Cheap theater: Where to enjoy affordable shows in NYC

RECOMMENDED: 50 best New York attractions 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 younger artists such as the Roots and Lykke Li. 

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

As well as the New York City Ballet (nycballet.com), the recently rechristened David H. Koch Theater is also home to the New York City Opera.

This chic, state-of-the-art venue, which comprises an Off Broadway space and two smaller theaters, is home to a lot of worthy programming, such as the annual Brits Off Broadway festival, which imports some of the U.K.’s best work for brief summer runs. The venue boasts three separate playing spaces. Theater A, on the ground floor, seats 196 people; upstairs are the 98-seat Theater B and a 70-seat black-box space, Theater C.

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.

After losing the lease on his Soho space in 2010, after nearly three decades there, Robert Lyons moved to the landmarked Archive building in teh West Village. The new space, home to the summer Ice Factory Festival and much more, remains an indispensable theatrical crucible.

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

With only 60 seats, this East Village hole-in-the wall has become both a rehearsal and performance space for New York Theatre Workshop, whose offices and mainstage are just next door. The black box frequently hosts smaller-scale shows by both NYTW and outside companies.

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.

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. 

More than 300 important contemporary plays have premiered here, among them dramas such as Driving Miss Daisy and The Heidi Chronicles and musicals such as Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and Sunday in the Park with George. Recent seasons have included works by Craig Lucas and an acclaimed musical version of the cult film Grey Gardens.

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.

This dance center offers classes in ballet, modern dance, contemporary, jazz, theater, hip-hop, house, tap, salsa, flamenco, African, tai chi, sword fighting and yoga.

Interviews and auditions are required at this venerable studio, which was opened in 1969 by Terry Schreiber and counts Edward Norton among its conservatory graduates. Newbies can choose from beginner classes like Meisner Technique I ($695 for 12 sessions), On-Camera I ($425 for six sessions) and Beginning Technique ($550 for eight sessions). The studio also mounts full-fledged productions, too, in case you want to see its students and alumni in action.

Broadway's biggest venue with approximately 1,938 seats, the Lyric was created in 1996-98 by combining the adjacent Apollo and Lyric Theatres (themselves built in 1903 and 1920, respectively). Originally named the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, the Lyric was previously known as Foxwoods Theatre and before that, the Hilton. Among its noteworthy resident shows have been Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Young Frankenstein, On the Town and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Its spacious, winding, gilded lobby is one of the most beautiful on the Great White Way. The theater has two main entrance spaces; for its current production, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is using the one on 43rd Street.

This 30-year-old community arts center, deep in the heart of the East Village, is known for its long history of raucous poetry slams, jam sessions and anything-goes open mikes.

This midtown cultural institute's 400-seat theater is home to a number of Gallic-themed screenings for kids and adults alike. For which we must say a hearty "merci!"

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.

Former artistic director of American Ballet Theatre and White Oak Dance Project, Mikhail Baryshnikov is something of an impresario. His home base—on a stark overpass near the Lincoln Tunnel—includes several inviting studios, the Howard Gilman Performance Space (a 192-seat theater), and superb facilities for rehearsals and workshops. The newly renovated Jerome Robbins Theater, at 238 seats, is an intimate, refined addition to the New York scene. The Wooster Group is the resident company.

Founded in 1996, this cozy, well-appointed black-box venue has presented avant-garde experimentation and politically provocative satires. After 20 years on White Street, the Flea relocated in 2017 to a new complex a few block south in Tribeca. Artistic director Niegel Smith and producing director Carol Ostrow oversee three new playing spaces: the Sam, mamed for theater agent Sam Cohn, which seats 120; the Peter, named for the late playwright A.R. Gurney, which seats 72; and the Siggy, named for actor and Flea cofounder Sigourney Weaver, which seats 44. The company is also home to the Bats, a youthful training company that performs in many of its productions. 

New York Live Arts was formed in 2011 by a merger of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop. Its mission is to support and showcase dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating.