 and welcome. Hello and welcome to No Summary, Golden Threads live stream series of conversations with artists who don't fit in a box. One of my favorite topics. My name is Andrea Assaf. I'm going to be your moderator today. I want to say first that Golden Thread Productions is the first, if you don't know, the first American theater company devoted to the Middle East in the United States, founded by playwright Taranjia Ghassarian in 1996. And Golden Thread is based on the ancestral lands of the Ramay Tush Ohloni, known colonially today as San Francisco, California. And this is the 25th year of Golden Thread celebrating their 25th anniversary. And we should all be celebrating that with them. So as I said, my name is Andrea Assaf. I'm the Artistic Director of Art to Action, which is based in Tampa, Florida. And I'm really honored to be here today as the moderator for this wonderful conversation about emerging Swana theater companies in the United States. And we have some really fabulous guests. I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves in a moment. And you can also follow along with their bios on HowlRound or in the chat. They'll be their professional bios will be dropped there as well. But today I'm delighted, delighted to welcome Rohina Malek, Nabronelson, and Shadi Geheri. I'm sorry about my Persian, my Iranian pronunciation, Farsi pronunciation is terrible. I apologize. So I'm going to ask everyone to introduce themselves with their name and organizational or company affiliation, pronouns, if that's something that you would like to share, where you're zooming in from today, and a land acknowledgement for that land, which I'll do first before I passed around, and your affiliation with Golden Thread, if you have one. So as I said, I'm zooming in from Tampa, Florida, which is the ancestral lands of the Seminole and Tokabaga peoples. And I'm with Art to Action, I use I welcome she or they pronouns. And I have the honor and pleasure of serving with Golden Thread on the National Steering Committee for Minotma, the MENA or Middle Eastern North African Theater Makers Alliance, which is a new and growing national network that we hope you will all connect with. So with that, I'll pass it first to Nabra to do a self introduction. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you Saharan Golden Thread. I'm Nabra Nelson, she or her pronouns. I am zooming in from the land of the Coastal Asian Duwamish people named after Duwamish Chief Seattle. And I have been in, I don't know, I'm a big Golden Thread fan. I've been in touch with Golden Thread for a while since I attended really orient the festival and convening in 2019, I believe, and since then have been following y'all and in touch in a variety of ways, which has just been so enriching. I am a theater creator, director, playwright, administrator, teaching artist, all types of types of theater creation. I'm a founding company member of Dunya Productions Seattle, which is what we'll be talking about today. And I'm from Nubia, Egypt, and California, currently in Seattle. I'm also the co-host of the podcast Conasa and Shea on Howl Around Theater Commons, that is a MENA focused theater podcast. And I'm also the director of arts engagement at Seattle Rep, run their community engagement education programs, and lead the Nubian Foundation for preserving a cultural heritage. Thank you so much, Nubra. I forgot to mention in our self descriptions, to include a self description, just to make this more accessible. So I'll model that. I'm a light-skinned Arab American person. I identify as Lebanese American, and I have short black hair and I'm wearing a black button down collared shirt. And behind me is a really colorful painting by a local artist named Amina Khan that's in an Islamic pattern. And my office with some books and stuff on the shelf. So Nubra, would you like to also do a visual self description and then pass it on, please? Yes, thank you for that. I'm a lighter-skinned brown woman with short brown hair, wearing some jewelry, a gray t-shirt, and behind me are a map of the world and a bookshelf with little cat statuettes. I'll pass it on to Rohina. Hi. Hi, everyone. My name is Rohina Malik. I am the artistic director of Medina Theater Collective. We are a brand new theater company dedicated to the Swannasa community. So we are not just Swanna, we are Swannasa. Southwest Asian, North African, and South Asian. I am South Asian. My family is from Pakistan, and I was born and raised in London, England. I am a playwright and screenwriter. Just finished my first screenplay, and hopefully, inshallah, God willing, it'll be produced in the summer of next year. So let's see with COVID, if that works out. But inshallah. And I am from Chicago. I live on Stolenland at the land of the Kickapoo people, and my pronouns are she, her, hers, and visual description of the room. I'm in my office slash bedroom, white wall ceiling fan, and I am a brown-skinned woman that wears glasses, and I have a light orange-colored headscarf and a black shirt, and I think I've covered everything. Shadi? Hello, everyone. Thank you, Golden Thread, for having us here. This is amazing, and thank you for everyone who's listening and sharing their time with us. My name is Shadi Raheri, and I am an Iranian woman, born and raised in Tehran, Iran, and now an immigrant and a woman of color in America. I live in New York City, and right now I am in Orange County, visiting family and doing some work. So my land acknowledgement that I learned today about where I am today is called Tongwa, but I live in Lenape land, and that today is called Brooklyn. Well, to tell you a little bit about myself, I, first, I'm a director and choreographer. Sometimes I