A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story with Willem Lange 2025 Playbill
All About the folks bringing you our A Christmas Carol: a Ghost Story presentation
performed by Willem Lange
-keeping his uninterrupted annual streak going for 50 years!
(1975-2025!)
Playwright: Charles Dickens
Lighting: Samuel Biondolillo & David Orlando, SJB Light Design
Scenic: Kim Bent & Kathleen Keenan
Sound: Andrew Vachon
Production Coordinator: Kim A Bent
House & Stage Manager: Kathleen Keenan
Live-streaming: Robert Bent
Featuring:
Willem Lange
as all the characters and himself!
Special Thanks to:
Andrew, Brandy, Bill, David, & Sam
Chris & Mike Zahm, Tootie and Mike Keenan, Lauren Aradi
More Special Thanks:
Susan Reid, Carolyn Grodinsky, Brandy Perez, John Kessler
Pat Keenan, All Our Decorators: Sophie Perez, Olive Ylin, Susan Reid
Special Thanks to Lost Nation Theater's 2026 Underwriters:
City of Montpelier, Vermont Mutual Insurance Company, Random Acts of Kindness Fund, Montpelier Community Fund, Mary Shriver Fund of the Alan Weiss Estate, Estate of Ted Richards
Eternity, The Point-FM
And ALL LNT's Business/Downtown On Stage Contributors. Please support these businesses supporting Lost Nation Theater. Read All about them HERE
About our Creatives:
Who’s Who in A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story
DONA BATE (Accounts Guru) was CEO of a regional community transportation system for 18 years before joining LNT, and is founder of dbatespeaking where as a speaker, trainer, and coach she shared her love and experience of communicating.
KIM ALLEN BENT (Founding Artistic Director/Scenic)
Kim is the Founding Artistic Director of Lost Nation Theater. His roots in Vermont go back six generations.
Why does he do Theater? “Because it's the only thing that makes sense of the world."
Recently, he played Prospero in The Tempest, made his musical theater debut, in The Prom, adapted Lion, Witch, & the Wardobe, and directed Two For Christmas! He looks forward to LNT’s 2026 Season when he’ll return to ‘The Stage Manger’ in Our Town, and direct Search for Signs… Favorite Show Quote: "It takes 900 years to explain one blown spark of Love..."
SAMUEL J. BIONDOLILLO (Lighting Supervisor & Rep Plot Designer) - is a New York based lighting designer for theatre, television, and events. LNT is grateful to this Vermonter for his assistance upgrading LNT's lighting and establishing a 'rep plot' which makes creating events like "Christmas Carol" possible.
He’s Director of Operations for the Tony-Winning producing organization Medley-Houlihan and CEO/President of Mckenzie Theatrical. His design work can be seen in theaters around the globe, including two national Broadway tours as well as several regional and international productions.
Sam joined LNT in 2008 as a camp participant and now serves as resident lighting designer and electrics supervisor. His most recent design for LNT was The Prom! He is Visiting Faculty of Design and Production at Connecticut College and a proud member of USA829. His work can be seen at: SJBLightingDesign.com
KATHLEEN KEENAN (Producing Artistic Director) is the producing artistic director of Lost Nation Theater. In addition to acting, directing, & producing theater, she is a singer-songwriter,
She won Broadway Worlds's Regional Theatre "Vocalist of the Decade" for her work in Always, Patsy Cline, and most recently had a blast portraying the diva Dee Dee in The Prom, the title role in Drowsy Chaperone and Diana in Next to Normal. In 2026, she plays The Witch in Into The Woods. She relished playing Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Rose in Dancing at Lughnasa, Catherine in proof and the title roles in Educating Rita, The Belle of Amherst, and Shirley Valentine.
She is grateful to Willem for "saying yes!" in 2020 and being the first performer on LNT's stage in ten months - albeit without an audience, and for returning in 2021 to share his work with a live audience in the theater and at home. It is an honor to help keep Willem's unbroken streak of annual performance of A Christmas Carol: a ghost story going. She is also indebted to Willem for educating her that "a ghost story" is part of Dickens' original title! Kathleen sends her deepest thanks to all the artists & volunteers involved and to the audience & community for “being there.”
