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The Phone Book was inspired by an actor's highest compliment - "she could read the phone book and make it sound great" - a series of dramatic readings of phone books, as if they were written by Shakespeare or O'Neill--and other strange lists. Most s… — The Phone Book was inspired by an actor's highest compliment - "she could read the phone book and make it sound great" - a series of dramatic readings of phone books, as if they were written by Shakespeare or O'Neill--and other strange lists. Most segments are 3:59, suitable for short cutaways.

The idea is simple: record the best actors in the English-speaking world interpreting phone books and all kinds of strange lists: instruction manuals and codes of behavior like Royal Etiquette: How To Behave When Presented to the Queen • recipes from old cookbooks • drug side effects • processed food ingredients • The Motion Picture (Hays) Code (1930) — read for laughs, whether the original text was intended to be humorous or not.

F. Murray Abraham, Alec Baldwin, John Lithgow, Renée Fleming, Garrison Keillor, Dick Cavett, Barbara Rosenblat, a top voice actor, and many others have read for the project.

THE PHONE BOOK

A radio series on PRX