First Online With Fran

There's always hope. You can't say the word hope without smiling. Hope is that ability to get up and go again. The Finnish have word for it--SISU. What it means is white-knuckle courage in the face of overwhelming odds. When everything is lost, the spirit of SISU manifests itself. And for me SISU means relentless resilience. I'm incredibly stubborn and the idea of ever giving up never crossed my mind. I had to prove that they were wrong. That they could never break me. 

Dr. John A. King is an Australian-born, Indigenous (Warumungu) author, s...

As I've traveled around the world to teach, speak, and lecture about audience development, in particular, Africa, is that what I've learned is that at the end of the day, people want to feel welcome, they want to have a good time, even if it's something that made them want to laugh, but to feel like, 'Wow, this was thought-provoking, this was interesting, and to feel that I made a good choice coming. And maybe I met someone that I didn't know.' I learned how class, particularly in America, is such a barrier for people to feel they...

I want to educate the public about what’s happening in the immigration crisis itself and inside the courts, about the refugees and how they are treated here, but also to make the performances beautiful in a way that will impart something profound to the audience. How do I put these stories into the most beautiful artistic form to go to the core of the human being? What I need from these performances is a call to action—for people to actually DO something. We need to educate them and impact them emotionally, so that people know what to do...

Why is freedom to read so important? I think we take for granted the idea that a multiplicity of voices are accessible to us, and our libraries are places that represent the voices of everyone in the community. There's a court case called Little v Llano just came out of the 5th district of the 5th circuit court of appeals, the district covers Texas and Louisiana. This court case is threatening one of the most essential freedoms that we have which is a couple of First Amendment precedents that were established in the 60s-70s that say that very...

"One of the major ideas behind Fall of Freedom was not only to get some bold-faced names involved to this project to attract involvement, but to get regular folks to participate...We are all creative beings; we are all producing culture all the time...it's not just seeing the art on the wall, but the conversations we might have. These are important cultural acts that are unfolding on a daily basis and everybody is participating in them. You don't have to fall into this special category of "artist" to produce culture. "

~Laura Raicovich



Lau...

Holding women back doesn't just harm women, it holds everyone back - our economies, our nations, our future. If inequality is limiting us all, why aren't we doing anything to fix it? To build the unity needed to move forward, we have to connect to people's values. What kind of world do they want? For me, the answer is clear: we need women's full participation - everywhere. Holding women back holds humanity back. And building a better world for women is better for everyone.   ~Lina AbiRafeh

Lina AbiRafeh is a prominent women’s rights activis...

I came up with this idea that we would have workshops, and we would have formerly incarcerated people come to the workshops, and we would teach them about organizing and teach about women's suffrage, civil rights, and marriage equality. How impactful a group of people can be if they all have the same interest. They're voters. They can talk to the state legislators and tell them, 'I'm a voter and what they're doing is making my life really hard.' And, to my great surprise, it totally worked! 

Amanda DuBois—attorney, social justice advocate, and...

I was pleasantly surprised and [found it] incredibly fulfilling when we brought kids who I interviewed down to Florida and thank you to the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra -- they gave us the opportunity to bring these young activists into schools and introduce these young activists -- this is three days after the last election so other kids in these schools were feeling very defeated; in the beginning they were afraid to ask questions...and our kids were in their 20s now and said, "OK, so you're upset.so, what are you gonna do?" There was an exchange of energy...

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.

We are making sure that the arts remain independent, well-funded, and accessible for all. Anytime anything rears its ugly head to challenge that, we will be there fighting for you. ~Erica Lauren Ortiz

Erica 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...

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...

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...

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 ac...

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 Vivens

Dr. 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...

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 d...

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 B...

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 Davenport

Adam 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 o...

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, M...

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 Steketee

Martha 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...

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 Simon

Alyssa 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...

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 Pope

Reid Pope (they/them) is a comedian, playwright, and Jew (despite the ironic last na...

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) a...

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 McC...

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 Dixon

Chris 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...

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 Mitchko

Janet Mitchko is the Artistic Director a...

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.  

Ro...

"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 an...

"Artivism is a combination of Art and Activism. I wrote about Bayard Rustin who served as the right hand of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for many years. He was a gay Quaker from Pennsylvania and a black man who was instrumental in organizing the March On Washington. Many had issues with Bayard working with Dr. King due to his sexuality. However, it was Bayard's influence that brought celebrities, politicians, and the like to support The March on Washington. Bayard was an amazing singer who combined his art and activism to change the world. Hence, the title The Artivist for...

"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 & Tel...

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 N...

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 a...

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 David

Valerie 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...

"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 <...

Focusing outside of yourself helps you thrive in this industry and helps you deal with so much and all the obstacles we face. ~Donna Benedicto

Donna 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...

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 fe...