For over a decade, Harlem-based artist Jonathan McCrory has served as Executive Artistic Director of the groundbreaking National Black Theatre (NBT), though he prefers the term “creative doula”. The two-time Obie-winner describes his role as enabling “unseen ideas to be birthed between the parents, which are the playwright and the director, or sometimes the playwright and the page”, McCrory shares with The Queer Review. The NYU TISCH School of the Arts alum is a Tony and Emmy-nominated producer and founding member of the collaborative producing organizations Harlem9, Black Theatre Commons, The Jubilee, Next Generation National Network, and The Movement Theatre Company. He was an honoree in Crain’s New York Business‘ inaugural Notable LGBTQ Leaders and Executives list.
Founded in 1968 by Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, NBT is the longest-running Black theatre in New York City, and one of the oldest theatres founded and consistently operated by a woman of colour in the United States. Under the current leadership of Teer’s daughter, CEO Sade Lythcott, NBT’s mission continues to be to produce “transformative theatre that enhances African American cultural identity by telling authentic, autonomous, multifaceted stories of the Black experience”. In a nod to Teer’s legacy as a champion of the Black Arts Movement, Beyoncé used part of a speech she gave on “Alien Superstar”, featured on her 2022 Renaissance album.
Last year, NBT made its Broadway debut with the transfer of its co-production of James Ijames’ Pulitzer-winning Fat Ham and currently has its second production on Broadway, a revival of Ossie Davis’ Purlie Victorious starring Leslie Odom, Jr., which runs until February 4th. Another highlight of NBT’s present season (the theatre’s 56th, themed Defiance of Our Bloom), will see The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout, conceived and directed by McCrory, re-mounted at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center Opera House on June 1st, 2024, following its sold out world premiere at The Apollo in 2022.
In a conversation which moves from Baldwin to Beyoncé, Jonathan McCrory speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s founder and editor James Kleinmann about first being drawn into musical theatre as a performer, navigating the theatre world as a young Black queer creative, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s vision when she founded NBT, the construction of the theatre’s new home in Harlem, NBT’s current season, and his appreciation for the queer community’s concept of chosen family.
Take me back to when your passion for theatre was sparked. What were the first flickers of that?
“The first flickers for doing theatre actually came all the way back in middle school. I grew up Catholic and I was an altar boy and in the choir. People knew that I could hold a note, so they invited me to be in musicals like Guys and Dolls and Hello, Dolly! At that time it was more about the social aspect of it for me, it allowed me to be around more people and to find my way into being accepted into a social circle. When I applied to high schools in the Washington DC DMV area, none of them would accept me. I got rejected from all 13 that I applied to. They didn’t think that I’d be able to live up to the academic rigour because I have ADD and dyslexia and I don’t test very well.”
“I found myself consistently being rubbed up against this notion of that I wasn’t good enough, that my brain wasn’t good enough, and that I wasn’t designed good enough. Ultimately though, someone said, ‘You do these musicals, you should apply for The Duke Ellington School of the Arts’, which is the historically Black arts high school in Washington, DC that Peggy Cooper Cafritz and Mike Malone founded in 1974. So I applied to the voice department and got accepted. Then they started a musical theatre strand which I got involved in. I was like, ‘Why not?!’ I haven’t stopped being curious about theatre and what theatre can do ever since. Theatre has been a salve in my life, theatre has created change and healing in my life. I’m grateful that when the roadblocks came along, theatre was always there to be the lever to open up the doors.”
“Theatre wasn’t necessarily part of my ethos when I was younger. I was more of a sports kid and an engineer. I like to build things. Give me a Lego set or an architectural design program and I’m in it. I drafted houses and would even pick the tiles. Interior design was my thing. The job that I currently have at NBT is the best of both worlds, where I get to have the conversation around architecting built space for the generative creative community, while also channeling ritual and spirituality as a vehicle for human transformation. The mixture of all that is a dream position and it draws on all of my strengths.”
Did you see any theatre when you were younger that had an impact on you?
