My twelfth annual theater gift guide below features links and information on shopping for
theater tickets,
theater subscriptions/memberships,
cast recordings,
play scripts and books about the theater
and theater on screen
I also suggest some souvenirs and knick-knacks intended as tangible reminders of an evanescent experience.
THEATER TICKETS
Gift cards: Telecharge gift cards , Today Tix gift cards and TKTS gift certificates (the last of which help support a worthy organization) allow the theatergoers on your holiday list to pick their own show to go to (or several shows – depending on how much money you put on the card.)
Some suggest it’s better to give a gift card from Visa or Mastercard,because the theater-specific gift cards charge fees for each show.
If you know what specific show your theater lover would love, or are willing to guess, you can buy tickets for them yourself directly from the show’s website or from the box office. (Broadway 2023-2024 Season Preview Guide)
I personally would not mind returning to see any of Broadway’s six longest-running shows, and these may be the ideal gift for a budding theater lover who’s never been
THEATER SUBSCRIPTIONS/MEMBERSHIPS
Some non-profit theaters still offer subscriptions or “season packages.” Many have switched to memberships, or flex passes, or simply gift certificates. Whatever form it takes, this is a gift both to your theater lover and to the theater itself, providing much needed support.
Among the New York City theaters I’ve joined at one time or another, and that I can recommend because they continue to produce some great work and make the theatergoer feel welcome: Brooklyn Academy of Music, which makes it easy to buy a gift membership; Lincoln Center Theater; The Public Theater; Playwrights Horizons; Signature
CAST RECORDINGS
Five albums have been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album:
“Kimberly Akimbo”
“Parade”
“Shucked”
“Some Like It Hot“
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of fleet Street“
Sondheim Unplugged has also been nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. It’s one of the offerings from Broadway Records, one of the four record labels that specialize in theater albums, offered in a range of formats: Among Broadway Records’s latest offerings, for example, is a digital album “Wild About You,” a recording of a show still in development sung by such Broadway talent as Lea Salonga, Alex Newell, and Joaquina Kalukango; a CD of the 2023 Broadway revival of Camelot and Once on This Island on vinyl.
The websites of all of the theater record labels are worth a browse.
Ghostlight/Sh-k-Boom highlights the Joe Iconis and Family album, a 5 LP box set including a 16-page booklet of lyrics, featuring more than three dozen singers, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Tveit, Krysta Rodriguez and George Salazar performing the songs by the composer best known for “Be More Chill”
Masterworks Broadway offers the cast recording of ”Funny Girl” starring Lea Michele, “Back to the Future the musical” and the album of “Lempicka,” which is coming to Broadway in the Spring.
PS Classics best-sellers include “Gutenberg The Musical” and an autographed CD of “Follies” including a 52-page full-color booklet.
An extravagant evergreen gift for the theater lover who still plays CDs:
Broadway in a Box – The Essential Broadway Musicals Collection — 25 (!) CDs of original cast recordings, from Annie to West Side Story.
BOOKS AND SCRIPTS
Scripts
There are some wonderful evergreen collections of theater scripts. Among my favorites:
And Library of America editions of
The Collected Plays of Arthur Miller
and
The Collected Plays of Tennessee Williams
to which I’ll add a newly published Library of America tome: Adrienne Kennedy: Collected Plays and Other Writings
Less extravagant are individual scripts. (For ideas check out 50 Best Plays of the Past 100 Years)
There is also a gift subscription to the Dramatists Play Service Book Club, which sends seven plays (a mix of new and back catalogue Acting Edition scripts) every three months. They also offer one-time “Specialty” collections of five scripts, including Black Voices, Women Voices, the plays of Paula Vogel, banned books, and Tony Award winners.
Scripts of plays on stage in 2023 or 2024:
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard, ran until July 2023
The Wanderers by Anna Ziegler, ran Off-Broadway Jan-Ap 2023
Plays for the Plague Years by Suzan-Lori Parks ran Off-Broadway in April 2023
Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, opened on Broadway Sep 27, 2023
Dig and I Need That by Theresa Rebeck; both plays opened in 2023, “I Need That” on Broadway.
