DC Metro Theater Arts is running a series of interviews with members of the cast of Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories. In the excerpts below they tell their own favorite holiday memories and their holiday wishes. Click on each actor’s photo to read their full Q&A.
Séamus Miller
(plays seven-year-old Truman, nicknamed Buddy)
Favorite holiday memory: “I really liked Obama’s speech at the White House Christmas party: ‘Happy Holidays! Don’t steal the forks.’ ”
Holiday wish: “I would like Bernie Sanders to come down my chimney in a Santa suit and restore funding to arts education. I’m only half-joking; I’ve seen theatre make such a difference in young people’s lives. Everybody needs art.”
Liz Dutton
(plays various roles as “Woman” plus a dog named Queenie)
Favorite holiday memory: “For Thanksgiving, my family used to drive up to Massachusetts in the snow to spend the holiday at my great grandmother’s house—at the time she was in her 90s, and she lived to be 107. We all gathered at her small place, and I think she managed to cook the whole meal herself, including her famous “homemade” pies (until we saw the Mrs. Smith’s boxes in the trash…). She didn’t have a whole lot to entertain my sister and our cousin, but at night we would sleep on her pull-out couch and watch State Fair (the only movie I think she owned).”
Holiday wish:“Good health to everyone in my family.”
Christopher Henley
(plays grownup Truman)
Favorite holiday memory: “Thanksgiving: Returning to DC from early afternoon Thanksgiving dinners in southern Pennsylvania, my family would stop in Thurmont, MD, where a liquor store would be inexplicably open. We would stock up for the rest of the drive home (with my 30-years-sober brother at the wheel) and debrief. Christmas: Everyone in my family would bring over the Christmas cards we’d received. We would put them around the house, everyone would look at them all, and then we would vote in various categories (best card, worst card, trendiest card, most clueless card, etc., including some categories not suitable for publication).
Holiday wish: “That violence would cease to be a defining aspect of our species, and that we would take greater and more forward-thinking care of our planet.”
Charlotte Akin
(plays Buddy’s cousin Miss Sook)
Favorite holiday memory: “I know it sounds cliche, but [my favorite holiday memory is] being with family. When my sister and her large family moved to a mountaintop ranch outside of Aspen, my whole family converged on them one Christmas. We took horse-drawn sleigh rides, went ice skating, skiing, caroling. Very Currier and Ives. It was a magical Christmas. Being with the whole family, priceless.“
Holiday wish:“That the world wasn’t such a scary place right now. So much sadness, so much turmoil. When you turn on the news it’s hard to get in the holiday spirit.”
Devon Ross
(plays various roles as “Man,” including Odd Henderson the bully)
Favorite holiday memory: “I always loved having Christmas back in Amarillo, Texas, with my extended family.”
Holiday wish: “I’ve been asking Santa for a jetpack for as long as I can remember.”
What’s your favorite holiday memory? If you had one holiday wish, what would it be?
Truman Capote’s Holiday Memories plays to December 20, 2015, at Theatre on the Run. For more information and tickets, click here.