Chorus gets in holiday spirit with madrigal dinner

A madrigal is a dinner with a comedic show, often set in the middle ages and is usually performed during the holiday season.

Bearden choral director Ms. Mary Sexton’s chorus class is putting on their own holiday madrigal in the Farragut Church of Christ at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.

The performance will feature songs such as “The Christmas Song,” “First Noel,” “Silent Night,” and other favorites. Dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m. for those who pre-ordered tickets. To end the show, Bearden’s female a cappella, “B Natural”, is closing out the night with songs like “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and “Sleigh Ride”.

Putting their creative minds together, the chorus class was able to write the entire script themselves, and, with the help of Ms. Sexton, have been able to memorize and run through the performance a few times, regardless of the time crunch.

“We’ve almost kind of modernized the traditional show, and we often joke about it, calling it ‘our Madrigal, the unmadrigal dinner, dinner’,” junior Anna Smith said. “The script is hilarious and features a lot of hilarious actors and actresses, including Brian Nachtrab as the jester and Bailee Burleson as the jestette.

“It’s no traditional boar’s head, wassail, medieval songs, long and boring skit.”

For new sophomore Alex Tedford, the professionalism of the upperclassmen helped him keep his head in the game during rehearsal.

“At the beginning, it was difficult because the music was a great deal more complex than the music for our first concert; so since a few of us are new this year, like myself, it was a bigger step up because we were not as experienced as the other students,” Tedford said. “It was really helpful to have the juniors and seniors who have been around for three or four years to really help us learn the music and get a feel for things.”

It’s the first time that Bearden has ever done a madrigal, but Ms. Sexton is hoping to make it a yearly performance.

Lucky for the class, they were able to scavenge for costumes and props and avoided spending a lot of money.

“We were able to beg, borrow, and steal from other schools and past shows,” Tedford said. “I think we got a few of the costumes from past musicals that Bearden has done, and Farragut does a madrigal every year so we borrowed costumes from them as well.”

According to Smith, Sam Phillips, one of the main roles of the show, had to drop his role last minute because of a change in Bearden’s basketball schedule. Bearden was scheduled to play West on Friday, but it was rescheduled due to West’s football team playing in the state championship game.

“It just happened [Tuesday],” Smith said. “We freaked out and had to find another person and ending up recruiting (sophomore) Konner Kah to step in and take his part.”

Despite some difficulties, the show must go on. While the dinner is only for guests who pre-ordered tickets, tickets to the show will be sold at the door for $5.