The Summit is our annual convening with the goal of highlighting the significance of our collective work and its broad impact beyond the theatre industry, centering conversations dedicated to community building and professional career development. All Summit photos can be found here.

If you are interested in joining the summit as a sponsor please email [email protected].

RISE Summit 2025 Panels:

Partnerships that Power Accessibility: hosted by AXIS Dance Company and Invest in Access. This panel explored how advance planning and intentional relationship-building are fundamental to creating accessible and equitable spaces across the performing arts and media sectors. Accessibility is about collaboration, trust, and designing with disabled communities from the start.

Data is Revolutionary, hosted by Dance Data Project, The Harriet Tubman Effect Institute and Women Count: Leaders from Dance Data Project®, Women Count, and The Harriet Tubman Effect demystified how to utilize data as an advocacy tool. Their goal is simple: Inspire individuals and organizations to employ data to ignite change. Through this panel, participant explored quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic information in order to apply that knowledge to further advocacy work in dance, theater, and the performing arts.  They taught how to identify hiring trends that cross the interrelated disciplines, forging a path that includes partnerships, co-creation, and transparency. The more transparent an industry, the more equitable it is. These three organizations will share tools and resources to illuminate pathways to equitable, diverse, and powerful arts leadership.

Access in Theory to Access in Practice, hosted by Expand the Canon and Parity Productions: With many equity-focused tools already available, what’s stopping the industry from using them, and how do we collectively shift from access in theory to access in practice? This panel explored the resources attempting to shape a more inclusive industry. What’s working, what’s missing, and what support is needed to move from intention and aspiration to sustained action and systemic change? Panelists discussed some of the practical resources already available, the barriers to their use, and how organizations within the RISE network and out of it can better collaborate to promote one another’s efforts. With an emphasis on accountability, awareness, and action, this session aimed to explore with the audience how to move forward without reinventing the wheel. 

This year’s summit was made possible with the generosity of our two sponsors, The Miranda Family Fund and Disney Theatrical Group.

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RISE Network Partners lead the following panels:

AAPI Voices
Hosted by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition

Stats and other collected data show where disparities in hiring still exist across disciplines in the theatre. Now what? After companies make efforts to widen their pools of artists, how can they be mindful of making their spaces healthy and welcoming for artists that have not been routinely included in their ecosystems? AAPAC (The Asian American Performers Action Coalition) will share findings from their most recent “Visibility Reports”, as well as the “The AAPAC Theater Practices Toolkit: Creating an inclusive environment for AAPI/Asian artists,” a new initiative intended to help address ongoing issues facing AAPI theatre artists in the workplace and spark new discussions around radical inclusion. The newly formed Asian American Theatre Artists Collective (created by Christine Toy Johnson) will share information on their new community resource directory of hirable AAPI theatre artists across disciplines and the impetus for its creation. Panelists include Johnson and Nandita Shenoy (members of AAPAC’s steering committee), Ethan Heard (Associate Artistic Director, Signature Theatre), independent casting director Andrea Zee, and Equity Stage Manager Fran Acuña Almiron.

Finding the Funds: Making Equitable Theater under Capitalism
Hosted by ACCESS Broadway NY, Design Action, Theatre Advocacy Project, and Theatre Producers of Color

Two designers, a producer, an HR professional, and an accessibility advisor discuss the money of theatre making in this facilitated conversation organized in partnership between Design Action, Theatre Producers of Color, Theatre Advocacy Project, and ACCESS Broadway New York. This conversation will delve into pay equity, funding co-designs and collective designs, hiring practices and retention, protected classes, representation, and how we balance all these things and continue to create theatre as production costs continue to rise. It is a conversation about where pay equity meets equitable representation. Join us as we identify structural barriers in the system that need to change and discuss sustainable models for financing our work looking forward. Panelists will include moderator Amara McNeil (Design Action), Sammy Lopez (Producer, TPOC), Carolina Ortiz Herrera (Lighting Designer, Design Action), Maria Porto (Accessibility Advisor, ACCESS Broadway NY), and Caylin Waller (HR Professional, Executive Director, and Co-Founder of TAP).

The Place From Whence We Came
Hosted by Dramatists Guild Foundation

This panel discussion brings together three prominent playwrights, Goldie E. Patrick, Garlia Cornelia Jones, and Stacey Rose, to discuss the importance of community building in the theater industry, specifically within regional theater. Moderated by the Dramatists Guild Foundation’s Community Impact and Engagement Manager, Jacquelyn Jordan, this discussion aims to provide actionable insights for anyone interested in creating and contributing to a more vibrant, supportive environment where people can connect, collaborate, and thrive.

With the generous support of our sponsors that have underwritten this event, partners and donors were able to attend at no cost. A suggested donation of $20 was encouraged for the general public.