By Augie Filholm, child actor in A Christmas Carol                  

Augie Filholm

In this past six weeks I have been performing as an actor at the DCTC (Denver Center Theatre Company). I was cast in the play A CHRISTMAS CAROL directed by Bruce Sevy. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to see how things worked back stage. Let me explain what it was like and what I had to do to be in this play.

First of all I had to audition. The auditions were at the DCTC, in a building called the Newman Center. The first audition was in a small room. First we met the director and the other kids at the audition. Then we had to sing. This was my fear of trying to get into the play. I am not a good singer. They made us sing a very short song in what we call the Schoolboy scene, when the main character Ebenezer Scrooge goes into the past and sees himself as a child. After the singing, we (meaning the other kids at the audition and me) were all assigned parts to audition for. We all got a sheet of paper that had the lines we were to audition for. They had me audition for a character named Peter Cratchit. Peter Cratchit is a boy who is the son of a poor man named Bob Cratchit. Peter has a younger brother and sister and an older sister, and his mother, of course. For my part, I had to read a small part from the Bible. This scene was a sad or gloomy sort of scene. It was not hard, but it was very exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. Every kid who auditioned for this part read the same thing. We all did it in front of each other, which made me even more nervous. After the audition, I waited at home for a call back. A call back is when the people who watched you audition call you back to audition again. This can mean that the director had a hard choice between two people or anything like that. We read and sang the same things as the previous audition, except there were not as many people this time. Feeling that I knew the part a little better than the audition before, I felt more confident and relaxed than the first time.

A couple days later, I got the call that I had gotten the part. Our first rehearsal was to be on November 2.

On November 2, the whole cast and crew showed up in the same room where we had the auditions. It was amazing to see how many people were really involved in it, and to meet them. It was especially fun to meet the kids who had gotten cast, to see who I was going to spend the next month and a half with. At this rehearsal we did not act physically, but we read the script. The director showed us a model of the stage and its props and features. We were going to first rehearse in the room that we were in right now.

The rehearsals were really fun, but they also made us very tired. We would sometimes stay at the rehearsal room from 6pm to 10pm just figuring out a small scene. Sometimes, it would just be a certain call for certain people, and sometimes we would have the whole cast there. Like I said before, this made us all tired. I thought I had it hard, but then we started tech rehearsal, and believe me, just a regular rehearsal was nothing compared to tech.

Tech rehearsal is when you move to the real stage that you will be performing on. Lights and most props are there, and sometimes, but not usually on the first tech, costumes. One would think that tech is really fun because you get to see all the props, and you get to see your costume, and you get out of school early, and things like that. When you get to tech, though, spending 12 hours downtown, with only a two hour break can sometimes make you feel tired, but mostly… very, very bored unless you’re on stage a lot. Finally we started previews, which is when an audience watches, but they can expect errors in lines or technical difficulties. This is also good for the directors, because they can get an understanding of the reaction to the crowd.

The Children of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Photo by Terry Shapiro.

After the previews, opening night came. Opening night is the most fun that there is during the whole run. The reason for this is that it’s opening night for one, and it is fun to celebrate that we are able to make this far, and put on a perfect show. There is also a fun party after the show with the cast and crew. After the opening night, the real show is on. Being in A Christmas Carol, a tradition for most families and schools is to come and see the show. This means that we are almost there every day doing two shows a day. This was a really fun run. The bad part is that we only get Mondays off and Christmas day off. Then when all the other kids are finally off, I only get a day’s rest, because I am in another play, called EVENTIDE, as DJ Kephart. It’s a lot of work, but I love it!

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