Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant in the 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.
Harriet Sansom Harris is an American actress known for her theater performances and for her portrayals of Bebe Glazer on Frasier and Felicia Tilman on Desperate Housewives.
Frances Hussey Sternhagen was an American actress. She was known as a character actress who appeared on- and off-Broadway, in movies, and on television for over six decades. Sternhagen received numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Saturn Award, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Gabriel Dell was an American actor and one of the members of what came to be known as the Dead End Kids, then later the East Side Kids and finally The Bowery Boys.
The Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actresses for quality supporting roles in a Broadway play. The awards are named after Antoinette Perry, an American actress who died in 1946. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the Tony Award Productions, a joint venture of The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, to "honor the best performances and stage productions of the previous year."
The Beard of Avon is a play by Amy Freed, originally commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory in 2001. It is a farcical treatment of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, in which both Shakespeare and his wife become involved, in different ways, with secret playwright Edward de Vere and find themselves helping to present the works of several other secretive authors under Shakespeare's name, including Queen Elizabeth I herself.
Maryann Plunkett is an American actress and singer.
Douglas Hughes is an American theatre director.
Tanya Barfield is an American playwright whose works have been presented both nationally and internationally.
Lauren Marcus is an American actress, singer and songwriter. She is best known for originating the role of Brooke Lohst in the musical Be More Chill.
Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). It portrays fictional events set during and after the Hansberry play, and is loosely based on historical events that took place in the city of Chicago. It premiered in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play received its UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a production directed by Dominic Cooke. The play received its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Morton. As described by The Washington Post, the play "applies a modern twist to the issues of race and housing and aspirations for a better life." Clybourne Park was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.
A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. The story tells of a black family's experiences in south Chicago, as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of the father, and deals with matters of housing discrimination, racism, and assimilation. The New York Drama Critics' Circle named it the best play of 1959, and in recent years publications such as The Independent and Time Out have listed it among the best plays ever written.
Ayad Akhtar is an American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. He has received numerous accolades including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as nominations for two Tony Awards.
The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window is the second and last staged play by playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. The play focuses on events that occur after Sidney hangs a political sign urging the end to bossism in the window of his Greenwich Village apartment. Chaos ensues in his marriage and personal relationships and raises questions about Bohemian culture, Judaism, race, suicide, homosexuality, political corruption, interracial love, and prostitution.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Anne Kauffman is an American director known primarily for her work on new plays, mainly in the New York area. She is a founding member of the theater group the Civilians. She made her Broadway debut with the Scott McPherson play Marvin's Room (2017) and returned with the revival of the Lorraine Hansberry play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (2023) and Mary Jane (2024).
Rachel Brosnahan is an American actress. She is best known for portraying an aspiring stand-up comedian in the Amazon Prime Video period comedy series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–2023), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2018 and two consecutive Golden Globe Awards in 2018 and 2019.
Leigh Silverman is an American director for the stage, both off-Broadway and on Broadway. She was nominated for the 2014 and 2024 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the musicals Violet and Suffs, and the 2008 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for the play From Up Here.
Juliette Carrillo is an American theatre director, playwright, and filmmaker. She has directed plays and musicals at the Denver Theater Center, Yale Repertory Theater, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Magic Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Arizona Theater Company, and the Actor's Theatre of Louisville.
Augusta Marsh Birney, known professionally as Gus Birney, is an American actress. She is known for her television roles in The Mist (2017), Dickinson (2019–2021), and Shining Vale (2022–2023). On stage, she made her Broadway debut in the 2023 revival of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. She also acted in off-Broadway productions of The Rose Tattoo (2016) and Our Class (2024).
