News

Performances added for Haire's reading of 'A Christmas Memory'

By Lightning Reports, Published: November 25, 2021

Truman Capote’s story, "A Christmas Memory," will be presented as a one-man show by actor and theologian E.R. Haire Jr. at the Episcopal Church of St. John in the Wilderness. Due to high demand, two more performances have been added.

The additional shows are at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17, and Saturday, Dec. 18. They join the already scheduled Saturday, Dec. 18, and Sunday, Dec. 19, at 2 p.m. performances in the church’s Wilderness Room on Rutledge Drive across from the sanctuary.

The show is free to the public but attendance is limited to 30 people per performance and RSVP is required. Visit stjohnflatrock.org to sign up. Face masks and physical distancing are required. Temperatures will be taken at the door.

"A Christmas Memory" takes place during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Until he was 10 years old, Truman Capote lived with elderly relatives in a small town in rural Alabama. The story is a frankly autobiographical account of those years, especially of his relationship with one of the elderly cousins, Miss Sook Faulk.

The greatest examples of Capote’s skillfulness as a writer are found among the stories inspired by his early childhood and the relationships he forged growing up in the rural South.

"A Christmas Memory" first appeared in Mademoiselle magazine in the late 1950s, when Capote was 27 years old, and has since become one of his most beloved and bestselling works.

Mr. Capote was a flamboyant figure in both literary and cultural circles. Controversial, colorful and complex, he was a writer of uncommon grace. His best-known works include Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood, Other Voices Other Rooms, and The Grass Harp. Mr. Capote died in 1984 at the age of 59.

A native of North Carolina, Haire worked as an actor and at Paramount Studios. He earned a master of sacred theology degree from Yale University Divinity School, focusing on drama and worship. In 2017 he earned a PhD. in theology and ethics from the University of the Edinburgh in Scotland.