Meet Your Co-Hosts!
Mary Chieffo
Mary Chieffo received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Juilliard in 2015, winning the Elizabeth Smith Voice and Speech Prize and the Saint-Denis Prize for “Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Drama.” In her fourth year, she took on the title character in Erica Schmidt’s all-female Macbeth, reprising the role with Schmidt in 2016 for Seattle Repertory Theatre’s The Other Season. After portraying Iago in October 2015 for Harlem Shakespeare Festival's all-female Othello, Mary participated in workshops of Lover, Beloved: An Evening With Carson McCullers—a one-woman show written by Grammy Award-winning Suzanne Vega and Tony- and Grammy Award-winning Duncan Sheik. She performed the piece at the Sherry Theatre in LA and at the Alley Theatre in Houston, TX in March and August of 2016. Mary stars as Jane in the upcoming webseries Digital Detox—a futuristic rendering of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper—opposite her fellow Group 44 alumnus Justin Lawrence Barnes, directed by Amber Benson (Buffy The Vampire Slayer). Mary has become known internationally as the Klingon Commander L’Rell on Star Trek: Discovery—a strong, smart female warrior struggling to reunify the Klingon Empire, a particularly patriarchal alien society. She hopes to use her newfound platform to bring about greater intersectional gender equality in front and behind the scenes in the entertainment industry and beyond. To that end, Mary is currently producing, writing, and starring in a feminist, gender, and color conscious Shakespeare adaptation alongside Viola Davis (Group 22) and Julius Tennon's JuVee Productions. She is thrilled to reveal more details about the project soon!
Austin Smith
Austin Smith received his Artist Diploma from the Juilliard Drama Division’s Group 43 in 2014, and made his professional debut starring in Soho Rep’s Obie-Award winning production of An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at Theatre for a New Audience. He is also an original Broadway cast member of Hamilton (Aaron Burr and George Washington u/s). Other Off-Broadway credits include the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Lincoln Center Theater, starring Marisa Tomei and directed by Rebecca Taichman, as well as the world premiere of Zurich by Amelia Roper at New York Theater Workshop. Austin’s television credits include Odd Mom Out and the upcoming HBO series, Random Acts of Flyness.