Theresa Rebeck (born c. 1958) is an American playwright, television writer and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award.

Rebeck was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in 1983, a M.F.A. in Playwriting in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Victorian era melodrama, awarded in 1989.

Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club Production; The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage Theatre; Bad Dates and The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre in 2003. Her play The Understudy, premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2008, with a cast including Reg Rogers, Bradley Cooper and Kristen Johnson, and ran in New York at the Roundabout Theatre from October 2009 - January 2010, featuring Julie White, Justin Kirk, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the cast. Rebeck is also writing the book for the new musical Ever After, based on the Drew Barrymore movie of the same name. That show was expected to start pre-Broadway tryouts in San Francisco in April 2009, but has been indefinitely postponed. Her play, Mauritius, ran at the Pasadena Playhouse in California from March 27 through April 26, 2009.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, Éamon de Valera in Michael Collins, and Metatron in Dogma.

Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Rickman was born in South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker. Rickman's mother was from Wales and a Methodist, and his father was of Irish Catholic background. He has one elder brother, David (b. 1944), a graphic designer, a younger brother, Michael (b. 1947), a tennis coach, and a younger sister, Sheila (b. 1949). Rickman attended Derwentwater Primary School, in Acton, a school that followed the Montessori method of education.

Douglas Hughes is an American theatre and film director. He is the son of acting couple Barnard Hughes (1915–2006) and Helen Stenborg.

Staff writers (2006). "Biography: Doug Hughes". American Theater Wing. http://www.americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/doug_hughes. Retrieved 2008-05-28. 

Charles Louis Busch (born August 23, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays Off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He also wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best known play is The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.

Busch was born in 1954 and grew up in Hartsdale, New York. He is the son of Gertrude (née Young) and Benjamin Busch. His father wanted to be an opera singer but owned a record store. His mother died when Busch was age 7. He has two older sisters: Meg Busch, a producer of promotional spots for Showtime, and Betsy Busch, a textile designer. Busch’s aunt, Lillian Blum, his mother's oldest sister and a former teacher, brought him to live in Manhattan after the death of his mother. She told an interviewer: "He was so shy it was almost pathological. ... Before he moved in with me, I would pick him up in Hartsdale on a Friday afternoon, and he would be like a zombie. But the minute we crossed the river to New York he was absolutely a new boy." Busch was intensely interested in films as a young child, especially those with female leads from the 30s and 40s. Blum insisted that Busch read the front page of the newspaper every day to help him keep at least one foot in the real world.

Justin Kirk (born May 28, 1969) is an American stage and film actor. He is known for playing Prior Walter in Mike Nichols's screen adaptation of Angels in America (for which he received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series) and for his portrayal of Andy Botwin in Showtime's Weeds. He will star in the upcoming NBC sitcom Animal Practice in 2012.

Kirk was born in Salem, Oregon. His mother was of Russian Jewish descent and his father was of Danish and English ancestry. He grew up in Union, Washington, where he attended a grade school on a Native American reservation.^{[citation needed]} He moved to Minneapolis when he was 12 years old, and then to New York City after graduating from high school. Kirk played guitar in several New York bands in the early '90s, most notably The Dimestore Darlings. He also completed a two-year conservatory acting program at Circle in the Square.^{[citation needed]}

His first role on Broadway was a play called Any Given Day, which was performed at the Longacre Theatre. He also appeared in Love! Valour! Compassion! both on-screen and on stage, for which he received an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance in the Ensemble. In addition he won a Back Stage West Garland Award for Outstanding Performance on his role of a piano prodigy in Old Wicked Songs, staged at New York's Promenade Theater and Los Angeles' Geffen Playhouse.