My friend, Mika teaches Sunday school at her church. They put on a Christmas pageant every year but Mika was tired of doing the same thing every year so approached me. Would I help her even though she couldn't afford to pay me much? I told her I wouldn't charge anything for a church function but would help her. What did she have in mind? Well, she really didn't know. She thought I'd have an idea.
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Ummm...oh. I'm not religious at all. Spiritual but not religious. What would we do that wouldn't likely offend most people? I was mowing my lawn when it came to me.
I'd written a story about angels for my niece who was born on Thanksgiving. The surprise twist ending was that she was the Tiniest Angel, sent on Thanksgiving to remind everyone of what they have to be thankful for.
Mika loved the idea and the story...but we'd have to adapt it to the stage.
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We had plenty of church volunteers to help us construct the stage after we came up with a design for it.
We had seven little angels, one of which would be the Tiniest Angel. Plus a man to play God.
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The backdrop for the stage was a white wall covered with white mini curtain lights. Overhead were clouds.
Mika and I found a suitable "throne" for God, repainted it gold. We decorated 4 of my Christmas trees in angels, that would flank either side of the throne. I made and painted Earth out of corrugated. This would go in front of the throne, the Tiniest Angel would hide behind it and emerge from behind it to signify her incarnation on Earth.
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We needed somewhere to stage the kids when the Tiniest Angel was talking to God about going to earth so we decided we'd seat them at a dining table - an angel dining table. Thank heavens for Pinterest! We found the perfect angel table to recreate.
In order to facilitate the one set change we'd have, I built a platform on wheels that we could roll the set table onto the stage on. We sewed two white tablecloths together to make the tablecloth long enough to hide the platform on wheels.
Mika found this angel chair online and we both loved it.
Back to Habitat for Humanity Restore for 6 chair87\ s we
3made into angel chairs. The wings are made out of sturdy polystyrene and wired to the chair frame.
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Our volunteers helped us crank the stage and chairs out very quickly.
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On to the costumes. Each child's parents agreed to get their child his/her costume so we sent home a sheet with the kids showing them costume samples. We'd chosen white, gold and silver as our colors.
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For the Tiniest Angel's and God's costumes I consulted my friend Ellen in New York, who's a Broadway costume designer. She very graciously drew out God's costume for us and the church's sewing circle made it for us.
Ellen said she'd make the Tiniest Angel's costume for us and ship it to me.
In no way were we prepared for what arrived! The entire bottom of the dress was LED lights beneath the fabric. The top was silver sequins. Ellen had even made a pair of articulated wings!
While our Tiniest Angel was thrilled with her costume, we now had a round of 6 other little voices saying "How come SHE gets to have moving wings?!!" (We should have anticipated that one coming)
So the guys set to making 6 more pair of articulating wings so we didn't have a mutiny on our hands. LOL
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As luck would have it, our Tiniest Angel took ballet and made up an angel ballet to make her grand entrance onto the stage. What a great idea! She moved so gracefully she did look like an angel!
Mika and I couldn't have been more proud of our little angels. None of them missed their marks or forgot their lines. Their performance was perfect and got a standing ovation from the congregation.
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I was glad Mika and I had decided to hire a videographer to videotape the entire production. Church members could later order a copy of the video, which helped raise a little more money for the congregation.
Mika told me a couple of days later that there had been ministers from two other congreations in the audience and had asked if the kids could perform The Tiniest Angel at their churches. We ended up taking our show on the road for a brief time.