Cynthia Erivo, James Earl Jones, Uzo Aduba, & More Confirmed for New York Debut of LETTERS LIVE

LETTERS LIVE is thrilled to announce Cynthia Erivo, Edie Falco, Ian McShane, James Earl Jones, Katie Holmes, Kyle MacLachlan, Laurence Fishburne, Molly Ringwald and Uzo Aduba as the second wave of confirmed performers for its first ever NYC shows on May 18th and May 19th 2018, at The Town Hall.

They will join previously-announced guest Benedict Cumberbatch. Performances begin at 8pm ET and will run for 2 hours and 20 minutes with a 20 intermission. The Town Hall is located at 123 West 43rd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in midtown Manhattan. Additional celebrity cast members will be announced prior to the shows, while the rest will be a surprise each night.

LETTERS LIVE celebrates the enduring power of literary correspondence by inviting brilliant entertainers to perform remarkable and unforgettable letters to a live audience. To view a reel from the US debut show in Los Angeles this past February, visit HERE.

Tickets for LETTERS LIVE are on sale now and can be purchased HERE. Ticket prices starting at $60 and a portion of the proceeds from these 2 shows will support 826NYC and Entertainment Industry Foundation.

As past LETTERS LIVE performer Nick Cave writes, "LETTERS LIVE is so full of fun and mischief - and matters serious. The audience simply have no idea what they are going to get, except for the fact that the letters are always illuminating and the people who read them, a strange and eccentric bunch! Everybody seems to be there for a common cause; to celebrate the act of communication through the power of the written word. Completely awesome!"

Past LETTERS LIVE shows have included performances by an array of talent including Benedict Cumberbatch, Gillian Anderson, Ian McKellen, Kylie Minogue, Russell Brand, Thandie Newton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rose McGowan, Riz Ahmed, Juliet Stevenson, LeVar Burton, Mark Hamill, Anjelica Huston, Tom Hiddleston, Sally Hawkins, JJ Abrams, James Corden, Noma Dumezweni, Oscar Isaac, Mary J. Blige, Jude Law, Brie Larson, Nick Cave and Sir Ben Kingsley to name a few. Shows have Included letters written by the likes of David Bowie, Mohandas Gandhi, Maya Angelou, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Kurt Vonnegut, Charlotte Bronte, Tom Hanks, Katherine Hepburn, Richard Burton, Patti Smith, Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, and Che Guevara.

LETTERS LIVE first took place in December 2013 at the Tabernacle in London and quickly established itself as a powerful and dynamic event format that attracted outstanding talents to performing remarkable letters in front of a live audience.

Inspired by Shaun Usher's international best-selling Letters of Note series and Simon Garfield's To the Letter, LETTERS LIVE is a live celebration of the enduring power of literary correspondence. Each show always features a completely different array of great performers, reading remarkable letters written over the centuries and from around the world. One of the joys of Letters Live is that one never knows who is going to take to the stage or what letter they are going to bring alive.

The independent publishing house Canongate, who created and developed LETTERS LIVE, subsequently partnered with the film and television production company SunnyMarch to build Letters Live into an even more far-reaching and ambitious project. Their shared vision is to harness the power of letters through curated events of exceptional quality and to develop a multi-media platform that delivers the most memorable letters to people all around the world.

As well as celebrating the pain, joy, wisdom and humour expressed in letters, LETTERS LIVE has from the outset been committed to promoting literacy and to fund-raising for literacy charities. This remains an important part of its activities both in the UK and abroad.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride