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Photograph: Courtesy Maria BaranovaSkinnamarink (Little Lord)

Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

Looking for the best Off-Off Broadway shows? Here are the most promising productions at NYC’s smaller venues right now.

Adam Feldman
Written by
Adam Feldman
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Broadway and Off Broadway productions get most of the attention, but to get a true sense of the range and diversity of New York theater, you need to look to the smaller productions collectively known as Off-Off Broadway. There are about 200 Off-Off Broadway spaces in New York, mostly with fewer than 99 seats. Experimental plays thrive in New York's best Off-Off Broadway venues; that's where you'll find many of the city's most challenging and original works. But Off-Off is more than just the weird stuff: It also includes everything from magic shows to revivals of rarely seen classics, and it's a good place to get early looks at major rising talents. What's more, it tends to be affordable; while cheap Broadway tickets can be hard to find, most Off-Off Broadway shows are in the $15–$25 range. Here are some of the current shows that hold the most promise.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Off Broadway shows in NYC 

Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

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This revolutionary three-week festival is an open lottery-based theater festival that gives 100% of proceeds to the artists who take part. Formerly known as the FRIGID Fringe Festival, this will be their biggest festival yet, with over 45 shows including A Little Less Than Kind, a gender-bending adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Walt Kelly's Songs of the Pogo, a musical about cartoonist Walt Kelly; The Leading Lady Club: A Feminist (But Still Likable) Sketch Show; Brokeneck Girls: The Murder Ballad Musical, a true crime musical about the violence against women in folk music; and the TransMasculine Cabaret, Starring Vulva Va-Voom, a cabaret show about queer identity.  
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  • East Village
Austin Pendleton, the hardest-working man of the New York stage, directs a 25th-anniversary revival of his own engrossing backstage drama about the twilight of theater gods and the considerable umbrage of Orson Welles in exile. Brad Fryman leads the cast as Welles, joined by Ryan Tramont, Patrick Hamilton, Natalie Menna, Kim Taff and Luke Hofmaier.

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