insight into the play, the playwright, and the … · insight into the play, the playwright, and...

WORDS on PLAYSIINNSSIIGGHHTT IINNTTOO TTHHEE PPLLAAYY,, TTHHEE PPLLAAYYWWRRIIGGHHTT,, AANNDD TTHHEE PPRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN

2005/2010 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER

A Christmas Carolby charles dickensadapted by carey perloff and paul

walshmusic by karl lundebergdirected by domenique lozanobased on the original direction by

carey perloffchoreography by val caniparoli

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scenery by john arnonecostumes by beaver bauerlighting by nancy schertlersound by jake rodriguez

WORDS ON PLAYS prepared by

elizabeth brodersenpublications editor

jessica wernercontributing editor

margot melconpublications & literary assistant

A Christmas Carol

A M E R I C A N C O N S E R VAT O R Y T H E AT E R

Carey Perloff, Artistic Director Ellen Richard, Executive Director

P R E S E N T S

© 2005, 2010 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

by charles dickensadapted by carey perloff and

paul walshmusic by karl lundebergdirected by domenique lozanobased on the original direction

by carey perloffchoreography by val caniparolimusic direction by robert rutt

WORDS on PLAYSIINNSSIIGGHHTT IINNTTOO TTHHEE PPLLAAYY,, TTHHEE PPLLAAYYWWRRIIGGHHTT,, AANNDD TTHHEE PPRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN

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words on plays is made possible by

Special thanks to JPMorgan Chase Foundation, The Kimball Foundation,The Michelson Foundation, and Union Bank Foundation

for their support in bringing arts education programs to our community.

Costume sketches © 2005 by D. B. Bauer.

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table of contents

1. Characters and Synopsis of A Christmas Carol

6. A Brief Biography of Charles Dickensby David Elliott

8. Dreaming a New Carolby Elizabeth Brodersen

14. Interviews with Members of the Creative Team for A Christmas Carol:Carey Perloff, Director/Coadaptor * Paul Walsh, Coadaptor Karl Lundeberg, Composer * John Arnone, Scenic DesignerBeaver Bauer, Costume Designer * Val Caniparoli, Choreographer

37. A Carol Philosophyby Paul Walsh

41. A Man Redeemed by Memoriesby Michael Paller

45. An Excerpt from A Christmas CarolBy Charles Dickens

47. Some Noteworthy Versions of A Christmas Carol

49. Questions to Consider

50. For Further Information . . .

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characters and synopsis ofA CHRISTMAS CAROLA Christmas Carol, adapted from Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella by Carey Perloff andPaul Walsh, premiered at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California,on November 26, 2005.

characters ebenezer scroogeghost of jacob marleybob cratchitanne cratchitsally cratchitpeter cratchittiny tim cratchitbelinda cratchitned cratchitmartha cratchitclerkscharitablesbusinessmenfredmrs. dilberwoman in streetghost of christmas pastschoolmasterdaveyedwardboy dickboy scroogelittle fanwoman in the streetbeggar girlmr. fezziwigmrs. fezziwigyoung scroogedick wilkins

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belleermengardefelicitydorothyjimburtgiles the fiddleralanruthalfredchildren of alan and ruthprecious wilkinssarah wilkinsrory wilkinsghost of christmas presentturkish figsspanish onionsfrench plumsproduce sellersmarybethtopperannabellethomasignorancewantgang membersmrs. filcherboy in sunday clothesbelle wilkins

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synopsis

Act 1. scene 1. The city of London swirls with holiday activity as people rush to andfro in the biting cold to ready themselves for Christmas. The irritable Scrooge badg-

ers his workworn clerk, Bob Cratchit.scene 2. Charitable gentlemen arrive at the office of Scrooge and Marley, only to be

told by an abrasive Scrooge that his former partner, Jacob Marley, died on Christmas Eveseven years earlier. The gentlemen kindly ask for a contribution, and Scrooge respondswith a vicious tirade that there must surely be enough prisons and workhouses to accom-modate those in need. He pushes the charitable gentlemen out of his office, refusing tocontribute any of his abundant wealth to the poor. Scrooge also refuses to grant Cratchita small piece of coal for the fire, forcing the clerk to return his freezing fingers to work.Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, arrives and invites his uncle to have Christmas dinner with himand his wife, Mary. Scrooge vehemently refuses and remains unpleasant to the last as Fredleaves, undaunted, wishing all a merry Christmas.The clock chimes signaling the end of the workday,and Cratchit gratefully leaves.

scene 3. Scrooge leaves his office, cursing theholiday revelers all the way home. At his front door,Scrooge hears an eerie voice calling his name and seesMarley’s ghostly face hovering before him.Dismissing the apparition to fatigue, he enters hishouse to be confronted by his housekeeper, Mrs.Dilber, who fetches his gruel and readies him for bed.After he is settled, Mrs. Dilber departs, cursing heremployer for insisting that she return in the morningto care for him, even though it is Christmas Day.Alone in the dark with his meager supper, Scroogereassures himself and retires to bed.

scene 4. In a terrifying burst of light and sound,a spirit rises from below, calling out to Scrooge.Identifying itself as the ghost of Jacob Marley, thespirit explains to Scrooge that he has been con-demned to drag behind him in the afterlife chainsthat he forged with his own cruel and selfish behaviorin life. The ghost tells his former partner that there is


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hope for Scrooge, while he still lives, to avoid a similar fate. Marley informs Scrooge thatthree spirits will visit him during the night in an attempt to inspire Scrooge to change hisown fate. As the ghost is sucked back into the void, the haunting sounds of the spirit worldecho through Scrooge’s bedchamber.

scene 5. As the clock chimes the fateful hour, a luminous spirit descends from above,calling out to Scrooge to remember his long-forgotten former life. With the promise ofreclamation, the Ghost of Christmas Past guides Scrooge through scenes of his distantpast, first stopping at the school he attended as a boy. Scrooge sees younger versions ofhimself and his friends happily anticipating their Christmas holiday. At the Schoolmaster’surging, the children scatter, heading for their homes—all except Scrooge, who has nowhereto go and expects to spend a lonely holiday at the school. He is joyfully suprised by thearrival of his sister, Little Fan, who has come to bring Ebenezer home to stay. Little Fangives Scrooge their mother’s ring and makes him promise to wear it always, and they hap-pily rush off.

The Ghost of Christmas Past reminds Scrooge of hisrefusal to have dinner with Fred, his sister’s only child, andScrooge shamefacedly remembers that he and Fan hadpromised to always look after each other. The ghost bringsforth another memory from Scrooge’s past, and the scenechanges to a warehouse run by Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, whoemployed Ebenezer as a young man. The Fezziwigs’ generos-ity abounds as they host a holiday party and pass outChristmas bonuses to all their young employees. The ghostand Scrooge watch as his younger self flirts with Belle.Scrooge is reminded of how little it took to create so much cheer among so many young people. Thespirit then guides Scrooge forward a few years, as Scrooge’sbest friend, young Dick Wilkins, urges Ebenezer to attendthe annual Fezziwig party, especially since Belle is eagerlyexpecting him; young Ebenezer insists, however, on return-ing to work, convinced that Belle will only want him if he isrich. The scene progresses and Belle, compelled by loneliness,sadly breaks off her engagement with Ebenezer, citing the

Costume sketches for Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit


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fact that he has become driven by an obsession with profit and she is no longer fit to behis wife because she has no dowry to offer him.

With these memories burning his soul, Scrooge pleads with the Ghost of ChristmasPast to show him no more. One final vision appears, that of Belle as a young mother withher husband, an older Dick Wilkins, their children, and their happy life. As frustration anddespair overwhelm Scrooge, he snuffs out the light of Christmas Past in defiance. Thehaunting voice of Jacob Marley predicts the coming of the next spirit.

intermission

Act 11. scene 1. The Ghost of Christmas Present appears. The spirit explains thatall of humanity are its kin, recipients of an abundant supply of hope, good cheer, and

fulfillment. Tasty-looking fruits and vegetables roll across the stage as the Ghost ofChristmas Present conjures for Scrooge visions of the holiday season, which is celebratedall around him, despite his humbug attitude. One scene is that of Fred and Mary’s joyousdinner party, to which Scrooge has been invited. Fred defends Scrooge to his guests, end-ing with a toast to his absent uncle. Scrooge wistfully looks away, remembering again hisbroken promise to Fan.

The ghost leads Scrooge to the next vision, thatof the penniless yet happy Cratchit family as theygather for Christmas Eve, teasing each other play-fully. In a moment of seriousness, Bob and his wifediscuss the failing health of their sickly son, TinyTim, worrying over his increasing weakness. Bobreassures his wife, and gives thanks to Scrooge, evenas Anne curses his name. Ever kind, Bob insists thathis family toast to his employer, and ChristmasPresent escorts Scrooge away as the Cratchit familysings his blessings.

The Cratchit family’s singing is lost amid thegrowing din of unease as Christmas Present intro-duces Scrooge to Ignorance and Want, abrasiveyouths who terrorize Scrooge for turning a blindeye to those in need. As they fade, the bell chimesonce again to signal the coming of the third andfinal spirit.


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scene 2. The Ghost of Christmas Future, a huge specter, rises and hovers aboveScrooge, who pleads to the Ghost for kindness. As the giant specter’s wings close andopen, we see businessmen callously talking crudely about someone recently deceased.Scrooge watches with distress, demanding to know of whom they speak, when Mrs. Dilberand Mrs. Filcher arrive. They begin divvying up the dead man’s possessions as Scroogecries out for kindness, realizing the dead man is himself. The women strip the corpse ofvaluables, including his mother’s ring, and the scene changes to another scene of death:the Cratchit family in a funeral procession carrying the child-size coffin of Tiny Tim.Scrooge demands to know if these visions are certain to happen or merely things that maycome to pass. The Ghost of Christmas Future does not answer, but guides him into acemetery and to his very own tombstone. In terror, Scrooge vows to make amends in hislife and take the three spirits’ lessons to heart, in order to change the nightmare vision ofthe future he has just seen.

scene 3. It is Christmas morning and Scrooge awakens, shaken by the terrifyingvisions of the night before. As he realizes that he is back once again in his own room andhis own bed, and that the spirits have gone, he is giddy with relief that he is still alive andstill has a chance to mend his ways. He praises the holiday and the Ghosts for showinghim the way to happiness. Mrs. Dilber arrives and Scrooge demands to know the day.When she confesses bitterly that it is indeed Christmas Day, Scrooge rejoices—and shefears he has lost his mind. He asks her to dance and gives her a generous bonus beforesending her off to enjoy her holiday. Scrooge, still dressed in his nightshirt with a coatthrown hastily over, enters the street and gives a boy enough money to go purchase thehuge prize turkey from the poulterer down the street and deliver it to the Cratchit family.As Scrooge makes his way down the street, seeing everything with a new appreciation, heencounters the charitable gentlemen he denied the day before and promises them a largedonation. Fred and Mary appear from the crowd to see what is happening and findScrooge. He embraces Fred and asks to still be included in their Christmas dinner, thengives Mary the ring from his sister, insisting that it should be hers. As they are reuniting,Bob Cratchit makes his way through the crowd with Tiny Tim. Scrooge pretends to beangry with Cratchit, accusing him of failing to show up for work on Christmas Day. Bobis stammering to explain when Scrooge breaks a smile and promises to raise his salary andassist his needy family. Cratchit is overwhelmed with surprise when the boy arrives withthe huge turkey for his family. Belle Wilkins, Dick and Belle’s daughter, also meets Scroogeon the street, and as the spirits of Christmas Past and Present return, all of London praisethe joys of the holiday season.


