AWAKE AND SING The Martin E. Segal Theater Center of the City University of New York presents a daylong tribute 1197 736 1338 747to playwright Clifford Odets. The daytime session (10 a.m.) includes a panel discussion about Odets’s work, featuring the publisher emeritus of the Nation magazine, Victor Navasky, and moderator Hal Cantor.The evening session (6:30 p.m.) includes a reading of Odets’s 1935 play, “Awake and Sing!,” which is now on Broadway. Actors Stan Lachow, Charles Socarides, and Lori Wilner participate. Today, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Ave., between 34th and 35th streets, 212-817-8215, free, reservations required.

GENIUS OR NOT A writer for the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, moderates “A Question of Genius,” a discussion about Shakespeare’s plays. A reporter for the New York Observer, Ron Rosenbaum, and a Broadway director, Mark Lamos,are featured panelists. Actors Ginnifer Goodwin, Richard Easton, and others re-create selected scenes. Tonight, 6:30 p.m., Kaye Playhouse, Hunter College, 695 Park Ave. at 68th Street, 212-772-4448, $25-$40.

LIFE IN PRISON The Culture Project presents a reading of Charles Grodin’s new play “The Prosecution of Brandon Hein,” the story of a young man imprisoned for life for a crime he did not commit.The play is directed by Gordon Edelstein.Featured actors include Mr. Grodin and Carey Lowell. Tonight, 7:30 p.m., Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow St. at Seventh Avenue, 212-253-7017, free. E-mail boxoffice@cultureproject.org for tickets.

OUTSIDE THE BARS Rehabilitation Through The Arts, a program that gives formerly incarcerated men theatrical training, presents “From Sing Sing to Broadway – An Evening Without Walls,” a play about their experiences in prison. The play is directed by Brent Buell, and actor Charles Dutton is featured. Tonight, 7:30 p.m., Playwrights Horizons Theater, 416 W. 42nd St., between Ninth and Tenth avenues, 212-279-4200, $125-$200.