The Worthy
by Niegel Smith
featuring Talu Green, Temesgen Tocruray, and Kyra Davis
Join us for a celebratory walk for justice and Black men from the African Burial Ground to The Flea theater uplifting our souls.
The Worthy is sponsored in-part by its Tribeca neighbor, The Hemingway Gallery
ABOUT NIEGEL SMITH
Niegel Smith is a Bessie Award winning theater director and performance artist. His theater work has been produced by The Alley, The Barbican, Goodman Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Magic Theatre, The Melbourne Festival, Mixed Blood, New York Fringe Festival, New York Live Arts, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Playwrights Horizons, Pomegranate Arts, The Public Theater, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Summer Play Festival and Under the Radar, and his participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, The Invisible Dog, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. He often collaborates with playwright/performer Taylor Mac and with artist Todd Shalom. Smith was co-director of the critically acclaimed ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’, winner of the Kennedy Prize in Drama, the Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
JUNETEENTH PUBLIC PERFORMANCE COMMISSIONS
Join us June 11–19 throughout New York on a journey towards Black liberation and a celebration of Black joy, dreams, experiences, queerness, resistance, and more. Featuring new works by Ebony Noelle Golden, James Scruggs, Chanon Judson, Niegel Smith, and the Mx. Juneteenth Fire Island Drag Pageant by the Black and Brown Equity Coalition of Fire Island (BaBEC), this year’s Juneteenth public programming is distinct, daring, and engaging.
About The Flea’s Juneteenth Public Performance Program
The Flea’s Juneteenth Public Performance Program is also part of the Festival of New York, a growing collective of 200+ organizations across the five boroughs collaborating to marshal the creativity, resiliency, diversity, and spirit of collaboration that makes New York one of the strongest and most inspiring cities on earth.
The Juneteenth Public Performance Program was piloted by The Flea in 2021 to great success and commissioned and premiered four new public performances: Chanon Judson’s Time’s Up A Liberation Ritual, a new participatory dance piece in Fulton Park of Bed Stuy; James Scruggs’ Ask Me About Juneteenth, where an unusual character offered cotton blooms and cash to viewers willing to engage others in a frank conversation about race; Imani Uzuri’s Jus’ Like A Tree Planted By Water, a performance of experimental interpolations of African American spirituals in Harlem; and, Artistic Director Niegel Smith’s The Worthy, a celebratory walk for justice and Black men from the African Burial Ground to The Flea theater uplifting our souls.