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a brief biography of charles dickensby david elliott

Charles Dickens (1817–70) was born intoa comfortable home, knew real poverty,

and finally rose to become the wealthiestwriter in the world. His family backgroundwas checkered: one grandfather had been adomestic servant, another was an embezzler.His father was a navy clerk, a man of tremen-dous vitality, but also a spendthrift who in1824 was imprisoned for his debts. His manyfailings and essential charm became the basisfor one of Dickens’s great characters, DavidCopperfield’s Mr. Micawber.

The family’s descent into poverty—diffi-cult to avoid with ten children to feed—forced young Charles to abandon school in1824 and go to work in a London blackingwarehouse. Disgraced and hating the drudg-ery of his work, he was further embitteredwhen, after his father’s fortunes recovered, his

mother wanted him to continue in manual labor. At 15, however, he became a clerk in asolicitor’s office, and soon thereafter a court stenographer and newspaper reporter. Thenbegan his long, intimate love affair with London, the setting of almost all of his writings.As the historian Walter Bagehot later said, Dickens “describes London like a special cor-respondent for posterity.”

Although attracted to the theater (he considered becoming an actor), Dickens finallybegan to earn an income with his journalism. In 1833, at just 21, his stories and essays (laterpublished in Sketches by Boz [1836]) found a welcoming audience. The key to his fortunecame soon after when Dickens was asked to provide a comic narrative to accompany aseries of engravings. The resulting Pickwick Papers was an immediate success.

Dickens became in a sense the first “comic book artist,” and the serialization of his workin the popular press—often illustrated by Cruikshank or “Phiz” (Hablot Brown)—earnedhim an immense and demanding public. Major works began to roll from his pen: Oliver


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Twist, with its lush, sinister portrait of London’sunderworld and its population of poverty-strickenchildren, was serialized and published in book form in1838. It was followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1839), TheOld Curiosity Shop (1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841),Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), A Christmas Carol (1843),and his other enormously popular holiday tales.During a visit to the United States in 1842, his remarkson copyright protection and in support of the aboli-tion movement were met with hostility, and he repliedwith his own sharp criticism of American vulgarity inAmerican Notes (1842).

Beginning with the publication of Dombey and Sonin 1848, Dickens’s writing became increasingly refined,yet there was no break in his popularity. His workswere available everywhere, in periodicals as well asonstage; at one time 20 London theaters were simul-taneously presenting adaptations of Dickens stories.The gushingly sentimental “Death of Little Nell” wasan especial favorite.

Although Dombey had revealed a more penetrating criticism of the new industrial soci-ety, David Copperfield (1849), Dickens’s own favorite novel, returned to a world of boyhoodadventure and contained extensive autobiographical material. The 1850s, however, broughtthe “dark trilogy” of Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1857). Withthese works Dickens’s characterizations became more subdued and his view of social injus-tice more pervasive.

Although shaken by the separation from his wife, Catherine Hogarth, in 1858 (causedby his affair with the young actress Ellen Ternan) and exhausted by long speaking tours,Dickens was far from finished as a writer. In 1859 came A Tale of Two Cities, which was ahuge success, followed the next year by Great Expectations. The latter book—now consid-ered his masterpiece—revealed, in the character Pip, Dickens’s uncanny ability to enter themind of a child. His last works were Our Mutual Friend (1864), a stark criticism of moneyvalues, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on the case of John Jasper, an opium-addicted cathedral organist who murdered his nephew. Dickens literally died midsentence, and Drood was never finished, the author having truly worked himself to death.

I have endeavored

in this Ghostly little

book, to raise the

Ghost of an Idea,

which shall not put my

readers out of humour

with themselves, with

each other, with the

season, or with me.

May it haunt their

houses pleasantly, and

no one wish to lay it!

Their faithful friend

and servant, C.D.

—Charles Dickens,

A Christmas Carol,

December 1843


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dreaming a new CAROL

by elizabeth brodersen (fall 2005)

look up! look up! look up, know me better!for i am the spirit of christmas!look up! look up! look up, know me better!i have come to open your heart,i am here to banish the darkness . . .

—A Christmas Carol, adapted by Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh

From June to August this year, the unlikely sounds of Christmas could be heard waft-ing through A.C.T.’s offices in San Francisco, as early visions of sugarplums and

holiday revelers danced their way across the rehearsal room floor just down the hall. Thisis an auspicious moment for A.C.T., which, after producing 27 incarnations of the com-pany’s beloved 1976 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, has marshaled itscreative talent and energy to create a brand-new version that will premiere at the GearyTheater in December.

When A.C.T. originally mounted Dickens’s classic Christmas tale nearly 30 years ago,the Powers That Were felt optimistic that the show might be successful enough to returnfor one more season. At the time, A.C.T.’s Carol, adapted by Dennis Powers and LairdWilliamson, was one of the few theatrical productions of Dickens’s 1843 novella being per-formed in the United States. Over the next three decades, however, the annual productionof A Christmas Carol became a cornerstone of the A.C.T. repertory, performed 832 times toa collective audience of more than 775,000, employing nearly 1,000 actors (including sevendifferent Ebenezer Scrooges and hundreds of children) and 600 backstage staff along theway. After successfully remounting the same production for three decades—using the sameset pieces, props, and costumes, with only occasional refurbishment—and in light of theplethora of new Bay Area holiday productions, including the San Francisco Ballet’s newNutcracker, Best of Broadway’s new White Christmas, and Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut inBerkeley—A.C.T.’s leadership deemed the summer of 2005 the perfect moment to breathenew life and spirit into the company’s ever-popular holiday theatrical tradition.

“We went through incredible institutional soul-searching as we discussed Carol ’s con-tinuing significance to A.C.T.’s artists and audiences,” says Artistic Director Carey Perloff,who ultimately decided to develop a new adaptation of Dickens’s text herself, in collabo-


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ration with dramaturg Paul Walsh.“Contrary to popular belief, A ChristmasCarol is not a cash cow. It takes tremen-dous resources, in terms of staff time,creative energy, and financial support, tomount a production of such grand scaleeach year, and we knew it would take evenmore to create a new production from theground up. Yet there are deeply com-pelling reasons to keep this extraordinarystory in our repertory.”

Among those reasons is the multi-generational aspect of the production.Featuring in each season’s cast the entirethird-year class of A.C.T.’s top-rankedMaster of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Program, aswell as almost two dozen students fromthe Young Conservatory (YC), A.C.T.’sacclaimed program for actors aged 8 to19), A Christmas Carol has played a criticalrole in A.C.T.’s actor training curriculum, arole also central to the development of thenew production.

Relationships among the cast of eachyear’s Carol are fostered by a mentoring

program, in which each professional actor mentors an M.F.A. Program cast member, whoin turn mentors a yc student; thus each generation helps usher the succeeding one into thelife of the working theater artist. “This production announces to the world that young peo-ple are central to A.C.T.’s aesthetic experience,” adds Perloff. “Our M.F.A. Program, led byMelissa Smith, and our Young Conservatory, led by Craig Slaight, are incredible, and hereis our chance to really celebrate them and say, ‘Look what this institution can do.’”

Despite the stiff new competition looming literally around the corner last winter, audi-ences continued to flock to Carol, and it became evident that the A.C.T. production hasbecome a vital part of the wider Bay Area community’s holiday experience. “We discoveredjust how passionate people are about A Christmas Carol,” says Perloff. “Dramatizations ofthis story seem to have become an important ecumenical American ritual at holiday time,

Costume sketch for the Ghost of Christmas Past


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regardless of individual religious background or faith. Seeing Carol is an experience thatpeople yearn to have, year after year. It is a remarkable story, a secular tale about transfor-mation and the imagination.

“I also think we have to remember the number of people who are part of this company’slife who came first to A.C.T. to see A Christmas Carol, and that every year we have audi-ences who are seeing theater for the very first time.”

a new script and musicBecause her vision for Carol at A.C.T. was so particular, and included so many more chil-dren and young people than any version she could find, Perloff, a playwright in her ownright (A Colossus of Rhodes, Luminescence Dating), finally sat down with dramaturg PaulWalsh (whose previous translations and adaptations for A.C.T. have included A Doll’sHouse, Creditors, and Edward II) to begin work on a brand-new adaptation for A.C.T. Theyimmediately went back to Dickens’s original novella.

Sketch of the set for A Christmas Carol by John Arnone


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Taking advantage of the opportunity to tailor the script to A.C.T.’s needs, Walsh andPerloff set ground rules for the new version. The first rule: No narrator. Dickens himself,a familiar presence in many dramatic interpretations of the tale (including A.C.T.’s previ-ous version), no longer makes an appearance onstage. “We were excited to see whethereverything that happened could be dramatized,” says Perloff. “There are many ‘story the-ater’ versions [of A Christmas Carol]. I wanted to see if we could really make this a play.”

The second rule: Create two 40-minute acts with an intermission (fidgety childrenoften had a hard time sitting through the previous version’s 100-minute playing time).

The third rule was to stay true to the unique rhythms of Dickens’s language. “Wewanted to see if we could find a language for the script that echoed Dickens’s,” says Perloff.“His descriptive passages are filled with surprisingly sensual adjectives and active gerunds.I thought it would be wonderful to preserve the kinetic energy of his descriptive prose.”

Adds Walsh, “Dickens wrote his stories and novels nearly two centuries ago to be readaloud, so they’re already performative, in a sense. They have a cadence that’s meant to beheard, and words that, while sometimes unfamiliar, are wonderfully theatrical. So we’veheld to as much of Dickens’s language as is practical within our adaptation, at the sametime trying to make sure that everything is crystal clear moment by moment and celebra-tory of the imaginative possibilities of Dickens’s own text.”

Music is integral to the development of the new adaptation. Composer Karl FredrikLundeberg (who scored Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for A.C.T., as well as numerous projects forfilm and television) is writing all new music for the production, including several songs andunderscoring to provide Carol ’s dramatic action with narrative continuity and an overallsense of magic and celebration. “When I reread Carol after not reading it for 25 years, I wasstruck by how comical and wry the writing is,” says Lundeberg. “It almost reminded me ofP. G. Wodehouse. So the lyrics for the songs were already there, in the text. Carey wouldtake the first pass at ordering the words in a musical way, and then I would musicalize it.It’s an interesting way to create a book for a musical, because Charles Dickens is the lyricist.”

Lundeberg’s score draws from a wide variety of traditions, from the folk tunes of hisNorwegian family’s musical roots to contemporary American gospel. “Subliminally, themusic needs to have a lightness to it,” he says. “I ended up writing a lot of the melodies inwhat’s called the Lydian mode [in which the fourth note of a major scale is raised a halfstep], which gives them a sort of a lift. Because this is a piece that’s going to be done, hope-fully over many years, by people of different ages and levels of training, I didn’t want themelodies to be complex, but I did want the harmonies to be interesting, and as they keepshifting beneath the melodies, things move along faster.”


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fantastical designAlso crucial to the collaborative development process has been the involvement of theCarol design team, which includes, in addition to Lundeberg, Tony Award–winning scenicdesigner John Arnone (Lennon, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, and The Full Monty, amongmany others, on Broadway), costume designer Beaver Bauer (most recently, The Gamesterand The Goat for A.C.T.), lighting designer Nancy Schertler (The Real Thing, Hilda, LeveeJames, and Texts for Nothing for A.C.T.), sound designer Jake Rodriguez (The Colossus ofRhodes for A.C.T.), and San Francisco Ballet choreographer Val Caniparoli (A Doll’s Housefor A.C.T.). The team’s participation began early in the script writing process, acceleratingduring workshops of the draft text held at A.C.T.’s studios last summer.

