By Harlem Stage

Photos: John Bartleson\Hollis King

New York, NY (September 12, 2024) — Harlem Stage announced its 2024-2025 Season of new works, reimagined works, a new vision, and beloved festivals and series in the inaugural season for new CEO & Artistic Director, Dr. Indira Etwaroo. “When We Are Heard” is a multi-genre, multi-venue, and multi-platform season, filled with both free and ticketed events, that unleashes the transformative power of the burgeoning artists and communities of the Global Majority, which make up almost 85% of the global population.

The 2024-2025 Harlem Stage season lights the torch for its newly expanded mission “to ignite the artistic freedom of performing artists of the Global Majority to create new works, new ideas, and a new world in which ALL people can flourish. Due to persistent inequitable systems and structures, institutions focused on artists and audiences of the Global Majority remain the underinvested communities of the 21st century.

“It is not lost on me that my inaugural season at Harlem Stage is happening at a time when the fundamental rights of so many are being threatened across the world” stated Dr. Etwaroo. “Harlem – with its rich legacy – has been and will always be our home, yet, the entire world – with its cultural complexities, new technologies, and unfinished work of equity – is our stage. Harlem Stage joins hands with leaders and artists from across the globe to ensure ALL artists and arts institutions have access to equitable opportunities and resources to inspire true artistic freedom”

Harlem Stage’s season begins with the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra at Bryant Park (Sept 12) to kick off the annually sold-out Uptown Nights Festival (Oct 9 – 12), a mecca for bold works and ideas, including the World Premiere of “Hear Us” a work with haunting melodies and driving rhythms, inspired by the work of Sonia Sanchez and created by a performing artist collective with award-winning musical directors and musicians Arden Altino and Divinity Roxx with Deaf Artist, Justina Miles and more. The festival includes the heartfelt story of one of the first and few women of color to reach the C-suite in Silicon Valley, Denise Young whose acclaimed work “When We Are Seen,” inspired this season’s theme. Uptown Nights Festival also presents full dynamic evenings of genre-busting music and multisensory experiences with Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East, James Brandon Lewis, and Liza Jessie Peterson and the premier of the photographic exhibit Tadj (“Crown” in Swahili) by Hollis King – where regality meets eclecticism to illuminate Black dignity and humanity.

Harlem Stage presents the centerpiece of its 2024-2025 Season, Freedom Riders: A Journey with No End in Sight. To mark the 10th Anniversary of the evolving theatrical adaptation of 12 Angry Men…and Women, originally published by The New Press as a non-fiction work, Harlem Stage presents theatrical readings of contemporary, first-person accounts of racial profiling in America, as experienced by Black men and women from all walks of life, including the story of Breonna Taylor and, now, harrowing, never-before-heard accounts of racially-motivated violence. On May 21, 2025, award-winning actors and musicians will take Harlem Stage’s reimagined 12 Angry Men and…Women on the road to honor the route of the Great Migration when millions of Black Americans fled domestic terror in their own country and to honor the courage of the interstate Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement at five poignant sites from the South to the North of the East Coast in the US, reminding community members of the unfinished multi-generational journeys toward equity.

Sites are in Montgomery, AL (May 21); Atlanta, GA (May 22); Durham, NC (May 23); Washington DC (May 24) with the final reading and a live video stream from Harlem, New York at Harlem Stage on May 25, 2025, the 5th anniversary of George Floyd’s haunting murder that sparked the Global Black Lives Matter Movement of 2020. At each site, Harlem Stage will present an evening-length reading of the work with a live musical score; community conversations hosted by WQXR radio host Terrance McKnight; and writing workshops with hundreds of HBCU students to add their truth to the 12 Angry Men…and Women’s immutable story of inequity that has no foreseeable end in sight. Freedom Riders marks an expanded vision for Harlem Stage to deepen connections with theater artists and filmmakers across the world to tell stories that often go unheard.

“I have been a part of 12 Angry Men…and Women since its inception ten years ago. This work is a cacophony of voices of mainly Black men, but also women, pieced together to lay bare the systematic racism and racial profiling of Black citizens that continue to plague our cities and towns across the world” stated Wendell Pierce, award-winning theater, film and TV actor and producer. “The work does what art does best, it creates a platform for the global discussion of our shared humanity. Presenting this work to commemorate the horrific murder of George Floyd on the fifth anniversary of that tragic moment in history, ensures that he and so many others did not die in vain.”

