NEWSLETTER
Free One-Night-Only Event Directed by Zhailon Levingston
Leland Fowler, The Harlem Chamber Players, Niles Luther, Alicia Hall Moran, Jurnee Smollett, and Anthony Wayne will join Sherald onstage
New York, N.Y. (June 16, 2026) – The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Executive Director, Patrick Willingham) and Public Forum series curators Alexa Smith and Jeremy McCarter proudly announce AMERICAN SUBLIME: Stories from Elsewhere in III Acts on Monday, June 22 at 8:00 p.m. in The Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
An in-progress theatrical exploration inspired by artist Amy Sherald’s acclaimed body of work, originally exhibited as American Sublime at major U.S. museums, is now taking shape for the stage. The evening will feature live performances by Leland Fowler, The Harlem Chamber Players, Niles Luther, Alicia Hall Moran, Jurnee Smollett, and Anthony Wayne and an onstage conversation with Sherald and Tony Award-winning director Zhailon Levingston, reflecting on the creative process and the evolution of Sherald’s work for the stage.
“To experience American Sublime coming to life on the stage of The Delacorte Theater is deeply meaningful. American Sublime began somewhere between Big Fish and Alice in Wonderland, a space of dreaming, transformation, humor, and folklore. I'm looking forward to seeing it expand and inviting the audience into a shared encounter with figures who are simultaneously ordinary, mythic, and deeply human,” says creator Amy Sherald.
Public Theater Associate Artistic Director Alexa Smith shares, “Amy Sherald’s American Sublime was glorious in its museum expression, and we are thrilled to explore what happens when that vision is reimagined for The Delacorte. This evening embodies what Public Forum does best: creating space at the intersection of art and conversation to open new possibilities for how we understand art, identity, and one another.”
Creatively developed in association with National Black Theatre (Sade Lythcott, Chief Executive Officer; Jonathan McCrory, Executive Artistic Director) and featuring work by James Ijames, Raja Feather Kelly, Niles Luther, Jessie Montgomery, and Anna Deavere Smith. JamRock Productions is the Associate Producer of this event. Support for PUBLIC FORUM: AMERICAN SUBLIME is provided by The Hearthland Foundation.
Sade Lythcott, CEO of National Black Theatre, shares, "What makes this project so exciting is the opportunity to bring Amy Sherald's extraordinary portraits into conversation with the theatrical imagination of Zhailon Levingston, creating a new chapter in the evolving canon of American folklore. American Sublime embraces the full spectrum of Black life, from the everyday to the mythic, inviting audiences into the stories, dreams, and mythologies that shape who we are as a people and as a nation. It is especially meaningful to partner with The Public Theater once again, following FAT HAM, in creating a work that expands how Black life, memory, and imagination are experienced on stage."
Monday evenings, typically the night off from The Public’s Free Shakespeare in the Park performances, will now feature the revival of the PUBLIC FORUM series. The series will feature a distinctive mix of performance and conversation and a focus on American voices on this year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Free tickets will be made available on each Public Forum date via the line at The Delacorte, evening Standby at The Delacorte, digital lottery with TodayTix, and an in-person lottery at The Public. For more information, visit publictheater.org.
PUBLIC FORUMS
CITIES UNDER SIEGE
June 29
The arrival of an estimated 3,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota—dubbed Operation Metro Surge—began a period of significant civic unrest with far-reaching impact on public safety, law enforcement, the local economy and workforce, education, and the daily lives of Minnesotans. In January 2026, The Public Theater and The Guthrie Theater partnered to commission acclaimed documentary theater artists Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen to capture firsthand interviews, begin in-depth engagement with affected communities, and embark on the creation of a new play featuring Minnesotans’ real experiences. This special Forum evening will feature excerpts from this urgent work in progress and discussion around how cities and civilians respond in moments of crisis.
DIVISION AND RENEWAL: AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL SANDEL
August 10
American society has rarely been more polarized. How did we reach this moment of crisis, and what can any of us do to repair what has been broken? Michael Sandel, the Harvard professor and globally acclaimed “rock-star philosopher,” will return to The Delacorte Theater for a night of public philosophy, engaging an audience of New Yorkers in a spirited conversation about meritocracy, dignity, and where we go from here.
SUMMER BOOK CLUB CELEBRATION WITH THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
August 17
Calling all New Yorkers! As part of its annual Summer at the Library programming, The New York Public Library, in partnership with The Public Theater, invites New Yorkers to join a summer book club and read N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became together. The book club will culminate in a marquee event at The Delacorte Theater featuring readings, commissioned performances, and public conversation inspired by and celebrating the book.
BIOS
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH is an award-winning playwright and actress. She's credited with having created a new form of theater, focused on contemporary issues from multiple points of views composed of excerpts from hundreds of interviews. President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. Anna's plays and films based on them include Fires in the Mirror, “Twilight Los Angeles, Let Me Down Easy, and Notes from the Field.
