\nPlay tells story behind Dickens\u2019 famous work – Winston-Salem Journal: News<\/p>\n
David Zum Brunnen will play Charles Dickens in “The Night Before Christmas Carol” at the Brock Performing Arts Center on Dec. 8.<\/p>\n
Posted: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 12:00 am
\nLisa O’Donnell\/Winston-Salem Journal<\/p>\n
Elliot Engel has devoted much of his life to studying Charles Dickens.
\nBut when it came to watching \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d performed on stage, Engel had reached his limit.<\/p>\n
He figured others had, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think the world needed one more performance of \u2018A Christmas Carol,\u2019\u201d Engel said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
So Engel wrote a play himself, a one-man play that focuses on Dickens and how he came to write \u201cA Christmas Carol,\u201d one of the most enduring stories in the Christmas canon.
\nEngel\u2019s play, \u201cThe Night Before Christmas Carol,\u201d will be performed Sunday at the Brock Performing Arts Center in Mocksville. David zum Brunnen will play the role of Dickens.
\nThe setting is Oct. 13, 1843, a good two months before the novella hit the streets of London. Engel, who said he has read almost every book written about Dickens, mixed fact and fiction to re-create the story\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to educate the British public of the 1840s on the perils of being poor and the responsibility of being rich,\u201d said Engel, a Raleigh resident who has taught at Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.<\/p>\n
The book was an immediate sensation in England. Today, the tale of a miser\u2019s Christmas Eve transformation is most familiar to people as a play, not a book.<\/p>\n
Engel said he wrote his play to shed more light on the book.<\/p>\n
\u201cDickens wrote it as fiction. But the problem with that is that you get all this wonderful dialogue, but all the description is lost,\u201d Engel said. \u201cDickens is good at dialogue, but brilliant at description. I wanted to try to recapture Dickens\u2019 point of view. What you get with a play is the director\u2019s point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two hundred years after Dickens\u2019 birth, his story has become universally beloved. This Christmas, homes around the world will be decorated with Dickens\u2019 villages, complete with Tiny Tim and Scrooge figurines. Carolers will dress in Victorian-era costumes, tapping into a vein of nostalgia, in an age of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just far enough away from Dickens\u2019 period that it\u2019s antique and nostalgic,\u201d Engel said. \u201cWe\u2019re crazy about anything that is Victorian because it seems quaint and far away. It\u2019s a golden age. The 21 st century loves Dickens in a way the 19 th century didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Engel, a regular visitor to Davie County, noted that the \u201csingle most famous work about the Christmas spirit\u201d is being performed an hour away from the birthplace of O. Henry, whose short story, \u201cThe Gift of the Magi,\u201d Engel called \u201cthe second most famous story written about the Christmas spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sidniee Suggs, the executive director of the Davie County Arts Council, said the play offers theater patrons a twist on a familiar tale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could all go to High Point to see a wonderful version of the \u2018A Christmas Carol,\u2019\u201d Suggs said in reference to the annual performance of the play by the N.C. Shakespeare Festival. \u201cBut here, we\u2019re offering something a little different. You\u2019re getting \u2018A Christmas Carol\u2019 from a totally different perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIf You Go
\nWHAT: The Night Before Christmas Carol
\nWHEN: 7:30 p.m., Sunday
\nWHERE: Brock Performing Arts Center, 622 N. Main St., Mocksville
\nTICKETS: $12 for adults; $10 for students\/seniors, call the box office at (336)751-3000<\/p>\n
Play tells story behind Dickens\u2019 famous work – Winston-Salem Journal: News David Zum Brunnen will play Charles Dickens in “The Night Before Christmas Carol” at the Brock Performing Arts Center on Dec. 8. Posted: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 12:00 am Lisa O’Donnell\/Winston-Salem Journal Elliot Engel has devoted much of his life to studying Charles Dickens. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-night-before-christmas-carol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}