This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with stars, creators, and industry leaders on Broadway and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the leaders of the National Black Theater.

[0:23] Gordon Cox: Founded in Harlem in 1968 by Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, National Black Theater has long made a mission of producing theater that centers the Black experience, with an emphasis on multifaceted authenticity and autonomy.

[0:36] Gordon Cox: The company's current season includes its first Broadway outing in Fat Ham, the Pulitzer Prize winning play by James Imes that NBT co-produced with the public last year.

[0:47] Gordon Cox: As the show starts Broadway performances next month, the company is also in the midst of a capital redevelopment project for a 21-story building in Harlem that will provide a home for the theater as well as affordable housing and more.

[1:01] Gordon Cox: The company's current CEO, Shade Lifcott, is the daughter of the founder, and she leads NBT with executive artistic director Jonathan McCrory.

[1:10] Gordon Cox: The two of them are in the virtual studio with me to talk their upcoming Broadway outing, their ambitions for their new building, and what's so important about creating a holistic home for black stories, black artists, and black audiences.

[1:24] Gordon Cox: Hi, Shade and Jonathan. Thanks for joining me.

[1:27] Shade Lifcott: Happy to be here.

[1:28] Jonathan McCrory: Hi!

[1:29] Shade Lifcott: Great to be here.

[1:30] Gordon Cox: So, for listeners who might not know a whole lot about National Black Theater, I wonder if we could just start off talking a little bit about the history of the theater and the work you do there and the space it creates.

[1:42] Shade Lifcott: Sure, I'll start off. Thanks for having us. So the National Black Theater is the oldest and longest-running Black Theater in New York City. It was founded in 1968 by our founder, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, who happens to be my mother. And she created National Black Theater in the wake of civil the civil unrest of the civil rights and through the birth of the Black Arts Movement, created its own art form really. As an actress and a performer, a director, she was, you know, exhausted by how stymied and one-dimensional the roles for black actors were. And so she became a part of like a seminal movement to create black spaces. In 1968, Dr. King at his last address that, you know, build black spaces and institutions.

And I think she saw it as a call to action. And so National Black Theater was formed to kind of go one step beyond representation with so many black theaters that were formed during the late 60s were really tackling representation and storytelling and on the stage to really kind of turn the volume up on what it might be like to use black storytelling through the unapologetic truth of black artists to help not only create stories, authentic stories of black lifestyle, but also radical care for black communities in the space of black liberation in service of human transformation. And so she moved the family up to Harlem, where we've been since 1968. Her first original company of the National Black Theater was um she referred to the actors and the uh playwrights as liberators.

This idea that our art form has the power and the soul force energy by telling authentic stories of black lifestyle to counter counter the kind of mainstream narratives around uh the tropes of black culture, and that we as artists can liberate ourselves through the art of storytelling, and in that our audience, our community get to be kind of uh inspired to take action in their own liberation. So it was a conversation between uh liberation and the beginning conversation of what does active citizens in community look like, or you know, uh very personal approach to our own kind of activism and social impact. So that is how we started in 1968. Uh since then we have remained in Harlem for the most part, really touring our work, uh championing contemporary African American playwrights, directors, and producers.

In 1983, we had the great fortune of buying the city block that our theater was in, um, which put us in the conversation of institution building, where we understood that more than anything, what black community and black artists deserved was a home away from home. And how did we create something with permanence that we could kind of, you know, look at giving our community something it's never had since black folks were brought to this country um uh from Africa, which was a true home. Um, home has been an idea for uh black um African American culture since we were ripped from Africa, but what would like bricks and mortar look like? What was that salve, that healing need for being able to see each other and recognize each other wholly?

Um and so we purchased the city block uh in 1983 and uh began building what it was the institution of the National Black Theater. The complex that we have the privilege to steward now uh is the first revenue-generating black arts complex in the country. And under Jonathan and myself's leadership, we are undergoing building the theater of the future, which is the most exciting thing. So we're in a capital project right now that has this itinerant, um, but still very much uh investing in these radical and imaginative, authentic, unapologetic black artists that get to tell their story through playwriting, directing, producing, acting, and designing. And so we see ourselves as a laboratory and a hub for all things black culture through the theater lens.

