Event

Short Stories Live: Way West

"I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from," wrote Wallace Stegner. "I am a product of the American earth." The quest for identity and permanence in an America that is both fragmented and rootless is a persistent theme in stories of the American Weststories peopled by characters whose flinty independence is eternally at odds with a deep longing for connection. In Stegners Chip Off the Old Block, the flu epidemic of 1918 forces a boy to figure out what it takes to be a man. In Tess Gallagher's I Got a Guy Once, a laid-off logger reckons with the man who screwed him over. And in Gallagher's The Red Ensign, a woman struggles with the intrusion of men into what was once an all-female sanctuary. Christine Sumption directs this program featuring professional actors reading excerpts from these classics. Presented by Town Hall with A Contemporary Theatre.