This wasn't a party per se but a small stage production my friend, Chris and I put on for her church. I'm including it in case anyone wants to do something like this.
Chris lead her church youth group, who traditionally put on a Christmas presentation each year - usually the typical nativity play so many churches do on Christmas.
Chris wanted to do something different, would I help her?
"Well, what do you have in mind?" I asked.
"How about a story about angels?" she responded.
I thought she already had a play about angels for the kids to perform, but no. I was supposed to help her come up with one. YIKES!
I do my best thinking and come up with my best ideas when I'm not thinking at all. LOL I was dusting my furniture when the light bulb for this one came on.
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Some background: When my eldest niece made her First Communion I wanted to give her a unique gift that no one else would give her. I came up with the idea of writing a story about angels - which was ludicrous given that the extent of my knowledge where angels were concerned consisted of the fact they made nice Christmas tree toppers. Laura was born on Thanksgiving Day and in my story, The Tiniest Angel the surprise ending would be that Laura was the Tiniest Angel, sent to earth to remind all of us of everything we had to be thankful for.
Some truly miraculous angel-related events happened during my writing of that story but that's another story for another time. At any rate, after I'd written, illustrated and sent The Tiniest Angel off to Laura I began to have second thoughts. What if she thought the story was about the stupidest gift she'd ever received?
My brother phoned me the day of her First Communion party. They had about 30 guests at the house for this party. My brother was in tears, telling me they'd just read The Tiniest Angel to everyone present and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Laura took her story to school to be read to her class. It was then read to the entire school. The next phone call I got was from their parish priest, asking me to please get The Tiniest Angel published. From there, the story traveled to Puerto Rico and was read in schools there. I lost track of it's progress from there.
Unfortunately, over the years my only copy of The Tiniest Angel was lost or I'd print it all out here for you to use. Check your local library's childrens' section for angel stories you could use.
If Chris and I could adapt The Tiniest Angel to the stage, the youth group had their angel play.
Which is precisely what we set about doing.
If you're going to do a 'stage production' like this you'll need the help of volunteers. Chris and her minster recruited members of her congregation to help make costumes, build the set, act as stage hands and one person handled dimming the church lights during our one set change. The church choir provided our music.
Yes, a bit of work went into our production but every minute of it was so worth it!
Costuming
We had 15 angels and God we had to costume. I decided I wanted all of the angels in white and metallic gold or white and metallic silver. God would wear white, gold and red.
I turned to my Broadway costumer friend for help and together we designed 15 different angel costumes as well as some props to go with them - harps, trumpets and the like.
Each parent paid for their own child's angel costume by prior agreement.
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Another alternative is to have the parents provide the child's angel costume but you want to be very specific about what you want the costume to look like. If you're going to provide the costume wings as we did then the parents don't need to include wings on their child's costume.
The ladies of the church's quilting circle very graciously sewed our costumes. My Broadway costume designer friend insisted on making The Tiniest Angel's costume herself.
Neither Chris nor I are the overly excitable types but we both gasped when The Tiniest Angel's costume arrived from New York.
The entire dress was done in metallic gold, silver and white. The bottom of the dress was fiber optic so glowed when the church lights were turned down. My friend had sent a pair of articulated angel wings with the dress as well.
Luckily for us, the little girl playing The Tiniest Angel had studied ballet and when she moved, she looked like a real angel.
It's a good thing we hadn't yet made the wings for the 15 other angels because as soon as they saw the Tiniest Angel in her costume, Chris and I were hit with a chorus of "How come she gets to have moving wings?!!"
The minister managed to round up some volunteers to make 15 pair of articulated wings.
If you need to make a lot of angel wings, spray paint them with white glitter paint.
Easy and inexpensive.
We had a whole lot of angel wings flappin' away, lemme tell ya!
With the costuming under control Chris and I turn to the staging.
Setting the Stage
I started by building a backdrop out of MDF and painting it white.
I wanted the backdrop to have a softer look to it so decided to stretch white bedsheets over it, stapling them to the MDF.
