From Santa to Scrooge: Tom Roberts delivers Christmas memories on stage and off

The plan had been to bring in a professional actor from outside Sioux Falls.

As The Premiere Playhouse leaders prepared to produce their most professional production yet, “A Christmas Carol,” they thought they’d found their Ebenezer Scrooge —  the actor who originated the Crispin Whittell version of the Charles Dickens classic at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

“He’d done it eight years in a row,” director Lary Etten said. “We knew we’d get a lot of publicity, and he already knew the script.”

But as Christmas 2021 approached, the actor got “a much better-paying gig on the East Coast and had to step away,” Etten said. “That left us, like, what can we do?”

Etten, who came to Sioux Falls more than 40 years ago from Chicago, originally relocated to help renovate the Orpheum Theater, where “A Christmas Carol” now shows annually and runs this year through Dec. 23.

“As a director in Chicago, when would I have had the chance to do that?” he said. “But I didn’t know what level of talent they’d have.”

One of the first people he met, Tom Roberts, answered that question. And he instantly came to mind decades later as Etten searched for a new Scrooge.

When they met in the early 1980s, “he was really young and had just come out of college,” Etten said. “But I thought, ‘Wow, this is someone I want to work with again.’ He has a lot of basic, innate talent … and that has only continued.”

But by 2021, it had been at least a decade since Roberts, one of few to make a living in Sioux Falls acting professionally, had been on stage. A new generation of community theater leaders didn’t know him. Etten knew it wouldn’t matter.

At auditions, “he just knocked it out of the park,” Etten said. “And I truly, in my heart of hearts, knew he could. I knew he would be the best choice.”

Etten “convinced me,” Roberts said. “I wasn’t even sure I could do it anymore.”

This week, Roberts takes the Orpheum Theater stage as Scrooge for the third year of a three-year agreement with an open-ended option to extend.

And, in maybe the best testament to his acting ability: Off stage, Roberts and his work are about as “un-Scrooge-like” as it gets.

Fitting role

Roberts grew up on a farm south of Ipswich, then moved to “the big city of Aberdeen” when he was 12. In high school, a teacher encouraged him to try theater, and “the bug bites you, and suddenly you’re involved pretty heavily,” he said.

After college at Northern State University, he and his wife, Tammy, moved to the Twin Cities for a short time “but were very disillusioned,” he said. “We found we were working all the time and really had no time to be involved in what we wanted to do, so we moved back to Sioux Falls, and I got involved in community theater and that led to doing professional theater.”

He did commercial work and toured the Midwest with a performing group before coming back to Sioux Falls as a self-employed independent actor doing one-man shows, commercials and working with the South Dakota Arts Council as a teaching artist.

“I was making a career out of acting in South Dakota,” he said. “I was one of the only ones. I wasn’t making lots of money, but at least I could say I was doing it as a full-time job.”

And that led him to an artist visit in northern South Dakota one December night that changed everything.

“I was trying to head home to Sioux Falls and got as far as the Summit exit truck stop,” Roberts said.

A blizzard took hold. The roads closed. And his wife called.

She was directing a children’s Christmas program at a church and asked if he could write a story for it.

Overnight, stranded in his van, Roberts wrote.

“It was called ‘Twas the Night Before Christ,’ and it was my own rhyming version of the Christmas story but for baby Jesus,” he said. “They shared it at church, and over the years, they said we should turn it into a book.”

More than 20 years ago, that’s what they did. The couple didn’t have to think long to decide who should benefit from such a book.

When Tammy Roberts served as president of the South Dakota Advertising Federation, the organization had held a Christmas party benefiting Children’s Home Society. Roberts “got volunteered” to play Santa Claus.

“And that’s when I met the kids for the first time,” he said. “You only have to meet them once for them to make an impression on you.”

They started talking to friends about publishing the book, “and it started taking on a life of its own,” he said. “People said, ‘If you’re doing it for Children’s Home, we want to help.’”

