A Note from the Director

Patrick Mullins, Director, A Christmas Carol

Associate Artistic Director, VSC

“What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer;... If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!” - Ebenezer Scrooge  

 With a “recession” on, student loans to pay back, and a fiscal cliff looming, I think I’m closer than ever to connecting to our old pal Ebenezer.   I mean, I know Amazon Prime does free shipping, but... really? Do I need to spend the next two weeks buying presents for friends who already have everything that modern life could possibly require?  Is that gift of a new iPhone cover/hand-warmer/bottle-opener-that-mounts-to-your-bicycle-handlebars necessary?  Really?

I hope we don’t lose what our friend, Dickens, was trying to say all of those years ago. That the holidays are a “time when men and women seem by one consent to 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 just meat puppets trudging around getting in your way in the grocery aisle.” Ok, so maybe I paraphrased that a bit, but you get the point.

Every year I find it a bit harder to transition from the commercial-tastic holiday season to directing this show.  But then I crawl up inside of the production and I’m surrounded by a world where Christmas is about giving to others, about smiling at your fellow man, and about the harmonies sung in a world where love is practiced, and then...

Then I know it’s going to be ok.  And you know what?  It is going to be ok.

Maybe you can’t be in the cast of our little production and get to breathe it a little on stage every day like we get to do, but you can do some of the things we do in our cast.  You can recognize the little traditions that you do with others, whether it’s a card or a prayer or a cheers before dinner.

And you could do this mini-meditation for me...   As you walk through the parking lot to the grocery make a little mental Holiday wish for folks.  Even the folks you wouldn’t look at twice normally.  Wish for them some love, or some hope, or some cheer.  Each one of them.  Look at each one specifically (not while they’re looking at you, that might be creepy), and wish that for them.

Couldn’t we all use a little of that?  See if that practice doesn’t bring you more solidly into the world of humanity and more pleasantly dispositioned than the jerk trying to edge ahead of you in the self-checkout line while facebooking on his smartphone.  I promise you’ll be happier for it.

Oh, and join us for Christmas Carol.  See if it doesn’t bring you some cheer, too.  I gave it all the cheer I had.

As Tiny Tim observed - God bless us, every one. Happy New Year, folks.

Patrick Mullins,
Associate Artistic Director
Director of A Christmas Carol