Great Stories Alive !"Performance with Passion & Purpose"
Great Stories Alive !
"Performance with Passion & Purpose"
PO Box 11045 - Portland, OR
97211 - (503) 335-3876 - GreatStoriesAlive.com
NEWS RELEASE
FOR RELEASE ON: Monday, November 26, 2007
Media Contacts:
Al LePage, Performer, Great Stories Alive! / 503-335-3876
Bob Hart, Director, Lane County Historical Society & Museum / (541) 682-4242"A Christmas Carol Solo"
1856 Victorian Style!
A dramatic reading performance
of Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" will be presented in the style
of the Victorian era to benefit the Lane County Historical Society and
Museum in Eugene, Oregon. Al LePage, who has portrayed various
characters of Pacific Northwest history over the years, will star as
"Englishman Thomas Hutchinson, Amateur Thespian" complete with English
accent, clothing of the period and other accoutrements. The event
takes place on Thursday, December 20th at 7PM at the Eugene Garden Club
at 1645 High Street and doors open at 6:30PM. Admission is $8 per
person which will be collected at the door with all proceeds going to
the Lane County Historical Society and Museum. The evening
program is expected to be about 2 hours in length and is best
appreciated both by adults and children 8 years of age and older.
LePage's mission of both
"playing to -- and with -- audience members to bring history alive"
will quickly become evident when you first encounter him before the
performance. His love of improvisation combined with a highly
interactive approach means that he may not only engage you in
conversation, but also actually encourage you to join him on stage in
the opening act! In fact, watch out! Since he's playful,
likes to experiment and believes in seizing the moment, even he doesn't
always know what's going to happen. This not only helps makes
each performance unique, but also keeps it fresh and exciting. As
Shakespeare wrote, ". . . one man in his time plays many parts . . ."
and LePage's creative use of voice should shine through as he creates
all 26 characters, both male and female, all within the span of about
two hours. Yes, all the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players. So come, and play along with Al
LePage. He'll begin by taking you back to “Eugene City” in the
year 1856, introduce "himself" in character as "Englishmen Thomas
Hutchinson, Amateur Thespian", and then bring you both to laughter, and
hopefully some tears, during his dramatic reading of Charles Dickens 'A
Christmas Carol'.'" 
Doing these readings for charity in Eugene
1856-style actually has many parallels from history, indeed, history
will actually be repeating itself in many ways. First, Dickens
gave public readings of his works, "A Christmas Carol' among
them. In fact, he developed a "reading version" of it for the
stage, and that's the script LePage will be using for his
presentations. Dickens also brought the various characters to
life simply through changes in his voice, facial expressions and other
gestures and movements of the body, and LePage will do
likewise. So much for Dickens historic readings, but what's
significant about the Oregon Territory in 1856? This was the very
year that one of the first actors to perform in the Oregon Territory
arrived Stephen Massett was an English actor who came to America
in the 1850's, first performing in New York, then to California playing
to audiences both in San Francisco and then by touring the state's
mining camps. In 1856 he took a coastal steamer named the
"Columbia" up the coast to Astoria, where he gave his first performance
in what would soon become the state of Oregon before continuing on to
play in Portland and in cities in the Willamette Valley as far south as
Corvallis.