HOLIDAY PROGRAMMING

he’s playing a radio actor playing George, so as to relieve some of the pressure cast by the shadow of Stewart.

“Because it’s a radio play, it’s not about having to show, and as a result, I as the listener am much more actively engaged in the storytelling,” says Schultz. “The way the piece is being presented insists that I become engaged in the storytelling, my imagination is engaged, so when I hear that sound I extrapolate a car, and there’s another car, and so on.”

Similarly, Michael Shamata’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol is spare and pared down, relying on the story itself to work its magic. “He’s stripped it down so bare. So you have no walls, so when Scrooge arrives at his school and looks up, we have to put our own Hogwarts in there. And consequently, every single audience member has their platonic ideal of a 19th century boys school because there’s nothing to argue with them,” says Schultz. “I think that’s when theatre is most compelling, and most necessary as an art form as compared to watching a film.”

And this year, with the political climate what it is, Schultz says we need these stories more than ever. Rehearsals for It’s a Wonderful Life started the week of the U.S. presidential election. “I had planned for the second day of rehearsal that we would sit down and screen the film,” says Schultz. “It was very bizarre to have gone through night and then to sit down and watch a Frank Capra film. Where all of the evil that’s being done by Potter and his ilk, it’s horrifying how prescient it is.”