This new initiative found its wings with the entertainment company Audible.
“You lose something when you take away the audience, the live experience,” Crudup cautions.
Initially, Audible sought out solo plays to adapt for listeners.
Credit: Illustration by Livia Cives for EW
The show’s director, Leigh Silverman, joined Light at Audible’s studios foran exclusive recording.
“A performance, for me, is a performance.
It doesn’t matter the venue in which I’m doing it,” Light says.
“If I were doing another play, I would now ask that we do it for Audible.”
It’s incredibly important."
“It was like making a schedule for a film,” Kushner recalls.
[Exclusive listen: Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn in theAngels in Americaaudio play]
Kushner was skeptical.
He enlisted Tony nominees Edie Falco and Bobby Cannavale to read stage directions.
He tweaked the play ever so slightly.
He even found that the more visual the scene, the more it resonated in one’s ears.
“The absence of all of that spectacular stuff happening forces an almost muted study,” he says.
“It really forces concentration on the words.”
“I want to do all my plays this way.”
Same forFeeding the Dragon, a drama by and starring Sharon Washington.
“Our mission boils down to bringing great performances and great writing to more people,” Navin says.
“We believe so deeply in what the work is.”
That’s pretty amazing."
The actors are all in.
“When you give a performance, you take people to another place,” Light says.
“This is about telling stories.
Your imagination, particularly when you’re just listening to something, can run wild.”
That’s been incredibly rewarding."
