The season begins with a production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Saheem Ali. The play runs from May 22 through June 28, with an official opening night set for June 11. This staging marks the first time in nearly 20 years the tragedy has appeared at the Delacorte. In a unique creative choice, the title characters will speak to each other in Spanish, a language the production reserves for their private world.

“While Romeo and Juliet endures as one of the greatest love stories ever told, it is equally a cautionary tale about the devastating consequences of division within a society,” Ali said in a statement. “Shakespeare has something urgent and heartbreaking to say about how the young and innocent become collateral in wars they did not choose.”

The cast features Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens as Juliet and Daniel Bravo Hernández as Romeo. The ensemble includes veteran performers LaChanze, Deirdre O’Connell, and Okieriete Onaodowan.

Following the opening production, Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan will direct The Winter’s Tale, which runs from July 25 through August 23. The summer lineup also includes a Public Works production in August and a citywide tour of As You Like It by the Mobile Unit, directed by Emma Rosa Went.

To celebrate the reopening of the theater, The Public will host a kickoff event on Saturday, May 30, from noon to 5:00 p.m. featuring family activities. The theater will also introduce “Summer Fridays” on June 5, June 19, August 7, August 14, and August 21. These dates will include open house tours in the afternoon and evening picnics with live music.

In partnership with Citizens, The Public is expanding its borough distribution program to 50 locations, including 12 bank branches. The first distribution will take place May 23 at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden in Staten Island.

“By offering city wide ticket distributions at our branches, we’re expanding access to Free Shakespeare in the Park,” said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. He noted that the initiative makes it easier for New Yorkers to experience world class theater within their own neighborhoods.

Tickets remain free for all performances. In addition to the borough distributions, tickets can be acquired through the digital lottery on TodayTix or the traditional in person line at the Delacorte Theater. A limited number of seats are also available to donors who support The Public Theater with contributions starting at $300.

Full distribution schedules and performance calendars are available at PublicTheater.org.

Stepping into the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions on MoMA’s sixth floor this week, that sensation is palpable. After more than 50 years, the “greatest trickster of the 20th century” has returned to 53rd Street for a sprawling, once-in-a-generation retrospective. And even now in an era of AI-generated art and digital ephemera, Duchamp still feels like the most radical person in the building.

The journey begins not with a whimper, but with the painting that nearly broke the American art world in 1913. Standing before Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I was struck by how much “noise” the canvas still makes. Even after a century of cubist and futurist scholarship, the figure’s mechanical, stuttering movement down the stairs feels jarringly modern.

It is a rare treat to see it here; it hasn’t hung on these walls since 1974. Seeing it in person, you can almost hear the 1913 critics shouting that it looked like “an explosion in a shingle factory.”

As I moved into the center galleries, the exhibition transitioned from the “retinal” art Duchamp famously grew to loathe into the conceptual minefield of his Readymades.

Ann Temkin and Michelle Kuo have opted for what they call a “deadpan” installation. There are no ornate pedestals or dramatic spotlights for the Bicycle Wheel or the Bottlerack. Instead, they are presented with a clinical, almost industrial detachment.

Then, there is the Fountain. Positioned at eye level, the porcelain urinal (a 1950 replica authorized by the artist) remains the ultimate litmus test for the gallery-goer. I watched a group of teenagers circle it, their expressions shifting from confusion to a sort of guarded respect. “Is it art because it’s here?” one asked. Duchamp, I suspect, would have loved that the question is still being asked with such earnestness 109 years later.

“Duchamp challenged and transformed the very definition of an artwork,” Ann Temkin told me during a walkthrough. “Our goal was to foreground how he upended the opposition between the hand and the machine.”

The heart of the show is the Box in a Valise (Boîte-en-valise). In a darkened room midway through the exhibition, MoMA has gathered the most extensive collection of these “portable museums” ever shown.

These leather cases, containing miniature replicas of Duchamp’s life’s work, feel strangely prophetic in our age of zipped files and cloud storage. Looking into the tiny, folding compartments, where even the monumental Large Glass is shrunk to the size of a postcard, you see the artist as a meticulous archivist of his own myth.

While the original The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) remains too fragile to travel from its permanent home in Philadelphia, its presence is felt through a haunting series of preparatory studies and the cracked glass of To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour.

