American Theatre Artists Online

Arbender Robinson

Arbender Robinson has been entertaining Broadway audiences for decades. His Broadway credits include In Transit, Shuffle Along, the 2014 revival of Les Miserables (where he was the first black man to play Marius on Broadway), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, The Lion King, The Book Of Mormon, Hair, Ragtime, The Little Mermaid, and Hairspray.

Arbender starred in the 2016 hit musical Shuffle Along alongside many Broadway Legends including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Billy Porter. The show was Directed by Tony Award Winner George C Wolfe and Choreographed by Savion Glover.

Joe Calarco

Joe Calarco is a multiple award-winning director, playwright and dramaturg whose Off-Broadway credits include productions at Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, Second Stage, The Lucille Lortel, The Transport Group, Dreamlight Theatre Company and The New York Musical Theatre Festival.

He is the adaptor/director of Shakespeare’s R&J, which ran for a year Off-Broadway and earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. He also directed the play’s premieres in Chicago, D.C., London and Tokyo, garnering multiple awards along the way. 

He has directed national tours, world premieres and many award-winning productions at regional theatres across the country including at the Tony Award winning Signature Theatre.

As a writer his published works include Shakespeare’s R&J, In The Absence of Spring, and Walter Cronkite is Dead. His new play, Winter Break was published by Dramatists Play Service earlier this year.

Jenny McConnell Frederick

Jenny McConnell Frederick is a Washington, D.C. based Director, Producer and strong believer in impossible theatre. She's the Co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre which she founded in the summer of 1999 with Randy Baker.

She has directed dozens of productions at Rorschach, including the Helen Hayes nominated Voices Underwater and God of Vengeance and at various other theatres in the D.C. area.

She has served as a mentor director for the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival and as Artistic Director of DC’s Source Festival for over a decade, overseeing the selection, development, and production of more than 200 works for the stage.

Currently she is part of an 8-member team building Rorschach's ground-breaking Distance Frequencies, an immersive experience that sends participants to seven locations around Washington, D.C. to explore chapters in an unfolding story about the city’s history--real and imagined. The project will culminate in a live show in July 2021.

Liz Callaway

Tony award nominee and Emmy award winner Liz Callaway is an internationally acclaimed actress, singer, and recording artist whose Broadway credits include starring roles in Merrily We Roll Along, Miss Saigon, Baby, Cats and The Look of Love.

She can be heard singing the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated song “Journey to the Past” in the movie Anastasia, as well as numerous other animated features including Disney’s Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Beauty and the Beast, and The Swan Princess.

Her extensive concert and symphony career has included appearances in London, Paris, Sydney, and nearly every major city in the U.S. and she performs regularly with her sister Ann Hampton Callaway, with whom she created and recorded the theme song to the sitcom The Nanny.

Valarie Pettiford

Valarie Pettiford is an award-winning actor, dancer and singer. She earned a Tony and Grammy nomination for Fosse and was one of the principal dancers in the first national tour of Bob Fosse’s Dancin and his last original musical Big Deal. She was part of the original cast of Sophisticated Ladies and was nominated for an Ovation Award as Julie in the tour of Showboat directed by the legendary Hal Prince.

Valarie was the first American to portray Velma Kelly in the West End revival of Chicago starring alongside Chita Rivera. When Ms. Rivera was inducted into The Kennedy Center Honors, she personally requested Valarie reprise the role.

Valarie is honored to be part of The Verdon Fosse Legacy, reconstructing Bob Fosse’s choreography and teaching it to a new generation of dancers including reconstructing four numbers for the hit FX show Fosse/Verdon starring Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell.

Brad Oscar

Two time Tony Award nominee Brad Oscar is chomping at the bit to return to Broadway in Mrs. Doubtfire and has been seen there previously in Something Rotten!, Big Fish, Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Addams Family, Spamalot, The Producers, Jekyll & Hyde, and Aspects of Love.

He appeared in London’s West End as Max Bialystock in The Producers and in several national tours of major Broadway shows, various celebrated productions Off-Broadway, several Encores! at City Center as well as regionally at Arena Stage, The Old Globe, the LaJolla Playhouse, and the McCarter Theater amongst others.

