 Good. Okay. Is this on? I don't know. I can't hear. There it is. Hi everyone, how are you? And welcome to panel number three of how did you make that? I am going to first introduce our two guests who are making their way to the table. Melanie Joseph founding artistic producer of the Foundry and Jacob Pedrone founder and artistic director of the Soul Project. For those of you who don't know me which would not be a surprise. I am a writer and performer and I do autobiographical work most recently my solo play, Hi, Are You Single? Hi, Are You Single? was presented in the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater which is why Andrew Kircher thought that I would be appropriate because he said that I was charming and funny and so that I could make a talk charming and funny. Well, we'll try. I think I did one out of two yesterday charming and funny. Okay, so I'm going to aim for two out of two today. All right, let's talk to these wonderful folks. First of all let's see if your mics work. I hope they do. We're going to use mics. I'm a big proponent of that because you never know who in the room may or may not be hard of hearing. Even though it's a small room, I want to be accessible to everyone. Let's begin test. Can you hear me? Can everyone hear me? Yes. I think we're good. Let's start with Jacob since you're right here. You're both very charming. I can tell you that. But Jacob, tell us a little about the Soul Project for those who are unfamiliar and what sort of led you to create what is referred to on your website. It's not a theater company, but a theater initiative. Well, thank you all for, thank you to the Pralude Festival for having me here and it's an honor to be in the company of these two artists. So thank you. So the Soul Project is, yes, it is a new theater initiative and the way that we like to describe it is it's trying to promote a more inclusive American theater. The impetus to start the Soul Project began in 2013 when I arrived at the Public Theater. I was a producer on staff there and when I just began to kind of assess the sort of ecology or the ecosystem in New York City, I just saw that it was a very homogenous community that when I looked at the seasons off Broadway, they didn't really reflect the wonderful kaleidoscope of our great city. The stages were homogenous. And so I thought to myself, could I create an initiative that would allow us to really widen the circle in a really intentional way and specifically lift up Latinx voices. Latino playwrights just don't have the kind of visibility that I think they deserve. So what the Soul Project is, is it's essentially identifying Latinx playwrights and we pair them with leading off Broadway theaters in New York City and those theaters commit to producing their plays. And that's the initiative. The hope is that we create a body of work that really represents the city of New York and represents our community in all of its kind of fullness. The other dimension to the initiative is that after the work premieres here in New York City with the different off Broadway partners that we identify regional theaters around the country who then commit to the kind of what I like to call the continued life of the play. So the hope is that each playwright will not only have their production in New York, but then we'll go out into the regions. And so we really create kind of a national movement of celebrating and lifting up Latinx playwrights. Extraordinary. Extraordinary. Isn't it? And so are you. I'm ready to hear about the Foundry. Talk to us about the Foundry and what that organization. It has a long history. So just try to give us, you know, a summary for those who are unfamiliar. There doesn't seem to be. But my instruction was to start at a base on. So that is why I asked that. Excavating and building the archive of the company 23 plus years, 74 individual posts and sort of baby websites. Could you use the mic, please? So I'm sorry. I didn't realize. So I have been. I had my first day off on Wednesday since the end of June. I've just been a maniac excavating literally every single solitary thing we've done since 1994. And it's, it's been kind of a privilege more than it's been a nightmare also, but a really good nightmare. And when Andrew asked me to do this, I thought, okay, it seems like a good, it seems like a good time. So we just beta launched the Foundry website. Our website crashed everything back up the site. The host was hacked by some Russian mobsters and they lost everything and everyone lost all their sites. So we had to rebuild. So that's what just happened. So I do want to say before I tell you a little bit about the company that you might not know is that this year we're taking a pause. We aren't doing any shows, community programs or dialogues. Well, we're doing the ambassadors program. I'll come back to that. But we're actually taking a pause to look back and see what the heck we did for 23 and a half years and think about what the Foundry might become next. As a useful entity in the theater world. So I'll just say that I, it's not a starting night for, we never have had a season. We've never had a building. We've never had subscribers. We have done from the beginning productions. Well, we make work. We've done some existing works as well, but primarily all the work we do is by commission. So we do theater dialogues and different kinds of community programs. The idea of the Foundry is primarily to look at the agency of artists, not only as makers of art, but as makers of the world. And so there's a lot of politics involved in that. And I would say the three things that really lead the work we do are invitation, making and something else. But invitation and making right now is what