Adolph Green was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for musicals on Broadway and in Hollywood. Although they were not a romantic couple, they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership. They received numerous accolades including four Tony Awards and nominations for two Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. Green was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981. Comden and Green received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1991.
Julie Delpy is a French and American actress, screenwriter and film director. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa (1990), Voyager (1991), Three Colours: White (1993), the Before trilogy, An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), and 2 Days in Paris (2007).
Richard Foreman is an American avant-garde playwright and the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.
The Flea Theater is a theater in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It presents primarily experimental theatre by Black, brown, and queer artists, as well as a venue for film stars to act on a 74-seat stage. The theater was founded in 1996 by Jim Simpson, Sigourney Weaver, Mac Wellman, and Kyle Chepulis. The Flea earned early acclaim for original productions of post-9-11 play The Guys and political works by A. R. Gurney. According to the New York Times, "Since its inception in 1996, The Flea has presented over 100 plays and numerous dance and live music performances. Under Artistic Director Jim Simpson and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, The Flea is one of New York’s leading off-off-Broadway companies."
Joanna Kerns is an American actress and director best known for her role as Maggie Seaver on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains from 1985 to 1992.
David Patrick Kelly is an American actor, musician and lyricist who has appeared in numerous films and television series. He is best known for his role as the main antagonist Luther in the cult film The Warriors (1979). Kelly is also known for his collaborations with Spike Lee, in the films Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), and Chi-Raq (2015), and with David Lynch, appearing in Wild at Heart (1990) as well as Twin Peaks (1990–91) and its 2017 revival.
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the award-winning films The Bridge on the River Kwai and High Noon, among others. He was one of the screenwriters who were blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of their suspected communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party.
Lally Katz is an American and Australian dramatist writing for theater, film, and television. She now resides in Los Angeles.
Stefan Sebastian Brecht was a German-born American poet, critic, and scholar of theatre.
New York Theatre Ballet or NYTB was founded in 1978 by Diana Byer, who became its artistic director. Dedicated to the principles of the Cecchetti-Diaghilev tradition, the company both reprises classic masterworks and produces original ballets.
Reza Abdoh was an Iranian-born director and playwright known for large-scale, experimental theatrical productions, often staged in unusual spaces like warehouses and abandoned buildings.
David Cote is an American writer.
Salar Abdoh is an Iranian novelist and essayist. He is the author of the novels The Poet Game (2000), Opium (2004), Tehran At Twilight (2014), Out of Mesopotamia (2020), A Nearby Country Called Love (2023), and the editor and translator of the anthology Tehran Noir (2014). He is also a director of the graduate program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York at the City University of New York.
Banana Bag & Bodice is a Hudson Valley-based ensemble theatre company that creates original plays with a strong emphasis on text, music and design. They have performed at The Collapsable Hole, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, PS 122, The Brick Theater, Abrons Arts Center, American Repertory Theater, Joe's Pub,Bushwick Starr, and festivals in San Francisco, New York City, Montreal, Dublin, Edinburgh, Brighton, Bristol and Adelaide.
Young Jean Lee is an American playwright, director, and filmmaker. She was the Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, a not-for-profit theater company dedicated to producing her work. She has written and directed ten shows for Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Lee was called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York. With the 2018 production of Straight White Men at the Hayes Theater, Lee became the first Asian American woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
Tea Alagic is a Bosnian-American stage director and creator of devised theater. Her best-known productions include the premiere of The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the U.S premieres of plays by Austrian playwright and Nobel Laureate, Elfriede Jelinek and the revival of Passing Strange by Stew and Heidi Rodewald.
Sara Juli is an American modern dancer and choreographer who creates and performs solo works informed by daily life, combining elements of concert dance, comedy and storytelling. Juli is also the founder and director of Surala Consulting, a company specializing in strategic fundraising solutions.
Rhoda in Potatoland is an Ontological-Hysteric Theater play by Richard Foreman. It premiered in 1976, at 491 Broadway in New York. It ran from December 1975 until February 1976 and starred Kate Manheim as Rhoda and Bob Fleischner as Max. The play is insistently aimed at reshaping spectators' perceptions by focusing on form and structure. Foreman created a perceptually challenging environment that forces the audience to participate actively in constructing their experience of theater, especially since the visuals and the text are challenging to follow.
C. Kelly Wright is an actress, singer, and dancer. She has performed in Off-Broadway musicals and plays in New York City and in television and film in the U.S. and internationally. She is known for the development of new works in theater. She appeared in the world premieres of A Little Princess and Memphis. She has worked with new works from Marcus Gardley, Katori Hall, Imani Harrington, Mike Jones, Victor Lodato, Nina Mercer, Robert O'Hara, and Venus Opal Reese. She was an AUDELCO Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress. In film she is known for her performance in Black Nativity, Angel Wishes: Journey of a Spiritual Healer, and Everyday Black Man.
Livia De Paolis is an Italian-American actress, director, screenwriter and producer. She currently lives in New York City.
