 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the stage source. My name is David Shane, my pronouns are he, him, and his, and I am the program director here at stage source, and we're thrilled to have you for our Gender Explosion Forum. There have been, there are a committee of folks who have been working on this since before I was even here on how to make the New England Theatre community more gender inclusive, and that's going to be some of what we're talking about tonight. If you want to learn more about the work that that group has been doing, you can go to stagesource.org slash gender explosion. There are some great videos, there are some tips and some resources there on that site to help you learn about that work and how you might engage with it more fully. Moving forward, I want to make you aware of a couple of things to look out for. We are in the process of developing some resources to make available to the community to help with the wording of casting notices, so that's something to I see some nodding in the crowd. Good. So that's something to keep an eye out for that sort of in development, and we're hoping that in January we'll have some sort of standardized language that we can make available to everybody to keep an eye out for that. Another project that we just launched, the New England Monologues Project, is a project meant to engage New England playwrights and stage source member actors by providing the actors with audition material that is from new plays and new works so that it's fresh for their auditions and allowing those New England writers the chance to be heard by directors and artistic directors and literary folks in those auditions to help showcase their work. So check out that project if you're a writer or you know a writer. We are specifically looking for more material by and for trans and non-binary artists to include in that database, so definitely check that out and spread it around to your networks of folks and hopefully we can build that resource for the community as well. This evening's forum is being live streamed on Howl Round, so some of you are watching at home, hello, but it will also be available and archived on their site after tonight, so we will share that link with you and hope that you share it with anybody who couldn't be with us tonight so that they can also be a part of the discussion. All right, I'm going to get out of the way. I want to introduce you quickly to our panelists. First, to my right is Sarah Shipnoy, managing director of Company One Theatre. Next, Mark Lunsford, who is the artistic producer of the American Repertory Theatre, followed by Sloth Levine, who is a freelance director and playwright in our community, and finally, Liliana Vogel, who is the co-director of the Underlings Theatre Company, and I'm going to turn it over to our moderator for this evening. They are a playwright, actor, and activist, and I'm plugging writer of the upcoming The Earth Room at Freshing Theatre in May. I'm turning it over to Mark. Thank you. Wow, thank you for coming, everybody. So nice, and thank you for watching along at home. So, I'm Mark. I use they, them pronouns. Very excited for this kind of, I guess this is sort of the first public gathering of our gender explosion forum, the initiative in general. So, that's really jazzed about that. I think it's worth acknowledging today. We're talking about gender diversity in the Boston Theatre scene. We're talking about trans artists, non-binary artists, and audiences, how to bring them into spaces, how to get them making work, seeing work, and being included as a part of our theatre community. And I think it's worth acknowledging that the people in this room and on this panel today aren't necessarily, we don't necessarily represent all of the people who are affected by and interested in this topic. For example, trans people of color. We have a very white panel today. But we are, having said that, very lucky to have a panel of people who have made it a goal in their career and a priority to be talking about this question of gender diversity. So, let's get started. So, to start off with everybody, what is the work that still needs to be done in terms of gender diversity? What is it, what are we talking about, and what do you see as where we need to go from here in the Boston Theatre scene? Yeah, I mean, I think, I'll just jump right in, Mark, Keyham has pronounced, and I'm from the Air Tee, and part of my job is also working with Oberon, running Oberon, our club space in Harvard Square. I think institutionally it's really easy on the sort of quick fixes to focus on audiences and to focus on language that's in your institution and focus on, you know, making bathrooms inclusive and that's sort of the quick thing that we can all do. The work for me is about making spaces for queer and trans artists to be creating, to have their work supported, have their work seen, and to make sure that not only in the writing and the directing and acting, but across creative teams, we're making space and making sure that we are, you know, making room for queer and trans artists, which I think there's still so much work to do there. Not to say there isn't work to be doing for our audiences as well, because of course there is, but that's for me, I think, that's sort of nurturing, recruiting, and including that there's still a lot of room to grow. I would add too, I'm LaLaine, I'm at the Underlings Theatre Company, she hers, and I would add too that it's not just about making space, it's also about taking time and effort and starting conversations, like this one, or conversations on our own internal teams to talk about how we can improve our processes and talk openly about gender and gender identity so we can actively engage with it as something that is a component of our practice that is integrated and thought out at every step of the way when we go through putting together a production from our initial casting notices, certainly, but then through all the way to our publicity efforts, the profiles of the people that we share with our audiences, etc. Yeah, on the subject of sort of those quick fixes and things that are that are very visible, things that are easy to see, you mentioned bathrooms, casting breakdowns, what other kinds of quick fixes are sort of, are we seeing more of? I think, I mean, I think a lot of people are like jumping on the like normalizing pronoun usage, I'm slob, the pronouns are they, them, theirs, and doing that in meetings, in email signatures, they're showing up a lot more, which is really great, and I think that's kind of the most immediate way that you can get someone to start, even just like understanding for themselves how their gender identity functions professionally, because it's so easy to speak, okay, like I know I have pronouns, put them into my email signature, and from then on, every time you send an email, you have to think about the fact that your gender is a tool that you are performing. Yeah, and I would, I think Sarah from Company One, she, her, hers, I think definitely at the beginning of meetings, anytime you're with anyone new, normalizing, kind of introducing yourself with pronouns is a real easy, quick thing. I also think it helps, kind of normalizing, listening to people when they introduce themselves as well, which is something we can all use practice at, I think, which has been really valuable for us in our different spaces that we move. I think, I lost what I was going to say, but I think contact sheets as well, so anytime you're doing a production, anything like that, anytime where people are writing their identity in some fashion, whether that's their name or whatever it is, normalizing the practice of adding