Rebecca Barry is the bestselling author of Recipes for a Beautiful Life: A Memoir in Stories and Later, at the Bar: A Novel in Stories, a New York Times Notable Book, and cofounder of magazine Fresh Dirt. A notable MOTH storyteller she shares about Finding Joy in Death.

A Resident Playwright Alumnus at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, RiA Resident Playwright Alumnus at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Richard was recently honored to be selected for this year’s Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive.

Some theatres Richard has worked with:

In Chicago: Chicago Dramatists · Victory Gardens · American Blues Theater · The Second City · Ubiquitous Players · Otherworld · Raven · Naked Angels · Theatre Evolve. 

Beyond Chicago: Next Act · Santa Fe Playhouse · Theatre Southwest · Taphouse Theatre · Actors’ Theatre · Ruckus Rockwell.  

In New York City: Urban Stages, Vulcan Theatre, and Rhino Theatre. Richard was recently honored to be selected for this year’s Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive.

Siobhan Fallon Hogan is the writer, producer, and star of the soon to be released Shelter in Solitude. She also wrote, produced, and starred in her first feature RUSHED released in August 2021. Fallon Hogan and Peter Hogan established Emerald Caz Productions in 2019. The actress has been in three Lars Von Trier films since 2000 including the Palme D’ Or winner Dancer in the Dark, Dogville and The House that Jack Built. Von Trier’s Zentropa Films coproduced Rushed with Fallon Hogan. The actress has been in several blockbusters over the years including Men in Black, Forrest Gump, Holes, New in Town, Going in Style, Charlotte’s Web and Funny Games. Her televisions credits include SNL, Seinfeld, Billions, Wayward Pines, 30 Rock, Law & Order and many more. Shelter In Solitude stars Robert Patrick, Peter Macon, Peter Hogan, Dan Castellaneta and Fallon Hogan. The actress was seen this fall in Paramount Picture’s, Clifford the Big Red Dog.  The actress just finished playing a supporting role in a film Eileen directed by William Aldroyd starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie Fallon Hogan and Peter Hogan have been married for 29 years and have three children Bernadette, 27, a reporter and Albany Bureau Chief for the New York Post, Peter, 23, an actor and music producer and Sinead, an actress, and junior at Virginia Tech.

A producer, director, playwright, and actress, Jessica Durdock Moreno’s first play “To Richard!” premiered at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it won the Encore Producers Award and was nominated for the Inkwell Theater Playwright’s Promise Award. Her second play “GeorgieD.” was developed in the Chain Theatre Playwriting Lab, where it received a full workshop production in New York in the summer of 2021. She was a finalist for the Theater Masters Take Ten 2020 Festival, a semifinalist for the Athena Project’s 2020 Plays in Progress Series, and a finalist for the 2021 Echo Theater Company Young Playwrights Residence. She has developed plays with the Workshop Theater, which will present a reading of her play “New Canaan” starring Debra Jo Rupp in the fall of 2021. Her work has been presented in the Full Circle TheatreCollaborative’s New Works Festival, the Boston Theater Marathon, the NYU Tisch Bespoke Play Zoom Festival, and the NYU Tisch Critical Response Process Workshop. She has published plays with Smith and Kraus, and also some scripts literary magazine. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University. Jessica studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and classical ballet and Swedish in Stockholm. She grew up in New Milford, Connecticut, where she danced professionally as a teen with BLUDance Theatre and as a guest artist with Pilobolus. Reviews of Jessica’s work at www.JessicaDurdockMoreno.com

Edafe Okporo is an author of the forthcoming book Asylum, a memoir & manifesto by Simon and Schuster, and founder of The Pont LLC. He is passionate about extending a hand to communities in need and teaching leaders in communities and organizations on how to motivate their members to act. His work includes trying to build an inclusive society, both in and out of the workplace, that will spark JOY. The inclusion of LGBTQ people, refugees, and marginalized people is a path to building a joyful society.

Atoosa Rubenstein, an Iranian immigrant, became the youngest editor at Hearst and transformed several magazines, then she left it all, in order to come to grips with her deeper, inner story, that now powers her joy.

Mike has been a storyteller all his life—as a journalist, speechwriter, community activist, actor, and playwright. He has written over 25 plays, with production credits throughout the country and the UK. His play, “Pets (and Their Humans),” was named best original production by the New Jersey Association of Community Theaters.  A native New Englander, he lives in Holmdel, New Jersey and belongs to the Dramatists Guild.

One of seven programs offered by Big Apple Leadership Academy for the Arts, or BALAA (pronounced BALL-UH). TEME is a community marching band that teaches traditional HBCU style marching arts to youth and young adults in New York City. It was created to not only restore showstyle marching arts in the Big Apple, but also to create a platform through which youth may prepare for and pursue marching band scholarships to HBCUs. As an organization that serves historically underrepresented communities, all of BALAA’s programming, including TEME, is offered free of charge to the general public. TEME is open to anyone who desires to learn. Members may join as young as age 5, and there is no age limit for participation.

Asbury artist, architect and producer, Jim Watt & jazz artist, Antoine Drye, will paint to live jazz in a project to support jazz musicians called 1000 Watts.