The visual aesthetic of the new production reflects Perloff and Walsh’s desire to imag-ine Carol the way Dickens might have if he had created a production today. “I felt the production should be much more dreamlike, like the book, which is very filmic,” saysPerloff. “It cuts back and forth in time; it’s written in this fantastic way. So instead ofdetailing Scrooge’s adventure with the ghosts in a linear structure, we tell his story in a kindof swirling pageant with scenes dotted throughout.

“We also decided that, while we will keep the setting loosely Victorian, we’re not goingto be a slave to that period. The design is in no way realistic, because this is at its core a piece

A.C.T.’s A Christmas Carol, 2009: A reformed Scrooge (James Carpenter, center) celebratesthe season with his nephew, Fred (Philip Mills, right), and the Cratchits: Bob (A.C.T. core act-ing company member Gregory Wallace), Anne (A.C.T. core acting company member RenéAugesen), and Tiny Tim (Calum John). Photo by Kevin Berne.


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about magic and change. Dickens said that, if the ghosts could appeal to the imagination ofthis man such that he could ultimately believe in them, he would be transformed.”

Known for her inventive designs for the theater, Bauer took to heart her assignment tomake the ghosts “scary and surprising.” Representing the combination of gorgeous cos-tuming and ingenious stagecraft, they embody Dickens’s descriptions in his original text:Christmas Past is a candle, lit from within, who descends on a swing; Present is a Bacchicspirit of fecundity and abundance who sings a full-voiced gospel-like tune; Future is agigantic puppet that flies across the stage on tie-lines. “The ghosts are intentionallyandrogynous,” says Perloff. “The point is that they are otherworldly, filled with light andunlike ordinary humans; they swing in from the rafters, they rise up from the depths belowthe stage on elevators. They hang above like specters. They transport.”

scrooge’s journey back to communityPerloff and Walsh were particularly interested in the inherently theatrical possibilities ofthe ghost story that lies at the heart of Dickens’s tale. “I think, for Laird [Williamson] andDennis [Powers], A Christmas Carol was a piece about the Solstice, very much about dark-ness and light,” says Perloff. “For me, it’s also about the imagination. Dickens had a profound belief in fantastical storytelling. He told this particular ghost story in the beliefthat, if you could trigger a person’s imagination, you could trigger their humanity. I believethat’s really what he was trying to do with this story.”

“In rereading a classic text like A Christmas Carol,” adds Walsh, “we always read fromwhere we are today. Reading Carol this time, what we found was that Dickens in fact choseto write a ghost story. It’s not a story about the trials and travails of Victorian England, orabout child labor and the abuse of children; he wrote many books about that. This is amuch simpler story, about a man who has allowed himself to be separated from commu-nity and then is called back to community. He eventually finds his way back into the fold,because he’s been changed by the telling of the story.

“A Christmas Carol celebrates the possibility of theater to evoke and maybe even effectchange on behalf of community, because we watch theater as a community. Theater cele-brates that sense not of the individual, but of the individual in society, in community, andthat’s the story that A Christmas Carol tells.”

Fundamentally, A.C.T.’s new Carol is a gift to the entire Bay Area community of theaterartists and audiences. “One of the reasons this has been a very challenging process,” saysPerloff, “is that we’re trying to do all this as imaginatively and efficiently as possible, so wedon’t have to charge high ticket prices.We want this show to be affordable to the widestpossible audience. This story is for all of us.”


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interviews with members of the creativeteam for A CHRISTMAS CAROL

by elizabeth brodersen (summer/fall 2005)

carey perloff, co-adaptor and director

some of the most basic questions about this project are: why arewe doing a new CAROL? how is it going to be different from a.c.t.’sold production? what are your goals, and how have they changed during the process of developing this piece? We went through incredible soul-searching as we discussed Carol ’s continuing significanceto a.c.t. artists and audiences. Contrary to popular belief, A Christmas Carol is not a cashcow. It takes tremendous resources, in terms of staff time, creative energy, and financialsupport to mount a production of such grand scale each year, and we knew it would takeeven more to create a new production. Yet there are deeply compelling reasons to keep thisextraordinary story in our repertory. Among the foremost reasons is the multigenerationalaspect of the production. Every winter, Carol announces to the world that young peopleare central to a.c.t.’s aesthetic experience. Our Master of Fine Arts (m.f.a.) Program andYoung Conservatory (yc) are incredible, and here is our chance to celebrate them and say,“Look what this institution can do.”

We also realized that one of the amazing things about theater is the degree to which itswims in a river of its own time, that any great classic is reflected in the present moment.The particular way A Christmas Carol, the novel, was adapted 29 years ago was very mucha reflection of its own moment, historically and theatrically. Theater has changed so much,our theater in particular. In the intervening years, the earthquake hit and the Geary col-lapsed, and it was rebuilt as one of the great fly houses in the country. It is fully trapped, ithas all kinds of bells and whistles that the Geary never had before that could be used togreat effect to tell this story, this ghost story, which is what Dickens called his novel.

But for some time the jury was out [on whether we would continue producing Carol],and I kept thinking, for instance, about all the local competition. There’s a new WhiteChristmas next door [at the Curran]; there’s a new Nutcracker [at sf Ballet]. But what wediscovered is just how passionate people are about A Christmas Carol. Even last year, it soldextremely well, and it isn’t replicable. It isn’t like the Nutcracker. It isn’t like WhiteChristmas. A Christmas Carol as a story isn’t like anything else. It is the most remarkable,


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secular, and deeply humanistic tale about transformation and about the imagination, whichmakes it purely theatrical.

This emphasis on the imagination just jumped out at me when I reread the novel.Dickens really felt that if he could create a character as desiccated, as cut off—the word“Scrooge” comes from a word meaning “squeeze, ”and Scrooge has really squeezed everydrop of joyfulness out of himself—could it be possible to somehow trigger his own empa-thy? Is it possible to bring somebody like that back into the world? I think the entire jour-ney of Carol is about triggering someone’s empathy and imagination, such that someonepersecuted and removed from society finds a way back into the family of man.

Dickens was also playing with the idea of the ghost story. Could he create a situation inwhich this man was forced to believe in these three ghosts? So, of course in the beginningScrooge is saying, I don’t believe in any of this, it’s rubbish, its humbug, but slowly he startsto believe, and that is the power and artistry of the imagination.

I went and talked to [San Franciso Ballet Artistic Director] Helgi Tomasson, and hetold me that the ballet had faced the same question: Why a new Nutcracker? And he toldme, “If you want Carol to be important to a.c.t., you have to do it. You have to put it atthe center of your agenda.” I had never thought about doing a new adaptation myself.Never. And I remember this long lunch in January with [co-adaptor] Paul [Walsh] whenI first brought it up. I had no idea what he wasgoing to think of this—and then we went for it.We agreed to keep everything we treasure aboutthe old version, but to otherwise start fromscratch. We worked out a system that we neverreally had to articulate. I said I would do thesongs, and went away and did the lyrics, whilePaul pulled all the dialogue from the book thatwe thought we wanted. Then we just looked atit scene by scene and kept going off to work onour own and then bringing things back to eachother. It was surprisingly easy. We didn’t feel theleast bit territorial, or that we were writing intwo different voices. It all seemed very clear,which in part is because from the beginning weset ourselves some ground rules.

Annabelle at Fred’s party


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what were the ground rules?First, no narration. We were excited to see whether everything that happens in the novelcould be dramatized. There are many “story theater” versions of A Christmas Carol. I wantedto see if we could really make this a play. When a.c.t. first did Carol [in 1976], it was morecustomary for children to be read aloud to, but I do think children for better or worse haveshorter attention spans now. In the previous version, because there was so much time spenton setting the scene and narration, we didn’t get to Marley until 40 minutes into the firstact. I thought, This is a ghost story! We need to be at the first ghost within 15 minutes. Thesecond rule: we decided that while we will keep it in Victorian England, we’re not going tobe slaves to that setting. We didn’t want it to be realistic because it’s a piece about the imag-ination. So the ghosts have to drive it. The third rule: create two 40-minute acts with anintermission. Children had a hard time sitting through the longer version. And one of thefun things about coming to our theater is intermission. You get to wander that gorgeousspace and look down that beautiful staircase and go into the balconies.

We also wanted to create three distinct worlds for the ghosts of Past, Present, andFuture. Christmas Past sings, “Do you remember?” We like to think that is an easy verb,but memory can be a very fraught, difficult thing; particularly if you’ve had an unhappychildhood, remembering things about your past can be painful and confusing. Part of whatChristmas Past wants Scrooge to feel are the sensations he felt as a child, when he wasmore available to be touched by life, by others.

Christmas Present is about seduction, in a way: sensual and lively and very pleasurable,with the vibrancy and light of the present moment that you wish Scrooge would enter into.

Future is about terrorizing somebody with the potential consequences of his behavior.So the ghost of Christmas Future in our production is a terrifying presence that rises upabove the Geary stage, reminding and warning Scrooge of what will happen to him andhis own culture if he doesn’t take responsibility for contributing to the world around him.

how did you approach the novel and decide what to keep? We went through the novel very carefully and looked at Scrooge’s psychological journey.When you first meet him [in the book], he is a lonely schoolboy, and he seems to be sortof an abandoned child. There is a suggestion that his mother died in childbirth and thathis father has had a very hard time with it. The novel also implies a kind of crossroadsmoment where Scrooge chooses money and wealth over love and family. Now, I wouldn’tsay that the moral of Carol is “Money is a terrible thing,” but I do think the piece is aboutwhat happens when money and work become such obsessions that one’s primary connec-tion to the world gets severed. That’s what happens to Scrooge. He starts as someone who


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knows how to love: he loves Fan; he falls in love with Belle; he has Dick as a good friend.And then what happens to him? Dickens gives us an incredible scene where Scroogebreaks up with Belle, and that turning-point scene was missing [from a.c.t.’s old version].That’s really the choice that puts him on the wrong path.

I also felt the production should be much more dreamlike, like the book, which is veryfilmic. It cuts back and forth in time in this fantastic way. So instead of detailing Scrooge’sadventure with the ghosts in a conventionally linear scene-scene-scene structure, we tell hisstory in a kind of swirling pageant with scenes dotted throughout. So, for example, theFezziwig dance represents the passage of time, as told in the evolution of Scrooge’s rela-tionship with Belle.

The other thing I wanted to see is if we could find a language for the script that echoesDickens’s. His descriptive passages are filled with surprisingly sensual adjectives and activegerunds. I thought it would be wonderful to preserve the kinetic energy of his descriptiveprose. I chose lines I love, like the words about how cold it is, “stamping, biting,” and thedescriptive “clinking, clanking money,” and just tried to create lyrics out of that. It was thesame with the descriptions of the fruit. One thing that struck me when I reread the novelwas how incredibly sensual it is. Particularly in Christmas Present. It made me think of anEnglish cookbook by Elizabeth David called Mediterranean Food, which came out duringWorld War II, when the English were doing without so much. Dickens’s descriptions ofthe foods of Christmas reminded me so much of David’s sense of the sort of miracle ofMediterranean bounty. I thought, here we are in Victorian England [in Carol], and it’s coldand dark, and suddenly someone sees an olive. A fig. It’s about Christmas’s seductiveness.

did you think about dickens’s own motives or inspirations? What we realized is that Dickens was not just writing this out of altruism. A big part ofhis message is that it is in your own best interest to be benevolent, and to have a connec-tion to your society, because, if not, the society would be a culture of insurgents and crim-inality, which is what we know now. And we should realize that that transformation hap-pens to Scrooge in many ways: it happens through Christmas Past reminding him explic-itly; it also happens because he feels threatened. He is warned about what will happen toTiny Tim, and his own responsibility. Dickens wasn’t scared of saying, You are responsi-ble. Each one of us is responsible. He really thought that every single individual carries thepotential to change themselves, to change the world, to change the way people are treated.So we’re trying to chart several different actions: What is each spirit trying to do toScrooge, and how does he resist? And how can we make him resist as long as possible, tokeep it dramatic?


