Seasons > Easter >  Ways to Celebrate Easter in the Church > Passion Week Musical

A musical can be a good option for a church to put on for Easter. First, music can have a stronger emotional impact than words alone. Second, the audience is not expecting a super talent the way they would for a concert, so average choir members can sing together to make a nice musical production. With lots of musical numbers, more time is spent listening to music, with just bits and pieces of acting in between to keep the story line moving, so it is not so obvious if the actors aren’t ready for Broadway. Putting on a musical does require LOTS of practice for LOTS of people, so the church needs to really want to do this!

A nursery loaned the live plants to the church for the production. It made the simple backdrop seem a bit nicer.

They did not have a lot of props, but the ones they had were very nice.

The first scenes depicted life in the synagog and village life. The choir makes an ever ready crowd in each scene.

After briefly showing Jesus’ ministry, they jumped right into the last supper.

All lights were turned off as a substitute for a curtain for scene changes. Effective use of spotlights made it look like a different location without changing the backdrop.

The church baptismal was used for Pilot’s trial--a clever way to change the scene without changing the scene. It also gave the actors a passage to come in from behind.

The aisle was used as a scene change for Jesus carrying the cross, and the choir/crowd was used as a curtain for raising the cross.

The base of the cross is quite the engineering feet! The actor lies on the cross, then it is raised into an upright position. Cleverly made metal hooks go around the crosspieces and look like they come out of the hands, but gives the actor handles to hold onto. To lower the body, the strip of cloth was first it was put under the actor’s arms, then over the cross piece. Some really strong men hold onto the ends of the cloth to gently lower the limp body while other strong men on the front finished lowering the body and lay him on the ground.

The choir moves off to the side to reveal the empty grave painted onto the backdrop.

Seasons > Easter >  Ways to Celebrate Easter in the Church > Passion Week Musical

The baptismal is used in yet another scene change to depict the ascension. I thought it was quite impressive how they were able to effectively portray so many scenes with a single background!