Alan Stanford to Read A CHRISTMAS CAROL 12/4 at PICT

Legendary actor and director Alan Stanford will present a special one-night-only reading of Charles Dickens' classic tale of redemption, "A Christmas Carol," on Sunday, December 4th at 7:00 p.m. in the Charity Randall Theatre. Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for youth under 26.

Stingy Ebenezer Scrooge is a greedy, uncharitable man who is startled by a Christmas Eve visit from the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley's ghost warns him that he must change his ways or face a miserable afterlife. Three ghostly visitors attend on Scrooge during the night; the first, the ghost of Christmas past, allows him to revisit scenes of his youth, a time when he was happy and innocent. The second ghost, the ghost of Christmas present, shows scenes of families coming together and enjoying what they have, in spite of poverty. The Ghost of Christmas yet to come shows Scrooge dire visions of the future if he doesn't learn from what he witnessed. The journey towards redemption for Scrooge offers hope for the future and for all mankind.

Charles Dickens, father of modern-day Christmas traditions, is coming up on his 200th birthday (Feb. 7th, 2012). The original "99%", Dickens was a journalist and a champion for the rights of the poor, using his pen to fight for better living and working conditions and revealing to the public the abuse and mistreatment of people. He was the greatest writer of the Victorian period, the first "rock star" of writing, enjoying wider fame during his lifetime than any previous author.

Stanford's professional association with "A Christmas Carol" goes back more than a decade, when he first staged a theatrical adaptation of the book for the Gate Theatre in Dublin. He has staged a production of the show at the Gate every two to three years since. The benefit reading which Stanford is doing for PICT will reprise the performance he gave for an invited audience at the Irish Government Guest House.

The tradition of public readings of "A Christmas Carol" go back to Dickens himself. In 1853, A Christmas Carol was chosen for his first public reading with the performance an immense success. Thereafter, he read the tale in an abbreviated version 127 times until 1870 (the year of his death) when it provided the material for his farewell performance.

The first public reading he gave of A Christmas Carol was as a benefit charitable performance for Great Ormond Street Hospital, given at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church hall. The event raised enough money to enable the hospital to purchase the neighboring house, increasing the hospital's capacity from 20 to 75.

In the early years of the 20th century, Sir Squire Bancroft raised 20,000 pounds for the poor by reading the tale aloud publicly; and Captain Corbett-Smith read the tale to the troops in the trenches of World War I.

Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for youth under 26, and are available by calling ProArtsTickets at 412.394.3353 or online at www.proartstickets.org.

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