The Tempest

One balmy July evening last year, an audience gathered on the Hudson River to watch Open Throat, a stage adaptation of Henry Hoke’s novel about a queer mountain lion navigating friendships and the sprawling Los Angeles landscape. Passing cargo ships and pleasure cruises provided an unlikely backdrop for this landlocked tale, but as the sun set and Hoboken apartment windows illuminated across the river, the audience seemed eager to suspend its disbelief. In Little Island’s amphitheater, a sitcom actor could become a large non-binary cat, and a park atop a New York City river could become a suburban-Californian basement.

Outdoor performances, often free to the public, dot New York City’s parks and streets each summer. This year, New York Classical Theatre presented All’s Well That Ends Well in Battery Park, Moliere in the Park staged The Imaginary Invalid at Prospect Park’s LeFrak Center, and The Drilling Company’s Shakespeare in the Parking Lot celebrated its 30th anniversary with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Throughout the warmest months, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and tourists alike queue up to catch renowned jazz musicians at Celebrate Brooklyn’s Lena Horne Bandshell, new takes on the classics in Marcus Garvey Park, or opera arias onstage at Bryant Park.

If a summer night out is as carefree as it gets in New York City, producing these large-scale events — often in landmarked venues — is all effort. A tremendous amount of planning and labor goes into each performance run: Administrators and Parks staff prepare for months, everything from queue management systems to backup microphones. For weeks, directors block and rehearse scenes with actors, while set, costume, and lighting designers work closely with skilled technicians to bring the vision to life. But in recent years, even thoroughly conceptualized and tightly managed programs face growing unpredictability. The cause is climate: Rising temperatures and massive rainfall events can spoil any given outdoor performance with scarce notice. The city regularly breaks heat records — 2025 was the second-hottest summer on record. And as the climate changes, extreme storms bringing dangerously heavy rains — the kind that cause massive and deadly flash floods — are becoming more common, especially in the Northeast United States. About a month after Little Island’s mountain lion comedy, Susan Sarandon was set to host an evening of performances about harbor ecology titled the “Little Oyster Radio Hour” at the same venue. Sheets of rain poured down, and the front-of-house staff were forced to seek cover indoors at the adjacent Pier 57, huddling in a sopping wet heap next to a board game meet-up group. Intrepid audience members trekked across the West Side Highway, eager to take in the performance, but ultimately it was called off because of the unceasing precipitation.

This problem is not limited to New York City. In Boulder, Colorado, in 2023, nearly 100 people were injured by hail while waiting in line for a Louis Tomlinson concert; seven concertgoers were hospitalized. That same year, in the midst of record-breaking temperatures in Rio de Janeiro, a fan died of heat exhaustion after fainting during the second song of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert. More recently, six attendees were hospitalized this summer for heat-related illnesses at a Washington, DC, K-Pop concert, requiring the deployment of DC Emergency Medical Services’ ominously named Mass Casualty Task Force. This August, Chris Brown fans in Toronto navigated dangerously slippery walkways after a torrential downpour.

In New York City, outdoor theater is a treasured tradition. Now, the venues that have hosted these performances for decades must confront shifting climate realities. In Central Park, the Delacorte Theater — opened in the early 1960s to house a roving troupe led by director Joe Papp, and the permanent home of Shakespeare in the Park ever since — is a veritable institution, though one without a roof. To survive, it must adapt. Recent renovations, revealed during the August 2025 season, have provided an opportunity to tackle the problem head on, in what may prove to be a model for other outdoor venues facing the same challenges.

The $85 million renovation was funded through a roughly 50/50 mix of private and public contributions. Private donations have also created a large endowment to ensure sustained funding for free programming in Central Park and throughout the five boroughs. This is a far cry from the Delacorte’s scrappy origins. Ever since its hasty 1962 construction, according to The Public Theater’s Executive Director, Patrick Willingham, the theater’s technicians and designers have undertaken ad hoc construction work to make the space more fit for purpose. (“Theater people think they’re contractors,” Willingham notes.) Ennead Architects’ Stephen Chu, the principal architect of the theater’s recent renovation, called the historic structure “essentially a pop-up,” updated only sporadically over the decades. In addition to preparing the space for a changing climate, the renovation aimed to improve production value through the introduction of new in-stage lifts, and to promote accessibility through the construction of new ramps for audience members and workers alike along with expanded seating sections for disabled audience members.

