First Online With Fran

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Pope

Reid 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 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. Kaplan, Ellen W. (Routledge, 2024)