A Christmas Carol: The Scrooge Diaries

Over the summer of 2006, I’d spoken to actor/director George Maguire about the project and he expressed an interest in directing the show. He’d performed in the show and directed it countless times so we talked further about it. It seemed it was going to work out, but George turns 60 in December and he’d planned a trip to Europe to celebrate, which he wasn’t into rearranging for this show (understandably so).

RVP president, Tinka Ross, suggested longtime RVP director John Brebner. Since John is English and his shows are of the “lighter fare,” I thought Dickens might be a good fit, but wanted to discuss it with him. I sent him an email and followed up with a call about a week or so later. We talked about the show and he seemed like he really wanted to do it but wanted a few days to think about it. About two and a half weeks later, I called John since I hadn’t heard from him after the “few days” he said, and he was surprised I was calling. He’d assumed that when he didn’t call after a few days, I’d just gone and found someone else, which obviously wasn’t the case. He’d “taken another project” in that timeframe and was no longer available. So much for professional courtesy… So long, see ya…

When I was thinking of someone whose opinion I trust, I was racking my brain because I’m so damn picky in my theatre tastes. I couldn’t just ask anyone. I met Julian Lopez-Morillas in the summer of 2005 while performing Knight of the Burning Pestle at Marin Shakespeare. His wealth of information about Shakespeare is endless and after the show ended we met on a one-on-one basis to work on monologues and plays. I’d spoken to Julian about A Christmas Carol back then, but it was still in the embryonic stages so it was just casual conversation. I just did an examination for a Shakeseare Certification at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and Julian helped me immensely to prepare for it.

One morning, my wife said, “Why don’t you just ask Julian if he’d be interested? He has tons of experience, he’s smart, and you respect him & his work…”

Duh.

I should have just asked Julian from the start. I kicked myself a few times. I was a little concerned that his intelligence might make the show a little too “cerebral” for audiences and not enough of the “heart” the story has. But that was just a guess. After a conversation with Julian about the show, he wanted to see the final performance at The Marsh before he made his decision to commit. The night of the performance, he spoke to Charlie Varon about the show and me. Charlie was very positive and supportive about the solo show and its potential. Based on that evening, Julian agreed to do the project. I know my performance wasn’t the best that night, but at least it was progress in the right direction.

It was the best idea I ever had..or at least my wife has had…

One thing I found interesting while working with Charlie Varon at The Marsh was that he was a Jewish man helping me develop A Christmas Carol. When I remarked on this, he didn’t find it so unusual because of the universality of the Dickens classic. He really likes the story and having one religion or another doesn’t come into play. Naturally, even if you are Jewish in the USA, you could never escape the uber-commercialization of Christmas (or just about any holiday, for that matter) and therefore there’s holiday cheer wherever you go.

One of my lovely actress friends, Karen Leland, is also Jewish and asked me to play Hanukkah Harry at their celebration last December. Having never been to a Hanukkah celebration before, I think I learned more about it that evening that in my life up to that point. I think that the Jewish friends I’ve had in the past just know that I’m not and therefore don’t invite non-Jews to such celebrations. It was really cool for Karen and her husband John to share that with their friends. I met Karen at the grocery store the other day and she asked how the rehearsals were going. Then she said (in her best Michael Myers impersonation), “We’re going to bring all the Jews in Marin to your show!”

Heh..cool.

I should backtrack a little here to the process of adapting a literary work into a dramatic piece.

In early 2006, I thought it’d be good to get a head start on the adaptation. About a year prior, I’d take a TBA workshop with Bruce Pachtman about promoting a solo show. It was an OK 3-hour discussion with the group throwing out more tips than Bruce himself, but it was helpful in the sense of “psychologically establishing the possible,” which basically means that my idea for a show was not so unattainable…just a lot of hard work.

Bruce worked with Charlie Varon & David Ford at the Marsh in SF, a “breeding ground for new performance,” to develop his show and highly praised their work and guidance. I met a few other people that had taken Charlie’s workshop and were really enthusiastic about it. In discussions with my wife about it, she said “Just do it.” I procrastinated a bit and then she surprised me on my birthday with the gift of a workshop with Charlie.

The workshop was 10 weeks long and Charlie allowed us to work on whatever we wanted. I was a little nervous at first that the format was going to be rigid and the others (about 8 of us) there were primarily there to write and create their own (usually autobiographical) piece. I came in with a script all ready from day one and sort of had a headstart. Charlie was very helpful in defining a basic structure for how a single actor can play many parts at once. The main idea is to create “zones” on the stage and assign each character in a scene to a different area so that once the actor moves into that area, he becomes that character. This becomes more difficult when there’s a quicker dialogue between characters and you don’t want to look like a jackrabbit hopping around the stage so there are additional “tactics” to help. One of these is to develop a “trigger” for each character. This can be a mannerism, a line, a posture, or just about anything that you’ve already associated with a character. That way, when you change between them, you can bring the audience with you for each change and they psychologically “see” all the characters virtually at once. An interesting phenomenon…

The 10 weeks with Charlie culminated in a performance at The Marsh in August 2006. For this we chose the Scrooge & Marley scene to work on, which is a microcosm of the kinds of issues I’d have to grapple with throughout the play. Once these issues were resolved in this scene, it would be easier to resolve the rest. The result of was a 12-minute scene that the audience seemed to like. Most important of all, I “popped my cherry” with the piece and got the first audience out of the way.

This is the first posting to document my progress as I go through the process of developing, producing and performing my own one-man show. More to come…