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Join Austin Playhouse in celebrating the season with award-winning actress, storyteller, and author Bernadette Nason, as she reprises her one-woman version of Charles Dickens’ classic. Using the author's own abridged version, Nason vividly brings the story to life, portraying more than 30 characters in one hour. Yeah, we're awfully fond of this version – it'll do your holidays up right!

Hi, Brow! Good to see you on the Cap City stage again, local boy – rocking the mic, waxing all acerbic on the habits of the great unwashed, skewering the legends of rock & roll with your guitar in hand. No wonder they love you on Comedy Central, at HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, and here in Austin where you'll be wielding a big can of comedy whupass and anti-Grinch spray as this year's pinnacular holiday approaches.

"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.

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.

This is a free, citywide event in which the brass, string, and woodwind ensembles of the Austin Symphony travel all over Austin to perform during the month of December. Catch 'em, gratis, at your local venue.

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!

UT's Christine Zepeda leads a special tour of the Blanton's "Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders" exhibition, illuminating a panoply of griffins, giants, demons, dragons, and the other monsters that have enthralled people throughout time.

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.

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.

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.

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

The 2020 Texas Biennial Open Call is open to artists currently living and/or working in Texas, to Texas natives/expats working anywhere in the world, and to artists who have produced significant work in Texas over the last three years. Applications accepted online through Feb. 7. See website for details, yes.

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.

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.

Here's the 15th annual exhibition at Austin City Hall, presenting a wide array of painting, sculpture, drawing, and other media by 113 local artists. This year, the exhibition includes a special selection of photographs: The Bold Beauty Project of Texas, featuring images of Texas women with disabilities taken by photographers from across the state.

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 time for another Austin edition of this national reading series, featuring a theme of Reconciliation – as explored by the belletristic savants Sandra Sidi, Carrie Fountain, Josh Denslow, and The Flyin’ A's.

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