 A central question, I'm just going to read it to you so we're all very clear. Nearly 48 years after Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech. How has the American theater fared in its pursuit of gender and racial equality? So to engage in this conversation, we have brought together seven amazing, wonderful playwrights to each, who are in the middle of amazing careers, to discuss what they feel is happening in the American theater as far as race and gender. Now, we're just going to play around with having each person sort of explain and discuss their place in the American theater. We'll become a conversation, and then after the conversation is over, we'll actually open it up for you guys out there. So what we need for you to do is sort of tweet, and you can tweet using new play hashtag, and then sort of towards the end of this conversation, we'll come in and sort of engage. So let me introduce everyone first. First off, we have Maria Alex Beach, who's play, she's very good. She's played with little monsters we see this world premiere at Brandeis Theater Company in association with primary statements. We also have Rod of Wink, whose play, C, will premiere off Broadway in September 2011 in a co-production with Classical Theater Harlem and Hip Hop Theater Festival. We also have Bridget Kelso, a 2009 member of the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater here in New York City. We also have Winter Miller, who's played in Darfur, premiered to solo audiences at the Public Theater here in New York, and it also helped raise awareness of genocide in Sudan. We also have Dominique Marceau, whose play followed me to Nellis, they've used at, sorry, Premier Stages in New Jersey this summer, this 2011. We also have Deepa Harold Hitt, a co-founder of the Rising Circle Theater Collective, whose play Rise Festival offers a developmental home for the playwrights of color. And Benny Shamia, whose play Roar premiered at the New Group, and is now being taught in college courses around the country. So welcome to all of you out there, and welcome to all of these amazing playwrights, and they're going to have to be here. So let's sort of just jump in. I'm just curious to know what you guys feel about what you do. So, you know, this thing is that everyone means we're not quite sharp. And explain to us, or each other, what is the role of the playwright? What is the journey of the playwright? I'll start. I feel that one of the roles for me as a playwright is to, and I feel like so many playwrights say this, you know, to give voice to the people in our own lives, or in our communities, or in the larger world community that we feel don't have voice, or that their stories aren't being told. For me, my role and goal as a playwright is to address some of the things that I have questions about, you know, and that I want to engage the larger community in helping to answer some of the questions. So it's about me channeling my questions to the audience and having them become a part of the solution finding rather than me finding the solutions by myself. I'm interested in breaking down barriers between different groups and then using theater as a tool to create empathy and compassion. Because I think it's when we know someone's story, when we fall in love with them, then we have less of a desire to do them harm. And when there's more humanity in the world, there's more room for me. And the rest of us. For me, it's as a role of a playwright and then also being an artistic director of a company. It's to not only give voice to the stories and break down barriers, but it's to inspire people in the audience to connect to their stories and tell their own stories so that they feel like that wall is broken and they can walk off and say, hey, you know what, I experienced something like that and somebody else did too. I'm actually not alone in this. I think that's part of the role. It's a pretty interesting idea that writing with an agenda as women and as playwrights. I think that our agendas for writing, our desire to write, is very specific to us being women. I don't know if male playwrights think about making more barriers or have this aesthetic or feel this need or connection that I feel that I feel is the end of the year. The idea that my agenda is very specific when I have a purpose, I have a need not just for my own expression, but to make connections with other people. I feel like that's very specific to women. I don't know that I agree in the sense that I think that if you are a member of a press group, then your desire is to connect. And I just sort of was thinking about, say, Larry Kramer's normal heart, that he had a clear mission. I want you to tell the story about what's happening to my community. So if you come from the most privileged group, then maybe you don't have that same desire to break down barriers because you're not really feeling the barriers. But I think if you're not a white, well-educated, christian male, then probably you've got some kind of barrier that you want to break down. I was really attracted to being as specific as most other art forms of writing, because I was very excited by the idea of having a blueprint, creating the blueprint in which people of different communities could create. I think that's something that was always very attractive to me about theater. I mean, it's so strange what we do. We shine lights on a certain part of the stage. Everyone faces one way and we tend to reel. And we get emotional reactions to this thing that is not real. And to me, that was fascinating. And I think it's really interesting that all this is coming to the head about talking about women issues because I didn't really know I was a women's playwright until my second off-rocking production. Because being an Arab-American playwright was so overwhelming and mental to hold that it's very funny to me that I had to learn a little bit more about and it came to me with the critics and how it was my work to see. But when I was creating, I wanted to create that Arab-American below-men, how to be an Arab-American girl. I wanted to look at, you know, because Glynch Ross spoke to me. And even though Southern culture is very specific, just like Irish-American culture is very specific, for me, I came into the theater world and I could do that. And I think 15 years later, I'm still struggling. I'm now facing the time that, wow, okay, maybe it's not as easy to change the subject. And just to speak from our personal experience, I think the big answer would be I want to create work that lends itself towards