Church actors give families a taste of Nativity story at Staunton Country Park

Team members from Havant Passion Plays are staging short versions of the story of Jesus' s birth for visitors to Staunton Country Park in the days leading up to Christmas.

Nine performances are being spread over five days from December 18-22 and included the innkeeper and his wife, a Roman soldier, the Archangel Gabriel, Mary, Joseph, shepherds and wise men. They acted around the manger, inside a barn alongside sheep and goats from the farm.

Visitors to the park are gathering in the courtyard outside the barn to watch 'The Staunton Nativity' unfold which included 15-minute performances once or twice a day.

Director Carolyn Owens said: ‘We have costumes and experience from the Passion Plays that we have done every couple of summers in Havant, so we approached Staunton Country Park to see if they would like us to write and stage something on the Nativity. They were keen - it certainly adds extra value for families when they visit.

‘The cast list has slightly changed each day, depending on who is available. But these actors are now veterans of various Passion Plays and other projects we've done, and are very adaptable.’

The vicar of Leigh Park, the Rev Jonathan Jeffery, played the innkeeper and Ingrid Corrigan played his wife.

Families gathered in the courtyard ahead of the performance, with children encouraged to sit at the front. After the performance children could have their photos taken with the Nativity scene.

The Havant Passion Play team staged full-length, open-air plays about Jesus's life, death and resurrection in Havant Park in the summers of 2015, 2017 and 2019.

In 2020, they recorded 26 separate dramatic monologues, each from a different character in the Nativity story.

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Every morning during December, a new video was unveiled online in their ‘Living Advent Calendar’. They recorded similar video monologues in the run-up to Easter 2021. For details, see: www.havantpassionplay.org.uk.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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