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paul [walsh] uses the word “reclamation,” instead of “redemption,”to describe scrooge’s journey. what is your feeling about that?I think it’s important not to make this religious in any obvious sense, and “redemption”sounds like a very Christian term. It isn’t the word Dickens uses. In fact, there is only onemention of church in the entire novel, which is when Tiny Tim and Bob [Cratchit] arewalking out of church and they hear somebody saying, “It would be nice at Christmas toremember who made the lame to walk and the blind to see.” It seems to me, oddly enough,that A Christmas Carol has become an important ecumenical American ritual at holidaytime. We need rituals, but there are many people for whom the standard Christian orJewish or other religious rituals don’t particularly speak to them. There’s no other play thatis such an incredibly important annual ritual for so many people from diverse backgrounds.

the costume sketches of the ghosts are just wonderful.I wanted them to be totally androgynous spirits. This year we’re looking at them beingplayed by women, but in the future they could be played by men. The point is that they areotherworldly, filled with light, and not like ordinary humans. Their locomotion is differ-ent: they swing and rise up on elevators; they hang above like specters and transport.

what can you share about the ghost of christmas present?In the book, Christmas Present is described as a Bacchic spirit of fecundity, an image ofthe cornucopia, wearing a green velvet robe, growing holly and leaves, with fruit hangingeverywhere, while emanating light and exuding fertility. I have been torn with this idea ofit being a woman, because I love the idea of Scrooge confronting a female fertility spirit ina play about a character with an absent mother.

what about christmas future?The ghost of Christmas Future is an evanescent specter, a puppet made of mesh. It looksterrifying and starts roped to the ground, and then rises up until it’s this enormous pres-ence that envelops [Scrooge] with its wings. The design for this show has been anabsolutely integral part of the writing process from the beginning. John [Arnone, scenery],Beaver [Bauer, costumes], and Karl [Lundeberg, music] have very much been part of thewriting in the sense of responding to it.

and christmas past?Christmas Past is a flickering candle. This emanating light is important because it’s thesymbol of the imagination, that Scrooge’s mind is about to be “enlightened.” There is a


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metaphor throughout the play of Scrooge’s blindness. People say to him, “Open your eyes,blind man. Look up.” But he can’t see. Literally, he cannot see what they are offering him.He can’t remember his own past. He can’t see how wonderful Fred and Mary and his fam-ily are, that there is a community out there for him. So, the journey of the piece from dark-ness into light is also a man’s journey from blindness into seeing, into opening his eyes tothe possibilities of the world—and the candle is the flickering beginning.

what are some casting choices that people might not expect?Christmas Past is very young. She’s played by an m.f.a. Program student, and she’s aloneon a swing, in this fabulous opalescent makeup that makes her look like a sort of ancientcandle. Also, Christmas Past no longer has a family, as in the previous production. Mrs.Dilber is a favorite of mine right now; she’s a bit I stole from the [1951] Alastair Sim movie[Scrooge], which I love. We watched so many of the old movies, and they each have theirown ridiculous and wonderful things. I loved [in the Sim movie] that there was somebodyfor Scrooge to mistreat early on, in addition to Bob Crachit. He’s terrible to Mrs. Dilber.So I made him insist that she bring him his tea on Christmas morning, so she couldn’t gohome for the holiday. Dick Wilkins is much more present now. We have Dick as a boy, andwe have Dick as a young man. He is Scrooge’s best friend, and we see him marry Belle,and we see that relationship later on.

will more of the roles be played by m.f.a. program students?We did write more roles for them. We tried to really think how many roles—theCharitables, the Businessmen, Fred’s friends at his party, for example—could work withthe students. Not only are there more roles for them, but they have more to do, becausemany of them come onstage more often. And there are more roles for [yc] children, too.

is there anything else you’re thinking about, in terms of the community of CAROL? I think we always have to remember the number of people who are part of a.c.t.’s life whofirst came to a.c.t. to see A Christmas Carol. Every year it’s in part an audience that’s see-ing theater for the first time. That’s an important and inspiring thing. My hope is that thisnew piece will continue the tradition of welcoming a whole new generation of theater-goers to our theater and to the world of theatrical transformation. It’s important for theactors to remember that when you’re standing on that stage, somebody is sitting out thereseeing live theater for the very first time, and you will be what they remember years later.They will say, “I saw that performance, and it changed me.”


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paul walsh, co-adaptor

are there any particular principles or ideas that have guided thecreation of this new adaptation of A CHRISTMAS CAROL?The question came up as we were working: What is the key word of the text? What is thekey action of the play? Dickens uses the word “reclamation.” As Scrooge talks about thevarious incarnations of Christmas, and asks them what their purpose is, they say it’s toreclaim. It took me a long time to figure out why Dickens uses that word in particular. Inpart, I think it was because he was leaving to God the things that are God’s, and claimingfor man the things that are man’s, claiming for society the things that are of society. So he’snot pretending to be a godlike author in his writing. He is claiming a social position as awriter.

Reclamation and redemption are somewhat different, in ways that are relevant to a dis-cussion of Carol. Redemption is more spiritual. Redemption has a sense of something thathappens between you and your god, of your god reaching down and cleansing you, redeem-ing you, saving you by bringing you into your spiritual wholeness. Whereas reclamation issomething that society does, reclaiming its lost or discarded members. Whereas God canresurrect and only God can redeem, humanity reclaims.

I like the notion that reclamation has this social connotation. In the same way wereclaim natural resources through recycling, we reclaim lost individuals who’ve been in asense squandered or have squandered themselves, squandered their goodwill on behalf ofsome personal perversity, and as a result are lost to the community. A community needsthose possibilities, those individuals, to be full again. So the entire Carol story is about thereclaiming of Scrooge, as well as about our own reclamation, as members of the audience—about our own reclaiming of the spirit of Christmas, which is a spirit of both generosityand prolixity, a profusion of sensual celebration on behalf of community, on behalf of theseason, and on behalf of ourselves. So, if we do our job right [with the adaptation and pro-duction], we should each be reclaimed in the same way that Scrooge is reclaimed by theend of the play. Of course, we do it with less pain. We don’t have to be visited by increas-ingly insistent spirits.

The spirit of Christmas Past is a wonderful, inviting spirit who says to Scrooge, Comeback to what used to be, remember what used to be and who you used to be, and see if youcan come back in touch with that long-lost part of yourself. Scrooge watches his past as it’srevealed to him, sometimes sentimentally, sometimes with a shortness. But that visionalone doesn’t make him a changed man. Instead, Christmas Present must come in more


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insistently and say, Look here, look up. Join in this celebration, of which you should natu-rally be a part.

Scrooge does listen and starts on the path to reclamation, but he still has a long way togo. So then Christmas Future arrives and is absolutely terrifying, because it says nothing.Christmas Future just points at what the consequences of Scrooge’s actions will be, andthose consequences are dire. They are dire for Scrooge, and they are dire for all of us. Whenthe gang violence of Want and Ignorance bursts upon the stage, it is a warning to us all ofwhat could happen if we don’t reclaim a true sense of community, for the community of usall in the theater, the larger community of San Francisco, and indeed the community of theworld. This is why I think A Christmas Carol is such an exciting and important prospectfor the theater. It celebrates the possibility of theater to evoke and maybe even effect achange on behalf of community, because we watch theater as a community. We participatein the theater as a community, and this play celebrates not just the individual, but the indi-vidual in society.

how did you approach the new adaptation? When rereading a story like A Christmas Carol, we always read in the context of where weare today. What I found this time was that Dickens had chosen to write a ghost story. Carolis not a story about the trials and travails of life in Victorian England. Dickens had writ-ten many books about that subject, but Carol is not about child labor or the abuse of chil-dren in industrialized London. This is a much simpler story. It’s a story about a man whohas allowed himself to be separated from community and then is called back to commu-nity, first by these ghosts, these residual memories of his, and then by the community itself.He may come back into the fold kicking and screaming, but he comes back by the end will-ingly because he’s been changed by the telling of the story. So we really wanted to focus onthat quality.

That journey is effected through an activation of Scrooge’s imagination. Dickens iswonderful at activating all kinds of things in his storytelling through the use of a veryimaginative vocabulary and writing style. We wanted to find a theatrical metaphor thatwas equivalent to Dickens’s incredible prose, that would help our audiences join inScrooge’s imaginative journey, and therefore join in his reclamation.

what about dickens’s language? what is he like to work with as anadaptor?Dickens wrote his stories and novels nearly two centuries ago to be read aloud, so they’realready performative, in a sense. They have a cadence that’s meant to be heard, and words


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that, while sometimes unfamiliar, are wonderfully theatrical. So we’ve held to as much ofDickens’s language as is practical within our adaptation, at the same time trying to makesure that everything is crystal clear moment by moment and celebratory of the imagina-tive possibilities of Dickens’s own text.

karl lundeberg, composer

how would you describe yourself as a composer? your backgroundis in jazz, right?I’m a classically trained jazz musician who has played a lot of folk music and loves rock ’n’roll. I don’t like opera, and I don’t like musical theater. I got into writing music in the the-ater completely by accident. I hadn’t ever thought about it. I was living in Boston and, yes,I had a jazz group for 15 or 20 years. But I was actually trained classically. The first musicI played was either Norwegian folk music, or Motown, gospel, and Beatles music. It’sfunny because I’m just getting back into that now. I’ve spent many years in avant-garde jazzand modern classical music.

Because there’s so much music out there today, I think that a purely classical composeris a bit of a dead horse in this day and age. The same goes, as far as I’m concerned, withhard-line jazz people. And opera. I think modern composers need to not only have theireyes and minds open to all the different types of music that contribute to whatever the nextmusic is going to be, but they have to have some experience in them. So, doing graduatestudies in the New England Conservatory, studying classical orchestration and all that, wasevery bit as important to me as learning gospel piano from the piano player at the blackchurch we went to in Washington, and listening to the Beatles. It’s all important.

I got into writing for theater in Boston at the American Repertory Theatre (a.r.t.); thefirst show I ever did was King Stag, with Julie Taymor. A friend of mine, who was runninga Javanese gamelan orchestra I used to hang out and listen to, got a call from the a.r.t.,asking, “Do you know a jazz musician who knows a bit about Javanese gamelan music andwho can improvise?” “Well, he’s sitting right here.” The a.r.t. back then was into non-traditional music—[Brian] Eno and Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass—so that’s what Ithought writing music for the theater was about. I learned later that that’s not necessarilyso. The one “musical” musical I did was a piece with Eric Overmyer at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE, about 20 years ago. I remember a critic from the Washington Post said, “Ifyou like your musical theater to sound like Steely Dan, this is the piece for you.” I took thatas a great compliment.


