, screenwriter. Plays: Neva, Clase, Diciembre, Villa, Discurso, Beben, Feos, Escuela, Mateluna, Kuss, Goldrausch, B, Dragon. Film writing: Violeta se fue a los Cielos, El Club, Neruda, Araña, Ema, Homemade. He has directed at The Public Theater; Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus; Theater Basel; The Play Company. Publications include: VILLA + DISCURSO, Theater Magazine, Yale University. NEVA, Theater Communications Group. B, Oberon Modern Plays. Kiss, Samuel French.

KRISTY EDMUNDS (Speaker), Executive and Artistic Director of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA), is responsible for the artistic vision, programs and creative initiatives of the Center as part of the UCLA public mission. Under Edmunds’ leadership since 2011, the Center has evolved as one of the nation’s most respected and versatile organizations for contemporary performing arts across all disciplines. CAP UCLA presents numerous performances annually at the iconic Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, the Theatre at Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and in collaboration with leading organizations locally and internationally. CAP UCLA supports the creative development of new work through residencies and awards a three-year Artist Fellow for acclaimed master artists while building creative and scholarly contexts in the public presentation of their work(s) over time. To date, Edmunds has dramatically expanded and diversified the organization’s public engagement, and has involved CAP UCLA’s staff and visiting artists in the academic and research areas throughout UCLA. As an artist, curator, artistic director, and frequent advisor, Edmunds holds a reputation for innovation and insight within numerous art practices. She is widely regarded for championing the role of artists in a dynamically changing world, and for her depth in the presentation of their work. Her entrusted professional relationships with artists have resulted in ambitious commissions for new work, broad surveys of the range of their work, retrospectives and international collaborations. As a leader in the arts Edmunds is a frequently sought keynote speaker, nominator and conduit for “blasting open creative tributaries” in settings as globally-minded as the 2017CultureSummit in Abu Dhabi (where Edmunds served as one of eight Faculty members to the international delegation) to serving as a Scholar-in- Residence for the Pew Center for Art & Heritage (Philadelphia).

PERFORMANCE GROUP PANEL

INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE GROUP PANEL CONT.KRISTY EDMUNDS CONT. She is as committed to what can happen in a Los Angeles classroom for elementary school students as she is to adding her perspective at national policy tables. Edmunds has been a panelist for many of the nation’s most prestigious national grants and awards, has been a consultant for major cultural initiatives internationally, and serves on various Advisory Boards within the not-for-profit arts sector. At 28 Edmunds founded the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), and its annual TBA Festival (Time Based Art) in Portland, Oregon, and continues to be an Advisor to the organization. In 2004 she was appointed as the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival 2005-2008 and was the first to serve an unprecedented four-year term. Her festival programs were considered a high-water mark artistically and were acclaimed internationally. Following, Edmunds was appointed to lead the School of Performing Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts/University of Melbourne. After just one year she was appointed as Deputy Dean of the College. Upon her departure, she was awarded as an Honorary Professorial Fellow of the University. In characteristic fashion Edmunds carried dual responsibilities. While working in Melbourne, Australia, she was also appointed as the Consulting Artistic Director for the formative beginning of the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, before returning to the US in 2011. Through 2009 to 2012, Edmunds established the annual programming footprint of the critically heralded organization and curated noted works of scale by artists such as Peter Greenaway and Ann Hamilton. In recognition of her contribution to the arts, Edmunds was bestowed with the honor of Chevalier (Knight) de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2016 was the first recipient of the inaugural Berresford Prize by United States Artists (USA) in 2018. She is married with two sons, and now calls Los Angeles home.

