First Online With Fran

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 Narr...

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 giv...

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...

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’...

"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...

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...

The immigrant stories that are here. . . when they see in us the possibility that it's real. That's why I focus on a specific community because we know the challenges . . . so young artists they see in us, [and] know that [change] is possible and we are here to support them. Margarita Espada has traveled the world in her careers as an artist, educator and cultural organizer, training in physical a...

Writing plays became my way of communicating with all life- from the ordinary people to the sublime consciousness… all of which seemed to operate on the same plane for me. It was clear that we are all human life forms that can conform, reform or deform to the energetic stimulus around us- but when we PERForm- we are able perfect the form, taking it to a higher creative state. I was always surround...

Actors Equity is opening its doors. I think this is one of the most exciting things that's happening in my almost two decades as a Union member. It shifts the way people can become members. . . It is now OUR choice to become a member and that's incredible. Jessica Wu is an award-winning NYC-based playwright, director, songwriter, educator, and actor. Performance credits include the Broadway reviva...

Everything is connected. Everything, all these things, becomes a part of YOU. But then this journey does not stop. Some people stop from manifesting what they want because they understand the importance of training and then they let the training stop them...I'm not going to wait until I get the certification [to become] a certified coach. I know training is part of the journey...but that's not a p...

Everything is connected. Everything, all these things, becomes a part of YOU. But then this journey does not stop. Some people stop from manifesting what they want because they understand the importance of training and then they let the training stop them...I'm not going to wait until I get the certification [to become] a certified coach. I know training is part of the journey...but that's not a p...

It makes me feel happy. I feel happy when I sing. People who hear me sing tell me THEY feel happy; that I make their hearts happy. It's the most joyful thing that I can do, I feel, for me and for others. ~Jenny Lynn Stewart City Artist Corps Grants support NYC-based working artists who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Funding is offered to help sustain their practice and engage t...

It makes me feel happy. I feel happy when I sing. People who hear me sing tell me THEY feel happy; that I make their hearts happy. It's the most joyful thing that I can do, I feel, for me and for others. ~Jenny Lynn Stewart City Artist Corps Grants support NYC-based working artists who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Funding is offered to help sustain their practice and engage t...

Holly Savas is a mom, artist and VP of Brand, Art & Community at Creative Action Network. She's a passionate supporter of artists and of universal arts education in schools and makes it her mission to raise awareness and give back to her community whenever possible. Her job at CAN is the perfect combo of all of those things rolled into one.

Holly Savas is a mom, artist and VP of Brand, Art & Community at Creative Action Network. She's a passionate supporter of artists and of universal arts education in schools and makes it her mission to raise awareness and give back to her community whenever possible. Her job at CAN is the perfect combo of all of those things rolled into one.

Take one part blues, one part folk, one part country. Add a dash of Southern gospel, rock and jazz. Season with world-weary experience. You’ll have a taste of Mike Turner’s eclectic original music. Raised outside Detroit in a family steeped in the traditional mountain music of West Virginia, Mike grew up listening to the diverse sounds of gospel quartets, classic country and Motown. A 30-year care...

Take one part blues, one part folk, one part country. Add a dash of Southern gospel, rock and jazz. Season with world-weary experience. You’ll have a taste of Mike Turner’s eclectic original music. Raised outside Detroit in a family steeped in the traditional mountain music of West Virginia, Mike grew up listening to the diverse sounds of gospel quartets, classic country and Motown. A 30-year care...

Take one part blues, one part folk, one part country. Add a dash of Southern gospel, rock and jazz. Season with world-weary experience. You'll have a taste of Mike Turner's eclectic original music. Raised outside Detroit in a family steeped in the traditional mountain music of West Virginia, Mike grew up listening to the diverse sounds of gospel quartets, classic country and Motown. A 30-year care...

Take one part blues, one part folk, one part country. Add a dash of Southern gospel, rock and jazz. Season with world-weary experience. You'll have a taste of Mike Turner's eclectic original music. Raised outside Detroit in a family steeped in the traditional mountain music of West Virginia, Mike grew up listening to the diverse sounds of gospel quartets, classic country and Motown. A 30-year care...

Award-winning and best selling author Jeannie Moon is a native Long Islander and imagines that conjures an image of big hair and a nasally accent, but that’s not the Long Island that she knows. Raised in a north shore town that once would have been called bucolic and now people call trendy, she married her high school sweetheart and her children were born in the same hospital as she was. She has d...

Award-winning and best selling author Jeannie Moon is a native Long Islander and imagines that conjures an image of big hair and a nasally accent, but that’s not the Long Island that she knows. Raised in a north shore town that once would have been called bucolic and now people call trendy, she married her high school sweetheart and her children were born in the same hospital as she was. She has d...

Award-winning and best selling author Jeannie Moon is a native Long Islander and imagines that conjures an image of big hair and a nasally accent, but that’s not the Long Island that she knows. Raised in a north shore town that once would have been called bucolic and now people call trendy, she married her high school sweetheart and her children were born in the same hospital as she was. She has d...

Award-winning and best selling author Jeannie Moon is a native Long Islander and imagines that conjures an image of big hair and a nasally accent, but that’s not the Long Island that she knows. Raised in a north shore town that once would have been called bucolic and now people call trendy, she married her high school sweetheart and her children were born in the same hospital as she was. She has d...