Tell Us A Story, Master Fred!

 first published November 2018

Why do we love to hear the same story told over and over again?

Ask anyone with small children. They want to watch the same Disney movie over and over again. They want the same books read to them every night. A new, exciting story? No thanks – please tell me the same one again.

Small children have so many unknowns in their lives – every moment of every day is full of adventure and unexpected twists. They can’t predict life, because they don’t control it. They can’t read a schedule, and they don’t usually have any input into it. But stories – stories are predictable. They know when a character will break into song, when the lion roars, and when the funny bits are. Children cling to their stories as something that’s always true. Stories are comforting. And the hero always wins; there’s always a ‘happily ever after’.

As we grow older, we learn how to predict our schedule; we even start to control it. Not every activity is a new adventure; we learn routine and predictability. That’s when we fall in love with the new story, the new adventure. We seek out surprise.

But do we ever really outgrow the comfort of hearing ‘Once Upon A Time’? Do we ever lose our need to know that the story will open, progress, and close the same way it has a hundred times before? I think not; look at the hold Disney movies have on the adult population. For example, let’s look at The Lion King. We have the classic animated movie that many of us grew up watching – or raised our kids watching. That was quickly followed by storybooks. Then an amazing Broadway play. And now, a live-action movie. All telling the same story in slightly different ways. How many times will we listen to the same story? As many as possible, it seems.

Of course, we can’t forget that The Lion King goes back much further. It is the kids’ version of Hamlet, a story Shakespeare told over 400 years ago. The story of Hamlet/The Lion King has been told constantly over and over again for centuries – on stage, on paper, and on the screen. We certainly do like to repeat our stories.

One of my personal favorite stories to hear again and again is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Growing up, we went to see the stage version every year or two. There are many movie adaptations. Take a look at Wikipedia for an exhausting list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_A_Christmas_Carol.

It’s on the stage, though, where Christmas Carol really comes alive for me. In 2003 my daughter and I auditioned for an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that a local community theatre was producing. The director/author/producer had taken Charles Dickens’ story and, keeping as much of it intact as possible, turned it directly into a stage script. We loved this version, and we loved the theatre family we gained doing the show. We performed updated versions of the same script, with many of the same cast and crew, again in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. And after a break, I came back to the same script, and some of the same folks, in 2016. I’ve played, or at least rehearsed, almost every role at some point.

The first six times we did A Christmas Carol on stage, we had a huge stage with all kinds of clever effects and a huge cast. In 2016, we had a tiny stage with a huge cast. While sitting backstage waiting for my time onstage, to escape the anxiety of being in a small room with too many people, I took to reading a print copy of Charles Dickens’ story that was one of my props (cleverly disguised with black tape). I had read the story before, but I enjoyed the comfort of reading the familiar story which was so like, yet also unlike, the story we were telling onstage.

Reading the story as it was originally written, I remembered there were entire sections of the story that are usually not told onstage. And I fell in love with the narrator’s voice. I wanted a stage script that told the story in that voice. So... I wrote a play. I also wanted a smaller cast, with fewer children. While we’re at it, let’s simplify the props and set. And some of the language was too hard on modern ears; it needed to be gently shifted to something friendlier to audiences (when’s the last time you had a bowl of Smoking Bishop?).

I started the same way as the adaptation I had performed so many times; I downloaded Charles Dickens’ book, and then I assigned parts. I had a Narrator, who as it turned out, is Mr. Dickens himself. I consolidated all the parts to as few actors as possible. Each actor would come out and give part of the narration, then step onstage into a part. And step into another part later. And another. We had always had some actors playing multiple characters; now more of them would do so. Because the characters aren’t telling the story, the story is told by the Narrator.

Just like a parent reading a bedtime story to a child, the voice reading the story is central. The pictures in the storybook are illustrations that help the child – the audience – feel the story more fully. The Narrator tells you what happens, but more importantly tells you how to feel about what happens. The Narrator is by turns serious, jovial, disappointed, threatening, entertained, saddened, and at the end, heartened. The Narrator reads the story to the audience - and does the voices - and like pictures on the page of a bedtime story, actors on the stage illustrate it.

I wanted a feel similar to The Wizard of Oz, where we realize at the end that the people around Dorothy in her humdrum Kansas life have played all the roles in her adventures. The actors that play the characters in Scrooge’s Past are the same actors that play those in his Present, and in his Future. Because the story isn’t about the characters; the story is about Scrooge. The characters give it color and flavor and sound to make it come alive.

And this story about Scrooge, told so many ways over so many years – not as many as Hamlet, but still a respectable 175 years – is still the same story. The story of one man who was reminded, though the magic of Christmas, to open his shut-up heart and to love the people around him. And – spoiler alert – he lives Happily Ever After.

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I was honored to play the part of Charles Dickens, the Narrator, in the 2018 production of my own adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Lakewood Theatre. I got to read my favorite story to many of my favorite people, and to audience members young and old who both knew the story and discovered it for the first time. The show is now part of the Past, and you can ‘watch’ it through pictures in this album:

https://www.facebook.com/marthatori/media_set?set=a.10160952405650621&type=3

Many thanks are due to many people for my Christmas Carol journey, but the biggest to David Hutson, who wrote the original incredible script I performed so many times and directed it many of those years and made me dream about what is possible for this show, and John Carpenter (finally Scrooge), who convinced me to come out again after a long break and also directed it a couple of those years and was probably instrumental in getting it on the docket at Lakewood, where I was cast as the Narrator. Just because I adapted the script didn't mean I'd get the part of the storyteller.

I also want to call out Scott Bechtel and Tori Stephens for making some beautiful props. Scott adapted Scrooge's gravestone and created the Narrator's Book that I read from; the Book will be a Treasure for me for many years to come. Tori made Christmas Present's staff and the signs for our locations. They will also be treasured props I'll keep.