Featuring
Katie Dahl, Karen Mal
and James Valcq

Wednesday, December 28 - 4pm
Thursday, December 29 - 7pm
Friday, December 30 - 7pm
Saturday, December 31 - 4pm & 7pm

The holidays are a time for reunions. This winter, reunite with Katie Dahl, Karen Mal, and James Valcq to celebrate the holiday season. In the historic Gibraltar Town hall, this trio of AFT favorites will present an evening of songs and stories gathered from their own diverse holiday scrapbooks. Songs will range from the very old to the very new and will come from everywhere from faraway lands to the streets of Fish Creek.

Katie Dahl, is a professional singer-songwriter (www.katiedahlmusic.com) This Carleton College alumna experienced two career highlights this past summer: opening for her musical hero, Dar Williams, at Big Top Chautauqua, and work-shopping her first-ever musical, Victory Farm, which she’s writing with Emilie Coulson and Spitfire Grill composer James Valcq. An AFT fan for as long as she can remember, Katie made her first appearance on the AFT stage (wearing a spider hat, no less) in the 2009 production Sunsets and S’mores.

Karen Mal is no stranger to the AFT stage. She performed in the original casts of Lumberjacks in Love, Belgians in Heaven, and Fishing for the Moon, and also appeared in the very first AFT show to perform at the Gibraltar Town Hall. (And If Elected). She was composer/music director for Door Shakespeare for many years and comes home to Door County whenever she can.

Karen is also no stranger to her beloved colleagues James Valcq and Katie Dahl. James, with Fred Alley, wrote a role for her in AFT's The Passage, along with some noteworthy mandolin and clarinet parts. James and Karen also toured together in a production of Maurice Sendak's Really Rosie, and even performed Christmas music together in shopping malls in the greater New York City area. Karen and Katie have worked together on a handful of mandolin lessons in the early days, in concert in recent days, at Door County Bluegrass Camp, and in many Door Shakespeare productions, where Karen wrote the music and Katie got to play it wearing really cool outlandish costumes. Katie is also the only one of Karen's Wisconsin friends to make it down to the Kerrville Folk Festival. (Karen's home for three weeks a year)

Karen lives in Austin, Texas with her music and life partner, Will Taylor, and an extended unofficial family. She loves both the music and the climate there. While Austin was breaking its record for the number of triple-digit days this summer (85!), Karen was busy making her own record of Christmas music for mandolin and guitar. These days she plays music-full time, when she's not tending to her vegetable gardens and her flock of fourteen hens.

James Valcq composed the score of the Off-Broadway musical The Spitfire Grill (Playwrights Horizons, 2001), which won the Richard Rodgers Production Award and received Best Musical nominations from the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League as well as two Drama Desk nominations. The show, written with collaborator Fred Alley, has been produced over 350 times across the United States, in Germany, South Korea, the UK, Japan, and Australia. Also Off-Broadway, James was the composer/author of Zombies from the Beyond, which opened to critical acclaim in 1995. Broadway credits as conductor and/or musician including Chicago, Flower Drum Song, Cabaret, and Scarlet Pimpernel. Other conducting credits: Maurice Sendak’s production of Really Rosie (national tour), Candide, Lady in the Dark, South Pacific, The Producers (Skylight Opera Theatre), and She Loves Me (Indiana Rep). James has composed scores for Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Door Shakespeare, Idaho Youth Theatre, and American Folklore Theatre. As an actor, James has played the role of Cosme McMoon in Souvenir at Boise Contemporary Theatre and American Stage in Florida. Also: Ernie in Guys on Ice at AFT & Milwaukee Rep, Solanio in Merchant of Venice and the Friar in Much Ado About Nothing at Door Shakespeare. This past summer James appeared as Feste in Door Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and directed AFT’s fall production of The Spitfire Grill.