Tea with Mrs. Dickens

Catherine Dickens (Marci Diamond) shares favorite recipes of author /journalist/performer, Charles Dickens with her audiences in a one woman show. The most recent performance took place at the dickens Holiday Festival at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham,Massachusetts. (photo credit J. T. Turner)

The table is set for Catherine Dickens to discuss recipes of the Victorian Era(photo credit - Debbi Collar)

Penning her own pamphlet in the Victorian Era, Mrs. Charles Dickens found the time to share favorite recipes her husband with her readers. Marci Diamond and her partner, J. T. Turner created the script she has been performing for the past two years. Much research has gone into the re-creation, formation and character development of Catherine Dickens. Turner is also an actor. One of his many roles is performing as Charles Dickens. He is also an understudy for David Coffee who portrays Ebenezer Scrooge in the North Shore Music Theatre production of "A Christmas Carol." He can also be seen as "Fezziwig" on stage and one of the "gentlemen" in another scene.

Diamond and Turner used such sources as The British Museum and a book written by Dr. Lillian Nader," entitled The Other Dickens." Ideas about the show's creation were bounced off each other as they took walks along a beach, such as Charles and Catherine had once enjoyed.

A table, teacups and a chest of recipes set the stage at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham,Massachusetts. Catherine (Hogarth) Dickens stepped out before her audience in a Victorian dress and hat. She delighted in telling stories about her family (of ten children) and reading letters that had been written to her by Charles and some that she had written to her sisters about the earliest days of their courtship and marriage.

As Diamond was investigating and gaining more knowledge about Catherine Dickens, she also made a decision to try out some Victorian Era recipes. Admittedly, Diamond is a vegetarian who found that the dishes in Dickens day, " had quite a different taste." At an event for the Georgetown Historical Society, she followed Catherine Dickens recipe for Mince Pie, made with meat and made the current fearless version as well. As to another recipe she followed, she says it was similar to an apple crisp, "but the topping was quite dry."

Catherine Dickens, as portrayed by Marci Diamond, briefly mentions a few tragedies (within her show) that had once struck the Dickens household. One of them being the death of their 8 month old child. Diamond explains in a local coffee shop interview, that it was important to her to keep the script mainly to the happier times within the Dickens family than what was recorded later in the marriage that had survived 22 years.

Catherine Dickens was subjected to some harsh words by Charles Dickens. As to those early letters, "Catherine, on her deathbed, "told one of her daughters to give the letters to the museum because she "wanted the world to know he (Charles)" loved me once."

That love is evident in Diamond's role as his wife in "Tea With Mrs. Dickens," when she is sharing the stories and the letters with the audience.

Who, though, is the woman behind the character?

Marci Diamond, in her own role within her personal life includes a list of what she calls "life experiences' that have helped her "form other characters" within her work in the theatre on stage, in film or commercials. The same she believes is true when interacting with students.

"I student-taught U.S. History and Sociology classes at Waltham High in 1991, as part of my MA secondary teaching certification practicum (and my "pre-practicum"/observation was the prior year at Kennedy Middle School in Waltham). After completing my practicum, I accepted a full-time job at the domestic violence program where I had been volunteering since I was 19 (now called REACH Beyond Domestic Violence), and then went to Central America, and wound up in public health, and circus arts & acting, rather than returning to teaching high school/renewing my certification."

Diamond also considers herself an activist and is passionate about a variety of causes. "

"I went to Central America 1994-1995. I had taught local high school students at risk for dropping out, over 2 summers while I was in college, through the federally funded Summer Youth Employment and Training Program (sadly the feds no longer fund this program that provided job skills and experience as well as supporting school achievement and completion. 2 of the wonderful students were sisters who were refugees from the war in El Salvador. They and their family were so sweet and trying so hard to improve their situation and help others after so much war trauma and I got increasingly involved in the Central American solidarity movement. I decided to save what I could from my job at the domestic violence program and go on a delegation to El Salvador as an international electoral observer/monitor. This was during the first national elections at the close of the civil war, and international electoral monitors were requested by a human rights organization in San Salvador. I also wanted to first improve my Spanish which I had studied in school (but wasn't fluent), so I could be more useful, so went on my own to a Spanish school in the Guatemalan highlands that had a community service component for a few weeks before I would take buses from there to cross the border and meet the delegation in El Salvador. The community service project in Guatemala asked me to come back after the elections so I did so rather than return home, and stayed in Guatemala doing volunteer work (first at the Comedor Infantil, a women's collective providing nutrition to the children in the rural indigenous community and skills and support for their moms. I wrote a bilingual cookbook to raise funds for the project based on the recipes we cooked together there on a wood stove, for over 100 children a day. We also built latrines as well as composting bins for local families to improve hygiene and improve crop yield. Later I assisted a teacher of Spanish literacy/Spanish as a second language in another community who was working with the national literacy project - there we worked with indigenous "adults" (actually around 10-40 years old) who had very limited if any prior schooling or experience with reading/writing in their first (Mayan) language. I also volunteered at one point for a couple weeks in Managua, Nicaragua with a women's collective on their media project, researching how newspaper coverage of violence against women had changed (or not) over a 10 year period. In total, I was in Central America about a year and a half, with a few months of that in the middle back in the U.S. to get Emergency Medical Technician training, because I was being frequently called on to help with medical issues while in areas where there was not other medical care immediately available."

As to family life, she is the youngest of four sisters and recalls her earliest days as "snapshots of memories."She recalls her older sister singing to her and playing guitar. They (each f the sisters) also played with dolls" before she came along and would pose the dolls "into various bends" but "the dolls legs would break off." Her family was a gymnastic family and credit again goes to her sisters as "they would stretch me anomy legs did not break off." The early stretching by her sisters led training her body to be flexible and she is also known as a "contortionist" and enjoys time in the air on a trapeze. She holds the titles of actor, athlete, educator, and board member for community programs. She is founder of The Diamond Family Circus. She is the mother of co-director, Marisa Diamond who once told her she was being "selfish" if she did not share her athletic ability with others. " I walked into her classroom one day and heard " "My mom will do it." She then went up on the "lyra" and "I realized I was at home."

Although her biological daughter is Marisa, she considers herself a mother of two daughters. a and is proud of both and their accomplishments throughout the years. "Marisa is my biological daughter and cofounder of Diamond Family Circus. She is now 22 and a recent UMichigan graduate, performing, teaching, and doing video production at Circus Harmony at the City Museum in St. Louis.

Kristiane was a neighbor's child who we knew for many years, who came to live with us for about a year and a half when she was 17-18 when her family was having a lot of challenges and had moved out of the area, so I did serve as her foster parent ("informally", in that we didn't go through the system - she asked if she could stay with us for her senior year of high school, and her mom said that was fine ). She was able to graduate from high school (Marisa and I went to all her volleyball games etc!) and start college and now works on staff at a residential school. She and her now-husband, who live in Central MA, are still very much part of our family."

Another snapshot of early life as a performer, Diamond recalls being in her mother's arms following a local talent show. She and her sisters had sung "Teenager in Love" when a woman came up to her, smiled and said "You're such a little ham!" Diamond remembers "I burst into tears because I thought she was calling me a pig!"

Throughout the years and her many lifetime roles, Diamond has continued both acting and teaching. She is now with Aircraft Aerial Arts, a physical fitness program located at 14 Tyler Street in Somerville,Massachusetts (aircraft aerial arts.com) as well as Diamond Family Circus. (diamond circus.com).

More information on Diamond's extensive background and events or shows can be gathered at the links listed above.