Dallas Theater Center would like to recognize the generosity of our major corporate partners. Impact Creativity Mercury One MoneyGram The Moody Foundation Neiman Marcus Pier 1®

Stay Connected the StudyGuide 20142015Season

Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, centers on the curmudgeonly character Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge, a greedy, well-to-do businessman is infamous for his cruelty. He particularly detests Christmas—a time, he believes, enjoyed by those too lazy to work. He doesn’t believe in Christmas “cheer” or in charity for the poor.

After berating his trusted employee and rejecting his nephew’s invitation for

dinner, Scrooge retires to his home to spend Christmas Eve alone. But before the

night is through, Scrooge is visited by the tormented ghost of his former business

partner, Jacob Marley, and haunted by three spirits—the ghosts of Christmas Past,

Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

One-by-one the ghosts haunt Scrooge with different visions from his life to show

him the error of his ways. Scrooge is left both frightened and saddened by what he

sees, and is determined to change his life. When he wakes on Christmas morning,

Scrooge is a new man filled with the Christmas spirit.

By

CHARLES DICKENS

adapted by

KEVIN MORIARTY

Directed by

LEE TRULL

NOV 25-DEC 27 Wyly Theatre

Food insecurity exists whenever the availability of

nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods

in socially acceptable ways (e.g., without resorting to emergency food supplies,

scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies) is

limited or uncertain.

By the Numb#rs: Poverty, Food Insecurity and the North Texas Food Bank

LYN and JOHN MUSE HIGHLAND PARK VILLAGE

Major support of this production provided by Hoblitzelle Foundation, The Meadows Foundation and Hillcrest Foundation.

Black-and-white Victorian era photography reprinted from Dickens' London, introduced by Peter Ackroyd, courtesy of Headline Books.

Charles Dickens and the various ghosts of A Christmas Carol (Anonymous).

Hunger in America

49.1 million Americans lived in food-insecure householdsin 2013 (the most recent year for which we have complete statistics). That includes 33.3 million adults and 15.8 million children.

Another 6.8 million households experienced very low food security.

From 2011-2013, eight states exhibited statistically significantly higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average of 14.6%:

Arkansas 21.2%Mississippi 21.1%TexAs 18.0%Tennessee 17.4%North Carolina 17.3%Missouri 16.9%Georgia 16.6%Ohio 16.0%

Hunger in Texas

In the state of Texas, 4.8 million people are food insecure—that’s 1 in every 6 people. The rate grows to 1 in 5 for Dallas County (477,000 people).

One in every 4 kids in North Texas is food insecure (304,000 children).

95% of households served by the NTFB have an annual household income of $30,000 or less.

1 in 3 client households is affected by diabetes—and 60% of client households report having unpaid medical bills.

68% of client households have to choose between buying food and paying for medicine or medical care.

North Texas Food Bank

Last year, North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) provided 60 million nutritious meals.

NTFB distributed weekend backpacks to 11,000 chronically hungry elementary students at more than 330 schools through the Food 4 Kids program, and provided 418,392 meals through the School Pantry program during the 2013-2014 school year.

A $1 donation to North Texas Food Bank provides access to 3 meals.

For more information on poverty, food insecurity and what you can do to help, please visit: ntfb.org or feedingamerica.org

For the seventh year in a row, Dallas Theater Center is proudly partnering with the North Texas Food Bank around our annual production of a Christmas Carol. Hunger and food insecurity are not relics of Charles Dickens’ time—families across the U. S. and North Texas experience these challenges every day.

Dallas Theater Center would like to recognize the generosity of our major corporate partners. Impact Creativity Mercury One MoneyGram The Moody Foundation Neiman Marcus Pier 1®

Stay Connected the StudyGuide 20142015Season

Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, centers on the curmudgeonly character Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge, a greedy, well-to-do businessman is infamous for his cruelty. He particularly detests Christmas—a time, he believes, enjoyed by those too lazy to work. He doesn’t believe in Christmas “cheer” or in charity for the poor.

