Genre:
Comedy
Runtime:
65 - 80 mins
Cast:
7 male(s), 8 female(s), gender-flexible
Synopsis:
A Contemporary Christmas Carol
In modern day Beverly Hills, high powered Talent and Literary agent Elgin Scroge goes about his daily business running the shop with his one employee, Bob Cricket. It is the Christmas season of the year and Bob wants to leave early so he can buy Christmas presents for his family and Elgin finally lets him go with comments about how Elgin is left again to run the business.
The day turns to night and Elgin, who lives in his agency, pulls out the Murphy bed and prepares to go to sleep. In the middle of the night he is wakened by sounds from the Spirit of Christmas past played by a puppet. The spirit takes Elgin back in time and allows him to see how the past has formed his present situation. Some of these scenes are viewed through the flat screen television or the home movie center in the office. Other scenes are play out in the office.
The play follows the Dickens story with the Spirit of Christmas present and Christmas future, both puppets, bringing Elgin's life to a full circle and making him realize that he has not been the man he thought he was. In a whirlwind of change Eglin decides that he will be the man he always wanted to be and he starts by giving money to a charity that helps support lost and homeless children.
Elgin has a limousine drive him to the Cricket house where he parts with more money; enough to give the Crickets the best Christmas of their lives including a very important operation for Tina Cricket, one time California State Ice Skating champion who was hurt from a fatal fall. Elgin also gives the Crickets the Dead to their home so they will have some security for the future.
The play ends with Elgin giving money to passers by and the homeless. Elgin has obviously changed for the better and seems like he will be a better, more accommodating agent than he has been in the past.
The play is an updated version of, A Christmas Carol, including most of the cast from the original story. The script uses multi-media screens inside the agency to project many of the scenes from the past which were shot during the rehearsals on a digital camera and then edited as film and transmitted either through a 52" plasma, flat screen television or an eight foot square rear projection screen which acts as a home movie theatre for the agency to view movies or reels of new clients.
Notes:
This script was originally produced by the Theatre Arts Department of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California in 2009.
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