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 Delacorte Theater in Central Park is the fair-weather sister of the Public Theater. When not producing Shakespeare in the East Village, the Public offers the best of the Bard outdoors during Shakespeare in the Park (May–August). Free tickets (two per person) are distributed at both theaters at 1pm on the day of the performance. It's usually good to begin waiting around 9am, although the line can start forming as early as 6am when big-name stars are on the bill. You can also enter an online lottery for tickets.

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.

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.

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

At this retro storefront theater, kids sit cross-legged on mats in front of the stage while grown-ups hunker down on bleachers behind them. All the productions, which are largely adaptations of well-known fairy and folk tales, are written by the theater’s artistic director, Nicolas Coppola.

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. 

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. 

Lincoln Center Theater's newest space is a 131-seat venue that will showcase new plays by rising talent under the LCT3 umbrella. The Tow is also the centerpiece of a 23,000-square-foot rooftop complex, designed by noted architect Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, located on top of the Vivian Beaumont. The two-story structure (costing $41 million) also houses rehearsal and office space and includes an outdoor terrace overlooking the Lincoln Center Plaza.

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.

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.

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.

Prospect Park's Imagination Playground encourages inventive play with fixtures like a bronze dragon statue that spews water instead of fire, a sculpture of a boy reading while reaching down to pet his dog, cutout animal masks that kids can set their faces in, and a stage with multiple platforms of different heights for little ones to play on. In the summer, programs including storytelling, plays, music and crafts are available.

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.

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.  

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.

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 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 elegant theater at the Juilliard School hosts an outstanding variety of substantial concerts, most of them free or extremely affordable.

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.

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.

Broadway's smallest house was named after the beloved leading lady Helen Hayes in 1983 (after her namesake venue was demolished, along with the Morosco and Bijou, to construct the New York Marriott Marquis). The 597-seat space is perfect for chamber musicals or straight drama, and with a house this cozy, you can be assured of excellent sightlines. The nonprofit company Second Stage Theater recently assumed control of the venue; after extensive renovations, overseen by designer David Rockwell, the venue reopened in 2018.

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.

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.

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.