Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and has served as its president since 2015. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Constantine Alexander Payne is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is noted for his satirical depictions of contemporary American society. Payne has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award and two Golden Globe Awards as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.
Lance James Henriksen is an American actor. He is known for his works in various science fiction, action and horror films, such as that of Bishop in the Alien film franchise, and Frank Black in Fox television series Millennium (1996–1999) and The X-Files (1999). He has also done extensive voice work, as Kerchak the gorilla in the 1999 Disney film Tarzan (1999), General Shepherd in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett in BioWare's Mass Effect video game trilogy (2007–2012). He also appeared as Vukovich in The Terminator (1984), Ed Harley in the cult horror film Pumpkinhead (1988), Chains Cooper in Stone Cold (1991), and Emil Fouchon in Hard Target (1993).
Kenneth Edward Olin is an American actor, television director, and producer. He is known for his role as Michael Steadman in the ABC drama series Thirtysomething (1987–1991), for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama nomination in 1990. Olin later began working as television director and producer. His producer credits include Alias (2001–2006), Brothers & Sisters (2006–2011), and This Is Us (2016-2022). Olin is married to actress Patricia Wettig.
Michael Carlyle Hall is an American actor and singer best known for his roles as Dexter Morgan, the titular character in the Showtime series Dexter, and David Fisher in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under. These two roles collectively earned Hall a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also acted in Broadway shows and narrated audiobooks.
Ben Iden Payne, also known as B. Iden Payne, was an English actor, director and teacher. Active in professional theater for seventy years, he helped the first modern Repertory Theatre in the United Kingdom, was an early and effective advocate for Elizabethan staging of Shakespeare plays, and served as an inspiration for Shakespeare Companies and University theater programs throughout North America and the British Isles. His name lives on as the name of a theater at the University of Texas as well as annual theater awards presented in Austin, Texas.
Amanda Michael Plummer is an American-Canadian actress. She is known for her work on stage and for her roles in films including Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013). Plummer won a Tony Award in 1982 for her performance in Agnes of God. She most recently appeared in the third season of Star Trek: Picard (2023).
William Theodore Katt is an American actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Ralph Hinkley/Hanley on the ABC television series The Greatest American Hero (1981–83).
The Pillowman is a 2003 play by British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its first public reading in an early version at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 1995, also a final and completed version of the play was publicly read in 1998 and then finished and released as a book in some places in 1999. Production started in 2000 for the eventual 2003 performance. It tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state, who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of bizarre child murders occurring in his town. The play received the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the 2004-5 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play, and two Tony Awards for production. It was nominated for the 2004 Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.
James Christian Urbaniak is an American character actor. He is best known for his roles as Simon Grim in three Hal Hartley films: Henry Fool (1997), Fay Grim (2006) and Ned Rifle (2014), Robert Crumb in American Splendor (2003), Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture on the animated series The Venture Bros. (2003–2023), Grant Grunderschmidt on Review (2014–2017), and Arthur Tack on Difficult People (2015–2017).
Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor.
Steven E. Levitan is an American television producer, director, and screenwriter. He has created many television series such as Just Shoot Me!, Stark Raving Mad, Stacked, Back to You, Modern Family, and Reboot.
Founded in 1992, Hyde Park Theatre is an arts center in Austin, Texas, that has produced over 50 world and regional premieres. In addition to a mainstage season, HPT curates the largest performance festival in the Southwest, FronteraFest.
Thom Pain (based on nothing) is a 2004 one man show written by Will Eno. It is a rambling monologue in which the protagonist, who has suffered a lot in his life, tells the story of a bee sting, a boy with a dog that died, and his experience with a woman.
Anna Davida Shapiro is an American theater director, was the artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theater Company, and a professor at Northwestern University. Throughout her career, she has directed both the Steppenwolf Theater Company production of August: Osage County (2007) along with its Broadway debut (2008-2009), the Broadway debuts of The Motherfucker with the Hat (2011) and Fish in the Dark (2014), and Broadway revivals of This Is Our Youth and Of Mice and Men, both in 2014. She won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for her direction of August: Osage County.
Gary Anthony Sturgis is an American actor, musician, writer, teacher and entrepreneur, known for his role as Bar Patron and other characters in the television series America's Most Wanted, and for providing the voice of Ebon in the animated series Static Shock.
Robert Falls is an American theater director and the current artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
Boyd Vance was an American stage actor, director and producer in Austin, Texas. Vance was particularly known for supporting and advancing African-American performing arts in Austin. In 1993 he co-founded ProArts Collective, which he directed until his death following unexpected heart surgery in 2005.
Austin Shakespeare is a professional, classical theater production and education company located in Austin, Texas, USA. Multiple annual productions are cast by audition from a mix of Actor's Equity or Non-Equity, visiting or local, and company alumni or new actors. Performers of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are encouraged to audition. Austin Shakespeare is a Resident Company of the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
