Presenters

• Ebony Noelle Golden

  Ebony Noelle Golden is an artist, scholar, and culture strategist from Houston, TX and currently based in Harlem. She devises site-specific ceremonies, live art installations, creative collaborations, and arts experiments that explore and radically imagine viable strategies for collective black liberation. In 2020, Ebony launched Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) which serves as a hub for the study of diasporic black performance traditions. JPS is integral to the development of a five-part theatrical ceremony that will be developed and produced over the next three years with partners in Harlem, Brooklyn, Durham, and Ashfield, Massachusetts. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy and arts accelerator, that devises systems, strategies, solutions for and with education, arts, culture, and community groups globally. Golden’s current projects include: Jubilee 11213 (in partnership with Weeksville Heritage Center and generously supported by Creative Capital, Coalition of Theaters of Color, and Black Spatial Relics), free/conjure/black, and In The Name Of (commissioned by Apollo Theatre and generously supported by Double Edge Theatre, Toshi Reagon, Network of Ensemble Theatres and Hi-Arts).

• Jonathan McCrory

  Jonathan McCrory is a two Obie Award-winning, Harlem-based artist who has served as Executive Artistic Director at National Black Theatre since 2012 under the leadership of CEO, Sade Lythcott. He has directed numerous professional productions and concerts which include: How the Light Gets In (NYMF), Klook and Iron John (NAMT), Dead and Breathing, HandsUp, Hope Speaks, Blacken The Bubble, Asking for More, Last Laugh and Enter Your Sleep. He has worked at ETW at TISCH NYU with Emergence: A Communion and evoking him: Baldwin and at Suny Purchase directing Exit Strategy, & A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes. He has been acknowledged as an exceptional leader additionally through Craine’s New York Business 2020 Notable LGBTQ Leaders and Executives. In 2013, he was awarded the Emerging Producer Award by the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and the Torch Bearer Award by theatrical legend Woodie King Jr. He is a founding member of the collaborative producing organizations Harlem9, Black Theatre Commons, The Jubilee, Next Generation National Network and The Movement Theatre Company. McCrory sits on the National Advisory Committee for Howlround.com and was a member of the original cohort for ArtEquity. A Washington, DC native, McCrory attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and New York University’s TISCH School of the Arts. To learn more, please visit www.jonathanmccrory.com