The Liberty Center had staged ambitious variety shows to celebrate Christmas in recent years, but this year, the troupe is returning to a good old-fashioned play. That doesn’t mean it’s without plenty of logistical nightmares and kid-wrangling, though.
Luckily, Lucy Lemke-Clark, an experienced director of young actors, is at the helm for “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” a play she holds close to her heart. When she was 8, she performed in a Ginger Swearingen-directed production of the play in the mid-1980s. Now she hopes to channel a bit of the woman she calls “the matriarch of Sedalia theater.” Swearingen died in 2008 at age 68, and Lemke-Clark is dedicating this production to her.
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