“New York Classical is now a firmly rooted institution in the City.”
Our Mission
New York Classical Theatre creates and reinvigorates audiences for the theatre by presenting free productions of popular and forgotten classical plays in public spaces throughout New York City. We are also committed to developing and producing new plays by living playwrights that enrich and expand our understanding of what defines a classic.
Vision
NY Classical firmly believes that everyone—regardless of social, economic, or educational background—should have the opportunity to enjoy live professional theatre together as a community. Our free, engaging performances interpreted for approachable spaces inspire experienced theatergoers to reconnect with the classics and build new and future audiences.
Land Acknowledgement
We congregate on the unceded ancestral land of Lenni-Lenape people. We honor their elders and descendants, the memory of Seneca Village displaced by eminent domain in the design of Central Park, the sanctity of our nation’s earliest and largest African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, and the history of the African Grove Theatre in Greenwich Village.
For more information about the land we occupy, the Lenape Center is continuing Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland, through community, culture and the arts. thelenapecenter.com
Environmental Statement
NY Classical is deeply committed to the restoration of our ecosystem, a reduction in greenhouse gases, and the future of a healthy planet. Our outdoor productions take place in public green spaces and we act as stewards, leaving our parks cleaner than we find them. We actively encourage a reuse/recycle policy at our offices and make every attempt to minimize waste in our productions. All program materials are cell-phone based, our lighting/radio equipment is rechargeable, and costumes and props are stored locally and reused. In addition, we are a proud member of the Broadway Green Alliance, Off-Broadway Chapter.
History
Since 2000, New York Classical Theatre has presented over 900 free performances for more than 325,000 New Yorkers. We have produced extensively in non-traditional settings: outdoors in Central Park, Battery Park, Governors Island, Carl Schurz Park, Brooklyn Commons, Prospect Park, and Brooklyn Bridge Park and indoors at the ART/New York Mezzanine Theatre, Brookfield Place, One Liberty Plaza, One New York Plaza, and many more.
By adapting plays for public spaces, we have emerged as an innovative and unique addition to the City's theatrical landscape. Our production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull transformed the northwest corner of Central Park into a 19th-century Russian country estate, and the Governors Island parade grounds played the role of Agincourt for our epic production of William Shakespeare's Henry V (with a cast & crew of 50).
By producing at zero cost to our audiences, we reach a broad demographic of our urban community, and serve as an important cultural and educational programming resource for our venues. For example, our 2006 presentation of Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart was the first play performed at Castle Clinton National Monument in 100 years, and our production of The Tempest in 2013 re-opened the Castle after the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
To date, we have staged 47 all-free productions by playwrights including Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov, Aphra Behn, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, George Farquhar, Friedrich Schiller, Pierre de Marivaux, Alfred Jarry, and Alice Scovell.
NY Classical has received much critical acclaim in the media. The New York Times declared us "a movable feast! All the park's a stage!" The Washington Post’s Peter Marks called our production of Romeo & Juliet “a wonderful way to can claim Shakespeare for new audiences and rekindle it for the more familiar.” PBS Thirteen NYC-ARTS, WABC Eyewitness News (Sandy Kenyon), Fox 5 News, WNBC, NY1 News, WNET, WNYC, and Good Day New York have run wonderful features on our productions. We have also been seen in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out-New York, TheatreMania, Playbill.com, New York Daily News, The New York Observer, New York Post, Deadline Hollywood, The Boston Globe, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, El Mundo, BackStage, Downtown Express, New York Family Magazine, and many more.
Our “Season In Review” annual reports are available by clicking here: 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23, and 2023-24.