Photo by Eric Ting

Just as January’s winter weather threatens to lock everyone indoors, the New York theatre scene is about to save us from frigid isolation. A plethora of enticing festivals and plays will pop up all over the five boroughs, but the finest of these gatherings begins this week at the Public Theater. The Under The Radar Festival is an eleven-day celebration of independent shows that aims to shock, titillate, and educate audiences. The organizers of this event are just as fascinating as the work they produce, and luckily I have the inside connection to one of them.

Meiyin Wang is the vivacious Associate Artistic Director of the Under The Radar Festival. Meiyin, who holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University believes “theatre should live everywhere. I like seeing the liveliness of it…I like seeing an actress spit.”

Ms. Wang came to New York from Singapore where she spent two years as the playwright in residence at a local theater.

“Being a writer is a very solitary activity,” says Wang, “it takes a brave person to put pen to paper.” Knowing she needed more interactive pursuits, this ambitious thespian moved into directing because it required her to “respond to what happens in the room.”

First inspired by Theatre de Complicite’s award winning 1999 play Mnemonic, Wang gushes about the “beautiful text,” but finds that the “unpredictability of the ensemble piece is something you can’t quite translate onto the page. I get a little gaga over it.”

When I asked Meiyin (who seems to be a lady of many pursuits) how she defines herself within the profession, she said, “Differentiations aren’t helpful… I am a fan of theatre that makes its own rules.”

Her unabashed passion for experimental performance has been fostered at the Public. Mentored by Under The Radar’s Artistic Director and Producer Mark Russel, Wang has helped bring a host of provocative new productions to the city.

“All work in the Under The Radar Festival,” she says, “takes into question the fantasies and impulses of the people in the room.”

Among their most tantalizing offers, Wang and her colleagues have arranged a one-night only spectacle of 20th century songs and bedazzled costumes from the iconic performer Taylor Mac, Christina Anderson’s one-woman monologue Hollow Roots that questions the role of gender and race in self-identity, and Australian-based Back to Back theater’s much talked about show Ganesh Versus the Third Reich that has the god Ganesh traveling through time to reclaim the Swastika from the Nazis. The Hungarian director Edit Kaldor will present C’est du Chinois, a play with a French title that strives to teach its audience Mandarin. Wang believes that this unique piece of theatre will provide viewers with an “amalgamation of iniquities.”

This year will be the first time the entire series will take place exclusively at the newly remodeled Public. Wang is excited to “invite the neighborhood” back to the space that has been undergoing major renovations. Now that the hammers and nails have been put away, Wang feels the festival is the perfect opportunity to “celebrate the reopening,” and it will establish the Public as a friendly place for “people to run into each other in the lobby.” The Public is an amazing building,” she says “from its history as the Astor Library and beyond.” She’s ready to revel in the “downtown state of mind,” and she feels that this program will send viewers, “into the year with new excitement.”

Ms. Wang certainly has me looking forward to putting on my finest frock and dashing to the theatre. The Under The Radar Festival began on January 9 and runs through January 20. I’ll be looking for you in the lobby!

By Kiara Downey

This week I had the splendid opportunity to chat with the multi-talented East Village marvel, Angela DiCarlo. DiCarlo, whose gift for makeup design led her from Des Moines, Iowa to Manhattan, has created outrageous and unpredictable stage shows here in New York for the past 10 years. She’s a singer, a writer, and a producer who frequently lights up the stages of Joe’s Pub, Feinstein’s, and the Wild Project.

This gorgeous downtown denizen positively froths with bawdy delight. Whether she’s bringing a ruthless gossip columnist to life or belting out raunchy tunes at “The Mad World of Miss Hathaway,” this lady is a queen of theatre scene. She and I convened at the bustling 7A restaurant and dished on drama and what it takes to be a lauded lady performer in the hottest hood in the city.

As soon as Ms. Di Carlo walked into the café I knew I’d found a kindred spirit. With a shock of gorgeous red hair, a daring leopard print jacket, and eyebrows drawn in a Joan Crawford arch, she glamorized the crowded room. For anyone who watches “Mad Men,” this girl looks like a sassy sister of the show’s secretary Joan Harris, who is played by Christina Hendricks.

In fact, it was at the suggestion of Di Carlo’s friend and one-time producer David Conrad Brouillard that she first penned a few satirical songs for the spoof of that show about midtown, martini-drinking bad boys.

“I’m a cabaret artist and I had worked in other group projects such as ‘Lady, Lady, Lady’ at the Zipper Room,” she told me. “But I put this show together on my own. It was David who gave me the idea.”

When I gushed about the show’s delicious getups, DiCarlo admitted, “Most of the costumes come from my personal collection. Well, mine and my husband’s.”

