August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Mischa Anne Marsden Barton is a British-American film, television, and stage actress. She began her career on the stage, appearing in Tony Kushner's Slavs! and took the lead in James Lapine's Twelve Dreams at New York City's Lincoln Center. She made her screen debut with a guest appearance on the American soap opera All My Children (1995), and voicing a character on the Nickelodeon cartoon series KaBlam! (1996–97). Her first major film role was as the protagonist of Lawn Dogs (1997), a drama co-starring Sam Rockwell. She appeared in major pictures such as the romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999) and M. Night Shyamalan's psychological thriller The Sixth Sense (1999). She also starred in the indie crime drama Pups (1999).
Joseph Michael Manganiello is an American actor. His professional film career began when he played Flash Thompson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. His breakout role was as werewolf Alcide Herveaux in five seasons of the HBO series True Blood.
Fritz William Weaver was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 theatre, television, and film productions in a career spanning nearly 60 years.
Jitney is a play by American playwright August Wilson. The eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle", this play is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early autumn 1977. The play premiered on Broadway in 2017.
Stephen McKinley Henderson is an American actor. Henderson trained at Juilliard School for acting and later became a resident member of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis from 1976 to 1981. He came to prominence as a character actor often performing the plays of August Wilson. He has received nominations for two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Vulture named Henderson as one of "The 32 Greatest Character Actors Working Today".
The culture of Pittsburgh stems from the city's long history as a center for cultural philanthropy, as well as its rich ethnic traditions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, wealthy businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry J. Heinz, Henry Clay Frick, and nonprofit organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation donated millions of dollars to create educational and cultural institutions.
The Kill Point is an American television series that follows a group of U.S. Marines recently returned from serving in Iraq as they come together to pull off a major bank heist of a Three Rivers Bank branch in Pittsburgh. The series, produced by Mandeville Films and Lionsgate Television, was the first drama for the Spike TV network. Working title for the project was The Kill Pitt.
The Magic Theatre is a theatre company founded in 1967, presently based at the historic Fort Mason Center on San Francisco's northern waterfront. The Magic Theatre is well known and respected for its singular focus on the development and production of new plays. Sean San José is the Artistic Director.
Tarell Alvin McCraney is an American playwright. He is the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble.
Homecoming is a 2009 American independent horror-thriller film, directed by Morgan J. Freeman and written by Katie L. Fetting, Jake Goldberger and Frank Hannah. The film follows a student couple, Mike and Elizabeth, on their homecoming. Elizabeth is taken home by Mike's ex-girlfriend Shelby after a road accident. Shelby is soon revealed to be fixated on Mike and subsequently treats Elizabeth in a cruel and deranged manner. The film was poorly received by critics but was a box office success, grossing $8.5 million against a $1.5 million budget.
Zachary Booth is an American actor. He appeared in several productions with the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire, before starring in The N's What Goes On and on FX's Damages. Booth is a 2004 BFA graduate of the University of Michigan.
Lamman Rucker is an American actor. Rucker began his career on the daytime soap operas As the World Turns and All My Children, before roles in The Temptations and Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too?. He played Will Brown in the 2008 film Meet the Browns and its television adaptation. In 2016, he began starring as Jacob Greenleaf in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf. As of 2022, he stars in the BET+ drama series The Black Hamptons.
Israel Theo Hicks was an American theatre director who produced works at regional theaters around the country and Off Broadway, and was best known for his stagings of the entire series of plays by August Wilson about the African-American experience in the U.S. during and following the Great Migration.
Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company is a professional theatre company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 2003 by artistic director Mark Clayton Southers, the company originally held productions at the Penn Theater in Garfield and moved to a new space on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Between 2011 and 2018, it held productions in a space on Liberty Avenue in the same building used by Bricolage Production Company, as well as the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, where Southers was artistic director of theatre initiatives, and at other locations. In 2022, it moved into the former Madison Elementary School in Pittsburgh's historic Hill District.
Theater in Pittsburgh has existed professionally since the early 1800s and has continued to expand, having emerged as an important cultural force in the city over the past several decades.
Cup-A-Jo Productions is a theatre company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Established in 2004 by Joanna Lowe, the company's mission is to "further new & established works in an effort to focus on the artist by tackling a variety of subjects, exploring non-traditional venues & styles, & mixing theatre with film, dance, music & poetry." The company has produced established contemporary and classic plays, such as Medea, No Exit, A Thurber Carnival, and Hospitality Suite, as well as original works such as Life and Other One-Man Shows. Cup-A-Jo Productions has also produced original one-act plays in conjunction with the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. The company has held productions in numerous venues throughout the Pittsburgh area, including Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, Garfield Artworks, and the University of Pittsburgh Studio Theatre.
Keith Randolph Smith is an American Broadway, television, theater, and film actor.
A Resurrection is an American horror-thriller film written and directed by Matt Orlando. The film stars Mischa Barton, Michael Clarke Duncan and Devon Sawa. On 12 November 2012 a trailer was released. The film premiered in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles on 19 March 2013. This was followed by a limited theatrical release in the United States on 22 March 2013.
Michael Louis Chernus is an American actor who has acted on film, television, and the stage. He is best known for his role as Cal Chapman on the Netflix original comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), and had roles in the superhero film Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and the Apple TV+ series Severance (2022–present).
