A New Adaptation

Last week, a friend of mine from Park City, called. I used to work with Dana at the Egyptian Theatre there. She used to be the Artistic Director of the theatre. She called to say that the theatre has asked her to direct the Christmas show this year and she was wondering if I could write an original adaptation of the A Christmas Carol. Over ten years ago, we did a version of A Christmas Carol together. She was the director and I was the musical director. It’s hard to find a good version, so we found the best we could and doctored it up. It was a musical and we didn’t end up using half the song because they were pretty lame. Anyway, the best part of our production was the caroling quartet. I found authentic arrangements from the time period of traditional carols and we had the quartet sing as they changed all the scenery. The audience loved the quartet. So based on that, we decided to throw out all the other music this time around and further develop the idea of the quartet being central to the show. If Dana can cast it with singers who can act well, the quartet will also play multiple roles.

The fun part of writing a script for a specific production is that you can tailor fit it perfectly to your needs. That’s how the Tom Sawyer adaptation arose. We were asked to tour a production of Tom Sawyer and we knew we couldn’t travel with more than five people. There were no scripts in existence that had those parameters, so I got to write it and once it was cast, I put specific things in for the specific actors that we had. For instance, our Becky Thatcher is a wonderful singer, so I put in a short hymn for her to sing during the funeral scene.

So now I’ve spent the last week writing the first draft of Christmas Carol (and getting far too little sleep) and am now waiting for further direction from the designers and the director and waiting to see who gets cast and then I’ll start the rewrites. Meanwhile, I’ll keep going over it, cleaning it up and trying to add in some humor It’s a very fun process – not quite like writing an original story – but very good experience none the less.