12 Best Performing Arts Venues 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.

This community-based dance school and ballet company stages a few public performances each year, including festive balls and an annual winter concert.

A wonderful fount of culture, if a bit out-of-the-way, the society stages musicals, ballets, recitals, kids' theater, and operas at multiple out-of-town locations including Metairie, Slidell, and Meridian.

Returning to the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts and the Placido Domingo Stage, the October–April opera season generally showcases three operas, as well as a small handful of special events. Opera on Tap is an innovative series bringing performances to area pubs.

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.

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).