American Theatre Artists Online

Laura Rikard

Laura Rikard is an intimacy choreographer and coordinator and is Co-Founder and Head Faculty of Theatre Intimacy Education where she choreographs, consults, and teaches workshops on best practices for staging intimacy for professional and educational theatre and film across the country. 

She serves as the primary Intimacy Choreographer for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and has served as Intimacy Coordinator with NBC Universal/Amazon.  As a director and actor she has worked in film and television, in NYC, internationally, regionally, and on national tours. She has also devised various solo performance productions.  

She is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of South Carolina Upstate and she has served on the faculty at Stephen F. Austin State University, Brown University, and the University of Miami.

Edward Gero

Edward Gero is a veteran of the Washington theatre community, and a sixteen-time nominee and four-time recipient of the prestigious Helen Hayes Award – DC’s equivalent of the Tony Award. 

He began his career as a classical actor playing some 75 roles for over 36 years at the Shakespeare Theatre Company including acting alongside Stacy Keach and other greats. He has made a smooth transition to contemporary work bringing an authenticity and precision to roles as disparate as Mark Rothko in Red, Harry Brock in Born Yesterday, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, and Antonin Scalia in The Originalist a role that was created for him and he toured with culminating in an Off-Broadway run. He has also appeared in several musicals including The Pajama Game and Newsies at Arena Stage.

He is Professor of Theatre and Head of Performance for the School of Theater at George Mason University and he has recently started a Facebook live series called “Cooking with Eddie: La Mia Cucina” where he shares recipes influenced by his Italian-American roots.

Matthew Steffens

Matthew Steffens is an international director and choreographer, Broadway performer, teacher and film actor. 

He has danced on Broadway in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown with Patti Lupone, and Promises, Promises opposite Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth and in the films The Last Five Years alongside Anna Kendrick & Jeremy Jordan, and Across the Universe directed by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor.

He was Associate Choreographer for the Broadway musical Doctor Zhivago and Resident Director for the Off-Broadway immersive hit Queen of the Night. He has gone on to direct and choreograph shows with Second Stage, The Public Theater, Playmakers Repertory Company, and Revolucion Latina,  among others.

He also works with various charities and foundations, including Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS, and the Visible Ink program through Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

Linda Lavin and Billy Stritch

Tony and Golden Globe Award-winning stage and screen star, Linda Lavin has been delighting audiences for six decades. Her new album Love Notes is a swinging collection of songs led by Grammy nominated composer, arranger and jazz pianist Billy Stritch.

 

Jason Williams and Charlotte Cohn

My guests today are Jason Odell Williams and Charlotte Cohn. He’s a successful award-winning and Emmy nominated writer, producer and playwright, whose work has been seen on Netflix, Off-Broadway and around the country, and she is a former Opera singer, turned Broadway actor, who now focuses on directing and producing plays.

Colleen Kelly

Colleen Kelly, is Professor and Director of the MFA Program at the University of Virginia Department of Drama and a leading figure in the development and performance of theatrical stage combat.