They sold 3,000 copies of “‘Twas the Night Before Christ” in three weeks and raised $52,000 that first year.

“And we thought, ‘Maybe we should continue this,’” Roberts said. “And here we are 21 years and eight Christmas books later, and we’ve sold 60,000 books.”

That’s how a modestly paid professional actor now known as Scrooge has helped raise $1.6 million for kids in need.

“People believe in the mission behind it,” Roberts said.

Becoming Scrooge

By day, Tom and Tammy Roberts now both hold roles with Children’s Home Society – and have for years. She’s a development officer, and he’s an external communications coordinator – a new title this year after 15 years as an event coordinator overseeing a major fundraiser.

“I’m at the age I wanted to reduce my hours and focus more on discussing the mission of Children’s Home, so I do a lot of that,” said Roberts, who is now 66. “I go out and get in front of church groups, community groups, service clubs and talk about the mission of Children’s Home.”

Come November, though, life increasingly is consumed by “A Christmas Carol” for Roberts, whose role is so pivotal to the story he’s on stage nearly the entire production.

“Each year, it gets a little more challenging. I have to prepare myself, almost condition myself,” he said. “I’m one of the only actors who starts wearing my costume several weeks before opening because I wear so many layers, many of which are wool. You’re under hot lights running around the stage, and it can sap your energy.”

Still, “it’s a character I enjoy very much,” Roberts said. “The characters and the story itself are such an important reminder to people this time of year … and we as humans need reminders. We get caught up in so much of our lives, the busyness – especially around the holidays – and negativity happening in the world.”

Scrooge got caught up in it too, he continued. A hard upbringing and a career that brought financial success without personal fulfillment led him to a place where he struggled to see the good in the world.

“There’s good out there if we look for it,” Roberts said. “That’s the message I get and I hope audiences get.”

As an actor, Roberts “is almost unlimited in what he can do,” Etten said. “He can do comedy. He can do drama. He can do pathos. He can do emotional moments and be on the fringe of physical comedy, and there aren’t many actors who have that kind of a range and are more than competent in all those aspects. Tom is a rare actor who can find the emotional heart of a character, the human foibles, the humanity of the man. He can see how the nasty and negative side of where Scrooge came from to get to the level of Scrooge we know and dislike.”

The role is the acting equivalent “of running a marathon,” Etten continued. “He’s on stage almost the entire show, beginning to end, runs everything. But more important is the arc of the character from where Scrooge starts to where he ends up. The show, in gradual, temperamental shifts, is really a tough thing to pull off, and he does it amazingly.”

While this year’s show has many returning cast members, “about a third are newbies, and many of them had never worked with him, and some had not seen the production, and you could just see them go, ‘Oh my God, he’s amazing,’” Etten said.

“And he sets an amazing work ethic at rehearsals. He teaches young actors by demonstrating how he comes prepared and deals comfortably and kindly with anyone who has questions or who he works with on stage. He’s a paragon, I think, of actors in this area.”

This will be Etten’s final run as director of the show. Whether it will be Roberts’ final appearance remains to be seen.

“I had some health issues this fall that made me think, should I be doing it,” he said. “I’m at an age where I have to reevaluate year to year. Ask me next year and I’ll tell you.”

While the entire production is elevated – pandemic-related funding allowed the community theater to purchase a professional set, lighting and costumes for it – it’s Roberts’ performance that resonates the deepest, Etten said.

“He makes such an indelible impression in that role that it’s the first and foremost thing people talk about when they talk about the show,” he said. “Because he’s entirely believable from beginning to end.”

After Christmas, which Roberts spends quietly with family in Sioux Falls, there’s already an appointment on the books to shave Scrooge’s beard and take some well-deserved rest.

Then, it’s back to supporting kids in need of homes and healing, leaving the sort of legacy his signature character calls on all of us to strive for.

“Like Scrooge, even though we have a lot of negativity in the world, if we take the time to be more aware and look differently, we will find there’s a lot of good in the world,” Roberts said. “And a lot of good ways we can help.”