National Black Theatre Reveals 2023-24 Season 'Defiance of Our Bloom'
Learn more about the upcoming shows here!
By: Stephi Wild Aug. 04, 2023
New York, NY (August 3, 2023) — Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s Tony-nominated National Black Theatre (NBT) has announced its 2023-24 season, ‘Defiance of Our Bloom,’ with a theatrical lineup of four productions created in partnership with three leading theaters including Ars Nova, The Apollo and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Additional programming includes two notable workshop productions presented in-residency with Chelsea Factory, and features the works of two early career Black playwrights hand-picked to artistically develop, incubate, and execute their creative visions with NBT’s unwavering support through the I Am Soul Playwright Residency.
NBT’s highly anticipated 56th season is kicking off with the 2nd annual Learn To Love Yourself: Silent Disco + Portrait Series starting August 19th. This theatrical season, themed ‘Defiance of Our Bloom,’ comes on the heels of an explosive 2022-23 theatrical season that garnered NBT a total of 34 theatrical award nominations, including 5 Tony nominations for NBT’s Broadway debut for the critically acclaimed Fat Ham.
“I am so proud of this season’s offerings which continue to widen the aperture of the Black experience, while simultaneously challenging the traditional western theatrical norms, and championing the rich diaspora and diversity of our communities. From the Gulla Geechee tradition to the Queer and disabled, NBT continues to introduce new groundbreaking artists and work to the field, both locally and nationally. The Defiance of Out Bloom is a celebration of a cultural cornucopia of Black traditions that is intended to preserve the past while trailblazing towards a more liberatory future.”
- Sade Lythcott Chief Executive Officer, NBT
NBT’s 56th Theatrical Season LineUp: The Defiance of Our Bloom
(pray) – A World Premiere
Playwright, Director, and Choreographer: nicHi douglas
Music: Starr Busby and JJJJJerome Ellis
Designers: dots : Kimie Nishikawa (Set) DeShon Elem (Costume) Cha See (Lights) Mikaal Sulamain (Sound)
Co-Producer: Ars Nova
Dates: September 23 - October 28, 2023
Location: Ars Nova @ Greenwich House (27 Barrow Street)
A congregation for those past, present and future comes to power in (pray), a new choreopoem by nicHi douglas. A celebration and a reckoning, (pray) dives into the beautifully complex relationship between Black womxn and their spirituality. Following the form of a Sunday Baptist Church service while transporting us to an isolated ancestral forest, this sacred offering creates a communal space to heal and inspire the Black feminine divine. Alchemized in collaboration with Starr Busby and JJJJJerome Ellis (pray) interrogates and uplifts the tremendous value and weight of spiritual inheritance.
This World Premiere’s run is September 23 - October 28, 2023and is co-produced with Ars Nova at Greenwich House located at 27 Barrow Street. Support for this production comes from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with the New York Foundation for the Arts. (pray) offers a heartfelt invitation to the Black community, and especially Black womxn.
Packages O’ the Things We Deliver - A Public Presentation
Playwright: Oya Mae Dxtchxss-Davis
Dates: March 27 – 31, 2024
Location: Chelsea Factory
Packages O’ the Things We Deliver is the a public presentation as part of NBT’s ongoing residency with Manhattan’s Chelsea Factory from March 27 – 31, 2024. Written by Oya Mae Dxtchxss-Davis, a fellow of the I Am Soul Playwright Residency program, this public presentation will present one of her newest works commissioned during her residency. Packages O’ the Things We Deliver is about brotherhood, redemption, and the threat that police violence has in the Black community. This story follows the concerns of three brothers who have been given the chance to save the souls of their family and themselves - all of which are being haunted by their past. The brothers have to deliver packages to save their family… until one of them is murdered during delivery. After a year of waiting and still haunted by the past, the brothers are reunited and learn that delivering packages is the first task towards redemption. If they are to complete their healing and liberate the soul of their brother to OKO, a city beyond the ocean, they have much more that they must do.
