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New York doesn’t exactly lack for immersive theater these days but, even by downtown standards, North Star sounds ambitious. Landing at Irish Arts Center from June 3–21 and created and directed by Kwame Daniels, the North American premiere turns a 19th-century transatlantic journey into a full-bodied, standing-room performance that blends live music, spoken word and a chorus of voices spanning generations and continents.
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The show is an exploration of and response to abolitionist Frederick Douglass' journey to Belfast in 1845, shortly after publishing his first autobiography, in part to avoid the threat of re-enslavement. His time in Belfast proved transformative for both him and the city; he found an unlikely sense of belonging there, declaring he would “always have a home” in the city, which formed the Belfast Ladies Anti-Slavery Association after his visit. North Star takes those weeks and refracts it through a contemporary lens, asking what it means—then and now—for a place to open itself to outsiders and new ideas.
The genesis of the project came to Daniels after the murder of George Floyd, when even people in his life didn't understand the need for the Black Lives Matter movement. He remembers thinking, “Rather than continue to be angry behind a keyboard, why don't I set up a project that enables people to come closer to Black cultures and Black people, but essentially that is based on the island of Ireland?” He adds, “Those opportunities felt very rare, because historically discussions have centered the two dominant cultures—Catholics and Protestants—and other communities coming here didn't really have a place at the table.”
The score pulls from jazz, hip-hop, soul and classical traditions, with contributions from musicians including Kaidi Tatham and Hannah Peel, alongside spoken word from performers like Nandi Jola and Colin Salmon. And students from Belfast and New York are woven directly into the production, contributing poems developed in response to a deceptively simple prompt: Does your city feel like home?
For the Irish Arts Center, the production also signals just how far its programming ambitions have stretched since moving into its expanded Hell’s Kitchen home. Large-scale, multidisciplinary works like this—featuring more than two dozen performers onstage—would have been hard to imagine here a decade ago. Now, they’re becoming something of a calling card.
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