A virtual staged reading directed by Bob Balaban

To Benefit Guild Hall of East Hampton, NY

One of the most popular romantic comedies of our time, Same Time, Next Year ran four years on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for lead actress Ellen Burstyn. It remains one of the world’s most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers.

The performance will benefit Guild Hall and launch our new vision for the 2020 Summer Season with a focus on restarting the local creative economy through collaborations with regional artists, musicians, and performers, online and offline.

“Delicious wit, compassion, a sense of humor and a feel for nostalgia.” The New York Times

 “Genuinely funny and genuinely romantic.” New York Post

After you purchase your tickets a link to the reading will be emailed to you 24 hours prior to the reading.

Join David Leopold as he takes us on a tour of the Hirschfeld Century, an 82-year era in which Al Hirschfeld both recorded and defined so much of popular culture, especially through his drawings of productions on Broadway and in Hollywood. He was there at the birth of television and captured its first half-century. He recorded more popular music than any MP3, CD, LP, or wax cylinder ever did. His drawings of dance are among his most accomplished works. Leopold has spent 25 years studying Hirschfeld’s work, the first 13 as Hirschfeld’s Archivist, visiting him in his studio once or twice a week. In addition to curating exhibitions at the Library of Congress, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles among others, he is the Creative Director of The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. His book, The Hirschfeld Century: A Portrait of the Artist and His Age (Knopf), has been called by The Washington Post, “An instant classic.” Booklist declared, “Leopold emulates the economy and fluidity of Hirschfeld’s drawings in this star-studded, anecdote-rich, critically clarifying, and thoroughly enlightening portrait of the portraits.” His illustrated talk will show you rarely seen images as well as old favorites, and will include a post-show audience Q&A moderated by Josh Gladstone, Artistic Director of the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall.

A link to the live broadcast will be emailed to ticket holders in their confirmation receipts and again 24 hours in advance of the show.

A one man play by Joe Beck

Directed by Elizabeth Falk

Attention all fans of great literature and superb acting – BLOOMSDAY APPROACHES! Come celebrate one of Ireland (and the world’s) finest writers, James Joyce, as read and performed by a legend of the American stage, Austin Pendleton, at a one-night-only virtual live reading presented by Guild Hall. Joyce’s most famous work Ulysses (1922) is based on Homer’s The Odyssey and follows the movements of Leopold Bloom through a single day on June 16th, 1904. Bloomsday is celebrated every year in Dublin and around the world by fans of Joyce at events including readings, performances, visitations to locales from the book, cosplay as characters from the novel and even eating the traditional Bloomsday breakfast of liver & kidneys served alongside an Irish fried breakfast. You don’t necessarily need to wear a straw boater or eat rashers and black pudding to enjoy this exclusive performance – a benefit for Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater which has been closed by the pandemic – but then again, it’s a virtual presentation so what you do from the comfort of your home while listening to the amazing Pendleton interpret this literary masterpiece is entirely up to you.

Of playwright Joe Beck’s sharp, new adaptation Pendleton remarks, “I feel that Joe has done the impossible: created a character for the theatre who could actually be James Joyce. This accomplishment in Joe’s writing astonished me. I would have thought it impossible. But here he is, Mr. Joyce, musing in free-from, struggling in free-form, about his writing, about his dreams and his successful efforts to create a literature that represented life as he knew it, in all it’s astounding complexity and wonder. Joe Beck finds the drama as well as the humor, and the joy, in Joyce’s struggle; and the sense of climbing a daunting mountain, going higher and higher into some literary heaven that before him had been unknown to anyone. For all these reasons it is a thrill for me to read Joe’s play aloud.”

This is a remarkable opportunity to intimately experience the charisma and versatility of one of America’s theatrical living legends – Austin Pendleton – a foremost interpreter of all things Joycean as well as an Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning, Tony-nominated director, playwright and star of Broadway and innumerable film and television appearances in a stellar career that has spanned over five decades of performance. Pendleton is directed by his colleague Elizabeth Falk, noted director of opera and theatre with a wide-ranging career that has carried her across America’s regional theaters to work in Russia, Europe and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London where she has the distinction of being the first woman to direct a play for that stage.

This presentation is the second offering in Guild Hall’s new Virtual John Drew Theater series and follows the popular recent presentation of A PORTRAIT OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS staring Harris Yulin and Mercedes Ruehl. As with TENNESSEE, this evening’s performance will be followed by a live Q&A with Mr. Pendleton and the play’s creative team, moderated by the John Drew Theater’s Artistic Director Josh Gladstone.

A link to the live broadcast will be emailed to ticket holders 24 hours in advance. If you purchase a ticket after that, the link will be emailed automatically in your ticket receipt.