Theater Look In: Ragtime
Company members of Ragtime give an insider's look into the production of Ragtime, their professional experiences, and answer questions from the audience.
Quentin Earl Darrington (Coalhouse Walker Jr.) is honored and humbled to be making his Kennedy Center debut! A native of Lakeland, FL, and graduate of the University of South Florida, he was accepted into the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's repertory theater company, and later through Ruth Eckerd Hall, landed his first national tour. Credits include: A Little Night Music (Sacramento Music Circus), Dreamgirls (Madame Walker Theatre), The Lion King (Broadway National Tour), Abyssinia (Goodspeed Opera House), and Ragtime (Paper Mill Playhouse). Recently, Quentin has been touring the country as "Pa" in The Color Purple. As this journey brings Q full circle, he considers his favorite and most treasured role to be...Daddy! To my little kings, Oshea, Magnus, and Noble, you are always with me and I love you. My purpose is to inspire all people any and everywhere to love.
Manoel Felciano (Tateh) recently starred as Jan in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'N' Roll (A.C.T./Huntington, ETRA nomination). Broadway: Toby in Sweeney Todd (Tony nomination), Brooklyn, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret. Off-Broadway: Trumpery, Shockheaded Peter, Much Ado About Nothing (NYSF/Public Theater). Regional: ThreeSisters (Williamstown), title role in Sunday in the Park with George, I Just Stopped By to See The Man, Turandot: The Rumble for the Ring. Film: Uncertainty. TV: The Unusuals (upcoming ABC), Life on Mars, One Life to Live, All My Children. Concerts: The World Of Nick Adams with Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks (San Francisco Symphony), world premiere of Nathaniel Stookey's Zipperz with Pulitzer Prize nominee Eisa Davis (Oakland Symphony). BA: Yale MFA: NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program. Moonshot, his debut album of originals is available for sale in the gift shop and he recently completed the online songwriting project SundaySongs 2008. Following Ragtime, Mano will return to his hometown of San Francisco to star as Jerry in A.C.T.'s production of Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo (Peter and Jerry). Producing credits include the New York workshop presentations of The Hidden Sky and I Just Stopped By to See the Man. mano.felciano.com.
Donna Migliaccio (Emma Goldman, Ensemble) National Tour: Guys & Dolls (50th Anniversary Tour). Regional: Kennedy Center: Broadway: Three Generations, The Brand New Kid, Sunday in the Park with George; Signature Theatre: Assassins, Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, Urinetown, Into the Woods; Theater J: David in Shadow & Light; Shlemiel the First; MetroStage: The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!; Olney Theatre Center: Cinderella, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well; Arden Theatre: The Dinosaur Musical; Philadelphia Theatre Company: Elegies: A Song Cycle; San Francisco's Theatre on the Square: Dirty Blonde. Honors: Helen Hayes Awards (1992 and 2007; eight additional nominations); nominee, 2005 Barrymore Awards (Philadelphia).
Leslie Jacobson (Moderator) Leslie Jacobson is the founding Artistic Director of Horizons Theatre, now embarking on its 32nd year of production and the "longest running" women's theater in the U.S. As a playwright, director and teacher, Jacobson has committed her 30-plus years in the professional theater to creating and producing work that addresses many of the issues which plague our contemporary society- issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, and other de-humanizing methods or categorizing the individual. In the past five years, she has been working with a community in Winterfeldt, South Africa, creating theater with at-risk youth. She has been nominated three times for Helen Hayes Awards in the Category of Outstanding Direction. She is a professor of theater at The George Washington University and helped to inaugurate the Women in the Arts program at George Washington's Mt. Vernon Campus, and the MFA in Classical Acting with the Shakespeare Theatre. She has recently returned from a 5 month Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship doing and studying theater in Australia.
