In 1961, Broadway made a quiet decision about how the infant Christ could be depicted in Black Nativity. Boston’s National Center of Afro-American Artists made a very different one, and has stood by it for fifty-six years.
Join us for an evening of conversation, poetry, and song that tells the story behind Boston’s most beloved holiday tradition. You’ll hear how Langston Hughes’s ties to a Roxbury family shaped the music of our production, how Elma Lewis made Black Nativity a tradition passed down through generations, and why Boston’s choices on stage still matter today.
Featuring
- Wallace Best, Princeton University, author of Langston’s Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem
- Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon, Wesleyan University, author of The Black Circuit: Race, Performance, and Spectatorship in Black Popular Theatre
- Judge Milton L. Wright Jr., a 42-year member of the Black Nativity cast and its adult choral director, narrator and soloist
- Moderated by Amanda Shea, Boston Music Award winner and Emmy-nominated spoken-word artist
The program also includes performances of Langston Hughes’s poetry and by Black Nativity’s Voices of Black Persuasion choir.