pronouns to that, bios and programs on websites, those are all really easy, quick things that you do at once, and you have it available in any way that you're kind of promoting, promoting your work, but also talking about the artists and the people that you're working with. I think it's pretty easy. So, beyond that, how do we go about the work of bringing trans and non-binary theater artists to our theater spaces when that's the question? I'll jump in quick and just say a couple of things, but I think one is recognizing that it's a human rights issue, and that just like any other kind of active way that we're looking at diversity, inclusion, and equity in the world that this is part of that conversation, I think that's the first step. And then, again, I think with any sort of something that you kind of include in this equity diversity inclusion world, thinking about how the conversations are reciprocal, being really, really conscious about if you're inviting artists and audiences into your space, how are you going out and reciprocating that relationship, how are you learning about the people who've been, you may be doing a work that centers on a trans artist, but there's lots of people who've been doing that for a really long time. And who are they and are you engaging with them? And do you understand kind of what's already being done? I think it's kind of baseline where to start with some of these conversations. Yeah, I think that's really important to remember that it's that like for some industries like theater, maybe these are new topics, but like these are communities that have existed for, you know, thousands of years, if not, you know, the last couple of decades. But like people exist and they have a culture and they have work that they've been creating. And to then put it on stage is not really just enough because there's a lot of mistranslation that can happen when you simply take someone else's story and just put it up there and then see what happens. And there's a lot of other care that has to go into how you're working with people. Sure. So it's not just bringing trans and non binary artists in your space. But also, when you bring them in, how do you make sure they also have agency? Yeah, I think there goes to form as well to as much as content, right? I think sometimes we have such rigidity and creating theater and like what it's supposed to be and how a play is made. And I think opening up into more of a performance conversation, which we have a lot of privilege and over on to like be able to do to say that folks were like, I don't really want to play, but I consider myself a theater artist. I want to do this performance that we're able to support that because the space is sort of engineered in that way. And I think that has sort of led us into a new world of art making and theater artists that is really exciting and can sort of let us think about our practice in a different way. That is more inclusive of many people in general. Would you mind talking about a couple of examples of the sort of artists who come in and are not necessarily theater artists, but our performance artists? Yeah, yeah. The example that's like hot on my brain right now is Diana O is a performance artist that we're in your long collaboration with. And it started as so Diana is a performance artist, activist, musician. And it started as this idea of having Diana in the space to do a lot of original music. And we were sort of playing with my lingerie play, which is a piece that she did in New York, and then got into a further conversation about like, well, it might not be about having Diana and Oberon, it might be about Diana being with us as an institution and creating work in and around Boston in general, much in the way that she did with my lingerie play. So all of a sudden, you know, we were doing or are doing a lot of these sort of site specific installation pieces with Diana throughout the year. Because as we started to find like what her as an artist wanted to talk about and what was important to her in the work that she was doing, it suddenly became clear, it's like not just a show that comes and sits in Oberon, it's something that needs to be active in the community in a much more explicit way. And so we sort of used our tactics of Oberon and are taking them into these different venues across the city. And then another great example is an artist we just had this week named Tajah Lindley, who is a performance burlesque artist, and she came in the space and just sort of transformed it with this really incredible installation to really make sure the audience was directly engaged in the work and activated in the work. So it wasn't just about us passively watching her performance, but that we were actively engaged in helping create performance with her. There's the two that are sort of right at the top of my head. I'm popping it. I think to so underling specializes in classical works and in new plays. So when we're thinking about how we build inclusive communities, a lot of it comes down to saying what is really crucial for us to keep in these shows. And so often, in the works that we're doing, we're saying, Shakespeare really, we don't need to follow the exact gender politics here. It's not very inviting and welcoming. Let's spend our time getting rid of pronouns in the script, changing them. Right now we're in conversation with one of the playwrights we're working with this season, Elsa Brayson, who's wonderful. We've worked with her in the past. And his is we have an actor who uses they them pronouns, and is playing a character that was written for someone he uses she her pronouns. So we're working with this playwright to determine whether or not it's appropriate to change the character's pronouns. Is it essential to who this character is that they be this particular gender? So that's a conversation that's going on right now. Hopefully we close the script soon. It's it's been a really wonderful and rewarding back and forth to have that conversation about how essential is this. And then also, like, what exciting opportunities can we take advantage of our new residences that can we build in our work by throwing out the old hat classical stuffy nonsense? That's very exciting. So you are a trans and non binary theater artist. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about coming from that place, right? Making work? When have you felt sort of the most supported right in making work? Sure, not binary here. I felt the most supported when people said what you want to do. Because that's when I feel like I'm actually being asked what I think as a trans person, rather than what I think as a trans person about someone else's cis ideas. Because, yeah, like, I think you were getting at this mark that like, you can't just like bring in like a trans person or really any like marginalized identity, and ask them to just like, put their show in your theater and like, just do what you've been doing. But like, with some flavor, you have to it's when you get to like create from that place rather than try to put that on to something else. Those were a lot of specific words. But yeah, it's when I'm in situations where they say what do you want to make? And that's that's where I feel a lot supported. I'm curious about the difference between being sort of open to gender diversity and other forms of diversity to versus actively seeking them out. Yeah, they're different. They're very different approaches, right? And I think I know for us, I feel like right now, we're creating in lots of ways, different openness and trying to create as much inclusive practices as possible. But I will say it isn't has not been yet something that we've gone out and sought after. I think specifically with audiences, I think we've done a little bit more. Actually, no, maybe behind the scenes. I think some of that work has been done. But even, and there's been some I think with actors, but I think there's a lot of work in there. And it's much more intentional practice. Yeah, that was kind of an answer. But for me, they're very different. I think institutionally, I think a lot about like, when are you making space for work that's already been created? This is sort of a lot of saying in a presentation away. And when are you actually going to an artist and supporting their process and what they need to make and making the time for that to happen in the right way? And in an honest way that, you know, gives up the same resource that you would give to any other artist. And that's what I think about institution. I think it's really easy to get into a space where you're like, Well, this I saw this really great play that was written by this trans person, we're just going to put it in our season. And like, what I don't know what that's accomplished, necessarily, because there are great things about that, and certainly in terms of representation. But I think the work is in nurturing and developing and giving access to all the same resources as any other artists. And when that always makes me ask the question when I like see someone is like, Oh, we were doing a play that was great last season in someone else's city that was written by a trans writer. Then I was like, Okay, so the writers not here anymore. We've taken their play. Have we hired a trans director? Are there actual trans people in the cast? Has anyone trans touched this production? Or are we just interpreting someone's words? That's kind of that also feels very much like that's when I know that you're trying to like get some brownie points for by doing a trans play. But you're not trying to pay or support any new trans people that actually live in your city. And I feel like that's a really important aspect of doing the work and trying to create inclusion. I think too, we're all empowered here as audience members and economic decision makers to give our money to those things that match our values. So you know, when we're thinking about how we spend our funds for this season, we're thinking to like, Oh, if we have money left over, do we go and make a donation? What artists do we support? Who do we help financially as best we can as a teeny tiny fringe theater collective to encourage their own artistic and professional growth? Great. We went down the line. Interesting. Okay, so diving a little bit into sort of the way we build institutions, what can we be doing on structural level as well, like to have trans people sort of at every level of making theater? How can we integrate these ideas into hiring practices, company culture, bringing people to boards and on to staffs? I think I've been waiting for this question is hoping that you would mention it. And I think in our case, we learned a painful lesson about not incorporating questions around gender identity and gender inclusivity in our hiring practices. We worked with a designer in the past who wasn't very inclusive and didn't use inclusive language and was harmful to some of the existing relationships that we've used. So when we're going through an interview and with designers, we treat it as a must talk about topic talk to me about the first top relations you've worked with in the past, talk to me about trans and non binary actors, performers or co workers that you've worked with in the past. If you haven't, what reading have you done? What work have you done to engage yourself and educate yourself about this topic? We have learned that we will not work with people who are not willing to go out and learn that that is essential to our practices. And I'm like, of course, disappointed that we learned it in a painful way for some of the people that we worked with. However, the important thing for us was that we shifted and turned very quickly and immediately said, thank you for telling us this was wrong. We're going to go adopt it and implement it as part of our practice universally. I think for us, confronting audiences use damaging language has been learning experience. You know, I think, in particular institutionally, you can get such geared into a place of hospitality and take care of your audience and walk them out into your space and they're spending money and you know, they're important part of why the work exists. But at some point, they are using language or this happens to us in particular at Oberon because they're so on top of the work that has to be confronted in a very specific way. And it has to send a message to other people that this is a value for us. And we truly stand behind it. We have to address it in the moment. And I think that can be tricky. If you have been, you know, sort of engineered to caretake for your audience to say like, well, nope, I have to make it clear to you that this is not in line with our values and it's not in line with the values of the space. And, you know, we need you to either engage in a longer conversation with us about why that is important to us, or respectfully ask that you not come back. Yeah, I'll second that. We've had very in-depth conversations with audience members that have either mostly that have left during a show. I don't think we've ever had a confrontational issue during a performance I can think of. Most people leave and then have a confrontational lobby. But we, when oftentimes most of, I think most of our shows, we anticipate there being some sort of moment of confrontation with an audience member and that talking to our staff and our lobby staff about how to talk about that. And it isn't necessarily taking care of the audience member. It's being respectful in your conversation, but being real with your values and that it's really okay if you don't come back. Thanks for letting us know. And have a great life. We're good. And there are many times those conversations that do become really fruitful and great learning experiences we're running against, which I think is an important piece of doing the work, but also times it doesn't. And as far as like getting trans people to like multiple levels of theater production, that one is one that I would love to see addressed more in the future, because as a trans person, who is the only one who doesn't have like a company affiliation up here, that feels really stark to me. And it often feels that like, as trans artists were asked to do the trans project, or that, you know, come on and talk about our identity and then move on. And it feels like to me, that's what keeps like actual change from happening because people do their one show and then say bye. And if those decisions continue to be kept being made by trans people, then I think trans people would be considered important. Yeah, they were part of people making the decisions about who's coming into the space. What are some other obstacles and challenges? Well, you talked a little bit about something that didn't work. Do we have other examples of things we've seen not work and what we learned from that? I don't know if this counts really as not working, but it was definitely something that made us think and it provided some really great conversations with audience members. When we were at the Strand Theater this summer, we did gender inclusive bathrooms, but had a lot of and we've done this at multiple venues. But this in particular, the show brought in a lot of young audiences, a lot of middle school and specifically elementary middle school, high school students. And we hadn't thought through that all the way. And I think that provided some really interesting