Launched in 2021, Maestra Music’s Get To Work initiative started as a collective of 19 community partners aiming to create equity and accessibility in the national theatre industry.

That fall, friends Georgia Stitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda ran into each other at a pumpkin patch and began to discuss their current projects. Maestra, founded by Stitt in 2019, designed and built a directory dedicated to female and nonbinary theatre musicians. Miranda and the Miranda Family Fund were looking to create a directory for all below-the-line theatre employees, focusing on women, people of color, and those from underrepresented backgrounds with producers, general managers, and theater employers. They realized the existing infrastructure and developmental history of Get To Work could provide a perfect space to house the new industry-wide theatre directory he was working on with his father, Luis A. Miranda, Jr.

A partnership between Maestra Music and the Miranda Family Fund began in Summer 2022 under the umbrella of the Get To Work initiative. As the team developed, aiming for a launch of the new directory in June 2023, they rebranded to become RISE (Representation, Inclusion, & Support for Employment) Theatre, a name that better spoke to the specific moment in time and incorporated the national evolution of the programming.