A Night At The Theater

Krystina Alabado was last seen starring as Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls on Broadway. Additional Broadway credits include American Psycho and Green Day’s American Idiot. She has performed in the national tours of Evita, American Idiot, and Spring Awakening, and off-Broadway in The Mad Ones, This Ain’t No Disco, David Bowie's Lazarus, and Camp Wanatachi. Her film and television credits include Disney’s Better Nate Than Ever, A Killer Party, Sunny Day, God Friended Me, First Reformed, FX’s Tyrant, Mecha Builders on HBO Max, and Voltron Legendary Defender on Netflix. Alabado can be heard on the cast albums of The Mad Ones, A Killer Party, Goosebumps The Musical, Star Crossed, and more.

Michele A. Berdy is the Arts Editor for The Moscow Times and author of a weekly column on language, translation and culture. She has written scores of articles, book reviews, and features for the newspaper and published articles on translation, cultural communication, politics and society for periodicals such as Foreign Policy, Politico, and London Magazine. She is the author, co-author, or translator of ten books, and her literary translations have been published by The Short Story Project, Glas, Abbeville Press, and other publications.

Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904) is regarded as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama. He wrote hundreds of short stories and several plays, including his masterpieces The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. His works in both mediums have proved massively influential to modernist and realist movements in literature, and he is the namesake for the dramatic principle of “Chekhov’s gun.” Trained as a physician, Chekhov’s interest in social welfare led him to write the non-fiction volume Sakhalin Island, detailing conditions at a Russian penal colony, and he was well-known for his philanthropy, often treating the sick for no charge. Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888 and remains one of the most iconic voices in literature.

Hugh Dancy played Will Graham in Hannibal, for which he earned a Saturn Award and two Critics’ Choice nominations. Additional film and television credits include Black Hawk Down, Ella Enchanted, King Arthur, Adam, the television mini-series Elizabeth I, Blood and Chocolate, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Big C, Deadline Gallipoli, The Path, Late Night, Homeland, The Good Fight, and Downton Abbey: A New Era. On stage, he starred off-Broadway in The Pride and Apologia, and on Broadway in Venus in Fur and the revival of Journey’s End. Dancy currently stars in the reboot of Law & Order.

Claire Danes starred as Carrie Mathison on Showtime’s Homeland, for which she was awarded two Emmys, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Danes also received the Golden Globe for My So-Called Life, and the Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Awards for HBO’s Temple Grandin. Additional film credits include Little Women, Romeo + Juliet, The Hours, Shopgirl, Stardust, Me and Orson Welles, Brigsby Bear, and A Kid Like Jake. She made her Broadway debut as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion in 2007 and appeared in Dry Powder at the Public Theater in 2016. Her audiobook recording of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale won the 2013 Audie Award. Danes can currently be seen in Fleishman Is in Trouble and in the forthcoming series Full Circle and Rodham.

Santino Fontana is known for his Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Tony Award-winning portrayal of Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels in the Broadway production of Tootsie, and for voicing the character Prince Hans in Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated feature Frozen. Additionally, he has starred in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; 1776; and Zorba with Encores!; and on Broadway in The Importance of Being Earnest (Clarence Derwent Award); Brighton Beach Memoirs (Drama Desk Award); Act One; Billy Elliot; Cinderella (Tony nomination); and Hello, Dolly! His onscreen credits include Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Sisters, Shades of Blue, Mozart in the Jungle, Submissions Only, Off the Menu, Impossible Monsters, Fosse/Verdon, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Just One Kiss.

Peter Francis James has appeared on Broadway in Hillary and Clinton, Present Laughter, The Merchant of Venice, On Golden Pond, Drowning Crow, and Judgment at Nuremberg. His off-Broadway credits include Stuff Happens at the Public, for which he won the Obie, Lucille Lortel, and Drama Desk Awards, The Maids at Classic Stage Company, for which he also received an Obie Award, The Lady From Dubuque at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, and Signature Theater in New York, and Cymbeline with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Television and film credits include Godfather of Harlem, Oz, Boardwalk Empire, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Rough Night, The Code, The Bold Type, Katy Keene, and What We Do in the Shadows. James has narrated more than 75 audiobooks and taught Acting (Shakespeare) at the Yale School of Drama from 2000-2020. Currently, he can be seen in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl.

Rachel Klein is a writer living in Boston, MA. She writes everything from short humor to personal essays to her current project, a mostly-serious, sometimes funny memoir about the seven years she lived as an Orthodox Jew. Her writing has been featured in McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, Bitch Media, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Toast, Slate and more.

Ann Petry (1908 – 1997) was an American writer of novels, short stories, children's books, and journalism. Her 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies. Additional works include Country Place, The Narrows, Miss Muriel and Other Stories, and books for young readers including The Drugstore Cat, Tituba of Salem Village, and Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Amber Sparks is the author of the collections The Unfinished World, And I Do Not Forgive You, and May We Shed These Human Bodies. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, In Style, The Paris Review, Electric Literature, American Short Fiction, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel.

CREDITS

"Audience Instructions for Our Immersive/Experimental Theatre Production in an Abandoned Middle School in Bushwick" by Rachel Klein, published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency (January 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Rachel Klein. Used by permission of the author.

“Solo on the Drums” by Ann Petry. Copyright © 1945, 1947, 1958, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1971 by Ann Petry. Used by permission of Salky Literary Management.

“Our Mutual (Theater) Friend” by Amber Sparks, from And I Do Not Forgive You (Liveright 2020). Copyright © 2020 by Amber Sparks. Used by permission of Neon Literary.

“He and She” by Anton Chekhov, translated by Michele A. Berdy, first published in The Short Story Project. Copyright © Michele A. Berdy. Used by permission of the translator.