Travis Michael Holder is that total enigma: a theatre artist living in Hollywood. He was once referred to as a renaissance man for the number of pies into which he has placed his curious fingers, but he insists the illusion is more an imaginative version of the dastardly game of survival: always passing GO, winning an occasional hotel on Boardwalk, but somehow never collecting the fucking $200.
An actor since childhood, Travis has appeared in six Broadway productions and has toured in everything from Bye Bye Birdie; The King and I; Inherit the Wind; Oh Dad, Poor Dad…; Hair; and throughout Europe and Asia in Hello, Dolly—all before being tapped young, innocent (yeah, right), and briefly attractive while studying at Pasadena Playhouse College of the Theatre Arts to go under contract to Paramount Pictures as part of their New Talent program. He relocated permanently to Lost Angeles, a desolate place where his first love for theatre and live performance made him a stranger in a strange land dwarfed by the omnipresent Hollywood film industry.
Still, although quickly succumbing to the ease, lifestyle, and availability of good drugs in El Lay, he steadfastly refused to abandon his passion for the stage, a decision that resulted in his dismissal from his studio when he grew his hair long and against their objections joined the cast of Hair. His obstinance led him through the years to recognition from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Leading Performance by an Actor as Kenneth Halliwell in the west coast premiere of Nasty Little Secrets at Theatre/Theater; another LADCC Award as part of the ensemble cast of Stupid Fucking Bird at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center; a Drama-Logue Award as Lennie in Of Mice and Men; a ReviewPlays.com Award as Brian in The Shadow Box; Maddy Awards as Greta in Bent, Shelley Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross, and as Tennessee Williams himself in Lament for the Moths: the Lost Poems of Tennessee Williams; a Sage Award for The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Fest; six acting nominations from LA Weekly; Ovation, GLAAD, NAACP, and five Garland Award nominations. He has toured extensively as Amos “Mr. Cellophane” Hart in Chicago and regionally, he has been honored with an Inland Theatre League Award as Ken Talley in Fifth of July, three awards for direction and performance as Dr. Dysart in Equus, and he was up for Washington, DC’s Helen Hayes honors as Oscar Wilde in the world premiere of Oscar & Speranza.
As a playwright, Travis’ Looking South on Cahuenga Hill, L.O.L., STR8 2 PRDRS, and River and Other Phoeni Rising have been produced nationally and his first semi-autobiographical play Surprise Surprise, which originally debuted at the Victory Theatre Center in 1994, became a cult favorite 2010 feature film with a screenplay he adapted with producer-director Jerry Turner and featuring Travis in a leading role. His theatrical directorial credits include Dracula, Bye Bye Birdie, Equus, Stupid Fucking Bird, Other Desert Cities, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Tennessee Williams' The Purification and Small Craft Warnings, Brecht on Brecht, Bleacher Bums, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Dark of the Moon.
Once again ignoring the many warnings about the pitfalls for an actor to do such a thing, Travis began his nearly four-decade career as a Los Angeles theatre critic in 1987, serving as Theatre Editor for Entertainment Today for 21 years and reviewing weekly for Back Stage for 15 years. He was editor of Los Angeles Theatres Magazine and managing editor for both the Beverly Hills Post and West Hollywood Weekly, wrote monthly columns about music and Las Vegas entertainment in Salon City Magazine, and was a longtime contributor to Arts In LA before establishing TicketHoldersLA.com in 2017. As a member of the LA Drama Critics Circle, Travis holds the singular and once quite controversial distinction of being the only member in the organization’s 56-year history to have been recognized with an award as an actor—and twice.
Taking a highly successful detour into the insanity of the music industry in his 20s, Travis toured the globe with Dusty Springfield, The Doors, and Loggins & Messina before settling in as Talent Coordinator at the infamous Troubadour in LA and San Francisco, staying on in SF when Troubadour North became The Boarding House before he embarked on a breakneck career producing concerts nationally and internationally.
Contrary to what was presented as fact in Lee Hall's somewhat fantasized screenplay for the film Rocketman, it was Travis and not his majorly resistant boss Doug Weston who introduced Elton John to the US in his first stateside appearance and he was also responsible for bringing Bette Midler to the west coast on her inaugural national tour. He was instrumental in helping to launch the careers of, among others, such icons as Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne, David Foster, Robin Williams, Tom Waits, Glenn Frye and JD Souther, Steve Martin, Carole King, James Taylor, Billy Joel, David Byrne and The Talking Heads, Tim Buckley, Kenny Loggins and Jimmy Messina, Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack, The Pointer Sisters, John Denver, The Tubes, Rickie Lee Jones, and Cheech & Chong.
Travis maintains an active schedule as a private film and television acting coach in Los Angeles and, from 2010 to just before the world fell apart in 2020, he taught acting, theatre history, Media in Society, and directed BFA production workshops at the New York Film Academy’s west coast campus. He has also appeared several times since 2003 in performances and seminars at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans, an annual event which led him to Knowing What It Means to Miss You Know Where on a daily basis.