By the time you reach the final rooms, which cover his “retirement” into the world of professional chess and the secret 20-year labor of his final masterpiece, Étant donnés (represented here by fascinating archival documents), the myth of the “lazy” artist is thoroughly debunked. Duchamp wasn’t doing nothing; he was just waiting for us to catch up.

Walking into the museum this week, I was immediately confronted by Sweet Charity (2026) in the High Gallery. It is a thicket of towering, crumpled steel tubes, painted in defiant shades of ocher, chartreuse, and a particularly delicious citrus orange which look less like industrial refuse and more like giant, discarded candy wrappers. They are heavy, multi-ton monsters, yet they possess a “satin sheen” so convincing that I found myself resisting the urge to poke them just to see if they’d hiss and deflate.

A Journey in Reverse

The exhibition is cleverly staged in reverse chronological order. As you begin the ascent from the rotunda floor, you are essentially walking backward through Bove’s 25-year career. At the base, we see the “pipe monsters”, those massive, contorted stainless-steel compositions like Vase Face I / The Ascent to Heaven on a Dentist’s Chair. They feel almost biological, like the internal organs of some great mechanical beast that has been folded and tucked with the delicacy of origami.

As I moved up the ramps, the scale shifted from the monumental to the intimate. Bove has always been a master of the “found object,” and the mid-level galleries remind us of her surgical precision. There are her famous bookshelf installations, like How People Get Power, where paperback books and driftwood are arranged with a balance so precarious it feels like a physical manifestation of a thought.

The Hidden and the Tactile

The most startling moment of the show, however, isn’t Bove’s own work, but what she chose to reveal. On Ramp One, Bove has cut a diamond-shaped aperture into the temporary wall to expose a piece of the museum’s own history: the Alicia mural by Joan Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas. Hidden for decades, the ceramic mural now peeps through Bove’s architecture, a secret shared between two artists across time.

Further up, on Ramp Two, the exhibition offers something strictly forbidden in almost every other corner of the art world: a Tactile Library.

“It’s a weirdly radical act,” I overheard a guard whisper as a teenager gleefully handled a heavy chunk of anodized aluminum.

In this space, you can touch the raw materials, the bronze, steel, and even peacock feathers used by Bove to construct her world. It demystifies the “sculptural titan” persona, bringing the work back down to the level of the hand and the tool.

The Verdict

As I reached the top of the spiral, looking down at the six polished aluminum disks that Bove has hung to catch the light from the oculus, the museum felt different. Usually, the Guggenheim is a temple of looking; Bove has turned it into a laboratory of feeling.

She has taken the “hostile” reputation of heavy-metal minimalism and invited it to sit down and play a game of chess (literally, on artist-made tables scattered throughout the ramps).

By the time I reached the early drawings of nude models from the early 2000s near the top, the industrial weight of the ground floor felt like a distant, beautiful memory. Bove has managed to do the impossible: she has made steel feel as light as air, and the Guggenheim feel like home.

The exhibition, curated with a meticulous hand by Carmen Bambach, spans the entirety of the short but incandescent life of Raffaello Santi. It follows a chronological path beginning in the courtly atmosphere of Urbino and moving through the competitive air of Florence before culminating in the grand papal chambers of Rome. What struck me immediately was the sheer scale of the undertaking, with over 200 works on display including some 170 drawings that make the show feel like an intimate conversation with a genius who never seems to have had a bad day at the office.

The title of the show is no marketing gimmick. Raphael was the son of a poet and he composed sonnets himself, but his true poetry was visual. In the early sections, his drawings reveal a mind that was constantly refining and searching for a particular brand of grace that his contemporaries called sprezzatura. This is a studied nonchalance that makes the difficult look effortless. One particular reunion stopped me in my tracks where the museum has managed to bring together The Alba Madonna from the National Gallery of Art with its preparatory sketches from Lille. Seeing the final painting, a circular marvel of geometric harmony and tender emotion, alongside the frantic chalk marks that birthed it is a rare privilege. It reminds us that Raphael was not just a conduit for the divine but a disciplined worker who obsessed over the curve of a neck or the fold of a cloak.

