crazywin 9 Plays to Warm Up Winter in New York

In New York, Broadway hits its winter lull in January, as Off Broadway and beyond burst into activity. If most of the tourists have gone home after the holidays, many of the visiting theater artists have arrived from all over, for the annual festivals that draw a tantalizing breadth of new work.

The venerable Under the Radar festival (Saturday through Jan. 19), now in its post-Public Theater era, is blossoming lushly again, with some of the city’s major companies participating. The Prototype Festival (Thursday through Jan. 19) has a full menu of interdisciplinary opera, while the Exponential Festival (through Feb. 2) centers local emerging experimental theater makers. There’s also the International Fringe Encore Series (through March 16), whose lineup includes “Gwyneth Goes Skiing,” one of two Gwyneth Paltrow-focused shows at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

It’s a bountiful month, on festival stages and elsewhere. Here are nine shows worth keeping in mind.

‘Blind Runner’

In this hourlong play by the Iranian writer-director Amir Reza Koohestani, a political prisoner in Tehran asks her husband to help a young woman, who was blinded in a protest, to run a marathon in Paris. The more dangerous race is the one they undertake from there: trying to cross the English Channel through the tunnel without being hit by a train. A two-hander performed in Persian with English supertitles, and presented with Arian Moayed’s company, Waterwell, it’s about surveillance, oppression and the insistent pursuit of freedom. The critic Michael Billington called it “mesmerizing.” Part of Under the Radar. (Saturday through Jan. 24, St. Ann’s Warehouse)

‘Wonderful Joe’

The Canadian puppet artist Ronnie Burkett is a marvel to watch, manipulating populous casts of marionettes all on his own. Too seldom seen in New York, he arrives this month for a brief run of his new play, which landed on The Globe and Mail’s top-10 list of 2024 shows. The story is about an old man, Joe, and his aged dog, Mister, who lose their home to gentrification and hit the streets, approaching misfortune as adventure. This is not puppetry for little ones, though; audience members must be 16 or older. Part of Under the Radar. (Tuesday through Jan. 12, Lincoln Center)

‘Dead as a Dodo’Image“Dead as a Dodo,” in a Chicago production. It comes to New York next week.Credit...Richard Termine

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

The indictment comes five months after the couple was first accused of physically and emotionally abusing their daughter. The abuse occurred when she was 15 and 16 years old, prosecutors said in a news release.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

big thunder slots

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.crazywin