First Online With Fran

Anything that brings us back into the center of ourselves, into the space that literally is your heart, the center of you and recalls the truth of who you are, you should feel better. So, you are responding to who YOU are, not as who you're protecting yourself from. Kiana Webb is the founder and CEO of Glorious Arisings —a movement at the intersection of conscious leadership and spiritual transformation. Her work fuses leadership development, personal transformation, and spiritual wisdom to guide people toward deeper self-awareness, fulfillment, and meaningful impact.

Most people don't know that there is a Congressional Arts Congress. There are arts folks that on a bi-partisan level advocate for The Arts, and so, artists, if you live somewhere remote, and ask how can I advocate, you might be reaching out to your Congress person, and say, "hey, do you want to join a Congressional Arts Caucus?" and [use their language and join. ~Erica Lauren OrtizErica Lauren Ortiz (she/her) is a seasoned non-profit leader, arts advocate, and creative producer with deep roots in theatre, media, and cultural strategy. She currently serves as the Lead of Advocacy & Governance Programs at Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization at the forefront of building a just and thriving theatre ecology.

I don't really produce plays. There are many other organizations that are wonderful at producing plays, and I'm not interested in someone coming in that's completely done and all they're really looking for is financial support. I don't work like that. What most excites me is when I meet with an artist who would love to do a site-specific piece, and in whatever form it might take whether it be outdoors or indoors, in a car, in an elevator, on a roof or wherever it could be. They see a necessity for why En Garde and no one else. Anne Hamburger (she/her) Founded En Garde Arts in 1985. As its Executive Artistic Director, she is responsible for pioneering site-specific theatre in New York, using its streets and historic landmarks as her stage.

Our nuclear security has been compromised and that really is a dangerous situation because all of our nuclear sites are nuclear power plants, or they are a theoretically defunct site like where nuclear Hanford doesn't occur anymore, but it represents three super-fund sites that need to be cleaned up because of the amount of nuclear waste. What has been a really good outcome of [writing this book] is this being in the news again, people are starting to understand what a threat the amount of nuclear waste that's already been created can be to the public at large, because nuclear waste is volatile. Kay Smith-Blum, a former fashionista and Seattle School Board President, spends her days debunking the tropes of the mid-20th-century history. An odd dream and the recent upheaval over leaking radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear site compelled her to write, TANGLES, named 2024 Book of the Year by the Literary Global Book Awards and Best Debut Fiction by the American Writing Awards 2024. 

This new book I've written SWEET DREAMS AHEAD FOR BED is a story that literally outlines the steps for getting ready for sleep for babies to four-year-olds. Also, in the book are tips for parents on how to get your child to go to sleep. And what I've discovered in the new books I've been doing is the front of the book is the story, and the back four pages are parenting information...So, now what's happening is parents are reading the book out loud, then they're reading the tips. It's a wonderful way to get information to parents. This has really been successful. Tish Rabe (“Robby”) is a bestselling children's author, professional singer, animation Head Writer, scriptwriter and lyricist. She has written over 200 books for Sesame Street, Disney, Nickelodeon, PBS Kids and many more

Whether it's about immigrants, Iranians, Lebanese people or Jews in Warsaw or transgender characters or whatever those characters may be, I feel that, especially theatre, is like a mirror that you hold up to society either to its past, its possible future, its darknesses, its lightness -- things that we don't want to engage with every day in life because it actually has real-day consequences, but as actors we get to share that with people to have that experience with us, and I think it changes people.  Pooya Mohseni is a multi-award-winning Iranian American actor, writer, filmmaker and transgender activist. She is making her Broadway debut in Sanaz Toossi's Pulitzer winning play "English" at the Roundabout Theater.

Age tells us one thing: the day you were born and the day you will die, and there's a dash in between. And you know what? That dash is ME! That dash represents who you are. And it is up to YOU: to describe, to define, to manage your 'dash'. Don't ever let anyone manage your dash for you. ~Dr. Solanges VivensDr. Solanges Vivens is a nursing professional, entrepreneur, educator and product of Georgetown University School of Nursing. She and two minority partners formed VMTLTC Inc., in 1988. It was a multi-faceted, multi-million-dollar health care company which began on one simple idea: Commitment to Quality.

