Well, since church is pretty much the only theatre I am able to do these days, I took the opportunity to direct the annual FBCD Christmas production once again. This was a very different experience from last year, but definitely an enjoyable and rewarding one. Last year the text left so much to the imagination that I was able to infuse it with a very strong directorial concept, even throwing in some classical texts that I love. This year, not so much. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a children's play based on the book by Barbara Robinson and is relatively contemporary and realistic. I didn't feel that there was much directorial "vision" that I could add to it without somewhat cheapening the essence of the play. So we did a pretty straightforward production of the show, attempting to draw the most meaning that we could out of the more meaningful moments. Turns out the play had quite a bit of spiritual value for a secular piece. Nice.
Here is a picture of us getting notes. This is not even the entirety of the people involved. There were 30+ cast members alone, plus a choir, a small team of dancers and a bell choir (and a band and a tech team). Quite possibly close to 100 people involved. Total (organized) chaos.
Together with my partners in crime, maestro David Stanton (who received a promotion after last year's show from choir director to Worship Arts Pastor) and my good friend and choreographer Carrie Dean, we threw in a few musical numbers with dancing to figuratively represent some of the more pivotal moments in the play. Kind of like the interchapters in Grapes of Wrath? Remember that from eleventh grade? It actually worked! Above we have the climax of the play where the bully Imogene has a very touching motherly moment as Mary with the doll Jesus. Instead of it just being a 30-second moment as written in the text, we extended it with a beautiful song and lovely dance. It actually made for a really emotional climax to the play.
I guess this is me directing. Whahoo! I must also mention our producer, Debbie Fox, who again proved that our show would be an utter and complete disaster-- far worse that what we were representing in our play-- were she not involved. I also had two wonderful assistant directors, Christine Sipos and Steven Chavarria. These are people who, when they were first given to me, I did not know what to do with them. But they quickly found their place and became absolutely indispensable. For those of you film buffs, they were very much like the AD on a film set-- directing traffic, being beautifully bossy, and doing all the hard stuff that I am far too neurotic to accomplish. Kudos.
Since there were so many kids involved this year, I changed warm-ups a bit. Warm-ups this year had a stronger emphasis on fun theatre games and ended with me dedicating the show to a special cast member each night. We also did this silly oompapa thing that we used to do at Norwalk High. It's silly, but it somehow becomes very meaningful in context. You hadda be there, I guess.
There are many more of these pictures on our picasa if you click on that little picasa icon that keeps showing up at the end of my posts. =)