feeling somewhere in the world. But honestly, theater was the one place where all these different parts of my voice could come together. I consider myself a member of the hip-hop generation. And I've also done a stamp comedy, but in response to social justice issues. And I feel like theater is a place where all these parts of my voice can come together without compromise. You know, in hip-hop, there's just, you know, certain rules, you know, especially when you're a woman and you're a woman of color. At least in terms of the industries and stuff. And I didn't want to adhere to those rules. In terms of, you know, acting as an actor, working in mainstream, there's also some movements about look and aesthetic. And I didn't want to adhere to those. And I feel like theater is the one place where I can bring all these parts of myself together and yet feel very whole as a person. So yes, I write because I feel like I should write. This is what I can do to lend my voice towards healing in the world. But my own personal mission or my own personal reason for doing it is because it's where I feel myself, honestly. I have much more, I think, of just a visual sort of approach to theater, which is that I've always been a story-teller. And for many years I thought I was going to be a fiction writer. And then the writing board has actually been talking to me into going into theater. And I think that, I have a journalism background and theater is the one sort of medium that, if you have an imperious urge to show someone a particular truth about the human experience, it's the one place where, I almost call it the work of the gods, where you can put people in a space and truly show someone in a very specific space of time what happened or what happened in a story. And so I didn't realize that part of my work as a playwright was also going to be this, what we're doing now, which is to also, you know, ask the powers that need to give us a chance to do this. Because I think I'm pretty good at what I do. I didn't realize it would be actually so hard to get it done. Well, that's a very interesting point and I kind of want to understand that. You guys, Brigitte in particular, talked about having a particular agenda or sort of thing, I don't know if you were saying that you were actually able to put into an agenda where you have to sort of break down barriers. No, I was saying that I feel like the female agenda, the female playwright agenda seems very specific to me and we approach it from a different point. Right, okay. So I'm just adding to that. I'm curious to know what barriers do you guys experience? I mean, Rato's talking about writing because she wants to create a sort of sense of humanity. I wonder if you're saying the same thing, but in that pursuit to sort of share your humanity with the world, what are the barriers that you come up against? And are those barriers fair? Are those barriers expected? Do you have a sort of solvency in your mission to change the way theater looks or is women's presence and position? I thought that was something interesting between what both Virginia and I were saying about whether you're writing as a woman from an agenda or whether you're writing generally just from being the oppressed, which women are of that class and women of color are of that class. I agree that when you have a relationship to feeling there are barriers, then even if you're not writing intentionally from that place, even if you're not trying to crack down barriers, just the action of you writing is contributing to that, whether you decide for it to be or not in a space where it's so hard to get our work to put up. And I think some of the barriers that I've experienced have been a reactionary a little bit. I witness things and I don't see myself counted, like my reflections on me or where I would feel in my voice fits and I don't see that being reflected in the theater that I'm seeing produced on stages. To me the barrier has become psychological a lot of times. I see these images that don't reflect me, and it's like a lot of me tells me there's no place for me here. That doesn't mean that they're not literal. It's not like I fall out of my head and I'm making it up. But really, Dominique, if you just didn't have that mental barrier, that's a real barrier, but it becomes a psychological barrier because I see what I'm up against and then I go, well, where does my work fit? Where does my work fit? So then I can try and there are theaters that maybe welcome my noise or are excited about my ideas or whatever. Maybe there are theaters that are interested in producing my work, but there are also, when I look at what's being counted, I can only look at what's being done and say, this track record's not so great in terms of me feeling like I have a place that I belong. Can you give me specifics to what you said your advocates are concerned about? Well, for instance, I spent some time at the O'Neill last summer, and I felt very warm and welcome there. I was the only playwright of color in the National Playwright Conference. Now, there's another playwright of color in the Music O'Neill Conference. And so while I was among the women, we were in the majority of the men that were selected at the conference. There were more women playwrights in the National Playwright Conference than men. And so that felt, we celebrated that, me and my women peers. We're like, oh, look at this. And the guys celebrated with us like, oh, look at this. This is nice. But I was the only person of color. So that meant I'm the only woman of color. That's going to be black women, the only woman of color. And so that let me know that even though we are these women's voices that are being supported, and we're starting to get some recognition depending on who is running that mission, we're still not, women of color are still not being brought into this with equality either. So we are still thinking there is women to then also the women of color. And I think that that's an important part of it. And that's just from what I'm witnessing. But I don't just witness it as a playwright. I also witness it in casting. When I see shows being done, at all of the theaters that I've seen work at this year, great theater that I've seen work at. I've seen work at MTC. I've seen work at playwrights riding these great theaters. But when I look at the shows, I don't see a lot of people of color being represented in casting. Because when that tells me that either non-traditional casting is not happening, or these plays aren't right, are not right. And these plays don't include