“The first show I ever went to see before I became a student here was a Christmas show and it was such a warm feeling of like showing up to someone’s house and the Christmas lights are on and there’s a warm fire and there’s laughter and good food and good drink in that house. That Christmas vibe is on offer here in a really particular and unique way. And, the show is the central point of that. We come together around this holiday and this moment of connection and I think the story is really connecting with people. It’s really a place where you come around and feel that warmth and that joy and the camaraderie and cheer of Christmas.”
Aaron Krogman, Actor
My son and I journeyed out to Rosebud a few weeks ago to see A Christmas Story. The play is based on the 1983 movie and the books by Jean Shepherd and has been adapted for the stage by Philip Grecian. It’s the classic tale of Ralphie Parker’s relentless campaign to get his parents to buy him, “an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time,” for Christmas.
Surrounding this core story there are several other subplots and adventures where we meet a whole cast of characters including Ralphie’s friends, the neighbourhood bully, his little brother Randy, the mall Santa, and of course Ralphie’s mother, and his father “the old man.” The Rosebud production features a terrific cast and a versatile and stylized set that adapts easily from one location to the next all while keeping the action moving.
A Christmas Story is a fun and family-friendly production that not only includes a highly entertaining and memorable holiday classic but also features a delicious holiday buffet feast and live Christmas Carols to put you in the mood before you go and see the show. The production runs until December 22nd and tickets are available online at the Rosebud Theatre Website or by calling the box office at 1-800-267-7553.
Aaron Krogman portrays the grown-up Ralphie in a charming and nuanced performance where he guides us through this particular childhood Christmas memory and adds some humourous insights and observations from an adult point of view. I spoke with Aaron about the production, his time as a student in Rosebud, his five years playing Jesus in the Badlands Passion Play, and his love of music.
JAMES HUTCHISON
You’re a graduate of the Rosebud School of the Arts from 2008. Tell me a little bit about your time here as a student and what that was like?
AARON KROGMAN
When I graduated high school, I had no idea what to do with my life. I had high levels of interest in multiple topics and zero confidence in any of them. And I remember one summer other friends of mine had been back in town for the summer on their college summer break. And one of my friends said to me, “Dude, if you don’t go to school and do something, I will be so disappointed in you.”
And, a week later I said to my dad, “Dad, if I don’t get a plan together and go to school this fall, I never will, but I don’t know what I should study.” And he thought about it for a little bit and said, “You know Aaron, I’ve always thought you could be an actor on a stage.”
So, on his suggestion, I called Rosebud School of the Arts. Making that phone call was probably the scariest part of the whole thing. Paul Muir, who is the education director at Rosebud, and who is now my boss, answered the phone. We had a conversation about my interests and why I was calling, and I think that first conversation just opened a door for me that has never closed since.
When I showed up that September to start school, it was just amazing. I didn’t think the world could be the way it was in Rosebud. I didn’t think there would be people in the world who cared about the kind of stuff that I cared about. People who spent their lives making space for storytelling with the human being as the prime subject of storytelling and about the possibilities of making the world a better place and making human culture a better place and enabling us to see the best in each other. My time as a student in Rosebud is one of the most amazing life-giving experiences I’ve ever had.
JAMES
Do you feel that you discovered your purpose in life by going to Rosebud?
AARON
I have memories of being very young and caring about the kinds of things that Rosebud’s about. I wouldn’t say that I discovered my purpose. I recovered it. It was something that was alive in me at a very young age and coming to Rosebud as a student and now being here as a member of the company and as an instructor I feel like I recovered my five-year-old self.
JAMES
Was there any particular instructor or mentor at the school that you remember any lesson learned or experience that still resonates with you today?
AARON
You know it’s funny, I’ve been thinking about what’s been so significant for me in the last month about opening A Christmas Story because it’s been a five-and-a-half-year break for me from interacting with the Rosebud audience. And now I’m back and this is my first time on stage and re-engaging with that audience. And I think it is the collective education that the audience has given me – the feedback and the support and the affirmation of what good, clear, generous storytelling is.
I think what’s particularly unique about Rosebud educationally is the chance to be in front of the audiences that come here. I think they are a powerful part of the training that takes place and I think there are many in the audience who deliberately come here because they want to see students grow. And so, I think, in the big-picture view of what has really made a difference for me has been exposure to and vulnerability with that audience. They are just as significant an educator as any of the faculty here.
And most of the direction that I’ve received as an actor has been with Morris Ertman the Artistic Director of Rosebud. I’ve done more shows with him than any other director and cumulatively his confidence in the ideal that we as storytellers have something vital to offer that matters has rubbed off on me in ways I’m still just discovering.
