Nightbirds: The Story of Labelle
in collaboration with the Department of Theater & Hopkins CenterFrom the grind of the chitlin circuit to the swinging streets of London... the story of three women who reinvented themselves and revolutionized American music.
Nightbirds is a new work-in-development by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and the boundless Nona Hendryx.
Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash arrived in the music industry as a conventional girl group, polished, poised and expected to stay that way, but they refused to behave. Under the guidance of manager Vicki Wickham, a British music and television producer (dubbed the 4th Labelle), in a rebellious act of artistic reclamation, they shed the constraints of the girl group era and emerged as Labelle, a groundbreaking Afrofuturist trio. Clad in silver lame and feathers, they fused rock, funk, gospel, soul and glam into a sound, breaking barriers of race, gender and genre. As told by a chorus of voices, guided by an otherworldly Oracle, this rock opera traces their journey from conformity to liberation, from silence to their anthem Lady Marmalade.
Nona Hendryx
As the 2026 Dartmouth Roth Visiting Scholar, the multihyphenate rockstar is collaborating with Dartmouth faculty and breaking new ground in music, Afrofuturism and AI.
Nona Hendryx doesn't follow music's timeline—she rewrites it. A founding member of Labelle, inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame in 1999, she co-created three Gold Albums and the worldwide Platinum phenomenon Lady Marmalade. Her solo catalog spans nine studio albums, a Grammy nomination and collaborations with Prince, Peter Gabriel, George Clinton, Talking Heads and Keith Richards—alongside film work, including the Oscar-nominated Precious and compositions for Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater.
A self-taught technology pioneer since the 1980s, she has experimented with a plethora of new and old electronic instruments and technology. In 2024, that led to creating and producing The Dream Machine Experience—a world-premiere mixed reality installation at Lincoln Center fusing AR, VR and AI through an Afrofuturist lens, featuring George Clinton, Laurie Anderson, Mickalene Thomas, Skin and Vernon Reid. From Lady Marmalade to the Nonaverse—Nona Hendryx has never stopped asking what music can become.
Lynn Nottage
Lynn Nottage is a playwright, a screenwriter and installation artist. She is the first, and remains the only, woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world and include Ruined (2009), Sweat (2017) and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011). She is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, William Inge Festival Distinguished Playwright, TIME 100 (2019). Nottage is currently an Artistic Associate at the National Theatre in London, artist-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory and Professor of Theatre Arts at Columbia School of the Arts.
Resources
Download the Playbill New York Theatre Workshop at Dartmouth
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