NEW YORK, NY.- The Shed will present the New York live premiere of Steve McQueen's End Credits, a special two-performance engagement on September 25 and 26 in The Griffin Theater (545 West 30th Street). Created by the Academy Award–winning filmmaker and artist, End Credits is a haunting confrontation with state surveillance, political persecution, and the enduring legacy of legendary singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson.
For this special presentation at The Shed, McQueen's 72-hour video installation will be transformed into a one-hour, live performance featuring actors Laurel Lefkow, Jeff Mash, Eric Meyers, and Regina Reagan, who recorded the nearly 40 years of surveillance over a 10-year period with McQueen. The work exposes the contradictions, absurdities, and human toll of politically motivated surveillance while inviting audiences to consider the fragility of civil liberties and democratic institutions.
"End Credits asks audiences to confront how fear, bureaucracy, and racism can become instruments of state power," said Alex Poots, The Shed’s artistic director. "Presented at a moment when questions of civil liberties, democracy, free expression, and political dissent remain urgently relevant around the world, this rare live presentation offers an opportunity to experience one of Steve McQueen’s most powerful works in a new way."
Spanning one hour, this presentation of End Credits reveals the extensive surveillance campaign waged against Robeson and his wife, Eslanda Goode Robeson, whose advocacy for civil rights, labor, anti-fascism, and anti-colonial movements led to decades of government scrutiny. End Credits draws from thousands of pages of declassified FBI files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Through meticulous archival research and a spare yet emotionally resonant performance, McQueen creates a work that is both historical document and urgent contemporary warning for the health of our democracy.
Originally conceived over fifteen years ago and continually expanded through years of research, End Credits has been presented across the world since 2012 and was initially presented as performance work at Harvard University in 2025 as part of Steve McQueen’s series of Norton Lectures.
Recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation, Steve McQueen is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores universal themes, often addressing painful and challenging histories, and exposes the fragility of the human condition.
Awarded the Turner Prize in 1999, the Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts in 2024 and the Erasmus Prize in 2026, McQueen has had his artwork presented at some of the most significant venues and museums around the world. His work has been featured in Documenta (1997 and 2002); he represented Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was selected several times for the Venice Biennale’s central pavilion (2003, 2007, 2013, and 2015). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012); Schaulager, Basel (2013); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2017); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017). In 2019 he presented YEAR 3 at Tate Britain and had a major one-person exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020 which toured to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan in 2022. In spring 2023, he presented Grenfell at the Serpentine South Gallery, London. In 2024 McQueen unveiled a new installation, Bass, co-commissioned by Dia and Schaulager Basel, at Dia Beacon in New York. It was presented at Schaulager Basel from June to December 2025. He had a solo show at Dia Chelsea New York, which included Sunshine State, first commissioned for the 52nd edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2023, Bounty, and Exodus from September 2024 to July 2025. He presented a new work, Atlas, as part of a solo exhibition at the De Pont Museum, Tilburg this year and will have a solo show at Guggenheim Bilbao in October 2026.
McQueen has directed five feature films: Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Widows (2018), and Blitz (2024). Hunger was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave, received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014. In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a three-part documentary with James Rogan, about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. His documentary film, Occupied City, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. Blitz, his most recent feature film, about the Second World War, had its world premiere at the 68th BFI London Film Festival in 2024.
As the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University for the 2025–2026 academic year, McQueen delivered a series of six Norton Lectures.
McQueen was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011. He was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honors list.
McQueen was born in West London and is based in London and Amsterdam.
Laurel Lefkow is an award-winning actress, who has appeared in numerous film, television, and theater projects and is a regular voice on BBC Radio Four. Recent credits include Carole in The Diplomat, Black Mirror, The Alienist, Absentia, and Fair Play. Lefkow has been in countless radio and audio dramas including Mary Ann in Tales of the City, Ripley in Aliens, and Marion Davies in O is for Orson. Lefkow, with her fellow performers, has been involved with End Credits since 2012.
After his wife inspired him to join her doing improv in Chicago, Jeff Mash has enjoyed performing in a wide range of productions, from Doctor Who and Black Mirror to Dark Shadows and Zero Dark Thirty. That’s a lot of Darks! Even darker, Mash was cast in three different productions as the person who administered lethal injection! Typecast?? But seriously, Mash feels very fortunate to have been a part of End Credits since 2012, and now be part of the live version.
Eric Meyers is a first-class narrator of television documentaries. His credits include PBS-NOVA, Autopsy, When Sharks Attack, Animal Fight Night, and I Shouldn't Be Alive. Acting credits include the films Snatch, Woman in Gold, and Hologram for the King. TV appearances in Fleming, Hiroshima, and The Honourable Woman. Computer game voice credits include Cyberpunk 2077, Beyond a Steel Sky, and RoboCop-Rogue City. Audiobook narrations include The Wolf of Wall Street, Harlan Coben's The Stranger, and Ben Markovitz’s The Rest of Our Lives (2025 Booker Prize shortlist).
Regina Reagan began her theater work in Boston after graduation from Boston College, before training in London and continuing her stage career in the United Kingdom. She has long concentrated on voice-over work, recently narrating the documentary series Witches: Truth Behind the Trials for Nat Geo TV. Reagan has narrated over 250 audiobooks. Along with Eric Meyers, Jeff Mash, and Laurel Lefkow, she has been part of the End Credits project since 2012. This stage version premiered in the Norton Lecture series at Harvard in September 2025.
