Creativity in Captivity

Beowulf Boritt is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award® winning set for Susan Stroman's production of New York, New York. He designed the Tony Award® winning set for James Lapine's Act One. He has received four additional Tony Award® nominations for his designs of The Scottsboro Boys, POTUS, Therese Raquin, and Flying Over Sunset, for which he won a Drama Desk award. His book about set design, Transforming Space Over Time, is available on Amazon. He is the founder and manager of The 1/52 Project which provides financial support to encourage early career designers from historically excluded groups, with the aim of diversifying and strengthening the Broadway design community. Beowulf designed Harold Prince's final Broadway shows: Prince of Broadway and LoveMusik. In addition, he designed the sets for Sondheim on Sondheim, The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Steve Martin's Meteor Shower, A Bronx Tale, August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, Come From Away. Freestyle Love Supreme, Ohio State Murders, Mike Birbiglia's The New One and The Old Man and The Pool. Other highlights include the New York and Russian productions of Chaplin, the revival of On The Town, Rob Askins' Hand To God and the long running hit Rock of Ages. Off-Broadway, he has designed over one hundred shows, including Much Ado About Nothing, Merry Wives, and Coriolanus for Shakespeare in the Park, Fiddler on The Roof (in Yiddish), The Last Five Years, Mike Birbiglia's The New One, Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, Thank God For Jokes and Strindberg’s Miss Julie. His designs are in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Museum of American History and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as well as several private collections. In addition to a Tony Award he has been honored with an 2007 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Set Design, an Audelco Award, a Barrymore award, a Live Design Award for Innovation in Scenic Design, a Broadway Beacon Award, and a St. Louis Theater Circle Award. He has been nominated for four Drama Desk Awards, three Lucille Lortel Awards, four NY Outer Critic's Circle Awards, an LA Ovation Award, an LA NAACP Award, a San Francisco Critic's Circle Award and six Henry Hewes Awards. 

Marja Harmon plays Angelica Schuyler on the "And Peggy" tour of Hamilton. Her Broadway credits include Book of Mormon, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and New York City Center’s Merrily We Roll Along. She starred as Nala in the national tour of The Lion King, as well as regional productions of Aida, Ragtime, Hairspray, Dreamgirls, Grease, and more. Her TV appearances include God Friended Me, Murphy Brown, and Jessica Jones. Stay up-to-date with Marja by visiting her @marjaharmony on Instagram or her website at marjaharmon.me.

Simone Giertz is a Swedish inventor, maker, robotics enthusiast, TV host and professional content creator on YouTube. Simone’s creations include an alarm clock that slaps the user to wake them up, a lipstick applier, and an invention that shampoos the user’s hair. Giertz showcased several of these robots on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2016, Simone joined Tested.com, collaborating with Adam Savage on her first project, the popcorn feeding helmet. In 2017, she hosted the comedy TV show Manick with Nisse Hallberg on Swedish TV6. In 2018, she created a robot to promote season 2 of HBO’s Westworld. The same year she made her debut presenting at a TED conference on “Why You Should Make Useless Things”, encouraging people to ask questions through creation. Simone is the founder of a product design company called Yetch, with an online shop that can be found at Yetch.store. You can find her easily on her YouTube channel.

Doug McIntyre spent twenty-years as a television/screen writer and producer including the hit series Married… With Children, WKRP in Cincinnati, Mike Hammer – Private Eye, and the critically-acclaimed PBS series, Liberty’s Kids, which earned Doug a Humanitas Prize nomination for excellence in television writing. Together with his wife Penny Peyser, Doug wrote, produced, directed the award winning film: Trying to Get Good: the Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon. McIntyre is also the page one columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Lang Newspaper group as well as an accomplished book reviewer. In 2010 he was named “Best Columnist” by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Additionally, Doug has written for American History Illustrated, LA Jazz Scene, the L.A. Times, Long Beach Press Telegram, Pasadena Star News and the Connecticut Post. He co-authored Cheap Advice for Time/Warner Books. Doug hosted McIntyre in the Morning on Talk Radio 790 KABC in Los Angeles, and the wildly popular Red Eye Radio. Doug appeared on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect over a dozen times, as well as, Real Time on HBO, The History Channel, the FOX News Channel’s hit shows, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes, and numerous appearances on CNN. The radio trade magazine Talkers consistently ranks McIntyre among the top hosts in the business. 

Kira is an animation supervisor who joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2007 as an animation trainee in the talent development program. She’s contributed to a host of Disney Animation titles, including Oscar® winners Zootopia, Paperman and Frozen, plus Bolt, Tangled, Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice, Tangled Ever After and Wreck-It Ralph, as well as Ralph Breaks the Internet and Encanto, on which she was Head of Animation. Previously, Lehtomaki served as a junior animator on Alvin & the Chipmunks at Rhythm & Hues. At age 3, Lehtomaki saw Sleeping Beauty for the first time; she was mesmerized by the sequence of Briar Rose in the forest. By age 5, she knew she wanted to be a “drawer” for Disney. In addition to completing Animation Mentor’s online character animation program, she attended the University of Washington, majoring in computer science, and took part in the Disneyland Resort College Program.

