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First Online With Fran
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First Online With Fran

Author: Frances McGarry

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Featuring Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary things in The Arts
53 Episodes
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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. 
"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 my One-Man show."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. 
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Comments (5)

Roger Hendricks Simon

Brava, Frances! More! More! Keep me posted with what you're doing. Come back soon.

Jan 14th
Reply (1)

Melba LaRose

What a FABULOUS, informative, and educational show! I loved it!

Jan 9th
Reply

Pooja Mallipamula

Fran, you have such a calming voice, it’s peaceful to listen to :)

Jan 4th
Reply (1)
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