Congratulations to the Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance alumni and faculty cited in Newcity Stage‘s annual new year’s salute to movers and shakers in Chicago’s vibrant performing-arts scene. Among those celebrated in “Players 2025: The 50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago,” posted on Newcity‘s website January 7, 2025, are these Columbia College Theatre and Dance alums:

Caroline Neff ’07, a graduate of Columbia College’s BA Program in Acting. “Neff got her start in touring plays in high school before studying under the late Sheldon Patinkin at Columbia College Chicago,” notes Newcity‘s Tristan Bruns about the two-time Joseph Jefferson Award-winning actor, who’s an ensemble member of two of Chicago’s most acclaimed theatre companies, Steppenwolf and Steep. Neff is starring in Steppenwolf’s upcoming production of Sam Shepard‘s gritty drama Fool for Love, running January 30 through March 16.

Josh Ocean Thomas ’23, a graduate of Columbia College’s Comedy Writing and Performance BA program. “I Googled ‘best colleges if you want to be a comedian,’ and Columbia College popped right up,” Thomas says of why he came to Chicago from San Diego to study at Columbia’s pace-setting comedy program. Thomas is a resident comic at the Laugh Factory Chicago; Newcity‘s Tristan Bruns calls him “one of the most happening headliners and MCs on the Chicago comedy scene,” noting that he “also tours to clubs and theaters across the country.”

Erin Kilmurray ’08, a graduate of Columbia College’s BA Program in Dance, who Newcity‘s Sharon Hoyer says “makes the sweatiest, sexiest, most raucous dance performances in Chicago.” Dancer-choreographer-entrepreneur Kilmurray is the founder and artistic director of The Fly Honeys, who call themselves “a queer-celebratory, ass-shaking, glitter-bombing, party-starting punk performance group born from the iconic annual event, The Fly Honey Show, founded in Chicago’s underground performance scene in 2010.”

Tyler Anthony Smith ’17, a graduate of Columbia College’s BA Program in Acting. An actor, performance artist, and playwright, Smith is an ensemble member of Hell in a Handbag Productions, which produced Smith’s gender-bending comedy hits Poor People! The Parody Musical and Frankenstreisand.

Jenn Freeman, also known as Po’Chop, a former student in Columbia College’s Dance program, whose new one-person multimedia performance piece Thick: A Crumbling Freak Show will be featured in the Chicago Solo Spotlight Festival at the Dance Center of Columbia College March 14 and 15.

Also listed in Newcity Stage‘s “Players 2025” are Columbia College School of Theatre and Dance faculty members Jen Ellison, artistic director at The Second City – the nation’s leading comedy theatre and training center and Columbia College’s institutional partner for the Comedy Writing and Performance BA Program – and Tommy Rivera-Vega, a member of the artistic collective at Chicago’s Teatro Vista and a teacher in the Columbia College School of Theatre and Dance’s Musical Theatre Program.

As Newcity Stage publisher Brian Hieggelke writes in his introduction to Players 2025: “Chicago stages have been described as petri dishes for talent development, with the city seen as a particularly fertile launching pad for the stars of tomorrow, whether in acting, comedy, writing or dance. And they are that, thanks to an ethos that prioritizes bold experiments over safe choices, that understands failure as a necessary step toward success and, especially, champions community over competition. And this year’s class of Players disproves the idea that you have to leave Chicago to make it; this is a place for shooting stars and burning suns, and we’re privileged to bask in the warmth of both.”