JAMES
Well, let’s talk a little bit about A Christmas Story. At the end of the night after the audience has seen the play what do you think they walk away with?
AARON
Well, I think it’s similar to what the play does for me. We end the story on Christmas morning. And I remember Christmas after Christmas my dad giving me a Christmas gift and being really excited about it. And in the play the dad is excited that his son’s going to open the gift that he’s been asking for – forever. And the father and boy open the present and the dad has all this additional information about the gift and I have so many memories of my dad saying things like, “Oh, I got you this little stereo for your room. And it has all these features and let me take you through all the features.” And that’s what happens in the play. And that’s so familiar to me. And it makes me so fond of my own father in that moment. And I love story that returns us to our own life in a way that makes us more able to live it somehow. Whether that’s remembering the best parts of it or whether that’s looking at it in a slightly more positive way.
JAMES
Tell me about the cast and what it’s like to work with them and how you guys worked on the play and brought it together?
AARON
It’s a ton of people who are all currently Rosebud School of the Arts students or grads. A lot of times we bring in guest artists which is awesome, but this is a rare thing where it’s a big cast that’s in house. And there are lots of opportunities for students in this show to take their first steps on the Opera House stage.
It’s one of the things I’m loving the most about this process right now. I’m watching students go through what I went through as a student. Which is having the opportunity to perform in front of an audience and how that changes your experience of the text and how important that is and to realize, “Oh, there’s an opportunity for a laugh in this line, which I didn’t see at all. And if I just say it clearly and communicate it, and offer it up, the audience will be ready for it. They know there’s a laugh line coming before I do as an actor. And if I just listen to them, they lead me to it.” So that’s one of the elements that’s happening in the play right now and I love to see that happen.
JAMES
In Rosebud you do these main stage shows that run for two months. What as an actor is beneficial about having these longer runs where you get to spend time with this character in a story every week?
AARON
The educational opportunity is exponentially bigger. I think it’s amazing to experience the full range of what different audiences can be like in terms of their engagement. If you do a two-week run where you do ten shows, the greater part of your experience of that show is going to be rehearsal. Performance is the smaller part. And, I think that in most theatre programs you never get out of rehearsal.
You might do your student shows for a weekend or for a two-week run, but they’re all in house audiences. They are people who are coming that know you. There is value in an audience that is objective and indifferent and paying money to see a show. And there are those elements in a Rosebud audience and while they care about theatre they’re also paying money and they want it to be good. And I think that is part of the pressure cooker of what it means to be part of live theatre.
JAMES
When I was doing my research for this interview, I discovered that you released an album in 2012. I was just curious about music in your life and the importance of music and the creation of that album. How did that all come about?
AARON
I got into music long before I got into theatre. I was raised in the church and the primary involvement I had with the church was musical. So, I started playing drums and then played bass and then guitar and just did everything. I really loved music. It was one of the first things that really spoke to me.
And I was working on a play with Lucia Frangione, who’s a very successful award-winning Vancouver playwright who teaches a course here at Rosebud and she liked my writing and offered to collaborate with me on a project she was working on. And we started working on a piece about a songwriter who wrote songs and so I started writing songs for that play. We did some development and it was pretty exciting, but it didn’t really take off and so, in the end, I had these songs. And a friend of mine here in town Paul Zacharias was a music engineer and producer and he just made an offer to record them through his company doG House Studios. And I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
It’s funny that you asked about that because I’m actually scheduled to have another meeting with Paul and we’re going to record another album. And I’m excited about it because I’ve always loved music.
JAMES
Let’s talk a little bit about the Badlands Passion Play. You’ve been in the play for seven years and five of those years you played Jesus. Tell me a little bit about the experience of being in that production and what that was like.
AARON
It’s theatre, but it’s different. It’s unique. It’s outdoors and it’s primarily community theatre. There are a few people who are there in a professional capacity and most of those contracts are behind the scenes in terms of stage management, design, and direction.
Almost all of the actors are volunteer or from community theatre and I think that is probably what makes it the most unique. There’s an amateur vibe to it, which is amazing. I’ve become a huge fan of the word amateur, as I’ve heard it defined by some of my favourite authors, as those who do something for the love of it. These are the real priests of culture. They’re the ones who are making an offering with the work of their hands.
JAMES
How did you find your interpretation of Jesus and that story change over the time of you performing it?
AARON
I think it charts some of my growth as an actor. I understudied the part for two years and so I watched it and I developed my opinions. My first-time playing Jesus was a reaction to what I had seen. I really wanted to play Jesus as understated and not as profound and to be motivated by the present moment. But in some ways, it didn’t serve the stage because that’s a particularly large stage and the size of the performance has to be a certain thing in order for it to reach the back of the house. People are watching with binoculars. They’re not seeing my authentic transparent thought.
