February 7, 2022

Live Animal Christmas Play 2016 || Behind the Scenes

Today I am giving y’all a little peak into the “behind the scenes” of what REALLY happens to make the show happen.
First off, we had the spacious, quiet, and luxurious loud, crowded fellowship hall room (above) in which hair and makeup happened. We had the greatest crew of ladies you could imagine who did hair and makeup for ALL of the actors. Allison worked on this crew again this year, doing several of the Swiss ladies’ hairstyles.
We also had animal rooms, and a costume room, and dressing rooms, and eating rooms, and hangout rooms, and nooks and corners everywhere between. =)
Allison, getting her makeup done pre-show.
Sitting in line waiting for my makeup…which meant fun times hanging out with this cutie pie!

Almost ready to go!

Liz getting her makeup done.
Jewish mother + daughter duo-Rebecca + I.

Sister love!

Little Miss Rebecca, clad in her sweet white nightgown, reading in her dressing room, in between her scenes.

Allison and I took a few minutes in between shows to run across the square to grab some coffee and a little R+R time.

 Costumes, theatre makeup, and all. =)

Out front, our mother coordinated the hospitality crews that served cookies, candy canes, and hot chocolate to everyone who attended the shows. Sadly in the hustle of everything, it appears that we didn’t get a single picture of mother dear! Shown above is part of her team.

Chess and Dutch Blitz games ruled + reigned in the “grand hall” downstairs, where actors congregated in-between their scenes. It was a bit of a challenge to keep an eye on the TV screen (to keep track of when one’s part was approaching) and be fully engaged in a rousing Dutch Blitz game, at the same time. There may or may not be a number of close calls every year. Those in the audience will never know how close certain people come to missing their scene due to a very different type of activity that they were participating in just seconds before. =)

Even the guys had to wear makeup. Bless their sometimes reluctant hearts. =)

Allison working her Dutch braid magic.
Organized chaos!

Carson + Allison, in-between scenes.
Liz hanging out with one of the babies whose mama was on the makeup crew.
There are babies in abundance at our church! There were several used for the newborn baby Jesus, and several used for the older baby Jesus, during the journey into Egypt scene. 
There were plenty of volunteers to take care of switching babies out and taking care of them before and after scenes. 

Some of the words used for the 2016 script were just the greatest, and were greatly enjoyed and reused through other aspects of the play process. =)

Another coffee break with some of the sweetest gals around!

Carson with two of the other backstage guys. The backstage crew did set changes, set building, and all sorts of other things. Basically everything behind that curtain was them. =)


You’d never know it was a mix of Hershey’s chocolate sauce + red food coloring. =)

Liz, the little Mary, and our friend Katie, the adult Mary.

Waiting to go on stage…Sunday’s classy lookin’ offertory crew—preparing to bring the audiences their toe-tapping renditions of classic Christmas carols.

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These are a few of the pictures collected from our phones. The behind the scenes action seems to often be the least documented, and there are many great moments that aren’t shown here, like the classrooms that were turned into stalls for the animals, and the crews of people that cleaned up in-between shows, and that cleaned up from the animals, and the group of ladies that ran the kitchen and served the actors, etc. I could go on and on.
But this post gives a little taste of what really went down, behind the scenes. =)
And that’s a wrap on the 2016 Live Animal Christmas Play posts!

Tags

christmas, family, live animal christmas show, mabc


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  1. Enjoyed getting a quick glimpse of backstage + that lovely coffee run. 🙂 My brothers were recently were trying to think of someone to play chess with and I said that the basement of Marion Avenue is the place for chess players to be!

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