I love writing about women because this is how women are, and we're so diverse, right? We show our power in so many different ways, and sometimes it's not a lot of lines in the play; sometimes, it's just the way they show up. Cynthia Grace Robinson playwright/screenwriter/lyricist was born and raised in The Bronx, New York. "I use my platform as a Writer to amplify the voices of characters and narratives rarely portrayed on stage and screen. I believe as storytellers we have a unique opportunity to broaden the spectrum and deepen the complexity of the stories we choose to tell."

What I really wanted to do was to show a strong, flawed woman - a hundred years ago! - dealing with the same issues that strong, flawed women are dealing with today.KAREN E. OSBORNE, an award-winning and Amazon Kindle best-selling author of four suspense novels–Reckonings (award-winning family saga/suspense), Tangled Lies (award-winning murder mystery), Getting It Right (recognized by Essence Magazine as a Best Read), True Grace, (award-winning historical fiction inspired by her grandmother, set in 1924 Harlem, NY), and Justice for Emerson, a dual timeline murder mystery due out March 13, 2025.

What is central to my work is comedy. For me, there is a desperation in comedy that's very theatrical. And that you can ultimately get a play to a place where everybody wants to just kill themselves or they can tell a joke. So, to me, that's often where they often land. These are your choices: you can kill yourself or die or tell a joke. ~Theresa Rebeck Theresa Rebeck is a prolific and widely produced playwright, whose work can be seen and read throughout the United States and abroad. Last season, her fifth Broadway play premiered on Broadway, making Rebeck the most Broadway-produced female playwright of our time.

For me, acting is the greatest tool we have right now to teach people empathy. Because empathy requires you to put yourself squarely in the shoes of another person. I thin, therefore, acting should be a required subject that should be taught. Anything that teaches empathy. ~Adam DavenportAdam Davenport is the Founder and Artistic Director of The International Acting Studio (TIAS), with regular ongoing workshops in Belgrade, Budapest, Zagreb and Prague overseeing the coaching of more than 100 actors in Europe, from actors just starting their careers to well-established and famous actors in their own countries: including Guslagie Malanda, Jelena Gavrilović, Ana Geislerova, Kata Dobo, Slaven Došlo and Ivan Kamaras.

In BLANK, I wanted to open readers' eyes a little bit more to the inner workings of the publishing world. I started as an aspiring author then became an author ... I was immediately surprised and discouraged by how hard it is for ANY book to find its audience amid all the other books out there in the market. Zibby Owens is the bestselling author of Blank: A Novel, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, Princess Charming, and the forthcoming novel Overheard. She is the editor of three anthologies: On Being Jewish Now, Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids, and Moms Don't Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology. Zibby has regularly contributed to “Good Morning America,” Vogue, Oprah Daily, and many other outlets.

Holding people's feet to the fire by just saying, 'You know what, you may think that a lot of women are being hired.' 'I've done five shows last season, isn't that enough to make women happy?' 'No! it's the consistency of the pattern of hiring because we've been doing this now for fifteen years!' ~Martha SteketeeMartha Wade Steketee is a critic, researcher, and dramaturg. Michigander, who loved movies and theater, went off to study literature at Harvard and social science and social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Michigan, spent 20 years as a court researcher and domestic policy analyst in university and nonprofit research offices in several cities, then landed in dramaturgy, criticism, and theater research.

I came to New York to meet people I read about in college like Joe Chaiken and Judith Malina, and I met them! I took workshops with Joe Chaiken, and he was very encouraging, and so how could I NOT stick with it if Joe Chaiken thinks I'm doing okay? It was a dream come true. ~Alyssa SimonAlyssa Simon is an award-winning theatre and film actor, who has performed modern works, classics, cabarets and musicals in the U.S., U.K., Argentina and the Caribbean. She was selected as A Person Of The Year by Martin Denton of nytheatre.com for her acting work and she was also a Master Mason at the Caffe Cino award winning Brick Theatre.

