See these new plays and world premieres on Broadway and off Broadway
Catch all-new shows by veteran theatre writers and new playwrights alike.
New Off-Broadway plays regularly showcase limitless risk-taking, creativity, and excellence, and this year is no different. A couple of all-new plays are premiering directly on Broadway this spring, but there are plenty more at Off-Broadway theatres around the city to explore.
Some of this year's new plays share common themes, including intergenerational struggles, changing friendships, and self-discovery that happens inside a classroom. But with each playwright, and respective casts coming from different backgrounds, each story has its own unique perspective to offer. And what many of these stories have in common is a shared interest in the many different ways people can connect with each other and navigate the world together, whatever that looks like for them. Seeing the world through plenty of different playwrights' and characters' eyes is a great case for seeing more than one of these shows in New York!
Read more about the new plays on Broadway or off Broadway for the very first time — you could be part of the first audiences to see them before they potentially move to Broadway or thrive in productions all over the country. Many have limited runs, so don't miss out. If you're looking for even more new theatre to discover, check out our guide to all the Broadway shows opening soon.
Get tickets to plays on New York Theatre Guide.
New plays on Broadway
Multiple plays that have never been seen in New York are playing on Broadway this season. You can also catch a show that made its Off-Broadway debut long ago, a long-awaited Broadway debut by an established playwright, or a hit London show being seen in New York for the first time.
Leopoldstadt
Tom Stoppard is one of the most legendary living playwrights there is. He's had 18 productions on Broadway and won six Tony Awards, and his 19th is his most personal work to date, Leopoldstadt. Set in and named after the Jewish quarter of Vienna, the show follows multiple generations of one Jewish family from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Each family member has a different relationship with their Judaism — some wholeheartedly define themselves by it; others don't — but amid the Holocaust, during which they're all viewed as lesser, they're all forced to reckon with their identity, and their choices impact the next generations.
Get Leopoldstadt tickets now.
Peter Pan Goes Wrong
This slapstick spoof on the classic fairytale is actually 10 years old, having premiered in 2013, but it's only flying into New York for the first time in 2023. Mischief Theatre Company follows up its Tony-winning The Play That Goes Wrong with another show about the Cornley Drama Society, who are befallen by missed cues, unsteady sets, and lost boys (read: clueless cast members) as they try to stage Peter Pan.
Get Peter Pan Goes Wrong tickets now.
Prima Facie
When Emmy Award winner Jodie Comer headlined Prima Facie in London, her performance was dubbed a tour-de-force. Now, she will once again lead this new one-woman show in its Broadway premiere in April 2023. Comer stars as Tessa, a brilliant and highly skilled defense attorney who knows just how to exploit every weakness in a prosecutor's case. But when she herself is the victim of an assault, she sees the legal system from the other side and realizes how much her case will be picked apart, and her career ambitions and moral compass collide.
Check back for information on Prima Facie tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Purlie Victorious
Tony Award winner Leslie Odom, Jr. will star in the first revival of Ossie Davis's landmark 1961 play. He plays the title role of a preacher in the Jim Crow era, who travels to his hometown in Georgia to get money to free his church community and enslaved workers. The show, which is set to go up in summer 2023, marks Odom's first return to Broadway since starring in Hamilton.
Check back for information on Purlie Victorious tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
High Noon
Based on the 1952 Oscar-winning film, High Noon will be the first Western on Broadway in 85 years. The show follows Marshal Will Kane, who's caught between skipping town with his wife and escaping his enemies, or facing them head-on once and for all. Like the film, the play takes place over two hours in real time.
Check back for information on High Noon tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
New plays off Broadway
The Off-Broadway world is a haven for new plays. Off-Broadway theatres give new playwrights space to experiment with new work in front of small audiences, and that little show you saw off Broadway might soon become the next Broadway hit. Here are the new Off-Broadway plays premiering this year at theatres across the city.
Love
This new play at Park Avenue Armory invites audiences to step into the shoes of those in the welfare system and share in the love that gets them through everyday life. Inspired by interviews and firsthand experiences playwright Alexander Zeldin had when visiting shelters, Love is a timely, humanizing look at the welfare system, flaws and all.
Get Love tickets now.
Letters From Max
In 2018, two-time Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl published a book titled Letters from Max: a Poet, a Teacher, and a Friendship, documenting her correspondence with her late writing student, Max Ritvo. Now, she's adapted that book into a tender stage play, which shows the lessons teacher and student learned from each other, and how they helped each other grow.
Check back for information on Letters From Max tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
The Trees
Tina Satter directs Agnes Borinsky's The Trees at Playwrights Horizons. The show follows a brother and sister who create, by accident, a utopia in the park by their father's house. In a warlike world, they have to figure out how to keep this little makeshift community alive.
Get The Trees tickets now.
How to Defend Yourself
Playwright Liliana Padilla co-directs her own show at New York Theatre Workshop alongside Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown) and Steph Paul. It's fitting that a team of women bands together to lead How to Defend Yourself, itself about a team of young women banding together and learning self-defense after their sorority sister is raped. As they strengthen themselves, they tap into rage and desire they didn't know they had and learn how to channel it.
Check back for information on How to Defend Yourself tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Regretfully, So the Birds Are
Regretfully, So the Birds Are is a world-premiere play from Julia Izumi, described a "farcical tragedy." A fresh take on people's self-discovery quests, the show centers on the Whistler siblings, whose family problems only start at incest, arson, and murder. Amid it all, they're all looking to find something or hold onto something they have — if the birds don't get in their way.
Check back for information on Regretfully, So the Birds Are tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Elyria
Playwright Deepa Purohit makes her Off-Broadway debut with Elyria, named for the Ohio town. There, two mothers meet who, 20 years and 2 continents ago, had made a life-changing deal. Now, they must confront their pasts and the ways their futures will continue to tie them together from there.
Get Elyria tickets now.
Bees and Honey
MCC Theater premieres a Washington Heights love story by Guadalís Del Carmen. But it's not a fluffy, smooth romance. The show focuses on the young married couple Manuel and Johaira, who are starting to come face-to-face with the many challenges of life and marriage as they enter new phases in their lives. One question hangs over their heads all the while: Is love enough to get them through it all?
Check back for information on Bees and Honey tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Dark Disabled Stories
Ryan J. Haddad makes his Off-Broadway debut as a playwright with Dark Disabled Stories at The Public Theater. He also performs this solo show, which chronicles his experiences navigating a world that wasn't designed for him, his cerebral palsy, or his walker. Every performance of this show will feature open captions, audio descriptions, and American Sign Language interpretations.
Get Dark Disabled Stories tickets now.
the best we could (a family tragedy)
Manhattan Theatre Club presents the world premiere of the best we could (a family tragedy), a play by Emily Feldman about a father-daughter road trip. Their journey ends up spanning more than just miles and states in this equally funny and emotional story.
Get the best we could (a family tragedy) tickets now.
Good Bones
Fresh off a 2022 Pulitzer Prize win for his comedic Hamlet adaptation Fat Ham, James Ijames returns to The Public Theater with his newest work, Good Bones. The show explores the impact of gentrification, centering on one couple, Aisha and Travis. Aisha gets an opportunity to renovate an old house in her dream home, a part of a larger project to revitalize her childhood neighborhood. But her contractor, Earl, who also grew up there, doesn't remember the neighborhood as all bad, and he calls out how Aisha's work might displace the people who still call that neighborhood home.
Check back for information on Good Bones tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
The Half-God of Rainfall
Inua Ellams's The Half-God of Rainfall brings together old legends and modern characters in one new, epic myth that takes audiences from a Nigerian village to a U.S. basketball court to Mount Olympus and back. Demi is a half-Nigerian mortal, half-Greek god whose emotions cause the rain to fall and the rivers to flow. But he has another talent: basketball, and when he plays it, he wakes up even more gods living within the land. But when they awake, others are motivated to take a stand against them.
Check back for information on The Half-God of Rainfall tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Wet Brain
This co-production between Playwrights Horizons and MCC Theater is a world premiere from John J. Caswell, Jr. In Wet Brain, a family has been hardened into wisecrackers after dealing with their patriarch's alcoholism for so long. They still struggle to watch his ruin, though, and the play tells that story — along with how he's convinced he's getting abducted by aliens.
Check back for information on Wet Brain tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
King James
Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti and Glenn Davis lead the New York premiere of King James off Broadway. They play two vastly different men who, over the course of many years, develop a close friendship thanks to the one thing they have in common: their admiration of NBA legend LeBron James, whose career affects the trajectory of their own lives.
Check back for information on King James tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
shadow/land
The Public Theater first presented Erika Dickerson-Despenza's shadow/land as an audio play in 2021, and now, it's being mounted as a fully staged production for the first time. The first in a 10-play cycle from Despenza about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, shadow/land centers on a daughter who convinces her mother to sell their family business to minimize the impact of Katrina on them. However, they're haunted by the question of whether they've given up a valuable part of their family legacy.
Check back for information on shadow/land tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Primary Trust
This world-premiere play from Eboni Booth at Roundabout Theatre Company is all about getting a new lease on life. Kenneth's usual routine — working at the bookstore by day, drinking mai tais at the town tiki bar by night — gets disrupted when he's laid off. With nothing else to do, he finally faces a world he's been avoiding, and his discoveries prove surprising and even funny.
Check back for information on Primary Trust tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Grass
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins writes and directs his world-premiere play at Signature Theatre. The main character is an actor who has no job and just got evicted, so he has to go live with his father on a Texas island. To get there alive, he has to take the long road trip with his mother, with potentially comic results.
Check back for information on Grass tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
A Simulacrum
A Simulacrum is a unique theatrical collaboration between Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath and magician Steve Cuiffo. Storytelling meets sleight of hand in this show at Atlantic Theater Company, which dramatizes what happened when Lucas asked Steve to show him some magic tricks.
Check back for information on A Simulacrum tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
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