Below is a calendar of New York theater opening* in December. There are two new shows on Broadway, both with starry casts, one a revival of a futuristic play that feels almost present-day now (see Dec 8); the other has no official opening date (it begins Dec. 12) and it’s arguable whether it’s even theater. Beyond Broadway, there is another starry cast, led by Michelle Williams (Dec 14), and some serious plays about queer life, protest, war, epidemics, human rights.
But much of the month of December is taken up with holiday fare (which I’ve previewed in a separate post): Most of those shows (but not all) are annual traditions, some going back decades; most (but not all) are for the whole family.
The calendar below is organized chronologically by opening date*, or first performance, but we must consider the dates subject to change, thanks to the continuing vagaries of COVID-19, and the normal challenges and serendipity of live theater.
Each title below is linked to a relevant website.
Color key: Broadway: Red 🟥. Off Broadway: Blue 🟦. Off Off Broadway: Green 🟩.
Digital or Hybrid Theater: Yellow 🟨 Theater festival: Orange 🟧. Immersive/site-specific: Silver ⬜️ . Concert/cabaret 🎶 Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪 Outdoors:🌲Free (or “choose what you pay”) 🆓
December 2
🟦The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions (Park Avenue Armory)
A musical theater adaptation of a book published in 1977 that radically reimagined history of the world told through a queer lens
Dec 2-14
December 3
🟦Gotta Dance (York at The Theatre at St. Jean’s)
Ninety minutes of reconstructed choreography by Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, Michael Bennett, Susan Stroman, and Billy Wilson, from West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Pippin, Singin’ in the Rain, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, and more.
November 25 – December 28, 2025
🟧🆓Foreign Exchange Festival (Fxfest) (Playwrights Horizons)
For the first time, Playwrights Horizons and London’s Soho Theatre join forces to launch a foreign exchange festival for playwrights, sending eight new plays to opposite sides of the Atlantic.
The plays coming over to this side: Main Energy Character 2; Little Brother; I, Mother; White Girls Gang
Dec 3 – 6
December 4
🟦The American Soldier (A.R.T./New York Theatres)
Playwright and actor Douglas Taurel performs 14 different characters – men, women, and children – affected by various wars.
Dec 2 – 21
🟩Diversion (The Barrow Group Performing Arts Center)
Written by Scott Organ, who comes from a family of nurses, the play focuses on a team of ICU nurses working every day against the backdrop of the opioid crisis..
Through December 21
🟩Protest Song (La MaMa)
Tim Price’s one-man play tells the story of witty, charismatic man who is also an addict living on the streets of London during the Occupy London movement of 2011.
December 4 – 21
🟫Silent Green (La MaMa)
Watoku Ueno’s shadow-puppet piece explores our innate love for the natural world.
Dec 4 – 7
December 5
🟩“Bum Bum: or, This Farce Has Autism, (Epic Players at HERE)
The play written by autistic playwright Dave Osmundsen follows three performers during a chaotic live telethon benefiting “Singing and Hearing Autistic Greatness” (aka SHAG or SAHAG), as they’re pressured to deliver sanitized routines for a mainstream audience
December 7
🟩The Slide is the Negative (Chain Theater)
When a photographer betrays her closest friend by displaying an intimate, revealing photograph in a prestigious Chelsea gallery, the fallout spirals into a deadly web of infidelity and violence. Written by Jake Shore and starring Emmy winner Cady McClain
Through December 21
December 8
🟥Marjorie Prime (Second Stage’s Hayes Theater)
Written by Jordan Harrison, and directed by Anne Kauffman, with a stellar cast — Danny Burstein, Christopher Lowell, Cynthia Nixon, June Squibb — this 2015 play, about an elderly woman in the near future whose grown children give her a robot caregiver, is even more relevant with the ascendance of AI, but it’s also insightful about family dynamics. My review of it Off-Broadway in 2015.
🟩Oklahoma Samovar
Alice Eve Cohen’s play depicts five generations of a family, beginning with two Latvian teenagers who flee the Russian Army in 1887, and become the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run. A century later, twenty-year-old Emily tries to decipher her late mother’s mysterious request to have her ashes spread on a stranger’s farm, in a place she has never heard of
December 5 – 21
🟧7th Annual International Human Rights Art Festival (The Tank)
Each day has a different theme: eg : Celebration of Women’s Power Dec 9; Celebration of LGBTQIA+ Dec 10; Celebration of Immigration Dec 11.
Dec 8 – 14
December 12
🟥All Out: Comedy about Ambition (Nederlander)
In a follow-up to last year’s All In, a rotating cast of four well-known people reads the short stories by Simon Rich “about ego, envy, greed, and basically just New Yorkers in general.”
Dec 12 – March 8
December 14
🟦Anna Christie (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
Michelle Williams stars in a production directed by (her husband) Thomas Kail of Eugene O’Neill’s -century-old play about a former prostitute who falls in love. The cast also features Mare Winningham, Tom Sturridge, and Brian d’Arcy James
November 25–February 1
🟦 Predictor (AMT Theater)
A new play by Jennifer Blackmer about Meg Crane, the woman who invented the home pregnancy test
December 6-January 18
December 18
🟦Picnic at Hanging Rock: The Musical (Greenwich House Theater)
A musical adaptation of a novel that is best-known for Peter Weir’s film adaptation of the same name. On Valentine’s Day in 1900, a group of teenage schoolgirls go on a picnic to the foreboding Hanging Rock. Three vanish without a trace.
Dec 16 – January 17
*Opening Night
This selection of works of theater is organized chronologically by opening night, but includes the dates when a show’s run starts (if it starts in December) and ends (when available.)
Opening night is usually not the same as the first performance on Broadway and Off-Broadway (although it is the same for festivals and most Off-Off Broadway shows ) For 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. (Those shows that begin in December but don’t officially open until January will be listed in November’s calendar.)
Check out my article: What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.
