A CHRISTMAS CAROL
December 2023
AN AUTHENTIC CHRISTMAS PERFORMANCE
BY MASTER STORYTELLER ASHLEY RAMSDEN (UK)
(16+ yrs)
“Marley was dead, to begin with.
There can be no doubt whatsoever about that.”
– DICKENS
Master Storyteller, Ashely Ramsden, returns to the Netherlands with his perennially popular version of A Christmas Carol. Many of our audience tell STET that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Ashley’s marvelous and inventive retelling of the quintessential festive tale. Every year more performances in more towns in the Netherlands and it is still not enough! Dickens’ masterpiece is an intentional favorite that Ashley has performed on five continents, playing all 23 characters…’the animated breadth and flair of a whole cast’ – Santa Cruz Sentinel. The Master Storyteller has performed this story for thousands of school children with great success. Will your school host his show (again) this year?
| COST | €925/performance + 9% VAT + travel costs if your school is far away from The Hague. The price is negotiable in case you book more than one show. |
| DATE AND TIME | December 2023 – exact dates to be announced |
| RUNNING TIME | 75 – 80 minutes |
| VENUE | your school, or a location you provide |
| AGE | 16 + |
| LIMIT OF AUDIENCE MEMBERS | max 100 students/ performance |
| LANGUAGE | English (Ashley Ramsden is native English speaker) |
| AUTHENTICITY OF THE PERFORMANCE | The performance is based on Dicken’s A Christmas Carol and is told in a pure and authentic way. |
| ADVISED PREPARATIONS | If you have a chance, please make your students familiar with the story before they attend the storytelling performance. STET supplies the schools with educational material (for example A Christmas Carol PowerPoint game, a summary of the novel and an online Kahoot game) to complement the work they were doing in class. |
More about the theme
A Christmas Carol is a story about experiencing the true virtue of life – about getting a second chance to be a better person to ourselves and to others around us. The story lightens the darkest nights with hope that no one is meant to be alone or kept out of experiencing the healing power of love. It can be considered a morality tale, a story intended to teach readers (or viewers) a lesson about how to be a better person.
Discussion questions for in the class:
- What is the lesson Scrooge learns in A Christmas Carol?
- What other stories do you know that teach us how to be better people?
- What are the morals or lessons taught by those stories?
- Charles Dickens was very thoughtful in selecting his characters’ names. Why did he name his character Ebenezer Scrooge?
- When you hear the name Scrooge, does it evoke an emotion?
- Why did he use the name Cratchit, Fezziwig or Belle?
More about Ashley Ramsden
Ashley Ramsden is the founding director of the School of Storytelling (UK). He has toured with his remarkable storytelling programmes on all five continents, has appeared at major storytelling festivals in the UK, South Africa, Scandinavia and America.
Experiences in the past
The storytelling performance of Ashely Ramsden is one of the permanent programmes of STET. Our Education Department offers the performances since four years, with great success. In 2016 Ashley performed at the International School of Eerde in their beautiful 17th century Goblin Hall. Truly one of the most amazing settings he has ever performed in! We had a school group from The Melanchton College visiting the Muiderslot in 2017 to see the performance in the Knight Hall with candle lit chandeliers. NOTE, the option to host a school there will be possible this year again.
“We were happy we were able to offer this to our students, despite all the COVID measures,
and thank you all for helping us out when we hit roadblock of venue, being able to do two performances really helped.”
(Teacher at the Krimpenerwaard College, 2020)
„Scrooge was awesome! I mean awesome in the sense of how his character was
formed and how he transformed into an annoyingly nice guy in the end.”
(student, 17, 2016)
“Students were engaged! They asked meaningful questions after the performance
and their questions were treated with such care and respect.
We all enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot about storytelling.”
(teacher at a dutch secondary school, 2014)
Booking and information
E: education@theenglishtheatre.nl
T: +31 6 20431919