Has anyone ever written a whole nativity play for children and submitted it for publication? The last time I played for my children's school play, the teachers came up with the story-line, and I came up with the music. Some of it was familiar stuff and some of it I composed myself, and the whole thing went down really well. Has anyone ever had a Nativity play published? How did you go about it? Which publisher would be the best one to approach, and should it be fully illustrated? Would I have to pay an illustrator to do the whole thing, or would a few sample illustrations do for the sake of a first submission? (Obviously I'd have to write the whole thing myself this time in order to claim it as my own.)

Personally, I wouldn't even attempt to break into this market as there is so much out there already. For example, there are 40 Nativity 'musicals' listed on Musicroom.com alone. I'm not really aware of any publishers who specialise in this area perhaps apart from Golden Apple. Of course the other problem is that the number of nativity plays being performed are diminishing in our PC society. If you really want to present something like this to a publisher, you need to give them a really good reason for publishing it. Just because you might like it, or you may have showed it to another teacher who liked it, is simply not enough. Publishing is hard enough to break into, especially when you are trying to get into a genre which is already well represented.

David

I tend to agree with that, David.
Perhaps you could write a modern version of a mediaeval morality play? (No, that wasn't a joke.)

I have written and performed with a school four Christmas plays (only one being religious), but have never submitted anything for publication. I composed the music, wrote the lyrics, and rehearsed the children and put on the play, which is in each case was about 25 minutes long. They were all well received, but I did not have the confidence to submit them for publication, although at the time the reason I wrote them was because there was nothing much around for the 6-8 year old child.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and particularly writing the songs. Go ahead and write if you enjoy it, even if you don't have the play published it will be a great experience.

I wish you all the best! Please try and get a "Jewish" type feeling to your music where possible as Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds were all Jewish. this will add to the authenticity. Also remember in the story that nowhere is a "stable" mentioned at all (really!! - read all four gospels and nowhere will you find a stable mendtioned!). Also it never mentions specifically "three" wise men - there might have been fifty for all we know - and they probably didn't visit Mary until Jesus was around two years of age. I just think it would be refreshing if there was a nativity play which got its facts right!!

I agree that there's already a lot around, but a lot of it's pretty wick! What inspired the school I'm talking about to come up with an original one was this very fact. They're all either 'dead straight', telling the Christmas Story in a fairly dry way, or else they have little to do with the true meaning of Christmas at all. Or else the music is dull - at best. But I also agree that it might not be that easy to persuade somebody to publish a new one if there's already a fair bit out there. And I doubt if it would be much of a money-spinner, with the odd school buying the odd one or two copies! Might give it a go anyway, though, just for the fun of it. The songs I wrote for the last one were used in a couple of church 'productions' as well, that I didn't actually see, but the reports I got were good.

That's true, but it does say that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn (Luke 2:7). Mangers are traditionally found in stables so the inference is logical.

That's true I agree - no-one really knows what kind of place it was, though (and I could be wrong) I believe the Greek word for "inn" is really "Guestchamber". Also I believe (and I could be wrong again) that in those days animals were housed very close to the living quarters - often in the living quaters. Maybe Mary and Joseph had relatives in Bethlehem (since that's where their ancestral line was from), but because of the census their relatives had no room in the Guestchamber so they had to go in with the animals.

I just thought if Dulciana was looking for something slightly different rather than the bog-standard type story then it might be an interesting twist, and possibly more authentic.

Depends at least partly on the animals I think I know that stables shepherd style were caves with the entrance almost entirely blocked by stones. The place in the Church of the Nativity which is said to be Jesus' birthplace is certainly a cave, a small one at that. Certainly not the kind of stable we would imagine.

Heh - Jesus was a troglodyte!!