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Selected Shorts
Guest host Kirsten Vangsness presents four works about fame, celebrity, show biz, and what it takes to survive them. First, actor Cole Escola channels the legendary Joan Crawford in an excerpt from her autobiography, My Way of Life. Author Zadie Smith channels the dauntless spirit of Billie Holiday in “Crazy They Call Me,” performed by Karen Pittman. Will Eno’s “Interview" is a freewheeling monologue which offers both sides of an extensive and confessional outpouring performed by the author. And Bebe Neuwirth dances her way into our hearts playing a carefree child trapped in pretentious dance class in “I Am Narcissus,” by Elizabeth Olmstead.
Guest host Kirsten Vangsness presents four works about fame, celebrity, show biz, and what it takes to survive them. First, an excerpt from Hollywood legend Joan Crawford’s memoir “My Way of Life,” performed by Cole Escola.
Crawford was a renowned leading lady during Hollywood’s Golden Age, best known for her roles in Mildred Pierce, for which she won an Academy Award, Possessed, Dancing Lady, The Women, Sudden Fear, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, among dozens of credits over her five-decade career. Her autobiography, A Portrait of Joan, was published in 1962, followed by the memoir My Way of Life, published in 1971.
Cole Escola is a comedian, actor, writer, and cabaret performer, best known for his original comedy shorts. His notable theater appearances include Rock Bottom and Help! I’m Stuck at Joe’s Pub. He is the co-creator of the Jeffrey & Cole Casserole sketch comedy series. Escola has been featured on television in Man Seeking Woman, Girlboss, Difficult People, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and Mozart in the Jungle.
Zadie Smith channels the dauntless spirit of Billie Holiday in “Crazy They Call Me,” performed by Karen Pittman. She says the story came about because she was asked to provide a foreword for a collection of photographs of Holiday, and found herself unable to produce the conventional summary. Instead, she created a “witchy” channeling of the legendary vocalist.
Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, won the Orange Prize for Fiction, A Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her fourth novel, NW, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel,Swing Time, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker 2017. Her first essay collection,Changing My Mind, was published in 2009 and her second, Feel Free, in 2018.
Smith is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has twice been listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists. She writes regularly forThe New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and is a tenured professor of creative writing at New York University.
Smith’s seductive text is given life by reader Karen Pittman. Pittman won a Theatre World Award for her performance in Disgraced on Broadway, and recently starred as the title role in King Liz at Second Stage Theater Uptown and Pipeline at Lincoln Center, for which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play and a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance. Additional Broadway credits includePassing Strange and Good People, as well as Domesticated by Bruce Norris at Playwrights Horizons. Her film and television credits include Custody, Begin Again, The Bourne Legacy, The Good Wife, House of Cards, Horace and Pete, The Americans, Luke Cage, Madam Secretary, Elementary, Detroit, Love You More, and Benji the Dove. Pittman will appear in the forthcoming series AMC’s NOS4A2, and Netflix's Living With Yourself.
Turnabout is fair play in playwright Will Eno’s “Interview.” This freewheeling monologue offers both sides of an extensive and confessional outpouring, ranging from descriptions of an accident-prone family dog to the confession that he got into theatre because he “has some feeling for the dark,” and “likes to see people suffer under bright lighting. “An Interview with Will Eno,” was first published in The Believer.
Will Eno made his Broadway debut with his critically acclaimed play, The Realistic Joneses. His other plays include The Open House, Title and Deed, The Flu Season, Middletown, and Thom Pain (based on nothing), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His plays have appeared in Harper's, The Antioch Review, The Quarterly, and Best Ten-Minute Plays for Two Actors. In 2014, Eno received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award. He is a Helen Merrill Playwriting Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, a Fellow of the Cullman Center at the NY Public Library, and was awarded the first-ever Marian Seldes/Garson Kanin Fellowship by the Theater Hall of Fame, as well as the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton.
Our final story is a charming period piece, first published in The New Yorker in 1942. A carefree child is trapped in pretentious dance class in “I Am Narcissus,” by Elizabeth Olmstead, performed by Bebe Neuwirth.
Bebe Neuwirth has been dancing and singing and working in theater, television, and film for the last 40 years. Some of her credits are Broadway: A Chorus Line, Little Me, Dancin’, Sweet Charity (Tony Award), Damn Yankees, Addams Family, Chicago (Tony, Drama Desk, Astaire, etc. awards), and Fosse. Off-Broadway: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Here Lies Jenny, and more. Regional: West Side Story and The Taming of the Shrew, among others. London’s West End: Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Television: Cheers (2 Emmy Awards), Frasier, Blue Bloods, etc. Film: Green Card, Liberty Heights, and Summer Sam, among others. Albums: Porcelain and Stories in NYC (live at 54Below).
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