PEORIA, Ill. — Add this to the list of reasons why 2020 can be considered one long episode of “The Twilight Zone:” Ebenezer Scrooge is being generous this holiday season.
As music and theatre enthusiasts who haven’t gotten their fix of live shows in 2020 can attest, the arts has been one of the hardest hit industries by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The numbers to back up that statement paint a bleak picture: box office income nationwide is down 80%, and 2.7 million full-time arts workers have had their employment affected.
That’s why director Michael Arden enlisted Emmy Award-winning actor Jefferson Mays for a one-man adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.”
The show, which was filmed at United Place in New York, is watchable on demand, for a fee. Proceeds benefit over 40 theatres nationwide, including the Peoria Players Theatre.
“It was the brainchild of our producers,” Mays said. “I was approached by Regional Theatre Director Chris Ashley at La Jolla Playhouse in California, and he said we’d love for you to do this show when our theatre reopens, but if that’s not able to happen, why don’t we do a film, and not just an archival film, but a real, theatrical, hybrid version we can then show our subscribers?
“That quickly flowered into an idea of making it available across the country, and that flowered into the idea of giving part of the proceeds back to help support these theatres that are shut down, waiting for their doors to reopen.”
Mays said this version doesn’t have what he called the “pageantry” of the traditional version, simply because it doesn’t have the large cast of the traditional, but said it may be truer to the original vision than the version with which most people are familiar.
“I think it’s less a departure from the version people might be most familiar with as it is a return to the story, itself, particularly the ghost story,” he said.
“Perhaps, it resembles something Dickens, himself, might have done, because he quickly realized its dramatic potential and reduced his novella, which takes about three hours to read, to 90 minutes of a one-man show he toured Great Britain with and toured America with, twice, in the middle of the 19th century.
“So, we’ve sort of preserved his narrative voice with all of its wit and social outrage.”
Tickets for the show may be purchased through Jan. 3, 2021. The purchase of a ticket is good for unlimited streams over a 24-hour period.
The full interview with Mays:
