Christmas season is finally here! There are many different ways to celebrate the holidays: go caroling, watch Christmas specials, put up Christmas decorations or start going to the gym to prepare for another delicious dinner just a few weeks away. Columbia is getting ready for the holidays by putting on its very own holiday theatre production entitled “A Christmas Miracle at the Richland Fashion Mall” which will be performed at the Trustus Theatre.
Trustus Theatre's resident comedy troupe The Mothers is ready to put on a different kind of show for the community. “A Christmas Miracle," which will run from Dec. 1-16, is a completely original work that has connections to the Columbia area.
The director of the play, Abigail McNeely, who graduated from USC in the spring, says Columbia itself is very much a part of the play’s spirit.
“This show is unique because it is written by Columbians for Columbia,” McNeely said. “I’ve been telling people it’s quintessentially Christmas, it’s local, and it is perfect for Trustus Theatre and their mission to create new work.”
McNeely is also a member of The Mothers and helped write the show as well. They set out from the beginning to create a show that would be the first of its kind.
“We got together to write the show over the summer after our artistic director kind of came to us and told us that he wasn’t finding the kind of Christmas show that he wanted,” she said.
The play takes place at the real life Richland Mall where a bunch of fictional shop owners work hard to keep their stores open for the holidays. The show includes many real life Columbia landmarks that people will immediately recognize like the Nickelodeon Theatre and Lizard’s Thicket.
Making Columbia a part of the show is what makes “A Christmas Miracle” so different and special. Because it’s also an original production, McNeely said this put The Mothers in a unique position as performers.
“When you’re doing a brand new show, you get a lot more freedom in what you do,” she said.
This freedom of working on an original show rather than an already famous one like “A Christmas Carol” gave them wiggle room to try new things, but it also gave them a few challenges.
“It’s both a challenge and a gift that this has never been done before because we can take so many liberties with the script that we wrote," she said. "But there’s kind of no safety net of 'Well, let me just go see how this other theater did it.'”
Trustus Theatre has a reputation of fostering original work in the Columbia area, which McNeely thinks will make people who don’t know much about theater look at Columbia differently.
“It’s super cool to have brand new work come out of your own city instead of thinking ‘Oh well, new theatre can only come out of New York or Chicago or something.’ It’s not true! It comes out of here, too!” she said.