A Christmas Carol returns to the Valley Center Stage on Dec. 2

Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol” is returning to Valley Center Stage this December for the ninth production of the show in the theater’s 14 years of operation.

Gary Schwartz, founder of the Valley Center Stage, the director of this year’s holiday show and the actor playing Ebeneezer Scrooge, said this rendition of “A Christmas Carol” was adapted by the playwright Paul Sills, the son of Schwartz’s mentor, who was a renowned improvisation and acting coach.

“My teacher was Viola Spolin who invented the whole improvisational theater movement in America,” he said. “I studied with her and one of the very first shows that we did was Paul Sills’ ‘Story Theater.’ We’ve produced all of his shows here and ‘A Christmas Carol’ is his adaptation. It’s a real favorite of mine because it carries on the tradition of his mother’s work.”

Valley Center Stage is presenting “A Christmas Carol” in the Story Theater style, which means the actors tell the story to the audience through narration while also acting out the scenes. It was used by Sills as a way to condense Dickens’ original work into a shorter format.

Actors break from scenes to address the audience directly with observations from the perspective of their characters.

“The actors are storytellers, they tell the story directly to the audience, the audience is very much a part of the show,” Schwartz said.

The dialogue used in this adaptation of the famous holiday tale is the original Dickens text, but condensed for a theater production.

“We are using the exact text of Dickens,” Schwartz said. “The adaptation is really just editing and staging. We are presenting the original ‘A Christmas Carol.’”

The cast size of the show is the biggest in the theater’s 2016-17 season, Schwartz said. They have 22 people participating in the production with long-time returning actors and people new to theater performance.

According to Schwartz, more than half of the cast are brand new to the theater and this year is the first year they have auditioned. Six actors have returned for the production and have been in every other production of this show in the theater’s history including Ed Benson who plays Jacob Marley, Ebeneezer Scrooge’s former business partner and the ghost who tells Scrooge of the three other spirits that will appear to him.

“The actors who are returning are going to have deeper, much more powerful performances this year than they have had in the past,” he said. “And the new people, they get a chance to try it out.”

Schwartz, who is a professional acting teacher, uses his experience and knowledge of Spolin’s improvisational acting games to help warm up with the cast.

“We play theater games, while they are a lot of fun, they give the new actors the skills, for being on stage, projecting, being visible to the audience and handling imaginary objects in space,” he said. “The fun that it creates makes a real strong, cohesive cast, everyone ends up being friends. The value of theater games is tremendous.”

Valley Center Stage’s production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” will debut at 7:30 p.m., on Friday, Dec. 2. The show will run at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, through Dec. 17, plus a Sunday matinee, 2 p.m. on Dec. 11.

“It’s like one of our modern myths and it’s a ghost story, everybody comes away feeling completely in the Christmas spirit in this show and I think that’s the greatness of this show,” Schwartz said. “I really feel that a show like this brings our local community together.”

For tickets and more information, visit valleycenterstage.org.