7th-grader from Cobb to play 'Ralphie'

You’ll shoot your eye out ... Cooper?

One of this holiday season’s most coveted gifts arrived slightly early this year for 13-year-old Cooper Driskell of Cobb County. The seventh-grader at Dickerson Middle School in Marietta has snagged the role of Ralphie in Georgia Shakespeare’s upcoming production of “A Christmas Story.”

Based on the now classic 1983 movie about young Ralphie Parker’s obsessive quest to find “an official Red Ryder carbine action” BB gun under his Christmas tree in circa 1940s Indiana, the play runs Dec. 7-26 at Oglethorpe University’s Conant Performing Center.

It’s the first holiday production in years from the company better known for serious fare such as “Richard III” and “The Merchant of Venice.” But Georgia Shakespeare didn’t take the responsibility for finding Ralphie, Flick and five other adolescent cast members lightly.

Open auditions were conducted in four metro Atlanta locations from Duluth to Decatur throughout September; eventually, five Ralphie finalists were invited to strut their wide-eyed, not completely innocent stuff for director Drew Fracher and Georgia Shakespeare’s producing artistic director Richard Garner.

“The Ralphie character is not devious, but he’s a little bit of an operator [who’s] trying to scheme his way to getting what he wants,” said Fracher. “I was looking for someone who was a little silly, but could also talk a bit of a line and get away with it in a way that’s irresistible.