The National Black Theatre (NBT) wants to take you home. For its 2024/25 season, NBT is presenting five productions under the theme of “The Pilgrimage: A Journey Back Home.” On May 1, the third installment within the series, Bowl EP, will make its world premiere. We caught up with NBT’s executive artistic director and Tony Award winner, Jonathan McCrory to discuss how The Negro Motorist Green Book and today’s political climate inspired this season’s theme and the powerful message he hopes will resonate with audiences.
What inspired this season’s theme of pilgrimage?
This year’s theme was inspired by a collective acknowledgment and understanding of where we are as a society. Taking in the social-political ecosystem we were on the verge of facing in May 2024, and with the backdrop of the past presidential election, NBT wanted to create a space for our community to navigate. What NBT discovered as a tool we would position as our cornerstone; The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide created by Victor H. Green from 1936 to 1967 helped Black people travel through a Jim Crow and sundown state America with care and compassion. With this document as part of our foundation, we wanted to center on finding a safe, spiritual passage through these turbulent times because we have done it before. With that lens, we were able to look at the works we were planning to curate and produce and pinpoint how all five different productions were taking audiences on a sacred pilgrimage. Each work provides us with tools and resources to find our way through this present time and embolden our sense of liberation.
The concept of home is complicated for Black Americans, in particular, due to the history of enslavement. How does this season address that complexity?
This season is about addressing the complications of being Black in America and defining a “safe” passage home. It provides a diverse array of opinions, ideas, and thoughts that we hope help tackle and illuminate the various narratives and experiences that live inside our community to help our audiences activate their own definition and relationship with the term home. This feels correct because “home” is a word that embodies a vast amount of meaning and significance and something that can feel just out of our grasp as a “safe” space for many in our community.
T Mag recently did a story about the numerous plays and musicals this season that touch on political topics and questioned what theater wants from its audiences who watch the productions. What do you hope to get from audiences who see this new season?
I hope audience members get to engage with the vast narratives, diverse representation, and beautiful artistry within the Black expression, experience, and culture. I want audience members to walk away with tools to better appreciate and humanize the lives that are different from their own. I hope that they start to care more about Mother Earth. This season is meant to be a meditation that draws us together to move the dial toward making it home. So here is to us seeing you on the journey and to us all making it home.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
