Right
before Christmas each year, the Christian Senior High-school in Trondheim sets
all of its freshers in motion for a grand scale production. Some 150 students
work together during an intensive week to produce a final show comprising of
dancers, actors, singers, band and film-clips. All the elements of the show are
fully integrated through the storyline of the project. In addition to those who
are on stage there are also a number of ‘behind the scenes groups.’ These
included a cooking group who provided treats for the whole project; a ‘good
deeds’ group who did community work and collected a lot of clothes to be sent to
a charity in Eastern Europe; a costume and scenography group that worked with
the actors, dancers and the stage; a stage design and stage attire group who
worked with musicians, singers and with the stage design; a photography group
who prepared an exhibition in one of the halls, plus provided visual content
for the screens during the show; and finally, the editorial group who
documented the whole project through films that were shown during the morning
meetings, an official blog and through a number of different social media.
The tag
line for the project was ‘real image.’ At the morning meetings all students were
gathered, and through those meetings we aimed to establish both a Biblical view
and a practical life approach, and to marry them together. We put a particular focus
on this at the first morning meeting to set the pace for the rest of the week. At
the first meeting, all the group-leaders came up on stage and talked about
their personal relation to image and self-worth. To bring in further angles to
the topic we also used a number of video presentations. And since it’s a
creative project in Norway we showed a few ski-movies, base-jumping films and
music videos just for fun and to loosen up everyone’s shoulders a bit.
With 11
production-groups in motion and a team of professional creatives leading them,
I was hired to coordinate the project and lead all groups towards the same
final goal. A lot of admin and meetings, but I also got to sneak off to hold a
master-class in sound-engineering and lead some of the stage-building work.
A week is a
short time for a production this size, but the students and leaders really put
in the effort and the final production was something to be proud of for
everyone! The feedback from the regular staff was very positive and it was said
to have been one of the best projects to date.
The show
was on the same day as the School’s final Christmas celebration and the day was
ended with a big meal for all the students at the in-house sport’s hall, before
they went off to a Christmas service in church. A great punctuation mark to the
semester before the holidays!
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