 Oh, welcome to the 19th Zoom session. It was hard to believe that when we started a couple of months ago that we would be like, we would have all these incredible playwrights do this. So I'm so happy you're all here. No pressure on Kirby who is our special guest today and because I hope this continues beyond me. And I just wanna say thank you to Kirby for being here. Kirby is currently in the, where are you now? Riverside, LA? I'm in PR, yeah. Theater department at UCR. Riverside, yeah. All right, well I'm a UC product from Santa Cruz. So big ups to the UCs. But I've known about Kirby for a long time. I actually read one of your earliest plays called Black Ballin. Oh, hey, and Khalif, performing in Black Ballin at UCR. No way. Yes. Cool, so I'm really happy to be here because I totally hold you in high esteem as an artist, as a Latinx writer, as a Black writer. And you have a lot of hyphenates going on. So I wanna just wanna welcome you to our casa and pull up a chair. Thank you for coming. This is pretty free flowing. So I'd love to hear what maybe a little, maybe you can introduce a little bit about yourself and then maybe just kind of dive in what you'd like to do with us and then we can go into a Q&A. How's that sound? Absolutely, very cool. First of all, thank you for doing this. As I said, when I first jumped on, this is an incredible way to stay connected to folks. I know how much it must say just thought-wise, organization-wise, to put something together like this. And then once it comes to fruition, us as theater folks, we come to a space and we're seeing a lot of little boxes. And so we have to kind of learn to accept that those little boxes represent actual human beings. I am a strong advocate of turning my cameras on. I taught a class with 84 students about theater classes at UCR, where I'm currently the chair of the theater film and digital production department. And I would always try to get them to turn their cameras on just because, you know, I feed off of that human interaction higher or far away or near it is. So that's your call. So what I'm gonna do today is I'm going to talk about writing the didactic play. I gave it a title. I titled it on writing the didactic play because when you begin something with on, on doing something, it seems more clever than it really is. But we're gonna talk about writing the didactic play because I believe that, you know, given the present state we're in, I know for us as artists, there will probably be a lot of work coming out addressing our present state. And so I'm going to use my play Dreamscape as the narrative tool for us to talk about this. And hopefully the conversation will be free flowing. Some of you have seen Dreamscape. Some of you haven't. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to, I always like to have a foundational point of reference whenever I teach or whenever I'm working. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you the first four pages of Dreamscape. I'm gonna read the first four pages of Dreamscape. And then we will look at three basic things about writing a didactic play that I learned through Dreamscape and other works. So play Otis Redding just for a second. I'm dreaming of a white, it's white. Otis Redding's White Christmas gently describes the darkness. Chalk outlines of Mayesh Amil's materialized. Lights rise to reveal Mayesh is sitting in the front seat of her aunt's Nissan Center. She dances the 12 mortal moves as the music is spasmodically disrupted by 12 distortions. These are gunshots. Each one finding its target in Mayesh's body transforming her movement into a dazzling life, death dance. She lands in the front seat of the car, closes her eyes for a moment, and awakens with a jolt. Ever have one of those dreams where nothing comes out when you try to scream? She tries to scream, nothing comes out. See what I mean? One of those dreams. Christmas was three days ago. Jingle bells and ho, ho, ho. Oh, just so you know. This ain't gonna be one of them feel good shows. Just so you know. So, Christmas was three days ago. Jingle bells and ho, ho, ho. Today's December 28th, third day of Kwanzaa, Ujima. To build and maintain our community together and to make our brothers and sisters problems our problems and to solve them together. I know you didn't know. I didn't know either until uncle Darnell told me so during one of his blackouts. No, not that kind of blackout. That's just what we call it when uncle D has one of his moments and is compelled to bust you out because of your lack of blackness. You'll see what I mean. It's Ujima though. Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima. So me, Shine, my cousin Tony, dying to get our party on. Rolling to LA though. Tide of Club Metro. Oh, for those of you who don't know me, see I was born and raised in the IE. That's the Inland Empire, the IE. 60 miles east of the city of angels. So me, Shine, my cousin Tony, dying to get our party on. Rolling to LA though. Tide of Club Metro. Four dance floors, a hip hop reggae, rock and espanol and retro. So the center starts to rattle and pull to the right. Ah man, I cannot believe we got a flat in the middle of the night, not tonight. Okay, let me just get the fact folks. What is the deal with automobiles and my black folks? For real. And the fact that your spare is always flat, folks. For real. And do not get me talking about a working Jack folks. My black folks. So wind up at a fix at the spirit of 76 that sits on Central and Brockton. Gat in my lap, in case I get rocked on. Waiting for Shine and Tony to get back on the Triple A card, one in the morning sitting in my aunt Gwen's ride. I can't leave my Gwen's central sitting on Central. If it gets stolen, scratched, towed or broken into, soon as I see her, I'm gonna be the one getting broken into. Aunt Gwen's gonna kill me. Well, maybe not kill. But I sure ain't gonna be riding the Central no more, feel? Ever have one of those dreams where nothing comes out when you try to scream? Tap. So I'm sitting in the Central on Central sensing something like rapping, like tapping. Like, who's that peeping in my window? Chappelle, nobody now. Who's that peeping in my window? Tap. I hear the tapping again. Oh, cool. It's Tony. Hold on, girl. Let me let you in. Where you been? I'm lonely. Got me sitting in the station in the middle of the night, one in the morning losing some patience. Something, something, just ain't right. Tap. So this is the beginning. This is the intro to Dreamscape. Dreamscape is what I call a monologue with accompaniment. And that accompaniment is a beatboxer. And so the beatboxer serves as the orchestra, as the backdrop for the rhymes that I just did. But the focus is on Myisha Mills, who is a 19-year-old black woman who is sitting in the