 Nope, thank you everybody for coming back Hello clap wads clap twice It works with my five-year-old nephew and it works with all of you really impressive Anyone want to claim this? All right, Scott. I'll find you anyone want to claim a Adapter iPhone I took home sunglasses last year. Maybe I'll take home an adapter um Very quickly. I just want to take a moment to thank the folks that have served on The board and the exec slate during my tenure as president So if you are one of those people would you come join me on stage? If I were a better person, we would have presents. We don't have presents, but I just want to say thank you To this astonishing group of people They work their asses off They get emails at two o'clock in the morning and they save the day they do it with extraordinary charm and good humor and intelligence and Comradery and I am grateful to every second I have had as part of this organization since my first day as a member at Brian Quartz Toronto conference So thank you all for being who you are So in the goal of keeping everything really short and on time there is a bio for mr. Louis Alfaro in your handbook and online So if you have not read about him, I encourage you to do so if you have not read his work I encourage you to do so if you have not seen his plays, please produce them and send him some royalty money In addition to being a playwright and an activist he is also sometimes a performer and although tonight is not Officially one of those performances. I am utterly delighted that he agreed to join us and give you just a little taste of Who he is I have known Luis for a very long time And had the luxury of dipping in and out of his work over many many years and made a list of just a few of them Straight as a line at primary stages in the year 2000 a play by a Latino playwright with an Asian cast Electricidad at the Mark Taper Forum in 2004 and the film he wrote from Prada Tanada in 2011 So it's been a long journey of love to have this moment to get to share him with all of you So with no further ado, I give you the extraordinary Louis Alfaro Hello everybody. Oh Wow, I Was so nervous about coming here today because a lambda it sounds like a British Thing but it's so great to see all of you so many people. I know I want to thank Beth Blickers We were both at at Abrams artists at the same time I was a client and I was a terror client for that agency because I am a yes artist I say yes to everything and I have a really favorite memory, which was that I said yes to tree planting ceremony for the city of Anaheim, California And I remember that they had to do the contract for that and it's really great I Just I think what I want to say is that you know, although I work in the Academy. I teach at USC I really would just love to keep it really real It's a short little speech and I'm gonna try to include as much gossip and as I can include some images hopefully inspire some thoughts about new plays Development community building. I have had a really sort of extraordinary journey these last I'm afraid to say it, but I'm gonna have to say it these last 30 years There's something about saying that that that number and I think it's a that more and more I keep hearing This is a young man's game. So if you survive it, it's a gang culture If I give I got through the last first 20 years I think I can get through all of it So I'm super excited that nobody's gonna shoot me here tonight. I'm really happy I was raised very Pentecostal and very Catholic so essential to key to my work is this I think a sense of humility a sense of appreciation for For these opportunities and I have a lot of opportunities right now in my life I am the resident playwright at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I was just yeah, it's a great gig I am I Am a resident artist at the Magic Theater in San Francisco at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago a little company in LA called playwright Serena and Really kind of not because I want to but I think it's the new reality of how we work It used to be in the old days when I first started you were at one theater and and there was a kind of loyalty at one theater Right and it doesn't work like that anymore You kind of go around the country you're kind of a bit of a nomad and so I have spent the last 30 years Kind of traveling around the US and I do something a little different which has said I don't Just show up, you know for a table work and then and then you know You leave at the end of rehearsal and then come back for opening and then that next morning That's 6 a.m. Southwest flight that they put you on and send you home I actually stay I stay so I have been doing a series of what I call long-term Residencies at regional theaters across America. I stay for up to a year and I stay normally and kind of Cities that are wrestling with something with themselves. So I was in Tucson, Arizona for a year I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a year I was in Houston, Texas for a year So I've been kind of all over the country and one of the realities that I face as a as a person of color Doing theater in the regional theaters is that I not only bring my play I also bring the audience with me or I go and find them And so I thought today tell you a little bit about how I do that and also how I how I work inside of a company I have these little tricks, you know a box of donuts works really really well I am a notorious for bringing that first box of donuts to the box office and generally when I come to a company I start at the box office and then I move into marketing and then when we start working on the art I work I move into literary and so it's a way of Making sure that the signal we're giving to the community is the one we want