The Christmas Revels

The Washington Revels presents
THE CHRISTMAS REVELS

This year featuring English country music and dance

Enjoyed by 10,000 of your neighbors every year!

Now in its 28th season, one of the Washington area’s most popular holiday celebrations – The Christmas Revels – will play at GW’s Lisner Auditorium, 21st & H Streets, NW for two weekends, December 4-5 and December 10-12, 2010.

Each year Revels explores how the Winter Solstice has been celebrated in a different time or place. This year's show transports us back in time to novelist Thomas Hardy’s beloved Wessex and his fictional village of Mellstock in 19th-century England, with glorious music, rousing Morris dance, and the ever-popular audience sing-alongs!

This year’s holiday celebration features our special guests from England, The Mellstock Band – four extraordinary musicians. Performing on string and wind period instruments – including the haunting “serpent,” a snake-shaped ancestor of the tuba – they capture the genuine sound of a 19th-century village band.

Joining them will be our acclaimed Revels company (over 75 performers of all ages) as the village “quire,” the Washington Revels Brass, and the Cutting Edge Sword and Foggy Bottom Morris Men providing some exciting traditional dance.

Some of the tunes and carols may seem familiar, but this is a rare opportunity to hear them as they might have sounded in an England all but disappeared now, sung in a robust, even raucous style that drew no distinction between sacred and secular, and with a joy that is inspiring to a modern ear.

Revels’ shows include an unbeatable combination of elements: time-honored rituals, traditional dances, folk plays, holiday music performed by a lively and talented cast of adults and children, and the singing of carols with a brass quintet. This mixture of volunteer choristers with professional actors and musicians helps to create the exuberance and vitality that define a Revels performance.

Professionally staged and directed, Christmas Revels productions create an on-stage community of local adults, teens and children together with professional actors, musicians, and “tradition-bearers.” Open auditions for adults and teens are held every summer, and singers from throughout the Washington Metro area eagerly vie for one of 40 or so spaces to be cast. Separate auditions are held in September for 3rd-5th graders, and as many as 100 children try out for one of 15 or so spaces.

The celebration of the longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice, is at the heart of Revels. Despite “Christmas” in the title, this is not a religious pageant, but rather a unique seasonal celebration that is inclusive and meaningful to the community at large, regardless of background.

Join a lively cast of adults and children for the show that the Washington Post says "should become part of every family's holiday festivities."

WHEN:
Saturday Dec. 4 at 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Sunday Dec. 5 at 2:00pm
Friday Dec. 10 at 7:30pm
Saturday Dec. 11 at 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Sunday Dec. 12 at 1:00pm and 5:00pm

WHERE: Lisner Auditorium, GW University, 21st & H Streets, NW, Washington, DC
Directions & Parking information: http://www.lisner.org/directions.asp

COST: $12-$45 (discounts for Youth under 18 and for groups of 10 or more);
Family Friday: 25% off regular price for youth tickets on Friday Dec. 10.

BOX OFFICE: www.revelsdc.org or call 800-595-4849. Group Sales call 301-587-3835.

ADA SERVICES: ASL and Audio Description, Sunday Dec. 5 at 2pm; Wheelchair spaces, Braille and large-print programs available at all performances. For ADA seating, call 301-587-3835.