Step Up Productions' 2nd Annual HOLIDAZE Kicks Off This Weekend

'Tis the season! Step Up Productions will continue its 2014-15 season with the return of its wildly popular HoliDaze, a hilarious and heartwarming line-up of original holiday-themed short works by Kristiana Rae Colón, Dana Lynn Fromby, Aline Lathrop, Steven Peterson, Joshua Rollins and Steve Simoncic playing today, November 21 - December 21, 2014 at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave. in Chicago. Tickets are currently available at www.stepupproductions.org or by calling (312) 316-8255. The press performance is Tuesday, November 25 at 7:30 pm.

Due to popular demand, Step Up's popular holiday round up returns for its second year! This series of original one-acts showcases the crazy, zany, dysfunctional chaos of the holiday season. Twelve talented playwrights and directors put relationships, family and friends in the holiday pressure cooker for an unforgettable evening!

Throughout the run, Step Up Productions will be collecting donations of new hats, glove, coats and scarves for Make It Better Foundation's annual Warming Hearts & Hands program. Proceeds from HoliDaze will also help provide counseling for Seasonal Affective Disorder through Dr. Jacqueline Duke, PsyD, LLC. As part of its mission, Step Up Productions donates a portion of its proceeds to organizations in and around Chicago that support issues often highlighted in its productions.

The full HoliDaze 2014 line-up includes:

Perfect Space
By Joshua Rollins
Directed by Audrey Francis
Featuring Maria Margaglione and Conor Woods

Christmas Day. An alley outside a stage door. Daniel Radcliffe is inside rehearsing a play and two people are camped out waiting for him to appear. One's a fan who wants to thank him, the other is a boy wizard who wants to confront him for co-opting an identity that isn't his. A story of loneliness, identity, magic and finding your place in this world. And licorice.

Christmas Armaments
By Dana Lynn Formby
Directed by Kristen Johnson
Featuring Andy Lutz and Jessica Dean Turner

Clair and Nick have recently been reunited after Clair was released from a mental institution. She's still refusing to eat and not too keen on seeing her five-year-old daughter. Nick is ready to try and make this family work as he goes in "armed with Christmas," trying to convince Clair their family is worth living for.

Lunch Box Love
By Steven Simoncic
Directed by Kacie Smith
Featuring Alicia Ciuffini and Anthony Venturini

This is not a story about the youthful exuberance of falling in love... or the hard-boiled cynicism of falling out of it. It's a story about that everyday, punch-the-clock-and-pack-a-lunch kind of love... that imperfect, imprecise kind of love that still somehow manages to find a little glitter in the rubble.

Trade Show
By Aline Lathrop
Directed by Tara Branham
Featuring Samara Harris Anderson and Patrick Gannon

It's Christmas and Isabel has gone back to work - away from her husband and young daughter for first time. When she meets a seasoned trade show rep who shares secrets of carpet grades and makes her laugh, the real world seems to recede into the background of the Staples Convention Center and her purgatorial hotel room.

Gift Horse Grill
By Kristiana Rae Colón
Drected by Leonicia Bongorno
Featuring Jillian Burfete, Celeste Cooper, Luce Metrius, Tina Muñoz Pandya, Julian Parker and Curt Powell

A squad of poetic millennials decide to ditch their families' Christmases for a very merry kickback at the homies' crib. But the holiday spades game and yuletide cipher are interrupted when Santa, in the form of a housing bureau agent, drops in just after midnight. He comes with a puzzling offer to reconcile America's oldest debt, sending the party spinning toward the racially absurd.

A Couple of Nobodies
By Steven Peterson
Directed by Patrick Thornton
Featuring Elizabeth Antonucci and Anthony Venturini

Party queen Justine has nothing in common with reclusive Stuart in the apartment down the hall. Until she loses her keys after partying too hard on New Year's Eve and turns to him for help. Can he?

The production team for HoliDaze includes: Eleanor Kahn (set design), Raquel Adorno (costume design), Becca Jeffords (lighting design), Jeffrey Levin (sound design), Dorthea Walstrom (makeup design), Colin Morgan (props design), Jacob Puralweski (technical director), Megan Snowder (master electrician), Tara Branham (curator) and Beth Zupec (production manager).

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