Staged Reading of Crisis in Queens by Joy Behar

Joy Behar is an Emmy award winning co-host of The View. Acting TV credits include Baby Boom, and Woody Allen’s Crisis in Six Scenes. She has performed stand-up comedy for over thirty years and appeared in several films, including Nora Ephron’s This is Your Life, and Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery.  In theatre, she starred in Nicky Silver’s The Food Chain, and The Vagina Monologues. She wrote and starred in her own one woman show, Me, My Mouth,  and I, which ran at The Cherry Lane Theatre. Most recently, she wrote a book, The Great Gasbag: An A to Z Guide to Surviving Trump World. She is currently writing plays during the pandemic to keep her sane. 

John Gould Rubin, Artistic Director of The Private Theater, for which he directed a site-specific Hedda Gabler, a radical deconstruction of Strindberg’s Playing With Fire at The Box and Rocco, Chelsea, Adriana, Sean, Claudia, Gianna, Alex at HERE; and former co-Artistic and Executive Director of LAByrinth, for which he directed 7 plays including premieres by John Patrick Shanley and Erin Cressida Wilson. He’s directed throughout NYC at Rattlestick, Ma-Yi, and The Public among others, notably: Turn Me Loose (w/Joe Morton) at The Westside (nominated Best Director Jos. Callaway Award/SDC), The Wallis-Annenberg in LA and Arena Stage in DC; Peer Gynt at The International Ibsen Festival in Oslo, Norway, Queen For A Day (w/David Proval & Vinnie Pastore off-Broadway,) The Cherry Orchard (w/Ellen Burstyn at The Actor’s Studio,) American Buffalo (w/Treat Williams and Stephen Adly Guirgis.) Current projects: A Doll House radically re-imagined w/The Private Theatre, Godless by Michael Ricigliano, Jr. off-Broadway, a radically re-imagined, King Lear w/Joe Morton at The Wallis Annenberg in LA and the premier of Emmett: Down in my Heart at the H.A.U. Theater to be co-produced with Label-Noir, an Afro-German theater company, in Berlin, Germany.

Steven Weber made his NY stage debut opposite Geraldine Page in Odets' Paradise Lost and soon made it to Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. After a stint on As the World Turns he went on to appear in The Flamingo Kid, Hamburger Hill, Single White Female, The Temp, Jeffrey and Dracula: Dead and Loving It!"On TV Weber played the young JFK in the miniseries The Kennedy's of Massachusetts and Jack Torrence in ABC’s remake of The Shining.

But it was the NBC sitcom Wings, where Weber gained national attention, and again 10 years later in Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip where he received wide critical praise. Returning to the stage, Weber played "Leo Bloom" in the hit Broadway production The Producers, starred in National Anthems at London’s Old Vic and again on Broadway opposite Matthew Broderick in The Philanthropist as well as appearing at The Hollywood Bowl in acclaimed productions of Mamma Mia and Annie. Other tv projects include Murder In the First, Chasing Life, IZombie and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Most recently he was seen on HBO’s Ballers, 13 Reasons Why, Get Shorty, and opposite Fran Drescher in NBC’s Indebted. He is also a notable audiobook narrator, winning awards for his
reading of Stephen King’s It, among many others.

He can currently be seen on NBC’s hit drama Chicago Med.

Irene Sofia Lucio is an actress, writer and producer. She originated and developed her role in Slave Play which closed its Broadway run in January. Her NY credits include: Wit (Broadway), Slave Play (NYTW), Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb), Orange Julius (Rattlestick), Love and Information (NYTW), King Liz (Second Stage). Regional credits include El Huracan, Romeo and Juliet (Yale Rep), Bad Jews (Studio Theater DC), Pygmalion (CalShakes). Film and TV: The Americans, The Bartlett, Elementary, Gossip Girl, Casi Casi. She is known for co-creating the viral webseries: Bilingual Underrepresented Titless Sallies (BUTS)- which was nominated twice for an Imagen award and won the Best Comedic short award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival. She is in pre-production of an animated series and developing several TV shows. A member of the Actor's Center, she graduated from Princeton University and the Yale School of Drama. She is originally from San Juan, PR. 

An icon of stage and screen, Brenda Vaccaro has been nominated for an Academy Award, won Emmy and Golden Globe Awards, a Theater World Award, People’s Choice Award and been nominated three times for a Tony Award. 

This year, Brenda Vaccaro Joins HBO MAX’s Original Show … “And Just Like That…” The new chapter of the groundbreaking HBO series “Sex and the City”. Brenda Vaccaro plays Gloria Marquette, Mr. Big’s loyal, long-time secretary. 