After berating his trusted employee and rejecting his nephew’s invitation for

dinner, Scrooge retires to his home to spend Christmas Eve alone. But before the

night is through, Scrooge is visited by the tormented ghost of his former business

partner, Jacob Marley, and haunted by three spirits—the ghosts of Christmas Past,

Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

One-by-one the ghosts haunt Scrooge with different visions from his life to show

him the error of his ways. Scrooge is left both frightened and saddened by what he

sees, and is determined to change his life. When he wakes on Christmas morning,

Scrooge is a new man filled with the Christmas spirit.

By

CHARLES DICKENS

adapted by

KEVIN MORIARTY

Directed by

LEE TRULL

NOV 25-DEC 27 Wyly Theatre

Food insecurity exists whenever the availability of

nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods

in socially acceptable ways (e.g., without resorting to emergency food supplies,

scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies) is

limited or uncertain.

By the Numb#rs: Poverty, Food Insecurity and the North Texas Food Bank

LYN and JOHN MUSE HIGHLAND PARK VILLAGE

Major support of this production provided by Hoblitzelle Foundation, The Meadows Foundation and Hillcrest Foundation.

Black-and-white Victorian era photography reprinted from Dickens' London, introduced by Peter Ackroyd, courtesy of Headline Books.

Charles Dickens and the various ghosts of A Christmas Carol (Anonymous).

Hunger in America

49.1 million Americans lived in food-insecure householdsin 2013 (the most recent year for which we have complete statistics). That includes 33.3 million adults and 15.8 million children.

Another 6.8 million households experienced very low food security.

From 2011-2013, eight states exhibited statistically significantly higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average of 14.6%:

Arkansas 21.2%Mississippi 21.1%TexAs 18.0%Tennessee 17.4%North Carolina 17.3%Missouri 16.9%Georgia 16.6%Ohio 16.0%

Hunger in Texas

In the state of Texas, 4.8 million people are food insecure—that’s 1 in every 6 people. The rate grows to 1 in 5 for Dallas County (477,000 people).

One in every 4 kids in North Texas is food insecure (304,000 children).

95% of households served by the NTFB have an annual household income of $30,000 or less.

1 in 3 client households is affected by diabetes—and 60% of client households report having unpaid medical bills.

68% of client households have to choose between buying food and paying for medicine or medical care.

North Texas Food Bank

Last year, North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) provided 60 million nutritious meals.

NTFB distributed weekend backpacks to 11,000 chronically hungry elementary students at more than 330 schools through the Food 4 Kids program, and provided 418,392 meals through the School Pantry program during the 2013-2014 school year.

A $1 donation to North Texas Food Bank provides access to 3 meals.

For more information on poverty, food insecurity and what you can do to help, please visit: ntfb.org or feedingamerica.org

For the seventh year in a row, Dallas Theater Center is proudly partnering with the North Texas Food Bank around our annual production of a Christmas Carol. Hunger and food insecurity are not relics of Charles Dickens’ time—families across the U. S. and North Texas experience these challenges every day.

Adapting Since it was first published in 1843, countless versions and adaptations of a Christmas Carol have been presented on stage and screen. Dallas Theater Center’s adaptation sets the classic story in an oppressive factory like so many of the poor in Dickens' time would have worked in and which the author spent his life rallying against.

Throughout his literary career, Dickens also became known for his work as a social reformer. He worked as a philanthropist, gave lectures in Great Britain and america on the social evils of the time, and wrote books containing themes of aiding the poor and raising the standard of living for workers. In the early 1840s he began working on a Christmas Carol—a book written in part as a response to a trip to he’d made to Manchester to witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with a recent visit to the Field Lane Ragged School (an institution that took in the poorest of children from the worst slum in London and attempted to educate them), caused Dickens to resolve to write a story that would “strike a sledge hammer blow” for the poor and instill the Christmas spirit in even the hardest of hearts.

a Christmas Carol is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Many of the traditions around modern-day Christmas (from turkeys and garlands to trees and giving to the poor) come directly from Dickens' story.

Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest English novelists of the Victorian period—the time during Queen Victoria’s reign of Great Britain from 1837-1901. His literary works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice and hypocrisy.

