Interview: Playwright Stephen Temperley and A CHRISTMAS CAROL Adapted for Centenary Stage Company

Centenary Stage Company has announced the first professional series performance of their 35th Anniversary Season, Stephen Temperley's new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Nineteenth-century London fills the Lackland Performing Arts Center this holiday season with the Charles Dickens' classic. The show recaptures the spirit of an old-fashioned Christmas with this beloved story featuring all the favorite characters-Tiny Tim and the Cratchit family, the Fezziwigs, the Ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet-to-come-and, of course, the curmudgeon, Ebenezer Scrooge. The production is directed and led by CSC's own Award-winning Artistic Director, Carl Wallnau who is featured as Ebenezer Scrooge. This new adaptation is not a musical but a play with music and features original orchestration by Kevin Lynch as well as a host of carolers and live musicians.

Best known for one of the most produced plays in the US, Souvenir, Stephen Temperley's extensive resume includes work both on and off the stage in the U.S. and U.K. Souvenir was produced on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre and directed by Tony Award winner Vivian Matalon. Additional works of Temperely's include, Money/Mercy (Chelsea Theatre Center), That Kind of Woman (Dodger Productions), In the Country of the Free (the Mint Theatre), The Pilgrim Papers (Berkshire Theatre Festival), Songbook and Dance with Me, which debuted at Centenary Stage also directed by Vivian Matalon. As an actor, Temperley has worked extensively in regional theaters in the U.S. as well as U.K's West End, on TV and in repertory. On Broadway, Temperley was part of the original company of Crazy for You; and Off- Broadway in the Todd Rundgren musical, Up Against It, at the Public.

Broadwayworld.com had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Temperley about his career and A Christmas Carol that he adapted for Centenary Stage.

Who was the first person to recognize your talent for the performing arts?

Not sure how to answer that. I'm English; we don't really do encouragement. I attended a public school in London-Alleyns's, founded by the Elizabethan actor of the same name. I loathed the school but it was where I first acted, playing Cordelia in King Lear (it was of course an all boys school) when I was, I think, thirteen. I liked that, liked the idea of Shakespeare.

Can you tell us a little about your education and training?

I came to the States with my parents when I was fifteen. My father was a jazz musician and wanted to play here. Joe Temperley, he's all over YouTube. I was supposed to finish school but instead attended the American Academy of Dramatic Art and was working by the time I was seventeen, for the Public in Central Park-Henry IV, parts I and ii. I studied acting with Vivian Matalon-a great teacher-and briefly with Sandy Meisner. I think of myself as an American actor.

What advice to you have for people who are interested in a career in the theatre?

Read. Read the literature of the theater and know something of its history. Beyond that, I honestly don't know. Entering the theater now is so radically different from what it was when I was beginning. I was at the tail-end of the old apprentice model, you learned from watching others and working with older actors. You went to a drama school instead of a university, you found independent teachers and studied with them, now things are much more professionalized. Get a degree so you can switch course if you want. I didn't attend college so that was not an option for me. I've sometimes wished it was. Remember that New York is not the US: after COVID I suspect that will be truer than ever. Learn to sing well enough so you can be in a musical. Be prepared. Don't think of an audition as something to win. Don't let yourself be defined by the jobs you don't get.

How does being an actor inform your career as a playwright?

It's developed my ear. A playwright writes to the voice, having been an actor I think I can write dialogue that feels right-at least, it does to me. I also have an idea of what an actor can, and can't, do.

What were some of the challenges of adapting A Christmas Carol?

No children. I wanted to make a version for grown-ups. I use a very formal staging that dispenses with naturalistic detail to try to locate the social truth behind the story, because it's a truth that remains harshly critical and very is very pertinent in our time of huge inequalities and want. So the play happens in one place that is treated as if it were different locations. Dickens was a very entertaining writer, and sometimes his verbal pyrotechnics conceal his deeper concerns. I stripped down the language, where I kept it, and supplied a new ending that shows what happens to Scrooge and the others in the years that follow. Not that I don't want the play to be entertaining, just in a different way, perhaps. I remember when I played Scrooge at the McCarter, that I was astonished by how much emotion informs the story. Much of what we think we know about Scrooge's regeneration comes more from the various movies, and the original illustrations, than from Dickens' tale. I've tried to return his tale to its beginnings.

How do you like working with Centenary Stage Company?

It's a lovely place and I've enjoyed working there very much. It's a very handsome physical production-really quite spectacular-and a very enthusiastic and accomplished cast. Carl Wallnau, the director, very sensibly expanded the scale of my script so it would accord better with the scale of the theater and has been a very considerate and imaginative collaborator. Vivian and I did a play of mine there back in the late 90's, in the old theater. So this has been both familiar and new, a perfect combination for me right now.

What would you like audiences to know about the show?

I find the gallantry of everyone involved, the desire to have the theatre open at this sad time, to have a play on the stage so people can come see if they choose, I find it very moving. And is very much what I like most about the theater, sentimentally perhaps, the willingness to carry on in the face of seemingly impossible odds. The staff goes to a great deal of trouble to make everything, backstage as well as in the house, as safe as possible, taping off seats, insisting on masks, cleaning the air before and running a purifier during each show. Carl Wallnau has been determined to have the theater lit and I can only admire that. For the play, I hope an audience might find it surprising as well as entertaining. I think it very much speaks to today. As my Scrooge says, 'If we don't learn to be kind then we must perish'.

Can you share any of your plans for the future?

Sure. For some time I've been working on a novel expanded from my last play, 'Songbook'. The play was about devotion, about marriage, though the word is never used. The novel expands on those ideas spanning much of the 20th cent, moving forward and backward in time, following the lives of four men in New York who are defined, in one way or another, by the popular songs of the 30s through the 80s. It's very much about how we lived in the times before Stonewall, before any of the protections that LGBT people have now existed, when we tried to live with a measure of respect without knowing how to define ourselves. It's a love story about loss, regret, and piano bars. I'm approaching completion when I will record it.

To learn more about Stephen Temperley, visit his web site at http://stephentemperley.com/ and follow him on Facebook.

Performances for A Christmas Carol run through December 13th in the Sitnik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center. Centenary Stage Company remains committed to the health and safety of our community and adheres to all requirements set forth by the State of New Jersey including but not limited to: observing social distancing, limited capacity, and requiring masks or facial coverings. For more information regarding CSC COVID-19 policies please visit http://www.centenarystageco.org/faq. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.centenarystageco.org/.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Stephen Temperley and production photo by Chris Young