Mason Holdings to Present HOLIDAY HOUSE: CHRISTMAS BENDS

The latest theatrical experience from Mason Holdings is Holiday House: Christmas Bends, the story of an oddly ageless child who returns to the many Christmas' of her past (and includes a pre-show holiday party with glug, Christmas cookies and Santa).

We meet the child alone in the confines of her little room, sharing her space, her fantastical games, and all her remarkable imaginative resources. We see a mother, father, brother, and grandmother, but only as 8 and 16mm family film footage projected onto the walls of her room. And we hear the escalating strife of a tumultuous family, but only through the child, who acts as a vessel for their many voices.

Holiday House: Christmas Bends is both a darkly comedic experiential tour through phantom memories and a psychological study of how we experience childhood as outsiders, struggling to navigate and comprehend a world of deeply fallible adults. It is the gift of a strange and wondrous play date, and an unexpected visit with our own personal ghosts.

Running time is approximately 90 minutes

Holiday House features Tracy Weller. Holiday House is written by Tracy Weller and developed by Bixby Elliot and Tracy Weller, directed by Kristjan Thor with lighting design by Zach Blane, music and sound by Phil Carluzzo, set design by Justin & Christian Swader, costume and wig design by Natalie Loveland and projection design by Joseph Mastantuono (Butter on the Latch, Elliot Loves, The Insurgents, To Walk Without Fear, Happy House, Al Otro Lado, Cropsey, Bittersweet Place).

Praise for Mason Holdings:
"Tracy Weller's Jarring is...edgy theatre at its best."
-The Blot

"Tracy Weller is mesmerizing...captivates...unnerves."
-New York Theatre Guide

"A tour de force that will leave you haunted."
-Off Off Online

Performance Schedule:
Sat Dec 3 at 7:30pm *preview
Sun Dec 4 at 3pm *matinee / press invited
Wed Dec 7 at 7:30pm *press invited
Thurs Dec 8 at 7:30pm
Fri Dec 9 at 7:30pm
Sat Dec 10 at 7:30pm
Sun Dec 11 at 3pm *matinee
Wed Dec 14 at 7:30pm
Thurs Dec 15 at 7:30pm
Fri Dec 16 at 7:30pm
Sat Dec 17 at 7:30pm
Sun Dec 18 at 3pm *matinee
Wed Dec 21 at 7:30pm
Thurs Dec 22 at 7:30pm
Fri Dec 23 at 7:30pm

Location:
Fourth Street Theatre is located at 83 E 4th Street (b/w 2 Ave and Bowery) in the East Village. B/D/F/M/6 trains to Broadway/Lafayette.

More info at:
http://mason.holdings/

Tickets: $25 general admission, $15 for students

Tracy Weller (founder and director of Mason Holdings / writer / performer)
Tracy is an actress, writer and founder/director of Mason Holdings. She has performed throughout New York City and abroad at festivals in Germany, South Korea and Italy. She received her graduate training and MFA from Columbia University, with additional training from Ann Bogart and the Siti Company. She has extensive classical ballet training and experience in flamenco, modern, mime, and biomechanics. Some NYC credits include Down Range at The Mint, A Christmas Carol: A New Musical at Vortex Theater, Heist at The Sargent Theatre, Spectre Box's Amuse Bouche at INTAR, Touched at Uncle Ming's, Twelfth Night (Olivia) and House of Bernarda Alba (Magdalena, "Best Ensemble of the Year," New York Observer) at Riverside Theatre. She was a co-founder of Spectre Box, where she wrote, developed and produced Touched and Amuse Bouche, and she was a co-writer/collaborator of A Christmas Carol: A New Musical. She wrote and performed Jarring, directed by Kristjan Thor, and is in postproduction of a film adaptation. She curates, produces and hosts Mason Holdings' monthly salon series, Unseen & Unheard. In January, she will begin work on her next project, Hart Island, the story of New York City's potter's field. http://tracyweller.land/ and tracy@mason.holdings

Bixby Elliot's play Abraham Lincoln was a Faggot was produced at Chicago's About Face Theater and was selected as one of TimeOut Chicago's Top 10 Plays of 2015, it was nominated for Jeff Awards and received critical acclaim (critics pick by TimeOut and Windy City Times and 3 ½ stars from the Chicago Tribune). Abraham Lincoln was a Faggot was also a finalist for the O'Neill Theater Conference in 2010, as well as a finalist for New Dramatists, Seven Devils Development Conference, winner of the Pandora New Play Competition, a semi-finalist for and New Harmony Workshop. The New Yorker Magazine remarked that Bixby's latest NYC production of his play Sommerfugl, directed by Stephen Brackett and starring Wayne Wilcox, "conjures the spirit of Christopher Isherwood, both in its vivid evocation of Europe between the wars and in its characters' bittersweet yearning for the fullness of life." His play Blueprint was produced by Tony Award winning producer Arielle Tepper Madover as part of her new works Summer Play Festival (SPF). This production was directed by Drama Desk Nominee Jonathan Silverstein and starred Emmy winner Peter Strauss. Bixby's next play. His play Girl You Know It's True (inspired by the rise and fall of the pop/rock duo Milli Vanilli) was a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Conference in 2011, finalist for New Harmony, semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, finalist for Kitchen Dog Theater New Works and an advanced round entry for PlayPenn 2011. Girl You Know It's True received its world premiere production in Spring 2012 at Chicago's The Pavement Group and was produced in Seattle in March 2014. Other plays include Birds Do It (semi-finalist for Princess Grace Award), Treasure Island, FL (2012 O'Neill Conference semi-finalist, Seven Devils semi-finalist, SouthernRep New Play Festival Winner, New Orleans), PN1923.45 LS01 volume 2: The Book Play (New York Premiere: NYC International Fringe Festival), Hotel Oracle (New York premiere: Walkerspace/Soho Rep) and I Am Not Peter Pan (New York premiere: Cherry Lane Theater; Edinburgh Fringe Festival - Best of Fest Winner). Bixby is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Columbia University and a proud company member of InViolet Theater Company. Bixby's writing also includes television projects - in 2012 he was in development with Jennifer Lopez Entertainment for a new hour long comedy/drama and this year he is working with a producer on a new hour long historical drama. Bixby has also written two screenplays Highway and Happy, Now (finalist for the Sundance Writers Lab). He is the proud co-curator of The Brooklyn Generator (a new play generation project) and co-organizer of Second Monday Social (a monthly event for new play development).

?Kristjan Thor is a critically-acclaimed director of both theater and film. His first feature film, Diving Normal (www.divingnormal.com), premiered at the Dallas Film Festival subsequently won the audience award for Best Feature as well as the festival's award for Best Actress at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. His second feature, ASTREA (www.astraeathefilm.com) won the New Visions Award at Cinequest in San Jose, Audience Award at MIFF, Best Picture and Best Director at Sydney's Fantastic Planet Festival. Astraea was released with The Orchard this Fall. He is currently in pre-production for a feature that will be shot in Iceland, where Kristjan is from. Some highlights of Kristjan's theater work in NYC include: the US premier of Lukas Barfuss' The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, with Grace Gummer and the world premieres of Artifacts of Consequence, Balaton, Lathem Prince, and The Laws of Motion, all by Ashlin Halfnight. He also directed Bathsheba Doran's adaptation of Maeterlinck's The Blind, which transferred to the Classic Stage Company. Kristjan's work has been seen worked at PS 122, The Wild Project, CSC, the Sanford Meisner (with Vortex productions) and the Frying Pan, as well as many other venues across NYC. Last spring, Thor directed The Penalty, by Clay McCloud Chapman at Dixon Place and recently revived it at The Public Theater. He directed Jarring for Mason Holdings in 2015 and is currently working on a short film based on the play. Since 2009, Thor has been the Co-Creator and Founder of the immersive horror experience, BLACKOUT Haunted House, which currently has productions running in NYC, LA, Chicago, and Miami. More recently Kristjan, along with Blackout co-creator Josh Randall, has been collaborating with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions to help create their live events, based on The Purge film series. These shows includePurge: Fear the Night and Purge: Breakout. A documentary about BLACKOUT called, The Blackout Experiments premiered at Sundance 2016. BLACKOUT also has a VR Horror series that is in development. Thor graduated as a Senior Fellow from Dartmouth College and holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia's School of the Arts. He is presently a professor at NYU's Stonestreet Acting Studio.

Mason Holdings is a theatre company focused on unearthing, developing and producing stories of The Outsider. Our mission has a dual objective: we both seek out the work of the unrecognized artist and we create work that examines the life of the unrecognized human. From creator to creation, we plumb the fringes of society; the unseen and unheard are our collaborators and content.

Photo Credit: Nicolas Alvo

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