conversations with the group leaders who would come in and say, Hey, like, it's great that you're doing this, but I feel really uncomfortable when someone's using the urinal in a particular restroom and having somebody feels uncomfortable in that situation walking in. And I was like, that's, I hadn't thought about not that I hadn't thought about that at all, but I hadn't thought about that with someone who's under 18 and how that impacts the group leader and how that how what kind of conversations we need to have internally before we do something like that again. And not that we would, you know, we're not going to step back on making restrooms gender inclusive. But what else we need to do because we also need to create safe spaces for everybody who's who's coming to the show. So that was that was really that was definitely something that I was like, Okay, so this is the next step in terms of what are we doing? And really, I think providing I think we we did a lot of work on the creating gender inclusive restrooms that most of our venues, there's still some that are challenging. But but I also think we're not talking to our audience as well enough about it. We're not explaining why it's so important and why why it's a value of the organization. And so that's something we're thinking about too. Next steps. Yeah, that's the thing I wonder about too, like how do you, when you have the audience in the room, if they don't, if they're not necessarily on the same level of this conversation, like if they're not ready to talk about, well, I mean, I think everybody's ready to talk about pronouncing. But if they've never been in use to these ideas before. What it's about, it's about representation to what we're like sauce was like sauce was saying, doing the work and then have a bunch of, you know, cis men designing the show, who maybe aren't necessarily engaged with the themes of the show, or willing to have that kind of conversation could be really detrimental. And I think we have found sometimes having creative teams who haven't maybe since the time of material haven't really explored the themes or explored deeper conversations can be really problematic to creative process. And what ways are you finding sort of a question for everyone? What ways are you finding to establish those vocabularies with your creative teams? Designers, actors, staffs? How are you going about sort of establishing that vocabulary and having a place where you can all go from together? I think we're in a very fortunate position because we are just getting started and in our second season right now where we're thinking about how we build it in from the very beginning. So one of the things we've started doing is the first time that we gather our cast and gather our staff together, we talk about our pronouns. And we talk very openly about the company's values and its mission and why it is that we discuss pronouns at the beginnings of our meetings, why we included them on the audition form, why we put out like gender blind casting notices, etc. So, you know, each of our people has an understanding of the values that we live by and the values that we practice by so that they can take them as a toolkit and apply them to their own work, especially their work with us. Talking, lots of talking. Yeah, I think also being really open to being challenged, so making sure you're putting your values out there and then being really open about when someone's saying, hey, I actually don't see you guys doing this is really like it's super important. And we've learned a lot from that. We can continue to. We are by no means done with this work as no one is. So, yeah, lots of listening and talking. And where do you all see sort of as individuals and as part of the members of the organizations that you're part of? What do you see as your next steps? I think we use an opportunity to focus on the topic to turn over some of the leadership that we have in the organization and hand it over to people who like myself and the co-director Thunderlings are not cisgendered and instead are talented and wonderful trans and non-binary people. We'll talk about that later. Well, maybe that's the next step. I don't know. Yeah, no, I don't know. That's the tricky thing about being trans is that it's mad up to me to hire the trans person until someone asks me to hire people for them. You know, I just, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. Or unless you need to hire people. Yeah. Honestly, I found that like getting the work done that I want to do as it often is, whether or not I'm trans, I'm just a young theater maker. Producing your own work is kind of what happens. And so I recently produced, directed and wrote my own adaptation of Nusratu. Nusratu, the vampire. I happened this past Halloween. I mean that, I don't know how much of this was conscious and how much of this was just how I operate as a person, but friendly get go, it was a really queer and trans inclusive piece. Starting from just like the way that the script was written, I was trying to tell a story about people that didn't have traditional gender. And trying to talk about what is scary for trans people. So, and just going from there, it meant that the people that I wanted to work with had to understand what those fears were. And that's, a lot of those people were trans. So that's just kind of how that happens. And again, that's starting from what the work you're trying to make is and who you're trying to talk to and about. And if you want to do it correctly, who are the right people to be in the room with you? Yeah, I mean commissioning is what I think about a lot in terms of how work is developed and how you're spending commissioning resources. I mean it's like a big investment that we make as institutions and being generous with that and honest and supporting that work when it's commissioned. And I think just like always challenging, always thinking about the play that you're working on and even if it is not a play that is about gender, still challenging the characters that are in the play or the themes the play is dealing with always and not sort of taking your eye off the ball just because it's not the immediate content that you're dealing with in the piece. That's, I think as an artistic team at ART we're trying to make sure that we're always questioning like is that necessary? Is it appropriate? Can we think of it this way? It's very similar to the first point you made about like is it important that this character be gendered female or not? And always doing that regardless of what the play is talking about specifically. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think one of the things we're actively doing right now is developing a list of questions to ask ourselves for every project we're working on that is challenging our own assumptions about how we're approaching a lot of some of its logistics and just making sure that you know if because we move venues a lot a lot of what we're thinking about all the time is how is this venue we're walking into approaching this issue? Have they thought about it? What are we walking into? What are the conversations that they're not having that we need to introduce to that institution? Even so much as we had something that kind of made me, we had two things that happened this summer that kind of made me rethink and this is kind of where this set of questions came from is that somebody who identified within the LGBTQ community was saying why is it always me who's asking this question? It's not necessarily bad. I'm not asking it for it to be different. I just want to acknowledge that this is something that happens all the time. And I said why is it that you are the one who is asking this all the time? And I think it's not just within the LGBTQ community. I think it happens in any historically marginalized community and something that we, especially as institutions who are run by cisgender white individuals, need to be like challenging ourselves about all the time on every single thing we're doing. So I think that's that's one of the things just being much more conscious about it for as we move forward and then there was something else I was thinking about and I can't remember what it was right now. Well, okay. I mean I think it's again that intentionality and that challenge is in the programming you're doing in who are you asking, who are you inviting into the conversation or what work you're doing? Funders. That was my next conversation. That feels like a big next step that as nonprofit organizations and as a field we need to figure out I'm still filling out forms for funders that are done in a binary way, which just feels like the easiest thing to fix and then there's all the hard work that has to happen. So that's a huge thing that I think we, again I think with every marginalized community in this country we need to be having conversations with who controls the money around all that, but this one feels feels very particularly easy to fix that I don't know why it isn't done in a different way. In the unions I would say. Yeah. I think getting unions to be in this conversation with this is a huge piece of it because I feel like I'm always filling out audition surveys. They're like how many men and how many women do you audition? Yeah. Okay. It's really easy to fix. Right, so that's for me a lot. Crazy. Well, we have a lot of time. I was wondering if we could open things up to the audience, if anybody in the audience has any questions and I'll kind of pick you in and whoever from the panel wants to answer can go ahead. Actually I wanted to know a little bit more for either Sarah or Mark about the audience members that are having sort of difficulty that you're having uncomfortable conversations with. Could you give an example of like an incident that happened, number one, and then is it just a matter of that people didn't quite know what to expect and they were surprised or what's going on there with the audiences? Might always come in restaurant conversations I feel. I would say that's the majority of them right now. I think it's different than it was 10 years ago. I mean this has happened forever and I think again, it isn't always around gender identity, it's around lots of different things but yeah, it's around audience expectations seems to be the biggest thing other than the restroom issue is I thought this was one thing you've just challenged my values in a way I am totally uncomfortable with. How could you do that? I'm so mad. And I'm like, it's theater. That's like our mission and if you read anything about this play, I don't understand why you came if you were going to get mad. That's like the tenor of a lot of them. I think I have a couple of the restroom specific examples but I will say I don't remember none of them had actually been super confrontational. I know some of the ones that have been. They've all been really kind of opening up audience members. I never thought about that before. Why do you do that? Why do you do that is actually the biggest question I think we get from lots of audience members. So that's one of the things where we're like, we aren't doing a good enough job at talking about why we do this and why this is important. And yeah, that's mostly the tenor of what it is. The most confrontational things have not been around gender identity. It's been around politics and values and people just being really mad that we made them think differently. Yeah, I think anything that leads into a conversation with an audience member about gender as a construct is a performance. It suddenly becomes like that about the bathroom or the bathroom safety. It's that you have now waited into this very what could be for them abstract notion and so then it's a very uncomfortable place to be in particular if you're in the lobby at the low price. That's not necessarily the place where you thought you were going to have the conversation and it can get very tense very fast. But I have to echo what Sarah is saying that I would say by and large once you engage the conversation in a very respectful and safe way, it always proves to be positive. Always. To my surprise it proves positive more often than not. But there are still moments that it doesn't and I I'm always, you know, confounded by it because we presented this artist named Shakina Naifak a trans woman and I had so many people come to her show and have a great time and I was so upset about the all gender restrooms and I sort of I just thought like you know clearly you're engaged in the conversation and the central tenet of the show is about Shakina's journey and so it's interesting to me that this is the argument or the confrontation we have to have because I would have assumed clearly and correctly that you were ready and willing to engage in this conversation so I just found that interesting. Yeah. I have a question specifically for your slaw. Do you feel like there is open communication between being a trans and non-binary artist between yourself and theater companies or do you feel like that communication isn't there who's making the first move does it have to be you is it the companies how are you finding that relationship working? Do you mean as far as like finding a job or once I'm in a job just like in communication with who I'm working with? I guess both in a way you know when those opportunities come up like again who's making the first move like is it you putting yourself out there are you waiting for companies to make that move and once you're there like are you just kind of wandering around with people afraid to ask you pronouns or do you Well I guess the first thing I say is that I don't know who's afraid to ask me because they don't talk to me really great people who are transphobic are usually really good at like self-selecting which I appreciate I mean it's true but I feel like one I've been very lucky in that I've worked almost exclusively with people who are if not super educated really willing to learn and get better and talk I've never so far knock on wood really come up against a company that I felt like actively like unsafe in talking about my gender with but I do also think I've almost never gotten a job that has been posted and I've applied for it's only ever been things that I ask for so that's kind of really been how I as a trans person I'm honestly I don't know if that's because I'm trans or not that's not really for me to figure out but I don't feel that I've really gotten any of the opportunities because of a door that someone else opened and I said I can walk through it it was me saying can I open the store and I feel like that's also applicable to any kind of situation where you really have to find it to just like to advocate for yourself and then hopefully people will follow suit and then if they don't then you just go somewhere else because someone else will say yes I can speak to this a little bit too because I'm also a young trans theater artist is that part of it is that when you're a young theater artist like you do have to hustle and like you do you do have to put yourself out there a lot and it is hard to know like when when people say no to you like is it because of the lack of experience because they don't know you like is it because you're trans like those are questions we might never know the answers to as individuals this made me think of of data like it's so hard to find data right about like how how communities