front seat of a car where she will be shot 12 times by police officers who are called to rescue her, to help her. Her cousins had called because she was passed out. In writing Dreamscape, there were certain things that I wanted to do, that I set out to do that I thought were very helpful in working on this play. And I backed myself into the situation of having to deal with these issues. So the first thing I did was I did what I learned, I forget who said it, who told me this, but I asked, where should a play take place? You know, where should a play take place? And the answer I received was it should take place in a place that allows for the most dramatic action to occur. And so when I decided that I'm gonna write this story about this young black woman being shot to death, and I asked myself the question, where would be the place that allowed for the most dramatic action to take place? The only answer that I came up with was in the front seat of the car as she is being shot to death. So that's where I put her. And so the play begins with her in that seat and we see her rise up from the seat and she dances the entirety of the Otis Redding song that she heard. And after dancing the entirety of White Christmas, she lands back in the front seat of the car. And what we are going to experience will be 12 scenes. And each of those 12 scenes will represent one of the bullets that hit her. And each bullet will manifest itself in three ways. What that bullet did to her body physically, what memory that bullet triggered, and whether or not the coroner declares that she is dead or alive. And so this was the space, the box that I put myself in as a writer to address the theme that I wanted to address. And thematically what I wanted to talk about was the oppositional, the confrontational relationship that the black community has historically had with the police. And so that is what I wanted to say thematically. I knew what I wanted to say from the get go. The question was, how do I say it? What are the pieces that I put together in order to say it the way I wanted to say it? So the first thing was to put my character in the most dramatic space possible, front seat of the car as she's being shot. So there are a couple of things that I had to think about in writing this play. The first of those things that I want to talk about in writing a didactic play is tell me how I should feel and not what I should think. When you are working on it, when this is not prescriptive, when I'm working on a didactic play, what my goal is, is to tell the audience what they should feel, not what they should think. And so for me, taking that approach, I had to know what I wanted the audience to feel. So when I wanted them to feel the loss of a fellow human being. So in order to feel that loss, I had to let the audience feel the presence of that human being. In order for them to feel the presence, I had to construct a character or person someone that once they were gone from our lives, we would feel an absence. And so I set out to build the character of Myisha Mills. Dreamscape is based on a shooting of a young woman named Tyisha Miller in 1998. Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American young lady who, as I mentioned, was shot by the police 12 times. When I set out to write the play, I chose not to create a play about Tyisha Miller. The reason I made that choice was because I wanted to have the freedom as an artist to construct a character that I could achieve what I wanted to do thematically with. So it wasn't anything against who Tyisha Miller was. I had a goal that I thought I could achieve more powerfully by building a character with whom, through whom, I can make the points that I wanted to make. The second thing within the tell-me-don't-show-me is you should never speak the theme of your play. You should never tell the audience what it is that you want them to take away from your play. Once you do that, you have stopped me as an individual from extracting the brilliance that you put all the work into. Once you tell me, this is what you should think, then you've constrained me. You've stopped me from being able to do the thing that folks say is the most interesting thing that happens in plays for us as human beings, which are those things that we actually add to the stage. So never speak the theme. However, within the work, the theme should resonate in a way that makes it unavoidable for the audience to extract it. So there's a line in this play very early on where the character says, soon as I heard the cop siren, the first thing that popped in my mind, man, I wish I was a white girl or at least a little lighter than I am. So instead of me telling you what you should think, I haven't given you hopefully enough information so that you can go, okay, this is who the character is and this is what is running through the play thematically. So through a line like that, hopefully it addresses, hmm, I wonder if African-Americans are shot at a higher rate than others. Hmm, I wonder if there's colorism within the African-American community and the darker you are, the less acceptable you are. Hmm, I wonder if she says, I wish I was a white girl. What does that imply about quote unquote, the elevation of whiteness and how that has played a role in both recent as well as other history when it comes to that interaction. We have, you know, the most well-known incident of that is Emmett Till when he was supposedly lynched for whistling at a white woman. So this idea of embedding the themes into the work, I think is extremely important. Speaking the theme, like I said, it oftentimes, for me as an audience member, becomes kind of productive. Because once you tell me, then I don't have to do any work and I can take a nap because I'm done. Dang, that was a little harsh. That was a little too harsh. I'm not bad. Nothing's too harsh here. No, no, no, I felt it in my soul. I felt a little harshness, not that anyone. I just felt, you know, damn, curve, you just, you just went a little harsh. We want to hear it all. So, um, so that was the first thing. Second thing in writing a didactic play that I learned through Dreamscape is find the beauty in your story and show it to us. Find what's beautiful in this story and show it to us. The things that I did in Dreamscape that I found beautiful and I still, every time I see the play, I have these moments of like, man, that shit's kind of dope. Is, um, one of them is there's a dance scene at the club. She goes to a club and she's dancing. And she essentially runs through like a, um, different dance moves that I grew up with in the 90s that this character would likely have done. Um, I think she ends up with doing the Humpty Hump, right? But there's this moment where she's on stage. She's dancing at the club with the girl, with her girls. And there's just beauty, happiness, loveliness, like all of those things. I think she did the Roger Rabbit. And for me, every time I see the play, I let myself be in that moment. Probably because the beatboxing is usually dope. Not usually, it's always dope. And it just transports me to a place where, where nostalgia where visually, I'm actually seeing someone do those dances. Some of you are as mature as I am. That's what I call it. And, you know, you remember when you go to the club and you, you know, I could never do, I could like never do this one. Like I would always fake it. I'd line up with my boys and they would all do it. And then I'd fake it. But every time she does that move, because that's one of the places where she was hit, I immediately go back to me at Club Metro in Riverside going out all weekend. You know, trying to get my dance on. So once again, the beauty in that moment, I think has a parted to be transcended. So the dancing at the club. I mentioned the beatboxing. If you've ever witnessed really great beatboxing in person, there are a few things more amazing that I've seen performant. It's just that skill is incredible. So the beatboxing is beautiful. And then I use comedy for beauty. So within the play itself, there are times when I'm describing the play to folks and I say, yeah, you know, it's about this young lady who was shot to death. And then I find myself saying, and there are moments that are funny. And part of it is the understanding that we don't live in kind of just these static moments in life. There are times when something tragic is happening and something funny or silly happens. And so there's a moment where when she is shot in a scalp, she's shot in the head. And the coroner says, you know, the coroner does the coroner's report. This was only a shot to the scalp, perforating this and that. And she has a little moment with the coroner where she, you know, she lets the coroner know that when you're talking about a black woman here, you never say only, like only. And then when she finishes with the coroner, this is what she says. She says, and since I'm handing out advice, let me give the men a little slice. You know me, I'm going to be nice. She says, brother should always be aware of this fact. But if you're in a brother and you like your coffee black, here's a little insight to help you with your Mac. Do not touch the hair. Perm, relax, crimp, slick, braided, dreaded or fro. Please just let the hair go. Do not grab the hair. Do not stroke the hair. Do not caress the hair. Do not clutch the hair. Do not follow the hair. Do not fiddle with the hair. Do not twiddle with the hair. Do not absentmindedly twirl the hair and not pensively seize the hair. Do not passionately grip the hair. Do not attempt to run your fingers through the hair. Do not kiss the hair. Do not lick the hair. Just. Did I make it clear? Hands off the hair. So what. What I, what I wanted to do. In having these moments, these, these intensely tragic moments that are occurring on stage is I wanted to find those places. To let the audience breathe. I remember early on, I think when I wrote black ballin, I remember one of the comments in an earlier draft was curb, you don't let the audience breathe. It's like, you know, you go from this to that thing to the other thing, you know, you got, you got to let them breathe. You know, you don't let the audience breathe. I think I was more pissed off when I wrote black ballin. Yeah, maybe not my state of. Yeah. But so, so in putting dreamscape together, I was very conscious. I was very aware of where we were as far as the set, the setting. What I was doing as far as the intensity of the moment. And I wanted to make sure that that. I wanted to take a breath so that they could sit through 70 minutes, 70 minutes of watching someone, watching their life being taken from them. So I was, I wanted to create those moments of breathing. So the third thing, so first to tell me how I should feel, not what I should think to find the beauty in your story and show it to us, you know, put beauty on stage. And then the third thing is music and spectacle are powerful. I know, huh? Like no kidding. But the reason I say that is so often when I'm working with students and they're working on, on plays, music and spectacle seem to be an afterthought. And so, especially in dealing with and writing, creating work that is, that is intense, that is intended to be didactic, that, you know, will undoubtedly have these moments of, of horrific, you know, these moments of horror. Remember music and spectacle. And the reason I wanted you to hear Otis Redding's White Christmas is because first of all, if you've never listened to Otis Redding, find the anthology and listen to the, just all of it, just all of it. I'm not saying you'll like it. I'm just saying, find the anthology and listen to it. But make sure that you're at a high level of happiness because Otis, Otis to bring you down a little bit. Otis is kind of like James Taylor. James Taylor can sing, you know, happy birthday and you'll be sad. Like damn, James. But there's a, there's a power in his voice that is just to me that is transcendent. And so when I was, you know, deciding what is the song? What's the song? You know, how do I draw the audience into the story? Well, the shooting happened on the 28th of December, and so I knew it had to be a Christmas song. I knew it had to be a song that also served the purpose of creating a narrative. So yeah, it's white Christmas. By the way, I'm from Honduras. So the whole concept of a white Christmas is like, what, what does that make? Because, you know, we had two seasons, like 85 degrees and then 75 degrees. So that hell is a white Christmas. But I still love, I still love. So here's the thing about Zoom, just so y'all know, like my comic genius doesn't translate in the silence. Anyway, Khalif knows, he knows mine. Or maybe I'm not as funny as I think I am. So, so this is the thing. Choosing Otis Redding's White Christmas was intended to, to bring the audience in as quickly as possible. To let the audience know that this is, this is, this is very, it can be really, really a nice thing happening. It's Christmasy, there's dancing. But, but pretty quickly that there's a juxtaposition of what is happening at the beginning when she dances. And then we see and hear Otis at the very end of the play. And what we realized is that that beautiful dance that we saw her doing at the beginning was actually her death dance. That those moves were actually the 12 shots that were hitting her. So within the beauty of Otis and the movement and the dance was the actual physical narrative of the entire story. So you can actually go through the entire story and