Rosenthal provides a critical history and analysis of the connections between mainstream and experimental theatre in New York, from the 1960s to 2020, with a focus on Broadway. She argues that Broadway and mainstream theatre underwent multiple and significant transformations during the 1960s and in the decades that followed. Rosenthal analyzes the work of playwrights, directors, composers, choreographers, and designers who made art both downtown in experimental theatres and uptown on Broadway. The concept of the “mainstream experimental” is used as a descriptor for Broadway throughout the following half century, as commercial theatre continued to push and shape US society and culture at large. Alongside artists, pathbreaking producers off and on Broadway are the focus of this chapter, along with the prominence of ensemble-based musicals and dramatic works and the success of solo performances on Broadway. The contributions and legacies of LGBTQ artists such as Tony Kushner, Larry Kramer, and Lisa Kron, and Black artists including August Wilson, George C. Wolfe, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith, and Jeremy O. Harris, are central to Rosenthal’s argument and critique.

The Under the Radar festival is the result of the politics of a time and place that were reset by 9/11. That is when the USA finally learned that it is not invulnerable at home and that its alliances in art, culture, science, and industry are fundamental to its well-being. Situated at Astor Place, a neighbourhood at the crossroad between New York’s East and West Village, Under the Radar is part of a long history of a place that maps part of the story of American immigration, architecture, urban decay and renewal, the economy, and theatre. The festival pivoted away from American exceptionalism towards the interdependence of the neo-liberal economy by accentuating transnationalism in the context of globalization. Greenwich Village’s intellectual and artistic vibrancy has a history of being in conversation with ideas and experimentation originating in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Under the Radar draws upon and adds to this legacy of place through its presentation of work from all over the world. Diversity at Under the Radar signifies ‘this is us’, not in the sense of either multiculturalism or sameness, but of an inquiry of ideas that shapes our shared human destiny.