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The breathtaking aerialists of Blue Lapis Light reprise their acclaimed celebration of nature at this annual Luminations event, the high-flying dancers performing on columns and ropes among the Wildflower Center's trees and fields of indigenous plants.

La Pastorela – a tradition since the 16th century, the annual yuletide play that's been performed all over Mexico and Latinoamerica – is adapted and directed by Teatro Vivo founder Rupert Reyes. This year, Clemencia Zapata returns as music director of the story of shepherds on a pilgrimage that pits them against angels and demons who test their strength and faith along the way.

The Alchemy Theatre, with permission from the Truman Capote Literary Trust, presents that author's beloved 1956 short story, featuring Luke Hill as the narrator, "capturing Mr. Capote’s richly detailed memories of his Depression-era, rural Alabama boyhood with his best friend – an eccentric, 60-something distant cousin with whom he baked fruitcakes each Christmas." Directed by Michael Cooper, who previously helmed Alchemy's excellent Waverly Gallery production.

A letter that was never meant to be seen; a lie that was never meant to be told; a life he never dreamed he could have. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he’s always wanted: a chance to finally fit in, in this "deeply personal and profoundly contemporary musical about life and the way we live it." Right?

An award-winning, off-Broadway laugh-fest that'll take you back to 1956 and the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein's annual holiday quiche breakfast. Delicious discoveries and cheeky innuendoes ensue, as presented by City Theatre Company.

This show from the Penfold Theatre gang up in Round Rock draws audience members back in time to 1946, as members of the KPNF radio station are assembling for a live radio performance of, well, you know: George Bailey, that angel Clarence, Bedford Falls, and where the band Zuzu's Petals got its name from? Yes.

Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer-winning musical explores how one suburban household copes with crisis and mental illness, taking audiences "into the minds and hearts of each character, presenting their family's story with love, sympathy, and heart." Directed by Lisa Scheps and Brian Cheslik for Ground Floor Theatre and Deaf Austin Theatre. Note: This production will be fully deaf-inclusive, with each character played by two cast members – one deaf, one hearing. And, look, here's what Trey Gutierrez thought of the show.

Tapestry Dance Company's Acia Gray starts it all off as Ms. Bon Marche, a dance diva who introduces little Clara to a world of dance by giving her a pair of tap shoes – and the journey begins with the Mouse King and his powerful style of contemporary rhythm tap leading an army of tapping mice in their battle against the Nutcracker. Performed to a jazzed-up version of the original Tchaikovsky score and beloved jazz classics, all played live by a group that includes Masumi Jones on drums, Eddy Hobizal on piano, and Michael Stevens on bass.

Puerto Rican Folkloric Dance presents Tekina-eirú Maynard's new bilingual musical about the organized group of courageous women who stood up to the patriarchal colonial government of mid-19th-century San Juan for their rights to better living and working conditions.

Join the Texas Early Music Project for its annual multilicious feast of Christmas music through the ages, as they present a concert of medieval chant and joyous English and French carols, magnificent motets for eight parts from Italy and France, and lively Celtic songs, dulcet Dutch carols, exuberant folk-tunes, and more. Brett Barnes, Cayla Cardiff, Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, David Lopez, Jenny Houghton, Gil Zilkha, and Jenifer Thyssen are featured soloists, and acclaimed harpist Therese Honey and countertenor Ryland Angel are this year's special guests.

Valerie is the town butcher with an axe to grind; her daughter is a pharmacist whose clientele extends beyond the drug store. Over one cold February week, the town cop – who just happens to be Valerie’s sister-in-law – will try to sniff out this family’s secrets and lies in the Wisconsin city where the ground is white with snow and the air is black with comedy. Carlo Lorenzo Garcia directs Marisa Wegrzyn's play for Street Corner Arts. But – did the Chron's Elizabeth Cobbe find the show to be as funny as it's supposed to be? And what does she think of that Amber Quick? See here for the full review.

This show presents nine returning and new choreographers (the legendary Dre Torres among them) and 35 dancers to offer an eclectic mix of dance – everything from musical theatre to ballet and jazz. Bonus: The singers of VIBE will also be performing.

"Inspired by datamoshing, quantum mechanics, and the hyper saturation of imagery found in daily life, Gilmer creates oil paintings that explore the psychological effects of the figure through physical mutations that distort and merge various realities. Benton's figurative ceramics also portray a dialogue of the human condition, using symbolism as well as physical mutations to explore the depths of the subconscious. Less than reality and more than a dream, Benton and Gilmer’s work strives to give the viewer an alternative connection to the self." Note: This stuff will burrow into your optic nerves and make you feel a little weird, maybe, about the odd beauty it contains. So, yes: recommended.

