Melvin James Brooks is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter, and playwright. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2023.
Jonathan David Larson was an American composer, lyricist and playwright most famous for writing the musicals Rent and Tick, Tick... Boom!, which explored the social issues of multiculturalism, substance use disorder, and homophobia. He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Rent.
Bullets Over Broadway is a 1994 American black comedy crime film directed by Woody Allen, written by Allen and Douglas McGrath and starring an ensemble cast including John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palminteri, and Jennifer Tilly.
Steven Craig Banks is an American actor, musician, comedian, and writer of television, plays, books and cartoons, including CatDog, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Tops in Blue was a touring performance ensemble made up of active duty members of the United States Air Force formed in 1953. For 63 years, Tops in Blue traveled to more than 20 countries to perform more than 120 times each year for airmen and families around the world. Each year, they performed in front of more than 250,000 military personnel and their families, presenting an average of 120 performances at 100 locations worldwide throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Pacific.
Jillian Armenante is an American television and film actress, known for playing the role of Donna Kozlowski on the TV show Judging Amy.
Delferd Lynn Shores is an American film director, television writer, producer, playwright, standup comedian, and actor. He has written, directed and produced across studio and independent film, network and cable television and Los Angeles, regional and national touring theatre. He is also known for his LGBTQ+ activism. Shores was born in Winters, TX, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor and a high school drama teacher.
Raúl Eduardo Esparza is an American stage, screen, and voice actor, as well as singer. Considered one of Broadway's leading men since the 2000s, he is best known for his Tony Award-nominated performance as Bobby in the 2006 Broadway revival of Company and for his television role as New York Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Rafael Barba in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, where he had a recurring role in Season 14 and was promoted to a series regular in Seasons 15 to 19.
Frank Vincent Ferrante is an American stage actor, comedian and director known for his improvisation and audience interactive comedy. He has performed as Groucho Marx in the Arthur Marx/Robert Fisher play Groucho: A Life in Revue and in his own An Evening With Groucho. Ferrante was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Comedy Performance of the Year' for the title role in Groucho: A Life in Revue in London's West End in 1987. He had previously won New York's 1987 Theatre World Award for 'Outstanding Debut' for the same role.
Mel Tolkin was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Robert Joseph Litz was an American playwright, screenwriter, director and critic.
David Conolly is a writer, director, comedian and actor whose production company, Mansion Pictures, produced two feature-length films, Mothers & Daughters and The Understudy,
Christopher Gattelli is an American choreographer, performer and theatre director.
The first season of the television comedy series Modern Family aired on ABC from September 23, 2009, to May 19, 2010. The season was produced by Lloyd-Levitan Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television, with series creators Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan serving as executive producers. The series was picked up on April 29, 2009, and finished production in August 2009.
Fred Melamed is an American actor and writer. After spending most of his early career sporadically playing small roles in films, notably in seven films directed by Woody Allen, and primarily as a voice over artist for television announcements and commercials, he established himself as a renowned character actor, starting with his role as Sy Ableman in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man (2009). Other notable film credits include In a World... (2012), Hail, Caesar! (2016), and Shiva Baby (2020).
Andrew Tsao is an American theater, film and television producer and director.
Daniel Beaty is an American actor, singer, writer, composer and poet. Beaty is known for his blend of music, movement, and words in such original works as Emergence-See and Through The Night.
The Sacred Fools Theater Company is a Los Angeles-based theatre company and nonprofit organization. Founded in January 1997, it's a member organization of the LA Stage Alliance.
Christopher John O'Neill is a comedian and Broadway actor, best known for playing the role of Elder Arnold Cunningham in the musical The Book of Mormon. While performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his two-man traveling comedy act, The Chris and Paul Show, O'Neill was spotted by a casting director and invited to audition for the role of Elder Cunningham. He joined the first national tour as Elder Cunningham in December 2012, his professional acting debut, and in January 2015 he joined the Broadway cast. In 2019, The Chris and Paul Show competed in the NBC comedy competition television series Bring the Funny, making it to the finals of the show's first season.
The Hollywood Creative Alliance (HCA) is a film critic organization in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 2016 as the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society and renamed in 2019 to Hollywood Critics Association. Then change a second time to the current name in 2023.
