Days of A Christmas Carol Past
My Thirty Year Relationship with Victorian Ghosts
Part One: The Audition
I thought my red tights would be better with my navy blue skirt and red turtleneck because it would be a pattern with red, blue, red. Mom said that was, “TOO matching, like too perfect.” I had never heard of “too perfect”, and the fact that my mother, who seemed to have a mission to make everything perfect, would say this amazed me.
That my mom cared that much about my outfit amazed me too. She was about to drive me to audition for a part in a play at the city performing arts center. It was a staged adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but I knew it better as “Scrooge” from a cartoon and a movie musical I’d seen on TV.
Sitting in the back seat, I held my book of poems for children. I knew my poem by heart. I remembered how to say “necromancer”. It rhymed with dancer. I had to speak loudly. I knew I could read better than most of the kids I knew in fourth grade. I could act this poem with my voice and with my face. I could take a step forward and then a step back. I could — our car had arrived at the theater.
Mom said she couldn’t go into the room with me. I stepped into the large, mostly empty, brightly lit room. The director sat on a metal folding chair in front of a white wall. “What are you going to do today?” He asked.
“You know, Dad.”
“Well, pretend I’m not your dad. I’m the director.”
Suddenly, I felt silly. This whole scene was ridiculous. This was Dad. I knew his job was Artistic Director of this theater, but I hadn’t thought until just now how impossible it would be for me to treat him differently than my dad, my funny dad who read me stories and made me lunch on weekends. I could not do this.
“What are you reciting today?” said my stern, serious-faced director/dad.
“I can’t do this, I think.”
“Well, I already told you, Beck, that you don’t have to do this. You had said you wanted to be in this play, and this is what all the kids have to do who want to be in it. But your mom’s out in the hall, and she can take you home and no one will be mad. OK?”
His voice was friendly and caring. I was very close to running for the door. But if I had done this, my next ten Christmases would have been different than they turned out to be, and the two decades after that would also be different in ways I’ve only begun to figure out.
Acting out this story of a Victorian miser who is haunted by ghosts on Christmas Eve would introduce me to frustrations, jealousies, social justice, first pangs of love, self-discovery, John Lennon, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and my eventually writing an award-winning play.
My journey began in a regional theater’s rehearsal room in the American mid-west. That September afternoon in 1976, I stood silently, taking a few deep breaths, and then quickly recited a poem for my dad. He said I would hear if I got the part in a few days.
