Tonight, the cast of this year’s Christmas Revels rehearses in the Scottish Rite Theater for the first time. What’ll the set look like this time? I love the surprise that first night when I walk into the theater!

The cast play people in a little Quebecois village, around 1810, just about the end of the romantic age of voyageurs. It’s a small town, and cold this time of year, but we’re dancing indoors to keep warm. Some of the men decide to hunt beaver for their pelts, hoping to get rich quick, and become . Weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, they’re tired, miserable, cold, and homesick, and not nearly as wealthy as they’d hoped. They want to go home for the New Year’s fete, happening *right now*, where their sweethearts must be off dancing with other men! One swears he would sell his soul to the devil if he could only get back for the party.

Well, the devil knows a good thing when he sees it, and summons the man for an interview. The bargain is struck, and the devil lends them his Chasse Gallerie — a flying canoe, which they use to get the hundreds of miles home in a single night.

But what of their souls? How will they outsmart the devil? Come see the show and find out!