The Reading

Elsa Ricardi has turned her life into a best-selling memoir, and the publicity tour is going smoothly until she looks up from the podium at a reading and sees a face she has not seen in years. Jake was her childhood friend, and he is also a character in her book, though he never agreed to be one. His unannounced appearance forces a reckoning between the polished story Elsa has shared with the public and the more painful truth of what happened between them, and what her version of events has cost him. Directed by Nora Jaenicke from a script she wrote with Bobby Peretti, the twelve-minute drama stays tight and uncomfortable, with Ruya Koman, Devin Burnam and Alicia Harding in the cast. It is a sharp, compact story about memory, creative license and the responsibility that comes with telling a secret that belongs to someone else too.