The “Welcome Yule: A Midwinter Celebration” returns with its 41st production with three holiday performances between Dec. 12-14 at the Shea Theater Performing Arts Center. The shows will spotlight traditions and how those traditions are passed down.
The vision for this year’s show comes from Artistic Director Jinny Mason, who’s been a part of the annual production for 35 years. Mason said that her concept looks to the future generation of Welcome Yule performers while reflecting on her childhood love of the holiday season. Some audience participation will also be sprinkled in these performances.
“I was also thinking back to my childhood, when I was thinking about the old and the young, and I was remembering how much fun we had as kids, when on the holidays, especially, we were taken to the pub with our parents,” Mason said.
The first iterations of the Welcome Yule performances started with Rose Sheehan in the 1980s. Her inspiration was to hold a midwinter celebration at the Blue Light Coffee House in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Greenfield, the Welcome Yule about page explains. Since the 2000s, the Shea Theater has hosted the show. The themes of the performances change with the central purpose of celebrating the winter season, with knowledge that spring will come again.
Mason grew up in the working-class town of Northampton, England, located southeast of Birmingham in the Midlands. She recalls the extended family connection at the changing of the season, which is demonstrated in the Welcome Yule performances as the show opens in a quaint town inside a traditional English pub sometime in the 1900s.
The show has a cast of around 50 participants, with performers coming from across the Valley, Vermont and New Hampshire. It features several smaller group performances with dancing, singing and acting. This includes a children’s choir for the latest generation of Welcome Yule participants and a small group of performers showcasing the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.
This dance is an English tradition dating back to the 11th century in the village of Abbots Bromley where horns from a caribou are used for the six dancers, and these antlers, Mason said, were sourced from Alaska years ago for the dancers to use in other productions of Welcome Yule.
As part of her vision for the show, Mason wants to make sure there is audience engagement, sharing her vision for a theater of cast and audience dancing and singing together.
“They’ve always sung along, but I wanted to include them even more,” Mason said about the audience. “While we can’t accommodate large numbers, a few people will be asked to join us, to come and dance with us when we’re dancing. There’s a couple of points in the show where I’m probably being totally crazy, but I’m fantasizing that I will have the entire Shea Theater standing up and singing along with us.”
Mason expressed that as she nears 80 years old, Welcome Yule is turning to its younger generation of cast members, including second-generation and third-generation cast members, to maintain the tradition audiences have grown to love alive. Toward the end of the show, Mason said there is a scene of the season changing with plants growing alongside the cast of children becoming older, saying “it’s a real movement, not only toward the spring of the world, but it’s also to the growth of the kids.”
This spirit of continuance is alive for cast member and Welcome Yule social media manager Lo Nigrosh of Athol, whose two children, Charlie and Jolie, will be joining her for their first shows.
Nigrosh said that she went to see a Welcome Yule performance in 2024 since a family friend was in the show. Inspired by the performance, Nigrosh said she wanted to participate and rekindle a love for theater she had when she was younger.
“I kind of knew what to expect, because my friend was in it last year, and so she had been like, ‘You really have to practice a lot. It’s a lot of hours, it’s not a small commitment,'” Nigrosh said.
Now that the show is only one week away, Nigrosh said she feels prepared and has a sense of confidence in the performance while working alongside veteran Welcome Yule participants.
As a former audience member and now cast member, Nigrosh said she hopes audiences come away with a sense of appreciation for the changing of the seasons, and the tradition established by the show to celebrate this change, regardless of religous or spiritual beliefs.
“It’s not just about Christmas, but about Yule,” she said, “and this changing of the seasons that impact so many of us in our day to day lives, but we don’t always take the time to reflect on, so I think it would be cool for people to walk away with that.”
Showtimes for the Friday, Dec. 12 and Saturday, Dec. 13 performances will be at 7:30 p.m., with a matinee show at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 14.
Tickets to “Welcome Yule: A Midwinter Celebration” are available at the Shea Theater website at https://sheatheater.org/d/23213/Welcome-Yule-Presents:-A-Midwinter-Celebration. Tickets go on sale at the Shea Theater box office one hour before showtime.