Edward Harrigan (October 26, 1844 – June 6, 1911) was an American actor, playwright, theatre manager, and composer. Harrigan and Tony Hart formed the first famous collaboration in American musical theatre.

Harrigan was born in New York and of Irish lineage. He made his first acting appearance in San Francisco in 1867, and soon afterwards formed a stage partnership with Tony Hart (1855–1891), whose real name was Anthony Cannon. As "Harrigan and Hart," they had a great success on tour in the presentation of comic types of lower class characters drawn from everyday life on the streets of New York, especially the ethnic neighborhood "militias". Beginning as simple vaudeville sketches, Harrigan gradually worked these up into plays, with occasional songs, set to popular music by David Braham. The titles of these plays indicate their character, The Mulligan Guards, Squatter Sovereignty, A Leather Patch, The O'Regans.

By 1878, with The Mulligan Guard Picnic, Harrigan & Hart settled down on Broadway and played in seventeen of their shows over the next seven years (until Harrigan and Hart split up). Though still broad and farcical, these shows featured music that was integrated with a more literary story line, together with the dialogue and dance, and the shows began to resemble modern musical comedy. Harrigan wrote the stories and lyrics, and Braham wrote the music. These shows were very popular especially with New York's immigrant-based lower and middle classes, who were delighted to see themselves comically (but sympathetically) depicted on stage. The action of the plays took place in downtown Manhattan and concerned real-life problems, such as interracial tensions, political corruption, and gang violence, all mixed together with broad, street-smart comedy, puns and ethnic dialects. Harrigan played the politically ambitious Irish saloon owner "Dan Mulligan", and Hart played the African-American washerwoman "Rebecca Allup".

Michael "Mick" Moloney (b. November 15, 1944) is a traditional Irish musician and scholar. Born in Limerick, County Limerick, he was an important figure on the Dublin folk-song revival in the 1960s. In 1973, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He gained early fame as a member of Irish group The Johnstons and The Emmet Spiceland but has since performed and recorded with a variety of groups and individuals, including Eugene O'Donnell and Séamus Egan, and Marie & Martin Reilly; he also worked closely with The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. Mick also served as the artistic director for several major arts tours including The Green Fields of America, an ensemble of Irish musicians, singers and dancers which toured across the United States on several occasions. In all, he has produced and performed on over forty albums, and acted as advisor for scores of festivals and concerts all over America.

In 1992, Moloney received a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. For his work in public folklore, he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the NEA, the highest honor a traditional artist can receive from the United States. In 1999, he was named "best tenor-banjo player" by Frets magazine. He has taught ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish studies courses at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, and Villanova Universities, and currently teaches at New York University in the Irish Studies program.