By AFRO Staff
The miraculous story of Jesus’s birth comes to life Nov. 30 – Dec. 22 at Baltimore Center Stage with ArtsCentric’s production of “Black Nativity.”
A scene from the original Langston Hughes production of “Black Nativity” being performed in Rotterdam on Nov. 24, 1962. (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The Langston Hughes classic, which debuted Off-Broadway in December 1961, is a buoyant retelling of the Christmas story through a Black lens. And now the ArtsCentric production seeks to imagine Hughes’ play through a Baltimore lens.
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“What Langston Hughes has captured on the page is a snapshot of what the African-American experience with the nativity story has been. Our interest was in how to bring this to Baltimore, where we are, to our community so it feels like us and sounds like us,” said composer and music director Cedric D. Lyles.
In the show, Hughes’ evocative prose is borne along by exuberant dance and the sounds of jazz, blues, spirituals and gospel songs such as the seminal “Go Tell It On the Mountain.”
“You’re going to get every bit of possible ‘church’ you can imagine,” Lyles said, “but you will still get a story being told about the nativity from the Black perspective.”
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Throughout the show’s run there will be special events such as HBCU Night on Dec. 4 and an ASL performance on Dec. 13.
For more about the show and for tickets, visit ArtsCentric’s website here.
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Tagged: ArtsCentric, ASL performance, Baltimore, Black lens, Black Nativity, Cedric D. Lyles, HBCU Night, Jesus, Langston Hughes
