Garrison Keillor: It's Christmas, a time of year when our hearts are open and we become childlike and are willing to pay wads of cash to go see things and so it's when the performing arts haul in enough dough to balance their budgets and do the stuff they want to do because they took care of business at Christmastime-- the Ralph Haley Dance Company of New York is planning an interactive dance work called Messenger that's very exciting--
Tim Russell: It's a kinetic work that will be performed at various sites, and the dancers will be on bicycles on city streets in heavy traffic and exploring linear relationships with the trajectories of other vehicles--
GK: Messenger--
TR: That's the title of the work. Messenger.
GK: The company is able to do original work like that because they did forty-five performances of the Nutcracker between Thanksgiving and New Year's (NUTCRACKER MUSIC)-- a ballet that grandparents can take their granddaughters to and spend the sort of money that grandparents like to spend on granddaughters--
TR (ELDERLY): How about one of those sugarplum fairy sheets and pillowcase sets, Meghan?
Erica Rhodes: Oh, thanks, Gramps. Gosh. They're beautiful. And so is the Clara bedroom suite with the reindeer rug.
Sue Scott (VENDOR): Get your nuts here! Cashews! Walnuts! Pistachios!
GK: Much more so than, say, "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett.
Fred Newman: Hey-- you got any Godots?
TR (VENDOR): They're on order.
FN: How long is the wait?
TR (VENDOR): Hard to tell.
FN: Okay. Thanks.
TR (VENDOR): Whatever.
GK: Choirs have Handel's "Messiah" which hasn't been fully exploited yet but will be, I'm sure--
SS (VENDOR): Right over here-- get the Hallelujah Chorus for your cellphone ring-- only takes a minute to download--
GK: The theater, of course, has "A Christmas Carol" which every local and regional company in America puts on at least ten performances of and it pulls in money hand over fist because it has chains (CHAINS, SS GHOST: I was your partner Jacqueline Marley and now I am condemned to wander the earth in search of wallpaper that goes with that horrible couch you bought----.Ohhhhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhh.) and it has children (TR TINY: God bless us, every one.) and it has a beautiful young woman--
ER: I used to know you but I don't anymore. Your heart has changed. You've become completely enamored of money. And you've changed your name to Ebenezer. It used to be Brad.
TR (SCROOGE): Oh Spirit, show me no more. (BRIDGE)
GK: And it has redemption.
TR (SCROOGE): I will be a better man and I will celebrate Christmas in my heart and I will be like a father to Tiny Tim and I will find them an apartment, a three-bedroom with plenty of light and an Eat-In Kitchen and a Wood-Burning Fireplace so they can make Christmas pudding. (WARM STING)
GK: And "A Christmas Carol" has endless marketing possibilities. Everything Victorian, Dickensian, English gewgaws and bricabrac -- Anglophiles go crazy over this stuff-- the earnings from the gift shop alone are what subsidize your production of experimental work in the spring--
TR: LIGHT!!! MORE LIGHT!!!
SS: I'm not who you think I am. I'm not her.
FN: Only reason I'm here is to get away from the sound of the owls in the bathtub.
ER: Look. The reflective particles in the ceiling plaster are shining.
GK: Christmas: it's a cash cow for the performing arts. Children's theater has "A Child's Christmas in Wisconsin" by Dylan Thompson--..
TR (ACTORLY, WELSH): And it was winter and it was childhood and it was cheese logs and wrapping paper and the candles and turkey and pudding and the big-bosomed aunts and boozy uncles and there was cheese, O there was cheese, and it was melted over the tuna and the hamburger and even the turkey. And it was Christmas and it was childhood and it was cheese.
GK: Support the arts and go to a performance of something this month and visit the gift shop afterward. Your support of our Christmas show (NUTCRACKER) makes it possible for us to produce something this spring that you'll really despise. (NUT)