FROM 145TH TO 98TH STREET Comes to Urbanite Theatre

 Urbanite Theatre’s eleventh season will culminate in an exhilarating world premiere of FROM 145TH TO 98TH STREET, opening on May 30, 2025. We are thrilled to present this brand-new work by Nia Akilah Robinson, a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard, a playwriting MFA candidate at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and recipient of the 2020 Charles Rowan Beye New Play Commission from Urbanite Theatre.

"This play is five years in the making. How special is it to have your play be commissioned, and through drafts, be able to get to production?” remarks Robinson.

“I was interested in what it means to talk about a play that is so specific to Harlem. And the fact that Urbanite, in Sarasota, Florida, found close ties between the story of Harlem and thought that a Sarasota audience would understand and relate to those dynamics was so exciting to me.”

Robinson’s writing has been described recently as “deliberately Shakespearean” by The New York Times. David Lindsay-Abaire, playwright behind Rabbit Hole, Fuddy Meers, and Kimberly Akimbo, has hailed her as a “fearless, authentic and truly singular writer.”

“I love the language that this family has–it’s very authentic,” comments Director Jerrica D. White, a Brooklyn-based, Cincinnati-bred director, producer, and writer. “They are comedians, honey, all of them in their own way. This is a family that values what it means to be able to laugh with and at the expense of each other. This is a family that is learning how to be more truthful with each other, and has a big, open heart that is open and available to making wrongs right.”

“Wrapping up another season with a commissioned world premiere is immensely gratifying,” says Producing Artistic Director Summer Wallace. “It's remarkable how a story like FROM 145TH TO 98TH STREET can be so precisely rooted in its setting—right down to the street address—while still exploring universal themes and showcasing relationships that feel so deeply relatable and familiar. We’re so grateful to the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation for their support in making this production possible.”

Synopsis

When Jackie and Cedric moved their family from the heart of Harlem to 98th Street, they did so to create better economic opportunities for their children. But when their son, Jamal, is wrongfully accused of a crime and their daughter, Fatima, doubts her college plans, the Curtly family must either come together in adversity or watch as their clashing quests for success pull them apart.