NOTABLE GUESTS
As part of educating our Theatre students, we invite renowned actors and actresses and cast members from a variety of Plays and Musicals to come and visit with LWHS Theatre students. They talk about their work, their career path, their education and provide background perspective for the character they are currently portraying. Sometimes they also perform a scene or song.
Some of our guests are quite famous. As you can imagine this "close and personal" is a real thrill for our students.
James Earl Jones II
James visited LWHS in October 2018, as he was in town to portray Bob and other characters in the International Tour of Come From Away. And this is not James' first rodeo on tour. Previous he was on the road with Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
Calling Chicago home, regional credits as noted in his biography include: Porchlight Music Theatre; Goodman Theatre; Marriott Theatre; Court Theatre; Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Writers Theatre; Lookingglass; Lyric Opera of Chicago; San Francisco Opera; Ravinia Festival; Broadway in Chicago. TV/Film credits: Pokerhouse, Half-Bad, Chicago Med and Empire. Download James singing Sunday Morning from the movie “Breaking In” starring Gabrielle Union, on iTunes. Thanks to friends & family, Stewart Talent, Telsey and Chris Ashley. For my daughter Semaje.
James Earl Jones II is third cousin to his name sake from Star Wars fame.
Thanks James for your visit.
Joshua Grosso
Joshua visited LWHS Theatre in June of 2018, as he was in town performing as Marius in the touring version of Les Miserables.
Joshua Grosso is a Musical Theatre major at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama. He has the distinction of being the winner of the 2012 National High School Musical Theater Award for Best Performance by an Actor; his award-winning performance was presented at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre. Joshua was also featured in the PBS documentary Broadway or Bust. He recently took part in his first professional reading, Tinyard Hill, at Arts Garage's Summer Tune-Up series.
Pittsburghers may know him from shows during his college career, including The Full Monty for director Patrick Wilson, and as Fabrizio in The Light in the Piazza for Front Porch Productions. Television audiences got to know him as the best actor winner of the 2012 Jimmy Awards — the National High School Musical Theater program co-founded by Pittsburgh CLO’s Van Kaplan — which were filmed for the PBS documentary Broadway or Bust.
Since then he has appeared in In The Heights and most recently he can be seen in the TV Series Rise.
Thanks for coming Joshua, it was a blast.