“Englishman Thomas Hutchinson”
portrayed by actor Al LePage will present “A Very Victorian Christmas
Carol, Done like Dickens!” performed as Charles Dickens did in 1867 as
dramatic readings using only his voice, facial expressions and gestures
to create all 26 characters. All performances will also take
place where Dickens first performed them in America; four at the
historic Omni Parker House Hotel plus one at Converse Hall, which will
take
place on the exact historic calendar date Dickens performed at that
location in 1867. All these performances, plus another very
special “Footwork, Fiddles & Fun: A Fezziwig's Ball for Families”
event with Jacqueline and Dudley Laufman
of
“Two Fiddles,” will benefit the hungry, with 100% of all proceeds
going to benefit the Greater Boston Food Bank. Two full 2-hour
evening
performances on Fri., Nov. 26 and Sat., Nov. 27, 8-10PM, two shorter
1-hour afternoon performances on Sunday, Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, 2-4 PM,
and the “Fezziwig's Ball” dance on Sat. afternoon, Nov. 27, 2-4 PM,
happen in the historic Press Room at the Omni Parker House Hotel, 60
School
St., Boston. Another full 2-hour evening grand performance event,
where a rare edition of A Christmas
Carol plus two silver British coins,
all from the nineteenth century, will be given away, happens on
Thursday, Dec. 2, 7-9 PM, in 1600-seat Converse Hall, 88 Tremont St.,
Boston. Dickens performances were meant for adult audiences, but
mature children age 10 and older should also be able to appreciate them
and will be admitted. The ticket price is $18.67/person -- to
commemorate the
year Dickens performed in Boston -- for children and adults
and for all
performances, with special discounts available for those who qualify
for the
grand Converse Hall event. Tickets for the "Fezziwig's Ball"
dance event are only $4.99/person for children and adults. All
tickets must be reserved in advance either online through
BrownPaperTickets.com or by calling their 24/7 toll-free number,
1-800-838-3006. All events hosted at the Omni Parker House Hotel
are
being fully sponsored by OMNI Hotels & Resorts, Parker
House/Boston, and the exclusive print media sponsor for all Boston
performances
is GateHouse Media New England.
Photo
Credit: David Krapes
“Start the Time Machine,” begins
actor Al LePage, “we're going for a ride! We're all heading back
in time to the year 1876 -- just nine years after Dickens was in Boston
in 1867 -- to experience the same historic events, in the
same
historic spots, and exactly on or around the very same historic
calendar dates that the famed author himself did his first dramatic
readings in Boston. And I'll be doing these special performances
of A Christmas Carol just
like Dickens first did for charity, and using
his acting style, and based on his very own historic script, and all in
the guise of a nineteenth century Victorian Englishman, accent and
all!”
LePage entertains appreciative audiences with his one-man "solo" of
Dickens' Christmas Carol and
“this year” takes you back to “Boston
1876” as Victorian-era "Englishman Thomas Hutchinson." His full
performances not only use Dickens exact public reading version, but
also are done just like Dickens did simply by using his voice, facial
expressions, gestures and movement to create all 26 characters --
accents and all -- plus sound effects, too! From Scrooge to Tiny
Tim, from Marley's Ghost to Mrs. Cratchit, there's howls and growls,
bangs and bongs, a dance with a song, lively laughter and heartfelt
tears. His love of improvisation combined with a highly
interactive style means that he may not only engage you in
conversation, but also encourage you to join him on stage at some
point! In fact, watch out! Since he's playful, likes to
experiment and believes in seizing the moment, even he doesn't always
know what's going to happen next. And, before each reading, he's
definitely got what could aptly be called “his stories” to tell both in
“the year” and the place he's performing to connect, interpret, and
share history with the audience. This not only makes each
performance unique, but also keeps them fresh and exciting, spontaneous
and full of surprises, too!
Photo Credit: Great Stories Alive!