[6:40] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And Jonathan, tell me a little bit about what you when did you become involved? What did you know of the theater? What do you what and what do you as an artistic director consider some of its crowning achievements over the years?

[6:54] Jonathan McCrory: Yeah, I mean, uh so I've had the privilege of working um in partnership with Shade for close to now 11 years. We're 11 years strong. Um since that time, uh really have died, have been able to grow inside of my leadership and inside of my um inside of my uh understanding of my contribution to this organization. Um starting off as the director of theater arts programming, then turning into the artistic director, and then now um the executive artistic director. Um and during that tenure and during that time, um uh I have really been able to fall in love with this uh audacious and powerful um historical and actually revolutionary narrative and and placemaking mission that National Black Theater has always had.

Um as a student at Dugellian School of the Arts, uh National Black Theater was part of my um curriculum. Um the the of the chair of my theater department, Ken Johnson at DuGellington, um was uh was a student of Dr. Tears, uh, went through the tear technology of soul, which is a uh acting technique that Dr. Barbara Antier uh created and cultivated to train black artists uh to live inside of um their full selves in the creative process. Uh and so, and so the the myth, the legend, and also the actuality of who MBT was, it was a part of my educational apparatus. Um and uh not something that I would necessarily say was was was fully in um the zygeist of uh of where I thought I would land per se, in the way in which I've landed.

Um uh however uh it is it it has always been um a huge, a huge part of my uh my upbringing as a black artist. Um and then uh Michelle Shea, a mutual uh colleague, friend, love uh both uh Shade's actual godmother, I will say my theater godmother, um uh saw my saw a work that I had done called Black in the Bubble uh at Harm School of the Arts. Um and uh said, after seeing that work, which was written by a playwright by the name of Eric Lockley, after seeing that work, said, I think that there's something that you and Shade, do you know Shade? You and Shade need to meet, you and Shade need to connect. And um we set up a moment to have tea um weeks later, and we have never left each other's side since.

Um it became a love fest. So when I when I think when I that's how I was drawn to the organization, um, and that's and my commitment in staying in the organization is it goes back to that really audacious, beautiful invitation that Dr. Barbara and Tyr forged, um, which was welcome to your home away from home. Um this idea that a black artist, a black people uh can find home on the soil uh when we were placed here, uh not by our will, but as uh as a forced uh migration, um, um, to be indentured slave uh indentured into sl in servitude and in in slavery. Um and then what does it mean to find your liberation um from those shackles into the wholeness of your body and reminding yourself uh who you are and where you come from and how powerful your legacy and your lineage is.

Um and and having a return home. Um there's there's something quite powerful about uh this this conversation of connecting um Africa to America, America to Africa, um, that NBT um consistently is doing it. And in particular when we think about Nigeria and you th and we start to thinking about the Oshog Oshun Grove and Europe of Faith, um, like what does that mean to be to create the nexus for that cultural barrier to happen? Um and so many black and brown bodies uh long for that. I mean, I did when I was in um college. I longed for a destination that I could call home that looked like me, felt like me, um, and built from a Zaige of Rigor and which I desired. So it's been a privilege to hopefully write a history, um, write write new histories for future generations to not long for a home, but know where home can be.

[11:05] Shade Lifcott: I can I just quickly say too Gordon, uh the first project Jonathan and I worked on was um our first season actually National Black Theater didn't really conform to kind of the structure of Western theater, nonprofit theater with a season. We were more community activated, right? And so we were um responsive to community but uh when my when Dr Tear passed away and I took the helm, I understood that in order to create um the foundation that would create some sustainability and stability for the organization there were certain things that were necessary to um to uh adopt and so Jonathan uh I brought him in on a project um called Lyrics from lockdown and I bring up that as our first seminal work together because it really cemented uh this idea of holistic producing which takes the lens of social impact and social justice themes throughout the kind of work that we'll produce and so Lyrics from Lockdown by Brianne Bain was a partnership that National Black Theater had with Harry Belafonte and Jin Gina Belafonte and really saw us pair um our efforts with um um the Ford Foundation and the New York Correctional Association.

