Selected Shorts - April 27

two smiling actors stand side by side and in front of music stands and microphones

Prime Performance - Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 7:30pm
Please note: This performance is SOLD OUT.

The hit public radio and podcast series comes to town bringing three great actors and a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater and comedy.  Public Radio International’s wildly popular series and podcast goes live in a unique evening of literature in performance. Performers will include Joanna Gleason, Dylan Baker and Hettienne Park.  Artists/Stories subject to change 
 

  • Purchase tickets here
  • Advance tickets: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
  • Day of show tickets: $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff

Program

Presented in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute.  Funding support provided by University at Albany Foundation and University Auxiliary Services.

Photo above by Kevin Yatarola: Mike Doyle & Jane Curtin in Selected Shorts 2023 at UAlbany Performing Arts Center; photo of Dylan Baker by Robert Ascroft


Host Joanna Gleason (Broadway’s Into the Woods, The Affair, The West Wing) will be joined by Dylan Baker (The Good Wife, The Americans, Happiness) and Hettienne Park (Broadway's Seminar, Hannibal, The Girls on the Bus) for an evening of readings of short fiction by emerging and established writers about life’s unexpected twists and turns. 

The program will include: “The Luck of Others” by Ben Philippe, “Somebody’s Daughter” by Amy Silverberg, “A Sacrifice” by Simon Van Booy and “The Acorn” by Elizabeth Stix. The first two of these stories were commissioned for Selected Shorts and have never been published. 

Selected Shorts is produced by Symphony Space in New York City and broadcast on more than 150 stations to about 300,000 listeners around the country. The Selected Shorts podcast consistently ranks as one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes, with more than 100,000 downloads each week. Selected Shorts on Tour connects audiences with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater and comedy.
 

Joanna Gleason won a Tony for her portrayal of the Baker’s Wife in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods. Her other Broadway and off-Broadway credits include The Normal Heart; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, for which she received a Tony nomination; I Love My Wife; Happiness; Joe Egg, for which she received a Tony nomination; Sons of the Prophet; and The Real Thing; to name only a few. 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.

Dylan Baker is an actor whose many film and television credits include 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 Bête, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award, Corruption at Lincoln Center, The Audience with Helen Mirren, 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. Baker is also an audiobook narrator and was honored with the Audie Award for his reading of Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections and is the voice of Doctor Doom in Marvel’s Wastelanders: Doom. Baker can most recently be seen in Dream Scenario and LaRoy, Texas.

Hettienne Park is best known for her role as Beverly Katz on Hannibal and Tamika Collins on Stephen King's The Outsider.  Additional screen credits include Don’t Look UpGossip Girl, The OABlacklistHigh MaintenanceBride Wars, Damages and more. Park appeared on Broadway in Seminar with Alan Rickman and off-Broadway in Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, earning her a Theatre World Award for her debuts both on and off Broadway. Park currently guest-stars as front-running presidential candidate, Felicity Walker, in HBO Max's The Girls On The Bus, inspired by the book Chasing Hillary by New York Times journalist Amy Chozick.