Some tips for your Christmas Play
If you're reading this, it's probably around that time of year where we start to tear our hair out as we face into the Christmas play. On the night, the children will make us proud but there is an awful lot of preparation to be done beforehand!
Here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:
Last but not least, practice makes perfect and it will be alright on the night!
Here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:
- Don't be afraid to change the script to suit yourself. Many of the play scripts we buy are from companies based in the UK and there are often jokes or topics which might work in the UK that wouldn't work so well here. In some plays, the narrators can be quite proper and stilted so don't be afraid to "Irish" it up a bit!
- Make the script relevant to your school/ locality. Try and include some mention of your school or your town or a comment about a local person. It makes the play more meaningful to the people in the audience and will usually get you a laugh!
- Youtube and Itunes are your friends. You may be looking for backing tracks for the children to sing along with for plays or carol concerts. The magic words you need to search for on Youtube or Itunes are "karaoke" or "instrumental". There are plenty websites that will allow you to download from youtube and if that fails, you'll usually find the song on Itunes or some other music website.
- Editing music is easier than you think. There is a programme called Audacity which is fantastic for editing music. If you only want a piece of a song or want the key changed up or down, Audacity will be your new best friend. Don't be alarmed - it does look a bit complicated but if you spend a little while playing around with it, you will get used to it fairly fast. Audacity can be used for many things - changing the tempo of a song, cutting bits out, copying and pasting if you want to repeat a verse, fading a song in or fading it out. I've been using it for a few years and even I haven't fully got to grips with its many uses. One word of caution; to use Audacity, your music must be in MP3 format. If you are an Itunes user you will need to download a programme such as M4A to MP3 Converter, as Itunes files are M4A files.
- Use the children (if they are old and imaginative enough!) If you are a little apprehensive about editing your play, take into account that you have 30 or so little brains sitting in front of you who will probably have better ideas than you and would only be too delighted to help. Rewriting songs, even writing some or all of the play yourself is absolutely possible, if you're brave enough to try!
Last but not least, practice makes perfect and it will be alright on the night!