AN EVENING OF MUSIC, STORIES AND PLAYS
DECEMBER 13, 2025 @ 7PM
As the year draws to a close, Sea Dog Theater presents A Christmas Salon — an intimate evening of songs, stories, and short plays. This gathering welcomes all to share in the beauty and depth of the season through performances by Sea Dog’s community of artists.
Steeped in the Christmas spirit and open to all who seek beauty and belonging, the evening celebrates light in the midst of darkness, hope renewed, and the creative spark that connects us across belief and background.
FEATURED PERFORMERS
Len Cariou
Heather Summerhayes Cariou
James Yaegashi
Tami Schuch-Yaegashi
Debra Walton
Gary Sloan
Kamel Boutros
Christopher J. Domig
Karis Danish
Sally Shaw
Carolyn Best
Maggie Anne Gillette
Matthew Quinones
Steven Pichler
LEN CARIOU
Len Cariou is an internationally recognized, Tony Award-winning, Emmy-nominated actor whose career spans over six decades on Broadway and regional stages, in film, and television. A member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, he is celebrated in particular for originating the role of Frederick Egerman in Sondheim's A Little Night Music, and for his legendary performance as the title character in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He remains highly regarded for classical repertoires performed at the Stratford Festival and Guthrie theaters, including King Lear, which he assayed twice. His one-man show Broadway and the Bard embraces both the dramatic and musical elements of his sojourn in his beloved profession. Len is also known for playing the patriarch of the family in Blue Bloods, one of CBS's highest-rated primetime programs. He is a member of the Order of Manitoba and an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is a dear friend of Sea Dog Theater and originally played Morrie in our reading of Tuesdays with Morrie in 2022.
HEATHER SUMMERHAYES CARIOU
Heather Summerhayes Cariou is a 2016/17 post-graduate Fellow in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and recipient of the 2019 Kalanithi Writing Prize at Stanford Med. Before becoming the author of Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir she was classically trained as an actor/singer/dancer and appeared on stages across Canada and off-Broadway for 20 years. A damn-the-torpedoes kind of gal, she once paddle-captained a raft full of screaming women through Rogue River's Blossom Bar rapid at high water, and made a full-Kabuki Thanksgiving dinner in a Baltimore hotel room for the cast and crew of a Broadway-bound musical. Heather revels in the life of the mind and the open road of the heart. She has several writing projects in the hopper, including a collaboration with author Ann Burack-Weiss to adapt her book The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman's Life to the stage.
JAMES YAEGASHI
James Yaegashi is the son of an American mother and a Japanese father; he was raised in Japan. He has a long resume as an actor with TV and film credits, including: Runaways (Marvel), The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, Man on a Ledge, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Lisa Picard Is Famous, The Thomas Crown Affair, among others. He has originated many roles on and off Broadway including Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out (2003 Tony Award for Best Play), A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, A Few Stout Individuals, and Julia Cho’s Durango. For the stage, James has directed My Friend Has Come for the Asian American Writers Workshop and many plays for the 52nd Street Project Playmaking series. He has also directed numerous play readings over the years, including an online reading of Clippy and Ms. U for Ma-Yi Theater during the Covid pandemic shutdown. He made his filmmaking debut in 2012 with Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty, which won Best Feature in the DIY film competition at the Northside Festival, a trendsetter art festival in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
DEBRA WALTON
Debra Walton Honing her skills on Broadway, national tours, and in regional theatre, Debra has played a variety of roles from the title character in CLYDE’S to Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly! TV and streaming appearances include Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, and Harlem. Debra made her Broadway directorial debut as the Associate Director of Thoughts of a Colored Man. She currently serves as Interim Associate Artistic Director at The York Theatre.
GARY SLOAN
Gary Sloan has performed leading roles off-Broadway in New York and throughout the US in major regional theatres for forty years. He most recently was Head of the MFA Acting Program at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His acting text, In Rehearsal, was released by Routledge Publishing in London in 2011. He is currently rehearsing a five-year King Lear project with friend and director Mark Lewis.
TAMI SCHUCH-YAEGASHI
Tami Schuch-Yaegashi is a soprano with a degree from The Eastman School of Music. Classically trained and versatile, she has shared music in many places, including classes with her 100+ preschool students in Brooklyn; on her album of Americana songs, This Land (Parents’ Choice Award); in Paris for the world premiere of Kamel Boutros’ Requiem; in the studio singing sound clips for a Google project; in recitals on a boat at Bargemusic Brooklyn; on an episode of Damages; and on Sunday mornings as a soloist here at Saint George’s. She believes wholeheartedly in the redemptive, unifying power of music-making.
KAMEL BOUTROS
Kamel Boutros is a modern New York City Renaissance Man. As an internationally acclaimed opera baritone, he has performed baritone roles in multiple seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as in the UK, Japan, India, Italy, France, and other countries. He has shared stages at the Louvre in Paris, Bepu-Japan, and Verbier with his close friend, piano virtuoso Martha Argerich, the late Luciano Pavarotti, Tony Award winner Ruthie Ann Miles, and many others.
As an actor, he has appeared on the New York Off-Broadway stage in Babette’s Feast and in award-winning independent films and television shows, including major roles as 9/11 terrorist leader Mohammed Atta in The Hamburg Cell and as Mahmoud in The Death of Klinghoffer. He has also arranged music for film and television shows, such as Damages.
A classical pianist, he currently is the Music Director of Calvary – St. George’s Church parish in Gramercy Park, New York City, where he programs, conducts, writes, and performs an extraordinarily broad range of sacred music from multiple nations and genres composed over the last five centuries. Kamel also supervises all audio and co-manages video production at both churches, which are historic landmarks in New York City.
KARIS DANISH
Karis Danish New York theater credits: Off-Broadway Hit-Lit (Dir. Robert Wuhl), The Gold (The Pearl Theater) in the New York Musical Festival. Regional credits: How I Learned to Drive at Cleveland Playhouse and Syracuse Stage; Cowgirls at Pioneer Theater Company; Crimes of the Heart at Triad Stage; One Man, Two Guvnors at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis (Dir. Ed Stern); the world premiere of Tale of Two Cities (Dir. Warren Carlyle); Doubt (Dir. Anne Kauffman) at Asolo Repertory Theater; A Thousand Pines at Westport Country Playhouse (Dir. Austin Pendleton). She has also worked at Cape May Playhouse and the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Karis holds an M.F.A. from the FSU Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training.
SALLY SHAW
Sally Shaw is an NYC-based interdisciplinary artist. Winning Playbill’s 2021 Search for a Star competition kick-started her performing career before graduating with a BFA in Musical Theater from Ithaca College in 2022. Broadway: Gypsy (2024 revival). Other: La Cage Aux Folles (Anne) at Barrington Stage; Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns: The Musical (Butch Stagehand) at the Connelly Theatre; reading of The Humans at Sea Dog Theater (Brigid); The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy) at Cortland Rep. Proudly represented by CLA Partners and HCKR. @sal.shaw
CAROLYN BEST
Carolyn Best has worked as an actor at American Theatre of Actors (Playing with Fire), The Cherry Arts (As You Like It), Ithaca Shakespeare Company (The Two Gentlemen of Verona), and Amoeba Productions (As You Like It). In addition to mainstage performance work in Sweat, Julius Caesar, and red bike, she used her time at Ithaca College to proactively create her own work. She independently produced, directed, and dramaturged Heroes of the Fourth Turning at The Cherry Arts, and developed Mumsy, Get My Pan! and The Orange: An Odyssey as part of the pioneer MTD Collaboratory devising class.
She also proudly served as president of Wheels for Women, fundraising for survivors of domestic violence in Kerala, India, and had the thrilling opportunity to read twice for the New Voices Literary Festival in The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows and I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire.
In New York City, she is currently getting her imaginative sweat on developing The Practice Garage with TEAM member Libby King, and once a month she reads plays about alienation and reconciliation with Sea Dog Theater.
MAGGIE GILLETTE
Maggie Gillette is a NYC-based creative with devotion to classical theatre, farce & comedy, improv, and voiceovers. She enjoys working with young performers and diving into new original works. After she graduated from Ithaca College Theatre Arts with a B.F.A. in Acting in 2019, she had less than a year to get the ball rolling on her career in NYC, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. A few of her favorite credits include playing many characters in the premiere of Lost Lodge (The Kate), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (Savannah College of Art and Design Beach), The Moor-Hen (The Moors), Gertrude McFuzz (Seussical), and Olivia (Twelfth Night).