In this hilarious Christmas classic, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant is faced with casting the Herdman kids – probably the most inventively awful kids in history. You won't believe the mayhem – and the fun – when the Herdmans collide head-on with the story of Christmas!

This delightful show is adapted from the bestselling Young Adult book, and has become a holiday staple for groups across the United States. The crowd-pleasing comedy features plenty of memorable characters, a few favorite Christmas Carols, and lots of laughs.

The North Whitfield Middle School Theatre Department, The Pioneer Players, strives to provide a positive theatrical experience for students and families in our community. Our goal is to provide students the opportunity to experience theatre as performers, designers, backstage crew members, audience members, and learners. We hope to inspire our students and our community to continue towards the growth of the arts in North Georgia. We typically perform at least 6 times during a school year including 2 full length plays, a 15 minute tour, a variety show, and 2 chorus performances.

Drama Class:

In the school day we offer a year long performance class for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at NWMS.  These students spend the year learning vocal technique, acting, design, character analysis, technical theatre, choreography, costume design, and much more! The drama class puts on the big school musical each school year.

Junior Theater Festival Team:

The Junior Theatre Festival (JTF) is the world’s biggest and best celebration of young people performing musical theater. JTF brings together student musical theater troupes from all over the world for a weekend of musical theater mayhem and madness. Each troupe performs fifteen minutes from a Broadway Junior show for adjudication by a panel of musical theater experts. The weekend also features professional development for teachers, workshops for students and parents, a New Works Showcase featuring new musical adaptations soon to be released and concludes with a grand finale concert headlined by Broadway’s best! The Junior Theater Festival is sponsored by Playbill, Disney Musicals and Music Theatre International.

In 2021, The Pioneer Players received the Freddie G. Award for Excellence in Music at the 1st Junior Theater Festival Online Extravaganza. At the 2023 Festival we were awarded the Freddie G. Award for Excellence in Acting as well as the Freddie G. Award for Excellence in Dance.

The NWMS Pioneer Players will be bringing a 15-minute cut of Into The Woods Jr. to the 2024 Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, Georgia! Students will perform and compete for adjudication for musical theatre professionals, participate in theatre workshops, be some of the first to see new titles being introduced into the MTI Broadway Junior collection, and meet young people with the same passion and interests from all over the world! We will be heading to Atlanta to gather with peers from across 40 states and 6 countries.