 So, welcome everybody to the Martin's Seagull Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY. My name is Frank Henschkern. The director of the Seagull Center. We are thrilled that we actually back online, the live, I mean, not online, but live. We did our pre-hosts digitally and last year CUNY was so close, we couldn't do it, but it's very important for us, you know, to celebrate the life and the work of New York Theatre artists, making art is incredibly hard anywhere in the world. Making the New York is extremely hard, but after the time of Corona, there's an extra level of it. And we have the Murder Room investigation going on at the moment with Anne Rushburn, who says, just to mention, New York Downtown Theatre is a body, maybe a dead body. Who killed it? Why? And so she's doing one-on-one interviews in college to sign up, but also I think this evening is part of it, but in a good way. It doesn't look at the dead body, but it says, what is the future? Where are we going to? And the reincarnation there is the big question, is it a Renaissance? Something that was before, comes back, or is it a revolution? Maybe it wasn't so great before, so we'll have to see what these young scholars, artists think or think, and I think it's important to hear from them, and the people around the institutions, I think they are the future of the theatre. And it's a space to discuss, to hear your ideas and to see what's on your mind. So really, thank you all for coming out, especially on such a beautiful day. And thank you to Nick and to Jesse for putting this together. So here we go. Thank you so much, Frank. As he just said, my name is Jess, Applebound, and you are at Future Visions, provocations for the next performance ecosystem. And we're going to be as brief as possible, Nick and I, so because there's a lot of material to get to. But we also want to give you some grounding as in context to tonight, and so, and we also want people to be able to arrive, which I think has happened. So, I'm just going to jump in and just remind us that we're at the Graduate Center, and it's on Manopiah King territory on the island of Manhattan, and we're in a building that used to be a department store built the altman's and I just like to point that out because it lets us know that there are capitalist spaces that can be transformed into public good. So just to remind them of that, Eric Adams. So, so yes, and then we are with Prelude, and it's the 20th anniversary of Prelude, and so congratulations to that, Frank. Prelude is meant to be a meeting place for, I just want to make sure I'm getting my language right, for artists who are at the forefront of contemporary performance in New York City. And it is curated by Frank, and there are people that would love to thank Taylor Evertz, and Crichtman, Ronaldo Pereira, and Allison Pascal, and just started jumping into the intermaking. Everything happened, so thank you for that. As Prelude is dedicated to artists at the forefront, the festival gives us the space to discover the voices that are shaping the fields of both live performance and also academic scholarship. And the research and scholarship at the GC manifests in many different forms. Nick and I met actually in 2014 prior to coming to the GC on a project called the Brooklyn Commune, and that was a public research project led by artists surveying and reporting on the economy of our performance arts landscape. And now here at the GC, as students in the performance and theater program, we both received fellowships to work with Publix Lab, which had been a public humanities center, and that was where we were given the space to bring our full selves to our work as academics, to bring our values, to bring our communities, to bring the research that we were interested in, and then to develop ways of connecting our scholarship with those communities, and then further communities as well outside of the possibilities that we were thinking. So during that time, Nick and I developed Edge Effect Media Group, and that is a think-and-do thing, and it brings people from a widespread array of disciplines together in dynamic gathering spaces to study major issues of our time. And then we take what we've learned, we translate our collective learning into public knowledge through creative original works that manifest in an array of media. And the people that we have with us today are people who have been engaged with Edge Effect, and also with Nick and I for the 20 plus years that we've been working as practitioners. So thank you all for being here with us. And as practitioners, I'll share that I've been working with one year lease for over 20 some years, and with the assembly for quite some time as well, and there are independent projects and relationships that we've been developing as well. And for a practice that we do as Edge Effect is we identify the edges that we have with ourselves, and we think about how we would like people to know how we are showing up in spaces, and we do that with sharing these edges, which we've taken from the environmental technologies, environmental sciences, and with the arts, and sorry, I'm going to slow down and start getting there. We practice edges, which comes from an ecological term, Edge Effect, and those are what ecosystems meet at overlap quarters and form unexpected dynamic forms of life, as well as new forms of networks. And we recognize that within ourselves, there are lots of ecosystems in us. And so, and there's a lot of diversity within ourselves. And so we are showing up here with our edges. And mine, which I'll share with you or that I'm an academic practitioner or a scholar practitioner. I'm a dramaturg. I'm an introvert extrovert so public speaking is not my favorite thing to do. And I think that's part of my gemininess. And I am very close to being a third generation New Yorker with grandparents having come over here and having connections to the Bronx to Brooklyn to Queens, Manhattan, and now things again. So, I'll pass it over to me. Thank you, Jess. Hi, I am Nick Panasra, my pronouns are he and they. My edges are a lot of them are lumped under the banner of space maker that includes my work as a set designer as a director and as an artistic director. I'm also a facilitator of activist spaces and interdisciplinary scholar and like just a student here at the CUNY Graduate Center. The drive to gather here today comes from a deep desire to learn who is still here in the community. In the last month or two, our field has begun a kind of reckoning about the changes going on in our ecosystem. And of all the online articles and social media posts and conversations that have come a bit, one of them has been sticking with me at a few months ago, Jim Nicola, who is the outgoing artistic director of New York Theater Workshop was being interviewed here and he proposed that, you know, all the economic models that were supporting the 20th century theater didn't die in the year 2000 like many thought they would but they died in the last couple of years or are in the way out on the way out. And that comes on the heels of the we see you white American theater movement, which has continued to influence theaters and individuals nationwide towards anti racist action concrete action. And it builds on our knowledge that we've all already known which is that it's hard and demanding to be a theater maker in New York City. And in some of those demands, there is systemic racism, classism, sexism, ableism, ageism, decades of eroding economic support, rising rents and closing performance bases, extractive practices by the commercial theater sector and by the Academy, which takes without giving back to the ecosystem and the siphoning of attention to digital media just to name a few. And since this backdrop, we have asked these folks to write manifestos on very short notice, which is a fairly absurd thing to do. But we like them, even though manifestos have never succeeded for speaking for all of the people, and there will be enormous ideas and voices not represented here today. I still love them because they're powerful and provocative way to vision to something against which we can bounce and learn about ourselves. So we want to kind of take this visioning and decouplet from the historical avant garde as we often are taught it and learn it. First of all, it's because it's a model that sometimes holds us back. In one sense, it assigns an impossible amount of credit to usually one individual, usually a straight cis white man. And second of all it sets up change and warlike terms, the avant garde being the front lines of the battle. We think of the edge effect concept as a kind of alternative. I love it because when you consider it as a cultural metaphor, the edge effect describes what happens when two or more ecosystems overlap, and the new kinds of ideas and forms that can come from that space. It's not a person, it's a community, it's a place that generates these ideas and that's part of what we're here to foster today. So, to get to the actual thing, our event is going to unfold in three sections. First, we're going to ask our panelists to share their manifestos that they prepared. Then we're going to get on our feet and