First Online With Fran

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 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 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 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 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.