NYU Skirball and Under the Radar Festival present Moby Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville’s mythical work that is a hybrid of theater and majestic puppetry. Featuring seven actors, fifty puppets, video projections, a drowned orchestra and a whale-sized whale, Yngvild Aspeli stages this visual adaptation of Melville’s beast of a book, from the Norwegian theater company Plexus Polaire.

In 2019, NYU Skirball commissioned a new work by award-winning playwright/director Richard Maxwell and New York City Players. After a Covid-related delay, Maxwell’s Field of Mars, produced in association with the Under the Radar Festival and co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center, makes its World Premiere. Exploring the themes of music, food, nature, and spirituality, Maxwell’s newest work is set in locations as varied as the Garden of Eden and an Applebee’s in Chapel Hill, NC.

Classical Theatre of Harlem remounts its raucous, critically acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, continuing its mission to place diversity at the forefront of their performances. This Twelfth Night engages with the global conversation around equity and inclusion and features a majority-Black team of artists led by director Carl Cofield, CTH’s Associate Artistic Director.

Co-produced by NYU Skirball and The Invisible Dog, Eva Doumbia’s Autophagies (Self-Eaters) combines theater and aromas, music and flavors into a hybrid experience centered around cooking. It is also a reminder of the colonial histories still at play in today’s kitchens. Doumbia encourages us to think about the political dimension of food, reflecting with humor and tenderness on its origins, modes of culture and foodstuffs.

An NYU Skirball commission, Keely Garfield Dance’s highly anticipated premiere, The Invisible Project, is a ritualized performance inspired by Garfield’s work as an enduring dance artist, and her covert calling as a hospital chaplain. The work offers moving testimonials, emotionally extravagant embodiment, and understated disappearing acts to offer a glimpse of hope. Joining Garfield are Paul Hamilton, Molly Lieber, Angie Pittman, Opal Ingle, with original music by Jeff Berman, and costumes by Morgane Le Fay.

Drawing from many sources, including street dance and martial arts, the celebrated Korean dance company Bereishit Dance presents two NYC premieres. In Balance and Imbalance, dancers seamlessly partner and then hurtle through space, employing the laws of physics to illustrate the constantly turning wheel of opposition and harmony at the heart of all relationships. In Judo, featuring six male dancers, Soon-ho Park views sports as a way to control, mediate, traverse and indeed transcend the violent, churning urges within us.

Composer Philip Glass and performer-director Phelim McDermott (Improbable Theatre) have worked together on internationally acclaimed opera productions in London, New York, and beyond. Tao of Glass is their most personal collaboration yet. Inspired by a dream, this NYC premiere marries ten meditations on life, death and Taoist wisdom with ten pieces of music from Glass, presented by McDermott with an ensemble of musicians and puppeteers. Part concert, part performance, Tao of Glass is a storytelling tapestry, soundtracked by Glass’s mesmerizing music and shot through with Improbable’s trademark theatricality.

In a rare New York City appearance, France’s Centre Chorégraphique National Ballet de Lorraine presents an evening of two works. Cela nous concerne tous (This Concerns All Of Us) choreographed by New York-based artist Miguel Gutierrez, takes its inspiration (and title) from the May 1968 social and political movements in France. For Four Walls (2019), choreographed by Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley, draws upon Four Walls, the first collaboration between Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Rather than recreating the original 1944 piece, they have used the score for piano and voice as the driving force behind this free interpretation.