From their website: “Spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen. Whether we present stories around a lively theme, the favorite works of a guest author or a special collaboration with a museum or publication, each Selected Shorts event is a unique night of literature in performance. Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer.” LISTEN!!
If you love stories, you may already listen to Selected Shorts — either at Symphony Space, if you live in (or visit) New York, or on the radio (or streaming online), as I did for many, many years. There’s something so special about listening to someone read or tell a story, and I never outgrew the pleasure of it. One of my favorite memories is from the summer I had a new spinning wheel and I’d spin while Marnie read aloud to me — Grendel, John Gardner’s wrenching version of the Beowulf story, from the point of view of the monster. So a couple years ago, still relatively new to Manhattan and constantly dazzled by it, I bought an annual subscription to the Selected Shorts season, and loved going to all the performances. Now I pick and choose, and last night I went to the show called NOLA: Jazzy Tales from the Big Easy. I adore New Orleans, and have been there more times than I can shake a stick at. Here’s the program:
what a lovely menu!
Michael Cerveris
Of course the best part is sitting in the dark listening to the stories, and that’s worth the price of admission. But it’s also just fascinating watching the performers, some of whom perform. Some act the hell of out the piece. Some read it. Some are overly precise in their diction, some are loose and jangly. Michael Cerveris threw himself into reading the chapter from A Confederacy of Dunces, giving Ignatius a deep, slow booming voice, and the other characters quite different voices. He has a lot of familiarity with New Orleans (real being-there familiarity) and got the accents just right. There’s more than one accent there, and he nailed them, which gave me a lot of pleasure.
Patricia Clarkson, so luscious
Patricia Clarkson’s mother “runs New Orleans,” she said, and she grew up there. She’s got that deep, lush, drawly accent, you know, so I figured her readings would be great. She’s one who acted the hell out of it. Before she started, she suddenly took a wide, firm stance as if facing the microphone for a fight. When she started to read the Bukowski, she shifted her stance entirely. She was quite dramatic (big surprise there), raising and lowering the volume of her voice quite a bit, and her facial expressions were fluid and exaggerated. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes it felt a bit much, but I was definitely engaged. I just love hearing her accent, no matter what.
Clarke Peters -- loved him in The Wire, and also in Treme
Clarke Peters was gorgeous, elegant, and with such a deep beautiful voice it was a joy listening to him. I thought he was the best of the night. He really just stood there and told the story of the man trying to teach New Orleans kids how to play jazz, acting out what was necessary, singing the singing bits. He wasn’t flamboyant but he was in it. He also really nailed the accents, and I could close my eyes and listen to him and feel like I was back there. I could hear things that he wasn’t putting into the story, because what he did put into the story was so full. I wish he’d been the last reader of the night, it would’ve been such a lovely place to end. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
Amy Ryan, loved her in everything she's ever done
Still and all, it was a wonderful evening of intense story. Listening required great effort; it’s not at all a passive experience, even though it seems so. With each performer, the listener has to make a shift and learn how to hear. And listening to stories being read takes more effort, there’s a period of adjustment at the beginning where it doesn’t make sense — true of just reading short stories, too, sometimes.
And thus ends the first of my fantastic NY nights. Next up: Friday night’s Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine. It’s so delicious having such great things to look forward to.
oh what a week / mid-December, in 2011 / what a very special time for me / I’ll remember, what a week. (apologies to Leo Sayer)
Before I moved here, I had all these ideas about what I’d do as a New Yorker, and they entailed going to the theater, seeing live performances at Lincoln Center, walking in Central Park every day, and attending readings and lectures. And I do all those things (though not as much as I’d imagined…..), and feel lucky to live in a place with so many opportunities. Some are quite expensive, but there are so many inexpensive and free things to do, you can still have a culturally rich life even if you aren’t in the 1%. As I certainly am not.
But this is definitely going to be one of those weeks, and I cannot wait! Here’s what’s up on deck for lucky old me:
- Tuesday — poetry group. Oh how I love this, as any regular blog reader knows. Very smart people talking about poetry; it’s Temma’s Poetry Salon, as I like to think of it so I can feel even fancier.
- Wednesday — at Symphony Space, a Selected Shorts performance called NOLA stories, featuring Clarke Peters (from The Wire and Treme), Patricia Clarkson, Michael Cerveris, Amy Ryan, Roy Blount, Jr., and a performance by New Orleans piano legend Henry Butler. People reading stories out loud, while we listen in the dark, sheer heaven.
