Network Partners

RISE Theatre Network Partners are value-aligned organizations working to diversify the theatre industry by providing resources and opportunities for the continued integration of community development, equity, and accessibility. All our Network Partners are listed below, or you can navigate to applicable resource categories via the menu below.

A.R.T./New York (Alliance of Resident Theatres New York)

Founded in 1972 to promote community and collaboration within the performing arts, A.R.T./New York assists over 500 member theatres in realizing their rich artistic visions and serving their diverse audiences […]
The 1/52 Project

The OBIE Award winning 1/52 Project provides financial support to encourage early career designers from historically excluded groups with the aim of diversifying and strengthening the theater design community. Candidates of diverse backgrounds representing the full spectrum of theatrical activity, including those who have worked in non-traditional venues, are encouraged to apply to this program. The 1/52 Project considers all women of all ethnicities as part of a historically excluded group.
A Broader Way Foundation

A BroaderWay Foundation (ABW) was created in 2010 by Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs, with a passionate group of artists, activists, and social workers with a basic goal — amplifying the power of young women and gender-expansive youth through the arts. ABW is dedicated to using the beauty, self-discovery, discipline, joy, energy, and spirit of the arts to develop future leaders.
Access Broadway

ACCESS Broadway NY is a disability-led consultancy firm dedicated to creating, assessing, and developing pathways to accessibility in the performing arts. We provide a comprehensive perspective on inclusion and accessibility from those directly impacted, ensuring that our strategies and programming are effective and truly accessible for all.
Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC)

The mission of AAPAC (ASIAN AMERICAN PERFORMERS ACTION COALITION) is to expand the perception of Asian American performers in order to increase their access to and representation on New York City’s stages. They publish The Visibility Report yearly, covering employment statistics by race, the only publicly available report of its kind.
Arts Administrators of Color Network

The Arts Administrators of Color Network is a support network that harnesses the power of artists, arts administrators, and organizations of people of the global majority to connect and expand BIPOC leadership across the U. S. creative sector.
Arts Ignite

Arts Ignite is an international nonprofit arts education organization headquartered in New York City. Founded in 2006 by Broadway Music Director Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Arts Ignite cultivates community, creative capacity, and courage in young people ages 4–21 through arts workshops, summer camps, after-school programs, and enrichment experiences across multiple art forms.
AXIS Dance Company

Led by Artistic Director Nadia Adame and Executive Director Danae Rees, AXIS Dance Company is one of the nation’s most acclaimed ensembles of disabled, non-disabled, Deaf and neurodiverse performers. AXIS was founded in 1987 and is based in the Bay Area, California, where they create world-class productions that challenge perceptions and redefine dance and disability. Alongside their artistic programming, the Company provides unparalleled integrated dance education and outreach programs that remove barriers and showcase the beauty of difference.
Beyond the Stage Door

Beyond the Stage Door (BTSD) is a comprehensive and intensive program designed to educate and prepare undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds for careers in general, company and stage management in the theatre industry. In particular, BTSD is programmed for students who are members of racial and/or ethnic minority groups.
BIPOC Arts

BIPOC Arts is an online database of Black, Indigenous, and POC artists and administrators working in the opera industry. We celebrate Black, Indigenous, and POC individuals by providing a community for BIPOC opera professionals and serving as a resource for companies, collaborators, and recruiters to engage with a wide range of BIPOC talent in the field.
Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop

Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop,LLC is a Brooklyn-based collective founded in summer 2015. We are dedicated to developing, producing, incubating, and promoting Black art and artists who actively engage with justice in their work.
Black Theatre Coalition

To remove the “ILLUSION OF INCLUSION” in the American Theatre, by building a sustainable ethical roadmap that will increase employment opportunities for Black theater professionals. Our vision is to reshape the working ecosystem for those who have been marginalized by systemically racist and biased ideology.
Black Theatre United

As members of the Black theatre community, we stand together to help protect Black people, Black theatre, and Black lives of all shapes and orientations in communities across the country. Our voices are united to educate, empower, and inspire through excellence and activism in the pursuit of justice and equality. We will tell our stories, preserve our history, and ensure the legacy of Black theatre as American culture.
Breaking the Binary Theatre

Breaking the Binary Theatre is a new work development and community building hub wherein transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) artists come together to reclaim our artistic license and liberty on our own terms in spaces built by and for us. Breaking the Binary Theatre hosts a number of programs and initiatives, including our flagship artistic event each October: the all-TNB2S+ Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival.
Broadway Advocacy Coalition

Broadway Advocacy Coalition (BAC) is an arts-based advocacy organization that unites artists and directly impacted advocates to develop story-based artivism that advances justice and drives systemic change.
Broadway & Beyond: Access for Stage Managers of Color

Broadway & Beyond: Access for Stage Managers of Color provides opportunities to aspiring and current stage managers of color to learn from industry insiders, meet industry leaders, and provide insights to help stage managers of color start, maintain, and advance a career in the arts and theatre through free networking and educational events.
Broadway for Arts Education

Broadway for Arts Education (BAE) is a nonprofit, learning organization that uses performing arts education to dismantle systemic barriers to personal success alongside underserved youth. Partnering with the Broadway community, professional teaching artists, community-based organizations, and schools around the world, BAE brings a culturally responsive and decolonized approach to performing arts education.
Broadway Green Alliance

The Broadway Green Alliance (BGA) is an industry-wide initiative that educates, motivates, and inspires the entire theatre community and its patrons to implement environmentally friendlier practices on Broadway and beyond.
Broadway Women’s Alliance

Support. Connect. Empower. Dedicated to fostering community and supporting women, The Broadway Women’s Alliance is a peer-to-peer networking and programming organization for female professionals on the business side of Broadway.
The Business of Broadway

The Business of Broadway is led by a team of commercial theatre producers – Sammy Lopez, Erica Rotstein, Heather Shields, and Rachel Sussman – seeking to democratize knowledge around how the commercial theatre business operates.
The Circle Keepers

The Circle Keepers is a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization. They dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by training youth organizers as restorative justice practitioners, participatory action researchers and socially conscious activists. By centering the lived experiences of youth leaders, and promoting peacemaking through cultural and educational community organizing that heal the harms of racial segregation in schools.
Cody Renard Richard Scholarship Program

The Cody Renard Richard Scholarship Program strives to encourage more Black, Asian, Latinx, Indigenous, and other students of color to pursue degrees in the theatrical management and non-performance artistic fields.
Creative Nations

Creative Nations is an all Indigenous-led artists collective, founded in 2020 at The Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, CO. We operate the Sacred Space, a permanent establishment for Indigenous Artists to create and share their work. Our goals at Creative Nations are to create a space for creation and collaboration, as well as foster opportunities for all Indigenous artists to thrive.
Dance Data Project®

Dance Data Project ®’s mission is to promote gender equity in the dance industry, including but not limited to ballet companies, by providing a metrics based analysis. Through their research, programming, resources, and advocacy, DDP showcases and uplifts women throughout the dance industry. DDP focus on leaders, both artistic & administrative, and artists of merit: choreographers, photographers, lighting, costume, set designers, and commissioned composers.
Design Action

Design Action is an intergenerational coalition of BIPOC and white designers working to end racial inequities in the North American theater by confronting racism in our workplace and forging new pathways into the industry for rising designers of color.
Different Strokes Performing Arts Collective

Different Strokes committed to Making Theatre, Building Community, Facilitating Awareness, and Changing The World, One Play At A Time. Motivated by the belief that the arts are capable of bridging cultural and social gaps, we work to increase and sustain opportunities for diversity within the Western North Carolina performing arts community, and present works that confront issues of social diversity, in a provocative way.
Director’s Gathering

The vision of Directors Gathering is to create a theatre-director-centric community that fosters a vibrant, dynamic, caring, and inclusive ecosystem for theatre directors, promoting diverse ways of directing and sustaining a life-long journey in directing.
Drama Club

Drama Club’s mission is to consistently care for youth who are incarcerated and court-involved by creating space for them to thrive, using improv as their guide. Drama Club welcomes participants from all five boroughs of NYC, offering a space for young people to be themselves and form friendships through the joy of play.
Dramatists Guild Foundation

