Who We Are

A BRIEF HISTORY…
The Bridge Initiative (TBI) was launched in January 2015 by Brenda Jean Foley and Tracy Liz Miller with an Art Tank seed funding grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. The company’s goal was to promote women in theatre, modeling female leadership and bringing female writers to local stages in the Phoenix, AZ region. Because TBI insists on paying our full creative teams, we have eased into full productions and have not produced traditional theatre “seasons.”

Their first project was a national new play contest that resulted in the 2015 workshop premiere production of “Anatomy of a Hug” by Kat Ramsburg as part of a two-week symposium of new work. They went on to secure nonprofit status as a 501(c)3 in 2016. In 2017 and 2019, TBI presented an innovative new play and film festival called The Bechdel Test Fest, featuring short films and plays chosen from national submissions that satisfied the requirements of the Bechdel Test, namely that the work features two female-identifying characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. The planned 2020 Beyond Bechdel festival was canceled in March 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. Bridge pivoted to online content immediately, producing a virtual play reading series and later two innovative Quaran-Teams video events as well as a video presentations of The Taming by Lauren Gunderson and The Dalai Lama Is Not Welcome Here, part of Arizona Theatre Company’s Romerofest honoring the work of Arizona playwright Elaine Romero.

TBI’s first full production was The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson in partnership with Tempe Center for the Arts in 2018. Our first solo full production was A Feminine Ending by Sarah Treem, delayed by COVID till 2022, presented in rep with a workshop of local trans playwright Maybe Stewart’s autobiographical Just Be. In the last two years, we have co-produced The Moors by Jen Silverman and the professional premiere of Elaine Romero’s Like Heaven with Estrella Mountain Community College; the world premiere of The Flora and Fauna by Alyson Mead (who had won our new work contest in 2016); and we are working with Childsplay on an annual production of The Diary of Anne Frank principally intended for middle school audiences.

TBI is led by its governing board. Volunteer leadership transitioned in the summer of 2018 from Co-Founding Artistic Directors Foley and Miller to Foley taking on the title of solo Producing Artistic Director. Summer 2023, Foley transitioned to Producing Executive Director and the board approved two Acting Artistic Directors, Amie Bjorklund and Elizabeth Brownlee. Bjorklund assumes the title solo with Shonda Royall as Marketing Director for our most ambitious season yet in 2024-25.