About

Ellen McLaughlin

Ellen McLaughlin's plays have received numerous national and international productions. They include Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, Infinity's House, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Tongue of a Bird, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, Oedipus, Ajax in Iraq, Kissing the Floor, Septimus and Clarissa, Penelope, Blood Moon, Mercury’s Footpath, and The Oresteia. Producers include: the Public Theater, The National Actors' Theater, Classic Stage Co., Prototype Festival and New York Theater Workshop in NYC, Actors' Theater of Louisville, The Actors' Gang L.A., The Intiman Theater, Seattle, Almeida Theater, London, The Mark Taper Forum, L.A., The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Getty Villa, California., The Guthrie Theater, Minnesota, and Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington DC, among other venues.

Ms. McLaughlin is also an actor. She is most well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, appearing in every U.S. production from its earliest workshops through its Broadway run

Emily Nguyen

MSN, RN-BC, CNML

Emily Packard Dawson

Program Officer, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Eric Bogosian

Credits include:

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Talk Radio

Cadillac Records

Eric Jensen

Theater credits include:

The Bronx is Burning

The Exonerated

Film and Television credits include:

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Law and Order CSI

Erica Newhouse

TV credits include:

Law & Order

The Good Wife

Blue Bloods

The Blacklist

Mozart in the Jungle

Erica Tazel

Theater credits include:
I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda(NAACP Theater Award)
TV & Film credits include:
Justified

Erik Moody

Credits include:

Titus Andronicus

4000 Miles

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Erin Robinsong

Erin Robinsong is a poet and interdisciplinary artist working with ecological imagination. Her debut collection of poetry, Rag Cosmology, won the 2017 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and and she is the author of Liquidity (House House Press, 2020) and Wet Dream (forthcoming with Brick Books, 2022).

A PhD student at Concordia University, Erin’s research-creation work focuses on transcorporeal poetics. With scholar and place-based educator Michael Datura, she is currently organizing a Geopoetics Symposium & Residency on Cortes Island and online.

Collaborative performance works with Andréa de Keijzer and Hanna Sybille Müller include This ritual is not an accident; Facing away from that which is coming; revolutions and Polymorphic Microbe Bodies. Originally from Cortes Island, Erin is grateful to make her home in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Evan Parke

TV & Film credits include:
Blue
King Kong
The Air I Breathe
The Replacements

Frances McDormand

Credits include:

Olive Kitterage

Fargo

Moonrise Kingdom

Francis Collins

Former Director, National Institutes of Health

Francis Guinan

As a Steppenwolf Ensemble Member:
August: Osage County (Also Broadway)
The Seafarer
The Crucible

Francois Battiste

Theater credits include:
Prelude to a Kiss (Roundabout)
Broke-ology (Lincoln Center Theater)
The Good Negro (The Public Theater)

Frank Harts

Broadway:
A Raisin in the Sun
Theater credits include:
School for Lies (Classic Stage)
Fabulation (Baltimore Center Stage)

Frankie Faison

Frankie Faison has been an actor of stage, screen, and television for over 40years. Film credits include: Coming To America, Do The Right Thing, White Chicks, Down To Earth, Thomas Crown Affair. Television credits include: The Wire, Banshee, Luke Cage, The Good Wife, Law and Order. Stage credits include: Fences, King Lear, Death of a Salesman, Macbeth, Two Trains Running.

He has also appeared in many commercials and music videos and his voice has been featured in many voiceovers and books on tape. He has had a wonderful career with work he always looks forward to sharing with a willing audience. He is thrilled to be doing this reading. A special thanks to his loving partner Samantha.

Gabriel D. Hernandez

Credits Include:
The Marchers
CasablancaBox
The Bolero Was My Downfall

Gbenga Akinnagbe

TV & Film credits include:
Edge of Darkness
The Good Wife
The Wire

Giancarlo Esposito

Film credits include:
The Usual Suspects
Do the Right Thing
Malcolm X
Rabbit Hole (with Nicole Kidman)

Glenn Davis

Theater credits include:

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Richard Rogers Theatre)

Wig Out! (Vineyard Theatre)

The Bluest Eye (Steppenwolf)

Gloria Addo-Ayensu

Director of Health, Fairfax County Health Department

Gloria Reuben

Theater credits include:
Conversations in Tusculum (The Public Theater)
Stuff Happens (The Public Theater)
TV & Film credits include:
The Sentinel
ER

Graham Sack

Filmmaker

Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab Fellow

Greg Gadson

Colonel (Retired) Gregory D. Gadson, a Chesapeake, Va., native, served our nation in the United States Army for more than 26 years. Col. Gadson’s service culminated as the Garrison Commander of Fort Belvoir, where he oversaw the daily operations of the post, a strategic sustaining base where more than 50,000 military personnel and employees provide logistical, intelligence, medical and administrative support, and command and control for a mix of more than 140 commands and agencies for the Department of Defense.

A 25-year career Army officer, Col. Gadson’s life is a portrait of courage in the face of great adversity. In May 2007, as commander of the 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery, Col. Gadson’s greatest challenge came in Iraq, where an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack cost him both legs above the knees and normal use of his right arm and hand. Despite this, Col. Gadson remained on active duty in the Army and continued to inspire many with his message of courage, perseverance, determination and teamwork. Refusing to be defined by his severe and permanent injuries, he has continued to draw upon the lessons of Pride, Poise and Team, learned as a West Point linebacker, and apply them to his life, career and family.

He was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant of Field Artillery in 1989 from West Point. He has served in every major conflict of the past two decades, including Operations Desert Shield/Storm in Kuwait; Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He announced his retirement from US army in 2014. Col. Gadson has served in various assignments throughout the world dedicating himself to leading the Soldiers, civilian employees and family members in living the Army Values of Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage. He is a passionate advocate for wounded warriors, veterans and those with disabilities; on several occasions testifying before Congress on issues related to these groups.

In 2007, Tom Coughlin, New York Giants head coach, asked Col. Gadson to meet with the then-struggling team. Col. Gadson talked to the players about service, teamwork, duty, perseverance and adversity. Although he refuses to take any credit, the Giants players and coaches have heralded the key inspirational role he played in their unprecedented season culminating as victors of the 2008 Super Bowl. Col. Gadson currently maintains his mentoring relationship with the Giants. In addition, Col. Gadson has delivered his inspirational message and leadership counsel to numerous sports teams, corporate and non-profit organizations and government agencies.

Col. Gadson also established himself as an actor, acting in several movies and appearing in many TV shows. In 2012, he starred in an American military science fiction action war film Battleship portraying the role of Lieutenant Colonel Mick Canales. He is also an avid photographer.

Greg Ungar

Theater credits include:
As You Like It (Shakespeare Orange County)
Merchant of Venice(Shakespeare Orange County)
Waiting for Godot (Hunger Artists Theater)

Grelia Steele

Global Continuity and Crisis Manager, Guidehouse

Gretchen Egolf

TV & Film credits include:
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Namesake
Quiz Show

Halyna Kruk

Halyna Kruk is a poet, translator, and Medieval literature professor at Lviv State University. She has been recognized as a significant voice in Ukrainian poetry since her twenties. She has published five collected volumes of poetry and two volumes of prose fiction. Her children’s fiction has been rendered into fifteen languages. She has won numerous Ukrainian and European awards for her writing.

Harold Varmus

Harold Varmus, M.D., co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, joined the Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medicine as the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine on April 1, 2015. Prior to joining Meyer Cancer Center, Dr. Varmus was the Director of the National Cancer Institute for five years. He was also the President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for 10 years and Director of the National Institutes of Health for six years. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard University in English literature and Columbia University in Medicine, he trained at Columbia University Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), before becoming a member of the UCSF basic science faculty for over two decades. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and is involved in several initiatives to promote science and health in developing countries. The author of over 350 scientific papers and five books, including a recent memoir titled The Art and Politics of Science, he was a co-chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the Public Library of Science, and chair of the Scientific Board of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health.

Harris Yulin

Hedda Gabler
The Price
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Visit
A Lesson from Aloe
Watch on the Rhine

Heather Goldenhersh

Credits Include:

Doubt

Merchant of Venice

The Class

Heidi Schreck

Theater credits include:
The Language Archive(Roundabout)
Circle Mirror Transformation(Playwrights Horizons)
TV & Film credits include:
Hedda Gabler
The Good Wife

Hettienne Park

Credits include:

Hannibal

Young Adult

Bride Wars

Iryna Shuvalova

IRYNA SHUVALOVA is a poet and scholar from Kyiv, Ukraine, based in Nanjing, China. She is the author of five award-winning books of poetry, including Pray to the Empty Wells available in English (Lost Horse Press, 2019). Her most recent and fifth book of poetry Stoneorchardwoods (2020) has been named book of the year by Ukraine’s Litaktsent Prize for Literature and received the Special Prize of the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Book Award. In 2009, she co-edited 120 Pages of ‘Sodom,’ the first anthology of queer writing in Ukraine. Her poetry has been translated into 23 languages and published internationally, including in Modern Poetry in Translation, Ambit, White Review, Literary Hub, Apofenie, International Poetry Review, and others. Her forthcoming academic monograph 'Donbas Is My Sparta': Identity and Belonging in the Songs of the Russo-Ukrainian War explores the impact of the war on Ukrainian society. She holds a PhD in Slavonic Studies from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge scholar, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where she was a Fulbright scholar.

Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

Theater credits include:
The Iceman Cometh (Broadway)
TV & Film credits include:
The Wire
Goodfellas
The 25th Hour

Jacqueline Murekatete

Rwandan Genocide Survivor

Jake Gyllenhaal

Film credits include:

Nightcrawler

Jarhead

Brothers

Donnie Darko

Jamaal Bowman

U.S. representative for New York's 16th congressional district.

James Earl Jones

The Lion King,

The Hunt for Red October,

Coming to America,

Star Wars

James Vincent Meredith

As A Steppenwolf Ensemble Member:
The Crucible
The Bluest Eye
The Pain and The Itch

Jamie Hector

TV & Film credits include:
Spike Lee’s Clockers
The Wire
Third Watch

Jani Lauzon

Jani Lauzon is a multidisciplinary artists of Métis/French/Finnish ancestry. She is a 9 time Dora Mavor Moore nominated actress, a three time Juno nominated singer/songwriter, a Gemini Award winning puppeteer, an award winning director, and an artist educator. Her company Paper Canoe Projects was created to support production of her own work including: A Side of Dreams, I Call myself Princess, and Prophecy Fog. For more information on those shows please visit www.papercanoeprojects.com

Jason Butler Harner

Theater credits include:
Our Town (Barrow Street Theater)
The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center Theater)
The Paris Letter (Roundabout, Drama Desk Nomination)
Film credits include:
Changeling
The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3

Jason Isaacs

Credits include:

The Harry Potter Series

Fury

The Patriot

Jason Kirchick

MEDSURG-RN University of Vermont Medical Center

Jay O. Sanders

Broadway credits include:
Hamlet
Pygmalion
Saint Joan
TV & Film credits include:
Edge of Darkness
The Green Hornet
JFK

Jeannette (Jeannie) Meyer

Clinical Nurse Specialist for Palliative Care at UCLA Health, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital

Jeffrey Kahn

Director, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

Jeffrey Wright

Broadway credits include:
Topdog / Underdog
Angels in America (Tony Award)
TV & Film credits include:
Quantum of Solace
Syriana
Angels in America (HBO)

Jennifer Mudge

Broadway:
The Philanthropist
Reckless
TV credits include:
You Don’t Know Jack
Mercy

Jesse Eisenberg

Film credits include:
The Social Network
Adventureland
The Squid and the Whale

Jessica Hecht

Broadway:
A View from the Bridge (Tony And Drama League Award Nominations)
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Julius Caesar
After the Fall
The Last Night Of Ballyhoo

Jessica Steiner

RN, Adult Emergency, Lincoln Hospital

Jessie Buckley

Men

Women Talking

The Lost Daughter

Joanne Tucker

Theater credits include:
Little Doc (Rattlestick)
Graduate of The Juilliard School of Drama

John Chidester

Director, Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County

John Doman

Film and Television credits:

Blue Valentine

Mystic River

The Wire

Borgia

John Musgrave

JOHN MUSGRAVE served in Vietnam for eleven months and seventeen days in both the First and Third Marine Divisions before being permanently disabled by his third wound. He was medically retired as a corporal in 1969. He is the recipient of two Purple Hearts and two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry. In addition to speaking publicly about his war experiences, and working with younger veterans to help them reintegrate and heal, Musgrave is the author of the collection Notes to the Man Who Shot Me: Vietnam War Poems (Coal City Review).

John Turturro

Credits include:

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Do the Right Thing

The Big Lebowski

John Ventimiglia

Theater credits include:
All My Sons (Broadway)
The Exonerated
TV & Film credits include:
I Shot Andy Warhol
Mercy
The Sopranos

Jon Tazewell

Thomas S. Turgeon

Professor of Drama

Kenyon College

Jonathan David Martin

Theater credits include:
War Horse (Lincoln Center)
The Chosen (Portland Center Stage)
The Outsiders (Seattle Children’s Theater)

Josh Hamilton

Theater credits include:
Three Sisters (Classic Stage)
The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center Theater)
Proof (Broadway)
TV & Film credits include:
Ten Stories Tall
Away We Go
Mercy

Joshua M. Sharfstein

Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Juliana Francis-Kelly

Theater credits include:
The Girl From Monday
Maria Del Bosco
Go Go Go

Julie Kornfeld

Julie Kornfeld is the President of Kenyon College

Jumaane Williams

Jumaane Williams has served as the New York City Public Advocate since 2019. He formerly served as a member of the New York City Council from the 45th district.

Kara Young

Cost of Living [Broadway]Manhattan Theatre Club Original Broadway Production, 2022

Clyde's [Broadway]2021

All the Natalie Portmans [Off-Broadway]MCC Theater's Off-Broadway World Premiere, 2020

Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven [Off-Broadway]Atlantic Theatre's Off-Broadway World Premiere, 2019

The New Englanders [Off-Broadway]Manhattan Theatre Club Off-Broadway World Premiere, 2019

The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd [Off-Broadway]World Premier Production, 2018

Karen MacDonald

Theater credits include:

All My Sons, Bus Stop, (Huntington Theatre Co.)All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company)

Founding Company Member of the American Repertory Theatre, has appeared in 70 productions including Endgame, The Seagull, Mother Courage and her Children.

Karen Young

Theater credits include:
A Lie of the Mind (The New Group)
Film credits include:
Joe the King
Heading South
The Sopranos
Handsome Harry

Karla Mosley

Karla Mosley made headlines for her character “Maya Avant Forrester”, a transgender model working for “Forrester Creations”, on CBS’s Emmy Award winning daytime drama series The Bold and The Beautiful. A 2014 NAACP Image Award Nominee, Mosley proudly portrays a woman who has come out to her family and the world as a transgender woman, is now married and has adopted a child - a historical first for any CBS program. She has accepted 3 GLAAD Awards on behalf of the show for the story.

Mosley previously portrayed the elite “Belles” member “Elodie Baxter” on the CW’s critically acclaimed series Hart of Dixie and the sweet natured, pre-med student “Christina Moore Boudreau” on the Emmy Award winning soap, Guiding Light. She recurred on CBS’ Angel From Hell, appeared in the 2008 Cohen Brothers comedy, Burn After Reading, and traveled to Australia to record the three time Emmy Nominated TLC children’s series Hi-5.

Not only limited to acting, Mosley was commissioned by CBS to write, produce and star in the fictional web series, Room 8, which marks the first time a network soap has taken a character’s story arc and turned it into a separate series for the internet. From fan urging, Mosley published a book of micro poems “Short Poems for a Long and Happy Life”, and is currently streaming her original series, Wed-Locked.

Mosley graduated with honors from NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, receiving a BFA in drama. She went on to study at the Roy Hart Vocal Institute in France. She performed the role of Deena in the musical production Dreamgirls at TUTS & MUNY Theater Cos. alongside Jennifer Holliday. In 2008, Mosley starred in Expatriate, an off-Broadway show at the Culture Project Theater for which she was commended on her excellent voice and acting capabilities by notable publications such as The New York Times, Time Out New York, and Variety. She was nominated for a 2018 Stage Raw Theater Award and is currently nominated for an Ovation Award for her role in The Giant Void In My Soul.

