Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Under the Radar, New York City's longtime festival celebrating experimental theater, returns tomorrow. Now in its 21st year, the festival will showcase the latest performances through shows at venues including Lincoln Center, La MaMa, Symphony Space, and Park Avenue Armory. Under the Radar runs through January 25th. Joining me now with a preview of Under the Radar are co-creative directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal. Welcome to All Of It.

Meropi Peponides: Thank you.

Kaneza Schaal: Thank you, Alison. We're happy to be with you.

Alison Stewart: Meropi, you started as an intern on Under the Radar. I love that dedication.

Meropi Peponides: I did. It's true.

Alison Stewart: What made you want to dig into the organization?

Meropi Peponides: Well, I should clarify that I interned for a few years for Under the Radar many, many years back, left and did a host of other things, and then just recently returned as one of the co-creative directors with Kaneza Schaal. I think something that really drew me to the festival is in this new incarnation, Under the Radar is striving to become a citywide festival. It is now existing in 24 venues across Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn.

There are 31 shows that are collectively being created and produced by-- I couldn't even tell you if I tried how many artists, producers, managers, all coming together to make this festival happen. This big, ambitious collective effort across disciplines. There's theater folks, there's dance folks, music folks coming together across venues and across borders. We're also an international festival, so bringing international artists into conversation with artists from New York, all of those things are just so exciting to me now.

Alison Stewart: Now, Kaneza, I believe we've interviewed you before as a director.

Kaneza Schaal: Yes. It's great to be back.

Alison Stewart: It's nice to talk to you again. What made you want to be involved in Under the Radar, and what does it represent to you as an artist?

Kaneza Schaal: One of the things that I am so stunned by about the 20 years of Under the Radar and the world that that Mark Russell built in pushing this festival into the world is that it's really, to me, the invitation that Meropi and I have is less about curation and more about participating in this ecology and participating in the conditions for making art and the genealogies of art practice that Under the Radar has served. I really think of this as the invitation to seed new genealogies and to think about the practices that Under the Radar has developed to tend artists over time.

Alison Stewart: Meropi, this year, for the first time, Under the Radar was programmed under a "rotating leadership model." How does that work?

Meropi Peponides: Kaneza and I are a part of the curatorial team of Under the Radar alongside the brilliant Mark Russell, who founded the festival 21 years ago. We are serving two-year terms. We are bringing our communities, our perspectives, our various tastes, and what we love to the table. We're in conversation not just with Mark and our brilliant producers at ArKtype, Tommy and Sammy, but also with all of the venue partners. What do you think makes it Under the Radar show is a question we're asking to all of these 24 venue partners. It's through that ongoing conversation that the festival got made.

Alison Stewart: Kaneza, how do you see the benefits of a rotating leadership in this year's slate?

Kaneza Schaal: I think at its best, Under the Radar presents divergent forms, divergent opinions, maybe even contradictory opinions. I think that that takes more voices, and it takes listening to the 24 venue partners, and it takes understanding, leadership in a new American model that isn't about serving permanence, but is about serving change and ecology. The two-year tenure, I think, is part of this multiplicity of voices that is at the core of what the festival does best.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's get into it. Meropi, on January 17th, La MaMa will host 12 Last Songs, described as part live exhibition, part epic performance. I need to know more.

Meropi Peponides: Yes, we are so excited for 12 Last Songs. Something that I think excites me most is that this is a celebration of New Yorkers that will last. It's a 12-hour durational performance, and there's no actors. Every person who you will see on stage is a worker who will get up on stage and either do their job live on stage or demonstrate how their job is done live on stage. It's a celebration of the labor that quite literally makes our city run. It's a celebration of performance and labor, and labor is performance.

I think also, just really, is at the heart of what Kaneza mentioned, this celebration of these divergent perspectives all coming together under this one umbrella in the form of 12 Last Songs. It's an epic 12-hour performance. Don't worry, you can come and as you please for as much or as little of that time as you as you wish. I think it's also so emblematic of the wider umbrella that is under the radar, this bringing together of divergent perspectives, of expertise of all kinds, to be shared with New Yorkers in this way.

Alison Stewart: Kaneza, The HawtPlates. They'll be at the HERE Arts Center January 9th through the 25th. Who are The HawtPlates?

Kaneza Schaal: The HawtPlates are an extraordinary company of musicians comprised of Kenita Miller-Hicks, Jade Hicks, and Justin Hicks. I had the pleasure of seeing an early version of these ideas that have culminated into Dream Feed, actually, at Shirley Chisholm's former home in Brooklyn-

Alison Stewart: Oh my, wow.

Kaneza Schaal: -where there was this informal sharing of this music. I mention that because, again, back to genealogies. One of the things that astounds me in the practice of The HawtPlates is the musical genealogies that these artists pull on the vastness, the personalness, and the utter originality of what these artists bring to the stage. To me, I can't imagine a better prayer to start 2026 with January 9th through 25th at HERE Arts Center. Dream Feed. It is the fuel we need to meet this year.

Alison Stewart: Meropi, what other music performances do you have in the lineup this year? What are you excited about?

Meropi Peponides: I'm super excited about Love Force. That is Sunny Jain's latest work happening at Symphony Space this Friday, January 9th. Sunny is an incredible musician, performer, and maker, and is telling this beautiful story about black and brown solidarity across decades that I think is just so needed and so important in our moment right now. I'm very excited about that one.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, Kaneza?

Kaneza Schaal: I'm excited about the ways that we get to explore practice with artists. It makes me think about someone like Narcissister, who is doing Voyage into infinity at NYU Skirball January 16th through 18th. This is an artist who many people have defined her practice in hundreds of ways. Crudely, people often think about her in relationship to white box space or gallery space. To watch her sink her teeth into the theatrical tools and the scale of the Skirball is really exciting, and I feel like another one of these places that Under the Radar is such a vital part of the ecosystem.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Meropi Peponides -- I hope you got your last name right-- and Kaneza Shaal. They are the co-creative directors of Under the Radar Festival, which begins tomorrow and runs through January 25th. Dance in general. Let's talk about dance in general. Who else on the slate? I'm sorry, I've lost my place here. Dance-focused theater. Yes, Mami. That's what I want to talk about.

Meropi Peponides: Yes, MAMI is an incredible piece that is the US Premiere for Mario Banushi, who's an extraordinary young director who's been making waves all over the European festival circuit. He doesn't use text in his work, but it's this incredible, striking visual storytelling that's just almost expressionistic in the way that he makes his stage pictures. Also going to be at Skirball, and is just, yes, I think going to be an incredible piece that is all about the relationship of mothers and children. Also, just an incredibly universal topic, even though done in a very avant-garde way.

Alison Stewart: You said there wasn't music that it was performed with.

Meropi Peponides: He doesn't use text in his--

Alison Stewart: He doesn't use text.

Meropi Peponides: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What is it? Go ahead.

Kaneza Schaal: Still calls it theater, which I think is one of the fun bleeding places we have towards your question around dance. There are many pieces in the festival, I think this year that do that beautiful thing of getting out of the silos of how we like to classify in the west and living in the kind of expression that is true to each artist.

Alison Stewart: MAMI will be performing at NYU Skirball January 7th through the 10th. Let me get to Data Room. It's at The Performance Garage January 10th through the 12th. It will also include conversations and panels. Data Room is one of them. What is Data Room?

Kaneza Schaal: Data Room is my response to the wonderful invitation as a commissioned artist, along with this co-directorship. I really wanted to think not about the piece I wanted to make so much as how I wanted to serve the festival. That came back to me about these genealogies of practice. I am hosting three conversations, which for me are really about how we exchange knowledge and investing creative lineage and build senses of shared meaning in this time of fragmented attention and digital hyper exposure.

Those three conversations, one of them is with Esperanza Spalding and Kyle Abraham, thinking about histories and futures of experimental jazz, drawing-- Yes. One of them is with Helga Davis, Alicia Hall Moran, and Daniel Alexander Jones, thinking about the genealogies of performance practice that are in their current work. They will each share a song and then talk about the histories of performance practice in that song. Then, finally, on Monday the 12th, I'll host a conversation with Anne Hamilton and Lileana Blain-Cruz, really thinking about mythologies of practice.

I have been in very few rooms with Anne's work live, and yet the conversations I've had about her work have really influenced me. I'm excited about how mythology passes between all of us.

Alison Stewart: Meropi, tell people how they can find out more.

Meropi Peponides: You can see our full lineup at utrfest.org and at the websites of our incredible 24 partner organizations across the city. We hope you join us.

Alison Stewart: I have been speaking with the co-creative directors of the Under the Radar Festival, Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Shaal. Thank you for being with us.

Meropi Peponides: Thank you for having us.

Kaneza Schaal: See you in the lobby.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.