Below is a calendar of selected theater opening* this month in New York. None are on Broadway, but there is enough happening Off and Off-Off Broadway to see a new show nearly every night in February. Many feature familiar faces:
Some are dark — a new play about genocide, two about encounters with Nazis. One of these is co-written and starring Ethan Slater, showing an unknown side of mime Marcel Marceau. Sean Hayes stars in a solo play by David Cale, David Greenspan in a solo play by Jerry Lieblich), Okieriete ‘Oak’ Onaodowan in a new play by Ngozi Anyanwu.
:Lauren Yee also has a new play, Wallace Shawn is bringing back an old one. There are only a few musicals opening in February: an Encores concert starring Philippa Soo and Steven Pasquale, an “operatic monogram” about toxic masculinity, a puppet musical. The month is big on puppets Off Off Broadway – besides that puppet musical, Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure at Bushwick Starr, there is the puppet festival Puppetopia at HERE, and Mia M.I.A. and Footnotes at La MaMa.
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 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 ⬜️ .
Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪 Concert 🎶 Out of Town 🇺🇸
February 1
🟦Just Desserts (AMT Theater)
Five characters compete at the Jefferson County Bake-Off that features the culinary goods from a different actual baker at every performance.
January 30 – February 22
February 4
🎶High Spirits (NY City Center)
The Encores concert revives this 1964 musical adaptation of Noël Coward‘s play Blithe Spirit, a medium accidentally conjures up the dead first wife of a writer, which leads to chaos, even though his current wife sees nothing. Starring married couple Phillipa Soo (from Hamilton) and Steven Pasquale (from The Bridges of Madison County) Andrea Martin as the medium, and Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit) as Elvira the ghost.
February 4 – 15
February 5
🟦Hans Litten: The Jew Who Cross-examined Hitler (Philosophy Productions at Theater Row)
In 1931, while Germany was still a democracy, fractured, polarized, but intact, Hans Litten subpoenaed Hitler, put him on the witness stand, and forced him to answer publicly for his movement’s embrace of violence. For one brief moment, the law worked
January 30 – February 22, 2026
🟫Mia M.I.A., A Shadow Puppet Musical (La MaMa)
After Mia vanishes, Ella embarks on a quest to find lost loved ones, liberation and healing in this science fiction fairytale created by the theater collective Midnight Radio Show.
February 5 to 15
February 6
🟦Midwest Porn (The Tent Theater at 14th St. Y)
In this play by Quincy Long,, St. Mary’s Elementary School is threatened by low enrollment, a nascent adult entertainment industry, and an infestation of turtles, as well as fourth-grader Beatrice, who is organizing a boycott against Confirmation. The nine-member cast includes Bubba Weiller, who is also a playwright, whose second play “The Saviors” is coming to The Atlantic in June.
Running in repertory with The Leveret
January 31 to February 21
February 7
🟦The Leveret (The Tent Theater at 14th St. Y)
,In this solo play by Diane Glancy starring Bobby Plasencia, Spanish Franciscan Friar and architect Antonio Cruzado designs and builds Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mission using the enforced labor of the Gabrielino Tongva people.
Running in repertory with Midwest Porn
January 31 to February 21
🟫Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure (Bushwick Starr)
A new puppet musical about an orphaned mermaid-like charaxer living in Newtown Creek searching for family. Concept, Book & Lyrics by La Daniella. Music, Arrangements & Lyrics by Ben Langhorst
February 4 – 21
February 8
🟦Ai Yah Goy Vey (Pan Asian Rep at ART/New York)
A solo show written and performed by Richard Chang with the punning subtitle “Adventures of a Dim Sun in Search of His Wanton Father,” it tells the story of a country bumpkin who delivers Chinese takeout food in New York City’s diverse neighborhoods while seeking his long-lost Papa, who dumped his Chinese Opera diva-Mama
January 29 to March 1
February 10
🟦Not Nobody (Twilight Theater Company at 59e59)
In this play by Brian Dykstra, a professor of ethics saves a police officer’s life and is hailed as a hero — until he’s not.
February 5 – March 1
February 11
🟦The Monsters (MTC at NY City Center)
In this play written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu, Okieriete ‘Oak’ Onaodowan portrays an aging but successful fighter in the local Mixed Martial Arts circuit whose sister (Aigner Mizzelle) is obsessed with him, and finally shows up at his doorstep.
January 23 to March 15
🟦The Other Place (The Shed)
Emma D’Arcy, Ruby Stokes, and Tobias Menzies portray the family of an unstable patriarch who killed himself years earlier, but whose ashes still lie in the house, in this reworking of Sophocles’ tragedy “Antigone” by Alexander Zeldin (author of LOVE at Park Avenue Armory),
January 31 – March 1
February 12
🟦The Unknown (Studio Seaview)
Sean Hayes stars in a solo play by David Cale about a writer desperate to cure his writer’s block who retreats to a remote cabin—only to discover he may not be alone.
January 31 – April 12
🟩 without mirrors (The Brick)
In this 60-minute play written and directed by Jerry Lieblich, David Greenspan portrays a lone character who speaks a jagged poetry from what they think is a cave — though in truth they aren’t sure.
February 12 – 28
🟪 Mano a Mano (La Mama)
Paul Pinto’s “operatic monodrama” about toxic masculinity, “ninety minutes of virtuosic chants, rants, song and spectacle,”
February 12 – 22
February 13
🟩Twelve Minor Prophets (Jack)
After the death of his father, who was a biblical scholar, Josh gathers some actor friends to finish his father’s work, and stage the Twelve Minor Prophets from the Bible, but as a Western, a teen drama, a musical.
February 13 to 28
⬜️🇺🇸A Night At The Theater (Studio Playhouse in Montclair, NJ)
Step into the world of a 1940s-style comedy—until the leading lady drops dead, and the real show begins! In this immersive world premiere, the audience becomes part of the action, moving through all three floors of the theatre—front of house, backstage, dressing rooms, and beyond—unraveling clues and encountering suspects up close
February 14
🟦The Tragedy of Coriolanus (Theater for a New Audience)
Director Ash K. Tata, best-known for their inventive pandemic-era digital theater production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, brings their multimedia savvy to Shakespeare’s story of a celebrated war hero and uncompromising aristocrat who refuses to hide his contempt for the newly empowered plebeian citizens. Starring McKinley Belcher III as Coriolanus and Roslyn Ruff as his fearomse mother Volumnia.
February 3 to March 1
February 15
🟦The Waterfall (WP Theater)
In this play by Phanésia Pharel, a daughter (Natalie Paul) returns home to assist her ailing mother (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), and finds her confidence shaken by her mother’s ideas of what her life should be.
January 31 to March 1
February 16
🟦The Dinosaurs (Playwrights Horizons)
In this play by Jacob Perkins, a group of women (portrayed by an intergenerational cast, including Kathleen Chalfant, Elizabeth Marvel and April Mathis) share their stories every week for years and decades into eternity, keeping on coming back amidst shifting, unfamiliar worlds.
February 4 to March 1
🟦Hate Radio (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
Director Milo Rao brings us into the Rwandan radio station RTLM, where hate-media broadcasts demonized a population and ignited a genocide that claimed nearly a million lives
February 12–28.
🟨The Illusion (Red Bull at Florence Gould Theater and on demand)
Ranjit Bolt’s updated version of Corneille’s 17th century of an aging lawyer, longing for his estranged son, who engages a wizard who conjures scenes of romance, adventure, and peril from the younger man’s life, In person and simulcast on February 16, then on-demand February 17 through February 22.