write, sometimes I perform. I'm one of the co-founders of Peja Theatre Company, which there are like nine more people in it, and I'm just representative of one of the whole team. Everyone says hello, and I wish I can have everyone behind me, because we are really a company. And let me see. My passion is theatre. I will, until I'm alive, tell stories, and I tell stories about women that I know better, which have been living in Iran, have been living in a region that some of us call Middle East, and some are trying to call different names, such as Southwest Asia. I have so much to share. Did I say everything you asked me to? Okay, I think that's great. I think I will say I am brown-skinned, petite woman that you don't see how petite I am yet, and I have a couple of braided hair on my right side wearing an orange shirt, and I am in my brother's living room, have a so little connection to it, but this is where I thought it's better to sit for just practical reasons. Hi, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for those wonderful self-descriptions, and we've begun to start hearing a little bit about the work that you do in the companies that you're not only with, but creating and building, which is really exciting about today's conversation that we get to focus on at the same time that we celebrate Golden Thread's 25th anniversary, get to focus on new emerging and upcoming and growing organizations and companies and artistic leaders like yourselves. So my first question that I'd like to offer, because this series is framed around artists who don't fit in a box, which I know is certainly true, has been true for me in my life in many ways, but I'm so curious about what does that mean to you? What does it mean to you to not fit in a box and maybe what boxes have you been trying to get out of or break down or deconstruct or get rid of all together? What is this idea of not fitting in a box mean to you? Anyone like to start? I can start. Thanks, Irina. So for me, I think when I think of not fitting in a box, when I started my playwriting career, the number one produced playwrights were white men. And so my career began with like not fitting in a box. And then when the dramatist skill did a study of who's getting produced in the U.S., it was really eye-opening. It was information that we now had, like the research and the numbers to back up that I had already known, which was that women were produced less and then minority were produced even more or less. So it was really something for me as an artist to realize I don't fit the box. And I have to find a way to make my art and get my art on stage. And I think it's like this idea for me, when you say to not fit in a box is like think outside the box has always been my thing. And even with the pandemic, a lot of people like, oh, my God, this is the worst time to start a theater company, but not for me because I said, you know what, we're going to use Zoom. I love Zoom. And we're going to keep making art because there's so many important things that we need to discuss. So that's what it means to me. Thank you so much for bringing up both the actual statistical reality of the field that we're trying to work in and the challenges that we're currently facing, which we're going to talk about more in a little bit. Nabra or Shadi, would you like to address what does it mean for you to not be in a box or not fit in one? I think I'll take us back to like the very beginning of just immigration. On any forum that I have field to get to this country, there is not a box for me. And there is no wording for someone like me. And also, when you're just like a person from a different country that's trying to come to America, you try so hard to fit and follow any like instruction. It says the options that are on the paper that I have to sign to get to this country. The option for me is to feel the box written white, because it says Caucasians are considered white. And if you're living in Middle East, you're Caucasian. Am I counted white? Or do I have the privilege of white person in this country? Absolutely not. We all know that. So yes, there is no box yet designed for me to fit. And that has so many reasons politically, financially, and identity politics of who we are. I happily do not want to fit in any of boxes that this country yet is trying to describe or identify for me. It is very hard, because if anyone wants to approach me to hire me, they have to figure out where am I? None of the things work before you find your own box. Like not even just for me, but any person in the industry of filmmaking and theater making. And there are boxes. If you want to go to like a person to direct such thing, you're just like agents and companies will look through these boxes to find us. But I, someone like me, and I'm talking just personal, I'm from my own experience, I don't yet have anywhere that I fit. If there is, vaguely is any story that has to do with Middle East. And I will be honored to tell those stories because those stories have not yet been told enough. But still, I devise, I choreograph, I dance myself, I write, I teach, and I can make a classical play like Shakespeare or Greeks wonderfully, and I can make a contemporary play. I can translate. I don't want to fit in anywhere, just one box, because I believe like, you know, our jobs as like artists are so vast and can be done in so many ways. And I want all of those options to exist for me for the rest of my life. But the problem, of course, is if you don't fit for a box for the industry, therefore, you get hired less. And therefore, you have to design and create your own journey more, which is lovely. But every day, somehow, I become poorer. And that's not fun. So we've got