School Nativity Plays - Classic or Dud?

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Tell me about yours - did you get to be Mary or Joseph?

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I think I was a wise man once, type cast as ever.

Though, my best school play performance was when I was the scene shifter and didn't have to be in the play at all! Yay!

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:19 (twenty-two years ago)

i think i wz a three king once

"myrrh is mine its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom sorrowing sighing [something] dying sealed in a stone cold tomb"

party on!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:21 (twenty-two years ago)

i was mary. i had one line to say, and i forgot it. the shame.

― rener (rener), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Being from the People's Republic of Western Canada the school once did this thing where everybody dressed up as third world peasants and harangued the gathered audience about their selfishness and materialism at Xmas. And you wonder where some of my 'political views' come from?

― dave q, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Being of limited stature I got to be the page to one of the Three Kings in my first stage appearance at the age of seven. I love the way that extra characters are added to the story to accommodate everyone (if the music teaching at your school is good this problem can be alleviated by having some of the kids in a band). The most obvious addition to the basic story - the Innkeeper! The story of this non-canonical chap totally ruining the play by bundling M&J inside saying "Plenty of room!" has passed into school play folklore.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, I made the role of Innkeeper my own, with my Arthur Daley-esque ad-libs as I pottered around the stage going "No room at the inn, no room at the inn. But I might have something even better. How do you fancy something rustic madam?"

When I was five i was so little they made me the baby Jeebus.

I was also the scary Injun witch doctor in "Christmas On the Prairie" - an effort penned by out teacher one year as an excuse to since "The Green Green Grass Of Home". I made some of the little-uns cry with my realistic if somewhat steroetypical display of a Machivelian evil-dooer. Or maybe it was my maraca painted like a humang skull. Either way I got burnt at the stake at the end of the play (or at least had orange crepe paper waved at me at the stake).

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:30 (twenty-two years ago)

once i was a three king(tm) and once i was king herod.

― michael wells (michael w.), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 11:10 (twenty-two years ago)

In my Nativity play, back in the mid-seventies, I was cast as a slave of one of the Three Kings of Orient (I dont remember slaves in any other production of the story - maybe the teachers were going for historical authenticity). This was bad enough... but so was the only black girl in the entire school. This was in the days before political correctness went MAD, obv.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 11:14 (twenty-two years ago)

My school was far more multicultural than Jerry's, with Greek and Turkish Cypriot, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, African and West Indian kids. There was a group of kids cast as Children from Different Lands by the headmistress who had to do NOTHING AT ALL except come in and kneel before the manger (oops, almost typed manager there - a Freudian slip if ever there was one).

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 11:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't remember doing nativities - we did Plays. I was a teacher in one and got to wear high heels. I was very pleased with my ladylike appearance and didn't realise that I was, in fact, a Comedy Highlight until I tottered onto the stage. I was also a bluebird in Snow White, complete with blue tights, leotard, home-made wings attached to my shoulders and rings with loops of elastic and a brown beak.

My sister has a battered pink teddy bear called Jesus - we think it acquired the name after it was the baby in her playgroup nativity.

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

i got to be a star made out of aluminum.

― bruice stringbean, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 12:26 (twenty-two years ago)

i vaguely remember nativity stuff, but i def remember aladdin when i was 7, and when i was 8 i was a spirit of a tree in some weird pagan euro-tale thing.

what is dud is hilarious comedy sketches where grown up people pretend to be kids doing nativity. this was the basis of every ep of Whose Line is it Anyway?

what is classic is EVERY clip on You've Been Framed of parent videoing nativity only for kid to lift up skirt/fall off stage and land on spike/wave and shout "mummy! mummy! mummy! mummy! mummy! mummy!" v loudly/drop the baby jebus/hit shepherd/pull down backdrop/slap joseph for sly sloppy kiss/cry.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

we never did them in school, we had multi cultural winter things but in church i was a shepered.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:07 (twenty-two years ago)

We did a kinda Christmas play based on nursery rhymes when I was in Primary 1. We were the 4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie, we all had to crouch down in the pie (a masterpiece of Blue Peter stylee crepe paper and corrugated cardboard) until the end when we all had to jump out at the "when the pie was opened" line. This would have worked perfectly if a certain little boy hadn't peed his pants and caused a mass exodus of Blackbirds way before their cue!

― smee (smee), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:16 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.ocsociety.co.uk/Images/Iwerne.jpg

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Clearly it's time to invoke one of the greatest books ever:

http://familyfun.go.com/Resources/Features/entertain/books/book_bestxmaspageant.jpg

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

My god, was that made into a TV Movie? I think I loved it as a child.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, back in the early eighties with Loretta Swit. Reasonable enough adaptation, but the book with the original illustrations is the winner. Between that, A Christmas Story and A Charlie Brown Christmas, that makes a reasonably good overview of a second-half-of-the-century American christmas vision, but more could be included...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Angle #4.

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Was yours a geometric play Graham?

― smee (smee), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

No, I just a deparate blatent attempt at fitting in.

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Awww Graham, when I make a film of my life, you can have the part of the ickle boy who peed on all the other blackbirds in the pie - OK?

― smee (smee), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I was always The Angel Gabriel, due to being the only one in my class who had long blonde hair - which was apparently the main qualification for the part. I remember having to wear gold tinsel as a halo, and we had to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

― C J (C J), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Awww Graham, when I make a film of my life, you can have the part of the ickle boy who peed on all the other blackbirds in the pie - OK?

Was there no evian bottle handy?

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Chortle. If only we'd had a pint glass.....

― smee (smee), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I am sure I have told everyone I know at least 12 million times that I was swindled out of the role of Mary in our nativity play as despite the fact that I was the girlfriend of a little boy called Joseph (we were about 6) who was playing, well, Joseph, they thought it'd be cute to have the little girl called Mary playing Mary. I was not happy. Also I had long brown hair and everyone knows Mary had long brown hair. And I'd practiced by stomping round after my bath with a pale blue towel over my head for MONTHS before that. I had to be a stupid angel instead.

But then I got to be Sleeping Beauty in a later play so it was OK in the end (I guess they were half right...)

― Emma, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I have but one memory of my first ever nativity play, held at the local Catholic Church. I was dressed as a lamb and bawled my head off for about an hour. I remember looking out onto the audience and seeing my mum, gran and aunt at the back, looking worried/embarrassed. The priest was talking at the time and just kept on with his sermon as if nothing was happening.

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 19:13 (twenty-two years ago)

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