Four of Travis' own plays have premiered at the Egyptian Arena Theatre in Hollywood and his first effort as a playwright, Surprise, Surprise, debuted to critical acclaim and numerous extensions in 1994 at the Victory Theatre Center in Burbank, CA, featuring Travis opposite Gilligan’s Island rescuee Dawn Wells. Turned into a feature film this year with a screenplay adapted by Travis and producer/director Jerry Turner, Surprise, Surprise, starring Holder, Deborah Shelton, John Brotherton, Luke Eberl, and Mary Jo Catlett, is currently making the rounds of national and international film festivals.

Onscreen, Travis received critical acclaim as desert rat-artist Sherman in the indie feature Auditions; played Socrates as a homeless man in modernday LA opposite Jeremy Lelliott as Plato in Senator Plato; was Emmon Martrak, the world’s most obnoxious casting director, opposite Sally Kirkland in What’s Up, Scarlet?; hitchhiked through Malibu as Mucha in Souls, Full of It; appeared as a bigot tormented by demon-possessed junk food in The Burrito from Hell; watched his face dissolve in Sam Raimi’s cult classic Darkman; and leered excessively as Dr. Sigmund Winston in Masturbation: Putting the Fun into Self-Loving, winner of top honors from PlanetOut and the New York Film Festival, among many others, and part of TVA’s Men’s Mix DVD series, a compilation of award-winning short films.

Acting since childhood, Travis is a veteran of six Broadway productions and has traveled in numerous national and international tours over the years, playing everything from Hugo in Bye Bye Birdie to Jonathan in Oh Dad, Poor Dad to Barnaby in Hello, Dolly! (throughout Europe and Asia) to Woof in Hair to Artie in The House of Blue Leaves to Amos Hart in Chicago.

But way back in the late 60s when Hair began to recede, Travis met international singing superstar Dusty Springfield and made a 13-year detour into the music business, first traveling the globe as press rep for Dusty and subsequently taking on the same duties for The Doors and Loggins & Messina. He next began a long tenure as Talent Coordinator during the golden years of the infamous Troubadour nightclubs in LA and San Francisco, where he was instrumental in launching the careers of Steve Martin, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, James Taylor, John Denver, producer David Foster (with his original band Skylark), Cheech & Chong, Laura Nyro, Bonnie Raitt, and Glenn Frye of The Eagles, among others.

After hearing Elton John recording "Your Song" at a London recording studio while working for Dusty, Travis brought him to the States for his first American appearance at the Troubadour and arranged an itinerary at similar venues across the country in order to appease U.S. Immigration. This spun into a career in concert promotion, which included introducing Joni Mitchell to the world on a lengthy international tour (with an unknown Jackson Browne as the opening act) and taking Bette Midler out of New York's Continental Baths, toweling her off, and presenting her in concert across country (with Barry Manilow as accompanist and Bruce Vilanch writing topical jokes for each city they played), ending with her first historic west coast appearance at the Troub.

Loving the money but desperately missing acting, Travis returned to his first love in his mid-30s and the rest, as they say, has been downhill from there.

Aside from groveling ever since for acting work as the only 6'1" aging juvenile shaped like a pear, he has become well-known in Lost Angeles as a theatre writer and reviewer. His weekly column, “Ticketholders,” has appeared in several LA publications over the past 21 years and he has been Theatre Editor for Entertainment Today since 1990. He is also a regular weekly contributor to Back Stage West and writes monthly columns on music ("Clef Notes") and Las Vegas ("Vegas Daze") appearing in Salon City Magazine. You can check out his journalistic efforts at www.entertainmenttoday.net.

Travis' first novel, Waiting for Walk, was completed in 2005, dumped into a desk drawer after one rejection, and the ever-slothful, ever-deluded, ever-entitled author can't figure out why no one has magically found it yet, taken it out and published the damn thing. It's the story of a free-spirited professional child actor living and working in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s and much of it has a very familiar ring to Travis. Hopefully it will find a publisher soon before he jumps off the Hollywood Sign. Following is a bit about Waiting for Walk and even an excerpt, in case anyone's read this far without falling asleep:

Chronicling the evolution of Morgan Raeburn's maturation from pre-pubescence through his teen years, spent appearing daily on an early TV soap opera, as well as acting on Broadway and out on tour across the country, there’s nothing about his life that seems anything but perfectly normal to him. Existing within the nurturing confines of his passion for his art and with the blessings of his equally free-spirited mother, a former movie star blacklisted in the McCarthy era witchhunts, Morgan soon finds himself thrust headlong into an adult world that moves along at breakneck speed—a ride he’s confident he can handle no matter what should arise. A major personal crisis at age 14 instantly proves that theory wrong, sending the rampant hormones crashing through his quickly changing body into an emotional tailspin so horrendous that Morgan’s mother reconsiders her noninterventionist parenting. After recuperating from his nightmarish sexual initiation, she moves her son back into the family’s home in a quiet suburb of Chicago so he might finish growing up in a less hazardous environment. But it’s too late for that. Morgan Raeburn somehow knows the only way he’ll survive is by continuing to make his own decisions, bucking the rules of what society thinks is acceptable and, above all, living and thinking as an artist at all cost.

Winding through Waiting for Walk are some fascinating characters, including his mother’s best friend Judith, the notoriously reclusive Hollywood legend with whom he lives on the upper Westside when his mother returns to the midwest, a balls-out kind of woman who has for years successfully hidden her live-in lesbian lover from the world. Among the questionable role models are also Christian McCarren, the dashing international movie star who becomes Morgan’s obsession and whose own obsession in return changes both of their lives forever; Mercer Andrews, the tarnished but brilliant perpetually stoned-out Southern playwright who chases him around the dressing room at every opportunity; Maggie, his female high school art teacher who helps deliver him from his trauma state, leading them into a torrid secret relationship; and Sean Lauria, the angelic actor-dancer who falls in love with Morgan but is as afraid to let the nature of his affections show. Then there’s Morgan himself, committed to honesty and enlightenment at every moment of his life, yet so desperately afraid to admit his own confusing feelings to anyone, least of all to himself.

An Excerpt from Chapter Two of Travis Michael Holder’s Waiting for Walk:

Aside from all the horror stories of sharks swimming around in the theatrical waters prowling for young pink shrimpies with their squirmy little tails, Morgan knew he had a wonderful and unique life. Even as a kid not yet in his teens, he knew he loved being onstage more than anything in the world and he was certainly more comfortable there than anywhere else in the real non-show business world.

 Real life often alarmed Morgan a bit. People seemed so insincere to him when he was not working and home in Elmgrove or thrust into a situation where those around him were not the comfortable actors and artists and musicians and freaks he loved and understood so much more completely. But even considering his often commended early maturity and his uncommon exposure to all things adult, the scariest of anything he knew wasn’t jumping off a high dive or getting decent grades.

 Even as a little kid in Manhattan, Morgan could get to the studio and auditions and school by himself, eat by himself, get home by himself from just about anywhere on the island. He never in his life had the time—or interest—to learn how to ride a bike or play football, but he could hail a cab with killer instinct, just like the most seasoned New York veteran. Still for all the many things he could do, including putting an audience right smackdab in the palm of his hand, that one nagging little thing continued to taunt his sense of bravado.

 The thing he dreaded most was walking down the street in Manhattan by himself at the height of rush hour. Morgan never minded taking a cab or transferring on the subway, but walking alone during the day in midtown frightened the crap out of him. The problem was that he was so much smaller than most everyone else commuting around alone, and without a grown-up to hold his hand or guard him through the often dense pedestrian traffic, he could often be jostled and bumped and sent careening into street corner pretzel carts.

 But standing on a corner in anticipation of the DON’T WALK sign changing to WALK was the worst thing of all. He would be on the curb facing a sea of humanity impatient for all the streaks of yellow cabs to pass and the signal to change. As Morgan stood waiting for WALK, his stomach would begin to churn. It was like that annual running of the bulls in that village in Spain or wherever, only he was heading toward the beasts rather than running away from them. The light would change and the sea of humanity on the opposite curb would start right for him, as he did in return. When the two crashing forces of ordinary people headed in opposite directions met in the middle, he could feel them all tense up, lifting their briefcases and umbrellas high in the air for safety, poised and ready as they came in for the kill. Morgan was more times than not all but trampled beneath the rushing crowds and many, many times, he would find himself right back on the same side of the street where he’d started.

 Eons later, long after the death of both his mother and his first great love, Morgan would return to Manhattan from his west coast home for the first time in many years to start rehearsals for a play. He was anything but a wimpy kid at this point in his life; he was now quite an imposing adult. He smiled broadly as he faced his first midtown street corner at Fifty-seventh and Madison and its opposing troops of pedestrian wannabes.

 This time out, he knew he would get to the other side.

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