I'm thinking a lot about. We think of all of the shows that we do, everything that we do as another opportunity. They invite people to come together and think about their relationship to what it means to be alive in the world and making the world. Because you make the world every day, right? So that's kind of the gist. Does that give enough information? Of course it does. Absolutely. That's terrific. Now, I'm curious, because I saw one of the in-development projects on your new website, which looks fabulous, by the way, for a beta website that came about because your last one just died. I saw that you were potentially developing a book about the history of the company. And is that something that you're going to continue to think about in this year that you're taking to reflect? Yeah, this reflection equals doing the archive and getting it up and cleaning it up. And we're making a book. The website exists as the sort of coffee table book. It has all of the pictures and all the everything and all the histories of the shows, etc. But the book is hopefully and has begun to really try to understand the evolution of the inquiry of the questions we were asking. Over those years. As something that may be useful to makers and social justice workers, I think that the foundry in some way itself is an art project. The company is an art project. And so it's gone through its various evolutions of asking what art is, and what a company is, and what a theater is, and what a citizen is, although I don't like that word. What a maker of the world is. Wonderful. Now, your company that's been around since 1994, your company that was... 94. 94. Yes. Yes. That's what I said. It's okay. In 1994, you scared me. 10 more years, I didn't do it. 1994 and an initiative established in 2016. So obviously we have two sides of the spectrum here. Very new and very established. And both of you don't have buildings. Both of you rely on partnerships with established companies to either present your work or co-produce your work. That kind of... No? Rent? Total rentals. Totally. Okay. And so let's start there. We can. We can. But that's a question that I wouldn't have known to ask. So I'll come back to it. But you are a company that is partnering with other organizations. And that's the pillar of the work that you're doing. It wasn't that, oh, I'm going to just produce my... You know, lots of young people are starting their own companies all the time. And some of them don't last. A lot of them don't last. But yours is already making a huge impact in just over a year because you're partnering with these major organizations. How did you know that that was the route you wanted to take? And how did you go about... Obviously you have an administrative background at the public and at Oregon Shakespeare and other places, you know. But how did you know this is the model that I want to take? And how did you parlay those relationships so quickly into viable partnerships? Yeah. I mean, I think figuring out what the apparatus was going to be for this whole project was sort of a little bit of an evolution. Because the way that I describe it is that it is kind of a big experiment. I wasn't sure it was going to work. You know, when I communicated the vision to some sort of early supporters, they were like, I don't think those artistic directors are going to sort of want to share any kind of artistic control or want to be in partnership with an initiative that is very specific. And so I wasn't sure, actually. But what I did know from the get-go was that we had to really... I'm looking at my dear friend Stephanie and one of the things that we talk about a lot in our work is really banging down the doors of these kind of predominantly white institutions and to really catalyze real change around promoting racial equity. So it was about, in my mind, it was very much like, we're not going to self-produce. We're going to bang down the door of these large off-roadway institutions and really ask to have a real seat at the table and to claim space in a real way. And I think fortunately, because I have a background as a producer, starting at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles and certainly with Steppenwolf and OSF, where, you know, Martha Levy and Bill Roush have been incredible mentors. They're both... Martha has since passed away and Bill continues to run the company at OSF. I think that one thing that they really taught me was the value of relationships, that so much of what it means to make theater is relationships, is to sit across from someone and to understand their story in a deep way. So that was really the orientation that I think I entered this work with. So as I met with the different artistic directors, that's where I started from, was let's build a meaningful relationship together, let's go on a journey together, let's create a more inclusive American theater. And I think, you know, who doesn't want to get on board with that vision? And so it's not... So it is about promoting Latinx writers, but I think that the larger invitation to these off-roadway companies that are partners is, let's widen that circle, let's actually create real systemic change and really give voice to people who don't have them. I mean, I think they could be doing it across the board and it's wonderful that this is happening. Like it's happening at the public this season. So wow, wow, wow. Yes, everyone, please come see Edepis El Rey. It's a New York premiere by one of our master writers. I mean, this is a prime example of a writer who's built such an amazing body of work, Luis Alfaro, you know, he's taking these Greek classics and put them in a contemporary context. And Edepis El Rey is so fantastic and spellbinding. And