Teen Santa is a fast-paced and wildly inventive new holiday musical chronicling the life of 17-year-old Chris, who discovers that his super-hero powers of faith, hope, and charity often turn him into a teenage Santa Claus! Set in Chris’s garage with a live onstage band, the show cleverly uses props and clutter from the garage to create the present, the past, and several comic book-style fantasy sequences. This is the perfect holiday show for a highly creative production team, and your teen cast members will love the theatrical, punk rock-flavored score. Teen Santa is a uniquely entertaining musical that will prove to one and all that belief in the spirit of Christmas can change the world!
SYNOPSIS
Synopsis
Act I
Look up in the sky— it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Santa Claus! Chris enters seeming like any normal teenager, but the band informs onlookers otherwise (“Seventeen Year Old Santa Claus”). A woman’s bag, filled with newly-bought Christmas ornaments, gets stolen on a local street; luckily Chris is there to save the day. A girl drops her doll into a sewer. Who is there to bring her beloved toy, dripping wet, back to her side? 17-year-old Santa Claus of course… how did this young man get to this extraordinary level of holiday stardom?
There is a flashback, and Chris is now a sophomore in high school (“Flashback”). It is July and all he can think about are his upcoming plans for Christmas; the decorations, the food, the gifts— he can’t seem to help himself. His parents are a bit worried by his holiday obsession (“Santa Wannabe”). Even his sister senses something amiss.
His parents can remember when this obsessing began to take a hold of their son (“Flashback Further”). Chris went to the mall with his friends Ben and Eddie (“The Mall Song”). Chris’s friends are describing to him an incident of heroism they have just heard of. Someone had knocked over the person collecting money for the Salvation Army and ran off with all the dough! Then, out of nowhere, some kid dressed like Santa Claus came and chased the thief down.
Chris keeps Ben from making fun of a mall employee and at the same time helps a lost little girl find her mother in the store. Just then, an eerie woman appears, and all but Chris are frozen onstage. She takes Chris’s hand passes something on to him that is beyond wisdom (“This Boy”). Then she gives him a red knapsack and disappears. When everyone unfreezes no one has seen the lady except for Chris.
Back at home, Chris’s sister and Mom notice an odd mark on his hand. The doctor brushes it off as nothing. What is odd, though, is that Chris can sense what other people are thinking, feeling, and wanting for Christmas (“These Are the Things I Know”).
The cast comes on stage and time moves forward to the day after Christmas last year (“Flash Forward”). Chris is talking to a girl from school, Angelica. She is impressed by his intelligence and his good-hearted nature. After some dream sequence fantasies, Chris actually works up the courage to ask her out.
Chris is wondering if his genes may be related to Santa in some way. His dad is perplexed to find out that Chris has been tutoring a little girl in math without even mentioning it. He also skipped school to do a Christmas concert at the local elementary school. Chris wonders why his dad is trying to make him into the “villain,” when he is only trying to do good.
The lady from the mall appears to Chris once again to encourage him to keep going. She admits that she is the spirit of Christmas, and it is Chris’s job to help keep her alive (“The Confirmation Song”). Chris is finally starting to understand his purpose (“The Realization”).
Act II
At the top of the second act, Chris takes the audience back to the first flashback, in July (“Christmas in July”). Eddie and Ben are trying to get Chris to come out and enjoy the last day of summer, but he is much too busy getting ready for Christmas. Angelica, who is now Chris’s girlfriend, is starting to get upset at how busy he has been.
When Chris tries to get out of going to school, so that he can work on Christmas, his parents intervene.
When Chris’s dad reads in the news that some thieves tried to rob a warehouse full of toys but were apprehended by a young man dressed up as Santa, he thinks Chris might need psychotherapy (“Psychotherapy”). The doctors just can’t figure it out, though.
Angelica finally has enough and breaks up with Chris (“Sad Christmas Ballad”).
When Chris reveals to his mother that he has been receiving Christmas letters, she starts to encourage his Christmas cheer. That night she has a dream (“Flashback Way Way Back”). When she was in the hospital having Chris, his dad’s flight was delayed in Boston. The nurse that was tending to her giving birth told her that her son would one day take a dramatic change. Chris’s mom actually believes he is Santa Claus! Angelica comes back to apologize, and everybody is living the Christmas spirit (“Seventeen Year Old Santa Claus”).
QUOTE
Entertaining for all ages!
–Connecticut Post
More Info
Characters:
Chris – 17-year-old Santa Claus.
