"Tuna Christmas" Kicks Off Season of Holiday Plays

Topher Payne Plays 13 Roles in Single Performance

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

A trio of holiday-themed plays open within the next week, all written by gay men and all featuring gay actors in leading roles. Just before Atlanta sees long runs of “The Santaland Diaries” and “A Queer Carol,” the one-week run of “A Tuna Christmas,” the perennial favorite starring two actors who play a whole town of characters, stops in as part of a national tour.

Local playwright, actor and columnist Topher Payne is one of the two stars of “Tuna,” which opened locally on Nov. 19 and plays through Nov. 23 at ART Station in Stone Mountain. The show is the popular follow-up to “Greater Tuna,” taking place in the third smallest town in Texas. In this show, hell breaks loose as a community theater’s production of “A Christmas Carol” and the annual yard-decorating contest go awry.

Payne and his co-star Jef Holbrook play all 24 characters, and Payne portrays 13 of them — from a 10-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother. Approximately half of the characters are women. Although “Tuna” is considered a widely recognized as a two-man piece, Payne gives extra credit to two crew members.

“It’s really a four person show,” he says. “We have two dressers, and they deserve credit for dressing us, sometimes within seconds.”

Payne says the play’s humor hits a nerve with a wide audience.

“It’s not just about life in Texas or the South,” he says. “People know and recognize these people. Small towns are small towns.”

The Springer Opera House in Columbus is producing the tour.