are being represented yes don't you think identity numbers are how do we go about the work of gathering data surveys like handwritten audience surveys are 20 years and it's gone through different iterations with asking people different questions and Democrat how are you asking about demographic information like this we started just using blink lines and we're like we want you to talk about your gender here and that's new that's only I think been just last season we did that it's been really fascinating the breath of answers and how people identify and you know we're thinking I'm also with having to fill out all these really fun demographic sheets for funders really thinking about how are we asking our staff our board where are we asking these kinds of questions when I fill these out my guessing which is I don't want to be in a situation where I'm guessing things so how do we create an atmosphere where where people feel safe to answer this question honestly is something I think about a lot we've done that with gender and race or the two things or race and I think I've defined it as race and ethnicity or I think I have a whole bunch of things however you want to talk about this with us we're very interested in the nuance of it because oftentimes we're not given the opportunity to be to have a nuanced answer to those things which I think is super important it's just in the sort of conversation about gender that like the terms are constantly changing the terms is in the literal vocabulary that we're using sort of you know non-binary as a word I don't know exactly how long it's been around so nobody like quote me on this but like in general usage is a relatively new term for us to be using and hopefully at some point it'll not have to be non something else we've stopped using the word non-white because it's really white centric and that's problematic so how do we and my guess is in five years non-binary actually probably won't be used and that will have evolved to something that feels not binary centric yeah it does definitely feel for me like the word non-binary specifically nine times out of ten if someone asks me what my gender is I'm going to say well I'm non-binary I'm non-binary and that's not because like that's a noun that is my gender it's because that's the easiest way to describe it to a cis person is to just give them a third option like but the term non-binary is not in and of itself a gender it's just a description yeah yeah so we've talked a little bit about like the fact that there's not that much like leadership that is being offered to trans people or that trans people are not in a lot of leadership and like we definitely need to move more towards that but while that's still the case what specifically do we ask of our staffs when taking care of like trans actors or directors or creators in any way like what how do we make sure that they are doing that support that we're saying they're supposed to do what does that support look like in the case of like various types of theater right like and what do you do when like maybe an actor is expressing discomfort with something or a concern with something that maybe like the request is out of the norm of what a theater production does or out of the norm of what your company has done like what do you do with that and how do you make sure that's happening successfully I think it's in the training and the listening you know I think as is the case with bonding members who may question restrooms I think there's a lot of staff members who maybe just haven't engaged in a conversation about gender but the minute you talk to a staff or talk to a group of artists this is important to us fortunately in my experience so far it's been a pretty quick evolution like oh of course and also hear all the things I could be doing to make sure I'm instilling that my own team I'm not sure that's the overwhelming case but for us it was specifically about taking the time to be like this is why we talk about pronouns this is why it's important to change the restrooms just even that sharing of information I think took a big step into raising it as an important value institution so the backstage version of bathrooms right like dressing rooms have been really interesting for me as a trans actor because I'm not particularly comfortable in like either a men's dressing room or a women's dressing room and a lot of the time I am the person who has to bring that up right like I have to go to the stage manager or whoever is in charge and say like hey I need to have a discussion about which dressing room I'm going to be in and if they're gendered I usually make the choice to go with the one that has a person who I feel safe with things like that but I definitely think like talking to your actors about which dressing rooms they would prefer even for cis actors I think that's an important conversation to have so that's one small thing there's ways like that like not waiting for your actor to come to you to ask about where they can feel safe where if you've done the work beforehand it's really easy to show your actors creative team whoever whatever your employee is you've done the work to like try to make them feel safe which will lead to a conversation about like what steps to take because there's not always going to be a one size fits all answer for everything but if you are able to like anticipate what the question is going to be you don't necessarily need to have the answer but it's very easy to show someone that you've already thought about it because you just have to think about it and also I'll say I think one thing that now that I after I thought about it after it happened it wasn't surprising to me but thinking about when a cisgender actor then comes to you and is like why is this like why is someone in their own space why are we treating this differently why is this a different space than what I'm used to that's happened a few times with us and I'll also say again that I think translates out to any traditionally marginalized community that you're working with often times it's an interesting conversation to have be real about it cisgender white male artists and staff and being really thoughtful about how it's not about coddling them it's about actually engaging in the conversation and thinking through how is that conversation going to happen because it will and how are you being thoughtful about it ahead of time I think there's been a practice institution for many years too thinking about the LGBTQ as a unit and so when these institutions have tons of white sister gay men they feel like it's a box ticked and the intersectionality of that conversation is like totally gone and the gay white member and those positions are not challenged in that either we're facing the transphobia in the community themselves and so I think that's yeah yeah so it's like oh we're doing great because I'll be taking you and it's like we've actually just hired a bunch of white gay guys so yeah so this question would be kind of for everyone except for Sloth because you made that very clear but one thing I'm finding as a theater artist who's predominantly an actor that I feel as though where this conversation is coming up more and more often which on one level is great I almost feel as though I'm also being further marginalized like if somebody sees that my pronouns as a human and actor are they them theirs then their assumption is like therefore the characters they will want to play are only they them theirs and it's like I would prefer to be kind of seen as a shape shifter or like open to being able to play more roles and not then be pigeonholed significantly more so are there any measures that you guys let you three know of that