Virtual Selected Shorts: With a Twist

Lauren Ambrose can currently be seen on the Apple TV+ series Servant, created by M. Night Shyamalan. On Broadway, she starred as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, a performance that won her the Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination. Additional stage credits include Awake and Sing! at Lincoln Center Exit the King on Broadway, and Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet at the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. A two-time Emmy Award nominee for her performance as Claire Fisher in the HBO series Six Feet Under, she has also starred in Where the Wild Things Are; Wanderlust; Sleepwalk with Me; Starting Out in the Evening; I'm Coming Over; The River; The Return of Jezebel James; Torchwood; The Interestings; Monsters of God; Dig; and The X-Files.

Teagle F. Bougere recently portrayed James Baldwin in the American Vicarious virtual production of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, and co-starred with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the webseries Queen America. Bougere's Broadway credits include The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Tempest. He was featured in The Public Theater’s productions of Socrates and the much acclaimed production of Coriolanus in Central Park. His most recent New York stage appearance was the world premiere of The New Englanders at Manhattan Theater Club. Additional theater credits include Is God Is at SoHo Rep, Beast in the Jungle, the title role in the stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man at The Court Theater in Chicago, The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and The Huntington in Boston, Julius Caesar and Cymbeline for The Public Theater in Central Park, A Soldier’s Play at Second Stage, A Fair Country at Lincoln Center, Last Dance for Sybil (with Ruby Dee) at the New Federal Theatre, An Iliad (one man show) at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Blue Door at Berkeley Rep. His film and television credits include Hill ‘n’ Gully, The Path, The Mist, Good Friday, Conviction, Cosby, The Job, Third Watch, Murder in Black and White, A Night at the Museum, The Imposters, The Pelican Brief, Two Weeks Notice, and What the Deaf Man Heard, Bull, as well as seven episodes for the Law & Order franchise.

Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons, 1924 – 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood. His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas.

Maria Dizzia was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). She has appeared on stage in Uncle Vanya, Cradle and All, The Hallway Trilogy, The Drunken City, Eurydice, Belleville, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and most recently, If I Forget. Her film and television credits include While We’re Young, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Other Woman, Master of None, Horace and Pete, Louie, Royal Pains, Orange Is the New Black, Going in Style, 13 Reasons Why, Red Oaks, Sea Change, Humor Me, Piercing, Vox Lux, William, The Neighbors' Window, Two Against Nature, Shadow Girl, Depraved, Emergence, The Outside Story, The Undoing, and Forever Alone. Dizzia can be seen in the forthcoming films Two Against Nature and Ghostwritten.

Jac Jemc is the author of the novels Total Work of Art, My Only Wife, winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, The Grip of It, and the short story collections A Different Bed Every Time and False Bingo, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction and finalist for the Story Prize. Jemc currently teaches creative writing at UC San Diego.

Dame Penelope Lively is a novelist, short story writer, and author of children’s books. Her novels have won several literary awards, including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987. The Road to Lichfield and According to Mark were also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her children’s book, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, was awarded the Carnegie Medal, and A Stitch in Time won a Whitbread Award. Family Album was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010. The Third Wife is a story taken from The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories. The collection was published by Viking (US) and Fig Tree (UK) in 2016. Dame Penelope was awarded the OBE in 1989, the CBE in 2001 and the DBE in 2012.

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and named to 100 Notable Books of 2012, Glorious, and The Book of Harlan, which won a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction. She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of four awards from the BCALA. Praise Song for the Butterflies is her latest novel. She has written five novels under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday.

Arian Moayed is the Co-founder & Board Chair of Waterwell, a civic-minded and socially-conscious theater and education company, as well as a partner at the for-profit Waterwell Films. Most recently with Waterwell, Moayed arranged the transcripts of a deportation proceeding called The Courtroom, now published by Dramatists Play Service and a feature film in pre-production. Moayed writes and directs the Emmy-nominated The Accidental Wolf, a thriller starring Kelli O’Hara, exclusively on Topic. Additional Waterwell productions include a dual-language Hamlet, in which Moayed played the title role, and a remount of a forgotten war musical called Blueprint Specials. Notable acting credits include The Humans, for which he won a Drama Desk Award, his Obie Award-winning role in Guards at the Taj, and his Tony-nominated turn in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Current projects include 28 Mordad and the Christmas radio play The Man in Red. Moayed can be seen in HBO’s Succession and the upcoming Shonda Rhimes/Netflix’s Inventing Anna.

Amy Ryan has performed in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, earning Tony nominations for both Uncle Vanya and A Streetcar Named Desire. She received an OBIE award for her performance in Mike Bartlett’s play LOVE LOVE LOVE. Ryan’s television credits include Broad City, Robot Chicken, High Maintenance, In Treatment, The Wire, The Office, and most recently Only Murders in the Building. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film Gone Baby Gone. Additional film credits include Bridge of Spies, Birdman, Louder Than Bombs, Don Verdean, Changeling, Capote, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Green Zone, Win Win, Beautiful Boy, Late Night, Strange But True, Worth, and Lost Girls.

Kaneza Schaal is a New York City-based theater artist. Her recent awards and fellowships include a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, and 2018 Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award. Her piece Jack & showed in BAM’s 2018 Next Wave Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and with its co-commissioners Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On The Boards, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Schaal’s piece Cartography premiered at The Kennedy Center in January 2019, later touring to The New Victory Theater and Abu Dhabi Arts Center. In July 2019 she premiered a dance work, Maze, at The Shed in NYC. Most recently, she directed Bryce Dessner’s Triptych(Eyes of One on Another), which premiered at LA Philharmonic, The Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI, BAM Opera House and Holland Festival.

Dan Stevens is known to fans of Downton Abbey for the role of Matthew Crawley and for David Haller on Legion. His film and television credits include The Guest, Beauty and the Beast, Marshall, The Man Who Invented Christmas, Apostle, Lucy in the Sky, The Call of the Wild, High Maintenance, The Rental, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Blithe Spirit, and I Am Your Man. Stevens has narrated more than thirty audiobooks. He can be seen in the forthcoming series Solos and The Prince.

Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation, creator of The Rea Award for the Short Story. Support is also provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation, the NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust, The Shubert Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Henry Nias Foundation, the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, the Vidda Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the Lemberg Foundation, and The Grodzins Fund. Selected Shorts is also made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Symphony Space thanks our generous supporters, including our Board of Directors, Producers Circle, and members, who make our programs possible with their annual support.