There are more than 100 shows produced by the six annual theater festivals listed below, all of which begin in January. On offer are Beckett and Kabuki; a campy Princess Diana and an outraged Anita Hill; a wordless, clothes-less “visual poem” and a deafening “post-rock opera”; a ten-minute play about a Superhero League, and a 12-hour unscripted piece performed in shifts by 30 non-actor workers of New York City.
Most of it experimental, much of it mixed-genre, and all of it at far lower ticket prices than the average theater the rest of the year, these shows take over venues throughout the city every January. That’s the month the Association of Performing Arts Presenters holds its annual convention here — thousands of people who book shows for a living, a natural audience for cutting-edge work from all over. I focus on the theater festivals, but they are just part of the “independent multidisciplinary festivals, indispensable industry convenings and international marketplaces” that make up JanArtsNYC
It’s worth sorting through the festival offerings yourself (their titles below are linked to their websites.) The shows are too numerous, and their descriptions often too cryptic, for a definitive preview.
Under The Radar Festival
January 7 – 25
The oldest and largest of the January theater festivals, now in its 21st edition, is offering 32 shows in some two dozen venues. There are filters on the festival website that allow you to discover shows that are “international” or “tech forward” or “70 Minutes or Less”
Among the productions are three that I have seen elsewhere in previous years:
Ulysses by Elevator Repair Service
The experimental theater company who had a breakaway hit with “Gatz,” their verbatim reading/dramatization of “The Great Gatsby,” here presents a reading of highlights from each of the novel’s eighteen chapters. But the audience is suddenly jolted out of its assumption that this will be a conventional reading, as I discovered at an earlier version of this production four years ago, when the actors suddenly behave strangely: They stand up, dance, crawl; and most memorably, prop up Leopold Bloom ion his back, strip him of his dress (he was wearing a dress, perhaps an Irish kilt), and yank some half dozen baby dolls one by one out of his anus. (That’s not a passage I remember from the novel.) It will be presented January 14-24 at the Public Theater.
The Ford/Hill Project
A quartet of stellar actors led by co-creator Elizabeth Marvel and Amber Iman weave in verbatim transcripts of the tense, sexist Supreme Court confirmation hearings with Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford thirty years apart. I saw this Waterwell Production at the Public Theater in 2024 with a slightly different cast; it’s now running January 7-11 at La MaMa.
Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me
Eric Berryman with drummer Jharis Yokley presents Toasts, a genre of Black American storytelling that involves bawdy epic poems about legendary street heroes. The show, based on a 1976 record, was first presented in 2024 at the Wooster Group’s home theater, the Performing Garage, and is a follow-up to Berryman’s 2017 “The B-Side: ‘Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,’ a Record Album Interpretation,” It will be presented January 12 and 13 at Joe’s Pub.
Other shows by familiar artists:
All That Fall, a play by Samuel Beckett from seminal avant-garde company Mabou Mines
Watch Me Walk, a solo show about her disability from Anne Gridley, co-founder of the greatly inventive Nature Theater of Oklahoma.
Decidedly unfamiliar shows that sound intriguing:
12 Last Songs
On January 17 only, a 12-hour-long unscripted piece (but you’re not expected to stay the whole time) that invites 30 NYC workers in shifts into the room to demonstrate their labor. La MaMa
Mami
A “visual poem” — no words, all movement, about the mother-child relationship by 27-year-old Albanian–born director Mario Banushi. Jan 7-10 NYU Skirball.
Kanjincho
A modern take on a 12th century masterpiece of kabuki theater, about refugees (!). Jan 8-11, Japan Society
Try/Step/Trip
Dahlak Brathwaite’s musical, inspired by his own experience, uses hip hop and step to present the journey of a music man in a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program Jan 8-25, A.R.T./New York Theatre
Other shows of musical interest:
Bellow, by and about Irish accordionist Danny O’Mahony
Dream Feed, by the New York family band The HawtPlates.
Llontop the song-poems of Quechua poet Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco, celebrating Andean culture
Love Force, Sunny Jain, percussionist, composer, and bandleader of Red Baraat
A Tribute to Big Mama Thornton, Pamela Sneed on the rock’n’roll pioneer
The Exponential Festival
January 3 – February 7
The 11th annual edition of this festival presents 24 shows at nine Brooklyn venues over 36 days.
The first show in the festival, entitled “i’m going to take my pants off now,” runs January 3 to 17 at Life World. It stars Ann Marie Dorr, who, judging from the photograph, does take her pants off. It’s not entirely clearly what else she does, judging from the description: “A sweaty interactive play with moments that may or may not contain lowly cod fish, bodies, eating, vinyl, smells, fun words, not fun words, dark thoughts, and playlists and we can’t do it without you.”
