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.

RECOMMENDED: 50 best New York attractions 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 younger artists such as the Roots and Lykke Li. 

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

Interviews and auditions are required at this venerable studio, which was opened in 1969 by Terry Schreiber and counts Edward Norton among its conservatory graduates. Newbies can choose from beginner classes like Meisner Technique I ($695 for 12 sessions), On-Camera I ($425 for six sessions) and Beginning Technique ($550 for eight sessions). The studio also mounts full-fledged productions, too, in case you want to see its students and alumni in action.

Although the institution has been around in some incarnation since 1971, the sprawling cement complex was only converted from its former state as a WPA building in 1986, and its four stages have been chock-full of experimental, politically conscious theater ever since. Many of the shows—albeit offbeat—are appropriate for children.

Prospect Park's Imagination Playground encourages inventive play with fixtures like a bronze dragon statue that spews water instead of fire, a sculpture of a boy reading while reaching down to pet his dog, cutout animal masks that kids can set their faces in, and a stage with multiple platforms of different heights for little ones to play on. In the summer, programs including storytelling, plays, music and crafts are available.

Alicia Keys, Martha Graham, Jackson Pollack and Denzel Washington are among the artists who have performed, trained or taught workshops and classes at Abrons Art Center/Henry Street Settlement, an arts venue in the far reaches of the Lower East Side. The complex includes the 300-seat Playhouse (a pretty, blond-wood auditorium with a proscenium stage), the 100-seat blackbox Experimental Theater and another 99-seat Underground Theater, all of which are for rent.

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.

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. 

Since 1927, this 1,445-seater was known as the Alvin. It was renamed in 1983 to honor America’s most prolific playwright, Neil Simon, following the successful run of Brighton Beach Memoirs. From 2002-09, Hairspray played there, its longest resident to date.

This dance center offers classes in ballet, modern dance, contemporary, jazz, theater, hip-hop, house, tap, salsa, flamenco, African, tai chi, sword fighting and yoga.

This massive complex, located on the Hudson River, offers plenty of activities for kids and adults, including public swimming, classes for children and seniors, ice-skating and more.

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.

This venue hosts the occasional dance performance.

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

Some theaters get their names from composers or producers—even from dead drama critics. but the Music Box is named after a specific show. In 1921, producer Sam H. Harris honored a deal he made with hit-maker Irving Berlin and christened his new venue after Berlin's new tuner, The Music Box Revue. Since then, the 1,099-seat house, with an elegant limestone facade, has hosted a variety of musical and dramatic attractions. The 1930s at the Music Box were George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s decade; they premiered several comedies there, and Hart called it a dream theater. In recent seasons, the Music Box was home to August: Osage County.

Brian Rogers and Sheila Lewandowski founded this 5,000-square-foot performance venue in Long Island City in 2005, converting a onetime hardware store into two spaces: a low-ceilinged downstairs room and a loftier, brighter upstairs whitebox. The Factory is not for rent: Rogers curates his season, inviting artists (from midcareer playwrights like Mac Wellman to rising directors like Alice Reagan) onboard—and the space pays them. It's a welcoming place (buy your chocolate-chip cookies at the box office), and the spot won an Obie for its programming, which tends toward the highly physical, the interdisciplinary and the avant-garde.

Formerly the Virginia Theatre (and before that the Guild Theatre), this 1,228-seat space was renamed after the late, great African-American playwright in 2005. The current occupant is the long-running Jersey Boys, but in previous decades, the site was home to Eugene O’Neill’s mammoth Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy (1952) and the musical City of Angeles (1989).

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.

This 1927 house was designed by the great Broadway architect Herbert Krapp in the "modern Spanish" style. It was home to four Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, which premiered consecutively: Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), South Pacific (1949) and 1953's Me and Juliet. More recently—and by that, we mean since 1987—the Majestic has been home to The Phantom of the Opera, which shows no sign of closing. It seats 1,615.

The ghost of late, great producer David Belasco supposedly haunts this 1,016-seat house, built in 1907. We've never seen the specter—no doubt clad in priestly garb, as Belasco was wont to do—but we'll take theater folks' word for it. In 1935, the elegant playhouse was home to Clifford Odets's breakthrough drama Awake and Sing! It served as an NBC radio playhouse from 1949 to '53 but then returned to live fare. Over the decades, it has housed the scandalous sex-themed hit Oh! Calcutta!, a sterling revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 2009, which President Obama attended with the First Lady, and the recent Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

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.

This full-scale, multilevel theater produces the most professional—and inventive—children’s theater in NYC. The lineup often features European imports, and spans all genres, from opera to step dancing to puppetry.

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.

This classic 1903 Art Nouveau house has seen many changes on the Main Stem over the last century: vaudeville, classics, the Ziegfeld Follies (for more than two decades) and the drastic decline of the theater district during the Great Depression, and again in the 1970s and ’80s. Renovated and reopened, in 1997, the New Amsterdam soon became home to the Disney smash hit The Lion King. Since 2006, Mary Poppins has been wowing children and adults there. (The Lion King moved to the Minksoff.) The theater is operated by Disney Theatrical Productions.