Cheap theater: Where to enjoy affordable shows in NYC

The civic-minded Oskar Eustis is artistic director of this local institution dedicated to the work of new American playwrights but also known for its Shakespeare productions (Shakespeare in the Park). The building, an Astor Place landmark, has five stages, plays host to the annual Under the Radar festival, nurtures productions in its Lab series and is also home to the Joe’s Pub music venue.

The Tank, an adventurous multimedia performing-arts collaborative and talent incubator, spent years wandering from venue to venue, including a long stint in a small upstairs space on 46th Street. In 2017, it moved into the Midtown digs formerly occupied by Abingdon Theatre Company. Its two main spaces are the 98-seat June Havoc Theater and the 56-seat Dorothy Strelsin Theater. Meghan Finn is the company's longtime artistic director.

After a recent refurbishment, this downtown stalwart is now one of the most comfortable experimental spaces, what with its cozy lobby café (1 Dominick) and relatively impressive multimedia capacity. The upstairs space—long, wide and low—has played host to recent smashes like Taylor Mac’s epic The Lily’s Revenge, while the downstairs 70-seat black box sees new works by everyone from Karinne Keithley to Tina Satter. HERE’s strength lies in its come-one-come-all attitude, its absurdly generous grant and commissioning programs, and a genuine warmth that is largely thanks to the venue’s doyenne and founder, Kristin Marting, and the community of artists who call HERE a second home.

The adventurous theatergoer’s alternative to BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse offers an eclectic lineup of theater and music; recent shows have included high-level work by the Wooster Group and National Theatre of Scotland. In 2015 it moved to the impressive Tobacco Warehouse, built in the 1870s as an inspection center for tobacco and newly renovated for theatrical use.

Known as the Theatre de Lys until 1981, this historic 299-seater has hosted many landmark premieres in its day, including the legendary 1954 production of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. The Lortel is now the home of MCC Theater most of the year, with family-friendly productions mounted each summer by TheatreworksUSA.

Imported to the U.S. from Sweden in 1876, this venue is the coziest in all of NYC. Employing handmade marionettes and beautiful sets, the resident company mounts citified versions of well-known stories.

Nearly 30 years after it started hosting experimental performances in a loft on the Bowery, this plucky organization has opened its gorgeous new space a few blocks away on the Lower East Side. A lounge, mainstage theater and studio all support the work of emerging artists, including the annual Hot! festival of work with LGBT themes.

The Lyceum is Broadway's oldest continually operating legitimate space. Built by producer-manager David Frohman in 1903, it was purchased in 1940 by a conglomerate of producers which included George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart (co-authors of You Can't Take It with You and other comedies). In 1950, the Shuberts took ownership of the Lyceum, and still operate it. Alan Bates played the lovely 922-seat playhouse in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1957), and four years later, he returned in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker (1961). More recently, the venue was home to I Am My Own Wife and Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty.

Founded in 2003, Ars Nova rapidly established itself as one of New York City's essential cultural incurbators, thanks to such shows as Freestyle Love Supreme, Underground Railroad Game, Jacuzzi and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. Though it is maintaining a presence at its cozy original digs on West 54 Street, the company moved downtown in 2019 to a historic 199-seat venue on the first floor of Greenwich House, a community-service facility that has been offering programs in education, health and child care to the West Village since 1902. The space was previously home to the Barrow Street Theatre, which presented such high-quality fare as David Cromer’s decidedly nontraditional Our Town.  

Visitors may think they know this venerable theater from TV’s Showtime at the Apollo. But as the saying goes, the small screen adds ten pounds: The city’s home of R&B and soul is actually quite cozy. Known for launching the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo, among others at its legendary Amateur Night competition, the Apollo continues to mix veteran talents like Dianne Reeves with more contemporary acts like the Roots and Lykke Li. 

Steps on Broadway offers classes in many styles with some of the finest teachers in New York.

This eco-conscious 90-seat rental and production space is a standout, with its stunning wood-and-concrete construction (oozing with green technologies), sweet art gallery and even—when do you rhapsodize about this downtown?—a wonderful bathroom. Since openig in 2007, it has hosted several notable works, including Samuel D. Hunter's A Bright New Boise and the musical 33 to Nothing.

Called the New York Improv when it opened in 1963, this club showcased legends such as Bill Cosby, Andy Kaufman and Robin Williams during its first stint. After being closed for years, former collaborators opened this basement joint a few blocks from the original, and they showcase TV faces and other regulars from the club circuit. 