Born in Brooklyn, Brenda was raised in Dallas, Texas, she returned to New York City to enroll in the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse and later debuted on Broadway in John Patrick’s play Everybody Loves Opal, with Eileen Heckart, for which she received a Theatre World Award. She later starred on Broadway in shows including “The Affair,” “The Natural Look,” “Children from Their Games,” “Father’s Day,” and Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women,” and “The Odd Couple.” In California, she starred in the one-woman show “Full Gallop,” as fashion mogul Diana Vreeland. She was nominated for Tony Awards for her performances in the Abe Burrows comedy “Cactus Flower,” Herb Gardner’s “The Goodbye People,” and George Abbott’s musical “How Now, Dow Jones.” Vaccaro next starred in the Academy Award-winning film “Midnight Cowboy,” which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination. 

Vaccaro went on to star in numerous films, including “Going Home,” “Capricorn One,” “Airport ’77,” “I Love My Wife,” “Summertree,” “Supergirl” “Love Affair,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” “Cookie,” “Boynton Beach Club,” earned a Golden Globe nomination for “Where It’s At,” and won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for “Once Is Not Enough.”

Aside from making guest appearances on such shows as Friends, Superior Donuts and King and Queens, Vaccaro was Emmy- nominated for guesting on “The Golden Girls” and for Barry Levinson’s HBO film “You Don’t Know Jack.” She can also be seen on Netflix’s “Gypsy,” and most recently in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” 

Ms. Vaccaro has starred on television in three series of her own: “Sara,” for which she was an Emmy Award nominee, “Dear Detective,” and “Paper Dolls.” She won an Emmy Award for her performance on the comedy special “The Shape of Things.” 

Among her other many notable telefilms and miniseries are Stanley Kramer’s “The Trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,” “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones,” “Sunshine,” “Honor Thy Father,” “A Long Way Home,” and “The Pride of Jesse Hallam.” 

Vaccaro was the voice of ‘Mama Bravo’ on “Johnny Bravo,” and ‘Scruple’ on “The Smurfs.” Her other voice work includes roles on such series as “American Dad,” “Spawn,” and “Darkwing Duck.” She can be heard in the Oscar-nominated “Kubo and the Two Strings.” 

Film: Just released: Werewolves Within. Upcoming releases Red Pill (PAFF); Worth (Sundance); What Breaks the Ice (Woodstock Film Fest). Released 2020: Bad Education; Blush; Inside the Rain; The Half of It, First One In. TV: Recurring leads on Stranger Things, Homeland, Orange is the New Black, and Insecure. More TV: Awkwafina, Tommy, The Loudest Voice, Blacklist, Mindhunter, Bull, and Surveillance. Winner: SAG Award for Best Ensemble 2015 and 2016, OITNB and nominated SAG Award Best Ensemble 2018 Stranger Things. More Film: 18&12; Kendra & Beth; The Artists Wife; Beauty Mark; Goldstar; The Light of the Moon; Crazy Famous; Breaking Brooklyn; Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close; The Wolf of Wall Street; The Bourne Legacy; Catfight. Insta or Twitter: #@catecurtin

Dave Quay is a New York-based actor, filmmaker, and writer. He has appeared onstage in New York and regionally with theaters including the Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Classic Stage Company, Royal Shakespeare Company,   Theatre for a New Audience, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Alliance Theatre, Dorset Theater Festival, and Big Apple Circus. TV/Film credits include House of Cards (Netflix), Gotham (FOX), Blindspot (NBC), Bull (CBS), The Looming Tower (Hulu), Royal Pains (USA), and Ben Lewin's Catcher Was a Spy starring Paul Rudd. His directing credits include commercial, documentary, and narrative film, and he has taught and directed at New York Film Academy and NYU. Dave holds an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting.

Called one of the "hardest working actors in show business” by Entertainment Weekly magazine, Matt has been working as an actor on stage and in front of the camera for over 30 years—with leading roles on many celebrated cable shows like Cinemax’s “Banshee”, Showtime’s “Brotherhood” and--more recently—playing Gov. Sweeney on “Billions”.   However, he is probably best known for his role as FBI Agent Dwight Harris on HBO’s “The Sopranos”—a role he played for all 7 seasons and for which he won a SAG Award in 2007 as a member of the “Best Dramatic Ensemble”. Matt has recently turned his focus and talents to working behind the camera—writing and directing for both TV (Adult Swim) and film, including the award winning shorts “Matthew” and “Good Head” and the new feature film “A Town Called Purgatory”.