Free outdoor theater this summer in New York

Romeo and Juliet, the earliest of Shakespeare's major tragedies, is the timeless story of teenagers who, in rebellion against their disapproving parents, have sex and then die after scoring drugs from a local priest. This version is helmed by the Public’s associate artistic director, Saheem Ali, whose credits include last year's Twelfth Night in the Park as well as Broadway's Buena Vista Social Club. Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens play the star-crossed lovers; the supporting cast includes Deirdre O'Connell, Francis Jue, LaChanze, Glenn Fleshler and Caleb Joshua Eberhardt. Tickets are free, as always; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

The industrious New York Classical Theatre devotes its latest summer season to the Bard's historical tragedy, in which Roman senators bloodily veto a popular general after his leadership turns toward tyranny. If you missed the Public Theater's controversial Trump-themed production in 2017, here's another chance to see the play, minus the orange Julius. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic staging; the cast of nine includes Oneika Phillips and Carine Montbertrand as the honorable Brutus and Cassius, Clay Storseth as the ambitious Caesar and Paul Deo Jr. as the Roman ear borrower Mark Antony. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 2–21) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 23–28) and south to Battery Park (June 30–July 5). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested and donations are welcome. 

You can head to Central Park to see the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park, or you can wait for the Public to come to you as its Mobile Unit travels through all five boroughs with a stripped-down version of Shakespeare's ardent comedy about the forest romps of an ousted duke, his cross-dressing daughter and her lovestruck swain. Emma Rosa Went directs a cast of 10. The tour begins at Astor Place (June 4–6) before wending its way through the rest of the city and concluding in Prospect Park (June 27, 28); a full schedule is on the Public's website.

Boomerang Theatre Company returns—as boomerangs are wont to do!—with Shakespeare's rollicking comedy, a battle of the sexes to which the Geneva Conventions don't apply: A swaggering gold digger breaks the spirit of his headstrong bride through starvation, brainwashing and sleep deprivation. Philip Emeott directs the production, which stars Thane Madsen and Katy Castaldi as the contentious couple and is performed for free at 2pm on weekends in Central Park (enter from Central Park West at 69th St). Tickets can be reserved in advance. 

As the middle show of its summer schedule, Hudson Classical Theater Company presents Shakespeare's wordy revenge tragedy, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat. Company honcho Nicholas Martin-Smith directs; attendance is free and reservations are not required.

Who says you need huge movie stars to do Othello? Classical Theatre of Harlem's annual series of free outdoor performances in Marcus Garvey Park—sometimes known as Uptown Shakespeare in the Park—presents Shakespeare's fast-paced tragedy of jealousy, race and misplaced trust, in which a villain preys on the insecurities of a dark-skinned war hero married to a Venetian woman. Carl Cofield directs the full production, which stars James Udom, Nick Westrate, Isabel Arraiza, Orlando Grant, Keren Lugo and Hiram Delgado. Tickets are free but reservations (and donations) are suggested.

This summer offers not one, not two, but three different free alfresco NYC productions of Shakespeare's As You Like It, in which love-struck nobles romp around the Forest of Arden. This more, more, more situation raises that timeless disco question: How do you like it? The Drilling Company's version is the 31st season of the Lower East Side institution Shakespeare in the Parking Lot; directed and designed by the troupe's own Hamilton Clancy, it envisions Arden as a modern bohemian neighborhood. (Seats are provided for the first audience members to claim them, but spectators can also bring their own.) 

Hudson Classical Theater Company wraps up its summer season with a show from outside the classical-theater box: a stage version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1903 short story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men," in which the master detective Sherlock Holmes is contacted by an aristocrat who is newly married to an American woman with a shady past. HCTC's Susane Lee adapts the text and Nicholas Martin-Smith directs.

Following Romeo & Juliet, the second offering of Shakespeare in the Park's 2026 summer season offers somewhat happier hopes for lovers. A sweeping story of jealousy, love, repentance, angry bears and magic statuary, it begins in deep suffering but ends, like winter itself, with the prospect of healing and rebirth. Raúl Esparza plays the paranoid Leontes and Lily Rabe is his unjustly accused wife, Hermione, supported by Chuck Cooper, Teagle F. Bougere, Steven Skybell and Isabela Ferrer. Helming the production is that old master Daniel Sullivan—who, at 86, has directed eleven previous Shakespeare in the Park, along with such Broadway favorites as The Heidi Chronicles, Good People and Proof. Tickets are free, of course; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

Hip to Hip Theatre Company swivels from park to park in Queens, with outings to Jersey City and Southampton, to perform its 20th annual diptych of Shakespeare plays in rep. This summer's offerings are the Scottish tragedy Macbeth, in which a nobleman and his wife descend into a nightmare of disquiet after planning their monarch's murder, and popular comedy As You Like It, in which which an inventive young woman disguises herself as a boy to win her man. Consult Hip to Hip's website to see which production plays when and where.

After years as the first outdoor classical-theater production of the summer, Molière in the Park switches positions and becomes the season's final offering. This year's selection—performed as always in Brooklyn's Prospect Parrk—is the great French playwright's philosophically complex 1665 tragicomedy about a serial lothario, which was censored in its day and is rarely performed in ours. Keshav Moodliar takes on the title role, with Alana Raquel Bowers as his servant Sganarelle; Kaliswa Brewster, Kalyne Coleman and Daniel Pearce play all of other characters. Lucie Tiberghien directs a translation by Stephen Wadsworth; Johnathan Moore provides an original cello score. The show is free but reservations are strongly suggested.