Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol
A Cultural Heirloom
adapted by p. m. strain

Zona Gale Theatre
Portage Center for the Arts
Portage, WI
Dec. 2007
Scenic and Lighting Design by Patrick Strain
Costume Design by Barbara Church
Music Direction by Valerie Walth

Poster design by Patrick Strain

Selected research images:

Attic with stuff.	A source of color, warmth of "Christmas Present."
A source for space, but also an image of Christmas yet to come.

Production Photos:

The family discovers the Scrooge and Marley sign.



Cratchit and Scrooge in the office.



Scrooge and young Scrooge listen to Fan, while the ghosts of Christmas Past (played by twins Leah and Emma Harvey) look on.



Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present. Mostly here as a thank you to my costume designer - aren't these simply lovely?



The Cratchit family.

The party at Fred's house.

The churchyard and the Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come, portrayed by numerous (and ever changing) actors.

Production Notes: I wore many hats on this production - writer/director as well as scenic/lighting designer as well as producer. For more on the script, please see my Playwrighting Page. For a bit more on the design of the show, visit my ZGYPT page.The production values, as seems to be the leitmotif of my theatrical career, were spare. The budget tight, the space limiting, the rehearsal period frequently interrupted. The space I designed evoked an attic, with a small Victorian-style circular section. The area was beset with scenic pieces, props and odd costume bits. Once the play began, my goal was to make all of the costumes and props seem as if they had been just pulled from the surrounding chaos and the characters enter and exit fluidly, never halting the action. Of course, actors did leave the stage and costumes and props were retrieved from off stage, but the action never halted.

As the director, I had already been envisioning the prodcution all through the writing process. I was influenced, as I noted on my playwrighting page, by the Commonweal production, and wanted to use that simple theatrical aesthetic here on this production. Many of the actors being novice, I decided to forego an accent and keep them in as natural a voice as possible. Even the woman playing Marley did so mostly in her vocal range. The children playing the innocents, the youth playing up the scarey parts, and the adults playing mostly the presenters of information worked well.

I had no grand "concept" for the show - though telling the story within the framework of a family descended from Tiny Tim is, of course, a concept in itself. The essential throughline, though never beaten to death (and isn't that the best way to have a throughline?) is that family is more imporatant than money, and love (in this play especially viewed in the Christian view of self-sacrificing love) is what really matters. So, I trusted in Dickens' work and just let the story tell itself.

For inquiries about performance royalties for this script, please e-mail me.