And I lift that up because that was that became a formula for how we can have transformational theater experiences for both our community and for uh the artists that we would interact with. Um and so we world premiered lyrics for lockdown. It was our first New York Times major review, and working with the Belafantes, um, Gina and uh Mr. B was just transformational, and we understood very quickly like this is our jam. New work, uh developing work and producing. And then some of the highlights from them have been we produced James Imes first New York world premiere in Killmove Paradise, pairing him with Sahima Lee the first time that those two would work together, obviously not the last, um, championing organizations like the New Blackfest, introducing new work of Dominique Morisseau.

We uh co-produced um Detroit 67, directed by Kwame Kwe Arma as a co-production with the public theater and classical theater of Harlem. So they've been these moments all along the way while we were still on 125th and Fifth Avenue that really um mark some of the highlights of our time um partnering with each other, Jonathan and I. But what I will also say is it also cemented our um work to bridge community with theater through our dramaturgical lobby exhibits that um squarely are rooted in social impact themes in order to really make our home away from home a welcoming space for folks that might be familiar with the topic but not the art of theater. And so those are some of the things that I would laud that um have brought us to uh this moment together.

[14:33] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And so you are in the process of building a new home, expanding on the home you have.

[14:39] Jonathan McCrory: And you it's it's uh there are going to be residences, there are gonna be, it's a there's a there's a lot going on in this home. A lot going on.

[14:46] Gordon Cox: Yeah, tell uh tell us a little bit about uh because that is not, I don't know of any other theater that also is a you know landlord for folks uh you know in affordable housing. So like tell us a little bit about kind of what the idea behind that is and how you anticipate it uh kind of working for you.

[15:01] Jonathan McCrory: Sure. Uh Jonathan, I can tag team this. Um in 1983, uh we had a horrible fire in the building we were renting space, and that was the moment that Dr. Tears said, um, I want to buy this building. And then she said, you know what? Not the building. I want to buy the block. And people thought she was crazy. And she said, I want to buy the block because it's the most famous address in the world. And, you know, it's 80s in Harlem, so you can only imagine we're still reeling with, you know, uh, the race riots that had happened, crack, cocaine, AIDS was, you know, tearing through the arts community. And so this ravaged piece of soulful land, she was like, is the most famous address in the world. But she said it because she knew you could go around the world and say Fifth Avenue, and everybody knows New York City, opulence, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Museum Mile.

And you could say 125th Street, and everybody knows it's the cultural capital of the Black World. And so she wanted to buy the intersection of the two and build what she called a temple, a temple of liberation for her people. And she absolutely went out and she did that. And the idea behind it in the 80s was to create an ecosystem where artists, local artists, artists of color could live, work and serve. Um, really double downing on this welcome to your home away from home. And so that seed has was planted then and has never left us.

[16:46] Jonathan McCrory: Um not to bore your listeners, but through a series of rezoning and community um engagement and really galvanizing our community to say, is this something you want, right? In order to go through our ULURP, we had to go through nine public hearings, all of which were unanimous for MBT to build a mixed-use building. And so we have the great fortune to raise a shit ton of money to build what we think is community revitalization that centers community. So we're building a mixed-use building of um uh housing that's affordable. We're piloting, we're so excited to pilot with our developer partners, um, affordable housing for artists in New York City, which currently is um there isn't the policy to do that legally through the housing system, and we understand how important affordable housing is.

So we'll pilot in addition to our affordable housing, housing for artists that is radically affordable. We will reimagine the National Black Theater to be able to be not just a space for theatrical ambition, but a space for community reflection and community engagement with a technical space for immersive storytelling using XR, a studio theater exhibition space. But the thing that feels really incredible because we've always seen National Black Theater as a training space for young designers, artists of color. We are going to build a set shop in the cellar as well. So it'll be an ecosystem to bring Dr. Tear's vision of living, working, and serving under one building. And so we're excited to bring that to Harlem.

