New & Notable Plays: Week of September 14

What’s worth booking on a New York stage this week — Lupita opens tonight, School Girls is in previews, Arendt Off-Broadway.

6 titles

1. Pre-Existing Condition (2026), Marin Ireland
   A woman survives a relationship that did not look like a crime from the outside, in a 75-minute play by Marin Ireland that rotates its lead so no one face owns the part. It opens Monday, September 14, at Greenwich House; Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) plays it through September 26, then…
2. School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (2026), Jocelyn Bioh
   A queen bee at a Ghanaian boarding school has the Miss Ghana 1986 pageant locked up until an American transfer student blows up the room. Jocelyn Bioh and director Whitney White (the Jaja’s African Hair Braiding team) bring it to the Friedman with Patina Miller and Denée Benton. In previews since…
3. Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (2026), Jenny Lyn Bader
   In 1933 Berlin, a young Gestapo officer arrests a philosophy student, and the interrogation that follows is drawn from the real arrest of Hannah Arendt. Jenny Lyn Bader’s play has been in previews at 59E59 since September 12; it opens September 20 and closes October 25. Ninety minutes, no…
4. Paranormal Activity: A New Story (2026), Levi Holloway
   A haunted-house stage show sets out to scare a room full of strangers, adapted from the found-footage film franchise by writer Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett (Sleep No More). It has been open at the August Wilson since August 25 and runs through January 3, 2027, the only new Broadway…
5. Other Desert Cities (2026), Jon Robin Baitz
   A Palm Springs family gathers for Christmas, and a daughter’s memoir about them threatens to blow the polite version apart. Jon Robin Baitz’s play returns to Broadway with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) making her Broadway debut opposite Ed Harris and Allison Janney. Previews begin September 29, and…
6. 860 (2026), Billy Crystal
   Billy Crystal stands alone on the stage of the Imperial and tells his life story, two decades after 700 Sundays did the same for his childhood. Previews begin October 1 for a limited run. The name will sell it out on its own; save it now for one man, one theater, and the New York he still carries.