If you’ve ever lain awake at 2 am, spiraling into an existential crisis about the quiet tragedy of a suburban librarian or the unexplained comfort of a stranger’s voicemail, then Ira Glass is basically your patron saint. And now, praise be, he’s coming to Tampa.
On December 5th, the host and creator of This American Life will take the stage at the iconic Tampa Theatre for an evening of live storytelling. Yes, the actual human Ira Glass, standing right there in the room, doing what he’s done better than almost anyone alive: crafting stories that make you laugh and ugly cry within the same five-minute stretch.
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For those somehow unfamiliar: This American Life is the weekly public radio program that Glass put on the air in 1995 and has been making emotionally vulnerable people sob in their cars ever since. The show reaches more than three million (!!!) listeners each week and has earned eight Peabody Awards, three Emmys, and the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a radio show or podcast. It also helped launch Serial and S-Town, two podcasts that took the world by storm. So yes, Glass is kind of a big deal.
And the venue? Tampa Theatre opened on October 15th, 1926, a century-old atmospheric movie palace that Tampa’s own citizens refused to let be demolished back in 1973. It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978, and watching a master storyteller perform inside it feels appropriately poetic. The historic building is nearing the completion a large-scale renovation, and this is the perfect welcome back.
Here’s the catch: tickets won’t go on sale to the general public right away. WUSF and WSMR members get first crack starting in September, which means if you’ve been sitting on the fence about membership, here’s your very concrete reason to stop sitting and start acting.
December 5th, Tampa Theatre. Don’t be the person who finds out it’s sold out.