do an activity called spectrum of opinions. And third, we're going to have a round table discussion, the normal thing that we usually come to the theater to do news conflicts. In three, there will be opportunities for you to chime in using your phone so you can feel free to have that at the ready. And that goes through those of you at home as well. We are here to dig into big ideas and to have a good time doing it. And to that end, it feels like it would be even extra more fun to lower our stakes and our expectations of this conversation. By lowering the stakes, I mean that this panel is intended as a play space. It's a, it's a place we want to invite everyone on stage to speak in drafts to try on new ideas and see how they feel. And we won't hold each other to these opinions forever they're just let's come and out right now. By lowering our expectations, I mean that we're not trying to solve these problems definitively or come up with a unanimous answer about how to do that. Rather, we want to provide opportunities for us all to dig deeper into it. So, for the main event. Today, we are honored to be joined by Chie Marita, Jesse Cameron, Alec, Marisol Rosa Shapiro, Marisol Soledad, Jimena Garnica, Beto Orburn, and Yankee Demos. And yeah. And we're going to invite folks to deliver their, their preparations in that order. And then we'll talk. Hello. I am also not a public speaker. So, here I go first. My name is Chia Marita. I use she the pronouns. And my edges are, I'm, I come in primarily as a consultant and the person who looks at systems from the outside and sort of like warms my way in and makes a swift exit. But I am also a tinker. I like to think that I specialize in navigation. And I'm also nice. Which recently has done more to affect my process and the way that I think about the world. So, I did not have the benefit of your tremendous definition of manifesto while I was writing this. So I took to the internet. The more research that I did, the thing that I really got stuck to is that manifestos seem to think that there's supposed to be an answer. And that we're all supposed to agree. And that that answer is linked to a plan of action and a way to know when we succeed. I have a clear definition of what success looks like. So, I landed on the definition of manifestos that manifestos are a definition of success. So inviting us all into that play space. Will you all close your eyes with me? Follow my voice. I'll tell you when to open your eyes again and do whatever is comfortable here. You can stop at any time. You can open your eyes. The seats are like on the floor. You do what you need to do. But I'd like to take a moment as we get started today to really remind us all that we have bodies. Put your feet flat on the floor. Maybe give them a little wiggle and that feels good. Wriggle those toes around in your socks all the way down through that carpeted floor, through that department store floor. There's dirt down there somewhere. Remember to breathe as you're doing this. If your knees could do anything they wanted right now, what would they do? Maybe stretch your fingers. Remember that you have ribs, likely 24 of them. Maybe move your face into a silent expression of your day. Scream, laugh, bury your teeth. No one's watching except me. Let your face be a face. Let your body be a body and keep breathing. Now keeping your eyes closed and in your head for a moment, allow yourself to define success for yourself. Really hear it bring out in your head. Now whose voice is that definition in? Let's go a little deeper. I really want you to define success for you. If the prompt feels like a struggle, remember that you bring the whole last worlds into existence all the time on a daily basis. Simply apply that creativity to your own existence. Allow yourself to dream big. Dream the way you want. Maybe it's got something to do with practice or family or sustainability. Maybe it's about fear or anger or love. Is it in your voice now? I think the best way to succeed is to define success for yourself. And I don't think that we spend enough time as individuals doing it. Thanks for going there with me. So I don't think we can build the next performance ecosystem without attending to an inhuman ecosystem first. I think that we begin that work by grounding ourselves in what we need today and now and in the future. Your powerful definitions of success will defy the received wisdoms and violent voices of our governments and our systems, as well as the loving and noisy and complicated voices of our ancestors. And these dreams are the people with which we can prioritize ourselves and our communities and then and only then allow that to seep into a better way of thinking. My complicated ancestors raised me with an untranslatable concept called kijima. Everywhere growing up. It's one of those DNA level ideas that's baked into my being, as I'm sure you all have ideals that are baked into yours and can fill me with equal parts of shame and pride on any given moment, but I embody it. I think as an understanding of context and how to choose to act accordingly in any given moment. Some examples, I turned on the light because I needed it, so I will turn it off. I see a person approaching a closed door with their arms full of things and I empty arms will choose to help them. I said, I would deliver a manifesto. So here I am manifesting in. I begin a loop and then close it. My definition of success is my context. And newly equipped with our visions of utopia, our visions of utopia, we can build spaces and cultivate relationships and reimagine systems and make work that demands these destinations for us. We can nurture a new culture that insists on new ways of doing, which will in turn create ripples of context that demand others uphold these values to people over product process over productivity. Let your context be contagious and act accordingly. Thanks. Hi everyone. My name is Jesse Cameron Alec. I'm so happy to be on stage with all of you like really truly. I'm also obsessed with this idea of edges. It's very, very interesting and this ecological term. I'm going to talk to a lot of people about it. So my edges are that I am a dramaturg. I think first and foremost of the actual drama turds. I'm also a poet and a playwright. And I am a queer underground club person. That's a big sort of ecosystem that exists in. I'm a first generation American. And I am a science fiction expert. I'm also Scorpio. And it's fall. It's, you know, this Halloween sort of thing. So we're going to tell you a ghost story. Why can't the American theater change. We all want to change. We all know that this isn't working. There are programming problems financial issues galore the influence of commercial money is destroying things artistic development houses are crashing donors vanishing audiences not returning. No one is getting paid enough everyone is leaving the industry and not returning why because people are unhappy you can feel it when you walk into a theater the artists are unhappy the technicians are unhappy the administrators are unhappy have you ever met an artistic director before they are the most unhappy people in the entire planet. The ship is full of holes and we can see the water coming in. Why can't we do anything about it. Maybe we don't want to, or maybe there's something else that doesn't want to. Have you heard of the term agree Gore. My boyfriend, Fernando Gregorio brought the concept to me about six months ago and he and I have been tossing around ever since an agree Gore is an occult concept that originated from the book of Enoch, which has its roots in ancient Hebrew mysticism. The choreographer a desola assault whom he taught me there's actually parallels in the Yoruba tradition for this concept as well. In brief, an agree Gore is a non physical entity that is made material and brought into physical existence by the collective belief of a people. A family might gather together the power of its love and manifest an archangel that comes select and with a flaming sword it protects the ancestral lanes, or a town of people might some of the great monster that runs wild devouring little children created purely by the power of their bigotry. Egregors are not often created consciously in fact it's most likely than the agree Gore is created unconsciously, accidentally by a massive act of group thing. The agree Gore is consensus made manifest from the first moment that the agree is born, excuse me from the first moment that the agree Gore is born, it has purpose. He knows exactly what it's there to do, and it seeks out a means of doing it immediately. Just as quickly the agree Gore separates itself from the people that created it. The creators no longer have dominion over the creation. The creation is an organism all into itself. It will continue to feed off of the love of the family or the hatred of the village, but it doesn't take orders anymore. The agree Gore lives to do two things. It's given tasks and like any other organism to maintain its own existence. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your theater is haunted. There is an agree Gore living inside of your walls. There is an entity that is the institution that you work at. It has interests and desires it has moods and issues. They are unique unto itself. It was created long before you arrived at that theater, and it will be there long after you were gone. You could replace every single person at your institution, and the institution would behave exactly the same way, because the agree Gore is more than the people who are there. You can have endless meetings about cultural transformation and not change a single thing about the way that you do business. The agree Gore wants to be itself. The Spiritus Institute was summoned into existence to do a job in a certain manner, a little laden joke for you. It was summoned into existence to do a job in a certain manner and it will not rest until that job is done. Can you see what your agree Gore looks like? Can you hear its voice speaking through the mouths of your managers? Can you feel how it moves through your building stacking boxes in that one corner where everyone eats for there to be boxes, but somehow there's always boxes ending up there. Can you see how it makes important decisions for you. It guides institutions budgets, excoles values and daily emotions. And as you go from one institution to another. Can you feel how the agree Gore is actually feel very similar. Same same but different. The same thing with the executive department and the executive department, the stress of tech week, how every leader thinks that they don't stand their institution for at least 30 years the entire institution will crumble. The ways in which we must bite our tongues and sometimes engage in distasteful conversations with donors. The problems there are the problems here. They don't change. The spirit is the same. Imagine with me that the American theater has an agree Gore as well. A big looming go live hands that stretch costs across state lines. A neck is wide as the Rocky Mountains thighs falling off our southern borders, shoulders so broad that they rub against our coasts. Imagine the energy contained within that agree Gore. Imagine the power. Imagine the potential. Imagine the power of what it wants. It wants to continue to exist and existence for an agree for means existing as it currently exists, eating the same food, making the same kind of art, working with the same kind of people. Egregors don't want to change. This is the reason why ironically, even as systems begin to fail, even as the flow of donations try up, even as audiences stop responding to certain kinds of arts, even as the agree Gore begins to starve itself to death. It has great difficulty, difficulty adapting, and it will stop you from adapting as well. And the word agree Gore comes from a Gregoris, which means wakeful. And I think it's a useful word root word for the concept that we're talking about. Do we try to change the agree for knowing how difficult that will be knowing the self awareness and almost impossible collective buy in that would take. Or do we try and kill the agree for drive it off a cliff like the mob from a black and white movie that will kill a monster. Or do we reach out to heal the breach between us and the agree Gore with love as mythic knowledge would guide us to do. Or do we build our own agree goers summon our own spirits in new box. These are the questions that I lay at your feet. The agree Gore is ever wakeful. And we must be as well. Hello, hello, hello. Hi. Thanks, Jesse. I just want to clean out that the shadow up there are those two lights kind of looks like a dragon. Like will agree Gore looking down at us from the ceiling. I noticed that while you're speaking. Hi everybody. My name is Marisol I usually her pronouns. I am a theater maker I wear many hats. I'm a performer I'm a director. I'm a teaching artist I'm a facilitator of all kinds of creative space. I'm a collaborator. I'm a, I'm born and bred born and raised in New York City I'm a Jew your weekend. I'm body qua and I'm very happy to be here with all of you. All right. Oh, and one other thing that you should know is that I, I make a lot of different kinds of work, some of it, kind of on the range from like nasty fun political satire to really gentle shows for Kenny babies. And so I'm speaking to you today and part as an advocate for children and for theater for young audiences. If this manifesto had a title it would be why didn't you make it more interesting. I made my off Broadway directorial debut, mounting a show called wink, or remounting a show called link, which was created by Brooklyn's spellbound theater. We opened over at the new victory on 42nd Street, right in the middle of Times Square, you know, prime real estate across the street from madam to so this gentle show for very young theater goers was created for young people ages three to five had been in spellbound repertoire for years, it had been developed over many years had played to amazing kids in Miami at the Long Island Children's Museum at symphony space and many many places before that. I'm really excited to bring this dreamy wordless piece full of shadow puppetry and animation and object transformation to our big bright audiences of little little little ones arriving from schools all over New York City to our big beautiful theater on 42nd Street. During the show, especially during education performances and kids were coming from school. There was cooing clapping in the audience and foods and Oz and the 500 seat new victory was like a baby rage. And, you know, in these audiences for education shows, we had the powerful ratio of like one adults to every 10 to 20 children so you can imagine like just almost 500, like five year olds in our five hundred seat house really incredible. So one of my favorite parts of shows at the new victory, where I've worked now as artists in several capacities also as a teaching artist is the post performance discussions, which I'm sure we have many feelings about. But at the new victory they're pretty amazing. So after an hour long experience of art created, especially for them, the young people are invited to ask, and sometimes they say some pretty fantastic and provocative things. A few highlights from our wink talk backs. After one show, a student who'd been seated in a balcony spot with some kind of special sight lines began recounting in detail in a sort of mumbled stream of consciousness, how we'd achieved every single moment of magic in the show. A designer mind and engineer I don't know a technician a director, he was up in the balcony. One student asked after this beautiful artistic experience. What can we eat in the theater. And one student was likely a little bit developmentally advanced for this particular really gentle show for babies basically asked, Why didn't you make it more interesting. Taking a moment to scrape my ego off the floor. I was struck by the power of this question, and by the consideration it provoked for me why didn't you make it more interesting theater for young audiences in this country. I would say even within our artistic community has kind of a poor reputation and a lot of circles. Children, both are often marginalized under considered and under resourced expected to conform to adults expectations that they will behave like smaller if stupider adults in for children under resourced schools under resource healthcare under resource food systems and bloated carceral ones. Children over are a marginalized class, and they're subject to subject to poverty and war, and all kinds of violence that adults and our systems foist upon them with little if any agency to meaningfully resist the demand change or accountability. In our country for sure the economics of art and aesthetic education and aesthetic experience feed into and reflect right this marginalized status of young people and children. And so they are left asking us all of us why didn't you make it more interesting. And here we are a group of thoughtful, creative boundary breaking adults working at the what is it forefront of contemporary performance. And so I invite you to ask yourselves, all of you. What can you do to make it more interesting. Having an audience that will dream and imagine with you that will engage you ask you hard questions. Why can I eat in the theater and why didn't you make it more interesting. I invite you to consider making work for young people and for families. New York City in particular is the largest school system in the country. We just welcomed this fall at least 20,000 newly arrived immigrants into our schools, many of them displaced from home by violence, climate catastrophe and desperate economic circumstances all over the world. And we as artists are nimble enough to respond to this changing world, and to uncertainty and to help our young people process the same. Young people are actually the emerging moment. And New York City kids, as I'm sure many of you know are savvy, sometimes very sassy, extremely wise, and a ton of fun. So the last provocation I'll leave you with is something that I came across today actually in my capacity as an arts educator and teaching artist. This comes from the give guide, which stands for growing inclusivity for bright vibrant engagement. This is an amazing comprehensive document that you can find online again it's called the give