Photo courtesy of the Alliance Theatre
Over the decades, tens of thousands of Atlantans saw actor Chris Kayser in his signature role as Ebenezer Scrooge in the annual Alliance Theatre production of A Christmas Carol. And while he played the part first at Atlanta’s Academy Theatre and then for 16 seasons at the Alliance, he never tired of playing Charles Dickens’ signature skinflint.
“People always ask, ‘How can you play this every year?’” Kayser reflected during a 2015 interview. “I always answer, ‘Easy.’ It’s an all-star cast, you get to work with amazing people, and just headlining a show at the Alliance Theatre is a great thing. Every year you hope you’re a year better at being an actor.”
That ever-present modesty is a recurring theme in the tributes being posted across social media this week as Atlanta’s theater community mourns the loss of the Atlanta acting icon, who died December 3 at age 75 after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer. Last month, Kayser was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Atlanta’s Suzi Bass Awards.
Photo courtesy of the Alliance Theatre
If you went to see a theatrical production in metro Atlanta over the last 40 years, it’s highly likely you’ve seen Kayser at work. He was in The Light in the Piazza at Theatrical Outfit; routinely performed in French at Theatre du Reve; appeared in dozens of Shakespeare plays over 20 years at Georgia Shakespeare; was in everything from Quills to Superior Doughnuts at the Horizon Theatre; Swindlers, Mamma Mia!, and Wit at the Aurora Theatre; and Sailing to Byzantium, Hometown Boy, and Skintight at Actor’s Express. But he was most frequently onstage at the Alliance, where in addition to A Christmas Carol, Kayser appeared in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Glengarry Glen Ross, Ever After, and most recently in Everybody, where he was co-directed by Alliance Theatre’s artistic director Susan Booth, just before she departed to become the artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.
“Chris was the heart of our theater community because he cared for everyone,” Booth recalled December 5 during a phone call from Chicago. “There’s no one who worked with him who wasn’t madly in love with him. For good or ill, we work in a field where people can be competitive, and being competitive can make people not always support one another. You ask, ‘Why did he get that job? Why didn’t I get that job?’ Chris didn’t participate in that. He loved getting to do the work that he did, and he was happy for everyone else who got to do that work as well.”
“Chris was arguably one of the most interesting people I have ever met,” remembers Atlanta actor-director David de Vries, Kayser’s friend and fellow tennis player, who directed the actor and appeared alongside him on stage for decades. “It was because he was fearless. When he did Quills, he was buck naked onstage for two hours. He would dive into acting in French. At the same time, he was humble, transparent about his fears and his vulnerabilities. He was an actor’s actor. He was a great man who played great men. He had a depth of soul that he would just dive right into and anchor to whatever character he was playing, whether it was Richard II or Scrooge.”
Decades ago, as a young man preparing to play what would become his seasonal signature role, Kayser worked with iconic Atlanta actor and Academy Theatre founder Frank Wittow to physically transform himself into Ebenezer Scrooge. “We did breathing patterns, body, facial mask, voice, everything,” Kayser recalled in 2015. “We did an exercise, something silly like filling up a bookcase, but doing it as Scrooge would fill it. What his hands meant, why he’s kind of protecting his genitals and yet his jaw is stuck out, expecting blows and physically maneuvering his body in order to make himself a small target. That all helped me transform and kept me from acting in any kind of a young way.” Kayser added, laughing: “Later on, of course, I got to stop wearing the old-age makeup! I finally aged into the role.”
“What made Chris a good actor is that he tuned in, he listened to you, and what you fed him is what he reacted to,” recalls actress Terry Burrell, who played the Queen of France opposite Kayser’s king in the 2019 Alliance production of the musical Ever After. “He had such a great sense of that, and also a great sense of timing. It was perfect.”
Originally in the show, the king and queen had a second-act duet that was later cut. While not primarily known as a singer, Kayser was crestfallen. “He was so looking forward to it,” Burrell remembers. “He sang just as he talked. It was smooth. He approached it as he did everything—as a storyteller.”
In the summer of 2022, a visibly annoyed Kayser stopped Susan Booth in the hall at the Alliance prior to the production of Everybody. The ensemble piece requires its cast to draw cards at the start of the show each night, and the person who draws the Everybody role has to take the journey from life to death in real time onstage. Booth had been told of Kayser’s cancer diagnosis. “He asked me, ‘Did I piss you off or something?’” she recalls. “‘You’re not going to bring me in for Everybody?’ I said, ‘Chris, I know something about you, and you know this play. This play demands that you deal with your own mortality on a nightly basis.’ And his response was, ‘Right! So I’d be brilliant for this!’”
During the show’s first table read, Kayser drew the Everybody card. The climax of the part culminates in the actor running around the theatre until exhausted, screaming, “My body is failing me! I’m angry at my body!” In the moment, Kayser, forever a physical actor, leapt out of his chair and ran the circumference of the rehearsal space yelling the dialogue.
Recalls Booth: “Everyone in that room who has loved this man for decades was just in puddles. Chris was full-out committing. It was breathtaking. But it was so Chris. He derived joy from the words, from the liveness of it, from the people he was working alongside. It was always, ‘I get to do this for a living!’ His life was his work, and his work gave him profound joy.”
In a public Facebook message posted Wednesday, Kayser’s daughter, actress and choreographer Noelle Kayser, announced that a celebration of his life will be held in the new year. She added: “Father, how lucky am I to have your eyes so I can see you every time I look in the mirror. Like you always said to me—I love you perfectly. I love you completely. I’ll see you on the ancestral plane, Pops.”
Photo courtesy of the Alliance Theatre
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