Creativity in Captivity

Reggie Watts is an internationally renowned musician/comedian/writer who served as the bandleader on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden. Using nothing but his voice, his looping pedals, and his vast imagination, Watts blurs the lines between music and comedy, wowing audiences with performances that are one hundred percent improvised.  He is the author of the book Great Falls, Montana: Fast...

A Tony-honored, Obie, Rosetta LeNoire, JACL, and Asian American Arts Alliance award-winning writer, actor, director, filmmaker and advocate for inclusion. Christine’s plays and libretti have been developed with the Roundabout Theatre Company, The O'Neill Theater Center, Prospect Theater Company, National Women's Theatre Festival, Village Theatre, Ars Nova, Greater Boston Stage Company, the Abingdo...

Leaving Dublin, Ireland where he was born and raised until the age of 22, David Nihill got drunk on travel and never quite hit sobriety of it. He has lived and worked in twelve countries and visited over seventy. His storytelling and comedy shows draw on his wide travels, cultural observations, attempts at language study, (occasional) international drinking session(s) and being a mildly confused i...

Lisa Pelto, founder and CEO of Concierge Marketing Inc. Publishing Services, has been working with authors and small publishers as a publishing consultant and author services provider for over three decades. Her career in books began with an architect firm in 1980, then to an ad agency in 1986, purchasing printing and graphic design. From there, she went to Boys Town Press, where she fell head ove...

Mario "the Maker Magician" Marchese is a first generation Italian-American, New York-based touring performer, author, and maker, known for his unique brand of Robot Magic. He infuses DIY electronics and robotics into his work and uses magic to inspire kids and families to make and create without limitation. Mario has appeared on Sesame Street, NBC's Universal Kids, HGTV, and live on tour opening f...

Micah Christian is an artist passionate about storytelling, composing, and performing music that supports, enhances, and creates "moments." He is the co-founder and lead vocalist of America's Got Talent Finalist, Sons of Serendip. Career Highlights include collaborations with the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, Cynthia Erivo, performing for the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Oprah Winfrey's 2020 Vision...

A professor and head of the Department of Graphic Design, Apparel Design, Retail Merchandising, and Product Design at the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying humor, creativity, and idea generation. Dr. Kudrowitz is interested in how creativity is perceived, evaluated and learned. He has...

Engineer turned comedienne, Amy Barnes, started her stand-up career in Seattle, appearing at comedy clubs while working days in the aerospace industry. When faced with a choice between the two career paths, in a striking blow to the Girls In STEM Movement, she chose comedy. In a move to Los Angeles she began working as a comedy writer. Contributing material to the likes of Nancy Travis, Bonnie Hun...

Jason Ma (馬智培) is the son of an immigrant family and a grateful descendant of a long line of those who were able to persist, overcome, and succeed on their way to becoming Americans. In addition to writing, he's an actor who has performed extensively on Broadway and Off-Broadway stages, in regional theaters, and in many international venues. Jason is the ASCAP Foundation’s 2017 recipient of the...

A dynamic standup comic & actor with an original blend of storytelling and improvised rock-n-roll comedy. Jen was the 2017 Winner of NPR's Snap Judgement Comedic Performance of the Year for her Girl Scout Cookie Caper story. Kober received the 2018 Comedic Performance of the Year for her story titled Nana Vs. OJ. She appeared on Netflix in 2019 as she joined the casts of RuPaul's sitcom AJ & The Q...

A world-class juggler and visual artist who has performed in 45 different countries, touring solo work and collaborating with companies such as Spiegelworld, The Gandini Juggling Project, Cie Jérôme Thomas, Les 7 doigts de la main, Cirkus Cirkör, Cie Ea Eo, and Cirque du Soleil. Jay is the former head teacher of juggling at the Dans och Cirkushögskolan in Stockholm , Sweden (2000-2019), and has pu...

At the age of 15 while growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lois knew she was destined to be producer/director. What she didn’t know was that over the next 40 years she would stay in Milwaukee and produce and direct content in every industry sector: corporate, non-profit, education, healthcare, and her favorite, broadcast TV. For the past 15 years she teamed up with comedian/actor John McGivern and...

