A Christmas play that premiered on radio in 2011, is making its way to the stage for the first time.

Rat a tat Man, which can still be heard on the radio during the holiday season, will be at the Grand Theater in Frankfurt.

We had a chance to learn more about the play and talk with some of the artists, bringing the play to life more in our Arts and Culture segment we call tapestry.

I was listening to, the radio.

Gloria Stephane was on there playing, turned the beat around, turn the beat around.

He goes, rat tat tat tat tat tat on the drum.

So he must be a rat a tat man.

That was just, you know, you talk to yourself when you're driving down the road in your car.

I thought, well, I guess when he was a kid, he was a little drummer boy.

There's a story about him, and I couldn't get that out of my head.

Oliver Denton, the character that I'm playing, is a very tortured kind of soul.

And he was nine years old.

He was playing his drum.

And, he believes that he heard gunshots behind his drum.

And his drum may have masked som So he's kind of lived with that for the last 30 years, and he keeps reliving those memories over and over in his head.

And I thought it was kind of unique to dig into a character like that.

So this is my first acting gig.

It was my first audition, actually.

I have a little bit of experience being on stage.

I was the lead singer of a local rock band for a while.

We started when I was 12.

So this is a lot more memorization, a lot more hitting cues.

It's been a little challenging in that sense.

Before, all I had to do is remember lyrics, and that was it.

So it's been fun, though.

I've really appreciated the challenge.

It's been different, and I like it.

The characters in this play, they really bring it off.

They read the script.

They absorb the roles.

They know the the magnitude, the weight that this play carries.

Touchy subjects here and there.

I want a story that has some substance to it that has some interest to it.

And this play has that, the storyline has that.

And, and it was really an honor to get to collaborate with Charlie to, to expand it and turn, you know, what was a 45 minute, radio drama into an hour, 45 minute, stage play, the opening scene of the movie or the stage play of It's a Wonderful Life, is the George Bailey character literally standing on a bridge, contemplating ending his own life.

You know, that's the opening of of the play, of the story.

And if you look at like A Christmas Carol, you know, the Ebenezer Scrooge character has a scene where he's standing over his unborn body in a grave.

You know, when he's, you know, looking at the Ghost of Christmas yet to come.

So there's some pretty dark themes that happen in Christmas stories, but they all have a redemptive quality, and this one very much has a redemptive quality.

A lot of Christmas stories are dark.

All those things can have redemptive qualities even though they're dark.

So I think that's ultimately his character arc is just how does he find redemption and peace through this tortured existence that he's been living for the last 30 years?

Christmas for Oliver Dent.

And it wasn't about getting gifts.

It was about finding the truth.

Our story writes.

That man harkens back to 1969 as Oliver Dent settles in the fourth grade at Saint Michael's, Paris.

I've been a writer for 40 years, and it's nice to see somebody else say it out loud and commit to memory words.

I sat in my La-Z-Boy chair with a laptop, writing that maybe it's pretty good after all.

Maybe there is a story there to be told.

Maybe it's worth telling.

This is new.

I mean, audience has never seen this before.

And even if a lot of people have heard it as a radio drama, it's it's evolved a lot since then.

So it's going to be different than what they've heard.

And I feel, I guess a particular, a particular responsibility and pressure to do justice to the show.

On Charlie's behalf.

I mean, this is his baby.

You know, he wrote this more than 15 years ago and has wanted it to be a stage production for many years.

And, I felt an enormous amount of pressure to do it right to, to do it justice.

So I trust we will.

The show will run at the Grand Theater in Frankfurt from Thursday to Sunday.

Tickets are available online at the theater's website.