American Theatre Artists Online

Patrick W. Lord

Patrick W. Lord is a projection and video designer.  He has designed projections for over 60 productions including numerous world premieres at The Kennedy Center, multiple productions at Shakespeare Theatre Company, including HAMLET featuring Michael Urie in the title role, and for various theatres in NY, DC and across the country including Lincoln Center, Revolucion Latina, Synetic Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, Gala Hispanic Theatre, MetroStage, 1^st Stage and The Keegan Theatre. 

He also recently worked on the video design team to adapt the Broadway show Mean Girls for its first national tour. His work has been nominated across the country, and he is a passionate advocate for Theatre for Young Audiences.

He holds an MFA in Projection Design from The University of Texas at Austin.

Debra Clinton

Debra Clinton is passionate about theatre and especially theatre education in all its forms. A theatre artist for over 30 years, Debra Clinton has made a career performing, directing, writing, and teaching theatre.

As the current President of Virginia Theatre Association (VTA), one of the largest state theatre associations in the country, she is responsible for connecting, creating, cultivating and advocating for practitioners of theatre across the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Debra’s directorial credits include work at Virginia Repertory Theatre, Firehouse Theatre, Richmond Triangle Players, Dogwood Dell and countless productions at the Weinstein JCC in Richmond, VA, where she is artistic director of the Jewish Family Theatre.

Debra is a proud recipient of the 2013 Theresa Pollack award for excellence in theatre, as well as a recipient of a Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Award for her libretto and lyrics for the original musical, Croaker, along with composer Jason Marks, which received a NYC production Off Off Broadway in 2016. 

Gisela Chipe

Gisela Chipe is an award winning actor, writer and producer who works to create greater visibility for black and brown stories.

Her theatre work has been seen Off-Broadway at the Classical Theatre of Harlem and PS122 and at regional theaters across the country including the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, the Alley Theatre, Syracuse Stage, DC’s Studio Theatre, Great Lakes Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Contemporary American Theater Festival and Florida Studio Theatre.

Half-Ecuadorean and born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she grew up speaking Portuguese, Spanish and English. Her extensive TV and film work include the feature film Bel Canto opposite Julianne Moore, and roles on NBC’s Manifest and CBS’s The Good Wife.

Gisela frequently lends her voice to national commercials, campaign and audiobooks, in English and Spanish, including the promos for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio for NBC Universal and Univision.

J. Robert Spencer

J. Robert Spencer is best known as Broadway’s original Nick Massi in the Tony Award and Grammy Award winning show Jersey Boys with additional credits as an independent film director, producer, writer and singer.

He was also the original Dan Goodman in the critically acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical Next To Normal for which he earned a Tony Award Nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical.

Since 2011, J. Robert has performed in over 700 concerts all over the world with his singing group, “The Midtown Men – Four Original Stars from Broadway’s Jersey Boys.” touring all over the United States and internationally in Italy, Canada, Mexico City, and Beijing.

http://www.jrobertspencer.com/

Kris Kukul

Kris Kukul is a New York City Based Orchestrator, Arranger, Music Director and Composer. Currently he is Music Supervisor, Conductor and Orchestrator for Broadway’s Tony nominated Beetlejuice The Musical! Other recent projects include, In The Green at Lincoln Center, David Byrne’s Joan of Arc at The Public Theatre, a remounting of Elizabeth Swados' Runaways at New York’s City Center, The Aenied with music by Duncan Sheik, and many other works at Playwrights Horizons, The Vineyard, New York Theatre Workshop, The Atlantic, The Flea, LaMama, Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, Birdland, the Cherry Lane and the Lucille Lortel. 

His work has also been featured at various regional theatres across the country and for 10 seasons, he served as the resident music director for the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where among other things he directed the legendary Late-Night Cabarets, featuring iconic performers including Renee Fleming, Kathleen Turner, Allison Janey, Tyne Daly, David Hyde Pierce, Judy Kuhn, Kelli O’Hara, Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry, and many others.

He began his career working for musical theatre icon, Elizabeth Swados, and has committed to keeping her legacy alive and he recently arranged, orchestrated and conducted Lincoln Center’s American Songbook: The Music of Elizabeth Swados.

Kris is a Graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and he has taught at Tisch/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, The New School, Duke University, Columbia University, and Queens College.

Madeline Michel

Madeline Michel has been teaching English, Math and Theatre since 1980. Originally from New York, her philosophy of education was shaped in Baltimore City, where she discovered that good teachers should always be learning from their students.

Her driving passion is student agency, which takes the form of student led playwriting, choreography, direction and design.

Michel has guided her students to create moving theatre works dealing with police brutality, racism, discrimination, racial profiling and gentrification.

She shares her 2019 Tony Excellence in Education Award with her students at Monticello High School in Charlottesville, Virginia who are the true award winners.

Sherrice Mojgani

Sherrice Mojgani is one of only a handful of women of color designing lighting for professional theatre in the United States. She has designed for Arena Stage, Signature Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Old Globe, and San Diego Repertory Theatre. 

In 2019 Mojgani’s design for Into the Woods at Barrington Stage won a Berkshire Theatre Critics Circle Award and in 2017 she served as Associate Lighting Designer for the legendary Howell Binkley on Broadway’s hit musical Come From Away.

Mojgani is a member of United Scenic Artist 829 and she is an assistant professor in the School of Theatre at George Mason University. Originally from Orange County California, Mojgani holds a BA in Theatre Arts from UC Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Lighting Design from UC San Diego.

Steven Skybell

Steven Skybell most recently starred as Tevye in Joel Grey’s acclaimed Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he won the 2019 Lucille Lortel award for Outstanding performance by a lead actor in a musical. 

Skybell’s Broadway credits include: the 2015 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, Wicked, The Full Monty, Pal Joey, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Café Crown and Ah, Wilderness! 

During the pandemic, Skybell has been fashioning an evening of Yiddish songs that will include highlights from the Yiddish Fiddler as well as songs from the treasury of Yiddish music.

Gretchen Cryer (w/special guest Jon Cryer)

Gretchen Cryer is most well-known for writing the book and lyrics and starring in “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road (with music by Nancy Ford) which won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical and Best Actress, and received a Grammy nomination for the album.

Gretchen has written numerous other shows with Nancy Ford and they were the first female composer-lyricist team to have their work produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway. 

Cryer and Ford’s new show “Still Getting My Act Together” is slated for production in 2021.

Gretchen is on the Dramatist Guild Council and is President Emeritus of the Dramatists Guild Foundation. She also teaches a workshop entitled “Creating Your Own Solo Performance” and has helped dozens of solo artists develop their pieces.

She will be presenting five of her solo artists at the Cherry Lane Theater in May 2021 in a festival entitled “True Stories.”

Brittney Harris

Brittney Harris is an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University. Her areas of expertise are in Race and Performance, Theatre for Social Change, and performative community-engaged programming: examining the concept of “race” as a celebration of self, culture and artistic expression.

Throughout VA, NC, GA, and DC, Brittney has created several community engagement-based theatre projects and conducted workshops on solo performance development and devised theatre. Currently, she is workshopping and touring her two solo performance projects, The Intersection: The Sandra Bland Project and Being B.A.D.; each project explores the adverse effects of violence in social media on the personal psyche and how narrative-based storytelling is used as a vessel for social resilience and redemption.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Georgia.

https://brittneysharris.com/