roles for those people. I think it's really important that we make it a station between active censorship and lack of opportunity. When we're talking about race or gender, what we're really talking about is the other role, which is resources. And is that what I agree. And my first show in New York was called Chocolate in America. In America, I wrote it. I produced it for $400 and came to festival in our act. Now, it was a show, subtitle, growing up Arab in America. And all the characters were Arab, but they didn't talk about it and they were just people. And I premiered it a month before 9-11. And it was just kind of like, I wanted to invite you to a show about ethnic people, and I'd just show you a show about people and ask them if they're non-traditional. Now, a month later, the world changed. I didn't take this up too long. But I think it's really important to remember and to feel empowered in that. We have to be very careful about how we talk about what kinds of changes we want. Because if it's about getting certain institutions to allow more of our voices by embarrassing, which is a tactic, a primary and effective tactic, because if you're taking corporate city-state federal funding saying you're supporting people in color and you're not doing that, or you're not supporting people to the extent that the law industry or the medical industry is, and you're taking federal funding, that's another thing. But I think it's very important for me in these conversations to remember that there are people who are active in the sense that their voices are not being heard. And it's similar to what happened to the African-American community in the last century where they had to go to Europe in order to work. But what's different is now we live in a society where we imagine that there is a level playing because all of these institutions saying that they're doing these things have not been able to do that specifically for the African-American community. But it's for any community that is the most dangerous at the time. And when I grew up, Russia was the big scary thing. And I can't wait until 30 years from now, China's going to be the big scary thing. And I'd rather like to just be... Right now. But I think it's really important to delineate between censorship and lack of opportunity so that we know how to target people who can give us more opportunities. I want to just say here quickly is that I think this was a practical path for me about this conversation because one of the unspoken... I think there is this sense of speaking out about certain things that we've noticed and that we've witnessed and that we've experienced. I think this is unspoken rule of life. Don't complain. I don't think we're complaining. I think we're trying to challenge the industry that we live and work in. But there's just this unspoken rule when regardless of what your frustrations are as a playwright you've been told to work as too narrow in scope or you're just not fit to rock theater and then want to know why that is and not get a clear answer. And it's just kind of this rule of just like don't shake the ball, don't rock in. You want to get produced. And that is what really gets out of my skin is that my work seems to be so true but as a playwright I'm kind of discouraged from being honest and being truthful and the fear of like, well, if we speak in this broadcast like how is that going to affect our careers? You and I keep this conversation about how novelists can create books and Tony Morris can create books that challenge racism and challenges the very industry that she's in but she still has a lacking in that very industry. But as a playwright I mean it's kind of just no one speaks about it but like if you challenge artistic directors or if you maybe speak true to the voice in your very work you may be considered problematic. And so I think that this is really important to me that we have this competition because I do see fear as not as a tangible, you know, but as there. And then the other thing that I've experienced and I'm still a little familiar with my career is this conversation about audience. You know, like who is your audience and whether or not the audience or the audience that's perceived to attend a particular theater will connect with your work. And I feel like just like the writer can be marginalized so can an audience. I used to say that the typical audience at a particular theater won't want to hear something different. So I think the idea of like who your audience is I mean I think that my work may speak to a certain segment of society as Damian spoke about that may not be heard or often talked about or invisible but as a human being I mean what does it matter if I look like that person on stage. It's like I wonder sometimes that artistic directors have gone into this idea of well I don't know how my audience is going to take this matter so that to me is a barrier for me and a potential audience. Can I speak to the artistic director part of it? I think that is such an amazing point. As an artistic director of a company that's been around for ten years not very visible but ten years ago when I started the company with a colleague of mine. He's African American, I'm Indian American and we were like hey let's umbrella it into people of color and as we were talking about people of color and what that meant I would constantly get like it's an Indian theater company right? I said no it's people of color and it was a constant push to get those words out. Now we're in an age where everybody knows we all accept what that terminology means it's rolling off for our tongues and I feel like I'm in a position as an artistic director and a playwright to do something and an artistic director of a company that doesn't have a huge budget but our mission is to get the work of people of color out of the stage, get those voices and those voices that we don't hear out there. But one thing I would say about what you're saying is that there's not enough in terms of a barrier and what you're speaking of there's not enough spaces that we can call a home whatever you define as a home to say yeah I don't actually feel like and this is ideal of course but I think I created this company because I felt like look this space doesn't exist where we can actually be without the sort of elephant in the room and actually just the other night we were in our lab and the playwrights were talking and one of them said you know we don't even actually can talk about life when we're in the room because that piece has been removed we're actually just