to give It's also a way of making sure that when you have that first experience Coming to a theater. It's the most positive experience you can have so I am Kind of crazy about things like working with the parking lot guy I'm working with the people who do facilities because I do think that's where the first experience starts It starts with having a really good parking lot experience so that you want to come back. Yeah I'm the most ignorant person in the room. That's the title of today's speech. I am The most ignorant person in the room. That's where I start. This is where I learn That I need to be told everything about a community. So when I go to a new community I do something that I learned from a woman named Rachel Ray who's a TV host a food host Yeah, and she says that she goes to these different cities and she'll say hey Where's the best place for me to have breakfast and if three people tell her the same place, then that's the place That's the local place, right? I do a little variation on that. Who should I talk to? And so that's where it starts and it's not usually the mayor It's usually that guy that does the activism work or this lady who is keeping these things together in town Or somebody who is kind of like the town gossip Whoever it is they usually are the first entrance into a community I am trying my best in my work to be as authentic and as truthful in the creation of the work Not only for the audience, but most of the time I am working with the community that are in essence kind of my dramaturgs I was born and raised in downtown Los Angeles in a very poor and a very violent neighborhood called Pico Union I generally don't like to tell this story because I used to have a lot of shame about it But I'm gonna tell you because I think it's really important as to how I started So my mom is at born again Pentecostal is at prayer service. It's a Wednesday night My dad is at the Hollywood Park racetrack and I am babysitting my little sister There is a bar at the corner called it Gloob Halisco and there is a fight at the bar I know this because a guy is walking down the street with a piece of a pool cue sticking out of his stomach And he starts to walk towards our house and lo and behold He falls and dies in front of the house Our dog Toro later to be renamed tortilla when he got run over jumps on this guy and starts to bite him and there is panic. There is chaos. There are some police lights There is ambulances there's all kinds of stuff now what what I think is happening even though I don't know the word yet is there is opera There is something extraordinary going outside on outside out that window And it is the beginning of my journey towards storytelling so guess what I was in the fourth grade and We had to write an essay and it was just lucky that that happened most important thing that happened in your neighborhood So I write this wonderful essay about this guy and the pool cue and my dog and the ambulance lights And I'm you know already using metaphor It's like a circus and you know I'm going on and on and on and so my mother gets called in by my teacher who has read it My mother and I have to go visit the principal who Suspends me for a week and I have to see a therapist so Wonderful right and here's the thing that's so amazing about it was raised by two form worker parents from the Central Valley of California Delano, and so we were raised in the United form workers kind of political family and my father used to say to us when we were kids We must bring to light that which is in the dark which is abuses Which is oppression which is all this stuff and in that moment when I am in that principal's office I realize that somebody is trying to stop me from telling the truth Yeah, and so it's the beginning of writing for me My mother went and bought me a bunch of little books and I started to journal write and I never stopped It was the beginning of Intro into poetry I spent 10 years in the poetry world and then I spent another 10 years doing performance art In the u.s. I went to europe I went to canada I went to latin america And I'll just very quickly tell you that the theater of performance art was also Away into discovering theater. So I have two famous pieces I'm looking at meat hunter because I think you've seen them both in a disgusting manner I drink a bottle of tequila on stage and then I work out so kind of crazy statement on machismo and How much can my body take and and I call them these modern bodvills And the other one is I eat two boxes of twinkies and then I type rope walk And so, uh, I know you're thinking. Hmm. Okay. Who did they get for the keynote? But it did get me to europe, right And he got me a macArthur award so Uh, but that was really just the beginning for seeing my art really kind of in two ways I think of my playwriting life as My life before maria iran foreigners and my life after meeting iran So I was a student of iran foreigners says and it changed my life In many ways, um, I belong to an ancient tradition. I don't have any formal Education in terms of the art. So I was really I come from that ancient tradition of mentoring I was mentored by iran At a certain point iran said now you must go to paula vogel So I was paula vogel's assistant for a while and I was mentored by her paula sent me off to mac wellman That was very very interesting In fact, I'll tell you my little well mac wellman story because I got gossip. I have to do a little gossip, right? So mac and I are at a bar in la called, uh, l coyote And yeah, the dangerous dangerous margaritas. I'm underage, but I have a I have a fake idea. So it's all okay, right? And um, I'm wasted and he hands me a napkin and he says You're not very well read and it's going to haunt you for the rest of your