'You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!'

The lines, the scenes and the characters are virtually sewn into the fabric of the holiday season.

The Red Ryder BB gun. The pink rabbit onesie pajamas. The tongue stuck the frozen pole.

“You’ll shoot your eye out” and “Oh, fudge” are pieces of the American lexicon.

Just about everyone, everywhere, in every walk of life has flipped the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story” on their television at some time in the month of December. If you have cable television it’s almost impossible to miss — it’s run for 24 straight hours from Christmas Eve into Christmas Day for nearly two decades on either TNT or TBS.

This month, Whitefish Theatre Co. is bringing the movie to life with a stage adaptation of the holiday classic at the O’Shaughnessy Center for three weekends, starting tonight.

DIRECTOR REBECCA Schaffer, like most of the rest of the cast, flashes back to her childhood at the first mention of “A Christmas Story.”

“I remember it as a favorite of my dad’s,” she said. “I was excited to connect to the story theatrically in that way because my dad will get to come out and see this. To be able to share this story, as it has been processed through my brain, with him when we shared all of these memories together.”

“I’ve told my physical therapist, I’ve told my doctor, I’ve told my dentist and every single one of them says ‘oh yeah, Red Ryder and the BB gun,’” Scott Plotkin, who plays grown-up Ralphie and acts as the show’s narrator, said. “They all know the story because they’ve seen that movie because it was just on every year and people would see it and it became that kind of family tradition.”

Memories, as it turns out, are of particular significance throughout this production.

In the stage version, the most visible character is the narrator (Plotkin) who travels through his memory to share the story of one Christmas season. The narrator is a near-constant presence on stage while the other characters — his younger self, his family, his classmates — act out his recollections, unaware of his presence.

The play takes fantastical diversions from within his memory several times, including a wild shootout in his childhood home as Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB gun fend off a rampaging gang of desperados.

“This show is, to me, it’s about memory and how we tell the stories of our memories,” Schaffer said. “And how the stories also shape our memories and change our memories. This is not necessarily a realistic, kitchen-sink drama set in 1941. It is all of these pieces of Ralph’s life that he is bringing into this time and this place, and his childhood and this pivotal moment.”

For Plotkin, who lived in California for many years before moving to the valley last year, the unique role as narrator is something new after 25 years of acting in community theater productions.

“I’ve had big parts before but what’s different about this one is the fact that so much of what I’m saying or talking about is sort of laying the foundation of what’s going to happen,” he said. “So I’ve got to make sure I get my story straight and the lines are cogent and coherent so that the audience gets what’s going on.”

THE FACT that the story is so well known can create some challenges, but cast members — even young Ralphie, played by 13-year-old Henry Spradlin — relished the opportunity to bring a favorite movie to the stage.

“It’s actually really nice,” Spradlin said. “It’s kind of fun because I can watch the movie and then see how my character is different from the one in the movie.”

The script stays mostly true to the movie script, so there is a tongue stuck to a pole and there is Ralphie getting soap in his mouth and wearing pink bunny pajamas (what Spradlin called his favorite scene). But a few diversions do still pop up. One of the largest is the character Esther Jane (13-year-old Taylor Gray), who plays a classmate after Ralphie’s affection in the play.

“In the movie, Esther Jane has zero lines so I don’t really know what her character is so I get to play with it a lot,” Gray said. “But it’s also kind of hard because I have the characters set in my mind, what they should be like, so then it’s cool to see what the other actors do, having seen the movie before, and playing with that, too.”

Both Spradlin and Gray have been part of Whitefish Theatre Co. productions before, including together previously under Schaffer’s direction in “The Little Prince.”

“The kids do a great job,” Schaffer said. “They’re so smart and they’re young artists. They’re not necessarily just kids. I think the more responsibility you give them and more you talk to them like ‘hey, this is your choice, your imagination’ the better they perform because they want that responsibility.

“They’re people like all of us who are trying to do their thing and find their way and find their passion and find their purpose, and when you give them that level of responsibility to perform it’s a way of them finding their purpose.”

The 22-member cast includes a number of youngsters, from Ralphie’s friends Flick (Liam Lohr) and Schwartz (Kai Nash) to Ralphie’s younger brother, Randy (Badge Busse), who wobbles around the stage in his over-stuffed winter coat.

“There’s a lot of laughs,” Plotkin said. “But I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have adults who are going to see so much of their own families and growing up years ago and grandparents, and so many of the jokes are adult kinds of jokes they’re going to get, they’re going to understand and laugh like crazy.”

“I think for kids my age, they will have watched the movie and I think they’ll think this will be funny, too,” Spradlin added. “I just think it will bring (them) back to the movie and make them feel like they can’t wait for Christmas. I know I feel, all through the rehearsal process, I just feel like Christmas is so much closer than it is.”

“A CHRISTMAS Story” opens tonight with a sneak preview show at the O’Shaughnessy Center at 7:30 p.m. The play runs three straight weekends, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from Dec. 4-18. The Friday and Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m. with the Sunday matinees at 4 p.m.

Tickets are $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and $10 for students with reserved seating.

Tickets can be purchased at the O’Shaughnessy Center box office — 1 Central Ave. in Whitefish — or by calling 406-862-5371. Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and one hour before performance times. Tickets are also sold online at www.whitefishtheatreco.org. For tonight’s sneak preview, all tickets are $10 and sold only at the box office.

Andy Viano is the Entertainment Editor at the Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at (406) 758-4439 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com.