A British video game developer and director best known as the writer of Her Story, the two Silent Hill games, Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and  Immortality. He previously worked as a game director at Climax Studios before leaving in 2014 to become an independent game developer. He published his first indie game, Her Story, in June of 2015. In 2017, Sam founded Half Mer...

A musical standup comedian with appearances on Last Comic Standing and NBC’s Bring On the Funny. Kristin has six full-length comedy albums and her own Dry Bar Comedy Special. Kristin grew up a minister’s daughter in a small town in West Texas. Much like Footloose, she was raised in a no-drinking, no-dancing, no instrumental music environment, so she immediately took up drinking, dancing and playin...

An award-winning global director of cirque, cinema and stage. As a comic act designer he specializes in clowns, characters and story components. Stefan is the author of The Power of HA!Connecting Through the Heart of Humor. He studied theatre in college only to realize that his true passion lay in the cross-over to the circus arts, so he set his sights on Cirque du Soleil. As a result of his intui...

Billy McGuigan is the creator director of several internationally touring shows including Rave On! The Buddy Holly Experience, Yesterday and Today: The Interactive Beatles Experience, and Billy McGuigan’s Pop Rock Orchestra. Career highlights include performing with Buddy Holly’s contemporaries Tommy Allsup and Sonny West and headlining Las Vegas with Yesterday and Today: The Interactive Beatles E...

A production designer and illustrator from Portland known for solving visual problems across both animation and children’s books. Jenn just wrapped her next kid’s book, Cactus Queen, a non-fiction picture book written by Lori Alexander for Calkins Creek. Other recent works include designing color for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, illustrating on Henry Selick’s Wendell & Wild, and illustrating Th...

A theatre director, puppeteer, and African American theatre historian and archivist that seeks to disrupt generational curses of self-hate, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance. Intellectually curious and emotionally dexterous, Jerrell is at home in a wide range of genres including, but not limited to, American Realism, Magical Realism, Traditional and Contemporary Musical Theatre, Poetic...

More backstage banter from the green room of The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival presented by The National Comedy Center in Lucy’s hometown of Jamestown, NY. Comics from across the U.S. whose credits include Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, Last Comic Standing, Conan, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with David Letterman bring their unique brand of humor to the podcast and take the...

Backstage at The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival presented by The National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. Comics from around the nation who have appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and The Late Late Show with James Corden will be performing their newest and often truest material. This episode features Tony Deyo, Ashley Austin Morris, Adam Mamawala, Turner Spark...

An award-winning theatrical costume designer who has collaborated with The American Conservatory Theater, Teatro Zinzanni, The Roundabout Theatre Company, Cabaret Zazou, California Shakespeare Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, TheatreWorks, Classic Stage Company, Northlight Theatre, The Papermill Playhouse and The Pasadena Playhouse.  She has created...

A troupe of interdisciplinary performing artists from Pittsburgh that create original outdoor interactive music spectacles that have toured to Europe and Asia, performed Off-Broadway and on Broadway, from Lincoln Center to Stanford University, in over 250 venues in 36 of the United States and throughout Canada. Led by co-artistic directors Jackie Dempsey and Steve O’Hearn, Squonk creates joyful, b...

Often credited with single-handedly reviving the lost art of the concert poster, his creative career rose largely out of his enthusiasm for Austin’s growing underground punk rock scene in the early eighties. In 1981, he began designing and posting black and white flyers for friends’ bands on telephone poles. His reputation quickly grew as an artist whose work was graphically compelling and cultura...

Rachel Bloom is best known as the co-creator and star of the CW musical dramedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. She has won the 2016 Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy, the 2016 Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actress in a TV Comedy, and the 2016 TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. In 2019, Rachel won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics...

Jeremy Davis and Clay Johnson and their fiery 17 piece big band are collectively known as The Fabulous Equinox Orchestra.  All across North America, audiences have fallen in love with these sophisticated Southern gentleman and their high-energy show. A collection of the greatest songs, the best original arrangements and phenomenal musicianship, is the signature of these two exceptional musicians a...