Creativity in Captivity

A visual artist known for her hand-cut, wall-mounted paper forms and immersive, site-specific sculptures. Crystal’s colorful work exudes wonder and whimsy while being constructed from humble everyday materials like chicken wire and repurposed children’s birthday party tablecloths. Her sprawling installations can be seen bursting off of gallery walls and engulfing the outside of buildings from Lodz, Poland to Burlington, Vermont. She earned a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 2004 and received her MFA from the University of Tennessee in 2008. After a brief stint of teaching art at a college-level for five years, Crystal left academia to focus exclusively on her studio practice. She achieved her greatest notoriety for her immense, biomorphic site works that envelop the interiors and exteriors of buildings. These exuberant, boldly colored forms have a robust, eye-popping appeal. She is booked for installations in Miami, Arizona, Italy, Switzerland and France. On this episode, multi-dimensional wonder worker Crystal Wagner explains how she produced some of her most explosive works, tells us what it means to be an art generator and reveals that she has a tattoo of an exacto knife.

A Vice News Tonight correspondent covering stories at the intersection of politics and culture. Dexter is an Emmy-winning journalist plus two nominations and has contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage while working with the Los Angeles Times. He has a PhD in East Asian studies at Cornell University and is currently splitting his time between a pos-doctorate at Princeton and as documentary filmmaker. Dexter established the world’s largest public collection of Japanese hip-hop at UC Riverside and is writing a book on the topic. He began working in new media as a student director of programming at KUCR Radio, independently producing podcasts as well as music and news programs. He has written on topics as diverse as Internet and youth culture, social justice and video games. On this episode he shares how asking questions leads him to the stories he covers, the unfortunate number of times he has been confused for a protester while out with his camera crew and trying to get his father to crossover from Jazz to Rap. 

A musician and songwriter for over 40 years who rose to the top of the charts as a member of the iconic band The Go-Go’s. Kathy wrote or co-wrote some of the bands most renowned tunes, including the hits Vacation and Head Over Heels. Her journey went from opening for The Rolling Stones to the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. She returned to Austin to pursue creative opportunities as a public speaker, spokesperson, producer and actor. Kathy is the author of a compelling memoir called All I Ever Wanted—a soundtrack of original music accompanies the book. Several of her songs are featured in the Broadway musical based on The Go-Go’s catalog Head over Heels, currently in regional productions across the country. She still finds time to play guitar in the all-female rock ‘n’ roll band she started called The Bluebonnets. On this episode we hear the story of John Belushi following her band to gigs around the country, how she finishes writing her songs incrementally and how being in a band was like being a member of a family that she really needed. 

Joe Rohde, Experience Architect for Virgin Galactic and veteran Imagineer at Disney, shares insights on immersive experiences, the power of details, and his global travels. Topics include creativity during slow periods, balancing work with personal exploration, dream travel destinations, collaborative creativity in Imagineering, evolving storytelling in theme park design, and embracing curiosity and collaboration in creativity.

A Grammy-nominated comedian and podcaster with 10 appearances on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and 4 appearances on Conan. His debut Comedy Central special, Full-Time Magic, and his debut album, Yelled At By a Clown, reached #1 on the iTunes Comedy Charts and remained on Billboard’s Top Ten Comedy Charts for weeks. Bargatze’s half-hour Netflix special on The Standups, premiered in 2017, and his first solo one-hour Netflix special, The Tennessee Kid, premiered globally to rave reviews in 2019. In 2021, he released his second Netflix special, The Greatest Average American, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. He regularly performs at Bonnaroo, SXSW, Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival, and Sasquatch! Music Festival, Clusterfest, and the JFL Montreal Comedy Festival. Nate was featured as one of Esquire's ‘Best New Comedians’ by Jim Gaffigan, one of Marc Maron's ‘Comedians to Watch’ in Rolling Stone, one of Variety’s ‘10 Comics to Watch’ for 2015, and as #1 on Vulture's ‘50 Comedians You Should Know’ in 2015. His weekly podcast, Nateland, tackles the meaningless issues that we face day to day. In this episode Nate shares what it is like to be from a funny family, he gives his picks for the Mount Rushmore of Comedy and we explore the notion of starting a sanctuary in Nate’s name to protect gummy bears.  