JAMES
You were acting for the camera instead of the stage.
AARON
Totally. And, you know, the directors were all over me for that, and rightfully so. And I think we each have our imagined version of who Jesus is or was regardless of our faith and we also have this imagined version of Jesus that our culture offers us. Is he angry or is he warm and kind?
And I really wanted him to be like my version where he’s warm, thoughtful, and a little bit of a rebel. But the second year I got to do it I went really hard in the other direction. And the third year I did it, I sort of was like, I have no idea what I’m doing in any of this. And so, I just emptied myself of any preconceived ideas and based my performance very much in the moment and it’s not my strength as an actor.
I pre-plan. I know my text. I do my backstory. That’s been my habit, and that third year, I threw it all out. I just emptied myself of any preconceived notion of what I ought to do, and I just entered and reacted, and it was very much a roll of the dice in terms of who I was embodying. And I still did the right blocking. I didn’t surprise anybody really, but it was for me internally a hands-off kind of thing. And then the last two years I did the same thing and that’s kind of how I am as an actor now.
Rehearsals are about finding the boundaries, the thresholds, the gates to pass through. The ones that matter. And then after knowing those boundaries taking my hands off the wheel and having less control and the less control I have the more alive I am in the scene and the more people can enter into it. So, I flush the lines from my head. I empty myself of my awareness so I’m not conscious of what’s coming. I just let go and trust that the lines will be there and then I just react in the moment. Which is something I should have been doing in the first place.
JAMES
But that’s the big challenge, right? It’s the ability to know the lines so well that you can forget them. So, the emotional energy of your interaction with the characters on stage is what you’re actually responding to.
AARON
Totally. And that’s what I’ve loved about acting alongside someone like Nathan Schmidt who plays my Dad in A Christmas Story. He’s just one of the most generous scene partners. He pays attention. And he just says yes to everything you do.
JAMES
I have one more question about the Passion Play just because I was reading that it’s becoming more musical. There’s been the addition of live music and rather than the lines always being spoken some of them are now being sung. Is that correct?
AARON
In 2018 they went on a big tangent down this musical road and then in 2019 they jumped in with both feet. I think I sang twelve songs in last summer’s version. And now for next year, they’re not going to be doing the music they’re going to go in a different direction.
JAMES
Oh, interesting.
AARON
That’s another unique thing about the Passion Play. They’re workshopping it every year. And sometimes there are big changes and sometimes there are smaller changes. The production, as a whole, is hungry to grow and always kind of morphs.
But there is something really cool about the musical theatre form because it’s larger than life. The size of the expression and the form of the expression reaches further, it’s more obvious and it demands more of your body. It demands more of your instrument. And I think it lends itself to the size of an outdoor stage. And in the Passion Play, you have to use your hands. You have to point at who you’re talking to. All those things which feels so manufactured, when you’re not used to them become the language of that stage. And musical theatre already lives a huge step further in that direction.
But it’s funny because in recent years I’ve spent much more time on the Passion Play stage than on a smaller stage like the Rosebud Opera House and I’ve had to shake off the habit of full arm extension every time I say a line to somebody. It’s been great to let that go and find a more subtle size of performance.
JAMES
So, why should people come out to Rosebud to see A Christmas Story?
AARON
Because it’s more than just the show. It’s coming to this town. There’s Christmas lights everywhere. There’s Turkey in the buffet. You get to hear Christmas music sung to you as you eat. You enter into the Christmas context in a way that is just so memorable.
The first show I ever went to see before I became a student here was a Christmas show and it was such a warm feeling of like showing up to someone’s house and the Christmas lights are on and there’s a warm fire and there’s laughter and good food and good drink in that house. That Christmas vibe is on offer here in a really particular and unique way. And, the show is the central point of that. We come together around this holiday and this moment of connection and I think the story is really connecting with people.
It’s really a place where you come around and feel that warmth and that joy and the camaraderie and cheer of Christmas.
A Christmas Story based on the 1983 movie and the books by Jean Shepherd and adapted for the stage by Philip Grecian runs until December 22nd at the Rosebud Opera House. The production stars Aaron Krogman, Rebbekah Ogden, Glenda Warkentin, Nathan Schmidt, and Silas Winters and is directed by Paul F. Muir. Tickets are just $84.00 for adults and $62.00 for youth and include a seasonal buffet with roast turkey and stuffing, plenty of side dishes and other main courses, plus a vast array of pies and cookies and puddings. Order tickets on-line at the Rosebud Theatre Website or by calling the box office at 1-800-267-7553.
