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Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood, who are starring in a limited engagement of Bug on Broadway starting this month. Photo by Lily Cummings.
Catch Carrie Coon, Jon Stewart, Kathleen Chalfant, John Gallagher Jr. and others in new shows
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December brings a cornucopia of holiday performances. But if you're already feeling all bah humbug, here are 12 promising productions starting this month that have nothing to do with the season. Highlights include Carrie Coon in an acclaimed revival of Bug, a stary anniversary reading of The Laramie Project, a play about the woman who invented the first home pregnancy test and a rotating cast of cutups (Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano!) in All Out: Comedy About Ambition. Be sure to browse the listings in TDF's Show Finder to see what else is playing this month. And remember, most of our November picks are still running!
If you're a TDF member, log in to your account daily to see what we're selling as ticket inventory changes frequently.
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Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets on the Upper East Side
Begins December 2. Closes December 14.
Composer Philip Venables and writer-director Ted Huffman are behind this genre-and-gender-bending cabaret inspired by Larry Mitchell's cheekily titled 1977 book of fables that reimagines world history through an irreverent queer lens. Joyful in its radical politics, this fantasia fuses theatre, movement and many styles of song to conjure a community of rebels seeking liberation through the ages.
59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street between Madison and Park Avenues in Midtown East
Begins December 3. Closes December 20.
Three female retirees (downtown darlings Mia Katigbak, Jan Leslie Harding and Petronia Paley) reenact scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire as they grapple with their pasts and the challenges of their futures in Peggy Stafford's amusingly clear-eyed meditation on aging. The Tank's celebrated artistic director Meghan Finn helms this intriguing new play, which costars the always awesome Pete Simpson, so memorable as the aloof object of desire in Infinite Life.
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HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue at Dominick Street in Soho
Previews begin December 4. Opens December 5. Closes December 14. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.
Neuro-inclusive theatre company EPIC Players presents the world premiere of BUM BUM, a laugh-out-loud farce by Autistic playwright Dave Osmundsen set during a disorganized live telethon as three Autistic performers are pressured to present sanitized versions of themselves and their acts. When they rebel, chaos and comedy ensue. An all-too-rare instance of autistic representation onstage and behind the scenes.
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Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Avenue and MacDougal Street in the West Village
Begins December 4. Closes December 6. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.
An impressive cast, including Kathleen Chalfant, John Gallagher Jr., Kal Penn, Conrad Ricamora and Samira Wiley, star in the 25th anniversary concert reading of The Laramie Project, Moisés Kaufman's landmark docudrama about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student. Directed by Kaufman and based on extensive interviews, this groundbreaking play features a cast of eight channeling hundreds of individuals impacted by this shocking and callous act, which sparked a national movement against LGBTQ+ violence.
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Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street between Rivington and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side
Begins December 4. Closes December 20.
Busy TV actor Amy Hargreaves (Homeland, 13 Reasons Why) headlines Amina Henry's road trip dramedy about a worried mom who goads her depressed adult children into a cross-country adventure to the Grand Canyon. She hopes to bring them closer together, but impulsive visits to exes and long-held secrets make for a bumpy ride. An empathetic, absurdist and amusing look at an imperfect family co-presented by Dixon Place and That Old Hillside.
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La MaMa's The Downstairs, 66 East 4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue in the East Village
Begins December 5. Closes December 21.
Alice Eve Cohen's Oklahoma Samovar was inspired by her own family history, as a young woman in the 1980s tries to figure out why her late mother wants her ashes spread on a farm in a faraway and unfamiliar town. Turns out their Latvian ancestors fled the Russian Army and ended up as the sole Jews in the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889. Immigration, assimilation, generational trauma and the connection of mothers and daughters are all explored in this poignant drama.
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The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue near Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Begins December 5. Closes December 21.
Playwright-performer Rawya El Chab shares her harrowing tale of fleeing the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 with her family. Through storytelling, shadow puppets and projections, she conjures her journey through personal recollections and historical context. The second installment of her trilogy about late-20th-century Lebanon, Crossing the River is directed by Jesse Freedman.
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AMT Theater, 354 West 45th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Midtown West
Previews begin December 6. Opens December 14. Closes January 18, 2026. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.
Tony nominee Caitlin Kinnunen (The Prom) portrays Margaret Crane, the inventor of the first home pregnancy test, in Jennifer Blackmer's Predictor about her absurd struggle to bring the game changer to market—it took a decade! Alex Keegan directs this darkly comic play about a woman's right to know whether she has to choose.
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Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues
Begins December 12. Closes March 8, 2026.
The same team behind last season's All In: Comedy About Love reunite for All Out: Comedy About Ambition. Like the previous show, this is essentially starry readings of humorous stories by Simon Rich, produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels and directed by Alex Timbers. The rotating cast includes Jon Stewart (December 12-December 21), Wayne Brady (December 29-January 18), Cecily Strong (December 29–January 18), Heidi Gardner (January 20-February 15), Sarah Silverman (January 20–February 15), Ray Romano (February 17-March 8) and many other comedic icons. The soul-pop band Lawrence, featuring Just in Time Tony nominee Gracie Lawrence, provides live music.
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Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue
Previews begin December 17. Opens January 8, 2026. Closes February 8, 2026.
A production that originated at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company pre-pandemic, this mounting of Tracy Letts' 30-year-old psychological thriller Bug stars his wife, the in-demand Carrie Coon (The White Lotus, The Gilded Age) and Namir Smallwood as a couple holed up in an Oklahoma motel room who descend into paranoia and madness. Tony winner David Cromer (The Band's Visit; Good Night, and Good Luck) directs the production for Manhattan Theatre Club.
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Greenwich House Theater, 27 Barrow Street near Seventh Avenue South in the West Village
Previews begin December 16. Opens December 18. Closes January 17, 2026. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.
If you've seen Peter Weir's haunting 1975 mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock or read Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel on which it's based, you may be surprised to hear it's been adapted into a musical. When three teenage girls go missing on a class trip in the wilds of Australia on Valentine's Day 1900, it throws their community into chaos. It's challenging material to be sure, examining the constraints of gender roles and violence against women. But this show, with a book and lyrics by Hilary Bell and music by Greta Gertler Gold, features an impressive cast led by Real Women Have Curves' Tatianna Córdoba, and follows in the footsteps of other Off-Broadway musicals (Spring Awakening comes to mind) willing to tackle dark themes.
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Wild Project, 195 East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B in the East Village
Begins December 17. Closes January 11, 2026.
Four tales by lauded Yiddish poet and Holocaust survivor Abraham Sutzkever come to life in Night Stories, which is performed in Yiddish with English supertitles. All touch on the horrors of what he and six million other Jews went through as ghosts from that genocide demand to be heard. Despite the awfulness, the evening ends on a hopeful note with the true story Portrait in Blue Sweater about a lost painting of Sutzkever by a murdered artist that magically reappears.
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Raven Snook is the Editor of TDF Stages. Follow her on Facebook at @Raven.Snook. Follow TDF on Facebook at @TDFNYC.
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