The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout – (Washington, D.C. Premiere)
Director and Creative Conception: Jonathan McCrory
Co-Producers: The Apollo and American Composers Orchestra
Dates: June 1, 2024
Location: The Kennedy Center Opera House
The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout is a one-night-only music driven theatrical performance at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. on June 1, 2024. After a sold-out world premiere at the historic The Apollo, The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout is a theatrical event centering the soul of Black folks and the heart of America's brilliant and bitter present through orchestral and choral music. Mounted in the Oprea House of the Kennedy Center, the show features the creative concept and direction by NBT’s Executive Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory. The Gathering honors our present pulse need for a collective space of remembrance, to enact the sacred technology of a Ring Shout and engage the streets – a place where today's civic unrest has taken place. This program is made possible through the support from Arts For Justice, Ford Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. This performance is co-produced by National Black Theatre, The Apollo and American Composers Orchestra in association with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is an external rental presented in coordination with the Kennedy Center Campus Rental Office.
“This season is dedicated to the seed sowing, the rooting and the prosperity housed in our bloom. Defiance Of Our Bloom features artists who have leaned into providing a resource that gets us there by crafting works that help us honor our shared humanity through the power of Black Liberation. Through the 56th Season, we are calling on the need to release into the unknown and allow for what you once knew to become something different, something transformed, something you can use to meet the world you now live in. These productions are rooted in an intervention of love, and a restructuring of those rough grooves to be met with care, so you can answer the call to transcend and recycle trauma into life-bearing lessons.”
- Jonathan McCrory, Executive Artistic Director of NBT
Bloodwork (Public Presentation)
Playwright: Kristen Adele Calhoun
Director: vickie washington
Dates: June 25 – 29, 2024
Location: Chelsea Factory
Bloodwork is the a public presentation as part of NBT’s ongoing residency with Manhattan’s Chelsea Factory from June 25 – 29, 2024. Written by Kristin Adele Calhoun, a fellow of the I Am Soul Playwright Residency program, and directed by vickie washington, this public presentation will present one of Calhoun’s newest works commissioned during her residency.. Bloodwork takes us on a journey of twelve generations of women converging in this epic journey across time and space in the name of deep healing. As 34-year-old Nyanda wrestles with a mysterious disease, her entire mother line emerges from the past to save her (and in turn, save themselves). Armed with the desire to be whole but at a loss for how to get there, ancestors and descendants struggle to shoulder the weight of wellness. Bold and gripping, Bloodwork asks, “if trauma can be passed down, what happens when we pass liberation down too?”
To keep up with National Black Theatre, visit their website HERE
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ABOUT NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE
NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE (NBT) is a Tony Award-nominated institution founded in 1968 by the late visionary artist Dr. Barbara Ann Teer. The nation’s first revenue-generating Black arts complex, NBT is the longest-running Black theatre in New York City, one of the oldest theatres founded and consistently operated by a woman of color in the nation, and has been included in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. NBT’s core mission is to produce transformational theatre that helps to shift the inaccuracies around African Americans’ cultural identity by telling authentic stories of Black lives. As an alternative learning environment, NBT uses theatre arts as a means to educate, enrich, entertain, empower and inform the national conscience around current social issues impacting our communities. Under the leadership of Sade Lythcott, CEO, and Jonathan McCrory, Executive Artistic Director, NBT helps re-shape a more inclusive American theatre field by providing an artistically rigorous and culturally sensitive space for artists of color to experiment, develop and present new work. Working with trailblazing artists from Nona Hendrix to Jeremy O. Harris; helping to launch the careers, most recently, of artists such as Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Mfoniso Udofia, Saheem Ali, Lee Edward Colston II, and Ebony Noelle Golden; and incubating Obie Award-winning companies like The Movement Theatre Company and Harlem9’s 48Hours in Harlem, NBT’s cultural production remains unparalleled. Located in the heart of Harlem, NBT is embarking on a historic major capital redevelopment project that will transform the current property into a 21st-century destination for Black culture through theatre. NBT welcomes more than 90,000 visitors annually; has produced 300+ original works; won 2 Obie awards and 58 AUDELCO Awards; received a CEBA Award of Merit; and has been nominated for multiple Drama Desk awards. NBT is supported by grants from Booth Ferris Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, New York Community Trust, Shubert Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, City Council of New York, City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and private donations. Visit nationalblacktheatre.org or follow NBT on Facebook (@NationalBlackTheatre) and Twitter/Instagram (@NatBlackTheatre).
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