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Twelfth Night (Shakespeare in the Park)
Photograph: Courtesy Joan MarcusTwelfth Night (Shakespeare in the Park)

Free outdoor theater this summer in New York

Can’t get into Shakespeare in the Park? Here’s a guide to other free outdoor theater you can find in New York.

Adam Feldman
Written by
Adam Feldman
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Public spaces come alive with free outdoor theater in New York City in the summer, and especially with the plays of William Shakespeare. The top destination, of course, is the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park presents excellent productions that among New York's best things to do in the summer. But you can also enjoy plays by Shakespeare and other classical masters elsewhere in the city: in Harlem,  Brooklyn, at Riverside Park, even in a Lower East Side parking lot. You might be surprised by the magic that can come from wonderful words, inventive actors and a mild summer breeze.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do outside in NYC

Free outdoor theater in NYC

  • Theater
  • Shakespeare

Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun), who directed an African-American cast in Shakespeare in the Park's delightful 2019 production of Much Ado About Nothing, gives a Black spin to the Bard's classic revenge tragedy, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat. Ato Blankson-Wood (Slave Play) stars as the brooding title character, joined by a cast that includes John Douglas Thompson, Solea Pfeiffer and Lorraine Toussaint. Tickets are, as always, free; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details. 

  • Theater
  • Comedy

Classical Theatre of Harlem's annual series of free outdoor performances in Marcus Garvey Park, which it bills as Uptown Shakespeare in the Park, returns with a play by Betty Shamieh that imagines the life of the pompous majordomo Malvolio in the wake his humiliation at the end of Twelfth Night. Ian Belknap and Ty Jones direct this cheeky sequel, which stars Allen Gilmore in the title role and also features John-Andrew Morrison, Stephanie Berry, Gabriel Lawrence, David Ryan Smith, Matthew J Harris, Marjorie Johnson, Kineta Kunutu, JD Mollison and Paula Galloway. 

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  • Theater
  • Shakespeare

The female character with the most lines in Shakespeare's oeuvre is not Cleopatra, Rosalind or Juliet: It's Margaret of Anjou, one of the thorniest figures in the War of the Roses, who rises and falls in the Henry VI trilogy (and returns to throw curses like hand grenades in Richard III). Hudson Classical Theater Company concludes its summer season with a Margaret-centric mashup of the Henry plays, adapted and directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, that stars Katherine Lerner-Lam as the blood-stained monarch.

  • Theater
  • Shakespeare

The Drilling Company's beloved Shakespeare in the Parking Lot returns for its 28th season of classical theater on the Lower East Side. Hamilton Clancy's production of Shakespeare's wacky farce, in which two pairs of identical twins get into double jeopardy, takes inspiration from the Coen Brothers' stoner-noir classic The Big Lebowski

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  • Theater
  • Shakespeare

Hip to Hip Theatre Company moves from park to park in Queens (with outings to Staten Island and Southampton) to perform two Shakespeare plays in rep: the cleverly plotted early farce The Comedy of Errors and the poetical history play Richard II, about a weak king who gets stashed in the Tower after making an unpopular land deal. Consult Hip to Hip's website to see which production plays when and where.

  • Theater
  • Shakespeare

The Public Theater's civically ambitious Public Works program, which collaborates with multiple New York communities to create large-scale theater, returns to the Delacorte with Benjamin Velez's musical adaptation of Shakespeare's late romance, whose story elements include a sorcerer’s revenge, young lovers, a shipwreck, a monster and a fairy slave. Public Works chief Laurie Woolery directs the production, and Tiffany Rea-Fisher choreographs. Casting of the principal roles—usually played by professional actors, leading an army of amateurs—has not yet been announced. 

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