Christmas Musicals for Church
Issue link: https://read.jwpepper.com/i/144030
57 Hark, the Herald Angels Sing – • Send a recording of this song home with each child in order to offer them the opportunity to listen to it repeatedly and learn all the verses. This carol has a lot of words and will take the children several weeks to learn. • Learn one verse a week for three weeks, singing only that verse each week. On week four, put all the verses together and sing through several times with the track, to allow the children to hear the key change before verse 3. This carol offers the opportunity to invite the Congregation to participate by singing along! Production Notes Stage Placement for Children: One of the challenges of this musical is also one of its strengths – the use of multimedia and live stage performance, all in one production. The children will want to see the screen for the DVD projection, and will need to, in order to sing along and stay with the characters on the DVD. Let me suggest that you lower your screen so that the children can easily see it from the stage, but not too low so as to cover up any of the stage set or the children. It will also need to be high enough for the audience to see comfortably. Try placing your children to one side of the stage so that they can turn slightly to both see the screen, and also project toward the audience as they sing. [You could also place a monitor screen on the floor facing the children, so they can see it easily and still face the front of the stage.] Additional Production Notes VeggieTales Theme (Opening Song) • Although a tuba is played in the DVD animation for this opening theme song, if possible, have a live tuba player actually come onto the stage and "play along" with the oom-pah (1-5-1-5) ostinato. Or, the 'live player' could pretend to be playing, achieving a similar effect. This is strictly to add humor and entertainment to the opening scene. Decorate the tuba with loads of tinsel and other Christmas decorations, to the point of the extreme. (The use of tinsel will be understood later in the musical when Larry sings, "Oh, Where Is My Tinsel?") The live tuba player can be a teenager or adult, and should be very animated, "acting" and interacting with the audience. You might want to have the live tuba enter down an aisle or from a side door so he/she can move through the audience. • Children should already be on stage before the opening of the DVD and the tuba coming on stage. Place them in a casual manner along the front of the stage, so that they can "lead" the audience in singing along with the children and the DVD.