Other highlights command equal attention. The Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, on loan from the Louvre, serves as the definitive image of the Renaissance gentleman with a softness of fur and an empathetic gaze that are even more arresting in person. Nearby, the Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn from the Galleria Borghese captures the enigmatic elegance Raphael could conjure with a single brushstroke. Since the famous frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura cannot travel, the museum has created a digital room where the murals are projected onto the walls to provide a necessary sense of scale for the surrounding sketches.

There is a modern tendency to prefer the tortured shadows of Leonardo or the muscular angst of Michelangelo. Raphael, by contrast, was affable, productive, and died at the peak of his fame at only 37 years old. Because he lacked the tortured artist persona, his reputation has occasionally suffered from the false accusation of being too perfect or too easy. This exhibition corrects that narrative. As I moved into the final rooms which feature three massive tapestries designed for the Sistine Chapel, the sheer power of his ambition became undeniable. These are not merely decorative objects but grand dramas of human expression.

The show ends with a nod to his final decade in Rome where he ran a studio so efficient and influential that it essentially set the template for the modern artistic workshop. Even in his most commercial moments, that sublime poetry remains. For those planning a visit, the exhibition runs through June 28, 2026. It is best to arrive early, as the crowds for the Alba Madonna form quickly and you will want space to appreciate the delicate silverpoint drawings that act as the true heartbeat of this show.

Stepping off the Bowery and into the clinical whiteness of the building, I felt the familiar hum of the city fade. The museum has doubled its footprint with a jagged expansion designed by OMA, yet the interior feels more like a cathedral dedicated to the posthuman condition than a simple gallery space. The curators have assembled a collection that does not merely look at the future but seems to remember it from a place of deep digital nostalgia.

The exhibition spans the entire museum, occupying every floor in a deliberate attempt to map a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the galleries, the human form is rendered with such precision that it triggers a primal sort of vertigo. I found myself wandering through spaces where historical artifacts like the glass skin of a 1935 anatomical dummy by Franz Tschakert sat in conversation with the animatronic pathos of Carlo Rambaldi’s E.T.

There is a specific kind of wit found in these rooms. It is a dry and almost medicinal humor. We see our own insecurities mirrored in the glitches of simulated faces. The show suggests that as we lean further into artificial intelligence and biological engineering, we are not losing our humanity so much as we are outsourcing it to more durable containers.

What struck me most was the absence of the typical chrome aesthetics often found in visions of tomorrow. Instead, the textures here are organic and unsettling. There are sculptures that look like skin and videos that feel like fever dreams. One of the most arresting sights is the fourth floor where Anicka Yi’s biomechanical aerobes float through the air like translucent ghosts, patrolling the gallery as if they are the true inhabitants and we are merely their guests.

The artists seem less interested in the hardware of the future and more concerned with the software of the soul. They ask questions that I felt vibrating in my own chest. If a memory is stored on a server, does it still belong to the heart? Can an algorithm feel the weight of a Sunday afternoon? Watching Pierre Huyghe’s film of a macaque monkey wearing a porcelain mask of a girl, I felt a profound sense of dislocation. The film compels a questioning of where primal instinct ends and human performance begins.

The New Museum has always excelled at capturing the anxiety of the present moment. With this exhibition, they have managed to capture the anxiety of a moment that has not yet arrived. It is a challenging experience that offers no easy comfort. You do not leave these galleries feeling reassured about the path of progress. Instead, you leave feeling a strange kinship with the machines.

In the Hall of Robots, the sheer variety of forms is overwhelming. From the visceral and tormented meat of a Francis Bacon painting to the hauntingly levitating cyborgs of Andro Wekua, the show is a mirror held up to a face we have not yet fully grown into. As I walked back out onto the sunlit streets of Manhattan, the world looked different. The faces of the people passing by seemed a bit more fragile and their movements a bit more precious. We are all, it seems, just memories of a future that is already unfolding around us.

Located on West 42nd Street, the theater serves as the flagship home for the Roundabout Theatre Company. Formerly known as the American Airlines Theatre, it was renamed in 2024 to honor Todd Haimes, the longtime artistic director who transformed the nonprofit into a titan of the New York stage before his death in 2023.

The renovation effort received approximately $3 million in state support through the New York State Council on the Arts and Empire State Development. Additional funding was provided by the City of New York, including contributions from the Department of Cultural Affairs and the City Council.

