 Yeah, she's good, yeah, she has a lot of story to tell. Yeah, she's good, yeah, she has a lot of story to tell. Yeah, she's good, yeah, she has a lot of story to tell. Hi, I'm Courtney Kichuba, I'm part of the marketing team at Samuel French. Thank you so much for coming on behalf of our partners, which is the wonderful Vineyard Theatre we're in right now. How great, they've been wonderful, their staff is scattered around. How round, which do you all know how round online? Yes, I'm seeing heads nod and shake. They're doing a live stream actually right now. Hi live stream people, so everybody can cheer really loudly for them. And then finally Playbill, which is our first year collaborating with Playbill and it's been tremendous. So thank you Playbill, there's a Playbill place just right there. This is our third year of panel events actually. It is the first time that it's in a space this big and the first year on identity. Were any of you in the past two years, did you come to any of ours? Right's week, musicals week? Yeah, we got some, there we go. So if you want to learn more about those panels and or about the panels that are coming up tomorrow, Thursday and Friday, plus there's a whole companion series of essays that are on tonight as written by Larissa Fasthorse. There's a whole bunch of great essays that are going on. Go to playbill.com backslash identity week and you can see a bunch of great stuff there. Also I'm going to give a shout out to our social media because if you had your picture taken by Christian who's right there, that'll be up on our Facebook tomorrow. So just a few housekeeping chores. First, please silence the cell phones but do not turn them off because if you are a tweeter, we would love for you to tweet with us during this. I'm going to be sitting up in the last row live tweeting what these wonderful people say. The Wi-Fi because you might need it, especially if you're down in the front row. VT2 and it's all lowercase vineyard is the password. So if you want to log into that now. You can use hashtag identity week and you can follow us on Twitter. We'll be tweeting it's at Mr. Samuel French and I am proud to say because of identity week, we're changing at Mr. Samuel French to just Samuel French NYC. That's happening next week so stay tuned. No more Mr. We don't need Mr. So also before I bring out our wonderful panelists and moderator, we want to give a huge thanks to them and everybody else who's participating this week. These are some of the industry's best and they have a lot of great things to say and we're so glad that you're here to be a part of it. So I'm going to introduce our moderator is Pippin Parker who is the director of the School of Drama in the New School and he's wonderful and great on Twitter and he's going to introduce the rest of our panelists. There you go. Enjoy. Hi, thank you. Geez, I guess I will... Let me... Let me lava up here. So it's really my pleasure to be here. Really my tech skills have really gone downhill. It's really... So it's my pleasure to be here and I want to introduce to you, I can't quite see into the back but I will introduce my name. So tonight we have a really fantastic panel of playwrights and I'm happy to introduce Lydia Diamond, Damon Shea, Kimber Lee, and Ray Kamatma. I think... You know, I think... Well, we'll see if it's working, but thanks. Lydia was actress as well as a playwright, I believe. Is that correct? A long, long time ago. So, Damon, I want to start with you because about a year ago, I think you wrote... I know that you wrote an article, a little essay, and four Sam French's publication called Breaking Character, Breaking Character Magazine, and the piece was called Asian Playwrights and Asian Characters, What's the Deal? So I was wondering, I was hoping, because that essay helped inspire the theme for this week's identity issues. So I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of a little capsule of that article, why you wrote it, and what were you expressing in that article or essay? Right, thank you. So what's the deal? The article really is about my journey as a playwright. You know, I grew up in Singapore, I came to this country, 20 years ago I started writing 10 years ago, and really this is about what I choose to write. And when I started, I wrote everything. But I realized as time went on that there was a shortage of roles for Asian actors on stage. And I realized that as a playwright, I can actually correct that. So one of my missions, starting from a few years ago, was to write a place with more Asian characters. But beyond that, I also wanted to reflect the diverse community that is out there. I believe that people on stage should reflect everything out there. So it's not just about writing Asian characters, it's also writing about all sorts of ethnicity, all sorts of races, all sorts of interests to give underserved voices, you know, a voice on stage. So that was what I wrote about. Great. And in that essay, I think you say that you sort of came to this sensitivity, you arrived at this sort of sensitivity about the need to provide opportunities for actors and theater artists of color. And I'm wondering if that sort of moment, or that sort of journey resonates with the rest of you or if you came into playwriting with that already? Gimber? I didn't break eye contact for us to know. What is the question? So in other words, is that something, is the notion, if it does resonate with you, that sort of story that Damon told about coming to this sort of realization that there was an opportunity and almost, I think, as Damon described it as a sort of a sensitive sensitivity towards the need to create opportunities for actors of color, theater artists of color. And she sort of discovered, after he was a playwright, he was already writing plays. And I'm wondering if that resonates with you or maybe you had a different kind of association with those issues. Yeah, sure. I think that for me, I don't know that I, when I came to writing that I had an overt mission to provide roles for actors of color, I had a great awareness of who I was putting on stage when I wrote things. But I think that the things that I wrote and the way that those characters rose to the surface comes from my life, which I think is, I guess that's part of what we're talking about here is identity. Things come from your identity, perhaps even without you thinking about it overtly all the time. It's just part of who I am as part of the world that I live in and the world that I'm absorbing around me all the time. But I don't mind that there are people of color populating my plays. It doesn't hurt my feelings. And it is something perhaps that I've become not more deliberate about but more conscious of in the way that I'm conscious of the presence of people of color in every place that I am. I'm always counting. Right. I think you've mentioned, Kimbert, that you were... That's why I looked at the audience. Kimbert, you had mentioned it. I just wanted to get into identity itself. You had mentioned, I think, that you were the only Asian American in your school and in your parents' church and in your hometown. And I'm wondering if you... When you came to playwriting or came to theater, did you find it as a place where you could... And that you were... I'm sorry. That you also had an enormous sort of self-enforced notion of trying to fit in, I think. Was the theater some place that you could get away from that or when you came to the theater, was there a population of... were there people like you that you found or was that a struggle when you came as well? I think you said that you watched Hee Haw in order to fit in with your... Oh, I've been researching things like that. Yeah. I mean, I think that when I came to the theater, it was tremendously freeing and extremely constraining at the same time because the sort of range... The range of things. And when I think about these issues of identity and representation, I always think about range because that is the place where I think difficulty comes in is if that range is being narrowed to only one story. So for me, and I was an actor before I was a playwright, and so for me as an actor and also being a woman and also being of the certain physical presence that I am, there were a lot of things that were not available to me and it took me a really long time to figure out that, oh, that's because I'm Asian. And these parts are not meant for me. These places are maybe not meant for me and so then it becomes this question of like, okay, so what do we do about that? Where do I participate? All right, I want to back into a question about casting, which we were talking about a little bit before we came out, but Lydia, in Smart People, you have a character in the play who's an African-American actress, actor, female, and she, like the other characters, it sort of seems to be struggling with what that means, how much her racial identity informs her character and how much it should and how it's perceived. How did that, the creation of that character and that sort of world of people, how intentional was that to address these issues of identity and what was your process of going through that? It was deeply intentional because it was, the play Smart People was about race. It's so interesting because in those moments of paranoia in the green room, I was like, wow, I'm the only black person on this pen. Am I supposed to be? Did they think I was Asian-American? And then I was like... You did well at the end of this. You can be an honorary Asian-American. And then the thing is that in my play Smart People, one of the things that made me the most uncomfortable was that I have a character who's Asian-American and there's a very disturbing scene that is very much about playing with the tensions of race and identity, but through the process of making the play and with the actors who helped develop the play with me over the course of seven years, there was the, I struggled with the question about what, I'm, there's a scene in which a woman who is so confessional. I'm so uncomfortable. A woman who's told me. A woman who is Chinese and Japanese-American has a scene in which she goes down on her white boyfriend and the scene is, in my mind, a very complicated and disturbing scene purposefully to serve a political paradigm of the play. But, as you can see... I think the stage note is, it's disturbing. Well, yes, but disturbing for someone who, for the last 20 years, my whole thing has been about race and being very conscious of the images I put on stage and what they meant and, like, you were saying, who I don't get to see on stage and I thought, well, I never get to see. I don't often get to see Asian-American women be like this empowered person. She's a psychiatrist at Harvard and so the politics of what that means just undid me and it's so funny because I was a teacher for nine years at Boston University and we had conversations about identity all the time with my students and it was generally white students because, you know, that's why we have panels like this. And I would say, you know, it's the character and embrace the difference and it's fine and blah, blah, blah. And so I didn't know that I would have this sense of identity crisis in the coming of the making of my art. You're not having an identity crisis right now. A little bit. No, not an identity crisis, but just an awareness. And it wouldn't matter. And I would have this with African-American plays because I write so much about class. So I would write a play about African-Americans in three different classes in one house and I would think, what if I'm not, I'm deemed by other African-Americans not African-American enough or classist or whatever. So it's not a neuroses that's limited to my portrayal of an Asian-American woman on stage but I would say I have a certain sense of authority when I move through the world when we talk about a race in terms of black and white and I'm very uncomfortably aware that so often the conversation about race is in black and white. And so I'm very conscious of that right now. Well, this has been, you know, this past year has really been the conversation I feel and it might only, this might be completely superficial or my only awareness, personal awareness but it feels like the conversation about Asian-American theater artists has been very resonant this past year and there were a couple of incidents there was a micado and to a certain degree I think of what's Sue's play in Pennsylvania where the casting of characters and particularly Asian-American actors has become and the representation of Asian-American, Asian-American characters on stage has become a very provocative discussion and Damon, I was thinking of the experience that you had with a producer who was going to do a reading of your play Green Tea, Black Coffee, or is it the other way? Black Coffee, Green Tea. Black Coffee, Green Tea which called for three Asian-American actors and an African-American actor. One African-American. Why don't you talk a little bit about that? Sure. This is a short play, you know, Black Coffee, Green Tea and a producer just wanted to do a reading of this and I gave permission assuming that they would cast three Asians and one African-American except after giving the permission the producer wrote to me and said, oh you know we are a small company and we can only afford this number of actors all of them are white so if you don't mind we're going to cast four white people to be in this play three Asians and one African-American. So you know when you're confronted by things like this you just say thank you but no thank you and you try to explain why and hopefully they understand why and so that was a real experience for me. And eventually you pulled the... Yes, I pulled the rides. I pulled the rides. And I think that there's a, you know, the question, it provokes the question about what that experience is and the sort of authenticity aspect of casting. But also it was interesting because I know Kimber that you have talked about theater sometimes being siloed so the feeling that sometimes a theater company not the vineyard, but a theater company somewhere maybe doing say like the Asian play and that is the play that has Asian or Asian-American playwrights and Asian-American performers for an Asian audience and that you have sometimes felt that it's too kind of separated. That the diversity is really not intermingled but that it's trying to reach different audiences instead of having a common conversation. This question isn't actually to you but to Ray, because I wonder... Ray, you've talked about... just to bring in another aspect of it Ray, you've talked about coming out in high school and you felt it seemed like a non-traumatic event. I wondered as both an Asian-American writer and a gay writer, have you experienced that do you feel it siloed and do you feel like you have to identify yourself as one or the other or both and is there a world in the theater for multiple identities? I mean, I do think it's siloed. I think that's not even really a thought. We know that it's siloed. We can see it in seasons. We can see it in theaters. We can see it in funding for theaters. We know that it's siloed. We're kidding ourselves if we're going to pretend that it isn't. I do think that with... what I've been writing in particular because I've been told that my plays aren't Asian enough or that my plays aren't gay enough. And I always counter that really that's about the other person's limited ideas of what a gay or Asian-American play is and not actually about the play that I've written. I have noticed recently that I haven't really changed the way that I write. I think all of my plays are gay. I think they are all Asian-American. And I don't care whether people agree. They are because I wrote them. And I have noticed that the conversation of intersectionality has become just much larger within first in academic circles and then within artistic circles and now within mass culture that people get it a lot more. And so now when people encounter my plays they are more open to the idea that it could be dealing with multiple things and doesn't have to... doesn't have to discuss those things in a particular way in order to be deemed about that. That does feel like it's getting better to you? To me it feels like it's getting better. It just feels like there are more... I feel like because people are more open to it we are encountering new problems and so sometimes it feels worse because we have to have conversations and arguments that we didn't have to have before. But I feel like before that people would just be like, I don't know what that is. And then just sort of shove it aside. And now they're like, oh, I kind of get it. And we're just trying to work our way through it. I think in... Lydia, you talked to smart people about... I think... and the play takes place at the... right around the 2008 election of Obama so it's the first Obama election and you sort of toy with the notion having the characters tease out the question of whether we're entering a post-racial world and I'm wondering if you reflect back on that way your thoughts are and what that looks like in context of theater. I'll try to actually answer your question this time. It's not a question, it's a provocation. I think that... So I started writing the play before the election because I wrote so slowly. I knew I was writing a play that was self-consciously about race. And then I wrote it so slowly that the election happened and it completely shifted the paradigm about how race gets talked about and then people started being self-congratulatory and talking about post-racial and I was writing a play in the middle of all of that. And so the characters in the play aren't confused about post-racial but the play is aware that there's this dynamic and it was actually right before the post-racial but the play is sort of, yeah, it's on the cusp of what is about to be called post-racial and it's so clearly in a world that is never going to be post-racial. And what are your thoughts about that in terms of theater itself? Post-racial? There's no post-racial. I don't have. There's no gray area, it's not nuanced to me as evidenced by sitting on these panels. We sit on these panels. I've sat on these panels with you all the time and for 20 years I've been sitting on panels and we talk about race and I don't think white people sit on panels and talk about race very much so clearly there's stuff that needs to be worked on. And what is it, just to follow that up, what is it that needs to be worked on? Why is it not happening or what is happening? How slow or fast is the progress? What's your sort of take on that? That's a really big question. Societally, I think theater isn't, we flatter ourselves to think that we're somehow more liberal than the masses if this year is an example of how deeply, how much we're fooling ourselves about our universal liberalism, right? And I think that theater is as racist and as classist as anywhere else in America and in some ways maybe more so because we congratulate ourselves and think that we aren't. I think it needs to be examined and critiqued and I don't even know what your question is anymore. Well, I think it's deeply, deeply problematic. Just that when I go to the theater so often I am the only person of color in the theater, sometimes the only person of color watching my play in the theater and then I feel like the conversation that theaters have is how can we fix this but it's been a conversation that theaters have had for a long time which makes me think, well, how much investment really is there in fixing it and maybe it's not broken, maybe it's, you know, maybe there needs to be a completely different paradigm. What is that? I don't know. So I think that, I mean, it brings up a question and I think we circle around a lot which is theater is this sort of rarefied thing that has an audience, you know, like ballet or opera or something that is, you know, only in some shades of popular form but also, you know, a sort of niche form or are there structures in place that are really, you know, keeping it more, you know, more blander and more uniform than we'd like it to be. Have you guys faced situations that you feel are sort of structural in that way that you couldn't sort of break through? I'll try to answer. I'm not sure if I'm going to answer the right question. I'm not sure I asked the right question. I think, you know, talking about the totality of theater, I think there is professional and non-professional theater and I think where there's less gatekeeping involved, I think it's flourishing. I think there's a lot of stuff happening out there. Maybe we don't see it but it is out there but I think when you talk about more of the professional theater which is more curated, I think there's more of a gatekeeping and maybe that's where change needs to happen more. And there's an economic component, of course, for artists. If there are gates being kept in the places where you can actually almost feed your families to work then, you know, that's a gate that in any other sort of sphere professionally you could actually suit the profession for being not inclusive. So, you know, you could call it niche or you could call it white supremacy. I was up late watching the debate. I feel like I'm about to say something. One way if you wanted to, you could look at the structures that exist in the American theater and you could say to yourself, these structures resemble the structures that exist in our country institutionally as a nation, how we were founded, how our government was set up to function. And everyone likes to talk about how broken things are, the government's broken, the American theater is broken. And I would actually say that perhaps it is functioning exactly the way it was built to function which is to protect the interests and the advancement of a certain population of people which does not include, you know, diverse points of view, we'll say, by and large the points of view of people of color, the ways in which storytelling shifts in those cultures. So I kind of feel like if... And it is this thing where it's the same, we have these panels, we have these conversations and we all are very honest with each other and we all do our best to communicate across what seems to be this perpetual divide. And then we go away and the machine continues to function the way that it functions. And so I don't have answers for any of this, but my questions start to be around what are the foundational causes that keep these structures in place and how do we address those. And until that happens, we'll continue to sit on panels which, you know, it's nice to have a bottle of water. But, you know, as far as change is concerned, I think that there's a difference that's necessary in the way that we're looking at what we perceive to be the problem. Let me ask a little bit of a provocative question and a little outside the realm of theater specifically, but it's interesting as more and more television has been produced in New York, and as television has become much more interested, well, let's say they've found the value of playwrights, it seems, over the last few years. If you guys have noticed that relationship and what that might mean for you as playwrights. Can I have a steering TV? Yeah. Well, that's interesting too, right? Because that goes back to what we were talking about, about how race, because, you know, we can only wrap its mind around, you know, a very simple idea of what race is, and so, you know, all of the black people, we have a month, you know, we have February, so that's interesting. But they're only the same five of us trying to get the February slot. Still, we do have a month. And I say that, so yes, I have put my big toe into the world of television and I just recently think I've taken it out because I'm too slow at writing and because of this idea of white people defining what black is supposed to look like in the media, and so there's a degree to which I feel a certain amount of responsibility, right? Like, beyond that you win the lottery if you should get a television series, we need the people writing the television series that give a broad depiction of who we all are in America, right? But there's, you bump your head against the system that you were talking about that is defining for us who we are. Because, you know, when you, again, and I'm sorry, we're so, we obviously are, I won't speak for you. I came to be on this, I put on makeup to be on the panel. I'm not resentful of being on the panel, but I was on a panel about this and I was on a panel about this in Seattle two days ago and, see, I've lost my words. It's the debate. Right. We're talking about the responsibility that you feel in television but maybe also in theater. Well, okay, so I guess we have all these thousands and thousands and thousands of television channels now, right? Minus even the ones about reality TV and still they are not reflective even of just the demographic on this stage in any kind of substantive way. So it feels like with television you can reach a larger audience and that's great but it certainly isn't more progressive than the theater and the structures that keep it inclusive of a small group of people are the same structures but with more money. Right. Kimber, earlier you mentioned something about different types of plays or different types of storytelling in different cultures. I wonder if you could sort of address that a little bit and it seemed like a little bit what you were alluding to was the sort of, you know, well-made play, sort of canonical Western play if that's what you were alluding to as opposed to other ways of telling stories which are maybe newer to the theater that are still younger to the theater world in our sense. I think so. I mean, I think that there's a way in which there are... there's a very specific group of people who get to make the decision about what is presented as a good play or a worthy play and that can often look like a certain type of thing and if the way that you write does not fit into that mold it can be dismissed as being not valid. So it has to do with, you know, we all grow up in our own little microcultures in our families but then also within the greater community that we are from and all of those things influence the way that we receive and tell story. So having a wider door, I guess, for everybody to kind of go through together is something that seems to be very challenging and I don't blame artistic directors or literary managers or any of the traditional gatekeepers in the way of like, well, it's just their fault because they're so narrow-minded. I understand that there are challenges and that there are audiences because the audience is always the thing, right? I mean, the play is meant to be in a conversation with an audience and if the audience, you know, it gets back to this question of like, who are the people that are watching the play when Lydia goes to see her play and she's the only person of color what is the conversation that's happening? What conversation can that play have? It's a blander of conversation. It's a more exciting conversation, right? And Ray, I think you worked at the public, if I'm right, Ray, didn't you? I did, yeah, yeah. So you were both in an artistic capacity. Okay, yeah, I couldn't remember. What was it like even in the non-artist capacity working inside an institution, I think it was before you won the Pony Award? I mean, if actually I could talk a little about what Kimber was saying. Sure. You know, just because as the co-director of the My Writers Lab, you know, we sit, you know, we meet every two weeks. We hear a vast number of plays by writers. There are all of the different things that they're writing, the things they're experimenting with, the things that we're playing with. And of course, you know, we follow each other to figure out what plays are getting done, right? And so from this broad number of plays that people are writing, ultimately, the plays that are getting done from an Asian-American, or Asian and Asian-American playwriting lab are the plays about ethnicity. So people will do the plays that the lab