Appropriate and two other plays by Branden Jacob-Jenkins. Appropriate is opening on Broadway December 18, 2023
Doubt A Parable by John Patrick Shanley, opening on Broadway Feb 29, 2024
My Son’s a Queer But What Can You Do by Rob Madge, opening on Broadway Mar 12, 2024
Home by Samm-Art Williams, opening on Broadway June 2024
Theater books
I love the following memoirs, histories and books of criticism or analysis, some of them going back decades, some published this year.
Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers written with Jesse Green (my review
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro (my review)
The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built by Jack Viertel
Act One: An Autobiography by Moss Hart
Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway by Michael Riedel
Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way by Stewart F. Lane
“Blanche: The Life and Times of Tennessee Williams’s Greatest Creation” by Nancy Shoenberger (my review)
Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields
Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum
Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History by Glen Burger)
This Is Not My Memoir by André Gregory (my review)
Lot Six: A Memoir by David Adjmi (my review)
Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris (my review)
Books about Stephen Sondheim have proliferated since his death in 2021. These are the ones I’ve found worthwhile, none more so than his own two-volume collection of lyrics and observations published a dozen years ago.
Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim
The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia by Rick Pender
“Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created ‘Sunday in the Park with George’” by James Lapine (my review)
“Sondheim: HIs Life, His Shows, His Legacy” (my review)
THEATER ON SCREEN
Companies offering theater online to subscribers were already increasingly popular before “digital theater” became the only theater in town during the 17-month pandemic shutdown. So much innovative theater made its way into computer screens during that time; some of it still exists; digital programming has become a part of some theater companies’ regular offerings. But the theater on screen that you can purchase as gifts are the platforms that existed before the pandemic: BroadwayHD, Digital Theatre, and Marquee TV
Throughout the year, the National Theatre Live broadcasts its productions in movie theaters throughout the United States.
For those who would prefer something now considered old-fashioned, both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company sell DVDs of its productions, although you have to pay in pounds.
SOUVENIRS AND KNICK-KNACKS
How about a t-shirt that says: Eat Sleep Musicasl Repeat, Or one that says: Will Power. (Get it?) Or a Broadway Musical Blanket. Or a Comedy and Tragedy Masks Wall Clock, Or a Shakespeare Twelfth Night Toy Theater. Or 100 Musical Theater Shows Scratch Off Poster — each time you see a show, you scratch off the title of each show you’ve seen and get the logo underneath.
There are any number of gag theater gifts that won’t necessarily make the recipient gag. The National Theatre gift page offers magnets and mugs printed with Shakespeare’s insults, and both a poster and a tea towel printed with a chart of how each character dies in Shakespeare’s tragedies. They’re also still selling “Lady Macbeth’s Hand Sanitiser”
Each Broadway show offers its own branded merchandise: posters, calendars, t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, keychains, umbrellas, magnets, plush toys. You can buy these baubles at the theater itself and in gift shops in the theater district, and online at each show’s website (Here again is my calendar of the Broadway season, with a link to each show’s website.), as well as on a variety of other sites, for example at the Playbill.com store.
Dish towels and aprons printed with Broadway logos are the most popular item in the current and “classic” collections on the online store of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, (proceeds from which help the needy.) As always, Broadway logos are big everywhere theater knick-knacks are sold: Etsy offers quilts and blankets and scarves made of them — and even a teddy bear.
Shopping for theater gifts can feel like its own rich theatrical experience at the Drama Book Shop, which reopened in 2021 (new co-owner Lin-Manuel Miranda; an account of my first visit), and at the Museum of Broadway, which opened late last year. (my review: 10 things I learned, 11 rooms I liked.) The book shop sells both in-person and online. The museum, too, has both a gift shop and an online store, selling its own branded apparel, such as a t-shirt printed with a map of the theater district on the front, and a list of all 40 Broadway theaters on the back.
Both the bookstore and the museum also offer in-person events; the bookstore events sometimes in effect charge admission (requiring purchase of the book under discussion for admission.) You can buy a ticket to the museum as a gift, and subsidize attendance at a bookshop event. You can also give yourself a gift by visiting either.
I may earn a small commission from purchases made at some of the links in this post.
Already own a Broadway blanket- keep it at the foot of the bed every day (my room has a LOT of Broadway things)