The Under the Radar Theatre Festival Was Pronounced Dead. Here’s How It Was Reborn

Playbill: Last spring, Mark Russell was pulled into a meeting with his bosses at the Public Theater. It was the morning of May 15 and Russell thought he was coming in to tell them about the next iteration of the Under the Radar Festival, the experimental theatre event that the Public had presented since 2006. Instead, he was told that the Public was canceling the festival due to economic challengings coming out of the pandemic. “That means I was out of a job,” recalls Russell.