“I may have a surprise for you, too” adds LePage, “in the
form of a gift! Yes, they'll be some sort of special gift given
away at every event wherever I perform. But for the grand
performance in Converse Hall, well that's just too big for only one
gift. In fact, since it's my very first performance where
Dickens himself also gave his very first public reading performance in
Boston, and the fact that it will be held on the same exact calendar
date in 1867, I want to give away not one, but three very special gifts
to commemorate the occasion. So, two nineteenth century British
silver coins mentioned in the Carol
– an 1838 twopence, pronounced
tuppence, and an 1817 half-a-crown – plus a copy of A Christmas Carol
published coincidentally, of all places, in Boston, and in the
year
1876, too, will be given away that very evening.”
A “Tuppence,”
Half-a-Crown, and an 1876 edition of the Carol to be given away at the
"grand performance" in Converse Hall! (Image to left)
Hunger close to home is something LePage experienced as a young man
when the school he'd been working at as a teacher in Boston
unexpectedly closed over the winter holiday break. His savings
were meager, and deciding not to go on unemployment at the time,
struggled to make ends meet. He decided to pay his bills, and had
little money left for food. So, he got hungry for the very first
time in
his life. He was not starving, of course, but he remembers it
being winter and spring, and he felt cold and hungry,
and may even have been slightly malnourished as time went on. That
experience has stuck with him ever since, and that's why his primary
focus is to donate all proceeds to benefit organizations that help
prevent hunger close to home. So, here in the Boston area where
he grew up, benefiting the Greater Boston Food Bank seemed to be the
obvious choice.
Hunger close to home continues to grow. Here are just a few
highlights according to the Hunger in Eastern Massachusetts 2010 report
complied by the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB). Annually in
eastern Massachusetts, 394,300 people receive food that was distributed
to GBFB member agencies. This is a 23% increase from 2005 which is a
consistent trend in what the hunger relief network has been seeing in
the past four years and, in particular in the past 16 months with the
worst economic recession experience in the US since the Great
Depression. At any given time, at least one third of clients have
had to make choices between food and other critical survival factors
such as heat, housing, medical care or transportation. One in
three households receiving help through emergency food providers has at
least one child under the age of 18 years. Clearly the weakened
economy has had a continued, deleterious impact on low income
households in eastern Massachusetts. From 2005 to the present,
the number of pounds that GBFB distributed has increased by 27% from
24,764,467 to 31,496,955. Reliance on GBFB by pantries, soup
kitchens, and shelters continues to increase with 91% overall saying
that it would be a significant or devastating loss if there were no
Food Bank.
"Englishman Thomas
Hutchinson" portrayed by Al LePage as "Scrooge"
himself!
Image
by Melissa Ostrow/www.melophoto.net
“There are many things I like
about doing these events,” notes LePage, “but besides being able to
donate my talents to help prevent hunger close to home, whenever I pick
up the phone to potentially arrange a venue, an event, or publicity, I
get to offer others an opportunity to be generous, too. I get a
chance to ask others to live the spirit of giving right there and then,
thus making one of the messages of the Carol a reality as part of the
whole process. That's what the Omni Parker House Hotel did when
they
agreed to host and sponsor the events there, that's what GateHouse
Media New England did when they agreed to be our print media sponsor
and donate ad space in MetroWest Daily News, and that's what many
others have done, in ways both large and small, from people like Dudley
and Jacqueline Laufman of 'Two Fiddles' to local patron Paula
Jacoff. Finally, of course, there's the people who buy tickets
and attend the events, since all proceeds go to benefit the Greater
Boston Food Bank. So, you see, it's not just a performance of A
Christmas Carol, it's about everyone being involved in
someway to
help to deal with the issue of hunger in Boston and local communities
beyond. Like Dickens wrote in the Carol, 'it is good to be
children sometimes' and these events are definitely about that, but
also, and at the heart of them, they're about putting away childish
things. They're not just about the 'all about me' perspective
often held by children, they're also about the 'we,' about how each of
us can be generous and give to others in need, with whatever gifts we
can bring to the table.”
LePage, a native of Framingham, began bringing history to life through
improvised portrayals of real people from the past for over seven years
at historic sites, museums, and other venues throughout the Pacific
Northwest. He's written and produced his own historical dramas as
one-man shows, appeared on the nationally televised PBS “History
Detectives” series in roles ranging from a bartender to Robert E.
Lee. He's been giving performances of the Carol to benefit
charity in the United States and Canada since 2006, and will be giving
his 3rd annual performance the first Saturday in December at
Longfellow's Wayside Inn. Oregon Public Broadcasting recently
produced and will premier LePage this December doing his own shortened
version of Dickens' Christmas Carol
as a one-hour radio program on
stations throughout the state.
“Englishman Thomas Hutchinson” is a fictitious character originally
developed to share regional and western history. He's not only
like a Frankenstein of history, being made up of the bits and pieces of
people who once really did live, but also a sort of Forrest Gump of
history, too, somehow always showing up whenever and wherever history
is being made! He now continues to live on as a traveling
Victorian-era “Thespian” giving dramatic readings of A Christmas Carol
to benefit charity. In order to make his character both
believable and credible – or as incredible as the stories he tells seem
to be – LePage not only meticulously researches the history of the
place and “the year” he performs, but also often travels to historic
sites to soak up the sights and sounds and whatever else he can, not
only to better transport himself, but also audience members, back in
time.
Charles Dickens arrived in Boston on Tuesday, November 19th,
1867, and took up residence at an earlier version of today's Omni
Parker House Hotel. The author had just traveled by ship from
England to
America to do a public reading tour of dramatic scenes from some of his
works. His manager had arranged for him to recover from his sea
voyage with two weeks rest, which soon frustrated the impatient
Dickens, who wanted to perform. He was invited to this and that
function, but like any serious actor he knew he needed to rehearse, and
apparently used it as both a valid reason and an excuse to be left
alone. He did apparently, from all known facts and inferences,
give his very first reading in the existing Press Room of the time at
the famed luxurious hotel on Saturday, November 30th.
This first
informal reading was to a small group of men, Longfellow and Emerson
among them, called "The Saturday Club" and the story he chose to read
was his public reading version of A
Christmas Carol. A few days
later, on a Monday evening, December 2nd, he gave his first public
reading performance at 88 Tremont Street in the original location where
the old Tremont Theater once stood. Boston apparently had an
early snowstorm that very morning, but by nightfall all was clear and
the carriages lined up and down Tremont Street and beyond to see and
hear him. The event went well, very well indeed, and he did three
more performances on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the same week
in Boston, heading off for New York by train for more performances
thereafter. Both the Parker House Hotel, where Dickens stayed
while in Boston, and the venue where the original theater once stood
were rebuilt after 1867, but at the very same locations. In fact,
today's Omni Parker House Hotel has even kept some of the artifacts
that Dickens
actually used, such as the marble fire place mantle, now in today's
Dickens Room, and the mirror outside today's Press Room is the very
same one that Dickens apparently used to rehearse and practice his
facial expressions and gestures for the greatest dramatic effect.
He did perform in the then “Press Room” though, too. So all in
all, although LePage can not perform in the same exact room and hall as
Dickens, he can indeed perform at the very same locations, and in the
same sort of venues that he did, and most definitely, at Converse Hall
on the same exact historic calendar date of December 2nd.
(Click
here for more details -- in Dickens own words -- about his experiences while
in Boston and New York during November and December 1867.)
#####
The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB)
is the largest hunger-relief non-profit organization in New England,
and one of the largest food banks in the country, working to help end
hunger in eastern Massachusetts. It distributes more than 34
million pounds of food and grocery products annually to a network of
nearly 600 member hunger-relief agencies. The need for food,
though, continues to grow in the 190 communities served. You can
learn more about the GBFB and help make a difference in the fight
against hunger by visiting their website at www.gbfb.org or by calling
617-427-5200.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
NOTE TO MEDIA:
Embedded images are high
resolution and offered for free use by the print media for
stories related to these performances and may be cropped and
color-balanced as needed. Please credit the photographers as
follows:
“Scrooge” by “Melissa
Ostrow/www.melophoto.net”/ “Gifts” by “Great Stories Alive!”/
All other
images by “David Krapes”
CAPTION
SUGGESTION for IMAGES without captions:
"Englishman Thomas Hutchinson," portrayed by Al LePage is sure to bring
lots of laughter, and hopefully some tears, during his upcoming
dramatic reading performances of Dickens classic A Christmas Carol.
Great Stories Alive !