talking about the characters in our play and we're accepting that your play is from if people with heritage from China who play as people with African American heritage your play and we just sort of accept that as step as quote because that's what it is so I feel like you're right about the artistic directors and I think the one last thing I would say is that as a person of color and I come into this conversation as a person of color first probably before I come in as a woman I think I'm still coming into my identity is like woman playwright woman artistic director because of the mission of the company what I've been living for the last 10 years I do feel like there is in terms of ownership when we say we want to own it that means we own our creation of it the budgets of it how we look at how we spend our money the business side of it the enterprise of it and to me that's really important and it's important for me to be transparent with people in my company about that because we're all people of color we need to know this we need to know how these decisions are made and why they are made and why we are told no and why we are told yes and why it seems random why sometimes it's not absolutely not fair so just to bring that sort of into the mix as well I also think that there's a cultural component that we need to look at I was talking yesterday with a really artistic director in part about this conversation and one thing he brought up is sort of like that curve that an artistic director has to go that sort of learning curve of how do you work with a woman how do you talk to a woman how do you treat a woman in space and how we're kind of coming into this new kind of moment where I think this conversation is expanding and I'm thinking about sort of like my own development as an artist and I think there's a lot of good will for development out there among artistic directors and among people like that and I just think that the cultural anthropology is not completely there yet so when I'm talking to an artistic director maybe I'm in Venezuela and so maybe I'm a little bit more outspoken they're like whoa they're just whole kind of keys in the playwrights that are also pretty because they're very culturally acclimated to the community both to the audience and to tasks and to everyone and so part of what I think needs to happen is also this conversation about what do all of these cultures coming into this scene mean for how we interact with each other how we look at the work how we trust the work I mean how we develop the work you know like I think that an artistic director when he doesn't produce a play of mine he might be thinking or she might be thinking you know what this play might get slammed by a critic so I'm going to go with something that you know there's also this kind of protection that might come into play so all of this together means that this conversation is really elemental not as a way of alienating but as a way of saying look there's actually like tangible steps that we need to take in order to be more inclusive because none of us are going anywhere we're sort of here today and either we move towards like an apartheid type of situation where like every theater is just producing all these different ethnicities and we all feel safe and we see each other at cocktails and once in a while someone produces somebody else's work or we really take the next kind of you know very courageous stuff with the audience with the critics saying we want to try something new please forgive work you don't quite understand please understand we're trying to do something that's really great here in sort of coalescing culture and creating you know creating really important sort of mirrors as well as bridges I think people think that that's happening already that's the disconnects to me I've heard conversations like this before people think that they're doing them already people think that that's occurring and they also think I mean it's very interesting because I don't look traditionally Arab but someone then came up to me recently and she said you know I can't believe this play born mad long and obi you know Gatscher long and obi it's all those people with color and it was so funny because I was like you know I'm going to mention the things that she said but it was so funny it was so funny to me because the backlash against even this kind of conversation and so I felt like wow you know I never met her and she never met me before and she felt entitled just in this kind of entitlement about people of color and to a person she thought was on her team and it was really eye-opening for me and I said well what do you do when you face somebody like that and I said how do we engage people because I feel like there's people who care and the care knots about this particular subject how do you engage people and I think what it has to be is about taking our place as intellectuals theater is about ideas it's about challenging and I feel like for me I would love the conversation to shift to talk more about the content of the work that's being produced rather than just the color or the gender of the person you know because for me and I know that that's tricky and probably not a real popular approach but for me there's going to be a thousand Catherine Vigelos you know the one who did that terrible war movie which the only thing American soldiers do is detonate bombs that Iraqis put on other people you know I mean like you know like she's a woman but she's doing a story just about men her wedding in the Oscar for me is not an achievement if you're not you know and I feel like one of the ways to engage and to push this conversation past is like you know Rwanda has more women in their house of representatives than any other country in the world that's how they dealt with the genocide we don't see those images we don't and I feel like I would rather see a play by a white man that is more that challenges our assumptions rather than a play by an Arab woman in which you know Arab women are oppressed what I was just going to say is that how do we know that that play is not sitting by that a great play by an Arab American woman is not sitting on the desk of an artistic director I think you'll be honest is that I think there's this idea of point of entry where does this audience again this universal audience which it's not really universal come on universal is becoming a bad word where does this mainstream audience how do they where's the point of entry for them and so I'm not I totally agree with you Betty I think content is important I don't want to rally me on a play by a single person female because they want color it shouldn't be about the work speaking to the human existence but I I sometimes sit at night and not for myself I just think about what plays a sitting on these desks of these artistic directors and what about the conversation what about the playwright because it really is about personalities also whether or not you're right whether or not you're problematic whether or not you're intellectual educated about pedigree about sometimes it's about pedigree but I often wonder about those plays I know a lot of content I mean I feel like I know so many amazing playwrights who are constantly knocking on the door just to get their play read do you feel like there's a certain expectation as far as what you should be writing about like do you feel like theaters are like winter has a play that comes across the literary manager's desk is the expectation that this play needs to be about a woman's story in order for it to be produced I don't think so I don't think so I mean part of the playwrights talk about the the certain expectation of what they should be writing because they're a person of color so they think they could be writing about that or their woman's but I I really don't think so but I do want to just write a little bit because she's spoken about audience and she's spoken about you know artistic directors and I have to say this you know like to think of these audiences that are going to the theater and I don't think theater is solely an intellectual sport I think that's part of the problem is we're becoming how many leaders and our ideas about theater you know and theater is much for I mean for all of the people not just a particular talented type of people it's for everyone you know everybody has it is emotional as much as it is intellectual you know we can transcend and help each other and raise each other up and as well as challenge them and make each other feel I mean I think when the soul and that emotion gets lost in theater I'm less interested in it you know because it is that's probably what it's about and I saw some great shows this year that I said I saw Small Fire at Playwrights Horizon which no one on that stage reflected me and yet I felt so connected to that play and those people and because it was it was great fighting it was good acting you know but and so I felt I do feel like there are entry points into all audiences when those are my story is universal but I think what universal does not mean is to wipe out people's specificity I think universal means that we have very specific things about us that make us human that make you have very specific things about you and you that make you human that's totally different but there's a thread underneath that and I think that the same could be man you know there was a lot of conundrum about a Latino playwright writing about Black today from a Jewish home but I saw that play and I thought I felt I felt an entry point into that play because I felt like I just saw a while this is some like this is some sexy writing you know I mean I got decided by the fight and the character and I think that from a base of a playwright what's more interesting to me before I even put my agendas out there I'm like who are my who are the people out I'm interested in like what are those voices and those how do they talk and like what's this swag what's that what's interesting about these people to me that is their identity so that you're not specifically you you know so I I think that the audiences that go to theater now can't appreciate work from you know from in and everyone and I think that theater but artistic directors I feel like maybe challenge a little bit themselves by how to reach other audiences you know it's hard to get some of these audiences that haven't been seeing reflections of themselves into the theater so you do so then we go I can't I mean I understand I just a good record like if I'm I just a good record I'm like look we gotta get folks into our theater or it's not gonna be good to anybody you know so I I empathize and I say look we have to figure out a way to work together and not just challenge but many create solutions together and how we can really align with theater and help them to see things as opposed to us always feeling like we gotta be opposite and exciting you know we don't have to I think that's what I meant about you know I certainly don't believe by intellectual I mean I mean taking the forefront in exciting ways to see each other and that means humanizing and complicating what the images that we see I mean that's for me why I'm doing theater but I also want to speak a little bit to talk about what I'm trying to do is further than conversation because I feel like there's a juggernaut of you know people feeling like this conversation is about us and we get angry and we don't really reach and move beyond and what I'm saying is theater is itself control so if we can galvanize and make connections between other people who are very interested in using this art form to further and complicate and excite I think it's a better frame in which to have this conversation because I feel like like that woman that I encountered we all get very excited but it doesn't really lead into anything unless we are part of a movement and that means social change that means to other people but I feel like there's this conversation it's very easy for people to shut off and I know we've had this conversation with people so many times so I'm just trying to speak to that question because I feel like part of this conversation is sort of one slice of theater that we're talking about we're talking about a trajectory of people submitting their work to large or regional theaters or mid-sized theaters in New York City this is a very specific professional trajectory we're talking about here there is an absolutely full world other world out there and I understand that there is money that's tied to this meaning the playwrights pay and what their salary is but I think we're going to talk about innovation I feel often times most angry about the paradigm we put ourselves in when we take the exact trajectory that's historically been the trajectory instead of saying hey let's shift it up it can't be that hard to get other audiences into theater we go into schools we go into different communities we bring it to them live and everybody engages some tickets have a season we all Broadway yeah that's hard that's hard that's one slice of theater it's not the democratic theater that I necessarily