Selected Shorts: Lovers & Strangers - with Jane Curtin, Lauren Ambrose, Sonia Manzano and David Costabile

TICKETS

$35 – $45 

Mahaiwe Member & Youth Discount Event 

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$45 Premium 

Members receive $5 off each ticket

$15 ages 30 and under (visit the Box Office or call 413-528-0100, Wed – Sat, 12-4pm) 

The popular radio show and podcast Selected Shorts returns for an evening of romance and intrigue. Join us as actors including Jane Curtin, Lauren Ambrose, Sonia Manzano, and more perform funny, mysterious, and poignant short stories about love, competing desires, and unexpected encounters. Stay tuned for more casting news! 

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. 

PROGRAM:

How to Give the Wrong Impression by Katherine Heiney

Performed by Lauren Ambrose

Voices by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Carol Brown Janeway.

Performed by David Costabile

The Duck by Ben Loory

Performed by Sonia Manzano

The Magician’s Wife by Mary Gordon

Performed by Jane Curtin

A multiple Emmy and Tony nominee, Lauren Ambrose recently starred  in the critically lauded series Yellowjackets, Caddo Lake on HBO Max, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant for Apple TV+. Previously, Lauren starred to much acclaim as Eliza Doolittle in Lincoln Center’s production of My Fair Lady at the Vivian Beaumont Theater for director Bartlett Sher. Her performance earned her nominations for a Tony Award for Lead Actress and a Drama League Award. She also won the Outer Critics Circle Award in the category of Outstanding Actress in a Musical. Lauren’s past theater credits include Exit the King on Broadway, Lincoln Center Theater’s Awake and Sing!, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet at The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. On the feature side, Lauren can be seen in the MAX original mystery-thriller Caddo Lake alongside Dylan O’Brien and Eliza Scanlen, Stephan Gyllenhaal’s comedy Grassroots, and as Mindy in the Nataile Portman drama The Other Woman. On the small screen, Ambrose is well known for her role of Claire Fisher throughout all five seasons on HBO’s iconic series Six Feet Under, for which she earned two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. The series was nominated for five SAG Awards, of which the ensemble won twice. Upcoming projects include the film Tonight at Noon.

David Costabile is best known for his television work on Billions, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Flight of the Conchords, Damages, Better Call Saul, and Suits. On Broadway, he has appeared in Manhattan Theatre Club’s revival of Translations, the musical Titanic, The Tempest, and Caroline, or Change, the Drama Desk award-winning musical by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori. Off- Broadway he has appeared at the Public Theater, Playwright’s Horizons, Roundabout, CSC and others.  His additional screen credits include Lincoln, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Obliterated, Waco: The Aftermath,  and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Upcoming projects include Hershey and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

When you think of Sonia Manzano, you immediately think of children and television. Her most recent accomplishment was creating a children’s program, Alma’s Way, for PBS Kids. The series 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. But what Ms. 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. She is also an author whose most recent Scholastic novel, Coming Up Cuban, set in 1959, follows the lives of four children who represent different intersections of race and class during the Cuban Revolution.

Jane Curtin has appeared on Broadway in Noises Off, Candida, and Our Town. Her off-Broadway work includes Love Letters and the musical revue Pretzels, which she co-wrote. She starred in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun and won back-to-back Emmy Awards for her role on Kate & Allie. She is an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and also starred in the television film series The Librarian and its spin-off, The Librarians. Her film credits include Coneheads; Antz; I Love You, Man; I Don’t Know How She Does It; The Heat; The Spy Who Dumped Me; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Ode to Joy; Godmothered; Queen Bees; and  Jules, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. She starred on the television series Unforgettable and has had guest appearances on The Good Wife, 48 Hours ’til Monday, The Good Fight, Broad City, United We Fall, and Bupkis. Curtin can currently be seen on the Netflix mini-series The Residence.

Actors subject to change.

About Selected Shorts

Selected Shorts is produced by Symphony Space in New York City and broadcast on more than 150 stations around the country. The Selected Shorts podcast consistently ranks as one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes, with over 100,000 downloads every week. The series began in 1985 and enjoys sold-out performances to this day. Selected Shorts was conceived with a simple premise: take great stories by well-known and emerging writers and have them performed by terrific actors of stage and screen. Live events are often co-hosted by writers or involve a special collaboration with literary publications, podcasts, museums, and more. Each Selected Shorts is a unique reading of literature in performance. 

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