Good Grief, It's Christmas

by Butch Maxwell

The building where they staged their first Christmas pageant is being sold. So Charlie Braun has organized one more — sixty-one years after the original, with the same cast. Loocy has notes on everyone's blocking. Minus cannot answer a simple question simply. Schrader has made his peace with playing Joseph. And Sloopy the beagle has found a two-page document that nobody will stop long enough to read.
Then the...

The building where they staged their first Christmas pageant is being sold. So Charlie Braun has organized one more — sixty-one years after the original, with the same cast. Loocy has notes on everyone's blocking. Minus cannot answer a simple question simply. Schrader has made his peace with playing Joseph. And Sloopy the beagle has found a two-page document that nobody will stop long enough to read.
Then the cardboard star falls — the one Loocy said all evening was too far left — and lands on Loocy. The rehearsal becomes an investigation. Everyone was near the rigging. Everyone has something they've spent decades declining to say. And the anonymous buyer, Redwood Community Holdings, may be closer than anyone realizes.
An interactive musical comedy murder mystery for five performers and a roomful of recruited wise men, with parody carols, a fair-play solution hiding in plain sight, and the particular blend of sadness and joy that somehow feels like the same thing.

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Good Grief, It's Christmas

Character Information

Five principal performers, no doubling required. The remaining roles (the Little Red-Haired Girl, three wise men, and a teacher) are played by audience volunteers recruited during the performance; no advance preparation is needed, and volunteers should be guided generously toward success.
The principals are written as lifelong friends now in their late sixties, though the roles play well across a range of ages — the sixty-one-year history matters more than the birthdays. Casting is flexible with respect to race and ethnicity. Schrader spends most of the show at a keyboard; the role is best served by an actor who can play (or convincingly mime to an accompaniment track).
Sloopy is played by a human performer in a costume suggesting a beagle. The actor's face must remain visible. The role is entirely nonverbal and carries much of the show's physical comedy and, ultimately, its detective work — cast your strongest physical performer here.
One audience volunteer role (the Little Red-Haired Girl) carries emotional weight in Act Three and benefits from a warm, game participant; hosts may wish to select her with slightly more care than the wise men.
  • Charlie Braun
    The organizer. Earnest, methodical, and convinced that clipboards can solve emotional problems. Now a mid-level manager at a company he could not describe to you in under four minutes, Charlie has spent three weeks putting this final pageant together, and everybody showed up to argue. He directs the nativity the way he has done everything for sixty-one years: with thorough notes, genuine goodwill, and no ability whatsoever to make anyone listen. The clipboard has never helped.
    He has also spent sixty-one years looking at the Little Red-Haired Girl — and most of the evening looking at her instead of at what's in front of him. The role needs an actor who can anchor the chaos as straight man, land flustered comedy without playing dumb, and then quietly carry the show's saddest realization: "I spent sixty-one years looking at the wrong person." Sings (parody carols; enthusiasm matters more than polish). Should dance badly, on purpose, with total commitment.
    67 (but can be played by younger actor aging up)
    Male
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      20s,
      30s,
      40s,
      50s,
      60s,
      70s+
    • Actor Race/Ethnic Identity
      Asian, Pacific Islander, or Asian American,
      Black, African, Caribbean, or African American,
      Indigenous, First Nation, or Native American,
      Latinx/o/a or Hispanic,
      Middle Eastern, North African, or Arab American,
      Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander,
      South Asian or South Asian American
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Man
  • Loocy Van Pelt
    A certified life coach with fourteen paying clients, a thriving practice, and the absolute confidence of someone who has been right about everything since 1965. She has notes on your blocking. She took vacation days for this. Loocy drives the evening's comedy — the wise men are coming in from the wrong side, the star is too far left, the camel costume is creating weather — and the show's central irony is that she's right about all of it. The role demands an actor with genuine comic authority: someone who can bulldoze a room for two acts and still let two seconds of stillness at a threshold, seen by no one, tell you everything she's been carrying. Her exchanges with Schrader hold sixty-one years of something neither of them will name. Sings, loudly, occasionally in the correct key.