life So I suggest that you read this list and you start reading all these pieces on the list The first listing is the bible And it's the coran and then it was like tennessee williams I mean it kind of just went down the list, right? And um, maybe one of the greatest gifts I ever have and the mac, uh Turned me out to len jinkins And there I went for the next 10 years working, uh, non-stop So a lot of what I did was I was assist people in exchange for being in their workshops or for Being in the room with them. Um, I feel like everyone that I work with is capable of writing a great play And I talk about children and I talk about community members that I work with and senior citizen groups I feel that everyone can write a great play I feel that everyone could write a probably a great song a great poem But very few of us can write 10 of them because that requires this Right and all that writing is is really about technique and craft So for me the alchemy of writing really happened in play writing It really happened when I committed that thing, uh My my sort of chicano tongue to a pen and it landed on a very kind of american paper And somehow I've been sort of wrestling with one foot on each side of the border And sometimes the border is the us in mexico, but a lot of times the border is between um being a Queer and being in a straight culture being a person of color and being in institutions where I'm the only person of color So a lot of times, you know, I'm I'm having to sort of negotiate a lot of a lot of this So my first class with Irene forness Was with an amazing group of people honong. I don't know if you guys know honon Bridget carpenter Naomi Zuka Caritas bitch Alice twan and I reen asked what kind of play I wanted to write And uh, so I had by then I already had 16 arrests for civil disobedience I'm a political person and uh And at one point I even worked for the aclu teaching people how to get arrested And I blurted out that I wanted to write political plays and Irene forness says I hate people who write political plays The irony right and I didn't know her work, but it was like, okay As she said if you want to write a political play, I suggest that you stop writing right now And that you go do your work go do politics and then come back and write a play about nothing write a play about a rock And I promise you it will be political A cliche I know But it was um, it was a truth that really helped me. So I stopped writing I worked in HIV AIDS prevention Uh in a hospice and then I did field work I had a job where from midnight to 5 a.m I would go to griffith park, which is the largest park in alley county and I had a Flashlight and I was that super obnoxious guy that would go into the bushes and go Hey, are you guys about to have sex because uh, do you need a condom? And uh, do you know how to put it on because I could teach you I have a banana And I had a little safe sex show I did and so um, so true to performance art But true also to my activism and theater right and so I was doing a lot of this stuff And then I went to work for SCIU the the largest union in the country On a justice for janitors campaign and I came back And I did exactly what I read foreign assessment to do which is to write about nothing And of course the world entered right and my career took off So I spent 10 years at the mark tape reform. I ran a program called the latino theater initiative commissioned over 150 artists Um, and then I ran the new play development for a while and like all good things regime change happens and it ends And this is the challenge with the american theater at the moment when you finally learn how to be a good producer You get canned, right? So, uh I I was sort of lost. I didn't really know what to do and as beth was telling you I got hired to write a tween film an adaptation of sense and sensibility called from prada to nada and the woman I was working with was a French event as well and filmmaker named fina torres And uh, you know, we were working they put us up at a house in ohai, california And I was sort of depressed, you know, I'd worked. I think all of my life I think I had only taken one day off during my entire time at the taper And uh, she said what's the matter? I said, well, you know, I'm not sure I missed a job But I sure miss all the people And being a french rude woman She said the only thing that art asked you to do is to change get over yourself And it was the best lesson for going into long-term residencies What sometimes can be a little lonely, which sometimes when you're working in cities That are struggling you meet a lot of different kinds of people So I did a poverty study in hartford connecticut as many of you might know Do you guys know hartford connecticut so hartford state? So hartford, you know quadruples in size during the day, but at night It's 43 port a weekend and 40 something percent african-american Huge drug addiction problem So I spent my days at the local parish with the priest In the poorest parish in hartford and hartford is the poorest city in the richest state in the nation And so, um, you know, I would sit there and people would come in and they would Ask him to do final rights or they would want to rent the hall for 10 dollars and so it was like a kind of Amazing experience to just sit and know nothing and to learn everything about a city Um, I was in tucson connet tucson, arizona at working at borderlands theater in a lane romero's here Who has been a long long time playwright friend? And I did a project where I worked with young teen girls and I met a little girl 13 years old who had murdered her mother. It was a poetry Program and I'd like a juvenile juvenile Detention center and she had murdered her mother because the mother had put a hit out on