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 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

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

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.

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 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.

Signature Theatre, founded by James Houghton in 1991, focuses on exploring and celebrating playwrights in depth, with whole seasons devoted to works by individual living writers. In 2012, it moved to a home base equal to its lofty ambitions. Designed by star architect Frank Gehry, the new Signature Center comprises three major Off Broadway spaces: a 299-seater main stage, a 199-seat miniature opera house and a malleable courtyard theater named for the late Romulus Linney.

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.

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 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.

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.

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. 

Part of the gaggle of theaters on East 4th Street, the 99-seat Kraine is part of the loosely affiliated Horse Trade theaters (which also include the Red Room and UNDER St. Marks), where irreverent, independent work bubbles incessantly. The venue—a sweet proscenium with creaky, back-crippling red velvet seats—can also be rented, so it's difficult to pin the spot down in terms of a unified aesthetic.

Before Lincoln Center changed the cultural geography of New York, this was the home of the New York City Ballet (originally known as the Ballet Society). City Center’s lavish decor is golden, as are the companies that pass through. You can count on superb performances all year long, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the invaluable Encores! musical-theater series. In September, the Fall for Dance Festival features performances by an assortment of companies.

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. 

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. 

When the Shubert brothers opened it for business in 1911, the Winter Garden was heralded as a music hall "devoted to novel, international, spectacular and musical entertainments." It's current longtime occupant, Mamma Mia!, certainly fits the bill. Before that, from 1982 to 2000, Cats prowled the halls. The 1,498-seat space (with one of the larger Broadway stages and a relatively low proscenium arch) will probably have audiences shaking their booties to "Dancing Queen" for a good 10 or 15 years to come.

Located on West 45th west of Eighth Avenue, this building originally opened for business as the Martin Beck Theatre in 1924. Since 2003 it has been known as the Al Hirschfeld, after the immensely prolific and long-lived theater caricaturist. Seating capacity is 1,292 for plays and 1,282 for musicals. In recent seasons, it has hosted several major musical revivals: Guys and Dolls, The Sound of Music, Kiss Me Kate and most recently, Hair.

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.

This 1,091-seater—with a French Neoclassical–style exterior and a Beaux Arts–style interior—is one theater where the balcony seating is preferable to the mezzanine (which has almost no rake). Built in 1913, it has seen work by Ethel Barrymore and George S. Kaufman. In 1935, the Group Theatre was in residence, offering three productions by Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty, Till the Day I Die and Paradise Lost. The casts featured Odets, Elia Kazan, Bobby Lewis, Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky and Sanford Meisner. Recent successful revivals at the theater have included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Talk Radio and Boeing-Boeing.

Formerly known as the Best Buy Theater and the PlayStation Theater, this large, corporate club begs for character but finds redemption in its creature comforts. The sound and sight lines are both good, and there’s even edible food. Those who wish to look into a musician’s eyes can stand in the ample front section; foot-weary fans can sit in the cinema-like section in back. It’s a comfortable place to see a well-known band that hasn’t (yet) reached stadium-filling fame.

From the outside, the SoHo Playhouse looks like what it once was: a charming, federalist rowhouse. In its long and storied past (it converted to theaterhood in the ’20s), the venue has had many masters, including Edward Albee, who produced a number of exciting premieres here during the '60s. Now the 199-seat proscenium seems incredibly tiny—when the enormously successful 2009 production of Emperor Jones played here, it seemed like the actors might get snagged on the lights. Still, the Playhouse feels like a slice of old New York, granting a certain gravitas to the many rental productions that cycle through its doors.

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.

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.

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.