(ALBANY, N.Y.) – Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper, Emmy Award-winner Margo Martindale, and Tony Award winners Bill Irwin and Julie White are among the actors who will be reading short plays over the air on Playing on Air, a new public radio show of short plays, to be broadcast every fourth Friday of every month beginning on Friday, July 27, 2012, at 1pm, on WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
Originally written for the stage, these ten to 20 minute selections translate to radio with ease. Short plays, a standard theatrical form, are performed without interruption as one would hear them on stage.
The July 27th episode features two short plays: Open Arms, an eleven minute play by Pulitzer Prize-winning finalist Alexandra Gersten-Vasillaros, featuring Bill Irwin (Tony Award winner for Best Actor, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and Julie White (Tony Award winner for Best Actress, The Little Dog Laughed). It is directed by John Rando, (Tony Award winner for Urinetown).
After the twelve-minute play, series producer and host Claudia Catania will interview the playwright as well as cast members Bill Irwin, Julie White and director John Rando.
The second play, Bite the Hand, is a twenty-minute play by Ara Watson. It features Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper (Oscar for Adaptation), Emmy Award-winner Margo Martindale (for Justified) and a new talent, Liv Rooth. It is directed by Doug Hughes, (Tony Award winner for Doubt).
Catania will interview the cast and playwright Ara Watson immediately after her play.
“Playing on Air delivers America’s foremost artists performing well-crafted short plays in the time it takes to eat a sandwich,” says Catania.
Playing on Air is the brainchild of its producer and host, Claudia Catania. After stints as an actress and then as associate publisher of Applause Theatre & Cinema books, Catania was executive producer of The New Group, a not-for-profit off-Broadway theater company, from 1993 to 1999. There she produced 16 plays, including Mike Leigh’s Ecstasy and Kenneth Lonergan’s This is Our Youth.
Catania has since produced documentaries and the New York run and national tour of the play TRUMBO, about the blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, which initially launched with Ed Harris, opened with Nathan Lane off-Broadway, and toured nationally with Brian Dennehy. Catania lives in Hillsdale, N.Y.
Stations carrying Playing on Air include: WAMC, 90.3 FM, Albany, NY, WAMC 1400 AM, Albany NY, WAMK, 90.9 FM, Kingston, NY, WOSR, 91.7 FM, Middletown, NY, WCEL, 91.9 FM, Plattsburgh, NY, WCAN, 93.3 FM, Canajoharie, NY, WANC, 103.9 FM, Ticonderoga, NY, WRUN-FM, Remsen-Utica, NY, WAMQ, 1005.1 FM, Great Barrington, NY, WWES, 88.9 FM, Mt. Kisco, WANZ, 90.1, Stamford. Translators include W280DJ, 103.9 FM, Beacon, NY, W247BM, 97.3 FM, Cooperstown, NY, W243BZ, 96.5 FM, Ellenville, NY, W271BF, 102.1 FM, Highland, NY, W246BJ, 97.1 FM, Hudson, NY, W295AA, 106.3 FM, Middletown, NY, W204CJ, 88.7 FM, Lake Placid, NY, W215BG, 90.9 FM, Milford, PA, W299AG, 107.7 FM, Newburgh, NY, W226AC, 93.1 FM, Rensselaer-Troy, NY, W296BD, 107.1 FM, Warwick, NY