Little Island Welcomes an Ambitious Sophomore Season

New York Times

02-04-2025

Little Island, the floating park atop a collection of funnel-like columns in the Hudson River, will welcome a flurry of programming to its theaters with no walls this summer, the second season of programming funded by Barry Diller and his family foundation.
Filling its three open-air performance spaces — the Amph, the Glade and the Playground — Little Island will present 110 live performances in its 18-week season. All for $25 or less.
At a moment when the performing arts industry is shrinking,' said Zack Winokur, Little Island's producing artistic director, 'particularly when it comes to new work, we're doing more.'
This season, Winokur added, he's 'thinking of the whole island as a canvas.'
The premieres include a new song cycle written and performed by Whitney White, 'The Case of the Stranger'(June 25-56), which uses Shakespeare as a lens to explore themes of immigration; and a new play by the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Suzan-Lori Parks, 'The Tune Up' (July 30-Aug. 3).
The season opens with the world premiere of Dan Schlosberg's 'The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar's Opera for a Grifter's City' (May 29-June 15), an adaptation of John Gay's comic 'The Beggar's Opera' (1728).
The lineup will also feature a new full-length work by the choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith, 'Seven Scenes' (Aug. 22-28), with a score composed and performed live by Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee of Ringdown; a new song cycle, 'The Lights,' by Matthew Aucoin, set to poetry by Ben Lerner (Aug. 2-3); a park takeover and live radio show from Radiolab (Aug. 6-7); and, on Aug. 10, a tribute night to the composer Arthur Russell, a marathon evening of free music and performance throughout the park, with performances by Laurie Anderson, Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and Martha Wainwright, among others.
Created and performed by more than 300 artists, the season will spotlight a new generation of directors, including Shayok Misha Chowdhury, who will direct the first New York production in more than 20 years of Lee Breuer's 'The Gospel at Colonus,' based on the Oedipus plays by Sophocles and told here in gospel (July 8-26); Eric Ting, who will direct Charles Ludlam's play 'Galas,' starring the opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo as a character based on the soprano Maria Callas (Sept. 6-28); and Rachel Chavkin, who will direct 'Eugene Onegin,' a bluegrass adaptation of Tchaikovsky's opera (July 30-31).
'People who, to me, represent a major part of my generation's most important and exciting theater makers across all disciplines are converging in one season in this place,' Winokur said.
Other highlights include the Grammy-winner Meshell Ndegeocello's 'No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin' (June 21-25), a theatricalized adaptation of her album, which is a tribute to Baldwin's legacy during the centenary of his birth; and musical nights with the painter Amy Sherald (June 20-21), who will host her favorite performers. (It will run alongside her exhibition at the Whitney.)
In addition, party seekers and passers-by can pop into a dance party — there will be eight, in August and September — in the Playground or the Glade hosted by the art and music nightlife collective Papi Juice. Live DJs and surprise performers will entertain as the sun sets into the water.
'People go there to enjoy green space, as we very often can't in the city,' Winokur said. 'And when performances are happening, the park is electric.'