guide it was created by community word project arts connection and the new victory. And in particular, out of this very, very, very robust resource, I want to share something called the seven rights to the body. And this is put it from the guide and give guide these seven rights to the body are a consensus of shared values, gathered from Eastern and indigenous philosophy, religious beliefs and human rights organizations. You can use these rights as a pedagogical guide or I would say an artistic guide to create a safe space for all learners or artists or emerging artists or emerging arts audiences, and to empower them to be advocates for themselves. Here we go the seven rights to the body, the right to be present to exist in any space, the rights to feel to experience and express emotions, the right to act to express yourself in your own way. The right to love and be loved to lead with your heart. The right to speak to articulate yourself in a verbal or nonverbal way. The right to see to notice or sense your own way. And the right to know, or to understand. Thank you. Thank you all. So beautiful to hear each of you. Hi everybody, my name is Jimena Garnica. I use she and they pronounce. I got that we were supposed to introduce ourselves. And so I didn't prepare the introduction, but I am. I am here. I am the daughter of Edith Magomes and hi Megarnica. They are in Colombia, my parents are an immigrant. I was born in the land called now Columbia, but I'm a United States citizen. I chair my life partnership and artistic partnership with Japanese creature that appeared in my life over 20 years ago Chigamorilla. And we love imagining things and creating things and yeah, it's like creation and imagination. And that means that I make works in different mediums in different spaces with different people. And I didn't bring a manifesto, I confess. I was like, I can't write a manifesto in two weeks. Um, but um, but I, I want to ask everybody here for a second to look at the title of today event. Think about one word that comes to your mind, one word only. And I'm actually going to ask the audience to vocalize that word, like maybe we start from the back to the front, you can say it loud and just one word really quickly. Maybe we start back there with you. Louder, sorry, provoke the gentleman back there. He's passing. Thank you. So, maybe a manifesto will emerge from me after today. I am already so inspired. And I'm remembering, I had this really amazing time this year in Colombia. And one of the things that I kind of like relieved and I believe again, what's this idea of gathering in a Kuzmui is a Casa de Pensamiento is the House of Thought, and to share the word to share the word. So instead of panels, there are many talk circles. And I'm looking forward with second part of this event. I spend that time and really confirm how much I love those talk circles and I like them because of their horizontality, the publicity. So after some thinking, I thought I would share my reflection on the title of today's event. Future visions provocations for the next performance ecosystem on future. Future is not fixed and point, but rather an ongoing process of becoming the future is happening is an ongoing process of becoming this future may now be singular. These futures are plural and are in ongoing process of becoming on visions. And I want to think of dreams, those thoughts, images and sensations, those ways to connect and to be in relation with the natural world, and understand his freedoms is cycles, the way it breeds dreams that reveal messages from animals from plans from other elements of the natural world and beyond my own world beyond my human on individual world on provocations. My personality has a pain for provoking, but somehow that is not how I felt about this title. The word and came was intentions, intentions as chair introspection towards, and that resulted in caring. So instant of in a set of provocations, I ended up with intentions of caring for. So so far, I have ongoing dreams, intentions of caring for on the next. If the future is an ongoing process of becoming next doesn't really follow an immediate order time, the space place sequence. So I refuse to think of the next performance ecosystem, as if we're something that comes after the current one. What is already happening back again to becoming to a constant state of becoming. So the next is already happening. Maybe nowhere some of us might be used to inhabit, but it's definitely out there and happening. So instead of next, I start thinking of all as in total the whole of intentions of caring for all on performance. Only many questions came as in, not only theater and dance right as in not only Eurocentric your American theater and dance right performance as experience as rituals as ceremonies as various cultural practices, question mark, question mark, question mark. And lastly, ecosystem. What if we make it plural. Just as if I was going to keep the word future it will have become futures. So ecosystems, worlds and webs of interconnected relationships ecosystems are integrated networks of plants animal humans and environments, all dependent off one another. And this led me to think about sustainability, but that was just a thought. So, after I excavated the title of today's event, future visions provocations for the next performance ecosystem. I ended up with another title, and not yet with a manifesto ongoing dreams, intentions of caring for all performance ecologies. Thank you everyone. My name is Beto Byrne. My edges. I think the first one I am with today is I'm the co founder of Radha pollution performance collective. I, through that company, I work a lot as a playwright, and as a musician. And as a general theater maker in ensemble and collective practice. I am also a writer of anarchist speculative fiction. Ask me about it if you want. And a new edge that I have been carrying with me lately, and I think it's becoming more and more important to me these days is as a border out of this. I'm still working on what that means in an activated way. But it's something that feels present to me a lot. So, yeah, so here's what I came up with. In 2011, Muroby and I set at a park bench in one hill park and admitted that our art had no home here in New York City. Our theater practices came from a shared experience growing up in by cultural households and our practices and inspirations from the Chicano theater movement and community community based performance practices. They were a common language in Los Angeles where we met in the shadows of the bright lights of Broadway. Not so much. Still inspiration surrounded us. The downtown theater movement brought new ideas and possibilities to what we were creating. At the living theater space, Judith Molina hug me inviting me into her beautiful non violent anarchist revolution, one of my favorite memories of being in the theater. We went to St. Anne's warehouse and watched work from all over the world and saw voices in a multitude of humanity. I met the artistic visionaries at Pregones and the Puerto Rican traveling theater who are my mentors this day. These people and these places confirmed for us that if we wanted it, we could look forward our vision here. So, much like the generations of radical artists who inspired us we came to the same illogical solution. If there was no home for us, then we must make and take space for ourselves. Our vision was to create a space for people like us members of the global majority who wanted to stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before us and push the boundaries of our form. As my dear friend and deli based theater makers who don't finish finding once told me the loonies always find each other. And we wanted to create a space for loonies. That space became radical evolution. An artist collective that as the name implied is forward thinking and reflective fast and slow revolution and process a purposeful wonderful contradiction that both makes no sense and is perfectly coherent. Kind of like really good theater. We're now 12 years into this project. And the world is a very different place or at least feels that way. It seems like each rotation takes us closer and closer to the last one that humanity will experience, or at the very least, a cataclysm is on the horizon. In the early days of the coven 19 pandemic, I went out to Roy called it a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky sky behind us. We can walk through it lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it. We're right in so many ways. In other ways, the challenges that have surfaced since then have been the same ones we've been fighting for centuries. I don't need to sit here and listen to them. Chances are when I just said this at least one or two is popped into your head. And if I sat here and tried, I would run out of time. So let's just call them are fucked up inheritance and move forward. One of the things here is that if these challenges have been with us for a long time so too are the solutions. Our ancestors gave us the answers if we're willing to listen. But Americans hate history. We hated his culture. I think that's because we can't stand to admit that our past is terrible. Because