Dickens' childhood is one of great poverty and sadness. He was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812 to John and Elizabeth. His father worked as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and the family lived a relatively comfortable life until Dickens was 12. When his father went into debt, the entire family, with the exception of Charles, was sent to live in a debtor’s prison—a common practice at the time. Charles left school and went to work in a factory to try to help pay off his family’s debt. He worked ten-hour days, six days a week, pasting labels onto pots of shoe polish. He earned six shillings a week for his efforts ($1.50/week in today’s money). The strenuous and often cruel working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his writing and interest in the reform of labor conditions the poor were subjected to. In time, Charles Dickens' father inherited money from his deceased grandmother and was able to pay off the family’s debts, thus securing their release from prison. Dickens eventually returned to school, forever changed by the experience.

Dickens' first job was in a law office—training that would later influence his novels Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House. By 1832 he began his literary career as a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. In 1833 he began writing fiction and his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals, under the pseudonym ‘Boz’. In april 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and within the same month published his first, highly successful novel The Pickwick Papers, printed as a serialized novel (with chapters released in installments over the course of several months or years), the usual format for fiction at the time. Each new episode of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public.

Charles Dickens:

Social Reformer

The Industrial Revolution and the

Life of a Child Factory WorkerThe Industrial Revolution brought about great change in manufacturing and production that eventually led to great innovation and prosperity for many nations. During the early 1800s, people flocked to urban centers to work in factories. However, with this new wave of industry and influx of people, society had not yet established laws to govern working conditions, wages or hours worked for workers. As such, to be poor in this time was usually a death sentence.

The life of a factory worker was dismal. Once a person became a factory worker, they usually died fairly quickly. Additionally, the gap between the rich and poor—the haves and have-nots—grew exponentially. Here are some statistics:

In 1833 (10 years before the publication of A Christmas Carol), the social reformer P. Gaskell conducted a study on the detrimental physical effects factory work had on individuals. The following is a summary of his observations:

“Their complexion is sallow and pallid—with a

peculiar flatness of feature cased by the want of a

proper quantity of adipose substance to cushion

their cheeks. Their stature low… Their limbs

slender, and playing badly and ungracefully.

A very general bowing of the legs. Great

numbers of girls and women walking lamely

or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal

flexures. Nearly all have flat feet, accompanied

with a down-tread… Hair thin and straight—

many of the men having but little beard, and

that in patches of a few hairs… A spiritless

and dejected air, a sprawling and wide action of the legs, and an appearance,

taken as a whole, giving the world but ‘little assurance of man,’ or if so, ‘most

sadly cheated of his fair proportions…’”

As a result of years of work by social reformers, the 1833 Factory Act was passed and included provisions for regulating enforcement. The Act established that no children under the age of 9 were to work in factories (though by this time, so many children had died, that few immediately benefited from this law). The Act established a maximum working week of 48 hours for those aged 9 to 13, limited to eight hours a day; and for children between 13 and 18 it was limited to 72 hours per week, limited to 12 hours daily. The Act also required children under 13 to receive elementary schooling for two hours each day.

In London, in 1830, the average life span for middle- to upper-class males was 44 years, versus 22 years for laborers (factory workers).

Only 1 in 5 children in London received any schooling. The majority, especially the poor, were expected to work to help support the family.

During the height of the Industrial Revolution, children as young as 4 years of age worked in factories with dangerous and often fatal working conditions. In coal mines children began work at the age of 5 and generally died before the age of 25.

Horrified by the number of hours children worked in factory conditions, in 1831, Sir John Cam Hobhouse proposed a bill to limit the number of hours worked by children to 64 hours per week. It faced strong opposition and was stalled in Parliament.

In 1839 almost half the funerals in London were of children under the age of 10.

Charles Dickens, oil paintingWilliam Powell Frith, 1859. (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Adapting Since it was first published in 1843, countless versions and adaptations of a Christmas Carol have been presented on stage and screen. Dallas Theater Center’s adaptation sets the classic story in an oppressive factory like so many of the poor in Dickens' time would have worked in and which the author spent his life rallying against.

Throughout his literary career, Dickens also became known for his work as a social reformer. He worked as a philanthropist, gave lectures in Great Britain and america on the social evils of the time, and wrote books containing themes of aiding the poor and raising the standard of living for workers. In the early 1840s he began working on a Christmas Carol—a book written in part as a response to a trip to he’d made to Manchester to witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with a recent visit to the Field Lane Ragged School (an institution that took in the poorest of children from the worst slum in London and attempted to educate them), caused Dickens to resolve to write a story that would “strike a sledge hammer blow” for the poor and instill the Christmas spirit in even the hardest of hearts.

a Christmas Carol is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Many of the traditions around modern-day Christmas (from turkeys and garlands to trees and giving to the poor) come directly from Dickens' story.

Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest English novelists of the Victorian period—the time during Queen Victoria’s reign of Great Britain from 1837-1901. His literary works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice and hypocrisy.

Dickens' childhood is one of great poverty and sadness. He was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812 to John and Elizabeth. His father worked as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and the family lived a relatively comfortable life until Dickens was 12. When his father went into debt, the entire family, with the exception of Charles, was sent to live in a debtor’s prison—a common practice at the time. Charles left school and went to work in a factory to try to help pay off his family’s debt. He worked ten-hour days, six days a week, pasting labels onto pots of shoe polish. He earned six shillings a week for his efforts ($1.50/week in today’s money). The strenuous and often cruel working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his writing and interest in the reform of labor conditions the poor were subjected to. In time, Charles Dickens' father inherited money from his deceased grandmother and was able to pay off the family’s debts, thus securing their release from prison. Dickens eventually returned to school, forever changed by the experience.

Dickens' first job was in a law office—training that would later influence his novels Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House. By 1832 he began his literary career as a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. In 1833 he began writing fiction and his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals, under the pseudonym ‘Boz’. In april 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and within the same month published his first, highly successful novel The Pickwick Papers, printed as a serialized novel (with chapters released in installments over the course of several months or years), the usual format for fiction at the time. Each new episode of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public.

Charles Dickens:

Social Reformer

The Industrial Revolution and the

Life of a Child Factory WorkerThe Industrial Revolution brought about great change in manufacturing and production that eventually led to great innovation and prosperity for many nations. During the early 1800s, people flocked to urban centers to work in factories. However, with this new wave of industry and influx of people, society had not yet established laws to govern working conditions, wages or hours worked for workers. As such, to be poor in this time was usually a death sentence.

The life of a factory worker was dismal. Once a person became a factory worker, they usually died fairly quickly. Additionally, the gap between the rich and poor—the haves and have-nots—grew exponentially. Here are some statistics:

In 1833 (10 years before the publication of A Christmas Carol), the social reformer P. Gaskell conducted a study on the detrimental physical effects factory work had on individuals. The following is a summary of his observations:

“Their complexion is sallow and pallid—with a

peculiar flatness of feature cased by the want of a

proper quantity of adipose substance to cushion

their cheeks. Their stature low… Their limbs

slender, and playing badly and ungracefully.

A very general bowing of the legs. Great

numbers of girls and women walking lamely

or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal

flexures. Nearly all have flat feet, accompanied

with a down-tread… Hair thin and straight—

many of the men having but little beard, and

that in patches of a few hairs… A spiritless

and dejected air, a sprawling and wide action of the legs, and an appearance,

taken as a whole, giving the world but ‘little assurance of man,’ or if so, ‘most

sadly cheated of his fair proportions…’”

As a result of years of work by social reformers, the 1833 Factory Act was passed and included provisions for regulating enforcement. The Act established that no children under the age of 9 were to work in factories (though by this time, so many children had died, that few immediately benefited from this law). The Act established a maximum working week of 48 hours for those aged 9 to 13, limited to eight hours a day; and for children between 13 and 18 it was limited to 72 hours per week, limited to 12 hours daily. The Act also required children under 13 to receive elementary schooling for two hours each day.

In London, in 1830, the average life span for middle- to upper-class males was 44 years, versus 22 years for laborers (factory workers).

Only 1 in 5 children in London received any schooling. The majority, especially the poor, were expected to work to help support the family.

During the height of the Industrial Revolution, children as young as 4 years of age worked in factories with dangerous and often fatal working conditions. In coal mines children began work at the age of 5 and generally died before the age of 25.

Horrified by the number of hours children worked in factory conditions, in 1831, Sir John Cam Hobhouse proposed a bill to limit the number of hours worked by children to 64 hours per week. It faced strong opposition and was stalled in Parliament.

In 1839 almost half the funerals in London were of children under the age of 10.

Charles Dickens, oil paintingWilliam Powell Frith, 1859. (Victoria & Albert Museum)