Harlem’s National Black Theatre Announces 2024-2025 Season: The Pilgrimage Home

On the heels of a triumphant 2023/2024 season, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre (NBT) has announced its 2024/2025 season.

 The Pilgrimage: A Journey Back Home. takes the lead in a critical year where we as a community have the choice to craft the kind of home we want for the future and a year when NBT continues the focus of its own new home this season, the theater invites everyone to imagine what it means to create, imagine and navigate through spaces to discover one’s belonging. With a theatrical lineup featuring five productions created in partnership with venerated theaters including The Apollo, Kip Republic, The Vineyard Theatre, The New Group, and The Flea Theater, audiences will get a first-hand look at transformative works addressing topics from climate to immigration, colorism, HIV/AIDS, and Black Skate culture. These productions will be paired with a series of complementary events and conversations spearheaded by NBT’s Alternative Learning and Social Impact Department.

“As National Black Theatre continues its own homecoming with the construction of our new arts complex, we’re proud to share The Pilgrimage: A Journey Back Home with our audiences. This season speaks to our ethos as an organization, proving that the stage is a vital tool for liberation, nurturing new voices and honoring those who paved the way for us to create freely.” – Sade Lythcott, CEO, NBT

The Pilgrimage: A Journey Back Home draws inspiration from The Negro Motorist/Travelers’ Green Book – a resource published by Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966 which aided African American travelers as they navigated the tumultuous segregated landscape created by Jim Crow laws. More than just a travel guide, Green Book offered a pathway to safety, and a way to re/build community and respite during times of alienation and hostility – which are two words many of us are feeling all too often in the current climate locally, nationally and globally.

As NBT sets its sights on returning to its physical home at the iconic intersection of 125th Street and 5th Avenue in Harlem, NY in the coming years, through the theatrical magic and navigation of these dynamic artists, this season will be a testament to its mission to create a space that goes beyond storytelling. A season that offers different approaches to generate the salve and possible naming of a new Green Book. A list of tools and resources that help us build our needed sanctuary right here right now and  honors and uplifts a deep ancestral connection, as much as it is a season that honors the relationship between NBT and its Harlem community today.

“In a time when our sector is under critical and formidable pressure it is a profound gift to be able to make this announcement and celebrate an extraordinary diversity of artistic practices, stories and artists. This season is one comprised of the nuance housed in our community and the creative resilience Black artists are forged. These five productions are generating an active pathway to our liberation in the face  of the most challenging times with grace, compassion and rigor. The arts can save the soul of our Nation and as we craft the future we want these works to play a critical role in that conversation.

Each and every one of them are addressing our humanity head-on and invites us to explore a world where we all get to experience the power of the salve and not be solely the sacrifice. We look forward to seeing what home you will craft while being on this pilgrimage.”- Jonathan McCrory Executive Artistic Director, NBT

NBT’s 2024/2025 Theatrical Season: The Pilgrimage: A Journey Back Home

The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree 

Written, Directed, and Choreographed by: Ebony Noelle Golden

Featuring: Jupiter Performance Studio

Co-Produced by: National Black Theatre and The Apollo

Dates: September 13- 15 and 21-22, 2024

Fresh off the success of 125th & Freedom comes The Divining: Ceremonies in the name of the m/other tree, written, directed, and choreographed by Ebony Noelle Golden, a powerful 3-part series of ritual performances, processions, and visual installations that invites you to experience the intersection of art, activism, and spirituality. Guided by the wisdom of ancestors and the urgency of now, this theatrical ceremony combines movement, poetry, percussion and visual art in a call to reclaim our connection to the land and to each other. The Divining: Ceremonies in the name of the m/other tree weaves together the rhythms of climate change, environmental justice, and the deep roots of Harlem’s heritage. The show is featuring Jupiter Performance Studio and was awarded by NEFA the National Theater Project Creation & Touring Grant and was originally commissioned by The Apollo.

KINGS…come home (North American Premiere), Playwright: Smita James, Veronique Efomi & Munganyende, Director: Ira Kip, Co-directed by: Winston “winne” Bergwijn, Co-Produced by: National Black Theatre and Kip Republic, Dates: March 5 – March 16, 2025, Location: The Victoria Theatre at The Apollo (253 W 125th Street, New York, NY 10027)

Making its North American Premiere after a successful tour in Europe is KINGS…come home by first-generation Netherland immigrants Smita James, Veronique Efomi & Munganyende and directed by Ira Kip. KINGS… Come Home tells the story of a family looking for a new home. After leaving their motherland, they go on a journey to find prosperity, opportunity and safety. They find a house in the middle of a field, move in and make it their utopia, until the walls start moving and the house slowly falls apart. As they continue their journey, we witness the long-lasting effects of their continuous displacement and how it shapes their reality. The show investigates the effects of migration caused by a spectrum of social and economic issues. It also examines the intrinsic connection between migration and our colonial past’s long term effects on all of us. Whether it’s due to climate change, war, or institutional racism, it is the impasse that lies at the basis of their departure as well as their arrival. The question the play unpacks is; what does it mean to perpetually be displaced and unrooted when in search of a home?

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Bowl EP (World Premiere)

Written and Directed by: Nazareth Hassan

Co-Produced by: National Black Theatre and Vineyard Theatre and in association with The New Group

Dates: April 17 – May 25, 2025

Location: Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15th Street, New York, NY 10003)

Kelly K Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter need to find a name for their rap group. Through flirty interludes, cringy overshares, and practicing their ollies, they grow increasingly closer. Skating and Smoking. Skating and Drinking. Skating and exorcizing a demon. With live skating and original music, enter Bowl EP: a skate park, in the middle of a wasteland, at the edge of the galaxy. The world premiere of Bowl EP is written and directed by Nazareth Hassan who is a Tow Playwright in Residence awarded by the Tow Foundation.

Chiaroscuro (New York Premiere)

Playwright: Aishah Rahman

Director: abigail jean-baptiste

In association with: The Flea

Dates: May 26 – June 22, 2025

Location: The Flea Theatre (20 Thomas Street, New York, NY 10007)

Chiaroscuro, written by Black Arts Movement writer Aishah Rahman, is named after the Italian artistic term referring to a stark contrast between dark and light. This New York Premiere of this american classic will be directed by abigail jean-baptiste, NBT’s Soul Directing Resident. The play explores the social implications of such contrast as it relates skin color, specifically within the Black community. The play is set on a love boat-type cruise ship for Black singles where “pretty” means light-skinned, all the men are dark, and Papa Legba, the African trickster spirit, is disguised as a ship steward.

Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman (Public Presentation)

Playwright: Nathan Yungerberg
Director: Zhailon Levingston
Dates: June 26 – June 29, 2025

Rounding out the theatrical season NBT will present the Public Presentation of NBT’s I Am Soul Playwright Resident Nathan Yungerberg with Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman. The newly commissioned work will be directed by Zhailon Levingston (CATS: The Jellicle Ball and Chicken & Biscuits). Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman delves into the strength of chosen family and honors the forgotten through the eyes of Umar, a young gay black writer residing in New York City during the AIDS epidemic. Umar and his closest female friend, Charlie, conjure the spirits of the lives lost by evoking the power of love, friendship, and magic.

ABOUT NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE

NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE (NBT) is a Emmy-nominated and Tony Award-winning 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, Mfoniso Udofia, Saheem Ali, Lee Edward Colston II, and Ebony Noelle Golden; and incubating Obie Award-winning companies like The Movement Theatre Company and Harlem 9’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 Instagram (@NatBlackTheatre).

Photo credit: 1) Smita. 2) Nazareth Hassan. 3) Nathan Yungerberg.