Our Own Christmas Dinner Theatre

By Betty Tillery

This Christmas season, three hundred people will be privileged to attend a dinner theatre presentation of “Dear Caesar Augustus”. If you don’t already have a ticket, you probably will not be in that group. However, keep your eyes open your ears tuned; a stray ticket may surface. If it does, grab it up and come.

As befits this time of year, the theme of the play tells the Old Christmas Story, but in a new way. You will discover with the Innkeeper that it does not take the edict of an emperor to bring God to a man’s heart and to his house. The innkeeper takes care of his inn, counts his money, and lives vicariously the adventures of many people through tales told by travelers, tales of sailors and their ships at sea, of camel caravans, and kings and princes. But when the greatest story ever told actually takes place in his inn, he sleeps throughout the event that would change the course of the world.

And while he slept, over all that land shone the light of a new star whose radiance brought light to the darkest corner. And a baby was born in his stable. The innkeeper’s wife little knew how privileged she was to bring the swaddling clothes and wrap the tiny baby in a manger where He slept as peacefully as a new born lamb. No one realized that the world had waited thousands of years for that moment. The innkeeper slept as soundly as though your life and mine and the lives of everyone for all time to come were not wrapped in His birth. What a moment that would have been, to have touched the hand of God!

And still the innkeeper sleeps as his stable boys and cousins, the Judaean shepherds, come hurrying to tell of a visit by a host of angels who sang of glory to God... The shepherds tell of the message of the angels, and how they left their campfire to find “this thing which has come to pass”

Finally, the innkeeper is completely aroused from sleep by the news that three Magi from the east are at the gate of his inn. The Magi explain how the star they have followed and ancient prophecies have brought them to the City of David to worship a new-born babe, king of the Jews. Somewhat flustered, the innkeeper realizes that there has indeed been a baby born in his stable beneath a star of unheard of radiance and magnitude. They all go to the stable where the Magi in wonder and admiration make prophecies and give gifts as they kneel in awe of the beauty and brightness of the baby. The innkeeper, his wife and stable boy join the Magi on their knees in worship.

This is the story of Christmas -- a story that is relevant in every home in every age. Not a tale that was once told, but eternally fitting into every life as meaningful now as it was then if we will only let its message be born in our hearts. The innkeeper realizes that as God has come to his home God’s spirit has entered his heart, and will shed a glow of warmth, love and compassion forever.

Our Dinner Theatre play, “Dear Caesar Augustus” written by Jewell Ellen Smith, will be presented December the twelfth at the Lake Lodge to the fortunate ticket holders. This is a post-wide function sponsored by Fort Rucker Chaplains and Protestant Women of the Chapel. The cast is large, and I will not attempt to name all here, but the male lead, the innkeeper, is portrayed by Chaplain Clyde Northrop who is no newcomer to theatrical activities; nor is Betty Tillery who plays the innkeeper’s wife. Other actors who have also appeared in several Prayer Breakfast plays, are Chaplain Howard Easley, Major Mike Boyd, Courtney McNair, Louie Reynolds, Marie Kounk and Betty Black. You will enjoy performances by these and many newcomers plus a host of heavenly angels trained by Peggy Flippen.

Published December 1980 in The HEDGEHOPPER; See the Sunbonnet Soliloquy “Dear Caesar Augustus” and the play of the same name on this same website. Click your browser’s ‘Back’ button to return.