Thornton Wilder's rarely staged ‘The Long Christmas Dinner’ arrives at TUTA Theatre

TUTA Theatre is stepping into the busy holiday theater scene with a staging of Thornton Wilder’s rarely seen one-act play “The Long Christmas Dinner,” which follows holiday dinners within one family over nine decades.

A seasonal play is something new for TUTA, a company typically drawn to challenging and unusual pieces of theater experimental in form and content.

Co-artistic director Jacqueline Stone came across Wilder’s play when researching ideas for another theater she works with, Breckinridge Backstage Theatre in Colorado. She determined it wasn’t right for that company but felt it might have a home at TUTA.

“We had never even had a conversation about doing a holiday show before this,” Stone says. “But like anything we produce, the show had the right ingredients that when put through a TUTA lens made sense to us.”

Stone says she appreciates what holiday shows contribute to the season but feels this play is about much more than the holidays. It just happens to take place on Christmas day.

“I think Wilder’s play is ultimately much more about relationships and family and celebrating the living,” says Stone who also directs the play. “Getting to see the generational thread and the relationships as they change over time and seeing how the people who come before us really do influence things that we see and feel as the next generation.

“The Long Christmas Dinner,” (which runs about 80 minutes), showcases the Bayard family across the years. Babies are born, family members die, and life goes on as family roots are spread to new generations.

“The Long Christmas Dinner” was first produced in 1931, seven years before Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning “Our Town” hit the stage. Rarely produced now, "Christmas Dinner" was experimental in its own right as it laid some groundwork for theatrical devises and elements (actors miming actions without props, time manipulation, minimal set design) that the playwright would develop further in "Our Town."

In both plays Wilder, a master at capturing the everyday lives of folks, plays with time, family connections and the legacy of a life lived. (“The Long Christmas Dinner” inspired others as well. Orson Welles told filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that the play inspired a scene in his classic film, “Citizen Kane,” in which a continuous montage of vignettes depicts the nine-year deterioration of Kane’s marriage. And German-American composer Paul Hindemith wrote an opera based on the play.)

TUTA’s staging features a cast of seven actors who portray multiple characters as well as some characters aging from young to old without leaving the stage. There is no blackout or other device allowing the actors added time to transition.

“The actors literally age in front of us on stage. They have to be sensitive to these micro shifts that occur in aging and that manifest for each of them differently,” Stone says.

Cast member Wain Parham portrays two characters — Cousin Brandon, who ages from his twenties to his sixties, and Samuel, a young man of 19 about to head off to war.

“For me from an acting perspective, it feels like I have just as much work to do as if I was in a three-act play,” Parham says. “There’s a high level of sensitivity the actors have to have not just to what’s happening in the room but also to each other to make sure we’re all in sync. It’s been really fun figuring out that challenge but it’s definitely a process.”

Wilder set the play in the late 1800s to early 1900s. TUTA has shifted time further into the future.

“We were interested in exploring the past and the present but also the future and just kind of imagining the world we want this family to live in. We want it to feel like it could really be set at any point in time," Stone says.

Stone feels there are several characters whom audience members may recognize in their own families as Wilder offers a universality in his characters that travels through to today.

“Wilder was such an honest writer about relationships and that holds true in this play,” Stone says. “It reminds us about what we want to say to people while we’re here, a message about seizing the moment. Life moves very quickly and you feel that in the tempo of the play. We never know what’s around the corner. It’s just such a powerful message particularly at the holidays.”