BEMIDJI — Few holiday stories have quite the reputation as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. There have been numerous adaptations in movies, plays and even with Muppets. Bemidji Community Theater will be tackling a musical adaptation by Leslie Bricusse called Scrooge! The Musical for their fall production.
BCT performed a play version of the classic Dickens tale a few years ago, and community members have been asking if they would ever do it again.
It’s a challenge to wrangle a cast of about 41 people including young children and a lot of first-time actors. However, director Mary Knox-Johnson and stage manager Kristine Cannon have a lot of experience in theater productions and are ready.
They both agreed there was a learning curve for their new cast members, and it was a lot of work finding enough costumes set in the Victorian age for a cast of this size. However, they took it step by step to get the production going. First, the cast learned the music, then the choreography, then practiced on stage.
Having a large cast can make it difficult to keep track of what everyone is doing at all times. But Knox-Johnson organized a schematic that basically tells the cast exactly what their responsibilities are and where they should be.
It’s not often a production has so many first-time actors. Knox-Johnson said it was because they had a lot of families who auditioned together. There’s a husband and wife with their three kids in the show, a mother with her three kids and even a grandfather and grandson in the cast. Knox-Johnson and Cannon both enjoy getting a chance to work with these new actors.
“You can see the growth definitely in some of these kids. But the challenge was we had a group of people who had never done theater before,” Cannon said. “And what happens is none of them know the basics. ... So, we get really interesting things.”
They are excited to show the fantastic elements in the show like ghosts and spirits.
“Of course, you always have some fog, but we're going to experiment with our lighting, and we are trying some videography for some of the special effects,” Knox-Johnson said.
As for their favorite parts in the musical production process, Knox-Johnson said hers is the creation part: To have a vision in mind and try to reproduce that in the real world. Even though they’ve done A Christmas Carol-style production before, they’re creating something new.
Cannon's favorite part is the connection within the cast.
“You can put 42 people on the stage who are all singing the same thing and doing their parts and looking terrific on an exquisite set and if they are not connected to each other, it's kind of flat for me,” she said.
“I think it's like a puzzle," Knox-Johnson said.
"We have 41 puzzle pieces and so we put all these puzzle pieces together to create this goal and sometimes it's different from what we thought it was going to be, but so far, I think it's coming out the way we want it to be.”
There will also be theater seats at the Bemidji Community Theater that will be in use for the first time for this production. Tickets are available at the BCT website and at McKenzie Place, myBemidji and Ken K. Thompson Jewelry.
Each show will offer free books to every child in attendance as part of their literacy project. There will be a holiday ugly sweater contest and Victorian Christmas ornaments for sale at the boutique.
Performances are Nov. 15-17 and Nov. 22-24, with Friday and Saturday performances at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday performances at 2:00 p.m.
Tell us about upcoming arts events where you live in Northern Minnesota by emailing psa@kaxe.org.
Area Voices is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.