Named after the bullish head of the Shubert Organization, Gerald Schoenfeld, this 1,079-seat space (known until 2005 as the Plymouth) features a relatively restrained neoclassical interior, done in the Adam style. Historic productions there include the world premiere of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942 (featuring Talluleh Bankhead), The Odd Couple in 1965 and the musical Jekyll & Hyde in 1997.  

The grandest of the Lincoln Center buildings, the Met is a spectacular place to experience opera and ballet. The space hosts the Metropolitan Opera from September to May, with major visiting companies appearing in summer. The majestic theater also showcases works from a range of international dance companies, from the Paris Opéra Ballet to the Kirov Ballet. In spring, the Met is home to American Ballet Theatre, which presents full-length classic story ballets, works by contemporary choreographers and special performances and workshops for children. RECOMMENDED: 101 best things do in NYC

This homey 60-seat black box (up some seriously steep stairs) is a mere block and a half from the subway, and only 15 minutes on the L train from Union Square. The space has become one of the best curated spots in the city; it supports up-and-coming stage talent like William Burke and avant-garde veterans such as Target Margin Theater and Cynthia Hopkins, as well as a variety of performance art and multimedia performances.

Founded in 2012, this arts center is led by artistic director Alec Duffy (Three Pianos, Shadows). The space's mission is to serve as a cultural hub in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, presenting cutting-edge theater, music and dance performances, expanding access to the arts, bridging audiences and educating youth. 

Brian Rogers and Sheila Lewandowski founded this 5,000-square-foot performance venue in Long Island City in 2005, converting a onetime hardware store into two spaces: a low-ceilinged downstairs room and a loftier, brighter upstairs whitebox. The Factory is not for rent: Rogers curates his season, inviting artists (from midcareer playwrights like Mac Wellman to rising directors like Alice Reagan) onboard—and the space pays them. It's a welcoming place (buy your chocolate-chip cookies at the box office), and the spot won an Obie for its programming, which tends toward the highly physical, the interdisciplinary and the avant-garde.

Camp is still in session at Abrons. However, there are COVID safety protocols. Masks must be worn at all times and everyone age 12 and older must show proof of vaccination. Campers will enjoy weekly water activities, weekly field trips, and will receive daily instruction in dance, music, theater, and visual arts.

This full-scale, multilevel theater produces the most professional—and inventive—children’s theater in NYC. The lineup often features European imports, and spans all genres, from opera to step dancing to puppetry.

This scrappy 70-seat space—an erstwhile garage—popped into the theatrical scene in 2002 squished into a vanishingly tiny spot on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. Its founders, Robert Honeywell and Michael Gardner, have maintained a rattling schedule of tartly themed summer festivals (such as the Moral Values Festival), pieces by low-budget, high-concept avant-gardists like the Debate Society and Ian W. Hill, and works helmed by Honeywell and Gardner themselves.

Opened in 2006, this cramped two-theater complex—formerly known as the Snapple Theater Center—is home to two long-running shows: the Perfect Crime and kid-friendly The Fantasticks (playing in the Jerry Orbach Theater). The Orbach's awkward seating plan places most audience members to the side of the action, so be careful when buying tickets.

The ghost of late, great producer David Belasco supposedly haunts this 1,016-seat house, built in 1907. We've never seen the specter—no doubt clad in priestly garb, as Belasco was wont to do—but we'll take theater folks' word for it. In 1935, the elegant playhouse was home to Clifford Odets's breakthrough drama Awake and Sing! It served as an NBC radio playhouse from 1949 to '53 but then returned to live fare. Over the decades, it has housed the scandalous sex-themed hit Oh! Calcutta!, a sterling revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 2009, which President Obama attended with the First Lady, and the recent Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Walk into this revolution-red theater—with its narrow First Floor Theater, its spectacularly barnlike next-door Ellen Stewart Theatre and the groovy attic Club Theater—and you are transported back in time to the New York scene's ’60s heyday. The mama herself, the late Ellen Stewart, first opened La MaMa's doors in 1961; it has since produced major figures like Tadeusz Kantor, Andrei Serban and Ping Chong, along with younger multicultural, dance-theater and avant-garde artists.

With a purview that includes Greek tragedies, medieval mystery plays and Elizabethan standards, Classic Stage Company (under artistic director Brian Kulick) makes the old new again with performances including open rehearsals, staged readings and full-blown productions. The 199-seat black-box space is arranged for performances with audiences on three sides of the stage.