A CHRISTMAS CAROL 2020 AUDITION SIDES

Due to the continued challenges of physical distancing, we will only be accepting video auditions at this time. Performers of all ethnic backgrounds, gender, and age are invited to submit.

This year, because of the limitations posed by COVID-19, our annual production of A Christmas Carol will look very different than it has in previous years. We will be looking for a small cast (5-6 performers) who will need to be strong character actors and singers in order to play an abundance of roles.

Please choose three of the following characters and record the following text for the characters of your choice. Please choose whichever characters most appeal to you, but we encourage you to make each character performance as distinct and diverse as possible. You are welcome to choose characters of any gender and all roles will be cast with gender and colour-blind casting.

Along with your three characters, please sing one verse of a Christmas Carol of your choice. Instrumental accompaniment is not required.

Please send audition video (or link to unlisted YouTube posting) to the following address: info@highlandartstheatre.com

Please make the e-mail subject: “HAT Christmas Carol Audition 2020”.

Deadline for video audition is midnight on Wednesday, September 30th.

All performers must be available all twelve performances – Nov 24th to Dec 6th (Tuesday to Sunday) and for part-time rehearsals for four weeks prior to opening night.

Performers may be asked to attend a callback audition if necessary.

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at: info@highlandartstheatre.com

CHARACTER CHOICES (CHOOSE 3):

SCROOGE     I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlewomen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there. If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon!

FRED              There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say. Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, 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 another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

MARLEY        Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! Hear me! My time is nearly gone. I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. You will be haunted by Three Spirits. Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next. Look to see me no more; and remember what has passed between us lest you suffer the same fate as those such as you!

FAN                I have come to bring you home, dear brother! To bring you home, home, home! Father is so much kinder than he used to be! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man and are never ever to come back here; we’re to be together all Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world. The merriest time!

FEZZIWIG     Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick! Yo ho, my boys! No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up before a man can say Jack Robinson! Hilli-ho! Chirrup, Ebenezer! Ho ho ho!

BELLE            It matters little. To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve. You fear the world too much! All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the fear of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not? I would gladly think otherwise if I could. Heaven knows! But can even I believe that were you free today you would choose a dowerless girl? No. I know; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.

CRATCHIT    As good as gold. And better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see. A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!

PRESENT       My life upon this globe, is very brief. It ends at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near. Look: These children are Man’s, and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom. Deny it! Slander those who tell it! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!

STOCKS         No, I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead. It happened last night, I believe, but God knows what the matter with him was. No one knows. In fact, when I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend! I haven’t heard what he’s done with his money. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know! It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral. For upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer? I don’t mind going… if a lunch is provided!

CHARWOMAN         Let the charwoman alone to be the first! Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it! Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.

MRS. CRATCHIT       ‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them – ’ She breaks off, caught by emotion. Sorry, my loves. The colour hurts my eyes. They’re better now again. I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time. I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed. But he was very light to carry, and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!