(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The Spring Festival is returning to Crossroads Theatre with two great productions and free community events for all. The community-inspired experience offers world-class artists and amazing performances of theatre relevant to what is going on in our world today. This year’s festival will be held at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center (NBPAC) and run from June 15 through June 26, 2022.

The world premiere of Freedom Rider, Conceived and Directed by Crossroad’s Artistic Director, Ricardo Khan, and written by Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, Murray Horwitz, Nathan Louis Jackson, Ricardo Khan, and Nikkole Salter is based on real events. This stirring play, sometimes funny and always inspiring, celebrates their journey that changed a nation forever on May 4, 1961. It will follow a group of young civil rights activists from colleges and universities across the country who boarded interstate buses southbound from Washington, DC to challenge the non-enforcement of the US Supreme Court rule that segregated public buses.

Freedom Rider will be presented June 15-26.  For more on the play, click here for the NJ Stage interview with Ricardo Khan.

Having captivated Crossroads audiences with his last tour-de-force, The Adventures of Fishy Waters, acclaimed blues musician and Grammy nominee Guy Davis returns with an all-new show called Sugarbelly and Other Tales My Father Told Me. Part tall tale, part medicine show, part mystery. Witness a bygone way of life breathing again, resurrected by field hollers and songs. Performed in Guy’s inimitable style, Sugarbelly promises to be a unique and deeply satisfying evening of theatre. This runs from June 10-26.  

Tickets are on sale now and are $20-$55 per person. Tickets are available for purchase online. All Spring Festival events will be ASL-interpreted.  

This event is part of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance 2022 Stages Festival, made possible by support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; Bank of America; The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey; OceanFirst Foundation; New Jersey Historical Commission. 

In 1978, Ricardo Khan and the late Lee Richardson founded the Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, NJ as a place of creative expression, discovery, and cultural pride, where trained black and brown artists could engage in substantive, non-stereotypical roles in the theatre, and where artists and craftspeople of all colors could work together for the good of art and community. Since then and with an enduring devotion to that foundational vision, Crossroads built a national reputation as an artistic home for some of the most important, transformative voices in the American Theatre, honoring Black culture, spirit, and history, and giving voice to that experience in order that people of all backgrounds can meet, appreciate, discover and celebrate in a place of healing and joy- the Crossroads.

New Brunswick Performing Arts Center (NBPAC) has propelled New Brunswick’s Downtown Cultural Arts District into the spotlight as the region’s most exciting and dynamic performing arts center. NBPAC features two state-of-the-art theatrical venues in the Elizabeth Ross Johnson and Arthur Laurents Theaters, dedicated rehearsal studios, and collaborative workspaces for arts organizations across the region.