American Theatre Artists Online

Priyanka Shetty

Priyanka Shetty is an award-winning actor, director, and playwright heralded by the New York Times as someone to watch. Her critically acclaimed one-woman show The Elephant in the Room has been performed at numerous venues across the country including The Kennedy Center and will be staged at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Assembly Festival.

Priyanka made her Off-Broadway debut with her second solo play #Charlottesville at the Drama Desk award-winning 59E59 Theaters’ “East to Edinburgh” Festival in July 2021. She was also handpicked for the prestigious Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive 2021, where she further developed The Wall, the final play in her triptych of solos.

Priyanka earned a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Virginia and has served on the faculty of the University of Virginia’s Department of Drama.

Matthew Gardiner

Matthew Gardiner is the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Tony Award winning Signature Theatre. The Washington Post has called him “One of the top young musical-theater directors in the land.”

At Signature, Gardiner has directed or choregraphed over 25 productions including revivals of classic and contemporary musicals, new works, and world premieres and of course many musicals by Stephen Sondheim, as part of Signature’s special commitment to producing the great master’s work.

Over the past year, amid a global pandemic that has made live performance nearly impossible, Matthew has worked to ensure Signature continues to engage audiences with bold and exciting new online content, while also actively working to expand its reach.

Matthew is the recipient of three Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Director of a Musical and has been honored with over a dozen nominations. He holds a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Florence Lacey

Award winning Broadway veteran Florence Lacey holds the world record for the most performances of Eva Peron in Evita, having played the role on Broadway, national tours & several international tours. She has also starred in Broadway productions of The Grand Tour, Hello Dolly, Les Miserables and the most recent Tony nominated revival of Follies.

Her professional career in musical theater around the world spans four decades and many thousands of performances and she has shared the stage with such Broadway legends as Carol Channing, Joel Grey and Bernadette Peters.

She is also a well known star of many regional theatres across the country, having performed dozens of lead roles including Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Sally Durant Plumer in Follies and Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the Tony Award winning Signature Theatre and appearing in Sunday In The Park with George at The Kennedy Center.

Pomme Koch

Pomme Koch played the role of Itzik in the ten-time Tony Award winning musical The Band’s Visit, both on Broadway and on the 1st national tour. He has appeared Off-Broadway and at many regional theatres across the country including La Jolla Playhouse, A.C.T. in San Francisco, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Theatre Calgary, and others.
You may have also seen him on TV in “House of Cards” and “Blue Bloods”.

He's spent the pandemic serving as a delegate in Actors' Equity Association and working on arts-labor policies for the upcoming New York City mayoral election.

Originally hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, he studied theatre and political science at the University of Michigan and lived in D.C. before settling in New York.

Thom Sesma

Thom Sesma has numerous Broadway, Off-Broadway, TV and film appearances to his credit, including The Times They Are a Changin, Man of La Mancha and La Cage Aux Folles. Some recent highlights include the title role in the off-Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd and a Lucille Lortel nominated performance in Pacific Overtures at Classic Stage Company, as well as the world premiere of Tom Kitt and John Logan's Superhero at Second Stage and Ibsen's Ghosts with Uma Thurman at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

His most recent live theatre performance was in Michael Friedman’s Unknown Soldier which opened on March 9, 2020 off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. Three days later live theatre was suspended due to the COVID19 pandemic and since then he’s accumulated many remote live-stream virtual credits in plays, musicals, concerts and works in development.  He has also kept busy appearing in many roles in television and film and teaching a popular course called “Acting on Zoom”. 

He is currently starring in an online production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, with an all Asian cast, produced by CollaborAzian and with proceeds going to #StopAAPIHate that will stream starting July 15th.

Brandon J. Ellis

Brandon J. Ellis most recently appeared on Broadway as World War II vet Davy Zlatic in Bandstand. His other Broadway credits include the original companies of the 2006 revival of Company and Once, which he also reprised in the West End.  He also starred in the 1^st National tour of The Play That Goes Wrong.