we just released a couple more tickets. The show runs until December, but please, please come and see it and let people know. Because I think the way that we let artistic directors and communities know that we can sell tickets is by having butts in seats. So, yeah. You know, how did you identify the playwrights that you wanted to be a part of this launch? So it's very much a collaboration. So between the Soul Project, I work with a collective of artists. There are six other artists that I work closely with. We're sort of like a little sort of mini theater company. And we actually enter a curatorial process with every partner. So in the case of Oscar Eustis, you know, we gave Oscar a list of writers to think about. He sort of talked to me about the artist he was excited by. And then we landed on Luis Alfaro. The same thing happened with Susan Bernfield at New Georgia. We did a play, The World Premier of Alligator, by Hilary Betis. And then in our partnership with Rattlestick, it was the same sort of thing. We gave a list to Daniella. Daniella sort of said, I'm interested in supporting Martin Zimmerman. I was like, hey, that's perfect. We love Martin. We want to support him. And Seven Spots in the Sun was the thing that we birthed together. And we did the New York premiere of that. It's fine. You ask a question? Go ahead. Am I E? I haven't actually. I'm a big fan of his work. I went to their gala that was fantastic. Oh, there we go. Can we please use the mic? Is this Ralph Pena who runs my theater is doing similar. At least it's driven by carving out space for most Asian American writers. And they've really, I mean, they've really levered attention in a really gorgeous way and a really responsible way. I just feel like you guys should know each other. Because he's also been doing it for 25 years. They do fantastic work. And I think one of the things that the Soul Project is also allowing us to do is to talk to these different artistic leaders or gatekeepers. And the awards that we use to describe their functions, their gatekeepers, they can make decisions to promote real changes. We talk about intersectionality. So in putting the creative teams together for these different shows, one of the mandates for these different partner companies is that there's real intersectionality. So that it's not an all-white creative team. So for you directors out there, it's always so disappointing when you open the playbill and you see, you know, again, I think that the work is made richer when you have a racially diverse creative team. So it's been really, it's been such a blessing that the Soul Project is allowing us to actually have all these different points of intersection to promote real change. Yeah. Now let's go back to the question of rentals. Because this is called How Did You Make That? And I want to know how do you choose where to go? Where you want your productions to be? The production decides. Because we make most of our stuff from scratch, so we don't know what it's going to be until it starts to have a skeleton. And so then it's, I mean it's not always as beautiful as that because sometimes it makes itself into something and you can't get the space for it so you get the best you can. But some of our work has been, as you must know now, in the theaters and some have been on buses and in restaurants and in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage and various things. And the last show we did, we actually turned a theater into a gallery. And so it's really the show identity, the development process of whatever this thing becomes determines then where we're, you know, the kind of architecture that it belongs in. And I also should say, just because I don't want to be orthodox about we rent everything, there have been some co-presenters with us who've actually, but we don't seek that, we never have. Because I just, I think we want the autonomy of being able to do what, to understand what we mean by what we're doing, especially because it's new and usually the structure of it, who knows if it's going to work, who the hell ever knows. So having, so we don't, you know, it's dicey when you partner with somebody when you don't know what it's going to be. And sometimes it's fabulous and sometimes it's like, hmm, that was an interesting reach. You know, I mean, yeah. So mostly when we need a theater, we rent it. And sometimes we're presented. Like again, I've just been, I forgot about all of these shows that we had done at the ice factory first. I'd forgotten that we'd done them at the ice factory and then they went to St. Anne's or the public or hero there. And I, because the noisy ones are the big theaters. So, but, yeah, so there's no one way, but typically we don't seek the kind of, we don't look for the kind of partnerships like that. We haven't so far. And community is such a huge pillar of everything that you do. You know, there's a thing on the website that says productions and then there's a thing that says dialogues and it's all these talks and ways that you've engaged the community of New York. And, you know, it's so community engagement is sort of becoming something that's invoked now. Well, hopefully it's better than invoke, but it is popular. Yes. And what, how do you reach people who don't often come to the theater and engage a community that is, that is, you know, outside the bounds of who we might be marketing tickets to all the time? Well, I also want to add to that. How do you engage artists who don't usually come to dialogues? Or can you, like, it's a, it is a harmonic challenge because we're always hoping that artists will come to the dialogues. It's the hardest thing to do. Oh, yeah. It used to be in the, I think it's because our dialogues have