The Paradox Players presents the Dickens classic, as adapted Christopher Schario and directed by Barbara Abbate.

ZACH’s adaptation of the Dickens classic is a family-friendly spectacular, a musical sleigh ride through rhythm and time, infusing the traditional Victorian story with a score that spans all genres and eras. Directed by Dave Steakley, with musical direction by Allen Robertson.

The Asian American Resource Center presents four exhibitions that reflect on community, cultural heritage, and nature in various mediums: "Colours of Life: An Indian Perspective" by Shruti Mehta; "Pink Lotus" by Marcella Kourkova; and the group shows "Everything That Matters" and "Abstractions of AVAFest."

This annual concert from the Austin Civic Orchestra features guest violinist Jessica Mathaes, who will perform Vivaldi’s “Winter” from The Four Seasons. Plus, excerpts from holiday classics including Handel’s Messiah and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

George Lucas' modern mythos of space-opera proportions gets the fine art treatment with an officially licensed Disney & LucasFilm exhibit that includes original works and giclees on paper and canvas. Bonus: the gallery's own original film posters and collectibles. And – what's that you say? Oh, yes: COSPLAYERS WELCOME.

Holiday art sale of works that are, yes, 12" by 12" – in a diversity of media, from an array of fine talent, brought to you by those cultural instigators at the Austin Visual Arts Association.

From its vibrant sets and costumes to the impressive cast of more than 200 dancers, this colorful winter classic brings families and friends together every year to enjoy the world’s best-known ballet. Featuring choreography by Stephen Mills, with Tchaikovsky's score performed live by the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

The willful self-destruction of humanity by Earth’s most formidable species – humans – is the topic of New Orleans-born and Dallas-raised photographer Tia Boyd. Through a series of portraits, Boyd reveals "a surviving race of godlike women warriors who have come to terraform the planet for future inhabitants." And here's our full review of the show.

The third iteration of this series of art-conversation featuring Black women and nonbinary artists, presented by #bossbabesATX and Mercy Emelike, showcases local abstract painter Arielle Austin.

This is an extensive group exhibit focused on the personal philosophies of premiere Austin and Central Texas artists. Sacred geometry, the importance of family, life and death, our connection to nature, and spirituality are among the perspectives that the artists (Randall Reid, Sam Yeates, Jan Heaton, Faustinus Deraet, David Leonard, Denise Fulton, and John Sager, among others) have focused on. What a fine follow-up to that excellent "Lone Star Wild" show, and what a glorious way to bid 2019 farewell!

Tom Bandage, inspired by the machinist’s craft and the volumetric simplicity of Bauhaus, attempts to capture the shape of thought through geometric contortions of material, removing traditional construction materials such as concrete, metal, and acrylic from their urban contexts and applying them to abstract conceptions of form and space.

The public is invited to stop in and enjoy dance and music performances by Flamencura youth and adult students and acclaimed dance company A’lante Flamenco.

Mary Shelley's monstrous masterpiece, as adapted by Patrick Sandford, is presented by Different Stages with Norman Blumensaadt directing and Sam Grimes as the unfortunate results of Dr. Frankenstein's tampering with natural forces beyond control.

Sarah Fox's new show at this excellent Eastside gallery is about the nature of little boys and the men that they become. "It is an exhibition," says the artist, "that I made in an attempt to be a better mother and to create a safer world for my son."

Is it too obvious to say "all hail" to this new exhibition of work by that storied creator of graphic psychedelia Matt Rebholz and the modern Magellan of sculptural form and texture Terra Goolsby? In any case, we recommend this "array of intimate pieces that meditates on notions of transfiguration, intracorporeal transit, and planetary departure, offering encounters with bodily and terrestrial alternatives for an uncertain future." It's this sort of thing.

The Visual Arts League of Shalom Austin JCC presents four artists whose works display different techniques of abstraction: Patti Troth Black, Diane Sandlin, Jane Fier, and Ashley Mayel.

We'll tell you two things: 1) Kate Willett is a comedian, actress, and writer whose raunchy feminist storytelling is both smart and relatable, and 2) her 15-minute special recently premiered on Netflix – and we'll recommend you click for reservations ASAP.

Keith Sonnier’s videowork from 1973 is the latest to get the big-screen treatment in this ongoing series from your friends at UT's Landmarks program.

"Morgan’s style of comedy combines her Southern charm and storytelling about her own life into an act that keeps audiences coming back for more. People are always accusing her of spying on them because she, a stay-at-home mother of three with a husband, seems to be living the same life they are."

