Frigid New York gives you the chills in its fourth annual festival inspired by Mexico's dead-lifting Día de los Muertos. The lineup features spooky variety shows, short horror plays, Edgar Allan Poe works, a traditional ofrenda, psychic mediums, a tiny interactive matchbox theatre, a murder ballad musical, necromancer burlesque, and other tales of the macabre. Among them are Stephen Smith's One Man Poe, Andrew Agress's The Witching Hour and Maeve Aurora Chapman and Liam Corley's Death Owns an Ice Cream Parlor. Visit the festival's website for a schedule and a full list of offerings for shows.
Broadway and Off Broadway productions get most of the attention, but to get a true sense of the range and diversity of New York theater, you need to look to the smaller productions collectively known as Off-Off Broadway. There are more than dozens of Off-Off Broadway spaces in New York, mostly with fewer than 99 seats. Experimental plays thrive in New York's best Off-Off Broadway venues; that's where you'll find many of the city's most challenging and original works. But Off-Off is more than just the weird stuff: It also includes everything from original dramas to revivals of rarely seen classics, and it's a good place to get early looks at rising talents. What's more, it tends to be affordable; while cheap Broadway tickets can be hard to find, most Off-Off Broadway shows are in the $15–$35 range. Here are some of the current shows that hold the most promise.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Off Broadway shows in NYC
