Ebenezer to Ebenezer: On Truth, Witnessing, and Seeing Differently at A Christmas Carol

Alliance Theatre, November 16, 2025 Atlanta, Georgia

On Sunday, November 16, Windy and I moved from one Ebenezer to another. We began our morning at Ebenezer Baptist Church where Rev. Carl S. Young Jr. preached from John 20:24 through 29. This is the passage in which Thomas asks for proof of Christ’s resurrection. He says, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands.

Rev. Young reframed Thomas as a seeker of truth. He described this desire for evidence as a form of maturity, a way of separating what we want from what we need. And what we need most right now, he said, is truth. Truth that can withstand distortion. Truth protected by witnesses. Truth that is not afraid of scrutiny.

He reminded us that Jesus delayed the ascension so that history could be safeguarded by eyewitness testimony. That idea stayed with me. It followed me into the afternoon.

A few hours later Windy and I settled into our seats on the Coca Cola Stage at The Alliance Theatre for David H. Bell’s A Christmas Carol, directed by Amanda Watkins. I did not expect the sermon to trail behind me into Dickens, but it did. It shaped how I watched the performance and how I felt it working inside my body.

1843 to 2025. A Story Traveling Across Time and Power

I could not watch this production without remembering that Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in London in 1843. This was an antebellum period in the United States, twenty two years before the abolition of slavery. The novella emerged inside a British empire sustained through colonial economies. Meanwhile, the United States was still operating through the labor of enslaved Black people.

Now this story appears in 2025 Atlanta. A city shaped by Reconstruction, civil rights leadership, Black political and economic influence, and ongoing disparities in wealth and incarceration. The performance arrives in a place where Black memory and Black embodiment cannot be separated from the landscape.

So when the production opened with a Black man being arrested and taken to debtor’s prison at the command of Scrooge, something in me paused. This storyline does not exist in Dickens. I checked. Someone added it.

Color blind casting might have informed the selection of actors. Yet the audience’s witnessing is not color blind. Not here. Not in Atlanta. Not in a place where the history of policing and criminalization continues to shape Black life.

When a Black Body Is Arrested on an Atlanta Stage

In this adaptation a man is imprisoned for debt. His family works to free him by selling fruits and vegetables. Scrooge eventually buys everything they have. His purchase secures the man’s release.

I found myself asking new questions.

Why was this storyline created.

What does it mean to introduce imprisonment into a story about moral transformation.

What changes when the imprisoned body is Black.

What happens when we view this scene inside a city shaped by the legacy of chain gangs, convict leasing, and contemporary incarceration.

Even without explicit commentary, the moment is thick with context. It is impossible for me to perceive it as neutral. I wondered whether the production intended to make a statement or whether meaning simply spilled into the scene from Atlanta’s landscape.

Then I wondered something deeper.

Do stories change because different bodies play the roles.

Or do we change as witnesses when we see certain bodies inhabiting familiar narratives.

Eyewitnessing as Transformation. Thomas and Scrooge

Both Thomas and Scrooge require evidence before they can transform. Thomas needs to see and touch Christ’s wounds.

Scrooge must witness the consequences of his choices. He is taken into the past, present, and future so that he can see the truth he has been unwilling to face.

Neither of them changes through argument.

Both change through embodied encounters with truth.

This made me wonder about my own witnessing.

When we watch a performance, whose truth are we being asked to encounter.

And whose truth do we project onto the bodies in front of us.

Windy watched the show with full attention. She noticed details that did not occur to me. She asked questions afterward that opened new pathways in my thinking. I realized that we were watching the same story through different archives. Her archive is still forming. Mine carries layers of history, memory, and Atlanta’s complicated past.

What do children inherit from the stories we place them in front of.

And how do they learn to read the world differently from us.

How Do We Hold Stories in Our Bodies

When we left the theatre I realized I had more questions than answers. This is becoming a pattern in my Field Notes writing, and maybe that is the point.

Performance raises questions that research cannot resolve.

How do performers hold history in their bodies when they take on roles never meant for them.

How do audiences read meaning onto Black bodies even when race is not written into the script.

What does it mean to insert the imprisonment of a Black man into a Victorian narrative produced during the height of colonial expansion.

What does the moment reveal about the limits of color blind casting.

How do our own embodied archives shape what feels possible or impossible onstage.

I am learning that preservation is not only about materials and documents. It is also about the meanings that rise inside us when we watch someone else move through a story. These meanings often exceed the script. They exceed the intention of the production. They exceed the frameworks we bring with us.

The archive is not only the program Windy carried in her hands. It is also the widening of her eyes. The shift in my breath. The tension in the room when a Black man is taken away by officers. These things cannot be cataloged in a traditional sense, but they can be witnessed.

Maybe witnessing is a form of preservation.

Ending With Questions Instead of Answers

I am left with questions that feel more important than conclusions.

What stories shift when a Black body enters the frame.

How do we honor performances that create meaning through presence.

What do we owe to the moments that challenge our expectations.

How do we preserve questions that do not resolve.

Rev. Young said that truth is what we need most.

And truth requires witnesses.

On this Sunday, from Ebenezer to Ebenezer, Windy and I witnessed something that asked us to see differently. I am not sure that I understand everything that happened on that stage. But I know that it asked me to pay attention. I know that it raised questions that I will carry for a long time.

And maybe that is the work of the radical archive.

Not to answer every question.

But to honor the ones that refuse to let us go.

Selected Performers of Color

The following performers contributed to the emotional and interpretive texture of this production. Their work shaped many of the questions explored in this Field Notes entry.

• Thomas Neal Antwon Ghant

  Tom Watkins, Mr. Fezziwig, Topper, Ensemble

• Andrew Goodall

  Understudy Lamplighter, Fouquet, Matthew Watkins, Ensemble

• Christopher Hampton

  Bob Cratchit, Mr. Pritchitt, Ensemble

• Soleia Howington

  Melinda Cratchit, Child Dick Wilkins, Child Fret, Want, Ensemble

• Brad Raymond

  Ghost of Christmas Present, Ensemble

• Dane Troy

  Fred, Dick Wilkins, Ensemble

• Adam Washington

  Lamplighter, Fouquet, Ensemble

  Understudy Ghost of Christmas Present, Tom Watkins, Mr. Fezziwig, Topper, Ensemble