🟦The Fever (Greenwich House)
Wallace Shawn stars in his 1990 play about a nameless narrator, confined to a squalid hotel room inside a poor nation, who lies feverish as political repression takes place just outside his window, and starts to question his complicity. This will run in repertory to Shawn’s new play, “What We Did Before Our Moth Plays” (which opens March 5)
Sundays and Mondays February 16 – April 26.
February 18
🟧🟫Puppetopia (Here Arts Center)
Parched by Official Puppet Business and co-produced by HERE: A sentient mushroom discovers a deep well left by extinct humanity
Ruby & Charlie by Jessica Simon & Co,:A young couple in the 1950s are brought together by swing dance and the music of Ray Charles.
The Magnificent Ms. Pham written by Tommy Nguyen and co-directed by Tommy Nguyen and Doug Fitch: A retelling of the true story of boatperson Kim Pham and her unwitting journey to becoming American
February 17 – March 1
February 20
⬜️🇺🇸The Young King (Mile Square Theater in Hoboken)
An adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale about a naive boy raised by shepherds is discovered to be heir to the kingdom.
(The webpage describes the show as and “immersive experience for the whole family,” but doesn’t explain how it is immersive, so I asked the artistic director, who replied (in part): “…Audience members will be assigned to a people group in the story and characters will greet them and guide them up through the staircase to our upper lobby where our audiences will create some art objects that will also be part of the story. 4 audience members will be invited up on stage to give a gift to The Young King,…”)
February 19 – March 8
February 22
🟦Marcel on the Train (CSC)
History remembers Marcel Marceau as the world’s greatest mime. But before the spotlight, he was a young man in Nazi-occupied France, guiding Jewish children to safety. The play is co-written by and starring Ethan Slater (SpongeBob SquarePants, Wicked)
February 5 – March 14,
February 23
🟦Mother Russia (Signature)
Lauren Yee’s play takes place in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Evgeny is hired to spy on Katya, a former pop singer with whom he promptly falls in love. Starring Steven Boyer, Adam Chanler-Berat, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and David Turner
February 3 to March 15
🟦You Got Older (Cherry Lane)
In this revival of the 2014 play by Clare Barron (Dance Nation), directed by Anne Kauffman, Mae (Alia Shawkat) is unmoored and unsettle after losing both her job and her boyfriend (who happened to be her boss), so she returns to her small Washington hometown to take care of her ailing father. There she meets a stranger.
Feb 12 – March 29
February 24
🟦The Reservoir (Atlantic)
Written by Jake Brasch, the-play features Noah Galvin as Josh, whose life is a mess. He’s moved home to Denver to get sober, but after years of drinking, the fog in his brain won’t lift. Struggling with memory loss, confusion, and shame he finds himself strangely in step with his four aging grandparents. His co-stars include Mary Beth Peil and Chip Zein
February 5 – March 15
February 25
🟦Meat Suit (Second Stage at Signature)
Subtitled “or the shitshow of motherhood,” and written and directed by Aya Ogawa, the play “plunges audiences into the raw, hilarious chaos of being a mom.”
February 26
🟦Chinese Republicans (Roundabout’s Laura Pels)
Themes of assimilation, intergenerational conflict, and gender politics in the workplace emerge in this comedy by Alex Lin, directed by Chay Yew about three high-powered businesswomen whose monthly lunch is jolted by a young woman new to the workforce,
February 5 to April 5
February 27
🟫⬜️Footnotes (La MaMa)
An immersive multi-media puppetry performance designed and directed by Theodora Skipitares about the history, power and poetry of walking, including famous walkers Aristotle who taught his lessons while walking, Henry Thoreau, Virginia Woolf and Mahatma Gandhi. The audience itself has to walk to several spaces within the theater, each member guided by a small booklet of instructions and interactive stories.
Feb 27 – March 15,
*Opening Night
This selection of plays 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 — although it is the same for shows in 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. (Shows that begin in February but don’t officially open until March will be listed in next month’s calendar.)
Check out my article: What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.