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can you describe your process of developing the musical style ofthe new A CHRISTMAS CAROL?I started out talking with Carey about what the musical language of the play was going tobe, because it is set in its [Victorian] period. And none of us wanted it to sound like musi-cal theater. So, since I wanted the score to sound like it could have come out of the 19thcentury, I started thinking we were going to use violins and harps, real instruments—noelectronic stuff. Carey agreed with the decision to use music that could have been playedin the 19th century, but in a harmonic language that is a little more modern.

what came first in writing the songs, the lyrics or the music?carey talks about rewriting the lyrics at the beginning of thepiece, and you doing something to make it all rhythmical. itsounds like an interesting sort of collaboration.She already had most of the lyrics, and then I would reposition things to make it all fit alittle better musically. Sometimes things rhyme and sometimes they don’t. Of course all thewords are basically right out of Dickens. And they’re very good lyrics, because there arelots of delicious, flavorful words. When I reread A Christmas Carol after not reading it for25 years, I was really struck by how comical and wry it is. It almost reminded me of p. g. Wodehouse’s writing. It’s fun language, so it just became a question of reorderingthose terrific words into a musical language. Carey would take the first pass, and then Iwould musicalize it. It’s an interesting way to create a “book” for a musical show, becauseyou don’t have a lyricist. Charles Dickens is the lyricist, in a way. Carey is the doctor of thelyrics. I foul them up a little and make them more musical. So that’s really it.

do you have any thematic concepts in your head as you’re workingon the music? Well, it’s funny because the very first song we were writing had to be very energetic andvery light. The words are “piercing, piercing, piercing,” etc. This might be more musicaland harmonic theory than people want to read about [laughter], but I ended up writing alot of the melodies in what’s called the Lydian mode [in which the fourth note of a majorscale is raised a half step], which gives them a sort of a lift. Because this is a piece that’sgoing to be done, hopefully, over many years, by people of different ages and levels of train-ing, I didn’t want the melodies to be complex, but I did want the harmonies to be inter-esting, and as they keep shifting beneath the melodies, things move along faster.


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do you work with literary, as opposed to musical, concepts at thesame time? for example, carey and paul have emphasized the ideaof “reclamation,” making the point that this version of CAROL isabout rejoining community.I think [about those ideas] subliminally, in an awareness that the musical pieces have tohave a lightness to them; there’s enough heaviness with the ghosts. I’m Norwegian, andChristmas in Norway has been celebrated for thousands of years as a winter solstice festi-val. It has nothing to do with religion, and I think that’s part of what this [Carol] is about.A festival is about uplift, about people being together for one day of the year on which theydon’t think about themselves, but instead think about everybody else, which is a happy,positive, light thing. My mother’s family were all Norwegian folk musicians, so I’ve playedNorwegian folk music ever since I was a little kid. The song they play in the Fezziwig partyis actually an old Scandinavian folk tune I know from my family, the kind of tune they—and the Fezziwigs—would be dancing to with a fiddler.

do you think of this as a score or as a kind of soundtrack, withindividual songs?It is going to be a score. The trick to that is to have an economy of themes that you use,variations of songs or song themes and melodic motifs as underscoring. I’ll find out moreonce the rehearsal process starts. It will have as much music in it as a musical, yet I thor-oughly agree with the concept of a “play with music.” Anything to keep away from the “M[for ‘musical’] word.” [laughter]

john arnone, scenic designer

how did you become interested in this project?Carey and I go way back. We met while working on Steve Reich’s The Cave, which wasprior to her becoming artistic director of a.c.t. We actually hadn’t been in touch sincethen, until we found ourselves on the same plane to New York. I was heading back afterdoing the Lennon try-outs at the Orpheum, and she was on her way to supervise the [NewYork production of the] play she wrote, Luminescence Dating. And she asked me, “Wouldyou design A Christmas Carol?” I said, “Sure.” I thought at first she was talking about Carolfor 2006—but, no [laugh]. So, I said, “We better have a production meeting.” There wasan empty seat next to hers, and we had a preliminary production meeting right there onthe plane.


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what did you talk about at that first meeting? how did youapproach the project? I think we focused more on the origins of the piece, because at that point she only hadabout a three-page outline; there wasn’t a script to show me. It was clear that it was a verytrue adaptation of the novel, trying to take what was best about Dickens’s storytelling andtranslate that into a stage story, so that there was dramatic action, a theatrical arc, andsongs. Then, we began to identify a structure based on the writing she had done to date,and divide it up into its dramatic parts. We discussed the town and its atmosphere, thecontext for the piece, which was Dickens’s London. We looked at a lot of Gustave Doréetchings, which convey the feeling of the congestion and the industrialization and urban-ization, as well as the claustrophobia, paranoia, fear, and dark qualities. Then we discussedthe interiors, and the fact that there is only one interior that is real—Scrooge’s bedroom.It’s very claustrophobic, an internalized black box. I think it is somewhat of a metaphor forScrooge’s own interior life, his soul, his incredibly fettered heart, and how dark his life hasbecome. Then the black box is transformational and opens up to [the ghosts of ] ChristmasPast, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future, again a metaphor for how everythinggrows out of this very dark interior. Then of course there were discussions about the natureof the conveyance of Christmas Past and Present.

the flying?Yes, right, how they could all come down to earth, so to speak. At some point they are eachsomehow elevated. We also talked a lot about casting, and there was a strong feeling that

Color elevation for the schoolhouse hanger in the set of A Christmas Carol, designed by John Arnone


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Christmas Past and Present were to be women. Christmas Future was sort of indetermi-nate at the time, although we discussed Scrooge being presented with a sort of feminineaspect that is able to expose to him not only his present life but where his life is going tolead if he doesn’t change his ways. The idea of that sort of sexual energy unlocking his soulseemed important, in terms of the feminine influence over this old, crotchety man, that ittakes the feminine to get underneath that hard shell, into the depth of his soul. So it wasn’t just set design we talked about.

how did you get the idea for christmas future as a puppet? We were looking at all sorts of things. You never see [Christmas Future] in full detail, soyou never really know what it is you’re looking at. It’s more of a frightening hovering pres-ence, actually terrifying, and it serves as a sort of host for the last part of the production,which is what we call the “nightmare sequence.” Christmas Future became a sort of scenic element, since I had been thinking that, first of all, it isn’t real. It is surreal and otherworldly and larger than life. And it could act as a device to introduce the differentscenes of the nightmare sequence: the businessmen talking about someone’s death; the

Model of the set for A Christmas Carol designed by John Arnone


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Dilber/Filcher sequence, in which they steal the bedclothes off of Scrooge’s bed; the TinyTim funeral; and then Scrooge in the cemetery seeing and falling into his own grave. Sothis specter evolved into a scenic device to introduce all of these elements.

Christmas Present exits, dematerializes, through the spirit of Christmas Future, andthen the businessmen materialize through the specter. And then Dilber and Filcher dema-terialize through the specter again. And when we then fly the specter out, it becomes ahovering presence over the classic turn-of-the-century scene, which is the death of thechild. At this point, Scrooge has been softened enough by Christmas Present andChristmas Past that [the child’s death] actually has some meaning for him when he seesit. Then there is only one scene left, for Scrooge to fall into his own grave, which is theconclusion of the nightmare. I don’t know what horror movie out of the ’70s or ’80s doesn’t feature someone coming out of their grave or falling into their grave as being theultimate experience that everyone dreads—death.

what else inspired you in developing these concepts, in additionto the doré? i’m thinking of early 20th-century films.Well, you always think of Murnau and Nosferatu and his Faust, but in all honesty we wentback to the Brian Desmond Hurst movie, Scrooge (1951), with Alastair Sim playing Scrooge.I even ran it through my computer and pulled images from it, because it is very true to thenovel in its specificity. And it is in black and white, and I think of our show as basically inblack and white as well.

the set model looks very colorful, though.The town does look like it’s colorful, but it’s dark, and it can go even darker. We were look-ing at some artistic techniques, such as watercolor, that could be abstract, dreamlike, andimpressionistic—and also somewhat frightening. In between the bookend scenes of thetown, there are accents of red, but we really wanted to leave the color palette open to thecostume designer, because there are so many characters in the piece and it would be moreadvantageous for her to have some freedom with the color, to help tell the story throughcolor progressions and developments in costuming.

to get back to the puppet/specter, literally, how will it work? doyou know yet what it ’s made of? We’re still developing the puppet, and it’s very much like a see-through scrim. It’s silklikefabric that shimmers, is very diaphanous, and can blow in the wind. It has a birdlike feeling; we were using images of a raven, like the bird of death. If we’re successful with its


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execution, it won’t be so specific as, Oh, look at that bird. It also resembles the peaks of theroofs in the town, using an abstract version of a similar [visual] language. It has four exten-sion poles that operate the wings, which are held by four actors. They can operate thesewing extensions backwards and forwards and up and down. We might also build in somemovement, making it pulse and breathe, and add sound to enhance the nightmare qualityand the overall effect of the specter of Christmas Future.

is the vortex part of the nightmare sequence?Yes, the vortex is a painted drop, on which the lighting designer will project a sort of spin-ning gobo [a thin patterned metal disk placed in a spotlight and projected onto the stage,creating shadow effects], so that the audience’s point of view will become somewhat dis-oriented. The storm and the lightning effects in the nightmare sequence will reach theirgreatest height, and there’s a scenic net of gravestones that match the gravestones on theground. They will become animated, and the lights will start to strobe, so that it looks likethey’re flying through the air. The overall effect is of vertigo and disorientation. Scroogethen turns around and sees that his headstone, marked “rip, Ebenezer Scrooge,” is actu-ally his bed. His headboard has become a headstone, and, seeing his name, he collapses inhorror and falls into the grave. Then immediately the stage goes into full transformationand he realizes he is actually in his bed, and he wakes up and it is the next day. It isChristmas morning.

That transition happens very quickly. We have about 20 seconds to set up the town andrestore everything onstage for the last scene of the play. What is going on backstage is quitecomplex. The [backstage] crew will never stop, not even during intermission. Once theybegin, it will be like choreography for the four people who are operating the show. Theywill be more active than any of the actors, except for maybe Scrooge himself. And it isreally going to be up to them, with brutal consistency, to make the show happen everynight. The writing is even timed to the scene changes.

carey has talked about how the designers have been very much apart of the collaboration process in developing the text, whichis unusual. how has this worked in terms of your design process? The conceptualizing and the writing and the scene design all happen on a parallel track,and I think they informed each other since I was designing the set from the outline, beforethe script was written. So once the real script writing process began, Carey made somechanges [based on the scenic needs], and you rarely get to do that. Usually there is no timeand there is no money. Not that there was much time or money to do this! [laugh] I mean,


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I’ve never worked as fast on a design that is this thought out. I’m reluctant to say “com-plex,” because I like to think in the end that it has an economy and a simplicity and an elegance to it, so you won’t realize how much is going on. It will be like a dream.

beaver bauer, costume designerwith A.C.T. Costume Shop Assistant Manager Joan Raymond

preparing the costumes for this production has been an intense,time-consuming process, from sketching the initial designs toshopping for fabric . . .beaver bauer: We went to New York and Los Angeles just to shop for exactly what weneeded for Carol, and we’ve been to every store here [in San Francisco], and we’ve ordereda lot through the mail.joan raymond: We went to New York in July. Shopping for A Christmas Carol in July inNew York during a heat wave and a thunderstorm!

bb: I wouldn’t have considered doing a show this complex at another theater, in partbecause A.C.T. is a unique place where you know you can make a bold creative choice in arendering and then have a ghost of a chance that what you are envisioning can actually beachieved. There is enough depth [of talent and experience] in the costume shop to paintfabric and create a hat from scratch and really take something all the way from the groundup—from just fabric. We’re even painting fabric for [the Ghost of Christmas Present].

how does the design process evolve for something like christmaspresent’s costume? does it begin with a conversation with [director] carey [perloff ]?bb: I think Carey first called me in January or February [2005], and by March I was sketch-ing. I don’t feel quite as verbally dexterous as some designers, and I feel more comfortablewith my pencil. It’s easier for me to go home and just start drawing. I convert ideas bestthat way. I feel better with my pencil in my own little room. I can drive everybody crazybecause I always have 15 different versions of everything, but it’s usually something I’m try-ing to work through, some adjustment that seems minor but I’m trying to process some-thing. I start casting through all these ideas and discarding and choosing and sometimesgoing back to the original idea. It can be a circuitous and complicated process.

