National Black Theatre has revealed its 2025-2026 season: Named The Alchemy of Return: Remembering is a Radical Act, the upcoming season is themed around the idea that the future acts as a North Star influenced by the impact of the past. 

The season will include a remount co-produced with New York Theatre Workshop, a public presentation, and multiple community-centering events in partnership with Park Avenue Armory, The Hemispheric Institute, and The Schomburg Center for Black Research.

Beginning in May 2026, NBT will produce a remounting of The Peculiar Patriot, a co-production with New York Theatre Workshop, in association with Lena Waithe. Written and performed by Liza Jessie Peterson, the one-person show is inspired by Peterson's decades-long work with prison populations, and the human impact of mass incarceration in America. Directed by Talvin Wilks, the play began development in 2003 with performances in more than 35 penitentiaries across the U.S. Hi-ARTS and NBT joined forces to produce the world premiere for the general public in September 2017.

The Peculiar Patriot's creative team will include scenic and lighting designer Andrew Cissna, projection designer Katherine Freer, costume designer LaToya Murray-Berry, sound designer Luqman Brown, props designer Belynda M’Baye, and tour producer James Blaszko.

The 2026 public presentation will be The Festival in Da Back, written by Brian Egland and directed by Nic Ashe. Hosted by HERE Arts Center April 8-12, 2026, The Festival in Da Back is a commissioned work that will mark Egland's NYC debut as a playwright. 

The piece is described as follows: "In Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the crawfish capital of the world, they say there’s two festivals: the one out front, and the one in da back. But it’s what happens on the front lawn of 318 Dorset Street that cracks open a family legacy. Ghosts hum through the zydeco, dreams rattle in the cooler, and everyone’s waiting for someone who might never come home. The Festival in da Back is a richly textured, fiercely funny play about who we crown, what we bury, and whether the music that once moved us can still bring us home."

Casting and further creative team members will be revealed at a later date.

A number of community events will also be on offer throughout the season, including the Learn to Love Yourself Silent Disco and Portrait Series, the Black Theater Advance: A Salon Inspired by Catalyst and the Future of Black Theatre, the archival series Legacy in Layers: The Formation of Our Roots, the Schomburg Centennial: Hidden Figures Recentered, and more.

NBT Executive Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory said in a statement, "In a time when Black history, culture, and brilliance are being systematically banned, erased, and silenced, National Black Theatre affirms a simple but urgent truth: remembering is a revolutionary act. The Alchemy of Return rises as a direct response to this era of sanctioned forgetting. To remember is to reclaim agency. To archive. To resist invisibility. To transform harm into possibility and setting the stage for the radical act we need to see happen in our lives, our community, this country, and the world. This season is a bold call to remember what we are being conditioned to forget—and in doing so, to shape a more liberated future. It is through the programming that NBT invites you into an inward journey, to reconnect, and to alchemize memory to mobilize the change needed today!

“Our stories and history are powerful tools against erasure, both as a defense and as a healing force to affirm who we are. Each day, powerful systems try to rewrite our reality and limit our imaginations. This season’s work, curated with love, celebrates the richness of our culture and affirms that our gatherings, our history, and our creativity work as a mechanism to declare a future where we exist fully and freely.”

For more information on the upcoming season, click here.