Next Episode THEATER TALK Features Public Theater's TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS

In its first segment, THEATER TALK focuses on the play TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS, now in a highly successful run at The Public Theater. It was adapted for the stage by one of the episode's guests, actor/writer Nia Vardalos, who also stars in the production, co-conceived by the other guest in the segment, writer/columnist Marshall Heyman. The play is based on author Cheryl Strayed's best-selling book, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, a compilation of reader letters and Strayed's responses from her column, "Dear Sugar," on TheRumpus.net. Excerpting and adapting readers' experiences and Strayed's empathetic responses make for, in Heyman's words, a "funny, painful, honest, brave" evening of theater, one that leaves many of its audiences members in tears. In fact, Tony-winning writer and TV producer Warren Leight (Side Man, Law and Order: SVU), who co-hosts the segment with producer Susan Haskins, recommends that audiences "bring tissues."

Next is a discussion about the prolific Sir Noël Coward and his never-produced play Salute to the Brave, being performed for the first time as a one-night-only benefit for The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) on November 13. Joining Haskins and guest co-host Donna Hanover of CUNY TV's Arts in the City is the play's director Scott Alan Evans, also TACT's Executive Artistic Director; Geoffrey Johnson, a former colleague of Coward's and now a Trustee of the Noël Coward Foundation; plus actor Kristine Nielsen, who is a key player in the all-star cast of the production that also includes Peter Bartlett, Reed Birney, Jennifer Ehle, Simon Jones and Rocco Sisto. Coward wrote the play in 1941 as a subtle way to convince the United States to join Britain and its allies in the struggle to beat back Germany and the other Axis Powers. However, as Johnson tells it, "The ink was not yet dry" when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of that year and the U.S. immediately joined World War II. Believing Salute to THE BRAVE had lost its purpose, Coward stashed it away where it was all but forgotten until decades later when Coward scholar Barry Day, OBE, found it and brought to TACT's attention.

Following is the broadcast/cable schedule for this episode in the New York area:

CUNY TV
Monday, November 6 (2017) at 8:00 PM
Saturday, November 11 at 8:30 PM
Sunday, November 12 at 7:00 AM
Monday, November 13 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM

PBS/Thirteen
Friday, November 10 at 1:30 AM (Saturday morning)
Sunday, November 12 at 11:30 AM

WLIW/21
Monday, November 13 at 5:30 PM

NYC LIFE/25
Thursday, November 16 at 11:00 PM
Monday, November 20 at 3:30 AM

THEATER TALK - winner of the 2017 Emmy Award for Best Interview/Discussion Show in the NYC area - is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and The Friends of Theater Talk.

*CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is broadcast in the NYC metropolitan area on digital Ch. 25.3 and cablecast in the city's five boroughs on Ch. 75 (Spectrum & Optimum/Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN), and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). THEATER TALK episodes are available online anytime at www.cuny.tv and www.theatertalk.org and via iTunes.

Photo by Myra Wong