Best Off Broadway
Updated Daily
The Public Theater is a major Off-Broadway performing arts venue and theater company located in New York City. Founded in 1954 by Joseph Papp, it has been housed in the former Astor Library building in the East Village since 1967. The institution is known for originating the free Shakespeare in the...
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is a musical play written by Lanie Robertson that premiered in 1986. The production dramatizes one of jazz singer Billie Holiday's final performances, set in a small bar in South Philadelphia shortly before her death in 1959. The intimate revue features the vocali...
Playwrights Horizons is a nonprofit off-Broadway theater founded in 1971 in New York City, dedicated to producing new American plays and musicals. It has premiered works such as Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, Stephen Karam's The Humans, and the musical Grey Gardens. Operating out of...
New York Theatre Workshop is a nonprofit Off-Broadway theater company founded in 1979 and based in Manhattan's East Village. It develops and produces new stage works, often supporting projects through readings, workshops, and full productions. The company presented the original New York production o...
Signature Theatre is an off-Broadway theater company based in New York City, founded in 1991 by director James Houghton. The institution operates on a distinctive residency model where an entire theatrical season is dedicated to the body of work of a single contemporary playwright. It has featured r...
Manhattan Theatre Club is a nonprofit theatrical production company based in New York City. Founded in 1970, the organization operates across both Broadway and off-Broadway venues, including the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and New York City Center. The company focuses on developing and producing new...
The 1968 Off-Broadway revue, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, presented American audiences with translated performances of Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel’s iconic chansons. Notable for introducing his dramatic storytelling and distinctive voice to a new market, the show re...
The Vineyard Theatre is a non-profit off-Broadway theater company located in the Union Square neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1981, the organization is dedicated to producing bold new theatrical works and fostering the development of emerging and established playwrights. It has a long hist...
Atlantic Theater Company is a nonprofit Off-Broadway theater organization founded in New York City in 1985 by David Mamet, William H. Macy, and fellow collaborators. Its artistic approach was shaped by the Practical Aesthetics acting technique developed by Mamet and Macy. The company produces new pl...
The Me Nobody Knows is an American musical built from writings by young people living in New York City. It has music by Gary William Friedman, lyrics by Will Holt, and additional lyrics by Herb Schapiro, with material adapted from an anthology edited by Stephen M. Joseph. After an Off-Broadway produ...
The World Goes 'Round is a 1991 Off-Broadway musical revue featuring the song catalogue of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. Conceived and directed by Scott Ellis with choreography by Susan Stroman and a linking script by David Thompson, the production is performed by a cast of five and ar...
Stomp is a long-running physical theater revue originating in the United Kingdom. The performance utilizes rhythmic movement and amplified percussive sounds created through unconventional materials such as metal pipes, buckets, and even clothing. It’s notable for its innovative approach to music and...
Black Nativity is Langston Hughes's gospel retelling of the Nativity with an all-Black cast, commissioned by Karamu House and first staged on Broadway in 1961.
Songs for a New World is Jason Robert Brown's 1995 theatrical song cycle, notable as his first produced Off-Broadway show and major professional score.
One Mo' Time is Vernel Bagneris's 1979 musical revue recreating a 1920s New Orleans vaudeville show through period jazz, blues, comedy, and dance.
The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) is a 2003 show by Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart that retells one plot in the styles of five Broadway composers.
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (1968) is a groundbreaking French revue featuring the music and dramatic monologues of Belgian artist Jacques Brel. The production presented his intensely personal and politically charged songs to an American audience for the first time, establishin...
Small off-Broadway theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, named after philanthropist Mitzi E. Newhouse, with a seating capacity of around 300.
*Old Hats* is an off-Broadway clowning revue featuring the legendary physical comedians Bill Irwin and David Shiner. The show, which premiered in 2013 at the Pershing Square Signature Center in New York City, blends classic vaudeville routines, slapstick comedy, and improvisational audience interact...
Forbidden Broadway is a musical revue created by Gerard Alessandrini that first opened in New York in 1982. Through rewritten songs, sketches, impersonations, and changing editions, it satirizes Broadway productions, theatrical conventions, prominent performers, composers, and industry trends. The s...
Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back is an installment of Gerard Alessandrini's long-running theatrical revue, which uses rewritten songs, sketches, and impersonations to parody Broadway productions and performers. This 1990s edition targeted prominent shows including Rent, Cats, Show Boat, and Disney st...
And the World Goes 'Round is a musical revue built from songs by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. It opened Off-Broadway in 1991 and draws material from their stage musicals, films, and individual songs, including works associated with Cabaret, Chicago, and New York, New York. Rather than...
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill is a 1972 musical revue tracing Weill's German and American careers through songs written with Brecht and later collaborators.
The Jonathan Larson Project is a 2025 Off-Broadway revue conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, presenting archival songs by Rent composer Jonathan Larson.
Oh, Coward! is a 1972 musical revue devised by Roderick Cook from Noël Coward's songs and writings, and it later played Broadway in 1986.
"Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit" is a 2004 off-Broadway satirical revue created and written by Gerard Alessandrini. It is part of the long-running "Forbidden Broadway" franchise, which parodies contemporary Broadway musicals, plays, and theatrical personalities. The show features a small c...
"Forever Plaid" is an Off-Broadway musical revue written and directed by Stuart Ross, which premiered in New York in 1989. The show centers on the fictional 1950s male vocal group "The Plaids," who return from the dead to perform the close-harmony pop hits they never got to sing during their lifetim...
A William Finn song revue conceived by Rob Ruggiero in 2006, combining selections from Falsettos and A New Brain with unpublished and unproduced material.
"The Greenwich Village Follies of 1919" was the inaugural production of a theatrical revue created and directed by John Murray Anderson. It originated at the small Greenwich Village Theatre in downtown Manhattan before transferring to Broadway, where it launched a successful multi-year franchise. Th...
The All Night Strut! is a musical revue created by Fran Charnas that surveys American jazz, swing, and blues songs of the 1930s and 1940s.
