Traditional white lights, tinsel and ornaments on Christmas trees will not be seen at the Space 55 theater this holiday season. Instead, tree decorations include hair curlers, dried spaghetti and condoms.
Space 55, located on Pierce and Seventh streets, is hosting ‘The Weirdest Little Christmas Tree Contest.’ This is the first year for the festive event, which runs from Dec. 4-20.
Contestants are encouraged to decorate a 12-inch tree with any items or theme they want.
“I made up the contest because I wanted trees in the lobby of Space 55 for our ‘A Bloody Mary Christmas’ audience to look at, and thought it would be great to get our audience involved with that,” said Charlie Steak, associate artistic director at Space 55.
When a guest purchases a ticket to see “A Bloody Mary Christmas,” they also gain admission to view the contest entries and vote for their favorite weird tree.
The contest was a natural fit with Space 55’s annual holiday show.
“‘A Bloody Mary Christmas’ is an unusual holiday show–the holiday musicals for people who hate the holidays and musicals, so the jump from that to weird Christmas trees was pretty easy,” Steak said.
The themes for the trees range far and wide.
“I played around with a lot of ideas first, some of them were kind of bizarre and some were stupid,” said John Woodland, Space 55 volunteer and contest participant.
Woodland finally landed on ‘Curled up for Christmas.’
“I happened to be at Goodwill and walked past a bag of curlers,” Woodland said.” I thought how fun to wrap the curlers around the tree, as if the branches are being curled.”
“I just went with the whole theme of a woman having her hair curled, sunglasses and a magazine. I thought about putting a cigarette in there but decided not to,” Woodland said.
Inspiration for Ashley Naftule, another Christmas tree contestant, came from a single ornament and blossomed from there.
“The name of my tree is ‘The Passion of Mr. Bill.’ It started when I found a Mr. Bill hanging tree ornament a couple weeks ago,” Naftule said.
Mr. Bill is a popular clay clown character from early “Saturday Night Live” seasons.
“From there it went a little weird with a bunch of eyes on it. There are some stuffed animals, that sort of thing,” Naftule said.
Other tree decorations include dried spaghetti laid across the branches like tinsel.
A tag that reads, “The little condom tree. Don’t give a gift that keeps on giving!” accompanies a tree decorated with the plastic protection.
“Someone’s mother actually brought that one in,” Steak said.
The trees are now available for viewing and voting until Dec. 20, when the winner will be announced at “7 Minutes under the Mistletoe.”
The contest will stay open to new entries until the final date, but the earlier the tree is in the contest, the more opportunities there are for guests to vote for it.
“We have such an inventive crowd of artists that orbits around and through Space 55,” Steak said. “The tagline on the poster, ‘Celebrate your inner crafty nerd’, was an affectionate reference to them.”
Contact the reporter at rjmaki@asu.edu
