ANN HARADA (Stacey) Ann Harada originated the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and the West End. Other Broadway includes Cinderella, 9 to 5, M Butterfly, Seussical, Les Miserables (revival). Recent Off-Broadway includes Brooklynite (Vineyard Theatre) and Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Westside Theatre). Regionally: 42nd Street and Mamma Mia (MUNY), and God of Carnage (George Street Playhouse). Film: Youth in Oregon, Sisters, Trouble, Admission, Hope Springs, and The Art of Getting By. TV: “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” “The Good Wife,” “SMASH,” “30 Rock,” “House of Cards,” “Master of None.”
ZAINAB JAH (Katey) Recent credits include: Maima, Eclipsed (Broadway); title role of Hamlet (The Wilma Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo N Juliet, Trojan Women (Classical Theatre of Harlem); The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Atlantic Theater, NYC), Prudence in The Convert, Josephine in Ruined, A Doll’s House (Williamstown Theatre Festival); In Darfur (The Public Theatre /NYSF), Peter Sellars’ Children Of Herakles (European Tour). Film/TV credits: New York, I Love You (Short), “Law & Order SVU,” Outliving Emily (with Andre Braugher and Philicia Rashad). Awards: OBIE Award (Eclipsed), Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award (Hamlet); Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award Best Featured Actress (The Convert); San Francisco Bay Area Critics’ Circle – Outstanding Performance Female Featured Role (Ruined); and Best Featured Actress, Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Featured Actress Award (The Convert).
JESSICA LUCK (Britney) Jessica is thrilled to be making her off-Broadway debut in Stuffed! Select NY Theater: The Digger (La MaMa), The Blood Brothers (The Brick), The Quake (Ideal Glass), Our Town (The Gene Frankel), and The Disembodied Soul (NY Fringe). Web Series: Down Dog and Carolers. Jessica is a Yale graduate and a recent Rockwell scholar at ESPA/ Primary Stages. She is a member of the rock band My Dear Mycroft and the improv team The Jessicas.
LISA LAMPANELLI (Playwright/Lisa) Lisa Lampanelli shot her fifth stand-up special, “Back to the Drawing Board,” which premiered June 26, 2015 on EPIX and was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for “Best Comedy Album.” In the special, Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean showed off her radically different look after having lost more than 100 pounds. That weight loss, which she has maintained for over four years, inspired her to write Stuffed since, having been every size from 2 to 26, she has firsthand knowledge of the food and body-image struggle.
Lisa became a household name when she joined 17 other celebrities on the fifth season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” where she advanced to the final four in the competition, raising $130,000 for her chosen charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She also starred as a regular on “Bounty Hunters,” CMT’s first-ever animated series, and recently stole the show on an episode of CBS’s “2 Broke Girls,” helmed by “Sex and The City” creator, Michael Patrick King.
Lampanelli joined the ranks of comedy greats with her 2009 HBO comedy special, “Long Live the Queen,” and that same year, released her autobiography, Chocolate, Please:
My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks (Harper Collins). Lisa was also a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy Magazine and is a contributor to the blog for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga and meditation retreat center.
Harris Yulin has appeared on Broadway in Hedda Gabler, The Price, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Visit, A Lesson From Aloes, and Watch On The Rhine. His off-Broadway credits include Raindance at Signature Theatre; Don Juan In Hell at Symphony Space; Steve Tesich’s Arts And Leisure at Playwrights Horizons; Tina Howe’s Approaching Zanzibar at Second Stage; Hamlet, King John, Richard III, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at New York Shakespeare Festival; and Mrs. Warren’s Profession and Hedda Gabler at Roundabout. Regional credits include Finishing the Picture at Goodman Theatre; a recent appearance in the title role of King Lear at New Jersey Shakespeare Festival; The Talking Cure at Mark Taper Forum; Tartuffe at the Guthrie and Arena Stage; Henry V at Hartford Stage; and The Tempest at Shakespeare & Co. Mr. Yulin’s directing credits include Horton Foote’s The Prisoner’s Song at Ensemble Studio Theatre; Conor McPherson’s This Lime Tree Bower at Primary Stages; Don Juan In Hell in London (Riverside Studios) and in New York (Symphony Space), Steve Tesich’s Baba Goya (Second Stage), Adele Shank’s Winter Play at Second Stage; Candida at the Shaw Festival; and The Front Page and The Guardsman at Long Wharf. His television credits include “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight,” “Mister Sterling,” “24,” “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” “Frasier” (Emmy Nomination), and “La Femme Nikita” (Emmy Nomination). His film credits include Fur, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Emperor’s Club, Training Day, The Million Dollar Hotel, The Hurricane, Looking for Richard, Murder at 1600, Multiplicity, Clear and Present Danger, and Scarface.