the dad Who was a drug dealer from the south side of tucson? And so Terrible terrible story a beautiful young lady a great poet And so that night I would go to the arizona theater company to see a play and I remember it was a comedy It was called the mystery of arma vep And so I needed something to raise my spirits and I went into the little arizona theater company store And they had a collection of the greeks, which I'd never read 10 greeks for 10 dollars dollar greek pretty good, right? And the first Play that I read is electro the story of a young girl who murders her mother to avenge her father's death And something shifts in me, right? I'm going to tell this story beat per beat And I'm going to keep it modern But I'm going to take all of those beats of the greeks and I'm going to teach myself How to write a really good play in 90 minutes with life and love and death and Family and all the good stuff and and it sent me on a journey So for the last 10 10 years or so I've written a four greeks I wrote a play called electricidad that was done on the main stage at the goodman marked a perform I wrote a play called edifice l ray That's been all over the country And then most recently I wrote an adaptation of medea called bruja for the magic theater And then because I'm a glutton for punishment. I wrote another version of medea called mojada Which is kind of really making its way around the country So I thought today that I would show you a little bit through image because you know, I'm not that beautiful Do image some of the programs that I do how I do them and you can get a sense of how I travel through the theater And and since we have so few moments. I thought I'd kind of like Plow through this and so forgive me if If I'm kind of going a little too fast. So This is a project that I did in santa barbara Teen young teen gang members with senior citizens six months the senior citizens play the kids the kids play the senior citizens One of the most extraordinary experiences. I'll tell you why I had a young guy His name was osso, which in Spanish means bear And he decided at the first rehearsal that nobody in the gang was going to come to rehearsal What do you do about that, right? So I'm sitting in santa barbara, which is about two hours out of LA Trying to figure out what to do. I'm at a starbucks and I wait till 10 p.m. And I go to osso's house Knock on the door his mother answers and I say hola está osito so I have to take him down a few notches, right? And um, she was So she sends me upstairs. He doesn't know I'm coming he opens the door There he is and his boxers and his undershirt and I said so here's the deal I know that you want to be in charge And I don't need to be in charge right now. I'm listed as the director, but you can be the director I will tell you everything you need to do And you will get the credit in the program But you have to guarantee that the the young gang members will show up to every rehearsal and they'll never be late And sure enough six months not a single absence Not a single tardy and when people were like racing Also would get on his little phone and say get here and they would get there, right? So one of the greatest accomplishments that I learned early on was how to negotiate with community And I love the program because the program says directed by osso assisted directed by louise alvaro And this little lady her name is china is the dramaturg and so I was hoping she'd be here today, but Clearly she hasn't followed the craft Um, uh in my journeys. I also do a lot of crazy things like playwriting workshops with the red-headed ladies of palm springs Isn't that fabulous? Uh, so I started to I started to work and Build plays and one of the plays that I built was a play called breakfast lunch and dinner about a woman who gets So impossibly large that she starts to float I had always been my dream to to make theater. That's fantastical That's impossible and I went to a bunch of directors because I was this young arrogant guy a new dramatist And I would interview directors, right? And I'd say can you make somebody float on stage and then you know like I don't know like Annie Kaufman would say no And they go next and so Lisa Peterson said yes, I will make your floating person So we worked on this piece. This is Diane Rodriguez who is president of the tcg board and now on the national council of the arts She'd be thrilled that I'm showing this picture of her and that equalled um this play At heart for stage So I kind of got to see my fat woman fly And it was really kind of extraordinary But the thing that was most extraordinary about this Was going and working with the box office because when you have 43 percent Puerto Ricans in town You need a Spanish speaking box office person And maybe the biggest activism I did at heartford was higher a Spanish speaking box office person who's still there 10 years later And so little by little that is the kind of politics that take over So although I see these images and I think about how much fun this play was I think about creating access for the audience to enter into the world of the play And then I went to Oregon Shakespeare Festival to do this play. This is Sandra Marquez the newest member of steppenwolf ensemble If you guys know Sandra, she's not this big at all. She's super thin And uh, this is one of my favorite pictures. Louis Douth at the Is here from osf as well and um, we had an amazing journey 10 years ago Which has said my boss bill roush told me we need to get the numbers to change the numbers And if we're doing a latino play we need to see latino. So he gave me 10 000 tickets at a discounted price I went into town I had an office not at the uh, Oregon Shakespeare Festival But at a place called la clínica del valle