The Apollo Fall/Winter 2025 Season Revealed Featuring HANG TIME and More

The Apollo has revealed its Fall/Winter 2025 season of performances, exhibitions, and community programs, including commissions, presentations, and collaborations with cultural partners across New York City and beyond. Taking place while its Historic Theater is under renovation, Apollo season highlights include a theater series marking the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that explores its lasting impact on Louisiana, the country and disproportionately affected Black communities in New Orleans, both reflecting and intensifying long-standing racial and economic disparities; a panel discussion on the legacy of the iconic reggae group Steel Pulse; and performances that pay tribute to music legends and showcase emerging talent.
 
Apollo programs continue at The Apollo Stages at The Victoria and at partner locations while the Historic Theater undergoes its largest renovation and restoration in history, which began on July 1.
 
In September, The Apollo New Works commission in collaboration with Junebug Productions, Echoes of the Storm, brings together eight playwrights—four based in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states, and four Louisiana-born writers now based in New York—to create a series of 10-minute plays reflecting on the enduring impact of Katrina 20 years after the devastating storm. The works are relayed through intimate storytelling, offering a deeply personal look at how the storm reshaped lives, communities, and cultural identity. The plays will then tour across the U.S., culminating in New Orleans, Louisiana at Junebug Productions. The Katrina commemoration will also span film and conversations including a screening of episode 1 of the upcoming Netflix docuseries co-produced by Spike Lee, Katrina: Come Hell and High Water and talkback with the program’s producers. The weekend of events entitled Southern Stories will kick off with a reading of a new play by Apollo’s Director of New Works, Kelley Girod. Echoes of the Storm builds upon The Apollo’s commissioning support of creative innovation by emerging and established artists whose work challenges, reflects, and is in dialogue with the most pressing issues within our communities. Previous works have included The Blues and Its People, the stage adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me; The Gathering in collaboration with National Black Theatre and American Composers Orchestra, and genre-defying opera We Shall Not Be Moved by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Bill T. Jones, co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia.
 
In November, The Apollo presents HANG TIME, a searing and poetic work written and directed by Harlem native and Pulitzer Prize finalist Zora Howard. Critically acclaimed during its 2023 Off-Broadway debut, the 10-performance run at The Apollo of HANG TIME is a powerful Harlem homecoming for Ms. Howard. Centering the emotional lives and inner worlds of three Black men as they gather beneath an old tree, the play offers an intimate, unflinching exploration of vulnerability, memory, and Black masculinity.
 
While programs continue in its new spaces, The Apollo’s major full-scale restoration, renovation, and modernization of its iconic Historic Theater is underway, led by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects + Planners with consultants Charcoalblue, Flyleaf Creative, and Higgins Quasebarth & Partners. The project honors the legacy of The Apollo while enhancing the audience experience with a renovated and expanded lobby with a café and bar for community gatherings and performances, new and restored seating, significant upgrades to backstage areas for artists, a revitalized, globally recognized historic Apollo marquee, and more. Construction on the theater—which first opened in 1914 and was renamed The Apollo in 1934—began this summer and will be undertaken in phases until its completion in 2026. The Apollo’s season of programs follows below, with additional programs to be announced.