are preventing you from making assumptions of the people who walk into the audition room so I think one thing that we do of course like on all of our audition forms we ask what roles are you interested in and we take that very seriously but when we see an actor who is wonderful for a role that we that they themselves can come into audition for or that we had found ourselves writing them out of we have a conversation with them and say hey would you be interested in reading for this character I think you have a lot of their qualities let me know so it's a back and forth then an exchange I think too for us you know our leadership has done a lot of work with I totally lost that thought it's gone but I guess one of the things that we think about is being really conscious so that when we we catch ourselves when we're screwing up and making mistakes and doing our best to apologize when we see that we're making mistake before someone says that they're hurt or harmed so that's like that's crucial owning your mistakes and being like I'm screw up I know it and I can do better it comes up a lot with musicals and ensembles in particular for us and saying like it's not just because we thought that the ensemble was six men, six women to do partner dancing you need to get rid of that what are the voices you need what ability you need and then cast that ensemble and have a conversation later about do you feel drawn to a specific character in this ensemble that has a gender identity do you not sort of just throw away that that to me is like especially not something musical casting the like very quick this easy thing it doesn't have to be gendered in that way necessarily yeah I think there's a lot of work in terms of as far as companies go especially those of us who are commissioning new work talk to them say right it's a big part of it too I think what's really interesting to me and I think where the conversation is going to end up going is a very similar track with the difference the very specific and intentional difference between color blind casting and color conscious casting and where is this conversation where is this conversation in the evolution very similarly to that conversation and where is that conversation with organizations, playwrights and actors in the whole community because I think that conversation is further down the road a little bit then thinking about it with gender identity and I think it's the long game I think that conversation is the long game I wish I had a better answer there's a lot of work yeah Hi, so one question that I have is, so talking about classical work we've talked a lot about new work what do we do with kind of the new modern canon because I recently had an experience where I released a casting list with gender inclusive casting and we got dinged from Samuel French saying hey you can't do that and I said yes we can I absolutely can so it becomes that question of when we're dealing with then living playwrights how does that change and they're not living playwrights in our community they're living playwrights who are not to name names, Tom Sovereign like what exactly what exactly do we do how are we going to determine kind of what our definition of inclusivity is going forward and this is an industry thing we have to take it on as an industry it's the only way it's going to change I think again it's thinking about how each of those each of the groups of individual in our community are going to take ownership of this it's a huge thing for organizations to talk to playwrights when they're commissioning work eventually hopefully this won't be as big of an issue as it is now but I think we've gone down the road a couple of times of challenging Sam French's or whatever however they're putting it out and they're going to get mad at us if we do something different and gone down the road of talking to the agents and everything else and it's hard it's really really hard so I think it is a matter of all of us being very conscious of it and like why does that why do we break up like the first thing all the playwrights do is break down by gender and it's just male and female and why is that such a big thing at the beginning of every you know part in Sam French catalog why is that I shouldn't single them out because everyone does it but yeah it's I think it's up to the Lort theaters to start talking about it it's up to the community theaters everybody at every level yeah more work super necessary and feels like something that's really easy to fix this doesn't seem that challenging but I also think it gets down into if we can be intentional about it if playwrights can be really intentional about it and we've kind of been we've had that open conversation about it and they're intentional about it will we see a bigger diversity and how if we're gonna still go down this route finding gender for our characters and our plays are we seeing more diversity within that so yeah I think it gets back into that like long winding road conversation but yeah so necessary can I ask a follow up was the cast notice that the characters will identify gender and you remove the gender so that people could or was it that you added language just like all gender identify people I gave the pronouns to the characters that all genders will be considered and what particular character I said I'm looking for someone who presents as gender queer I'm looking for somebody who has a visibly queer presence and that was in the cast because yeah yeah I think it's two steps for me like the first one is simply including language it's like inviting gender queer folks to audition for your play it's like not a problem it's like we need to have a larger conversation here but then the next step of that is to your point about the living play rate and being able to engage them in conversations like I know you were at this play 20 years ago but here's what we're thinking about now and you're hitting on the themes and the content even if you haven't named it specifically in the gender character and we invite you to think about this with us and like approach this in a different way and I think if they're not hip to that then they're not aligned with the values that theater can move on and if they won't listen to that then they lose a production of their play they lose a whole group of artists who would have come to have a relationship with it and all audience who would have had a relationship with it and plenty of other people are into the play that's one of the yeah I've heard parts about it but when you know when the bigger theaters start demanding that things change and that is a industry conversation that's happening you know it's not just the small productions here and there that's when it will change so there was it's kind of a half baked question I'm going to try and make or say so you had mentioned that there was a situation in which having a gender free restroom was uncomfortable with the younger audience and I think that it's really important to talk about how we address gender inclusivity with young audiences and as an elementary school teacher myself and so I'm wondering if anyone has ideas about the way that you can either incorporate this in your company's how to not punish and sexualize gender inclusivity with young audiences and specifically for Slop is there suggestions that you can give these companies in ways that you would like to see that done as well as panelists well okay so there's there's a lot of things here I mean like I mean I'm not all trans people so I can't speak for all of us but so I approached this in two ways where I one of the things I love to do is to get a free young audiences I really like it I've done a lot of it but also I'm not a teacher