Shakespeare in the Park is famous for its “open to all” ethos, but its outdoor setting means that it is also open to weather disruptions; contending with the elements in the pursuit of a great performance is nothing new. As early as 1963, Papp begged the Parks Commissioner for a tent where actors might continue rehearsals during sudden thunderstorms. That request did not ultimately pan out. A lack of air conditioning in the dressing rooms has presumably left actors like Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and James Earl Jones sweating it out before and after shows. In the off season, Central Park’s nonhuman inhabitants have found their way into the theater. Prior to the renovation, it took workers roughly six weeks each year to clean up the raccoon ruckus room in the area beneath the audience seating. (Despite the disruption they cause, the raccoons are beloved by Shakespeare in the Park’s staff and audiences.)

Making do is less viable as a strategy when climate change shows up in more and more extreme ways. The Delacorte has long struggled with the rain, and with more of it each year, those problems are only getting worse. Total annual precipitation is projected to increase by seven to seventeen percent by the 2080s compared to 1981–2010 averages. Prior to the renovation, the space underneath the stands — where raccoons would gather during the winter — would flood whenever it rained. The pine floorboards under the seats were prone to rotting; around 20 percent of the wood would need to be replaced each year, and with wetter weather, that number was only increasing. Every time it rained, water would seep through the gaps between boards, comingling with electric wires from the lighting and sound systems. Actors and technicians dodged puddles backstage. The renovation replaced the pine with Kebony-brand timber — a durable product that is used throughout New York City’s parks primarily as pier and boardwalk decking and has a lifespan of decades, not years. The area underneath the stands has also been built out as a proper back-of-house workshop space — no more water seeping through the floorboards above.

Previously, wiring for the lighting rig snaked through backstage areas and up poles, leaving cords exposed to the elements and workers running up and down for weeks. Now, with electrical systems contained within the poles, workers have to spend less time during the hot summer weather moving cords around and securing them. This improvement should also speed up change-over time between productions each summer.

In order to keep workers (lighting and sound technicians, ushers and security guards, stage and production managers) safe during periods of extreme heat, air conditioning was added to back-of-house spaces, including the stage manager’s booth, the dressing rooms, and the box office and concession stands. Picking up tickets at the box office, audience members can feel cool air wafting out from behind the desk. In such a permeable structure, siting the infrastructure for the cooling system proved a challenge: Placing it directly in the park would be an eyesore, so Ennead found space under the grandstand, constructing a mezzanine level above the box office and concessions stand to hold the equipment.

But keeping the audience cool was not a major priority in the design. “Because our performances are in the evenings, we anticipate that temperatures will be cool enough for our audiences to enjoy the show,” noted Rosalind Barbour, The Public Theater’s administrative chief of staff. “We focused primarily on climate control that would support production activity that occurs during the daytime when it is the hottest.” That said, new plastic chairs are larger and conduct less heat than the venue’s previous seats, creating a more comfortable guest experience on a sticky July or August evening.

The renovation also, at last, keeps wildlife out of back-of-house areas. (Raccoons and coyotes still can be found hanging out in the stands between performances.) Initially, Chu considered design strategies that would encourage coexistence between human and non-human animals: “I had this idea: What if the theater’s actual skin was a home for wildlife, if the textured façade was really homes for birds? Of course, no operator would want to deal with that. There was nesting in every nook and cranny of the previous theater. And once they nested, the crew had to work around them and make sure they didn’t disturb those nests.” Without any wildlife messes to clean up backstage, preparing to open a show each summer will be quicker and more efficient.

While the theater’s renovations aim to address at least some of these climate concerns, extreme weather is as much an operational concern as an architectural one. Production staff must be mindful of weather conditions that are simply not a concern in indoor theaters. Set designers ensure that the floors onstage are textured so that actors’ rubber shoes don’t slip and slide in wet conditions. Costume designers embrace natural fibers that breathe in warmer temperatures, and are mindful to pick fabrics that can handle moisture. Stage manager Buzz Cohen remembered one production she worked on: “I did a show where there were beautiful silk robes. After the first time they got wet, they were never the same.” Cotton and linen are more forgiving.

While labor unions in other industries have developed clear protocols for working in rain or extreme heat, the Actor’s Equity Association, which counts stage managers and performers among its members, mostly tells companies to follow guidance from the National Weather Service. Cohen remembered her early days working at the Delacorte: “Way back in the day, there would be an Equity meeting at the first rehearsal. The Equity rep would be there, and often an actor would ask, ‘When is it too hot to work?’ The answer would be, ‘It’s never too hot to work.’” Policies have improved since then: When the heat index reaches above a certain level, stage managers like Cohen ensure more frequent breaks for rest and water during rehearsals (five minutes every hour). “Now we really are trying to make sure that people are safe and covered,” said Cohen. “People don’t have to be begging to be able to go in the shade or drink water.”

But sometimes the show simply cannot go on. In order to make educated decisions about postponements or cancellations, Cohen monitors somewhere between ten and thirteen weather apps; some apps, like a hurricane tracker, are necessary only in the direst circumstances. But with decades of experience, she has her own ways of understanding what’s happening with the rain. “Everyone can do the imitation of me in between the cues,” Cohen laughed. “Opening the door, going out, whipping my cap off, and standing with my face and my palms up to the sky, I can feel how hard the precipitation is. It always looks like a monsoon, if you’re looking at it in the stage lights, but it actually might be quite light.”

This year, The Public Theater solidified the process for making cancellation decisions. A staff member from The Public’s producing team is present at each performance, and members of the technical team regularly consult on whether a show can continue. Cohen explained, “I am getting feedback from the stage managers who are down on the deck; they are much more attuned to what it feels like. What is it like under foot? How are the actors feeling? And I will get input from the sound department. We use microphones, and there’s an extent to how wet they can get before they’re frying.”

But on rainy-but-not-too-rainy days, the stage management team takes extra care to make sure that the show can proceed. Stage managers push water off the deck using squeegees and extra-absorbent towels, taking special care with set pieces more prone to slipperiness, like the large letterforms in this year’s production of Twelfth Night.

The night before the renovated theater’s ribbon cutting on July 15, New York City saw 2.07 inches of rain over the course of a single hour — the second-highest one-hour rainfall total in the city’s recorded history. The next morning, the sun shone on the event, but the ground remained waterlogged and muddy. A Central Park groundskeeper used a leaf blower to dry a temporary stage before the politicians and civil servants ascended to celebrate the new building.

As much as the theater’s outdoor setting presents challenges, its open environment is also what makes it unique. Each morning, hundreds of people line up starting around 6 am to procure tickets for that evening’s performance under the night sky. Even on rainy days, many intrepid audience members are willing to wait it out or brave a little precipitation. Those who do are often rewarded with the sort of magic that can only happen in live theater. Cohen recalled a production of Henry V: “If you know the historical circumstances of the Battle of Agincourt, one of the reasons that the British won was that it was raining and the French knights in their heavy armor could not survive in that environment. It was starting to mist down as the actors playing the British army were headed upstage into this rain that was beautifully lit. Indoor theater doesn’t have moments like that. There’s a profound connection with our shows and the environment around it.”

Ultimately, the renovation aimed to preserve the joyful experience cherished by generations of New Yorkers. “That memory is really what we’re trying to achieve, something that makes you feel good about being part of the city,” Chu said. “It feels like it belongs here.”

But, as New York summers get hotter and rainier, it may become necessary to further rethink the program’s design and operations. The Delacorte’s chair manufacturer, Kotobuki, is currently working on designing seating that incorporates cooling elements like small, built-in fans — for now, primarily focused on outdoor sports stadiums in climates warmer than New York City. Other institutions have made more dramatic changes like installing retractable roofs. (That strategy was considered for the Delacorte’s renovation but ultimately not pursued.)

There may be a future where Shakespeare in the Park becomes a spring or fall tradition instead. Chu relayed conversations with The Public’s staff that considered what additional work could be done to make the space usable during the shoulder seasons. During a June 27 press tour of the theater, Artistic Director Oskar Eustis remarked that The Public was considering staging performances earlier and later in the year, allowing the space to take a break during the hottest weeks of July and August. But that isn’t necessary quite yet. For now, the renovations at the Delacorte are enough. Come what may, the theater will adapt, Eustis said. “We will be able to do outdoor theater for the next generation.”