About

Congo Square Theatre Company is an ensemble dedicated to artistic excellence. By producing definitive and transformative theatre spawned from the African Diaspora, as well as other world cultures, Congo Square Theatre Company seeks to establish itself as an institution of multicultural theatre.

Congo Square, New Orleans was originally sacred ground to the  Houma Indians. It is most commonly known as the public market where enslaved Africans and free people of color would gather to sing, drum, dance, and trade on Sunday afternoons. Dating back to 1819, African cultural expressions displayed at Congo Square  developed into African American traditions still celebrated today. 

 

Congo Square was co-founded in 1999 by Derrick Sanders and Reginald Nelson.  Both Sanders and Nelson were driven to create a theatre ensemble that strives for artistic excellence and to become part of American theater’s national landscape. Since then the ensemble has grown to sixteen members and gained a reputation as one of the premier African American theatre’s in the country. Over the past eleven years Congo Square has gone on to produce more than 30 productions, including August Wilson’s Seven Guitars which garnered top honors  (best ensemble, best direction and best production) at the 2007 Joseph Jefferson Awards.  Congo Square is the first African American theatre company to recieve such accolades.

  

In 2005 Congo Square established The New Playwright Initiative, which was renamed The August Wilson New Play Initiative after his death.  This program is designed to provide opportunities for emerging African American playwrights. Since its inception, The August Wilson New Play Initiative has produced new works like Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond, which has gone on to receive several national productions, Deep Azure by Chadwick Boseman, currently being adapted to film and most recently, St. James Infirmary by Brian Tucker and Congo Square ensemble member Javon Johnson’s Sanctified.

  The August Wilson New Play Initiative is Congo Square’s proactive approach to cultivating and supporting new works of the African Diaspora by the next generation of great American playwrights. Through its multi-faceted developmental process of commissioning new artists, producing staged readings, and hosting developmental workshops, The August Wilson New Play Initiative seeks to produce new works by new playwrights, thereby contributing to the cannon American theatre.