Carlsbad tween stars in Fox’s live ‘Christmas Story’

In the fictional 1940s Indiana world of “A Christmas Story,” the weather outside is so frightful, a little boy’s tongue gets frozen to a flagpole when he gives it a lick.

But this Sunday evening, when “A Christmas Story” becomes the latest musical performed live on Fox Television, the actors will likely be sweating in their parkas on the Warner Brothers back lot in Burbank. The forecast for that day is for a high of 72 degrees.

Among the boys starring in Sunday’s live broadcast is 12-year-old Noah Baird of Carlsbad. The home-schooled sixth-grader has spent much of the past four years shuttling back and fourth between sunny Southern California and snowy Manhattan, where he spent more than two years in the Broadway cast of “Matilda the Musical” and the New York production of “A Christmas Story.”

While Noah said he loves performing and still auditions for roles once or twice a week, he’s enjoying a more settled life in his native Carlsbad. This past summer, he learned how to surf, and he and his dad, Daniel, now surf together at least once a week.

“I definitely want to do theater for the rest of my life, but I want to balance it with other things,” he said. “I’d also like to be either a professional surfer, or a chemist or a race car designer.”

Noah has been performing since the age of 4, when he was first cast in a youth production of “Annie Jr.” by his mother, Becky Baird. Like her son, Becky started performing as a child. She founded the J*Company youth theatre in La Jolla in 1993, toured in musicals in the mid-1990s and now works as a freelance musical theater coach and youth theater director.

Noah said he likes the excitement of performing, how every performance and audience is different, and the kinship he feels with other theater artists.

Noah started out in youth theater. Then in 2011, he made the jump to adult-cast shows, including San Diego Musical Theatre’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and, later, “Fiddler on the Roof and “The Wizard of Oz” at Vista’s Moonlight Amphitheatre.

In 2013, he set his sights on the musical version of “A Christmas Story,” which he saw a snippet of during the Tony Awards telecast from New York. After several months of auditions, callbacks and workshops, he landed the role of Randy, the younger, annoying brother of Ralphie Parker, the bespectacled Indiana grade-schooler who dreams of getting a Red Ryder air rifle for Christmas.

The three-month “Christmas Story” tour started in Hartford, Conn., then moved to Boston and finished up at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The family — which includes Noah’s 10-year-old sister, Talia — spent the holidays that year in New York. Then they returned to Carlsbad, where in 2014 he continued acting. He played Little Jake in San Diego Musical Theatre’s “Annie Get Your Gun” and “Boo Who” in the Old Globe’s “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Then in 2015 he landed a role in the Broadway production of “Matilda The Musical.”

The musical, based on Roald Dahl’s darkly comic children’s novel, featured children vaulting, swinging, jumping and climbing. Noah said rehearsals were like a cardio boot camp. Every day, the children warmed up by jogging, doing push-ups and other calisthenics.

He was the “small boy swing,” alternating between two roles a few days a week. “I played Nigel, the boy who gets thrown under the coats, and Eric, the boy who gets his ears pulled.”

At first, Becky and her husband, Daniel, took turns staying in New York with Noah. Then, when his contract kept getting renewed, the family moved permanently to New York in late 2015, sharing a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Daniel is a web director for Slacker Radio and is able to work anywhere via laptop.

Noah said the highlights of living in New York were eating at food festivals, epic snowstorms and meeting fellow actors like “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

“He was just another guy in the neighborhood,” Noah said. “You just ran into people like him on your way to work.”

But the cold weather and lack of sunshine gradually wore on the family, and in mid-2016, Becky and Talia moved back home to Carlsbad. Daniel and Noah moved home when the “Matilda” closed last January.

He wasn’t idle for long. On the plane ride home, he found out he’d been cast in “Freaky Friday,” which ran last spring at La Jolla Playhouse.

Landing the part in the Fox “Live” production of “A Christmas Story” was the result of nearly three months of auditions. For this one-night-only performance, Noah will be playing the newly created role of “Billy,” who is one of Ralphie Parker’s buddies. The production co-stars Matthew Broderick, Maya Rudolph and Jane Krakowski. It will air live, be taped for future broadcast and a soundtrack has been recorded for future sale.

Over the past several weeks, Noah said he’s spent much of his time in rehearsals in L.A. and supplementing that with voice and dance lessons and classwork through a work-at-home program with High Tech Middle North County school.

The live performance will be enacted on a large cityscape indoor-outdoor set on the Warner Brothers studio back lot. Noah said he’s been rehearsing quick costume changes while running back and forth behind the scenes to reach the different sets that represent the idyllic town of Hohman, Ind.

The biggest difference between stage and television work is that on Sunday he’ll be performing in a three-dimensional, nearly lifelike world.

“There are cameras all around you and there’s no way you’re ever not on camera, so you always have to be ‘on,’ ” he said. “I’m comfortable performing live, but with cameras, every centimeter matters and you have to hit all your marks exactly. It’s a new kind of challenge.”

“A Christmas Story Live!” will air on Fox at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com