Audra McDonald and Billy Porter Set for Major SHUFFLE ALONG Reunion at Lincoln Center

Audra McDonald, Billy Porter and several of Broadway’s most celebrated performers will reunite this September for a special concert presentation of SHUFFLE ALONG, forming one of the headline events in Lincoln Center’s newly announced 2026/27 season.

The concert will revisit SHUFFLE ALONG, OR THE MAKING OF THE MUSICAL SENSATION OF 1921 AND ALL THAT FOLLOWED, the ambitious musical that brought together an extraordinary company of performers during its acclaimed Broadway season in 2016.

Joining McDonald and Porter will be fellow original company members Brian Stokes Mitchell, Brandon Victor Dixon, Adrienne Warren and Brooks Ashmanskas, alongside Norm Lewis. Writer and director George C. Wolfe will return to oversee the presentation, with choreographer and tap innovator Savion Glover also rejoining the creative team.

Lincoln Center’s current calendar lists the concert for Sunday 27 September at 7.30pm at the Rose Theater, located within Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall. The performance will offer audiences a rare opportunity to experience much of the musical’s original cast and creative leadership together again.

The reunion arrives a decade after Wolfe’s production opened at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre. SHUFFLE ALONG began previews in March 2016, officially opened on 28 April and played its final performance on 24 July of that year.

Despite its relatively brief run, the production became one of the most nominated musicals of the season, receiving 10 Tony Award nominations. Its recognition included nominations for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography and performances by Brandon Victor Dixon and Adrienne Warren.

Rather than presenting a conventional revival, Wolfe’s musical explored the creation, success and complicated legacy of the original SHUFFLE ALONG. That landmark production, featuring music by Eubie Blake, lyrics by Noble Sissle and a book by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, opened on Broadway in May 1921.

The original musical became a major commercial success, playing 484 performances and helping to establish new opportunities for Black writers, composers and performers on Broadway. Its popularity also contributed to the cultural momentum surrounding the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance, while providing early opportunities for artists who would become influential figures in American entertainment.

Wolfe’s version placed those achievements within a broader examination of race, authorship, recognition and the ways theatrical history is preserved. It combined the original score with a backstage narrative about the artists who created the 1921 musical and the consequences of its unexpected success.

The concert will be presented as part of Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill Festival, which celebrates the cultural history of the predominantly Black and Puerto Rican neighbourhood that once occupied the area where the Lincoln Center campus now stands.

The festival forms part of the institution’s continuing effort to acknowledge the communities displaced during the urban renewal projects that transformed the area during the 1950s. Its programming places the work of artists connected to those communities at the centre of Lincoln Center’s contemporary cultural programme.

Another major event in the season will be the 25th anniversary presentation of Jacqulyn Buglisi’s TABLE OF SILENCE PROJECT 9/11. More than 150 dancers and musicians are expected to gather on Josie Robertson Plaza on 11 September for the annual public ritual commemorating those affected by terrorism, war and oppression. A free public dress rehearsal will be held on the preceding evening.

Dance will remain a significant component of the wider season. Lincoln Center will stage the first winter edition of its Contemporary Dance Festival in January, highlighting United States based companies and work by choreographers including Hannah Garner, Omar Román De Jesús, Heidi Latsky, Shamel Pitts and Netta Yerushalmy.

Additional dance programming will include work from Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire, along with an evening honouring the legacy of Carmen de Lavallade, featuring performers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Elsewhere in the programme, Sekou McMiller’s URBAN LOVE SUITE will receive its New York premiere on 16 October. A musical tribute to Prince and D’Angelo, featuring members of D’Angelo’s band The Vanguard, is scheduled for 23 September, while tap artist Michela Marino Lerman will present SOLE BLUE on 10 December.

Designer and artist Clint Ramos will curate the latest season of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, while composer, journalist and Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad will join the institution as an Artist in Residence.

Trumpeter, composer and educator Wynton Marsalis has been selected as Lincoln Center’s 2026/27 Visionary Artist. Events across the campus will celebrate his influence on jazz, education and American music as he prepares to conclude his nearly 40 year tenure as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The season will also continue Lincoln Center’s commitment to accessible programming. Performances will be offered either free of charge or through the institution’s Choose What You Pay ticketing system, which allows audiences to select from a range of prices.

Tickets for the autumn programme are scheduled to go on sale on 9 September, with selected membership presales beginning earlier.

While the season encompasses music, dance, theatre, technology and multidisciplinary performance, the return of SHUFFLE ALONG is likely to be among its most anticipated events. The concert will reunite an exceptional company while reviving a work that asked audiences to reconsider whose achievements are celebrated, whose stories disappear from the record and how Broadway’s history continues to shape the theatre of today.