    67 (but can be played by younger actor aging up)
    Female
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      20s,
      30s,
      40s,
      50s,
      60s,
      70s+
    • Actor Race/Ethnic Identity
      Asian, Pacific Islander, or Asian American,
      Black, African, Caribbean, or African American,
      Indigenous, First Nation, or Native American,
      Latinx/o/a or Hispanic,
      Middle Eastern, North African, or Arab American,
      Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander,
      South Asian or South Asian American
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Woman
  • Minus Van Pelt
    Loocy's brother. Professor of theology and ethics, genuinely beloved by his students, unable to answer a simple question simply. He has published three books and is happy to summarize all three, unprompted. He still carries the backpack — preparedness is a virtue — and something else in it that he does not explain. In Act Three, Minus steps forward to run the investigation, and the actor gets the show's biggest structural gift: the pedant becomes the detective, and the detective becomes the person who finally says the true things out loud. Needs precise comic diction, real warmth underneath the footnotes, and the ability to land the evening's emotional summation without sentimentality. Sings; struggles nobly with rhyme schemes.
    66 (but can be played by younger actor aging up)
    Male
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      20s,
      30s,
      40s,
      50s,
      60s,
      70s+
    • Actor Race/Ethnic Identity
      Asian, Pacific Islander, or Asian American,
      Black, African, Caribbean, or African American,
      Indigenous, First Nation, or Native American,
      Latinx/o/a or Hispanic,
      Middle Eastern, North African, or Arab American,
      Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander,
      South Asian or South Asian American
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Man
  • Schrader
    Middle-school music teacher. Accompanies life with quiet resignation. Schrader spends the show at his keyboard, delivering the driest lines in the script without looking up, and playing Joseph again because Loocy volunteered him again. He gives lessons in the basement, Tuesday and Thursday. The organ isn't the point. Nobody asks what the point is. The role wants an actor with impeccable deadpan timing and the discipline to underplay for two acts so that the two moments he looks directly at someone land like events. Keyboard skills strongly preferred; the role can be played to an accompaniment track by an actor who mimes convincingly, but a performer who actually plays is the ideal.
    67 (but can be played by younger actor aging up)
    male idenityfing
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      20s,
      30s,
      40s,
      50s,
      60s,
      70s+
    • Actor Race/Ethnic Identity
      Asian, Pacific Islander, or Asian American,
      Black, African, Caribbean, or African American,
      Indigenous, First Nation, or Native American,
      Latinx/o/a or Hispanic,
      Middle Eastern, North African, or Arab American,
      Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander,
      South Asian or South Asian American
    • Actor Gender Identity
      Man
  • Sloopy
    A beagle. Possibly the only competent investigator in the room. Sloopy is played by a human in a costume suggesting a beagle — the actor's face must remain visible — and the role is entirely nonverbal. It is also, quietly, the lead: Sloopy finds the crucial document in Act One, spends the entire evening trying to show it to people, is ignored by everyone, and is proven right about all of it. Along the way he becomes a camel, a Beagle Scout, an aviator, a true-crime podcaster, and a detective in a deerstalker. The role requires world-class physical comedy, total commitment, dance ability, and the timing to hold a look at the audience one beat longer than is comfortable. Whoever plays Sloopy will be the person your audience talks about in the parking lot.
    Beagle
    Can be played by:
    • Actor Age
      20s,
      30s,
      40s,
      50s,
      60s,
      70s+
    • Actor Race/Ethnic Identity
      Asian, Pacific Islander, or Asian American,
      Black, African, Caribbean, or African American,
      Indigenous, First Nation, or Native American,
      Latinx/o/a or Hispanic,
      Middle Eastern, North African, or Arab American,
      Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander,
      South Asian or South Asian American