Arts & Culture

On Thursday, Jan. 23, five actors with intellectual disabilities will take the stage in Back to Back Theatre’s “The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes” at ArtsEmerson. In 70 minutes, the powerful performance vacillates from hilarious to heart-wrenching to deeply intellectual and back again. 

On Saturday night, Jan. 18, Terence Blanchard and his quintet, the E-Collective, gave a concert at the Berklee Performance Center, presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston.

The brushstrokes of Anthony Young’s paintings are laced with generational trauma. In his show “Passage: A Space Between Too Much and Never Enough,” running at Boston’s AREA Gallery through Feb. 2, Young explores with delicacy and dynamism the roots of this trauma and the ways to overcome it.

Through Feb. 9, the Lyric Stage Company debuts a show as sweet as its name. “The Cake,” written by Bekah Brunstetter, follows a traditional Southern baker named Della who is thrown into moral conflict when her deceased best friend’s daughter Jen asks for a wedding cake for her same-sex marriage.

Several years ago, playwright Mary M. McCullough overheard a longtime married couple bickering about why the husband wouldn’t leave the house. McCullough jotted down a few lines of dialogue and put it away. Now, drafts later, that conversation reemerges in the debut of McCullough’s play, “Smoked Oysters,” playing at Greater Egleston High School in Roxbury Monday through Wednesday, Jan. 20–22.

There’s a new group of art curators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and most of them are still in high school. “Black Histories, Black Futures,” opening at the museum Jan. 20, showcases the talents of young scholars as part of new partnership between the MFA and local youth empowerment organizations.

Through Saturday, Jan. 18, creators at the Society of Arts and Crafts in the Seaport are looking through the lens of childhood wonder in “Child’s Play.” Here, adult artists create whimsical, play-inspired pieces that both reignite the wonder of early play, and, if the viewer so desires, analyze the sometimes dark forces behind that play.

“Cats” opened at the Citizens Bank Opera House in Boston on Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 19. The show features new sound design and direction, as well as new choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler of “Hamilton” and “In The Heights” fame. Brandon Michael Nase, who’s currently starring in the show’s North American tour as the wise feline Old Deuteronomy, says that in the world of musical theater, there’s an adage that actors often use: “When there’s nothing left to sing, you have to sing.”

On Dec. 31 at Trinity Church in Boston, the Handel and Haydn Society performed its 2,500th concert. Fittingly, it was the annual Jubilee Day Concert celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the United States, this year sporting its new name, the Emancipation Proclamation Concert.

Recently, the Millennium Gospel Choir performed its 19th annual Christmas concert at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Now a three-concert event spanning Friday and Saturday, the program draws capacity audiences, many of whom, like the singers, return year after year.

Actors’ Shakespeare Project rings 2020 in with a laugh. Running through Jan. 12 at the Charlestown Working Theater, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” is a humorous romp through the Bard’s canon, with the cast taking on some of his most famous characters with wit and skill.

It was a spectacular year for artists of color in Boston. Diverse voices thrived in theater, visual art, music, dance and performance across the city. Before we dive into all the arts 2020 has to offer, we’re looking back on a few of the many wonderful works of 2019.