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See a feminist riff on Death of a Salesman, a best of all Fringes fest, a new Mexican musical and more
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Adventurous audiences know that some of the biggest theatrical thrills are found on NYC's smallest stages. These shows are also great for theatregoers on a budget. In fact, TDF members can see dozens of Off-Off Broadway productions for as little as $11! Not a TDF member? Consider joining our Go Off-Off and Beyond program, which gives you access to discount tickets to indie theatre, music and dance performances for a one-time fee of five bucks.
In terms of COVID-19 safety protocols, rules vary by venue. While we are trying to keep this article up to date, be sure to double-check the protocols before purchasing tickets so you arrive prepared.
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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Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker Street between Mott and Elizabeth Streets in Noho
Begins November 10. Closes November 20. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $15 tickets.
Masks are optional but encouraged.
For the past half century, Encompass New Opera Theatre has developed new musical works for the stage. This November the company is remounting one of its biggest successes: 2011's Angel of the Amazon. The opera is based on the true story of Sister Dorothy Stang, a nun who devoted her life to protecting the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous peoples who called it home. But her environmental activism earned her some powerful enemies in the logging industry, who decided to stop her at all costs. Her tale is both inspiring and tragic.
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New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in the West Village
Begins November 15. Closes December 3. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $12 tickets.
Masks are required.
Alfred Hitchcock fans know exactly who George Kaplan is... or rather, who he isn't. Throughout North by Northwest, Cary Grant's character is constantly mistaken for the imaginary spy who was created as a decoy. French playwright Frédéric Sonntag uses that as a jumping off point for this dizzying comedy thriller exploring the way fiction impacts politics and identity. After being staged in more than a dozen counties in Europe, the NYC-based Bridge Production Group gives the play its New York premiere at New Ohio Theatre with a cast that includes Christina Toth from Orange Is the New Black.
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Urban Stages, 259 West 30th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in Midtown West
Begins November 16. Closes December 4. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $21 tickets.
Masks are optional but encouraged.
Just call them dissing cousins! Eleanor and Alice Roosevelt had a complicated relationship. Born the same year, they endured tragic childhoods and married politicians, though from different parties. Throughout their lives they were rivals and frenemies, and Ellen Abrams' new two-hander delves into all their juicy drama. Off-Broadway vet Mary Bacon plays Alice and for colored girls... Tony winner Trazana Beverley portrays the former First Lady as these cousins meet at eight pivotal moments over the course of their lives.
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Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in the East Village
POSTPONED UNTIL 2023.
Masks are optional but encouraged.
Get ready for some camp! Joel Greenhouse's outrageous parody of '50s exploitation flicks centers on a D-list actress named Renee Flame who commits murder, flees and ends up joining an ancient religious cult whose members transform into alligators when sexually aroused. You read that correctly. Jenne Vath and downtown icon Brian Belovitch (whose memoir Trans Figured: My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man is a must-read), star in this zany romp.
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The Chain Theatre, 312 West 36th between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Midtown West
Runs through November 19. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $12 tickets.
Masks are required.
Despite the title, G.D. Kimble's What Passes for Comedy is a drama exploring racism and anti-Semitism during the golden age of live television. Set behind the scenes of a fictional late-night talk show in 1963, the story centers on a trio of diverse writers who scrawl an incendiary joke on the host's cue card as a prank. When he reads it live on air, the political fallout upends their lives both personally and professionally as they grapple with uncomfortable truths about their collaboration.
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The Tank, 312 West 36th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Midtown West
Runs through November 20. If you're a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $12 tickets.
Broadway is currently hosting a groundbreaking production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman that is well worth seeing. But Off-Off Broadway at The Tank, playwright Barbara Cassidy is reconsidering the story from the perspective of the title character's widow. Beginning on the day her husband Willy commits suicide, Mrs. Loman imagines what this devoted wife does next and how, in some ways, his death frees her. The Tank's artistic director Meghan Finn helms this thought-provoking and feminist riff on an American classic.
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Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street in Soho
Begins November 25. Closes January 8, 2023.
Masks are optional but encouraged.
