Selected Shorts: John Lithgow and Friends: Tellers of Tales and Poets Aplenty!

Along with other actors, John Lithgow shares classic stories from Tellers of Tales, a beloved collection from his childhood edited by W. Somerset Maugham, and story poems from his new anthology, The Poet’s Corner.

Performance playlist:

Introductions by John Lithgow

Poems from The Poet’s Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family, compiled by John Lithgow

The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or The Wonderful One Hoss Shay: A Logical Story by Oliver Wendell Holmes

read by John Lithgow

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

read by Bill Irwin

The Jumblies by Edward Lear

read by Bill Irwin and John Lithgow

Birches by Robert Frost

read by John Lithgow

If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein

read by Bill Irwin and John Lithgow

The Tyger by William Blake

read by John Lithgow

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Red Wheelbarrow

This is Just to Say

The Thinker

read by Bill Irwin

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

read by Bill Irwin and John Lithgow

The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs

read by John Lithgow

John Lithgow is a four-time Emmy Award winner, two-time Tony Award winner, and two-time Academy Award nominee. He is perhaps most widely known for his role on 3rd Rock from the Sun, for which he also received a Golden Globe and an American Comedy Award. He has starred on Broadway in the musicals Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Sweet Smell of Success, and in plays including The Retreat from Moscow, M. Butterfly, The Front Page and Requiem for a Heavyweight. His film credits include Terms of Endearment, The World According to Garp, Harry and the Hendersons, Cliffhanger and, most recently, Shrek, Kinsey and Dreamgirls. Lithgow is also the bestselling author of seven children’s books including The Remarkable Farkle McBride and Mahalia Mouse Goes to College, and has recorded three children’s albums. He conceived a picture book and a ballet (with Christopher Wheeldon) based on Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals. This summer, he played Malvolio in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night in Stratford-upon-Avon. 

Bill Irwin recently starred on Broadway and in London’s West End in the revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which he won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. The Signature Theatre devoted its 2003/2004 season to his original work, which he wrote, directed and performed. His original works include the Broadway productions Fool Moon (with David Shiner), Largely New York and The Regard of Flight, developed with Doug Skinner, M.C. O’Connor and Nancy Harrington. Many of these were first developed at Dance Theatre Workshop. His other Broadway work includes The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? and Waiting for Godot. He has starred in such films as Popeye, Eight Men Out and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Irwin’s other awards include the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer’s Fellowship and Guggenheim, Fulbright and MacArthur Fellowships.