The Time When Artists Go to Work

Good evening, Under the Radar (UTR) family. Thank you to Mark, Meropi, Kaneza, Tommy, and Sami for inviting me.

Welcome to a gathering of brilliance, rebellion, and unapologetic creativity.

I come to you as a believer in the power of art to transform, to shake foundations, to ignite revolutions of the heart, mind, and spirit. I come to you as a daughter of Harlem, where resilience and artistry are stitched into the sidewalks and whispered through the trees. I come to you as a Black woman standing in a lineage of storytellers who have fought, prayed, and dreamed this moment into existence.

This is always my favorite time of the year. It’s like a class reunion in New York City every year for the performing arts field.

More importantly I love UTR, it made my APAP [Association of Performing Arts Professionals] experience. UTR was always the cooler, hipper, cousin. UTR was my tribe of people. Mostly because UTR existed outside of center. Outside of center, as most of us in this room.

This brings me to Mark Russel. I first met Mark back in the late nineties, early two thousands, when myself and creative conspirators Clyde Valentin and Danny Hoch felt that the mainstream theatre did not have a welcoming place for our generational voice. We had a wild idea to start a festival that celebrated young artist voices of color that existed outside of center. Folks like Sarah Jones, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kris Diaz, Eisa Davis, UNIVERSES. And Mark Russel said, “Here are the keys to PS122, we are a home to you.”

There were glorious years of young audience members in t-shirts and backpacks lined up around blocks of the lower east side theatre in the height of New York City summer hot. The theatre was everything a downtown theatre should be, full of grit and guts and all fire. The art was unbridled and fearless.

It was glorious. It was life affirming. It was art it its best: always finding a way, making a way.

We went on to host hundreds of artists from not only across the country but across the world. We continued to host the festival at PS122 and then across venues throughout New York City. Then we expanded the festival to Washington, DC; Chicago; and San Francisco. The festival ran for close to twenty years across the country. Our artists from the festival went on to win awards, perform on larger stages across the country, write for television and film, win Tonys, Oscars, you name it.

PS122, the theatre home of Leguizamo, Finley, Bogosian, continued to thrive. Mark, pushing envelopes and boundaries, set his sights on other lily pads. Starting UTR first in Brooklyn and then to the Public, UTR became a citywide fixture—one of the leading annual art festivals in New York City. Actually, in the country. For the last twenty years being housed at the Public Theater, the country’s leading Off-Broadway/regional theatre.

We are now in the mainstream. “Mama we made it!” In my Beyoncé voice, “we on top!”

But now here we stand on 9 January 2025.

There have been more moments than not where I have woken up with heaviness on my spirit. I watch as political and social progress are threatened as if in sinking sand. I watch as arts funding has receded to an all-time low. I watch as books and ideas are banned with frequency and ease as if the act does not contradict the core of American democracy.

I am reminded of the words of Toni Morrison: “the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread.”

These moments we know all too well.

It was out of the moment of dread we pick up the bull horn:

Billie’s Strange Fruit as an outcry of the continued horrors perpetrated in the shadows, that got her banned from many a stage.

Lorraine’s portraiture of the red lines that existed around Black bodies.

Baldwin’s writing of choreograph a path to liberation and freedom for a people.

Artists like Paul Robeson, Primo Levi, Ai Weiwei, Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Dashiell Hammett, Wole Soyinka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lillian Hellman, Salman Rushdie, Herta Müller, Walter Benjamin, whose work existed amongst moments of discomfort, dread, and erasure. In those moments, they all picked up a pen, a brush, a mic, and got to work out of necessity.

Hell, when Under the Radar was on the brink of extinction from the Public, the producers said “Fuck it, we don’t need one theatre, we will take over the whole city!” The whole damn city was the venue. This was necessity.

Our power does not exist in the applause but in our imagination, our ability to render another way possible.

Our power does not exist in the applause but in our imagination, our ability to render another way possible, to challenge the world around—outside of center.

We must sit in the margins to have the right angle, the right view point, to tell the truth.

We do not exist in the center of comfortability. We do not make board members feel comfortable. We do not exist to appease the status quo. When we don’t quite fit in is exactly when we are doing our job.

We are truth tellers, we reflect humanity to its core: the beauty and the uncomfortable truths.

You are power. Because the world needs you. It needs your messy, complicated, gorgeous visions. It needs your stories that don’t fit neatly into boxes. It needs your courage to dream, to disrupt, to insist that we can be more, do more, love more.

“Democracy demands wisdom, Democracy demands vision”—NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] Chair Maria Jackson.

Artists are the core, are the soil.

Today, we gather under the radar, but make no mistake: this is where the ground swells. This is where movements begin. This is where the unseen becomes undeniable. Under the Radar is not just a festival; it is a crucible, a proving ground, a sanctuary for the bold and the brave.

This is where we dare to ask the questions that burn in our chests, to name the truths others fear to utter, to imagine a world that does not yet exist—and then set about creating it.

So let us sit boldly in our place outside of center. Let us honor the audacity of every artist who will take the stage during this festival.

Under the Radar, let’s set this city on fire—the kind that warms, the kind that illuminates, the kind that burns away what no longer serves us.

I want to remind us of the Toni Morrison quote:

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.”

No place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Pick up your pen, pick up your brush, pick up your mic. Let us all get to work.

Our work is not optional, we are necessity.

The artist says, "I see you. I see your cracks. I see the scaffolding holding up your lies. And I have come to tear it down."

The artist—you, me, us—is the original insurgent. The artist is a threat to systems of oppression, to regimes of silence, to the architecture of the status quo. The artist says, "I see you. I see your cracks. I see the scaffolding holding up your lies. And I have come to tear it down."

But let’s be real, this work is not easy: To tell the truth in a time of deception is to court danger. To shine a light in dark places is to risk backlash. To create is to confront the void, to wrestle with the doubt, to be constantly told that what you have to say doesn’t matter—and to keep going anyway. That’s the fire. That’s the faith.

So tonight, I want to remind you of your power. Because the world needs you. It needs your messy, complicated, gorgeous visions. It needs your stories that don’t fit neatly into boxes. It needs your courage to dream, to disrupt, to insist that we can be more, do more, love more.