The open-air amphitheater on Little Island was packed last June for several nights of a genre-bending tribute to James Baldwin.
Summer at Little Island, a picturesque park in the Hudson River near the Meatpacking District, looks a bit different this year. It recently announced an abridged six-week performance slate that trades some of the theatrical spectacle of recent summers for more concert-style shows and culinary events.
For its inaugural performing arts season, in the summer of 2024, Little Island commissioned nine world premieres across dance, opera and theater, including the smash hit “The Marriage of Figaro,” a rendition of Mozart’s classic opera starring the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in every lead role. Last year there were 110 scheduled performances from May 29 through Sept. 28, including a revival of “The Gospel at Colonus.”
By comparison, there are 56 scheduled performances this summer between July 29 and Sept. 6, including a new play — “Marina,” an undersea saga — by Julio Torres and Martine Gutierrez, as well as the Tony winner Qween Jean’s returning Summer Legacy Ball.
Zack Winokur, the producing artistic director of Little Island, said this season was tighter because Barry Diller, the former Hollywood magnate who developed the park, “wants to take programming in a different direction, so we’re taking this year to rethink our long-term programming plan.”
“While it’s shorter, it is dense and no less ambitious and no less high-quality,” Winokur continued.
Winokur said that Diller’s financial commitments had not changed. The developer previously said his family foundation would cover costs for 20 years, estimating his contributions at $380 million.
A representative for Diller said he was not available to comment.
Zacqué Aaronson, a theater influencer who has seen several productions at Little Island over the years, said he was disappointed to see the arts venue “cut way back” from “full productions” to “just a lot of little one-offs.”
But he was not surprised, he said, because a friend had suggested that it was not a good sign when Little Island had not announced its programming yet.
“So there was some relief that at least they were doing something small,” Aaronson said. He added, “I’ll take live performance and entertainment anywhere I can get it, especially when it’s at an affordable ticket price.”
After initially opening to the public in 2021, Little Island got a second wind in 2024, when Diller pledged to fund an annual performing arts festival. He enlisted the producer Scott Rudin and Winokur, a Juilliard-trained dancer turned director, to help conceptualize and oversee the programming.
Winokur said that he put together this season’s programming with Diller’s input, just like previous years, and was “really thinking about what music makes New York City.”
“What we’re trying to build is a really dense, amazing, exciting, only-in-New-York, only-on-Little-Island kind of experience,” Winokur said.
Kicking things off in late July is a new act from the cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond. The events in August include a concert series from Costanzo titled “Minimalism” and acts commemorating the music of Tin Pan Alley and the Harlem Renaissance. The performance season closes in September with a centenary celebration honoring Allen Ginsberg, with special guests Rufus Wainwright and Bill Frisell. Several culinary events, food pop-ups and DJ-fueled dance parties fill out the schedule.
Winokur said the lineup was not inspired by a unifying theme but by his curiosity and excitement about “people who are singular and who define a portion of the moment we’re living in.”
He declined to quantify this season’s budget or elaborate further on Diller’s vision for programming, saying, “I don’t want to characterize the position that we’re going in because no decision about the future has been made yet.”
However, he maintained that if this summer does not feature a certain type of programming, it does not mean it will not return in the future.
“We’re still so young,” Winokur said. “There’s nothing normal — there’s no regular year.”
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