Tips on Christmas Concert Organization & Logistics
Keep the concert length manageable.
No matter what, your concert must be kept to a reasonable length. For an elementary school concert I recommend no more than an hour. Keeping the length reasonable is important for holding the attention of your audience, but also for keeping your students focused. If they are waiting a full hour before they perform, it is difficult to expect them to be at their best. Consider what you want to spend your time on, and concentrate on reducing non-performance time (time wasted entering/exiting the stage, for example), before cutting down the number of acts.
Arrange for appropriate “entertainment” backstage.
Make sure that you have a fellow teacher or volunteer who can be responsible for keeping students quiet and calm while they are not on stage. Colouring sheets, board games, or even a movie are all good ways to prevent things from getting wild. Kids get amped up when they are excited or nervous about performing – having something ready for them to do while they are waiting will prevent a lot of problems.
Kick those MCs to the curb.
There is absolutely NO REASON that you need to have each class announced before they perform. REALLY. Why? Well, first of all I am relatively sure that every parent in attendance will be able to recognize their kid without your assistance. Secondly, if you provide a program, this is a much classier way of letting parents know the name of the song as well as the order of the performances. If you want to connect the musical numbers together with a script, that’s great (Tracking’ Santa is a great example) but that “such and such will now be sung by so and so” is completely unnecessary.
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