“The only production that I can remember burning something in my being was seeing Brian Stokes Mitchell in Man of La Mancha in Washington DC. I was in my first year at Duke Ellington when I witnessed him take over that role, and do it so brazenly, fearlessly, and so effervescently with his voice and his passion. That was a really profound transportation for me and it’s one of the earliest professional performances that I can remember seeing. I can even remember the set and the sunflowers that showed up. I have a visceral memory of it.”
“My first trip to New York in my second or third year at Duke Ellington to see The Lion King also left a big impression. After that it would be watching Wicked on Broadway when I was at NYU and seeing that moment of Elphaba flying. That showed me where true magic can show up inside theatre. I got transported as she flew on that last song before act one closes, “Defying Gravity”, and it really took my breath away. I can recall these moments of my breath being taken away that allowed me to be inspired by this craft and this form and what people can do with built space if they have the time and the ingenuity to make something happen.”
I love that you mentioned that magical moment of theatre in Wicked. It doesn’t always have to be as grand as that, but theatre has the potential for those moments that capture our imaginations and thrill us and feed our spirits.
“When you are in your body and when someone is kinetically traversing and expressing themselves, they become like the sun and it feels like we are all orbiting their existence. That is magic and that’s what those moments are, where we are witnessing a God force. It could be our own internal God force, it could be someone else’s God force, but we are bowing down in that one moment to source showing up and shifting how we see the world. That’s what those moments were for me. At that moment in time, those artists, those humans, channeled an energy that reminded me of the presence of a higher power and gave me the realization that I can somewhat have access to that myself. There’s a lot of humility there and there’s also a deep exultation and promise inside of it.”
“I know we’re supposed to be talking about theatre, but I’m going to talk about Beyoncé. Beyoncé should always be brought into the conversation; the beehive is always here! I went to see Beyoncé in concert, and her ability to construct that sacred space that we are all attracted to and all love is a God force. We raise it up as a deity. What I love about the Beyoncé documentary is that she allows us to see that the God force that we love is just her rigour and her hunger for loving us that deeply, loving herself that deeply, and loving her culture that deeply. It reminds me that we all can do that, if we so choose. It is not an easy feat, but it is something that we all have access to, we all have the ability to cultivate a renaissance for our own community, for our own people, if we so choose.”
How would you describe your experience of navigating the theatre world as a young Black queer creative?
“My journey before National Black Theatre has been about—and still is about—building a home that I never had as a Black creative, as an artist. It’s been about building a space that looks like me, feels like me, tastes like me, and is interested in the things that I’m interested in. When I left NYU, there wasn’t a space like that, so I founded The Movement Theatre Company with a group of friends and then a producing entity with another group of friends called Harlem9. I’ve always been curious about the architecture of home and what home looks like. A lot of that is because I didn’t feel like I had access to that vibration of home.”
“Alvin Ailey awakened something in Black dancers in my community, and around the world, to aspire to something different because there was a home—founded by a fiercely dedicated Black man, run and empowered by a Black woman—that searched to figure out how to create a national entity to hold the bigness of who we are. If we think about that, even if my friends never danced at Ailey, the idea that Ailey existed created something for them to bounce ideas off. They could be like, ‘I don’t want to do that’, or ‘I do want to do that’, or ‘How do I find my own space inside of that?”
“For theatre, a lot of those spaces were myths, legends, and historical facts. Those spaces are not always welcoming to queer folks of the entire spectrum—same gender loving folks, trans, nonbinary folks—they are sometimes not willing to accept that vibration of humanity, that is vital, core, and essential to saying, ‘If we love us, that is us’. Not to say that National Black Theatre is perfect at it, but we seek to be so deeply and humanistically.”
“My inquiry has also been about asking, ‘How do I love myself enough to radically stand in the truth of who I am?’ Through that radical truth of standing in who I am, I can then create enough of a visceral, energetic magnet that I start to attract abundance to those ideas. So that it can be sustainable, so that it can be caring, so that it can led with compassion. So that we—meaning me and my kinfolk—can rise the tide collectively. It means it has to be cross-generational, it means it has to cross the binary, it has to be a transactional, transmuted, transmorphic thing that allows for us to peer into the future.”