changed so much over the years. I would say the first 10 years where the dialogues were kind of paused. Okay, wait a minute. This is happening? This is actually happening? Is this what we mean? Wait a minute. Is this, is this it? And then the more we would get people to come and talk to us about what was actually happening, the more we realized that not only did they know it was actually happening, but they were so advanced in terms of the way they were either prefiguring other ways for things to happen. And, like, one of my favorite events was this thing that R.J., one of my partners was R.J. McConaughey, who's a social justice worker, and he curated this series called This Is How He Dipped This Is Out. And, yeah, you know how many times I heard that song over there? And it was all, it was a kind of, I called it a radical show and tell, this is all of these demonstrations of completely other structures that are going, systemic processes that are, like, this is actually happening, which also comes from lipstick traces. This is actually happening. And it was the most, I couldn't believe all of, like, it was like, you're kidding, that, you're kidding, that, that, that. And that was in 2011, I think, or I'm not sure, somewhere in the 210s. And it was very, very hard to get artists to come to that. And so that's been, I think, for me as big a challenge as, in fact, probably more of a challenge, because we have done so many different projects with different communities, mostly social justice grassroots communities, who themselves have so much agency and presence and smarts and organizing skills. So I've always been so attracted to those kinds of communities. More so, I think, than, we've worked with some church communities and some mosques and stuff, but it's a, there's a different energy. I think social justice communities are a lot like artists because they're makers. They hold what isn't there until it's there, and they have to, right? So we've just developed so many, such currency with people in those communities. So it's, but they also didn't want to come to the theater. So we started the audience ambassadors program in 2010, I think it was. So that's a program where, because we had this whole big meeting with all these people that we had just done this big, huge community theater festival called, This Is How We Did It, or so I can't remember whatever it was. New York City, just like I pictured it. Also another Stevie Wonder song from, you know, that great song. What is that song? Living in the City. So, and then we did a show called Telephone, and no one came. We couldn't get anybody came. We had worked with something like, I don't know, 150, 200 people for a year, and nobody came to Telephone. So I had this big gathering, had this big dinner party, and said, How come? And the most interesting thing, which, and I have it on tape, I was listening to it on tape for the archive. And they would say things like, I don't know what to wear, or what is that, where is that? Or what am I gonna, what's that theater? Or what's that play? Or like the simplest things. So it was, it had nothing to do with money, because they were offered free tickets all the time. So it had nothing, I mean, of course it had to do with money, especially with political people, insofar as how dare those theaters charge that much money, which is a big, interesting thing when we were at the public. But the, and we had free tickets. Anyway, that's another very, it's an interesting story. It's not a bad story. So they, we, so we just said, okay, well we're gonna hire five community organizers from around the city every year to organize groups of people, and we're gonna go to the theater. And that's what we do. And so we've been doing that every year in fall and spring. And the theaters have been, although everybody's getting a little tired of our asking, but the theater's for the most part for many years have been incredibly generous, because we wanna bring 50 people. You know, so that's, so we've seen everything, we've taken them to everything. So does that, that, yeah, that's really extraordinary. That's fabulous. And I think now is the time when we can open it up to questions. Now there's a rule about these questions. And that is no statements, no personal narratives about how your lives have been touched by their work, just questions. And so that we can get as much out of these two illustrious individuals as possible. All right, so does somebody have a microphone to be running? Yes, we do. So feel free to raise your hands if you have questions for these folks. Yes, sure, if you... Oh no, there's a jack-o-lantern. Okay, Jack has a quit. Thank you so much for starting us. Thank you. Hi, a question for Jacob. Just, and I know a lot about Soul Projects, this sounds strange, but part of your mission is going into these institutions and describe them as predominantly white institutions. And essentially what you're asking them to do at the very base level is to change. And I imagine that a lot, when you walk into someone's theater and say, I would like you to change, please, that there is some resistance to that, right? Or at least there's maybe some bristling at the very least. And I was curious about how you navigate that, those points of tension when you're at showing someone places where they can do better. Oh, Jack. I'm looking at Stephanie just because we're engaged in this work all the time. But no, it's such a great question and it's incredibly challenging. But what I have found has worked is that it's an invitation that I really try to disarm them by saying it's an invitation for us to go on a journey together. And why don't we enter this work with the spirit of generosity and a spirit of as a