Ten Mini-Plays by Barry Gifford - One Night Only!
Join us on Thursday, September 21, for a FREE performance of ten captivating mini-plays written by renowned author and playwright, Barry Gifford (Sailor & Lula, Roy’s World). This one-night-only event will take place at The Players, located at 16 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY.
Music performed live by Miles Okazaki.
Featuring readings by actors including Tony-Award winning Lois Smith, Yvonna Pearson, Jodie Markell, Owen Campbell, and others.
Writers portrayed include Georges Simenon, Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor, William Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Nelson Algren, Jane Bowles, and Emily Dickinson.
Produced by Ray Gaspard.
Directed by Susan Moon and Dan Simon.
Please arrive early to ensure a seat. This event is free and open to the public but seating is limited and requires RSVP.
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About the book:
In Writers, great American storyteller Barry Gifford paints portraits of writers caught in imaginary vulnerable moments in their lives. In prose that is funny, grotesque, and a touch brutal, Gifford shows these writers at their most human, which is to say at their worst: they are liars, frauds, lousy lovers, and drunks.
This is a world in which Ernest Hemingway drunkenly sets explosive trip wires outside his home in Cuba, Marcel Proust implores the angel of death as a delirious Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in a hospital bed, and Albert Camus converses with a young prostitute while staring at himself in the mirror of a New York City hotel room.
In Gifford's house of mirrors, we are offered a unique perspective on this group of literary greats. These stories, meant to be performed as plays, are tender and thoughtful exercises in empathy. Obsessions loom large, especially a preoccupation with death. Gifford asks: What does it mean to devote oneself entirely to art? And as an artist, what defines failure, or success?
This new edition edition of Writers includes five new pieces, featuring Georges Simenon with André Gide, Franz Kafka with Marcel Proust, Flannery O’Connor with William Burroughs, Ivan Turgenev with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad with D.H. Lawrence, and Willa Cather with Gypsy Rose Lee.