The Apollo and The National Black Theatre To Co-Present The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree Written, directed and choreographed by Ebony Noelle Golden
New immersive work, commissioned by The Apollo, will incorporate movement, poetry, and visual art, and will unfold across multiple locations in addition to The Apollo’s Stages at The Victoria
Harlem, NY—August 29, 2024— The Apollo and The National Black Theatre (NBT) announced today the presentation of The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree, the New York City premiere of a new immersive theatrical ceremony from celebrated playwright, director, and choreographer Ebony Noelle Golden that explores the journey of climate reparations through multi-disciplinary performances in the streets of Harlem and in Apollo Stages at The Victoria. Media assets are available HERE.
The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree, conceived and curated by Ebony Noelle Golden and featuring Jupiter Performance Studio, is a powerful 3-part series of ritual performances, processions, and visual installations that invites audiences to experience the intersection of art, activism, and spirituality.
“I have been profoundly quickened by the creation of this offering. I am immensely grateful for my East Texas and rural Louisiana ways of living and loving. Our connection to the divine, our food, our conjure, our soil song, our dance are my inheritance. May my elders, teachers and ancestors be pleased and may all who witness The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree be lifted up,” said creator Ebony Noelle Golden.
For each performance, audience members will engage with and immerse themselves within the environment, walking alongside the players and actively participating in the story. For the New York premiere, The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree will take place outdoors throughout Harlem, and on The Apollo’s Stages at the Victoria.
Due to the importance of centering the community and giving access to all, performances will be free and open to the public.
RSVPs are now open at apollotheater.org/event/the-divining.
“We are honored to have this deeply prescient production as part of our Apollo New Works program, and to work with our partner, the National Black Theatre, to provide an incubation space for Ebony and her genre-defying, boundary-pushing work,” said Apollo Executive Producer Kamilah Forbes. “This is what The Apollo is about—providing space for artists to challenge themselves and expand their practice. By allowing them to take risks they wouldn’t otherwise be able to take, we are fostering and cultivating new lines of inquiry, pulling a new narrative thread from the diasporic tangle of the Black experience.”
Inspired by M Archive: After the End of the World and Dub: Finding Ceremony, two installations of poet, artist, and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ experimental tryptic, the theatrical ceremony utilizes movement, poetry, percussion, and visual art to encourage audience members to understand that their connection to the natural world is critical to their liberation. Set in the 1970s in a rural coastal town, The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree, posits Black communities as sanctuaries—spiritual, ecological, metaphysical—and follows two sisters as they embark on an epic journey across time and space to seek environmental justice.
“It’s powerful to begin our pilgrimage this season with Ebony's progressive, spiritual work that centers on one of the most pressing issues of our time—our relationship with the planet. As climate change intensifies, it’s our duty to reconnect with our responsibility to address the preverbal threat that we've generated to our very existence. This is why NBT and The Apollo have made every show 100% FREE for the community. We need everyone involved to be moved toward action. Join us, and let's heal our Earth together.”said National Black Theatre Executive Artistic Director Jonthan McCrory.
The Divining: Ceremonies from in the name of the m/other tree is part of The Apollo’s Fall/Winter 2024 season.
Performance Details
Friday, September 13, 2024 | 4:30pm
Saturday, September 14 & Sunday, September 15, 2024 | 4pm
Saturday, September 21 & Sunday, September 22, 2024 | 4pm
Free and open to the public. RSVPs open August 29, 2024
These performances will take place in Harlem as well as The Apollo Stages at The Victoria Theater located at 233 W. 125th Street, Third Floor (between Adam Clayton Powell & Frederick Douglass Blvd).