Alot of the reasons why the male/female -- the binary, in general, was for men specifically like white men and colonizers, to assert dominance and control over people who were lesser than them or predominantly women and women of color is that they could marry them, own them, and enslave them. So, these containers were a sort of act of violence on people; that being said, claiming and reclaiming the labels can be an act of liberation.  ~Reid PopeReid Pope (they/them) is a comedian, playwright, and Jew (despite the ironic last name) who's been featured in PAPER, Vulture, and Boys With Plants Magazine. They do stand-up around NYC and serve as the Head Writer and Executive Producer of Late Stage Live: a trans-led monthly late-night comedy news show on Brooklyn public access.

Theater is both a spiritual healing and emotional healing and even physical healing for me, and it's been my raison d'etre for most of my life, and that's been problematic, at times, because...as a professional actor there are going to be times when you're not engaged or employed in my chosen profession, but I still go back to the theater to look for sustenance, inspiration, community --all those imperatives that I cannot find anywhere else to date. Steven Hauck actor/playwright recently made his directorial debut with TOMORROW WE LOVE (co-author Jeffrey Vause) at the Chain Theater in New York. He directed that production, as well as plays and musicals at Newstage Theatre, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, Geva Theater and the Red Barn Playhouse.

The theater is essential to the health of a nation - of any democracy. And perhaps we are so impoverished right now is because of our inability to communicate with each other and see anyone else's point of view other than our own is that we are theater starved. This is where one gets the whole package of the humanist code is in the theater. This is where the big ideas of the day are truly debated, and this has been going on since the Greeks! Emily Mann is a playwright, screenwriter, director, mentor, and McCarter Theater's Artistic Director and Resident Playwright Emerita, dedicated to creating and supporting theater that impels conversation, debate, and empathy in an increasingly polarized world.

Harriet Tubman knows how to relate to the different groups because Harriet doesn't 'see' people like [cultural entities]; my audience is seen as humans, a beautiful mélange of people that are just there -- all together -- breathing in sync. ~Christine DixonChris Dixon has been directing, producing, booking, and starring in the award-winning, one woman show Harriet Tubman Herself. This production first got its start with a grant from Staten Island Arts. She belongs to SAG-AFTRA, Arts Ignite, The African American Women in Cinema, The New York Women in Film & Television.

I believe that [National Women's History month] is about women and social change. Leaders of change reside with women.Ellen W. Kaplan is Professor Emerita of acting and directing at Smith, a Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica, Fulbright Senior Specialist in Pakistan, Romania and Hong Kong, an actress, director and playwright. Ellen works extensively with underserved and at-risk communities, including Arts in Special Education in Pennsylvania; Young Playwrights Festival; pre-GED literacy training; with women in prison, and death row inmates.Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons. ed. Kaplan, Ellen W. (Routledge, 2024)

I would like to believe I attract heart-centered individuals to work with. I create a sense of safety in the rooms, empowerment and we are in service of the text. I pick plays that are going to take us on a journey that we all want to go on; that we're all going to leave a little bit better; that we're going to share with our audience, and we're all going to leave the experience a little bit better than when we came. That's my hope. ~ Janet MitchkoJanet Mitchko is the Artistic Director at The Public Theatre, an Equity theatre located in Lewiston, Maine. She considers herself lucky to have spent most of her life earning a living in the theatre. Executive/Co-Artistic Director Christopher Schario will be retiring at the end of this season and her title has been changed from Co-Artistic Director to sole Artistic Director of The Public Theatre. An Executive Director has been hired as we pursue a new leadership model.

Losing or winning an argument is not just a zero-sum game. Working together, collaborating is something that you have to learn. The most important part is not you getting all you want all the time, but learning how to feel satisfaction, even if your collaborator talks you into something else. How to find satisfaction within that and helping them to do the same thing. This seems esoteric, but you know something, it's not. And I think that is something we've lost...and something that the world of The Arts could teach our public discourse.  Robert Viagas is an author and historian specializing in theatre. He was an editor at Playbill for 24 years, during which time he created Playbill.com, the theatre news service that's now the standard source in our industry.

