What better way to usher in the Christmas week than revisiting the classic tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge's transformation from a stingy recluse to a man who "knew how to keep Christmas well."
A dramatic reading of the Charles Dickens masterpiece, A Christmas Carol, featuring music by With One Voice is being presented as a special family treat by the Dekker Centre for the Performing Arts Sunday, Dec. 21.聽
The reading, which it is hoped will become an annual event, is being produced by the Dekker Centre and Jim Walls, a member of the local acting community.
"We hadn't done it for a long time," says Walls. "I always thought it was a great family event 鈥� suitable for everyone."
It's about community celebration of Christmas, he explains, but it doesn't have a religious theme.
He says, "It has a very traditional theme and yet it's not exclusive."
When he suggested it to the Dekker Centre, Walls said, they were receptive to the idea. Being relatively easy to produce means they could keep the costs down, so tickets are only $15 for adults and $6 for children.
The host for the afternoon performance is Roy Challis, local actor, director and playwright. The readings will be performed by Clint Barrett, Judy Bishop, Lloyd Deshaye and Tracy Knowles of the Battlefords Community Players.聽Joining them will be two friends of the Dekker Centre and the Battlefords, David Dekker and John Gormley.聽 聽
"I think people are really comfortable with the story," says Walls. "They are familiar with it, but at the same time the language of the actual text is so great, it's so rich, it's funny and it can be a little bit scary."
Of course, there's a message there, too, says Walls, "but just to sit and listen to the language is going to be a real treat."
Most people are familiar with film adaptations of the story, he says, so "there are familiar lines people will be saying in their own heads."
Accompanying the readings will be the local vocal group With One Voice.
"I'm really excited about the music, too," says Walls. "With One Voice has been working on traditional Christmas songs and carols so they are interlaced with the narrative, the story itself."
The cast will also use representative costumes.
"We're not really going for the full Victorian look, but we'll use hats and scarves and whatnot to represent the time," says Walls, "but I didn't want to get bogged down in costumes. It really is about the spoken word."
The script of the reading will closely follow the original story, but it is not the whole book, even though the book is not a long one.
"If you read the novella, which is really quite short, most of the script comes directly from it, but it's been added to so it's a little bit more dramatic and not quite as descriptive."
There are various scripts people use for dramatic readings, often based on those Dickens himself used when he did his own public readings.
A Christmas Carol was published on Dec. 19, 1843. The first edition, all 6,000 copies, sold out in four days. Its popularity soon spread from Britain to North America.
Dickens began performing dramatic readings of A Christmas Carol, 10 years after it was first published, the first great author to do such readings of his own work. At the time, most authors would have thought it beneath them, but it is said he captivated his audiences so completely during his one-man representations of his own characters that they 鈥渇ell into a kind of trance, as a universal feeling of joy seemed to invade the whole assembly.鈥�
He continued his performances until just three months before his death in 1870.
