January 4-19, 2025

Mark Russell has been working in the downtown dance/performance and theater world for over 35 years. From 1983-2004 he was the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122. He brought the space from a low-tech artist rental space to a world-renowned presenting institution committed to developing the work of New York City artists. In January 2005 Russell launched the Under the Radar Festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse. UTR focuses on theater-based contemporary performance. The festival moved to the Public Theater in 2006 and became a centerpiece in the New York City theater season; mixing international performances with national and local artists. Russell has been involved with many artists over his career, creating opportunities for them to grow and reach wider audiences. He is now involved in re-imagining The Under the Radar Festival for a new generation.

Meropi Peponides is a theater maker, dramaturg, podcast producer, writer and co-founder of Radical Evolution Performance Collective. She has been co-creating and producing theatre for the past 18 years with a focus on devised ensemble work, new plays, site-specific work and community-based performance. Her work explores cross-cultural affinity and seeks to disrupt cultural hierarchies by drawing inspiration from and lifting up BIPOC and nonwestern traditions. From 2014-2023 she was the producer and then co-director of Soho Rep. While there, she produced 18 off-Broadway productions, most world premieres, that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Lucille Lortel Award, and numerous OBIE Awards, among others. Upcoming with Radical Evolution: National tour of Canciones, an immersive, site-specific play with music and The Hunger Project (working title, commission from Soho Rep). Other organizations with which she has collaborated include The Foundry Theatre, The Movement Theatre Company and The Public Theater. She also organizes with Artists Co-Creating Real Equity (ACRE), Justice Committee, and Artists Against Apartheid.

Kaneza Schaal works in theater, film, and opera. She believes theater is a model for participatory society and fundamental to a functioning democracy. By creating performances that speak many formal, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and experiential languages she seeks expansive audiences. Schaal’s work has shown in divergent contexts, from NYC galleries, to courtyards in Vietnam, to East African amphitheaters, to European opera houses, to US public housing, to rural auditoriums in the United Arab Emirates. Domestically her work has shown at The Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Los Angeles Opera, Detroit Opera, LA Philharmonic, The Shed, Walker Arts Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, REDCAT, The New Victory Theater, and New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art. Schaal is Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, and she directed the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar.