Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, and Bryan Doerries team up for special event at the 92nd St. Y
Who: Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Bryan Doerries, Thane Rosenbaum
What: “The Redemptive Power of Ancient Stories”
Where: 92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St., 212-415-5500
When: Saturday, April 16, $32 ($15 for ages thirty-five & under), 7:30
Why: “What do Greek tragedies have to say to us now? What timeless things do they show us about what it means to be human? What were these ancient plays originally designed to do? And can they still work for audiences and readers today?” writer, director, and translator Bryan Doerries asks in the prologue to his book The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today (Knopf, September 2015, $26.95). Doerries is the artistic director of Outside the Wire, a self-described “social impact company” that presents such projects as End of Life, Prometheus in Prison, and Theater of War, which consists of dramatic readings of Sophocles’s Ajax and Philoctetes performed for military and civilian communities in America and Europe, with a particular focus on the psychological and physical impact of war. On April 16, Doerries will be joined by Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated actors Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man, John Adams) and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck.; Temple Grandin) at the 92nd St. Y, where they will perform dramatic readings and participate in a discussion moderated by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum. The evening will conclude with Doerries signing copies of The Theater of War as well as his brand-new graphic novel, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan (Pantheon, April 5, 2016, $19.95), which links Homer’s Odyssey to American soldiers returning home from Afghanistan.