WP Theater presents
New York Premiere DEAR ELIZABETH
Written by Sarah Ruhl & Directed by Kate Whoriskey FINAL WEEK – MUST CLOSE DEC 5!
Starring a rotating cast of LUMINARIES including: BECKY ANN BAKER, DAVID AARON BAKER, KATHLEEN CHALFANT, RINDE ECKERT, CHERRY JONES, MIA KATIGBAK, ELLEN MCLAUGHLIN, POLLY NOONAN, PETER SCOLARI, J. SMITH-CAMERON, JOHN DOUGLAS THOMPSON & HARRIS YULIN.
NYC: Most recent: Awake & Sing! NAATCO (Obie Award); Washeteria (Soho Rep); A Beautiful Day in November…Great Lakes (New Georges/Women’s Project), Scenes from a Marriage (New York Theater Workshop). Other NYC: Public Theater, Foundry Theater, Civilians, Ma-Yi, Target Margin, Clubbed Thumb, Intar, Pan Asian Rep. Regional: Berkeley Repertory Theater (CA), Swine Palace (LA), Guthrie (MN). International: Manila, Philippines; Abu Dhabi, UAE. Film: I Smile Back, Clutter, Slow Jam King. TV: “Mysteries of Laura,” “Chicago PD,” “Conviction.” Artistic Producing Director and co-founder, NAATCO (National Asian American Theatre Company). Founding director, CAATA (Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists). Other awards: Lucille Lortel, Lee Reynolds Awards (League of Professional Theatre Women); Actors Equity’s Rosetta LeNoire Award, in recognition of her “artistic contribution to the universality of the human experience in the American theater”; New Dramatists’ Charles Bowden Actor Award. BA, Barnard College; MA, Columbia University.
Rinde Eckert is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director. His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America and to major theater festivals in Europe and Asia. Eckert began his career as a writer and performer in the 1980’s, writing librettos for Paul Dresher (Pioneer, Power Failure, Slow Fire, Ravenshead). He composed dance scores for choreographers Sarah Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Rinde began composing and performing his own music/theater works in 1992 with The Gardening of Thomas D, an homage to Dante which subsequently toured the United States and France. Staged works for solo performer include Becoming…Unusual: The Education of an Eclectic; three one-act plays: An Idiot Divine, Romeo Sierra Tango and Quit This House; and works for radio including Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall. Writing credits for the theater include Highway Ulysses, Horizon, Orpheus X, And God Created Great Whales, which has been produced three times with the original cast and director, for a total of 227 performances. And God Created Great Whales, Horizon and Orpheus X have run off-Broadway, garnering Drama Desk Nominations and the Lucille Lortel Award. Rinde has received numerous honors and awards for his body of work. In 2012 he was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist, was honored to receive the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award. In 2007 Rinde Eckert was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Eckert wrote the text and performed in the multi-media production Slide with composer/guitarist Mackey and the new music ensemble 8th blackbird, which toured to major university campuses and the Ojai Festival. Renamed Lonely Motel by Cedille Records, the project won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Eckert and Mackey are members of BIG FARM, a ‘prog-rock’ super group with drummer Jason Treuting (So Percussion) and bassist Mark Haanstra. Rinde Eckert’s own uniquely eclectic music is released on Germany’s Intuition label and through Songline/Tonefield Productions.
Ellen McLaughlin’s acting work includes originating the part of the Angel in Angels in America, playing the role in workshops and regional productions through its Broadway run in 1993-1994. Other favorite work includes the Homebody in Bart Sher’s production of Homebody/Kabul (Intiman, Seattle, WA), Pirate Jenny in A Threepenny Opera (Trinity Rep. Elliot Norton Award), Claire in Albee’s A Delicate Balance, (Arena Stage, Yale Repertory Theater), Margie in Good People (George St. Playhouse. Seattle Rep.) and Rosemary in Outside Mullingar (George St. Playhouse.) New York credits include: String of Pearls (Primary Stages), Blue Window (Manhattan Theater Club), and A Bright Room Called Day (Public Theater). Television work includes several appearances on “Law and Order”. McLaughlin is also a playwright.
Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Broadway World have partnered for an inaugural filmed Conversations Q&A series to recognize and celebrate the vibrant theatre community in New York City and the union actors who aspire to have a career on the stage and screen. View a featured career Conversations with Cherry Jones moderated by Broadway World’s Richard Ridge of “Backstage with Richard Ridge!”