members are talking about basically, you know, fitting into a culture that is not Asian-American. You know, but they won't do, like, someone's sci-fi play or someone's boxing play or someone's, you know, like, those are not the plays that are getting done by Asian-American artists. Although, you know, although other, artists of other ethnicities, those plays are getting done all the time. And so I think a little bit of what Kimber's talking about is that, you know, if you, so if you happen to have a play that fits into this sort of ethnography or immigration or cultural identity slot or idea about what the conversation is about Asian-Americans to people who are not Asian-American, then there is a chance that your play will get done. But if you're Asian-American and you write about NASCAR, then that one just, you can chuck that one. You know, that's for you. That's your pet project. Because no one's ever going to do your NASCAR. Right. And the presumption that your NASCAR play isn't colored by your experience of being whoever you are in this culture. There's a, yeah, I feel like there is a feeling of like, ah, we're bringing in this Asian-American playwright. We would like you to do something Asian-American. For us. We're going to write a rant. That was just a suggestion that there's sort of one story. No. I became very conscious of, I feel like I am having a certain level of bitterness that I think that I don't have as much as I feel like it's coming out right now. And it is also because I have had the privilege of being inside and sort of all through and in institutions. And I do. I do understand that it's complicated. I think where I have a problem is when there's disingenuousness on it. I get it if you want to be like, you know, we're a white theater company. And at this theater company, we do white plays and we have a white audience. It becomes disingenuous when you say, I just can't figure out how to get a diverse audience, but you don't really want one. Or you only want one contained in the amount of time and the space that you want one. And you want that audience to match that play. But in that little piece of time. And that's what makes me kind of crazy. And I think that my frustration is fueled by that. I said I was on a panel in Seattle, but it was a panel made up of all black female playwrights. And so we've been, you know, drinking and stewing. So it all worked up. But it's a similar, it strikes me that it's a similar experience to getting back to the casting question when you hear, you know, we tried to cast, we tried to, we put out a notice and the sort of disparity between the kind of development and cultivation and really nurturing of a community and wanting to be inclusive in a limited kind of way. So, Lydia, what you're saying is that there's a lot of, to me it sounds like there's a lot more work than just kind of maybe disingenuously or naively throwing out an opportunity in a limited kind of way as opposed to the ongoing work that it would take. And we're all too smart as theater people to be naive. We're not naive, we're really, really brilliant. So... I think that there's a piece to that as well that has to do with accountability. And I do think that there's a lot of anxiety around all of this. And the anxiety that you expressed about including an Asian-American character in smart people. So I think all of us are feeling our way through these types of questions. But it feels to me like if there is to be a lack of disingenuousness, if there's, if there's, if people are being authentic about their intentions and what they really want to be doing, that accountability is the key component of that. Accountability with the community that you are able, representing to a larger world. And that is, that carries with it a great responsibility for what you are representing. And then an accountability with the community, if it is not your community, an accountability with the community that you're representing. So they have a voice in that representation. And then I feel like that extends to this idea of if you have gone to great lengths to bring the black community in, in February to see the play in February, how much of an effort are you making to bring that same community in when you do your, you know, George Shaw play? You know what I mean? If you, if you are going to extend yourself, it seems to me that it would be advantageous to try to continue to bring those audiences in the door and extend that invitation to them just as vigorously for the rest of your season. And for no other reason than that the art is then better. Yeah. Because, you know, you talked about that, smart people and my anxiety, I was afraid maybe that I was here so you could all tell me how horrible that representation was because obviously I'm a narcissist. I saw the play twice. Did you? No, I saw it again to be angry. No, I love it. But how do I, like how do you have that conversation when you're being workshopped or when you're being presented in a place that doesn't give the diversity enough to have the juicy conversation? Like through the development over the too many years of smart people I got to develop it with five Asian American actresses and that was my, you know, not that I didn't do my due diligence but there isn't a diverse world even in which we can all become more sophisticated around all of this. So. And so in the, when you had that experience or maybe for all of you it sounds like the ability to work with not only the management of theater companies, the selection of material but really the opportunity to work with other theater artists, you know and the collaborative part of it, which Lydia was saying was so helpful to you as you were developing that. And I wonder if that's also for the rest of you part of the attraction of theater, part of the frustration, you know that you've felt as someone who's trying to be in there as a collaborative artist. I just want to strike a note of optimism here. Because it's all gloom and doom. You know I was recently a member of the emerging writers group at the Public Theater and you know I don't know whether it's an exception but they've been doing very diverse programming. They've had great successes. So it's not about, oh if we put on this play nobody's going to come to see. Well everybody has seen Hamilton, right? So I think there is a conversation around that that needs to happen for other theater companies to see what the public theater is doing. And you know I experienced some of that from the inside and you know it was great to be an Asian playwright working with a very diverse group of artists within that space. Yeah I didn't even feel it was all gloom and doom until you said that. He can just feel the gloom vibrating off of me. And you know it's funny because I've been in this most incredibly beautiful rehearsal space at the 42nd you know with these gorgeous brilliant actors and this wonderful director and how lucky are we to be theater artists. Yes but I think even the complexity of being asked, you know not being asked but putting