 Welcome, I am Alec Duffy, and I'm the founder and co-director of the Brooklyn Performance and Civic Space Jack. Our mission is to fuel experiments in art and activism. And one of the ways that we decided to use so-called downtime during the pandemic was to start learning from other organizations. Welcome, I am Alec Duffy, and I'm the founder. Sorry, other art leaders that were connecting art and community in radical ways. This series Shop Talk is really a chance for us to get at details of how these theaters and leaders are doing what they are doing. It's a brief conversation, 30 minutes, because we understand Zoom fatigue. We've had about 10 episodes so far in the series, but this is our first on HowlRoundTV. We consider it hitting the big time. So grab a slice and get ready to meet two individuals doing inspiring work in New Haven, Connecticut. The artistic director of the Long War Theater, Jacob Padrone, and their head of community partnerships, Cheyenne Barbosa. We're so glad to have them here as part of Shop Talk. Welcome. A slice and get ready to welcome you. Thanks for having us. Yes. Hello. Hi Cheyenne. Welcome. To begin, I want to quote the recently appointed artistic director of the Magic Theater in San Francisco, Sean San Jose, who recently talked in an interview about his role in transforming that organization. Here he's talking about the city of San Francisco. It's a freak flag, he said. We're the leftmost coast, we're the poetry center, we're jazz city, we're bebop, we're Fillmore Street, we're Summer of Love, we're hippies, we're the Black Power movement, we're the Chicano movement, we're Asian arts, we're gay power. If that's not living in your theater, then man, just make an effing box and make it so high in the sky that no one can reach it. Jacob, you came into leadership of the Long Wharf Theater in 2019. If that's San Francisco, what is the New Haven that you want to include at the Long Wharf? Oh, I love that. And I love Sean's quote because I'm from the Bay Area. I'm from California. So the way that he captures sort of the spirit and the essence of our city or of our area I think is so spot on. I think New Haven, you know, New Haven has a really rich history and it's actually not dissimilar from I think the way in which Sean is describing California and the Bay Area. We are a city of imagination. We are a city of innovation. The bicycle was created in New Haven. The hamburger was created in New Haven. We are famous for our pizza. In many ways, the kind of culture that has been activated in the city of New Haven is I think what makes, it's one of the many reasons why our city I think is really special. The other thing that I always like to amplify when I talk about New Haven is we are a city of activism. You know, the Black Panthers and the Lords have a long history here. But a lot of activism work. One of the first chapters for Black Lives Matter was formed right here in New Haven. So this intersection, right, this intersection of theater, arts, culture, activism. New Haven is often regarded as the cultural capital of the state. And I think just given the number of theaters we have museums, restaurants, a world class university, and many universities actually nearby. It's a really dynamic, artistic hub. So there's just, there's lots of vibrancy to the city of New Haven. And the other thing, you know, to note is that we're not, you know, we're not far from the city. So there is kind of a, there's kind of a relationship to the city of New York. Some people describe New Haven as another borough, just in terms of you know the time that it takes to get to Manhattan all the way into Brooklyn sometimes is the same amount of time that it would take to get to New Haven. So that's just a little slice of how I describe the city. Great. Jacob, when you go to the website for Long Wharf Theater now, it says in big letters, theater is for everyone. When you arrived at the Long Wharf two years ago, who wasn't included in the community of the theater. I think like many theaters across the country, I think we haven't been great architects of including everyone in our city or allowing our stages to reflect the communities that we are in. So I would say, you know, the theater was predominantly older, white, affluent audience members. We are, you know, we're grateful that they have supported the theater for many, many years. And we have to create bridges to those who haven't been coming. Specifically, I would say like our black community, our Latin community, our South Asian community, our indigenous community. So, folks with disability, neurodiversity, right, the thing that I say to our staff and to our board and really to, to everyone in our community is that one of the things that I love about the theater is that it's a space that can hold all of us. It's a space that can hold all of our stories. But we have to be the architects of making sure that we create those bridges to all of those communities. And that I think when we walk into a theater and see that kaleidoscope, it actually makes the work on stage richer. So, so that's what we're trying to manifest at Long Wharf. And in many ways that's lifelong work. You know, I think that that's the work that all of us are trying to do in our respective theaters and I think some theaters maybe do it a little bit better than others. But we're on a journey, right? Like we, I took over the theater, you know, less than three years ago. And so this work is, is going to take time and really thanks to the leadership of Cheyenne and others, I think that things are shifting. And I think we are moving the needle and we are reflecting the city of New Haven and new and exciting ways. And as you began to imagine first steps with the theater, what was your vision around addressing some of that lack of participational engagement with those communities and in building a bridge? Cheyenne, do you want to, do you want to share a little, a little of how some of the ways that we're doing that maybe like sharing play on my block as one example of the way that we're trying to address and be more inclusive at Long Wharf? Sure. So it's play on my block as one of our programs that we launched this summer. It went up in August was a new venture for us at Long Wharf as we're used to producing plays indoors. But as we were, as we were challenging the model of, of how we see live theater, thanks to COVID really challenging, you know, really forcing us to be creative and think outside, outside the box for Long Wharf specifically. We really, we really wanted to amplify that New Haven has its own pool of talent that never, that never needed Long Wharf that never needed like regional theater or New York is approval that, that there's a lot of homegrown talent. There's a lot of talent that's, that's being trained and fostered here and creating opportunities for those folks who are non-union who don't have agent representation and, and are really creating things here in the city, really finding a new opportunity to gather those folks together and create a live piece of theater that would be relevant to our community. So with the help of the Cultural Affairs Office of the City of New Haven, we launched play on my block, which at its core is a celebration of local artists for local artists free to the public outside in our local neighborhood parks. And we identified two parks in two particular neighborhoods that we want to continue to build relationships with that we know have bustling artists and, and community leaders to and say like hey let's let's do work. Let's let's have theater and discussion and civic dialogue around that theater here so we did Passing Strange by Stu the Tony award-winning musical and Passing Strange felt very relevant. It felt very rooted in an experience that we don't often get to see and, and for me personally it was a triumphant story of a young black boy that's not rooted in our drama. So we were really excited to partner with the city partner with local artists and local musicians, and, and really have have a grand old time in two, two neighborhood parks. So what does it mean to like create access right and eliminate certain barriers that we think are, are keeping folks from giving Long Wharf a try or maybe, or maybe keeping Long Wharf in a box that feels inaccessible over here. What does it mean to just kind of shake it up and say nope, we're going to bring the theater to you. We're going to bring the theater around the corner from your house. So that's just one, just one, Cheyenne, thank you so much this fantastic and Cheyenne, Cheyenne was our director. So Cheyenne was the visionary director behind that program and for our production of Passing Strange by Stu and Heidi Rodewald. So that's just one, you know one way that we're trying to really move the needle. And the thing that I think is important to say in the context of this conversation is that you know you have to keep showing up. You know, I think I like you know this right that in our community work and when you're trying to transfer when you're trying to do cultural transformation work inside a theater company. You have to keep doing you have to keep showing up you have to keep doing the work. It's not enough to just say, we're going to do it and you do it once you have to continue to evolve you have to continue to expand the circle and remake the circle that that's also part of of how we're trying to transform at Longmore. I find that it takes a lot of time right that that certainly two years is certainly not going to do the trick, but you know a jack for example we started jack around nine years ago and really it's just now that a lot of the lot of the relationship building that started nine years ago is starting to bear fruit and their trusted relationships built with members of a local church community, for example, or elders. So that, so that now they're coming to all of our events. You know, and our block party our theater shows our reparations discussions, but it took a long time to get there. And so that's the thing that's, you know, for me it was a great reminder as I'm always wanted to kind of get things done really quickly and and have that mindset so really took a shift in thinking about time when approaching a community engagement work. And I wanted to ask a little bit more about that project. This is called shop talk so we get into the details, the specifics, and I'm curious about what engagement with the neighborhood that surrounded that park looks like who was doing what. I'm sorry, leading up to the production. Yeah, thank you so much. So we were really excited to bring to bring on an artist a local artist that we love and have a relationship with Paul Bryant Hudson, who is a beloved talent in the city and we said you know we want to do this right and we want to like, make that we're not that we're not kind of saying this is what you need and here's, you know, oftentimes theaters are like this neighborhood needs this right, but we really wanted to identify some folks so our, our former head of our department, Alida statement was really instrumental in gathering focus groups of local leaders of those neighbor of the different neighborhoods and pitching the shows that we had on our docket that we're like these are shows that we think are relevant to our, you know, our community that we want to have with people with people in our community, like, are these are these plays of interest to you all in the neighborhoods do we feel like this is the right moment for these particular plays and let's talk about it. So we had a few sessions like that where we invited different leaders and organizers and artists into the zoom room to chat with us. And then we also hold we also pulled some of those folks as well, and received a lot of great anonymous feedback that was instrumental in like how we scaffolded this piece with this this process with intention and we're still learning as as as a first go around but we wanted to really walk with purpose. So those were a few ways but to get the word out we knew that we needed to really target folks who are like neighborhoods and zip codes that aren't on our mailing list and wanted to make sure that the neighbors knew knew about it so we made sure that certain zip codes specifically received a mailer that this was going on in their backyards, you know, because we don't just have them in our database to talk to so it was exciting to see folks just walk up with their lawn chairs that were like who knew but we heard music so we came over and exciting to hear the feedback of like hey when is this happening again. And I want to make sure that I tell my people about this, you know. So, so that was some those are some of the ways that we like did our outreach and we learned a lot. And I can't say that it was the most perfect way to do it but but we take those learnings and we apply it to next season and and build those relationships and that word of word of mouth. I would be curious if you could speak a little bit more about any kind of unexpected challenge that you faced with the project. I can start. Go for it Jacob. Well, one of the, you know, one of the one of the early challenges that we had is you know we talk a lot about, you know, this idea of what it means to move at the speed of trust right move at the speed of the relationship. We are in a relational business so we have to make sure that our relationships are are really solid and I'm right here on my coffee table is this book right we will not cancel as Adrian Marie Brown, who just continues to be such a north star for me and my thinking in my leadership. And Adrian talks openly about how the strength of our work is based on the strength of our relationships. And so when we started play on my block when we started the planning process, we actually wanted to do it much sooner in the summer I think initially we were thinking we were going to do it in June. And we got some feedback from the community which is, you know, you actually haven't done the work to understand your community, you have you don't know the history of this city. Are you going to helicopter in which is often what happens in this kind of work and we were like no no no we actually want to co construct and co create this piece together. So we took a long pause so we delayed the whole process by almost the entire summer, so that way we could really move at the speed of trust, make sure we had the relationships in the community. And I think that's that was such an important lesson for us, in terms of how we actually want to engage with, you know, with our city and with this, you know the civic life of our community. And I think it really paid off, you know, but again we have to just, you know you have to keep showing up is was was part of what we kept hearing. There was a quote, I think that yours, Jacob that Cheyenne quoted in an article about this project about something about theater, something about theater living outdoors. I don't remember exactly maybe Cheyenne remembers it but many stages, right the stages don't just exist within the four walls of our theaters that that if we look around in our communities there are stages everywhere to be found and that was the thing that we wanted to celebrate as a part of our season last year that we called one city. Many stages. Yes. So if you think about the future, the coming year, let's say, and you do have a full slate of programming in the theater itself. What does engagement look like for those. So thinking about building bridges and whatnot. Have you found opportunities to, to construct those bridges for the productions that are in the season are you still working on figuring that out or coming up with a plan for that. Yes, Cheyenne go for it. I think we're, we're, we're working on it right. Yeah, and, and what's lovely is that it's not the one size fits all model. I think we're really trying to listen to the needs of the piece and listen to the needs of our community partners and our artists and really construct something special for each individual and construct a new, you know, a new way of engagement and thinking. So, Jacob, Jacob's favorite word is it's emergent, you know, that that this process is ever changing and emergent and that's kind of like what that's kind of what's exciting about it to Absolutely. I mean that's something that we're we're now that we've got live in person programming up again. It's something that we're in the thick of trying to be really strategic about who we're inviting to which show not not trying to not with a not from an angle of we know best but just want to be really intentional about the relationships that we're looking to build and do that with some with some smarts infusing that. So, for example, they're not a lot some some shows of Jack we would not want to approach the local Episcopal church and see if the church members want to come. Although that does not mean any individual from that from that church would not enjoy it. But there was a piece Justin Hicks crossover, which was just in our space this past couple weeks, which is about his experience grown up in his father's church and his father baking bread. For the parishioners it was a small community center where they held the church. And we thought this is perfect like this is the perfect opportunity for us to approach this particular community. And, and, and it worked people really had a kind of magical mysterious time in the theater. In the next show it might be a completely different group that we're looking to kind of shake hands with, depending on the subject matter or the artists inspiration. I did want to, I guess, you know, stepping back to the pandemic time Cheyenne you came into the organization during the pandemic in my correct, like during the shutdown. Oh, I'm going in. I'm October. Oh, what's what is today this week was my three season anniversary. I'm in my fourth season. Okay, okay, so you were around when things were pre pandemic and happening. Yeah, right. Okay. So what did engagement look like during the shutdown like during like let's look at and doesn't have to be anything like it's fine. Nothing happened because the world was insane but I'm just curious what, like for the first year. When it was not clear that when we would be back, even for outdoor gatherings. What did that look like on your end. It's, it's, it hit different just to hear you say for the first year of the pandemic. You know, it's like that just still is blows my mind. The, I will say we did we did a lot of regrouping. And like what is this moment do we move forward because some some theaters were very quick to get their digital content out, you know, and we really wanted to figure out like what's going on in this community and this are we just like scrapping things. We don't want to scrap things together we want to be intentional. Some of some of those early projects early, like late spring of 2020 and early summer were things like play at home. We were able to commission a few writers to participate in this in writing short 10 minute plays that became this anthology online that people can download for free anyone. So we contributed three playwright commissions as did many other theaters. So there's this beautiful anthology of free plays that people can just perform. And while they were in their houses so that was like, that was a really lovely thing and we said well what if we did a an evening and just showcase those do we have like the resources to put that together on zoom. Another engagement was okay so we have members we want to talk to members about plays and get them excited and maintain their excitement about plays and what's coming up next maybe we should start a play club, which is a book club but for place with place for our members so if you're a long war theater member it is a free program that you can opt into where myself, Jacob and our colleague Kate more Haney who's also the artistic associate literary where we gather together we we've curated a list of plays and we chat with our members about those plays and sometimes we have artists that are associated to those plays or associated to productions of those scripts and have like really robust discussions about the work so that's some of the early on engagement. In addition to a really incredible play writers room and festival called led by an incredible talent and director playwright dramaturg. I'm going to go to Dane figure out a DD who, who was like the co curator of black trans women at the center which was a festival of place centering centering black trans women experiences and their and scripts that that highlight and feature black trans identity, and we're really excited about that that program and that relationship has flourished into a second year. So, year two in the quarantine we did black trans women at the center. And again, and that was even more robust and even more fruitful and we, we look forward to just deepening that partnership. And we met Lady Dane in the quarantine I still have not met her in person, she is DC based or Baltimore based so it's exciting to have connected with so many people across the country in zoom I can't say that the quarantine was a waste. You know it allowed us to be innovative and connect in a really, really impactful way. Thank you. Yeah, the other. Thank you, Cheyenne, but as you as you were sharing I was like wow we really did a lot. I think sometimes we forget like shit we did so much, because we were just trying to stay active trying to stay connected to our audiences and to our supporters and you know, the other thing that we did, Alec that was really important to to Longworth was we wanted to also use, you know, the fall of 2020 as an opportunity to have conversation given that it was an election year that it was a historic election. And so one of the things we talk about at Longworth a lot is what does it mean to have art and activism living side by side and that that in many ways they're one in the same. So we wanted to host a Congress ideally the Congress was going to be in person where we were going to invite artists and activists, and really try to engage in kind of a national conversation around what is the state of the American theater, as it relates to, you know, the and our country, given that our world is very much on fire. So we shifted that to an online experience where we identified a cohort of about 70, again 70 leaders, artistic directors donors, and we had a conversation over two days. And that was really, that was actually really for me that was a real highlight of last season during the pandemic or during the shutdown, when we were not going inside spaces. One of the other highlights as a part of that artistic Congress was, we had a keynote address by Dominique more so, and Louie Salfaro in conversation, you know, Dominique and Louise are to MacArthur genius award winners. Fantastic conversation and they just said some really, really amazing things, and it's actually on our on our YouTube channel. So if anyone wants to check it out, you can hear their conversation. They both shared manifestos for the future of the American theater, and the piece that always, you know that that has stayed with me, all of these months after is Louie Salfaro said this thing where he said the great pause has become the great possibility. This idea that we are, you know, that the shutdown was a pause, but it gave us time and space to think about what are the possibilities for how we want to dream and move forward in our work together as theater makers and as storytellers. Before your intro speech to that and remember being very inspired by it. It was a pretty foundational moment for me in in thinking about theater last year. So thank you for that. And Jack that we're, we haven't done enough of is excuse the fire engines around me is to recognize how many languages are represented in New York, and how how many people in New York, maybe do not speak English at all, and to have our programming reflect That's something that we're hoping to address moving forward but it's not something we've had much of a track record in doing in the past. I'm curious if that's come up in your conversations about outreach or building bridges around non English language. And you want to you want to take that one or I mean, sure I think I think I can also harken back to play on my block recognizing that one of the neighborhoods that we were planning on one of the neighborhoods we identified that we wanted to have the performance and what the feedback that we received was like hey, there is a large demographic of this population that doesn't speak English of this community that doesn't speak English that and or our bilingual. And what does it mean to provide resource and try to try to provide resource there. And it's, it's, it's something that I think within the quarantine there there's more access to to these different services that allow for for programming to be in English and in Spanish, but we did have a digital program and folks could opt into like these blurbs in English and in Spanish and in the show about you like I've seen breakdowns of what's going on in the play, I kind of harken it back to how we engage in opera. Right, I've never, I personally have never been to an opera in English, but I love going to the opera. So what is it, how do we amplify that experience and make it accessible for folks I think is an ongoing conversation at Long Wharf. I want to thank you both for being here we are near in the end of our time. I'm grateful for your time in in talking to us a bit more about the details of how you do what you do. It's meaningful of course to us for us to learn a jack, but I hope that it was also helpful for others that are watching this as well. For those who are watching. This is our first shop talk on how round it serves as kind of a pilot. We want to be back on how round. So if you know anyone at how round say I love this, or shout them out on social media and let them know that you want us back that would be helpful to us. Thank you both. Thanks everyone thanks how round TV, and hopefully we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you for having us Alec. Thank you Alec. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.