After performing in Project Shakespeare’s “A Christmas Carol” for five holiday seasons in a row, Christopher Commander moved back to England in 2014 and he missed being in the play so much he recorded his own one-man verson of the Charles Dickens’ classic.
“I just missed it. I missed doing it. … I love ‘Christmas Carol.’ Charles Dickens wrote a book that captured the zeitgeist of Victorian Christmas. There is something tangible about that,” Commander said. “So yes there is a one-man ‘Christmas Carol’ by me on the internet out there. Don’t look it up.”
Project Shakespeare opens its annual holiday production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in Peterborough Friday as part of a planned 17-show run in communities throughout the Monadnock Region and beyond.
It is the 11th annual “Christmas Carol” production from the Jaffrey-based youth theater program run by founder and director Deborah Shakespeare Thurber. And will be Commander’s return to Thurber’s adapted and directed “Christmas Carol,” in which he will be playing the central character of Ebenezer Scrooge in both the 10 youth performances, featuring 20 local youth aged 6 to 18, and the seven 3-person performances Commander and fellow Project Shakespeare alums Sarah Wendy Burman and Patrick Sherlock are taking on.
“What’s nice this year is we are going to so many places. There’s a bunch. There’s different dinners, Aldworth Manor. We still have four (shows) if people want to just see the show. But it’s opening up and doing it differently,” Thurber said.
For Thurber the tradition with the production is always bringing something new to it whether by going back to the text to draw out or expand a small character, finding something new in another movie or production or with a new set. All of which has been done this year.
“Every year I have to make it new. So every year I have to come up with a new opening song or a little bit of a new way of starting it. Some years I’ve had 36 kids. This year I have my smallest cast. I only have 21,” Thurber said.
Thurber also wanted to do something different theatrically this year with a new three-person version. “I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we did a small ‘Christmas Carol.’”
The first production in 2009 had only a two-night run at the Jaffrey Women’s Club with Thurber, her husband Steven Thurber and a parent reading the narration while the children performed the scenes.
Commander said he would have been 16 at the time. “I was there at the inception, which was quite fun and I stayed till 2013 and moved back to the U.K. in 2014.”
Commander is now associate director of Project Shakespeare, a role he has been slowly stepping into the past few summer seasons as Thurber and Commander look to the future of the youth theatre program. For this production he is working as a mentor actor.
“When it comes down to it we still try and complete the tagline of Project Shakespeare, which is ‘Transforming students lives through theater education.’ And so the idea is no matter what, even if I’m in a show, hopefully I will be passing on something. There is a thing in acting where you always want to work with people that push you. So hopefully, I will help my scene partners. … It always come back down to some form of education,” Commander said.
For the current ensemble of young actors “A Christmas Carol” is their holiday tradition.
“This is my fifth ‘Christmas Carol,’” says Abby Hampson, 17, of Jaffrey. “I don’t really have a Christmas season cause I spent all my time going to rehearsals and then shows. But it brings my family together because they all go and see the show.”
Hampson will be off at college this time next year but is excited this last ‘Christmas Carol’ will also serve as a bonding experience for her with her young nieces who have joined the production this year.
Hancock sisters Grace, 17, and Gabby Ramsden, 13, have been in the production for the past eight years. They both started as Cratchit children and have gone on to play multiple characters from there.
“Now it just feels like Christmas would be incomplete without it,” Grace said.
“This is what we do every Christmas,” Gabby said.
Fellow “Christmas Carol” veteran Alyssia Maki, 17, of Jaffrey was known for many years for her role as Christmas Past, eventually she moved on to Christmas Present.
“When ‘Christmas Carol’ starts, that’s the start of the Christmas season,” Alyssia said.
This year she is finally tall enough to play the last ghost.
“Alyssia is playing the Ghost of Christmas future, which means she will have played all of the ghosts,” Thurber said.
While Thurber strives to make the show new each year, she says there are aspects of the show that remain the same.
“There are some things that are tradition,” Thurber said, like the Fezziwig dance that was choreographed years back by some of the actors and has stayed the same ever since, but audiences will notice the new touches added, “Last year we added Charles Dickens and this year his publisher.”
Commander said the Dickens tale is a long held holiday tradition for anyone who has seen it once, because once you have seen it you want to return to it every holiday season and you see it somewhere in your own world every Christmastime.
“Words that were put down to page over 170 years ago still resonate with generations now and sort of echo down and touch people. There isn’t a Christmas that will go by where I won’t see or read or be in a ‘Christmas Carol.’ ‘Christmas Carol’ has been with me for so long,” Commander said.
Commander said it is more than just the story of the redemption of one man, which in and of itself always draws people.
“It’s Christmas and it’s love. It’s all those things wrapped up in one story,” Commander said. “There’s just something about ‘Christmas Carol.’ It resonates in a way with people that no other story does. … It’s a message to everyone. It’s a message to every man, women or child. Whoever comes to see ‘Christmas Carol,’ ‘Be happy and kind to people.’ Can we have more of that in the world? I think everyone sees a bit of Scrooge in themselves and I think it’s good to remind people you can destroy that part of Scrooge in you. … And who doesn’t want to time travel.”
The youth cast includes Brooke, Molly and Sarah Wendy Burman, Talia Droz, Abigail Hampson, Grace and Emily Lewis, Helen Martynuska, Alyssia Maki, Harold Thomas McCarthy, Benjamin Michaud, Grace & Gabrielle Ramsden, Kadin Rinaldi, Aurora Sousa, Sophia Spingola, Anna Taylor, Ella Weinmann and Katie Whitaker.
Proceeds from show performances benefit Project Shakespeare’s theater education programs.
Performances run from Dec. 13 through 23.
■Friday, Dec. 13, 7 p.m. Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church, 25 Main St., Peterborough.
■Saturday, Dec. 14, 7 p.m., First Church in Jaffrey Center.
■Monday, Dec. 16, 7 p.m. (3-actor performance), Monadnock Waldorf School, 98 S. Lincoln St., Keene.
■Friday, Dec. 20, 7 p.m., First Congregational Church in Rindge.
Tickets are $10 for adults $5 for children [12 & under]. Purchase at the box office half hour prior to the show.
Special holiday performances that include food and drink include:
■Sunday, Dec. 15, 3 & 5:30 p.m., The Hancock Inn, 33 Main St., Hancock.
■Saturday, Dec. 21, 10 a.m. A Family Christmas Carol Brunch at La Belle Winery, 345 NH Route 101, Amherst.
■Saturday, Dec. 21, 5 p.m. Homemade Holiday Dinner & Performance at The Jaffrey Civic Center, 40 Main St., Jaffrey.
■Sunday, Dec. 22, 3:30 & 6:30 p.m., Aldworth Manor, Harrisville.
■Monday, Dec. 23, 5 p.m., The Monadnock Inn, 379 Main St., Jaffrey.
Intimate three-actor performance on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 6 p.m. Sunflowers Café, 21 Main St., Jaffrey.
For more information go online to www.projectshakespeare.org.