The Reading

Elsa Ricardi has turned her life into a best-selling memoir, and the publicity tour is going beautifully until she looks up from the podium at a reading and sees a face from her past. Jake was a childhood friend, and he is a character in her book, though not one who ever agreed to be. His unexpected appearance forces a confrontation between the polished version of events Elsa has sold to the public and a darker truth about what happened between them, and what her words cost him. Director Nora Jaenicke, who co-wrote the script with Bobby Peretti, keeps the eleven-minute drama tight and uncomfortable, letting Ruya Koman's poised Elsa and Devin Burnam's raw, insistent Jake collide in real time, with Alicia Harding in support. A story about creative license, memory and the ethics of telling someone else's secret, The Reading appears on Here TV as part of the Queer Quickies anthology.