Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Selected Shorts

Symphony Space

Arts, Fiction, Books, Society & Culture

4.4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Host Meg Wolitzer presents works that reflect on the loss of love, creatively imagined by a quartet of thoughtful writers. In “The Space,” by Christopher Boucher, a lost love is replaced by—her absence. The reader is Rob Yang. In Wendi Kaufman’s “Helen on Eighty-Sixth Street,” the loss is the backstory, as a lively ‘tween, voiced by Donna Lynne Champlin, finds ways to deflect the emotional fallout from her father’s absence. Sharon Olds’ wrenching poem, “Last Look,” read by Jane Kaczmarek, is our palette clearer before we close with a Raymond Carver classic, “Why Don’t You Dance?” The couple idly roving a lawn sale don’t realize they are walking through the detritus of lost relationship. The reader is Corey Stoll.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love is a many-splendered thing until it's not.
0:11.9	And on this program, we hear stories about what comes after love and marriage.
0:16.3	But I promise it's not all downhill.
0:18.9	Stay with me, Meg Wallitzer, for funny and moving stories about
0:22.4	why breakups are hard, but then you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
0:40.0	You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction,
0:43.5	one short story at a time.
0:46.0	These violent delights have violent ends.
0:49.1	That's sage friar Lawrence cautioning Romeo and Juliet.
0:52.9	A reminder that much as writers are drawn to love,
0:55.9	the failure of love is equally compelling. And on this program, we offer three stories and a poem
1:01.7	about divorce and dissolution. But don't worry, this show is not a downer, because our masterly
1:08.1	writers shape such compelling narratives around a central anguish that we come away both contemplative and exhilarated about what life will offer next.
1:17.6	In these stories, loss is personified. A child's ambition deflects the absence of a parent, a marriage gets a last look, and a garage sale tells a tale of its own.
1:29.3	Our first piece is by Christopher Boucher, whose published works have provocative titles like
1:34.0	How to Keep Your Vokeshagon Alive and Big Giant Floating Head.
1:38.7	This story, The Space, is also provocative in the way it deals with change.
1:43.8	It's performed by Rob Yang,
1:45.8	known for strong work in shows like Succession and The Resident.
1:50.3	Here he is with Christopher Boucher's The space.
2:11.2	I loved you.
2:15.2	And when you left, you left a space.
	...

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