Also to be able to continue to be a template, right? For how you engage community, not develop neighborhoods, but engage community because we believe that our community deserves first-class downtown resources without having to get on the A train and go down to see that caliber of artistic rigor and ambition. So we're excited to do it. We're excited to do on the corridor of 125th Street and join our friends at Studio Museum and the Apollo Theater, all one block away from us, and bring the energy of MBT Beyond Walls home in 2026.

[19:28] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Shade and Jonathan right after the break.

[19:40] Gordon Cox: And now here's more of the leaders of National Black Theater, Shade Lifcott and Jonathan McCrory. I wonder if this is and this will be a question for both of you. I wonder if you could talk about Shade, you talked about um the founding of the theater and sort of in response to the civil rights movement and uh all of that and the importance of the theater and what it does then. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what is important and meaningful now about what NBT does and how it does it in terms of how it is responding to this moment compared to you know the late 60s.

[20:15] Shade Lifcott: I mean, I would uplift and say that like what's happening now, it's a it's a uh what MBT is doing now is that it's responding to our society in the mid like I there's a thing that we've been looking at is like what does care, what does what does after care look like in the midst of so much grief, right? Grief in the time of transformation. We are all transforming, our society's transforming, our lives are transforming. Yet there is a latent sense of grief that is actually running through so many of our social circles, so many of what we lost and what we also uh were not able to truly grieve in in our normal quote unquote normal way since the pandemic has hit us. And so, what MBT begins to bring to this to the forefront is a salve, right?

And our curation and in our cultivation is a salve of creative ideation that looks at this theory of change. What does it look like to allow for black liberation plus art plus placemaking to create the conditions for humans to be transformed? We're very clear that we are centering on the ethos and the and the um and and the pedagogy of what does it actually look like to allow for black people to be liberated so black liberation through the vehicle of art but then saying because and especially what's so powerful about this moment is that we're able to transform this notion of national black theater from just being on 125th Street and Fifth Avenue but this idea of it being an idea that ideas are what actually transcend time transcend location and actually transform the very sense of like legacy and the and what we can pass on.

[21:53] Shade Lifcott: And so what does it mean for us to be able to be stewards of of tooling those sites in which we are able to engage with for them to also have tools of liberation to build their as Dr. Barbara Antier would say a national black theater on every city block, right? And I and I and I really believe in that in the simple fact of everybody deserves to be liberated and everybody deserves to have their own sense of transformation. So what does National Black theater get to do now that it is continu that is part of its continual journey is that it gets to have a conversation with how are we still transforming evolving as humanity through the understanding that we still have not given space for black and brown bodies to truly be liberated and that the and that the biggest question has not been answered.

Until a black woman is free and I would say now a black trans woman is free. The eight old adage, we as society are not free. And we see it day in and day out in how we how how we distribute distribute power and how we kind of um use utilize power to subjugate certain communities to to have to find fight and have to live in unhumane conditions in what is known as the wealthiest country in the world, right?

[23:14] Shade Lifcott: So then what does that mean? How do we how do we scratch at that? I think MBT is looking at ways in which how we shine light on that on that on that imbalance, and also how do we create and how do we create conditions for us to have healthy conversations that don't call you out who may not identify as part of the black diasporic experience? How do we not call you out but call you into relationship to understanding that we are all hu we're all having a human experience through particular um situations that are that are that are a little bit beyond our control, but yet we can we can guide ourselves to a destiny together. So much of the world has changed um in the midst of these two pandemics that or two plus two plus pandemics that have gone on, you know.

We are all, especially theater, you know, still reeling from the impact of COVID-19. Um and then, of course, we were all in isolation and quarantine when we watched the murder of George Floyd, which created a groundswell of reckoning in some corners of the country and the planet that we're not actively having these conversations.

[24:29] Jonathan McCrory: And to Jonathan's point, you know, I always say when folks are like, oh, we never knew about MBT, are you brand new? And the we always say, no, we're brand true. We've been doing this work for over a half a century. And the work of our theory of change really is about focusing on the problem, but focusing on the solution.

