A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classical Theatre of Harlem 2024)
Photograph: Courtesy Richard Termine | A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classical Theatre of Harlem 2024)
Photograph: Courtesy Richard Termine

Free outdoor theater this summer in New York

Here’s a guide to other free outdoor theater you can find in New York in 2025, including Shakespeare in the Park.

Adam Feldman
Advertising

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 usually 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 and Brooklyn, at Battery and Riverside Parks, 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. (And don't forget to check out the free and cheap offerings on Little Island this summer.)

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do outside in NYC

Free outdoor theater in NYC

  • Outdoor theaters
  • Financial District

A determined young woman doggedly pursues the uninterested object of her affections—whose hand in marriage she has been granted by a grateful king—in Shakespeare's rarely produced comedy, a romance so problematic that its title verges on sarcasm. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic production for his industrious New York Classical Theatre; the cast of eight includes Anique Clements as the dauntless Helena, Paul Deo Jr. as the heedless Bertram, Karel Heřmánek Jr. as the feckless Parolles and Nick Salamone and Carine Montbertran as well-intentioned nobles. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 3–22) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 24–29) and south to Battery Park (July 1–6). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested.

  • Shakespeare
  • Central Park

The longevous Boomerang Theatre Company returns—as, true to its name, it is wont to do!—with a free Central Park staging of Shakespeare's lyrical portrait of the last Plantagenet king, a unfortunate weakling who gets sent to the Tower after making an unpopular land deal (setting off a splitting of heirs that eventually leads to the War of the Roses, as chronicled in Shakespeare's other history plays). Aimee Todoroff directs the production, which stars Broken Box Mime Theater's Tasha Milk in the title role. Performances are at 2pm on weekends, and tickets can be reserved in advance. 

Advertising
  • Classical
  • Upper West Side

For the middle show of its summer schedule, Hudson Classical Theater Company presents an outdoor production of Jane Austen's 1811 debut novel, in which sisters of meager fortune and markedly different temperaments seek husbands of suitable station. The adaptation is by the company's executive artistic director, Susane Lee, who has a penchant for 19th-century books. (She also adapted the company's suite of plays based on the adventure tales of Alexandre Dumas, père.) Attendance is free and reservations are not required.

  • Shakespeare
  • Harlem

Classical Theatre of Harlem's annual series of free outdoor performances in Marcus Garvey Park—also known as Uptown Shakespeare in the Park—presents an original neoclassical work by playwright Will Power and director Carl Cofield, who also collaborated on CTH's 2021 summer offering, the Richard III riff Seize the King. The play focuses on a figure who is often overlooked in tales of the Trojan War: the Ethiopian king and demigod Memnon—not to be confused with the Greek king Agamemnon—who led a large contingent in Troy's defense before falling to that notorious heel Achilles. Eric Berryman essays the title role, flanked by a cast that includes Andrea Patterson, Jesse J. Perez as Priam, David Darrow and Jesse Corbin. Tickets are free but reservations are strongly suggested.

Advertising
  • Shakespeare
  • Lower East Side

The Drilling Company's beloved Shakespeare in the Parking Lot returns for its 30th season of free classical theater on the Lower East Side. This year's offering is a new account of the Bard's perennially popular forest farce, in which a bossy Bottom falls into a wild world of drugged-up fairy sex; the company last mounted this show in 2016. (Seating is provided for the first audience members to claim it, but spectators can also bring their own chairs.) 

  • Shakespeare
  • Hell's Kitchen

Hip to Hip Theatre Company swivels from park to park in Queens, with outings to Jersey City and Southampton, to perform its annual diptych of Shakespeare plays in rep. This summer's offerings are the talky tragedy Hamletwhere a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat, and the magical romance The Tempest, in which an enisled sorcerer storms at the Neapolitan nobles who betrayed him. Consult Hip to Hip's website to see which production plays when and where.

Advertising
  • Shakespeare
  • Central Park

After taking last summer off for renovations to the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Public Theater's cherished annual series Shakespeare in the Park returns with one of the Bard's most popular plays: an ever-popular comedy of cross-purposes, cross-dressing and cross-gartered socks. Resident director Saheem Ali (Buena Vista Social Clubdirects a starry cast: Lupita Nyong’o and her brother Junior Nyong'o as Viola and Sebastian, nearly-identical siblings separated by a shipwreck; Sandra Oh as the mourning noblewoman who takes a shine to Viola when she is dressed as a boy; and Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Khris Davis, Bill Camp, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Moses Sumney as various figures in the lovely Olivia's orbit. Tickets are, as always, free; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

  • Classical
  • Morningside Heights

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, An Enemy of the People and Hedda Gabler remain highly popular, and one gets occasional revivals of Ghosts, The Master Builder, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm and John Gabriel Borkman. But the master Norwegian dramatist's 1888 play The Lady from the Sea, written in between those great works, almost never surfaces these days. Hudson Classical Theater Company wraps up its summer season with fresh look at this rarity —the story of a woman torn between her doctor husband and her sailor ex-flame—as adapted by the company's own Susane Lee. (A fun fact about the play: Ibsen later brought back one of its minor figures, Hilda Wangel, as a main character in The Master Builder.)

Advertising
  • Shakespeare
  • Morningside Heights

The Public Theater's civically ambitious Public Works series, which collaborates with multiple New York communities to create large-scale theater, lost its leader when director Laurie Woolery fell victim to budget cuts at the Public last year. But the program soldiers on with songwriter-playwright Troy Anthony's new concert adapatation of one of Shakespeare's strangest plays: a kind of Ancient Mediterranean Flash Gordon adventure (often co-attributed to Elizabethan ne'er-do-well George Wilkins) that includes shipwrecks, contests to win a princess’s hand, a pirate abduction, a virgin in a brothel and a guest shot by the goddess Diana. Carl Cofield directs the production, which is performed at the impressive Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights in lieu of the usual Delacorte Theater, which is busy hosting Shakespeare in the Park this year. Casting of the principal roles—usually played by professional actors, leading an army of amateurs—has not yet been announced.

Looking for a Broadway show in NYC?

Recommended
    You may also like
    You may also like
    Advertising