“I have a portrait of James Baldwin behind me. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is because if you were to read all of his essays, you’d see that Baldwin is etching a pathway for those in the future to live more brilliantly in their own bodies. He’s not necessarily writing for himself. He’s not necessarily writing for the present moment. He’s writing to create hope for the future. I want to craft a hope note that says that I can be accepted for who I am and live wholly in my body. That wholeness may not be seen in this moment, but I am so dedicated to the gloriousness of my own humanity and the humanity of others, that I will peer into the truth and create a vortex that says the future can happen right now.”
“These folks, these legends, these humans, these flawed but angelic people—like James Baldwin, like Bayard Rustin—gave of themselves so fiercely so that there could be a Jonathan McCrory, who could express himself the way that he does, in his unique queer apparatus. So that I could live inside of the vernacular of my own being. I’m not saying that I’m perfect at it, but I am a byproduct of their wishes. I think my work is to create the byproduct of my own wishes and sow the seeds for that, so that future generations are able to imagine differently because there was an existence called James Baldwin, an existence called Bayard Rustin, and hopefully, because there was an existence called Jonathan McCrory. If I can do my little bit to be a part of that, then that’s a life worth living and that’s a life worth giving all that I can to.”
The founding of National Black Theatre was very much about that too wasn’t it, that sense of “we need this right now” as part of a vision for the future?
“You’re 100% right. Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, the founder of National Black Theatre, was radically trying to create a space for humans under systemic devices that were trying to lock them out of their own bodies. In 1968 she founded the organization and 30 years later she would go on to buy a city block to question, ‘How does this land serve me? How does this location serve me?’ And the ‘me’ is the we, because her life was given in service. I appreciate you uplifting that in the forging of National Black Theatre, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer is also a person who sets off the winds so that I can sail. She’s at the apex of that because she bought a city block for an institution to have its home, for a community to have a space that was a permanent destination. A space that said, we came from royalty, we are kings and we are queens, and the story is written that we are the complete grace notes of humanity and when we are liberated, all humanity is liberated.”
“Dr. Teer saw the future with such clarity—like Baldwin, like Rustin—that she created a permanent North Star for us to pour into. Now I have the privilege to be one of the people to pour into that North Star, to be a vestige, to be a witness to her brilliance, and to be one of her inheritors. NBT is an inheritance that I get to steward so that I can make sure that a person like me growing up in DC, having the same kind of algorithm that I have, can say, ‘I want to find a Black theatre that looks like me, feels like me, tastes like me’ and hopefully they might see NBT. I would love it if they said, ‘I know of the National Black Theatre, but I want to create something different’, or if they said, ‘I want to join the National Black theatre to be a part of that movement’. Both of those things are important, both of those things are essential, and both of those things have been made possible because the institution is present. It has to be real. Theory is possibility unrealized and NBT is realized theory so that people can dream in a different way.”
In terms of NBT’s new physical space, what can you share about what is being built in Harlem?
“On the corner of 125th Street and 5th Avenue in Harlem you will see this beautiful building that is a living land acknowledgement to our people; to Black people, to humanity, to Black liberation. NBT will own and occupy about 27,000 square feet inside this building. There will be two new theatres, plus a rehearsal studio, and we will have beautiful art on display. There will also be a tower above that has apartments and NBT is in the process of looking at artists’ housing in the city, questioning how artists live, serve, and work in their community. With our developer, we are going to launch a pilot program that will seek to allow for artists to live inside this building and to have this idea of seeding their own permanence.”
“When we think about the renter economy, it’s a fragile economy that makes people vagrant, living by the whims of an economic system that is unsustainable. It does not allow for an ecology, a dexterity of humanity to show up. It only allows for a set group of people, who have a certain amount of jobs or a certain amount of access to inheritance or to wealth, to be able to call this place a home. NBT hopes to do our small part in rethinking how we create homes for artists, particularly Black artists, the community that helps to create the beauty and dynamism that we know as New York City. Without art in the city, it is not the same, it is robbed.”
“We will start doing some light programming in the new space in 2026, with full-on programming in 2027. That’s the projected plan and we are deeply excited. It’s a gorgeous building. Whenever I visit, there’s something new that reminds me to pinch myself with deep gratitude that this is hapening. It’s going to be a testament to the beauty, the rigour, the foresight, and the fortitude of what a Black woman did for her community. A national space that will live in its permanence for the service of future generations.”
