Immediately after the 1997 production of The Last Christmas Carol closed, Mike Schirtzinger, director of The Davis Discovery Center, told me he wanted to do the show again.  Although it had been well received, he felt, as did Scott Michal, the composer, and I that we could do a better job next time.  So we turned out attention to getting a director who had experience with musicals and would be supportive of the material.  We were able to recruit a friend of ours, Susie Gehrisch.  Not only is she an accomplished director, but an actor, musician, and singer as well.

Some of the things we wanted to “fix” this time around shouldn’t have been issues the first time.  For example, the original director didn’t want to incorporate any choreography into the show.  She also reduced the main prop in the show – a merchant’s sidewalk cart which was written to have all kinds of doors which opened up – to a tiny wooden wheelbarrow.  However, the biggest change was the attention give to the music.

Scott is a serious composer whose works have been performed by symphonies and chamber groups.  His music for The Last Christmas Carol is sophisticated and challenging.  As a result, Susie brought in Sarah Alderman, a talented music teacher, to work with the cast on the music whenever they weren’t needed to work on their lines.  It was almost like they were rehearsing for two shows at the same time.

As far as the cart was concerned, I built it myself.  I started out with a shopping cart I bought for $15 from a Hechinger home improvement store which was going out of business.  I then built a wooden framework around it which incorporated doors on both sides, the front, and the top.  I trimmed it with Christmas tree lights and placed a small artificial Christmas tree inside which popped up when you raised the lid.  The whole contraption was painted flat black so that it was almost invisible until the lights came on.  It created the “magtical” effect I had originally envisioned.

All-in-all, the second production, although not without challenges, was much more satisfying on a personal and artistic level.  It was also the first production to include a few adult actors with the kids and teens.  The question, now, was what should we do next?