DR. BARBARA ANN TEER Founder, CEO Emerita
“Welcome to your home away from home."
“Seated inside the heart of each and every one of us is a being, a self, a fire, a flame, a god.”
“Black art is a healing art and it has the ability to heal the world.”
“Keep Soul Alive”
“Learn to love yourself”
“Make Your Culture Count”
“We are in the business of transformation. Our purpose is to transform the experience of theatre into a celebration of life.”
“We are the power source, the energy machines needed to Keep Soul Alive in the world.”
Founder and CEO emerita of the National Black Theatre, Barbara Ann Teer was born in East St. Louis, Illinois on June 18, 1937, to a family of educators and leaders in the field of community development. She graduated magna cum laude with her degree in dance education from the University of Illinois, plus several advanced university studies here and abroad with dance masters. After developing a successful dance career, Teer moved to New York City to pursue her career as an educator, dancer, and later as an actor, director, writer and playwright.
In the mid-sixties, at the heights of a successful acting career, Teer became increasingly dissatisfied and disenfranchised with the stereotypical roles being offered to people of color. Her teaching skills with young people were used to develop the Group Theatre Workshop with Robert Hooks, which was foundational beginning of the world-renowned Negro Ensemble Company. Teer went uptown to Harlem to continue her research and teaching and founded the National Black Theatre (NBT) in 1968 to maintain and develop African American cultural traditions. In 1983, Teer expanded the purpose and vision of the NBT by purchasing a 64,000-square-foot city block of property on 125th Street and Fifth Avenue, creating the first revenue-generating black art complex in the country that incubated several Black cultural and entrepreneurial businesses.
In May 1994, Teer was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Rochester, New York and in 1995, an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Southern Illinois.
Dr. Barbara Ann Teer was an award-winning performer, director, and visionary entrepreneur and was recognized as one of the Mothers of the Black Arts Movement. Forged out of an original company of artists known as The Liberators who were directed and trained by Dr. Teer, NBT generated a new way of releasing the Soul Energy inherent in the black lifestyle called “The Five Cycles of Evolution” which moved participants from “self-conscious art to god conscious art.” This pyramid process of performing and training evolved to be called TEER: The Technology of Soul.
Teer is included in Who’s Who Worldwide, which recognized her as a global business leader, and received numerous awards and citations for her creativity and stand as a cultural leader. Her life’s work still inspires. In 2023, her inclusion in Beyonce Knowles’s song, Alien Superstar from her Renaissance Album, posthumously won a GRAMMY.
Her vision and her blueprint will always remain our North Star.