LAST UPDATED: 1/1/2025
Friends always ask me how I see so manyy 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 EXPENSIVE. (But good news if you’re under 30, 35 or even 40: Quite a few theaters have great ticket discount programs.)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: 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)
Under the Radar Festival: January 4 — 19, 2025, Various*****
New York City’s premier annual festival of experimental theater, featuring cutting-edge performances from around the world and across the U.S.
Shows of interest: Blind Runner (Jan 4 — 25, 2025 @ St Ann’s), Cuckoo by Jaha Koo (Jan 16 — 18, 2025), Runway by Christiana Kosiari (Jan 10 — 14, 2025), Rich With History and other stuff you say at a haunted house by Mabou Mines (Jan 8 —16)
A Guide for the Homesick by Ken Urban (Dec 6 — Jan 12, 2025, DR2 Theatre)
Two strangers meet in a shabby Amsterdam hotel room. Over the course of 80 intense minutes, Teddy and Jeremy explore the complex nuances of guilt and fear, love and desire.
Seagull Fucker by Eli Rarey (Jan 17 — 19, 2025, LaMaMa)
Moscow, 2022. Colliding with the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, a theater director’s staging of The Seagull is irrevocably compromised… but that’s just the beginning.
Symphony of Rats by Richard Foreman (Jan 7 — 25, The Performing Garage)
In Symphony of Rats, a President of the United States is receiving messages by means other than the known senses, and he doesn't know whether to trust them or not.
Nina by Forrest Malloy (Jan 23 – Feb 9, 2025, TheaterLab)
As final performances of Chekhov’s The Seagull loom, themes of love, art, and unfulfilled potential echo onstage and off. Nina is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes look at the always high-stakes, often ridiculous environment of actor training, illuminating the tensions, intimacy, and even cruelty that define the making of great art and the strongest of female friendships.
The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison (Jan 11 — Feb 23, Vineyard Theatre)*
At the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, the curators are fiercely committed to bringing a lost civilization to life again: What were humans really like? What did they wear, what did they eat, how did they die out?
SAFE HOUSE by Enda Walsh and Anna Mullarkey (Feb 15 — Mar 2, 2025, Irish Arts Center)*
In an outdoor handball alley in the Irish countryside—amongst rubbish and debris—a young woman, Grace, is living alone. Through song, music, recorded voice, and film, we’re outside looking at Grace—and then we’re inside her fractured thoughts, trying to make some sense of it all.
Grangeville by Samuel D. Hunter (Feb 4 — March 16, 2025, Signature Theatre)*
Across a void of thousands of miles and oceans of hurt, two half-brothers tentatively reconnect over the care of their ailing mother. Grangeville is a new play about the fallibility of memory, the stories we tell to make sense of our suffering, and the complexity of forgiveness.
festivals & series
BAM Next Wave Festival: Sep 17 —Jan 19, 2025, Various**
Next Wave is where well-known visionaries and trailblazing rebels unleash their groundbreaking creativity onto the world.
Shows of interest: Gaviota by Guillermo Cacace (Nov 13 — 23).
PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL: January 9 — 19, 2025, Various
The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and is a model now emulated around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking.
Shows of interest: EAT THE DOCUMENT by Dana Spiotta (Jan 9 — 12, 2025), BLACK LODGE by David Little & Anne Waldman (Jan 11 — 12, 2025).
The Exponential Festival: January 2025, Various
The participants in this multi-artist, multi-venue festival are committed to ecstatic creativity in the face of commercialism. Exponential is driven by inclusiveness and a diversity of artists, forms, and ideas coupled with utopian resource-sharing, mentoring and the championing of risky, rigorous work in eclectic fields.
theater over $50 & probably worth it
The Dead, 1904 based on the novella by James Joyce; adapted by Paul Muldoon & Jean Hanff Korelitz (Dec 3 — Jan 5, Irish Rep)
The Dead, 1904 is an adaptation of James Joyce’s novella. 57 audience members act as guests in attendance at the Morkans’ holiday party; as they move from room to room, they observe character interactions, enjoy music and dance, and are served a meal inspired by the menu in the novella. The production takes place in an authentic Victorian mansion, perfectly evoking the atmosphere of the story.
On The Evolutionary Function of Shame by D.A. Mindell (Feb 12 – Mar 9, 2025, Second Stage Theater)
In the beginning, two people got kicked out of a garden for eating fruit. Many years later, Adam—a transgender man expecting a child—meets with his twin sister, Eve, a pioneering scientist. She offers her brother prenatal services from her cutting-edge practice. But what exactly does that entail? And does Adam even want Eve’s help?
SUMO by Lisa Sanaye Dring (Feb 20 - Mar 23, 2025, The Public Theater)
Akio arrives as an angry, ambitious 18-year-old with a lot to learn. Expecting validation, dominance, and fame, and desperate to move up the ranks, he slams headlong into his fellow wrestlers. With sponsorship money at stake, their bodies on the line, and their futures at risk, the wrestlers struggle to carve themselves—and one another—into the men they dream of being.
Deep Blue Sound by Abe Koogler (Feb 25 — Mar 29, 2025, The Public)*2
On an island in the Pacific Northwest, the community gathers to address the disappearance of the local orca pod. Friendships fray, tumors grow, new love blooms, wood is chopped, poems are written. The seasons change. Will the whales ever return?
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (Feb 28 — Apr 6, 2025, BAM)*
In the sweltering heat of New Orleans summer, a woman's grip on the world begins to slip. When Blanche arrives at her sister Stella's doorstep, desperate and out of options, her complicated past ignites a smoldering tension within the walls of the stifling apartment.
We Had a World by Joshua Harmon (Feb 25 — Apr 13, MTC)
A dying woman calls her grandson and asks him to write a play about their family. “But I want you to promise me something,” she says. “Make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible."
All Nighter by Natalie Margolin (Feb 24 — May 17, MCC Theatre Space)*
It’s finals week at a small liberal arts college in rural Pennsylvania. A tight-knit group of roommates pull one last all-nighter to complete their final assignments. Holed up in an old ballroom, the hours pass, the pressure mounts, the Adderall flows, and the truths that have always bound this group together are put to the test. What will be left when the sun rises?
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.
Get tickets (for now) for $45 (no fees!) with code CTFAN25.