The Friends of Greenwich Library kicks off the festive season with a selection of scripted stories entitled Holiday Tales, presented by Selected Shorts. The event will be held in the Library’s Berkley Theater on Tuesday, December 12 at 7:00 p.m. With short fiction by Ann Beattie, Simon Rich, and Jeanette Winterson, actors Michel Gill (The Dropout), Joanna Gleason (The Bite), and Sonia Manzano (Sesame Street) perform hilarious, poignant, and moving stories about seasonal gatherings with family and friends. After the show, the actors will participate in a 15-minute audience Q&A.
Founded in 1985, 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. Numerous Broadway and big- and small-screen actors read pieces of new and classic short fiction before a live audience, and these readings are the basis for an hour-long public radio program and podcast, produced in conjunction with WNYC and distributed nation-wide.
Michel Gill is known for his roles in the television series The Dropout, The Gilded Age, Nova Vita, God Friended Me, Chicago Med, House of Cards, Mr. Robot, The Get Down, and Ray Donovan. Additional film and television credits include The Good Wife, Person of Interest, Forever, Everything, Affliction, Condemned, and Who Killed JonBenét? Gill has been featured on numerous regional stages, including off-Broadway in Speaking in Tongues, A Winter’s Tale, Naked, Othello, Lincoln Portrait, Da Caravaggio, and Coyote Ugly, and on Broadway in A Man for All Seasons.
Joanna Gleason won a Tony for her portrayal of the Baker’s Wife in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods, and received Tony nominations for her roles in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Her other Broadway and off-Broadway credits include The Normal Heart, I Love My Wife, Happiness, Sons of the Prophet, and The Real Thing. Her television credits include The West Wing, The Newsroom, Love and War, Bette, and many more. Films include Hannah and Her Sisters, Boogie Nights, Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Skeleton Twins, and many more. She has written and directed two films: a short, Morning Into Night, which debuted at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and was selected for the Cambridge Film Festival; and a feature, The Grotto, which won the Best Narrative Feature premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival in 2022. She has been reading stories for Selected Shorts for 35 years.
Sonia Manzano is a first-generation mainland Puerto Rican, raised in the South Bronx. In the early 1970s at Carnegie Mellon University, she participated in the creation of the Broadway show hit Godspell. From there she went on to affect the lives of millions of parents and children when she was offered the opportunity to create the role of “Maria” on Sesame Street. After 44 years on Sesame Street, she decided to write books. Her 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. Sonia has been recognized with 15 Emmy Awards for writing Sesame Street, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences 2016. She most recently received the 2022 Beacon Award from PBS. Ms. Manzano has created and developed with Fred Rogers Productions an animated children’s program for PBS. Alma’s Way premiered in October 2021.
Selected Shorts is produced by Symphony Space in New York City and broadcast on more than 150 stations around the country, and it connects listeners to the world with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater, and comedy. The Selected Shorts podcast consistently ranks as one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes, with more than 100,000 downloads every week. The series began in 1985 and enjoys sold-out performances to this day. Evenings are often co-hosted by writers or involve a special collaboration with literary publications, podcasts, museums, and more. Each Selected Shorts is a unique night of literature in performance.
This program is presented by the Friends of Greenwich Library and made possible by charitable contributions from our community. It is free of charge and open to all. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and guests are invited to stay after the show for a brief Q&A with the actors. Registration is required.
For more information, visit https://greenwichlibrary.libcal.com/event/10524717