A New York Times bestselling author of a dozen critically acclaimed picture books, which have sold more than five million copies combined. They include Dragons Love Tacos, Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, High Five, Gladys the Magic Chicken, Secret Pizza Party, Robo-Sauce, the Those Darn Squirrels trilogy, and El Chupacabras, which won the Texas Bluebonnet Award. Publishers Weekly called his #1 New York Times bestselling story collection The Ice Cream Machine a “madcap middle grade debut.” He is fast at work on his next middle grade collab The Human Kaboom.  Visit Adam online at www.whothehell.com and follow him on Twitter @rubingo.

Lia Chang is an actor, a multi-media content producer, activist, documentarian, corporate photographer and an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Bev’s Girl Films, making films that foster inclusion and diversity on both sides of the camera. Bev’s Girl Films’ debut short film, Hide and Seek was a top ten film in the Asian American Film Lab’s 2015 72 Hour Shootout Filmmaking Competition, and Lia received a Best Actress nomination. She is also the host and Executive Producer of a weekly Arts, Entertainment and Lifestyle program called BACKSTAGE PASS WITH LIA CHANG. Lia's short film, When the World Was Young garnered a 2021 DisOrient Film Audience Choice Award for Best Short Narrative. Lia has appeared in the films Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman. She also stars in and serves as Executive Producer for the short independent films Hide and Seek, Balancing Act, Rom-Com Gone Wrong, Belongingness and When the World was Young. She is the Executive Producer for The Cactus, The Language Lesson, The Writer and Cream and 2 Shugahs. Lia is the recipient of a Prospect Muse Award, a OCA Chinese American Journalist Award, and a AAJA National Award for New Media. Lia is an AAJA Executive Leadership Graduate, a Western Knight Fellow at USC’s Annenberg College of Communications for Specialized Journalism on Entertainment Journalism in the Digital Age, a National Press Photographers Association Visual Edge/Visual Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute for New Media, a Scripps Howard New Media Fellow at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and a National Tropical Botanical Garden Environmental Journalism Fellow. She was a syndicated columnist for KYODO News, writing about What's Hot in New York.

One of the jazz world's most acclaimed performers, possessing a potent combination of dynamic vocal abilities, impeccable phrasing, and powerful emotional resonance. Nicole's passionate, soulful voice and heartfelt charisma have earned her a Soul Train Award for “Best Traditional Jazz Performance," and four Top-10 jazz albums on U.S. Billboard, JazzWeek, HMV Japan and UK Sweet Rhythms charts. Heralded by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Japan Times, El Pais, Jazz Times, Essence, and more, Nicole tells real stories through peerless interpretations of repertoire from the American Songbook, classic and contemporary jazz, popular standards, blues, and originals. She has captivated audiences in 20 countries, headlining at venues in cities including New York, Tokyo, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, San Francisco, and Miami at such venues as Blue Note; Jazz at Lincoln Center; Blues, Alley, The Smith Center; Kravis Center; Jazz St. Louis, Feinstein’s; Madrid Jazz Festival; and more. Nicole has also recorded with some of today’s musical greats including Kirk Whalum, Julian Lage, John Clayton, and Gerald Clayton and has performed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, Pasadena Pops and Michael Feinstein. In late 2019, she returned to the theatrical stage and garnered critical praise in the musical version of The Bodyguard; in Dec. 2021, she starred in the new musical A Wonderful World, based on the life of Louis Armstrong; and in 2022, she portrayed ‘Brenda’ in Smokey Joe’s Cafe.

A DGA-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, producer, and author, known for his signature style and discerning eye for talent. He is the founder of the production company Feigco Entertainment, as well as the content company Powderkeg Media, which aims to champion new voices with a commitment to female, LGBTQIA+ creators, and filmmakers of color. Feig is a visionary filmmaker with a proven track record of female-led hits that have grossed over one billion dollars worldwide including “Bridesmaids, “Last Christmas,” “The Heat,” “Ghostbusters,” “Spy,” and “A Simple Favor,” the latter of which Feig will direct and produce a sequel. Most recently, he served as the director, producer, and co-writer of the film “The School for Good and Evil,” starring Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington, which debuted as the #1 film on Netflix in 84 countries worldwide. Up next, Feig will direct and produce the action-comedy film “Grand Death Lotto,” starring John Cena, Awkwafina and Simu Liu for Amazon Studios. In television, he is a writer, executive producer, and director of FOX’s “Welcome to Flatch,” which is currently airing its second season, and an executive producer of “Minx,” which will premiere its second season on Starz later this year. Feig recently created and launched his own award-winning gin brand, Artingstall’s in the U.S. and U.K., which won Best Gin and Double Gold at the 2019 WSWA competition. While in lockdown in 2020, he hosted a nightly Quarantine Cocktail Time on his Instagram, inspiring a cocktail book titled Cocktail Time!

An award-winning humor writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker Daily Shouts, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, US Weekly Fashion Police, Scary Mommy, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and various other outlets. Wendi is the author of the middle-grade book Ginger Mancino, Kid Comedian and the humorous memoir I’m Wearing Tunics Now, and a contributor to many anthologies. Her humor pieces have been performed by award-winning actresses including Uzo Aduba, Sharon Horgan and Alison Brie. Wendi’s eponymous blog was named “Funniest Parenting Blog” by Parents Magazine and she was named “Most Entertaining Writer” at the Mom 2.0 Influencer conference. She both speaks on and teaches humor writing to children and adults.