Below is a day-by-day calendar of theater opening* in December, a month that features two Broadway openings — a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins starring Sarah Paulson (see December 18th), and a musical based on a documentary about young adults on the autism spectrum, performed by a cast that is also on the spectrum (see December 10th.) Off-Broadway there is another show by and about somebody on the spectrum, a new musical about the making of an unlikely blockbuster album, a play about NYC as home to Native Americans now and 400 years ago, and an epic tale told with puppets.
This is also the month for holiday shows (previewed in a separate post) — many of them annual, most for the whole family (although some of them decidedly not for children.
The calendar below is organized chronologically by opening date*, but we must consider the dates subject to change, thanks to the continuing vagaries of COVID-19.
Each title below is linked to a relevant website.
Key: Broadway: Red 🟥. Off Broadway: Blue 🟦. Off Off Broadway: Green 🟩.
Digital or Hybrid Theater: Yellow 🟨.
Theater festival: Orange 🟧.
Puppetry: Brown 🟫.
Staged Reading 📖
Immersive and/or site-specific: Silver ⬜️
Opera: Purple🟪. Concert 🎶 Out of town 🚍
December 1
🟩Palatable Gay Robot (Ars Nova)
Stephen Brower comedically explores the pejorative portrayal of gay men in show business.
December 3
🟦Lone Star (Ruth Stage at Theater Row)
James McClure’s comedy about a Vietnam veteran battling symptoms of PTSD takes place in the cluttered back yard of a small-town Texas bar where he’s joined by his younger brother.
November 25 – December 23
December 4
🟫Life & Times of Michael K (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse, Little Amal) adapts J.M. Coetzee’s 1983 novel about a simple man who embarks on a journey through South Africa, ravaged by civil war, to return his dying mother to the farm where she was born.
November 29-December 23
🟦Madwomen of the West (Actors Temple Theater)
A new comedy by Sandra Tsing Loh in which four women gather in a Brentwood mansion for a surprise birthday brunch for one of them, who hates birthdays. Starring Caroline Aaron, Brooke Adams, Marilu Henner, and Melanie Mayron.
November 11 to December 31
December 5
🟦Manahatta (The Public Theater )
In this play by Mary Kathryn Nagle, Jane Snake, a young Native woman with a Stanford MBA. Jane reconnects with her ancestral Lenape homeland, known as Manahatta, when she moves from Oklahoma to New York for a banking job just before the 2008 financial meltdown – while 400 years earlier in the same place, the people of the Delaware Nation are expelled from their land.
November 16 – December 23
December 6
🟦The Inheritance of a Long-Term Fault (Clutch at Theater Row)
Playwright Melisa Annis focuses on a successful geologist at a high-profile conference to explore “the power shifts women experience over time and continents.”
December 1-23
December 7
🟦Export Quality (HERE)
A play drawn from true stories of mail-order brides from the Philippines,
Dec 3-17
🟩🟨Schmidt Smith Schmidt (The Brick)
In this darkly humorous work created by Leonie Bell with the performance artist known as Local Grandma, the lonesome and forgotten search for new connective tissue in a matrilineal, landscape
Dec 7 – 17
December 8
🟦White Gold (New Victory at Stage 42)
This acrobatics-packed story celebrates the cultural rebuilding of Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime
December 8-30
December 10
🟥How to Dance in Ohio (Belasco)
In this musical with music by Jacob Yandura and book and lyrics by Rebekah Greer Melocik, based on an HBO documentary of the same name, seven autistic young adults at a group counseling center in Columbus, Ohio, prepare for a spring formal dance—a challenge that breaks open their routines as they experience love, stress, excitement, and independence.
December 11
🟦Less Lonely (Greenwich House Theater)
Jess Tom’s one-person comedy about sex in the face of death, gender transition on the brink of oblivion, and the search for love at the end of the world.
November 28 – January 6
December 12
🟦Is It Thursday Yet? (PAC NYC)
A tapestry of dance, live music and home video footage that invites you into the unique complexities of dancer and choreographer Jenn Freeman’s life following her Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis at age 33
December 8 – 23
December 13
🟦Buena Vista Social Club (Atlantic)
This new musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”), tells the story of these artists story behind the making of the unlikely blockbuster album recorded by a group of Cuban musical legends who gathered in Havana for a week in 1996 to record it.
November 17 through January 21 .
December 17
🟦Night of the Iguana (La Femme Theater Productions at Signature)
A revival of Tennessee Williams’ play about a defrocked clergyman during a stormy night at the Costa Verde Hotel in Acapulco, directed by Emily Mann with an impressive cast that includes Tim Daly, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Lea DeLaria, Austin Pendleton and Jean Lichty
December 6 – February 25, 2024
December 18
🟥Appropriate (Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater)
Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll, Elle Fanning are among the cast in this Broadway debut of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ 2013 play about the dysfunctional Lafayette family whose members have returned to their late patriarch’s Arkansas home to deal with the remains of his estate – and discover their liberal lawyer father was a closet racist.
November 28 – February 11
*Opening Night
This selection of plays in this month is organized chronologically by opening night, but includes the dates when a show’s run starts and ends (when available.)
Opening night is usually not the same as the first performance on Broadway and Off-Broadway. There is usually a “preview period” that can last days or weeks, sometimes months. But professional reviews are forbidden from being published until opening night, which is why I organize this calendar by opening night (when it exists and when I can find it) rather than first performance, as a way to support the continuing relevance of theater reviewing. (Shows that begin previews in December but don’t open until January will be featured in next month’s calendar.) Check out my essay: Broadway Opening Night. What It Means. How It’s Changed. 7 Facts to Clear Up The Confusion and Crystallize the Outrage.
What Is Broadway 🟥, Off Broadway 🟦 and Off-Off Broadway🟩?
Off-Broadway theaters, by definition, have anywhere from 100 to 499 seats. If a theater has more seats than that, it’s a Broadway house. If it has fewer, it’s Off-Off Broadway. (There is a more sophisticated definition, having to do with contracts, and more elaborate distinctions, having to do with ticket prices, number and location of theaters, length of runs, willingness to take artistic risks, etc.)
(Lincoln Center has separate Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theaters. Several of the city’s performing arts centers, such as The Shed, Little Island, Park Avenue Armory, NYU Skirball, and now PAC NYC at the World Trade Center site technically exist outside Broadway/Off-Broadway/Off-Off Broadway classifications; I list them as Off-Broadway, even though most have more than 500 seats.)