The Brazilian artist Lucas Simões "thinks of his new works as drawings, even though they carry no graphite and have some dimensionality. He draws with an industrial laser, cutting angular or curved shapes into blackened steel plates, essentially turning them into elaborate paperclips that pinch, pull, and compress his trademark stacks of tracing paper." It's like … a little metal shibari for sheets of pulp? Ingenious, to be sure, and visually intriguing.

Brooke Burnside, Diego Mireles Duran, and Carlos Rosales-Silva use use their unique perspectives to understand the residues of colonial histories and expand the Western cultural vocabulary to include the traditions of their homelands and ancestors, the visual and the spatial offering an alternative to the codified and inequitable linguistic and logical mathematical approaches that most educational structures are built on.

The goal is to photograph one person of each age – that's 0-100 years – of the people who live, work, grew up in, are from, or frequent the area of East Austin around East 12th Street. The good folks of Northern-Southern are hosting this remarkable project, with Keyheira Keys as lead curator, and they might need you, Eastsider, to be among those portraits. (Eventually, there'll be a public exhibition of all these photographs.) See the website for details, then head on over this weekend!

Let's get small, with works by 53 local artists.

The artist Rehab El Sadek continues her exploration into issues related to immigration, belonging, communication, and language, using sound installation, photography, and the written word to inspire consideration of residential spaces and our relationship to them and to each other. Visitors to this intimate Eastside gallery are invited to add their own reflections on where they live and where they have felt most at home. Note: The closing celebration features a reading by Naomi Shihab Nye and friends.

That's right, one of Austin's best little galleries is back – bigger and better than ever, now in a new space south of the river. And what a way to inaugurate this fresh venue – with a sort of sequel to last year's excellent "Witches" show, this one curated by Laurel Barickman and Katie Cowden and featuring a plethora of artists drawing their subjects from folklore and occultism's darker spaces and from deep inside the shadows of human nature. They're embracing – and displaying – all of it here, though: the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the holy and the evil in everyone. The devil, as we know, is in the details.

Austin Playhouse celebrates the holiday season with the romantic musical comedy, set in the 1930s, about two feuding shop clerks who can’t seem to find common ground, but by night write beautiful love letters to their "secret admirers." And who do you suppose those turn out to be? (Note: Not Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan, although this play was made into the movie You've Got Mail.) Starring Joey Banks and Sarah Zeringue, directed by Scott Shipman with musical direction by Lyn Koenning.

From griffins and giants to demons and dragons, monsters have enthralled people throughout time. In medieval art and literature, these fanciful creatures give form to fears, curiosities, and fantasies of the unfamiliar and the unknown. This new exhibition, organized by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, presents a lively array of monsters that appear in more than 50 illuminated manuscripts from the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Each of the three sections of the exhibition – "Terrors, Aliens, and Wonders" – will explore the ways monsters functioned as the embodiment of power, the representation of marginalized groups in society, or the inspiration for awe.

This installation presents new work that expands Lily Cox-Richard’s research into the contextual history of materials, making visible unseen systems that dictate materials’ production, value, and use, and engages larger questions of natural resources, labor, the specifics of place, and the politics of viewership.

Showcasing representations of artists at work from the Blanton’s collection, this exhibition organized by Mairead Carney Horton examines the ways in which artists have performed their identities, built their reputations, and interacted with the marketplace over the last 500 years.

The complex relationship between contemporary art and anthropology shapes the subject of "The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn," an 11-artist exhibition representing a wide range of media – including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance. And here's our own Robert Faires with a full review of the show.

David Sedaris’ irreverent and cynical Crumpet returns! The outlandish tale of a Macy’s elf merrily jingles to life in this holiday classic. With 75 minutes of rollicking (and not so politically correct) fun, this evening will delight adult elves who like things more naughty than nice. Directed by Nat Miller and reviewed here by Paul Beutel.

Yeah, no, this is a monumental showing of work – including a series of paintings commissioned for the exhibition – by one of the best, most provocative artists working on this planet. The former Austinite (he taught at UT for 20 years) Michael Ray Charles "is known for art that investigates the legacy of historic racial stereotypes of African Americans. Since the 1990s, he's created complex, layered paintings that challenge stereotypes, power dynamics, and social and cultural hierarchies." Ah, words can't even – but our Arts Editor Robert Faires offers a fine preview right here.

It's winter-holiday time again, right? And so Austin's newest ballet company, Ventana Ballet, presents their "jazzy and interactive re-imagination" of The Nutcracker at a series of cocktail-enhanced soirées in the courtyard of the Neill-Cochran House.

Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez and Betelhem Makonnen explore immigration and transnational identity, political repression, and the impact of silence in family narratives.