ourselves in the position of saying I'm going to be vulnerable enough to slap really hard the hands that feed me because I know that we're all doing our very best that in and of itself is very specific to the population of artists of color because more than we're asked to talk about the aesthetic of our work we're asked to be very honest about something that's a very dangerous thing to be honest about. Well let me ask you a little. To no end I say that. I mean we can't be able to you know in a way when we talk about our own work we have to be able to position our work for other people to understand it because a lot of times you know like however savvy an artistic stuff is or a theater is or an audience is you know sometimes it may you know whatever play of mind they're doing it might be the first queer Filipino-American play they've ever done. No. You know. So it you know so like just as I don't know. So like you know so artists of color in a way that other you know artists don't or queer artists often have to go into a theater and not just write their play finish their play go to rehearsals make sure everything's working but then figure out how they're going to position their play how they're going to talk about it when they're on this panel how they're going to talk about it with journalists who do not understand or asking bizarre questions or you know like about you know ethnicity or sexuality or gender you know and so it becomes a there are some extra jobs and you know in being able to create work. So do you feel it seems like what you're saying is that not only do you have to be the playwright which is the obvious part but that you have a certain responsibility of bringing and I think they might have talked about this a little bit of bringing the cultural context to into excuse me into the rehearsal room so that you have an almost another level of responsibility on top of delivering the text and letting it be interpreted in the more traditional sense. Would you like to get away from that is that a is that something you like is it a burden is it you know it makes my writing better that you have that you are that you that I that I have had to that I have had the privilege to move through the world having to be very dexterous about how I navigate or keep myself safe or keep the people around me safe or be utterly offensive to the people around me or whatever. I have a hyper consciousness around my identity as an African-American woman moving through the world and I think that that's what playwrights are asked to have we have to and so that's that's a privilege complicated as it may be I think I think it makes my writing better I take seven years to write plays sometimes but because it is a tricky thing to unpack. Do you have similar feelings about that? I think it's fun most of the time honestly I do I think it's I do think it's fun not just you know I okay so this okay 10% evil a little bit of evil it's fun catching people sometimes like the part of that that's not evil is that when you do catch people then it you know you can see you can sometimes see in the audience like little light bulbs go off like I've been asked on more than one occasion why I write Filipino characters and I love to I love saying to people who ask that question especially in large public forums I like saying you would never ask a white writer why they're writing white characters you know and so and even like just that you know just that moment when you're there and you're in front of a bunch of people and you see all of these people like oh no you wouldn't you wouldn't do that and you know just for them to start to understand what you're doing what you're trying to do by creating these worlds that people can latch into and you know and in trying to build empathy with people that they don't know or people that they don't like or you know or showing you know those you know showing people like me trying to develop empathy with people they don't know or don't like you know it's it's it's it's fun sometimes and a little evil I mean I think it's it's um it's what it's it's what it's what Lydia was talking about it's it's um this idea that that speaking the will sometimes feel may sometimes feel like a slap in the face to certain institutions where we have to make our bread and butter but if those institutions are serious about extending an invitation to have a real conversation these are this this that that Ray was talking about is also part of that conversation and what gets us to the table is being authentic with each other about what our intentions are and what we're really there for so so that's where that can happen once we have all come to the table in an authentic way then we can have these conversations where there's an exchange and there's learning on both sides so and I hazard to guess that we everyone up here we've all had those very fruitful and brave relationships you you know if you ask me talk to me about race in America I'm going to get angry and I'm going to say some things but that doesn't negate that I have appreciated and continue to appreciate the people the white people the white institutions who have partnered with me to start making it better but it doesn't it hasn't made it go away so of course I'm going to be not happy about it that's a really difficult you know bifurcated consciousness to articulate to someone we in America we only know how to hear I'm upset as you're saying I'm doing that to you and I don't think that it always can mean that it can mean we we can all acknowledge that there's this thing this elephant in the room that isn't that's really big elephants are big right and so how how we can't we can't fix it if we're also uncomfortable that we can't fix it I wonder was that profound sounding or just talking about this you know extra responsibility I don't know whether it's fair or not fair but I think it's always an opportunity to have you know like what everyone say of an exchange and you know I take it upon myself to really if somebody seems to be kind of putting me in a box and they may not realize it you know illuminate that to them and actually it does open up a new conversation and and I like to do that but I tend to do it in a very tactful way so sometimes it's a lot of responsibility you know again whether that's fair or not fair I'm okay with it and in the other so the flip side of that is in your writing so what we're discussing is really the sort of exchange of ideas and expectations and notions between people and institutions and artists but I wonder as artists yourself do you have to get over the fact that you may the work may be perceived as representing something bigger than you and what I have a specific moment in smart people and I have no idea what this was like for you but in which the character of Valerie's an actor is auditioning for a play it's a very specific type of African-American at least dialect I don't know what your intention was there but I wondered about that sort of notion of representation and did you feel were you worried about what the