Kristine Thatcher (born 1950) is a playwright, director and actress.
Thatcher, born Kristine Marie Schneider, began acting at 16 with a small professional company in her hometown, Lansing, Michigan. She went on to work at regional theaters across the country. Her first husband was actor Tim Thatcher, at which point she created the stage name of Margaret "Maggie" Thatcher. In 1985, while married to her second husband, actor Tom Blair, she met David Darlow while the two performed in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago. Darlow became her third husband.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she acted and directed with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. She volunteered to write a show based on the poet Lorine Niedecker's life and work, which became the play, Niedecker. [1]
She has taught at Columbia College, Lake Forest College. Although long associated with theatre in Chicago, she was the artistic director of the Boarshead Theatre in Lansing, Michigan 2005 until 2009. Soon after she founded the Stormfield Theater in Lansing; the theater closed in 2012. [2] [3]
Among Friends (winner of the 1997 Scott McPherson Memorial Award), Emma's Child (winner of the 1995 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a 1997 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the 1997 RESOLVE "Award for Excellence in the Arts," the 1997 Cunningham Prize for Playwriting from DePaul University, and the 1997 After Dark Award for Outstanding New Work), Voice of Good Hope (nominated for 2000 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work). [4]
Mae Whitman is an American actor. She began her career as a child actor, starring in the films When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), One Fine Day (1996), Independence Day (1996) and Hope Floats (1998), and the television series Chicago Hope (1996–1999) and JAG (1998–2001). She earned mainstream recognition for her performances in the Fox sitcom Arrested Development, the NBC drama series Parenthood (2010–2015)—for which she was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award—and the NBC crime comedy series Good Girls (2018–2021). She also had roles in the films Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) and The DUFF (2015), the latter earning her a Teen Choice Award nomination.
Thomas Edward Hulce is an American actor and theatre producer. He is best known for his portrayal of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the Academy Award-winning film Amadeus (1984), as well as the roles of Larry "Pinto" Kroger in Animal House (1978), Larry Buckman in Parenthood (1989), and Quasimodo in Disney's animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Hulce's awards include an Emmy Award for The Heidi Chronicles, a 2007 Tony Award for Best Musical as a lead producer for Spring Awakening, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for Amadeus, and four Golden Globe nominations.
Chicago is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the jazz age, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same title by playwright and one-time reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal".
Lorine Faith Niedecker was an American poet. Her poetry is known for its spareness, its focus on the natural landscapes of Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, its philosophical materialism, its mise-en-page experimentation, and its surrealism. She is regarded as a major figure in the history of American regional poetry, the Objectivist poetic movement, and the mid-20th-century American poetic avant-garde.
Lauren Tom is an American actress. She began her career on stage, winning an Obie Award. Her films include The Joy Luck Club (1993). On television, she is known for her roles in the NBC sitcom Friends (1995–1996), the ABC series Men in Trees (2006–2008) and Grace Under Fire (1997–1998), the CW series Supernatural (2012–2014), and the Disney Channel series Andi Mack (2017–2019).
Timothy Busfield is an American actor and director. He has played Elliot Weston on the television series thirtysomething; Mark, the brother-in-law of Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams; and Danny Concannon on the television series The West Wing. In 1991 he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for thirtysomething. He is also the founder of the 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization Theatre for Children, Inc. In 2024 he was inducted into the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
L. Scott Caldwell is an American actress perhaps best known for her roles as Deputy U.S. Marshall Erin Poole in The Fugitive (1993) and Rose on the television series Lost.
Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois, but also to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for touring productions, as well as original productions that transfer to Broadway and other cities. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States. As many as 100 shows could be seen any given night from 200 companies as of 2018, some with national reputations and many in creative "storefront" theaters, demonstrating a vibrant theater scene "from the ground up". According to American Theatre magazine, Chicago's theater is "justly legendary".
Margaret "Maggie" Edson is an American playwright. She is a recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Wit. She has been a public school teacher since 1992.
Dael Orlandersmith is an American actress, poet and playwright. She is known for her Obie Award-winning Beauty's Daughter and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama, Yellowman.
Rose Marie Abdoo is an American actress and comedian, known for her roles as Stars Hollow's local mechanic, Gypsy, on Gilmore Girls and as Spanish teacher Señorita Rodriguez on That's So Raven.
Richard Henzel is a Chicago-based stage, film, TV, and voice-over actor.
Frances Helen Foster was an American film, television and stage actress. In addition to being an actress, Foster was also an award–winning stage director and a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company. Moreover, in 1955, she became the first African American to appear in a nationally broadcast television commercial.
Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.
Oak Park Festival Theatre (OPFT) is a professional theatre company in Oak Park, Illinois, under contract with Actors' Equity Association. The company was founded in 1975 by Marion Kaczmar, an Oak Park resident and arts patron, and performed Renaissance works, almost exclusively by William Shakespeare, until 2004, when it broadened its scope to classics of other eras. Its outdoor venue has been Austin Gardens, a wooded park near downtown Oak Park within walking distance from restaurants, Frank Lloyd Wright landmarks, and Metra and CTA trains. To attract a greater following, Renaissance, classical, and modern American works were added to the offerings, some being produced indoors in historic Farson-Mills Home and, in the 2010-11 season, in the studio space in the Madison Street Theatre.
Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actress from Detroit, Michigan. She has written more than nine plays, three of which are part of a cycle titled The Detroit Project. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018.
Reverend Lucia Fidelia Woolley Gillette was among the first women ordained Universalist minister in the United States and the first woman ordained of any denomination in Canada.
Delia Villegas Vorhauer was an American Latina social worker, who successfully ran programs to assist the Hispanic communities in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. She was awarded a presidential medal for her efforts in development. She founded Mujeres Unidas de Michigan as an advocacy group for Spanish-speaking women and as a result of their activism the group sent six delegates to the 1977 National Women's Conference, which was a part of the UN International Women's Year programs. Vorhauer served as vice chair of the delegation to the conference. She authored the Mason Miller Report, an evaluation of minorities and higher education, which became the model for analyzing participation of minorities in colleges and universities throughout Michigan, leading to a state bi-lingual education law. When she lost her sight, due to diabetes, Vorhauer became an advocate for the blind. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, the first Latina to be honored in the hall.
Martyna Majok is a Polish-born American playwright who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living. She emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New Jersey. Majok studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and Juilliard School. Her plays are often politically engaged, feature dark humor, and experiment with structure and time.
David Darlow is an American actor and stage director.