a lot to do. Yes, thank you so much for that. You raised so many important points there. First of all, the government racial categories which don't reflect our, not only don't reflect our lived experience in the United States, but also don't allow us to build power in the way that other identity-based groups can build power as a voting base in this country, right, for example. But also that you raise the way that racialization plays out in the industry and the arts field, especially theater and film. And I really think we could do a whole long conversation on the history of race in America and how it has informed representation in the media and how we're still living with and navigating those very damaging histories in just trying to make a living in our own field. And I do think that it's what pushes so many of us to create our own companies. Because the field, the system, the systems that we have to navigate are not built for us and don't acknowledge the totality of who we are. And so we wind up creating our own spaces. So we're going to talk about that a little bit more in the next question, but I want to hear from Nabra. What does it mean to you to not fit in a box? Yeah, I love that you brought up the box checking Shadi as well, because I think that's where I first learned that I don't fit in a box as a mixed-race woman. I'm always navigating which box to check when people give me surveys. So not fitting a box has always been my reality. I think that's the experience of a lot of mixed-race people. Even if we have the same ethnicities that we're mixed with, two different mixed-race folks have completely different experiences. Thinking about even conversations I have about race and ethnicity with my brother, we have completely different experiences with that, even two people who grew up together. And so there's that. And then thinking about also swana and swanasa identity, it's such a broad swath of identities that and yet they're still in the United States, some type of idea or stereotype of what a swanasa person is. And so again all of us, it's a kind of an identity that I feel like all most of us would feel like we don't fit in a box, whatever that box is, because there isn't really a box. It's very much fabricated as a overarching term to attempt to kind of have some type of idea of a region that is just far too broad and diverse to actually define. So I think a lot about my identities, most of my identities are not visible so I've always been trying to redefine the boxes people put in me. I constantly find myself misunderstood or seen as very different from how I see myself. And that really does translate into my art. I think my art, especially my writing, is about showing people that there is no box, breaking down these ideas of boxes. The more I talk to people, the more I do being in community engagement, I work with so many different types of people that the more I learn that there really is no box and this idea of being able to categorize people or understand them in such simple terms is something that for some reason has been, I don't know, I don't know, it's a thing that's attractive to some people. I don't know, I guess it makes people comfortable but it makes me uncomfortable and I'd much rather live in a world where we are kind of approaching others as completely open that you could be anything. That's like how I wish people would approach me is that you could be absolutely anything. Whether I think one thing or I see one thing or another, this person could absolutely be anything and that's how I try to approach others and try to kind of shift thinking of the folks that I'm creating art for. Thank you for that. I really appreciate that you named not only how as mixed race people, which I consider myself to be too, not only how our different our experiences can be different even within one family but that's also gendered right? That's where intersectionality starts to happen is not only are we racialized in certain ways but then that even that racialization is gendered and in my case for someone who identifies as queer as well as Arab-American in the popular imagination of the United States that doesn't exist. Like that's not even an identity that's possible and I feel like so much of our time is spent going no actually I exist, I'm here, I'm real. Let me tell you my story which leads me to this question about so how did you decide or start to maybe it wasn't even a decision sometimes it just organically happens how did you start to build your own companies or create your own theater or how did you make that decision first of all to kind of step out of the box of the industry in which you you know are cast to fit a certain look and then read the lines that are given but rather make that choice to create your own work and to build your own communities or collectives or groups. I'd love to hear about how you made that move because I think it's such a big shift for so many artists to make and how did you do it and how are you what are you what are you doing with your group and how are you growing anybody want to start? I can go first. Okay yeah go ahead Reena. So it had been on my mind for a long time just as the years were going by the folks that are part of our collective at Medina are folks that I've been working with over a decade and it really is just a group of friends who are Southwest Asian or Middle Eastern North Africans South Asian and we're friends and we collaborate all the time and there's just such a great group of folks and I think that group just shows the diversity of these regions and it had always been on my mind to just start something because so often I found myself going to so many institutions saying you need to do a play