Highlights this weekend include the hip hop musical “Mexodus,” South African musician Nduduzo Makhathini at Wynton Marsalis’ “House of Swing” and the 50th anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Also, free events include an acrobatic circus on a food truck in Lincoln Center and Downtown magazine’s costume contest for canines at Pier 57.
Theater
Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson in “Mexodus,” main, and Nygel D. Robinson, inset. (Curtis Brown; Marcus Middleton)
“Mexodus“
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre — 18 Minetta Lane, Manhattan (Greenwich Village)
Through Nov. 1, Various times.
“Mexodus,” a new musical from playwright Brian Quijada and musician Nygel D. Robinson, uses hip-hop and other Black art forms to tell the semi fictional story of a runaway Black slave who crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico. There, a former Mexican soldier of the Mexican American War turns out to be a secret abolitionist with his own secret network for freedom.
Robinson, 32, tells The Daily News that the show has taken on many forms throughout its five-year journey to the stage in New York. He and Quijada, both first-rate musicians, met at a conference right before the world shut down in 2020. Their collaboration soon followed, writing one song a month together over the course of a year via Zoom.
“Me and Brian wrote this because people would only see a portion of us,” the Le Grange, North Carolina native said. “Like, I worked a lot as a musician and sometimes as a diversity hire because I’m the Black boy who plays instruments, and there’s not that many of us out there pursuing it. So you know, when they want to diversify a Johnny Cash musical, they call me and same with Brian as a Latino man who’s playing guitar.”
“So we’ve only been seen partially, but this is the first time that I’ve been seeing everything I can do, that I think I can do well,” Robinson added. “I’m doing it on that stage, every instrument, every acting choice, every dance move, every single thing that I have trained myself to be able to do.”
The live-looping musical, which has been extended several times beyond its initial end date and received rave reviews, is eyeing a Broadway transfer.
While there are of course comparisons to “Hamilton,” which also uses hip hop as a device to retell American history, Robinson shies away from them.
“The comparison, while flattering, I’m also like, ‘don’t be lazy,” he said, giving props to Lin-Manuel Miranda for being a trailblazer in the field. “I think comparison is a thief of joy. So let it be its own thing.”
Robinson added that he just wants people to see “Mexodus” for themselves: “Come see it. Come see that we can be two different things and they could exist at the same time that it exists without each other.”
Tickets start at $56.50. Rush tickets are available on the TodayTix app.
Film
“Rocky Horror Picture Show” (Walt Disney Studios)
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Live Shadow Cast“
Quad Cinema — 34 West 13th St., Manhattan (Greenwich Village)
Sat. Oct. 25, 7:15 p.m.
It’s time to do the “Time Warp” again! For its golden anniversary, the newly restored 4K version of the enduring campy cult classic starring Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry is making it to the big screen.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is the longest-running theatrical release in film history, with weekly screenings still held around the world.
The Jim Sherman-directed musical comedy horror flick has attracted a dedicated fanbase that come out to movie theaters to see and participate in the show with shadow casts, fan costumes and audience callbacks. The Quad is hosting a double-feature of the original film with “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror,” Linus O’Brien’s documentary about the cultural juggernaut. There will also be a Q&A with filmmakers Loe Fahie and Eric & Laurel.
Tickets are $20.19.
Music
Nduduzo Makhathini (Arthur Dlamini)
Nduduzo Makhathini
Jazz at Lincoln Center— 10 Columbus Circle, Manhattan (Upper West Side)
Fri. Oct. 24 and Sat. Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.
This year, Jazz at Lincoln Center is dedicating its entire season to Mother Africa — and South African pianist, Zulu healer and educator Nduduzo Makhathini is returning to “The House of Swing” for the first time since appearing for Lincoln Center’s “The South African Songbook” concert in 2019.
Makhathini, whose music has been described as “lush with ancestral invocation, meditations on Blackness and spiritual exploration,” will take the stage with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as well as Wynton Marsalis, who will perform his original compositions and the music of late South African musical trailblazer Bheki Mseleku.
Tickets start at $42.
Food
Taste of the Seaport (Mike Szpot)
Taste of the Seaport 2025
Pier 16 — 19 Fulton St, Peck Slip, Manhattan (South Street Seaport)
Sat. Oct. 25, Noon – 5 p.m.
The food festival celebrates its 15th year on the historic downtown waterfront, serving as a fundraiser for two of Lower Manhattan’s public schools, Spruce Street School (PS 397) and Peck Slip School (PS 343).
With its mission of uniting chefs, local business, families and supporters to strengthen the downtown community, Taste of the Seaport founders Alex Davis and Learan Kahanov have assembled a lineup of more than 50 of the city’s top restaurants — including Jean-George Vongerichten’s The Fulton, Delmonico’s, and Helene Henderson’s Malibu Farm — as well as small businesses, live music performances and KidZone activities for all ages.
Tickets start at $60.
Family
Celebrate Halloween – Kawaii Kreature Festival (Winston Williams)
Celebrate Halloween – Kawaii Kreature Festival
Brooklyn Children’s Museum—145 Brooklyn Ave., Brooklyn (Crown Heights)
Sun. Oct. 26, 10 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
For the second year, anime culture is on deck at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s early Halloween festivities — served up by AniTOMO Con, which is bringing anime screenings, yokai mask-making and a rooftop boba bar to the day-long festivities.
Youngsters can strut the runway with their costumes, trick-or-treat through museum exhibits, and meet creepy crawly animals from the museum’s living collection.
Tickets are $15.
Outdoors
“Cirque Kikasse: SANTÉ!” (Benoit Theriault)
“Cirque Kikasse: SANTÉ!”
Hearst Plaza —30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Manhattan (Upper West Side)
Sat. Oct. 25 and Sun. Oct. 26, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
As part of Lincoln Center’s 4th annual Open House weekend, the gravity-defying circus will perform their open-air acrobatics on top of and around an operational food truck.
For “SANTÉ!”, the Quebec-based mobile circus displays its high-level acrobatic skills, contagious energy and breathtaking balancing acts in a 40-minute show where the troupe arrange tables and chairs into a tower 30 feet in the air, creating comic chaos as they inefficiently clean their truck and trampoline, and flooding the area with an overflowing popcorn machine.
Free.
Free
“Barktoberfest” (Pier 57)
“Barktoberfest”
Pier 57— 25 11th Ave., Manhattan (Chelsea)
Sat. Oct. 25, 11 a.m.
Another pre-Halloween to-do this weekend involves costumes and canines for Downtown magazine‘s annual affair on Pier 57’s spacious rooftop park.
Pet “pawrents” are encouraged to dress up their fur babies and enter them in a costume contest to win prizes such as dinner at Nobu, a stay at the Four Seasons Hotel, a Classic Harbor Line Fall Foliage cruise and a pet photography package with Josh Owens. This year’s sponsored charity is the Muddy Paws Rescue organization.
Free.
If you have an upcoming weekend event you’d like to submit for consideration in an upcoming roundup, please email: nycevents@nydailynews.com with the full listing details. Consideration does not guarantee inclusion.
Originally Published: October 23, 2025 at 11:57 AM EDT