12 women to watch on Broadway this season

In honor of Women's History Month in March, New York Theatre Guide's staff shouted out performers, directors, writers, and more whose work you can't miss.

Happy Women's History Month! There's no better time to celebrate all the women in the theatre industry making history on Broadway and beyond. The 2023-24 season was a record season for female creatives on Broadway, and this season also features dozens of fresh faces and veteran talent doing unmissable work on and off stage.

The New York Theatre Guide staff shared some of their favorite female theatre artists currently represented on and off Broadway — their picks include actors, writers, directors, choreographers, designers, and multihyphenates. Click the links below for more info and tickets to their work in March and beyond — after all, these artists are worth celebrating long after Women's History Month ends.

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Adrienne Warren (actor, The Last Five Years)

by Joe Dziemianowicz

“I’m still hurting,” sings Cathy in The Last Five Years. Bank on actress Adrienne Warren to reveal all the feelings, bitter and sweet, of this woman who finds and loses love in Jason Robert Brown’s musical co-starring Nick Jonas. Whether she’s playing Tina Turner to Tony-winning effect in Tina, a 1920s songbird in Shuffle Along, or a cheerleader in Bring It On The Musical, digging deep and getting real is Warren's strength.

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Camille A. Brown (choreographer, Gypsy and Hell's Kitchen)

by Amelia Merrill

Taking on the legacy of original Gypsy choreographer Jerome Robbins is no easy feat, but Camille A. Brown is up to the task — she's been nominated for four Tony Awards. A former student and frequent collaborator of the prestigious Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Brown combines her musical theatre expertise with her knowledge of African American dance traditions for this season’s Gypsy revival, which stars Black actors in leading roles for the first time.

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Cha See (lighting designer, Oh, Mary!)

by Kyle Turner

Much of Cole Escola's Oh, Mary! is so, so bright. Well, until it's not. Cha See knows Escola’s reference points: the lighting of classic Hollywood melodramas, the bleary-eyed beam of PBS Masterpiece Theatre episodes where each bulb highlights an actor's expressiveness, and, for the finale, a bit of classic Broadway spectacle. See deploys the vividness and intensity of light throughout Escola's drawing room farce breathlessly, but when the show switches modes to suggest darkness and emotion, See’s design brings us into Mary Todd Lincoln’s deranged reality.

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Helen J. Shen (actor, Maybe Happy Ending)

by Caroline Cao

"We have a shelf life," Helen J. Shen, as a robot named Claire, bemoans. The actress is melting hearts in Maybe Happy Ending, where she plays the perfect foil to Darren Criss as her love interest. I followed Shen’s early work in last year's musical Teeth, so it’s a thrill to see her debut in a lead role on Broadway. With steadfast body language, Shen captures what it means for a breaking-down being to find agency when mortality is close.

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Joanna Gleason (actor, We Had a World)

by Joey Sims

A stage and screen legend, Tony Award winner Joanna Gleason returns to the New York stage following a 14-year absence. In her devastating supporting turn in Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet in 2011, Gleason tore my heart in two. I expect the same from Joshua Harmon's new play. A prickly matriach is a perfect role for Gleason, an expert performer whose dramatic skill is matched only by her expert comic timing. How lucky we are her to have her back.

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Jocelyn Bioh (writer, Goddess)

by Austin Fimmano

Born and bred in New York City, Jocelyn Bioh made her Broadway playwriting debut in 2023 with the Tony Award-nominated Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Much like her adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor for Shakespeare in the Park, Jaja combined heart and hilarity with rich characters inspired by people you might meet in a West African hair salon in Harlem. Her mythology-inspired new project for The Public Theater, Goddess, promises to be another jewel in her crown.

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Justina Machado (actor, Real Women Have Curves)

by Amelia Merrill

Though she’s no stranger to the stage, Justina Machado is returning to Broadway for the first time since 2010. After originating the role of Carmen in Real Women Have Curves at American Repertory Theater, Machado is reprising the role in the Broadway transfer, based on Josefina López’s play and HBO film adaptation. The star of Netflix’s One Day At a Time reboot was last seen on Broadway in A Free Man of Color and as Daniela in In The Heights.

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Kara Young (actor, Purpose)

by Billy McEntee

After picking up her first Tony Award last year, Kara Young is back on Broadway for the fourth season in a row, appearing in the highly-anticipated Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Young is known for her feisty, agile roles, ones she grounds even as they chase big, lofty dreams. She is an inimitable New York actor and is always a standout in whatever play she graces.

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Kimberly Belflower (writer, John Proctor Is the Villain)

by Billy McEntee

Sometimes, new plays graduate from a successful Off-Broadway run to a Broadway production, but it can also be refreshing when plays from across the U.S. come to New York. That's the case for John Proctor Is the Villain, Kimberly Belflower's Broadway debut. A young writer from Appalachian Georgia, she is a voice to watch with her biting riff on The Crucible starring Sadie Sink.

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Robyn Hurder (actor, Smash)

by Gillian Russo

Aaron Tveit's vocals made "El Tango de Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge! The Musical go viral, but when I saw the show, I couldn't take my eyes off the force that is Robyn Hurder dancing behind him. Her dance talents prove the power of movement in a show alongside the music and dialogue — she can tell a whole story with one small motion — but Hurder's a true triple threat. In her latest show, Smash, her character plays the iconic Marilyn Monroe — a role she was made for.

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Tina Landau (writer/director, Redwood and Floyd Collins)

by Sarah Rebell

Tina Landau makes history as the first woman to direct and co-write two Broadway premieres in the same season. In January 2025 was Redwood, starring powerhouse Idina Menzel belting while climbing a redwood tree. In March, Floyd Collins opens with Broadway favorite Jeremy Jordan as the imperiled explorer of the title. Known for bringing unique worlds to the stage (see: her Tony-nominated SpongeBob The Musical), Landau is someone to watch as she leaps from treetops to caverns.

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Whitney White (director, The Last Five Years)

by Gillian Russo

I became an instant Whitney White fan in 2019, when I saw her production of the play Our Dear Dead Drug Lord — eight times. Also a writer and actor, she makes shows that are daring, thoughtful, and elevate every script to a new level. I always know I'm in for a thrill ride at a White show, and I can't wait to see what she does with one of my favorite musicals.

Get The Last Five Years tickets now.