Tower Theater celebrates Christmas with the Sanders family

The Liberty University Department of Theatre Arts plans to celebrate the Christmas season with their holiday production of “Sanders Family Christmas,” starting Thursday, Dec. 5, and running through Dec. 13 with eight performances.

The show is the department’s fourth production this season and the final one of the fall semester. It is the sequel to the popular gospel musical “Smoke on the Mountain” by Connie Ray and Alan Bailey, which Liberty performed six years ago.

The series of plays revolves around the Sanders family as they travel to different churches to share their testimonies and sing gospel classics. “Sanders Family Christmas” revisits the characters on Dec. 24, 1941, just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor and days before their son, Dennis Sanders, prepares for deployment with the Marine Corps. Hilarity and drama ensues as the family prepares to send Dennis off to war.

The production, directed by assistant professor Neal Brasher, is full of classic gospel Christmas songs, including “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Away in a Manger,” and “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.”

Brasher considers this production essential to rounding out the fall theater season because it focuses on the importance of family.

“Some of the more moving parts of the play are the relationships between the people in the family,” he said. “I think because it is a show about a family it helps us to think of one of the most significant things about Christmas: the relationships in our families.”