in two towns over And uh, la clínica del valle is where all the migrant farm workers go and I learned things which I love as a play Right, which is I learned things about states. So Oregon is an organic state. They don't put anything in the water That's not organic to the water. So they don't have fluoride That summer a young 11 year old migrant farm worker died of a tooth abscess So that started to fuel A whole ton of stories and when you're in a clinic, you're learning this all of this in really immense and profound ways But the other exciting thing is freda casillas who is our community outreach person? And I went to medford and we found this woman who had this taco truck and we said to her Um, would you come and she said no, I'd never make any money So we guaranteed her three thousand dollars as she would come for our big latino opening weekend and we had a Conjunto that we brought from sinaloa. We like really built this thing up, right? And so she agreed to come and she made ten thousand dollars that first weekend So now she is an institution taco truck tuesday at osf We had to take it off the bricks because the shakespeare purists were really really mad. So now it's over by the new theater She's joined the hispanic chamber of counts Count commerce and she gives us 10 percent of all into the hispanic scholarship fund We can do it, right? We can write the play We can bring the audience and We can bring the taco truck So I read that five percent of all plays for young people only five percent have a female lead I don't know if that's true. Is it does anyone know if that's still true? So I wrote a play called black butterfly has a really long title took it to the kennedy center twice And I was a big hit Just wrote it on a lark really because I was so dismayed But the fact that most young girls in place support the little boy who goes on the journey, right? So could we have five females talking about being poets and this play has had about 13 productions And it was seen in la by 135,000 kids Right You can do it Here's another kind of activism. I wrote a play called hero right after the iraq war comedy I read about a guy from lajabra california who fell off His truck While he was protecting water in iraq and he got the key to the city and I was like, wait a minute I want the key to lajabra california, right? So I wrote this silly little comedy. We started rehearsing latino cast We noticed that all the reservations are only latino. So the next day john revera the director hires an asian cast So on thursday nights latino cast friday nights asian cast saturday latinos sunday asians And you know what happened only the latinos would come to the latino show only the asians can relation show So we had to mix the moms and the minute that happened Diverse audience Yeah What a lesson I wrote a play for cornerstone theater company called body of faith. This is a great lesson about playwriting Gay and lesbian transgender lb gt Q did you know there's a q? What is it? Questioning I don't know and i'm gay I could be thrown out of the tribe for that. So um, I wrote this play interviewed people of faith Lesbian nuns everybody and I met two transgender people And one of the transgender people in the play told me that he was from santa She was from santa june, texas and um was going to jump off a bridge So depressed and the parents came the fire department was there It was a big big thing in the news and uh The mother's crying and she says don't jump. We love you. We know you're gay and she says i'm i'm not gay I'm a woman. I'm transgender and the mother says jump So right so like core beliefs right and she says that is the moment when I realized That the only thing that was going to get me through this journey of changing my body was faith So the t in transgender is the same t in transformation It's the same t in transubstantiation I got in so much trouble with the catholic church I got a note from my parish telling me that we're going to kick me out It was amazing, but you know what nuns came Priests came and I didn't realize we had so many gay and lesbian Uh nuns and priests in alley county extraordinary And it won the pen award for drama. Thank god. So here I go into the greeks um, I love What happened and I started in tucson at a little theater called borderlands And I really loved working at borderlands because although it's a non professional theater writing a new play for a non professional theater requires A lot of craziness like people not showing up and nobody ever kind of really actually learned all the lines But the thing that was extraordinary was I needed to get the essence and the authenticity of the language And that is what that community gave me they gave it to me This is a pima community college where we ended up doing the play And they gave me this wonderful gift and that's what equalled a main stage production at the goodman theater um It was a very interesting experience at the goodman because it was I think the first Outside of zootsuit and a few others the first kind of large scale latino new play And I'll never uh, tanya saracho. Do you guys know the playwright tanya saracho? She's a good friend of mine We were at the box office because she was in the place She was in the chorus and a person came up a very innocent wonderful older woman Who didn't realize it but went up and said is this play in spiky knees? and the box office guy said Oh, you know, he's wrestling with that, right? And and she goes, you know spiky knees when it's like spanish and english and he goes I don't think that's a word right and uh It was basically my experience of how powerful it was to be at a big gigantic theater like at the goodman And also to educate the audience so I started to do post plays and now I believe