Opinionist: Under the Radar Festival

Clocking in at two and a half hours, Architecting is over twice as long as the average production at Under the Radar, the internationally-sourced theater festival curated by Mark Russell, former artistic director of PS 122. The TEAM, an NYC-based company who created Architecting, is going for an epic "road tripping requiem for modern America," with a loose narrative about a tasteless Hollywood remake of Gone With the Wind produced in New Orleans, drawing parallels between post-Katrina squalor and post-Civil War devastation. There are compelling ideas manifest in The TEAM's execution, and the performers are smart, diligent practitioners of the Experimental Theater Wing/Wooster Group aesthetic, but after a while the enterprise begins to sag, and the large scale video projection seems de rigueur, not essential. Architecting's blueprints have been finalized, but one senses a volatile 90 minute gem waiting to be coaxed out of these ambitious designs. (Photo courtesy Eamonn McGoldrick.)