Alan Cumming is a Scottish-American actor, singer, writer, filmmaker, and activist who has acted in numerous films, television shows, and plays. His London stage appearances include Hamlet, the Maniac in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, the lead in Bent, The National Theatre of Scotland's The Bacchae and Samuel Beckett's Endgame at The Old Vic opposite Daniel Radcliffe. On Broadway, he has appeared in The Threepenny Opera, as the master of ceremonies in Cabaret, Design for Living and a one-man adaptation of Macbeth. His best-known film roles include his performances in Emma, GoldenEye, the Spy Kids trilogy, Son of the Mask, and X2. Cumming also introduces Masterpiece Mystery! for PBS and appeared on The Good Wife, for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Satellite Award. A filming of his Las Vegas cabaret show, Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, aired on PBS stations in November 2016.
Nathan Lane is an American actor and writer. In a career spanning 45 years he has been seen on stage and screen in many roles including Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in Mouse Hunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and in many plays by Terrence McNally, including The Lisbon Traviata, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, and Love! Valour! Compassion!. His voice work includes The Lion King as Timon and Stuart Little as Snowbell. He has played recurring roles on television in Modern Family, The Good Wife, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story as F. Lee Bailey, and was a regular on Penny Dreadful: City of Angels as Detective Lewis Michener.
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There, Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody, and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical, A Chorus Line. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991 and its Broadway opening was in 1993.
I Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright based on his conversations with the German antiquarian Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The one-man play premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at Playwrights Horizons. It opened on Broadway later that year. The play was developed with Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project, and Kaufman also acted as director. Jefferson Mays starred in the Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, playing some forty roles. Wright received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work.
The Night of the Iguana is a stage play written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. First staged as a one-act play in 1959, Williams developed it into a full-length play over the next two years, staging two different versions in 1959 and 1960, and then arriving at the three-act version of the text which premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Oscar-winning 1964 film directed by John Huston and starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. The other is a 2000 Croatian production.
Benjamin Shenkman is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the comedy-drama series Royal Pains and the acclaimed HBO miniseries Angels in America, which earned him both Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.
Carol Lawrence is an American actress, appearing in musical theatre and on television. She is known for portraying Maria on Broadway in the musical West Side Story (1957), receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She appeared at The Muny, St. Louis, in several musicals, including Funny Girl. She also appeared in many television dramas, including Rawhide and Murder She Wrote. She was married to fellow performer Robert Goulet.
Mass Appeal is a two-character play by Bill C. Davis. The comedy-drama focuses on the conflict between a complacent Roman Catholic pastor and the idealistic young deacon who is assigned to his affluent, suburban parish.
Daniel J. Sullivan is an American theatre and film director and playwright.
Emily Skinner, also known as Emily Scott Skinner, is a Tony-nominated American stage actress and singer. She has played leading roles in such Broadway productions as Prince of Broadway, The Cher Show, Side Show, Jekyll & Hyde, James Joyce's The Dead, The Full Monty, Dinner at Eight, Billy Elliot, as well as the Actor's Fund Broadway concerts of Dreamgirls and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She has sung on concert stages around the world and on numerous recordings.
Robert Falls is an American theater director and the current artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
Samm-Art Williams is an American playwright and screenwriter, and a stage and film/TV actor and television producer. Much of his work concerns the African-American experience.
Danny Burstein is an American actor and singer, most known for his work on the Broadway stage.
Charlotte Blair Parker was a noted American playwright and aspiring actress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She began her theatrical career as an actress, eventually playing opposite John Edward McCullough, Mary Anderson, and Dion Boucicault. Writing under the pen name Lottie Blair Parker, she wrote about a dozen produced plays but is remembered most for three popular stage plays produced between 1897 and 1906: Way Down East, Under Southern Skies and The Redemption of David Corson. Of the three, Way Down East, produced in 1898, was the most successful, proving to be one of the most popular American plays of its time, steadily performed for two decades.
Gilles Chiasson is an American producer, director, composer, writer and actor. While he first came to prominence as an actor, particularly in the original cast of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning RENT, Chiasson went on to work in film and television development and now focuses on theater administration and operations. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife Sherri Parker Lee and their two sons.
David J. Fishelson is an American producer, playwright, and director for film, theatre, television and radio, based in Manhattan since 1982. He is best known for being the lead producer of Golda's Balcony, the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history (2003–05)—which he also produced as a feature motion picture, Golda's Balcony , that was popular in over 75 film festivals in 2019-20)—as well as being the founder/producer of Manhattan Ensemble Theatre ("MET"), an award-winning Off-Broadway theatre company located in SoHo, New York City. As a filmmaker, his work has been broadcast on PBS, exhibited theatrically, and selected for 87 international film festivals. As a theatre producer and playwright, his work has garnered 31 nominations from the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Obie, Drama League, Lortel, Blackburn Prize and Touring Broadway awards organizations, while landing on Time Out NY's year-end "Best in Theatre" list on 4 different occasions.
Sam Gold is a theater director and actor. He has directed both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Fun Home.
James Leo Colby was an American actor in film, television and stage. Colby appeared in multiple Broadway plays and few stage productions in Connecticut.
Douglas Denoff is a five-time Tony Award-Nominated Broadway theatre producer, writer and entrepreneur. He has won the Drama Desk Award as a producer and television's Emmy Award, and, in 2012 received his first Grammy Award nomination. Through his company Sutton Square Entertainment, he develops and produces original new musicals and plays that can be successful on Broadway, and in regional theatres and touring companies.