“The curtain rises on a new chapter at the Todd Haimes Theatre as this transformative renovation supports greater accessibility to the arts for all,” Governor Hochul said in a statement. She noted that the investment reinforces the theater district as a global cultural hub and a critical engine for the state economy.

Modernizing a Classic

The most technical aspects of the project addressed longstanding barriers for patrons with disabilities. The theater now features a Bluetooth enabled assistive listening system, which allows patrons who are deaf or hard of hearing to connect their personal devices directly to the sound system of the venue. The number of wheelchair accessible seats was also increased, rising from 23 to 28 within the 740 seat auditorium.

Beyond accessibility, the project included a full restoration of the Neo-Renaissance interior, updates to safety systems, and the installation of new seating and carpeting. On the fifth floor, a once underutilized area was converted into a flexible use space designed for rehearsals, readings, and community engagement programs.

“I am so proud to reopen the revitalized Todd Haimes Theatre with a play that he loved, and to welcome audiences back to an accessible, sustainable, state of the art venue,” said Scott Ellis, the interim artistic director for Roundabout.

A Legacy on 42nd Street

The building itself has long been a centerpiece of the redevelopment of 42nd Street. Originally opened in 1918 as the Selwyn Theatre, it was designed by George Keister in an Italian Renaissance style. After decades as a cinema and eventually falling into disrepair, it was reclaimed by Roundabout in the late 1990s as part of the revitalization of Times Square.

The current improvements are seen as the final step in ensuring the house can meet the demands of modern Broadway productions while maintaining its historic charm. The theater is scheduled to reopen to the public this spring with a revival of the Noël Coward play Fallen Angels, featuring a cast that includes Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne.

The completion of the project comes at a time of broader state investment in the arts. Earlier this year, the Governor proposed significant expansions to tax credits for theatrical productions to bolster the recovery of the industry following the pandemic.

Designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, the new structure is less a carbon copy and more a conversational partner to the original SANAA designed building. While the 2007 flagship is known for its hermetic, opaque quality, the OMA expansion offers a more transparent and angular profile. Cloaked in laminated glass with integrated metal mesh, the building appears to “kiss” its predecessor at a central point before tapering toward a street level plaza.

“It is not simply an extension, but a complement, a counterpart,” Mr. Koolhaas said of the project. “We interpreted the commission as if there were two parts that were finally united and that would form a single entity.”

The $82 million project arrives at a moment of transition for the museum. Lisa Phillips, the Toby Devan Lewis Director who has led the institution for over 26 years, is set to step down in April. For Ms. Phillips, the expansion is the culmination of a decade of planning and a final testament to the museum’s ethos of radical openness.

“The New Museum has always been a future facing museum – not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made,” Ms. Phillips said during a recent preview. “This expansion ushers in a new era of possibilities for the New Museum as a vital civic resource.”

Inside, the architectural changes are as much about logistics as they are about aesthetics. The museum has long struggled with “bottleneck” circulation, a byproduct of its vertical design. The OMA addition solves this with three new elevators and a dramatic atrium staircase that offers views of the surrounding neighborhood while providing space for large scale commissions.

The first of these is a sprawling fiber artwork by the Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová, which tumbles down four stories within the new stairwell. Other permanent site specific works include a facade commission by Tschabalala Self and a sculpture by Sarah Lucas located in the new entry plaza.

The expansion also provides a permanent home for NEW INC, the museum’s cultural incubator for tech and design, and includes a 74 seat forum for public programs. On the ground floor, a new restaurant designed by Mr. Shigematsu and helmed by chef Julia Sherman aims to turn the museum into a social hub as much as a gallery space.

The reopening is anchored by a building wide exhibition titled “New Humans: Memories of the Future.” Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director, the show features works by more than 200 artists, ranging from historical figures like Salvador Dalí and Francis Bacon to contemporary provocateurs like Precious Okoyomon and Hito Steyerl.

The exhibition explores how technological and social forces have reshaped the very definition of what it means to be human. In many ways, it reflects the museum’s own evolution: an institution that started in a single room on Hudson Street in 1977 and now occupies a 120,000 square foot campus on the Bowery.

“The New Museum is an incubator for new cultural perspectives,” Mr. Shigematsu said. “The expansion aims to embody that attitude of openness.”