if we have to do that, we also have to take ownership of it. So instead we just rewrite it, pretend it was different than what it was. Maybe make a musical that reimagines our past because it makes us feel more empowered. Well, enough. We just forget it. After all, the dead aren't here to contradict us or to remind us, are they? That's a rhetorical question. They actually are here. Ghosts are very, very real. They have unfinished business and we are all haunted. So when I was thinking about what performance should be made supported and shared throughout our city. I thought of all of this. I thought of the future. One important by the past. And there's so many options, but this is what came up as the most important to me at this moment. We're living through a time where there's increased support for the value of labor. At the same time, only around 11% of us citizens are members of a union, and that number is decreasing. It's time artists see themselves as intimately connected to this larger struggle. We need better stronger more powerful solidarity between each other. Actors need more than a guild. Actors need more than equity. As Nick and Jack just put it to us, we are poly disciplinary creatures were more than cogs in the nonprofit industrial theater complex. Right now, whether we like it or not, we're all complicit in that machine and it's time we break it. The best way we can do that is through solidarity and not just solidarity between dancers line designers and directors, but between artists, Amazon delivery persons, the auto workers and the taxi drivers. We're all in the same struggle. This is the truth our ancestors knew and fought for it's why we have weekends. It's why we have an eight hour work day, at least in some industries, because we still have 10 out of 12s. The makers are not special snowflakes and we never have been, but the industries, the academies and the funders that support us have long put artists in this position, so much so that we become infantilized. We sit here in the belly of one of these beasts and I want to say that we need to see these systems as the product problematic oppressors that they are, and we can reject it. Not only can we do that, but artists are called to our practice to reimagine the world for better. For many of us these systems have placed a false narrative in our heads, one that tells us material wealth is possible in the current system. If there are any students here today find four people in this room who've been doing this for more than 15 years, ask them if it's possible to make a decent living solely off their labor as an artist. Listen to the answer, didn't ask them why they still do it. This change may seem impossible to do. But I wanted to put one more quote into this because my favorite writer is Ursula Le Guin, and she once said, these power, this change is impossible, its power seems inescapable, but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings resistance and change often begin in art. She went on to say that it begins with writers the art of words. Maybe this moment needs more than words. Maybe it needs the art of action, the art of bodies and movement and vibration. So let's resist and change with the art of performance. Thank you. Hi everybody. Hi, my name is young be my pronouns or she her. I identify as a theater director and a theater educator. I am the artistic director of a small company in New York called one year lease. We work here in New York and we just finished some summer programming in India, Japan and Greece. I want to thank Jess, Nick and the prelude festival first of all for giving and all of these wonderful people and all of you for being here for this conversation for giving space for this conversation. My edges past being a theater director and educator are that in the past 20 years I've also worked in arts management and in producing. I am Dutch Greek. I'm a visitor here. I think I've landed on that. I'm a single mother to to a quite capricious five year old. I carry with me a deep interest and care for those who are displaced in our worlds today. I have homes whose histories are being erased, and those who have nothing to return to. I'm not sure I would not invest either. But maybe I wrote a provocation. I wrote something of dreams. I dream of ensembles for artists in this country. And perhaps before I continue I should define what ensemble is for me. As simple as I see it as a multitude of voices and approaches coming together out of curiosity. And once we have danced and conversed with each other. Knowing that we'll never move or speak in exactly the same way again, because now we hold within us a community and a multitude of experiences. So I dream of more ensembles I dream, I dream of value placed in working together over time. A value placed in a body of work, as opposed to what the next show is of ensembles with history. A particular dream of particularly dream of intergenerational ensembles, which celebrate in both space for children for parents for the elderly, for everything else between that. In the words I have not said. I dream of spaces that are less lonely and more revelatory of the art leading instead of the business of the art leading instead of the messaging of the art leading instead of the funding. And of the art leading instead of the day to day realities. I dream of companies that are artists led, many of them that provide homes that provide spaces to dream. That provides spaces that welcome artists of all races, ethnicities and cultures without having to make that diversity the conversation. I dream of spaces given to shows that are not easily marketable, but perhaps can create a conversation. Conversation and all of its complexity of critics creating conversation instead of making or breaking a show of spaces in which artists disagree and learn from each other over time. I think we're standing in an extraordinary time. And I hope that we choose to build spaces that are complex that are uneasy while holding each other and uplifting the notion that we don't know how to do this, not that we do. Wow. Thank you all so much. There's so much to talk about. Can we go to that next slide. So, so this is the part where you get to start to play. This is one of two little moments. So we're going to ask you, those of you who want to play along and I spoke to him home to either that QR code, or go to mentee calm and enter the code 7, 8484449. That's, if you can't read that on the projector screen from a computer potentially it's M E N T I dot com and the code you put in is 7, 8484449. So when you do, and it's stuff that's on the left or that stuff that's on the top of the stay there. So if you lose this screen it's going to be okay you can still read the top, hopefully, or ask a friend. We can go to the next slide now. And so we're going to, we kind of chose six categories of conversation and you can rank these you can choose one, you can rank all six and then hit submit. The results will populate live and the most popular things will rise to the top and we'll use three of the top three things to help inform our game that we're going to play next but before we get there. I'm going to hand it over to Jess. And I'm going to just remind us that what we'd love to do now is just have all of you have quick responses of things that either resonated that stood out for you or something that even might potentially have like been something that you're not sure of. So we'll go around. And if you'll start, what was like one image provocation question thought that stood out. I mean, the aggregate war is hard to lose. But I'm interested in how, how much conversation arose, sort of creating this like monstrous other leech of the problem, or of the ghost or of the issue or like there's a lot of creative people on stage, turns out we're going to make a monster out of the story. I love it. But I think that's what I'm being left with is this, this sort of ghostly image and I don't know, do we kill it or make a new one? That's what I'm sitting with. The two things, because I have to, I'm that I'm sort of left with is one, the seven rights of the body, which I'm going to look up and take home and like, you know, think about it. I think it's very interesting the idea of like that that concept actually what our rights are, you know, as people got bodies. And then the workers movement, you know, the workers movement, and what are we going to do, what are we going to do with this crappy crappy service system that we have in terms of not for profits and commercial theater and you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. And the options are not good. The options both options are not good. And so how do we break the wheel of this thing. So how do you appreciate the talk of the Union to solidarity workers. Yeah, I think similarly, as you mentioned, the idea that there is like this, this entity that we all are like feeding and sort of worshipping and also hating and wanting to throw off and kill and continuing to feed and sort of fight. That's very important for me and then the question of like, when in our work and when in our play. Do we not feel that present and what are the conditions, like how do we build the