Orange County Register

South Coast Repertory and the Arts Blog have joined forces to bring you something we’ve never tried before during a holiday season: an ongoing blog contributed by a member of SCR’s “A Christmas Carol” cast, Louis Lotorto.

Unlike many members of South Coast Rep’s ”Christmas Carol” team (including Hal Landon, who has played Ebenezer Scrooge for every one of the show’s 28 previous annual incarnations), Lotorto has never participated before in O.C.’s most venerable Yuletide theatrical tradition. He’ll be providing the Arts Blog with periodic posts and photos as rehearsals progress, and we hope to hear from him a few times during the production’s monthlong run, too. It will be fascinating to read what a “Christmas Carol” neophyte has to say about the myth- and rumor-shrouded play and the tightknit group that makes the magic happen every year.

Lotorto plays Scrooge’s nephew, Fred. According to Wikipedia,

“Fred is the son of Scrooge’s sister Fan, who died many years before ”A Christmas Carol” begins. Scrooge, who loved his sister very much, has never accepted her death, and the sight of Fred unfailingly reminds him of the grief he still feels from her loss. This is one reason for Scrooge’s antipathy towards his nephew; another is Fred’s unceasingly cheerful attitude, which is anathema to Scrooge’s cynical personality. It says a great deal about Scrooge that even his eternally optimistic nephew is thoroughly shocked by his transformation at the end of the novel.”

Here’s Lotorto’s first blog entry:

Christmas came early for me this year in the form of a July phone call offering me the role of Fred in SCR’s beloved production of “A Christmas Carol.”  I felt the same joy and elation that I did as a child on Christmas morning, ripping the wrapping paper off of the presents under the tree.  It has been with that same gleeful excitement that I’ve waited for rehearsals to begin.  I should say rather excitement and fear, as this is a production full of SCR’s major actor heavyweights who have been doing this production together for many years.

 As the first rehearsal approached, I was bit nervous.  Would director John-David Keller and my fellow actors like my choices and characterization of Fred?  How would my colleagues, some of whom I’ve worked with before, take to the “new kid on the block?” Besides some of the young adults and kids in the show, I am the only newbie.

I decided the best thing I could do before rehearsals actually started was to get a copy of the book, A Christmas Carol, which I hadn’t read in ages.  I’d seen a couple of stage productions and movie versions, but I thought it would be a good idea to get familiar with Dickens’ actual words.  His descriptions are so delicious and conjure up so many great images that it helped me come up with a clear picture of Fred to use for my characterization.

 As much as I don’t like to memorize lines before the first rehearsal, I thought I would at least memorize my first scene in “A Christmas Carol,” where Fred visits Scrooge and Bob Cratchit.  I knew things were going to move very fast and I didn’t want to feel behind or that I was holding up the proceedings by having my face buried in my script.  As the Stage Manager said to me over the phone a few days before rehearsals started, “Get ready to board the Christmas Carol Express, it has left the station and is moving very fast!”  Yikes.  I hope this train doesn’t leave me at the station!

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