gatherer rather than as a hunter? Because I don't know all the answers and neither do you, but let's actually kind of create the answers together. And because what systemic change looks like for the public theater is going to be very different than what it looks like for Tim at Playwrights Horizons versus what it looks like for Bernie at MCC Theater, Bernie Telsey. So I always just try to meet them where they're at and when there's white fragility because they're opt-in is and defensiveness, I always just say, let's bring our shoulders down and again, I don't have all the answers, you don't have all the answers, but let's actually create the solutions together. And somehow that seems to kind of work and even before a partner comes on board, I really just try to have a very frank, honest conversation where I say, are you ready to do the work? Because the work is hard and the work is lifelong. Because this is about organizational change and it has to start from the very top. So not just about you as the artistic leader and your executive director, but how does it touch all parts of the organization? The board of directors, the staff, and then of course the audience, the programming, the communities that you're serving. So it does feel like a big lift and to be totally honest, I think there are some theaters that the appetite for it is so fantastic and then there are some, you know, where it's gonna just be a harder lift, but again, meeting them where they're at and always describing it as an invitation. On the founder, I keep on hearing the echoes of Joseph Boyce and his social sculptures and bringing it to the people and engaging the people. And I also hear the theater of the oppressed where bringing it to the community and then having the community get involved in even writing legislation. How are you engaging the community more in their face rather than in a theater environment? There's no one way. What I want to make really clear before I begin to try to answer that question is that the Foundry is an ecology. So we do high art and sometimes in community theater and we do the ambassadors program and free-range Thanksgiving and all kinds of different invitations to people to consider what they are in the world and how we are together in the world. And so I want to be really clear that although I love Freerie, I'm not Freerie, pardon me, while I love Boa, I'm not, in fact, nothing we've ever done has been radical in that particular way. I take great honor in your recognizing Joseph Boyce. In fact, I think I might use that as one of the tags for the shows. It's an ongoing, honest to goodness. There's not one way. It's very organic. And the great thing about not having a season and a building and a responsibility to filling the household, you know, 52 weeks a year, we can sort of follow the work. You can follow the work and you can follow the relationships and you can follow people's ideas. And so I know this is not a specific answer, but when we did the Community Theatre Festival, the Citywide Community Theatre Festival, it grew out of the year before we had given our dialogue series that year. We had given the curation over to five community organizations to curate the dialogues. We had a subject idea. We threw it up, whatever. And of the six dialogues, five of them were performances. So we thought, oh, okay, they don't want to do dialogues. So maybe we should do, let's do a Community Theatre Festival. Let's do a Community Theatre Festival. So it literally, we just followed because it's a nimble company, thank goodness. And so we can follow, we can follow our way. And sometimes we're dismally a mess, like a failure at the invitation. And it's very challenging with, it's never challenging with the community. It's commonly challenging with the organizational structure of social justice community organizations. And you understand it. They have campaigns. They got shit to do. And I don't necessarily, and we don't organize that way. We don't have sign up sheets and not that we would prevent it, but we have a different kind of politics. So we have a prefigurative politics as opposed to protest politics. So it's like you said, it's just meet people where they are and you be yourself where you are and you work it out or you don't. There are people who hate us. It breaks my heart, but it's true. There are people who really hate us. So that's their fault, their problem. I mean, I think it's ridiculous just to, anyway. It's too sectarian. You're both so generous with all of the invitation language, which I really appreciate, but I have to ask if there's ever been a moment where you just had to demand. Fabulous. Steph, that's such a good question. Do you want to go first on that? I have a very specific, I actually have a very specific example and I wonder, maybe the audience can tell me once I share what the example is, because it's so specific and some might actually say a little, maybe even a little reductive in terms of what the request was, but I think it's okay to share this example, but basically we were trying to figure out how to, I prefaced this by saying when we started to think about the different partner companies, the public theater was certainly on the list. We felt it was so important because under the leadership of Joe Papp, Latino theater was really, the public theater was a real home for Latino theater and so part of, and film, and there was the programming swell to a big festival that used to happen at the Delacorte in Central Park. The budget ballooned to $2 million. So one of the things that I wanted to talk to Oscar a lot about when I first arrived at the public theater in 2013 was, Oscar, how do we reactivate that history? How do we actually get Latinos back