about Palestine you need to do a play about this or about that and they just you know listen but never take any action to follow through and I got to a point where I was just so tired of that and I just thought how long are we going to be waiting for folks to tell our stories let's just do it ourselves and see what happens and you know for me what I had noticed that disturbed me was that you know um first of all I've been since I was a teenager noticing Muslim portrayal on our media Arab portrayal Middle Eastern portrayal just the whole community always with this things written by white folks where we are stereotyped and we are the villain the terrorist the bad guy and I was so sick of that so that played into me as a playwright writing plays about the Muslim community and that's how I started working with these folks who are now part of Medina and but still because I was the playwright I was not the one choosing and the folks choosing sometimes don't want to even have a conversation I was lucky to have a conversation sometimes with artistic directors many times they won't even meet with you and I was just tired of that so part of the reason I thought this would be great was we get to choose the place and one thing that really disturbed me was the fact that nobody could deny if we look at productions that get pulled out of seasons and canceled it tends to be plays about Palestine and that just fricking piss me off and then January 2020 my father died February 2020 right before the pandemic I went to Palestine and it was with an interfaith group Jewish Muslim Christian we went as this group to just learn and it was a life-changing trip and I just came back with this like fire inside me that because I'm very aware of how plays about Palestine get pulled out of seasons and canceled and that silencing you see in academia you see in so many ways of life in the US so it was that was on my mind then the pandemic hit we're stuck at home and I just prayed on it like just something in my heart this feeling that I need to call my friends together and we just need to start a suanasa theater company and even if it means zoom we'll do zoom if it means audio plays we'll do audio plays but let's make art together and gave it a lot of thought gave it a lot of prayer and then just decided to move forward and the great thing was that once I made that decision everything just started to fall into place and I so far we've presented The Shroud Maker by Ahmad Massoud who's from Gaza and if you don't know this player right you need to know him I read his play The Shroud Maker and I was just sobbing I mean it was just such a beautiful powerful painful piece of art and when do we hear from folks from Gaza it was just so important to me that this play gets up some way shape or form and we got it up and we got vaccinated we were able to go to a recording studio and we were able to bring in a filmmaker and film it and get really high quality audio and share that and I now have this amazing recording of this play which I want to hopefully partner with other theaters and get more audience members to see this performance and we did it as a high quality staged reading and I can't tell you the response from audiences I mean it's been amazing so it doesn't always have to be full production sometimes we just can't afford to do that we don't have much money so again we have to think outside the box going back to thinking outside of the box how can we still do high quality how can we still tell the stories and working with Ahmad has been such a joy and upcoming for us in October he's flying to Chicago Insha'Allah God willing if things are okay with Delta we are partnering with International Voices Project which chooses about six or seven international playwrights and has a festival and they I talked to them about The Shroud Maker and they said yes and so he will represent Palestine so that's upcoming and we've worked on with we've worked with Hannah Khalil on her play scenes from 73 years which is also again about the occupation Palestine she is an Irish Palestinian playwright amazing woman and we got to present her play through Zoom and yes we did it through Zoom but um Baltimore Theater Project partnered with us and folks from Baltimore got to see it folks from all over the world got to buy tickets and see that so it's just been really great and then other upcoming things we're doing a play of mine with Broken Nose Theater called The Hijabis about three hijabi women and it's kind of my take on um if you know HBO's Girls this is my version of Girls so that upcoming and um what just lots of things cooking lots of things cooking thank you for that so it's so great to hear that you've got so much going on and that you're able to despite the pandemic be so creatively productive and I just love I just it's so inspiring that Palestine is at the center of your work and of birthing this new company or collective it's it's really beautiful and and and courageous and important work and I really appreciate hearing about it Shadi I know you were ready to say something also about what is it what made you want to start this work and why now and never do you want to go first or yeah okay that'd be great um well payda is a noun that comes from a verb uh being found um being visible um and um that is like really the core of uh how payda theater company truly came up it's just funny and unbelievably organic I wrote a play Tosca Tehran when I was curating um Immigrant Mix Fest at Atlantic Theater with Aryan Myed and Sahi Mali and that play has um and all of the characters are just um Iranian theater artists in Tehran and um I casted that show that reading obviously with Iranian and Iranian American actors and we became just eight people who felt like wait what like we can't we cannot continue um so uh the the thing was between us and it felt like we just can't let it go and I um invited everyone to my tiny apartment I made form a sabzi and I cook a lot and I am a good cook I will say that um and um everyone came we gathered and um I said you all feel like we have to continue I agree and I have some options some potential projects do you want to do this and we just very organically continued as a company um we are now growing we have three new members who joined us um so it is just like a beautiful company of people as Nebra said we are Iranian and Iranian Americans but each one of us are so different in our like politics in our understanding of this identity politics and our life experience I came here 2012 some of our members in this in the company have came after me and some have like you know parents that are not Iranian and they can't even talk Farsi so there's just like so so a big variety of people in our group and that's to me the beauty of us um we um continue to find out who we are we sat down for many hours to say what is our mission we sat down for many hours to say what is our name and um our name came um from just like you know these wardings we were talking about and Hassan one of our members was like wait like so what if we call it payda and I was like we were all like um yes and so like the answers and everything came just really organically between all of us and I will say more than anything this this is just like a home and affinity space to me personally like we every day are in conversation with each other we device a lot and we make things a lot together and so um we have some projects like and we are figuring out as a company how to function constantly because as Rohina said there is no money or it hasn't like somehow belong to us yet I will say um like when you're talking about troubles we have because of the skin I hold because of the identity policies I hold very clearly I'll say when I'm raising money like um and all different applications that we're using will flag us we will tell like really like great donors and supporters we have that like oh suspicious why because we introduce ourselves Iranian and Iranian American because of the word Iran things get stopped like everything that has to spend like a week or two to be proved it will take months for us and I have to sign like different like uh contracts for example that I'm not paying someone outside America I'm not paying someone blah blah and it's like just ridiculous just embarrassing it's just in your face xenophobia and racism and it is not just how I am treated in a room by artistic director it is in detail of how we're going to work that is making problems and conflicts um we right now have like as Rohina said I'm like yes so I'm not crazy we're not crazy you have a bunch of like things you're cooking too we do too we have a complete play Tosca Tehran that um potentially um is a piece to go up on stage or in front of a camera and we are working on it and there are people who are really interested in that play and I do believe in it the story of Iranian artists in Iran that are trying to put um Puccini's Tosca up but right now it is impossible to tell a story such as that it is impossible they will not let us say that story in Iran right now so they have got censored and they are on a risk of like being arrested um and we made with collaboration um members of payda with rattlesnake theater and new york theater salon and a festival of dance music and storytelling and kids show for brooklyn and we performed that in prospect park it was a fabulous day a big like gathering of like hundreds of people and um we are approaching that piece as a touring piece that we show somehow shrink or expand use a part and I very intentionally devised that with my collaborators that way because we know money says the first thing and we couldn't always go that big so now then and september 25th we're telling the stories um in La Plaza in east village again free for everyone I personally believe we have to make art that is accessible for everyone and I have on a very huge criticism toward theater in America because it is elite and it is for a specific class of this country while I think it must be for every single person who um wants to listen to a story um we have a lot of collaborators that are not Iranian and Iranian American and we devise with them we collaborate with them we're big on collaboration as you have heard that word million times from my mouth today um and um I am starting to um write a new piece named lake town with help of all other members of company which is um truly um as um symbolic world of present Iran and what is happening in that country um I think I have covered everything that's great thank you and tell but you can ask me questions yeah thank you so much for letting us know what's upcoming both Shadi and Rohina I just want to um comment on you know what you're what you're saying about um money and how the work gets supported and funded in this country and how it is um uh it has systemic issues systemic barriers and also uh highly politicized ones and um I you know I think it's really important that we're talking about that openly I think that the field is in a moment of trying um you know many uh funders and philanthropists in the field are trying to make change and maybe not always understanding really how the systems work and impact uh our communities and our work and so it's really important that we're talking about it and making that visible and that uh we all work together to um take those systemic barriers dismantle those systemic barriers so that work can be more equitably