A Chrismoose Carol turns 20, reflects on past with an eye to the future

It's different every year, by design.

The Loose Moose Theatre Company's production of A Chrismoose Carol opens this week and its artistic director says the 20th anniversary edition should be a talker.

The theme changes each year. This year, it's horror flicks.

"The first year we did it, we did it as a one-off. We thought, 'Oh, it would be fun to do A Christmas Carol in sort of a fun way.' The first year it was the very cheap Christmas Carol because we didn't really have a budget," Dennis Cahill told The Calgary Eyeopener.

"But, the end result was, it was so much fun for us and it seemed to be so much fun for the audience, we thought, let's do it again. But we decided at that point that we would never do it the same way twice. We wanted to keep it fresh for ourselves as well as for our audience so in that tradition, every year we have tried to do it a little differently either by doing a different genre or in some cases we have just changed the way we have presented it."

Previous versions have included western, science fiction, Roman and medieval genres.

"We did a three-person version where the audience got to choose who was going to play Scrooge. We had to audition at the beginning of the show by giving our best 'Bah Humbug' and then the audience would decide who would better represent Ebenezer Scrooge," Cahill said with a laugh.

He says, in addition to some of the regulars that have contributed to the theatre company, it's cyclical.

"It seems like every once and while we get a whole new influx of new talent, and we are just at that point right now," Cahill explained.

"It's really exciting, really interesting to see where that will take us."

A Chrismoose Carol runs until Dec. 23 and the schedule and ticket information is all online.

With files from Calgary Eyeopener and Mike Symington