4 X'MAS
An Evening of One-Acts and BONUS Monologue by
George Cameron Grant
Christmas magic for audiences who like their Holidays with a little edge.
4 X’MAS is an evening of holiday one-acts by George Cameron Grant that moves from outrageous comedy to romance, heartbreak and unexpected acts of grace.
A pair of estranged lovers rediscover each other after an office Christmas party. Five Christmas ornaments fight for their very survival. A broken-down Santa encounters a young woman who may need him as desperately as he needs her. And on the Brooklyn Bridge, two strangers discover that sometimes it takes two broken hearts to make one whole.
Along with the poignant monologue THE FIRST NOEL, the collection, which contains the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival finalists BALLS and SANTA COMES TO THE KING DAVID, looks beyond the tinsel, presents and familiar Christmas traditions to the people underneath them—people searching for love, forgiveness, belonging and another chance.
Funny, touching and unapologetically human, 4 X’MAS celebrates a simple idea:
Sometimes the greatest Christmas miracles are the ones we create for each other.
BALLS
What if you had to sing for your life?
Five Christmas ornaments—Gold, Silver, Green, Red and Blue—have survived another year together. But when the couple who owns them erupts into a Christmas Eve battle and decorations start flying, the Balls suddenly face a horrifying possibility: if the marriage doesn't survive Christmas, neither may they.
Their solution? Sing for their lives.
BALLS, a Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival finalist, is an outrageous comic fantasy in which five very opinionated Christmas ornaments discover that even the most fragile things can sometimes hold a family together. Funny, theatrical and wonderfully absurd, it's Christmas seen from the one point of view nobody ever considered—the decorations.
THE OFFICE PARTY
Their greatest gift is about to arrive.
What begins as the aftermath of a slightly out-of-control office Christmas party appears to have become a very dangerous affair. A man and woman, still partially dressed in their Santa costumes, have stolen away for an hour of passion—while nervously awaiting the return of Richard.
But when the front door finally opens, the truth turns the entire situation upside down.
THE OFFICE PARTY is a fast, sexy Christmas comedy that plays with the audience's assumptions before revealing that these two aren't beginning an illicit affair at all. They're an estranged husband and wife who have unexpectedly rediscovered each other—and Richard is their teenage son. By Christmas morning, three people may be getting exactly what they wanted most:
their family back together.
THE FIRST NOEL
Sometimes, a miracle can be a simple act of kindness.
Noel is young, homeless and spending Christmas Eve outside a Chinese take-out—not because she has nowhere else to be, but because this particular spot once stood beneath the window of the woman who gave her both her name and her belief that people are basically good.
Every Christmas Eve, Noel returns.
With humor that barely conceals the hurt beneath it, she remembers her mother, the home that disappeared, the father she escaped and the life that eventually left her on the street. Yet despite everything, Noel still clings to her mother's belief that small moments of human kindness matter.
THE FIRST NOEL is an intimate Christmas monologue about homelessness, memory, dignity and hope—and about one seemingly insignificant gesture from a stranger that proves Noel's mother may have been right all along.
A bonus monologue from the 4 X'MAS Christmas Collection of One-Acts.
SANTA'S CLARA
Even a lost soul can help another find their way home.
On an unnaturally warm Christmas Eve in the shadows of Port Authority, Dawn is surviving on the streets when she encounters a disheveled, whiskey-carrying Santa Claus with a sack full of memories and an impossible claim: he's been looking for her.
The stranger turns out to be something far more extraordinary than another sidewalk Santa. He remembers Dawn as the hopeful little girl she once was—and carries proof of a life she has tried desperately to forget.
SANTA'S CLARA is a funny, gritty and ultimately moving urban Christmas fable about two lost souls, second chances and the possibility that being broken doesn't make someone a lost cause. And before Santa disappears, he gives Dawn something more valuable than anything in his sack:
a reason to believe she can begin again.
SANTA COMES TO THE KING DAVID
Can two broken hearts make one whole?
Eleven minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve, two strangers meet at the exact center of the Brooklyn Bridge: Marsha Zimmerman, escaping another miserable holiday, and Tim Cleary, inexplicably dressed as Santa Claus.
Tim has just come from the King David Nursing Home, where for years he has spent Christmas Eve playing Santa for its Jewish residents—a tradition born from his childhood friendship with Stella Levy. But this Christmas, Stella has given her “little Santa” one final assignment: take half of the broken-heart charm she shared with her beloved husband to the Brooklyn Bridge and trust that he'll know what to do next.
Then Marsha arrives.
Warm, funny and touched with a little Christmas magic, SANTA COMES TO THE KING DAVID, a Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival finalist, is a story about friendship, memory, faith and the unexpected possibility of love after loss. As midnight arrives, Stella's promise begins to make sense: Sometimes it takes two broken hearts to make one whole.