The Gifts of Christmas

Last weekend I participated in a huge Christmas extravaganza put on by my church. The Thousand Oaks Stake of the LDS Church presented "Finding Christmas", a trilogy consisting of the First Christmas, The Music of Christmas, and The Gifts of Christmas. I was in the Gifts of Christmas. Our portion of the trilogy was a play, combining the magic of Dicken's Christmas Carol with modern times. It was so much work... we put on 5 different performances over 3 days: Friday evening, Saturday matinee, Saturday evening, Sunday matinee, and Sunday evening. Each performance required us to perform our segment 3 separate times, because the audience circulated to all three performances. So, three times each performance meant we put on our show 15 times! But it was so much fun! We had lots of rehearsals over the past month or so, especially the last week. It seems that my whole life revolved around the rehearsal and performance schedule. In addition to doing a little 'acting', if you can call it that, I played my hammered dulcimer as part of the play. It went really well! I didn't make any mistakes to speak of, and I wasn't even nervous. It was exhilarating to be a part of such a wonderful production. The other two segments were more like standard concerts or pageants... with choirs, soloists, orchestra, and dancing. I didn't really get to see the other two shows, but I heard they were wonderful. Bruce video taped some of the segments, and everything looked and sounded so professional.

I'm finally getting back to normal this week, but I feel so bad that I haven't been blogging at all since last Friday. I hope that just because it's Christmas coming up next week, that I don't let this go too long without an update!

I created this simple layout (I even used our Christmas card background) to share a few of the photos of the performance. One of the fun things about the show was that I took photos with my iPhone during the show, while I was onstage, and in character. It was part of the show, and it gave me lots of (mostly horrible) photos to work with. (Trust me, although the iPhone cameras have come a long way since they first came out, the photos can't compare to a DSLR!)  But I think these came out just fine, and they capture the spirit of the performance!
(Click on the picture for a closer look)