[24:56] Shade Lifcott: So call-out culture is nothing we've ever wanted to participate in. Call-out culture really still centers the problem. And we believe if you invest and you center something, that's where all the energy will go. So our calling in is saying we've been doing the work of freedom, freedom work, right? And also to understand this really magical time or catalytic time, I should say, not magical, but catalytic time of the pandemic, we get to see in real time how we're all connected, right? So if we're all connected, we understand community care differently through the pandemic. If we're all connected, then the freedom work we're doing at MBT is not just for folks that walk into MBT, it's for all of us. So we want to call people in to having a relationship with their own freedom, which is something we've been doing since the uh the time we opened our doors in 1968, and we just happen to do it through the lens of the black artist, an investment in the black artist.

[26:04] Gordon Cox: Let's talk more about Fat Ham, which uh you co-produced with the public last year, and uh in just a few weeks is starting uh rehearsals for its Broadway transfer. Um, I wonder if you could just, well, first of all, why how and why does Fat Ham kind of exemplify the kind of theater that uh NBT does?

[26:26] Jonathan McCrory: I mean, I would just uplift and say uh Fat Ham exemplifies the kind of theater MBT does. You kind of have to go back to Kilmu Paradise. Um I say that is because the kind of Killmove Paradise for uh listeners, I'm actually you made it, you may have mentioned this already, Shade, but that was the uh the playwright James Iams and the director Sahima Lee that uh NBT co-produced um a few years ago, five years ago ish.

[26:54] Shade Lifcott: Yeah, we yeah, we produced the world premiere of it in in New York City.

[26:59] Jonathan McCrory: And what I think is really important about saying that, as far as talking about how does why does Fat Ham exemplify uh the kind of work that MBT wants to produce is because we are about durational relationships with artists. Um we are about creating catalytic um opportunities that really allow for artists to see themselves in the future and actually allow for them to create relationships that hopefully allow that hopefully build on the kind of uh vivacious, kind of rigorous, kind of um explorative, explore ex yeah, explorative work that they would like to do past their moment of working with us.

[27:34] Jonathan McCrory: So when we when we come to something like Fat Ham, um the the the chickens come home to roost in a good way, right? Um uh uh Sahim Sahim who get who is who is granted this opportunity to finally um do become the after becoming the artistic associate at uh and the director in residence at the public theater, gets this opportunity to do a show in-house. And in wanting to do something in-house, he wanted to bring the family back together. He wanted to say, hey, I'm I'm about to make this leap. I'm about to do this thing. In order for me to do this thing, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go back to when I I'm gonna go back to the roots. Um when when someone when someone poured so much fertilizer, so much love into my life, um, and and paired me with a playwright that is like a brother to me that I love like family, James Aynes. Um and I want to kind of bring all elements of the family back together so we can soar again and have another collision moment.

[28:30] Jonathan McCrory: Um so this this moment, and we could talk about the art, but the relationship, I just want to talk about the relationship that that have actually been interwoven inside this process is really important to name. Um I think from an artistic standpoint, why Fat Ham exemplifies the kind of work that it um that that MBT seeks to do, likes to do, um, and is crafted to do uh is because Fat Ham uh it it did, it was an anecdote in a time in a moment when we all needed it. Um we all needed a moment to be in joy, we all needed a moment to be in family, we all need a moment to see each other smile and laugh again. And for 90 minutes, we got to sit with each other in an intimate setting when in a time when we were kind of told to be in that kind of tight space could be dangerous.

[29:19] Shade Lifcott: And we laughed our hearts out. We didn't, we it wasn't a play about grief or black grief or black trauma, even those moments of those did show up. It was a mo it was a play that said, I'm gonna introduce laughter back into your normal vocabulary and welcome you into a love affair with a cultural moment, which is looking at this black family who does barbecue and looking at the cookout and looking at what it means to have those family dynamics show up. So it was like rigorously rooted inside of black culture while also rigorously examining a Western cultural icon, which is Hamlet, while also rigorously inviting a family back together. And the collision of all of that is what we like to say is diamond making processes.