In her rare free time, Mosley loves to combine two of her passions, performing arts and social justice, to raise money and awareness for various non-profit organizations. She was on the board of “Covenant House,” the largest privately funded agency in the Americas, which provides shelter and other services to homeless youth. Additionally, she is a celebrity ambassador for the “National Eating Disorders Association” (NEDA), which campaigns for the prevention, improved access to quality treatment and increased research funding to better understand and treat eating disorders. She is currently the Philanthropic Director of Ammunition Theater Co., an LA based company that is composed of working Hollywood actors committed to fostering new, diverse work, fresh ideas and merging activism with art. In August 2016, Mosley and her business partner Tina Huang created 1:1 Productions. 1:1 is a film, TV & digital production company whose mission is to champion women of color in front of and behind the camera.

Karrie Prinz

R.N., Tri-County Family Medicine Inc.

Kate Burton

Credits include:

Scandal

Grey’s Anatomy

The Ice Storm

Katherine Stewart

Theater credits include:
West Side Story
Henry V
Taming of the Shrew

Kathleen Chalfant

Broadway:
Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk Nominations)
M. Butterfly
Racing Demon
Off-Broadway:
Wit (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Obie and Outer Circle Critics Award)

Kathryn Erbe

Kathryn Erbe is best known for playing Detective Alexandra Eames in “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” Erbe’s television credits include playing the infamous death row inmate Shirley Bellinger on the acclaimed HBO series “Oz.” She also appeared on NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street,” the miniseries “George Wallace,” Showtime’s original production of “Naked City: Justice with a Bullet,” NBC’s “Another World” and the television movie “Breathing Lessons.”

Erbe also gained notice in the 1999 box office hit “Stir of Echoes” opposite Kevin Bacon and “Dream with the Fishes” with David Arquette. Her additional film credits include “Entropy,” “Kiss of Death,” “D2: The Mighty Ducks,” “Rich in Love”, “What About Bob?”, and “Speaking of Sex” with Lara Flynn Boyle and Bill Murray. Before appearing in feature films, Erbe began her career on the stage.

She is a member of the Steppenwolf Theater Company and has starred in many of their productions, including Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” as Stella, “Curse of the Starving Class” and “My Thing of Love.” She earned a Tony® Award nomination in 1991 for her portrayal of Mary in “Speed of Darkness.” Erbe is also an active member of the Atlantic Theatre Company.

Kathryn Hunter

Harry Potter

Rome

Tale of Tales

Kayshawn Carter-Davis

RN,

Roanoke Chowan Community Health Center

Keith David

Film credits include:
The Princess and The Frog
Coraline
Crash

Keshia Pollack Porter

Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Kevin Miller

Iraq War Veteran, DAV Team Member

Kim Behrens

BSN, RN Accountable Care Manager
Bellevue Hospital Center

Kimberly Hèbert

Better Call Saul

Five Feet Apart

Red Hook Summer

Kristina Bohdanova Obluchynska

Kristina Bohdanova Obluchynska

Kristina Obluchynska is an exchange graduate student in the Clinical Psychology area at Notre Dame. She grew up in Zaporizhzhya but currently lives in Lviv as a student at Ukrainian Catholic University. Since the beginning of the war, she has been working in the area of psychological trauma and psychological first aid.

Latoya Lucas

Iraq War Veteran, Purple Heart Recipient

Leeman Kessler

Mayor of Gambier, Ohio

Lemon Andersen

Theater credits include:

HBO’s Def Poetry Jam (Broadway, Tony Award)

County of Kings (The Public)

Film credits include:

Inside Man

The Soloist

Lesley Sharp

Credits include:

Vera Drake

The Full Monty

Afterlife

Lili Taylor

Film & TV Credits include:

The Good Wife

Six Feet Under

High Fidelity

Lina Patel

Theater credits include:
Sankalpan (Desire)
The Ragged Claws
TV & Film:
Numbers
The Day After Tomorrow

Linda Powell

Theater credits include:
On Golden Pond (Broadway)
Wilder, Wilder, Wilder(Broadway)
The Overwhelming(Roundabout)
TV & Film credits include:
American Gangster
Morning Glory
The Good Wife

Liza Colón-Zayas

The Bear

In Treatment

Law & Order

Lois Smith

The French Dispatch (2021)

Lady Bird (2017)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

East of Eden (1955)

Louis Cancelmi

Theater credits include:
This (Playwrights Horizons)
The Singing Forest (The Public Theater)
Blasted (Soho Rep)

Lyudmila Yankina

Human Rights Defender

Humanitarian Volunteer

ZMINA Human Rights Center, Ukraine