Hauntings for Halloween

ACTORS & ARTISTS:

René Auberjonois won the Tony Award for his role in the musical CoCo and was nominated for City of Angels, Big River, and The Good Doctor. His film and television credits include M.A.S.H., The Patriot, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Player, Certain Women, Blood Stripe, The Circuit, Benson, The Good Wife, Masters of Sex, Criminal Minds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Madam Secretary, The Circuit, Windows on the World, Raising Buchanan, and First Cow. He also starred as Odo and directed a number of episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He will appear in the forthcoming film Cortex.

Russell Banks’ most recent book is the nonfiction essay collection Voyager. Additional works include The Invisible Stranger, Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, Success Stories, and Continental Drift. He has won numerous awards and prizes for his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, an O. Henry Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His work has been collected in The Best American Short Stories, Continental Drift was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Affliction was short-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Prize and the Irish International Prize.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is lauded as the “Queen of Crime” for her 66 crime novels and 14 short story collections as well as the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which continues on the West End in London today. Her novels and short stories have been adapted for stage, screen, radio, video games, comics, and more than thirty films, including the 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Christie was the first recipient of the Grand Master Award, the highest honor presented by the Mystery Writers of America, and her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by the Crime Writers’ Association.

Fionnula Flanagan is often associated with the works of James Joyce, beginning with the 1967 film version of Ulysses and theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown, and James Joyce's Women. She has read Molly Bloom's soliloquy numerous times at Symphony Space's Bloomsday celebration. Additional credits include featured roles on television programs such as Murder She Wrote, the Star Trek series, and Brotherhood. On film she's appeared in The Others, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Waking Ned, and Some Mother's Son. On Broadway she most recently appeared in The Ferryman, for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress. Flanagan will appear in the forthcoming films Radioflash and Flycatcher.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, he published his greatest work, The Metamorphosis, in 1915 and won the prestigious Theodor Fontane Prize. His other works include The The Trial, The Castle, Amerika, and A Country Doctor. His writing is notable for its emphasis on the absurdity of modern life and the terror of authoritarian government. He has influenced numerous writers throughout the last century, inspiring the term “kafkaesque,” which is used to describe literature that echoes the nightmarish and abstract aspects of his work.

Richard Masur is recognized for a variety of roles over his 45-year career on series including The Hot l Baltimore, One Day at a Time, Rhoda, and more recently, Transparent, Girls, Younger, The Good Wife, Orange Is the New Black, and Mr. Robot. Additional TV miniseries and movie credits include Fallen Angel, Adam, The Burning Bed, It, And The Band Played On, and 61*. He has appeared in more than 60 feature films, including The Thing, Heartburn, Risky Business, My Girl, License to Drive,Tumbledown, Lonely Boys, and Don’t Think Twice. Masur’s stage work includes Lucky Guy, Democracy, and The Changing Room on Broadway, and Sarah, Sarah; The Ruby Sunrise; Dust; Fetch Clay, Make Man; and Relevance off-Broadway. He is featured in the forthcoming films Before/During/After and Another Year Together.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters and a major figure in the development of horror and science fiction. His signature darkness in classic stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” and poems such as “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells” have haunted and influenced generations of American readers. His published fiction and poetry received little acclaim until 1845, when “The Raven” first appeared in the Evening Mirror to immediate acclaim. Poe followed work between Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, where he edited and wrote for small presses such as Southern Literary Messenger, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and Broadway Journal. In addition to his well-known poems and tales of the macabre, Poe is also credited with being the inventor of the modern detective story with his work “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Kaneza Schaal is a New York City-based theater artist. She has worked on stage with Elevator Repair Service, The Wooster Group, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, and New York City Opera. This work brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, BAM, and MoMA. On screen, she recently appeared in the film The Indiscernables. Schaal directed Go Forth, which premiered at Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival, and Jack &, a multimedia performance piece she created in collaboration with Cornell Alston, co-commissioned by PICA, Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On The Boards, and Center for Contemporary Art Cincinnati. Her latest work, Cartography, was workshopped through New Victory Theater Lab, NYU Abu Dhabi, and premiered at The Kennedy Center in January 2019. For her performance in Petra at The Performance Space, Schaal was nominated for a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer.

Isaiah Sheffer (1935-2012) was a writer, director, cultural entrepreneur, and impresario. He was co-founder of Symphony Space in New York City, served as the organization’s Artistic Director until 2010 and Founding Artistic Director thereafter, and was widely known as the host of Selected Shorts. In addition, he was the creator of Wall to Wall and Bloomsday on Broadway, as well as the co-creator of The Thalia Follies political cabaret.

Rita Wolf was seen off-Broadway last year at The New York Theatre Workshop in the premiere of Hammaad Chaudhury's debut play An Ordinary Muslim and at The Flea Theatre in Emma and Max, written and directed by Todd Solondz. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her role in David Greig’s The American Pilot at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Additional New York theater credits include the premiere of Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop and later at BAM. Film credits include Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Laundrette and Spike Lee's Girl 6. Wolf is featured in the Audible recording of Evil Eye, a noir drama written by Madhuri Shekar, and is currently featured in Richard Nelson’s The Michaels at the Public Theater.

Harris Yulin’s Broadway credits include Hedda Gabler, The Price, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Visit, A Lesson from Aloes, and Watch on the Rhine. Off-Broadway and regional theater productions include Don Juan in Hell at Symphony Space, After the Fall, Uncle Vanya, Hedda Gabler, Tartuffe, Hamlet, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and many others. His directorial work includes Don Juan in Hell, Candida, The Rehearsal, As You Like It, Horton Foote’s The Trip To Bountiful, for which he won the Lucille Lortel Award, and David Auburn’s An Upset. Yulin’s recent television credits include Veep, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ozark, Billions, and Divorce.