Jun 16, 2022

Joanne Tucker made her screen debut in 2012’s gay comedy “Gayby” alongside her now-husband, Adam Driver. The pair met while studying at Juilliard and married in 2013. (If you want to see both actors when they were still wet behind the ears, they played versions of themselves in the horror short “The Basement,” still available on YouTube as of this writing.)

Tucker’s most recent roles include a part in Paul Riccio’s critically acclaimed independent film “Give or Take” and a recurring part on Showtime’s “American Rust.” She also starred in Scott Burns’ “The Report,” Alex Gibney’s “Zero Days” and Alex Ross Perry’s “Listen Up Philip.”

But when Tucker isn’t appearing in movies, she runs Arts in the Armed Forces (AITAF) with her husband.Tucker cofounded the nonprofit charity with Driver to provide high-quality theater and film programming to active- duty service members and veterans. The idea for the organization began in 2008 when Driver realized that the performing arts helped him articulate his own feelings about serving in the Marines post-9/11. AITAF’s flagship event is their annual Veterans Day performance fundraiser, usually held at the American Airlines Theater or Roundabout Theatre Company in the old Studio 54 space.

Throughout the year, Tucker and a revolving cast of professional actors volunteer to visit military bases all over the world to perform. In March of this year, for example, AITAF visited the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, which was the target of a terrorist attack in 2019. “We all have roles to play,” said one audience member whose reaction AITAF shared. “Theater allows us to take a break from those roles for a few hours.”