In the 1991 film Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon Chancellor remarks to Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise, “You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” In 2007, residents of Minnesota learned that the same held true for the nineteenth century Charles Dickens when the Commedia Beauregard theater company in Saint Paul adapted the English novelist’s A Christmas Carol into Klingon as a fundraiser. The one-night performance was repeated the following three years in Minnesota, then for six years in Chicago. It has likewise been performed in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
A Klingon Christmas Carol retains the basic premise of the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet-to-come visiting miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the main protagonist of the story. While the mission of those ghosts was to show Scrooge the folies of his ways and change him into a better person, the Klingon version centers on SQuja’, who lacks the courage and honor that is so vital to Klingon culture. By the end of the two-act play, SQuja’ likewise sees the error of his ways after having been visited by the ghosts of Kahless past, present, and yet-to-come.
“The way I look at it, it’s almost an inversion of your typical Christmas Carol-type story,” Nick D’Alberto – who portrayed SQuja’ at the Lit Live performance in Simi Valley, just outside Los Angeles – told Broadway World in 2017. “Instead of learning the value of compassion and caring for your fellow man, you are learning the true value of killing people and taking their stuff.”
Conceived by Christopher Kidder-Mostrom and Sasha Warren on a lark, the pair wrote the script in English and then handed it off to Laura Thurston, Bill Hedrick, and Christopher Kidder-Mostrom for translation into Klingon. The play was then expanded in 2010, with new content and translations by Chris Lipscombe, a member of the Klingon Language Institute. The various productions of A Klingon Christmas Carol included English subtitles, and it is considered the first theater production to be performed in Klingon.
“I knew it would all be in Klingon, but I guess I wasn’t able to conceive what a massive undertaking it would be,” Nick D’Alberto noted. “It’s been really challenging, learning a whole new language in two months.” To assist the actors, co-writer Christopher Kidder-Mostrom flew to Los Angeles for a weekend-long Klingon language seminar. “There was a three-hour Saturday night session and then a six-hour Sunday session, teaching the basics of the language, playing Klingon Monopoly, splitting our cast into teams and doing Klingon language games, and everything he could possibly think of to teach our cast the language,” producer Kaelia Winterstein explained to Broadway World.
In 2015, A Klingon Christmas Carol returned to its Minnesota birthplace for performances during the month of December courtesy of the St. Paul’s Mounds Theater. Annual productions then continued for the next three years. When the script became unavailable for licensing in 2019, the theater troupe was still determined to maintain their Star Trek-themed Christmas tradition, and a brainstorming session resulted in the adaptation of another holiday staple into Klingon, the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life.
Co-written by Bill Stiteler, Brian Watson-Jones, Tim Uren, and Tim Wick with translations by Chris Lipscombe, It’s an Honorable Life takes the basic premise of the original and turns it on its head, just as had been done with A Klingon Christmas Carol. Whereas George Bailey contemplates suicide in It’s a Wonderful Life and is visited by a guardian angel after his friends and family pray for divine intervention, the friends and family of Klingon Bailey pray for him to have an honorable death. The Bailey of It’s an Honorable Life believes he has been cheated out of the Klingon rite of dying in battle when he is hired as a teacher for young warriors.
Instead of a guardian angel, this Bailey is visited by the god-like Q from the Q Continuum, who shows him what life would have been like for his family and friends if he had achieved an honorable death in his youth. In addition to Star Trek, the writers peppered the script for It’s an Honorable Life with references to other movie classics, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Christmas and the corresponding holiday season is a time of peace and good will, family traditions, and personal reflection. While Klingons don’t celebrate Christmas, they do have their own traditions centered on warrior culture and concepts of bravery and honor. While A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life reflect the meaning of life on Earth for humans, the same can be said for Klingons with A Klingon Christmas Carol and It’s an Honorable Life.
Anthony Letizia