8 Best Performing Arts in New Orleans, Louisiana

This community theater also houses an acting school, providing young local actors with an audience. Productions include musical dramatizations of musicians' biographies, as well as straight drama in small but careful productions. Some casts include local celebrities.

Theater buffs routinely make the hour's drive from downtown New Orleans to this unique theater that sits on the banks of Bayou Lafourche in the small Cajun town of Lockport, Louisiana. Theater director Perry Martin is a hometown hero here, having spent years working on Broadway and in Los Angeles, directing and producing more than 80 theatrical productions, many of them award winning. Returning home, he has brought an incredible artistic vision and world-class talent to this charming and unlikely location. Productions celebrate life in the South and in Cajun Louisiana.

Since 1916, Le Petit Théâtre has entertained the French Quarter with plays, musicals, and variety shows. The oldest continuously running community theater in the United States occupies a historic building in the Quarter. The community-based group were originally housed in one of the Pontalba apartments on Jackson Square, but they quickly outgrew that space and moved to this building in 1922. The flagstone patio with its fountain is postcard-perfect. Renovations have resulted in many improvements to the theater itself, and also made room for Tableau, a restaurant featuring contemporary Creole fare by local restaurateur Dickie Brennan. The theater presents children's entertainment in addition to its usual calendar of classics, musicals, and dramas, often with local themes. Events in the Tennessee Williams Festival take place here in March.

Tulane's Shakespeare Festival, at the university's Dixon Concert Hall, interprets the Bard's work in a series of three to four imaginative, high-quality productions each season.

This intimate theater is the perfect setting for alternative productions, and it attracts not only intelligent works by local companies but also touring artists from over the country, including the occasional Broadway hit.

This well-established theater company specializes in original, first-rate contemporary theater productions. It stages premiers by regional and international playwrights and hosts a variety of community workshops and classes. Performances take place in a gorgeously renovated former church, with a full bar and plenty of gothic charm.

This theater produces three crowd-pleasing musicals every summer at Tulane's Dixon Hall. Tickets run from $5 to $35 and tend to sell out fast.

Best known for its summer bills of fare, the university has several arts and theater groups that stage top-notch musical and dramatic productions.

Summer Lyric Theatre. This theater produces three crowd-pleasing musicals every summer at Tulane's Dixon Hall. Tickets run $28 to $37, and tend to sell out fast. (504/865–5269; www.summerlyric.tulane.edu).

Summer Shakespeare Festival. Tulane's Summer Shakespeare Festival, at the university's Lupin Theater, interprets the Bard's work in a series of four imaginative, high-quality productions. (504/865–5106; www.neworleansshakespeare.com).