Weather 
LITTLE ISLAND has revealed programming details for its second annual summer season, including multiple world premieres, commencing May 29, 2025, in its open-air performance spaces—The Amph and The Glade— and through takeovers of the entire park. Little Island will present 110 live performances by and featuring more than 300 artists, in an 18-week season running through September 28, 2025. The Amph tickets are $25, and The Glade shows are free to the public, all enhanced by curated food and drinks, served al fresco on the Hudson River.
The four-month-long season will include the legendary Charles Ludlam’s uproarious and heartbreaking Galas, starring acclaimed countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as the iconic Maria Magdalena Galas (rhymes with Callas), directed by Eric Ting; Seven Scenes, a world premiere evening-length work choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber with a score composed and performed live by Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan (Ringdown); No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello’s intimately theatricalized adaption of her remarkable latest album, a tribute to the life, work, and legacy of James Baldwin on the centenary of his birth, performed by Ndegeocello;
Arthur Russell: The Platform on the Ocean, a marathon six-hour event featuring the songs of Arthur Russell as presented and arranged by Thomas Bartlett, with a huge cast of performers including Laurie Anderson,) and Martha Wainwright; The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter’s City, the world premiere of a brand-new adaptation of John Gay’s watershed comic opera, The Beggar’s Opera, reuniting the team behind last season’s smash hit The Marriage of Figaro — director Dustin Wills and composer/arranger Dan Schlosberg — joined this summer by writer Kate Tarker; Shape Note Sing, America’s oldest — 200 years, in fact — choral tradition in which the public is the performer, created and actualized by Sam Amidon; the first new production in New York of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s groundbreaking The Gospel at Colonus, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury; a series of two and four-handed pyrotechnic piano performances by Jeremy Denk & Conor Hanick; eight floor-packing parties and performances from Brooklyn nightlife collective Papi Juice; the world premiere of The Lights, a collaboration between composer Matt Aucoin and author Ben Lerner; The Tune Up, a new piece by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award–winner Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Niegel Smith; New York’s first listen to Sarah Gancher’s bluegrass adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, directed by Rachel Chavkin; a park-wide takeover and live radio show from Radiolab hosted by Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller; Cécile McLorin Salvant returning to curate eight nights in The Glade, and renowned painter Amy Sherald bringing her favorite musicians to the island; and the world premiere of The Case of the Stranger, a wildly inventive song cycle from Whitney White.
Sitting directly in the Hudson River, Little Island opened in May 2021 and has since been enjoyed by more than six million visitors. In 2013, Barry Diller, in collaboration with Hudson River Park Trust leadership and funded by The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation, embraced the unique opportunity to envision a solution for the repair and reactivation of Pier 54, which had been badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The park was designed as an entirely new type of public space for New York, one that would create an immersive experience of nature and art. It contains two performance spaces – a 750-seat amphitheater (The Amph) and a 250-seat venue (The Glade) – and also invites artists to imagine the entire island as a canvas for performance. The park’s imaginative design offers all New Yorkers and visitors a new public space that is dynamic, captivating, and restorative.
Zack Winokur is Producing Artistic Director of Little Island and curates the season, which is made possible by The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation. Little Island is operated year-round by a 50-member staff co-helmed by Winokur and Executive Director Laura Clement.
