Anna Deavere Smith has been hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theater.” She began interviewing people across the country 20 years ago. Without props, sets, or costumes, she translates those encounters into profound performances, each drawing verbatim from the original recorded interview.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Emmy Award-winning journalist David Novarro is co-anchor of Eyewitness News First on Channel 7 WABC-TV in New York. A native of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Queens, Novarro started his career with Eyewitness News as a college intern and rose through the ranks to become a reporter.

20ll marked Alison Stewart’s twentieth year as a professional journalist. In 2010-2011 she hosted the PBS news magazine Need to Know. In 2007 Stewart was the founding host of NPR’s breakthrough multiplatform news program, The Bryant Park Project, the first public radio news program to seamlessly incorporate audio, video, and social media.