Below is a calendar of theater opening* in June. Sting is bringing his Broadway musical, much changed, to the Metropolitan Opera, and this time starring in it. Two dystopian dramas about an authoritarian America are returning intact; no need to update. Billy Porter is leading an all-Black cast of “La Cage Aux Folles,” one of a pride of plays and festivals marking Gay Pride Month.
There is a new ASL play, a new hippie musical, and an encore presentation of a rewrite of an Arthur Miller play from a woman’s perspective.
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 ⬜️.
Puppetry: Brown 🟫. Opera: Purple 🟪. Concert: 🎶. Out of Town: 🇺🇸. Free or pay what you can: 🆓
June 1
🟧Global Forms (Rattlestick)
An all-international arts festival showcasing the work of immigrant theater artists
June 1 – 7
June 2
🟦Jerome (Playwrights Horizons)
Written by John Caswell (Wet Brain), Jerome is a ghost town in the secluded Arizona backcountry that is home to Con and Doane, an aging gay couple of army veterans who’ve built a quiet life far from the chaos of cities and other people—until a stranger arrives, fleeing his damaged past, and falls into their arms. Starring Ken Barnett, Tyrone Mitchell Henderson, and Stephen Spinelli.
May 15 – June 21
🟦Are you Now or Have You Ever Been? (NY City Center Stage 1)
A revival of this docudrama, written by Eric Bentley and directed by Anna D. Shapiro, with a rotating all-star cast, about the 1940s House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings, where fame offered no protection and political pressure could end a career.
June 2 – September 11
🎶🟨Sapphic Broadway (54 Below and livestream)
A celebratory concert of queer women in musical theater.
June 3
🟦North Star (Irish Arts Center)
This immersive theatrical event responds to abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ historic visit to Belfast in 1845, with live music and spoken word performance
June 3 – 21
🟫Puppet Blok (Dixon Place)
new and developing works in myriad forms of puppet theater including Marionettes, Shadow Puppetry, Object Theater, Bunraku, Hand and Rod, Toy Theater, Kurama Ningyo, Pageantry, Stop Motion Animation, and puppets ranging in size from fingers to full body puppets.
June 3 – 9
June 4
🟧Squirts (La MaMa)
The queer intergenerational performance festival’s 13th edition will feature Lady Bunny, Chiquitita, RuAfza, LaWhore Vagistan, Bijli, Mei Ann Teo,Ife Olujobi, Deepali Zeer, with tributes to Agosto Machado and Diana Oh / ZaZa D.
June 4 – 7
🟧🇺🇸Voices International Theatre and Arts Festival (Jersey City Theater Center)
June 4 – 28
🟦A Woman Among Women (Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater)
Julia May Jonas’s response to Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” with his male characters transposed to female characters. I was intrigued when I saw the production at the Bushwick Starr. “What matters to the average theatergoer is surely that “A Woman Among Women” is more than just an exercise in male-to-female transpositions; it takes on a life of its own
🟦Girl Interrupted (Public Theater)
Juliana Canfield, Tony nominee for Stereophonic, stars in Martyna Majok’s stage adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir about her eighteen months in a psychiatric hospital(which was also turned into a well-known film) with original music by Aimee Mann, directed by Jo Bonney.
May 13 – July 12
🎶🟨Blood Moon Manor (54 Below and livestream)
A concert presentation of a new musical: Happy couple Roxy and Iman have found their new home. However, their first night staying in the house becomes a fight for survival when a lunar eclipse awakens the restless spirits of those who have died within and around the manor’s walls.
June 5
🟨🟥Fallen Angels (BroadwayHD)
A livestream of the Noel Coward revival on Broadway starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara. Requires a subscription or one-month pass. (My review of the production on stage.)
June 6
🇺🇸7th Inning Stretch: FIFA Edition, (Mile Square Theater)
One-night-only event featuring seven original short plays inspired by soccer and the spirit of the World Cup.
Pushing Mirrors written and directed by Chima Chikazunga
A.B.C. written by Abby Tilly, directed by Dorea A. Slagle
No Hands written by Stephen Kaplan, directed Anthony Gusevich
GOATED written by Gabriel Diego Hernandez, directed Tais Fontanez
Soccer Moms Through The Ages written by Lenny Hort, directed Mikaela Kafka
Spatial Awareness written by Pia Wilson, directed Joi Danielle Price
Pass to the Outside written by Iraisa Ann Riley, directed Chris Cragin-Day
(June 7 – The Tonys)
June 9
🟪The Last Ship (Metropolitan Opera)
Sting stars in a revised version of his musical about shipbuilders facing the closure of their yard. There is a new book by Barney Norris, The original musical had a three-month run on Broadway in 2014.
