If Charles Dickens were still alive and collecting residuals for productions on stage of his novella “A Christmas Carol,” he’d be wealthy beyond Ebenezer Scrooge’s wildest dreams. It’s the holiday season gift that keeps on giving … and giving … and giving.

Possibly overlooked are the actors who perform year after year in theatrical productions of “A Christmas Carol,” some of whom “age out” of roles like Scrooge’s nephew and return playing Bob Cratchit, then later old Fezziwig, Marley’s Ghost or even Scrooge himself.

That’s Eddie, the protagonist of Anna Ouyang Moench’s “Your Local Theater Presents: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Again,” a world premiere play opening Sunday at La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Les Waters. Playwright Moench is an MFA graduate of UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance and Waters was the onetime head of that department’s directing program.

In “Your Local Theater Presents …”, Eddie (Miles G. Jackson) starts out as a Juilliard-trained actor in a cast of “A Christmas Carol” and over time finds himself coming back to the show, but in more and more “mature” roles.

Juliet Brett and Miles G. Jackson in La Jolla Playhouses world premiere play Your Local Theater Presents a Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Again. (Rich Soublet II)

For playwright Moench, whose “Birds of North America” was produced last year at Moxie Theatre, “Your Local Theater Presents …” is “personal to me, in terms of I work with actors. I’m so in awe of them and grateful to them for what they bring into the process and into the art form. Also I’m grateful for the sacrifices they make.”

“Many of them often have to completely pull up stakes and move to a new city for just a couple of months. It’s very difficult to feel settled and build the kind of family life that a lot of people want or imagine for themselves.”

Moench considers “Your Local Theater Presents …” personal to her on a family level as well. “My husband was an actor and ended up making a career change (to an ER nurse) when we were making longer term plans for what we wanted as a family.”

This world premiere is in a way dedicated to the kinds of actors Moench describes.

“There are times,” she said, “when it’s worth it, when this field, this job, doing these plays is so full of joy and challenge in a good way. There can be these incredible, transcendent moments. But they can be few and far between. When the job disappears for an amount of time you don’t even know, what are you left with?

“I wanted to write about both the good and the bad parts, the reasons why people stay in it and do it.”

Stage productions of “A Christmas Carol,” which are traditional across the country, fueled Moench’s inspiration.

“Every actor I know pretty much has done ‘A Christmas Carol’,” she said. “My instinct is that probably most audiences, if they’ve ever seen a play, there’s a good chances they’ve seen ‘A Christmas Carol.’ It’s part of the holiday. It may be the only play they see all year.”

A conversation with an actor-friend of Moench’s brought the idea to fruition.

“He was doing ‘A Christmas Carol’ and he said that the costume department at the theater was so excited because the same actor had been playing Marley for many, many seasons but he was bigger now and couldn’t fit into the traditional Marley costume jacket. My friend got the role of Marley because he could fit into the jacket.”

But that friend wasn’t the only model for Eddie.

There are aspects of my husband,” Moench said. “There are aspects of me as well. This experience is not unique to actors. For everybody in the field, when you’re working a job, it’s not tailored to you as a person — it’s tailored to completing a set of tasks in a certain way. You have to find some way to make them work together.”

For Eddie, it’s being adaptable.

Though “Your Local Theater Presents …” is premiering on the cusp of the holiday season, it wasn’t written as a seasonal play.

“It’s not really about the magic of Christmas or even about ‘A Christmas Carol,’” said Moench. “It’s about people at their jobs and going through a career.”

Though she did admit: “When I was writing it I thought it would be a really fun play to have in repertory with ‘A Christmas Carol.’”

Your Local Theater Presents: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Again

When: Now in previews. Opens Sunday and runs through Dec. 15. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Where: La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, UC San Diego, La Jolla

Tickets: $30 and up

Phone: 858-550-1010

Online: lajollaplayhouse.org