- Friday — the annual Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine. Remember I went last year, and was prone to fits of joy and awe? The same dance group is performing this year (The Force of Nature Dance Theater), along with old and new musicians. I know it’ll be magical again.
- Saturday — I’m going to see the NYC Ballet dance The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center! In all these years of life, I’ve never seen a live performance. My dear friend Temma invited me, and we’re going to dinner before the show. She wants to see little girls in the audience wearing satin ribbons and bows, and I’m sure they’ll be there in abundance.
- Sunday — I’m going to the final performance of Krapp’s Last Tape, my favorite Beckett play, at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), performed by John Hurt. If you haven’t read Krapp, this is essentially the point: A tragedy in one act for a lone actor, this dramatization of the messy truths of memory and time illuminates the predicament we face when we become strangers to our former selves. Doesn’t that sound like something I’d love?! I have so many former selves, so many lives I’ve lived, this play really speaks to me more than any of Beckett’s plays and stories.
So yeah, it’s going to be an amazing, amazing week. Today I’m making panettone, finishing up my Ho-Ho-Ho-ing and getting everything wrapped and ready to ship to Austin tomorrow, and doing some house-straightening.
last year's panettone, with apricots and cranberries and lots of dried fruit yummies
Department of Random:
- Why do computer manufacturers use different keyboards??? It’s always tiny little small differences, like the placement of the Control and Alt keys. On my last keyboard, the arrangement on the lower left was Fn, Ctrl, then Alt. On my new one it’s Ctrl, Fn, Alt. It’s driving me crazy! I use keystroke combinations constantly, and my little finger expects the Ctrl key to be in a certain place. It’s really goofing me up, man.
- Here are the year’s 26 best films, according to The New Yorker. I haven’t seen most of them, yikes!
- And here are the most criminally overlooked books of the year, according to Flavorwire. I feel so guilty, because I’ve also overlooked them. All.
- When I was a very little [precocious] girl, around 5 years old as I recall, I wanted to be a paleontologist and discover dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. That’s all I wanted to be when I grew up, and I remember feeling it quite desperately. It pissed off my mother, for some reason. Marnie sent me a link to this article about a recent discovery of a nest of gorgeous dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. See?? That could’ve been mine!
- Watch and enjoy this interview with a one-year-old. “On Fridays she hits the turtles.”
- And one more: remember how much I loved Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a poet’s gorgeous memoir of his difficult father? It’s going to be a movie called Being Flynn, and the casting looks perfect. The trailer suggests the movie will capture the mood and feeling. I am SO excited, and can’t wait to see it. Here’s the trailer:
Happy Sunday y’all!
please click through on this one!
Have you ever read something that just haunts you? Everyone has, probably, in one form or another. But this story truly haunts me, it hovers around the edges, it has even shown up in a dream. The Seventh Man, by Haruki Murakami, was read by John Shea at Symphony Space. I’ve attended the Selected Shorts readings at Symphony Space, and they’re almost always wonderful. I haven’t read this story, and even if I did, I heard it read first, and that reading may partially account for the haunting nature of it — but I suspect it’s deeply embedded in the story itself. John Shea’s reading of it is just magnificent – dramatic, loud, whispering, terrified, exhausted. It’s a relatively long listen – 40 minutes (I think….time just stops when I listen to it, which I’ve done 10 or 11 times).
I’ve typed and erased several attempts to introduce you to the story, to make you want to listen, but whatever I write just misses the boat enough to make me afraid you won’t. It’s really an incredible story. At Symphony Space, it was part of a program called “Deepening Insight” so it’s about the main character’s insight into the most terrible and affecting thing that ever happened to him. If you like to think about metaphor and meaning and transformation and life, please please please give it a try.
I won’t continue to tease; if you want to listen, here you go, and if you want to read it, click here. [note: don't be put off when you start listening - the program featured 2 stories, and this clip begins with a snippet of the 2nd story, followed by the introduction of John Shea, who will then start reading. Be patient, the story starts around a minute and a half.] If you want to keep listening, the 2nd story is included in the audio, too, after the Murakami.
I’d like to know about stories that have had this kind of effect on you. My reading time is pretty severely limited, and I prefer to read things that at least have the potential to knock me back like this. I love literary fiction – Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Murakami – so I’m always interested in a recommendation of a powerful story. Got one to share with me?
Popular posts: