Troy Anthony / Composer

Troy Anthony is a Kentucky-born composer/lyricist, director, and theater-maker based in NYC practicing Black queer joy. Troy has received commissions from The 5th Avenue Theater, The Apollo, The Civilians, National Black Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and The Shed. He’s enjoyed residencies with BLKSPACE,  Chelsea Factory, The O’Neill Theater Center and Village Theater.  Additionally, he’s presented work at Joe’s Pub, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, JACK, Prospect Theater Company, the National Alliance of Musical Theater Conference, and 54 Below. He has also been seen performing at the Delacorte in the Public Theater’s Hercules, Twelfth Night and As You Like It . Troy recently received the Vivace Award from the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation.  Troy’s work lives at the intersection of art, social justice and community practice. In this spirit, he currently serves as the Creative Director of Fire Ensemble Inc. as a home to develop his work and to share the joy of singing in community. The Fire Ensemble is currently in-residence at The Shed and is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Darnell-Moser Charitable Fund.

Jonathan McCrory / Director

Jonathan McCrory is a Tony Award and Emmy Award nominated producer, two time 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.

National Black Theatre /

National Black Theatre (NBT) is a Tony Award-winning 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, 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. www.nationalblacktheatre.org.

New York Theatre Workshop /

New York Theatre Workshop empowers visionary theatre-makers and brings their work to adventurous audiences through productions, artist workshops and education and community engagement programs. We nurture pioneering new writers alongside powerhouse playwrights, engage inimitable genre-shaping directors, and support emerging artists in the earliest days of their careers. 

We’ve mounted over 150 productions from artists whose work has shaped our very idea of what theatre can be, including Jonathan Larson’s Rent; Tony Kushner’s Slavs! And Homebody/Kabul; Doug Wright’s Quills; Claudia Shear’s Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus; Will Power’s The Seven and Fetch Clay, Make Man; Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath; Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher; Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová and Enda Walsh’s Once; David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus; Dael Orlandersmith’s The Gimmick and Forever; Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me; Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play; Kristina Wong’s Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord; Aleshea Harris’s On Sugarland; Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Maria Friedman and choreographed by Tim Jackson; Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries; and eight acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW’s productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, 29 Tony Awards, 2 Grammy Awards and numerous Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards. 

NYTW is represented on Broadway with Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin.