Public Theater to Present THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER as Part of Public Forum, 12/14

The Public Theater announced the return of Public Forum's holiday tradition, a one-night-only Drama Club reading and discussion of THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER on Sunday, December 14 at 7:00 p.m. at Joe's Pub at The Public. Just in time for the holidays, this exciting evening will feature a reading of Thornton Wilder's 1931 one-act featuring Tarell Alvin McCraney, Ethan Lipton, Andrew Solomon, and Tappan Wilder. Wilder's ingenious, heartbreaking play traces 90 years in the life of an American family, and will spark a discussion about family and storytelling in a society that's rapidly accelerating.

Public Theater Member tickets for DRAMA CLUB: THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER, priced at $40, and single tickets, starting at $50, are on available now. Tickets can be accessed by calling (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. (There is no food or drink minimum for the Public Forum Drama Club series in 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.

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.

PUBLIC FORUM, now in its fifth season, presents the theater of ideas: performances and conversations that explore dramatic literature as a way to understand society. 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, Tony Kushner, Rachel Maddow, Wynton Marsalis, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, Suzan-Lori Parks, Salman Rushdie, David Simon, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Sondheim, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, young veterans of the war in Afghanistan - plus performances and readings by Christine Baranski, Annette Bening, Jessica Chastain, Billy Collins, Matt Damon, E.L. Doctorow, Holly Hunter, James Earl Jones, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Redgrave, among others. The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation provides lead support for The Public's access and engagement programming.

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