Tangled Lives

Selected Shorts

Symphony Space

Arts, Fiction, Books, Society & Culture

4.4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about tangled lives; those situations; those people that pull you in and won’t let you go. These works focus on encounters that affect a character's life in some unusual or enduring way. “Missed Connection—M4W,” by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, takes the idea of “chance encounter” to its limits. It’s performed by Richard Kind. “My Years of Living Dangerously,” by Danielle Henderson, explores the idea of sin and redemption. It’s performed by Karen Pittman. And in Melissa’ Banks’ ruefully comic “Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Away,” performed by Julianna Margulies, one sibling makes a bad choice the other has to live with. Both Julianna Margulies and Karen Pittman talk about their readings backstage at the live show, which was hosted and curated by Meg Wolitzer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On the next selected shorts, a sister meets her brother's new girlfriend.
0:12.7	Please, to meet you.
0:14.5	She kisses Jack full on the mouth, and then she says she thinks she's coming down with
0:18.5	something.
0:22.5	Juliana Margulese reads a roofal and funny story by Melissa Bank.
0:26.7	I'm Meg Wallitzer, stay with us.
0:30.3	You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the
0:34.2	magic of fiction, one short story at a time.
0:44.8	Tangle is such a great word.
0:46.3	According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is both active, twist together into a confused
0:51.4	mass, or descriptive, a confused mass of something twisted together.
0:56.9	Either way, the implication is messy, but possibly also alluring and tantalizing.
1:02.6	Tangled branches may be something you want to avoid, and it's certainly a nuisance when
1:06.5	all the chains on your necklaces or the cords on your headphones get jumbled together.
1:11.7	But working your way through a good bowl of sesame noodles might be just the thing.
1:16.6	With a definition that broad, we could have featured just about any kind of relationship,
1:21.3	but for this show, we're focusing on unexpected encounters that end up affecting a character's
1:26.3	life in some unusual or enduring way, so no matter what the outcome, they are forever tangled.
1:34.0	One story takes the idea of chance and counter to its limits, a second ponders the relationship
1:40.0	between sin and redemption, and in the third, we see what happens when one sibling makes
1:45.5	a bad choice the other has to live with.
1:48.6	And all of these performances came from a live, selected short show that I had the pleasure
	...

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