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“I moved to Austin and the first show that I was offered to direct was A Christmas Story, and then it came to the following Christmas of Elf, and then now here we are for a third Christmas in a row, and it’s like, yeah, I’m the Austin Christmas guy,â€� says theater director Richard Cerato of his recent history helming holiday-themed shows. “And I’ll take that. I’ll take that title.â€�

This December, Cerato is directing Frost Bites: A Holiday Cabaret for Alchemy Theatre. He says that while he didn’t set out to specialize in Christmas shows, he has always been a fan of the season. “I just love the holidays,� he says. “And yeah, when Carol [Hickey, Alchemy’s artistic director] suggested a holiday cabaret, I said ‘Oh great, I’m your guy. I’ve got a whole box of Christmas set decorations ready to go!’�

The idea of presenting a Christmas season cabaret show grew out of a class that Cerato taught this past summer for Hickey’s acting studio. “I’d asked him to teach a class on musical theater � he has an amazing background in musical theater in New York � and so he asked if he could do a cabaret class, where it would be part monologue, part standup, and obviously part singing and song, and really focused on the storytelling,� Hickey says. “And I went to their final day of the class, where they kind of presented their offerings� and I was just blown away.�

Hickey was inspired to ask Cerato to create a holiday-themed cabaret show for Alchemy Theatre. “It all sort of fell into place,� Cerato says. “And oftentimes when you think about cabaret, you think about a dozen or so actor/singers who stand up at a microphone and they share stories and they sing songs. And that’s all well and we could do something like that for the holidays, but we decided to take it a step further and create sort of a thematic structure around it.�

Cerato and his cast have created a tight one-hour show that still manages to pack in some 28 songs, he says. “There actually were a few more than that,� he says. “I think we were up to 35 at one point. And how we fit 28 songs into an hour� well, it’s Christmas magic, so you’ll have to come and see it for yourself to see how it plays out. And you know, with cabaret� cabaret’s kind of the all-encompassing artform, so there’s not just singing and dancing. There is a lot of singing and dancing, but there’s also burlesque and pantomime and puppetry and lot of what’s called ‘little art.� So there’s a lot of variety.