Cool Things To Do In New York City This Weekend: Under The Radar Festival & Monet’s Garden!

By The DivaGals | January 18, 2023 | Travel

Happy Hump Day, which means it’s time to start making plans for the weekend! There’s always so much to do in New York City, it can be hard to focus your attention. Luckily, we DivaGals are always on the lookout for fun ways to fill your time. Here are our cool things to do in New York City this weekend.

Under The Radar 2023 Festival at the Public Theater

We’re all for avant-garde, experimental art, and the Public Theater offers plenty with its 18th annual, back-in-person Under the Radar festival that gives a platform to emerging and experienced artists. We suggest checking out The Case for American Exceptionalism by a Lady Muz by comedian Negin Farsad, who shares with us what her show is about. “It was born out of a several years realization that I am that one optimistic Muslim friend that utterly and thoroughly believes in the American promise … I’m an Iranian-American Muz with a black husband, a mixed baby, and a Pomeranian from a place called Rancho Cucamonga so our very family formation touches multiple points on the globe and the only home that really makes sense is America. So I make that case, using PowerPoint, jokes about dating, influencers, gun ranges, King Kong, skinny dudes, Thanksgiving, peanut brittle, and dozens of points in between. It’s standup comedy with visual stimulation AND patriotism!” You can also see Kaneza Schaal’s KLII, which exorcises the ghost of King Leopold II, one the worst and most brutal colonizers of the Congolese people in the 1800s; Queens of Sheba that explores colorism; and seven methods of killing kylie jenner, exploring the cultural appropriation of Black culture and identity. Under The Radar 2023 runs at the Public Theater in New York City through January 22.

Monet’s Garden – The Immersive Experience

Sometimes you want to sound fancy, and knowing a thing or two about impressionist art Claude Monet would certainly be a way. This interactive experience allows you to become one with the art, through paintings that move, ebb and flow; paintings have become full-scale garden settings and opportunities to make your own Monet-inspired floral motif. While there I enjoy an intimate pianist performance by #WBWD Stephan Moccio who wrote “Earned It,” performed by The Weeknd in Fifty Shades of Grey. Allow yourself to be enveloped by Monet’s Garden.

photo credit: Negin Farsad by Ryan Lash. Queens of Sheba by Ali Wright. Delaina Dixon @ Monet’s Garden by Jay Dref.