Revels casts form their own families, onstage and off

The tradition-within-tradition effect is even more intense for the cast. Director Patrick Swanson forms the large ensemble, a blending of amateurs and professionals, into a tight-knit community by encouraging camaraderie, especially among the volunteers in the chorus.

As a result, many have caught various strains of the show-biz bug. Revels musical director George Emlen estimates that more than two dozen former cast members have gone on to professional or semiprofessional theatrical careers.

Sarah Corey is currently starring as Sister Amnesia in the Lyric Stage Company's production of "Meshuggah-Nuns!" She appeared in four Revels productions from 1988-91, beginning in the children's chorus.

"Revels was the first time I got the idea of how deep and profound theatrical friendships could be, which had a huge impact on me," she says. "It was also the first time I'd ever felt that my relationships with other kids and with adults were of equal value. There were so many adults who did not treat us like we were just little kids. And I experienced a very intense, almost euphoric bond with the other children that I'd never experienced before."

Those kinds of social connections are encouraged in many ways, from the grueling two-month rehearsal period to the way each cast is actually formed into a village. Children are given stage parents, often with fictional identities as the local blacksmith, midwife, and so on.

Swanson says the idea was hatched in the '70s by Revels founders John and Carol Langstaff as a practical way to give stage movements a sense of purpose, especially for the children. They were simply told to return to their families when not otherwise occupied. But it was soon clear this evinced something fundamental to the Revels mission.

"The families idea is really the building block of how Revels works," Swanson says. "We want the audience to look onstage and see pretty real behavior, not an artificial, staged version of life. This is a built-in structure for moving 70 or 80 people around in ways that seem natural."

Revels encourages socializing within the cast. Among Corey's most cherished memories are scurrying off with other children during what they thought were stolen moments from rehearsal. In fact, they were doing just what Swanson wanted them to do.

"Many of our audience members come as family groups," he says, "and this is part of how they celebrate their holidays. By the time the show opens, the people onstage are mirroring that closeness, and you see little glimpses of it. The teens might be getting a bit on the nerves of the older people; the small children gravitate closely to their stage families. Those kinds of real-life moments, many of them not staged, draw the audience into the illusion they are not just watching this ancient community, but being welcomed into it."

Joining in Revels offers practical life lessons as well. Aoife O'Donovan may be the hottest young roots singer in Boston, performing with the bluegrass-jazz fusion band Wayfaring Strangers, her old-timey band Crooked Still, and the klezmer group Khevre. Appearing in the Revels children's chorus in 1995, when she was 12, she learned a lot about dealing with peer-group pressure.

"We did a song called `There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig,' " she recalls, "and instead of getting a singing solo, I had to wear a cow's hat on my head and pretend I was a cow going out to plow. Which was embarrassing for me. I was in eighth grade, you know, and you really want to be cool. So I had to learn to suck it up; a bunch of my friends came to see me, and I said, `You know, being a cow is cool.' It was a good learning experience, actually."

Maria Sangiolo is a popular singer-songwriter on the New England coffeehouse circuit. Fresh out of college in 1988, she appeared in three editions of Revels shows. The experience changed her course from pop to folk.

"When I did Revels, I was instantaneously connected to folk music," she says, "because so many performers in the show were into that. And there was such a strong sense of community within the cast. That communal aspect -- and the part the music plays in creating that -- just caught my heart. This was a kind of entertaining that was not just about you."

Corey says: "Revels was like a coming of age. When you're a kid, you look up to the adults so much, think `Wow, they're so talented; I wish I could do that someday.' Then as a teenager, you're more like, `Oh, I could do that.' And a few years later, there you are in the adult chorus with many of the same people you were looking up to when you were 11. It really is like growing up in a community."

(The "Christmas Revels" runs through Dec. 30 at Sanders Theatre. Call 617-972-8300 or visit www.revels.org.)