LAST UPDATED: 11/20/2025
Friends always ask me how I see so many plays that they’ve never even heard of. The long answer is, “I get recommendations, pay attention to playwrights whose work I’ve liked in the past and most crucially, I also subscribe to (and skim) many, many individual theater’s newsletters.” The short answer is, “It’s weirdly hard and annoying!” And can be quite expensive. (Good news if you’re under 30, 35 or even 40: Quite a few theaters have great ticket discount programs. Click the following footnote for more info on that.)1
This is a free newsletter, but it’s also an ever-updating landing page and a list of what I’m seeing, as well as what I’d like to see in-theater. I’ll annotate when it feels right: bold means a production seems interesting to me, a star* means I have a ticket, two stars** means I liked it (or, honestly, a trusted friend-of-the-newsletter did) This letter will appear in your inbox when there’s enough worthy of an update. Otherwise, please check back regularly! If you’re looking to see something on stage (and off-Broadway) TODAY, check out Stage Spotlight NYC.
SEEN ANYTHING GOOD LATELY? REPLY TO THIS EMAIL & TELL ME! PLEASE!
currently running (and about to run)
BLUE COWBOY by David Cale (Oct 14 — Nov 22, Bushwick Starr)*
A writer from New York travels to Ketchum, Idaho to work on a film script set in Sun Valley. His plans and life take a wildly unanticipated turn after he has a chance encounter with an elusive ranch hand at the town’s annual “Trailing of the Sheep Festival”.
The Wasp by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Oct 23 — Nov 23, Little Engine Theatre) [EXTENDED]
Heather and Carla haven’t spoken since school. Their lives could not be more different, one outwardly successful, the other struggling to stay afloat. When they meet again, what begins as a friendly reunion spirals into a tense and unsettling encounter, where long-buried secrets surface and dangerous possibilities take flight.
Richard III by William Shakespeare, adapted by Craig Baldwin (Oct 28 — Nov 30, Astor Place Theatre)
Set in 1980s Manhattan, the neon skyline and shadowy backrooms become an epic battleground of identity and power, where a king’s divine right crumbles beneath the weight of human frailty.
Michael Urie does Richard III!
The Burning Caldron of Fiery Fire by Anne Washburn (Oct 23 – Dec 7, Vineyard Theater)
Somewhere in foggy Northern California, an intentional community tries to live off the land and keep an unsteady world at bay. But when one of their own dies unexpectedly, ideals are tested and faith in their independence is rocked.
Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play is an absolute classic and if you ever get a chance to see it performed, you should.
Practice by Nazareth Hassan (Oct 30 — Dec 7, Playwrights Horizons)*
Asa Leon is the charismatic avant-garde auteur of the moment. For their next highly-anticipated performance piece, they assemble a company of actors to live together in an old Brooklyn church and make a play about themselves.
Das Rauschgift by Travis Amiel, Cosimo Pori, Nina Lucia Rodriguez, and Arzu Salman (Dec 4 – 21, Box of Moonlight)*
The never-ending battle of trying to have a good time is warped within a prism of problems as Travis, Cosimo, and Arzu attempt to convince their friend Nina to hit the town and indulge. Along the way, the gang approaches an intersection of conflicting desires: Is it truly possible to release your inhibitions and not lose control? To follow the herd and still feel like an individual? Can one even enjoy an ice cream sundae without extra hot fudge?
Messy White Gays by Drew Droege (Oct 6 — Jan 11, The Duke on 42nd Street)
It’s Sunday morning in Hell’s Kitchen. Brecken and Caden have just murdered their boyfriend and stuffed his body into a Jonathan Adler credenza. Unfortunately, they’ve also invited friends over for brunch.
Drew Droege’s one man show, Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, was one of my favorites when it played at Barrow Street in 2016 — and his new show has Aaron Jackson & James Cusati-Moyer.
Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill (Nov 25 — Feb 1, St. Ann’s Warehouse)*
A weary former prostitute seeks out her estranged sea captain father, hoping to find forgiveness from him, while hiding her past from a stoker she loves in Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
Michelle Williams! Directed by her husband (Tony Award winner) Thomas Kail! Eugene O’Neil! A show that won the Pulitzer in… 1922!
DIRT by Sour Milk (Jan 22 — Feb 16, 2026, The Tank)
An interactive theatre experience where audiences rebuild New York after the East River vanishes—constructing an imagined neighborhood atop fifteen pounds of pudding.
festivals & series
Powerhouse International (Sept 25 – Dec 13, Powerhouse Arts)*
Former BAM artistic director David Binder curates this new festival in a former power plant features more than a dozen cutting-edge works from around the world.
Recs: Good Sex by Dead Centre with Emilie Pine*, Chapter I: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella by Carolina Bianchi y Cara de Cavalo*.
Crossing The Line (Sept 9 — Nov 22, various)*
This year’s Crossing The Line festival highlights new collisions and experiments in audience and form, inviting art lovers to experience boundary-breaking visual art, music, film, dance, and theater all across New York City.
Recs: I saw Tiago Rodrigues’ By Heart last year at BAM, and it was great; LACRIMA @ BAM & (again!) The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella @ Powerhouse.
Under the Radar Festival (Jan 7 — 25, various)
One of my favorite yearly festivals, there’s always something great going on somewhere in the city for UTR. Do not miss it.
Recs: I already have tickets for Tina Satter’s PETRA (I loved Half Straddle’s Is This a Room from 2019), and the 12(!) hour 12 Last Songs at LaMaMa. I plan to grab one for Elevator Repair Shop’s ULYSSES at The Public (their 6+ hour GATZ was highlight of last year for me.) I liked The Ford/Hill Project when I saw it’s last run at The Public! I’d also check out The Visitors and Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me.
The Exponential Festival (Jan 5 — Feb 8, various)
A month-long January festival dedicated to New York City-based emerging artists working in experimental performance. Recs: TK!
theater over $50 & probably worth it (and sometimes there’s a discount if you’re under 40, so check the fine print!)
ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS by Heather Christian (Sept 30 — Nov 23, Signature Theatre)**2
Composer Heather Christian imbues the classical oratorio with blues, gospel, jazz and soul. The result is an in-the-round fusion of music and theater, featuring eighteen virtuosic singers and instrumentalists.
I saw this right before it shut down for COVID reasons and I plan to see it again. As well as anything Christian ever does — I will definitely see Terce when it comes back early next year after a too-short run last year. And Christian just won a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant! More in the New Yorker.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett (Oct 22 – Nov 23, Irish Arts Center)*
In their 50th anniversary year, the celebrated Irish theatre company Druid return to New York with a masterpiece from the Irish theatrical canon.
Kyoto by Joe Murphy (Oct 8 — Nov 30, Lincoln Center Theater)
Saving the Earth is a filthy business. Welcome to the Kyoto Conference Centre, December 11, 1997. The nations of the world are in deadlock. Time is running out and a climate change agreement feels a world away. The greatest obstacle: American oil lobbyist and master strategist, Don Pearlman…
Queens by Martyna Majok (Oct 10 — Nov 31, MTC)*
In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive.
Anna Chlumsky, Marin Ireland, Julia Lester (who was fab in All Nighter), in a play by Martyna Majok (who also wrote 2018 Pulitzer winner, Cost of Living.)
Meet the Cartozians by Talene Monahon (Oct 29 — Dec 7, Second Stage)
This bold, witty new play follows two sets of Armenian Americans: one man fighting for legal recognition in the 1920s, while a century later, his descendant fights for followers and a competent glam team. A wildly imaginative and deeply compelling story of culture and heritage, Meet the Cartozians asks who gets to belong — and at what cost?
Directed by David Cromer, who just did George Clooney’s Goodnight and Good Luck, as well as Dead Outlaw & the incredible 2-year run of Our Town in 2009. And Will Brill! Tony winner for Stereophonic!
Are The Bennett Girls OK? by Emily Breeze (Oct 21 — Dec 21, West End Theater)* [EXTENDED]
Bedlam’s sharply irreverent production of Emily Breeze’s comedy, a riff on Pride and Prejudice, has period dress, contemporary vernacular and a magnetic Mrs. Bennet.
NYT Critics’ Pick! brought to you by NYC-based theater group, Bedlam.
This World of Tomorrow by Tom Hanks and James Glossman (Oct 30 — Dec 21, The Shed)
It’s the end of the 21st-century and Bert Allenberry is longing for the past. When Bert embarks on a time-traveling quest for true love, he returns—again, and again, and again—to one special day at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York.
Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph (Nov 7 - Dec 28, Lucille Lortel Theatre)*
Gruesome Playground Injuries charts the magnetic connection between two childhood friends drawn together through pain, accidents, and unseen wounds of the heart.
Nicholas Braun (that guy from Succession) and Kara Young (who won this year’s Best Actress Tony for her incredible work in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose in a play written by Rajiv, who won 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.
Tartuffe by Molière, in a new version by Lucas Hnath (Nov 28 — Jan 11, 2026, New York Theatre Workshop)*
A razor-sharp reinvention of Molière’s iconoclastic comedy in a mad-dash production full of ferocious wit, outrageous design, and downright buffoonery.
Stars aside (Matthew Broderick, Bianca Del Rio, David Cross,), this show is adapted by Lucas Hnath (who wrote the incredible Dana H. and The Thin Place) and directed by Sarah Benson (who directed Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer-winning Fairview.) I also love Ikechukwu Ufomadu (Amusements) & Ryan J. Haddad (Dark Disabled Stories).
The Honey Trap by Leo McGann (Sept 17 – Feb 15, 2026, Irish Rep)
Belfast, 1979. At the height of the Troubles, two off-duty British soldiers think they’ve hit it off with two local girls at a unionist pub on the city’s outskirts. But what begins as a night of flirtation and playful sparring soon turns dark. Decades later, as one of the soldiers recounts the events for an American oral history project, long-buried memories resurface, drawing him back to Belfast in search of answers and revenge.
What We Did Before Our Moth Days by Wallace Shawn (Feb 4 — Mar 5, Greenwich House Theater)*
Set in an urban world of intelligent and somewhat gentle middle-class people, a father, mother, son, and the long-time mistress of the father tell the intimate story of their lives.
John Early!!! Maria Dizzia!!! Hope Davis!!! A play by Wallace Shawn!!! YES!!!!
Quite a few theaters have “Under 30”, “Under 35” or “Under 40”! programs OR student discounts. Check for them when you’re buying tickets — for example, Manhattan Theatre Club’s 30 Under 35, HIPTIX at Roundabout (if you’re under 40!), Lincoln Center Theater’s LincTix for Under 35s, Second Stage Theatre’s $30 Under 30, Irish Rep’s GreenSeats for Under 35s, Playwrights Horizons’ 30 & Under Membership, Vineyard Theater’s 40 Under 40 (where for $40 (once) you can get any ticket to any show for $20), and New York City Center’s “Access Club” just extended their age limit from 35 to 40(!) — according to this TikToker. Other ways to get cheaper tickets: sign up for the theater’s newsletter (they’ll often send out codes for discounts) or check TodayTix.
USE CODE 26WMAT to get 35% off tickets for these performances only:
Wednesday, November 12, and 19 at 2PM.