Broadway stars emphasize 'now is the time' for all to act
philanthropically at Town & Country summit
[October 30, 2025]
By JAMES POLLARD
NEW YORK (AP) — Philanthropy isn't so different from theater for Tony
Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell.
“Life is a collaborative art,” explained Mitchell, one of Broadway’s
preeminent leading men for more than two decades and a leader who
steered the industry's support of performing arts professionals as the
longtime chair of The Entertainment Community Fund. “It’s about people
working together to make something impossible happen.”
And, just as a stage production requires the combined talents of
celebrated actors and behind-the-scenes stagehands across professions
and socioeconomic statuses, Mitchell finds there are “all kinds of ways”
for everyone to lend a helping hand. He brought that message Tuesday to
Town & Country's annual Philanthropy Summit, where fellow stars John
Leguizamo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff and Celia
Keenan-Bolger emphasized that the current moment asks everyone to donate
at least something of their time, talent or treasure.
The lifestyle magazine cast the stakes in stark terms with year-end
“giving season” fast approaching: between the Trump administration's
vast cuts to social services grants and recent Bank of America findings
that the share of households who give charitably is declining, staff
wrote, the onus “is on an ever shrinking number of us.”
Mitchell would know a thing or two about living philanthropically: he
brought joy to his New York City neighborhood during the early pandemic
shutdowns with simple nightly serenades from his apartment window and
became a co-founding member of Black Theatre United when 2020's racial
justice movement brought new attention to Broadway’s lack of diversity.
“Wherever you look, all over the world, everything seems to be going a
little bit crazy,” Mitchell said. “People feel very off centered and out
of phase, and they’re not able to find their own happy part. And I think
the easiest, quickest way to do that is to help others and give to
people that are less fortunate.”
The summit highlighted business' responsibility to alleviate stress
during such an uncertain time for the nonprofit sector. Companies are
uniquely positioned to rally employees and consumers around charitable
causes through workplace giving programs and point-of-sale nonprofit
partnerships, a panel of corporate philanthropists told the audience at
Hearst Tower.
Shortly after the 2008 financial crisis plunged the world into a
recession, Carol Hamilton pushed L’Oréal's luxury brands to raise
millions of dollars for UNICEF's safe water efforts. Now, fresh off
retiring from her position as L’Oréal's U.S. president of acquisitions,
she said she is rallying her former beauty industry colleagues to
support a new UNICEF initiative empowering girls to shape national
policies and tackle issues such as gender-based violence.
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Andrew Dunckelman speaks on a panel at the Town & Country
Philanthropy Summit on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP
Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
 Hamilton said hers is an example of
corporate giving's “force multiplier." At Napa Valley conferences
and book launches, she said she has garnered interest from other
cosmetics leaders who trust L’Oréal's legitimacy when it comes to
philanthropy.
“There's, I think, more willingness to support the cause I'm
creating because it seems to have legs and credibility,” Hamilton
said. “I didn't just leave L’Oréal and say, ‘Oh, I want to become
philanthropic. It seems like a good thing to do.’”
The summit also elevated Harlem's National Black Theatre as a model
for responsible public-private commitments to once-disinvested
communities. National Black Theatre CEO Sade Lythcott is
redeveloping the historic 125th Street space into a
multi-disciplinary cultural arts center that she hopes will become
the country's premiere destination for Black storytelling. The
21-story facility, which is set to stage its first performances in
2027, will provide both a theater complex and affordable housing for
artists.
Lythcott's project partner is Dasha Zhukova Niarchos, founder of a
real estate development company called Ray and wife of Greek
shipping heir Stavros Niarchos III. Speaking Tuesday, the two women
emphasized that development should protect culture instead of
displacing it. They plan to do just that by building an ecosystem
where Black artists can live, work and serve the surrounding
community.
The National Black Theatre's 2022 production of Pulitzer
Prize-winning play “Fat Ham” was its first to transfer to Broadway,
Lythcott said, proving the value of diverse stories to midtown
Manhattan's iconic theater district. With her theater company's new
home in Harlem, just $14 million away from reaching its fundraising
goal, she hopes to show that philanthropy and business can “do well
by doing good" together.
“There is no community, there is no neighborhood, there is no wealth
without a rooted sense of belonging and being," Lythcott said. "What
arts and culture does is really hold your hand and become a north
star to how we connect with each other — across generations, across
economic backgrounds, across ethnicities.”
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