into this theater, back into Lafayette Street? And so, you know, so to have Edepecel Ray there, to have Luis Alfaro in that building is incredibly special and so I was going back and forth with marketing to figure out how do we actually communicate to the world that the SOLE project is a real partner in this and so in our community, opening night, right guys, is a big deal because it's the step and repeat, you know, you have your actors, your creative team, your writer, your director, who stand, you know, in front of that thing and pictures get taken and those pictures exist in perpetuity. And so the request, the demand was, I think it's really important that we have the public logo and the SOLE projects logo next to each other and the public, you know, there was real concern that well gosh, if we do that for you, it's just going to open a huge can of worms and the public, rightfully so, I think was trying to, needing to protect their brand, which I totally understand, but what I said was, as I said, I can appreciate the concern, but the way that I described it was, the way that I described it to them as I said, it's more than, it's actually not about the logos. Why this is important and why I am making this demand is because it's about artists of color claiming space, that we get to claim space in a very predominantly white community. This is white supremacy, so part of what we get to do is we get to say, we matter, we are here and we are staying. And so that was the moment where I felt like I had to make that demand and I'm very grateful that the demand was listened to and we will have both the Soul Project logo and the Public Theater logo on the step and repeat on October 24th for opening night and I think it is a real testament to the public to really hearing that we get to claim space as people of color. So, oh my gosh, I feel like are you okay? Now I just want to get off the planet. I just feel like where else can I go because capitalism is killing me. So, I mean the fact that you act, I know that place. I know that place, that that is what unfortunately has to take up your time to fight for and find your generosity of invitation for. It's like when? But that's, you know, that's my, you know, well it's such a difficult one because I think that I think that I feel less demanding in my hope for change in my politics. I really do feel like I'm part of an evolution of an ecological evolution and again, I perfectly well understand that it's easy for me to say I have food, I'm white, I'm educated, blah, blah, blah. But I feel, I feel excited by what Grace Lee Boggs used to say now is the time on the clock of the world for us to grow our souls and that is the most important activism of our time and a woman who lived to 102 was an activist as someone to pay attention to. So, I feel not demanding in that although listen to me, right? But I don't fight, I actually don't, one of the reasons I rent, I just don't want to fight. I don't want to fight over stupid things. Like, let's make something entirely otherwise. Let's make a whole other fucking world. Let's try it. Right? So, I just so I don't feel demanding in my politics. I get demanding and I hate myself for it but it's a darn truth. Especially when I'm not sure what to do. You know, I get just, no, do you think that's true? No worked with me on a show. Do you think that's true? Like, I do feel I'm like basically a generous, I feel generous by default but there are times when I'm like, no. I don't even want to think about the other side. So, but I'm working on it. Maybe. Extraordinary question and next year we'll have a panel on just like demands. Cause I think that was extraordinary. And I'm enraged and now I want to like keep talking about, oh wow. Step and repeat. Okay. Other questions? Okay, perfect. You're next. Yo, go, go, go. Oh my gosh, it's my favorite usher from the public theater. Hi. A question I guess for both of you. What ways can, and this is a really broad question, what ways can we make theater more accessible to communities other than financial other than financial initiatives? Community. What do you mean by that? How do you even start to think about who those, like all black people or all brown? Like what do you mean? So, as an usher at the public theater most of the audiences I deal with are 40s to 60 older white people who have been going to the theater for years and I, and whenever there's an audience that isn't just that group it's like, wow and there usually tend to be a lot more appreciative of the work and basically how do you reach out to the New York City community because the audiences I see in the theater aren't reflective of the New York City community and you said even when something's free sometimes people still don't come. What ways can we reach out to the people and what ways are we failing in making the theater accessible on a non-financial level? Yeah, cool. No, you go. When you have an audience that doesn't look like the white 40s to 60s what are they therefore usually? Absolutely not a mystery. I think so. I can't honest to God tell you that of 23 in that blah blah years I bet 35% of my life I've spent wondering about invitation. Like what is the nature of an invitation? What is the, how does the show itself contain that invitation? How does the space contain that invitation? Like what is the most what is the, what are all the languages of invitation? And so there's certain and it's such a harmonic when it's people who are being invited to come to something that is not I mean first of all, who's got time? You know, I mean part of it is just how busy people are and how selective they have to be with their time. So you're asking them to give of their time to something that they