Event Information

Black Nativity

Hanna Theatre at Playhouse Square
Start: November 30, 2024 7:30 pm
End: December 15, 2024 5:30 pm

Address:
1501 Euclid Ave. Ste. 200
Cleveland, OH – 44115

Admission Price: $$ ($25 - $75)

This December, the Karamu House, a multi-cultural theatre and Cleveland mainstay that produces African American focused productions, will perform Langston Hughes’ The Black Nativity at the Hanna Theatre. This popular holiday production often sells out, so act fast and get your tickets today!

History of the Black Nativity

The Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is often called a “gospel-drama,” as it heavily features gospel music — perhaps even more than traditional theater techniques.
 
According to Hughes’ biographer, Arnold Rampersad, Hughes went searching Harlem for the most authentic gospel music he could incorporate into the show: “Haunting the storefront churches and temples, he slipped in among the faithful while the services were in full swing and the melodic and religious fervor rose to its zenith. Then he hurried back to his desk to revise and revamp his text.”
 
First performed at the York Theatre on Dec. 11, 1961 and then at President Kennedy's International Jazz Festival, it went on to cause a sensation at the Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto, Italy.

A New York Times critic reporting from Spoleto wrote, "Sophisticated Italian audiences greeted Black Nativity with enthusiasm, taking part in the singing and hand clapping and insisting on curtain call after curtain call."

The staid Rome newspaper Il Tempo wrote, "The elegant festival public appeared to have forgotten itself, lost in this rhythmic wave that overwhelmed it, an integral part itself that bound stage and auditorium in a mystical fusion." In London, Oslo, Brussels, Copenhagen and Rotterdam, Black Nativity triumphed before its return to New York and the then-new Lincoln Center. 

Significance to Cleveland

This production has special meaning to Cleveland. Langston Hughes taught at Karamu House as a young man and lived in an apartment at Karamu. He often returned to Karamu during the 1930s to observe and help shape the debuting presentations of several of his works. So, it is especially fitting that it comes alive on the newly renovated Jelliffe stage.