reaction was going to be first question that I didn't answer right that was the first that was a tangent to the first question that's my that was no I am Valerie is a an African-American actress who's navigating being an African-American actress and the opportunities to her that are limited because of it and so the scene that what he's speaking of is is hilarious and she goes to an audition and she's given a side of who she's going to audition for and but when she gets there they see her and they have said oh this is the side that you want to be reading and it's not what she prepared and it's like a very urban accented trope I guess and so there's great comedy in her sort of trying to do it and you know being a black girl from the suburbs trained at white institutions kind of being able to code switch off the page in a cold reading and kind of not and all of the things it you know and it's funny about five minutes left I wanted to find out if there's any any of you guys who have questions for our panelists so we don't have a microphone but I can repeat either you can use your good from the diaphragm voice or I can repeat the question back for our live stream etc so or are we too shy can barely barely see out in the house hi yes there's someone in third row hi no you yes yes hi hi I've over talked okay so the question was as a playwright or a theater artist coming in and having your work produced within an institution what kind of agency or power you might have to encourage the institution to diversify their audience whether it's through discounted tickets or other kinds of outreach the community broader than the standard you know homogeneous audience that tends to show up I think it really depends on first of all it depends on if it's a world premiere and if you're a part of the process and and oftentimes the different theaters have different levels of participation that they offer to playwrights and certainly as a playwright you can ask for things and I've been at theaters where we asked and said we would love to provide tickets so that we can offer seats to members of this community so that they can they can make it in I have to name check Longworth theater because they produced a play of mine and they did kind of almost a full year long of outreach and removing barriers so that people who did not traditionally attend shows at Longworth would be able to come and participate in the not only in the show but in a day long event where in their community leaders would come into the theater and have cross community discussions about things that were happening within their community and it felt to me like it was something that was very community driven and it was a real invitation and that they used the play as a point of departure so that was something that they did but but different theaters have various levels of ability and also intention for for doing extending themselves in that way and then because the what you were saying because the institutions are so vehement and move slowly I've partnered with many great theater companies who have worked hard and together we see how the structure makes it a push you know the Huntington Theater Company they've always partnered with me to to you know reach out to the community and they have I think since Peter Dubois especially has been artistic director there's been a great consciousness around that Boston is a very polarized city it's Boston and and there are things in structural things in place like and this is not just specific this is regional theater subscription base so let's say you do make every black person in the city come to your play well the subscriptions have already been sold and if it's a hit they're going to use their tickets and so where do all of those black people go to see the play and and and I and I have watched the Huntington kind of do this we're going to figure this out with every production and you know so it is not unheard of and I don't know one of the conversations I was having in Seattle with all the African-American women playwrights is the many different hats that we wear as produced playwrights because suddenly you do need to have some marketing savvy and you do need to be able to have a good relationship with your artistic director and say hey if I can get in there to your marketing I could I could tell them that if they put this on the poster it'll be deeply offensive you know things like that great another question that looks like Peter Quo so I think that so the question was asked is of playwrights I guess the tension between writing from your authentic experience and also the desire to explore other characters who may be outside your experience and so that that's one tension and also the tension between an increasing awareness that we want people on stage whose own authentic experiences performers are somehow married to I think my feeling is that if you know it's all about authenticity then all you see is going to be biographies on stage you know I think that's you know if you push it to the extreme and I think you know the human imagination is something that we should celebrate and you know from God knows when I mean with people have been creating different types of characters so I think you know it's not about that I think it's about the intention it's about the work put in to understand what these characters that you're creating and an empathy for these characters how real they are you know so so that would be my response to that I think I mean yeah just I think when it comes to writing characters outside of your experience I think what part of what's become difficult is not just the writing of the character but the that the issue has become so charged that there are many artists who won't react criticism in a won't react to criticism in a necessarily healthy way you know you say you got that wrong yeah like usually right usually the you know they're not usually I shouldn't say usually but like you know people become defensive or afraid and rather than engaging you know they'll put up a wall and then the person you ask the question will put up a wall and suddenly everyone's throwing things over walls you know and you know it's but you know which strangely like you know if someone is like oh you know this character that whether it's not a racially charged or you know or sexually charged or whatever issue where it's like oh I just don't believe this person's you know action from beginning to end you go oh okay what what what lost you you know and then you figure out what to you know what to massage or what to what to change you know because I I do actually write a lot of characters that are so far out of what I you know of what I've done in life and you know and I have I have actually been had conversations where people are upset by what I've represented and you know and it's you just I feel like you sit down and talk and you learn you figure out how to do the next time I have characters in published plays that I regret what I've done you know and and I think that you know and if you know and and when those