Several years ago, Dramatic Christmas Musicals were in plentiful supply. Many churches were performing dinner theatres or simply innovative, dramatic productions in an attempt to reach out to their communities with the Good News of new life in Jesus Christ at Christmas time.
In those days, I was the Associate Pastor for Worship Arts at a church in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. We had performed many of Deborah Craig-Claar's works , but found that there weren’t a lot of new dramatic musicals available.
So my wife, Leona and I lost our minds and decided to just create one ourselves. About a year and a half later, we started rehearsals…
Here’s the scoop on “One Mad Christmas:”
The musical was inspired by the movie, “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” although there are only a few similarities. The story surrounds Cooper Weston and a group of Christmas travelers who are presented with the possibility of finding 250,000 dollars that is hidden somewhere in the fictional town of Madding, Nevada, on Christmas Eve of 1960.
Throughout the course of the musical, the group grows from the small group of searchers to a crazy mob including Murray, a huckster who overhears the group talking about the money, a trio of “Nightclub Singer wannabes,” Deano, Frankie and Sam (who sing a song called, “We 3 Cats”), and even a group of kids who have been chasing Department Store Santas! But will more money really solve the problems they are going through and provide what they really need?
Hmmm….
Anyway, there are six scenes, including a nightclub (old style), a department store, a library, and a mine. There are a variety of surprises, a touch of mystery, a lot of humor, and a clear presentation of the hope we have in Jesus.
My wife and I tried to avoid as many cliché’s as possible, include the kinds of things that we enjoyed from previous productions, and put together a story we felt that we and our friends would enjoy seeing. We presented 3 performances with our Worship Arts Ministry, and it was very well received.
Not long after presenting the musical, we felt called to plant a new church. When we made that leap, we kind of left any thoughts of publishing the musical behind us and poured ourselves into the task before us. We always thought we'd get around to making it available to churches or getting it published, or something - but for those of you who are familiar with church planting, you know that we rarely had much time for that.
Since then, we've had numerous inquires about the availability of the musical, and I was reminded that there are churches who might still be interested in a creative, independently produced dramatic musical for Christmas.
That's why we started this site.
Here you'll find tips, ideas, extras and "behind the scenes" stories about this production for churches who are currently working on or are interested in performing "One Mad Christmas." We hope you find what you're looking for.
Start your search here: Seven Reasons To Do "One Mad Christmas" This Year
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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
