Cynthia Nixon Set for Public Forum Drama Club's THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER,12/10

The Public Theater announced that Tony Award winner Cynthia Nixon has joined the December Public Forum Drama Club event, The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder, on Tuesday, December 10 at 7:00 p.m. at Joe's Pub. In Public Forum Drama Club, authors, musicians, journalists, scholars, and actors come together to give onstage readings of one-act plays that have some special resonance in our lives today. Each reading concludes with a discussion of the hard questions that the play raises about our politics, our culture, and the way we live now.

Just in time for the holiday season, Thornton Wilder's ingenious, heartbreaking play traces 90 years in the life of an American family. It will be read and discussed by Cynthia Nixon; her daughter, Persephone Mozes; actor/playwright Lisa Kron; media theorist Douglas Rushkoff; Thornton Wilder's nephew and literary executor, Tappan Wilder; Anne-Marie Slaughter, the president and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of the recent cover story in The Atlantic about trying to have it all; and her son, Edward Moravcsik.

Single tickets for the Public Forum Drama Club evening, The Long Christmas Dinner, start at $46.50 and can be purchased at (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. The Library at The Public is open nightly for food and drink, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

On Monday, December 9, there will be a PUBLIC FORUM SOLO program featuring Joseph Stiglitz. The Nobel Prize-winning economist will give a talk on income inequality and what the artistic community can do about it, followed by a conversation featuring Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels of Run-D.M.C., Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, and Public Works Director Lear deBessonet.

PUBLIC FORUM presents the theater of ideas. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, this series of conversations and performances features leading voices in politics, media, and the arts. Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway, Cynthia Nixon, Sam Waterston, and former NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman have hosted its programs, which have featured the insights of Kurt Andersen, David Brooks, David Byrne, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Tony Kushner, Rachel Maddow, Wynton Marsalis, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, David Simon, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Sondheim, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the culture writers of New York Magazine, and young veterans of the war in Afghanistan - plus performances by Christine Baranski, Matt Damon, Holly Hunter, Wendell Pierce, and Vanessa Redgrave, among others. Current Forum programs include Public Forum Drama Club, Public Forum Duets, Public Forum Solos, and the Public Forum Podcast.

Cynthia Nixon made her film debut in Little Darlings at the age of 12 and her Broadway debut at 14 in The Philadelphia Story. At 18, she juggled two simultaneous roles on Broadway - in Hurlyburly and in The Real Thing. She has been directed by Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, Louis Malle, Milos Forman, Mike Nichols, and Robert Altman. Cynthia co-starred as Miranda in HBO's series "Sex and the City" (Emmy Award), and then in the two wildly successful SATC films. She has appeared in over 40 plays, 10 on Broadway, including Indiscretions (Tony Nominee), Angels in America, The Women, Rabbit Hole (Tony Award), and Wit (Tony Nominee).

Lisa Kron is a playwright and performer whose plays include Fun Home, In The Wake, Well, 2.5 Minute Ride for The Public; and The Ver**zon Play. Kron is also reprising her roles as Mrs. Mi-Tzu and Mrs. Yang in The Foundry Theatre's production of Good Person of Szechwan, directed by Lear deBessonet, at The Public Theater. Her honors include Guggenheim, Lortel, Lark, Sundance, and NEA/TCG Fellowships; a Creative Capital Grant; Helen Merrill Award; and an Alpert Award. She is a founding member of the Obie and Bessie Award-winning theatre company, The Five Lesbian Brothers. She is on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is the author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, as well as a dozen other bestselling books on media, technology, and culture, including Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, Life Inc., and the novel, Ecstasy Club. He wrote the graphic novels, Testament and A.D.D., and made the television documentaries, "Merchants of Cool," "The Persuaders," and "Digital Nation." He lives in New York, and lectures about media, society, and economics around the world.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER is the president and CEO of the New America Foundation and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009-2011, she served as the director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position. Prior to her government service, Dr. Slaughter was the Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from 2002-2009 and the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School from 1994-2002. She has written or edited six books, including A New World Order and The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World, and is a frequent contributor to a number of publications, including The Atlantic and Project Syndicate. In 2012, she published "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," in The Atlantic, which quickly became the most read article in the history of the magazine and helped spark a renewed national debate on the continued obstacles to genuine full male-female equality.

Tappan Wilder is Thornton Wilder's literary executor and speaks widely about his uncle's life and work. He has contributed Afterwords to the nine-volume HarperCollins re-issue of Thornton Wilder's novels and major plays. He has also served as an editor or advisor for editions of Wilder's short plays, selected letters, and the operatic version of Our Town, among a number of special projects. He is especially proud of assistance given to Penelope Niven, author of the major new (2012) Thornton Wilder biography. He is a member of Pen-American Center, a Trustee of the Yale Library Associates, and an honorary trustee of Long Wharf Theatre (New Haven).

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works explore the connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of his seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927, and his next-to-last novel, The Eighth Day, received the National Book Award (1968). Two of his four major plays garnered Pulitzer Prizes, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). His play, The Matchmaker ran on Broadway for 486 performances (1955-1957), Wilder's Broadway record, and was later adapted into the record-breaking musical Hello, Dolly! Wilder also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them translation, acting, opera librettos, lecturing, teaching and film (his screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 psycho-thriller, Shadow of a Doubt remains a classic to this day). Penelope Niven's definitive biography, Thornton Wilder: A Life, was published in October 2012.

Photo by Picture Perfect / Rob Latour /Rex USA