‘He Rules the World’ to capture true meaning of Christmas with spectacular concert experience
The human imagination coupled with ingenuity can be an amazing thing. Through the creative process, what often begins as a spark of an idea can quickly germinate into a full-blown living, breathing entity.
One need to look no further than the overwhelming success of "The Chosen" streaming video season. As the program approaches its fifth season, we must not forget that this global phenomenon began as a simple idea for a Christmas video at a local, midwestern church. Today, nearly 800 million people have watched at least one episode.
Peter and Jennifer Emerson hope to have a similar experience with their creative spark of an idea. Several years ago, they took their daughter to a Christmas performance by the theatrically-infused Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Not only did they witness a spectacular performance filled with hard-charging music, dynamic performances, and cutting-edge lighting wizardry, they also came away with an inspirational idea that has consumed the last five years of their lives.
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“While I was sitting there, I was thinking, wow, that's really cool,” recounts Peter Emerson, who has performed for four sitting U.S. presidents while a member of the U.S. Navy Orchestra. “And I thought, I can do that. And then towards the end of the piece, I was thinking, why am I not doing this?”
While the Trans-Siberian Orchestra certainly produces a sometimes mind-bending show, it lacks the most important element of the Christmas story: Jesus. The idea seemed simple enough. Why not create an immersive live concert experience that blends song, narration, and spectacular imagery to tell the Nativity in its entirety?
“One of the things that stood out most to me about that experience was that their Christmas story was really about the spirit of Christmas and not really about Christ in Christmas, Peter Emerson continues. “So I decided to take my skills and put them to use to create a show that told the Nativity story in its completion.”
This seed of inspiration is about to become a reality. Making its debut Dec. 11-14 at the Hippodrome Theater in Waco, Texas, "He Rules the World" is intent on creating a family-friendly, contemporary live concert experience that explores the characters of the Nativity story of God’s plan being fulfilled.
“I grew up in the church and I loved the pageantry of the Christmas Eve service and all of the hymns,” Peter Emerson explains. “And if you think about the hymns, each of them only tells a fragment of the story. It's like a stained glass window. So, He Rules the World is a collection of these stained glass windows where I take the original hymn melody from a time-tested Christmas carol and use that as a launching point to expand and explore the emotions first person from the participants in the story.”
"He Rules the World" is narrated by actor Kevin Sorbo, and the production also features vocalist David Gaschen, of "The Phantom of the Opera" fame.
The Emersons join us to talk about what fueled their desire to launch such a complex visual spectacle to honor the true Christmas story. Listen as they share what people can expect to see at this event and a few things they learned about Jesus that they never knew before.
Listen now:
