Get in the holiday spirit with these two classic Twin Cities performances:
Black Nativity
Telling Langston Hughes’s story of a widow wrapped in sadness whose family arrives to remind her that there is still much to live for, Penumbra’s holiday musical classic delivers a blend of jazz, gospel, and dance that stirs the heart and evokes all the seasons of life with power, depth, and a genuine spirit of joy and renewal.
December 4-21; penumbratheatre.org
La Natividad
A terrific source of Twin Cities holiday memories is La Natividad, the Mexican-culture inspired telling of the Nativity story that takes place at In the Heart of the Beast’s theater space then spills out into the streets for a candlelit procession with snacks to follow. It’s a bilingual mix of puppetry and street theater that somehow manages to feel both transcendent and grittily urban. Thematically, it’s based around the notion of the pregnant Mary as an archetypal refugee, and the grace and beauty of the concepts of shelter, aid, and the limitless hope that accompanies every birth. December 11-21, hobt.org
