FROM SCS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR CHARLES PASTERNAK: December 24, Christmas Eve, was the closing performance of our 2025 Christmas Carol. All weekend the has been windy and wet, with particularly strong gusts that evening. I stood outside the Vets Hall as I do before every performance — greeting people, wishing them Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. It was a sold out house, so I knew there would be a rush of patrons just before curtain at 7:00 p.m. I hoped the line out the door wouldn’t force anybody into the rain.

At 6:57 p.m. I heard a loud electrical pop somewhere down Front Street and the power went out for blocks. That’s when the first act of magic happened: I didn’t know this at the time, but a moment after the power went out in the auditorium, someone started to sing Silent Night, and the whole audience joined in. Meanwhile, I quickly checked in with our front of house team: no, there was not a generator; yes, most of the audience was already in the theatre. I moved quickly to the stage with my camera flashlight on me, announcing, “Hello all! Clearly, the power’s out. However, one way or another, the show will go on…” Our audience cheered. They were excited.

I dashed upstairs to our dressing rooms to check in with the cast. What do we do? Well, we do it by flashlight. Well, we can’t do all the staging… dozens of costume changes, moving sets, choreography in the dark. Someone could get hurt. Okay… we do it as a reading. To candlelight. Do we sing? We have to do the carols. But they’re multipart harmonies and we’re not getting the notes from anywhere – we’ll play the first notes from a phone. The two child actors can’t believe we’re doing this. But they’re excited. We all are. In a way, this is the best live theatre has to offer.

We head down to the stage. The cast sit in a semi-circle on stage. We set up flashlights as footlights. They all hold the electric candles they normally walk in with during In the Bleak Midwinter. They begin singing that beautiful, haunting carol. A few things are clear immediately: first, they sound gorgeous; second, the Vets Hall around them has never been so quiet – both because the audience is leaning forward, rapt – and because there is no ambient noise with the power out; third, when they stand up, the footlight flashlights don’t light their faces. So I grab one while my amazing co-director Alicia Gibson grabs the other and we lie in our groundling section shining them up at the speakers.

I know right away that this is a perfect show to be read in this manner. It’s already a narrative adaptation of the novella. More poetry has been retained than in most stage productions – more description of Dickens’ vibrant, if less dramatic, world is laced in there. And the actors… they’re bringing it. Our audience is meeting them actively.

I’m an unapologetically sentimental and nostalgic person. I’m getting emotional writing this. But I didn’t shed a tear that night — maybe the first time that has been true when I’ve seen our Carol; the adrenaline was too high and I had too much to do. But that was the best Carol I have ever seen anywhere. Bar none. And one of the most exciting nights of theatre I have ever been a part of…

Christmas Eve. Closing Performance. 3 minutes before showtime. Most of the audience was already sitting down. They sung Silent Night together. And we wouldn’t send them home without a show.

And I haven’t said enough about our amazing cast. But words will fail. I’ll just say that it started as a stand up / sit down reading and grew, as the show went on, into an improvised theatrical event. There were many meta-theatrical reverberations and the company let them play (“Darkness is cheap… *laughter* …and Scrooge liked it.”) But Mike Ryan, our intrepid Scrooge, stayed devotedly in character, leading us as he always does on that stage.

The cast finishes. The audience goes wild. After the cast *carefully* sings their way out of the house with We Wish You a Merry Christmas, I leap up and ask our audience to please be *very careful* as they make their way out of the hall. Our amazing front-of-house team is already there with flashlights to guide the way. As I stand out front, thanking everyone as they depart, I know most of them have just experienced something they’ll never forget.

We couldn’t recreate it… though we may try. Closing with a candlelit reading in future years may be just the way to honor something like this.

Here’s to holiday miracles.

— Charles Pasternak, SCS Artistic Director
— December 26, 2025