January in New York City theater, EXPLAINED
In January New York City turns into a wonderland of innovative, weird, risky, magical theater. Why?
The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP; hashtag #APAPNYC) convenes a conference in New York City every January. It is a massive gathering of artistic directors and other theater managers who schedule artists to perform at the venues they represent. The conference attendees hold a lot of power and the purse strings for artists who want to perform across the U.S. and internationally. So, the conference also draws many experienced and emerging performing arts artists to perform their newest work, often still in workshop form.
Several of New York’s leading non-profit theaters, including The Public Theater, P.S. 122, and HERE Art Center, curate festivals during this period. The performances vary greatly in terms of genre, style, tone, and completeness. Many of the performances are slices of works-in-progress and some of the works will appear on the main stages of these same theaters in the future once fully developed.
The January theater festivals are a unique opportunity for those of us lucky enough to be in New York at this time to see the latest work from some of the most exciting artists working today in dance, theater, and every performing arts hybrid imaginable. But let’s be honest, it can also be an experience fraught with peril because we are talking about experimental, independent artists who are trying new things. But that’s sort of the point: the tickets to these shows are cheap (typically between $10 and $25) and the shows are usually only an hour to 90 minutes long, so the risk is actually pretty low.
At the same time many big commercial theater productions close in early January, having wrung every last drop of cash they can out of New York’s heavy December tourist crop, and the new season of “big stage” theater doesn’t get started until later in the year. So now’s your chance to escape January’s dreary, cold weather into the welcoming, warm, wacky world of contemporary performing arts and check out these theater festivals.
If you want suggestions on what to see, listen to this episode of the Maxamoo Podcast where we talk about ten shows from five different festivals that we’re especially excited to see this month. Information about all of the shows featured is included on the podcast’s show page.
You can also check out these preview articles from major New York City publications:
American Theater Magazine
Everything, All at Once
New York Times
In Your Seat but on Your Toes
New York Post
Rising stars hit the boards for downtown theater festivals
Time Out New York
January arts binge: downtown theater fests in New York
Village Voice
Top of the Heap: A Cheat Sheet to Five Performance Festivals
The festivals are:
AMERICAN REALNESS
American Realness explores the theme realness. Created and curated by Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor, in partnership with Abrons Arts Center, it is an annual festival of experimental dance and category-defying performances.
COIL 14
Celebrating its 9th anniversary, COIL is a theater festival produced by Performance Space 122 (PS 122). This year the festival will focus on New York-based artists with nine theatrical productions at venues across the City.
LIVE ARTERY
New York Live Arts presents Live Artery, an annual event of dance and body-based performances commissioned or created by NYLA.
OTHER FORCES
Other Forces is an annual festival of independent theater in its 5th edition. This year the festival features five production in the course of 18 days.
PROTOTYPE
Curated by “contemporary mini music drama…impresarios” Kristin Marting and Kim Whitener of HERE, and Beth Morrison of BMP, Prototype is a festival of opera-theater and music-theater works.
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Created by the Contemporary Performance Network, the inaugural presentation of this four-day festival features experimental performance works by artists exploring contemporary issues.
SQUIRTS
An annual series of performances at La MaMa curated by Dan Fishback, a writer and performer and the director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, each evening includes performances by multiple artists and features one emerging queer performer and one guest star veteran of the queer performance community.
UNDER THE RADAR
Under The Radar is the granddaddy of all the January festivals. It is produced by The Public Theater and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. It channels worldwide innovative theater to New York audience, and will bring together 16 theatrical shows in this edition.