From the streets of London to a home in Santragachhi on the western fringes of Kolkata, actors recorded videos from different cities for an online adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
A student, a principal, an architect, people from various walks of life came together to put up the play during the Christmas season and send the message that Christmas is about giving.
The 40-minute play was presented by The All-India Anglo-Indian Association.
The lines in the first 10 minutes of the play sum up the spirit of Christmas.
The gentleman visitor went to the ‘cold and stony’ and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge asking for charity.
“At this time of the year it is more than usually desirable to make some slight provision for the poor and penniless who suffer greatly from the cold. Many thousands are in want of common necessities, hundreds and thousands are in want of common comfort... A few of us are hoping to raise funds to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We chose this time because it is the time of all others when want is strongly felt and abundance rejoices. May I put you down for something...,” the visitor said.
“Christmas is all to do with giving and it is very apt at this age. If I can share something which is mine, and not wake up late. We thought we send this message out to keep giving through the year,” said Barry O’Brien, from London, who returned to stage after three decades and played Scrooge, the central character.
The Cratchit family in the online production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Telegraph picture
While O’Brien shot the video from London, there were others from different cities of the world. The play was pieced together by a technical team and director Maya Gomez, an architect.
As O’Brien put it: when one is put in a corner, it makes people innovative and brings them together.
The instruction from the director was to look to their left or right to make it look like a conversation between two people.
“Everyone is busy and we did not want people to record several times but to do it once. The convenience of an online production as opposed to a live one is that people could do it at their convenience,” said Gomez.
The production, streamed online on Thursday evening, was an initiative of Team Expressions, an online group ‘for the love of the English language’ created by The All-India Anglo-Indian Association.