A Cosmic Carol
An immersive retelling of a classic in a cosmic context
I co-created and directed a solstice ceremony blended with ambient theatre, reimagining Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol through a cosmic lens. The production integrated mythic storytelling, shadow puppetry, ambient soundscapes, and participatory performance, inviting audiences to journey with Anima Mundi — the world spirit — through themes of remembrance, presence, and future possibility. I orchestrated the vision, production design, narrative development, and coordination of over 20 performers and contributors across theatrical, musical, and ritual disciplines — all assembled with just one month's notice.
The script positions Anima Mundi as a spirit experiencing forgetting during the solstice, guided by a narrator and three spirits through reflection on past, present, and future. The experience featured participant choice between observer and active roles, with an emergent third act shaped by the audience. The evening closed with a question: "What will you do with your shred of light, on this one of the longest of our long nights?"
Highlights
- Four-hour immersive event on Salt Spring Island hosting 50+ guests
- Over 20 performers and contributors coordinated across theatrical, musical, and ritual disciplines
- Three DJs provided ambient soundscapes integrated with live performance
- Original ritual theater framework weaving cosmic mythology and collective reflection
- Contact improvisation and communal dancing woven throughout the experience
- Created a space where participants felt safe, welcomed, and free to express their true selves
- Incorporated participant interaction and an emergent third act
- Collaborative, decentralized co-creation among a transdisciplinary team
Contributions
- Narrative design, scriptwriting, and mythic reinterpretation of the Dickens source material
- Event direction, production coordination, and team leadership
- Experience architecture across sound, light, staging, and audience journey
- Visual and emotional tone development including moodboard, projection, and lighting design
- Coordinated casting and rehearsal across 20+ contributors in under four weeks
Video Snippets
Ambient Odyssey
A Cosmic Carol was produced as part of the Ambient Odyssey series — an ongoing cycle of immersive gatherings exploring consciousness, myth, and collective meaning-making through ritual performance, music, and participatory art on Salt Spring Island.
Acknowledgements
Kit (Anima Mundi), Fox, Leif & Antonio (The Three Spirits), Ivy (Fallen Star), Manu, Iain & Echo (Soundscapes), Ashley (Lighting & Projection), Ari (Narration & Story), Chloe (Earth Altar), Noah & Ish (Production Support), Adam (Divination), and the Salt Spring Island community at Beaver Point Hall.
Script Sample
The thing about being born in the forgetting times, those who are old enough to remember the long cycle say, is that it's very difficult to remember that you've been born in the forgetting times. It's very natural to imagine that your world, your outlook, your memory are all just as they ought to be… persistent in their timeless form, regardless of how strange things might seem. But of course, that's not the whole story. Not by a longshot.
Allow me to introduce to you the heroine of your story. You know her, don't you?
Or you did. Long ago. When her hair grew long, and the waters on her face flowed sweet and clean, radiant in their power. Their torrents re-shaping mountains since time immemorial. The sweet birth of dewdrops on the leaves of virgin forests.
A thousand elegant languages born in the ecology of an under-growth so vast and unfurled that its echo was heard in the very first navel of the very first named being to ever stand upon her face. The rich roiling laughter of her soil. The deepest sigh of her breath in every scent revealed in songs so sweet you could hear almost hear them in the cresting radiance of dawn's light.
That was long before axe, and the saw, and the motor. Before the machines we taught to count, or the million lights learned to carry our voices around the world. Long before the rain of styrofoam takeout cups, crushed under the heels of a thousand thousand mothers and a thousand thousand fathers, shuffling broken under the weight of the leaden yellow sky. Through the smoke and the grease and the ruptured horseshoe of the CRISPRed genome. Before the brain chip learned us to forget how the moon is supposed to be howled at. Before a trillion zeros and just as many ones, offering liberation through their potent power to upend the structure of domination and conquest, dissolved before our eyes into the two-step, lock and key, block and chain, of a dialectic lumbering numb towards the same place it was always heading, but with more terrible power than ever.
And somewhere in that towering, shuddering weight of all her beauty revealed, and all its coherence forgotten, she stumbled. Startled. Overwhelmed in the face of it all. Forgetting. Just a little bit. And she curled ever so slightly inwards. Her radiant glow pulling taut across her shoulders. The first thread of an armour plating. In the face of the bigness of her majesty, and the bigness of the terror of how it could all be so profoundly unremembered. And in that stuttered step, that lacunae of feeling, she lost something.
Something significant. Something she'd vowed not to lose. And a seed was born in the Anima Mundi's heart of her very own forgetting. Woven from the tapestry, from whence all forgetting comes, its tattered thread wound deep to her core. And it grew. It grew and it grew, over days, and months and years.
And maybe that was all a long time ago too… Even though it feels so familiar.
Feels like this moment. How long does forgetting last?
Whatever the timeline and whatever the scope, whenever it happened it always happens like this again and again. With this day, when the earth gathers to her belly the few faint threads of light streaming our way, and the sun crowns its head from the galactic centre on the solstice. Our heroine finds herself wrapped in the synthetic warmth of her forgetting, wandering amidst the echo of her heart.
…
NARRATOR
And with that. The striking of the clock. The long linger of solstice's darkness lifting. The cresting of dawn's light.
ANIMA
…there are no more spirits, are there?
NARRATOR
No, little one. No more spirits. Not this evening.
ANIMA
So what then? What happens now?
NARRATOR
Well, that, I suppose, is up to you. Spirit of the world. Anima Mundi. You who are the breath of life upon this earth. What would you like to happen now?
ANIMA
Well, I… I suppose it's time to share this story with the world.
NARRATOR
And how will you do that, little one?
ANIMA
I have no more dance, no more song. I shall dream my dream of what could be..
Good night all. Good night spirits. Sweet dreams till morning's light.
NARRATOR
Well there you have her. Our Anima. Weaver of the world. Holder of light. Bearer of what is yet to be born. There she sleeps, and in sleeping dreams. Some say that she's been sleeping for a long time. Some say, just for a moment. Some say that whatever the timeline and whatever the scope, whenever it happened it always happens just like this. Every year.
But you. Dear dreamer. You're awake. Aren't you? And what will you do with your shred of light, on this one of the longest, of our long nights.