Ebenezer Scrooge

No, I wouldn't call the story of Scrooge my own personal archetype. But at the story's outset I do see Scrooge as an archetype of the negative aspects of astrological Saturn-fearful, self-protective, contracted, bitterly cold-hearted toward the suffering of others, miserly, abusive-all those nasty qualities we associate with cruel masters and slum landlords. There is nothing lovable about him at the top of the show. He's a bastard and proud of it, just what you'd expect from a negative expression of Saturn energies.

Now, everyone has Saturn somewhere in their astrological chart, so everyone has the potential for a negative expression of those conservative, self-protective qualities. For most of us, they pop out only under special circumstances, like when our security is threatened. With Scrooge, they dominate and control his personality, which is what makes him an archetype.
In my performance of Scrooge in the beginning of the show I emphasize those Saturn qualities I find in myself-hateful, mean, and self-protective. But don't forget that Scrooge begins to change pretty early on. Marley scares the crap out of him, so he can't even say "Humbug" any more. After that, there are all kinds of colors in his character, which I try to capture, as he goes through a wide range of experiences before he breaks down completely, repents, and begins his new, reformed life. So you have to ask, What is the Scrooge archetype? Is it the mean old man, the stunned, inter-dimensional traveler, or the joyful and generous philanthropist? And the answer, of course, is that he's all of that, and more.

More to the point of archetypes, I think, is the story itself as a winter solstice ritual marking the rebirth of the light in the season of darkness. I think that's at the heart of why people return to it year after year and what gives the story archetypal weight. Scrooge's journey into his own darkness, culminating in visions of his own death, parallels the growing darkness of the season, until-Poof! At the darkest hour there's rebirth, there's rescue from fear and death, just as happens with the Sun at the solstice, when we celebrate Christmas, a pagan festival really, upon which Christianity has piggy-backed.

As for my own personal archetype, I'm not entirely sure what that means. Maybe I don't have one, or not a single one. I know I have an natural instinct as an Actor, an illusionist of sorts, and am greatly fulfilled by weaving a spell of enchantment around a story that moves people to a fresh level of consciousness. That may be a kind of archetype. But I respond to other models, too, and I'd be a liar and a fraud if I pretended I know who I really am.

For one thing, sharing this story, which leads an audience from darkness into light, really makes my holiday season a fulfilling time. I meet all kinds of people, who greet me after the show with big smiles on their faces, and I even make some money for myself, which doesn't often happen in theater. A big infusion of old-fashioned "Christmas Spirit" streams into my life and lasts for days and weeks afterwards.

But the best part, of course, is playing it-being inside the story looking out while also hearing myself say the wonderful words and feeling myself in pretty much perpetual motion, like a dancer, in a way. It all becomes quite real to me, even when I'm just rehearsing, and when I get to the end, say the final words, and the tape finally stops rolling, there's a moment or so of feedback that runs through my system which feels like I'm standing on a cloud in an eternal space as part of a cosmic smile. The next moment, of course, the spell is broken, the characters fade away, and I look out upon ordinary reality once more as an ordinary person who answers to a certain name, lives at a certain address, drives a certain car, and all that stuff that defines my daily life.

So clearly the performance of this piece has a transcendent effect on me, but I'm not sure it carries over into the street the way a religious experience might. It's more like a high from a controlled substance. It's great while I'm on it, and I learn a lot from it, but whether it actually transforms me or not is debatable. I still have to work on myself in more fundamental ways that have little or nothing to do with my work as a performer.

In 1996 I began working as a part-time custodian at a United Methodist church in our Norfolk, VA, neighborhood-a day job to hold body and soul together. From the beginning the pastor of that church took an interest in my theater activities and sometimes asked me to join with her in performing a vignette or a skit as part of her Sunday services. She knew I'd played Scrooge a number of times in Lancaster, and in 2005, after she'd moved on to another church in Virginia Beach, she commissioned me to work up a fifteen- or twenty-minute bit from A Christmas Carol to complement a Christmas sermon she was preparing on charity. So I did that, playing several characters myself, and performed it one Advent Sunday at her church.

The piece was a hit! I mean, it blew me away how enthusiastically people raved about it; and that's when I got the idea of adapting the whole story into a one-person show. So I bought a copy of Dickens' novella, and between Christmas and New Year's, 2005, while my enthusiasm for it was still fresh and in season, I created the script.

The idea of editing it down to one hour came from my experience from acting in several two-hour productions and from seeing several stage and film versions over many years. It's also what I find in the novella. The story, for my taste, gets too long, too fluffed out with crowd-pleasing scenes and effects, not to mention Dickens' ornate language. These qualities tend to obscure and dilute the main story, which is really quite dark and foreboding until it reaches its crisis and turns toward redemption and rebirth. I wanted to emphasize this core theme by removing the padding which I felt were distractions. Then the story, without losing its eloquence, becomes sleek and compact, moving quickly and concisely in a really wonderful arc through an array of primal emotional states which descend into the depths of nightmare-almost classically tragic-before they turn, rising to triumph and joy and resolving all in a happy ending. Along the way on that arc there are these unforgettable characters, making the whole thing a veritable actor's feast. In my opinion, it's more fulfilling to perform than Shakespeare.

Also, I might add, my adaptation doesn't have to be played by one actor. That style evolved as a natural extension of my original commission, and also, since I thought I could pull it off technically and artistically, because it would be a) unique among an overcrowded field of holiday shows and b) a hell of a lot easier than auditioning for a cast and dealing with the inevitable tangle of scheduling conflicts which are the bane of community theater projects. Still, the play, which has been published by HaveScripts in Virginia Beach (available at www.havescripts.com), is not necessarily a one-person show but is suitable as well for a small ensemble.

The story carries a strong social message, which many of the characters bring out and which Scrooge finally embraces in the end. But it's the Ghost of Jacob Marley who states that message in its starkest terms when he repudiates his own misspent life as a covetous, tight-fisted businessman. "Mankind was my business!" he cries out to Scrooge in a wail of remorse. "The common welfare was my business! Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business!"

So Christmas Carol is about how we're supposed to treat one another, how our concerns should be for the good of all, not just ourselves and a few select others. In its simplest terms, it promotes the Golden Rule, applied across the whole of society. Dickens was, after all, a humanitarian Aquarius.

Marley's outburst carries such weight, I think, because he is Scrooge's role model, his mentor. He's a bit older than Scrooge, who admires and emulates his cutthroat business methods. So Marley is partially responsible for the wretched state of Scrooge's soul. It's not too much of a stretch to see their relationship as guru-disciple, with the guru returning from the grave to try to save his disciple from the terrible consequences of continuing to follow his misguided teaching.

I want audiences to hear that message of social justice. I personally believe making the common welfare our business should govern individual lifestyle choices. It is, after all, enshrined in the Preamble of our U.S. Constitution. But in the profit-driven, laissez-faire capitalist society we've become-and which England was in Dickens' time-the principle of the common welfare is routinely overlooked if not actively dismissed. We need to hear it again. I need to keep hearing it myself. One of the main perks I get from doing this show over and over is to ingrain that message into my own brain, where it hopefully contributes to my improvement as a person and a citizen. I hope it has a bit of that effect upon my audiences as well.

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