I love it I think it's necessary I think we all want it and that's a great way to get our work out there but I think this conversation is a little bit narrow in terms of how we are bringing theater to the communities how are we taking what our substantive content is that you're talking about engaging people and saying you know what you're not just part of this and you're going to talk about who you are tell me who you are you saw this I'm not going to sit up here in a panel let's hear about who you are what your experience was with this particular thing that's where I feel like the innovation and pushing the ticket and pushing the paradigms I can knock on 100 artistic directors doors right now and say they're going to say no when you hands out they're not going to give me a chance say you're Indian or you know none of your things can be produced too many there so at the end of time it's just like what else are we doing what are the paradigms that we are creating and shifting in order to not coexist with that I'm not saying get rid of it we need that that's money making and lots of people have succeeded from that what are other paradigms that we're doing are we searching in our minds for those how are we doing them right now we don't even know it yet I'm going to be the next to Tyler's conversation too I'm going to be the next to Tyler's conversation too I'm going to be the next to Tyler's conversation too even though it may not necessarily be offering specific concrete steps that you're talking about I feel like for me personally I need this conversation whatever the outcome is whatever whatever its meaning is is necessary for me as a playwright because I don't have these contradictions I've never had the chance to sit down and talk with other playwrights about these issues so I think it's really important that even if it is sort of oh well this is what's wrong and why can't we do this if it does have that tone to me that's still important I would like to see in terms of working towards a potential solution or at least something that shakes things up is what if we use Title IX as a model for theaters and Title IX changed the sports arena it wasn't necessarily designated for sports but it said if you're going to give money if you're taking federal money and you're an educational institution then you need to give women the same things that you're giving men and it upped participation in sports it upped the number of sports for women and sports available for women and I think the same thing is entirely possible in theater these theaters are cultural slash educational institutions a lot of them have educational arms and they're receiving public money they're receiving federal money they're receiving state money and city money and so my question is why isn't it discrimination if there isn't a certain amount of work that's being produced by a representation of the people who are in that community it's not like there's only one playwright of color who's out there writing and that that person just keeps getting passed over there are all these writers and there are more and more of them so why aren't the demographics of who's getting produced changed and in some ways yeah unless we shift the paradigm it's top down so if it's going to be top down then I want to say give us some affirmative action and I will give up my slot to someone of color if it's my slot because I'm interested in that you know when I started to find the colleges affirmative action came in and I knew I knew that the woman next to me got in we have like the same setup but I knew that one woman next to me got in because she was a legacy to that school and the other got in because they wanted people of color and I felt like this isn't my time but how do you you consume that I can assure I'm not positive like when you stack up and that's a controversial thing to say and affirmative action and quotas are very sticky but when you take like things when you take like grade point average and SAT scores and curricular activities and you look at it you're also like colleges I mean there is an element that isn't just you know like these are your SAT scores these are the colleges just what's really hard to make those you know I want to admit that it's not it's I'm using a personal example in order to say that for me my experience was I think that that was I've experienced that and I feel fun with it I feel like we're not all starting from the same we're not starting at the same starting line and so there are times when I need to give over to something and it's not because I'm better but if someone is equal to me and they haven't been given as a representation then I would like to see that person have the representation I appreciate what one's just saying actually I'm sorry I was trying to I appreciate what she's saying because I was thinking about this actually and I've been thinking about coming to this conversation I was thinking like how do we balance how do we level the playing for you and to me it's not a matter of I think it's important to say it's not a matter of equal you know intellect it's a matter of opportunity and I think when we talk about an employment I think we leave out employment when we talk in these conversations and employment is like you know real I mean like people need to be have jobs right so at some times when I think like when we give into these problems we go on auto I don't talk about racing it's not about your personal taste it's not to me a matter of employment like let's just look at employment numbers disparity in employment with women we know this might like this is on the national platform it's just like theater is mirroring though the country you know so it's not like these are not real issues these are this is employment and so I think when we look at that base something like what we're talking about about targeting so that we can create a little bit more balance in the theater it's not it's not a one-sided idea and I think that's an important issue what would happen if there were quotes and it was just the idea for three to five years there need to be X number of plays by women and you know like there has to be that take federal funding I don't I think if you take federal funding or you know corporate funding that makes sense to me they're not corporate the federal but I pay taxes right folks don't have to cut into this amazing discussion we have some folks who have been tweeting and they have some very interesting questions and she can't wait to hear them please I love it so the first one I'm going to Valerie Curtis new hey Valerie her question is is the mainstream audience really interested in assessing new points of entry yeah we can't assume that they're not I mean who is this the actor who was interviewed I thought every single person who you know I mean I feel like well we're audiences we're interested in we're interested in here's the thing audiences are interested in stars so as you get the stars from these communities they'll be interested you know I mean like if you're given the same attention and level of production as other writers you know what I mean if you put Denzel Washington in your off-broadway place people will be interested so anyway as a person who works in there's a lot of community theater and working community I don't want to assume that people yes you will get a lot of people showing up at Denzel's there but I think if we put the same amount of effort in promoting something that we do like the new speakers on one-time history I saw like I don't know how many black and brown men on one-time history for the latest sneaker and I started asking them are they going to be voting with the song the vote like if we put how who exactly who needs to come together in ensuring that but if we put the same amount of effort in tying their their identity to wrote their help to this experience of theater we won't have crowds around the corner but we have to we have to put the value into it I also think that you know Wayne's from theater but even other theaters have fallen into this trap when you sent stars I thought that that's what you were talking about they've fallen into a trap of developing names rather than content and work and so now what happens is that yeah and some of them are terrific favorites but you know you can tell sometimes their output is like fantastic but sometimes it's like you know maybe you should have taken six months off and gone and volunteered so you know so in the process in the process if like there were some kind of I always believe like change culture at the conversational level first of all people understand what it is that the problem is because if you enforce something you create device where it's like what we're saying is you know I've read I've read like mind blowing plays by so many women out there that are sitting in their in their computers right now and if a little space were opened up and decision makers were you know and probably a lot of them but if there were a system where they said you know um you're not going to get these three names that we know or these five names that we know you're going to get someone new every season you're going to get two people that are new every season whose works are exciting we start to change the mentality of the culture and of the audience and if we say honestly this is what we want to do this is a hardcore civil rights issue human rights issue you know we're stuck here and let's move there let's move towards it with a lot of love and attention and diligence I do think we can start to see a change without kissing each other often honestly our mission for the company to get players of people the stories of people on stage I don't know who would have bought that ten years ago and said that's your only focus like that's all you're going to do and I'm not saying we're proliferating New York we would love to do that but I think as I see audiences come in to see the work with the cultivation so yes it's a hunger it's a hunger out there now and there has been a hunger it's just getting those folks who are hungry and having them lead the path I think and that sounds idealistic and it's not easy work but you have to be committed and dedicated in order to do it and take it on look I don't do producing white plays very well I do do this well because I'm very passionate and committed about it and I think that's what you need people who are passionate and committed about changing what is going on with the audience so the question was mainstream theater it was very specific that the fire is on and I would say in 10 years I surely hope this is fun I do too here's another interesting tweet question from Little Miss Uku hey how have you felt typecast as a playwright you know what I just want to say that I think that that success typecast playwright and then there's part of me that wants to stay on the margins because I want to be able to write what I'm called to write and I think about John Ware in his last play Free Man of Color the houses in Lincoln Center were so often empty and this was one of the most audacious and beautiful and rich plays I've seen and I think the audience was like what we came for house of little leaves and didn't know what to do so I think that there's typecast and it comes in when someone wants to do something that's out of what they've been doing so yes I think you know there's there's any you know aren't even just coming in on a play they don't know who we are I don't know what race don't need more so I'm like that's pretty she's French you know we don't know if I'm a man or a woman so there's a certain amount of anonymity that does happen but I think as you do work you get you get pigeonholed into oh well she writes about the blank experience and you know I'm personally interested in not doing that and in trying something completely different with each play so that I have as much freedom to explore that right and it means you know my stuff is not seen as mainstream and is not you know people are not saying when's your next you know you can't wait to put that French for math right yeah we all win I'm waiting for that play it's almost ready you touched on this in that health discussion at the New Black Fest as well there are certain tracks that people get on and there are certain trajectories like if you kind of go through Juilliard if you go through NYU like there's a certain queue that occurs as well people start to expect a certain amount a certain type of work from this type of system and there's room set aside for three people this season from these certain tracks and so if everyone else is you know might be able to fit in if you can so I think that that's another way people get tied back so these tracks that are what do you say tracks I mean part of it is the networking like for example people who go to Juilliard want to work with people who want to Juilliard and the more people from Juilliard are there is a thing that that also makes sense in terms of tracks that when you know when you admire someone creatively you've maybe gone to school with them that you continue to work with them so there is