Dear Theater Fans, Happy new year! Congratulations, you made it through the holidays! Hopefully they were good to you. Now, let’s shift gears because festival season is upon us. While New York hosts several festivals this month, including Prototype, the Exponential Festival and The Fire This Time, Under the Radar remains the biggest and most eclectic. “If anything defines Under the Radar, it’s a distaste for boundaries,” Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote in a roundup of shows that look especially promising. Some titles may be familiar from earlier runs, like “Ulysses,” the latest literary excavation by the Elevator Repair Service company, and “The Ford/Hill Project,” which juxtaposes the testimonies of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford at Senate nomination hearings for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, in 1991, and Brett Kavanaugh, in 2018. There are also plenty of new works from up-and-coming artists like the Albanian Greek director Mario Banushi, who is making his North American debut tonight with “Mami” at N.Y.U. Skirball. Banushi, who is 26, has garnered attention in Europe for his image-driven, mysterious works devoid of text. He spoke to Roslyn Sulcas about producing theater that is about feeling, not understanding. “Words can limit things,” he said. “For me, this way of working opens up more possibilities.” Certain texts, though, can prompt us to rethink the meaning of words, as Alissa Wilkinson wrote in an article about Shakespeare’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy for Hamlet. Alissa suggested that its “great emotional flexibility is among its wonders, and must have to do with its primal simplicity” and probably why it “has been so often performed, and with so many different shades of interpretation.” Soon we’ll get Riz Ahmed’s interpretation of the monologue, when he stars in a new film adaptation of “Hamlet” next month. (Here’s the trailer.) Please reach out to me at theaterfeedback@nytimes.com with suggestions for articles or to offer your thoughts about our coverage. And urge your friends to subscribe to this newsletter. Have a wonderful week, Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here.
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