Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Family fun in Northern Virginia: "3 Days 'til Christmas!" performance

Over the weekend we went to see a wonderful play over at the Northern Virginia Community College Annandale Campus called "3 Days 'til Christmas". This was a spur of the moment decision as  I decided the day before to search for a play to see and found this one in a web search, we read the description and immediately bought some tickets as a surprise for our daughter. 

The show, put on by Encore Theatrical Arts Project (ETAP), was fantastic.The show is an original holiday story. The singing, acting and dancing were beautiful and very professional. The performers in the show ranged from (approximately) 6th to 12th grade with three adult special guest performers. The show is fun for all ages.

The opening scene shows some of Santa's elves at the North Pole sad that all of the kids are on the naughty list, no one is going to get presents! Reginald, who is in charge, is upset that children are breaking the toys. After starting in the present, the story then flashes back 3 days to explain the events leading up to the current. In between is lots of entertainment, many laughs, with a happy ending of course. Did I mention the costumes? These were beautiful too.

We all really had a great time. What also made it special is there is a Girl Scout "behind the scenes" tour before the performances. Since there were not too many kids at the later show, our family was invited to come along (the kids in this group even got the chance to appear on stage during song #2). It was neat to learn about what goes on backstage with this type of show and speak with the producer, the backstage crew and some of the performers.

Based in Northern Virginia, ETAP, a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing new talent, is now in its 19th year. Many of the organization's graduates have gone on to become Radio City Rockettes, appear on Broadway, perform on various cruise lines and more. 

We happened to catch the second to last day for 2014's holiday performance, but ETAP has a new show every year, so if you missed it this year, keep an eye out for next year.

My family was already asking if we could go back and see next year's Christmas show.

My response? "Absolutely!"


(No photos or video allowed during the show, however, Fox News also reported on this and included a video segment of the show).



1 comment:

  1. This sounds wonderful and maybe we should make it one of the things we do next year.

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