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E.R. Haire Jr. to present Capote's 'Christmas Story'

E.R. Haire Jr. will present 'A Christmas Story' Saturday and Sunday.

By Lightning Reports, Published: December 16, 2020

FLAT ROCK — Actor and theologian E.R. Haire Jr. will present Truman Capote’s "A Christmas Memory" as a one-man show at the Episcopal Church of St. John in the Wilderness at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 19, and Sunday, Dec. 20, in the church Parish Hall on Rutledge Drive across from the sanctuary.

The show is free to the public but attendance is limited to 25 people per performance. RSVP is required. Click here to sign up. Face masks covering nose and mouth 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.

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, Earle Ross (E.R.) Haire Jr. worked in Los Angeles as an actor and at Paramount Studios. Theater credits in Los Angeles include The Foreigner, You Can’t Take It With You, Hamlet, Henry V, Richard III, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and the comedy spoof Riffs of Shakespeare. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, he has appeared in some forgettable films and on a daytime TV drama your grandmother might have watched, "Days of Our Lives." Haire 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