Dramatists Guild Foundation (DGF) is a national charity that fuels the future of American theater by supporting the writers who create it. DGF fosters playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists at all stages of their careers. DGF sponsors educational programs; provides awards, grants, and stipends; offers free space to create new works; and gives emergency aid to writers in need of immediate support.
The Dramatists Guild of America

As the professional trade association for playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists, the Dramatists Guild of America works to protect and advance the rights of all theatre writers across the country.
Expand The Canon

Expand the Canon is committed to lead the theatrical canon toward gender equity through research, curation, and advocacy. They connect theaters, educators, and artists to powerful, overlooked plays by women that have always deserved to be classics— and inspire others to embrace a more inclusive cultural legacy.
Fuse Theatre

Fuse Theatre is a non-profit centered in the San Francisco Bay Area, dedicated to encouraging meaningful engagement in communities through theatre. Fuse works to expand perspectives, challenge the status quo, and promote justice by elevating voices often unheard and stories often left untold. Fuse Theatre believes its work is made stronger by the many voices, perspectives, and experiences brought into projects.
Greenwich House Music School

Since 1905, Greenwich House Music School (GHMS) has provided high-quality, affordable arts education for New Yorkers of all ages. The goal of Greenwich House Music School is to teach students the beauty and transformative power of music, art, and dance.
Harriet Tubman Effect Institute

The Harriet Tubman Effect, founded and led by DEI Director Nicole Johnson, is a human resource center and institute for justice advocacy and research. Their mission is to dismantle systemic oppression by producing participatory-action research and human resource initiatives, and reallocating wealth to Black and Brown DEI consultants across American industries.
The Industry Standard Group

The Industry Standard Group (TISG) is a community-based organization that creates opportunities for those traditionally underrepresented and marginalized, especially BIPOC folks, in the Broadway community to contribute to, invest in, and produce the highest level projects in the commercial theatre industry.
Intimacy Coordinators of Color

ICOC is dedicated to bringing more members of the Global Majority into leadership positions in the burgeoning intimacy industry by offering opportunities to work in regional theater, Broadway and Off-Broadway.
Invest In Access, Inc.

Invest In Access is a 501c3 Charitable Organization. We reshape events, mindsets and the workplace to ensure equitable access for disabled Americans.
The Lillys

The Lillys are responsible for creating The Lilly Awards, The Count and Counting Together (both housed at the Dramatists Guild), The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative Sculpture and Scholarship, The Family Residency at Space on Ryder Farm among other accomplishments. The Lillys are proud to have moved 3.5 million dollars into the hands of women theater artists.
Maestra

MAESTRA provides support, visibility, and community to the women who make the music in the musical theater industry. Since women are under-represented in musical theater, our membership is made up of female and non-binary composers, music directors, orchestrators, arrangers, copyists, rehearsal pianists and other musicians.
The Make Good Project

Building spaces dedicated to fortifying the voices of Black women as story bearers. We are archivists of our lived and historical pasts. We are wellsprings for our limitless imaginations and dreams of the future.
Musicians United for Social Equity (MUSE)

MUSE’s mission is to cultivate greater racial equity in theatrical music departments by providing access, internships, mentorships, and support to historically marginalized people of color. MUSE aims to challenge systemic acts of exclusion and support musicians as we transition to a more diverse and inclusive environment for all.
National Women’s History Museum

Founded in 1996, the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) is an innovative virtual-first museum dedicated to uncovering, interpreting, and celebrating women’s diverse contributions to society. A renowned leader in women’s history education, the Museum brings to life the countless untold stories of women throughout history, and serves as a space for all to inspire, experience, collaborate, and amplify women’s impact—past, present, and future. We strive to fundamentally change the way women and girls see their potential and power.
Notes for Notes

NOTES FOR NOTES® provides youth with FREE access to music instruments, instruction and recording studio environments so that music may become a profoundly positive influence in their lives.
Noor Theatre

Noor Theatre is the only NYC-based theater company dedicated to supporting, developing, and producing the work of theatre artists of Middle Eastern, North African, and Southwest Asian (MENA/SWANA) descent.
Open Stage Project

Open Stage Project is a New York City nonprofit closing the gender gap in behind-the-scenes careers by educating, mentoring, and empowering young women and nonbinary students to pursue jobs in theater, film, and TV via free after-school programs.
Parity Productions

