(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

Actor and Director

If you are thinking about too much, you're probably not doing it right. Some nights you do it and you're just like, that just felt like it was ten minutes long and I just was on cloud nine. What was I doing? A great, great American actor George C. Scott had a great quote once, he said, "Every actor worth their salt has one good show a week and spends those other seven shows wondering what they did that made them so good that night." And nobody knows. If you could figure that out and if you could bottle that then, of course, everybody could do it.

JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

Actor and Director

I've been so fortunate to work with such great actors over the years. Laura Linney, Joe Mantello and the entire company of The Normal Heart, Nathan Lane, who I consider one of my great educators. He was a real mentor to me. He was such a professional and he was so devoted to the character and worked tirelessly to make the character in the show as good as it could possibly be. Nathan never ever did it sitting down. He's always full steam ahead and there was a great lesson in that for me to watch somebody's work ethic. It taught me my work ethic.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

(Highlights) PAULO SZOT

(Highlights) PAULO SZOT

Tony Award-Winning Singer, Actor and Star of Chicago, the longest-running American Musical in Broadway History

All the themes are very contemporary. I think what moves this story is the search for instantaneous celebrity. That’s what the girls are all about, Roxie and Velma. They want to be famous. Of course everything that you cited, corruption, crimes, the press focusing on sensational stories–it’s all there. And I think that’s why the public relates so much to it.

PAULO SZOT

PAULO SZOT

Tony Award-Winning Singer, Actor and Star of Chicago, the longest-running American Musical in Broadway History

All the themes are very contemporary. I think what moves this story is the search for instantaneous celebrity. That’s what the girls are all about, Roxie and Velma. They want to be famous. Of course everything that you cited, corruption, crimes, the press focusing on sensational stories–it’s all there. And I think that’s why the public relates so much to it.

(Highlights) ALICE BROOKS

(Highlights) ALICE BROOKS

Award-winning Cinematographer
In The Heights, Tick, Tick…Boom!

There’s this children’s book called Miss Rumphius, and I’ve carried it around with me my entire life. It’s about a woman who grandfather tells her three things, and the last one is the most difficult thing of all and that’s to fill the world with beauty. And I give this book to every one of my friends who are having babies, I have a copy with me almost at all times, and I’m reminded of that feeling that Jonathan Larson had in Tick, Tick…Boom! Of how much time do we have to do something great.

ALICE BROOKS

ALICE BROOKS

Award-winning Cinematographer
In The Heights, Tick, Tick…Boom!

There’s this children’s book called Miss Rumphius, and I’ve carried it around with me my entire life. It’s about a woman who grandfather tells her three things, and the last one is the most difficult thing of all and that’s to fill the world with beauty. And I give this book to every one of my friends who are having babies, I have a copy with me almost at all times, and I’m reminded of that feeling that Jonathan Larson had in Tick, Tick…Boom! Of how much time do we have to do something great.

DOUG WRIGHT

DOUG WRIGHT

Playwright & President of the Dramatists Guild of America

I think we have to look to find the voices of women and marginalized people because sometimes it's the most disenfranchised people in the culture that are the most articulate about it and most aware of the innate injustice in certain social systems. So I think we really have examine our canon and broaden and deepen it to include more voices.

(Highlights) KATE MUETH

(Highlights) KATE MUETH

Actress, Choreographer, Artistic Director - Neo-Political Cowgirls

I care very deeply about the arts, theater arts. So I had a choice to make, either leave entirely or be the change, as they say. So I started Neo-Political Cowgirls to embrace women in their story, in our story.

KATE MUETH

KATE MUETH

Actress, Choreographer, Artistic Director - Neo-Political Cowgirls

I care very deeply about the arts, theater arts. So I had a choice to make, either leave entirely or be the change, as they say. So I started Neo-Political Cowgirls to embrace women in their story, in our story.