conditions in which we notice that we're not feeding that goes that monster. So many things I'm thinking. I have a lot of words from from your manifesto. I have a nice news here, but I was also thinking now you're talking about the monster and I was thinking, let's be centered these like why you're centering the master, you know, so I, and I think I appreciate your intervention. You know, these words, right and sample process intergenital activity. Yeah, when you talk about the unions the work so Yeah, so the dissentery and, and, and what are we doing. Yeah, what is the action. Yeah. Intersection between the ancestors in the children and the ensembles. And I think that's something to really consider that there's something really poking to me about thinking about that. But maybe I've just been thinking a lot about intergenerational work because I'm working with an artist in their 70s right now. So it's like the idea of that might just be coming to talk because I'm just seems like that there's something potent to think about that. Yeah, I, I think I was left with she and the seven. I mean, what are they there seven right right and then you're taking a provocation and making it for me about envision that's how much, how much change we hold within our own bodies, how much change you started us with that. How much is, is this embodying of the, the possibilities, how much can we change with them. Don't know what any of that. Wonderful. I think we're going to use that as one of the layers to our next movement in the panel and we're going to play, unless we want to continue doing that city. How are you feeling. Let's play, let's play, let's go play. So we want to get on our feet. And you can go upstage or downstage left and right, and the game goes like this. We're going to read a statement. Yes, or I will read a statement that will correspond to those top three categories that you've chosen. Thank you very much. And if the panelists strongly agree with the statement, they're going to walk to that side of the stage all the way there. If they strongly disagree, they're going to walk all the way there and if they feel like they're in the middle they're going to go where they feel in the middle. That makes sense to them, but upstage downstage doesn't matter. It's just about data. Okay, so people can take artistic liberties with upstage downstage and try not to read into it unless they say so. Yeah, yeah, agree. Disagree. And the spectrum in between. Good. Okay, so number one, public good. I need to take my glasses off just part of the reason that speaking has been hard. The performing arts contribute to the public good, even for those who cannot attend performances themselves. Agree. Disagree. Want to read it again just. Yes. The performing arts contribute to the public good, even for those who cannot attend performances themselves. Okay, find your spots. Look at each other. All right, I'm going to start with the most extreme agree, which is Jesse. Jesse, why do you feel like you, you're here. Yeah, because I think our does I think our does things to us that changes us, and it actually changes our interactions with it. On one level it doesn't matter that like you know someone doesn't come to a place someone else came to the play and change them in the world. Cool, I'm going to go I think to bet you who I think is the most strongly disagree and find out what your thoughts are there. I am on this side of the half. Your response. Can you read the. Absolutely. The performing arts contribute to the public good, even for those who cannot attend performances themselves. Yeah, so I mean it's going to be interesting I think I have a question around what this term the public good means and how are we interpreting it. And the kind of larger questions I have around that so I don't feel like I can go all the way because I feel like I can think about some things that would make me want to step a little more. Push it to the middle. Cool. Cool. Does anyone want to add something else in. Yeah. I just use this event up in my hands. I think the word that struck me was can't, because the reason I was like, wait, do I want to be actually all the way over here for a second, mostly because if we aren't thinking about why can't people get to the theater and what are the things that are stopping from happening. Then I wonder about the good that we are doing if the thought process does not include everybody should be able to get to the theater. So that is the word can't that made me actually want to run that way and then I was confused so the theater can get to them, or the theater can go to them, like why we think that people have to get to a space that calls the ether right. Right. And I just want to yeah question. I'm going to stand over here to ask this question, which is, who is the theater, what is the public, right in particular, how do we define the public, we tend to generalize that and have big notions that can cover up some biases in our thinking. And, and one of the things that's been really productive for me and Jess and our public humanities space here at the Graduate Center has been to try to be very specific about the public's we're trying to serve. And that is a challenge that I think I would put forward to everybody when we use this term. I think we can get here and I'm glad you did. So it's a little bit of a provocation. Do you have anything else. Anyone else. Well, that's okay we have a lot of time to talk about this stuff as seated people. So I'm going to read the next one. This one is about economic models. The responsibility to fix the arts economy should fall to the government. Yeah, I'm going to start by putting you in the spot because you're the strongest to agreeing with that. Again, I get it should fall to the government and too many other things. I don't think that this government in this country pays any attention or enough attention to the arts so I don't want to go over there and take them off the hook. And I don't want to go over there because I don't think that I think when we speak of government what sort of government because I don't think we're living in a true democracy so I certainly don't want to give that up. I certainly don't want to give that power there. Yeah, that's why I'm standing here. She had you want to share what you're thinking. I mean I think I'm back to defining our terms here, like fix and should government like these are all giant words for for giant spectral shapes that I don't want to give that much responsibility or power to. What do you believe about this stuff. What do I believe about this stuff. I mean any guy come back to what I was talking about in my manifesto I think I believe we all have bodies. I think that those bodies field things, and that very often the things that we're feeling and experiencing need to be the heart of our own experience. We have to listen more to that voice and it has to be less about like who should fix the stuff and the monsters and more about what can we take responsibility for in our own lives to send those ripples out to create change. I think thank you. That's great. Yeah, I was meant to say one more I was thinking about Marisol, who in her manifesto provocation talked to us about representation so I feel like representation is part of the public good and it's also part of this question of the economics of who should, who should help us. So I'm wondering if you have thoughts to what comes to your mind and your position that you're sitting in and with the audiences that you work with. We have a government that wants to destroy government. We have a government that doesn't want to feed children. We have a government that wants children in debt for school lunch. I, I don't have a better idea. In this moment, except like us, we have to figure some things out together. But at this particular time, I would say, and especially when it comes to the arts, and anything that might be a seed for change or revolution or care care was another important word that came up in our conversation like, we just don't have high hopes for our government. I'm like, actually bored of that question, in a way, like, I think this is true probably of all artists but definitely in the theater for young audiences for all, we're like, look what we could do if only we had the money of Denmark or the UK, or you know, yeah, like, okay, and, and what right. I feel like I want to be like, clone and be there and be there. Because I do think that it's really horrible that this government doesn't value art. There is no places, there is no value system to create memories and children so that they can grow up and feel like empathy to arrive to a theater to wow, you know, to create this memory that you created your family going to the theaters, not necessarily to a football game, these memories that you create with your date when you're like teenager and you're going to see a play together. There is, I feel sorry, because I experienced those memories, and, and they're powerful. So I feel that there is also an amazing way for artists here to be advocates, and to really look into policy changing. And really, like, because, because they're afraid of artists, because we're not ever be a centralized