The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show is a puppet show for very young children and their families. It stages four picture books by Eric Carle back to back, with 75 handcrafted puppets, puppeteers and an original score. Small children are invited to join in rather than sit still, so the room is looser than at most theater.

Jonathan Rockefeller created the show and developed it in 2014 together with Carle and Carle's team. It is presented by Rockefeller Productions. In New York this is a limited engagement at the DR2 Theatre, billed as a return by popular demand.

As of October 2026, the company says the show has played in more than 20 countries for more than 3 million children.

The title story starts with a little egg on a leaf. A caterpillar hatches, hungry, and the tale follows its appetite through the days of the week, with fruit counted off as it goes. The stage version follows Carle's book from the egg through the caterpillar's eating days.

That book came out in 1969. Carle made its pictures in collage from hand-painted papers, and its pages have holes punched where the caterpillar has eaten through. It teaches counting and the days of the week, so many families know it before they arrive.

The other stories change from season to season, but the title story is always included. Mister Seahorse takes the audience into the sea, while The Very Busy Spider spends a day on a farm.

Every story on the bill is adapted from a picture book. Carle wrote and illustrated most of them: Mister Seahorse dates from 2004, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse from 2011 and The Very Busy Spider from 1984. A 1967 book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Carle, has also been part of the show.

As of October 2026, the fall program adds The Very Busy Spider, in a full-scale staging that is a first for the United States, to the Blue Horse story, Mister Seahorse and the title story. Listings for the 2026 run do not all agree: one names a different trio next to the title story, made up of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, The Very Busy Spider and Mister Seahorse. The companion stories rotate, so check the official site for the line-up on your date.

The music is original. Nate Edmondson wrote it for the 2016 and 2023 New York productions.

The puppets are the production. For the 2023 DR2 run, Rockefeller Studios, a film and theater company based in New York and London, designed and built more than 75 puppets. Each story gets its own cast of creatures, and the puppeteers move between them.

Every performance is designed to be sensory-friendly: sound is never too loud, and there are no sudden sound or light cues. The house lights stay at half throughout, so the theater is never fully dark. The company says its shows are designed to be autism friendly, with a firm no-shushing rule and a quiet area in the lobby for anyone who needs a break.

Photography is not allowed during the performance. The puppets return to the stage afterward, under better light, for photos.

The show premiered on January 8, 2015, at the Riverside Theatre in Sydney as part of the Sydney Festival, then toured Australia later that year.

The U.S. premiere opened on February 7, 2016, at the 47th Street Theatre in New York, after previews from January 30, 2016. The original New York cast was Jake Bazel, Ariel Lauryn, Mindy Leanse, Weston Long and Kayla Prestel. The original program had The Very Lonely Firefly and Mister Seahorse beside the title story, plus The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse. A London debut followed at the Ambassadors Theatre on December 2, 2016.

The show came back to the DR2 Theatre from September 28, 2017, to May 20, 2018. That run was first set to close on February 4, 2018 and was extended twice. The company scheduled the show's 1,000th performance worldwide for January 21, 2018. Later stops included Chicago Children's Theatre in September and October 2019 and the El Portal Theatre in Los Angeles from November 2023 to January 2024, followed by a 2024 tour.

The DR2 Theatre hosted a further engagement from February 10, 2023, to July 2, 2023, with an official opening on February 27, 2023. A tenth-anniversary run played at The Duke Theatre in New York from September 7, 2024, to January 4, 2025. The current DR2 Theatre engagement began performances on June 27, 2026, and its calendar continues past the fall stories into a holiday edition, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Holiday Show.