Ideas For Your "One Mad Christmas" Preview Party

Many churches performing dramatic musical productions at Christmas plan a "Listening/Viewing" type of party prior to beginning rehearsals in order to cast the vision and get everyone jazzed (so to speak) about the production. But how do you do that without a soundtrack or quality preview video? That's where we were when we introduced "One Mad Christmas" to our group for the first time.

In previous years, we had used a preview video for this purpose, but this one was, of course, different. We had the added excitement of it being an original musical, but we also had to discover a way to give everyone a picture of what to expect.

Here’s what we did to pull that off. Maybe it will give you a few ideas, also:

• I recruited people to do a reading of the dramatic script before our listening/viewing party. These were generally people I had in mind for the various roles, but not all of them. We printed out copies of the script for everyone, invited them to my house for pizza, assigned them parts to read through, and then we sat in a circle and did a “reading run through.” When we had our "all chorus/cast/interested parties" listening/viewing party, I had these same people read it through like a “radio show.” (Although I honestly can’t remember if we read through sections or the whole thing.)

• I previewed/worked through the score with my pianist and drummer before “previewing” it with everyone else. They had a pretty good handle on it by the time we presented it at the listening/viewing party.

• I printed up production books that included all of the songs that the entire chorus would be singing as well as costume information, background info, countdown information, etc. and passed them out to everyone who came to the listening/viewing party. (Much of this information is provided for you in the "Director's Production Guide" for "One Mad Christmas." It is provided with the other downloadable materials when you license the musical.)

• We sang through the songs live with piano and drums as we introduced the musical that night. This created an immediate "hands on" experience with the musical that involved everyone in the process from the beginning.

• We made a big deal about it being a “special” production, unlike the “canned” musicals we had done in the past. (Not being derogatory here, just trying to distinguish it as being something unique.) Our cast and chorus were very excited about doing a musical that no one else in our area was doing, and one in fact, that had never been done before!

For the earliest groups to license the musical for 2009, Leona and I will be adding a special touch to your Preview Parties by creating a personalized video introduction for you (free, of course). Hopefully, this will help to establish the feel and tone of the musical and our heart/vision behind creating it.

If your group is a little closer to us (we live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex) we’d be happy to do something similar in person. Contact us today!

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Be sure to download all of the free "preview" files that are located in the sidebar of the main page of this blog, and start with the file, "1MadStarthere.pdf." If you have any additional questions, please feel free to drop me a line at: johnnyleckie [at] gmail.com