Your 24/25 Programming
Your 24/25 Season - Taking You Around The World.
Join in for a fresh season of plays that will transport you across the globe and through time—from Japan to Australia, to America’s past, present, and future. It’s a season of exploration and adventure, with a slate of new shows from internationally renowned theater companies like Elevator Repair Service, Ma-Yi Theater Company, and Belvoir St. Theatre, storytellers such as Caryl Churchill and David Finnigan, and bold American voices, such as James Ijames and Lisa Sanaye Dring.
This season of brilliant work at our flagship Astor Place home all leads up to the re-opening of the newly revitalized Delacorte Theater. Free Shakespeare in the Park will return to Central Park in the summer of 2025 with a joyful new production of TWELFTH NIGHT, directed by Tony Award nominee and The Public's Associate Artistic Director, Saheem Ali.
The Public is your passport to unforgettable shows that inspire, challenge, and bring the world’s best work to the heart of New York.
Fall 24.
Counting and Cracking
எண்ணிக்கை, இல்லையேல் கையோங்கு
ගණන් නොගන්නේ නම් ගණන් කරන්න
North American Premiere
Presenting a Belvoir St Theatre & Kurinji Co-Production
By S. Shakthidharan with Eamon Flack
In Partnership with NYU Skirball
Performances at NYU Skirball (566 LaGuardia Place)
Begins September 6, 2024
Belvoir St Theatre’s COUNTING AND CRACKING, by S. Shakthidharan and directed by Eamon Flack, comes to NYU Skirball this fall for its North American Premiere after critically acclaimed productions in Australia and the United Kingdom. The sweeping, episodic play features 19 actors from across the globe on a multi-generational journey of a Sri-Lankan Australian family from 1956-2004. Radha fled Sri Lanka with her unborn child as the nation struggled with conflict. Two decades later, her son Siddhartha, now an Australian man who knows little of his family’s background, receives a call from the past that changes everything he thought he knew, and who he thought he was.
Good Bones
New York Premiere
By James Ijames
Directed by Saheem Ali
Begins September 19, 2024
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames explores gentrification and the growing price of the American dream in his sharp, funny new play, GOOD BONES. A work opportunity to revitalize the blighted neighborhood she grew up in has led Aisha and her chef husband Travis to buy and renovate a charming old house. The Public’s Associate Artistic Director Saheem Ali directs this New York premiere new play about community, change, and the soul of our cities.
Deep History
New York Premiere
Written and Performed by David Finnigan
Begins October 5, 2024
At the end of 2019, in the English countryside, Australian playwright David Finnigan began writing a play about the six turning points that have brought us to this moment in time—our ecosystems transformed, our planet on the brink of unthinkable climate disaster. But then Finnigan's hometown of Canberra was hit by bushfires. As an area the size of England burned and one billion animals perished, he started to receive texts from loved ones racing to evacuate amid the devastation. An extraordinary ride through human history, DEEP HISTORY is shot through with humor and glowing with hope.
Gatz
Final NYC Encore of Acclaimed Production
By Elevator Repair Service
Text: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Directed by John Collins
Begins November 1, 2024
Ahead of the centennial of The Great Gatsby’s publication and more than a decade after its original Obie and Lortel Award-winning engagements, Elevator Repair Service’s GATZ returns to The Public for a thrilling and final New York City encore of the acclaimed production. One morning in the office of a mysterious small business, an employee finds a copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk. He starts to read it out loud and doesn’t stop. An event not to be missed and a last chance to see this theatrical and literary tour de force by one of the American theater’s most exciting and inventive companies.
The Politics of Now
The Supreme Court. School shootings. The abuse of power, past and present. Experience three presentations featuring work that speaks directly to our current politics and cultural conversation. THE POLITICS OF NOW features three riveting, compassionate theatrical works, including THE FORD/HILL PROJECT, GUAC, and a screening of CONVERSATIONS IN TUSCULUM.
Winter/Spring 25.
Sumo
New York Premiere
By Lisa Sanaye Dring
A co-production of Ma-Yi Theater Company and La Jolla Playhouse
Directed by Ralph B. Peña
Begins February 20, 2025
Entrenched in an elite sumo training facility in Tokyo, six men practice, eat, love, play, and ultimately fight. Step into the sacred world of sumo wrestling, with the New York premiere of Lisa Sanaye Dring’s mesmerizing new drama, SUMO. Akio arrives as an angry, ambitious 18-year-old with a lot to learn. Expecting validation, dominance, and fame, and desperate to move up the ranks, he slams headlong into his fellow wrestlers. Obie Award winner Ralph B. Peña directs this powerhouse drama.
Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.
North American Premiere of All Four Plays Presented Together
By Caryl Churchill
Directed by James Macdonald
Begins April 3, 2025
A girl made of glass. Gods and murders. A pack of ghosts. And a secret in a bottle. A kaleidoscope of stories, each short play is a testament to how playwright Caryl Churchill has “remade the landscape of contemporary drama—and earned herself a place among the greats” (The Guardian). James Macdonald directs these wildly inventive new works.
Goddess
New York Premiere
GODDESS
Conceived by Saheem Ali
Music and Lyrics by Michael Thurber
Book by Jocelyn Bioh
Choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie
Directed by Saheem Ali
Begins April 29, 2025
The critically acclaimed team behind the 2021 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Merry Wives returns to The Public with the New York premiere of a new musical conceived and directed by Associate Artistic Director/Resident Director Saheem Ali, featuring music and lyrics by Michael Thurber and a book by Tony Award nominee Jocelyn Bioh. A mysterious singer arrives at Moto Moto, a steamy Afro-jazz club in Mombasa, Kenya. She casts an entrancing spell on everyone, including a young man who has returned home from studying in America. Will the big plans for his life—stepping into a political legacy and marrying his fiancée—be upended? Inspired by the myth of Marimba, the Goddess who created beautiful songs from her heartbreak, this is a rousing tale of romance, the supernatural, and the quest towards one’s truest self.
Summer 25 and Beyond.
Twelfth Night
To reopen The Delacorte Theater
Free Shakespeare in the Park 2025
TWELFTH NIGHT
Directed by Saheem Ali
Summer 2025
The Public Theater will celebrate the opening of the newly revitalized Delacorte Theater with a Free Shakespeare in the Park all-star cast of Public alumni in a production of TWELFTH NIGHT. Join us to revel in the midsummer madness as twins Sebastian and Viola survive shipwreck, revenge plots, and the trick doors of love. The Public’s Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director, Tony Award nominee Saheem Ali directs this joyful romp welcoming all of New York back to the magic of Central Park’s beloved theater. Be there when the stage lights turn on again at The Delacorte—a New York City classic—with this high-powered production of the Bard’s classic comedy.
Let's Keep Dancing: A Death Row Story
World Premiere Audio Play
By John Purugganan
Directed by Oskar Eustis
Incarcerated since 1989, John Purugganan is committed to reaching past the prison walls, becoming a tutor, mentor, and prolific writer. His audio play LET’S KEEP DANCING: A Death Row Story was a prizewinner in the first annual Arts in Corrections Playwriting Contest. Michael Green is 21 years old and has just arrived in the cell he’ll inhabit for the rest of his life. His neighbor, Hap Embleton, is 67 and has been imprisoned for most of his life. Artistic Director Oskar Eustis directs this compelling, world premiere audio play about two souls fighting to survive the row.
Initiative
Kicking off Fall 2025 season
World Premiere
By Else Went
Directed by Emma Rosa Went
Fall 2025
Playwright Else Went, alumnus of our acclaimed Emerging Writers Group, brings her transformative new play INITIATIVE to The Public in Fall 2025. A bittersweet reflection on adolescence at the dawn of the new millennium, INITIATIVE charts the intertwined lives of seven teens from 2000-2004, as they become friends and more than friends, wrestle with their potential, face incalculable loss, and struggle to find their way in (and get out of) “Coastal Podunk, California.” Emma Rosa Went directs this epic world premiere guaranteed to make you remember the most difficult and beautiful things about growing up.
The Seat of Our Pants
World Premiere Musical
SEAT OF OUR PANTS
Music & Lyrics by Ethan Lipton
Based Upon the Play The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Fall 2025
Next fall, The Public’s Emerging Writers Group alumnus and Obie Award-winning playwright, songwriter, and singer Ethan Lipton brings his irreverently funny show THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS to The Public for its world premiere. A rollicking adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, this new musical about age-old problems tells the twisting, often absurd story of the Antrobus family who have been alive for 5,000 years but live in the same existential dread as the rest of us. Mired in the hot mess of being alive, the Antrobuses survive all manner of catastrophe in their endless quest to begin again, and again, and again. Two-time Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman directs this bracingly original spectacle—a musical reminder that surviving is what we do best.
Programs.
Joe's Pub
Celebrating its 26th Anniversary in October 2024, iconic music, comedy, and live performance venue Joe’s Pub continues the tradition with a season of dynamic nightly performances.
Free Shakespeare in the Park
FREE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park is one of the cornerstones of The Public Theater’s mission. Since 1962, over six million people have enjoyed more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare and other classical works and musicals.
The Delacorte Theater is under construction and undergoing its first major renovation in decade and will reopen in 2025. So, this summer, we're celebrating all things Free Shakespeare in the Park by bringing the show to you in your community and at home.
Mobile Unit
The Mobile Unit is a modern reimagining of Joseph Papp’s Mobile Theater, inspired by Ten Thousand Things Theater in Minneapolis, MN. The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit breaks down economic and geographic barriers to the arts by meeting our communities where they are—staging free professional theater productions in local neighborhood venues such as libraries, homeless shelters, correctional facilities, and community centers across all five New York City boroughs. Over the years, Mobile Unit has served thousands of audiences with critically acclaimed productions.
Public Works
PUBLIC WORKS, a major artistic program of the Public Theater, aims to restore and build community by connecting people through the creation of extraordinary works of art. Public Works is animated by the idea that theater is a place of possibility, where the boundaries that separate us from each other in the rest of life can fall away. Working with partner organizations in all five boroughs, Public Works invites community members to take classes, participate in programming, attend performances, and join in the creation of ambitious works of participatory theater.
Devised Theater Working Group
The DEVISED THEATER WORKING GROUP (DTWG) is an artist resource group designed for live arts-makers of all disciplines. Formed as a complementary program to the Under the Radar Festival in 2014, DTWG creates an infrastructure to support collaborative collectives and other untraditional originators as they forge new theater by offering the dramaturgical, technical, artistic, and administrative resources of The Public Theater.
Emerging Writers Group
EMERGING WRITERS GROUP is a program that provides key support and resources for writers at the early stages of their careers. Writers are selected bi-annually and receive a two-year fellowship facilitated by The Public’s New Work Development department. EWG meets twice a month for peer feedback on plays in progress as well as special sessions that connect the group to the wider landscape of New York City theater.
Support The Public
Consider becoming a Supporter to unlock early access to the 2024-2025 Season! Join in today with a gift of $100 or more to support theater of, by, and for all people. As thanks, you will receive savings on tickets and transaction fees, and a host of exciting benefits, for a full year.
Want Even Earlier Access? Join as a Supporter Plus, with a gift of $300 or more, for even earlier access to the season, as well as reserved seating for Free Shakespeare in the Park.
Join in today or call 212.967.7555 to learn more.
Team Public
Team Public is a new way to stay connected and engaged with The Public’s artists, staff, programming, events, and so much more. Team Public is part of our larger membership program. It is FREE and open to all. You will receive weekly calendar updates, downloadable content, artist spotlights, a monthly newsletter, historical fun facts, and special invitations to events and discussions.