You’re Invited to a ‘Crafternoon’ of Heart, Hot Cocoa, and Holiday Spirit
Crafts. Storytelling. Healing. HOLIDAY blends live performance with hands-on participation, guiding audiences through old-fashioned crafting rituals while weaving stories of love, loss, and renewal.
Led by two hosts, Dakota and Riley, this immersive crafting experience unfolds as a shared creative gathering that celebrates memory, community, and the quiet magic of making something together.
“I started developing this play during the pandemic,” notes writer Jeffrey James Keyes, “and I continued refining it through Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab. During that time, I kept coming back to the idea of gathering: how essential it is to be in a room with other people, to create something together, and to share stories that help us make sense of our lives. HOLIDAY was born from that longing for connection and ritual. It’s part theatre, part crafting circle, and part quiet act of healing. My hope is that audiences walk away feeling seen, inspired, and maybe a little lighter.”
“HOLIDAY came from our mutual desire to create a theatrical experience that is full of heart for an atypical audience,” says director Andrew Coopman. “The world feels like it’s on fire all the time right now. We wake up, we look at our phones, and we dread whatever may be on the news. But the holidays are a magical time of year where maybe, just maybe, we can come together and connect. So, we thought, ‘What if we created a show that allowed the audience to do some crafts together? Where stakes are low, but holiday spirit and joy are high?’ And that’s what this is… A Crafternoon full of heart, hot cocoa, and holiday spirit.”
Playwright Jeffrey James Keyes co-authored the New York Times best-selling book Killer Chef with James Patterson. He earned his MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and is the recipient of the inaugural PEN America L’Engle/Rahman Prize for Mentorship. His plays Southies, Uniforms, and Imaginary Friends were all featured in the Concord Theatricals/Samuel French Off Off Broadway (OOB) Short Play Festival, with additional work produced at SoHo Playhouse, 59E59 Theaters, and London’s Old Vic.
As a producer, Jeffrey has worked on the travel series Out in GayCities with Lexus, the Sundance series Revealing featuring Joe Zee, and MTV’s True Life. His short films 181 and Uniform have been showcased at over 30 festivals. His script for Digital Arrest, a virtual reality project, won the top prize at the 2019 NYC Media Lab. He also received the 2022 Fresh Fruit Festival Audience Favorite Award for his short Christmas, and his 24-Hour Plays Viral Monologue Safe Word was nominated for Best Digital Entertainment at The Queerties.
Director Andrew Coopman was a 2022-2023 Drama League FutureNow Fellowship recipient with credits including: Alan Turing & The Queen of the Night (World Premier, Player’s Theatre), The Last Performance of Pauline Cushman (World Premier, The Tank), Georgia & The Butch (World Premier, The Tank), The Apollo of Bellac (Hangar Theatre), Head Over Heels (Lakewood Playhouse), Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (Jones Playhouse), Bryony Lavery’s Frozen: A Play (Cabaret Theater), Mary Zimmerman’s The Odyssey (Studio East), Little Women the Musical (Seattle Musical Theater), Wilde Tales (Seattle Opera), The Little Mermaid (Kitsap Forest Theater), Once Upon a Mattress (Snoqualmie Falls Forest Theater), The Wizard of Oz (Tacoma Little Theater), and multiple touring remounts of The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System (TheaterWorksUSA). Andrew was a 2024 Artist in Residence playwright with Skeleton Rep(resents).
The Cast is Ashton Muñiz, soon to be seen in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride. Recent acting credits include Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance on Broadway, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music; Amber Walker, fresh from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2024 season understudying Jane Eyre and Lady Macduff; and Yeauxlanda Kay, seen on HBO’s Peabody Award-winning Def Poetry Jam (Seasons 3 & 4) and creator and host of the podcast This Could Be Us But You Keep Voting Republican.
HOLIDAY is on at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, NY, December 3–7, 2025: Wednesday, December 3 at 3:00 PM; Thursday, December 4 at 7:00 PM; Friday, December 5 at 7:00 PM; Saturday, December 6 at 3:00 PM; Sunday, December 7 at 5:00 PM. Tickets are $20 here.
Make a trip of it and grab a Black Friday deal on hotels in nearby Greenwich Village!