don't normally give their time to and in a place that they've never been etc. So it's a lot of hurdles. So it's kind of why I think there's an ecology and I think the public's doing it now. You know there's or beginning to there's a lot of different sort of, I mean if you think of, don't think, well if you think of you're making a symphony of invitation which means there's lots of different instruments that are going to ring and have to learn to be played. And so it's it's the project that Stephanie does it's the project that Lear or the new person does. It's you know it's it's all of those and it takes time honey it takes so much time that's where I don't feel demanding you know I again working with Archie McConaughey was life changing when he was at the Founder for five years and he said to me once we were asked by a funder who was just becoming interested in arts and social justice we had to hide all of our stuff from most of the funders for so many years and then suddenly all the funders are getting excited. So they wanted to give us money they called us and they said give us a three year plan and so Archie and I walked out of there and Archie looked at me and he said if they were really serious about this they'd ask for a hundred year plan the work that we're doing is a hundred years of work and it shows up and the successes show up in so many different flavors so it's not and again I think it's in capitalism is in the way big time because everything is so transactional you know even if you're offering free tickets it's still like you're getting away without paying something so there's a lot of things to work on simultaneously in what this invitation is and it's not going to come tomorrow if for sure isn't and even if it comes tomorrow it needs to last so that would be my answer too we only have time for one more question I think it's this gentleman do you still want to ask the question okay my my question was about if there were times in both of your organizations when you felt that there was an impulse that you had or a pack that you wanted to explore but for any number of reasons you had to say like no we're doing this thing that's happening over here and specifically that's because hearing about the Foundry project not having freaking building for 26 years sounds kind of terrifying and I mean I can't imagine that it's hard to imagine that it's a lot of fun to find places to rent all the time so I was kind of curious okay well I have one more question so please let me know I actually think that so in the short time that the Soul project has been around I think there have been a number of times where I have to think deeply about the mission and vision and I think my job as the artistic director is does this decision get us closer to the mission because I feel like that always has to be sort of the north star and so I feel like I face that most with who the partner companies are because now has this kind of wonderful problem where initially it was me going out and sort of meeting with the different artistic directors you know we're going to produce 12 writers with 12 different off-Broadway theaters and we have more than 12 companies in New York City who want to be a part of this thing right so that feels like such a wonderful problem to have and so now it's the work of okay who are the companies as I mentioned earlier who are the companies ready to really do the work who are the companies that are committed to racial equity who are the companies that want to promote systemic change like you know so that for me feels like sort of the biggest decision that I feel like I'm constantly having to make and then the second is thinking about those writers, thinking about that body of work you know the way that we describe it is we want to create a kaleidoscopic body of work that really represents the Latinx community in a beautiful way but I imagine that as the Soul Project journey continues that I will continue to be faced with questions and challenges and I think that one of the best things that a leader can do is when a leader says I don't know and so to just to be able to actually invite that kind of the unknown you know I remember my old professor from graduate school he said this really great thing that always has stayed with me which is a good leader a good artistic leader is concerned with being right but they are deeply concerned with figuring out what is wrong and so I always think about that when am I making the right decision and when am I making the wrong one and knowing that I'm not always going to have the right answer in 23 years yeah yeah put that on your body for a minute in 23 years do you want this project to do you imagine this project for 23 years do you have any idea around the time or the my hope is that in 23 years an initiative like the sole project will absolutely not be needed that the sole project will have failed I talk about this very explicitly the sole project will have failed if the only time these partner companies produce a play by a Latinx writer is when they are doing it with the sole project the invitation is to change I think to Jack's point it's very intentional that we do not exist in perpetuity that once all 12 writers are produced the hope is that we will have planted enough seeds that will affect change across the entire country so you're talking 12 writers that you want to place 12 writers nationally in New York City and then see where you are and then basically hope that those artistic directors those gatekeepers that they pick up the mantle well and the artists pick up the mantle and that's exactly right you know, not just the gatekeepers what a way to end thank you all so much for coming thank you to Jacob and to Melanie