Becky Ann Baker has appeared on television and film in Ted Lasso and Girls, for which she received Emmy nominations; Freaks and Geeks; Kings; The Good Wife; The Blacklist; Big Little Lies; Brockmire; Younger; Hunters; Little Voice; New Amsterdam; Billions; A Simple Plan; Lorenzo’s Oil; Sabrina; Two Weeks Notice; Nights in Rodanthe; Starbright; The Half of It; Holler, Jackpot!; The Girls on the Bus; Elsbeth; All Happy Families; Our Hero, Balthazar; Ella McKay; and Only Murders in the Building. She has performed on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Streetcar Named Desire, Titanic, Assassins, All My Sons, and Good People. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Suddenly Last Summer at the Roundabout Theatre Company; Comedy of Errors, Othello, and Two Gentlemen of Verona at the New York Shakespeare Festival; Durang, Durang at the Manhattan Theatre Club; Barbecue at the Public Theater; and virtually in The Homebound Project.

Renée Elise Goldsberry is a multi-hyphenate actress and singer, best known for originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in the groundbreaking Broadway musical Hamilton, for which she won Tony and Grammy Awards and received an Emmy Award nomination for the Disney+ filmed version. Onscreen, Goldsberry most recently starred in the critically acclaimed comedy series Girls5eva, for which she earned multiple Critics Choice and Television Critic Association Award nominations for her breakthrough role as Wickie Roy. For film, she next co-stars in Kathryn Bigelow’s highly anticipated feature A House of Dynamite. Her past screen credits include the title role in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks starring Oprah Winfrey; memorable supporting performances in Marvel’s She-Hulk and Netflix’s Altered Carbon; a recurring role on CBS’s The Good Wife; a key supporting turn opposite Sterling K. Brown, Taylor Russell, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the lauded indie feature Waves; a leading role in the independent feature Albany Road; and two Daytime Emmy nominations for her fan-favorite performance as Evangeline Williamson on the daytime drama One Life to Live, for which she was also nominated for two NAACP Image Awards. A stage veteran, she will return to Broadway in Spring 2026 in the new play The Balusters, written by Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire. Her previous Broadway credits include the musicals The Color Purple, Rent, and The Lion King, and the plays Good People and All In: Comedy About Love. Her recently released debut album of original music, Who I Really Am, is available now on all streaming platforms.

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award–winning host of All In with Chris Hayes at 8 PM ET Tuesday through Friday on MSNBC, as well as host of MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast, which launched in May 2018 and new episodes are released weekly on Tuesdays wherever podcasts are available. Each week on the podcast, Chris Hayes asks the big questions that keep him up at night. How do we make sense of this unprecedented moment in world history? Why Is This Happening? is presented by MSNBC and features interviews with political figures, journalists, writers, and academics. Previously, Hayes hosted the weekend program Up with Chris Hayes, which premiered in 2011. Prior to joining MSNBC as an anchor, he had served as a frequent substitute host for The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Hayes became an MSNBC contributor in 2010 and has been with The Nation since 2007. Hayes is a former Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. From 2008-2010, he was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, he was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times. Since 2002, Hayes has written on a wide variety of political and social issues, from union organizing and economic democracy, to the intersection of politics and technology. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian, and The Chicago Reader. Hayes published his most recent book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, in January 2025. The book debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Hayes' first book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, which is about the crisis of authority in American life, was published in June 2012 and was also a New York Times best-seller. Hayes grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Brown University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. He lives in New York with his wife and three children.

James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize–winning and Tony Award–nominated playwright, director, and educator. James’ plays have been produced by Flashpoint Theater Company, Orbiter 3, Theatre Horizon, Wilma Theatre, Theatre Exile, Azuka Theatre, The National Black Theatre, JACK, The Public Theater, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, Definition Theatre, Timeline Theater, Shotgun Players, and have received development with PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark, Playwrights Horizon, Clubbed Thumb, Villanova Theater, Wilma Theater, Azuka Theatre, and Victory Garden. James received the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist and two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play for The Brothers Size with Simpatico Theatre Company and Gem of the Ocean with Arden Theatre. James is a 2015 Pew Fellow for Playwriting, the 2015 winner of the Terrence McNally New Play Award for WHITE, the 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize winner for The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, a 2017 recipient of the Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise, a 2020 and 2022 Steinberg Prize, and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama recipient and a 2023 Tony nominee for Best Play for Fat Ham. James was a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing collective. He received a B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and an M.F.A. in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. James is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Columbia University.

