A Southern Christmas Carol:
It's   Dickens   Y'all!

Enigma Theater Company's A Southern Christmas Carol takes one of the most familiar holiday stories in the world and shifts it just a few degrees south. The result is a warm, gently political, and community-minded staged reading that makes Charles Dickens' classic feel both comfortingly old-fashioned and sharply relevant to life in North Carolina.

Enigma itself grew out of unusual times. The company began as a small gathering of local artists during the pandemic, when everyone was bored, lonely, and missing live theater. Their first adventure was an online reading of The Importance of Being Earnest -- complete with fancy hats, bread and wine on screen, and playful casting against traditional gender roles, shared free on YouTube. It was a fitting origin: a little irreverent, a little homespun, and deeply rooted in the joy of gathering around a good story.

Now, in what the company wryly calls another "enigma" of a historical moment, Enigma turns to Dickens. Last year they started musing about how perfect A Christmas Carol might be with a Southern accent. As they dug into it, the parallels between the London that Dickens was writing about and the American South that they live in became hard to ignore: stark wealth and poverty, workers treated as disposable, and a culture that often elevates profit above people. The show that emerged takes Dickens' 1843 novella, adapts it into a play, and then slowly reveals a Southern context around it.

This Southern Christmas Carol is explicitly set in North Carolina. London remains the story's skeleton, but the play roots itself here: you'll hear references to Durham, Raleigh, and Duke Chapel; and the performers use Southern accents that echo the variety of voices common in the region around the time the novella was written. The result is a subtle but powerful shift -- Ebenezer Scrooge's counting house suddenly feels much closer to home.

Adapter/producer/director Amanda Lee Scherle, who has 25 years in acting, directing, and producing theater has taken Dickens' gorgeous prose and shaped it for the stage with a clear agenda: to pull the other characters front and center. Scrooge remains what the story requires -- a wealthy, older white man -- but the ghosts, Jacob Marley, and many of the people around him are mainly women and people of color. That casting choice doesn't just update the story visually; it underlines who so often does the hard work of nudging powerful men toward decency.

Historically, the adaptation is also in conversation with Dickens himself who visited the United States twice. In 1842, at 25, he arrived starry-eyed, imagining America as the height of democracy and freedom and as a place that might respect the poor people he believed had value. He left appalled, particularly by the South -- famously hating the "three S's": slavery, spittoons, and senators. Back in England, he attacked slavery in his writing and criticized a press he felt kept Americans uninformed. That disappointment hums under this production: what Dickens saw in 1842 and the inequalities that he wrote about in 1843 still resonate in 2025 North Carolina.

The ensemble cast works as a true company, with roles and narration shared among a group of performers who bring a mix of theater, music, scholarship, and even baking into the room. Erik Lars Myers anchors the piece as Scrooge, and definitely delivers the exuberant joy the character experiences when given a second chance. Amanda Lee Scherle serves as narrator and adapter, guiding the audience through Dickens' world and its Southern echoes from her red leather high-backed chair. Jessica Fleming, a Durham-based actor and improv comedian, shifts agilely among roles (including multiple spirits), bringing a quick wit and precise timing.

From Raleigh, J. Ra'Chel Fowler brings a strong Southern voice and dramatic presence to the characters of Marley, the Ghost of Christmas Past, and others. Gerald Alden, an up-and-coming Triangle actor, brings a wide range of distinctive voices to Bob Cratchit and a number of Dicken's supporting characters. Dr. Sarah Ficke, an English professor at UNC, moves easily between academic familiarity with the text and the immediacy of performance. The company also makes space for younger performers: Ayla Wolfson and Quinn Scherle are trying Dickens on for the first time; and their presence emphasizes that this is a story being handed down, not just repeated. Together they embody Enigma's founding spirit: playful, slightly off-kilter, and deeply communal.

The minimal staging typical of a staged reading is balanced by clear storytelling and a strong sense of atmosphere through the Dickensian language. When it works -- as it often does -- you can almost see the candlelight and feel the cold just from the shifts in tone and tempo. The simplicity keeps the focus on ideas of generosity, accountability, and community responsibility.

Beyond the storytelling itself, A Southern Christmas Carol is also a statement of values. Enigma is explicit that "Our actors are paid first, our ticket price is sliding scale, and our profit will go to benefit Siembra NC." Siembra, founded in 2017, is a grassroots organization whose primary objective is keeping Hispanic communities in North Carolina safe from abusive employers and landlords, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and corrosive politics. They work to educate and inform, to develop strong protective practices, and to advocate alongside allies. Enigma sees their work as squarely in line with Dickens' moral outrage; they suggest the author would be just as appalled by many current conditions in our state as he was by what he witnessed in 1842. Every dollar raised beyond operating costs goes to support Siembra's efforts.

The Pay-What-You-Can model (with tickets in the $15-$30 range) makes the show accessible while directing real money toward that work. It's A Christmas Carol that doesn't just talk about charity and justice; it quietly channels holiday generosity toward people who need it now.

Performances run at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5th, evening at Shadowbox Studio in Durham, with a 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7th, matinee at Night School Bar, also in Durham. Doors open early enough for audiences to find their seats, settle in, and feel like part of a shared, slightly mischievous community event rather than a formal, hands-off production. Tickets and details are available via Enigma Theater Company's Facebook page or by e-mailing amanda@enigmatheatercompany.com.

A Southern Christmas Carol honors the heart of Dickens' story while subtly shifting the frame: from Victorian London to contemporary North Carolina, from individual redemption to collective care, from abstract charity to concrete support of a local immigrant-justice organization. It's a holiday offering that leaves you not only humming with seasonal warmth, but also thinking seriously about how we treat our neighbors -- and what it might take, in our own lives, to change.

A SOUTHERN CHRISTMAS CAROL (staged reading) (In Person at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5th, at Shadowbox Studio and 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7th, at Night School Bar), adapted, produced, and directed by Amanda Lee Scherle and starring Amanda Lee Scherle as the Narrator, Erik Lars Myers as Ebenezer Scrooge, and J. Ra'Chel Fowler as Jacob Marley/Ghost of Christmas Past, and Gerald Alden as Bob Cratchit and others, plus Jessica Fleming, Sarah Ficke, Juliana Finch, Gerald Rubin, Ayla Wolfson, and Quinn Scherle (Enigma Theater Company at the Shadowbox Studio and Night School Bar, both in Durham). PRESENTER: https://www.facebook.com/enigmatheaterco and https://www.instagram.com/enigmatheaterco/. VENUE #1 (Shadowbox Studio): https://shadowboxstudio.org/, https://www.nightschoolbar.com/durhamnc, https://instagram.com/Shadowbox_Studio, and https://twitter.com/ShadowboxDurham. DIRECTIONS: https://shadowboxstudio.org/contact/. VENUE #2 (Night School Bar): https://www.nightschoolbar.com/, https://www.facebook.com/nightschoolbar/, https://www.instagram.com/nightschoolbar/>/a> and https://x.com/nightschoolbar. DIRECTIONS & PARKING: https://www.nightschoolbar.com/durhamnc. TICKETS: Pay What You Can: $15-$30, plus taxes and fees. Click here for Dec. 5th and here for Dec. 7th. to buy tickets. INFORMATION: amanda@enigmatheatercompany.com. PLEASE DONATE TO: Enigma Theater Co..

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