Francesca Bolam is a British born, NYC based Actress.

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Edition Sixty-Eight- Week Sixty-Eight:

Written by: Jacob West

Francesca Bolam is a British born, NYC based Actress. She attended The American Musical and Dramatic Academy in LA & NYC from 2012-2014, where she studied Musical Theatre.

She is known for writing, directing and starring in many plays including “Untitled Monologues” (2020) and most recently “Hoyt St” (2023) which debuted at Theatre Row. She has performed in venues all over the UK and NYC and has collaborated with companies such as The Peace Poets and The Poetry Project. She was lead vocalist on a project with Grammy winning, Oscar nominated Bassy Bob Brockmann. She gained her BA in Musical Theatre from the New School in New York, graduating Summa Cum Laude.

Where are you from and how does that affect your work?

I’m originally from a very industrial, working class town in the North East of England but I reside in Crown Heights Brooklyn NYC. I honestly feel like my experience growing up in the environment I was in forces me to look at some of the nitty gritty aspects of life. Of classism and privilege and a need to create to survive. I think that is often the driving force behind telling these stories. England is very much a place where people don’t openly share their troubles, everything is always brushed under the carpet. I can’t live like that, bottling everything up. The themes and topics of my work strive to tell the untold.

Tell me about your favorite medium.

Aside from acting, I write. I’ve always written. For me it is the easiest way to release whatever is going on inside.

When is your favorite time of day to create?

While I would love to be one of those artists with a consistent time of day to write, I’m just not. The last play I wrote, I wrote the initial script in two days and took it from there. I want to move into writing something everyday.

Describe how art is important to society.

This is such a loaded question. Art has this capacity to be many things all at once, a tool for awareness, an escape, a way to relate, a force to rebel, and the best part is it is never interpreted the same. For me art has the ability to make me feel free, it’s often a relief from many experiences/emotions, it’s a mode for healing and I think that is why it is important to society. There are so many vast mediums, that there is something for everyone to access.

Your latest play “Dream Card” which is being presented by Riff Raff NYC follows the theme of immigrants in New York. How was this important to?

I am an immigrant artist in New York, who has been making it home for the last ten years. I understand a lot of the hoops we have to jump through. I also understand there are so many immigrant experiences. This piece for me is very personal, it follows three friends who are all from the same place, but are very different in so many ways but gravitate to one and other because of one commonality. I wanted to deep dive in this piece on the multilayered intricacies of an immigrant friendship group and the individual challenges they each face. I also wanted to speak to the fact that often times the weight of leaving a place dictates the drive to create a home elsewhere and how difficult it is to juggle a life in multiple places.

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Where do you find inspiration?

Sometimes I feel like it’s not even me writing, something just comes over me and I have to put it on paper or the notes in my phone before it leaves my brain. Moments like this feel like pure magic. Other times I work off of a theme or a starting off point, it could be a lyric in a song, a familiar street, an argument, anything! Sometimes it’s in conversations, in the case of “Dream Card” it was many many back and forth conversations with my dear friend Natasha Jain, who plays Priya. She was instrumental in the creation of this piece and is a brilliant, multifaceted artist who just gets it and me.

What is the most exciting part of putting together a play?

I love the rehearsal room, this is where the words come to life and the fun begins. Just the other day one of the actors in “Dream Card” had a completely different take on part of the script and it was so exciting to hear their ideas and how those ideas shaped a scene. Then when you begin to add music and transitions, I’m completely in my element. I have been fortunate to work alongside some incredible talent too and for that I am so grateful.

You can see “Dream Card” at Court Square Theater, March 8,9 & 10. Cast includes, Francesca Bolam (VICE TV, Hoyt St) Chase Naylor, (Tight Five, Hudson Guild) Natasha Jain (The Butcher, Andrew Bliss) and Umberina (Remembering Morgan, Downtown Urban Arts festival and founder of Chaand Theatre). Bolam is reunited with Joseph Fusco (Agatha Christie’s The Stranger -Players Theater – BWW Award-Nominee Best Production, To Live For- UCPAC, Hoyt St -Theatre Row, Teatro Latea) who will be directing the piece.