19 Aug Adam Gopnik returns to Aspen to relive two historic nights
Storyteller and New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik will return to Aspen on Sept. 2 and 3 for a Solo Flights Special Presentation at the Hurst Theater ahead of Theatre Aspen’s Solo Flights Festival, which runs Sept. 8 to 13.
Gopnik will present two new one-hour shows for a series he developed with Jed Bernstein, titled “History of the World in 100 Performances.” Each show will be performed twice — with two performances revisiting the Broadway opening of “A Chorus Line” and the other two turning to Ella Fitzgerald, a jazz singer who won 13 Grammy Awards and sold more than 40 million records.
The seed for the series grew while Bernstein was running Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2014 to 2016 in Manhattan. He kept returning to a question: What makes certain nights at the theater unforgettable?
“I’m always very obsessed with the impact theater can have on people,” Bernstein said.
He said he kept contemplating about the endings, the moments when people walked out thinking, “I can’t believe I got to see this.”