"Art is ageless. There is no number on Art. As long as your heart is in it, you can do it. And that's a fantastic thing because very often we do put age limits on things, and we put age limits on PEOPLE, and I don't think that's necessarily so. I think these people are teaching us that it's absolutely possible."ADRIENNE D. WILLIAMS is New York based actor, director, educator, and storyteller. She is an Artistic Associate at the Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, and a member of The Honor Roll, The Bechdel Group and the Rattlestick Theatre Community. And holds an MFA in Acting from Binghamton University. 

"Artivist is a combination of Artist and Activism. I write about Bayard Rustin who was basically the right hand of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for many years. He was a gay Quaker from Pennsylvania and a black man, and there were a lot of issues with him working with Dr. King. Bayard was able to get all of the celebrities and everybody who wanted to support him at the March in Washington and made a lot of amazing changes. His art, his creativity, and in combination with the activism is what got the name Artivist. "  Carla Debbie Alleyne is a playwright, screenwriter, and director who received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Film and Television and Dramatic Writing from New York University. Carla's play Hey, Little Walter was produced Off-Broadway at Playwright's Horizon as part of the Young Playwrights Festival when she was 16 years old. 

"It's so important to have that outlook of everyone is human, everyone is worthy, but I also think it's important, for me, and for everyone to protect ourselves. [As a sensitive child growing up] to protect myself, I dove into movies, I dove into playwriting when I couldn't get that connection from anywhere else. The Arts is what saved me." Stephanie Okun is a playwright/screenwriter/director. She is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University, student at NYU's Educational Theatre MA program, and proud former intern/current member of New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT). At a young age, she discovered her love for playwriting and pursued it at Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Inc., an organization that changed her life. For her, theater is home and she's always thrilled to be there.

How can I explain change? It's something that makes me feel hopeful...that audiences, and as people, and most importantly as human beings, we can, by looking at the big picture, be much better equipped, I think, at making change...we have to look at how can we work together to make change in the world. CATHERINE FILLOUX (Playwright/Librettist/Activist) is an award-winning French Algerian American playwright and librettist who has been writing about human rights for many decades. Filloux's world premiere play “How to Eat an Orange” opens in Spring 2024 at La MaMa in New York City. The play was commissioned by INTAR.

How do we create a world where we allow people to express themselves, and if they need to be called in, or if they're doing something that really is egregious? How do we help teach them [students] why it's problematic rather than me having to shut them down? Clara Francesca is an award-winning artist, activist, educator and speech coach and holds a BA in Laws & Biomedical Sciences from Monash University. She specialized in mediation, courageous conversation integration and has over 15 years of professional practice coaching and facilitating co-existing with differences in shared space. Her acting spans from avant-garde live immersive poetry recitations and classical theatre to commercial voice overs and co-starring on network TV. Clara has meditatively sung at the NYC Hayden Planetarium, is a member of NYC's SITI Company's Inaugural Conservatory Alumni, co-founder of XREnsemble and performs game-theory with TidalFire at the California Academy of Sciences Dome Shows.

My mission is to keep [Iraqi Jewish] culture alive; to sustain that culture because we don't want history repeating itself. And to educate - we are all the same people. We are all in the mindset of being ONE. And that we should celebrate our differences instead of fearing them or being alienated by those differences. ~Valerie DavidValerie David, is a New York City-based performer/playwright. Her mission in life is to educate and empower through the performing arts.

Even though [Don't Shoot the Messenger] is comical it's an opportunity to change thoughts about who we are, and they can see us as normal people with disabilities. There should be no barriers between us. We find ways to communicate. We find ways to be together and collaborate. I was filled with hope. We can achieve great things when we work together. It also showed sign language wasn't a detriment. Sign language is amazing! It's a natural form of communication. Maleni Chaitoo is a passionate entrepreneur residing in New York City. Her professional endeavors in business, performing arts, and education contribute to her success as a multi-faceted businesswoman who embraces challenges and converts them into opportunities. 