His film and television credits include Ghost Town, The Producers, “Madam Secretary,” “Smash,” “The Good Wife,” and three “Law & Order” series.

Veronica del Cerro and Michael Kevin Darnall

Verónica del Cerro and Michael Kevin Darnall are both accomplished actors in the Washington D.C. area.  

Veronica’s credits include Othello at The Shakespeare Theatre Center, Arabian Nights at Constellation Theatre, El Paso Blue and Ana en el Tropico at GALA Theatre, August: Osage County at Everyman Theatre, Adventures of Homer at The Kennedy Center, Savage in Limbo at MetroStage, My Children! My Africa! and Rock n' Roll at Studio Theatre, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents at Roundhouse Theatre. Currently making her home base in Spain, she is beginning to devise and develop her own directorial projects.

Michael’s New York credits include Romeo & Juliet at TheatreRats, Beyond Therapy at Bohemian Archeology and Arden: The Lamentable Tragedie… at Spring TheaterWorks. In DC he has appeared at The Shakespeare Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Roundhouse Theatre, Studio Theatre, Mosaic Theatre Company, Theatre J, Imagination Stage, MetroStage and Constellation Theatre and he is a company member at The Hub and Spooky Action Theatre. His regional credits include the Cincinnati Playhouse, Chautauqua Theatre Company, and Rhinoleap. Michael has been nominated five times for DC’s Helen Hayes Award, and he has appeared on HBO's The Wire.

Veronica and Michael will be starring together in Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune, as part of MetroStage’s Tribute to the late great American playwright Terrence McNally streaming online from April 21-25 at MetroStage.org

Betty Buckley - Part 2

Welcome back for Part 2 of my interview with Tony Award winner Betty Buckley!  

In Part 1 Betty talked about growing up in Texas and how she first became interested in performing and musical theatre and everything in her life that prepared her for and led up to her first big break in the musical 1776 on Broadway. 

In this week’s episode, Betty shares her experiences working in film and TV, her Tony winning role in Cats and playing Margaret White in the cult musical Carrie on Broadway.  She also talks about her passion for teaching – which she is now doing online through the T. Schreiber Studio in New York.  

Betty Buckley - Part 1

In an award-winning career that has encompassed TV, film, stage and concert work around the globe, Betty Buckley is probably best known as the quintessential musical theatre actress having won a Tony Award for her performance as Grizabella in Cats (singing the famous tune “Memory”) and a Tony nomination for Triumph of Love.

She recently completed headlining the National Tour of the new Broadway Production of Hello Dolly! and received an Olivier Award nomination for her critically acclaimed interpretation of Norma Desmond in the London production of Sunset Boulevard, which she repeated to more rave reviews on Broadway.

Her other Broadway credits include 1776, Pippin, Song and Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Carrie and she has appeared multiple times Off-Broadway and at various regional theatres and concert halls across the country.

For over forty years Ms. Buckley has been a teacher of scene study and song interpretation, giving workshops in Manhattan and various universities and Performing Arts Conservatories around the country. She is now offering her Master Class online, enabling actors and singers the opportunity to work with her from anywhere in the world.

Emily Skinner

Emily Skinner has unequivocally established herself as one of Broadway’s most engaging and versatile performers. She was last seen on Broadway in The Cher Show. Her other Broadway credits include Prince of Broadway (directed by Hal Prince in his final show) for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award, Billy Elliott, Jekyll & Hyde, James Joyce’s The Dead (opposite Christopher Walken), The Full Monty and Dinner at Eight.

Off-Broadway, Emily has appeared at City Center Encores!, Manhattan Theatre Club, WPA Theatre, The Transport Group, Madison Square Garden, York Theatre, Playwrights Horizons and the Roundabout Theatre and she has performed lead roles at many of the major regional theatres across the country.

Emily was nominated for a Tony Award (along with Alice Ripley) and received a Drama League Award for her performance as Daisy Hilton in the short-lived, but now cult classic, original Broadway production of Side Show.