Now What....

I talked a little about life dreams on the Jubilee posts...even mentioned one or two.

But there is one dream that I haven't talked about here at all...

There is a Christianized musical version of 'A Christmas Carol' that is performed by churches around the country at Christmas time; we saw it years ago at a local church, and, in '04 and '05, our church did it.

It's a lot of fun, but, well, to be honest there are some things about that script that just...bugged me. Anachronistic elements, some things held over from the original text that didn't really work with the new setting (how can you tell an angel that 'there's more of gravy than of grave about you'?)...an awkward combining of characters into one person...well, anyway, most of those things didn't bother anyone else so I just kind of tried to ignore them. But they bugged me.

Then I got an idea to rewrite some of the scenes/elements that bothered me the most. And, over a few months, I re-wrote a number of things (the angel became a 'foul food phantom', for instance)...some changes were minor, some were complete resettings of the scenes. We have an unalterable video narration, which meant I couldn't change anything that would require changes to that, so I was a bit restricted in how much changing I could do.

And I got the bulk of the angst written out. But...I don't know if those scenes will be usable, even if we do the show again. It was my problem w/the original, not anyone else's. So I need to be ready to accept as fact a decision to stick to the original script.

But even that is not the real dream. After I wrote all of that out, I found that I still couldn't leave it alone. So I went back and pulled out my Dickens and began a fresh rewrite...a new re-telling of the story, with the Christian repentance theme in it. Oh, and music.

Last night, I finally finished the lyrics for the last song I left space for. Aside from some editing tweaks that are sure to be needed, the new script...I called it 'God Bless Us, Everyone'... is finished.

But -- I don't know if it's even performable. It requires a large cast (including a fair number of men, which is difficult to cast in a church!); many microphones and some pretty quick scene changes in which one end of the stage is lit, with action, while the scene is being switched on the unlit other end. And there is a video narrative as well, although it could be done live on a remote small stage. In other words, I don't know if it's logistically feasible or not. So it probably needs some collaboration from Folks Who Know About Stuff Like That. At the very least, it needs a composer to put music to the lyrics.

A few people at church have read it in its earlier drafts...responses have varied from polite to warmly enthusiastic. But no direction on what to do next.

So...here's the dream: I want to do something with it. But I don't know what...or how...

But, you know, if it really is a God-dream, I have a feeling that will work itself out.