Parity Productions promotes parity by empowering women, trans, and gender-expansive artists in NYC theatre. In fulfilling our mission, we develop original plays, produce and promote the work of playwrights, directors, and designers, and provide opportunities for underrepresented voices to work in theatre.
Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative

The Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative operates 424 w 54 Street as a legally incorporated and wholeheartedly organized co-op supporting entrepreneurs, educators, and artists who share values of service and hospitality. Here, we work to design experiences, build companies and organizations, practice our crafts, cultivate relationships, and grow as people.
Producer Hub

Developed specifically for independent producers and artists operating in nimble, bespoke business models, Producer Hub offers programs, resources, and community that allow participants to ease the burden of sustainability in business practice. Producer Hub helps them create work, realize their full potential, and make lasting contributions to the performing arts field. Producer Hub supports performance entrepreneurs at every stage of their practice, needs, and financial capacity.
R.Evolución Latina

R.Evolución Latina activates individual and collective human growth through artistic experiences, fostering transformation and social change—a true Revolution of Evolution, making a difference through the arts.
Ring of Keys

Ring of Keys is a 501(c)3 nonprofit artist service organization that fosters community and visibility for musical theatre artists – onstage and off – who self-identify as queer women, transgender, and gender non-conforming artists. By providing community outreach to advocate for and amplify these artists and widening the public’s engagement with and education about queer stories, Ring of Keys queers the stage to create a more inclusive musical theatre landscape for all.
Spectra Media Collective

Spectra is founded by the Saunders family – a group of technologists, theater artists, and educators with a unique set of skills and experiences aligned with our vision to utilize technology to expand access and lower the cost of entry to theater for artists, administrators, and audiences alike.
TEMPO

TEMPO (Trans & Expansive Music Professional Organization) is an organization for artists under the trans/gender expansive umbrella as well as the music umbrella, predominantly within musical theatre. We work intercommunally and intracommunally. We partner with other organizations that share our goal of opportunities for growth as music makers for groups who have been historically overlooked.
Theatre Advocacy Project | TAP

TAP has a mission to create safe and equitable working conditions for all theatre professionals through a suite of HR & DEI tools.
Theatre of the Oppressed NYC

Theatre of the Oppressed NYC partners with communities confronting systemic oppression to inspire transformative action through theatre. Their goals are to build solidarity and awareness; to enable actors to become activists; and to influence policy-making through participatory theatre. Their work is guided by several core principles: that any discussion of a social problem should center the voices of those most affected; that unscripted, live encounters have immense potential for transformative change; and that community-based art and activism can influence policy.
Theatre Producers of Color (TPOC)

Theatre Producers of Color (TPOC) is a multifaceted collective of theatremakers joined together in support of the next generation of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) producers by providing access to education, training, and mentorship.
Think Tank for Theatrical Innovation (T3i)

The Think Tank for Theatrical Innovation (T3i) is a volunteer group of theater industry professionals whose purpose is to provide a space for discussion around facilitating change, varied topics related to social justice and systemic racism in our industry.
tutti

tutti aims to diversify music departments and pit orchestras on Broadway and beyond. We support historically marginalized individuals in the arts by offering two mentorship programs: Music Director Observership and Creative Exchange. These initiatives connect professionals and Broadway artists, fostering relationships that create pathways for BIPOC musicians to access opportunities and community.
Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA)

VASTA is an international non-profit that brings together a global network of voice and speech professionals across all disciplines and industries—uniting artists, educators, coaches, therapists, and more. Their mission is to cultivate the voice and speech profession and its multidisciplinary impact with passion, respect, and definitive leadership.
Women Count

The Women Count report series looks at Off- and Off-Off-Broadway hiring patterns to inform national conversations about gender parity in the American theater. The goal of the report series is to change the conversation from anecdotes to advocacy on behalf of female and non-binary playwrights, performers, and off-stage theater workers.
Women & Theatre

Women & Theatre is a community project and podcast. Our mission is to connect women and gender-expansive folks in the theatre industry by cultivating open conversations across identities and professional roles, creating opportunities to support one another in growing our careers, and pooling our collective wisdom to build the equitable theatrical spaces of the future.