The Mercy Street Theatre Company, an ensemble founded and led by Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumni, celebrates the winter holidays with Merry Christmas, Mulch Pile!, a new comedy by resident playwright Dakota Parobek (BA ’15), a graduate of Columbia College’s BA program in playwriting. The play concerns the friendship between Santa Claus and Laura, a young trans woman just coming to terms with her identity, as the two search for the thing between selfish and selfless. Merry Christmas, Mulch Pile! runs December 3-6 at the Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee, in Chicago. For tickets, click here.

The play–the first show in Mercy Street‘s 2015-16 season–is directed by Mercy Street’s associate artistic director Jake Fruend (BA ’13), a graduate of Columbia College’s theatre directing program. The cast includes Columbia College faculty member Michael Ryczek, who plays Santa Claus, and alumni Nicholas Caesar (BA ’10) and Juliana Brecher (BA ’13), graduates of Columbia College’s BA Program in Acting. Jerico Bleu (BA ’13), also an acting program alumnus, is the show’s dramaturg, and Alaina Moore (BA ’13), a graduate of Columbia College’s art and design program, is the production’s costume designer. Julia Rohed (BA ’13), a graduate of Columbia College’s theatre directing program, is Mercy Street’s artistic director and co-founder.

For this production, Mercy Street is partnering with Chicago House, an agency serving disenfranchised individuals and families in the LGBTQ community by providing housing, employment services, legal services, medical linkage and retention services, HIV prevention services, and other supportive programs. For more information on Chicago House’s work and the partnership with Mercy Street, click here.