Photo credit: Jenny Plevin
For the third year and counting, the Marcus Center has teamed with its resident company, Black Arts MKE, to present Langston Hughes’ song play Black Nativity. Under the perfect direction of Malkia Stampley and with mighty contributions by music director Antoine Reynolds and choreographer De Mar Walker, the story of the birth of Jesus is given the immediacy of present-day life in Milwaukee.
Black Nativity’s 30 songs cover the full range of musical styles created by African Americans while the ever-lively, affecting stage images and dancing tell several stories at once. There’s the familiar one—Mary, Joseph, the angel, shepherds and the three kings—and another one that’s right off the streets. A brilliant four-piece band and a local cast of sensational singer-dancer-actors (including four talented children) blew the roof off the Marcus Center’s Wilson Theatre on opening night.
It’s easy to imagine a far more quaintly reverent, less flesh-and-blood production of Hughes’ 1961 song poem than the one Stampley has staged. There are no folded hands or bowed heads; nothing resembling a crèche. In addition to the jaw-dropping musical performances, secular souls like mine receive plenty of nourishment from the imagery. White privilege allowed me to grow up with the unconsidered notion that, while Jesus was everybody’s shepherd, he most likely loved his white sheep the most. The image of a black baby Jesus in the loving arms of a contemporary young black Mary is infinitely meaningful.
We see Mary in the agony of labor—writhing on the ground while dignified women in modern African dress encircle her, dancing and singing, uniting their energies to help this humblest of new mothers through childbirth. That child, born in the lowest circumstances (no room for them in, um, Bethlehem), will become that revolutionary visionary, that undying moral inspiration, that Prince of Peace.
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A tableau at the top of the show includes performers taking the knee. The stage is divided for most of Act Two between a church choir with their preacher and a group of Milwaukeeans at the grave of a slain child. The latter stage a protest holding signs such as “Reclaiming My Life” and “My Humanity Should Not Be Up for Debate.” After a momentary mimed argument, church folk and protesters unite, proclaiming the highest value of Christianity and Humanism in the closing tableau: a march led by children with sign that read “Love.” Joy to the world!
Through Dec. 17 at the Marcus Center’s Wilson Theatre at Vogel Hall, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, call 414-273-7206 or visit marcuscenter.org/show/black-nativity.
