Carey Mulligan, Billy Crudup, and Lance Bass among the first to perform shows driven by language and voice and produced by Audible both live at the Off-Broadway theater and digitally for listeners around the world

NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Audible Inc., the world’s largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment, today announced that the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village will serve as its creative home for live performances in New York. Audible will host and produce a wide variety of live performances at the Minetta Lane including dramatic plays, comedic shows, engaging panel discussions and more, with Audible members receiving exclusive access to discounted tickets and related audio content. Additional information and Audible performances of captivating stage productions starring Carey Mulligan, Billy Crudup, Judith Light, and others are available for preorder and download at www.audible.com/theater.

Audible’s first live stage production at the Minetta Lane Theatre, in March 2018, was the award-winning Harry Clarke, a sexually charged and wickedly funny one-man thriller performed by Tony Award-winning actor Billy Crudup. Audible will produce The Path to Pride, an event inspired by the new Audible Original of the same name, and a live storytelling experience featuring personal stories around LGBT pride co-hosted by Lance Bass and Nikki Levy on June 25th. This June Audible will also bring a five-week run of Girls & Boys, a pulse-pounding, hilarious, gripping, and heartbreaking play performed by Carey Mulligan to the Minetta Lane Theatre. Listeners around the world can also enjoy the audio production of Harry Clarke on Audible now, with Girls and Boys and The Path to Pride currently available for preorder, and releasing on Audible in June.

“Since its earliest days, Audible has been committed to supporting professional actors in their craft and sharing their powerful performances with our listeners,” said Audible founder and CEO Don Katz. “We are thrilled to be producing live shows at the Minetta Lane Theatre and offering yet another way for people to experience the entertaining, voice-driven productions that define the Audible aesthetic.”

“We are equally proud to bring these outstanding live performances to our listeners globally, enabling those outside of New York to experience their own private performance of these productions,” Katz added.

The fall and winter lineups at the Minetta Lane Theatre will be announced in the coming months. Audible will also be announcing live performances in other cities in the near future.

The Minetta Lane Theatre is owned by Liberty Theatres, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reading International, Inc. (NASDAQ CM: RDI). RDI also owns, and manages through Liberty Theatres, the Orpheum Theatre in Manhattan and the Royal George Theatre in Chicago. Expressing enthusiasm for Audible’s plans for the Minetta Lane, President of Liberty Theatres and Executive Vice President of RDI, Margaret Cotter said, “We think the commitment that this high energy company has made by bringing exciting new works and a variety of offerings is a thrilling and unprecedented opportunity for New York audiences and will help rejuvenate Off Broadway.”

Last year, Audible announced a $5M fund to commission and produce new one- and two- person works by emerging playwrights from around the world driven by language and voice, in keeping with Audible’s core commitment to elevate listening experiences through powerful performances of brilliantly composed words. The first class of fifteen theater commissions includes Aaron Mark, Aditi Brennan Kapil, Antoinette Nwandu, Bridgette A. Wimberly, Chisa Hutchinson, David Rossmer, Gary McNair, James Anthony Tyler, James Fritz, Lauren Gunderson, Leah Nanako Winkler, Madhuri Shekar, Nassim Soleimanpour, Paola Lázaro, and Regina Taylor.

With a 30-day membership trial at Audible, new listeners can enjoy any one audiobook, including the live performances recorded and made available for listeners around the world, free.

Audible invented and commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, and has since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. In 2017, listeners around the world downloaded over two billion hours of Audible content.

ABOUT AUDIBLE, INC.

Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ: AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio content, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible was created to unleash the emotive music in language and the habituating power and utility of verbal expression. Audible content includes more than 425,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is also the provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes Store.

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Audible.com

Esther Bochner, [email protected]

Source: Audible, Inc.

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