Lady Bunny, originally known as "Bunny Hickory Dickory Dock", is an American drag queen, nightclub DJ, actor, comedian, and event organizer. She is the founder of the annual Wigstock event, as well as an occasional television and radio personality. She has released disco singles such as "Shame, Shame, Shame!" and "The Pussycat Song", and has hosted two one-woman comedy shows, 'That Ain't No Lady!' and 'Clowns Syndrome'.
Susan Tyrrell was an American character actress. Tyrrell's career began in theater in New York City in the 1960s in Broadway and off Broadway productions. Her first film was Shoot Out (1971). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Oma in John Huston's Fat City (1972). In 1978, Tyrrell received the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Andy Warhol's Bad (1977). Her New York Times obituary described her as "a whiskey-voiced character actress (with) talent for playing the downtrodden, outré, and grotesque."
Dominick DeLuise was an American actor, comedian and author. Known primarily for comedy roles, he rose to fame in the 1970s as a frequent guest on television variety shows. He is widely recognized for his performances in the films of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, as well as a series of collaborations and a double act with Burt Reynolds. Beginning in the 1980s, his popularity expanded to younger audiences from voicing characters in several major animated productions, particularly those of Don Bluth.
Michael Musto is an American journalist who has long been a prevalent presence in entertainment-related publications, as well as on websites and television shows. Best known as a columnist for The Village Voice, where he wrote the La Dolce Musto column of gossip, nightlife, reviews, interviews, and political observations, in 2021, he started writing articles about nightlife, movies, theater, NYC, and LGBTQ politics for the revived Village Voice, which returned as a print publication, with accompanying website.
Donna McKechnie is an American musical theater dancer, singer, actress, and choreographer. She is known for her professional and personal relationship with choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she collaborated on her most noted role, the character of Cassie in the musical A Chorus Line. She earned the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for this performance in 1976. She is also known for playing Amanda Harris/Olivia Corey on the Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows from 1969 to 1970.
Bruce Gerald Vilanch is an American comedy writer, songwriter and actor. He is a two-time Emmy Award-winner. Vilanch is best known to the public for his four-year stint on Hollywood Squares, as a celebrity participant; behind the scenes he was head writer for the show. In 2000, he performed off-Broadway in his self-penned one-man show, Bruce Vilanch: Almost Famous.
David Xavier Harrigan, also Tomata du Plenty, was an American singer of the late 1970s and early 1980s Los Angeles electropunk band The Screamers. He was also the founder of Seattle's counterculture troupe Ze Whiz Kidz. During the later part of his life he focused on painting.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a U.S./Canadian poet, writer, educator and social activist. Their writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans. A central concern of their work is the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. They are also a writer and organizer within the disability justice movement.
Brad Stephen "Taylor" Negron was an American actor, comedian, writer and artist. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Albert in Punchline (1988) and as Milo in the 1991 action comedy The Last Boy Scout.
Danny Woodburn is an American actor, comedian, and activist for the disability rights movement linked to his dwarfism.
A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show, one-woman show, or one-person show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including autobiographical creations, comedy acts, novel adaptations, vaudeville, poetry, music and dance. In 1996, Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman became the longest-running one-person play in the history of Broadway theatre.
Marga Gomez is a comedian, writer, performer, and teaching artist from Harlem, New York. She has written and performed in thirteen solo plays which have been presented nationally and internationally. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno. She also acted in season two of the Netflix series Sense8. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Gomez pivoted to adapting and presenting her work for live streaming. She has been featured in online theater festivals from New York to San Diego, as well as a five-week virtual run for Brava, SF where she is an artist-in-residence. She is a GLAAD media award winner and recipient of the 2020 CCI Investing in Artists grant.
Thomas James Jagodowski is an American comedian, actor, and improvisational performer who resides in Chicago. He has been a member of The Second City as well as a performer and teacher at iO Theater, formerly known as "Improv Olympic". He has appeared in movies such as Stranger Than Fiction, The Ice Harvest, No Sleep Till Madison, Get Hard and the television show, Prison Break. He is most recognizable from the long-running series of improvised Sonic Drive-In commercials featuring himself and Peter Grosz until 2020.
Luis Alfaro is a Chicano performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist.
George Beban was a US actor, director, writer and producer. Beban began as a child performer in San Francisco, California, and became a well-known vaudevillian and stage actor in the 1890s and 1900s. He was best known for his portrayal of Italian immigrant characters, including his starring roles in the play The Sign of the Rose and the 1915 silent film classic The Italian. Though strongly associated with his Italian immigrant roles, Beban was born in San Francisco, could not speak a word of Italian, and was the son of parents from Dalmatia and Ireland.
Mike Albo is an American writer, comedian, actor and humorist. He is known for his writing and performances that criticize and satirize contemporary celebrity and consumer culture.
Stephen Guarino is an American actor and comedian, known as Sully Patterson on the Jim Carrey-produced Showtime series I'm Dying Up Here (2017–2018) and for his recurring role as Derrick in the ABC comedy series Happy Endings, a character that has since been carried over to the NBC sitcom Marry Me, as well as Connor on the ABC sitcom Dr. Ken.
Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories is a 2004 anthology edited by Bob Guter and John R. Killacky. The book is a collection of personal stories from gay men with disabilities. The stories are told through a variety of literary genres, including poetry, prose, and interviews. The book won the 2004 Lambda Literary Award for the Anthologies/Non-fiction category. Contributors to the book include gay men such as Greg Walloch and Kenny Fries. Disability rights activist J. Quinn Brisben was also a contributor. After being turned down for publication by 30 publishers, the anthology was finally published by Harrington Park Press, an imprint of Haworth Press.
Matthew "Matteo" Lane is an American comedian, actor, singer, and illustrator.
Ryan O'Connell is an American writer, actor, director, comedian, LGBTQ activist, and disability advocate. He is known for his 2015 memoir, I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, about his life as a gay man with cerebral palsy, which he adapted into television series Special for Netflix, premiering in April 2019.
