Dale Ladouceur is infectiously charismatic, engaging, and unapologetically opinionated, which also helps her to make one hell of a ghost of Christmas future and Scrooge’s fiancé in Brass Monkey’s upcoming production of The Christmas Carol Project.

At one time, being on stage was something Ladouceur only dreamed of. It wasn’t until her 22nd birthday that fate would intervene. She was given a documentary that featured the instrument she plays today – a chapman stick, which basically looks like the neck of a guitar.

“Up until that point, I actually had only self-taught myself to play guitar, but I never really had a rapport with the instrument” she says.  “This is the instrument that made me an artist.”

Just like the wands choose the wizard in Harry Potter, the chapman stick chose Ladouceur. She took it on professionally and when The Christmas Carol Project started up 16 years ago, she was the first to sign on.

“Even then, I could see the parallels between our story and society,” Ladouceur offers when explaining what intrigued her to join. “Over the years, the production has grown organically. We even have Juno award-winning song writers involved.”

This version of The Christmas Carol Project is unlike any other performance you’ll see this holiday season. The story is told with very little dialogue and a narrator weaves the story through the music, but it is the sounds that tell the story. The full-costumed musicians assume certain characters from the Dickens’ classic.

“We’ve written the songs to tell the stories of those characters,” Ladouceur explains before mentioning what it means for her to take the stage. “There is something surreal about all of this. No matter what stage it is, you can’t help but enter a different realm of sorts -there’s a feeling or tone that there’s a job to do and I am very lucky to have that job.”

To catch Ladouceur in all her ghostly glory, grab tickets for the 8 p.m. performances on Dec. 28 and 29 from the Fringe Theatre Box Office, fringetheatre.ca or by calling 780-409-1910.