NEW YORK, NY.- The Under the Radar festival, the Public Theater’s annual showcase for experimental theater, will return in person next year, Jan. 12-30. The event, now in its 18th year, will feature nearly two dozen artists, with performances held at the Public and Mabou Mines in Manhattan as well as a venue in upstate New York.

Those who have attended in past years will notice a few differences: The festival will run for three weeks instead of two and include only 15 productions at the Public — all 90 minutes or less — down from the 22 at the 2020 festival.

“I’m happy we have a smaller festival this year so we can really concentrate on these pieces and give them the attention they deserve,” Mark Russell, the festival director, said in a phone conversation, adding that he hadn’t yet determined whether the change would be permanent.

One of the pieces that Russell said he was most excited to land was Jasmine Lee-Jones’ “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” (Jan. 12-16, 18-23, 25-29). Staged to critical acclaim at London’s Royal Court Theater last summer, the 90-minute two-hander explores cultural appropriation, queerness, friendship and the ownership of Black bodies online and in real life.

A cultural reexamination is also what Annie Saunders and Becca Wolff have planned for the New York premiere of their hourlong show “Our Country,” a meeting of mythic and modern America set in California’s marijuana country and inspired by Sophocles’ “Antigone” (Jan. 12-16, 21-23).

A pair of solo shows also highlight the schedule: Playwright Inua Ellams (“Barber Shop Chronicles”) will perform his 90-minute, music- and poetry-filled piece “An Evening with an Immigrant,” which chronicles his journey from Nigeria to England (Jan. 18-20). Roger Guenveur Smith, an actor known for his roles in Spike Lee films, will return to the festival with his hourlong solo show “Otto Frank,” a historical account of the father of Anne Frank, who was the only immediate member of his family to survive the Holocaust (Jan. 13-16, 20-23).




Rounding out the slate is a double bill of “Mud/Drowning,” two intimate works by María Irene Fornés, a Cuban American playwright and director who died in 2018, which, following a sold-out run last year, will return to the experimental theater company Mabou Mines (Jan. 12-16, 18-23, 25-30). “Mud,” a play by Fornés, is a grim consideration of ignorance, poverty and desperation, while “Drowning,” a half-hour “pocket” opera by composer Philip Glass, is adapted from Fornés’ five-page surreal play based on a short story by Anton Chekhov.

A new initiative, “Under the Radar: On the Road,” will also bring a pair of Pascal Rambert monologues, “The Art of Theater” and “With My Own Hands,” to a venue called PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century in Chatham, New York, which sits on 100 acres of orchards, meadows and woodlands (Jan. 14-15, 22-23).

Following the Under the Radar Festival, “An Evening with an Immigrant” will also be performed at Oklahoma City Repertory Theater (Jan. 22-23) and at Stanford University (Jan. 29-30), and “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” will transfer to Washington, D.C., for a three-week run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Feb. 14-March 6).

“We’re acknowledging that small-scale work needs touring to survive and reach the widest audience,” Russell said.

The festival will also include eight works in the “Incoming!” works-in-process series and the return of concerts by artists including Migguel Anggelo, Salty Brine and Alicia Hall Moran at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan.

A full lineup is available at publictheater.org.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.