The Nativity Play

Rehearsal 1

Well. that time of year is upon us again - the time when I have to make THE toughest decision of the year!  Yep! You guessed it - who will be Mary and Joseph this year!  You see in our school we do one whole Infant nativity (only 3 classes total) and traditionally the parts of Mary and Joseph have been taken by Reception children.  Normally these are just 'cameo' parts, and all they have to do is wheel the wonky donkey up from the back of the hall, climb the steps to the stage, and then sit and look sweet.  So on this basis I had actually chosen the 2 children to star this year... and then I found out... this years performance involves speaking parts for M+J, so I had a little try out with them in class, and although 'Joseph' doesn't have the clearest of speech, he was willing to give it a really good go.  'Mary' however, had all the charisma of a block of wood, and made about as much noise.  So there we were, in the hall with the Y1 and 2 classes, first rehearsal proper (they have been learning the songs for a while) and 'Joseph's ' hitherto loud voice, turned into a whisper, and 'Mary' clammed up, and the Y2 teacher just glossed over it and gave them no time to overcome their stage fright!  Well the first rehearsal was, as usual pretty tedious for all concerned, children getting fidgety because all we do is go over the beginning part of the play again, and again, and again.  The play this year is called 'Are we nearly there yet?' and concerns a family who are going on a hiking holiday to Bethlehem.  Anyway after we had finished and gone back to class, I got Mary and Joseph together to talk about their parts.  Joseph was still really keen to carry on, but Mary didn't want to know, so we agreed that she could become a 'star' and one of the 'stars' could become Mary.  All that remained was for me to inform the parents of the 'small' change in costume requirement!

 

Mary and Joseph continued.....