This is my last post on this blog. I’m grateful to eveyrone who contributed to the show and it’s success. I learned tons along the way (I think everyone did) and enjoyed it. I’m not sure I’ll repeat this show next year, but maybe in a few years (adding the long list of things I’d liked to have done but didn’t have time). I have a few other “performance-related interests” over the coming year (some shows I’d really like to be in and roles I’d like to play/reprise). That’s a cryptic expression in order to avoid saying anything and possibly jinxing my chances.

Have a Happy New Year!

The words of many have been very encouraging. I feel like I’m getting more praise than I actually deserve. I guess it’s mainly because I know I can do even better. I guess I have tomorrow’s performance to accomplish that…

I wish I had a few more weeks of performances to really refine some points I’d like to further explore but, alas, “this is the end, my friend…” I have been invitied to perform at an International Theatre Festival in Bratislava, Slovakia next year and perform (in English) the show. I don’t know if I’ll actually do it or not, but we’ll see in another year.

Tonight’s performance fell into the category of the “Friday Night Lull” for me. People said they enjoyed it, but the energy was off for me personally…not to mention a phlegm attack during the first act which had me choking on my words and random intervals. Where’s that glass of agua when you need it?

I have the strong feeling that the last three shows are going to be better and better, culminating in the best show being the Christmas Eve matinee (which is sold out!). At this point, I wish I had the time (and energy!) to incorporate more ideas I have for the show, but with the tight schedule there just isn’t time to really work out the details. Maybe if I were playing just ONE character instead of 40+, I could do it.

“Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities…”—Graham Greene
(From a card Julian gave me just before the performance)

It has been a rough ride these last few days. Tons of technical considerations, tons of lines, and tons of production-related issues to resolve (being the guy who’s wearing many hats). It all came down to last night and apparently we pulled it off.

There were a few minor technical glitches in the show last night (not to mention my jumping around a bit on the text, which made the folks in the booth a bit nervous, yet acutely aware of the performance throughout…). We made some last minute changes yesterday to the dances and magic to simplify them. But that was technically our “preview” and tonight is opening night (no difference in the performance…just semantics). There’s so much more I would have to liked to add to the show, but that’s for next year (???).

Now, it’s back to studying lines again. Did you think that because we’d just had opening night, we can rest on our laurels??? Heck no.

There’s so much crap to sort out and thankfully there are a few great people helping out while I try and concentrate on the massive amount of lines I need to learn. They’re mostly down (with a few rough spots here and there), but I really need to spend more time…which is a luxury that doesn’t exist right now…

I’ve been talking with other people who have done one man shows for advice on various things. I’m mainly interested in actors who have done solo shows that they didn’t write themselves because they can’t really improvise if they “go up” on their lines (an actor’s term for getting lost or forgetting one’s lines during a performance). I rarely go up during a performance, and when it’s happened (I can’t even remember the last time it did) I’ve always been able to improvise my way out of it since I always know where my character is going. Not the case with Dickens.

Dickens has a particular style of prose that’s similar to Shakespeare, which is VERY difficult to improvise and sound right. There are still 8 days until opening night and that’s barely enough time to get it all right! I think I’ll end up feeling like I’m doing a tightrope act and could fall at any moment!

Aside from my role in King Lear being misspelled (“Perillus”…soooooo close….. ), I think it captures well the difficulty of the process. There’s an intensive “back and forth” between Julian & myself that doesn’t normally occur when doing full-cast shows because there are so many details. The article almost made it sound a little like we were at each other’s throats (“There appears to be an uneasy rapport between this actor and director – but a rapport still…”), but that’s not the case at all. I know that when Julian’s directing, he’s used to the director overseeing and having final “say” on every little detail (like most shows!). But since this project is my “baby,” we share in those details. Sometimes I catch things he doesn’t see and sometimes vice-versa (actually, more often the latter). But when we disagree on how something should be presented, we always discuss it and come to an amiable conclusion.

Charlie Varon was really good at this. Sometimes when I’d do a section for him he’d sit there quietly for quite a while, absorbing what I’d just done, and formulate a question or comment which drove to the heart of the problem at hand. Though he had some suggestions for developing the adaptation which I think were in a different direction than I wanted to go, they were great exploratory exercises which almost always revealed something useful. There’s definitely a faint “Charlie Stamp” on the way I’ve been going about things.

But the biggest stamp is Julian’s…followed by my own. I enjoy productions where the director’s vision is crystal clear. The production can fail or succeed, but it almost doesn’t matter to me. I think it can almost entirely overcome a poorly written play if the director makes something out of it. But when you start from something as well-written as A Christmas Carol, how can it fail?

I met with Steve Coleman yesterday to discuss more of his ideas for the set & set pieces. He’s got some great ideas and will be a little more hands-on after his art exhibit opens at the Throckmorton next Tuesday. Check it out here!

I also went over all the sound design with Julian and our sound designer Josh Hittleman. He’s also enlisted the one and only Jeremy Fortes (is that a good thing or a bad thing??? ) to help out in creating some of the ghostly effects. Believe it or not the name “Hunter S. Thompson” came up several times in the discussion of sound for the show…

I’m slowly remembering what it’s like to produce a show that I’m also in. It sucks. I’d really rather focus on the performance, but I find myself being distracted by the minutae of organization. Thankfully, I started early enough on this project that I was able to take care of most of the things that would have monopolized my attention during a period I should be focusing on learning lines.

David Templeton wrote a nice article in TBA magazine (known to the old skool folks as “Callboard”) and there should be a few other articles coming out in the month of December. I don’t care too much for the interviews and press aspects (though most journalists & critics are nice people just doing their job) as much as other actors do, but it’s necessary to get out the word on a great show like this one.

Which brings to the around to the point of “Why another A Christmas Carol ?”–a question people keep asking me. There are a few reasons, the biggest of which is my personal connection to the story. My family wasn’t well off growing up but my parents tried to make Christmas special to my brothers and I. I think there are many individual elements (as well as the story as a whole) that embody true Christmas Spirit. I think that it extends beyond Christmas to any religion or culture, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas per se. Whatever you celebrate, let it come from the goodness of your heart and for the betterment of the world.

“Are you going to hug a tree now??” I hear you say…. OK OK OK. It’s mushy, etc. but there’s something in it.

Another reason I tell people is that Dickens used to do public readings of Carol where he’d stand at a podium, book in hand, and play all the characters (he used a shortened “Public Reading Edition” and is about half the length of the full story, which would likely be close to a three-hour reading!). This was the classic and most authentic way of “performing” the story that Dickens preferred. Nowadays, the only productions you see are these large stage productions with special effects, ghosts, smoke and so on, which are so over the top (and often very hokey–like A.C.T’s Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come in last-year’s production) that they are overlooking the heart of the story. It’s become about the spectacle and not about the story itself. This is where my production comes in, landing firmly BETWEEN these two examples. It’s not a reading and there aren’t any lasers and flying-bedsheet ghosts. Besides, who can compete with the power of the imagination? Using the imaginations of the audience members is the most powerful tool of all.

Oh… for those of you that don’t know…the title of the story is “A Christmas Carol”…not “Christmas Carol”.. Don’t forget the “A”…it’s important. If you’ve ever seen the show and understood what you saw, you’d know why.