An Intimate Show at Joe's Pub

Joe's Pub is one of the six performance spaces inside the Public Theater, set in the old Astor Library building on Lafayette Street and named for Joseph Papp, who founded the Public and free Shakespeare in the Park. The room seats a small crowd at tables and along a bar, and the bookings refuse to settle into one genre: cabaret and downtown performance art one night, a folk singer or an international band the next, plus Broadway performers trying out new material.

Buy tickets through the Public Theater's site, where Joe's Pub has its own calendar, and note the food or drink minimum at tables. Shows often run twice a night, and the late show is where the experimental acts tend to land. Reserved table seating fills first, so book early for anything you particularly want. It is the downtown counterpart to the uptown supper clubs: the same closeness, with more risk and less formality.