Like we want to be in the process of creating diamond making apparatuses and that is done through healthy friction. That is how diamonds are done and through a durational process. And I will just quickly say that Fat Ham exemplifies National Black Theater's mission, vision, and kind of community agreements fundamentally because it's so subversive, right? When Dr. Tear formed the National Black Theater, this was a great experiment. It was a subversive experiment that used theater in this pursuit of liberation as we've spoken about. And the thing about Fat Ham was it's a subversive Hamlet, right? It is a way to talk about hard things through the mechanism of what brings everyone's guard down, which is joy and laughter.

And one of the things that you know Jonathan is our artistic leader at National Black Theater, he has always said as a mandate in his leadership is I am less interested in the Pulitzer Award winning play. I'm interested in supporting and developing the artist to come into relationship with the Pulitzer Award winning artist. So from that standpoint as well, Fat Ham exemplifies what Jonathan as executive artistic director set out to do. He does it in our residency programs, but really with this new work of James as Killmove Paradise, he saw that thing in both James and Sahim, where we wanted to pour radical care into these artists because you know we wanted them to be in a relationship with their liberation and of like that Pulitzer Award-winning artist.

And so you can only imagine winning the Pulitzer three days before preview start was a wild, wild ride, but also cementing what we stand for at National Black Theater and what we invest in as National Black Theater.

[32:07] Shade Lifcott: And I think the last thing that I would just say is that that subversive nature of always looking to counter respond to what the media is showing. So I think back to you know the summer that Mike Brown was killed, and there were so many police killings, and we were watching this kind of psychic traumatic pornography on repeat. MBT just dedicated that season to in pursuit of black joy. And similarly, in this time of tumult, as we, you know, as we mourn the deaths of Tyree Nichols and countless black bodies, we think a part of that antidote is to tell the truth through the mechanism of joy. Because what our community deserves is a break. What our community deserves is to be able to tell our story and seated in the root chakra of laughter, not that is born of our experience.

Like it is laugh out loud, gut, like stomach holding gut, funny, but for black audience, all too often, those kinds of comedies on Broadway, we find ourselves in audiences where we feel like people are laughing at us, not with us. And so this is another call, call you in moment where audiences of all shapes, colors, sizes, gender, sexuality, can find themselves in the characters that James has written and Sahim is masterfully directing, and we can let our guard down and learn more about each other through laughter. And so we're excited about that. Also, it's activism because James wrote Fat Ham in an activist's tongue and pin because as he went to school and he studied Shakespeare, all of his professors said that the Shakespearean, you know, iambic pentameter is clumsy and doesn't belong on the black tongue. So he was like, I'll show you and this Fat Ham, a southern queer take on Hamlet. Fat Ham is born.

[34:29] Shade Lifcott: Yeah. And in a dude, we should say, in addition to Fat Ham, there's also programming and residencies and other things all going on at National Black Theater. So yeah, we have a full season. Our full season is MBT Beyond Walls, love, a ritual of repair. Currently, right now, we are in tech. We are in tech for Amani, which will be our first main stage production. It's in co-production with Rattlestick. It is a profound, beautiful quest of looking at a young black girl's journey, and we go through her journey to find her own liberation. Her parents pinned that her liberation would be for her to go to the moon. So we're on a journey of figuring out what does it mean for a black body to see their liberation beyond the stars?

What happens when we go beyond the stars? How do we see ourselves beyond the stars? And then from there, we go to a beautiful show that's happening with at the signature Percy and Square with the new group. We have Bernardo's daughter. And then we round out the season actually with a couple of events, but a workshop production with at the flea called Black Mother Lost Daughter. We also have a partnership with the Park Avenue Army that we will be doing on Dr. Tier's birthday on June 18th, called Hidden Conversations.

[35:41] Shade Lifcott: I wonder if we could close by I'd like to ask you, you know, it's right there in the title, National Black Theater. In what ways is the work that you do national and how do you imagine it continuing to grow nationally as you grow into your new space and your new home? So I mean, when I think of the word National Black Theater, and I think about our work, I'm reminded of this need of as a young black artist, of how we are on a day-to-day basis inspiring the next generation to have a pillar to lean on, to grow to, to aspire. And I think the way that we are national as National Black Theater is how we have worked in places like St. Louis, the St. Louis Theater, how we worked at McCarter, how we worked at DC, how we worked in Boston, how our seedlings of our work have actually gone by supporting Infoniso, how her work has transformed and been around her pormanto has happened all over the country.

