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Travel

HOLIDAY THEATER MAKES WONDERFUL MEMORIES

By Leslee Jaquette
For many years our family of four often brought the holidays to a climax with a pilgrimage to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre (ACT). During the next decade, each of these live theater encounters reminded our family of the season’s greater message.
To experience holiday theater, whether it be The Nutcracker Ballet, It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, is to bring caring and compassion back onto the radar screen, at least for an evening. Besides, this sort of celebratory, life-participatory event is a delightful way to spend some truly memorable time together as a family.
The first time the Jaquette tribe attended A Christmas Carol was when Roger was age 8 and Adam was age 4. It was the most memorable because the boys were so little, the tickets were such a big investment and downtown Seattle sparkled like the heavens.
With my husband Bill grinding through law school the previous three years, we had been living a shoestring much too tight to even consider such a luxury as live theater. But, now two years after passing The Bar, we decided to treat ourselves. In later years, we still considered the tickets somewhat “spendy,” but we always agreed they were the best present we could enjoy together.
That first year we also started an adjunct tradition, dinner before the theater at the Ye Old Spaghetti Factory on the Seattle waterfront. After stuffing ourselves, we bundled up for a walk around the downtown, admiring the train and bear displays in Frederick & Nelson’s windows.
Upon arrival at the theater, the kids took in every nuance of the experience: the costumes, the lights and the dark, secret places that open one’s imagination. I guess all this caught on bigtime because Roger and Adam respectively graduated from college in drama and film writing. But that first night at A Christmas Carol, Roger still recalls feeling “butterflies” as we took our seats.
The play begins. Adam is so little and chubby, he squirms up onto my lap like a puppy. The force and closeness of the actors and the rich, beautiful Victorian sets bring the story to life. Adam holds his breath during the rattling chains and spooky voices. Roger holds Bill’s hand.
I can see Roger press back in his seat when mean, old Ebenezer Scrooge rants and raves about the stage. The play moves briskly through the story of Scrooge’s serious lack of charity, how he has wasted his youth and his future looks miserable. Roger relaxes during Scrooge’s flashbacks to his happy memories while working for Mister Fezziwig. The dance scene is a big hit. Of course, the boys totally identify with Tiny Tim and almost bound onto the stage during the jubilant ending when Scrooge miraculously finds the true spirit of Christmas.
During the next decade, we attended ACT’s always moving production of A Christmas Carol several more times. When the boys were teenagers, they actually bugged us to buy the tickets early so we could plan this special event, the one night of the season we would all be together.
The last time we attended the play, ACT had moved to its “new” digs next to the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. Despite the fact that theater at the $30 million Kreielsheimer Place just “wasn’t the same,” the fine actors and elegant sets quickly conjured the same intimacy that amazed us at our first production.
I suspect that if our young men ever produce offspring, we will carry on the tradition of incorporating wonderful holiday theater into our family experience. There is no other word for it – it is simply “magical.”
A Contemporary Theatre –  206-292-7676;  www.acttheatre.org/