OLGA GARAY-ENGLISH (Moderator), is an independent arts consultant. She is Senior Advisor for International Affairs to Chile’s Fundación Teatro a Mil, the producer of Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil, one of the top Festivals in Latin America. She was Senior Advisor to France Los Angeles Foundation (2014-2019), funding collaborations of LA and French artists. In 2016, the County of Los Angeles named her Executive Director of the Ford Theatres, a 1,200-seat historic amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills, until the end of 2019 when the Los Angeles Philharmonic assumed responsibilities of the venue. She is Senior Advisor to Staging Change, a research project of the John Brademas Center of New York University and the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. From 2007 to 2014, Olga was Executive Director, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs reporting to LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. As founding Program Director for the Arts for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (1998-2005), Olga was responsible for one of the largest national arts funders in the United States awarding $145 million to arts organizations in the U.S. and abroad. The Western Arts Alliance named Ms. Garay-English one of 2013’s Fifty Most Powerful and Influential People in the Nonprofit Arts and one of the top five Local Arts Agency Leaders. She was named a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 2012. Born in Santa Clara, Cuba, she became a United States citizen in 1978. She is the widow of Dr. Kerry English, a developmental pediatrician who dedicated his life to serving abused and foster children in South Los Angeles. LIGIA LEWIS (Panelist), was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and raised in Florida. In her practice Lewis takes on a variety of roles—choreographer, director, dancer, performer—staging her work in different types of venues, including theaters, galleries, and museums. She carefully considers how the site of presentation shapes the experience of her work, how a body is ultimately seen. Each of her pieces explores genre through different forms of physical expression and a rotating cast of performers. Her recent performance trilogy includes Water Will (in Melody) (2018), a gothic tale set in black and white; minor matter (2016), a poetic work illuminated by red; and Sorrow Swag (2014), presented in a saturated blue. She recently produced, deader than dead (2020), for the Made in LA Biennial at the Hammer Museum, creating a film as a document of the performance with the same name. ligialewis.com

INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE GROUP PANEL CONT.EIKO OTAKE (Panelist), Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma but since 2014 has been performing her own solo project A Body in Places. In 2017, she launched a multi-year Duet Project, an open-ended series of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural and cross-generational experiments with a diverse range of artists both living and dead. Eiko has been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, the Dance Magazine Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the first Doris Duke Artist Award. For her solo work, she has received a Bessies Special Citation, an Art Matters fellowship, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts. Between 2014 and 2019, she and photographer/historian William Johnston travelled five times to post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima and collaborated on creating A Body in Fukushima, an extensive and expanding project that documents her body in places of nuclear contamination. Eiko has presented A Body in Fukushima internationally at conferences and panels on environmental disasters. In January 2020, Eiko travelled to China for a month to collaborate with choreographer Wen Hui, during which the Covid-19 pandemic was identified. ANNIE-B PARSON (Panelist), is a choreographer; she co-founded Big Dance Theater in 1991. She has also made dances and stagings for the work of David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Jonathan Demme, Salt ‘n Pepa, Esperanza Spalding, David Lang, Anne Carson, Jonsi, Ivo van Hove, and the Martha Graham Dance Co. Her most recent work with David Byrne, American Utopia, was made into a film by Spike Lee. The live show will return to Broadway next year. She will premiere a new work with her company at BAM/The Kitchen; The Walker/The Wexner/CPA/Philly Fringe, and other theaters in 2021.

DIANE RAGSDALE (Speaker), is a speaker, writer, researcher, lecturer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics. She works with a number of institutions including, at the moment, as director and co-lead faculty of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. In June 2020 she completed a three-year appointment at The New School in Manhattan, where she successfully launched, built, and directed a one-of-a-kind MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship for performance-based artists and designed and launched a new graduate minor in Creative Community Development. She teaches an annual workshop series on Aesthetic Values in a Changed Cultural Context for Yale University’s Theater Management MFA. She previously worked as a program officer for theater and dance at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; was managing director of the contemporary performing arts center On the Boards, in Seattle; was executive director of a music festival in the resort town of Sandpoint, Idaho; worked for the Sundance and Seattle film festivals, as well as for Peter Gabriel’s music festival WOMAD USA and Seattle’s Bumbershoot; and began her arts career as a theater practitioner. She is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, where she lectured from 2011-2015 in the cultural economics program.

