Charles Baudelaire was a 19th century French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal; (1857;The Flowers of Evil) which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century. Jordan's favorite poem of his is Get Drunk.

Zoe Caldwell began acting professionally in her native Australia at the age of nine. She earned a scholarship to Stratford-on-Avon, where she performed with such notable actors as Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Paul Robeson, Albert Finney, Mary Orr, and Sir Ian Holm. She joined Canada’s Stratford Festival Theatre, and was the only non-American to be a charter member and perform at Sir Tyrone’s Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Among many other honors, she is the recipient of four Tony Awards, for Slapstick Tragedy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Medea, and Master Class.

Eleanora Duse in performance, is still considered one of the innovators of a new style on stage. She broke free from the standard mold that locked actors into posed expressions of emotions. Duse reached inside herself to find a connection to the inner truth of the character and reflected that truth in a bold new way. She sought realism in performance by breaking standard convention and led the way for others to discover that they too could find their own style of performance rather than being locked into restrictive techniques of the past. Through Duse, characters lived rather than merely existed.