Cast and Creative Team
Lead Artist: Ebony Noelle Golden
Ensemble: Zenni Corbin, Fletcher Christian, SHESHE Dance, Sierra Leverett, Rayna Nakai, Trevor Hayes
Creatives: Ebony "Es" Webster (Associate Choreographer), Kofi Hunter (M/D Composer), Jessica Howard (Vocal coach), Ray Archie (Sound Design), Izmir Ickbal (Scenic Design), Viktor Givens (Scenic Environmentalist/Installation Artist), Belynda M'Baye (Props Design), Emma Deane, Jack Meister-Lopez (Production Stage Manager), Brianna Guillen (Assistant Stage Manager) and Amber Snead (Casting Director)
About Ebony Noelle Golden
Ebony Noelle Golden is a theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur and public scholar. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy that devises systems, strategies, and social justice solutions nationally. In 2020, she founded Jupiter Performance Studio, a space to study and practice Black diasporic performance traditions. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden works to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks in service of liberation and collective wellbeing. Her practice is rooted in community-design, ritual performance, and leadership development through a liberatory ecowomanist praxis. Invoking messy, magical, and medicinal processes, Ebony and her collaborators, work to conjure a better world.
About the National Black Theatre
National Black Theatre (NBT) is a Emmy-nominated and Tony Award-winning institution founded in 1968 by the late visionary artist Dr. Barbara Ann Teer. The nation’s first revenue-generating Black arts complex, NBT is the longest-running Black theatre in New York City, one of the oldest theatres founded and consistently operated by a woman of color in the nation, and has been included in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. NBT’s core mission is to produce transformational theatre that helps to shift the inaccuracies around African Americans’ cultural identity by telling authentic stories of Black lives. As an alternative learning environment, NBT uses theatre arts as a means to educate, enrich, entertain, empower and inform the national conscience around current social issues impacting our communities. Under the leadership of Sade Lythcott, CEO, and Jonathan McCrory, Executive Artistic Director, NBT helps re-shape a more inclusive American theatre field by providing an artistically rigorous and culturally sensitive space for artists of color to experiment, develop and present new work. Working with trailblazing artists from Nona Hendrix to Jeremy O. Harris; helping to launch the careers, most recently, of artists such as Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Mfoniso Udofia, Saheem Ali, Lee Edward Colston II, and Ebony Noelle Golden; and incubating Obie Award-winning companies like The Movement Theatre Company and Harlem9’s 48Hours in Harlem, NBT’s cultural production remains unparalleled. Visit nationalblacktheatre.org or follow NBT on Facebook (@NationalBlackTheatre) and Twitter/Instagram (@NatBlackTheatre).
About The Apollo Stages at The Victoria
Just down the street on 125th from The Apollo’s Historic Theater is the Apollo Stages at the Victoria. The new 25,000-square-foot facility, designed by KGA (Kostow Greenwood Architects), includes two theaters, a central lobby and main floor exhibition gallery space that serve as convening points for patrons, and administrative offices for Apollo staff, visiting artists, and artistic collaborators. The theaters and offices inhabit the third and fourth floors of the revitalized mixed-use Victoria Theater building, which also includes retails spaces and a hotel.
The new 199- and 99-seat studio theaters, the latter named after former Apollo President Jonelle Procope who stepped down in 2023 after leading the organization for two decades, are designed for theatrical productions, live music performances, film screenings, special events, and recordings. Both theaters are flat-floor venues with acoustically isolated slabs and resilient sprung dance floors—as well as dressing rooms and chorus rooms. Notably, The Apollo has introduced across both theaters a custom-built, retractable seating system to allow for multiple configurations, making it adaptable to the needs of performers and collaborators.
The use of these spaces will also be opened up to the community, offering subsidized use for cultural partners and artists seeking resources to develop their craft.
About The Apollo
The Apollo is an American cultural treasure. It is a vibrant non-profit organization rooted in the Harlem community that engages people from around New York, the nation, and the world. Since 1934, The Apollo has celebrated, created, and presented work that centers Black artists and voices from across the African Diaspora. It has also been a catalyst for social and civic advocacy. Today, The Apollo is the largest performing arts institution committed to Black culture and creativity.
The Apollo is a commissioner and presenter; catalyst for new artists, audiences, and creative workforce; and partner in the projection of the African American narrative and its role in the development of American and global culture.
The Apollo envisions a new American canon centered on contributions to the performing arts by artists of the African diaspora, in America and beyond.