system. You know, when I was working as a citizen love is an Albany. They used to say like, oh, yeah, it is dangerous because you don't know who the leader is, they just fall. And, and I think there is a lot of power that we all have here, that we really could use to really get to that place where we can increase budgets, where we can really think about unison, but like, that's, that's key, March needs more money. And the government in a way needs to step up and not just, you know, the philanthropy mask with what we know is mask. We're at the last of the three. Sure. Yeah. I also wanted to take a moment and share that this thing that just brought up at the beginning that we've worked on a decade ago called the Brooklyn commune was kind of like a manifesto, and one of the things that we discovered pretty early on was this book from 1965 called performing arts, the dilemma by William Balmo and William Bowen, and it's out of print but if you want to get in touch with us we have ways of understanding it or getting it to you, and especially the Brooklyn commune report itself does the highlights. But the whole idea of it is that the, they were asked at the beginning of the NEA is founding what should we expect for the arts economy moving forward, please these young economists will you do a study for us and study the sector and what should be happening. And the, the, the discovery was that every year, the arts will cost more and more money in a capitalist system, because the rest of the economy can more or less lower the costs of doing it by making things more efficient over time, but theater like healthcare and like education are dependent on live human to human interactions they cannot be sped up like you cannot rehearse Macbeth faster is they use it in the, in the, in the, in this study so I'm quoting that as part of the script. And if you can rehearse that faster now than you could 200 years ago. And so if we're understanding this fundamental premise that it's going to be more and more expensive every year. What do we do about that, the government could be one way. But it's something that we need to have a plan for maybe. Yeah. Well, we're finding out that these kind of broad statements are really both welcoming of a lot of thought but also really maybe frustrating structure to work with but we do have one more, which is the audience. And the, the broad statement and strongly agree disagree. Theater is relevant to people today. Yeah, stand somewhere where you feel like you have a people in mind. Yeah. I like that you can keep moving. If that's how you feel. I like this. Hard holding. Jesse, how are you feeling about this question. Well, it's like clearly not the audiences didn't come back after the pandemic, you know, and we're busy trying to blame Netflix on it and like but like the audiences came back to clubs. You know, every time you get a ticket to like a club night, you can't get a ticket. It's impossible. You have to race your friends get tickets and their slides performance there and if you're going out there and they're spending a lot of money and there's there's young people there and there's brown people there and there's trans people there, you know, and the other likes to be like, oh no, those people don't exist. They don't go out, but they do go. They just don't come to our house. It's us. It's not that you know. So is it relevant. No, but the reason why I like that is like it could be. And some is, it could be. Who wants to chime in next. That's how are you doing. I think that my assumption here is that we're seeing theaters relevant. And the reason why I'm over here is because I'm assuming that we're talking about the institution of theater. Not the art form of theater. Not the theater that happens between all people all the time and the idea of performance happens and surrounds us every day. I'm making the assumption you're talking about theater as in like the spaces where people say like, hey, you want to go see a play. Right. And that I agree with you Jesse just run the numbers. Right. Although it is worthwhile that Netflix is really in danger of going bankrupt and might not be around. So, hey, there's something going on. It's also completely economically unstable and has been from its begin, but like the. So, that's what I'm thinking about. I'm like saying, and I mean, obviously, like my writing was talking about that right like this institution itself this idea of itself. I don't know if it's relevant anymore. I don't know. I think it may have served its purpose. You know, and maybe it's time to think about something different. I want to jump in with an intervention here I was at a conversation the other day, and something that links what Beto is saying of what are we defining as theater, and something I think that Marisol brings up to in terms of us thinking of who is making theater and attending theater is that there are high schools and middle schools and people are doing musicals all the time and plays all the time, and parents are coming as audience and families coming as audience so when we're thinking of theater. And that's what we're thinking about because maybe it is relevant to audiences today and we're just a little bit too elite in our, in our ideas. Yes. Yes, there's something that happens. Right. There's something that happens where it's like everybody understands K through 12th grade what it is like try out for a play and be in a show and be in a play or like be in a dance. Or like play in your orchestra play in your band right like everybody understands that and then something happens after we have structures of school where things get professionalized. And some people are artists and some people are not and some people belong inside the theater and some people don't. Some people can afford a ticket and other people don't. And the institution of the theater becomes the question. Whereas, like, do you want to do a play. Everyone's like yeah I want to do play. Like, yes, I want to sing whatever something from guys and dolls like I do. So, yeah, I just want to I'm just echoing sort of what you were saying just. So what you brought up about like what do we mean when we say that people are hungry for it. And I've also, you know, worked as a community engagement professional and some respects for some theaters where it's like, Oh, we got hundreds of people to talk to us about making a show about their town and then we had an intergenerational ensemble of like from eight ages, eight to like 96 or something of 60 people 70 people who want to be on stage and tell their story. Right. Once the barriers to access were lowered and it was like this is actually yours. This is yours. It's for you it's by you. It's a meaning to the story that you want to tell and the way you want to tell it. So, I'm hopeful over here. Yeah, thank you for that. I also think that there is, like, we can generalize right audience don't come back to the theater, but it's that, you know, like, through the pandemic. There were so many shows that had pack spaces. Do we think a pack spaces is a 500 800 house proscenium. Right. That's those are questions. There's this tree. It was so much art going on like I've been creating throughout the whole pandemic and we had sold out shows. So I feel that's why I walking right but yeah it depends like where so it go back to yeah that generalization where it always keep leading us to. Yeah, thank you so much I'm kind of hearing. Let's make it easier to plug in for people and we can democratize theater a lot more than we are. And let's maybe make smaller theaters. And so having a burden for everything to be huge, because the ticket sales so rarely pay for things anyway. But I also just want to like knowledge that time to buy real fast. And, and maybe we should just like kind of stay in army and ring positions for like the last 10 minutes of chatting. And so, and so grab a mic if you don't have one. And it looks like everyone almost got them so. And we'll, and we can go to the next slide. If we don't mind. So that's for you at home and you in the audience you can just write anything you want now, like, if you got a question throw it up there. If you have a thought, please share it. If it gets mean towards a person or a group we're going to shut it down, but other than that, do your thing. And, and yeah, so you want to. Yeah, so I think, because we just have 10 minutes left and because we are also the we were thinking we did focus this for a moment on New York City, like I think, giving us all the question for a moment of. How could New York City pull through for you. That's the question that I would love to find your responses to. Yeah, how could New York City pull through for you. Which is similar to the question on the screen what are you hopeful about it looking forward to but in the, you know, in a way, who wants to go first, but I want to hear from everyone on that one. You got something. Can I reframe the question. Can we bring reframe the question is like how can we pull through for New York City. Like why, why does the city need to do something for me. Why are we not helping the city. Right. What is our role in the conversation right in the dialogue in the action. Do