NEW YORK CITY: The Under the Radar festival has announced some highlights of the lineup for its 21st edition, Jan. 7-25, 2026, programmed as a citywide festival with multiple venues and multiple co-presenters. It is also the first be programmed under its new rotating leadership model, in which co-creative directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal joined founder and artistic director Mark Russell in two-year terms to ensure that the festival’s programming is “ever-evolving and of-the-moment.” The festival is produced by Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype.
For more than two decades, UTR has served as a singular catalyst for the city’s performing arts organizations to introduce the best of U.S. and international experimental performance—what festival organizers refer to as the “global downtown”—to New York City. Since its reemergence in 2024, Under the Radar has gathered artists, audiences, and theatre industry experts around an array of contemporary performances shaped by fearless experimentation. 2026 marks its third year as a citywide collaboration informed by the multiplicity of visions of the partner institutions’ artistic leaders.
Among the highlights of next year’s festival are Dream Feed, by the Bronx-based family trio the HawtPlates, produced by HERE Arts Center, originally commissioned and developed through the HERE Arts Residency Program (HARP), with additional commissioning support by Under the Radar; Cherish Menzo and Camilo Mejía Cortés’s DARKMATTER, presented by Performance Space New York; Narcissister’s Voyage Into Infinity, presented by NYU Skirball; MAMI, from Albanian-Greek director Mario Banushi, also presented by NYU Skirball; DATA ROOM, a series of conversations hosted by New York-based theatre, opera, and film artist Kaneza Schaal, presented at the Performing Garage; and Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein’s Friday Night Rat Catchers, performed with Marianne Rendón and presented by the Live Artery Festival at New York Live Arts.
UTR will once again offer an industry symposium for professionals from around the world to address the most pressing issues facing the creative sector; will present numerous opportunities to experience major works in progress; and will provide new community gathering spaces for audiences and artists.
“After 20 years as artistic director of the Under the Radar Festival, I am pleased to pass the artistic leadership of the festival to Kaneza, and Meropi, working beside all of our venue partners and producers,” said festival founder and executive director Mark Russell in a statement. “They bring fresh perspectives to the festival and have created an exceptional lineup that reflects the vibrancy of artistic exploration in our city and around the world. These five works are just a glimpse of the breadth and reach of Under the Radar 2026.”
UTR co-creative director Kaneza Schaal said in a statement, “This new life of Under the Radar over the past three years is built on the tending of ecosystems that have been created over 20 years, a tending of literal genealogies of creative practice, seeded across the world. This unique collaboration is one of the sacred risks of this festival and it’s being done for the sake of New York City.”
Added co-creative director Meropi Peponides in a statement, “What excites me about putting this slate of work out there is that one person might be confused by any individual show and the person right next to them might be thrilled. A third person in the audience may have yet another, very different response. I see the festival as holding space for all of those extremes and everything in between. Just because something delights me doesn’t mean it won’t enrage somebody else. This is crucial, because so much of our media landscape is geared toward us being told what to think, constantly. So the act of exploring divergent reactions with curiosity, with generosity—that is the thing we can all gather around. This festival exists in the act of taking a chance on something unknown—of most everyone in the audience taking that collective risk together.”
Beyond the highlights announced today, UTR plans in the coming weeks to announce programming presented in partnership with more than 20 New York City cultural organizations, including La MaMa, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Chocolate Factory Theater.
