Too Rich to Fail: Shakespeare and Money in America

Tickets and Information

Visit the Too Rich to Fail: Shakespeare and Money in America website:
http://www.publictheater.org

To coincide with the Public's production of Timon of Athens, Shakespeare's timely tragedy about a man who loses and gains a fortune, The Public Forum continues its high-profile season with a program exploring the power of money in America, the land of million-dollar bonuses, credit-card debt, and more. The program features insights from leading voices in politics, arts, the media -- and you.

In the first part of the program, Richard Thomas, the stage and screen star who's playing Timon, will talk about the role and Shakespeare's views on money with Barry Edelstein, the play's director and author of Thinking Shakespeare. The discussion will be moderated by Randy Cohen, who writes the Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine.

The second part will be a wide-ranging conversation about the role of money in our lives: the widening gap between rich and poor, the financial crisis, the power of Wall Street, money in politics, why Americans equate wealth and virtue, and more. Participants will include Bethany McLean, who writes Slate's "Moneybox" column and is the co-author of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here, a new history of the financial crisis; David Patrick Columbia, who chronicles the city's elite on the website New York Social Diary; and Katy Lederer, who worked at a hedge fund before writing a book of poems about money, The Heaven-Sent Leaf, and has also written the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers. The conversation will be moderated by the director of the Public Forum, Newsweek senior writer Jeremy McCarter.