supported in in our field and also more accessible to more communities as you were saying Shadi so I want to pass it to Navrat to talk about um what made you want to start your own uh company or create your own work yeah well uh the story of PEDA actually uh resonates with my experience with Dunia as well like it was very natural and organic and family kind of feeling I guess oriented um so this the idea for Dunia Productions for Mina Focus Theatre Company in Seattle came from uh one of our other founding company members Hana Edie this amazing Palestinian playwright and director and actor and he just started like get it you know reaching out to different Mina folks he knew in town theater artists and non-theater artists um like advocates and activists um and I learned that he was gathering folks through my friend and colleague who's also Egyptian who's like you should go to this thing I can't uh so he then then we can I connected with Hana and he was like come through and so we all went to uh another company member Mina's house and over like snacks in her living room we uh we talked about you know putting together a theater company and again it just came out of like it was so natural it was just so like yeah of course um let's do it let's do it like we like each other this is great some of us are strangers some of us know each other I was like I actually relatively new to Seattle period I had just moved in 2019 and it was like a a few months after I'd moved here so um but it felt like yes this is this is this feels great this is gonna work um and uh yeah so uh it really came out of you know there isn't a lot of you know Suana Mina focus Mina plays in general in produced in Seattle um and when they are produced uh they're not really produced with community support or or community collaboration you know we're seeing a lot of white directors or maybe only white directors um who are directing these plays by Mina playwrights um you know non-Mina creative teams um there isn't a lot of community engagement with the with the local community so we wanted to see more of our stories and we wanted to see it done right um and done in collaboration with us and what we wanted to say um and again also because most of these stories are produced um by you know again obviously non-Mina uh companies but also slightly you know some usually larger companies um they also often fall into that trap of of telling you know telling our grief and telling our trauma um for white audiences instead of telling the stories that we want to tell for for us and for our community and with our community and so uh and after you know being at that uh first kind of there are one of the first convenings for Minatma and having those conversations about the importance of um these spaces for our community um and making art with and buy in for our community um and knowing about Golden Thread knowing about North Theater uh knowing about Silk Road Rising already uh I didn't like didn't even think about it I was like of course we're gonna create a theater focused theater company like naturally why didn't why doesn't this already exist um and so it really it's very much an ensemble all of us are founding of the company members um everything is done in collaboration with everyone it's a very much like uh you know kind of majority rules but more like consensus based uh decision making we all just kind of agree and support each other which is lovely um we did start right before COVID our kind of debut was a piece by one of our company members Jenna Edie um which was a dance piece beautiful dance piece she did with her father Hanna and um and that we also like had a reception where we like you know had our you know debut so it's a society by the way um and then COVID came and we're like we're just going to keep going um and like what Hanna said we were like there's still so much to say right now like we're not going to pause um and in fact I think some of our I mean uh some incredible work came out of COVID our first uh Zoom play was a letters from Palestine in the time of the virus and it was a verbatim piece um that was really sourced from uh testimonies from Palestinians that folks in our company knew and we compiled and um put in an order and then all all of us company members read these testimonials of what was happening during COVID in Palestine and uh it was so impactful because it was so you learned about the occupation through its differences and similarities to quarantine um and really a uh a fascinating you know uh perspective on both COVID and the occupation and then um we did another Zoom piece called loved ones families of the incarcerated that was another verbatim piece um by that that uh kind of um tied uh uh incarcerated Palestinian stories and the stories of their loved ones with the stories of African-American incarceration and we held a panel discussion after that as well um and we collaborated with a local film organization as well as Seattle Rep to put on a screening of There is a Field which is a film by one of our company members Jen Marlowe um that uh that um ties Palestinian liberation with African-American liberation as well and brought again panelists from across those communities to talk about solidarity and and then uh what we're looking forward towards is uh in-person productions we're like okay let's just shift focus let's do this let's commit uh let's start fundraising and everything and and our plans are getting ever so slowly pushed a little bit later a little bit later so hopefully we can actually really set in dates but we'll be doing a living room touring production of my play Nubian stories and then we'll be doing an in-person production of Hana Edmast's play The Return which