Celebrity Guests


Kurt Elling

Enjoy the in-depth and intimate conversation above with Kurt Elling and Fear No ART host, Elysabeth Alfano. On Friday, September 30, the Union League Club of Chicago will proudly induct jazz vocalist and composer Kurt Elling as a Distinguished Musician. Kurt Elling (born November 2, 1967) is an American jazz vocalist, composer, lyricist and vocalese Read more…

The Interrupters

Tickets for the June 25th Dinner Party, click here. Steve James is the award-winning director, producer, and co-editor of Kartemquin’s Hoop Dreams, which won every major critics award as well as a Peabody and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1995. The film earned James the Directors Guild of America Award and the MTV Movie Read more…

Rick Kogan

Named Chicago’s Best Reporter and a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, Rick Kogan is a senior writer and columnist for the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday section and creator and host of “The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan” on WGN-AM. Kogan began his career at 16, working for the Chicago Sun-Times during the tumultuous Read more…

Charles Osgood

Charles Osgood was born in Milwaukee and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He graduated from Ripon College and later studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a master of fine arts degree in photography. He began his journalism career as a reporter for City News Bureau, the legendary Chicago training ground for Read more…

Marc Smith

It’s the 25th year Anniversary Party-Extravaganza of the Poetry Slam! Join host Elysabeth Alfano on Fear No ART and go behind the scenes of the Green Mill in Chicago with performance poet Marc Smith. Marc Smith is a performance poet and the creator and founder of the International Poetry Slam movement.  As stated in the Read more…

Susan Messing

In this episode of Fear No ART Chicago, host Elysabeth Alfano goes behind the scenes with improviser Susan Messing, just minutes before her TBS Just For Laughs performance with Michael Patrick Thornton at the Annoyance Theatre. Then, in a rare, unedited interview, Elysabeth talks with Susan and Michael on the stage of the Annoyance Theatre, Read more…

Michael Patrick Thornton

Michael Patrick Thornton was a guest on the February 2013 Dinner Party. In this rare and unedited interview, Elysabeth Alfano, of Fear No ART, talks to Michael Patrick Thornton and Susan Messing on the stage of The Annoyance Theatre just minutes after their performance for the TBS Just For Laughs comedy Festival.  In Susan’s interview, Read more…

Jon Langford

Jon performs at the Jan. 30 Fear No ART presents The Dinner Party.   The Dinner Party broadcasts live the last Monday night of every month on FearNoART.tv  For more information and to be a guest in the audience of a future Dinner Party, click here. The CD/Book release party for “Skull Orchard Revisited” is a Read more…

Joan Cusack

Here is a clip from Elysabeth’s show, Fear No Art,  on Chicago’s PBS station, WTTW. Joan Cusack began her acting career at The Piven Theatre Worshop, studying under Byne and Joyce Piven and crediting Joyce Piven with being instrumental in her acting career and he “artist mother”. Cusack has twice been nominated for Academy Award Read more…

Joyce Piven & Joan Cusack

JOYCE PIVEN (Co-Founder / Artistic Director Emeritus) was one of the founding members and leading actresses at Playwrights’ Theatre, the group that spawned Compass Players and Second City.  With Playwright’s Theatre, she played leading roles in Midsummer Nights Dream, The Seagull, The Dybbuk, Round Dance and Caucasian Chalk Circle and studied extensively with Uta Hagen Read more…