The retooling of a classic can be difficult to handle, but it seems that Lyle Burrow, assistant technical director for the theatre department, has a pretty good grasp on it.

Burrow is directing ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas for this year’s holiday play with a child friendly twist.

“It’s actually the writing of the poem and the story starts, ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring. Not even a mouse…” but it turns out there was a mouse,'” Burrow said. “She was stirring. In fact, she helped Clement Moore write the play.”

Burrow said the telling of the writing of the poem stays true to the message of the poem without exactly mimicking it.

“It’s a story actually about believing, inspiration and being inspired to believe in things,” he said. “As we grow up, we all have a tendency to not believe in Santa Claus anymore for one reason or another whether we saw Dad putting the presents under the tree or you saw Grandpa’s watch on Santa’s arm. We all find that there’s no such thing but we find later in life that if you start to look around there’s still out there.”

Twenty-five people auditioned for the six parts in the play, making casting a difficult for Burrow, but he narrowed it down and cast his group, stating that the main key to auditioning for a children’s show is creativity.

“If you  an audition and say, do three minutes of a Christmas story and they stumble through Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or something, and then somebody comes in and tells you about how they ate too many Reeses too early and he got up and puked all over the Christmas tree…somebody with some creativity and some life experience as opposed to someone that’s just trying to repeat something that they’ve heard over a thousand times in their life, then you’re going to choose the more creative people.”

The show has been running twice daily since Monday for children. Public performances will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday in Bud Walton Theatre. Prices are $1 for adults and fifty cents for children. There is no reserved seating.