theatretalk

Drama Club is an innovative non-profit organization that provides theatre programming and positive mentorship to young people who are incarcerated or court-involved in New York City, bringing classes into juvenile detention centers, jails and community centers.  Drama Club is committed to providing New York City’s most vulnerable youth the opportunity to laugh, play, and cultivate life skills through improvisational theatre.

Josie Whittlesey is the founder and Executive Director of Drama Club. Her previous work includes teaching for Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing and Woodbourne Correctional Facilities, where she taught courses on acting, public speaking, and comedy. Before founding Drama Club, Josie developed a drop-in acting class for GEMS, serving girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. Over the last ten years she has taught acting, improvisation, and text analysis at Fordham University, New York University, Montclair State University, and Larry Singer Studios. She holds an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Acting program.

Lewis Flinn is the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical Lysistrata Jones (with a book by Douglas Carter Beane). Other current projects with Beane include the Broadway bound Hood which debuted at the Dallas Theater Center and won Best Musical 0f Dallas 2017, and a musical version of Beane’s hit film, To Wong Foo. Flinn has composed scores and songs for over 50 Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional productions including TONY nominated The Little Dog Laughed, Charles Busch’s Off-Broadway Die Mommie Die, The Divine Sister, The Tribute Artist (Drama Desk nom for Best Music) and The Third Story. Other theaters where he has worked included Playwright’s Horizons, Manhattan Class Company, South Coast Rep, The Geffen Playhouse, The Cleveland Play House, The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Lincoln Center Theater, 2nd Stage Theater, and the Drama Dept.  He has been a guest artist at Cornell, Dartmouth, The Boston Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Arts - London, and The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Carol Dunne is the Producing Artistic Director of Northern Stage, regional non-profit LORT-D professional theater company in Vermont with a mission to change lives, one story at a time. Now in her sixth season, she brings a wealth of experience from her former position as Producing Artistic Director of the New London Barn Playhouse, a company she transformed from a semi-professional summer stock theater to one of the most successful summer theaters in New England. Since 2013, Dunne and her team have overseen the $9.2 million Campaign for Northern Stage, which culminated in the opening of the theater’s new home, the state of the art Barrette Center for the Arts. During Carol’s tenure, she has introduced the development of new plays to the Northern Stage repertoire with New Works Now, an annual new play festival, and directed many times on the mainstage. In 2017, Dunne received a $1.25 million grant from the Pussycat Foundation to further women in the American theater, which she used to start the BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle, a cohort of five professional leaders run by women to support female artists and leaders in the field. Dunne also serves as an award winning Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College. She joins us today from White River Junction, Vermont.

Adam Hyndman is a performing artist, producer, and activist. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Cultural Anthropology and minors in theater and dance. He has worked extensively in the arts, performing on stage and screen with roles on Broadway and television. Some notable credits include: NBC’s The Sing Off, Children Of Eden at the Kennedy Center, Aladdin on Broadway, and the Tony Award winning revival of Once On This Island. Adam uses his experiences working with narratives to challenge his vision for the world. This focus leads him to opportunities in and out of the arts. He is passionate about creating possibilities for people to connect and activate their purpose on a direct level through personalized wellness coaching. Adam pulls from experiences as a nutrition coach, life coach, and crisis counselor. He also has a wealth of experience supporting arts projects dramaturgically and collaborating with producing teams for theatrical productions. As an individual committed to excellence and progressive achievement through collaboration, he works toward the manifestation of a diverse and inclusive world.

Alie B. Gorrie is an artist and advocate who strives to kindle meaningful connection with others so that we can create a more inclusive world.  She is a proud member of Actors Equity, and has performed all over the country on tour and in regional theatre. She is currently producing ABLE: a series, a new doc-series featuring actors with disabilities from stage and screen.  ABLE hopes to remove stigmas around disability, discuss the powerful artistic contributions actors with disabilities are making, and ABLE hopes to encourage storytellers to create more representative and truthful narratives. Alie B. happens to be visually impaired, and is the founder of Songs for Sight, an organization that helps kids and teens with low vision across Alabama receive the technology and training they need to succeed. 

Sara Glancy is a New York City-based actor and entrepreneur. As an actor, she’s performed Off-Broadway, in touring companies, and regionally. In 2014, Sara founded Audition Rep Matchmaker, a service which pairs actors with songs and monologues that will make them shine in the audition room. This was borne out of a project she did in 2013, where every day for a year she either read a play she’d never read or listened to a musical she’d never heard. Thus began Sara’s love affair with audition repertoire. Sara's also a public speaking coach at Actors Touch, a company she founded in 2018 that helps non-actors take the stage and approach public speaking with less fear and more fun.