One of the first things we did after reading [Dickens’s] book was reflect on the fact thatthe spirits [of Christmas Past, Present, and Future] don’t really have a gender. They really


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are spirits, in a way more than ghosts, and that interested me. My first thought [forChristmas Present] was that I was interested in the power of the color green as a life force,as a metaphor for the present tense—especially because it seems like Scrooge is so discon-nected from his present life and from his environment that he is walking in almost a par-allel universe. I thought that it would be great, in contrast, to have something really, reallyvital. In the book, Christmas Present is described as someone, either a man or a woman,wearing a green robe, and it brought to mind for me something more organic and more,not necessarily Druidic, but something with a powerful force of life and nature runningthrough it.

so, you did a sketch from that first conversation after readingthe novella . . .bb: Yes, and then we looked at that sketch and at the show as a whole to begin to figureout where we were in terms of the budget [laughter]. In terms of priorities, we knew thatwe had earmarked a fair amount for the ghosts, that they were something we weren’t goingto stint on; we knew they were significant characters and would carry a lot of visual impactin the show. And then I think we started talking about what the fabric was going to be.We considered all the options of possible color and texture, and then we set out to find thefabric. We knew we wanted green velvet, with red veins running through it, and we hopedwe could buy that fabric.

jr: We couldn’t find it! It might be in Milan, but it was definitely not in New York orLos Angeles.

bb: So then we decided to buy white fabric and dye it ourselves, and to create the veinsin the fabric by using a caustic chemical to burn the velvet away. At that point, we startedcreating samples, because you never know how the fabric is going to behave with the dye,to figure out which is most effective. Then we had to decide what to line it with. There arean unbelievable number of considerations, in terms of creating the shape of the fabric, cre-ating wearability, and creating the overall impression of what a costume should look like.

what state is a costume in when an actor is finally being fitted?jr: There are three [fittings] for each costume that we build in the shop. The first is themuslin fitting, where [Costume Shop Manager] David [Draper] will drape a muslin pat-tern, based on Beaver’s drawings, on a form in the shapes she has talked about. They’lloften have a conversation with the pattern on the form to change a line, even before weput it on a person. And then we have a second muslin fitting with the actor, with actualmuslin stitched into the shape of the costume. At that point we’re still working in broad


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strokes, even though in that fitting we’ll start to fine tune where the detail comes in. Ourfirst hand then takes the pattern and makes sure that any patterns [in the fabric] arematching and aligned, so if there is a floral pattern, for example, the flowers match up. Youcould place a floral somewhere that makes it look like a polka dot, or you could place itwhere it hits at a lovely place on the body. If there is a stripe with a blue and a grey and awhite, maybe putting the strongest color of stripe in a certain place will guide your eye toflatter the body even more. It’s an unbelievably detailed and precise process. Then the pat-tern goes back to the drawing board, and all of the alterations to the muslin get translatedinto paper patterns again, and then those get cut out of the real fabric, which is thenstitched into the real shape. Finally, we do a fitting with the fabric [on the actor]. Then wemay not see the actor again until we get to the theater.

bb: Honestly, I am really dependent on Joan and David for the finer points in fitting. Ithink I have a good perception of silhouette and what I want, but they have a finer eyesometimes for things like where the sleeve starts, how it hangs, where we’re going to put

Costume shop accessories artisan Jane Boggess working on the most labor-intensivecostume in A Christmas Carol: the robe for the Ghost of Christmas Present. Boggessand others in the costume department spent more than eight weeks at work on the fab-ric for this one garment, which underwent a six-step coloring process: 50 yards of whitevelvet were dyed green; etched with chemicals to burn vinelike designs in the fabric;painted gold; painted red (the step shown in the photo); rolled in paper and steamed toset the dye; then the background was painted green, rinsed, and dried. Finally, the vel-vet robe was cut from the fabric and fitted to the actor.


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the waistline. Any of those things can totally alter your perception of the costume and theway that person moves. It’s really a delicate dance, especially with the performer standingthere, with all of their own particular issues about their body and their character.

jr: Some of it is menswear, which is where the tailor comes in. On this show specifi-cally, we have six different outside contractors building costumes, as well as us here in theshop. There is also the communication between our team and when they come in to fitthings, that throws another spin on the dressing room dance.

then you get to the theater and you're in technical rehearsals.presumably all the costumes are finished, right? [L A U G H T ER] bb: There is this whole other series of events that takes place then: the making of the listof the costumes, and what gets worn with what, by whom and in what order, and wherethe pieces will be placed backstage, and which actor goes to which dressing room, and whoin wardrobe goes to what part of the stage to make sure that the actors make their changeson time.

jr: I make the dressing listsand get them to wardrobe.Wardrobe figures it out withstage management, depending onwhere the actors’ entrances willbe, where the quick changebooths will go, how manywardrobe people they’ve got,where the wig people will be, andso on. And they all gave to getout of the stage crew’s way,because they’re all scrambling,too.

bb: It’s a whole other dancethat is never seen.

jr: It takes me about six hoursto make the first pass through thedressing list. And that’s withoutspecific descriptions. For exam-ple, at that point I just write

The Ghost of Christmas Present


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down “overcoat,” but not “the black overcoat [made out of the fabric] with the white win-dowpane and the dot in the center,” or “the grey one that looks like a 1950s swing coat.”That will come later.

bb: In most cases, [tech rehearsals] are the first time we see a wig and costume together.

and at what point do you coordinate with the set design? thecolors have to complement, right?bb: I forget when, exactly, but [scenic designer] John [Arnone] came out to San Franciscowith reams of information. And I had sketches I had already shown to [director] Carey[Perloff ]. I think Sparky [lighting designer Nancy Schertler] came in a day later. We hada five- or six-hour meeting where we all just started talking and playing with things, andthen we met again the next day after we all had time to weigh what each other had said.So there were some fairly good strokes, and when we got to New York we finally had adecent set of sketches. John, luckily, is a fairly collaborative person by nature, so he wantedto see what we were putting forth, rather than issuing a dictum himself. Some designersoperate that way. There are lighting designers who don’t even want to look at the [fabric]swatches, you know? Which is shocking. How can it not matter? Especially if you haveparty dresses. Who do we want to come forward, who do we want to recede? What kindof light are Scrooge and Dilber walking through? Is it so dark that we’re going to losethem? Do we need to put light colors near their faces so at least we can find them? Allthose things are important.

jr: That’s why Carey put together a team this time that really is collaborative.bb: And it’s all done with humor, usually. Because it’s such a stressful process, having a

couple of jokes on the side, or even in the main, really helps carry one through it. Thereare so many things that when you look at a costume you just don’t know how many peo-ple’s hands it has passed through. Their energy and thought and time and love have beenput into it. I don’t think anyone can ever begin to know.

jr: It would be great to know how many hours went into Christmas Present’s costume.bb: I would imagine that [a.c.t. Accessories Artisan] Jane [Boggess] had to spend well

over 80 hours, don’t you think?jr: Oh, I think it’s going to be way more than that.bb: And then someone will look at it and think, Oh, they probably bought that at

Britex, or something. But it takes 120 hours, or whatever it is, to make the fabric—andthat’s before it is sewn, before the collar is made, before the cuffs are made, before the drapewith the feathers and the train and the wig . . .


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val caniparoli, choreographer

how does this process feel different to you from the work youtypically do with a dance company?It’s been much more of a collaborative process, particularly in the workshop, with the per-formers and the students. It’s struck me as very different from the dance world. For onething, dancers’ careers are brief, so the intensity level is much higher in a room withdancers, which leads to a very different way of working. There is a kind of urgency toeverything, this feeling that “I have to do this now. If I don’t get that part now, I’ll neverget it, and I have to get that part. I can’t wait until I’m 50 or 60.” So there’s a sense of imme-diacy. Working on [A Christmas Carol] has been intense, but in a very different way.

were you involved pretty early in the process?Yes, from the very beginning, since the initial workshops. I came in once there was alreadya draft script. It’s been great watching the piece evolve musically with [composer] Karl[Lundeberg]. It’s wonderful working with a composer who is right there. It is a luxury.

have you worked in theater much, as opposed to ballet?I started mostly in theater and music, at Washington State. So I have that background, butI haven’t really done that in 32 years.

how are you approaching the process differently, given that youare working largely with nondancers?I don’t treat it that much differently. Even in the dance world, I see what’s in the room andwe work together at making something happen. I’m more collaborative than many chore-ographers. Maybe that’s because of my theater background, or something. So it’s not so farremoved from what I do already, but it’s just on a different plane.

do you work with thematic concepts in your mind? does thatinform or change your approach? for example, the word “reclama-tion” comes up a lot in conversations with carey about scrooge.I like her words [laugh], but I use them as a point of departure. This is similar to what Ido when I work with opera, because I work with a director there, too. I like to hear whateveryone has to say. I’m not a talker, but I like to listen and let everything sink in. Then Iadapt it and see what I can do to offer more.


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Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball, from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, 1843; engraving by John Leech/ Victoria & Albert Museum, London / The Bridgeman Art Library


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a CAROL philosophyby paul walsh

For more than a century and a half, ever since it was first published in December 1843,Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has thrilled audiences with its story of reclama-

tion and transformation. In fact, it is the second most popular Christmas tale ever told. Thefirst, of course, is the story of the miraculous birth in Bethlehem, told in the Gospel of SaintLuke, with a manger and shepherds and a magical star. Dickens’s story is decidedly urban,with its cynical sense of the poverty and greed of the city, but it has its magic, too, and aglorious rebirth as the spirit of Christmas enters the heart of Scrooge, transforming himfrom miserly curmudgeon into a generous and joyful member of the Christmas community.It is a beloved story, this Christmas Carol, and it is a story that was written to be retold,charming and edifying generations of audiences as few other stories in literature have.

In 1843, the 31-year-old Charles Dickens was already well known as the genial author of suchserialized installment successes as The Pickwick Papers, Sketches by Boz, Oliver Twist, NicholasNickelby, and The Old Curiosity Shop. Recognized as a writer of prodigious talent and invention,he was a celebrity and a public figure known for his compassion, humor, and generosity of spirit.When Dickens spoke, people listened. What Dickens wrote, people read. His serial novelsenjoyed enormous popularity as readers waited with bated breath for each new installment.

All that seemed to change, however, in the fall of 1843. Having recently returned fromhis first trip to America, Dickens had begun writing a new serial novel, Martin Chuzzlewit,in which he sought to display “the number and variety of humors and vices that have theirroot in selfishness,” as he told his friend and early biographer John Forster. The murder-ous greed and hypocrisy exposed in the novel took its toll on the author’s accustomed idealism, and readership for his serial began to fall off. What Dickens in his letters called“the Chuzzlewit agonies” threatened to swamp the author and send him adrift in a sea ofanxious doubt and despair. Only generosity, he conjectured, can stave off the corruptingforce of wealth, but generosity itself seemed to be a thing of the past. The thought so troubled the author that it put him in a foul humor. He felt his idealism wane and with ithis astonishing powers of imagination. He was on the verge of being unable to work.Besides, in the face of disappointing financial returns on the serialization of the novel,Dickens’s publishers talked of reducing his payment by 50 pounds a month, adding finan-cial pressure to spiritual depletion. His father and brothers were pleading for loans, and hiswife, Kate, was pregnant with their fifth child.


