Photo Courtesy of NC Shakespeare Festival

I recently sat down with actor Allan Edwards of the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival to talk to him about how he prepares to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the festival’s yearly production of A Christmas Carol.

A mischievous smile sneaks across his face. “Here’s a hint about actors’ processes: I do have to think about my hair and my facial hair,” he says, “because it takes some lead time. People think I’m doing all this research on miserliness, and all I’m thinking about is if I have enough time to get my sideburns in.”

Joking aside, as Edwards prepares to perform the world’s most famous miser for the 10th time this December, he reveals that he’s done a lot of research for the part.

But on this October day, we talk about his acting process, how he avoids letting the part become stale, and what Charles Dickens’ “ghostly little book” says to us today, in an uncertain and insecure time.

A native of Houston, Edwards had planned on a career in the ministry and even accepted a teaching position before choosing the stage as his professional home. He has now been a mainstay at NCSF for nearly 20 years.

Edwards has been involved in A Christmas Carol just as long, playing various roles over the years, each of which has presented its own set of challenges. But, he says, the one assignment he longed for was Scrooge — a role that another actor had been playing for years. “He was wonderful in it, but I always thought I’d do it differently,” Edwards remembers.

How? He explains, “I have a principal in my acting: If the character I am playing were to walk into the back of the theater and watch me perform him, would he be insulted? Scrooge is an easy guy to sacrifice to comedy. He’s a cranky old guy and he’s pathetically out of date and everybody knows he’s a stupid miser and that miserliness is stupidity.”

Edwards’ approach, though, is to play Ebenezer Scrooge not as a caricature of miserliness, but as someone very human and very familiar. “The gist of the role is that all of us have in us the possibility, if not the habit, of responding to the scary world by hoarding or closing or protecting, whether it’s our emotional lives or our monetary life,” he says. “Fear gives us an option — we can either embrace the world and its insecurities or do what Dickens and I consider the fruitless option of trying to protect ourselves and make ourselves more secure.

“But we’re not secure,” he continues, referring to the current financial troubles plaguing our nation. Edwards notes that Scrooge’s answers to the insecurities of his own time were rational, accepted answers —  ones that many people would have agreed with. But Dickens cuts through these answers and reminds us that the things we hold on to for safety have no power to keep us safe. Quite the contrary.

For Scrooge, Edwards says, “Every choice he’s made to make himself secure has made him less himself, less human, less connected.” The magic of the story is not that someone comes in and makes Scrooge see reason. Instead, the characters come into his dream. Scrooge is actually telling himself these things; he’s reconnecting with himself.

Dickens wrote a tale that could be just a piece of propaganda advocating social involvement, but it’s much more. The writer loved his characters, and he believed in the possibility of redemption from their foolishness. “And that sentiment, that point of view, really resonates with me and expresses itself in my approach to the role,” Edwards says.

Playing one character for so long — at least 20 performances each year for 10 years, not to mention rehearsals — could lead to complacency. How does this veteran actor avoid that?

First, he says, he realizes how lucky he is. “Knowing how many wonderful actors are looking for work at any given time, it is incumbent upon me that if I’m getting paid to act, I do the best possible job I can,” he says.

Second, in every rehearsal and performance, he works to stay engaged and present in each scene — which can be dangerous. Edwards recalls one instance when a fellow actor’s performance was so sweet and innocent that it literally took his breath away; he was so moved that he couldn’t continue. But the risks involved in being so engaged are worthwhile to Edwards mainly for the magic that such moments give to both actors and audience.

“Who knows,” he says. “Today we may hear the angels sing.” 

The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival’s production of A Christmas Carol runs from November 30 to December 21. For information, go to http://www.ncshakes.org.