MARK RUSSELL, Director, Under the Radar at The Public TheaterMark Russell created the Under the Radar Festival in 2005. The Festival moved to The Public in 2006 and became an integral part of its season. From 1983-2004, Russell was the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122 (P.S. 122).

JON GRENAY, Associate Director of Under the RadarJon Grenay is the Associate Director of The Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater. The Under the Radar Festival provides artists from all cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds a high-visibility platform to present their work at The Public. Additionally, Jon Grenay supports the Devised Theater Working Group. Formed as a complementary program to the Under the Radar Festival, DTWG creates an infrastructure to support collaborative collectives and other untraditional originators as they forge new theater. Throughout his 14 years with The Public he has led several major programs, including Shakespeare in the Park, Public Works, and Under the Radar as Production Manager. Born in Flint Michigan, Jon received a BA from the University of Michigan-Flint before moving to NYC.

KELLY KERWIN, Associate Producer of Under the Radar Kelly Kerwin is a producer, performance curator, and dramaturg originally from the Ozarks. She is currently the Associate Producer for the Under the Radar Festival at The Public, where she supports the Devised Theater Working Group and she has line produced The Line, A Bright Room Called Day, Soft Power, We’re Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time, Mlima’s Tale, and the Onassis Festival, a collaboration with Onassis USA and The Public Theater. Previously, she has been on the artistic staff at Yale Repertory Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Atlantic Theater Company, The House Theatre of Chicago, Collaboraction, and she was the co-artistic director for Yale Cabaret’s 46th Season. She also helped establish, with Jane Beachy, Chicago’s Salonathon—a weekly series specializing in underground performance. She was the dramaturg for the world premiere of Ike Holter’s Hit the Wall (Steppenwolf’s Garage Rep; The Inconvenience), which made the Chicago Tribune’s “Top Ten Plays” list. She has a BFA from The Theatre School at DePaul University, and an MFA in Dramaturgy/Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama. Kelly also teaches in the theater department at Connecticut College. kellykerwin.com

UNDER THE

RADAR STAFF

The Public is theater of, by, and for all people. Artist-driven, radically inclusive, and fundamentally democratic, The Public continues the work of its visionary founder Joe Papp as a civic institution engaging, both on-stage and off, with some of the most important ideas and social issues of today. Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public’s wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City’s five boroughs, Public Forum, Under the Radar, Public Studio, Public Works, Public Shakespeare Initiative, and Joe’s Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Girl From the North Country. Their programs and productions can also be seen

regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 59 Tony Awards, 184 Obie Awards, 55 Drama Desk Awards, 58 Lortel Awards, 34 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, 53 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. publictheater.org

Under The Radar Festival (UTR) has presented over 240 companies from 42 countries over the last 17 years. It has grown into a landmark of the New York City theater season and is a vital part of The Public’s mission, providing a high-visibility platform to support artists from diverse backgrounds who are redefining the act of making theater. Widely recognized as a premier launching pad for new and cutting-edge performance from the U.S. and abroad, UTR has presented works by such respected artists as Elevator Repair Service, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Gob Squad, Belarus Free Theatre, Guillermo Calderón, and Young Jean Lee. This year’s free Under the Radar will feature a robust line-up of digital livestream and streaming on-demand performances. These artists have risen to the occasion and answer the unprecedented challenges of this time with fearlessness and heart.

Every January in New York City, more than 45,000 performing arts leaders, artists, and enthusiasts from across the globe converge for JanArtsNYC. A partnership among 11 independent multidisciplinary festivals, indispensable industry convenings, and international marketplaces, JanArtsNYC is one of the largest and most influential gatherings of its kind. For more info visit, janartsnyc.org. Promotional support provided by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

UNDER THE RADAR

JanArtsNYC

THE PUBLIC THEATER

Under the Radar Symposium: A Creative Summit is a half-day event on January 7, featuring conversations and panels about the field at this moment in time. Artists and arts leaders from around the globe will participate in a virtual summit. Digital attendance at the Symposium is open to all those who would like to participate.

SYMPOSIUMUNDER THE RADAR

ABOUT