plays do get done I do actually talk if I have am in touch with the people doing the play talk to them about things that I think are difficult about it things that I would like to change you know or that you know things that I would like to do differently and I think that's made me a better writer and I think a lot some writers are afraid to do that and it just and just really quickly I'm sorry I'm talking so much about the queer phase thing I think that is you know I think I think that's very contextual you know like I there are absolutely roles that I've written for characters that are GLBT who I would be fine with a person of any sexuality playing those characters but then there are particular characters where the experience is so tied up in sexuality or nuances of sexuality or issues of sexuality beyond even just generally like a gay issue that is even beyond gay people do you know what I mean where it's like it's so many steps are moved that the only way you're going to get a performance that is going to a crafted performance that will make that character work is if you cast a gay person you know then then I then I insist on a gay person like and after all the terrible things I do like that level of understanding shame and you know and bullying it's just you need a you need a gay guy to do that and it's you know so yeah but but there are plenty of characters like Benji and Edith can shoot things and hit them oh actually that's not true actually Kenny and Edith like Kenny and Edith you know I don't think that actor has to be gay to play Kenny one more question and we have to wrap up I'm sorry I almost can't see anything okay in the back back second to last row I can't bring that home so what I did so it's about to step on tones rather than deal with the power of the fact that with British I dealt with issues, issues being bullied, who thinks by my kind of stepping away from all of that I might still run into problems so the question just to repeat it is the writer who's Caribbean and British and asking if really from another perspective another sort of color to the palette of the conversation if she would face similar challenges and I wonder if if this gets Lydia a little bit at your point about the you alluded to where you said specifically you feel that we have trouble dealing with more than one thing that we're locked in kind of binary kind of conversation that it's always it's black or white so to introduce Asian as a complicating factor so right you know not just through the middle passage absolutely that's complicated I think you can do anything you want to do because you're a playwright and I think that we live in America so depending on how the play is cast or yet I think I and I think what I was I think what I was saying was I don't think that in America you can be immune to other people's assumptions and prejudices and sensitivities and so that could fall out well for your play or that could be something that makes you prickly and it doesn't I don't know that I don't know that it matters I would I would just add to that as well that the beautiful thing about being a generative artist is that you control your narrative so you do not have to tell your story from the standpoint of an outside gaze obviously when an audience comes to see it they're going to have their reaction and you can't control that but what you can control down to the minutest detail is your vision your artistic vision of what it is that you want to express about your experience that you're trying to put into this play so that's I mean I would just encourage you to stay true to that because that's the power that we do have is to express what we express free of the constraint of coming from someone else's perspective I think that uh yeah and it's also I think important to note that we've you know today we've said Asian and Asian American which is a very blunt instrument I mean we're talking about a huge content of many many many different cultures and that's as far as we've gotten right now it seems so there's I don't touch me or black or African American there's a lot of ways and I think there's many more conversations you know in the future but I wonder just to sort of wrap up I did wonder from you from you as playwrights and theater artists when you sort of squint and can see into the future if you can a theater that seems the kind of best version of the theater what that might look like we would all make lots and lots of money well funded I think that there are young people and companies doing it I think that they're established companies that have been doing it all along and I do think that there's something about economic accessibility so they don't get celebrated companies like company one where we've worked and companies like Congo Square and Chicago and companies like the number at traditionally African American I think that people have been doing it and so I guess my fantasy in my future would be would be that there's more access to financial resources so that we're not just knocking on the doors of the institutions who are either trying if sometimes ineffectually to help us or would rather we go away I would love to see us be able to build our own institutions and I've certainly sat on enough of these panels with enough brilliant people that we could figure it out but that we're poor artists who don't have time I think I may be naive but I think we need to strive for a fearless theater you know a theater that does not fear that it's not going to make money it's not going to attract people it's going to offend this people it's going to offend that segment I think if we are fearless and we have this central understanding of expressing someone's passion I think we can get there right what could you say the question just if you could imagine a theater a better theater a theater that you would make you happy what that would look like I think we're just going to say well funded again I mean you know it would be I think that I think just like in the very simplest simplest way if we if the American theater were a theater where the artists making theater could make a living just doing theater I think that would change a lot of things in terms of access diversity the stories that are being on stage if if everyone could actually make a living doing theater and not doing theater and teaching and and being and you know whatever I think that would change a lot Kimmer I don't want anybody tweeting that I'm a socialist maybe I am I would be a shin of the material resources of the American theater because what Lydia said is so important theaters and people and companies who have been doing this work of trying to broaden the American theater for years and years and years but because of the way the resources are distributed they struggle so it would be really great to have a real invitation to everybody great well we are out of time I want to thank Sam French of course for having us in the vineyard theater and howl around and most particularly Kimber and Ray and Damon and Lydia thank you so much for offering