RAJA FEATHER KELLY is a choreographer and director and the Artistic Director of the feath3r theory (TF3T), the Brooklyn-based company he founded in 2009. In 2026/27, TF3T will premiere A Body of Dangerous Ideas, a triptych including a collaboration with Bill T. Jones and two new works for TF3T by Kelly. In 2025, Kelly served as Production Dramaturg for AUTOGYNEGAMY at the National Arts Centre in Montreal and as a DanceWEB Mentor at the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival in Vienna. He returns to both institutions in 2026. Recent projects include co-directing Michael R. Jackson's Complications in Sue at Opera Philadelphia, choreography for Missy Mazzoli's Lincoln in the Bardo the Metropolitan Opera, and direction and choreography for Anna K. Jacob and Michael R. Jackson's Teeth at the Asbury Park Theatre Company. Kelly choreographed the Tony Award–winning A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson and Fairview by Jackie Sibbles-Drury, both Pulitzer Prize winners. Additional credits include White Girl in Danger, SUFFS, Lempicka, The Listeners at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Macbeth in Stride at Brooklyn Academy of Music. His play The Fires was a 2024 New York Times Critics’ Pick. He is the recipient of a 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award, a Princeton Arts Fellowship, an Obie Award, and multiple Princess Grace Awards
LELAND FOWLER The Public: Sally & Tom, Plays for the Plague Year, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, & Henry V. He’s performed at Lincoln Center, Little Island, Vineyard, The New Group, Rattlestick, Playwrights Horizons, TFANA, Williamstown, among others. TV/Film: “Blossoming Wasp;” “City on a Hill.” BA: Morehouse College; MFA: Yale School of Drama. Leland is a member of the Actor’s Center.
ZHAILON LEVINGSTON is a Louisiana-raised storyteller, director, and activist. He is a Board Member for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, which he co-created, and teaches the Theatre of Change course at Columbia University. Levingston is also the Artistic Director of Inheritance Theatre Project. Select credits include Chicken and Biscuits (Broadway), Cats: The Jellicle Ball (Perelman Performing Arts Center, Broadway), Table 17 (MCC), Wonderful Town (Encores), Alex Newell and the Gospel of a Diva (Audible/Minetta Lane), Little Miss Perfect (Olney Theatre Center), Patience (Second Stage), The Wiz (Cincinnati Children’s Theatre), Tina: The Tina Turner Musical (Broadway), and Hadestown (Korea).
NILES LUTHER is a composer-cellist and pioneer of Art Music: original compositions written in direct response to specific works of visual art. As inaugural Composer-in-Residence at the Brooklyn Museum (2023–2025), supported by a Ford Foundation fellowship, he has scored masterworks by Claude Monet and Utagawa Hiroshige, and served as Musical Director for Kehinde Wiley Studio. His work has appeared at the National Gallery London, Stephen Friedman Gallery, the William Morris Gallery, and Galerie Templon.
AMY SHERALD (b. 1973, Columbus, GA) documents contemporary African American experience in the United States through arresting, intimate portraits. Sherald engages with the history of photography and portraiture, inviting viewers to participate in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate Black life in American art. In addition to being the first woman and first African American to ever receive the grand prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., she was also awarded the Pollock Prize for Creativity by Pollock-Krasner Foundation, as well as the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art. In 2018, Sherald was selected by First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She is represented by the contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth, and her work is held in public collections such as the Baltimore Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
ANTHONY WAYNE Broadway: TINA – The Tina Turner Musical (Raymond), TOOTSIE, Once On This Island, PIPPIN (Manson Trio), Anything Goes, Priscilla (Jimmy). Off-Broadway: Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical (Sylvester), Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole (Nat & Sammy Standby; NYTW). NYCC ENCORES!: La Cage aux Folles (Albin & Georges Standby), A Chorus Line (Richie), Anyone Can Whistle, Bells Are Ringing. Regional: ELF – The Musical (Store Manager), Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Lumiére), Mary Poppins (Bert), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (André). BLACK BROADWAY MEN, INC. (Exec. Dir.; @BlackBroadwayMen). www.
NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE
National Black Theatre is a Tony Award and Emmy Award-nominated 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, Chief Executive Officer, 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. nationalblacktheatre.org
THE PUBLIC continues the work of its visionary founder Joe Papp as a civic institution engaging, both on-stage and off, with some of the most important ideas and social issues of today. Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public’s wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City’s five boroughs, Public Works, and Joe’s Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Their programs and productions can also be seen regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 64 Tony Awards, 197 Obie Awards, 63 Drama Desk Awards, 66 Lortel Awards, 36 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, 72 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. publictheater.org
The Public Theater stands in honor of the first inhabitants and our ancestors. We acknowledge the land on which The Public and its theaters stand—the original homeland of the Lenape people. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We honor the generations of stewards and we pay our respects to the many diverse indigenous peoples still connected to this land.
The Public also gives our respect to the people of Seneca Village, a community of Black property owners who were removed from their land and whose village was destroyed in the creation of Central Park. We recognize the sacrifice that these ancestors made and honor Seneca Village’s legacy.
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