Carolina Performing Arts Unveils Lineup For Inaugural ALL. TOGETHER. NOW. Festival

Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced the full lineup and programming details for the inaugural All. Together. Now. festival, taking place Feb. 19–21, 2027. Announced in May, the three-day festival will bring together visiting artists, UNC researchers and students, and Triangle artists and community partners for performances, creative experiences, and conversations connected by the inaugural festival's central ideas of Love & Hope.  

Unfolding in venues and spaces across the Carolina campus and downtown Chapel Hill, the festival offers three kinds of experiences: Pass Events, full-length performances accessed with the purchase of a festival day pass; free Open Gatherings, developed with campus and community partners that span public artmaking, jam sessions, conversations, and film; and a separately ticketed Saturday-night Special Presentation. Selected highlights from the lineup unveiled online today include: 

For the Special Presentation:  

• The Daily Show correspondent and rotating host Josh Johnson will take the stage Saturday night at Memorial Hall for the festival's only reserved-seating performance, bringing the distinctly conversational stand-up that has made him one of the most acclaimed and widely watched comedians working today. 

For Pass Events:  

• an immersive, interstellar listening experience built from real voicemails imagining more hopeful futures in Utopian Hotline, a Mitu Collaboration presented beneath the dome at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center; 
• a choral work that turns caring for others into song and movement in composer David Lang's assembly of the poor hymnal, performed by The Crossing, led by artistic director Donald Nally with staging and choreography by Annie-B Parson;  
• a theatrical mixtape of hip-hop, spoken word, and step about a young Black man's fight to define himself beyond the criminal justice system in Dahlak Brathwaite's Try/Step/Trip;  
• three stories of love persisting against the odds, carried across cultures and centuries by string quartet Brooklyn Rider, including new visuals inspired by the work of Frida Kahlo, in Star-Crossed;  
• a genre-crossing exchange of percussion, electronics, bilingual songs, banjo, and guitar from Sō Percussion, Helado Negro and This Is the Kit;  
• and a performance blending hip-hop, soul, jazz, and funk with strikingly honest lyrics about mental health and healing from Tiny Desk Contest winner Cure for Paranoia. 

For Open Gatherings:  

• NC Hip Hop Cypher, featuring multiple generations of North Carolina Hip Hop artists, copresented and co-curated by Carolina Waves founder Mir.I.am and Chapel Hill Poet Laureate and UNC faculty member Donovan Livingston;  
• an A Love Supreme jam led by saxophonist and educator Dexter Moses, celebrating North Carolina native John Coltrane;  
• Poetry in the Round, a poetry assembly guided by the four current poets laureate from Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh;  
• a multi-media Sound Installation created live by Triangle trio Delver using synthesizers, drum machines, seashells, broken violins, and beaver logs;  
• Public Artmaking, led by artists affiliated with the Carrboro-based The ArtsCenter, to include mural-making and interactive sculpture;  
• informal, coffee-talk-style encounters with UNC faculty and researchers, ranging from panels on Love & Hope, to Quick Studies offering small-group conversations with experts, to Open Classrooms inviting the public into UNC learning spaces;  
• readings from The North Carolina Folk Play Project, presented by PlayMakers Repertory Company as part of its 50th-anniversary season;  
• an exploratory experience at the Ackland Art Museum, where festivalgoers will be prompted to break into small groups to engage with works from the museum and reflect on ideas of love and hope  
• and a film showcase at the Varsity Theatre centered on love and hope, curated by the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Research in Black Culture and History that builds on the Center's annual fall Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film. 

“We built All. Together. Now. to gather a wide range of people, ideas, and art forms into shared spaces across one weekend, and invite everyone to be part of what unfolds,” said Carolina Performing Arts executive and artistic director Alison Friedman. “That freedom to move between experiences is what makes a festival exciting! Artists meet researchers, tradition meets experimentation, and a performance might lead to a conversation with someone new, a jam session with local artists, or a work of art made alongside neighbors. With so much range and choice, no two paths through the weekend will be the same. Festivalgoers can begin with whatever draws them in and leave room to discover what happens along the way.” 

Festival day passes go on sale September 15 at noon. Tickets for Josh Johnson will go on sale in mid-October, with additional details to be announced.

Need more Raleigh Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...