Toby Veck, in flat cap and heavy wool, looking up toward the bell tower.
Anthology Productions presents
Charles Dickens’

The Chimes

In a season that demands us to be better, The Chimes dares you to believe again.

A Christmas fable·Dec 11–23, 2026·World Trade Center Portland

With gratitude to founding producer Ronni Lacroute

Reserve your seats
When

December 11–23, 2026Preview Dec 11 · Opening night Dec 12Doors 6:45 PM · show starts 7:30 PM65 minutes, no intermission

Where

World Trade Center Portland121 SW Salmon Street, PortlandAbout two hundred seats a night

Choose a performance

Donors and Society Members reserve first, with a private link or code. Have a code? Enter it here.

Everyone else: reservations open to the public in October. Join the list and you'll hear first.

December 2026
Friday, December 11

  • 7:30 PM PST · Preview

    Doors at 6:45 PM PST

    Pre-sale only — enter your code above to unlock

    Locked

Free to reserve, with a card on file. How reserving works

The StoryLondon, Christmas Eve, 1847

Believe again.

In a season that asks us to be better, The Chimes dares us to believe again.

Toby Veck is a London porter. Day after day, he stands beneath the bell tower and listens. He has a daughter he adores, a wedding to bless, and little else to his name.

When the world pushes him toward despair, the chimes carry him forward. Not to punish him. To restore his faith in people.

Charles Dickens wrote this story. Ben Tissell brings it to life, alone on stage, this December.

Toby Veck in half-light, jaw set, eyes lifted.
Toby Veck · rehearsal still
Meg, seen from behind in a pale headscarf, facing a cold doorway.
Meg · the year that could come
Toby Veck looking upward toward the chimes.
“I am Time. I am Hope.”
Ben Tissell in costume as Toby Veck, laughing between takes.
Ben Tissell · between takes
Ben Tissell as Toby Veck, in cap and scarf, looking up toward the bell tower.
In performance · The Chimes
Who tells it

Ben Tissell

Described by Oregon ArtsWatch as “mesmerizing” and “electric,” Ben Tissell is an actor, musician and songwriter based in Portland, Oregon.

A member of the Actors’ Equity Association, he is equally at home in musicals, plays, classics and new works — Dr. Pomatter in Waitress, Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Jason in Ordinary Days, the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance. He has released multiple albums as a songwriter, been commissioned as a playwright and lyricist, and directed and music directed at Lakewood Theatre, Portland Playhouse, George Fox University and others.

In 2020 he created The Chimes, a solo show drawn from Dickens’ Christmas fable, and played it to rave reviews and full houses in the years that followed. In December 2026 it returns with Anthology Productions, on a stage built for it.

When he is not making theatre and music, Ben can usually be found outdoors, reading a novel, or being goofy with his beloved niece and nephews.

First accessBefore the public announcement

Who gets in first.

Every seat is free to reserve, which makes the order of the queue the only thing we have to give. It goes to the people who make the run possible, and it goes in this order.

  1. 01
    Major donors

    Underwriting a night of the run, or more than one. They choose seats before the house opens to anybody else.

    First
  2. 02
    Society Members

    The giving circle that keeps the doors open across the year, at any level. In while every date is still whole.

    Next
  3. 03
    One-time donors

    Any gift, any amount, at any point before the run. One is enough to move you up the queue.

    Then
  4. 04
    Newsletter subscribers

    The only rung that costs nothing but an email address — and still ahead of the public announcement.

    Then
  5. —
    Everyone else

    Whatever the four rungs above have not already taken. In a house this size, that is not a long list.

    Last
Reserve your seatsBecome a Society Member

Reservations open once the seating chart is final. Each group hears in turn.

How we bring it to lifeThe work, and what it costs

Reserve free.
Pay what it was worth.

This part is not really about ticketing. It is how a show like this gets made at all, and it is the most deliberate decision in the production.

A play about who gets shut out should not be shutting anybody out. So you will not be asked for money to hold a seat. You will be asked after the show, once you know what the night was actually worth to you.

A seat at this show runs about $45. That is what it costs to put it on the stage — the room, the lights, the people, the hours — and it is what we suggest if the night earned it.

Some will give more. Some less. Some nothing at all, and they are as welcome as anyone: donors pay for seats in advance precisely so that price is never the reason a seat sits empty. It averages out. It always has.

We are not making the work cheap. We are making it reachable. Those are different things, and this is how you get both.

$0
Always an option, and never a lesser one.Give nothing and nobody at the door will know or ask. That is not a loophole in the model — it is the model.
Suggested
$45
One seat, honestly

What an evening of this actually costs to stage. If the night was worth it, this is the number.

$90
Yours and one more

Covers your chair and the person beside you who could not have paid for theirs.

$225
A row of five

Holds five seats open across the run for students, artists and neighbors.

One thing we ask

A free seat is still somebody’s seat. If your plans change, release it — the house is small and there is always a waitlist.

Too late to release? Pass your tickets to a friend or family member instead. Every QR code gets one person in, and a seat someone uses is never charged.

New to this? Read how reserving works

Keep a good heart

Come and be rung back.

Two weeks in December. Free to reserve. The rest is up to you.

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Dec 11–23Free to reserve
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