A brief report from the Under The Radar Festival:
* Even more full than last year--this has become the de facto epicenter for new work in NYC, and you can feel how the festival's tendrils have extended--it's truly enormous at this point. It may be the most exciting time of year for NYC theater, especially theater that one can actually afford to see.
* If you have tickets to any show, get there early--the lobby can be a madhouse with four or five shows launching at once, and you'll need time to get sorted out, especially if you are seeing sold out shows. People are managing to get in to sold out shows by arriving early, so if that's your plan ensure that you do.
* TERMINUS is absolutely amazing--a fantastic, magical piece of storytelling and theater from the Abbey Theatre. Get a ticket to it right the fuck now.
* Reggie Watts' DISINFORMATION is wonderful. I know Reggie and his director from way, way back, and this is the best adaptation of the late-nineties absurdist sketch comedy fused with masterful sonic play and Reggie's signature presence. You would be a fool to miss it.
* Finally, this isn't at UTR but I must say that I saw HAPPY DAYS at BAM on Tuesday, and even though I was impossibly busy this week I've rarely been more happy about my time investment. Fiona Shaw is brilliant in this role, and its a staggering production--I'd never really enjoyed this particular work as much as others by Beckett, and now I see the error of my ways. Brantley's review is here, and tickets may still be available here.
...
And as for me?
I'm extremely excited, nervous and above all things, pregnant with the new show. I can feel it roiling inside me, and I am having trouble focusing on anything around me with any detail. So many conversations, interviews, facts and figures are still spinning inside me, and I can feel the edges of structure beginning to emerge out of myself--hints, shapes, edges of reason and argument. I am so afraid of ego, of losing the thread, of not standing up for the things I want to speak about, of so many things....but my fear is a light patina on top of a growing resolve. I just hope that I am enough for it, and that I can serve the story well, and that it passes over and through me completely.
I wonder what will happen. There is so little we can know.
12:41 PM
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