Three Authors, Many Actors & Music

Talent

Maggie Siff, Ronald Peet, Raúl Castillo, James Cromwell, Tom Nelis, Mary Beth Peil, Vincent Piazza, Laila Robins, Reid Scott & Antonique Smith

ABOUT THE CAST

Raúl Castillo Jr. is an American actor and playwright. Currently filming the untitled Brad Ingelsby/HBO Drama Series, Castillo is known for his acting roles in such productions as Cassandro, Miguel Wants to Fight, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Amexicano, Cold Weather and his role as Richie Donado Ventura in the HBO series Looking and its subsequent series finale. He received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the film We the Animals.  His notable written plays include Border Stories and Between Me, You, and the Lampshade. His works are associated with the LAByrinth Theater Company and the Atlantic Theater Company.

Ronald Peet can currently be seen as Neville Stafford opposite Vince Vaughn in Apple TV’s hit series “Bad Monkey” from executive producer Bill Lawrence (“Ted Lasso.” “Shrinking”). Ronald’s film projects include The Meyerowitz Stories, opposite Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and Adam Sandler; First Reformed, directed by Paul Schrader; Nevada, 2018 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection; The Land of the Owls; A24’s upcoming Untitled Julio Torres Project opposite Tilda Swinton. His television credits include Netflix’s “The I-Land” (series regular), Netflix’s “Partner Track” (recurring guest star), FXX’s “Dicktown” (recurring guest star), “The Good Fight,” “Tommy,” “The Looming Tower,” “Bull,” “Blindspot,” and “Girls.” Appearances on the New York Stage include New York Times Critic Pick The Fires (Soho Rep). Jeremy O. Harris’s Daddy (The New Group/Vineyard Theatre); Play On Shakespeare (Classic Stage and Utah Shakespeare Festival); Spill (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Cute Activist (Bushwick Starr); Kentucky (Ensemble Studio Theatre and Page 73); Icarus in the L.E.S. (Joe’s Pub); The World My Mama Raised (Clubbed Thumb); Debutante (Ars Nova) and regional credits include The Lion In Winter (Barrington Stage/Miami New Drama), and over 30 roles in 15 productions with the American Shakespeare Center. An accomplished singer and audiobook narrator, Ronald performed in Bernstein’s MASS at Lincoln Center and Karehuse at Joe’s Pub and has narrated for Audible, Podium, Penguin Random House, and Hachette. Ronald is an honors graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an Emory alumnus.

James Cromwell is an esteemed actor and activist. Known for his extensive work as a character actor, he has received a Primetime Emmy Award as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Babe (1995). Other notable roles include in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), Deep Impact (1998), The Green Mile (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), The Longest Yard (2005) The Queen (2006), W. (2008), Secretariat (2010), The Artist (2011), Still Mine (2013), Marshall (2017), and Emperor (2020). Cromwell is also well known for his roles in television including Angels in America (2003), Six Feet Under (2003–2005), American Horror Story: Asylum (2012–2013), for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, Boardwalk Empire (2012–2013), The Young Pope (2016), Counterpart (2018–2019), Succession (2018–2023), for which he earned three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor, and Sugar (2024).

Tom Nelis has appeared on Broadway in Girl from the North Country, Indecent, The Visit, Enron, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and Aida. Off Broadway he has been seen at The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, The Signature Theater, Classic Stage Company, Theater for a New Audience / The Royal Shakespeare Company, Cafe La Mama, New York Theater Workshop, Second Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mineta Lane, and Manhattan Theater Club as well as at regional theaters across the U.S. He has been awarded an Eliot Norton Award for Prospero in The Tempest, an OBIE for Marshall McLuhan in The Medium, and a Drama League Nomination for Leonard Bernstein in Score. Nelis was a founding member of SITI Company and performed with that ensemble for 25 years. He has toured the U.S. and Europe with both Laurie Anderson and Richard Foreman. He earned his MFA at UC San Diego.

Mary Beth Peil is an American actress and soprano. She began her career as an opera singer in 1962 with the Goldovsky Opera Theater. After her Broadway debut, Peil has remained a stage actress in musicals and plays. She is the recipient of an Obie Award and has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award, a Helen Hayes Award, and two Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 1992 she made her film debut in a small role in the movie Jersey Girl, and made her first appearance on television in 1994 on the program Law & Order. She is best known for her roles in the main casts of two television series: as Evelyn ‘Grams’ Ryan in Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003) and Jackie Florrick in The Good Wife (2009–2016). Notable film credits include portraying Jack Lemmon’s love interest in The Odd Couple II, and performances in The Stepford Wives, Flags of Our Fathers, Mirrors, Maladies, and Collateral Beauty. In 2020, she was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Digital Drama Series for the role of Helen in After Forever.

Vincent Piazza is an American film, television and stage actor. Currently a series regular in Taylor Sheridan’s Tulsa King (2022-present), Piazza had a great role in The Sopranos, and went on to play Lucky Luciano in the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014). He has also played Earl Hefner in the comedy-drama Rocket Science and singer Tommy DeVito in Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of Jersey Boys (2014).