you want to answer it. Well, I asked the question. I have it, I can, I can, but I'd rather hear other people first. Yeah, do you have something. No kidding. You know, I, I was thinking of this with the last the last statement I'm like, are we talking about New York City or we're talking about the US are we. I think New York City and more so than I don't know if I don't know if that's a true statement, but as a city of immigrants and when I think of theater being being important. There are so many different cultural reasons people go to the theater that how do we, how do we create spaces to hold all of those. And what am I hopeful about is that we can think about space differently we can think about where do people go to this need and I think people need do need theater so what spaces can we create that that answer that need and I don't I don't know where those spaces are but I think some of them are religious spaces, some of them are our public spaces. I think New York City and I think it does this in some ways but I think we need to keep rethinking of where do people go and how do we reach how do we go to them. I think it's really popular like some hardcore questions up here, but we'll answer every single one of them. I've been New York City for a long time and one thing I will say is that the relationship with New York City must be reciprocal for me so New York City does only. I've given the city a lot and she better pay so I'm number one I'd say but they're different things I think I every every single day I own New York City kindness, you know, and that is the only way to get around the city is to like pay kindness kindness kindness and hope that other people will pay you with kindness to, you know, I think that's an important thing by New York City, but in terms of like when New York City can like, you know, give me or how can like come through for me for the art and stuff like that as to what it has to do with space as well. I wish that New York City would do something that would give artists space to work in, you know, like I'm just that one thing is such a gigantic barrier to creating art. And I teach students that I wonder with these students, because I always tell them don't wait for the institutions just go out and art your art. And I was like, you know, when we were like how to have data companies and stuff like that, you know, but like I'm, but back in the day when we were like, but kids, the spaces were easier to get. They were easier to like, you know, hustle through trick your way into. And now how do young people get space these days, and New York City could give us space which was a lot empty spaces, because New York City is going through a weird time. I want New York City to give us empty spaces just to play in and to make worth the other end. And it's there. There's so much empty space. But I do think it's, it's easy to forget I think that we live on a series of islands. And like in an island real estate will always be at a premium. Right. And so like that's something like that question of space. But also say, really some of my favorite theater happens on the subway. So give those guys give those break dancers a couple of bucks every time see them they're working the butts off. Awesome. I'm hopeful about co-ops. I think it's about sharing space models, whether it's an actual like co-op shape or not, but it's something about mixed use spaces and bringing in creative people from different areas of the city. And with different things to say, and creating space that doesn't have that sort of like elitist theater thing, because clearly that's not working. And that offers just more intentional ways to, to ask those questions to folks who were not interested in creating space. I love all these questions, thoughts and reflections. And I was thinking once giving you life and keeping you here right now and it's so interesting that you are going to space and then the space because became the thing. And at the beginning I was like, well, my community really is like, it's like the people who want to work with us, the interns at email and want to intern in our place. You know, just like the people who want to support, you know, it's just like, you know, the people who want to work with us, the interns at email and want to intern in our place. You know, just like the people who want to support, you know, it's just like, but then I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, but all that is possible because you have access to space. We did fought a lot for that space, but it is possible because there is a space like a star, this Casa de Pensamiento, this is a space in which we can gather. So it's, it's, it's that and that house of thought or of where you do things, whether it's ritual, whether it's cooking, eating together, performing together, fighting together in generative confrontation like we'd say at LeMay. It's, I think it's key. Not because we cannot do theater and performance in other places like you say that so well, like, I love that we are places to perform. But there is something that we need this sort of circle spaces so that we can tune to each other in the values that we want to resonate with in the world or that we want to create those resonance in the world. So yeah, I think definitely we really have to somehow organize for that kind of chair space being creative solidarity economy. Feel what that means to us right now and and how we're going to work together. Yeah. And Marisol I think you have an answer get right. But I was gonna also just give that I love that I think you're the last one to answer and you are the New Yorker among us on this stage who is, you know, born and been here from the beginning of your life so it's kind of lovely that we have you for some thoughts. Yeah, I guess this call for space really resonates with me space to in which to make to attune to be in circle together. And then I'm like let's take it to the streets like I don't have a street theater festival a busking festival like we have all these incredible artists everywhere. And I wonder also if that's a way of democratizing, not only who is regarded as an artist, but also who has access to the art. Like you could make a piece in your space that you're blessed to have access to bring it to the street and then like the dude playing electric violin like a, like a genius and the subway can also play in the same festival right. So yeah, I just, I think, I don't know the city feels really hard right now feels really hard. It's hard to be on the street in New York right now. It's feeling like it used to back in the day when I was like a little a little baby. You know, we're all here. So we can, we're making it happen and we're, we're hopeful we keep keeping on because of our community and our foolish and beautiful sense of possibility. So we keep going. Thank you. You know, I'm inspired by so much of the way that this conversation is flowed. And, and I'm, you know, going back to this question and manifestos and avant garde and like what matters there and I think for the last 100 150 years we've been so concerned about finding people in the theater, aesthetically, politically, but I think what I'm hearing and also feeling today is like a return to something ancient which is something that is denied to us in the rest of our daily life about being in a room together and being vulnerable and learning from each other about that or watching people do that. And that's no offense to our friends on on the robots, but like, I do, I do think it's different. And I find hope there. I find, I find, I know I've been transformed there. And the only thing that I will add is that, and then when you talked about progress, and it's always the future is now and is happening and we are always in the moment of becoming and to remember that with the revolution and the end with the ritual, it is centered on our ability to continue to become. And I think that that is one of the essential qualities that theater and performance has that other media and genres don't. So, thank you for an amazingly wonderful build conversation tonight. Thank you all for being with us. Yeah, so we have just some quick things and you guys can feel free to pack your stuff and get ready and do whatever you need to do, but we would like to thank again the prelude staff we'd like to thank, thank Frank, and the team at prelude we'd like to thank the CUNY Graduate Center and the theater and performance art program and howl round for streaming this event. And we want to remember that on Saturday 1014 from nine to one at the tank there's going to be a dance party and awards for people to go to It's 9pm. 9pm. And as they say, awesome. It's an all day dance party for me. And, and most most importantly, we are going to be at a bar next, and that is, oh, at, oh wait, no, I was going to say that part. I'm going to say that the tank is located on 36th Street because they're both located on the same street. And so is the bar. Exactly. So 36th Street is happening this year for preludes. That's about us, but if you want to continue the conversation will be continuing it. So thanks everyone for being here digitally and in the future. Also, and have a wonderful evening.