This event has been postponed and a new date will be announced for the fall.
A gathering of HBCU students and faculty featuring workshops, networking opportunities, and performances designed to support emerging theatre professionals in their artistic development.
WE WILL DREAM
No Dream Deferred and The André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice proudly announce the return of the WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival in 2025 from 22 March to 2 May 2025. Now in its second year, the festival embraces the theme The Water Remembers, exploring the transformative power of water as a vessel of remembrance, connection, and cultural legacy. This theme is in alignment with the Katrina 20 commemoration taking place across New Orleans this year.
This year, we end the festival with a journey across the water as a special WE WILL DREAM delegation joins the 2025 International Black Theatre Summit in Accra, Ghana, deepening connections between Black theatremakers from across the diaspora.
As the largest festival in the gulf coast region dedicated to uplifting new works by Black and African-descendant theatremakers, WE WILL DREAM continues to promote innovation, collaboration, and cultural reclamation. With a robust lineup of performances, workshops, and special events, the festival will catalyze artistic and community engagement across New Orleans and beyond.
Click here to purchase tickets for the in-person events.
Lauren Turner Hines, Founder of No Dream Deferred and The André Cailloux Center, expressed her excitement for the festival’s second year:
“WE WILL DREAM is more than a festival; it is a movement that affirms African Diasporic artists, stories, and cultural legacies. With ‘The Water Remembers,’ we are embracing the fluidity of our narratives, the strength of our connections, and the boundless power of our artistry.”
Jacqueline Flores, Producer, Latinx Theatre Commons added:
“The Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) is thrilled to be continuing our partnership with the We Will Dream Festival. For over a decade we have worked to amplify the work of Latinx theatremakers and working with Lauren Turner Hines as she amplifies the work of Black Southern playwrights is a dream of a collaboration. We are looking forward to continuing to build coalitions with other culturally specific organizations. And we're specifically excited to send a delegation of LTC members to New Orleans for AZÚcAR! New Play Reading Festival and support Afro-Latinx artists who we recognize have been historically left out of predominantly Latinx spaces.”
Dr. Monica White Mdounu, Executive Director and Founder, The Craft Institute added:
“The International Black Theatre Summit (IBTS) is part of a continuum. IBTS builds upon the 1998 National Black Theatre Summit legendary playwright August Wilson convened in collaboration with Dartmouth College professors. Their gathering drew inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s Niagra Movement in 1905, which eventually led to the formation of the NAACP. The 4th Biennial IBTS gathering in Ghana for the first IBTS convening on the continent is 120 years in the making. We are honored to have the participation of No Dream Deferred: a Black theatre company in the southern United States, which Wilson referred to as an ancestral home for Africans in America. Their delegation along with the participation of Black theatres and storytellers in theatre, film, television, and related media around the country and throughout the world reflects the future. Our collective journey and gathering is a testament to how far we have come and how much further we still must go–equipped with knowledge of our history and current events—to reimagine and realize a collective future in which we can all access creative, cultural, economic, and educational freedom.”
About No Dream Deferred
No Dream Deferred is a community-anchored theatre organization that prioritizes culturally relevant theatremaking and amplifies historically excluded voices. Visit their website here.
About The André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice
The André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice is a multidisciplinary, community-centered performing arts center dedicated to freedom, flourishing, and promoting justice through the arts, community engagement, dialogue, and sustainable arts enterprise development for Black makers. Visit their website here.
About HowlRound TV
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page.
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