John Lithgow has just joined the cast of Radio Bloomsday, the 30th annual, 7-hour broadcast of excerpts from James Joyce's Ulysses. The distinguished actor will read Charles Lamb's version of Ulysses for children, which inspired Joyce. Radio Bloomsday will be heard coast to coast on Thursday, June 16 on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York, 7 PM - 2 AM.
To celebrate Bloomsday, the day on which Ulysses takes place, our broadcast will feature artists from New York, Los Angeles, London and Dublin. The show will be streamed live on wbai.org.Radio Bloomsday brings together contemporary artists to make Joyce's text fresh and accessible to modern audiences. Highlights include Alec Baldwin reading Lord Tennyson's poem Ulysses. Booker-Prize-winning novelist Anne Enright narrates the entire Calypso episode with quintessential New York playwright and actor Wallace Shawn as Leopold Bloom. Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon reads an excerpt of the Proteus episode. Garrison Keillor reads another excerpt from Wandering Rocks. Jerry Stiller reads Bloom's thoughts about Passover. Stage veterans Bernadette Quigley and Fiana Toibin give the first taste of Joyce's novel by reading the opening passage of Ulysses. Students at James Joyce's alma mater, Belvedere College in Dublin, will perform the Nestor episode in which Stephen Dedalus teaches John Milton's Lycidas, which will be read by Jim Fletcher (Gatz). From Los Angeles Bob Odenkirk and Paul Dooley interrogate each other in an excerpt from the Ithaca episode. Comedian Marc Maron reads a neurotic Bloom. From London, novelist Nick McDonell is Stephen Dedalus in Wandering Rocks.Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos
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