"Here's the thing about AI. It doesn't have a soul, and it doesn't understand psychology, and it doesn't understand the quirks of human behavior. All it can do is strip-mine what has already been written by other people. So, AI is first and foremost in violation of copyright because it's using our material without compensating. Secondly, it has no sense of humor and it has no sense of character and so the stuff that comes out of AI sounds very stilted. Third, audiences aren't that stupid. They can tell when there's life behind something and there isn't." ~Jeffrey Sweet Jeffrey Sweet has had a split career. On the one hand, as a dramatist, he's been writing plays and musicals that first were produced professionally in 1970. They have been produced off-Broadway in New York and on stages around the world, though he's primarily identified with Chicago. He was part of the wave of writers, actors and directors who transformed Chicago's off-Loop theater scene beginning in the Seventies. 

Focusing outside of yourself helps you thrive in this industry and helps you deal with so much and all the obstacles we face. ~Donna BenedictoDonna Benedicto is a Filipina Canadian actress and singer born and raised in Vancouver, BC. Growing up as an ethnic minority, Donna decided to make a switch from full-time singing to pursue acting in 2013 because she saw a gap in Asian representation. Since then, she has gone on to become the first Filipina lead in multiple TV movies, including Incendo's Farmer Seeking Love, as well as guest starring on NBC's The Good Doctor, and booking recurring roles on CW's Supergirl and ABC's A Million Little Things. 

My work has always been about bringing people together, forging new transcultural and transnational artistic relationships, and combining research with theatre-making in order to explore and extend the limits of creativity.Avra Sidiropoulou is a theatre director and academic. She is the Artistic Director of Persona Theatre Company. She has published extensively on directing theory and practice, contemporary performance and dramaturgy and is the author of Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018) In 2020 she was nominated for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award by the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Telling stories that activate emotions helps audiences be open to new ideas. People can only change themselves. But until they experience the new they will remain stuck in the old--in other words, we are growing and changing or stagnating and dying. My work helps people find the best of themselves.Theresa Chaze began her career in the mid-1980s at a small independent TV station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Moving to Traverse City, she worked at the local ABC affiliate as a producer, writer, editor, and director. In the mid-1990s, she ghostwrote two features and two shorts. However, after working as a producer on two independent films, she walked away from the industry. In 2009, she started her journey back began through a series of coincidences. Her time away from film and television gave her the strength and courage to turn "impossible" into "I'm possible".

Getting my Masters at Harvard at age sixty-nine, I hope that I'm inspiring other women that there are no limits. There's absolutely no limits except for those you place on yourself. I never actually wrote a screenplay and now all these Film Festivals think I'm such a great writer.. . There's always a first time for everything. Why not me? Pamela S. K. Glasner is a critically acclaimed published author of fiction and non-fiction, a filmmaker, a playwright, a social advocate. She is also a proud member of the Writer's Guild of America, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, the Connecticut Historical Society and Grace Episcopal Church. Additionally, she is a Registered Reader at both the Royal Society of London and the British Library.

I truly believe we are in an apocalyptic culture shift ; truly, an historical, multi-century, multi-millennial shift and in the last gasp of the white-supremacist patriarchal society. We are living through that moment...So, what I focus on these days more than railing against what has been we had to tear the scales from people's eyes: 'Hey, wake up everybody! This is what's been happening and you need to look!' But the moment has shifted now and now we have to build on what's going to happen next. And what is already happening. And that is what I spend my days doing. ​Naomi McDougall Jones is an award-winning storyteller and thought leader for bringing gender parity to cinema. A long-time advocate for bringing parity to film, both on and off screen, she has spoken at film festivals and conferences around the world and written extensively on this subject.

