I’m wrestling with how to describe The Christmas Revels, which is usually a good sign. I like art that can’t be easily filed. Part live theater, part cultural showcase, part seasonal celebration, part music and madness, and part dance-a-thon, this year’s Christmas Revels will take onlookers on a journey to 18th century Scotland beginning Saturday, Dec. 13.



Well, technically, onlookers will be at the Rialto Theater Tacoma. But you get the idea.

The Christmas Revels format is heralded as a harkening to days when art and community were one. What the National Endowment for the Arts calls a “new form of musical theater” is a seasonal celebration of sorts. It involves a nice blend of folk and formal — dance, theater, music and more — with hopes of invoking various times, cultures and places. If you choose to ignore the man behind the curtain, you will be rewarded with a show unlike anything you’ve ever seen, the presenters promise.



The show involves as many as 90 people on stage (like a Funkadelic show, only this one involves more sets of bagpipes). The core of the performance is a large chorus of adults and children, selected from the local community, who are joined by a cadre of professional actors, storytellers, singers, dancers and instrumentalists.



This year, Christmas Revels organizers promise plenty of harp and fiddle, Highland and Lowland bagpipes, the traditions of Plough Monday and Hogmanay, Highland dancing, Scottish country dancing and sword dancing — as well as the “barrie mooskin” (translation: Get that old kilt out of the closet, and head to the Rialto Theater Tacoma).



[Rialto Theater, The Christmas Revels, Dec. 13 2 and 7:30 p.m., Dec. 14 1 and 5:30 p.m., Dec. 16-17 7:30 p.m., $9.50-$26, 310 S. Ninth St., 253.591.5894]