McCarter's A Christmas Carol Bake-Off Festival of Plays

McCarter invites audiences to the public culmination of November’s Paula Vogel A Christmas Carol Boot Camp and Bake-Off, which challenged 49 local writers to create original ten-minute plays containing dramatic “ingredients” (e.g., a filmic version of A Christmas Carol, an aspects of Dickens’ original novella, a detail of local or Christmas history, a theme, an image, a specific dramatic element) assigned by Vogel herself!

Ten plays—written in the course of one week by a multi-generational, multi-cultural group of playwrights from our neighboring communities—have been selected from the 49 Bake-Off works generated in November and will be presented as play readings by an ensemble of professional actors—including McCarter's beloved Ebenezer Scrooge, actor Greg Wood—in a fun, lively, occasionally poignant, and celebratory event.

Come celebrate the holidays, A Christmas Carol, and community in this special McCarter Engagement offering.

Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. Lifetime achievement awards include: American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have three awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival's Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre, and the Paula Vogel Mentor’s Award by Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence. She is currently serving as judge for the Yale Drama Series 2021 and 2022 competitions. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and she teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. paulavogelplaywright.com