Really strongly in post plays and so I did kind of a post play every other night um Just to so these are steals from the play And then there was a production at the mark tape or forum I'm just going to go really quick through them because my minutes are up Lots of productions everywhere dallas Uh, the old la city jail. How scary was that? Of the first def production Fabulous, right? So I went into edifice. All right. The thing I love about the greeks is there's a question we're asking, right? So if electra the question of electra is is it possible for us to forgive The question of edifice is is it destiny or is it fate? Right and so I read that uh 62 percent of all young men in the california state prison system Uh, we'll go back at least once into prison once they're released 62 percent Where are the new kingdoms? Yeah, so we started at the magic theater with the very simple Kind of staging of the play moved into victory gardens theater chicago This is the eighth production of the play and as a playwright. I have to say um This is finally where the play landed So it takes me a long time usually first productions Are not really kind of my favorite or i'm still working There was a character named uh creon creon se crea muy creon Which is a play on creon and um, I never kind of got that character in every review seven productions previous would say Something's wrong with the creon and then you know, you meet an actor And he brings something to the experience and it was a young guy just out of depol And he would sit at rehearsal with this little pad and he would write the most amazing notes Thoughts for himself as a character and something Switched for me too and it was the first time that I met an actor who actually wrote his part He didn't actually give me the language, but he gave me The soul of this character and then uh, this play really took off It was like christis jones's uh only four stars that ever got from him It went and it ran all summer and it and it got picked up everywhere So here was my experience in chicago 35 performances Every day I'd get up in the morning and I'd take a subway like the kedsey line All the way to its end and then I would take a bus all the way to its end And then I would walk about 10 blocks in the 95 degree heat and I shaved my head I did all kinds of crazy stuff just to like survive it and I would go meet a non-profit leader that was working with issues around young men just out of prison Gang prevention and then that night they would come to the theater And they would be my guest at the at the post play So we show up for first performance and the audience Beautiful audience is about 65 and older White Very loyal, but doesn't look like the city right? So I got up and I went out front and I said you guys we have to do something about this So Yes, yes, so this is one of my favorite productions because I think it just the audience was changed and I was changed So here's my sad story about casting the most amazing actor He's having the most amazing career in chicago's names adam pos. Have you ever seen him? I saw him because I saw him in a rajeev joseph play at theater works in uh, palo alto And um, he came into audition. I said, I'm sorry. I'm so I feel terrible about this But I'm gonna ask do you not to audition because I'm really working towards a kind of authenticity with play And I'm really looking for latinos and he goes. Well, you know what? I've never played a latino and I'm porto rican And I go, oh my god. I've seen you in like three rajeev joseph plays. He goes. I did a lot of good accent work at de paul And and so a kind of amazing journey with this actor He's in kind of everything I do now in chicago, right? So not only am I building the play I'm building the audience I'm building the community of actors as well The only way we're going to be good enough for these regional theaters is if we we become veterans in the field Uh production in minneapolis with carlyle brown as teresia's How amazing is that? you know Uh woolly mammoth a big lesson I learned Eastern european designer. He says to me, what's your favorite tv show? I go america's next top model. I love it and uh He brings in this set at the set design And uh, he took out all the chairs if you notice up there and he built a ramp a modeling ramp And the entire place took place on this ramp. So you have to be very careful about what you tell designers This is the famous uh road rage scene in in edifice. So that was the drawing and this was the actual design I learned a big lesson the audience was terrified. You must never Sit them that close when there's blood and violence. They were um, they were beyond terrified Uh, I never saw a single person of color at their production and the poor, you know, I love woolly mammoth God bless them. But the the crowd that came was like, oh my god I can never go to the inner city It was terrifying for them This was the set So one of my greatest experiences working regional theater woolly mammoth While i'm doing edifice. I'm also working with 12 adults People in a y in a ymca program Literacy program learning how to read and write for the first time in their lives They come to first rehearsal They come to table work. They come to design meetings They come to opening night and they come throughout the run and uh, they learn Uh to read and write with the play called edifice. El rey. How fabulous is that? Yeah I'm so damn lucky. This woman gave me a lot of trouble You can almost tell the ones that give you trouble, right? Uh production here, I wanted to show you this because this is a production here in portland And with wonderful Olga is Olga here Is Olga here? That's Olga Sanchez the wonderful Who's taken a breather from uh acting to get her phd Fabulous Fabulous