Jeremy McCarter is the literary executor of the novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder, an associate artist at the Public Theater, and the founder and executive producer of the acclaimed audio-drama company Make-Believe Association, for which he adapted and directed an award-winning version of Hamlet that had its world premiere at this year’s Tribeca Festival. He is the author of Young Radicals and the co-author of Viewfinder with Jon M. Chu and Hamilton: The Revolution with Lin-Manuel Miranda. His cultural criticism has appeared in New York magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Jim Parsons recently starred in the Broadway revival of Our Town and the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, also on Broadway, opposite Jessica Lange and Celia Keenan-Bolger. He starred alongside Ben Aldridge in Focus Features’ Spoiler Alert based on Michael Ausiello’s acclaimed memoir of the same title. Other theater includes the Off-Broadway revival of A Man of No Importance for The Classic Stage Company, The Boys in the Band, An Act of God, Harvey, and The Normal Heart. Additional films include A Kid Like Jake; Garden State; Hidden Figures; The Boys in the Band; The Normal Heart; and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Parsons played Sheldon Cooper on the TV show The Big Bang Theory for twelve seasons. Upcoming projects include The Leader and Just by Looking at Him.

Roslyn Ruff recently starred in KYOTO at Lincoln Center. Her Broadway credits include The Skin of Our Teeth, earning her the Joseph A. Callaway Award; All the Way; Romeo and Juliet; and Fences. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in The Piano Lesson, for which she was honored with the Lucille Lortel Award, the Audelco Award, and a Drama League nomination; Seven Guitars (Obie Award); X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation (Drama League nomination); Things of Dry Hours (Drama League nomination); Fairview; The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World; Macbeth; Familiar; Scenes from a Marriage; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; and The Cherry Orchard. Her regional credits include productions at the McCarter Theatre, People's Light, Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Two River Theater, Long Wharf, Alliance, Geffen Playhouse, and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. On screen, Ruff has been seen in Marriage Story, The Help, Salt, Rachel Getting Married, Evil, Blue Bloods, The Godfather of Harlem, Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, Pose, and Divorce.

Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Her books include Smile: The Story of a Face; 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (a New York Times notable book); and most recently, Lessons from My Teachers. Her plays have been done on and off Broadway and around the country, as well as internationally. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee, her plays have been translated into fifteen languages. She is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Whiting Writers’ Award, Lily Award, Susan Smith Blackburn, and PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright. She studied playwriting with Paula Vogel at Brown University, where she received an honorary doctorate. For the past twelve years, she’s taught at the Geffen School for Drama at Yale, where she is currently professor of playwriting. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. For more information: www.sarahruhlplaywright.com

Amos Tappan Wilder is Thornton Wilder’s nephew and served as his uncle’s literary executor from 1995–2023. In this role, he managed Wilder’s intellectual property, promoted interest in the literary and dramatic subsidiary rights of the works, and spoke widely about his uncle’s life, family, and artistic legacy. He oversaw the reissue of all of Wilder’s novels and major plays in the HarperCollins Thornton Wilder Library edition, to which he contributed Afterwords, The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder edited by Robin Gibbs Wilder and Jackson Bryer, The Library of America’s three Wilder volumes, and the definitive biography of his uncle by Penelope Niven entitled Thornton Wilder: A Life. He also supported dramatic adaptations and operas of Wilder’s fiction and drama, including the Our Town opera composed by Ned Rorem with libretto by J.D. McClatchy, and arranged publication of lost works, including Wilder’s Broadway record-breaking translation of A Doll’s House. Tappan is a graduate of Yale and holds advanced degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in American Studies from Yale. He is Honorary Chair of The Thornton Wilder Society, a member of P.E.N. (American Center), Honorary Trustee of Long Wharf Theatre, and member of the National Council of Graywolf Press.

Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and is the recipient of a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. In 2018, she founded BALDWIN FOR THE ARTS.

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both drama, for Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and fiction for The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, hiked the Alps with the heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, received a Bronze Star for his service in World War II, and was credited with discovering Orson Welles. He was also a much-loved teacher, letter-writer (especially with Gertrude Stein), and public speaker—in four languages. Hello, Dolly! is based on his play The Matchmaker. Learn more about his extraordinary life and work at thorntonwilder.com.