The Best Christmas Pageant Ever comes to Renaissance Center

Release Date: 12/13/2001. Expired: 12/16/2001

The Herdman kids are the worst, meanest, most behaviorally challenged kids in the world and they are in the church Christmas pageant by default. Only time will tell how the wild hijinks pan out as The Renaissance Center presents The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

As an added treat, special live musical performances will be held before the play, and the performances will be different each evening of the play, according to Elaine Sherrill, senior director of Music at The Renaissance Center.

Written by Barbara Robinson and directed by award-winning director Art Conn, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever focuses on a couple struggling to put on the church Christmas pageant and they are faced with having to cast the Herdman kids in the production. However, the most inventive, awful kids in the history of the world haven’t heard the Christmas story, they don’t attend church regularly and nobody knows anything about their parents. The children fight, bully and appear to have no respect for each other or anyone else. Once they discover what the Christmas story is about, it’s mayhem and fun and a head-on collision with how things really ought to have been, had they had anything to say about it, on that starry night in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago.

Conn, who has been directing live theatre for more than 20 years and spent several of those years directing plays at Fort Campbell, Ky., said The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is one of his particular favorites.

“I’d done it before and it’s such a good Christmas show,” Conn said. “It involves a lot of children, it’s for children and adults and appeals to a wide range of audiences at Christmastime.”

Conn, who recently garnered the top nod in the FORSCOM Awards for his direction of The Dining Room for the United States Army, said he is fond of community theatre since it gives everyone in the community a chance to become involved in all aspects of live theatre if they so desire.

“I love community theatre,” he said. “It’s great when you can get the community involved in actually doing theatre, working around it, unlike professional theatre where everybody gets paid to do everything. It’s more community involvement.”

In addition to Conn’s first-place award, his cast also took first place in Ensemble.

“I also got first place in Set Design and Lighting,” Conn said.

Performances of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever are 7 p.m. Dec. 6-8 and 13-15, and 2 p.m. Dec. 9 and 16.

Tickets are $10 adults, $8 seniors and $5 children under 13.

For more information, or to purchase tickets call The Renaissance Center at (615)740-5600.

The Renaissance Center is located at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 minutes west of Nashville off Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Theatre page for more about community and professional theatre.

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