Five Boroughs in Greasepaint, Broadway Runs the New York City Marathon

Tony winner Patina Miller, Merle Dandridge, Benjamin Walker, Joshua Bassett and Erika Henningsen are among the Broadway performers running the TCS New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 1, 2026.

It starts on Staten Island and ends in Central Park. In between are 26.2 miles of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, and a lot of people who usually get their applause sitting down.

Playbill published the list on Wednesday. Several of the runners are raising money for causes. At least one of them goes back to a Broadway stage the same month.

Who From Broadway Is Running?

Miller leads the list. This will be her fourth New York City Marathon, Playbill reports. She is also in the middle of a Broadway run, playing the pageant recruiter Eloise Amponsah in School Girls, or The African Mean Girls Play at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, which runs through November 15, according to Manhattan Theatre Club.

She knows the start line well. In 2023 she sang the national anthem on Staten Island before the gun and then ran the course in about four hours, according to her Wikipedia biography. Miller won a Tony in 2013 as the Leading Player in Pippin and played Raquel Thomas on Starz's Power Book III: Raising Kanan.

Jordan Litz returns for his second marathon. Last year he finished the race and then played both shows of a two-show day at Wicked, Playbill notes.

The rest of the stage contingent reads this way.

Erika Henningsen, who originated Cady Heron in Broadway's Mean Girls, runs for Girl Rising. Joshua Bassett, the singer and star of Disney+'s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, runs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Merle Dandridge, a Rent and Once on This Island veteran who played Persephone in Hadestown in 2025 and Marlene on HBO's The Last of Us, runs for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. So does Ellie Fisher, the wife of Broadway's Jordan Fisher.

Benjamin Walker, who played the title role in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson on Broadway and was a Tony nominee for All My Sons, is running too. Playbill names no charity for him.

Who Else Is on the List?

Not everyone on the course takes a bow. New York Road Runners, the club that organizes the race, told Playbill that Broadway electrician Brianna Messina will also run. Chloe Lukasiak of Dance Moms is running in support of TheaterWorksUSA.

In 2023 she sang the national anthem on Staten Island before the gun and then ran the course in about four hours.

There is precedent for the double shift. Playbill recalls that Cynthia Erivo ran the New York marathon in 2016 and then played two performances of The Color Purple. This year she ran the London Marathon and went on to perform her one-woman Dracula in the West End. In New York she returns on November 16 with a benefit concert at Geffen Hall.

How Does Someone Get Into the Marathon?

There are three main routes, Playbill explains. Runners win a spot in the lottery, earn one by completing nine qualifying New York Road Runners races, or run for a charity that holds entries.

The race has grown a long way from its first edition. The first New York City Marathon, in September 1970, sent 127 runners around loops of Central Park, and 55 of them finished. Last year more than 59,000 people crossed the line, a figure that varies slightly by source.

What Is the Course?

The marathon starts at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, at the foot of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. It crosses into Brooklyn, runs through Queens and into Manhattan, ducks into the Bronx over the Willis Avenue Bridge, then comes back down through Manhattan to finish in Central Park beside Tavern on the Green.

What to Know Before You Go

Race day is Sunday, November 1. Watching from the curb is free from mile 3 to mile 26, Playbill notes. The final stretch inside Central Park needs a ticket for the grandstand seating, sold through the race's ticketing partner.

Bring a sign. Most of these runners are used to a curtain call. On November 1 they get 26 miles of one.