The Past, a Present Yet to Come - 2025

Plenty of FREE on-site parking (LINK to video showing the way) / ADA accessible. Performing at the Little Theatre at Kennedy Catholic High School, 140 S 140th St., Burien, WA.

The Past, a Present Yet to Come by Matt Schatz

November 28 thru December 21, 2025 (Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm) – Northwest Premiere

Order TICKETS online OR EMAIL BAT WITH YOUR TICKET REQUEST – HERE! OR CALL AND LEAVE A MESSAGE AT BAT: 206-242-5180.

In this irreverent imagining of how Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol came to be written, a young entrepreneur in Victorian London sets out to produce a play that will soften his Uncle Ebenezer Scrooge’s hard heart. He turns to no-nonsense theatre producer J.B. Roth, who engages a broke, philandering Dickens. Are there ulterior motives for this unlikely mission to save Scrooge?

Run Time: about 100 minutes with no intermission. (Contains some adult content and a little adult language.)

A special shout-out to 4Culture, the City of Burien, and donors like YOU who sponsor this production. Special thanks to Kennedy Catholic High School and The Evergreen Ballet.

All student tickets are always $5. Additionally, if ticket prices are a barrier, please contact us at info@BATtheatre.org. These deals are sponsored in part by 4Culture through the Public Free Access 2025 project.

Reviews:

You may believe you’ve seen every iteration possible of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ but you’ve never seen it like this.

. . . .

Together, the cast formed a chemistry that was supremely entertaining as the plot twisted such a well-known tale into a heart-warming story about motives, character, and the possibility of change.

B-Town Blog – LINK

The Past, a Present Yet to Come is a story about the courage it takes to believe that people can change, even when all evidence suggests otherwise. That idea is carried by excellent performances across the board, with a cast that invests fully in the sincerity of the piece. . . . Through Fred’s unwavering optimism and the ensemble’s thoughtful work, Burien Actors Theatre offers a holiday production rooted in hope rather than nostalgia—a reminder that transformation often begins not with the person who needs to change, but with the one willing to insist that change is possible.

The Sound on Stage

SHOW PHOTOS – LINK

MEET THE CAST in order of appearance:

Fred: Danielle Alexis Nicole Mitchell (she/her) is a Seattle-based actor, writer, and Associate Producer with Theatre Battery. A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts with a BFA in Theater, she has appeared in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Nurse), Milk Like Sugar, and We Are Pussy Riot or Everything is PR. Her original solo work, Shame, premiered with Theatre Battery. Additional stage credits include performances with Book-It Repertory Theatre and Copious Love Productions. Danielle is thrilled to make her Burien Actors Theatre debut in The Past, A Present Yet to Come, and sends love and gratitude to her close friends and family for their endless encouragement and support.

J.B. Roth: Lauren Erwin (she/her) – With credits spanning classics, new plays, and immersive audio drama, Lauren is always in pursuit of the next great story. Trained at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she was most recently seen onstage as Petruchio/Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew and Hermia/Quince/Fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with GreenStage. Other credits include #00 in The Wolves at Southern Rep and the title role in the award-winning podcast Missing Annie Lee.

Charles Dickens: John Dugaw (he/him) last worked with BAT in the 2022 season as part of the cast for “On the Market.” This experience encouraged him to pursue new goals and challenges as a performer. You may have caught him locally at Renton Civic Theatre’s “The Full Monty”, Valley Center Stage’s “The Clean House”, Dukesbay Productions “Andalana”, Acts on Stage’s “The Soldier’s Story”, Mount Baker Workshop’s “The Lost Object”, or a number of other musicals and artistic plays, commercials, or ad copy. He is incredibly thankful for the cast and crew on this production and the effort to tell a different kind of holiday story that still shows transformation. He wishes to remind audiences that actors do things they find personally detestable with the goal of showing how ugly some things are, and how important change is. He finds hate and discrimination in any form detestable. You are made of the dust of the stars, wonderfully made, never doubt you are loved, needed, and cherished. Go make art! We need more of it. And lastly, yes he uses two accents in this show.

Meet the Author:

Matt Schatz is a writer and composer. His plays and musicals include A Wicked Soul In Cherry Hill (Geffen Playhouse, Edgerton New Play Award), An Untitled New Play By Justin Timberlake (City Theatre/Pittsburgh CLO), The Door You Never Saw Before (Geffen Stayhouse), The Burdens (The O’Neill, City Theatre, Urbanite Theatre, and others), No One Sings Like You Anymore (Seattle Rep Commission), I Battled Lenny Ross (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Georama (St. Louis Rep, Great River Shakespeare Festival, NYMF), Where Ever It May Be (CLO Spark Festival), Dunkfest ’88 (Ars Nova), Oh, Gastronomy! (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Love Trapezoid (Astoria Performing Arts Center) and The Tallest Building in the World (Luna Stage).

