FastForward Interviews Ania O’Hare, head of Casting & Talent

WRITERS/REPORTERS: Kylie Sebastian, Zadie Winthrop and Jackie Chin (Freshmen at San Domenico, Urban High of San Francisco and Convent Sacred Heart Preparatory schools)

‘Inspired, passionate, and family-oriented’

That’s how Ania O’Hare, head of television casting & talent relations for DreamWorks Television Animation, describes the workplace environment at her successful and forward-thinking company. A three-time Emmy® Award-winner, O’Hare has helped bring some of our favorite movie characters to life: the fierce yet adorable Puss in Boots, Poppy in Trolls: The Beat Goes On! and the roles of Boss Baby in The Boss Baby: Back in Business.

Managing the casting decisions of more than a dozen up-and-coming DreamWorks television series is no easy task; it’s O’Hare’s job to influence who will be the voices in DreamWorks’ She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the next Blinky the troll in DreamWorks’ Tales of Arcadia: Trollhunters, and many other built-from-scratch characters. Matching a voice against the imaginations of millions isn’t in most job descriptions, and when O’Hare began her career, she had no idea she’d end up working in animation at all. Determined to venture into the unknown, she packed her bags and her accounting know-how and headed for Los Angeles, across the continent from the Boston where she grew up and half a world away from her native Poland.

WRITER: C. C. CLARK
REPORTERS: Sabine Lloyd, Lily Baldwin, Kylar Flynn, Brandon Lopez, Kyle Austin, Simone Harper, Angie Gonzalez, Jacqui Martin, Lauren McKechnie, Claire McKechnie, Samantha Michaels, Josh Santos, Anna Silverman, Campbell Slavin, Lilli Wanninger

“From WBEZ Chicago it’s This American Life, I’m Ira Glass...stay with us.”

On the surface this unremarkable sentence provides the bare minimum of information and nothing but: radio station, title, host. And yet whenever we hear those nine words—whether it’s on the bedroom radio, through headphones on the bus, or anywhere in between—a sense of calm washes over us.

Perhaps it’s the familiarity of the delivery that’s so soothing. The pauses and intonations are always the same, and when we hear this exact and particular series of soundwaves, our senses alert us that we’re about to hear stories that will make us think, laugh, or cry—sometimes all three at once. But the thing we love most about that sentence? “Stay with us.” It’s an ongoing invitation to take an unforgettable journey into the challenging lives of complex people not unlike ourselves. And in that spirit we invite you to peer into the life of the show’s erudite host, Ira Glass. From Marin County, California, it’s FastForward…stay with us.

FastForward interviews Actors Therese Phaelan and Luis Vega

By Zadie Winthrop, Kylie Sebastian and Jackie Chin; Freshmen at San Domencio, Sacred Heart Preparatory and Urban High Schools

The Humans, a play by Stephen Karam about our fears and hopes, interspersed with many laughs was indeed a “family thriller.” The play swept the Tony Awards in 2016 and received “Best Play of the Year” from major newspapers and magazines across the country. We witnessed a family with members of different generations coming together at a Thanksgiving dinner, while sharing their opinions and life experiences at the Los Angeles engagement of The Humans presented by Center Theatre Group at the Ahmanson Theatre this summer. The play was comical, sometimes sad and emotional, as family members shared raw emotions, nonetheless demonstrating their love and unity as a family.