Creativity in Captivity

Tracy Brigden is the Senior Artistic Producer at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She has over 20 years of experience in off-Broadway and regional theater as a dynamic artistic leader with an extensive knowledge of the new play development and production process, as well as strong, long term relationships with major American and international playwrights, composers, actors, directors, designers and other theatre artists. As a director she has a demonstrated history of creating world-class, acclaimed and notable productions, particularly new plays and musicals, including numerous world premiere productions. Tracy served as Artistic Director at City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh for 16 years, leading the company to its prominent and respected place as a major incubator and producer of new plays and musicals. As a freelance director, she has worked around the country, principally on new plays. Prior to City Theatre, Tracy served on the artistic staffs of Manhattan Theatre Club and Hartford Stage Co. She studied theatre for her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University and earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from Point Park University. 

Adam Savage has spent his life gathering skills that allow him to take what's in his brain and make it real, working with every material and in every medium he could fathom — metal, paper, glass, plastic, rubber, foam, plaster, pneumatics, hydraulics, animatronics, neon, glassblowing, mold-making and injection molding to name just a few. In 1993, Adam began concentrating his career on the special-effects industry, honing his skills through more than 100 television commercials and a dozen feature films, including Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Galaxy Quest and the Matrix sequels. A decade later, Adam was chosen along with Jamie Hyneman to produce and host MythBusters, which premiered on Discovery Channel in January 2003. Fourteen years, 279 episodes, 1,015 myths, 2,950 experiments, eight Emmy nominations and 83 miles of duct tape later, that version of the series ended in March 2016. A few years later, Adam hosted and executive produced MythBusters Jr. as well as a solo series, Savage Builds, for Discovery Channel. Today, Adam stars in and produces content for his YouTube channel Tested, including a popular build series (Adam Savage’s One Day Builds) and behind-the-scenes deep dives into multiple blockbuster films (including Alien Covenant, Mortal Engines and Blade Runner 2049.) In 2019 Adam finished his first book, Every Tool’s a Hammer, which is a chronicle of his life as a maker.

Gael Chandler began her career at a drive-in theatre in Santa Rosa, CA as a cashier at the Star-Vue Motor Movies, where she became interested in the projection booth. There she learned base and emulsion, cement and tape splicing and other 35mm basics. Eventually, her union brothers and the town's theatre managers were persuaded to let her in the booth and the union. This meant she got to run Rocky, Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever for months, and take location assignments doing grip, electrical and craft service work. While serving as a projectionist she earned two BAs before heading to Hollywood where she began slipping through studio gates. Gael’s first job was as an assistant at a sound studio where she transferred 500 tiger growls from ¼" to 35mm on her first day. It was a good place to meet editors and led to her first assistant editor job on the TV show That’s Incredible! She spent over three decades in Los Angeles editing comedies, dramas, documentaries, features, corporate videos, and promos. Gael cut on every medium: film, tape, and digital, and trained hundreds of professionals, professors, independent filmmakers and students to operate digital editing equipment. She worked on The New Leave It to Beaver, the first show to edit on Ediflex - a groundbreaking non-linear editing system - and was nominated two years in a row for a CableACE Award for Best Editing of a Comedy Series. She also taught classes on editing history, theory, and practice to college students. Gael wrote two editions of Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film Or Video and Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Lover Must Know. In 2010 she retired to northern California and wrote Chronicles of Old San Francisco: Exploring the Historic City by the Bay and co-founded PictureYourBook to produce book trailers and enhanced eBooks. She continues to write plays, screenplays and short stories. Her current project is co-authoring Preaching and Editing (working title) with Homiletics professor Reverend Shauna K. Hannan, PhD.

A self-taught filmmaker who has directed four feature films, three documentaries and over 1300 national & regional commercials, as well as Maria Bamford’s acclaimed Netflix Comedy Special. Jordan directs advertising campaigns for brands and agencies from all over the world. He has directed comedy giants Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Keegan-Michael Key, Rory Scovel and other notable celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brad Paisley. Equally nimble with visual effects, he’s shot over 50 sleight-of-hand magic trick spots for Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles that effortlessly combine in-camera and digital trickery. Jordan is the recipient of numerous advertising awards which include multiple Clio Awards, National Gold, ADDY’s, Gold Promax Award, One Show, D Show, Pencil and AICP Awards. His work is routinely spotlighted in Adweek, Ads of The World and AgencySpy. In 2010, Jordan completed his passion project I Am Comic, a feature documentary that is part of a trilogy on what it takes to be a stand-up comedian, followed by 2014’s aptly titled I Am Road Comic starring Pete Holmes and Marc Maron. The most gripping film of the trilogy is I Am Battle Comic. Filming took Brady to Afghanistan, Kuwait and undisclosed parts of the Middle East where he performed stand-up comedy for our troops stationed there. Jordan hosts the weekly filmmaking podcast Respect the Process, described as “The Rosetta Stone of Filmmaking”, and teaches Commercial Directing Bootcamp.