This is actually one of the clearest descriptions in this festival. I don’t know how Exponential devotees figure out what to see; I suspect they look for shows that involve people they know.
That is how I’m choosing my utopias, which is written by Jay Stull, whom I know. But it also sounds promising: “A group of survivors live a kind of idyll in the abandoned apartments of a suddenly vacant New York City: They salvage, farm, cook, and wait for the species to come to a quiet end.” The play is being presented January 15 – 18 at Loading Dock.
I look also for relevance, In :/secondplace, a play by Kaye Hurley at Brick Aux Jan 8-10, “earth rockets toward its tipping point, trans people watch their rights being eroded, and AI redefines how we conceive reality itself’
I also look for puppets. Maria Reads a Book: Higher Eyes on Aricama, which follows Ari and Cama as their homeland turns to dust, employs four 4’x4’ paintings brought to life with 28 puppets, 13 mini sets, one 7’ puppet costume, a live videographer, and original live music. It runs January 15-17 at Jack on a double bill with ¿¡¡simon negs≈≈>:(:{{** (work-in-progress) in which “two dancers try their best to follow a series of increasingly difficult and ruthless instructions.”
And a high art/pop art fusion is hard to resist. Time Passes weaves together text from Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse” with all the lines spoken in the movie “Jaws” by the character Ellen Brody, the wife of the police chief. January 23- 31 at Target Margin’s The Doxsee Theater.
2026 International Fringe Encore Series
January 3 – March 29
SoHo Playhouse
The festival scouts fringe festivals from around the world, and presents them anew. This year there are 15 shows in this encore series, nine of them having originated at the Edinburgh Fringe. Only seven are running in January.
I saw Gwyneth Goes Skiing last year (And The Fit Prince this summer at Edinburgh); how could I miss Diana, The Untold and Untrue Story, Linus Karp and Joseph Martin’s campy chronicle of Princess Diana, January 6 – 10.
Other promising titles:
Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed the World, Duane Forrest’s solo show, Jan 3 – Feb 1
And Her Children. January 14 – February 13. A reimagining of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, about a woman who profits off gun violence by representing the NRA
Prototype Festival
January 7 – 18
six locations
The thirteenth season of this unconventional opera festival will present seven pieces and concerts
BMP Songbook, is a concert celebrating the two-decade history of Beth Morrison Projects, the producer of the festival, featuring selections of music from their 65+ commissioned and produced opera and music-theatre works . January 7 and 8,National Sawdust
Precipe
A contemporary fairy tale about a young woman fighting to find her voice and power as a woman. It promises puppets. LaMaMa January 8 – 11
Hildegard
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s historical fiction set in 1147 about St. Hildegard von Bingen, German Benedictine abbess/polymath, as she receives visions from God. At Gerald Lynch Theater of John Jay College, January 9 – 14.
The All Sing: Whale-Road (Hwael-Rād)
An ode to song and human-animal connection, featuring a medal band and hundreds of professional and volunteer singers. January 11, Father Duffy Square, Times Square
What to Wear,
This comedic post-rock opera that comments on the superficial pressures and pleasures of society was created twenty years ago by Richard Foreman (who died in 2025 at the age of 87) in collaboration with composer Michael Gordon. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, January 15-18
Art Bath
An “immersive performance salon”
Tiergarden
An exploration of the historic moments of societal madness using music ranging from Handel and Verdi to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dean Martin to Max Richter, William Byrd to Brecht & Weill, with a panoply of performances that includes opera, classical, jazz, ballet, burlesque. On January16, in the Alley Behind St. Paul’s Carroll Street
PhysFestNYC
January 8 – 18
Stella Adler Center for the Arts
The third annual PhysFestNYC once again describes itself as a physical theater festival (which means “Dance Theater, Commedia dell’arte, Clown, Mime, Butoh, Mukabhinaya, and limitless genre-mixing or -defying styles.”) There are 20 shows in this year’s festival, as well as 19 workshops, seven panels and an opening and closing party.
The Marble in My Mouth
January 9 and 10. A fever dream play that asks: What happens when love has nowhere to go? If your grief were to take physical form, what would it become?.
Body Concert
January 10 and 11: A 50 minute solo show performed to a bittersweet electroacoustic score by Mark Bruckner.
Volta
January 16. An original devised play placing two sisters amid shape shifting hallways, memory palaces, and lost connections.
Broken Box Mime Theater
A best-of collection of original short stories told entirely through movement. Broken Box Mime are the organizers of the festival.
The Fire This Time Festival
January 23-31
Apollo Stages at The Victoria
The six ten-minute plays in the 17th season of this festival of emerging Black playwrights range from humorous to moving, pointed, and political, directed by Ken-Matt Martin
