Pageantry

I met with our Choir Director this morning to talk about the Children's Christmas Pageant. Oh, my goodness. So many things to consider.

He wanted to meet to bounce ideas off someone else and, since I'm directing the Cherub Choir this year, he thought it should be me.

We looked over several canned Programs. While they all have strengths and weaknesses, none seemed right for our Choir. We are running consistently about 30 children at choir practice, 10 of them being 4, 5, and 6 year olds.

Parents want a Pageant to last longer than 5 minutes. But the little kids can't handle much more than 5 minutes. And we only have 4 middle-schoolers. Everything is either too hard or too simple.

Then we have the scenery issue. If we set the Play in Bethlehem, we have scenery already. Any other setting, and new scenery must be made, including a backdrop. And when will we have time to do that?

Speaking of time, we're working now on All Saint's Day music and really won't be able to get into the throws of Christmas until after All Saint's, which leaves only 5 weeks of practice. Anything too difficult won't allow for enough practice time, unless . . .

We can use a accompaniment CD. Then we can give copies of the CD out to all the children so they can practice the music at home, tripling the impact of our practice times. However, if you use the CD, then you HAVE to use a canned program, and we're right back where we started.

I had no idea this would be so difficult. David, our Choir Director, played an amazingly catchy piece for me that he wrote last night (he's VERY talented and we're lucky to have him at our church). If we could somehow build our own Musical around his pieces, we may be in luck. But then we don't have the practice CD's - unless he tapes him playing the pieces.

Ultimately, it all falls solidly on HIS shoulders. I felt a little sad for him. He has a lot of work if we go that direction. Truthfully, he has a lot of work if we go ANY direction.

I think we have a start of something big, though. And I can't wait to see the finished product.