This month, Seattle's Black Nativity returns to the stage after a 10-year break. The new production takes audiences to church, inviting them to raise their voices and feel joy.
Intiman Theatre produced the play, from the acclaimed African American poet and playwright Langston Hughes, annually since 1998. The play is a re-telling of the birth of Jesus through a Black lens. The creative team behind the production included the Reverend Pat Wright, who passed away last year, and her Total Experience Gospel Choir.
Due to financial trouble, the theater stopped producing the show after 2012. When they decided to bring it back, they put together a new team to bring a different version of the production to life. Director, Valerie Curtis-Newton said she was excited to re-imagine the show.
"I didn't feel bound to do whatever had been done before except to use Langston Hughes' script as the roadmap," Curtis-Newton said. "What I knew is that as a queer, artistic, Black woman, it was important to me to make sure that the play was as open and inviting as it could be."
Traditionally, the first part of the play takes audiences through the Nativity, while the second half is usually a sermon. Curtis-Newton got rid of the sermon and instead chose to use the second act as a way to engage the audience directly through song. The production tapped Rev. Sam Townsend Jr. as the music director. The role that his mentor, Rev. Pat Wright had assumed back in the day.
"I think that's what makes the second part of that interview in this production so special, because we really turned the focus from the stage to the audience, the audience actually becomes the choir," Townsend said.
Townsend said the show has struck a chord. He described three occasions when men have come up to him with tears in their eyes thanking him for the joy the show brought them.
Black Nativity runs through Dec. 30 at Broadway Performance Hall at Seattle Central Community College.
