The popular radio show and podcast ‘Selected Shorts’ returns to Stony Brook Southampton for an evening of humorous and intriguing short fiction that explores the complexities of who we are and how we make sense of the world.
Host Meg Wolitzer and actors Becky Ann Baker, Dylan Baker, Richard Kind and Sonia Manzano will take the stage at the Avram Theater on Friday, July 11, at 7 pm. The show will bring to life whimsical and poignant tales from Patricia Marx, Kurt Vonnegut and more. Don’t miss this spellbinding night!
Our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Sometimes funny. Always moving. ‘Selected Shorts’ connects you to the world with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater and comedy.
Richard Kind was recently featured in the star-studded rotating cast of All In: Comedy About Love on Broadway, and has also starred in Broadway productions of Kiss Me Kate, The Producers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife and The Big Knife, for which he received a Drama Desk Award. His film credits include Wolfs, Beau Is Afraid, Argo, A Serious Man, The Station Agent and Bombshell, as well as voicing characters in Inside Out, A Bug’s Life, Cars, Big Mouth, Family Guy and Toy Story 3. His television appearances include Spin City, Mad About You, Only Murders in the Building, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gotham, I’m Dying Up Here, Burn Notice, Luck, Red Oaks and Brockmire, among others.
Becky Ann Baker received an Emmy nomination for Girls and has appeared in Freaks and Geeks, The Good Wife, The Blacklist, Big Little Lies, Brockmire, Billions, A Simple Plan, Two Weeks Notice, Ted Lasso, Elsbeth and All Happy Families. She has performed on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Streetcar Named Desire, Titanic, Assassins, All My Sons and Good People. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Suddenly Last Summer at the Roundabout Theatre Company; Comedy of Errors, Othello and Two Gentlemen of Verona at the New York Shakespeare Festival; Durang, Durang at the Manhattan Theatre Club; and Barbecue at the Public Theater.
Dylan Baker is an actor whose film and television credits include Dream Scenario; LaRoy, Texas; The Resort; Inside Man; Hunters; Happiness; The Hot Zone: Anthrax; The Good Fight and The Good Wife; Homeland; Little Women; Spider-Man 2 & 3; Selma; Confirmation; Kings; Damages; and The Americans. His extensive theater credits include La Bete, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award; Corruption at Lincoln Center; The Audience with Helen Mirren; and the Broadway revival of The Front Page, Bernhardt/Hamlet and Medea at BAM. In addition to his acting credits, he directed the 2014 film 23 Blast.
Sonia Manzano created the children’s program, Alma’s Way, for PBS Kids, which has won two Imagen Awards for Best Youth Programing, a 2022 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Program and a 2023 NAACP nomination for an Image Award. Manzano is best known for performing the role of “Maria” on Sesame Street for 44 seasons, where her work affected the lives of millions of parents and children and garnered her two Emmy Award nominations in addition to the National Academy of Arts and Science’s Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy in 2016. As a writer for the show, she took home 15 Emmys. In 2022, Manzano was honored with the Beacon Award from PBS.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s ‘Selected Shorts.’
More than 35 years ago, ‘Selected Shorts’ was born on the stage at Symphony Space in Manhattan and quickly became one of the best known shows of its kind, spawning a popular public radio show, podcast, audio collections and national tours. The series was conceived with a simple premise: take great stories by well-known and emerging writers and have them brought to life by terrific actors of stage and screen. Whether featuring stories around a lively theme, the favorite works of a guest author or a special collaboration, each ‘Selected Shorts’ event is a unique night of literature in performance.
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