Off the Page Archive
Word for Word's Off the Page staged reading series has been our testing ground for new material. Here is an admittedly partial archive of stories that have been performed.
2019
February 11 - “Complainers” by Jeffrey Eugenides
Directed by Amy Kossow
From Fresh Complaint, the Pulitzer winner's only book of short stories, "which leaves the readers freshly grateful for what literature can do". —NPR
March 18 - Selections from Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border by Octavio Solis
Directed by Sheila Balter with Jim Cave
The reading includes the following chapters “The Way Over,” “El Judio,” “La Llorona,” “Wild Kingdom,” “Jeep in the Water,” “The Quince,” “The Sister,” “The Mexican Apology,” “El Segundo,” “Neto,” and “My Right Foot.” SF Chronicle: Best 100 Books of 2018. "In these disarming retablos, [Solis] offers readers an expansive way of regarding the troubled world we live in now." —Seattle Times.
June 10 - “Broken Homes” and “Sitting with the Dead” by William Trevor
Directed by Paul Finocchiaro
"Every sentence William Trevor wrote was perfectly crafted, yet he had a love of storytelling: his first loyalty was always to the reader's desire to find out what was going to happen next." —The Guardian
July 22 - “Citizen” by Greg Sarris
Directed by Gendell Hing-Hernandez and JoAnne Winter
”Citizen” tells the tale of Salvador, born in the U.S., but raised in Mexico, son of an American mother and Mexican father. He has returned to the U.S. to find his mother, or rather her grave. In the process, he discovers his true identity, and what it means to belong.
December 2 - “Now Wait for This Week” by Alice Sola Kim
Directed by Isabel Langen
Directorial Consultant - Sheila Balter
A young woman in New York City finds herself doomed to perpetually celebrate her birthday, searching for a way to escape the pattern while struggling to convince anyone of what she’s going through.
2018
March 12 - “Shenanigans” and “Madame Guralnik” by Edith Pearlman
Directed by Adrian Elfenbaum
“Edith Pearlman is the best short story writer in the world. A lot of people know that. More will.” —The London Times
May 21 - "Avarice" and "Loyalty" by Charles Baxter
Directed by Amy Kossow
From the collection There's Something I Want You to Do. "Revelations of the unexpected in the course of mundane day-to-day reality, the fleeting moments that indelibly shape a life, the moral and emotional quandaries that besiege us all. These are the themes that Charles Baxter has made his own over the span of a distinguished writing career..."
—from The Atlantic
June 25 - “The Abbess of Crewe" by Muriel Spark
Directed by Amy Kossow
“I’ve been rereading a lot of Spark over this last year and a half, because the times we’re in right now, and the way the information speedfests are forming our everyday history and asking such challenging questions about truth and lies and fiction, mean that I’ve found I’ve had the need of Spark like never before – her intelligence, her longsightedness, her wit, her liberating merriment, her formidable blitheness.” —Fellow Scottish Novelist Ali Smith, writing on Muriel Spark’s centenary, in The Guardian
September 17 - "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Directed by Delia MacDougall
Join us for a special reading of the classic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.
October 18 - Selections from Retablos by Octavio Solis
Part of the Litquake Festival
Directed by Sheila Balter
at the Elbo Room
Join us for a reading and an appearance by the author, Octavio Solis. His book will be available by the publisher, City Lights, for purchase and after the reading, Mr. Solis will be in conversation with Oscar Villalon, Editor of ZYZZVA.
November 5 - “The Glass Essay” by Anne Carson
Directed by Stephanie Hunt
Learn more about Anne Carson and her work in the 2013 New York Times article, "The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson."
December 3 - “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
Directed by Joel Mullennix
John Cheever is a “brilliant chronicler of American suburbia led a tortured double life filled with sexual guilt, alcoholism and self-loathing.” —The Guardian. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs".
December 17 - “Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons
Directed by Amy Kossow
Stella Dorothea Gibbons (5 January 1902 – 19 December 1989) was an English author, journalist, and poet. “Gibbons's writing has been praised by critics for its perspicacity, sense of fun, charm, wit and descriptive skill—the last a product of her journalistic training—which she used to convey both atmosphere and character.” (Wikipedia “Stella Gibbons")