His Off-Broadway credits include August Rush, Missed Connections, and Balls…The Musical which he also wrote and he is in the process of writing a new musical called The Drum Bridge with Drew Gasparini.  

His TV/Film work includes 30 Rock, Vinyl and Shake Rattle and Roll.  He holds a BFA in Acting from University of North Carolina Greensboro.

He is currently appearing in Seven Deadly Sins, an Off-Broadway production set in the meatpacking district, directed by Moises Kaufman, playing in a limited engagement until July 18. 

Bligh Voth

Bligh Voth is an actor, singer and writer originally from Washington, D.C. now living in New York City. She was last seen on the first national tour of the 10-time Tony Award winning musical, The Band’s Visit.

She has appeared off-Broadway in the new musical Loveless, Texas and in The Time Machine at New York Musical Theatre Festival and her other New York credits include the Atlantic Theater Company, Primary Stages and Boomerang Theatre Company.

Bligh has performed at many regional theatres across the country including the Paper Mill Playhouse, Ogunquit Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ford's Theatre, The Studio Theater, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma and Signature Theatre.

She wrote the book for a new Cole Porter revue called, Let’s Misbehave: Cole Porter After Dark and she served as the editorial director of Nasty Women of New York, a photography project melding the world of portrait photography with storytelling, giving a voice to the uniquely diverse women of New York City.

Her solo show No Really, I’m Not Crazy debuted at The Green Room 42 in New York City.

Currently she is working on a country/bluegrass EP.

Natascia Diaz

Multiple Award-winning Broadway actor Natascia Diaz has performed professionally since the age of nine. Growing up in New York City, she began her training at The School of American Ballet where she was hand-picked by Jerome Robbins and librettist Arthur Laurents to perform the role of Anita in both the National and International tours of West Side Story garnering Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Award and St. Louis's Kevin Klein Award.

Her Broadway credits include Paul Simon’s The Capeman, and leading roles in Seussical, and the 2004 revival of Man of La Mancha, in which she also understudied the role of Aldonza, performing the role opposite Brian Stokes Mitchell.

She is well known to DC theatre audiences, having won two Helen Hayes awards, and appearing often at the Tony Award winning Signature Theatre, MetroStage and other notable venues.

She is also featured in the Broadway Documentary Film, Every Little Step, about the auditions for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line.

Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith

Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith describe themselves as modern musical theatre writers who explore the darker side of human nature, while searching for the light. The Washington Post called them “the most prolific writers of musicals in the Washington area who consistently get their work produced.”

Their collaboration has resulted in nine full length musicals including, Night of the Living Dead the musical, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Turn of the Screw, Monsters of the Villa Diodati, Kaleidoscope, Witch, and On Air. Several of their works were commissioned by Creative Cauldron as part of their Bold New Works Initiative. Their latest project is a new musical based on the story of the five women that Jack the Ripper killed, called Whitechapel.

Both Matt and Stephen were nominated together for the Helen Hayes Award for Directing their musical, The Turn of the Screw and each has also received the award individually.

They are currently delighting theatre afficionados with their podcast The Conner & Smith Show interviewing DC creatives and exploring their past and future works.

Derek McLane

Derek McLane is a Tony Award winning set designer who has designed over 350 productions on Broadway, off-Broadway, internationally, regionally, and for television. A few of his award-winning designs for Broadway include: Moulin Rouge!, American Son, Parisian Woman, Beautiful, Follies, Anything Goes, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Million Dollar Quartet, Ragtime, 33 Variations, Little Women, The Pajama Game, I Am My Own Wife and The Women.

He designed the 2013-2018 Academy Awards ceremonies and 4 live musicals for television and he is the winner of multiple Obie, Lucille Lortel, Art Director’s Guild, Emmy and Drama Desk Awards.