Fabulous uh seattle Uh denver Not denver. Yeah dem. No dallas theater works and then um a production recently in san diego so um And then I and then I started working on this media. How crazy is that this actress? I met when she was 12 years old Her mother is the famous land water rights activist Maria Varela We met at a macArthur gathering and she said my daughter. This is my daughter Sabina and she wants to be an actress And you're like all right. Okay. Good luck She shows up a few years later in my life and she's my student at usc And then um, I find out that she had done Electricity at the new mexico arts festival And then she did adepts at dallas theater center and then she played medea in this place So she's done all my work. Um, that's the way we build community. That's the way we build actors This is a guy named Sean San Jose who has a company called composanto the legendary company of san francisco We've done 18 works together Some people just get you right And then of course I decided to do another medea because Um, I didn't really think the one I wrote was good enough really And so I met I went back to chicago and I started to meet these people called the dreamers People who hang out on the street and they counsel people who are undocumented About where you can get uh services everything right? Um, how to avoid getting arrested and um I write this piece in the middle of this play Based on this woman's narrative Um, so then another piece of information pops up to me like the greeks give you right More than half of all women who cross into the u.s Undocumented from latin america are assaulted most of the time. They're raped What a terrible price to pay to come into this country, right? So I decided I wasn't going to take a stand on immigration because it was It was uh, like people were very dramatic about it senator dick durbin came and did one of my post plays and We decided that what we were going to do was try to not talk numbers of people But show you the humanity of people who are undocumented in this country So could we just show you what it is to live undocumented in america and that is the journey of this play It's all the beats the media The other thing when you're looking for authenticity Is the house So I spent months and months in pilson, which is the mexican american neighborhood of chicago And I started taking pictures of houses Because I knew I wanted the house to look Of the way that my audience might really buy into it. So this was the original Design that you know of the picture of an actual house that I found in chicago And then the amazing set designer, you know, of course did her magic And you know, it's interesting the minute that sometimes when your people walk into a theater and they go Oh, yeah, okay, and then they sit down and they don't do this, but they do this right extraordinary And that was design Uh, thank you to norman frisch who's also here. I remember all my friends are here. I'm so excited Norman frisch. I don't know if you guys know norman norman stand. Yeah, there's norman norman. Uh, yeah, he's the big wick I don't think I'd be doing the greeks if it wasn't for norman He worked at the getty and he got me interested in telling these greek stories And I went up there and I met these scholars that were extraordinary And once again, he came to san francisco and he saw bruja and he thought I could do better I think uh, you asked some pretty pointed Questions that weren't that were kind of critical but sweet and then This is I'm messing with them right and uh, and then uh, this this production this big production just happened And we just won the los angeles drama critics circle award and it won the jeff award for best play So it's had a kind of and it's opening at oregon shakespeare festival next season And then at the end of next year, it'll be a portland center stage so finally this is a good example of um Of another great lesson I learned isop in rancho cucko monga You get hired by a city to write a play for children and it has to include isop And you have to meet the city's founding fathers and they're going to take you all their museums And and you still don't have enough creativity to get through it and nothing was sort of kicking in And they said we have this native american woman named barbara who wants to meet you Can you go to the hot dog on a stick at rancho? Whatever the mall victoria garden and she's going to meet you at hot dog on a stick And there she is a hot dog on a stick and she says hi I'm I work with the native community. I hear you doing this play I have two requests the play if it's for children should not feature humans. It should be animals I go, okay. That's all right. Just we all have animal spirits, right? And then she goes the other thing is I have to take you and show you our herbs So I was like, all right, whoo, it's okay. So we get in the car and we go to the 210 freeway Entrance ramp pull over we get off all the cars are getting on the freeway And she's picking the herbs and we're eating the herbs that were originally there And something about the idea of reaching under And looking to see what's underneath the city Started this play. So I wrote this crazy play about a little bear named isop Whose family dies in a in the big foothill fire the parents were super pissed That's a picture of the actual foothill that went up in flames. So it was based on a true story And she there's her clan and they do this wrap when they come out and then the fire comes and they all Leave except for her And then I just started working with all these Native American images to belong to the Tongva tribe of that region Rancho Cucamonga So every night the moon dies so that we can have a new day so that the sun can come up So the moon speaks