Although New York City no longer has a Fringe festival (RIP), we do have the annual International Fringe Encore Series thanks to Soho Playhouse. For six weeks, the downtown venue presents 14 cutting-edge shows, all handpicked from Fringe fests in Orlando, Brighton, Edmonton, Hollywood, Edinburgh and Milano. Tantalizing titles include Abortion Weekend, Afghanistan Is Not Funny, The House That F*cks and Sigmund Troy'd.
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The Connelly Theater, 220 East Fourth Street between Avenues A and B in the East Village
Begins November 29. Closes December 10.
Masks are required.
DEAD + ALIVE is a clown show about death. Conceived, co-directed and featuring Richard Saudek, this physical theatre piece is inspired by a Jewish custom that demands a guardian watch the recently deceased to ensure the soul doesn't escape and run wild before burial. Saudek takes this concept and applies it to a pair of folks separated by life and death, as the living one tries to stop the other's corpse from causing chaos.
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La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East 4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue in the East Village
Begins December 1. Closes December 18.
Masks are required.
Underneath the Skin is the brainchild of Obie-winning performance artist John Kelly, who appeared on Broadway in James Joyce's The Dead and is well known for channeling Joni Mitchell. This genre-defying work is a dance-theatre piece about the colorful life of Samuel Steward, a 20th-century gay novelist, tattoo artist, writer of erotic fiction and sexual explorer, who channeled his desires into his art. A cast of four conjure his adventures, including trysts with Valentino and Rock Hudson, friendships with Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, and an unofficial collaboration with Alfred Kinsey.
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The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue near Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Begins December 1. Closes December 18.
Masks are required.
One of NYC's premiere theatre companies dedicated to telling stories by and about women, The Hearth presents the world premiere of Events, an absurdist new play by Bailey Williams about the impossibility of work-life balance. Most of us can't live without working, but do you have a life if all you do is work? Written during lockdown, Events questions a culture that only sees value in productivity and doesn't even pause to acknowledge grief.
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JACK, 20 Putnam Avenue near Downing Street in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Begins December 2. Closes December 18.
Masks are required.
Rising musical theatre composer Jaime Lozano has some impressive fans—Lin-Manuel Miranda recently dubbed him "the next big thing." A cabaret favorite who frequently performs at Joe's Pub, the Latine songwriter explores a horrific real-life phenomenon in his new musical Desaparecidas: the disappearance of hundreds of women and girls in Ciudad Juárez, México. With a book by Georgina Escobar and additional lyrics by director Florencia Cuenca, the show interweaves songs and Mexican folklore with stories of the vanished. Lozano has many other musicals in development so this is your chance to say you saw his work when!
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Gallery Players, 199 14th Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn
Begins December 3. Closes December 18.
Masks are required.
Brooklyn's intrepid Gallery Players revives Peter and the Starcatcher, Rick Elice's Tony-nominated action-adventure play that tells the origin story of Peter Pan, Captain Hook and all the other fantastical characters from J. M. Barrie's classic. Equally heartwarming and hilarious (Black Stache is one of the greatest comedic stage characters of this century), the show playfully explores the depths of greed and despair, and the bonds of friendship and love.
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59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street between Madison and Park Avenues in Midtown East
Begins December 8. Closes December 23.
Masks are required.
A clever reimagining of the first English-language play presented in North American back in 1665, Ye Bear & Ye Cubb is set in a 17th-century Virginia pub as a motley group of amateur actors puts on a show. Inspired by historical documents, this devised piece crashes through the fourth wall as audiences are invited to experience the birth of the American theatre and the court trial it inspired. Oh yes, there was drama on stage and off! Note: There are three "tavern seats" available at each performance that include a beverage and a craft.
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Andrew Block is an Ovation Award-winning director who hails from New Orleans and now works primarily with the vibrant NYC independent theatre community. He also serves as TDF's Manager of Off & Off-Off Broadway Services.
TDF MEMBERS: Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.
Top image: John Kelly, left, in his dance-theatre piece Underneath the Skin, which is running at La MaMa in December. Photo by Ian Douglas.
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