is about also about Palestinian solidarity and what's happening there so now working towards like figuring out a fundraiser we have what's interesting about our company is that we aren't all theater makers there are advocates there are fundraisers there are just people who who want to support in some way and we really all of us kind of lift each other it's an incredible way to to work and now we're also finding our our voice as out of kids for the MENA community as these um critical artistic thinkers who can comment on what's happening locally um and and put out statements and use social media to represent our community because we're all from very different backgrounds um and so now we have an advocacy page on our website that that shares a couple open letters we've we've published about about plays we needed to say something about and now we're also finding a collaboration and partnership with um activists based organizations here in Seattle who are who are clearly doing activism now we we are really finding our place in in that world to be to be more than artists but also really active advocates and representatives for our community thank you so much i love all the solidarity work that you're doing in the in this model of like really working cross-sector and uh and interdisciplinary not just within the arts but even beyond the arts which is something that is also like close to my heart with art actions work so i really uh i'm excited to see that happening on the other coast um and so if you are just joining us or just tuning in this is no summary golden threads live stream series of conversations with artists who don't fit in a box and we're uh today talking about in emerging uh swanasa theater companies and collectives um across the us and i wish we had so much more time together because there's so much more to talk about i'm going to invite folks if you are watching a live stream or you're in the zoom room and would like to post a question in the chat uh you can definitely post a question and it'll get to me and hopefully we'll get to work it in so uh we invite questions anytime and i have more questions which i'll share while we're waiting to see what comes in and i really invite uh for this last you know uh 12 minutes or so that we have together to make this a conversation so we'll try to keep our own individual uh responses short and and so that we can really have some response to each other um so you don't have to just respond to me but to each other as well um so i'm curious you've all mentioned in some way uh the pandemic and how it's affecting the work that you're able to do at this time and how you're looking beyond the pandemic and there's so much happening in the world and i just wonder um you're you're trying to emerge uh and create something new in this extremely challenging historical moment when there's so much to respond to and also so much to navigate in terms of how we're able to create our work and uh and what it is that we need to say in this historical moment so i'm just wondering how do you feel this historical moment that we're in is shaping your work right now and going forward anybody want to take that one? I just think it's not separatable like um more than anything just experience of this like the events that happened and upside down our entire world like it's not something that happened to one region or the other but just we all went through this and we are still going and i don't know like um if it says it's a very it's a very big question and i will say like it just like made for me more clear that like no nothing censored nothing no play no game anymore it is very clear what must have been done and it's very clear what must have been the priority of um a person like me that is like an artist i like spent all my life learning how to tell stories i pay my rent with that so um it just has become way more clear that we are all in this big trouble and the power dynamic of who has like less privilege or more privilege is not not any simple thing and um i take it more serious to take my responsibility my privilege like um not granted and also do the thing that i can with my small hands for the causes that i really care uh being get shifting from telling stories to education being shifting like just forgetting everything and becoming a politician to change policies i don't know what that is but like i think we are living in a world that emergent strategy and changing with the changes and being capable of being like water is a key or at least to me it feels the right thing to do to to fix some of some of this i this it's so refreshing to me that to hear your response because i grew up in a generation in which i and i was constantly battling the perception that art and politics are different things and political art is somehow lesser or bad art or um constantly having to fight for this idea that um the art that we make is absolutely informed by the historical moment that we live in and the political conversations that we need to be having or simply the crises that we're responding to and so it's so refreshing to me to see um you know a new generation of theater companies where that isn't even a question anymore it isn't even a debate you know the the question is how are we going to make a difference with our work um not whether or not we should and uh and i really really appreciate that we have a question um feel free as we go forward uh to address that but we also have another question in the chat that i'm going to share which is um uh how do you how do you or how do you work with the idea of witness and memory and do you feel any pressure to produce work that could be described as healing are you willing to make theatergoers feel