WILLEM LANGE (Performer)
From 1968 to 1972 Will directed the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center. From 1972 until his “retirement” in 2007, he was a building and remodeling contractor in Hanover. He's an adopted member of the Dartmouth Class of 1957.
In 1981 he began writing a weekly column, “A Yankee Notebook,” which appears in several New England newspapers. He's a commentator or host for Vermont Public Radio and both Vermont and New Hampshire Public Television. His annual readings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began in 1975 and continue unabated. He’s published several audio recordings and nine books and received four Emmy nominations, and won one (!) for his work as the long-running host of New Hampshire Public Television’s award-winning show “Windows to the Wild”.
In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric Adventure Society, a group of outdoor enthusiasts whose members have skied the 200-mile Alaska Marathon, climbed in Alaska, the Andes, and Himalayas, bushwhacked on skis through northern New England, and paddled rivers north of the Arctic Circle.
He first performed A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story in 1975 after painstakingly transcribing (from an old LP) Dickens' own performance cut (or prompter script) of his story. Willem has performed it every year since - even during the pandemic! LNT is so happy to have been able to make that happen. LNT Artistic Director says it's "a part he was born to play!"
His other stage credits include The Stage Manager in Our Town and Winter Tales with Vermont Stage.
After forty years in New Hampshire, Will and his wife, Ida, moved to Vermont in 2007. Following two years of declining health, Ida died in April 2018. Will remains in East Montpelier in the last house she designed. He has three children and four grandchildren.
BRANDY ANN PEREZ( Associate Managing Director) Brandy serves as Associate Managing Director and house manager at LNT where she works in arts administration while sharing her love of dance and the performing arts. She teaches ballet at Moving Light Dance Studio and volunteers for Vermont Dance Alliance. Over the years, Brandy has been a member of the Vermont Dance Collective, created her own choreography for ballets and musicals, helped to found and run Ballet Wolcott, taught at Johnson State College and dance studios around the state, and collaborated with many local choreographers, teachers, and arts groups. She’s served as movement coach for LNT’s Sam & Jim in Hell and Three Sisters, Four Women. She’s currently co-directing The Green Mountain Nutcracker.
ANDREW VACHON (Sound Engineer) Andrew first worked with LNT as an Intern in high school. (We won’t say how long ago that was!) Since getting his degree in Recording, he has designed sound for several shows with LNT - most recently Next to Normal and 3 Sisters 4 Women, Sam & Jim in Hell as well as My Mother’s Three Mothers. Andrew is also LNT’s “go to” live-mixing guru. Musicals he’s mixed lately include Cabaret, Side by Side by Sondheim, The Addams Family, The Prom, Drowsy Chaperone and Next to Normal He’ll be back for The Beat Goes On later this month.
If you enjoy Christmas Carol - be sure to check out
A Child's Christmas in Wales and Other Tales a special event Saturday December 13
and THE BEAT GOES ON! - Our New Year's Eve Celebration with Shidaa Projects!
And Look for LNT's 2026 Season and Special Events!
Get 2026 Season Tickets - they Make Great Gifts!
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About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a clerk at the Navy Pay Office. His father, John Dickens, continually living beyond his means, was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824. 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory earning six shillings a week to help support the family.
This dark experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy that became a defining experience in his life. He would later write that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age.”
This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and the world he would create through his fiction.
Dickens would go on to write 15 major novels including, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and his personal favorite, David Copperfield. He will forever be associated with the celebration of Christmas due to his Christmas Books, the most popular being A Christmas Carol.
Dickens also edited, and contributed to, weekly journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Near the end of his life he traveled throughout Britain and America giving public readings of his work. (It is the prompt script of A Christmas Carol that Dickens created for this tour that Willem uses in his performance of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story.)
Charles Dickens died an old man of 57, worn out with work and travel, on June 9, 1870. He wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, Kent, but the Nation would not allow it.
He was laid to rest in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey. The flowers from thousands of mourners overflowed the open grave. Among the more beautiful bouquets were many simple clusters of wildflowers wrapped in rags.
Current office hours are:
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39 Main Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
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