BEYOND BB

When do you start making plans for Christmas? At Play it by Ear Drama, we’ve been thinking about Christmas for months. We’ve been taking bookings for our Nativity Pantomime since last December and we’ve been working on the new show since the summer so by the time we get to the big day, you would think we would be completely Christmased out and yet that’s not entirely true.

This year we will be performing the third incarnation of our Nativity Pantomime. It’s always fundamentally the same story; Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus in a manger, a supporting cast of angels, wisemen, shepherds and of course the panto staples of Buttons and Widow Twanky; and while all of that sounds so familiar, our job as a Christian drama company is to bring this story to life in a new and engaging way that brings home something a bit different to our audiences whether they’ve heard the story a thousand times or never before.

As we perform more than 30 shows over the Christmas period, we are often asked if we get bored of doing the same thing over and over again and surprisingly the truth is, not really. Every audience is different and therefore every performance is different…the venues vary in shape and size leading to a variety of logistical challenges and there’s no telling how audience members are going to interact, especially the younger ones.  All of that is true on a surface level but also in a much deeper way too. Children can throw you off with an unexpected interaction but also often pleasantly surprise you when it comes to how attentive they are in the quieter sections of the show while older audience members are often struck by seeing something which they haven’t really thought about before because they’ve seen the story in a new way.

All of this keeps us on our toes but indeed it is the Christmas story itself which ultimately keeps us wondering. The power of performing Biblical stories is that you get to step into the shoes of those characters and think deeply about what they were thinking and feeling at any given moment. The power of doing that thirty something times over the course of a month is that you get to journey with Mary and Joseph, you get to experience the joy of the shepherds and sometimes over that month, new ideas will come to mind…a line that you have said 26 times already will suddenly take on a different meaning on the 27^th time, a new insight, a new wondering as to what that character may have been going through at the time and a deeper sense of God’s presence as we grapple with everything life throws at us. Of course, most significantly we receive a fresh understanding of the incredible gift that God has given, of what Christmas is all about…Emmanuel, God with us.

Matthew 1:23

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel” (which means, God with us).

Written by Ross

Play it by Ear Drama