Adapter of Guthrie’s ‘Christmas Carol’ dies at 42

The light has gone out on a rising stage talent.

Lavina Jadhwani, the writer, director and jill-of-all-theater-trades whose updated version of “A Christmas Carol” has played to some hundreds of thousands of patrons at the Guthrie Theater, died Wednesday at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago.

She was 42.

Jadhwani had been battling ovarian cancer after dealing with an earlier bout of breast cancer.

“Lavina’s contributions to the Guthrie and to the theater [field] were profound,” said artistic director Joseph Haj.

A self-described “professional Shakespeare nerd” who worked nationally from her base in Chicago, Jadhwani was known for her lyrical and focused adaptations of classics, including Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya.”

Her updates were spare distillations that often clocked in at 90 minutes and showed an appreciation for brevity and wit.

“It’s beyond my wildest dreams to be making this story at this scale and for an audience that listens so exquisitely,” Jadhwani told the Minnesota Star Tribune in 2021. “I love that [’Carol’] is such a clear, moving intergenerational story with so many points of energy and that it’s noncynical.”

Her “Carol” is being produced not just at the Guthrie, but at five different theaters across the country, including in Louisville, Ky., said Chandra Jadhwani, Lavina’s mother.

“She was immensely proud of it,” Chandra Jadhwani said.

Her daughter also was a notable director. In fact, Jadhwani liked to joke that most artists only get one chance to make their Guthrie debut, but that she did it twice — in 2021 as a playwright and before that as a director.

In 2019, she staged a lusty production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

“The first time I met her, I handed her the keys to Mixed Blood and said she should be running the theater,” said founder Jack Reuler, who worked with Jadhwani as a playwright, director, dramaturg, producer and casting director. “She had so many talents that I thought she was ideally suited to run her own shop. But she wanted to stay close to her family in Chicago.”

Jadhwani was reared in Hinsdale, Ill., by her mother, a physical therapist, and her father, Chander, an engineer. She was steeped in STEM programs as a child and for three years attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a residential public school in Aurora, Ill. It was there that she directed her first show, “Inherit the Wind.”

“There were expectations for her to be a scientist or robotic engineer or something like that,” Chandra Jadhwani said. “One of the moms at school thought that she would help find a cure for cancer, ironically.”

When Jadhwani decided to go into the arts for college, her parents called around to ask about the prospects of making a living.

“People told me that it’s not what you know but who you know in the theater world,” Chandra Jadhwani said.

Jadhwani would later study scenic design as an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, where she also earned a master’s degree in arts management. She earned an MFA in directing at DePaul University as well.

Acutely aware of women’s voices in classic texts, Jadhwani also worked on an adaptation of a trilogy on women in the Ramayana, the Hindu epic.

The script for “Carol” is unchanged. The Guthrie’s production, which stars David Beach as Scrooge, begins previews Nov. 8.

“I thought the world of her, and will miss her,” Haj said. “May her memory be a blessing.”

Besides her parents, who live in Chicago, survivors include a brother Krish, also of Chicago.