Cherry Jones starred most recently in the triumphant Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (Tony Nomination), which originated at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a founding member and where earlier in her career she appeared in more than 25 productions including Twelfth Night, Three Sisters and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Broadway and Off-Broadway: Doubt (Tony, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle and Obie Awards), Lincoln Center Theater’s production of The Heiress (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Pride’s Crossing (Drama Desk Award); When We Were Young and Unafraid; The Baltimore Waltz (Obie Award); Faith Healer; Flesh and Blood; Imaginary Friends; A Moon for the Misbegotten (Tony Award nomination); Angels in America; Our Country’s Good (Tony Award nomination); and Roundabout Theatre Company’s productions of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Major Barbara and The Night of the Iguana. Television: President Allison Taylor in “24” (Emmy Award), “What Makes a Family,” “Awake,” the next season of “Transparent” on Amazon, the upcoming series “Mercy Street,” and the upcoming mini-series “11/22/63” starring James Franco. Film: Ocean’s Twelve, Cradle Will Rock, The Horse Whisperer, The Perfect Storm, Erin Brockovich, Signs, The Village, Mother and Child, Swimmers, the upcoming films I Saw the Light, and Fun House opposite Tina Fey.
Photograph of Cherry Jones by Zachary Maxwell Stertz
Broadway/NY: Hairspray, Sly Fox, Magic Bird, Out of This World, Ziegfeld Follies of 1937 (City Center Encores!), World Premiere of A.R. Gurney’s Family Furniture, Lucky Guy. Regional: World Premieres of Daniel Sullivan’s Inspecting Carol, Ken Ludwig’s Fox on The Fairway at The George Street Playhouse. Winner Best Actor, Berkshire Theater Festival for The Foreigner. VQT Emmy Award Winner for “Newhart,” Three Time Emmy Nominee, Film Critic’s Award Nomination as Best Featured Actor for “Girls” (HBO), recurring on “Gotham,” also “Bosom Buddies,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “The West Wing,” “E.R.,” “Family Ties,” “White Collar,” “King of Queens,” “Reba,” “Ally McBeal,” “From the Earth to the Moon” (HBO), “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” (Showtime). Selected Film: That Thing You Do, Polar Express, Suburban Girl, Camp Nowhere, The Ryan White Story, and upcoming Madoff for ABC films.
(Robert Lowell in WP’s ‘Dear Elizabeth’) won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance for his portrayal of Louis Armstrong in Satchmo at the Waldorf. Shakespeare & Company: Richard III, Othello, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, All’s Well That Ends Well, King Lear. Joe Mott in The Iceman Cometh with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy at the Goodman Theatre, Kent in King Lear at the Public Theater with Sam Waterston, Macbeth at TFANA, Marc Antony in Antony and Cleopatra at Hartford Stage with Kate Mulgrew, Gennady in The Forest at CSC with Dianne Wiest, Brutus Jones in The Emperor Jones at The Irish Rep (Lucille Lortel, Drama League and Drama Desk nominations), Othello at TFANA (OBIE, Lucille Lortel Award, Drama League nomination, AUDELCO nomination). Broadway: A Time to Kill, LeBret in Cyrano with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner, and Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington. International credits: Hotspur in Henry IV (Royal Shakespeare Company). Other off-Broadway credits: Women Beware Women (Red Bull), Enobarbus in Anthony and Cleopatra, Orombo in Oroonoko (TFANA, AUDELCO nomination), Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler (NYTW), Edgar in King Lear (Classical Theater of Harlem, AUDELCO nomination). Regional credits: Lucious Jenkins in Jesus Hopped the A Train (The Wilma Theater, Barrymore Award), Williamstown Theater, Trinity Rep, Shakespeare & Company, ART. TV/FILM: “Law and Order”, “Conviction”, “Michael Clayton”, “Midway”, “Malcolm X”.
(Elizabeth Bishop in WP’s ‘Dear Elizabeth’) has appeared in numerous theatre productions off and on Broadway. Highlights include Our Country’s Good (Tony® nomination), Sarah, Sarah (Drama Desk nomination), Fuddy Meers (Outer Critics and Drama Desk nominations), and As Bees In Honey Drown (Obie award, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics nominations). Recent credits include a critically acclaimed run as the title character in Juno And The Paycock at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC, as well as Richard Nelson’s Sorry and Sweet and Sad (Drama Desk and Obie awards) at the Public and That Hopey Changey Thing by the same author. Also Midsummer Night’s Dream at La Jolla Playhouse and The Starry Messenger by Kenneth Lonergan at the New Group. TV work includes a Series Regular role on SUNDANCE’S “Rectify” and a Recurring Role on HBO’s “True Blood.” Recent film work includes Frank Whaley’s “Like Sunday, Like Rain” and J. also stars opposite Anna Paquin in Kenneth Lonergan’s film “Margaret”, which won her the Best Supporting Actress award for the International Cinephile Society.
As both poets and personalities, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell could hardly have been more different. She: intensely shy and self-doubting, producing gemlike, allusive poems so infrequently that…read more here.
