ANT Fest is Ars Nova's annual festival of All New Talent showcasing new work from New York’s most adventurous emerging artists. Every summer, Ars Nova throws open their doors to the next wave of pioneering theater, comedy, music and hybrid theater-makers who fill the stage with their most dynamic ideas.
ANT Fest 2025 includes:
The Mushroom Kingdom of Ezili
Charlene Jean, Regi Angelou, Star Mitchell, Dria Brown
The Mud People live in a polyamorous idyll in the Mushroom Kingdom until a struggling artist inadvertently traps them in his imagination one day while foraging for mushrooms. Two femmes from the polycule rediscover their love, transform the artist’s mind from a prison into a spring of life and invite him into the Kingdom he once exploited. Enter the mind altering experience of this ecologically vibrant and pleasure-centered world that focuses on Black, Queer and Femme joy.
Mudhole
Kerry Coddett, Mahayla Laurence
Top of her class and full of potential, teenage Kerry Coddett can’t quite find her social footing between the sadistic teachers and bad influences in the public and private schools of New York City. Be the head of the class as she recounts the story of a precocious but mischievous student from Canarsie, Brooklyn falling in and out of love with school, taking a turn to delinquency, and overcoming the odds to make it through adolescence and the New York secondary school system.
GOLEMATRIARK
Eli Berman, Stuart B Meyers
Inspired by the Jewish myth of the golem, GOLEMATRIARK reimagines the figure of the creator not as a distant patriarch but as a mother: expansive, intuitive and generative. Blurring the boundaries between body and object, machine and spirit and sound and speech, this ritualistic sound-art experience imagines a redefining of collective power.
WATCHDOG
Mack Brown, Murphy Taylor Smith, Emerson Mae Smith
Two identical women—unrelated and unknown to each other—meet by chance. As their lives circle each other (and the drain), memories mutate, identities blur and co-dependency turns to cross-contamination. Written by and starring Emerson and Murphy Smith, identical twin transgender women, get ready for a razor-sharp black comedy and a psychological thriller—like Single White Female meets Persona with a sprinkling of Fiona Apple.
Small Dragon on Noah's Ark
Piper Hill
On this Ark—a luxury cruise version of the biblical original—there’s a casino, a puppet propaganda show, a gay unicorn couple on the brink of divorce and at the very back of the boarding line: a small dragon who isn’t supposed to exist. Adapted from the musical-RPG-video game Small Dragon, welcome to the live, interactive video-game-musical about memory, survival and the strange rituals of proving yourself real.
Beautiful Princess Disorder
Kathy Ng
Triangle Person is a “human body” with a triangle “head” who wears a navy-blue no-nonsense swimsuit and lives in a patch of sky in the parking lot just outside of heaven with roommates Mother Teresa and Tilikum the bull orca. A questionnaire in an angel language may just determine if Triangle Person will be granted admission to everlasting bliss.
And Then The Rodeo Burned Down
Xhloe Rice, Natasha Roland
The Rodeo is the best place in the world. Why would someone burn it down? Anyone would be lucky to work there, especially one who’s perfectly content with being a rodeo clown. They wouldn’t do a thing like that. Saddle up for an alleged tale of arson about two clowns desperately trying to afford the rodeo in this absurdist Western send up of the American Dream.
AREA D
LOUR
A scrappy Palestinian pop band enters Eurovision to take the world stage—if they can survive the chaos, politics and each other, first. Experience a raw and electrifying Arab pop concert that grapples with the immense responsibility of giving voice to a people whose stories are not often heard.
Me & My Friends, We Have So Much Fun
kanishk pandey, Milo Tucker-Meyer, Lauren Serafica, Katie Walenta
You've finally come home from a long day at work. You're ready to do your favorite thing in the world: watch Family Guy clip compilations and forget you exist. But your goddamn roommate Rye has to interrupt at the last minute to read you some of his tweets. Which can't be that bad, right? It's not like there's anything dangerous about tweets.
Showgasm. ANTF Edition
Brittany Carney
Showgasm. is Ars Nova’s untamed recurring variety-show-meets party, serving up comedy to burlesque and everything (and anything) in between. Hosted by comedian Brittany Carney, you can expect to meet the who’s-who of the weird and wonderful. Joining Carney will be comedian Winston Hodges among others.
crabby
Madi Fabber, Em Hausmann
In a coastal Florida city that will be underwater in 50 years, Arden joins a carcinization support group for people seeking to evolve into crabs for financial compensation. Dive into an exploration of what human parts of us capitalism demands we give up in order to be the most useful version of ourselves.
THIS BUG IS GAY
Genevieve Simon, Katherine Wilkinson
Can you translate your body? Do you secretly know you’re the least favorite child? Why do some words taste so good? How horny was Franz Kafka? What joy can we find by releasing the need to be understood? How many blueberries can you fit in your mouth at once? Performed in German, join this reimagined queer clown extravaganza version of Kakfa’s The Metamorphosis.
The Monkeypox Gospel
Ngofeen Mputubwele, Alex Hare
In Ngofeen Mputubwele’s intimate epidemic tell-all, which combines behind-the-scenes reporting, real audio interviews and tangential flights of fantasy—we dive into theology, opera and language. Adapted from his podcast and from reporting Ngofeen conducted for The New Yorker, we’re asked to testify to the truth about viruses—and perhaps reveal the crises we ignore.
The Goddamn Tooney Lunes
Rat Queen Theatre Company (Molly Bicks, Carsen Joenk)
The Goddamn Tooney Lunes was a group of geeky teen misfits who started a punk band to channel their high school angst, raging hormones and raucous personalities. Ten years later, a tragedy reunites the band for one more glorious night of mosh pits, stick n’ pokes and debauchery. Get tickets to the reunion concert that reckons with the disturbing realities of the band's seemingly glamorous teen years.
Uncle John and the Demon of the Wood
Dalia Ashurina, Go Home
Led by Uncle John and his niece Sonya, a band of musicians attempt a ritual to contact the spirit of their sister and mother through song. The sound of wind rattles the cabin walls and shakes the door handles. There are rumors of a demon in the woods beyond. Who or what is the ghost that haunts this forest? A song cycle of folk music performed by the band Go Home, a theatricalized concert and a ritual seance based on the characters and narrative of Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya.