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a ghost story for christmasDepressed, upset, and in desperate need of inspiration, Dickens decided to try to squeezea new project between installments of Martin Chuzzlewit. And so, early in November, heset to work on a ghost story for Christmas he had been mulling over. In little more than amonth, Dickens penned one of the most beloved and enduring holiday stories of all time,inventing the genre of the Christmas book in the process.

He also managed to deliver his little book to the publishers in time to be ready for last-minute Christmas shoppers. Published on gilt-edged green paper and bound in red cottoncovers with a wreath of holly and ivy stamped in gold on the front, A Christmas Carol, withillustrations by John Leech, was intended to be both a treasured gift and a family heirloomthat would be read again and again for years to come. And indeed it has been.

From its first day in the bookshops, A Christmas Carol was a wondrous success. All6,000 copies of its first edition sold out by January, and the first foreign-language editionappeared in France early in 1844. (It has since been translated into nearly every language.)In fact, it was such an immediate success that within weeks of its release A Christmas Carolhad been adapted for the stage, and by February no fewer than eight different productionswere running in London theaters. Audiences of Dickens’s day loved the story. As we stilldo today. We love to hear it read aloud, to see it acted out, to marvel at its magic, and tocelebrate its exuberance and abundance.

The success of A Christmas Carol was greater than even an optimist like Dickens couldhave dreamed. Not only was his story an overwhelming triumph, but writing it had put itsauthor in the mood to celebrate Christmas with giddy abandon. “When [A ChristmasCarol] was done,” Dickens wrote to a friend with characteristic hyperbole, “I broke out likea Madman. . . . Such dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blind-man’s buffings,such theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old years and kissings-in of new ones never tookplace in these parts before.” From the start he had hoped to write a story that would cutacross the social spectrum and renew faith in the power and possibilities of generosity,imagination, and the goodwill of the community to reclaim the spirit of Christmas foritself. And he succeeded in writing a story that not only spoke to people of all generationsand classes, but revitalized Christmas itself.

holiday of wonderBy 1843, the celebration of the Twelve Days and Christmas, a carefree winter celebrationof abundance and generosity that had been a treasured part of the English countryside inyears gone by, was all but lost in Dickens’s London. Suffering the attacks of Calvinists onthe right and Utilitarians on the left, Christmas celebrations had dwindled into pale


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reminders of their former selves. In A Christmas Carol and his subsequent Christmasbooks, with their mistletoe and plum puddings and wassailing and blind man’s buffing,Dickens transported customs of old from the countryside to the city. Christmas spirit wasenough to transform Old Fezziwig into the Lord of the Manor and Founder of the Feast,and a few ribbons were enough to transform his warehouse into the modern equivalent ofthe great room of an old country manor house, just as good will and imagination wereenough to transform the simple family dinner around the Cratchits’ humble table into amedieval feast fit for a king. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens not only moved the hearts andminds of his readers to think of the needs of others during the holiday season, he also suc-ceeded in convincing his readers that a good old-fashioned Christmas was still possible,even in the blighted urban landscape of industrial England in the mid 19th century, evenin the midst of a decade known as “the Hungry Forties.”

What marks Dickens’s story as original is in fact this nostalgic yearning for a childhoodblessed by the warmth of a country hearth and home, and for the sights and sounds andsmells and tastes of a traditional rural Christmas, replete with all the customs and practicesand games and songs and spirit associated with it. Kissing under the mistletoe was a nearlyforgotten custom in Dickens’s day. It was he who is said to have revived a practice thatdates back to the ancient Celts and their Druid holy men. But Dickens was not interestedsimply in rescuing quaint customs and old-style victuals from the dusty archives of forgot-ten folklore. He understood that Christmas is a special time of remembering. It is a por-tal to a half-remembered past, both personal and communal, and all its special games andsongs and foods, particular to each household and each community, bind families togetherand link them in memory to their own past. This was a holiday of wonder and abundancecapable of transcending both sanctimonious Puritan abstinence and the dispiriting single-minded utilitarianism already rampant in Dickens’s time.

To deny the pleasures of this world to oneself or others, Dickens insisted, was to denythe beneficence of creation. To value industrialization above human industry and treatone’s fellows as cogs in the commercial machine was to impoverish the spirit and the bodyof the community that were the lifeblood of progress. To pursue profit at all costs was todeny one’s basic humanity and jeopardize, not only one’s place in society, but the survivalof society itself. In place of such short-sighted views, Dickens proposed his “Carol philos-ophy”: “cheerful views, sharp anatomisation of humbug, jolly good temper . . . and a veinof glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming reference in everything to Home, andFireside.” In place of business, mechanization, and utilitarianism, Dickens celebratedimagination, family, and fellow feeling. In place of self-denial and renunciation, Dickenscelebrated abundance, hospitality, and the pleasures of life.


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Dickens’s Carol philosophy sought to rehumanize daily social life by reaching out fromhearth and family to embrace the small wonders of life that make it seem magical. It is thisthat audiences for a century and a half have found so compelling about this simple ghoststory for the Christmas holidays.

a CAROL for every ageEach age has retold Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to address its own needs, and the amiablestory has proven accommodatingly malleable. Dickens’s contemporaries rediscovered thetraditional Christmas in the heart of the modern urban city. Later Victorians, terrified bythe new science of Darwin and Spencer, read Dickens’s tale as a retelling of the originalChristmas story with Scrooge as a misguided wise man searching for the poor man’s childwho would restore a sense of order and proportion to the world. During the wars anddepressions of the 20th century, A Christmas Carol offered comfort and a sense of thefamiliar values of hearth and home.

The first film version of A Christmas Carol appeared in 1908, and half a dozen silent filmversions followed in the first decades of the century. In the 1940s, cbs Radio askedPresident Roosevelt to read the story for national broadcast (and in 1957, Eleanor Rooseveltrecorded her own reading). Arguably the best screen adaptation is the 1951 British film AChristmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim; Richard Williams’s animated short film based onthe original John Leech drawings won an Academy Award in 1972. By the end of the 20thcentury, holiday versions of A Christmas Carol (musical and nonmusical) graced stagesacross the country, while the motifs of Dickens’s story echoed in nearly every form of pop-ular entertainment. And now, at the start of a new century, this perennial tale offers a newsense of hope in the power of imagination and community to reclaim its lost members,even those as intractable as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Through all these tellings and retellings, A Christmas Carol has taken its place as amodern myth in the consciousness of the industrial age. Scrooge, Marley, Bob Cratchit,and Tiny Tim have grown larger than Dickens’s story, taking on a life of their own that isgreater than the sum of all the versions and adaptations, all the parodies and piracies, allthe Christmas cards and advertisements that have kept this tale and its unforgettable char-acters alive or tried to appropriate them for some other use. And even as the story ofDickens’s A Christmas Carol has grown larger than itself, the spirit of generosity and magicat its heart has continued to shine through.


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a man redeemed by memoriesby michael paller (2008)

In 1843, the year that he wrote AChristmas Carol, the world belonged

to Charles Dickens. His first book,Sketches by Boz, had been published in1836, and his career had been on anupward trajectory since. Boz had beenfollowed by one success after another,including The Pickwick Papers, OliverTwist, and Nicholas Nickleby. He marriedCatherine Hogarth in 1836 and by 1839

was living with her and their four chil-dren (six more would follow) in a finehouse in the Regent’s Park section ofLondon with marble columns in thedining room, rich mahogany-paneleddoors, a well-stocked library, a walledgarden, and a coach house completewith coach and groom. Every inch thedandy, he was instantly recognizablewith wavy brown hair down to his shoul-ders. His velvet and satin waistcoats in deep greens and reds, often embroidered withbrightly colored flowers, were festooned with gold watch chains matched with gold tiepinsand rings. These were not affectations but irrefutable expressions of physical vitality andintellectual exuberance. He was a character of his own creation, and he knew it: he nick-named himself “The Inimitable.”

Dickens’s energy could not be held in check by writing alone. In his early years, thebooks came almost unbidden; he could be found in the parlor amidst family and friends,contributing to the lively conversation while simultaneously working on the latest install-ment of Oliver Twist. Games, jokes, puns, songs, laughter poured from him around thedinner table and hearth, which he dominated with his oversized presence; after dark hestalked London, including its worst slums, often until sunrise, working off an inexhaustible

Charles Dickens, aged 18 (1830), by Janet Ross. © Dickens House Museum, London, UK/TheBridgeman Art Library.


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fund of excess energy and exercising keen powers of observation and memory. He struckone, a biographer wrote, as “all fire and charm.”

Beneath the blaze thrown off by his outward life was the darkness of another one, asvital to his work as the light. His vivacity, vigor, and high spirits were complemented bydriving ambition, restlessness, and profound dissatisfaction. Something in the darknesshad created the need for the light; the outward joy was rooted in desolation. Where thelight took the form of boundless comic energy in his work, the darkness emerged as themelodrama of innocent people, children mostly, abandoned by parents and endangered bythe callous, greedy, and cruel.

Where did the darkness originate? In 1822, when he was ten, the family moved from thetown of Chatham to London, where the financial condition of his father, John (neverstrong to begin with), went from bad to worse. Young Charles, who had a voraciousappetite for learning and reading, was taken out of school and sent to the pawn shop withthe meager family belongings. Among the first items to go was the small library they’dbrought from Chatham.

In 1824, as John Dickens’s debts mounted, Charles was put to work. For twelve hours aday, six days a week, he pasted labels on jars of bootblacking in a creaking, rat-infestedwarehouse on the Thames. Soon after, his father was sent to Marshalsea Prison for indebt-edness, and, while the rest of the family went to live there with him, Charles was on hisown, living in lodgings. When not laboring at the warehouse or visiting his family inMarshalsea, the solitary 12-year-old boy walked the city, almost always hungry. After aboutfive months, John Dickens was released, and Charles, over the objection of his mother,who thought the family needed the money, was taken out of the blacking house andreturned to school. Although his time in the ramshackle house on the water was relativelyshort, Dickens never got over the experience or forgave his parents for thrusting him intoa frightening, alien world where he had to survive on his own.

No words can express the secret agony of my soul. . . . The deep remembranceof the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless; of the shame I feltin my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that, day byday, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in . . . was passing awayfrom me, never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. My wholenature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such considerations,that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams thatI have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolatelyback to that time in my life.


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Dickens never spoke of the episode to anyone other than his friend and biographer JohnForster. Neither his wife nor children learned of it until they read about it in Forster’s biog-raphy after Dickens’s death. For all his charm and volubility, there was in Dickens a wellof feelings he never revealed; he held this inner life close. None of the people who knew,or thought they knew, the ebullient author of later years had any notion of the darkness hecarried inside and could not forget, but as of yet could only approach sidewise in his workthrough a generalized, if sharp, sympathy for the poor.

Anumber of events led to the writing of A Christmas Carol; the two most immediatebalanced the pulls in him toward light and dark. A speaking engagement in the

northwest industrial city of Manchester in the fall of 1843 took him to the ManchesterAthenaeum, a charitable organization that provided education, exercise, and culture to theworking and middle classes. As he looked down from the platform over “the bright eyesand beaming faces” of the crowd, he spoke of his gladness that it provided outlets for bodyand mind amid the clanking machinery of the city’s booming textile factories. Then,returning to London, his walks through the city took him to several Ragged Schools.These were free schools run by volunteers who taught the poorest of the poor. Hedescribed the sight in a letter to his friend the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts. Theschool

was held in three most wretched rooms on the first floor of a rotten house:every plank, and timber, and brick, and lath, and piece of plaster shakes as youwalk. I have very seldom seen . . . anything so shocking as the dire neglect ofsoul and body as exhibited among these children. . . . To find anything withinthem—who know nothing of affection, care, love, or kindness of any sort—towhich it is possible to appeal, is, at first, like a search for the philosopher’sstone.