As the doors open this weekend with free admission for the public, the “New New Museum” stands as a rare architectural dialogue between two Pritzker Prize winning firms. It is a bold bet on the continued relevance of physical art spaces in an increasingly digital world, and a final, gleaming bow for the director who helped build it.

Organized by curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the 2026 Biennial features fifty-six artists, duos, and collectives. It is a show that explicitly rejects a singular title or a rigid theme. Instead, the curators have opted to follow the currents of “relationality,” a term that encompasses everything from family bonds and technological glitches to the messy overlap of geopolitics and ecology.

A Survey of Atmospheric Tensions

If previous biennials felt like shouting matches, this one feels like a series of intense, whispered conversations. The exhibition focuses heavily on mood and texture. Visitors do not find a neat summary of the political moment but rather an environment of “tension, tenderness, and unease.” It is a sprawled, sensorial experience where the absence of traditional painting is replaced by immersive soundscapes, digital consoles, and unconventional sculptures.

The curators conducted more than three hundred studio visits, looking past the borders of the United States to include artists from places where American influence has left a permanent mark, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines. The result is a Biennial that views “America” as an abstract, often violent entity that cannot be contained by simple lines on a map.

Notable Artists and Standout Works

Among the most moving entries is Kelly Akashi’s “Monument (Altadena)” (2026). On the fifth floor terrace, Akashi has erected a ghostly replica of a chimney made from cast glass bricks. It is a literal reconstruction of the only part of her California home that remained standing after the devastating wildfires of 2025. The work stands as a luminous, fragile witness to loss and the persistence of memory.

In another gallery, Emilie Louise Gossiaux presents “Kong Play,” a vast installation of one hundred handmade ceramic sculptures. These colorful, bulbous objects are replicas of a dog toy favored by London, the service dog of the artist. Gossiaux, who lost her sight in 2010, created the work as a tribute to her late companion, imagining an afterlife where joy is as simple as a favorite toy.

The exhibition also highlights a fascinating creative kinship between Andrea Fraser and her mother, Carmen de Monteflores. De Monteflores, now in her nineties, shows bold, graphic paintings from 1969. These are placed alongside Fraser’s series of wax toddlers from 2024. The juxtaposition creates a bridge between generations, exploring the fragile nature of care and domesticity.

Other highlights include:

• Agosto Machado: The veteran of the underground gay performance world presents “Altars,” intricate and deeply personal shrines dedicated to queer icons like Peter Hujar and Marsha P. Johnson.
• Zach Blas: An apocalyptic installation that uses artificial intelligence to explore fantasies of tech industry domination, featuring a standalone ground floor gallery that hums with digital anxiety.
• Raven Halfmoon: Towering ceramic figures, including the nine foot tall “Too Ancient to Care,” greet visitors with a sense of Indigenous resilience and monumental weight.
• Mao Ishikawa: The Japanese photographer contributes searing images from Okinawa that trace the lives of those living in the shadow of American military bases.

The Full List of Participants

The 2026 roster reflects a deeply diverse and intergenerational group of creators:

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Kelly Akashi, Kamrooz Aram, Ash Arder, Teresa Baker, Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Zach Blas, Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, Leo Castañeda, CFGNY, Nanibah Chacon, Maia Chao, Joshua Citarella, Mo Costello, Taína H. Cruz, Carmen de Monteflores, Ali Eyal, Andrea Fraser, Mariah Garnett, Ignacio Gatica, Jonathan González, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Kainoa Gruspe, Martine Gutierrez, Samia Halaby, Raven Halfmoon, Nile Harris with Dyer Rhoads, Aziz Hazara, Margaret Honda, Akira Ikezoe, Mao Ishikawa, Cooper Jacoby, David L. Johnson, kekahi wahi, Young Joon Kwak, Michelle Lopez, José Maceda, Agosto Machado, Oswaldo Maciá, Emilio Martínez Poppe, Isabelle Frances McGuire, Kimowan Metchewais, Nour Mobarak, and others.

In a world that feels increasingly fragmented, the 2026 Whitney Biennial suggests that the only way forward is to acknowledge the “misfit” nature of our existence. It is an exhibition that does not provide answers but instead invites us to stay in the tension of the present, lingering in the ghostly glow of glass chimneys and the memory of old songs.

