Radio Downtown: Radical '70s Artists Live on Air

Show Info

Created and directed by Steve Cosson 

Made from archival interviews from WNYC’s "Arts Forum," a 1970s radically open format radio show about avant garde artists, this world premiere enlists an experimental storytelling method in homage to its downtown subjects. The result is a hilariously naturalistic, wholly live experience. 

The cast of Radio Downtown channels some of the era’s most audacious visionaries like Harry Smith, Yvonne Rainer, and Kenneth Anger using their words verbatim with arresting images and films made by these artists. The resulting show invites us to see a future as imagined by these '70s trailblazers—an erasure of the line between art & audience; a cultural community that embraces political activism; and an abundant, wild, and fully democratic creative life for America.