A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time

Tonight, as I enjoy delicious Australian coffee from the new stovetop percolator Marina's parents sent me for Christmas, I find myself reliving a personal tradition. Every year, at Christmas, I find myself stepping backward in time with year-sized boots, stepping backward from Christmastime to Christmastime, finding what it is that I remember specifically about each year.

Only now, it isn't just that; I find myself thinking of my favorite story and how many different versions of it I've been part of in my professional life. Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL has been adapted in so many ways, but the only versions that I can really lend credence to are those that don't diminish the absolutely pitch-perfect, nuanced language of the original novella. That all sounds very lofty, and I don't mean it to. What I mean to do here is to pay tribute to some of the best (or at least my favorite) people I ever did some version of this show with.

In one production or another of A CHRISTMAS CAROL I have played Joe the junk dealer, Young Scrooge, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Bob Cratchit, and had a couple of runs at Scrooge himself. Add in a few smaller roles without much import and a version done by two actors and I know that text almost by heart, even today. I have loved every single production of this story I've done, if not every adaptation. I've been working for some years on my own adaptation, and one day I hope I'll get the chance to put it up... maybe with some of the following people helping me out.

John Clemo comes to mind first; an excellent Scrooge, excellent actor and a fine gentleman whom I still consider a close friend despite years and distance.

Matt Jones, who did the NTC tour of the show for many years and probably knows their version better than anyone else in the world... I never saw you do it, Matt, but I would love to see your Bob Cratchit or your Fred.

Travis Ploeger, from my very first Christmas Carol, who played Fred but I primarily remember as playing a completely dimwitted and deficient version of Dick Wilkins as I tried to maintain as Young Scrooge. His Dick Wilkins was the kind of lumbering oaf who might pet a bunny rabbit to death, and I completely stole his idea in a later production when I played a party guest I invented called "Special Tim."

And finally I'd like to pay tribute to a man who really did, in my experience with him, exemplify all the best qualities of a Scrooge transformed. Matt Kamprath, who passed away in 2009 at only 49, was (both on- and offstage) the life of the NTC tour I did in 2002. He was such a beloved Scrooge on the East Coast leg of that tour that many venues would simply not book the show unless Matty was playing the role.

I have been so lucky and so blessed in my life to have met and worked with so many very talented actors and professionals. It's a time to think about blessings, and a time for people to "open their shut up hearts open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

I have an immense feeling of gratitude tonight, for no specific reason but for all those blessings I've had that I haven't deserved and all those people whom I have been able to learn from over the years. If I've ever spent a Christmas with you, please know that tonight I am thinking of you and raising a glass in your honor.

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"