We are a film production company on a mission to inspire, empower and light a fire! Not just for women.We can acknowledge that we're all damaged, we're all broken. That doesn't mean that we're destroyed because beautiful things can grow out of damage. ~ Gina Dobson I'm exploring a me that I would have never known before. Women wear so many hats. How about wearing the hat that I want to wear! ~ Carla Kelly TurnerI started to get the idea that it's possible to do what you really want to do -- no matter what age you are. [My mother] led by an example for me. It's not IF this is possible -- it's more WHEN am I going to do this. ~Jennifer Pyle

Human rights and civil rights will be realized only when we fully hear the voices, ideas and creative concepts of womxn over 40, whose perspectives have long been marginalized and stifled. ~ Cindy Cooper Cynthia L. Cooper (Cindy to most people) is an award-winning playwright, journalist, author and activist. She became a playwright to use the power of the stage to address topics and issues that were flattened and ignored by popular media. Her plays are united by a passion for socially relevant topics, stylized staging and a dramatic-comedic mix.

Patt Addiss, Theater Producer, I didn't start out wanting to be a theatrical producer. She was busy running the promotion company she founded, but after 30 years, she handed the reins over to her daughter. Then in 2005, after ‘learning the tools of the trade,' Pat went on to produce more than 18 Broadway and Off-Broadway productions including: “Spring Awakening,” “Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike” and “Desperate Measures.” And…she's never looked back!I don't know all the answers. I mean I'm not some Great Guru. I just know what I know. I just know what has transpired in my life. You have to take chances. . . I will expire before I retire.

On one hand, Janet Stilson is a journalist. On the other, she writes scripts, novels and short stories that largely fall in the grounded sci-fi and fantasy genres and illuminate the human condition in provocative ways.I [want] people to think a little bit more about where we might be headed from the standpoint of communications and how it's manipulated and massaged by people with all sorts of different interests [and money]."The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." ~William Gibson

"We can heal. I think it's really important to be in control of what we're taking in so that we don't feel that we have to worry...that we can feel like we can live in our power, we can do things, as artists, that will hopefully push the needle and change the culture and make people think more deeply about what THEY can do if they're not artists."Playwright, Dramaturg, and Teacher Emma Goldman-Sherman (she/they) is an autistic, gender-dysphoric, queer, Jewish, feminist playwright living in New York City. Emma Goldman-Sherman is a playwright who likes to challenge audiences in terms of what we think a play can be. 

We're in a time where we are seeing new voices, new types of voices telling their stories and people create their identity through seeing themselves reflected in work, in all Art, all literature, in any aspect. And if you don't see yourself reflected EVER then think about how that impacts your life and not only in the character, but the narratives in all its ways. And that's why I hope to continue to create not only if I can create it, but foster it in other people.  Karen Cecilia She/Her/Hers (Playwright, Screenwriter, Director) Her work has been seen in NYC at 3LD, La Mama, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Theater For The New City, Theatre Odyssey, Sarasota FL, The Coalescence Theatre, Illinois and The Firehouse Theatre, Richmond, VA and Jermyn Street Theater, London England.

Learning through The Arts [as] being one of the most transformative vehicles in which we really get to a person's soul and to realize they're not alone in their feelings and that is by exchanging [ideas] and THAT is what theatre does...We have everything to gain by stories being told that we need to hear now and now more than ever. Romy Nordlinger is a NYC based Actor/Playwright and Audiobook Narrator. An award-winning bestselling Audiobook Narrator, Romy has recorded over 350 titles. Her acting roles include Guest and Co-starring roles on Bull, Manifest, FBI, Law & Order (Officer Talbor) and numerous independent films.Her acclaimed solo show PLACES (now Garden Of Alla) based on the life of trailblazing Broadway and Silent Film star Alla Nazimova, recently played at The Kennedy Center as well as 59E59, Edinburgh Fringe, Jerry Orbach Theatre Center, HERE Theater, The Jewish Museum, The Players Club, Dixon Place. 

YVETTE HEYLIGER Playwright/Director/Producing Artist/Author is a lifelong theatre artist, as well as an educator, and the author of What a Piece of Work is Man! Full-Length Plays for Leading Women. Yvette is a long-time activist for women in the American theatre and was recently named a finalist for the Advance Gender Equity in the Arts 2022 AGE Legacy Playwright Grant. 

Joan Kane (writer/actor/producer) is the founding Artistic Director of Ego Actus.I had to tell my story. I needed to be able to say, 'Look, I grew up in a time period in Brooklyn where racism was horrific and it was rampant.' I needed to talk about sexual assault. I needed to talk about survival; how you can have horrible things happen to you. And I think it's relevant today . . . I wanted to give some hope to folks: Look! Yeah, you can do it! You can go, you can push ahead. Tell your stories. Make sure that your truth is out there. For me, its' very important that my truth is out there because, I believe, it's truth that sets us free.

Emma Palzere-Rae is a playwright, actor, director, producer and non-profit administrator. Emma spent 15 years as part of the NYC theater community, where she began producing one-woman plays and founded the Womenkind Festival. Over its ten-year run, Womenkind presented nearly 75 different performers, mainly original works. She is the Associate Director at Artreach, Inc. (Norwich, CT), and has also held the position of Artistic Director for Plays for Living (NYC), a touring company dedicated to social change, where she also wrote and developed plays for the repertoire

Dani Martineck is a New York-based non-binary actor, writer, and award-winning audiobook narrator with a background in experimental psychology.I'm a storyteller. I've found that in communicating truthfully through the stories I tell, other people feel seen and understood, and it just radiates this ripple of openheartedness outward to places I'll never know.they/them - what's this?

Dani Martineck is a New York-based non-binary actor, writer, and award-winning audiobook narrator with a background in experimental psychology.I'm a storyteller. I've found that in communicating truthfully through the stories I tell, other people feel seen and understood, and it just radiates this ripple of openheartedness outward to places I'll never know.they/them - what's this?

Nicky Beer is a bi/queer writer, and the author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022). Her first two books, The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon, 2015), were both winners of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Poetry Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

Nicky Beer is a bi/queer writer, and the author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022). Her first two books, The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon, 2015), were both winners of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Poetry Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

"When we're talking about the power of The Arts -- the healing, the transformative powers -- we're really talking about the fact that we're human. We're humanizing the experience of others. So, we lead with empathy, and we lead in such a way that we put ourselves in someone else's shoes. It's more than meeting people for where they are --it's BEING where they are. It's getting inside of where they are . . . I can see new possibilities. NOW what can I do to change things?"Erika Lucille Ewing is a social impact entrepreneur and a multimedia creative, actor, activist, and fashion designer, "ARTIVIST." As former Chief of Staff of Black Lives Matter Greater NY Erika, she organized the Find Our Girls March to bring attention to the missing Black and Brown youth across the globe. In 2018, Erika combined her creativity, engagement, and activism skills and launched Got To Stop LLC. 

"When we're talking about the power of The Arts -- the healing, the transformative powers -- we're really talking about the fact that we're human. We're humanizing the experience of others. So, we lead with empathy, and we lead in such a way that we put ourselves in someone else's shoes. It's more than meeting people for where they are --it's BEING where they are. It's getting inside of where they are . . . I can see new possibilities. NOW what can I do to change things?"Erika Lucille Ewing is a social impact entrepreneur and a multimedia creative, actor, activist, and fashion designer, "ARTIVIST." As former Chief of Staff of Black Lives Matter Greater NY Erika, she organized the Find Our Girls March to bring attention to the missing Black and Brown youth across the globe. In 2018, Erika combined her creativity, engagement, and activism skills and launched Got To Stop LLC. 

Moise Morancy is an American actor, writer, director, producer, poet and activist from Brooklyn, New York. Moise always had a passion for telling stories. His career as a writer began as a young boy, capturing personal aspects of life's challenges through written expressions such as poetry, songwriting and eventually screenwriting. His literary works are transparent and serve as a safe haven for his life experiences. He has always had the mindset of turning one's pain into power.