BLOOD AND HOLLY Will Be Performed Stateside at The Paramount in December

Stateside at the Paramount presents Blood and Holly, a hysterical holiday performance by Greater Tuna's Jaston Williams based on his own life experiences. Limited three-show engagement December 17 - 18. Tickets go on sale Thursday, October 21 at 10 a.m. local time and will be available at www.austintheatre.org or by calling 512.474.1221 Monday - Friday, Noon - 5:30 p.m.

In his latest solo show, Blood and Holly, Jaston Williams remembers his childhood Christmas celebrations as being an odd mix of Babes in Toyland with occasional detours through Franco's Spain. Meet the two elderly Texan sisters minus all their eyebrows, the members of the Hugger family whose Christmas list includes everything from rubber knives for the kids to new teeth for Grandma and spend Christmas Eve, in a local bar, in the company of a delightfully merry gentleman. Known as the co-creator of the Greater Tuna plays, Jaston will have you in stitches. Get your holidays off to a "grand" start with Williams' performance of his original Blood and Holly - Christmas West of the Pecos production.

"Christmas is coming! Words can't express how thrilled we are for Jaston Williams to return to the stage at Stateside at the Paramount. After 21 months of holiday prison, we're decking the halls and trimming any tree we can find. So please join us as we celebrate Jaston and his darkly funny one-man holiday show, Blood and Holly - Christmas West of the Pecos." Lietza Brass Chief Programming Officer

Written and performed by Jaston Williams. Directed by Kristen Rogers. Lighting design by Luke Moyer. Costume Design by Susan Branch Towne. Sound design by Ken Huncovsky. Wig Design by Willa Kaye Warren. Produced and General Management by Kevin Bailey/MB Artists.

Blood and Holly plays Stateside at the Paramount for three-performances only, December 17-18. Tickets on sale Thursday, October 21 at www.austintheatre.org.

Jaston Williams is the author and co-actor of the two-person Greater Tuna plays, Greater Tuna, A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas. All four played across the U.S. for over thirty years, with stops off and on Broadway and in such venues as the Kennedy Center, Ford's Theatre, The Alley Theatre in Houston, Pasadena Playhouse in L.A, American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, The American Spoleto Festival and as an official American entry to the Edinburgh Festival, as well as two command performances at the White House.

He also wrote the screenplay and performed in the Norman Lear H.B.O. version of Greater Tuna. The Tuna plays are still among the most produced scripts in America offered in the Samuel French catalogue and A Tuna Christmas was chosen for inclusion in Best Plays of 1995. In a forty-year career, he has performed in plays running the gamut from the avant-garde works of Eugène Ionesco to the joy of musical comedy.

For his solo work, Jaston was awarded the national Marquee Award for Outstanding Contribution to Historical Theatres. He is a seven-time nominee for the prestigious Helen Hayes Awards, which recognizes and celebrates excellence in professional theatre, a recipient of the L.A. Drama-Logue Award, and the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Award. He has also received the Texas Governor's Award for Contribution to the Arts in Texas, and the Texas Medal of Arts. He holds an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Texas Tech University, where he is guest lecturer on the subject of playwriting.

Jaston's post-Tuna career has featured a number of original performance pieces presented coast to coast and which range in subject matter from his father's nervous breakdown the night the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, to escaping down a rumbling Guatemalan volcano while being pursued by armed kidnappers, to showing up at a 1970s Renaissance Fair held at Dennis Hopper's house, while wearing a chicken suit and passing himself off as Michelangelo. It's been every kind of life but boring.

Jaston lives in Lockhart, Texas, which is well within the Austin sphere of influence, with his husband, Kevin, and their son, Song.

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