JOSH GLADSTONE

JOSH GLADSTONE

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Artistic Director · John Drew Theater · Guild Hall of East Hampton

And the era of the actor-manager has probably passed, but in a curious way, I feel like I've been living that life as an actor-manager because I will both act, direct or produce and they all inform each other. You know, they're all part of the same creative language. And I think, having been an actor and first and foremost loving being an actor, I think I know how to speak and communicate with other actors at various levels.

(Highlights) JOE MANTEGNA

(Highlights) JOE MANTEGNA

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Actor and Director

When I read Mamet, to me, it was almost like–Yeah! I get it. This is a language I understand. It felt very comfortable to me. And I know he has told me that he has written characters with my voice in his mind as he wrote them, and so, again how lucky for me that that's the case. I feel very lucky that it's worked out that way that he's the writer that I ended up hooking up with.

JOE MANTEGNA

JOE MANTEGNA

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Actor and Director

When I read Mamet, to me, it was almost like–Yeah! I get it. This is a language I understand. It felt very comfortable to me. And I know he has told me that he has written characters with my voice in his mind as he wrote them, and so, again how lucky for me that that's the case. I feel very lucky that it's worked out that way that he's the writer that I ended up hooking up with.

(Highlights) DELIA EPHRON

(Highlights) DELIA EPHRON

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Author, Screenwriter and Producer

So the great thing about being a writer is you can take the pain of your life and make something out of it. And you can mix it up with the happier parts and make something even better out of it. I mean, it's kind of all these things end up being gifts when you're older.

DELIA EPHRON

DELIA EPHRON

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Author, Screenwriter and Producer

So the great thing about being a writer is you can take the pain of your life and make something out of it. And you can mix it up with the happier parts and make something even better out of it. I mean, it's kind of all these things end up being gifts when you're older.

(Highlights) EIMEAR McBRIDE

(Highlights) EIMEAR McBRIDE

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Eimear McBride trained at The Drama Centre in London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards, including the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. She occasionally writes interviews for The Guardian, TLS, and The New Statesman.

This interview was conducted by Justin Hayes and Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Reagan-Koffink. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. 


Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

(Highlights) HARRIS YULIN

(Highlights) HARRIS YULIN

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Emmy & SAG Award Nominated Actor & Director with roles in Ozark, Billions & Scarface

I really know theater because that's where I started. I went at it in a very haphazard way. It was not orderly at all. I didn't go to a proper school or anything like that. I did a little bit of studying here or there...Jeff Corey (and at one class in New York) someone said something that helped me a great deal. And then I just learned by doing it.

HARRIS YULIN

HARRIS YULIN

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Emmy & SAG Award Nominated Actor & Director with roles in Ozark, Billions & Scarface

I really know theater because that's where I started. I went at it in a very haphazard way. It was not orderly at all. I didn't go to a proper school or anything like that. I did a little bit of studying here or there...Jeff Corey (and at one class in New York) someone said something that helped me a great deal. And then I just learned by doing it.

EIMEAR McBRIDE

EIMEAR McBRIDE

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Eimear McBride trained at The Drama Centre in London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards, including the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. She occasionally writes interviews for The Guardian, TLS, and The New Statesman.

This interview was conducted by Justin Hayes and Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Reagan-Koffink. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. 



Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

(Highlights) GREGORY JBARA

(Highlights) GREGORY JBARA

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Gregory Jbara is a Tony award-winning stage actor with a impressive career spanning over four decades . On Broadway, Gregory has stared in renditions of Chicago, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Billy Elliot, which earned him the 2009 Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Since departing from the stage, Gregory has spent ten seasons alongside Tom Selick in the CBS drama Blue Bloods.

GREGORY JBARA

GREGORY JBARA

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Gregory Jbara is a Tony award winning stage actor with a impressive career spanning over four decades . On Broadway, Gregory has stared in renditions of Chicago, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Billy Elliot, which earned him the 2009 Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Since departing from the stage, Gregory has spent ten seasons alongside Tom Selick in the CBS drama Blue Bloods.

(Highlights) JOHN D'AGATA

(Highlights) JOHN D'AGATA

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John D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame, About a Mountain, and The Lifespan of a Fact, as well as the editor of the 3-volume series  A New History of the Essay, which includes the anthologies The Next American Essay, The Making of the American Essay, and The Lost Origins of the Essay. His work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an NEA Literature Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. He holds a B.A. from Hobart College and two M.F.A.s from the University of Iowa, and recently his essays have appeared in The Believer, Harper's, Gulf Coast, and Conjunctions. John D’Agata lives in Iowa City where he teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. The Lifespan of Fact was adapted into a Broadway play starring Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale.

JOHN D'AGATA

For a writer of non-fiction or essayist that’s very difficult to work with because we aren’t, or at least some of us don’t consider ourselves journalists. The tools that we are working with aren’t–What your favorite color is. Where you grew up. Or what your favorite number is. If we’re writing a profile of something, the tools that we’re working with are long conversations in which people are sharing anecdotes about themselves. When I do an interview with somebody, I don’t take out a tape recorder. I don’t have a notebook. I invite them on a walk so that we can feel at least that we’re just chatting.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cameron McDonald. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

JOHN D'AGATA

JOHN D'AGATA

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John D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame, About a Mountain, and The Lifespan of a Fact, as well as the editor of the 3-volume series  A New History of the Essay, which includes the anthologies The Next American Essay, The Making of the American Essay, and The Lost Origins of the Essay. His work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an NEA Literature Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. He holds a B.A. from Hobart College and two M.F.A.s from the University of Iowa, and recently his essays have appeared in The Believer, Harper's, Gulf Coast, and Conjunctions. John D’Agata lives in Iowa City where he teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. The Lifespan of Fact was adapted into a Broadway play starring Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale.

JOHN D'AGATA

For a writer of non-fiction or essayist that’s very difficult to work with because we aren’t, or at least some of us don’t consider ourselves journalists. The tools that we are working with aren’t–What your favorite color is. Where you grew up. Or what your favorite number is. If we’re writing a profile of something, the tools that we’re working with are long conversations in which people are sharing anecdotes about themselves. When I do an interview with somebody, I don’t take out a tape recorder. I don’t have a notebook. I invite them on a walk so that we can feel at least that we’re just chatting.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cameron McDonald. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

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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

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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

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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) EMMA WALTON HAMILTON

(Highlights) EMMA WALTON HAMILTON

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Children's Book Author · Editor · Producer · Arts Educator

Katherine Anne Porter, essentially what she says is that the arts are what we find when the rubble is cleared away. In other words, they are the sum and substance of our lives, and we can go through wars and changes and all kinds of challenges in the world, but in the end, the arts tell us who we are and they are what remain no matter what. And when we look back and understand other civilizations that went before us, and when we think ahead to how people will view us in future civilizations, it will be our art and the arts that inform that story and tell people who we are and who we were, just as they do now from history.

EMMA WALTON HAMILTON

EMMA WALTON HAMILTON

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Children's Book Author · Editor · Producer · Arts Educator

Katherine Anne Porter, essentially what she says is that the arts are what we find when the rubble is cleared away. In other words, they are the sum and substance of our lives, and we can go through wars and changes and all kinds of challenges in the world, but in the end, the arts tell us who we are and they are what remain no matter what. And when we look back and understand other civilizations that went before us, and when we think ahead to how people will view us in future civilizations, it will be our art and the arts that inform that story and tell people who we are and who we were, just as they do now from history.

(Highlights) PAULO SZOT

(Highlights) PAULO SZOT

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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

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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.