creating a sense of community but I think at least what I feel like you've talked about before is this idea of you know the institutions kind of taking care of their own sort of thing and how you know I'm not going to lie to all of these programs because I know what would make a big difference in my getting produced if I had a stamp of Juilliard that's not to say I don't want to learn because I've never actually been taught playwriting I didn't go to a program but so I know that for all the you know truth ones kind of speaking I could use some structure and some crack work but I also know that if it said Ryder Blank from Juilliard or Ryder Blank from Yale or what have you I know that there might be actually five more minutes so I just want to throw up this last tweet and then I want to ask you guys about some solvency plans for how you do it so this is for this is for Christine so quickly so what can what can should theaters and other art organizations be doing to address this inequality what's being done that works that's part of the solvency I have okay so I was thinking about this too I've been thinking about a lot of these things I think I just watched this documentary on freedom writing and so from PBS go and look online and see it but what I find moving about this movement is that people were willing to continue the journey when other people could not continue the journey when this group that's shippin' up views then the next group came in then the next group came in and then the next group came in and what I really think is important and it kind of touches a little bit on what Winston was saying I think that this problem cannot be one that only the marginalized people get involved in that's a problem right that's a problem you know the roles of liberation in this country and other places in the world have been because outsiders have recognized even if I'm not personally impacted by that I don't recognize the problem of that because somehow I am impacted by that I'm connected to that if there's no balance of theater then I'm not having a balanced experience in life so that impacts me and I need to be a part of this commitment to trying to get more voice of her I need to be invested in that too so I think that part of this solution is in appealing to our peers that are not necessarily just in our communities the people that are impacted need to be involved and then so the outside communities that say okay well I'm of this particular privilege I don't have that problem I'm a white man I don't have that problem I have other problems I'm sure I'm not trying to say there are white men who can't get produced because of whatever they're writing you know but I think that if we become part of a collaborative fight then we then we have to see change happen because everyone's involved it's not like oh the women are arguing the women's problem so we don't have to deal with the women like no I'm a man and I say the women have a point there we need to do something about that and if they have a problem then I have a problem I think one thing I'm really interested in is giving value to this other audience or you know to really change what audience is we're putting a seat up in Harlem a National Black Theater and you know some people like Rada do you really want to have your premiere of yourself as a playwright that off off off off off Broadway and my answer is yes because I really value the people in that community and if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have this play you know so it's like how do we value different audiences how can we create really great theater in different audiences and not look to these just mainstream and really have the same maybe we don't have the same money I understand that is an issue but to still try to have the same production value and give that audience the best effing theater that they could ever experience because they deserve it and the more that you do that I feel like people start to see that we do that in our company what's the solution I'm trying to work on a solution right now with a group of people who are dedicated to getting the voice of people to call out there so what we're doing is not only developing playwrights and getting their work out but also taking theater to communities just like you are in a sense of we have a solo Asian-American show that went to Queens for our high school group of women we have a show being developed right now charity hands and valor she's providing money to the waters and that's going up in the Bronx and that's going to come down because you know what it is about the people in the Bronx that is where her soul is coming from and I think the more of us that do that that really great to the communities that we see the more of us have the power sometimes our audience is a lot of white people in there so I think there is possibility in creating that solution and doing that working off of one another and doing it in our different spaces to help build that momentum I think it's also you know I think it's also understanding that sort of numbers and probabilities and how much of the nutrition game exists and so I think one of my strategies is like you know I've noticed that over the years that the rejection letters are signed by a more senior person like the interns assistant was like the first year and then after the game so I think that there's also like like working really really hard to become a better player right and I can see my own curve of improvement over the year and just not you know George Wolfe said that he recently I heard that he said that he felt like he was at a slot machine and everyone around him kept winning but he couldn't move because he invested so much money into this one so a lot of it is just about like you know not moving I'm starting with on my rejection letters away and the other thing I think have no people of color in their shoes I mean that's my own little protest is that you know if you're not going to introduce people of color like you don't want me in your audience I'm going to have to actually be part of that too so we're going to have unfortunately we're going to have to stop this now but you guys obviously will continue to have this conversation hopefully all of you out there will continue to have the conversation and so we understand that we are all a community we're all one and so we're going to have this exchange we're viewing this amazing conversation that we've been working on Thank you President Thank you President Thank you President Thank you President Thank you Thank you Thank you