like this You thought I was I don't know the parents were livid right now i'm doing bears I'm doing death. I mean they like the and of course we started doing Nighttime shows for the parents the parents wept because of course what happened is in the middle of this my father died And I didn't know how to process anything other than the day That my father died I went to rehearsal Because that's how crazed I was and I didn't know where to take all this grief and the sorrow So I wrote this play about a little bear that has to Be confronted with loss and grief. So she meets these retired lizards who take her in She meets these cactus 100 year old cactus did tell her about the history of Rancho Cucamonga She meets his salmon. She meets ants. She meets everybody right and in the process of meeting them They all do this crazy little ritual that we learned from they learned the entire play How amazing is that? So I'm pretty sure my time is up, but I think what I want to leave you with this I'm doing Pena costo plays now. Look at me. It's so sad Um, so I would like to leave you with one last start. So I did um when I was doing edifice I met a father greg boil of homeboy industries, which is a gang prevention center in los angeles And he said I have your edifice. I want you to come meet him And it was a guy who had just gotten out of something called the shoe solitary holding unit in prison. He had been in it for 16 years I'm his first like client that he's gonna meet in a room with no windows I go in the guy is completely tattooed and he won't look at me. He's Completely socially awkward and he tells me that when he was a kid He was in a gang called the wheel must gang will meet in california they were gonna kill his brother and Opposing gang said if you kill somebody else, we're gonna let your brother live So he got a gun and he went to a street corner in willmington and he shot an old lady waiting for a bus And he went to prison in prison. He had a fight and he murdered a guy in prison So he was put in this solitary holding unit So from the age of 16 to 32, right? So he says I say wow, that's interesting. So and you know me. I'm like a playwright So I'm like, do you know women and he's like, no, I'm a virgin because well, of course, right? And I go to you like What was your family? I never knew my mother and I said, oh, this is like extraordinary He's telling me all this stuff. I go. Have you ever heard of the play edifice? And he's like no and so and I tell him the whole story and he goes well, I know destiny and fate I know destiny of fate because what happened is I had the same guard the entire time I was in prison An old african-american man who said to me when you get out, I'm gonna retire and leave with you And sure enough The they tell you two weeks in advance They give you that extra pair of shoes. They give you $150. They give you a bus voucher They give you that your stuff and waiting outside of the gates was the guard who had retired And the guard was waiting for him and the guard said, can I hug you? And he said I have I know I don't know the touch of another person I don't know woman. I had never knew my mother and nobody ever touched me. I don't know that So the guard said I'm gonna show you what redemption feels like And he hugs him and he says I started crying and I must have cried for an hour And all I was thinking about was how all my spit was on this guy's shoulder And he goes and I knew in that moment That I understood that I had to take responsibility for my life and that I would never come back to prison So it's the most extraordinary thing when you're a playwright To meet the character you're writing and he's sitting in front of you and he gives you the story And all you have to do is channel all you have to do is transcribe all you have to do is translate It is what I love about community. I am the most ignorant person in the room All I have to do is listen and he gave me this amazing amazing gift And uh, so every Friday when I leave usc, I go down to home girl cafe It's a cafe for like x cholas and it's terrible the service is terrible because you know like their x gang girls So they don't get a crap and uh, so you go there and there's the guy Who's part of the speakers bureau with his tattoos to tattoo of his mother Tattoo of his father tattoo of his brother and you realize that he is a canvas And that is he carries his history with them how extraordinary I found my edifice We can do it. Thank you so much Thank you Thank you, thank you so much to louise alfaro Thank you to louis from osf for making this possible. Thank you all for staying and listening Thank you so much Can I just say? I think you know the thing is I don't think I always have trouble like when I do these things because I'm in a room usually with like people who are you know in jails and stuff So it's like a kept audience right a captive audience, but I think what's so extraordinary is just look out here Mead norman louis All so many of you I've known over so many years. We are on a journey together I know that we're not always at the same theater But I think it's extraordinary that we are part of this ancient tradition and we're still doing the work Isn't that amazing and that when we feel like we can't do it We have to remember that we're part of a very special tribe. We're the translators, right? End of day one. I think we got through it You're on your own for the rest of the evening anyone who wants to come to rogue hall and kick your evening off with a drink Please do anyone who wants to head to dinner and then come join at rogue hall. You're welcome to do that Have a great time ask the volunteers if you need help with anything and we will see you back here at I think 9 30 tomorrow morning anybody leave