SPEAKER: STEPHEN COLE | ENTERTAINER: CHRISTINE PEDI

Forty-five dollar admission includes a three-course lunch payable at the door by cash or check only

Stephen Cole is an award-winning musical theatre writer whose shows have been produced from New York City to London to the Middle East and Australia. His produced musicals include DODSWORTH starring Hal Linden, AFTER THE FAIR (Outer Critics Nominee for Best Musical), TIME AFTER TIME, GROSSINGERS starring Gavin McLeod & Ruta Lee, and THE ROAD TO QATAR! (Best Musical Dallas Critics Circle), INVENTING MARY MARTIN, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Kleban Award) CASPER starring Chita Rivers, MERMAN'S APPRENTICE (SF Critics Award for Best Score.) Stephen's books include THAT BOOK ABOUT THAT GIRL and I COULD HAVE SUNG ALL NIGHT, the Marni Nixon story (currently in development as a feature film from Amazon) and his debut novel, MARY & ETHEL...AND MIKEY WHO? Stephen is a Hermitage Fellow. Visit www.stephencolewriter.org

Christine Pedi, the “Lady of 1000 Voices,"  first discovered her talent for multiple personalities (Merman, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters etc) thru her long association with the legendary off Broadway revue FORBIDDEN BROADWAY  having performed in companies all over the world including Londons West End, Japan, Los Angeles, NYC, Singapore & DEEtroit.  She received a Drama Desk nomination for her work in FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD (Liza, Rosie Perez, Judi Dench, Sharon Stone etc) as well as an LA Ovation & NAACP Award. She also brought her collection of Divas to off B'ways long running  NEWSICAL the Musical  and  recently starred in and co-produced SPAMILTON: An American Parody written by Forbidden Broadways creator Gerard Allessandrini.

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On Broadway she   played Mama Morton ( yes just one character...all night) in the 2nd longest running musical of all time CHICAGO   (THE longest running AMERICAN musical BTW.)  Her Broadway debut was in LITTLE ME with Martin Short & Faith Prince, directed by Rob Marshall and she played several peculiar callers (again with the voices) opposite Liev Schreiber (well not opposite ... she was in the basement of the Longacre Theatre talking into a microphone while he was acting and smoking on stage but it was dynamic) in Eric Bogosians TALK RADIO directed by Robert Falls.