Famous actors to read short stories aloud at UAlbany

For actors who usually memorize lines meant to be spoken and pride themselves on becoming their characters, reading prose aloud from a page presents a different series of creative challenges.

"I think of it as channeling the author," says Anthony Rapp, an original cast member of the 1990s smash-hit musical "Rent" and currently on the CBS series "Star Trek: Discovery." "It's more like I'm presenting the material, not internalizing it," he says.

Jane Kaczmarek, best known as the mother on the 2000-06 Fox sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle," prepares elaborately to read fiction aloud, as she, Rapp and "Orange Is the New Black" co-star Alysia Reiner will on Saturday at the University at Albany's Performing Arts Center as part of the "Selected Shorts" program.

"I read the story many times, print it out in the biggest font I can use — I'm very nearsighted — and I used colored pencils to underline the different characters," says Kaczmarek, a veteran of more than two dozen "Selected Shorts" programs.

Originating at Symphony Space in Manhattan, the 34-year-old "Selected Shorts" features stage and screen actors reading short fiction before a live audience. In addition to regular programs at its home venue and at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, "Selected Shorts" visits theaters nationwide for similar readings, which are recorded for a popular podcast and show on public radio. (Locally, the one-hour program airs at 10 p.m. Wednesday and 11 a.m. Sunday on 90.3 WAMC.)

Saturday's show, with the theme Readers and Writers, is a co-presentation of UAlbany's Performing Arts Center and the New York State Writers Institute, based at the university. It will feature Rapp reading "The Baby," by the hotshot young humorist Simon Rich, whose first collection of stories was published when he was 23 and already a writer for "Saturday Night...