One holiday tradition can inspire another: so it is with this year's Lantern Light Tours at Mystic Seaport.

The new script for this season's progressive play, penned by well-known local playwright Anna Maria Trusky, pulls from the much-beloved "The Nutcracker."

Denise Kegler, the program manager for Lantern Light Tours, approached Trusky about doing the script for this year's performances. Kegler knew Trusky from her various writing and acting work.

She says she was struck by Trusky's creativity in her writing "and the way that her creativity leads to unique and inspiring comedy. ... Everything she writes is full of belly laughs. It is so hilarious. But there's always that underlying question or message, and that's really what we're looking for at Lantern Light. We want people to be wonderfully entertained, have a great experience and leave with a sense of the goodness ... (and) the message of Christmas."

Trusky says she was "really, really honored" to be asked to write the 2016 script for this production that leads visitors around the seaport as if it were Christmas Eve 1876.

Kegler suggested a story that would incorporate aspects of "The Nutcracker," and Trusky gave it her own spin and infused it with her own playful sense of humor.

She ended up using elements from both the original E.T.A. Hoffman short story and the legendary ballet. She reimagined various figures and plot points. For instance, Drosselmeyer, who provides the titular toy in "The Nutcracker," is also now a Santa figure. Mrs. Ginger, who has the giant skirt that children hide under, is a teacher at the seaport schoolhouse.

Trusky devised characters named Clara and Marie, since the central figure is called Marie in the written version and Clara in the ballet.

Here, Marie and Fritz have grown up to run a bakery called the Land of Sweets. They create a special seasonal baked good that they dub "nut-cracker sweets," and here's where the name came from: When they ran out of flour, they decided to use ground crackers and nuts instead.

So they need nuts to concoct this popular product. But some mischievous mice steal Marie and Fritz's nutcracker, which means they cannot crack nuts to use in the recipe. So the dynamic duo go on a quest to retrieve the nutcracker.

"It's a departure (from earlier Lantern Light Tours), and it's very, very whimsical and very funny," Trusky says.

She says she's been hearing from the actors and co-directors Kegler and Emma Palzere-Rae that everyone is laughing and having a great time in rehearsals.

"That warms the cockles of my heart. I really love to create pieces that create a lot of fun for the actors and crew as well as the visitors," she says.

Kegler says that she and Palzere-Rae "were very inspired by the script to go in a different direction theatrically, so this year we've really embraced physical comedy in a way that we haven't previously."

Indeed, she talks about the mice's physical comedy as being a combination of the commedia dell'arte figure Harlequin, Bugs Bunny and even a little bit of the Three Stooges.

There's a fresh take, too, on the costuming. Kegler says costumer Rebecca Bayreuther Donohue "has done a great job of looking at what we have and how we can turn that into something else. Because there's a lot more fantasy in the script than what we've had before, about half our cast are wearing historic reproduction clothing, and the other half are wearing fantasy costumes."

The mice outfits reflect what young boys wore in Victorian times, but with an animal twist — they'll don furry vests and tails. And they'll slip into hoods with mouse ears, reflecting what a mouse costume might have looked like during the Victorian era.

Makeup artist Erika Webb, meanwhile, plans for the mice to wear nose pieces that will make them look more like a human version of a mouse.

As for the Lantern Light script, Trusky says, "It will definitely transport people to another world for a short time. The holiday season is usually a stressful time under the best of circumstances, so I think people will really enjoy it and get a lot of laughs out of it. It does have a message, too, and the message that it gives is about kindness and sharing ... I really want people to go away with that, (to) not only have the endorphin rush of having laughed and seen something that's funny but just keeping that in mind as we go forward through the holiday season and beyond that we all need more of that in our lives. We also need to provide more of that."

Lantern Light Tours, Nov. 25-Dec. 23, Mystic Seaport, Greenmanville Avenue; tours being at 5 p.m. and leave every 15 minutes Fridays and Saturdays and Dec. 18; $32, $25 ages 5-17, free for kids 4 and under (members are $26, $19 ages 5-17); (860) 572-0711.

More about the playwright

Anna Maria Trusky grew up in a military family and lived in various locations before attending high school in Binghamton, N.Y. She majored in English at SUNY Binghamton and participated in a lot of theater while at college.

She moved to southeastern Connecticut after that, working as a writer and editor for the Bureau of Business Practice in Waterford. She's now a freelancer.

Trusky did some acting here with groups like the Stonington Players before writing her first play in the mid-1990s.

Among her many credits: She went on to do a lot of work with Artreach and Second Step Players. Just last month, her political murder-mystery comedy was staged by the Norwich Arts Center at the Yantic River Inn.

She's also a founding member of the improv troupe Comedy On Demand and wrote comedic murder mystery plays for the Essex Steam Train. She wrote and helped direct some of the shows for Kidsploration with Steve Elci and Friends; one of the episodes she wrote, "Lighthouse Lore & Legends," was nominated for a New England Emmy Award.

And she's worked at Mystic Seaport before; she acted as part of the TaleMakers theater program in 2015 and in last year's Lantern Light Tours.