Dynamic Duos

Joan Allen began her New York career off-Broadway in a production of And a Nightingale Sang. Her Broadway credits include Burn This, for which she received a Tony Award for Best Actress, The Heidi Chronicles, Impressionism, and The Waverly Gallery. She is an original member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she has appeared in more than 25 productions, including Balm in Gilead and The Wheel. Allen is a three-time Academy Award nominee, receiving Best Supporting Actress nominations forNixon andThe Crucible, and a Best Actress nomination forThe Contender. Additional film credits include Pleasantville, Face/Off, The Notebook, The Ice Storm, The Upside of Anger, The Bourne Identity series, and Room. On television, she is known for her portrayal of Georgia O’Keefe in the 2009 biopic of the same name, and she has had recurring roles in Luck, The Killing, The Family, and Lisey’s Story.

Santino Fontana is known for his Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Tony Award-winning portrayal of Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels in the Broadway production of Tootsie, and for voicing the character Prince Hans in Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated feature Frozen. Additionally, he has starred in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; 1776; and Zorba with Encores!; and on Broadway in The Importance of Being Earnest (Clarence Derwent Award); Brighton Beach Memoirs (Drama Desk Award); Act One; Billy Elliot; Cinderella (Tony nomination); and Hello, Dolly! Off Broadway he was seen in Sons of the Prophet (Lortel & Obie Awards). His film, web, and television credits include Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Sisters, Shades of Blue, Mozart in the Jungle, Submissions Only, Off the Menu, Impossible Monsters, and Fosse/Verdon.

Bruce Jay Friedman (1930 - 2020) was the author of eight novels, including Stern, A Mother’s Kisses, The Dick, About Harry Towns, The Current Climate, and A Father’s Kisses. His stories have been collected in Black Angels, Let’s Hear It for a Beautiful Guy, and Three Balconies, among other volumes. Friedman edited the landmark anthology Black Humor, published in 1965. His screenwriting credits include Splash, The Lonely Guy, and Stir Crazy. Friedman also authored four plays and several works of nonfiction, including his autobiography Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir.

Julie Halston is known as a “Legend of Off-Broadway” in honor of her extensive career on stage. A founding member of Charles Busch’s company Theatre-in-Limbo, she has performed alongside Busch in numerous productions, including The Divine Sister, Red Scare on Sunset, The Tribute Artist, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Halston’s Broadway credits include Gypsy, Hairspray, Anything Goes, On the Town, You Can’t Take It with You, for which she was awarded the Richard Seff Award, and most recently, Tootsie. She has been featured on television in The Class, Sex and the City, Difficult People, Crisis in Six Scenes, Theater Talk, Divorce, and Almost Family. Forthcoming projects include The Sixth Reel.

Kyle MacLachlan is best known for his leading role as Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, for which he won a Golden Globe Award, as well as its prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and the 2017 limited series revival. His film and television credits include Dune, Blue Velvet, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, The Good Wife, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Inside Out, Portlandia, Giant Little Ones,The House with a Clock in Its Walls,High Flying Bird, Fonzo, Capone, and the television series Carol’s Second Act and Atlantic Crossing. MacLachlan is also a winemaker, producing in the Walla Walla region of Washington State under the label Pursued by Bear.

Lorrie Moore is the author of the short story collections Self-Help, LikeLife, Birds of America, and Bark; three novels, Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, and A Gate at the Stairs; and a children’s novel, The Forgotten Helper. She has won the O. Henry Award, The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and the Finn Zinklar Award for the Short Story given by the Karen Blixen Society in Copenhagen. She has been a finalist for the Orange Prize, The PEN Faulkner Award, The National Book Critics' Circle Award, The Story Prize, and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her reviews and essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, and The Atlantic, and a collection of her non-fiction was published in 2018. Her collected short fiction was also published in the Everyman's Library series in 2020. A recipient of an NEA, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006, where she is currently a member of the Board of Directors.

Denis O’Hare’s screen credits include Garden State, A Mighty Heart, Michael Clayton, Milk, The Comedians, Duplicity, The Good Wife, True Blood, American Horror Story, HBO’s The Normal Heart, Dallas Buyers Club, This Is Us, Big Little Lies, Lizzie, The Goldfinch, American Gods, Dr. Seuss' the Grinch Musical, The Postcard Killings, and The Nevers. He won a Tony Award for his performance in Take Me Out and a Drama Desk Award for his role in Sweet Charity. He is the co-writer, with Lisa Peterson, and star of An Iliad, which was performed at the New York Theatre Workshop and The Broad Stage in Santa Monica. He and Peterson also co-authored a play about the bible, The Good Book, which premiered at the Court Theatre in Chicago and subsequently had a hit run at Berkeley Rep. O’Hare’s upcoming projects include Game of Power, Butterfly in the Typewriter, and Infinite Storm with Naomi Watts.