Highlighting the Spoken Word
Southampton Arts Summer 2014 at Stony Brook Southampton will present four public events during the coming week, starting Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with a free staged reading in the Avram Theater of “Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell.”
The reading will feature Mercedes Ruehl, Matthew Klam, Ain Gordon, Stephen Hamilton, and Christian Scheider reading from a script shaped by Kathie Russo, Gray’s widow, and Lucy Sexton, a theater director, from the monologist’s published work as well as from more personal material.
A second free program, “What I Really Want to Do Is Write Plays,” will take place Monday at 7:30 p.m., also in the Avram Theater. There will be readings of selections from original plays by Julie Sheehan, the director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing and literature, and Christian McLean, the Southampton Arts conference coordinator.
A free screening on Tuesday at 7 p.m. of “Let There Be Light,” John Huston’s 1946 documentary about veterans with shell shock, which was censored by the U.S. Army, will be followed by a panel discussion on “The Trauma of War” featuring Masha Gessen, a war correspondent who wrote a book about the jailed Russian protest band Pussy Riot, Adrian Bonenberger, a memoirist and combat veteran, and Benjamin Luft, the director of the World Trade Center health program. Daniel Menaker will moderate the discussion, which will take place in the Duke Lecture Hall.
TSR: The Southampton Review will offer up “Fish Out of Water,” the East End debut of the Moth, on Friday, July 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Avram Theater. the Moth: True Stories Told Live is a New York City nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Moth workshops help storytellers shape their stories and share them with wide-ranging audiences.
“Fish Out of Water” will be hosted by Adam Gopnik, who has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986, with stories by Ted Conover, Tara Clancy, Wendy Suzuki, Meg Wolitzer, and Simon Doonan. Tickets cost $50 and can be ordered at themoth.org.
Southampton Arts Summer includes, in addition to its public programs, graduate-level courses in literature, theater, film, and children’s literature. More information about the programs can be found at stonybrook.edu.