just watch your dance and see all 12 of the gunshots hit her. And once again, that's through the musicality. When it came to spectacle, you know, there were a number of things that, that happened on the stage. The one thing that I, that I thought became more spectacular as it evolved in, in rehearsal was the final scene. So in the final scene, the final moment, the beatboxer who has been sitting on stage the entire time facing backwards and at once just getting up and going to different places. He gets up and he stands up on the chair. That's back to back to her. And he stands up on the chair. She kneels down and does says now I lay me down and sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And he is standing, you know, as a giant. And after her prayer, she begins to do this, do the dance again. While she is dancing and he is as tall as he can be. He is giving us the list of her body parts. Her right lung weighed this much. Her left lung weighed this much. Her heart weighed this much. Her right lung weighed this much. Her left lung weighed this much. Otis Redding is playing in the background. She's dancing in front of us. Her left lung weighed this much. Her right lung weighed this much. And this moment of bringing all of these pieces together is damn. I can't, I can't believe I got emotional. I got emotional. There's something so powerful to me about that moment. Not because I constructed it, but because I believe it was supposed to be. And here's what I mean. That repetition of her body parts happened in rehearsal by accident. The person playing the beatboxer was trying to remember his lines. The actor was dancing. Otis was playing. And just the repetition of what ultimately this human being's existence came down to. These, these five body parts that would be weighed and notated as, you know, the final statement about their existence. And it was just, wow, it's a powerful moment. And for me in looking at how this story was constructed and being able to extract these, just these three things from, from constructing something that was written from, you know, a place of, of, of rage in some ways. I knew that if I wanted the theme to reach the audience, that I couldn't simply tell them the theme. I had to do these things in order to draw them in so that once, once the audience leaves, they're in fact, speaking the theme instead of me speaking it to them. Okay. Man. So let's talk. No, first of all, thank you for that. That was really awesome. And I'm, I'd like to encourage everyone to either raise their hand or write a question in the chat, but I, I only have one question. I do want to leave space for everyone to, to respond and to, to what you just shared, which I really, thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. It's interesting that people consider didactic theater to be that kind of theater that is like, hit you over the head with a subject or political idea or whatever. But the way that you're describing didactic theater is definitely more, it feels more subtle and maybe it's, can you describe, can you talk a little bit about how do, how do you channel that whatever passion or rage is driving you to write this particular story into something that doesn't like you said, like flip the switch of an audience member to, you know, turn, turn themselves off to you, to whatever story you're trying to tell. Can you, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And I chose didactic, you know, those of you who've been in my classes know that I am not a theatrical definition user kind of guy. But I thought didactic was a way to kind of give a sense of what I wanted to do. I think, I think we use didactic, we can use it in the same way that we use other, other tools in the theater and we can overuse it and we can misuse it. So, you know, there's dialogue. Every line of dialogue that I write, I try to make sure that it is something that serves those purposes. It's moving the plot forward, it's giving you information. It's, it's fucking amazingly written every single syllable. And it's something that actors will go, oh my goodness, I want to say these words, I want to do this thing. It's the, the, the term that we use for the thing doesn't dictate what that thing is. It's simply a matter of me saying, yeah, I want to write like, you know, I want to write something about this horrific thing that continues to happen. But my job, and I'm going to say this and we'll see where it goes. Years ago when I was, when I was, when I was blacker, somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody was going to say, oh, when you're talking about how to deliver a message, it's not, it's like music. I grew up in a black church, listen to gospel. And you can have a song that hits the same note over and over again, and it just hits that same note over and over again. And then you can have a song that just takes you on a journey. There's a song I want to recommend to you is by B.B. Wine is called This Song. It's like the most amazingly constructed song ever, but it is called The Journey. And it's the same thing with, with, I think with playwriting. We have to be conscious and cognizant of what we're using, how we're using those things to get to where we want to go. It's not a matter of eliminating, it's not a matter of saying, well, I'm calling this, for instance, a hip hop theater piece, but I can't use country music in it. To hell with that. Well, and Jennings has like a dope sample that I can use. I'll be dropping wailing Jen. So it's how we use the things. It's not just being constrained by, by those definitions. So yeah, I, that's, yeah. All right. All right. Thank you. Beautiful. I don't see any raised hands yet. I'm more than welcome, but I do see something in the chat. I think actually the question is, is the script published? Is there a way to see the script or a recording? Yes. The script is published in two anthologies. It is the Encuentros anthology. Yeah, I was looking for mine. And then it is also published in Daniel Banks's Say Word anthology. Yes. So Dreamscape is an Encuentro anthology and this Say Word. Amazing. And the next one I'm seeing is at what part of the writing process is the Beatbox Incorporated? Ah, so this was, um, when I initially wrote Dreamscape, it was intended to be a DJ accompanying the actor. Um, and I did a few performances with the DJ and part of it was because in the research, I found out that the DJs where the DJ keeps their turntables, that's called a coffin. Um, which I didn't know growing up in hip hop all these years. So I thought that was apropos to have the character exist in that space. Um, but what I wanted the DJ to do was so incredibly difficult and cumbersome that eventually, and I believe it was Daniel Banks who made the suggestion that I think about using a beatboxer. And so I had known a beatboxer for probably five years prior to bringing him into the process. His name is John Merchant. And once I brought him into the process, it also allowed me to have another body on stage without anything else. So this play takes place with two chairs and two mics. That's all we need. Um, and the beatboxer gave me more flexibility to make changes because he was so good that I could say, you know what dude, I think I wanted to sample can you try that one? With a DJ, it would have been a little bit more complex. Khalif, answer me the question. Oh, hang on. We got one from Marilo and then we got. Yeah, we'll jump to Khalif. Hi, my name is Marilo Nunez. I'm from Canada actually. And I arrived late. So I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself by asking this question. Um, when at what age did you decide that you wanted to become a play right? And who are your, do you have any Latinx influences that have inspired you as a writer? Oh, wow. Okay. At what age? I was about 23 or 24. I was at the University of California Riverside. It was Martin Luther King Day. I wanted to do a play that spoke to me and my generation that I wanted to write a play. So I wrote a play. It was a 10 minute play called Children of the King backstage that night. I heard the audience react for the first time and I said to myself, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. The next year I wrote another play from Martin Luther King Day. The next year I wrote another play. Um, and that's when I, that's how I started writing. Um, influences. Uh, they're, they're more direct folks like, um, who's my mentor, um, she, she, uh, I think it is still at UCLA. Um, Carlos Morton, uh, who forced me to do my first rewrite because I believed in amuse and I didn't believe in rewriting because I believe the message came to me directly to my mind. And if I rewrote it, I would anger the muse. Um, Carlos is like, dude, that's bullshit. Rewrite the play and give me a clearly defined protagonist, please. Um, so, uh, you know, I think there's, there's a lot of people who had very direct influence on my work. You know, of course, um, by this, um, I, at one point I had planned on getting a U-Haul truck, cutting the size of it out and taking my work on the road the way he did with Teatro. Um, hell, I might still do that. We'll see. But, but, but yeah, those, those are some of the folks that, uh, you know, Maria Elena Pones, um, I mean, I can, you know, a lot of the, the, the Star Wars, um, and, and, and in the space have influenced me and my work. Um, when I saw, when I saw, like probably a lot of us, when I saw, um, uh, I don't know why I want to say, but you go, it's not about you go. It's, um, damn it. So I'm 55. This happens for those of you who aren't 55. It's coming for you. Um, Joanne, what's the name of the play? Um, which play? I was so influenced by zoot suit. I couldn't remember the name. Um, but when I, when I saw, when I saw zoot, I, I believe it was the first play that I saw with a, with a narrator with who, who, who then became embedded in the, in the stories like, oh damn, I can do that. And so, um, yes. Thank you. Awesome. All right, Kelly, what you got for us? Um, I was just wondering, have you seen dreamscape yet produce where you weren't in the room, you or Fawze? And how does that, what does it look like since like he's just so ingrained in it at this point? Yeah, I've, I've seen on video, um, a high school in Milwaukee did a version of it with, with a, um, female DJs. Um, and it was so cool to see it. Done without me present. Um, I am, I'm hoping to, to, to see the work done independent of myself more, uh, to see what, what that reaction is. But yeah, I'm, uh, I'm nervous, but I'm excited because I do believe that there are folks who will bring like amazing things to the work that I can't bring as a director. I always tell people, you know, I perpetrate, I'm a playwright who perpetrates as a director. I direct my own stuff, but that's, that's as far as I can perpetrate that's, that's as far as I can perpetrate, but yes, I'm surprised, surprised Joanne Yadrow hasn't done it yet. Okay. Okay. Careful. Because do you know Chesney Snow? No. Okay, you got to look him up because he's in Syracuse next year and he's my beatboxer. So there you go. See, this is how this is our project. Thank you. You throw that, you throw that at me. You throw that at me. I know, I know what I was doing. Any other questions or, I mean, I can talk to you. Yeah, we got something from Alexis. Yes. Hi. Um, I've been finding as a playwright, there are a lot of stories like you have said that need to be told. We have to tell. And even, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly, this isn't a feel good story. Do you think that there is a balance that can be found between telling these really honest stories and also uplifting them to have that also didactic feel? Yes. And every time I, so I didn't grow up on musicals. And I've always said, you know, I don't necessarily, I'm not a big musicals person. And then every time I go to one, I'm like, damn, I get it. Like I went, years ago, I went to Oregon Shakespeare Festival and, you know, I'm black. And so they said, Harry, okay, you're going to get three tickets to go see Music Man. And I'm black with, with 10 other black teenagers with me who are doing a play called Buck Roll with Crump dancing. And I walked into Music Man black and they, oh, they said this, you're going to come out singing the song, the 70, hire many trombones that were leading, right? And I'm like, whatever. Oh my God. So I go into this damn thing. And I'm blown away by those things that I was talking about, the beauty, the musicality, the human, the thing that, whatever that thing is that makes us our human thing, do that human thing. I was like, shit, I'm, I left humming the damn song against my, my, my will. And so I say that to say, we can find those places where we can still address things. They don't always have to be this intense. I've done plays, I did a performance called Uncovered, where we took the, the idea of the pageant of the masters of recreating, using tabloids and took hip hop. So we created hip hop album covers. So we did Run Dem, CLL, Kuze, Biggie and Tupac, Wu-Tang Clan. And it was just, it was all movement and DJing, but the narrative, the underlying narrative of what hip hop is and what those album covers represented and having Biggie and Tupac facing off with each other just by movement. Still had a powerful narrative, but it, it was just so dope cause we ended it with, with doing a stop and pepper push it. So everybody got to dance. So, you know, we can do it. Thank you. Very cool. All right, we got Gina. You are unmuted. Hi. I just had a quick question. I'm sorry, I was a little late. So I'm sorry if this was already addressed, but I'm representing Costa Rica here. I'm curious if Honduras has inspired your work in one way or another and if it shows up, if there's a cultural influence there. Yes. Absolutely. So Hondureño, right? Okay, they piss me off sometimes and I always talk in those languages. But okay, real quick. My student Esther, Esther, is also Hondurania. Calif, tiene un poquito de semi British Honduranos from Belize, his family. I'm just calling people out, but here's the thing. I grew up, I was born in Honduras. I grew up, so I was 13 years old. The Bay Islands at first and then Puerto Cortez, which is on the mainland. And I didn't realize this until I realized it. And here's what I realized. We have a thing in Puerto Cortez called La Feria Agostina. And when I was there, basically you want to go through the ping pong balls and play football. And one year there was a man called El Hombre de Mil Bosses. And he was a storyteller. And he was on a stage making sounds with a microphone. And I remember even at 9, 10, 11 years old, sitting there watching his performance and just staying at the steps while my friends went to play everything else waiting for him to perform again. And this isn't something that I even thought about when I started writing plays, but I realized that that influence, that power of storytelling had gotten hold of me at that age. My formative years of storytelling and of being aware of the stage actually came in church where the performance was reciting memory verses and performing from Mother's Day. But those things, I realized once I came to this country, I would refer back to them. I wrote a play called Birthmark. And Birthmark is a play that takes place, the first half takes place in Honduras, the first half takes place in the U.S. And it's about a young man whose family moves to the U.S. after his father drowns on a merchant ship. And it's my way of talking about the duality of my existence. I was gonna say triality, but that's not a word until we say it over and over again then it becomes a word. But looking the way I look, speaking English, speaking Spanish, moving to the U.S. to LA, looking the way I look, speaking with an accent, having two pairs of parents in three shirts and the two pairs of parents with polyester pants. Anyway, looking how I look, speaking and just what that did for me once again was it forced me to step out of myself and learn how to speak English. So I learned how to say one, two, three instead of one, two, three. Right. So I had to step out of myself and I think that's where I started to observe both myself and others that allowed me then to put myself out of myself. So I went back to Honduras in 2016 on a Fulbright fellowship and we did, I did a translation of Dreamscape to Spanish. So there's a Spanish translation of Dreamscape that we actually did performances at the Una, the University, Universidad Nacional Autónoma. Dang, when you don't say, you lose it. In Tegucigalpa and we toured it to a few other places and went to Las Ruinas de Copán. We went to a couple of other places and did a bilingual version of Dreamscape with an actor from Honduras. She was a student at the university there. That's really inspiring and something that I hope I can do with my career in the future as well. Is there a way to find birthmark? Is it available somewhere? Birthmark is, no, but I will send it to you. Thank you. Can I send you an email? So we did it at UCR two years ago and I actually did a condensed version of it. So I did just a second act, but it's a two act play and the first act, like I said, is I'll take this to Honduras. So I'll send you the entire play. Thank you. That would be wonderful. Absolutely. I'm from Nicaragua, actually. And I've been to the Bay Islands in Honduras. I think it's gorgeous. Such a gorgeous place. And I had a question, but now that you said that there is a Spanish version on Dreamscape, I hope you do share with us how we can get to read it because I don't know. And just so everyone knows, Tlaloc has my information. So if you forget, and I'm at the University of California. I just posted a link to your faculty page. Okay. Yeah. And I would love for you to have the word. What did you have a question? Yes, I do. I have actually two questions. The first one is, so if I hope it's coherent, you say that you No, I can't speak Spanish, but I can't speak Spanish. I'll do it in English just for the benefit of everybody, so here's the question. Yes. When you were writing Dreamscape, you, there was, it was inspired by the murder of Tisha Miller. Yes. Created a character. Yes. In order to tell, you know, constructed this character in order to tell their, imagine and tell your theme and the story. And I was wondering if you could maybe just allow a little bit more for us. You know, kind of like what are like, like the pearls or the, the, the dangers that we should watch for when we're constructing a character that is actually somewhat based in reality. So make sure that it's not diluted. That was the first question. The second question, since you said it, how did you find that the word change when it was translated in Spanish? Because I think languages have, there's so much power and the musicality is different. And in this case, being a play that is music. Yeah, I would love to know about more about that. Okay. So, so, so, so number one, in creating the character based on Tisha Miller, there it was, there've been a couple of things, a couple of questions that folks have said, you know, to have asked what, why didn't, you know, why didn't you build, create the character that was her? What does the family think of the play? You know, and there is the danger of creating a character that's so close to someone who actually existed. The first thing I do, the first thing I did is I made it a point not to learn anything about Tisha Miller that I didn't already know. So my character was a softball player. And she was, you know, she was going to, could have gotten a scholarship to play softball. The reason she was a softball player is because her arm was shot and I needed her to swing her arm and let us know that I'm not going to be able to be a softball player anymore because of what's been done to me. My character, you know, you know, had, she, she had, I can't think of one for some reason, she had other characteristics that serve the purpose of the narrative. And so for me, constructing the character was in a way to honor, but not to replicate. The danger that we run into if we're creating a character that is intended to be possibly an antagonist based on someone else, then, you know, people may have more to say about that character. When Tisha Miller's grandmother saw the play, the thing that blew me away that she said to someone else was, she didn't realize, she had never thought about how many bullets actually hit her. What the play did, which is what I think has caused the George Floyd video to do what it did, is it actually slowed down time? When I wrote Dreamscape, I wanted to slow down time. And instead of the 45 seconds it took to shoot her 12 times. It took me about an hour and 10 minutes to be in that space with her. And so that may not be a great answer on the dangers of, of creating a character, but this is going to, it's going to be a cliche because sometimes cliches exist for reason. If you build a character with love, not build a loving character, but if you build a character with love, the thing that you construct will almost inevitably be powerful. And so when I built this character, you know, every time she dies on stage, I feel that loss. Every time, every time. Sorry. The other question is the translation. So Spanish is such a beautiful language. And English is a beautiful language. And so I've always grown up speaking both. And in working on a translation, because my Spanish, my knowledge of Spanish ends at the fifth grade. So I needed someone to actually help work on a translation with me. So Esther, who's sitting right there, actually did the translation. And then when I went to Honduras and we worked on it, the actress who played the role as well as some other colleagues that I met helped me with some of the nuances. They would say things like, no, you would never say, you would never say that. So for instance in Honduras, we don't say, to, we say, right? So if you say, how are you? And you, what are you going to do? You're going to do it, right? So that's one of the subtleties that strengthen the authenticity of the work. And once again, gives ownership, gives the audience that ownership that this is, this is mine and I can do with it what I need to do with it for myself. Thank you. Okay. I think we have, do we have a little more time with you, Kirby? I'm here. All right. I saw one more in the chat. Okay. Joanne, did you want to ask your question? Sure. I'm not going to go back. Just in terms of you working with, with writers, specifically those who are writing like solo shows very much like Dreamscape, how do you help them frame their work? What are some of the things that you help other writers who are kind of muscling through this when you see, you know, and every writer is different, but what are some of the things that are kind of standard that you're like, think about this, think about that specifically in solo work. Yes. Yes. So the first thing I ask a writer who's working on a solo piece is who's the character talking to? And here's the wrong answer. The audience. Your character in a solo show is never talking to the audience unless your character is talking to the audience. So in Dreamscape, the thing that I learned first was who is she talking to? And who she's talking to is the coroner. She's saying to the coroner, listen, dude, please do not declare me dead because look, I can dance. Please don't declare me dead because look, I might want to go to college. Please don't. So if she's talking to the coroner, there's intent behind everything she says. If she's talking to the audience, she's just saying to the audience, here's the theme of the show and agree with the theme because you should. Don't ever tell me I should agree with something because I should in a theater. You tell me what the story is and I'll let you know if I agree with it. So you have to know who you're talking to. And in the beginning of the show, when you're doing a solo performance, remember that there's a willpower, willpower. If you've never seen him, you probably never get to see the gathering. But oh my goodness, he builds the story so that it seems like he's having so much fun on stage that you want to go join. So even if you're on stage by yourself, remember that there's a world that you are building or that you have built. And you're saying to me, hey dude, hey, come check this out for like an hour and a half. I want you to come be in this world that I'm building. And here's the thing. This is gonna sound a little more morbid than I want it to be. We all get the same amount of time in a day. I am, Joanne, becoming a little bit more mature in my age, I was gonna cut my beard, but it's like two what in? I have a certain amount of time that I'm given. If you ask me, you say to me, hey, Kirk, listen, I want you to come and sit in this dark room for two hours because I have something that I have created that I believe will change your life. Then you need to put in the work to get my time. The way I approach every play that I write is that I'm asking you to give me some of your life. And I have to earn that. And if you don't approach it the same way, then don't ask me to come sit in a dark room for two hours. Like you haven't earned my two hours because I can't get them back. That's just, I have those. And then just, let me say the other thing. There's no such thing as throwaway dialogue in a script. There's no such thing as chatter. There's no such thing as, ooh, I've always wanted to write this line of dialogue. Ooh, I've always thought this was a cool phrase. I can give you a shit what you think is a cool phrase. Is it moving the plot forward? Is it keeping me interested? Is it giving me information that I need? And is it beautiful? And if it's not, you need to do a rewrite like Carlos Morton told me. There's a few more questions I think. I'm here. We got one from Linda. Hi, I just wanted to know what was it like getting into the mind of a female, young female character and what kind of process things that you have to do in order to go there? Yes, oh, thank you, thank you. One of the best compliments that I've gotten as a writer is when I've had people meet me and they say, we thought you were a woman. It's because you should. I did my research. So I'll always begin by saying, I've never been a 19-year-old black girl, but I've met and was turned down on days by a lot of them. And what I learned through that process to be observant. So my research entailed talking to my wife, my sisters, friends, anyone who would spend some time just talking. And the research did not entail, hey, tell me what it was like. My research entailed talking to another human being and just talking to them and absorbing, right? Our job as artists is to absorb, I believe, that what we do, especially as playwrights, is we absorb the spirit of other folks. And then it's our job to take what we've absorbed and put it on stage so that the audience can then get some of the beauty and some of the things that we got from those folks. So it was talking to folks. It was also going back and thinking about conversations I had with, don't touch the hair. Like, Curb, what are you doing? All of these moments that were, I've been to the club when three young ladies come to the club and I'm like, yeah, I'm dancing with you. And then I realized, wait, I'm just a prop because they have a whole routine. And I'm just like, I'm just here. And I try to move up and she's like, she walks me back but when she does it, it's really cool because I feel like, oh, she's pushing me. She's touching like, nah, she's not. I'm just moving you out the way so I can get back to the moves, right? So all of these moments that I lived, I tried to find how those moments would become narrative tools to speak to my ultimate theme and to make you feel that, damn, why is she not here? Well, thank you very much. I think that I'm looking forward to reading that script. Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to take these questions in the chat really quickly, directing your own work. How important is it to you? I have found a couple of directors who, it's not important for me to direct my own work but because I haven't found a fellow director or who lives near me, I work with Joanne, I work with Timothy Douglas, I work with Daniel Banks. But my work oftentimes has such specificity and such nuances that in trying to translate those, being on the radio, giving Los Angeles, who grew up on hip hop, but also grew up on gospel. And when I did birthmark, I had to have those conversations, but what I found is it's easier for me to try to put on the stage what I envisioned I had in my mind and to see if it actually works. I love directors and I wish I had more of them near me that I could work with because what they've done for my work has been exponentially more brilliant than what I've done for the work. But I still feel like it's not mandatory for me to direct a work, but there are things in my mind, even it's so funny because I was reading through Dreamscape and I was looking at the one in Quintra and I'm like, ooh, I need to take this stage direction out. So just so you know, I'm gonna be sending a rewrite and for the Quintra. But there are things that I have to do to see if what's in my mind will work on a stage. I asked that mostly because of how detailed your image of the last moment was and the discovery of that. And is that in the script as a full moment that this person stands on and you have to see this relationship? And yes, so I did what I learned, before when I started writing, I thought the playwright was brilliant and wrote all these amazing, what I discovered, the reality is, it's the ensemble, it's the directors. It's that thing that happens in a room that then we playwrights get and we just translate it onto the page and we seem like we're like geniuses. But that moment, what I describe, I've put it on the page as closely as I think I can to what the intention is. And that's our job. It's not to direct on a page. And that's their nose, like don't direct on a page. Don't tell an actor they're tapping their head nervously. No, just let them know that they're nervous. Let them decide what they do when they're nervous. They may pinch their nose, but you put as much of this on a page and I think it translates. Thank you. Yeah, don't listen to teachers that tell you to direct on the page. It's terrible. You get actor proof. I'm seeing one more in the chat. Do you ever teach or offer workshops that training artists can access that aren't at UCR? No, I'm kidding. I haven't done workshops in a while. Essentially, the workshops that I had been doing had been when people bring my play to their campuses. The last one I did was the University of Michigan. C.C. Costas brought me there and we did the performance and then I did a hip hop theater workshop. I'm so privileged to be able to do what I do for a living. When I was asked to do this, I thought I was all nervous, like damn, like what am I gonna say to people? But I love doing workshops. I love, and this is essentially, it would be this, except more. So there's no magic behind, it's just this and more of this. But absolutely, I love just kind of sharing this. And once again, my background is not theatrical. But once I knew this is what I was gonna do, then I tried to absorb as much from folks. I remember Paula Vogue came when I was in grad school and I sat there and I'm going, oh my goodness, you mean I can change the font in my script so it matches the tone of the story? Like why the hell wasn't I told this earlier on? Anyway. That's so cool. And I just wrote on the chat that you're available for hire. So if I'm ever hired again at a university, I'm definitely gonna bring you over. I just wanna thank you again for this opportunity. The isolation has been interesting for me and I haven't had this kind of exchange with colleagues and with new colleagues and students here. It's just like, dang, that just was so uplifting. I'm just, I'm hyped. I don't know what I'm gonna go do right now but I have to go confirm it because- We're gonna, you know, Megan and I are gonna call you. So let's set up a time to do that. But no, I really appreciate you having you being here and for saying yes to doing this because I think you've inspired a lot of folks today and thank you. Thank you all so much. And I'm welcome. Just call me. Thank you. All right. Thank you, everyone. And you know, you can buy the Encuentro where Dreamscape is published and look up Kirby at- I'm looking to tour Dreamscape too. Just so- Oh, great. I'm looking to tour, you know, where the cast is ready, we can tour it as a cast or we can do it as a, you know, as our own production. If you don't have a dope beatboxer, we actually have a recording of all the samples and the play itself. Oh, that's cool. I know, huh? Exactly. Please get on your J-O-B. I'm telling you- All right. All right. Okay, we're gonna say farewell and this is not the last Super Friends, I hope, but we're gonna take a big long break and during this break, I expect all of you to write a play. So do it for me, do it for Thea. Yeah, some good plays. Yeah, you guys, this has been great. It's been inspirational. So thank you all for doing, being a part of this. You will not, this is not the last you will hear from us. Thea, do you have anything to say? Consider this a season finale. We will be back after a brief hiatus. We'll hang out on Facebook in the meantime and I can't wait to see you all soon. That's right. Thank you, Thea, for everything. Thank you, Hal-Round. Thank you. Thank you for the rights. Thank you all for your candor, your, for sharing your inner thoughts and your hearts to us. And I will see you later. There's no, I don't believe in goodbyes. So anyway, gracias Kirby once again and hasta la pasta, baby. Hasta.