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When Robert Bassett started showing his artwork 40 years ago, people were baffled. Pink cottages and seascapes were the norm; he was painting figures with elongated necks and exaggerated facial features. Critics called his work “childlike” and “untra...

The new Star Wars characters are fun, but they’ve got nothing on Yoda, according to Kathryn Mullen. She’s admittedly biased. Ms Mullen was a puppeteer for the famed character in the 1980 hit, The Empire Strikes Back. “I loved the new movie,” she sai...

Cristela Alonzo’s family were baffled when she became a comedian. They wondered why she would waste her time on comedy. Years later, the 36-year-old has more than proven the worth of a comedy career. Last year, she became the first Latina to create...

Shipwrecks, dangerous caves and exploding icebergs are all in a day’s work for Jill Heinerth. The 50-year-old diver, underwater photographer and film-maker has spent decades exploring some of the world’s most dangerous waters. She’ll be giving a lect...

Frances Cox Williams found a strange man laying in her coffin and was not pleased. She kept it under her bed, had it regularly polished and frequently took naps in it. “Get your own!” she shouted, chasing the man out of the house. Mrs Williams, who l...

Winton Brangman has the special ability of being able to smile through any number of flubbed notes and botched lyrics. Jelani Veney will fill in for missing actors at the last minute and suffers through every missed step, especially when it is his ow...

Rowan Vickers was feeling out of place as he prepared for his first professional acting role. He was neither Jewish, nor American, but had been cast in Bad Jews, a play about a Jewish family in America. The 22-year-old tried reading the Old Testament...

Growing up in the Philippines, Dustin Jose Francisco didn’t have many toys. His father struggled to raise a large family on a policeman’s salary. “When the first Transformers movie came out in 1986, I made my own robots out of cardboard,” said the 4...

A collapsing stage, an old cigarette machine and a few bits of rotting furniture were mostly all that was left inside the old Clayhouse Inn. None of it fazed filmmaker Milton Raposo. The music lover thought the once popular nightclub was the perfect...

Billy Gringley’s artwork was falling into a rut. He’d had a few solo shows but his work was taking a back seat to the maintenance and construction jobs he took to support his family. “Art takes time,” he said. “I need long stretches of time to devot...