We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michole Biancosino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michole below.

Michole, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I started Project Y Theatre (www.projectytheatre.com) over two decades ago when I was just out of college and struggling to match what I had learned in school with the theatre landscape of the “real world.” While there was a lot I still didn’t know about myself as a person, I knew I needed to find a way to make work that felt meaningful to me, work that had something to say about the world. My co-conspirator in all this, Andrew W. Smith, made it possible for me to not only forge a path of indie theatre-making but to not be alone in that endeavor. Together we worked to support multiple seasons of what we called “new or unseen” plays – we were choosing our seasons, building our audiences, and creating community with other passionate theatre folks.

That company still lives today and we are doing some of the most meaningful work of my life. This year we launch our 11th year of Women in Theater Festival, a festival dedicated to supporting the making and producing of new works of theatre by women writers, directors, devisers and lead artists. Women in Theater (womenintheater.org) has launched many new plays into the world. By developing and producing plays in New York City, we are able to give playwrights and their plays the visibility they need for their plays to go onto future life. Women in Theater is so meaningful to me, as it is necessary for us to support the voices of women artists all the time – yes! – but even more so in the current political climate when grants and research funding get pulled simply for mentioning the word “woman.” I feel proud to keep Women in Theater vibrant and alive. Women are writing and making wildly creative works about the things that matter and we need more opportunities to hear their voices.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I grew up in a household where my father was a professional musician and a music teacher. Arts were always a part of my life. When I later when to college I studied English and Theatre, majoring in both, and then just couldn’t stop doing theatre once I left.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We need more financial stability for artists. We need more grants and not just small grants for emerging artists. There are artists at all ages and all stages in their careers and if we can move away from “emergency” funding then we’d all be better off. Recently Ireland passed a basic income for artists. It’s unfathomable in the US to think about having a universal basic income that would allow artists to not be “starving” but to thrive. And yet, we need to find a way to allow creatives to make work and to live in the cities where they are making work. There are so many parts of the federal government that are meant to help people being cut now – the department of education has been gutted, the department of health is run by quacks, we are paying astronomic amounts of taxpayer funds to bomb countries across the ocean….. the list goes on…. None of our taxes seem to be going to the systems that help people. Society needs to force the government at the highest levels to serve the people. There is no thriving in the ecosystem until the funding reflects some sort of value system where our taxes go into projects and offices that support education, health, and safety. Art is at the heart of a thriving society.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I have a website for the company, a website for Women in Theater Festival, and often websites for individual projects if they are going to tour and have some life. You need a web presence that people can find easily and that directs them to whatever it is you want them to do. For me I need people to see my press and to then buy a ticket to a show.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.womenintheater.org
• Instagram: @projectytheatre
• Facebook: @projectytheatre
• Linkedin: @micholebiancosino
• Youtube: @projectynyc
• Other: https://www.projectytheatre.com