playbill vip

          The Holidays, music, and theatricality have all been synonymous with my family—it courses through my veins; such that I was given, or perhaps, in true fashion, took charge of, writing, directing and performing in our family’s Christmas Shows at a very young age. To me, executing our Christmas Event began the foundational cementations of my journey as a working artist. I began working on the script and musical arrangements in August, and in November I held auditions for my brothers, my sister, and my cousin Tommy. Although the threat of being passed over for a role in my show loomed, miraculously, everyone was cast. Then countless rehearsals, tech rehearsals, quick changes, complicated choreography, light and sound cues, a Preview performance for my parents the night before, and even another Dress Rehearsal before Opening Night for our family and friends—I would like to add that we were all under the age of 11.   

          When Bethesda Repertory received a grant from the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts with the monumental aid of our Board Vice Chair, Pam Shriftman, and Managing Director, Michael William Gomez, I immediately began researching what possible projects we could mount with this gift we had received. I wanted to choose a piece that was absolutely not, “A Christmas Carol,” and also not a fully realized production. I then firmly believed that I did not want a work that was the saccharine fake happiness that the Holiday season pretends to be. There are so many unique experiences that every human has with this time of the year; marginally it is a positive time, but conversely, this time of the year can be difficult: monetarily, emotionally, spiritually. To simply find a something that covered all these factions proved difficult. Suddenly, I was in my parents living room again in 2001 and the memories of what those past Christmas Eve Performances meant to not only my family, but friends who were in attendance, came flooding back.

          Through sharing, exhuming, and investigating, the evening you are about to experience is a coalescence of our cast's personal experiences, in all their mess, anger, joy, trauma, and newfound understandings, curated into an evening with holiday standards and originally orchestrated and arranged music. I have been working on a version of this Production for the past 23 years to create what I hope is a meaningful and embracing journey on what the Holiday season pretends to be, and what it really is.

Onwards,

Andrew Rudy Galindo

Co-Founder and Artistic Director

Bethesda Repertory Theatre