We helped to develop that. We helped Orin Squire, who then became the writer for This Is Us, and then we think about the trajectory of Orin Squire. I think the national and national black theater is that we are the ignition and the light and we're the ignition and launch pad for black artists to begin to mature and maturate the very essence of who they are and create the platform for them to stand as pillars in our society. The national and the national black theater is that we draw and attract the kind of attention that is necessary so that black artists can righteously have that kind of a launch pad as well. And that we are dealing and that we hand we work, we work in addressing national issues that are impact our society both locally and nationally.

[37:45] Shade Lifcott: So that's what I think about when I think about the word national black theater, and I think about also this moment of MBT Beyond Walls, and how it's really helping us to ignite that word national because we can take our place-based idea and enter and introduce it to different locations so freely, so effortlessly, and then also culminate those all those ideas to then be fed back into the actual institution when we come back to in 2026.

[38:17] Jonathan McCrory: Yeah. I will try to briefly say national looks like a lot of different things at National Black Theater. I'll piggyback and pick up from Fat Ham, you know, for National Black Theater to be transferring something to Broadway, which is not only a national stage, it is the global stage. We are the third black theater in the history of the Great White Way to have anything transferred abroadway. That is, you know, that is mind blowing that we're getting diverse stories on the commercial theater stage on Broadway, but none of them have come from our community, have been developed in our spaces. And we're the first Black theater since 1978 to do so. So I think that has national impact, creating a template for other culturally specific theaters to see what might be possible with the kind of artistic rigor and cultural capital that we pour into our partnerships and our development of artists that feels incredibly impactful on a national stage.

I think also this idea of national black theater transcends New York City and really has a converse, a global conversation of black artists understanding that there is a place that can meet them wherever they are, whether it is after the Pulitzer, they've won the Pulitzer or as they're exiting, you know, college, that this is a home for their wildest imagination. And I think the idea of national black theater transcends space and time because I think of young dancers, young black dancers, just to understand that Alvin Ailey exists gives them possibility. And so the idea that national black theater that's breaking all of these historic barriers, centering our liberation, is a idea that transcends into a national and global kind of impact.

[40:37] Jonathan McCrory: And then lastly, you know, calibrating a space. Yes, Jonathan has mentioned we have we are develop actively developing and producing work all over the country. So we're literally national, but also this idea of creating safe space where black artists can feel seen, safe, and I would go so far to say sacred, is we plant seeds that grow not only in the artist but get to bloom all over the country because we understand that the artists we support go everywhere, you know, and so from that standpoint, I would say that we are a national ignition space for black storytelling and black culture globally, and that feels really exciting to be able to lean into that.

[41:26] Shade Lifcott: And then I guess lastly, Spirit is telling me I should share a secret with your audience, and that secret is when Dr. Tear founded the theater and named it the National Black Theater. One, she wanted to have the gravitas of a home away from home nationally, as we've talked at nauseam about, but it's also about cultural pride, right? This idea that we are nationalists, that we we stick a flag in the firmament of what it is to be proud to be black. So, what is a black nationalist, right? They are someone that comes from the national black theater, so that we encourage our writers, we encourage our artists to unleash their soul on paper. That is their affirming of their deep pride in their cultural and their cultural essence. And so national also kind of is a nod to our own pride in what we've been able to bring and cultivate in this country and of the diaspora.

[42:36] Gordon Cox: Um, well, we can't wait to see everything NBT has coming up. Can't wait to see Fat Ham again. Um thank you both. Thank you both for joining me. It was great to talk to you.

[42:47] Shade Lifcott: Gordon, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

[42:56] Gordon Cox: That was Shade Lifcott and Jonathan McCrory of National Black Theater, whose co-production of Fat Ham starts performances on Broadway March 21st. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd really appreciate it if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft. Find past episodes and subscribe at all the pod purveyors, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. Until next episode, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. Thanks for listening and see you at the theater.