Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four nominations for the Tony Award.
Paula Vogel is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
Joseph Connor Phillips is an American actor, writer, and conservative Christian commentator. He is best known for his role as Martin Kendall on the long-running NBC sitcom The Cosby Show, and as Justus Ward on the soap opera General Hospital.
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist who won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his 1983 novel Ironweed.
Timothy Busfield is an American actor and director. He has played Elliot Weston on the television series thirtysomething; Mark, the brother-in-law of Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams; and Danny Concannon on the television series The West Wing. In 1991 he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for thirtysomething. He is also the founder of the 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization Theatre for Children, Inc. In 2024 he was inducted into the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
Willa Shalit is an American social entrepreneur and strategic advisor. She is widely recognized for her work as an artist, theatre and television producer, photographer and author/editor.
Stephen Moorer is a stage actor, director, producer and non-profit administrator based on the Central California Coast. He founded the only year-round professional theatre in Monterey County, GroveMont Theatre in 1982, renaming the non-profit organization Pacific Repertory Theatre in 1994, when the group acquired the Golden Bough Playhouse in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep, is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for producing avant-garde plays by contemporary writers. The company, described as a "cultural pillar", is currently located in a 65-seat theatre in the TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. The company, and the projects it has produced, have won multiple prizes and earned critical acclaim, including numerous Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. A recent highlight was winning the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement for "nearly four decades of artistic distinction, innovative production, and provocative play selection."
Marnie Andrews is an American stage and television actress ER, JAG, Murder One, "Reasonable Doubts", (1991-1993), The Wonder Years and made for TV movies "Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story," (1991), Shattered Mind (1996), among others. Much of her stage work comes from the development of new plays. She has originated numerous roles in world premieres, several as a member of New Jersey Repertory Company. Andrews is also a director of theatre. As a singer and lyricist, she has composed with Christopher McHale, and Tyler Orr Sterrett.
Gilbert Moses III was an American director. He was also known for his work in the Civil Rights movement, as a staff member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and founder of the touring company, the Free Southern Theater toured the South during the 1960s.
Capital Repertory Theatre is a 309-seat professional regional theatre in Albany, New York. Capital Rep is the only theatre in the Capital District that is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT). As a member, it operates under collective bargaining agreements with Actors' Equity Association and other theatre worker unions.
Orphans is a play by Lyle Kessler. It premiered in 1983 at The Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles, where it received critical and commercial success and won the Drama-Logue Award. The play has been performed by the Steppenwolf Theatre and on Broadway in 2013.
Desdemona is a play by Toni Morrison. It was first produced in Vienna in May 2011. The title character of the play is Desdemona, the wife of the title character in Shakespeare's Othello. The 2011 play arose from a collaboration between Morrison, director Peter Sellars, and musician Rokia Traoré. About a decade earlier, Morrison and Sellars had disagreed about Shakespeare’s play, which Sellars detested but Morrison valued. They agreed that Sellars would stage “Othello” and Morrison would respond to in another way, resulting in her Desdemona.
The Garden Theatre was a major theater on Madison Avenue and 27th Street in Manhattan, New York City. The theatre opened on September 27, 1890, and closed in 1925. Part of the second Madison Square Garden complex, the theatre presented Broadway plays for two decades and then, as high-end theatres moved uptown to the Times Square area, became a facility for German and Yiddish theatre, motion pictures, lectures, and meetings of trade and political groups.
The New York State Writers Institute is a literary organization based at the University at Albany in Albany, New York. It sponsors the Albany Book Festival, the Albany Film Festival, Visiting Writers Series, Classic Film Series, the Trolley online literary magazine, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and New York State Summer Young Writers Institute in collaboration with Skidmore College.
New Heritage Theatre Group (NHTG) is the oldest Black nonprofit theater company in New York City, established in 1964. Through its multiple divisions: IMPACT Repertory Theatre, The Roger Furman Reading Series, and New Heritage Films, New Heritage gives training, exposure, and experience to new and emerging artists, playwrights, directors and technicians of color. New Heritage was founded by the late Roger Furman and is currently headed by Executive Producer Voza Rivers and Executive Artistic Director Jamal Joseph. NHTG presentations capture the historical, social, and political experiences of Black and Latino descendants in America and abroad.
Mark Bly is an American dramaturge, educator, and author. After graduating from Yale's Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program in 1980, Bly worked as a resident dramaturge – then a relatively new position in the United States. He held this position for several of the country's major regional theaters: the Guthrie, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, and the Alley. He was the first dramaturge to receive a Broadway dramaturgy credit for his collaboration with director Emily Mann on her play Execution of Justice (1986), During his career, Bly worked as a production dramaturge with a series of major theater artists including Doug Hughes, Garland Wright, Emily Mann and Moisés Kaufman, as well as on the world premieres of works by playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl and Rajiv Joseph.
Court Miller (1952–1986) was an American actor most notable for starring in the Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy.
New Orleans: the Storyville Musical is a musical by Toni Morrison, Donald McKayle and Dorothea Freitag, set in 1917 in New Orleans' Storyville district. Produced in workshop in 1982, it also received staged readings at New York Shakespeare Festival in 1984 but was never fully produced. It was Morrison's first venture in the medium of theatre.
