Harlem Stage Announces South-to-North Tour of Freedom Riders

Harlem Stage has announced a multi-city tour for the premiere of Freedom Riders: A Journey with No End in Sight, a theatrical concert reading. Before its October run at Harlem Stage, the production will embark on a South-to-North tour, an homage spanning 100 years of freedom movements (1925–2025).

Conceptualized and directed by Harlem Stage’s artistic director and CEO Indira Etwaroo, Freedom Riders is inspired by 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today, published by the New Press in 2012. It features a live musical score woven through first-person stories of survival, loss, resistance, and love, collaboratively composed and performed by pianist Arden Altino, violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Grammy-nominated bassist and former Beyoncé musical director Divinity Roxx.

The cast includes Lisa Arrindell (Saints & Sinners), Russell Hornsby (Fences), Billy Eugene Jones (Purlie Victorious), Angelica Ross (Pose), and Stephen Tyrone Williams (Lucky Guy).

The concert reading includes lighting and projection design by Devin Cameron, costume design by Jorge Rosario, and sound design by Gaines Legare, with LED special effects.

The cast and crew will journey together by bus from the South to the North, tracing in reverse the path of the original Freedom Riders who traveled from the North to the South to confront segregation, while also honoring the Great Migration route that carried millions of Black Americans and their families in search of freedom. Stops include First Baptist ‘Brick-a-Day’ Church in Montgomery, Alabama; the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at the Atlanta University Center in Atlanta, Georgia; and Harrison Theater at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro. Events in the South are free and open to the public.

The tour culminates with its premiere at Harlem Stage October 7–October 18, with an opening night on October 9.