The Hi-Desert Cultural Center Debuts 'An Actor's Carol'

Written by  Valerie-Jean (VJ) Hume

Playwright Charles Evered is sick of Christmas.

“There’s so little choice for theater!” he exclaimed. “There’s It’s a Wonderful Life, The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol—and that’s about it.”

So Evered decided to do something about it. The result is his 90-minute one-act play called An Actor’s Carol—a take on Charles Dickens’ famous A Christmas Carol. It will have its world premiere at Joshua Tree’s Hi-Desert Cultural Center on the first two weekends of December. Emmy Award-winning actor Hal Linden (Barney Miller) and veteran TV and film actor Barry Cutler will star in the first and second weekends of the play, respectively.

“Someone HAD to write it!” Evered declared.

Evered is no stranger to the High Desert. His play Adopt a Sailor was presented at the Hi-Desert Cultural Center a few years ago, and his work Class was a fundraiser for the theater, which is still trying to rebuild after a devastating blow from Mother Nature: An unprecedented freeze in January 2007.

Producer Radnich, the impresario of the Hi-Desert Cultural Center, is equally enthusiastic about An Actor’s Carol.

“We all have a great relationship,” he said. “Our theater is a place where we can experiment with nontraditional staging. I instantly loved the script for An Actor’s Carol, and I love working with great, talented people. This play is really different.”

Charles Evered, here for the production from his home in Princeton, N.J., fully expects these six performances will result in re-writes of his script. I was lucky enough to be invited to a staged reading of the very first version of An Actor’s Carol, hosted in Palm Springs by serene brunette beauty Kim Waltrip, whose company produced Evered’s first two movies. She told me she and Evered had known each other “for years. Our kids went to the same school!” At the reading, four actors introduced us to the multiple-role script—an actor’s delight.

The story is about a bitter, nasty actor who plays bitter, nasty Scrooge in some little theater’s production of A Christmas Carol. Like the character he’s playing, he experiences visitations from the beyond when he passes out backstage. (Yeah, he drinks.) It’s a modernized version of the classic tale, with cell phones, texting and some hilarious references to the 21st century life we know.

Like many who have faced tragedy, Evered chose to deal with life through comedy.

“Art saved my life,” he confided. “I might have gone to Yale … or to jail!”

We race through his resume: Raised in Rutherford, N.J., he lost both his parents early in life. His four siblings have all faced serious challenges, and frankly, some didn’t make it. A deathbed promise to his mother to never start drinking has been the foundation of his success—along with some fantastic luck.

He aspired to a career in baseball, of all things, but sadly found he was not sufficiently mega-talented in the sport. Oddly enough, it was a job as a janitor while still in high school, which included cleaning up the William Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts, that started the wheels turning. It was a shock to find out there were serious rental fees for the script—so he decided to write the plays himself. He was 18.

He experienced instant approval and success—and then he really did get to study playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

After graduating in 1991, he received a fellowship that allowed him to work in a Hollywood program sponsored by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg advised him, “Don’t try to please us with your writing. Write from your own heart.”

“Great advice! It made my career!” Evered said.

He eventually went on to teach what he had learned, as a founding faculty member at our own little University of Riverside Palm Desert Center, before moving on to a full professorship at the main campus in Riverside.

So what’s the future for An Actor’s Carol? After the six high desert performances, the final draft will be printed as a book in January by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.—and then it will be available for productions everywhere for Christmas of 2016.

“Christmas needs some fun,” he said. “… I hope An Actor’s Carol will exist forever. I’d like to see it done as repertory theater, so the audience can actually come to see Dickens’ play first, and then the next night, return to see An Actor’s Carol with the same actors, same stage and same set! Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

An Actor’s Carol will be performed at 7 p.m., Friday; and 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday, from Friday, Dec. 4, through Saturday, Dec. 12, at the Hi-Desert Cultural Center’s Blak Box Theater, located at 61231 Twentynine Palms Highway, in Joshua Tree. Tickets are $15 to $24. For tickets or more information, call 760-366-3777, or visit hidesertculturalcenter.org.

CLICK HERE to read original article.