Maria Brito is an award-winning New York-based contemporary art advisor, entrepreneur, author and curator. Her bestselling book How Creativity Rules The World was released in March of 2022. In 2015 Brito was selected by Complex magazine as one of the 20 Power Players in the Art World and in 2020 she was named by ARTnews as one of the visionaries who gets to shape the art world. A Harvard graduate, originally from Venezuela, her first monograph Out There was the recipient of UA Best Book Awards in both the Art and Design Categories. She has written for the Huffington Post, ElSle, Forbes, Artnet, Cultured Magazine, Departures and the Gulf Coast Journal of Literature and Fine Arts from the University of Houston, Texas. For several years, Maria has taught her creativity course in companies and, in 2019, she launched Jumpstart, an online program on creativity for entrepreneurs. She has worked on product collaborations with artists such as Kenny Scharf, Erik Parker, Katherine Bernhardt, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Nir Hod and many more. In 2016, Maria curated “Greek Gotham” presented at Dio Horia, Mykonos with the participation of sixteen New York-based artists including Kaws, Austin Lee, Nina Chanel Abney and Raul de Nieves. A full-color catalogue with an introduction by Jeffrey Deitch was written and designed by Maria to commemorate this exhibition. In 2019 she created and hosted The "C" Files with Maria Brito, a TV and streaming series for PBS's new station ALL ARTS. The same year she also curated two exhibitions: The Thousand and One Nights, the inaugural show of Artual Gallery in Beirut, Lebanon with seven American artists including Holly Coulis, Allison Zuckerman and Rosson Crow and MUSE, Shona McAndrew's first New York City exhibition at CHART Gallery in Tribeca. 

Matt Goldman is a New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer. He has been nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award, the Shamus Award and the Nero Award. Matt's television writing credits include Seinfeld, Ellen, Love & War, Working, Three Sisters, Level Up, Just Add Magic, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. He served as a consulting producer on Fox’s Luis, Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, CBS’s Gary Unmarried and Amazon’s Just Add Magic. Matt’s first novel, Gone to Dust, was published in the summer of 2017. It was followed by Broken Ice in 2018, The Shallows: A Nils Shapiro Novel in 2019 and Dead West in 2020. His first stand-alone, Carolina Moonset, was published in May of 2022 and is listed as one of the Best Books of 2022 by Amazon. His next novel, A Good Family, will be released in May of 2023. Matt’s stage play Bunk Bed Brothers, which he co-wrote with Pat Hazell, has run in numerous cities around the country and received critical acclaim in the Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and other publications. In addition to being developed for television by NBC, Sony TriStar optioned a film script based on the play. 

The Tony Award winning writing team of the musicals: Ragtime, Anastasia, Seussical, Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, Rocky, Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, Lucky Stiff, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, A Man of No Importance, Knoxville and Little Dancer. These renowned collaborators have received theater, film and music’s highest honors – the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Olivier Awards, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and four Grammys. They serve on the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America and founded the DGF Fellows Program for Emerging Writers. In 2014 they received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. 

Asi Wind is a recipient of the Close-up Magician of the Year Award from the prestigious Academy of Magical Arts at Los Angeles’s Magic Castle. For the last decade, Wind has served as the chief consultant to magician David Blaine, working on Blaine’s ABC television specials and his first live tour. Asi’s off-Broadway show, Concert of the Mind, received rave reviews, sold out and extended its run. His appearance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us has over 14 million views on YouTube, making it one of the most-watched performances in the show’s history. Asi is currently starring in his new critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway show, Inner Circle.

A multi-talented comedic composer, vocalist, actor and the creator of the irrepressible Broadway Barbara, whose showbiz tales and classic show tunes have made her a social media sensation. Leah is an alumni of the renowned Groundling’s Sunday Company and a founding member of the Transcendence Theatre Company, which earned her a Broadway World “Person to Watch” nomination and the opportunity to open for Rita Moreno and Ben Vereen in concert. She also sang alto in the premiere top 40 vintage trio The Beverly Bombshells. Leah's national tour credits include: Radio City Christmas Spectacular, 42nd Street and Happy Days. Regionally she has graced the stages of Paper Mill Playhouse, Goodspeed Opera House, Falcon Theatre and Eugene O’Neill Theatre. She has made television appearances on Maron, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Blackish. Find out much more by visiting @BroadwayBarbaraOfficial on Instagram and TikTok.

Executive producer / magic consultant for David Copperfield for over 30 years from the live Vegas show at the MGM casino to worldwide touring and television events. In 2017 Chris was awarded a Creative Fellowship from the Academy of Magical Arts for his mastery of both the art and business of magic. He is one of those rare individuals who was not only proficient, but highly influential in card magic and coin magic. He is the author of the books Totally Out of Control and The Right Stuff which feature dozens of his close-up creations. On this episode Chris discusses his love of movies including Jaws and the little known whodunnit The Last of Sheila, he shares how he acquired his collection of artist Frank Kozik’s colorful vinyl busts and he explains how he stays curious about everything from bridge design to fire hydrant placement to keep his problem solving muscle flexed.