quote unquote uncomfortable in order to start conversations and reflection i think i already know the answer that is yes but um what about this question of witness and memory in or healing in relation to uh all these other things that we're talking about about the historical political moment that we're in i think nabra you were about to say something yes this is all tied i love everything that's been said um one thing that i learned through covid is how um how crucial our art is and how how much bigger the responsibility to make important impactful art is i was like we need to we need no more you know wasting our breath every piece of art we make everything we say as artists needs to be making change it needs to be doing something for this world um so covid i think is personally impassioned me in that world and and made me better contextualize my art and what art should be um and to answer uh the question in the chat um i feel personally some responsibility to create more healing or perhaps more celebratory art especially about our communities because we don't see that very much and that that um balance between examining our struggles and our and you know our history and our current the current events and providing space of celebration and healing is something that's constantly on my mind as a theater creator um but from the donya productions perspective you know we're very political um and we're not afraid to be political um and it even in our mission our mission statement is creating art that will uh inspire and impassion our audiences to engage with the global struggle for social and political justice so it's in our mission to do that and all of our work has been very uh specifically about that and that's why we have panel discussions afterwards so that you know after some of our productions so that we can process with our audiences and give them practical tools to say like do this go to this website talk to this person give to this cause um and it was a big conversation about this this last you know letter that we penned about a local production um that we felt was was um was not helping at all the palestinian struggle and for liberation and um and that question of like how far do we go how political do we get how will this make people so uncomfortable us kind of stepping outside of art and becoming advocates that they won't want to see our art and we decided no we have to do this this is crucial and I think COVID was also part of that of finding that voice. Thank you so much Rohina did you want to respond to either of these questions? I think for um for me COVID just at first was like you know traumatizing because I was constantly traveling with my art and my life was airports and hotels and gigs and um to just have our whole industry shut down um I fell into depression and it was working my way through that depression that um just slowing down and I'm not realizing how badly many of us artists needed to slow down and just take a breath and just be um I did a lot of walking in my neighborhood um to help me get through my depression because I was feeling awful at that time I couldn't write and I am a writer that's what I do and I could not create I could not write I could not work on so many of the scripts that were waiting like folks were waiting for me to send drafts and what I realized through that time for me I realized a lot of things I realized all this travel all this stress from travel we were able to do so much on zoom and I think that was very eye-opening for me as an artist like well let's say the pandemic ends I don't want to go back to I don't think I want to go back to all that travel because it actually wasn't good for my health as an artist and so a lot of aha moments it's a new way of making art that is just exciting and I I just discovered you know audio plays like I keep talking about like this new beat it can reach folks and I was very much stuck in live it has to be live it has to be live and there is a beauty about live that no one can deny but there is also power in watching something or listening to something it's just a different medium so I don't know just the slowing down has been healing for me in a lot of ways teaching me new ways to do things teaching me that there are things I'm not going to go back to after this pandemic is over but of course I miss live and I can't wait to do live again but and as for memory you know like memory is just plays such a role in in so much of the playwrights that we produce their work in my work as an artist it's all about memory and it's a it's a powerful thing and I'm just I'm just really excited for the future I'm excited for these two amazing data companies that I have gotten to know better today so just feeling very grateful thank you so much I am so sorry that we have to say goodbye because I feel like there's so many more questions I want to ask you and and it's really been so lovely to get to know about your work and your companies and how you're navigating and looking to the future and it's been really inspiring thank you so much for this time together I want to thank Nabra Shadi and Rohina for being our panelists today and of course Golden Thread productions for hosting the new summary series and HowlRound for live streaming and please stay in touch with Golden Thread by signing up on the weekly email and or following on Facebook or following all of these companies and artists on Facebook and social media and we'd also like to thank Wendy Reyes our live streaming technician and Chris Steele for managing the live stream on Golden Thread's Facebook page and thank you to all of you for joining us today please do stay connected and keep building and creating thank you all goodbye thank you