The critically acclaimed E-Moves Festival: A Movement will close out the season at Harlem Stage (June 2025) with leading choreographers, including Bebe Miller, Michela Marino Lerman, and Eiko Otake, featuring Dancing in History’s Long Shadow: Talks and Screenings with Dancers and Choreographers of Color, curated by Ronald K. Alexander and Dr. JuYeon Ryu. This year’s festival will add a holistic wellness component for all ages with movement and yoga classes, meditation, healthy food and beverage offerings, and wellness workshops and screenings for the community.

This season, Harlem Stage commissioned five vital multi-genre performing artists — Marie Lloyd Paspe, Barkha Patel, Christopher Rivas, Marie Thomas, and Immanuel Wilkins — to develop new works, as part of its WaterWorks commissioning program that invests in bold ideas of artists of the Global Majority. Harlem Stage will draw back the curtain on the creative process and present the works-in-progress of all five artists in dialogue with the audience (Dec 7).

Harlem Stage sits at the intersection of diverse communities, opening its doors to New Yorkers of all ages to host a Community Open House with dancing and drumming, yoga and meditation, games, face-painting and more (Sept 14); a Land Acknowledgement Ceremony, honoring the diversity of Indigenous communities in Manhattan (Oct 13), a Community Halloween Party (Oct 31), an Election Night Watch Party (Nov 5), and partnerships throughout the season with renowned institutions, including Classical Theatre of Harlem, Urban Bush Women, The New Press, and Carnegie Hall.

“Navigating the world as both a woman and a Black person is an ever-present struggle for the fundamental right to be seen,” shared Denise Young. “The ability to see, and to hear, diverse perspectives enriches us all. Harlem Stage has placed the voice of artists at the center of its mission and we can hear their resounding call. As an artist myself, I’m honored that my work has inspired the title for this powerful and necessary season of programming at Harlem Stage.”

WHEN WE ARE HEARD

2024 – 2025 Season Information HERE

THE HARLEM STAGE TEAM

Harlem Stage operates year-round with a 20-member world-class staff, led by CEO & Artistic Director, Dr. Etwaroo and a leadership team of Managing Director, Eric Oberstein; Senior Director of Communications, Deirdre May; Director of Development, Shante Skyers; and Directors of Production and Operations, Amanda K. Ringger and Rodney Bissessar; as well as a 15-member Board of Directors composed of leaders, artists, and changemakers in their respective fields, led by Board President Courtney Lee-Mitchel and the Board of Directors: Jamie Cannon, Michael Young,

Mark Thomas, Angela Glover Blackwell, Jenna Bond, Jamila Ponton-Bragg, JoAnn K. Chase,

Claire Danes, Hugh Dancy, Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Jenette Kahn, Channing Martin, Rebecca Roberston, LaChanze, Tamara Tunie, and Blair Washington.

The 2024-2025 Season is made possible by foundation and corporate partners, and individual community members across the world committed to Harlem Stage’s quest for artistic freedom.

Tickets to Harlem Stage Events, Memberships, and Complete Partnership List at HarlemStage.org

ABOUT HARLEM STAGE

Ever-new. Ever-evolving. Ever-daring. Ever-fearless.

Harlem Stage, a 41-year-old radical socio-cultural artistic laboratory, inspires world class, innovative works by artists of the Global Majority to ignite artistic freedom. The New York Times has hailed Harlem Stage as “an invaluable incubator of talent” and Vijay Iyer has shared, “It is shockingly rare that artists of color are invited to become full participants in the national conversation, to respond to today’s world, and to offer a glimpse of tomorrow. I’ve looked all over for arts organizations that might prioritize new and cutting edge work by artists of color, and Harlem Stage stands out as one of the only presenters in the US that makes this their goal.” Iyer is one of many visionary artists who joined Harlem Stage in the earlier stages of their careers to create within this incubator of the future and he, along with four others within the Harlem Stage family, have joined the ranks of MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship awardees: Kyle Abraham, Bill T. Jones, Jason Moran, and Cecil Taylor.

Harlem Stage, neighbor to Columbia University and The City College of New York, welcomes audiences from all walks of life to its home, the historic site in West Harlem that was once a part of the Croton Aqueduct system—a great engineering feat of the 19th century—which supplied much needed fresh drinking water to New York City, beginning in 1890, twenty-seven years following the Emancipation Proclamation. The Romanesque Revival style accounts for much of the building’s grandeur and monumental beauty.

Harlem is Our Home. The World is Our Stage.