Laila Robins has appeared in films including Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), An Innocent Man (1989), Live Nude Girls (1995), True Crime (1999), She’s Lost Control (2014), Eye in the Sky (2015), and A Call to Spy (2019). Her television credits include regular roles on Gabriel’s Fire, Homeland, and Murder in the First, playing Pamela Milton in the final season of The Walking Dead (2022), and Colonel Grace Mallory in The Boys (2019–2024) and Gen V (2023).

Maggie Siff‘s notable television roles have included department store heiress Rachel Menken Katz on the AMC drama Mad Men, Dr. Tara Knowles on the FX drama Sons of Anarchy for which she was twice nominated for the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and psychiatrist Wendy Rhoades on the Showtime series Billions. She has also had roles in the films Push (2009), and Leaves of Grass (2010). She starred in indie film A Woman, a Part (2016) and had a minor role in the drama film One Percent More Humid (2017).

Reid Scott starred recently as Anne Hathaway’s ex-husband Daniel in Amazon’s The Idea of You, as Brendan “Brando” Dorff in the TBS comedy series My Boys (2006–2010), Dan Egan in the HBO comedy series Veep (2012–2019), and Gordon Ford in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2022–2023). He also appeared in the romantic comedy film Home Again (2017), the superhero film Venom (2018), and the comedy-drama film Late Night (2019).

Antonique Smith is an acclaimed actor and a 2015 Grammy nominated singer and writer. Antonique first garnered attention in her buzz-worthy leading role in Rent on Broadway as Mimi Marquez. She is recognized for her starring role of Faith Evans in Notorious where she received rave reviews and was praised by critics.  She starred in of season 2 of Marvel’s Luke Cage which debuted on Netflix to amazing reviews. She played CIA agent Sandra Burns in Abduction opposite Taylor Lautner and Alfred Molina, and in Yelling To The Sky, playing the starring role of Ola O’Hara, opposite Zoe Kravitz, Gabourey Sidibe and Jason Clarke. Antonique recently starred in the TV One romantic comedy Stock Option, which premiered to record ratings for the network and she has a lead role in the Netflix film Deuces. She has also guest starred and recurred on numerous hit TV shows including  HBO’s Bored To Death, the Sidney Lumet directed 100 Centre Street on A&E and she has a role in the hit 2017 FOX drama series Shots Fired.

Authors

Joyce Carol Oates & Bernice McFadden are attending, Lore Segal’s family will represent her as she is 96 and not venturing out these days, though she was with us at The Players on for the 20th Anniversary of WORDTheatre hosted by Phiphen Studios just last October 19th, 2023.

ABOUT THE WRITERS

Bernice L. McFadden is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Tulane University whose latest novel, Praise Song for the Butterflies, was long listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize in Fiction. Her novel The Book of Harlan won the 2017 American Book Award and the 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. The New York Times selected her novel Gathering of Waters as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012 and as an Editor’s Choice pick. She also penned Glorious, a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and featured in O, The Oprah Magazine. McFadden is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist and a recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

One of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, Joyce Carol Oates counts historical biographies, depictions of working class families, and magical realist Gothic fiction among her oeuvre. She often depicts hardships and violence in American towns, and has received both critical and popular acclaim in her 50-year career. Oates is the author of over 70 books, including the novels Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. (2020); The Book of American Martyrs (2017); The Accursed (2013); The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007); Blonde (2000), winner of the National Book Award; We Were the Mulvaneys (1996); Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990); You Must Remember This (1987); Bellefleur (1980); and them (1969), winner of the National Book Award. She is also the author of the story collections Beautiful Days (2018) and Dis mem ber (2017). Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Harper’s, and have been widely anthologized.

Lore Segal is an American novelist, translator, teacher, and author of children’s books and a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was born in 1928 in Vienna, the only child of solidly middle-class Jewish parents. Shortly after Hitler’s annexation of Austria, she was one of a group of five hundred Jewish schoolchildren quickly sent to England. For the next thirteen years, she lived in several countries and with many different families. After receiving her B.A. English Honors from the University of London in 1948, she went to live in the Dominican Republic, where she worked as a teacher, until her American quota allowed her to come to New York in May 1951. Her first significant publication, the novelistic autobiography Other People’s Houses, based on her experience as a refugee, was published in 1964 and serialized in The New Yorker. In 1965 she received the Guggenheim fellowship in creative writing followed by the National Council on the Arts and Humanities grant in 1967 and the Creative Artists Public Service Program grant in 1972. Lore Segal’s novels include Lucinella (1976), Her First American (1985) winner of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award and the Pulitzer finalist Shakespeare’s Kitchen (2008). Segal’s short story “The Reverse Bug” was included in Best American Short Stories 1989 and was a 1990 O. Henry Prize-winner. Her stories “Other People’s Deaths” and “Making Good” won the O. Henry Prize in 2008 and 2010, respectively. She has also published eight children’s books, such as Tell Me a Mitzie (1970) winner of Children’s Spring Book Festival first prize and the American Library Association Notable Book designation, and The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless, Her Cat, winner of the New York Times Notable Book designation, 1985.