A visual designer born in Montreal, raised in Cincinnati, now living in Las Vegas where he serves as co-director with David Copperfield and as David’s design director. Homer is often multi-tasking between conceptual drawing and design, cinematography, theatrical lighting design, script development, illusion staging, and video/music editing and sound design. Homer's illusion designs and cinematography have been featured in David's live show since 1993, several Emmy-award-winning television specials on CBS, and with David's top-rated luxury private island - Musha Cay. Red Safe, David Copperfield's new movie production company, finds Homer collaborating on design, camera blocking, and original concepts for films such as Steve Carell's comedy, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (hangman illusion), the hit Now You See Me and Paranormal Activity 4. Homer also designed the featured explosive escape in The Amazing Race season finale on CBS, as well as helped devise David Copperfield's vanish and reappearance with Robin Williams on The Crazy Ones. In this episode of the podcast, we discuss Homer’s design style and extraordinary attention to detail, and he shares stories of the responsibility of shooting all the photographs for the book David Copperfield’s History of Magic.

A producer, executive creative director, and Imagineer for over 31 years, Doris Hardoon, has just received the Buzz Price Thea Award recognizing her for “a lifetime of distinguished achievements.” Beginning her themed entertainment career in 1975 at Marine World Africa USA as a graphic designer, Doris was hired four years later by WED Enterprises (now known as Walt Disney Imagineering), working on projects including EPCOT’s The Land Pavilion, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris. Hardoon became a senior executive creative director, producer, and creative lead for a varied portfolio of investments, working at some point on all six Magic Kingdom-style Disney parks on three continents. Realizing the “Authentically Disney and Distinctly Chinese” philosophy, Doris lead the successful realization of the Shanghai Disney Resort that opened in 2016. She also served as a creative executive for WestCOT, Long Beach’s DisneySea, and Hong Kong Disneyland. Doris recently retired as an Imagineer and continues her work in the themed entertainment industry through her own design company DDesign Consultancy. On the podcast, she shares the cultural significance of her design choices, discusses how she came to be an Imagineer and she reveals hiding the names of some of her cherished teammates in the ironwork of Disneytown.  

Anna Condo is a filmmaker and a photographer born in Armenia and raised in France. From a young age, Anna enjoyed a passion for the arts and a love for the natural world's mysteries. As a teenager, she took art classes at the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris. Upon graduation, she enrolled at the Université Paris Nanterre for Art History and Archeology. That same year, she landed a TV role, transferred to the drama school Cours Florent and launched an acting career. In 1989, Anna began living between New York City and Paris. While in New York, she attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, raised two beautiful daughters, collaborated with numerous artists, wrote and directed four short films and three feature films, and published her first book, "AH Allen," a powerful tribute to her friend, poet Allen Ginsberg. In 2013, Anna rekindled a fascination with photography choosing flowers as the ultimate muse. The medium and the models became a creative outlet in solitude, counterbalancing her filmmaking's collaborative spirit. Learn more on Instagram: @anna.condo.

A “Solo Show Powerhouse” and consummate storyteller with a full toolkit of characters, sound effects, impersonations and improvisation. Reed was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for Dream On, The Cosby Show and Robert Townsend and His Partners in Crime. Reed was an advertising & promotion executive at NBC for two years, then did voice-work for cartoons such as Disney’s Gargoyles, Spider-Man and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. In 2008, he debuted a solo autobiographical show titled East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player and has presented a total of 5 solo shows altogether. In 2009, he became the warm-up comic for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno – and performed stand-up to warm up the studio audience for over 1,000 episodes. NPR/WNYC’s Snap Judgment recognized his storytelling for Performance of the Year in 2016. Later that year Theater Bay Area gave his show East 14th the 2016 TBA award for Outstanding Solo Show. The same year, Reed co-starred in the streaming comedy series, Bartlett, with Broadway phenom Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Hamilton. In 2019, Don Reed was approached by writer/director/filmmaker Robert Townsend to co-produce his one man, theatrical hit Living the Shuffle. On this episode he shares the importance of truth in storytelling, explains how he writes on the move in his car, and encourages anyone who does stand-up to try a night of storytelling.  

An award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, poet and professor at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. Her plays include The Oldest Boy, Dear Elizabeth, Stage Kiss, In the Next Room, (or The Vibrator Play) (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play); Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Melancholy Play; Scenes From Court Life; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday; Eurydice; Orlando and Late: A Cowboy Song. On this episode Sarah explains why it isn’t very cozy for a person to sit and read a play, she introduces the concept of Title Diagnosis to find the core of a story and she shares insights about her book “Smile: The Story of a Face”.