Dickens was so appalled by the conditions and so inspired by the efforts of the volun-teer teachers that, in addition to seeking Burdett-Coutts’s aid, he suggested to the editorsof the Edinburgh Review that he write an article about them. Almost as soon as he sug-gested it, however, he put the idea aside in favor of writing a book for the holiday season:A Christmas Carol.

The story poured out of him. “[T]he little book established over him a strange masterythat drove it on to completion before the end of November,” writes Edgar Johnson,Dickens’s first major 20th-century biographer. Dickens himself wrote that as he worked, he


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wept and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinarymanner in the composition; and thinking whereof he walked about the blackstreets of London 15 and 20 miles many a night when all sober folks had goneto bed.

He felt a great release when it was done. He described to a friend how he “broke outlike a madman,” and during the holidays that followed he threw himself into festivities ashe’d never done before. “Such dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blind-man’s-buffing, such theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old years and kissings-in of new onesnever took place in these parts before,” he wrote.

What had A Christmas Carol unlocked that caused a release of energy extraordinaryeven for him? In it, Dickens didn’t use the terrible memories that had haunted him for twodecades, but he made a discovery that would, in fits and starts over the next few years, allowhim to turn them into literature for the first time. For A Christmas Carol is the story of aman redeemed by his memories. For years, Ebenezer Scrooge had either blocked them outor chased them away, and as a result, could not live as a whole person. He worked, he ate,he slept, and rarely if ever raised his eyes above his ledger to see the hunger and need orthe happiness of the people around him. The story tells us, among other things, that a manlike Scrooge cannot live fully in the light of the present until he comes face to face withthe darkness of his past. This is exactly what he does. As Scrooge watches his painful child-hood and youth, he remembers, too, the happier times he has also forgotten. The pain ofthe lonely young Ebenezer is assuaged by the love of a sister; a boy abandoned by his father

finds comfort and love in a family of Fezziwigs. “Do YouRemember?” asks a song in a.c.t..’s version, and the answeris crucial. The man without a past has no future; in recov-ering his, Scrooge finds a life, a family, and a purpose.

Dickens couldn’t yet draw directly on the experiences ofhis childhood for A Christmas Carol, but in it he created acharacter who could face the darkness in his past and,rather than make an orphan of it, acknowledge its value.That opened the way to David Copperfield and LittleDorrit, rich novels that draw on the full range of Dickens’slife and experience, both the darkness and the light. Carolis a great gift to the world, and it was to Dickens, as well.

LLEEFFTT Fezziwig Party Girl

OOPPPPOOSSIITTEE Turkish Fig and French Plum


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an excerpt from A CHRISTMAS CAROL

by charles dickens

The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory.There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats

of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in theirapoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions,shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelvesin wanton shyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-upmistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there werebunches of grapes, made in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle from conspicuoushooks that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts,mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks amongst the woods, andpleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins [dark-skinned apples], squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and,in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to becarried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forthamong these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race,appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping roundand round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The Grocers’! oh theGrocers’! nearly closed, withperhaps two shutters down, orone; but through those gapssuch glimpses! It was not alonethat the scales, descending onthe counter, made a merrysound, or that the twine androller parted company so briskly,or that the canisters were rattledup and down like jugglingtricks, or even that the blendedscents of tea and coffee were sograteful to the nose, or even thatthe raisins were so plentiful and


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rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the otherspices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar, as to makethe coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs weremoist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the cus-tomers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tum-bled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left theirpurchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hun-dreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; when the Grocer and his peoplewere so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their apronsbehind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmasdaws to peck at if they chose.

Scrooge (James Carpenter, center) enjoys visions of the holiday season—including a feast of opulent fruits

who dance before him.


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some noteworthy versions of A CHRISTMASCAROL

1843 A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a ghost story of Christmas. By Charles Dickens,with illustrations by John Leech. Original novella.

1844 A Christmas Carol, or, Past, Present, and Future. As performed at the Theatre RoyalAdelphi, London. Dramatic adaptation by Edward Stirling. First stage adaptation.

1901 Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost. Silent Film. First film adaptation.

1913 Scrooge. Film adaptation starring Seymour Hicks.

1921 A Christmas Carol. Suite for piano in two parts by Alex Rowley.

1928 “A Christmas Carol”: The Story of a Sale. With marginal notes for a salesman.

1930 A Christmas Carol. Marionette play.

1947 Men of Goodwill: Variations on “A Christmas Carol” for Orchestra. By Benjamin Britten.

1951 Scrooge. Feature film starring Alastair Sim.

1956 The Stingiest Man in Town. Television musical starring Basil Rathbone.

1962 Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Starring animated character Mr. Magoo.

1967 “A Christmas Carol.” Smothers Brothers television parody.

1973 A Christmas Carol. Mime version by Marcel Marceau.

1975 The Passions of Carol. Pornographic film.

1976 A Christmas Carol. Dramatic adaptation by Dennis Powers and Laird Williamson.Premieres at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, directed by Williamson and featuring William Paterson as Scrooge.

1979 A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by puppets.

1979 Skinflint: A Country Christmas Carol. Transports Dickens’s Victorian London setting to present-day Tennessee. Features country singers Hoyt Axton as Scrooge and Barbara Mandrell as Belle.

1980 Bah, Humbug. Episode of television series “wkrp in Cincinnati.” Mr. Carlson,Scrooge-like, plans to give the station employees no Christmas bonuses until he


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eats one of Johnny Fever’s brownies and the dream induces visitations by the Christmas spirits.

1981 A Christmas Carol. Televised version of a.c.t.’s stage production filmed by abcVideo Enterprises and broadcast on Arts Cable TV, with William Paterson (Scrooge) Mark Murphey (Bob Cratchit), Raye Birk ( Jacob Marley), Tyson Thomas (Tiny Tim), and Lawrence Hecht (Narrator/Ghost of Christmas Present).

1983 “A Reggae Christmas Carol.” By Kevin Curran. The National Lampoon,December.

1983 Mickey’s Christmas Carol. The classic Disney animated characters play the roles inthis animated retelling of the Charles Dickens masterpiece.

1985 “A Christmas Carol in Harlem.” By Tony Kisch. The National Lampoon,December.

1986 It’s a Wonderful Job. Parody episode of the television series “Moonlighting.”

1988 Scrooged. A feature film in which a cynically selfish television executive (Bill Murray) gets haunted by three spirits bearing lessons on Christmas Eve.

1992 The Muppet Christmas Carol.

1994 “A Flintstones Christmas Carol.” A Cartoon Network retelling of the classic story set in the stone age.

1995 Ebbie. Made-for-television movie adaptation starring soap opera star Susan Luccias a ruthless property developer taught the true spirit of Christmas.

2000 A Diva’s Christmas Carol. Made-for-television movie featuring a very nasty pop singer (Vanessa Williams) who gets a reality check from three Christmas spirits.

2009 Disney’s animated A Christmas Carol. Starring Jim Carrey.


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questions to consider

1. What is Scrooge like as a person at the beginning of A Christmas Carol? How does hechange by the end of the play? What does the actor who plays him do to show Scrooge’stransformation?

2. How are the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future different? What lessonsdoes Scrooge learn from each spirit? Is there one particular moment or event that causesScrooge’s change of heart? What is it?

3. Who is your favorite character in the play? Why?

4. Write a short version of this story from another character’s perspective. Pretend, forexample, that you are Belle, Mrs. Dilber, Mrs. Cratchit, or Scrooge’s nephew, Fred. Howwould you explain Scrooge’s change of heart?

5. Pretend it is one year later, after the story ends. What do you think will be differentabout Scrooge and his life the next Christmas? What about Bob Cratchit? Mrs. Cratchit?Tiny Tim?

6. How do the set, costume, and lighting design show Scrooge’s transformation? What isthe mood of each scene, and how does the design help to establish that mood? How doesthe music affect the mood? What other effects influence the mood of each scene, and how?

7. What theatrical devices are used in this production to show Scrooge going backward orforward in time? How can we tell that other characters can’t see him or the ghosts?

8. Do you and your family celebrate Christmas? How? Or do you celebrate Hanukkah,Kwanzaa, or another winter holiday or festival? How is your celebration different from theChristmas celebrations portrayed in A Christmas Carol? How is it the same?

9. Charles Dickens says in A Christmas Carol that “the children are all angels.” What doyou think he meant by that? Do you agree? Why do you think there are so many childrenin this production?


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for further information . . .

on and by charles dickens

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion. Irvington, ny: Hylas, 1991.

Axton, William. Circle of Fire: Dickens’ Vision and Style and the Popular Victorian Theatre.Lexington, ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1966.

Bolton, Philip. Dickens Dramatized. Boston: g. k. Hall, 1987.

Carr, Jean Ferguson. “Dickens and Autobiography: A Wild Beast and His Keeper.” ELH

52, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 447–69.

The Charles Dickens Museum. http://www.dickensmuseum.com

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York:Facts on File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People.Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Dickens-Literature.com. The Complete Works of Charles Dickens.http://www.dickens-literature.com

Fawcett, F. Dubrez. Dickens the Dramatist. London: w. h. Allen, 1952.

Glancy, Ruth F. “Dickens and Christmas: His Framed-Tale Themes.” Nineteenth CenturyFiction 35, no. 1 ( June 1980).

Mitchell, Sally, ed. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Pub., 1988.

Palmer, William J. Dickens and New Historicism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Parker, Michael St. John. Charles Dickens. London: Pitkin Pictorials, 1973.

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—The Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1993.

Raesmaa, Ritva. Charles Dickens. http://dickens.fi/dickens.html

Schlicke, Paul, ed. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2009.

Smiley, Jane. Charles Dickens. New York: Lipper/Viking, 2002.


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Tomalin, Claire. The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. NewYork: Knopf, 1991.

Woods, Leigh. “As If I Had Been Another Man: Dickens, Transformation, and anAlternative Theatre.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 1 (March 1998): 88–100.

on A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Carpenter, James. The Scrooge Chronicles.http://calshakes-jimsrichardiiiblog.blogspot.com/search?q=christmas

Denver Center Theatre Company. Inside Out: A Christmas Carol.http:// denvercenter.org/Libraries/Study_Guides/A_Christmas_Carol_2010.sflb.ashx

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. The complete text online.http://www.stormfax.com/1dickens.htm.

_____. A Christmas Carol and Other Stories. With an introduction by John Irving. NewYork: Modern Library, 1995.

Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose.New York: w. w. Norton & Company Inc., 2004.

Lupu, Michael, ed. Guthrie Theater Study Guide: A Christmas Carol.http://www.guthrietheater.org/sites/default/files/playguide_ACC.2010.pdf

Perdue, David A. David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page: A Christmas Carol.http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/carol.html

on christmas

The History Channel. The History of Christmas.http://www.history.com/content/christmas

Fried, Natasha Tabori, and Lena Tabori, eds. The Christmas Almanac. New York: WelcomeBooks, 2003.

Marling, Karal Ann. Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday. Boston:Harvard University Press, 2001.

Restad, Penne L. Christmas in America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Santino, Jack. New Old-Fashioned Ways: Holidays and Popular Culture. Knoxville: Universityof Tennessee Press, 1996.


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insight into the play, the playwright, and the … · insight into the play, the playwright, and...

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