Your Guide toSan Francisco's Performing Arts Events This Spring
Here's a helpful round-up of the must-see performances in San Francisco this season.
From theater to opera to dance, San Francisco attracts the best of the best, giving visitors plenty of performances to choose from during their stay. Explore what’s playing this season and start planning your trip.
Dance
Don Quixote
San Francisco Ballet
This spectacle of chivalric knights, Barcelona beaches, daggers, and donkeys showcases extraordinary technique, rich storytelling, and the choreographic contributions of Helgi Tomasson and Yuri Possokhov. Don Quixote transforms the stage into a canvas of dynamic movement, vivid imagery, and magnetic entertainment that celebrates the art form’s most spirited traditions. March 19-28.
La Sylphide
San Francisco Ballet
Step into a world of enchantment, mystery, and ethereal beauty with La Sylphide. When James, a young Scottish farmer, becomes enchanted by a mystical sylph, he risks everything to follow her into a magical realm, only to discover the devastating cost of chasing the unattainable. April 10-16.
Mere Mortals
San Francisco Ballet
Mere Mortals reimagines the story of Pandora’s Jar through the lens of our tech-driven age. This fully immersive experience fuses movement, music, and cutting-edge visuals into a breathtaking sensory journey. April 24-May 3.
San Francisco International Arts Festival
Various Locations
The San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) transforms the city into a vibrant stage for the world’s most daring choreographers and circus artists. Focused on the power of the physical body, SFIAF showcases a high-octane blend of contemporary dance, traditional movement, and gravity-defying cirque. April 25-May 19.
CubaCaribe Festival of Dance & Music
ODC Theater
The 20th Annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music presents a retrospective of the last 20 years focused on community, resistance and joy. This anniversary season features seven dance companies performing and participating in community engagement and educational outreach activities over the course of the festival’s 14 days, April 8 through 19. The first weekend at ODC Theater features Alayo Dance Company, Arenas Dance Company, Los Lupeños de San José, Cunamacué, Alafia Dance Ensemble, and Moving Juntos Youth Ensemble.
Bay Area Dance Week
Various Locations
A 10-day inclusive celebration from April 24 through May 3 of movement and dance, when our dynamic and diverse Bay Area dance community opens their doors to the public to experience classes, workshops, performances and more, all free of charge.
Theater
Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really
SF Playhouse
Both terrifying and riotous, Kate Hamill’s imaginative, gender-bending “feminist revenge fantasy” is like no Dracula you’ve ever seen, exploring the nature of predators and reinventing the story as a smart, disquieting, darkly comic drama. Hamill’s signature style and postmodern wit upends this familiar tale of Victorian vampires, driving a stake through the heart of toxic masculinity. May 14-June 27.
Hell’s Kitchen
Orpheum Theater
Created by playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz and scored by Alicia Keys, Hell's Kitchen is largely drawn from the award-winning singer's story, based on Keys' life growing up in the Bronx. May 6-24.
The Phantom of the Opera
Orpheum Theater
A revitalized production featuring Maria Björnson’s brilliant original designs will arrive at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre from May 28 to June 21.
How to Make An American Son
New Conservatory Theatre Center
Teenage Orlando enjoys a lavish and privileged life, thanks to his family’s successful business. But, his Honduran-born father has different ideas of where his hard-earned cash should go. This audacious new comedy dares to ask: Who is entitled to privilege? April 3-May 10.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
New Conservatory Theatre Center
Neither the Berlin Wall nor the scars of her past are enough to stop Hedwig Schmidt from clawing out of the rubble and rising to new heights. The self-proclaimed “internationally ignored song stylist” is ready to set the record straight and rock the stage in the performance of a reclaimed lifetime. Catch Hedwig at NCTC, May 8-June 7.
Girls Chance Music
American Conservatory Theater
Featuring a score with elements unique to each performance, this world-premiere play with music from acclaimed playwright-composer-actor and Pulitzer Prize finalist Eisa Davis is a sharp, hilarious, aching story about coming of age under pressure. What does it mean to make something beautiful when everything might fall apart? March 12-April 19.
Hamnet
American Conservatory Theater
Direct from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel comes to the stage in this acclaimed U.S. premiere production. When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, Agnes and William Shakespeare, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. April 22-May 24.
Dear San Francisco
Club Fugazi
Powered by exhilarating acrobatics, choreography, spoken word, video projections, shadow play, and original music, Dear San Francisco invites locals and visitors alike on a heart-stopping romp through both the essence and the myth that is San Francisco. San Francisco comes vividly to life, performed by an international cast of world-class acrobats across a variety of disciplines. Through July 31.
Opera
The Barber of Seville
San Francisco Opera
Moved by the distress of two young lovers separated by the curmudgeonly Doctor Bartolo, Figaro pulls out his bag of tricks. But will Figaro’s scheming allow Rosina to flee the clutches of her guardian for true love’s embrace with Count Almaviva? May 28-June 21.
Elektra
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera’s production, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “extraordinary” and “stunning,” brings us to a modern-day museum. A young woman grappling with her own life is pulled into the ancient narrative in this ingenious production by Keith Warner, a taut psychological thriller in which the past and the present become one. June 7-June 27.
Doubt
Opera Parallèle
Opera Parallèle returns to the Presidio Theatre to present the world premiere of a newly reimagined version of Doubt, the iconic story of suspicion, morality, and power dynamics in a Catholic school. This inventive, multi-sensory production invites you to step into the narrative as part of the “congregation,” blurring the lines between observer and participant, creating a gripping experience you won’t forget. May 29-May 31.
Joe Coleman has been writing professionally since 2019. Though always up for an international trek, there’s nothing he loves more than a road trip exploring the large cities and small towns of the United States. You can find more of his work at colemancreates.com.
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