Picture this. You’ve spent the past few weeks, maybe months, moonlighting as a part-time theatre impresario: shaping the script, rehearsing musical numbers, and making sure your stars are hitting their marks. Then, on the December morning of the big premiere, as angels, shepherds and donkeys are donning their costumes, the phone rings. Half of the cast are sick, their parents say. The whole of reception has been struck by a nasty winter bug. Andrew Lloyd Webber never had to deal with this, you think to yourself. “One time it was just phone call after phone call: the whole cast was dropping like flies,” recalls former reception teacher and nativity veteran Alex Burnside, the founder of a pre-school phonics class providers Phonics with Robot Reg. “We had no Mary. I was going on the playground trying to find a child to replace her.”
Welcome to the chaotic world of the primary school nativity play, where the adage “the show must go on” has never been truer. It’s a rite of passage for kids, and a logistical nightmare for teachers. One half-hour performance – whether it be a traditional tableau or something a little left-field (more on that later) – requires at least a half-term’s worth of planning. “I don’t think the parents ever realise the work that goes into it,” says Lily Bond, who spent several years teaching at a south London primary school. “They say, ‘Never work with animals or children.’ It’s just like herding kittens, basically, and getting them to learn anything by heart takes weeks and weeks of input.”