Now, almost two years after bringing “The Mad World” to life, DiCarlo has just wrapped her 8th iteration of the show (titled “I’ll Be Horny for Christmas”) and she’s gathered a  sumptuous gaggle of talent to play her crazy characters.

From FischerSpooner’s Casey Spooner and Adam Dugas (“Chaos and Candy”) to David Ilku (“The Dueling Bankheads”) and Mike Albo (“Unitard”), the cast of the 2012 holiday episode brought seasoned stage chops to the creatures she’d invented.

“I’m so lucky to work with all of these people. David Ilku is a New York legend and Mike Albo is just fabulous. The whole cast is amazing.”

Albo, who was once a downtown Dazzle Dancer and is now a celebrated writer and soloist, wandered around the set as a vapid hippy and sang a song about hallucinogenic drugs, and I guffawed at just about every word Ilku said and sang. He and DiCarlo presented a joyous series of one-liners in a scene reminiscent of television’s Hee-Haw, and his voice impressed everyone in the audience.

When she finished her lunch, DiCarlo (who still does makeup for stars such as Kristen Wiig and Zach Galifianakis) reapplied a coat of bright coral lipstick and dashed out to prepare for that night’s production. It’s a shame you missed this recent “Mad World,” but don’t fret – DiCarlo and her wild crew will be back with more in May.

The downtown theater company (formerly HERE Arts Center) is plunging head first into the immersive theater experience this month with Lush Valley, opening Sept. 11. An audience-reliant new project that treats each spectator as part an examination of the American dream, Lush Valley’s audience members are under consideration for citizenship in the titular town, complete with paperwork, oaths, civics tests and fingerprinting.

“No one is forced to do anything they don’t want to do!” director Kristin Marting assured. “And we’re happy to respond to concerns anyone brings in. We’ve done all this training with the cast in terms of client interaction and their responsibilities.”

In a brave new world of participatory theater, Lush Valley is helping break new ground when it comes to engaging with the audience. Instead of the days when reluctant audiences members were dragged up on stage, slightly embarrassed, shows like Lush Valley are questioning what exactly theater means—and what it can do. The eight immigration officers sometimes deliver monologues to two or three audience members; the entire audience convenes for occasions like Town Hall meetings and voting or call in to a radio show to voice their concerns and complaints about America. And this may be the only show in town where texting during performances is actually encouraged.

“Lush Valley is a metaphor for America. It’s the America that still has high hopes for the ideals on which America was founded,” Marting said. “And [it’s] looking back to the breadth of those ideals, not the narrowness. The American dream used to have a different meaning, but now people think of a house with a white picket fence. There’s been a codification, and the show is trying to reconnect with our core values and engage people in thinking about those ideals.”

Divided into eight chapters, Lush Valley focuses on the concepts that comprise the classic American dream: equality, freedom, happiness, opportunity, community, ambition, hope and honor. Inspired by both literature (including John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy) and months of intensive workshops and online dialogue via the company’s blog and Facebook, the piece has combined theory with visceral experience.

If Lush Valley sounds ambitious, that may be because Marting and her collaborators—including writers Robert Lyons and Qui Nguyen—have been working on the piece intermittently for three years. But it wasn’t until last year that the idea of treating the show as a theatrical Ellis Island came to mind. “It’s really solidified how the whole show took shape,” Marting said. “[It’s] emotionally engaging and not heady and didactic. We really pushed to create something that’s funny and entertaining.”

Along those lines, Lush Valley will feature multiple dance numbers (derived from all-American pastimes like bowling and baseball) and jester characters inspired by the emotions Marting and her team have identified with the piece. “Lush Valley is about thinking how we all relate to each other and what our responsibilities are or should be towards each other,” Marting said. “But it’s also wrapped in Civil War fantasies and songs and dances and filled with people as complex as where we are as a country. We have a Tea Party and Democrats as well!”

Despite the presence of Tea Partiers, Marting said Lush Valley “is a friendlier, more inclusive place than America.” And thanks to the audience, every performance is different. “The audience changes it every night,” Marting said. “They get to choose the national anthem of Lush Valley and they write their own oath of allegiance that every citizen has to take to become a citizen.”

Premiering on the cusp of major changes in both America and theatrical conventions, Lush Valley promises to be unlike anything else currently on the boards—and unlike America, in Lush Valley, one actually feels as if a single person can make all the difference in the world. If only American politics had such instant gratification.

Lush Valley runs Sept. 9–24 at HERE, 145 6th Ave. (betw. Broome & Spring Sts.).

Scene from ‘Lush Valley’, a theater experience that gives new meaning to breaking down the fourth wall. PHOTO by carl skutsch.