Elaina
Di Monaco
NEWS// Job Update
Elaina recently joined WHYY's team as the
Billy Penn Audience Coordinator!
Billy Penn provides quality hyper-local reporting that is all Philly, all the time. Elaina is excited to flex their muscles as an event manager, fundraiser, and creative collaborator.
Billy Penn @ WHYY
No fluff, no BS, all Philly ✨
ARTS. NEWS. EVENTS.
Elaina Di Monaco (they/them) is a theatre director, event producer, fundraiser, and organizer living and working in Philadelphia.
Elaina grew up in Tampa FL and is confident that the Gulf of Mexico is a superior body of water. They moved to Philadelphia to attend the University of the Arts and graduated with a BFA in Directing, Playwriting & Production. While the Schuylkill River is not quite the same color as the Gulf, they decided that Philly's incredible arts community would suffice.
For the past 7 years, Elaina has worked as a professional theatre director and producer dedicated to exploring new realms of storytelling that represent nuanced queer lives on the stage. They are best known for their original works created by On The Rocks, a collaborative with Latinx playwright/producer Haygen-Brice Walker. OTR's mission is to take a challenging look at millennial culture inside of systems of homophobia and white supremacy through a lens of deconstructed horror, humor, and sex. Additionally, Elaina worked as a freelance dramaturg focusing on the development of new plays by local writers. They have recently begun to explore the ideologies of intimacy work for the stage with Intimacy Directors & Coordinators and are seeking additional training to eliminate harm, improve their understanding of power structures in the room, and embrace a practice of enthusiastic consent.
In addition to professional work, Elaina is active in their community. They participate in mutual aid efforts, political organizing, and currently oversee the Binder Drive, providing free binders for Black trans & gender non-conforming folx in the US. Elaina is also: decidedly over the patriarchy, uninterested in the gender binary, and disapproves of being interrupted during meetings. They are working on unlearning.
Elaina currently lives in West Philadelphia with their partner, Emma.
MY COMMITMENT TO
ANTI-RACISM
I acknowledge my privilege as a white person, and the ways that I uphold white supremacy. I am deeply committed to my own education and unlearning, and promise to work diligently to dismantle racist systems in my workplace.
WE'RE
LIVING ON
LOOTED
LAND
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I am working and living on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Lenape community, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. I, Elaina Di Monaco, also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples.
This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.