June 10
🟧Criminal Queerness Festival (National Queer Theater at HERE Arts Center)
The eighth annual festival is showcasing the work of Arab LGBTQ+ playwrights, as part of its mission to present new works written by artists from countries where queerness is criminalized or censored.
June 10-27.
🟩🟧Youth in Flames (59e59)
Written and performed by Mimi Martin, and inspired by true events, the show follows Millie, a cheeky British teenage expat living in Hong Kong whose world is upended during the 2019 regime protests. Through her friendship with local classmate Jesse, she is drawn into the heart of the cause and realizes that her carefree attitude can have real consequences. Part of Brits Off Broadway, direct from Edinburgh Fringe.
June 10 – 28
🟩🟧Catch of the Day (59e59)
Another “unbelievable true story” from Brits Off-Broadway, this “raucous and little-bit-political play” takes place in Ireland in 1966,involving a surprising number of nuns, and a skipper sailing into Dingle bay with a very unusual catch.
June 11
🟩Building the Wall (Urban Stages)
A revival of Robert Schenkkan’s 2017 dystopian play about immigrant detention centers after Trump declares martial law, which, let’s just say, doesn’t seem dated.
June 11-21
June 16
🟧🆓Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival (Bohemian National Hall)
The 10th annual free festival showcases contemporary Central and Eastern European theater honoring the legacy of Vaclav Havel. . Presented on June 20, for example, If I Had a Gun, I’d Take Them All Down is monodrama originally by Ukrainian playwright Piotr Armianovski inspired by the true story of Dmitry Bogrov, a Ukrainian-Jewish lawyer, double agent, and revolutionary who, in 1911, assassinated Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin at the Kyiv Opera House.
June 16 – 27
🟦I’m Almost There (BAM)
A modern love story that was a hit at Edinburgh written and performed by Todd Almond and directed by David Cromer, inspired by The Odyssey. All he wants to do is let the perfect man in. But can he overcome his unhinged neighbor, a seductive cult, a self-obsessed vampire, and a cat intent on dragging him to hell?
June 9 – 28
June 17
🎶La Cage Aux Folles (Encores at NY City Center)
The concert version of the Harvey Fierstein/Jerry Herman musical features an all-Black cast directed by Robert O’Hara, featuring Billy Porter as Albin and Wayne Brady as his longtime partner Georges, a gay couple who run a drag nightclub in St. Tropez, who must adjust when the son they raised wants to marry the daughter of a right-wing bigot. Co-stars James Jackson Jr. and Tonya Pinkins among others.
June 17 – 28
June 18
🟩Camping (Colt Coeur at HERE)
Virginia Lynne Barclay’s play traces the evolving relationship between Brit and Ari, two friends whose connection unfolds across three decades, set largely within the intimate space of a camping tent.
June 13 – July 11
June 20
⬜️🟨The Black Mirror Experience (The Shed)
A 60-minute collective experience, inspired by the British science fiction anthology television series, that fuses physical environments and interactive virtual reality. Requires the processing of biometric data (facial image and voice) using artificial intelligence to create your personalised avatar.
June 21
🟦Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts (NAATCO at the Public Theater)
This National Asian American Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, adapted and directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, is – as I wrote when it was first produced in 2018 — unlike any you’ve seen in New York before. This is true largely because you are unlikely ever to have seen these plays in New York before. ” (The photograph of Jon Norman Schneider is from 2018, but he is in the 2026 cast as well.)
June 9 – July 19
June 22
Twelve Hours with Tracy Letts (Circle in the Square)
A marathon staged reading of the works of the Pulitzer Prize winner: August: Osage County, Killer Joe, Linda Vista, The Minutes, and Man from Nebraska. The 30-member cast includes Katrina Lenk, John Gallagher Jr., Hamish Linklater, Adrienne Warren.
June 24
Music City (St. Lukes)
A return of this musical about two young singer-songwriters at the Wicked Tickle, an East Nashville bar that serves up cheap beer, open mics, and dreams of big breaks. The bar regulars bravely pursue love and music in the face of addiction, poverty, and haunting pasts.
June 15 – October 31
June 26
🆓Thank You Ryan for a Clean Microwave (The Shed)
Written by James Caverly and Andrew Morrill, the playwriting duo who created the ASL play “Trash,” this new play toggles between a Deaf-run coffee shop and a writer’s imagination.
June 26-27
June 29
🟦A Walk on the Moon (Laura Pels Theatre)
A musical adaptation of the 1999 movie about Brooklyn housewife Pearl Kantrowitz’s transformation in the Summer of 1969, during her annual trip north to a Catskills bungalow colony just as the world begins to shift beneath her feet. The country is reaching for the moon. A new spirit of freedom is sweeping the nation
June 15– August 22
*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 June but don’t officially open until July will be listed in next month’s calendar.)
Check out my article: What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.