What can you tell us about NBT’s current season?
“The theme of our 56th season is Defiance of Our Bloom, which looks at how we as humans bloom in the defiance of, in spite of. How are we creating the blossoms, the flowers, the fruits, that allow for us to live in the resiliency of our own brilliance? Nature teaches us how to be resilient and so this season we’re taking the time to honour nature’s lessons. For instance, when a volcano erupts, the lava will destroy all life around it, but one hundred years later, one thousand years later, that soil is actually the most fertile soil in the world. New Life can grow from the ash that that lava produced. What you have is a flourishing ecology of life. So if nature can teach us that, how can we be defiant in our own blooming? How can we be durational in our hope and our courage to live in the centre of our hearts and our beliefs?”
“The 2023-2024 season started with nicHi douglas’ (pray), which was a New York Times Critics’ Pick in the fall. We have Purlie Victorious happening right now until February 4th on Broadway, with Leslie Odom, Jr. and Kara Young. It’s a piece by Ossie Davis that hasn’t been seen in almost 62 years on Broadway. We’re doing the first revival of it and we welcome people to engage with Ossie Davis’ work as a legacy of this fearless and loving human and hear this grace note that he wrote for us as a community.”
“The season will move forward at the Chelsea Factory with workshop productions of two pieces that we’ve commissioned. The first is Oya Mae Dxtchxss-Davis’ Packages O’ The Things We Deliver, happening in March and then Bloodwork by Kristen Adele Calhoun will be staged in the latter part of June. The other main stage production that we are doing this season is The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout, happening in our nation’s capital. We’re transferring a show that we did at the Apollo all the way down into the Washington DC area. It will comprise an 80-person orchestra, a 49-person choir, and traverse two hours of a sonic landscape. It will take you from your root chakra, to your crown chakra, as seven different pieces chart from grief, to revelation, to exultation.”
“The ring shout comes from Ivory Coast in Africa, traversed through the transatlantic slave trade, resting mainly in the Gullah Geechee culture in the Carolinas, in the Black church. If you’ve seen the film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, you might remember that there’s a scene with an elderly Black woman living in the centre of a tree stump and people are walking counterclockwise around her. That is an example of what a ring shout could be. It’s this call and response that happens to a rhythmic beat through the liberation of one’s body, creating an elixir for someone to find their own spiritual salve to meet the oppression of our everyday lives.”
“NBT’s 56th season has a lot of big, juicy, beautiful programmatic offerings that allow for us to deepen our roots, to expand our possibilities in loving each other, holding each other up, and moving the conversation forward of what it means to be human today.”
You describe yourself as a “creative doula”, what does that phrase mean to you?
“I started to understand that my job wasn’t to be the artistic director, but that my job was to be an intermediary, to allow unseen ideas to be birthed between the parents, which are the playwright and the director, or sometimes the playwright and the page. My job is to create a 360-degree care apparatus, as doulas do, that allows for an artist to come into their fullest potential, and from that fullest potential, to transcend and go beyond their newest feat. So that’s what a creative doula is. It’s a term that I have lovingly defined myself as to get out of the Western idea of an artistic director and to get into the Indigenous idea of what I actually I see myself doing.”
Lastly, what’s your favorite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you?
“James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin are two humans who have deeply stirred resilience in who I am. From a cultural standpoint, I love the idea of redefining what family looks like that happens in queer culture. Living in a heteronormative society, our existence is sometimes othered and not seen as an equitable way of existing, so we find new ways of family in order to survive. I find myself in deep appreciation for how queer culture, how same gender loving culture, redefines what family can look like as a space of belonging and really etches that space of belonging each and every day by the way in which we show up for each other, the way that we hold each other, and the way that we see each other surpass our flaws. I’m not saying that it’s perfect and that it is crafted with no friction inside of it, but it is elevated to a space that allows for many of us to not feel isolated.”
By James Kleinmann
Discover more about National Black Theatre and its 2023-24 season at NationalBlackTheatre.org and read more about Jonathan McCrory at JonathanMcCrory.com. Follow him on Instagram @jaymc86 and on Facebook.
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