stage Although 60-degree days may try to fool us, Christmastime is in full swing. There are cards to write, presents to buy, cookies to bake—all kinds of chores to be done. How can any adult avoid it?
Of course, lest we forget, we once were children, and Christmas was something very different then. On December 15 in Live Art’s black-box theater, 15 teenaged actors, supported by four young colleagues backstage, performed Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales and made it clear that the real joys of the season are in the experiences of children.
For the first few minutes, my attention bounced from one engaging performer to the next, until I realized the show was not about the individual actors. The ensemble followed director Jennifer Peart’s beautiful and complicated choreography and blended together to create one universal child. They turned A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Thomas’ holiday memoir, into every child’s Christmas everywhere. The narrator wasn’t 6 or 16, boy or girl, rich or poor; he was all of these. He was all of us.
As the actors debated the merits of mediocre useful presents and (better yet) useless presents, replayed snowball fights, laughed at smoking uncles and tipsy aunts and ventured through scary streets to carol for the neighborhood Boo Radley, I immediately and fondly recalled my own childhood presents, snow ramps, aunts and uncles, and neighborhood adventures.
Before the play, the audience was treated to a performance by an ensemble, LA:T4. Twelve performers and one light board operator, under the direction of Daria Okugawa, tackled the tricky art of clowning. Every piece was a joy to watch, and it was clear that these teenagers will continue to grow in the art form. There were a few moments of simple, sublime hilarity and a couple of stand-out performances, notably the physical comedy of Jeremy Weiss.