Over that I hung white curtain lights. Basically, we had to recreate "Heaven" on the stage as well as God's throne room.
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I cut clouds from cardboard and glued puffed up snow blanket pieces over them. These were suspended from the top of the backdrop with monofilament fishing line.
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I found a suitable chair at Habitat For Humanity Restore with which to fashion God's throne. I spray painted the wood gold and reupholstered the seat in red velveteen material.
We needed a half globe of earth to put in front of God's throne so I cut one out of cardboard and painted it.
This globe would help hide the movements of the Tiniest Angel when she had to crawl from behind God's throne to rise up behind this globe, signifying her incarnation onto earth.
The last thing Chris and I had to stage was a dining table as the angels would be seated around this when God announced he was sending the Tiniest Angel to earth and why.
We found the perfect table to replicate:
Photos credit: Wenderly
Can't get more Angelic-looking than that!
We'd use my downstairs dining table. I built a wood platform on casters we could set the table on to roll it on and off stage and painted that platform white. We tried both ways (table set and unset) to move it onto the stage and found out it was much easier having the table already set and just rolled onto the stage.
This left the chairs to do something with to make them look Angelic.
You have 2 options here if you want Angelic chairs.
You can be smart and do it the easy way, purchasing angel chair covers from Amazon...OR...
You can do what this crazy woman did.
Back to Habitat For Humanity Restore for 6 chairs that would work.
Paint the wood silver, paint the chair pad white, make cardboard angel wings and paint them. Hot glue mini nylon cable clamps, one or 2 clamps to each cardboard angel wing. You're going to be wiring the wings to the chairs so you want to position your clamps on the wings according to your chair framework.
Using thin wire, wrap the wire around the chair frame then through the clamp loop a few times.
Twist the 2 ends of the wire together to hold the wings firmly in place.
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Of course, you don't have to get this elaborate if you don't want to. I'm just giving you an idea of what Chris and I did.
For the finishing touch, I brought in my white Christmas trees and turned them into angel trees. These would flank either side of the throne.
Our stage ended up looking something like this: (Minus the dining table)
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It's a bit hard to see below, but we did one set change when the lights were low and part of that scene change was placing a corrugated half earth in front of God's throne. The Tiniest Angel was behind that half globe, out of sight when the lights came back up. She then rose up from behind the globe to signify God sending her to earth.
If you're going to incorporate this element into your production, make sure your half globe is large enough for the Tiniest Angel to hide behind without the audience seeing her!
This same scene change involved rolling the dining table onto the stage and seating 6 of the angels around the table so they were in place at the table when the lights came back up.
I was really proud of those kids! Not a one of them forgot or flubbed their lines or missed their mark.
They got a standing ovation.
I do have to give due credit to the church choir as well. At the end of the play they performed the Piano Guys version of Angels From the Realms of Glory. It was the perfect beautiful ending to our little production.
Chris later told me a couple of ministers from other parishes were in the audience. Our little production had spread by word of mouth. They asked if the kids would come perform The Tiniest Angel at their churches as well.
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JUST A COUPLE OF NOTES: You can adapt a 'stage production' like this to reflect whatever yours/your church's beliefs are. If you're Christian for example, and you want baby Jesus in your production then have your Tiniest Angel that pops up behind the half globe that signifies that angel coming to earth, holding baby Jesus in her arms when she pops up from behind the globe.
You will need 3 or 4 volunteers to position the half globe in place and roll the dining table onto the stage while the lights are down between scenes.
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Have someone volunteer to video the production. Many attendees took videos with their cell phones but by using a volunteer, you can have them set up so they have an unobstructed view of the stage. Chris and I discovered there were several congregation members that asked for videos of the kids' play after the fact.
The church used this as a small scale fundraiser, selling the videographer's video for a nominal fee to those that wanted a video.
What happened to the real Tiniest Angel?
She became a missionary, going on several missions worldwide before taking her vows. She now works at the Vatican, approving and coordinating missions worldwide to help the impoverished in underdeveloped countries.
She became The Tiniest Angel in real life.