The Children’s Theatre’s 2025 production of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas! Photo: Glen Stubbe Photography
Children’s Theatre Company brings Dr. Seuss’s beloved holiday classic back to the stage.
Rehearsals are underway at the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis for the upcoming production of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, an original musical adaptation directed by company veteran Dean Holt. The story is based on the classic holiday book by Dr. Seuss, and is set in the festive and snowy town of Whoville. When the cantankerous Grinch tries to ruin the local Whos’ Christmas celebrations by stealing their decorations, food and gifts, the town’s reaction teaches him a valuable lesson about kindness.
This season, Maple Grove’s own Brandon Brooks has been cast as an understudy for the titular Grinch and Old Max. We connected with the actor to learn more about the upcoming Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which runs from November 3, 2026, through January 3, 2027.
Brandon Brooks is an understudy for the titular Grinch and Old Max in the 2026–2027 production of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas! Photo: Brandon Brooks
What has been one of the most exciting elements about being a part of this production? I love getting to see all the little things that change every year—it all adds up and keeps this whole show alive and growing. We have actors who have been in the show before who are moving into principal roles; we have kids who have seen this show before who now get to be in it; we have others who had no concept of what this was all going to look like who get to experience for the first time from within the show. All that movement is creating a natural shift to how the show looks and feels. And all the while, we try to imbue [the show] with the same spirit and keep the focus and the artistic goal the same as it’s ever been, going all the way back to the book and the cartoon. In that way, it’s sort of like sending a different train down the same tracks—we have a familiar destination in mind for our audience, but the little subtleties of how that journey changes along the way are what make revisiting the show year after year so rewarding.
Do you have a favorite memory from the rehearsal process so far? There’s an extended audience participation/improvisation section during one of the numbers in the second act, where the Grinch goes out into the audience and wreaks a little havoc. There are generally some younger, contemporary references that sneak their way in. It’s a really interesting challenge to build that sequence, because you have to figure out what’s going to be really, really funny to a mob of 700-plus middle schoolers seeing one of our student matinees. That’s hard to quantify, and it might change completely between the rehearsal room and actually getting onstage with a crowd. It’s fun to have all the kids who are in the show take a look at that scene and give us real-time feedback on what’s going to land and what’s going to completely bomb.
The Children’s Theatre’s Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas! has been a staple of the holiday season for years. Photo: Glen Stubbe Photography
What is one of your favorite lines or scenes, and why? I have a vivid memory of being in tech rehearsals for this show way back when and reaching a certain level of exhaustion towards the end of the week. Then this little mouse puppet comes out to look for leftover crumbs and has a squeaky little lament when it realizes the Grinch has taken everything. It’s the simplest little moment but at the time it had me in tears, laughing. It still gets a laugh out of me every year because of it!
How have you grown as a performer through working on this production? Well, almost the entirety of my time onstage has taken place between the first Grinch production I was in and this one. I played Young Max as a student actor back in 2012, just a couple years after starting to work at CTC for the first time. Getting to keep returning to this show as the years have gone on is such an interesting exercise. You get this really hands-on check-in with your own personality as a performer, and what’s changed about your process, by virtue of revisiting the same material at different parts of your life—especially now that I am taking on the perspective of understudying Old Max and the Grinch.
What do you hope the audience takes away from the show? I hope the audience is able to tell just how much the show means to the people who are putting it up. There are folks involved in this production who have done double-digit Grinches, and others who have roots in this show all the way back to the original 1994 production. We all have these favorite moments and traditions from inside the show, so we hope that feeling and spirit comes across and helps make this a tradition for the families who get to come back and see it every year.
Find tickets and showtimes at childrenstheatre.org.
Children’s Theatre Company
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