Dad / Announcer Voice / 1st Actor / Man on Street – Chris’s dad.
Mom / 2nd actor / Lady in Panic – Chris’s mom.
Ben / 3rd Actor / Thief – Chris’s friend.
Angelica / 4th Actor – Chris’s girlfriend.
Eddie / 5th Actor / Thief – Chris’s friend.
Sis / 6th Actor
Band Leader
Band
Lady – The spirit of Christmas.
Setting: The garage of Chris’s suburban home.
- Seventeen-Year-Old Superhero Santa Claus
- Just Like a Comic Book
- Flashback
- Santa Wannabe
- A Perfectly Normal Child
- Flashback Further
- The Mall Song
- Old Lady Sting
- Salvation Army’s Salvation
- His Boy
- Old Lady
- Whose Life Is It Anyway?
- Doctor B
- These Are the Things I Know
- Flash Forward
- A Hero’s Love Scene
- Santa Genes
- The Science of Teenagery
- Believe!
- Silent Movie
- The Confirmation Song
- The Realization (It’s in Me)
- Christmas in July
- A Hero’s Ringtone
- Out to Get Me
- Toy World
- Psychotherapy
- Kiss Her Upside-Down!
- Sad Christmas Ballad
- Breaking News
- Mama’s Boy
- This Boy (Reprise)
- Flash-Way-Back
- As I Hold His Hand
- Seventeen-Year-Old Superhero Santa Claus (Finale)
- Merry Bows-Mas!
Performance Royalties are based on theater particulars.
Billing responsibilities, pertinent copyright information, and playwrights' biographies are available in the show rider that comes with your license agreement.To download the show rider for Teen Santa, click here.
Tired of The Nutcracker? Bored with It's a Wonderful Life? If you're looking for a new, contemporary holiday show, veteran children's theater director and writer Bert Bernardi thinks Teen Santa might be just the ticket.
In the show, a 17-year-old boy uses his unexpected superhero powers to save Christmas. Much of the energy in the piece comes from a brand new punk rock-flavored score by Justin Rugg and the on-stage presence of the Connecticut boy band Nothing2Simple.
Teen Santa is produced by Bernardi's theater company, Pantochino Productions. The company has been producing shows in area schools since last winter and two months ago, when the first public Pantochino production, Cinderella Skeleton, scored a hit at New Haven's Off-Broadway Theatre, where Teen Santa opens on Thursday, Dec. 15.
"I got the idea for the show in late summer and early fall, and at first I thought we wouldn't do it until next year, but then I decided we needed to do it right now," Bernardi said of his work on the original book and lyrics.
When Rugg began providing inspired music to his lyrics, Bernardi knew he wasn't being hasty in producing Teen Santa this year.
"It's a great blend. You don't think of punk rock and Christmas," the writer-director said, laughing. New York actor Evan Faram is playing the title role after a series of appearances at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
"I don't want to tell you how it ends, but I can tell you that you'll come out feeling very good," Bernardi said of this "fresh look at old themes." Like all of the children's shows he's done over the years, the writer-director has designed Teen Santa to be entertaining for all ages. "We want it to be fun for the little kids and the older kids, but we want the parents and grandparents to have a good time, too," Bernardi said.
"I think everyone is going to get a kick out of the live band. I love the idea of a teen band playing in a show about teenagers," he said of Nothing2Simple, which consists of Nathaniel Schull on keyboards, Matt Velardi on guitar and Marc Prescott on percussion.
As the show has come together in rehearsal, Bernardi has begun to wonder if Teen Santa might not become a new holiday perennial— in this area and elsewhere. "I think it might be bigger than Pantochino. I hope we can turn it into a show that might be suitable for Nickelodeon or other outlets. We are just so excited about it," he said. –Joe Meyers, Connecticut Post
Materials: Digital Materials are provided via email as downloadable PDF files for you to print in-house. All materials are yours to keep! No deposits, no returns.
Required production materials for Teen Santa:
- Cast Scripts
- Vocal Books
- Director's Script
- Stage Manager's Script
- Orchestrations
- Logo Pack
- Piano/Vocal Score
Orchestrations:
- Conductor Score
- Piano
- Guitar
- Drum
Official Logo Pack Now Included!
To help you promote your show, Stage Rights now includes a logo pack with your license. The logo pack includes high-resolution versions (both color and black and white) of our show logo. The logo is the portion of the artwork with the show's title. The surrounding artwork is also available for an additional fee.
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