Rebecca Morton
Bio
An older Gen X-er, my childhood was surrounded by theatre people. My adulthood has been surrounded by children, first my students, then my own, and now more students! You can also find me on Medium here: https://medium.com/@becklesjm
Stories (61/0)
Chapter 8 of Days of A Christmas Carol Past: Non-Traditional Casting
The first non-storybook version of the Cinderella story my daughter ever saw was The Wonderful World Of Disney’s 1997 TV movie, starring Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as her Fairy Godmother. Bernadette Peters played her stepmother. Whoopi Goldberg played the prince’s mother and Victor Garber played his father. Cinderella’s stepsisters were each a different color.
By Rebecca Morton5 months ago in Chapters
My Best Christmases So Far Were the Ones With Strangers
Christmas 1991 was going to be depressing. I was living at graduate school, and my father was out of town for his job. Only my mother was in our family home for Christmas, and because of bad winter weather and train schedules, I planned to wait until Christmas morning to travel to see her.
By Rebecca Morton5 months ago in Confessions
Chapter 7 of Days of A Christmas Carol Past: 1980sTeen Limbo in the Greenroom
After that second production of my dad’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, I never acted on stage again — not in this or any other production. There is no dramatic reason for this. I just lost interest all of a sudden, a normal event for most teenagers.
By Rebecca Morton5 months ago in Chapters
Chapter 6 of Days of A Christmas Carol Past, My Thirty Year Relationship With Victorian Ghosts
I had it bad for Bob Cratchit, or rather, the actor who played him. About two weeks before we, the cast of that 1980 stage production of A Christmas Carol, were sidetracked by the John Lennon tragedy, I was falling in love. Days before I turned fourteen, the object of my crush was inappropriate to say the least.
By Rebecca Morton5 months ago in Chapters
I Lied to Santa Claus!
It wasn’t like me at all. To lie to anyone was not in my nature, or so I thought. By age seven, I had already established myself as a confirmed goodie two-shoes. Kids in my class at school called me “Smarty Pants”, because I got the answers right and raised my hand a lot.
By Rebecca Morton5 months ago in Confessions
Norman Lear's Most Complex Character: Edith Bunker
Norman Lear died this week age 101. Living that long is, in itself, is an accomplishment, but to us watching American television in the 1970s, he was the creator, writer, producer of every other sitcom we watched, including All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Chico and The Man, and One Day at a Time.
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Geeks
Chapter 5 of Days of A Christmas Carol Past, My Thirty Year Relationship With Victorian Ghosts
“It’s so sad! I can’t believe it.” It was my mom talking to my sister in the hall outside my bedroom door, so early that cold morning, it was still dark. My thoughts went right to my dad in Eastern Europe.
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Chapters
Chapter Four of Days of A Christmas Carol Past, My Thirty Year Relationship With Victorian Ghosts
If you read Chapter Three about my experiences involving stage productions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, you know it ended on a rather down note. But most of my memories of that 1976 production in Milwaukee, Wisconsin are happy ones of nervous excitement mixed with live orchestra music, makeup, costumes and, hiding behind it all, Christmas!
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Chapters
Chapter 3 of Days of A Christmas Carol Past, My Thirty Year Relationship With Victorian Ghosts
In Charles Dickens' 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Past makes Ebenezer Scrooge watch his younger self break up with his fiancée, Belle, Ebenezer’s torturous regret begins, but it does not end there. The Ghost then makes him watch “another Christmas” in which a happy Belle, now married to another man and surrounded by happy children, has forgotten all about Ebenezer. In the 1976 stage production of A Christmas Carol I acted in, I portrayed one of Belle’s happy children.
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Chapters
No, That's Not a Run-On Sentence!
I first noticed the confusion about four years ago, when my fellow online graduate students were reading an essay I wrote, and they left comments accusing me of using run-on sentences, though there were no actual run-ons in my essay.
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Writers
Days of A Christmas Carol Past, My Thirty Year Relationship With Victorian Ghosts, Chapter Two
There was a “Bah” cast and a “Humbug” cast of children in my dad’s 1976 Milwaukee production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. If you know the story, you know that Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas and says “Bah, humbug!” anytime anyone mentions the holiday.
By Rebecca Morton6 months ago in Chapters
- Top Story - November 2023