The initiative arrives as many independent theaters continue to navigate a challenging economic landscape. Nearly 30 venues across the five boroughs will participate, including well known institutions like Film Forum, the IFC Center, and the Paris Theater.

“Cinema Week is a chance to celebrate the local, curated and community oriented cinemas across our city that help New York feel like New York,” said Rafael Espinal, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, in a statement. Mr. Espinal, who was appointed to the post last month, emphasized that the city aims to ensure the experience is available to all by funding thousands of free admissions.

Eligibility for the free tickets is broad, covering public school teachers, CUNY students, active duty military personnel, and families registered with the Cool Culture program. People with disabilities and SNAP cardholders are also eligible.

The programming schedule is dense with restorations and special appearances. Highlights include a career retrospective of the filmmaker Agnès Varda and a series celebrating actor Catherine O’Hara. At Film Forum, a screening from the Young Film Forum archives will be introduced by Joel Coen and Frances McDormand.

The partnership also highlights a new regional alliance, Art House New York, which launched last October to strengthen independent film exhibition through collective marketing and research. For many theater owners, the city’s backing provides a much needed spotlight.

“This initiative reflects our vision for an inclusive creative economy that supports the people who make art, the people who experience it, and the venues that bring it to life,” Mr. Espinal said.

Beyond the films, the week offers various perks to entice audiences back to the big screen. The Angelika Film Center is offering half off tickets for its members during the latter half of the week, while the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center will provide discounted concession combos.

For Mayor Mamdani, the son of the filmmaker Mira Nair, the initiative carries a personal resonance. City officials noted that the mayor views these independent spaces as vital cultural cornerstones where communities gather to experience the art of filmmaking.

Detailed schedules and a full list of participating theaters are available on the Art House New York website.

From Matthew Broderick’s return to the Irish Rep to a Shakespearean titan tackling Rome’s bloodiest general, here are the five most anticipated Off-Broadway shows to catch this season.

1. Ulster American

Theater: Irish Repertory Theatre (Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage)

Opening: March 15, 2026

David Ireland’s razor-sharp satire arrives at the Irish Rep with a casting coup: Matthew Broderick stars alongside Geraldine Hughes and Max Baker. Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, the play is a brutal, darkly comic look at power dynamics, identity, and the perils of “enlightened” Hollywood ego. When a British director and an American actor meet to discuss a new play about Northern Ireland, the conversation spirals into a chaotic exploration of cultural appropriation and the fragile nature of political correctness.

2. My Joy is Heavy

Theater: New York Theatre Workshop

Opening: March 7, 2026

The powerhouse creative team behind Hadestown and Hundred Days reunites for this deeply personal portrait of loss and resilience. Written and performed by the indie-folk duo The Bengsons (Abigail and Shaun Bengson) and directed by Rachel Chavkin, the show navigates the “rural isolation” of a young family processing a pregnancy loss. Expect a soulful, stomping, and ultimately life-affirming score that transforms grief into a shared, communal ritual.

3. Titus Andronicus

Theater: Red Bull Theater at The Pershing Square Signature Center

Opening: March 17, 2026

Shakespeare’s goriest tragedy finds its perfect anchor in Patrick Page, whose bass-baritone and imposing stage presence have made him a modern master of theatrical villains and tragic heroes alike. Directed by Jesse Berger, this production promises to lean into the play’s visceral intensity while exploring the cyclical nature of revenge. Page’s Titus is sure to be the performance of the spring for those who prefer their theater with a side of grand, ancient tragedy.

4. Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)

Theater: The Public Theater (Barbaralee Theater)

Opening: March 6, 2026

The Public Theater continues its tradition of reinventing the classics with this strikingly titled new work. This isn’t your standard Sophocles; the play serves as a meta-theatrical dialogue with the classic text, examining how the themes of defiance and state power resonate today. With a cast including Tony Shalhoub, the production aims to peel back the layers of academic detachment usually associated with the play, making the “protest play” feel dangerously current.

5. Mexodus

Theater: Daryl Roth Theatre

Opening: March 6, 2026

In a season of revivals, Mexodus stands out as a groundbreaking musical experiment. Using live-looping and hip-hop, creators and performers Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson tell the “hidden history” of the Underground Railroad that led south to Mexico. It is a high-energy, two-man tour de force that blend documentary history with contemporary soundscapes, proving that the future of the American musical is often found in the smallest rooms.