The Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 8-19, $20-$28 (UTR Packs $75 for five shows)
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com
The tenth edition of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival is another diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, roundtable discussions, and free live music, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Among the sixteen shows, most of which take place at the Public, are 600 Highwaymen’s The Record, a dance-theater work that brings together a roomful of strangers to comment on the relationship between performer and audience; John Hodgman’s one-man piece, I Stole Your Dad, in which the Daily Show “resident expert” shares intimate, personal stories about his family and technology while baring himself onstage; psychiatrist Kuro Tanino and his Niwa Gekidan Penino company’s The Room Nobody Knows (at Japan Society), about two brothers getting ready for the older one’s birthday party; Andrew Ondrejcak’s Feast, in which a king and his court (starring Reg E. Cathey) have a farewell dinner as Babylon collapses; and the American premiere of hip-hopper Kate Tempest and Battersea Arts Centre’s Brand New Ancients (at St. Ann’s Warehouse), a multidisciplinary show about everyday life in a changing world. Also on the roster is Sacred Stories, Toshi Reagon’s thirtieth annual birthday celebration with special guests; Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man improvisation, Rodney King; a reimagining of Sekou Sundiata’s blessing the boats with Mike Ladd, Will Power, and Carl Hancock Rux; Cie. Philippe Saire’s Black Out (at La MaMa), Edgar Oliver’s Helen and Edgar, Lola Arias’s El Año en que nací / The year I was born (at La MaMa), SKaGeN’s BigMouth, tg STAN’s JDX — a public enemy, Sean Edward Lewis’s work-in-progress Frankenstein (at the Freeman Space), excerpts from ANIMALS’ The Baroness Is the Future, and Daniel Fish’s Eternal, the last three also part of the Incoming! Festival within a Festival.
Kate Tempest will rap about the state of the world in BRAND NEW ANCIENTS (photo by Christine Hardinge)
In addition, there will be numerous postshow talkbacks, a pair of workshops with Sara De Roo and Jolente De Keersmaker of tg STAN on January 10-11, four noon Culturebot conversations January 11-12 and 18-19, and Coil, Under the Radar, Prototype, and American Realness have joined forces to present free live concerts every night from January 9 to 19 in the Lounge at the Public, including Invincible, Christeene, Ethan Lipton, Heather Christian & the Arbonauts, Sky-Pony, Timur and the Dime Museum, the Middle Church Jerriesse Johnson Gospel Choir, M.A.K.U. Sound System, DJ Acidophilus, and Nick Hallett, Space Palace, and Woahmone DJs.
Inspired by actual events that took place in his hometown of Recife, Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds is an engaging slice-of-life examination of class differences and a community in the midst of social and economic change. When Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) and Fernando (Nivaldo Nascimento) go door-to-door offering their services as overnight security guards protecting the street, only Francisco (W. J. Solha), an aging, wealthy sugar baron who owns much of the surrounding property, and his grandson João (Gustavo Jahn) refuse to participate in the shady proposal, but Francisco insists that they keep their hands off another of his grandsons, Dinho (Yuri Holanda), who is responsible for a spate of car-stereo robberies. This suburban neighborhood, ever more in the architectural shadow of bigger high rises going up all around them, is filled with little secrets and minor resentments. A mechanic keys an expensive car when the owner is rude to him. Clodoaldo and a maid (Clébia Souza) make use of a fancy gated house he is taking care of while the owners are away. Sisters fight over the size of a flat-screen television. And a co-op board wants to fire their longtime night watchman without a severance package because he has taken to napping on the job. Meanwhile, João, who has two children by the daughter of the family’s maid, has started a relationship with the more acceptable Sofia (Irma Brown), but the privileged João still lives in the past; when he shows an apartment in one of Francisco’s condos, he points out what would be the maid’s room, assuming everyone can afford domestic help. And Bia (Meve Jinkings) finds a different kind of domestic help, buying large quantities of pot from the water guy, finding unique ways to deal with her neighbor’s howling dog, and using household appliances to pleasure herself. A film critic who has previously made documentaries, Filho, who wrote, directed, and coedited (with João Maria) Neighboring Sounds, has populated his debut full-length feature with believable characters caught up in realistic situations, along with just the right dose of black comedy. The film was shot with natural sound at a relaxed pace, inviting viewers into this intriguing fictional tale filled with real-world implications, involving a decaying past and modern issues of safety and surveillance. While João might be the moral conscious of the story, it is Jinkings’s Bia who steals this small gem of a film, her unique methods of daily survival a joy to behold. Neighboring Sounds is screening December 27 at 3:00 as part of the Guggenheim Museum program “Cinematic Sites” and will be introduced at 2:45 by series organizer Paul Dallas; the screening is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab,” which continues through January 5, when Wu Tsang’s Wildness will be shown. You can also catch the film on December 31 at 5:15 and January 1 at 8:30 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series