Woodland pageant tells Christmas story

GreyHawk Landing 13-year-old Ashley Murnen has grown up going to church, so she had to think hard when challenged to play Imogene Herdman, a bully who had never stepped inside a church building.

She and other members of Woodland Community Church and Woodland Fine Arts Academy performed “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” Dec. 6-8 at Woodland Community Church.

The dinner theater show told the story of the Herdman children — the “worst kids in the history of the world” — as they crashed church Sunday school and demanded parts in the upcoming Christmas pageant. The whole town panicked about having cigar-smoking, biting kids in important roles and wanted pageant director Grace Bradley to cancel the show. But she and the church Reverend persisted in this funny holiday classic and the Herdman kids helped tell the Christmas story in an unconventional way.

“It was interesting to play somebody who has never experienced God or his power,” Ashley said.