Tony, Grammy and Emmy-winning actor and Broadway legend André De Shields narrates Making Lincoln, a new podcast from The HISTORY® Channel that takes you inside the life of our 16th President to discover how Abraham Lincoln, a boy from the frontiers of Indiana, became the one leader who could heal a nation put asunder by civil war. Each episode will bring together leading historians, authors, and journalists to paint in vivid detail the forces that made the man Lincoln would become. Click here to listen to the podcast.
In a career spanning more than half a century, André De Shields has acquired a number of sobriquets, among them–“Broadway Deity,” “Professional Charmer” and “Papa Dré.” A showstopper at age 76, André was the triple-crown winner of the 2019 award season, garnering Tony, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Grammy Awards for his universally praised role as Hermes, Messenger to the Gods, in Hadestown. De Shields has also distinguished himself as director, philanthropist and educator. His defining theatrical performances include roles in the original Broadway productions of The Full Monty (Tony Award nomination), Play On! (Tony Award nomination), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Emmy Award) and the titular role in The Wiz. Currently, De Shields is experiencing growing pains as he prepares for his next adventure as Actor/Activist, eradicating the inauthentic while elevating the inexplicable. Ubuntu!www.andredeshields.com
André will return to Broadway on September 19 with Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke in the Young Vic/West end production of Death of a Salesman at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre.
He can currently be seen as Purple Presley in Season 3 of Apple TV+ HELPSTERS.
André recently celebrated National Honor Our LGBTQ Elders Day in Las Vegas with Miss Nevada Kataluna Enriquez.
You can catch André on PBS, beginning Wednesday, June 4 in the TRUE COLORS LGBTQ+ Our Stories, Our Songs Concert with Maestro Luke Frazier’s American Pops Orchestra.
On Monday, June 13, André will receive the Red Bull Theater’s Matador Award for Achievement in Classical Theater at the REVELRY Benefit Gala.
On Sunday, June 19, André will perform excerpts from his solo show, André De Shields is Frederick Douglass: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory for two performances only, at Flushing Town Hall.
This summer, André will star in a limited engagement of the World Premiere of Matthew Lombardo’s When Playwrights Kill, July 26 through August 7, 2022 at The Bushnell’s Belding Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut.
(© Matthew Murphy / Lia Chang)
BWW Feature: The Best of 2021 Cabaret, Club, and Concert André De Shields: BLACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: A MUSICAL MEDITATION ON HOW NOT TO BE EATEN BY THE SPHINX Wins 2021 BroadwayWorld Cabaret Award
LIA CHANG is a Chinese-American actor, a multi-media content producer, an award-winning filmmaker, and a photo activist and documentarian, who lifts up and amplifies BIPOC communities and artists and the institutions that support them. Lia moved to New York from her home in San Francisco when she was 17 years of age and made her stage debut as Liat in a national tour of South Pacific with Barbara Eden and Robert Goulet. She spent many years working extensively Off-Broadway, including Signature Theatre’s revival of Sam Shepard’s Chicago. Her film work includes Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Last Dragon. The decades of being viewed by others through the narrow lens of “Asian actor” in the industry brought Lia to a turning point, and she picked up her camera, determined to create awareness by documenting the work and the lives of her BIPOC colleagues, resulting in the creation of thousands of photographs and pieces of video. Her photo archives are housed in the AAPI collection in the Library of Congress’ Asian Reading Room under “Lia Chang Theater Portfolio collection,1989-2011” and in the “Lia Chang Photography Collection” in The Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library. Lia’s awards include the 2000 OCA Chinese American Journalist Award, the 2001 AAJA National Award for New Media and the 2022 Prospect Muse Award. She is also an AAJA Executive Leadership Graduate, a Western Knight Fellow at USC’s Annenberg College of Communications for Specialized Journalism on Entertainment Journalism in the Digital Age, a National Press Photographers Association Visual Edge/Visual Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute for New Media, and a Scripps Howard New Media Fellow at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. More recently, Lia co-founded Bev’s Girl Films, which makes films that foster inclusion and diversity on both sides of the camera. She executive produced and starred in the indie films Hide and Seek (AA Film Lab’s 2015 72 Hour Shootout Best Actress Nomination), Rom-Com Gone Wrong, and When the World Was Young (2021 DisOrient Film Audience Choice Award for Best Short Narrative). Lia is honored to have worked with Prospect Theater Company on a shared mission of lifting up BIPOC theater artists and creating a more diverse and inclusive musical theater canon. A retrospective of Lia’s photographs will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York later this year, documenting her BIPOC colleagues and contemporaries in the performing arts, which will include photos of Prospect Theater Company artists at work. www.liachang.com, www.liachangphotography.com
Backstage Pass with Lia Chang 