By Jennifer Theurer

The Christmas season kicks off this weekend with ACT Clay County’s performance of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” at The Rex on Saturday and Sunday with a third performance Dec. 6.

This production marks one of the largest casts ACT Clay County has ever had according to Director Jan Keim.

“We have 29 people in the cast this time,” she said. “We have 17 kids that are mostly under high school age.”

Rehearsals started mid-September and Keim says audiences can expect plenty of chaos and maybe even a fire during the performances.

A fire for performing started after the group put on their first production November 2019 and they’ve been producing two performances a year since then.

“[In 2019] we were just known as a community theater group,” she said. “And two to three years ago, we decided we needed to come up with a name. So we called ourselves ACT Clay County.”

Keim added that ACT actually stands for “A Community Theater” and is fully funded by private donations.