Awards include The Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre, The ASCAP Foundation Harold Arlen Musical Theater Award, The Reva Shiner Comedy Award, the New York Musical Festival Outstanding Lyrics Award, and Broadway World Pittsburgh’s Original Script of the Decade Award. Matt has received five Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation New Play Commissions; the most recent is an in-progress science musical with playwright Anna Ziegler.

Matt has had television and film projects developed for Fox, USA, TBS, Warner Bros, CBS, EOne, and others and has been in writers’ rooms for shows for AMC, Sony, Netflix, and others. Matt wrote the songs for Season 3 of Kevin Christopher Snipes’ hit Spotify/Gimlet podcast series The Two Princes. He was a writer for Netflix Animation’s upcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptation, for which he also co-wrote the pilot with Oscar-winner Taika Waititi. Matt has worked as a story consultant on projects for Waititi, Lynn Nottage, Netflix Features, and Lucasfilm. He’s currently co-writing a pilot for AMC. Matt lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jenna Hymes and their two daughters.

Meet the Director:

Adrian Cerrato is an actor and director in the greater Seattle area. He previously directed an all Latine production of The Glass Menagerie with Heart Repertory Theatre. He has also assistant-directed in a few productions, including Across a Little Red Marker and Sweet & Hot. In addition to directing, he has also acted in many theaters in the area, including Burien Actors Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Secondstory Repertory, and many others. Adrian received his BA in Drama from the University of Washington.

Meet the Stage Manager:

Maggie Larrick (she/her) was initially sucked into the theater vortex to paint sets for a high school play, which led to acting, directing, design, and more at Seattle-area theaters, including Triad Ensemble Theatre, Theatre Schmeatre, and Latino Theatre Projects. She has directed eleven plays for BAT, starting with Dazzle Your Eyes for BAT’s Playwrights Festival and Art in 2006. Last season, she directed the acclaimed The Sandwich Ministry, and this season, The Coast Starlight. Previously, she co-directed 13 plays for BAT with her longtime collaborator and good friend Rochelle Flynn, including most recently On the Market and The Twelve Dates of Christmas. Recent costume designs include BAT’s The Play’s the Thing, On the Market, Tiny Beautiful Things, and Beginning.

The creative team:

Cyndi Baumgardner (she/her), props design

Rob Falk (he/him), light design

Jester Kamps (they/them), costumer

Maggie Larrick (she/her), set

Eric Dickman (he/him), set and music

Scott Barker (he/him), set build

Ellie Hoit (he/they/she), Stage Crew

Director’s Notes:

And what would the Spirit of the holidays be without terrifying the rich into being more charitable or learning some moral lesson about materialism and what’s truly important after all your stuff is stolen by some solitary green guy posing as Santa? But what about the people who created these stories, or could have (the first one at least)? What were their lives like? What kind of people could they have been? What circumstances surrounded their lives? And what does it take to make or encourage someone we love to change? And what would it take for a man like Ebenezer Scrooge, if he really lived, to change? Can it be done? And can we ever change ourselves? We’ve all heard the trite cliché about how “people don’t change” but as a person who’s made significant changes in his own life, I know this isn’t always true. And indeed I would argue that change is the only thing we can do, and it happens whether we want it to or no. People do seem to resist change to an extraordinary degree, despite the fact that it continues to happen all around us. Still if possible, how can we change the people in or lives? Does it have to be a trick, a deception, a humbug? Or can we just show them the “error of their ways”? Must they realize it on their own? Or does it demand outside help?

These are themes that are explored in this hilarious fictional account of how one of the most famous Christmas stories came to be. Every single person in this play is changing in their own way, their behavior, how they interact with their fellow man (or woman), and at times into the very thing they hope to change.

Wow, this is way too serious of a note section for a comedy! But there’s another point about change, it can be fun and funny too, hilarious even! And that’s what these three characters discover in this play. And in doing so, they implore us to realize that perhaps, change can really only come from within.

Artistic Director Notes:

I hate Holiday plays. There, I said it.

I mean it. Pleeeeeeease not one more take on The Christmas Carol. Spare me from “a deeper look” into some trivial aspect of that play.

Then, along came The Past, a Present Yet to Come. It was everything I should despise: a look at the backstory of A Christmas Carol, complete with Scrooge and Tiny Tim. Yet, there I was, laughing as I read.

I do not know if you will have a white Holiday, and I hope you do not, because it could hurt ticket sales, but I do know you will have some laughs this Holiday because you are joining us for The Past, a Present Yet to Come.

We had a lot of fun bringing The Past, a Present Yet to Come alive. I am sure you will have fun watching it unfold on stage. Our fantastic cast, the director, crew, and all of the creatives wish you the best of the Season!

Happy Holidays!

This production is sponsored by the following, and donors like YOU (DONATE HERE):