I spoke earlier this week with Cedering Fox (left), the producer of WordTheatre, a series of literary short stories read by celebrities, about the show she’s producing this Sunday afternoon at the Cutting Room to celebrate the short fiction of Rick Moody. The two met at an 826LA benefit a few months ago and swapped emails. Fox, who had directed Dana Delany in a reading of Moody’s “On the Carousel” a while back, came up with the idea of building an entire show around Moody, recruiting TV actors Chris Noth and Anson Mount and Broadway’s Jodi Long as readers. (Moody will also be presenting never-before-read material.)
When we spoke, Fox was calling from the set of NBC’s Conviction, where she was going over Moody’s “The Grid” with Mount during a break in shooting. She put me on the phone with Mount, who explained that he first got involved with WordTheatre when Fox approached Mark Richard about including one of the stories from his collection, The Ice at the Bottom of the World, in a performance. Richard said it was okay, as long as Mount could read it, and the rest was history.