Movie features children’s Christmas pageant

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This article was published 19/12/2020 (2122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Along with memorizing her lines for her church’s Christmas pageant, this year Talia Pelletier also needs to understand — and feel — the rhythm of her character.

“It was a bit more challenging to learn because when you sing you can just look at the page and read,” says the Grade 7 student of her role as Grace in the Little Drummer Girl, which includes acting, singing and drumming.

“With drumming it’s memorized and you’re keeping with the beat.”

The annual children’s pageant at the United Church in Meadowood took on a percussive nature several months ago when Christian education director Bonnie Gauthier and accompanist Megan Dufrat realized the restrictions around public gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19 meant they couldn’t stage their usual children’s Advent concert.

So they rounded up drumsticks, purchased 20 orange five-gallon pails from a local hardware store, and taught the preschool and elementary-aged children some new rhythms. “We’re doing things differently and it’s something we’ve never done before,” Gauthier explains of the 30-minute movie they’ve produced from her script, edited by her 14-year-old daughter Alanis.

A take-off on the familiar carol Little Drummer Boy, by Katherine Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone, the pageant tells the story of a young girl learning how to drum and meeting the characters from the traditional Nativity story along the way.

Airing on the church’s YouTube channel at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 20, the movie also includes preschoolers singing a Christmas song set to the melody of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and bathrobe-wearing cast members drumming together for a shepherd’s stomp. Talia closes the production with a vocal and drum rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, which also features each child in a three-second bucket drum solo.

Initially, Gauthier and Dufrat intended to rehearse and record the children inside the church building, but they changed course after restrictions tightened to eliminate gatherings outside of households. Gauthier reassigned parts so siblings could shoot scenes together as Mary and Joseph, shepherds or the three magi. Dufrat recorded short videos of six different drumming rhythms, and then practised with the children over Zoom during their Monday night children’s church meetings.

They called on parents to record their children’s parts on their smartphones and found that letting go of the production resulted in more creativity and imagination than they had initially envisioned.

“This is going to be an experience the kids never forget,” Gauthier says of the process, which included one family filming inside a blanket fort in their living room and another travelling to the Kudlowich Homestead at Birds Hill Park to record the innkeeper scenes.

Moving from a musical production to a percussive one involved a few extra challenges, adds Dufrat, but mostly the kids were excited to learn drumming patterns and then record them.

“Pivoting like this and reimagining this takes a lot of work, but when you see the joy on kids’ faces, it was worth it,” says Dufrat, who edited the musical track on the video.

“This is so different from what we’ve ever done, but this is one people will remember.”

Like so many pandemic pivots, putting together this Christmas production at a distance resulted in some unexpected rewards, says Gauthier, a veteran of six previous children’s concerts and pageants.

“Somehow God is constantly tapping me on the shoulder and finding different ways to get where we need to be,” she says of opening up to new possibilities on how to stage the pageant virtually.

Those new possibilities extended to the young and enthusiastic percussion section of the church, says Dufrat, who says children who might have been reluctant to sing alone on camera were excited about drumming. As she edited the hours of submitted videos, she noticed a common scene played over once the lines were spoken and the drums were silenced.

“One of the coolest parts of the videos is what happens after the kids finish (the part) and their smiles and grins after,” explains the piano teacher and accompanist.

Holding on to hope and possibility was the underlying beat throughout the production, says Talia Pelletier, whose character feels down and even throws away her drum in the storyline.

“You get discouraged and then something lifts your spirits and you get encouraged,” she says.

brenda@suderman.com

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