Twas the afternoon before A Christmas Carol, and at the Goodman Theatre, director Steve Scott was getting down to brass tacks.

Ebenezer Scrooge completed his transformation from cold-hearted sad sack to jolly embodiment of Christmas spirit, and Tiny Tim cried out his signature “God bless us, everyone!”

Then, Scott stopped the show. After nearly a full year of work on the play, it was time to lay out the last piece of the puzzle: the curtain call.

Scott lined up Cratchits, ghosts, and finally Scrooge to take their bows, before coaching them through a few haphazard rounds of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

It was Friday, and the final dress rehearsal for the show that many consider to exemplify Christmas in Chicago. It was also Scott’s last chance to tweak the show before his production of the play returned to the Goodman for the first time in 19 years.

Scott, who lives in Printer’s Row, is by no means a stranger to the Goodman — he’s been associate producer at the theater since 1987, and has overseen more than 150 productions. Amongst his many directing credits over the years at the Goodman and elsewhere, he directed the theater’s productions of Christmas Carol from 1989 to 1992.

While he said he’s been intimately involved in each production of the play since then, it just wasn’t the same to be around it without directing it, Scott said.

“I just kind of missed the experience of working with these actors at this time of year to tell this wonderful story,” Scott said. “It’s such a special experience for everybody involved. It’s really not like any other production, because there’s just something about the message of the show certainly, and a celebratory nature. I think more than with any other show I’ve done in my career, the cast and company of Christmas Carol really needs to form a family.”

So when the previous director, Bill Brown, decided to leave the director’s chair after a few years, Scott stepped in. It was easy to step in, he said, since he hires the directors.

Things have changed since the last time he directed the show. Most notably, Goodman moved from its 75-year-old theater at Monroe Street and Columbus Drive behind the Art Institute, and into a completely rehabbed new theater at 170 N. Dearborn St. in the heart of the Loop.

The new theater’s bells and whistles have given Scott much more to work with, too, from Scrooge flying around the stage with the Ghost of Christmas Past to his grave rising up of the middle of the stage.

“In the old production, in the former Goodman, we did a lot with very little,” Scott said. “Some of the things that we achieved with special effects were surprisingly simple. Here, we have pretty much every element of modern theater technology at our beck and call. So it’s a much more sophisticated production now than it was when I first directed it, and as a result I think it’s a much more nuanced production.”

That’s something Scott wants the audience to realize — they just don’t roll out the same production year after year. Each Christmas Carol has its own vision and execution, and they do a lot to make it pop, he said.

“We have found that one of the reasons it is so successful is because we take it so seriously artistically,” Scott said. “I think for the audience, it really needs to kind of be an emotional roller coaster. … I’m trying to make the ghost-y part of the story a little scarier and a little more terrifying for everybody — my goal is to make at least one child cry per show — and to make the comedy of the show kind of blossom even more, and within all that, make the kind of seriousness of Scrooge’s search, and, you know, the search that all these characters have, really live.”