so and I like kids make me nervous I personally hesitate to like answer like I know what to do in the classroom for the kids in the bathroom because what I do is leave yeah so as far as like what the kids are seeing on stage I think it's really easy for kids to understand gender they just get it a lot quicker they don't care until you tell them to care like I don't know I've done a production of The Hobbit while I was in college where there were two men in the cast it was a lot of queerness going on a lot of fake beards on women and the kids liked it it makes you a dragon and dwarves like they buy into it and they understand that you can do whatever you want and it doesn't matter what your gender is yeah but the bathroom question is tricky and it's hard as a trans person to sometimes like want to make that space for yourself because you know that so many people are gonna like turn that into a safety issue or make you feel like dangerous to children which is like absolutely not the case but it is really hard to from the consensus I've rambled no it's okay and I'll clarify one point the issue was actually the urinals only like they actually didn't have an issue with the gender inclusivity but it was the urinals specifically which I think we just never, I hadn't thought about and that frankly is like it can be an issue and I've seen a lot of spaces that have like when especially it was like this was formerly a men's room and this was formerly a women's room you just say you know gender free bathroom with urinals and I've also seen other spaces just literally just tape off the urinals and just say we're just not gonna use this and I think that's something we'll probably move forward with we just hadn't thought about that specifically and it was actually a great conversation because he didn't have an issue with the whole concept which was nice so we can actually be nuanced about the conversation and say this aspect of it was challenging for us and I was like that actually you know what that's a really good point and yeah it was nice to have a nuanced conversation about it and I see that a restroom can be important for many other reasons regardless of gender and so for us one of the things that comes up a lot with the de-gendering of restrooms is like well it's too expensive to give her the urinals like yes it is but you don't have to you can do this this exact move and just say like this is a restroom that has this equipment this is a restroom but for us it was one stalled private restroom for families, for people with medical issues and might want to have privacy and so there are two rooms that have multiple stalls, multiple urinals and then also one complete private room that was important for a host of reasons that I think come up for folks beyond gender I didn't mean to make this question bathroom-centric like I've also had this in dressing rooms as well like I as a trans actor have been a cis child who didn't necessarily understand why it was in that dressing room how as leadership in theaters do you address that it's kind of what I'm trying to get at Yeah, I wish I had a better answer than listening and talking but I really like that's where it starts and I think for the company it's a lot of listening and making sure that whatever we're saying is translated in the way we intended back and that it's a really reciprocal conversation because we can make a lot of assumptions about things, a lot of assumptions all the time Yeah, it's just constantly being open because this is I mean we're human, as humans we're ever revolving everything we're doing is evolving all the time we can't just the decisions we made five years ago are not going to be the right decisions right now and that's with everything Yeah Yeah, and I'm giving the listening and talking answer to you which I didn't know it's not necessarily the most helpful but I think it's also about educating myself and using my cis privilege to open that conversation and have the conversation not relying on the trans actor who's in the dressing room with the cis child to have the conversation and deliver the education I think we have thought a lot about that in race and our white privilege and are also now really thinking about that in terms of our cis privilege and so I don't always do it the most eloquently I might, you know, sort of not have the greatest expertise but it's important I think to hold space to that conversation and not sort of put the broom on current trans folks who are part of a project I love the thread in this conversation about kind of waiting into the unknown and making mistakes along the way that that's and also, you know, educating yourself but letting yourself make those mistakes and learning from them I think it's really, really important I think we have time for one more question and then we'll wrap up anyone else in the audience Yeah, Dorie? Yeah, I guess I how are you all personally one of yourself in these things that also, like further conversations but also taking the actual steps and also what are your own personal account of these systems? Because they're going to really easy to say things and not do them Other than my Midwestern sense of guilt One of the things that we have started to do is compile like a list of questions that we've received or document like conversations that we've had in the past so that we can use them going forward as a tool to stop an awkward conversation from happening or supersede it needing to happen in the first place So we're, I know we're building a lot of our practices but when we're thinking about things like the venues that we're visiting or the way that we built an audition notice basically we take the lens that we see the world through and make sure that we're applying it every time so that every time that we have a meeting making a decision it's like, hey, what does our mission say? Why is that important? How do we utilize that here? Which is actually something Sarah told us when we were first getting started Live by the mission! What does your mission say? And bring it into the discussion bring it into meetings and casting decisions and bring it into the dressing room fittings with your cast bring it into, I don't know, every room just over any room, all the rooms, yes streets too I think it's about seeing work I mean, I'm wearing dancing when I'm an artist at the time but it's just like seeing work going and seeing the work that's being created seeing what artists are doing, familiarizing yourself that's where I find myself like am I always seeing the same kind of plays am I always seeing work by the same kind of person and how do I make sure I'm not falling into that rut or even just aesthetics, like falling into seeing the work that I enjoy and making sure I'm actually educating myself on the breadth of work that there is so that the preparing can be more effective For me, it's remembering that I don't know, like I said before, because I'm trans it just kind of happens because it says people make me uncomfortable but it's for me it's about remembering to not both for my sanity and for the person I want to put into the world remembering that that's not all there is to me and that I need to be doing just as much work for all the other things that I don't feel like troubled by and really making sure that those are just as important to me as the things that directly affect my identity Yeah, I'll throw out one thing is that not judging all the projects that we do the success of the projects that we do just on finances and just on finances a lot of times that's the only way we judge successive projects but putting out really specific value driven statements and then measuring ourselves against them at the end of a project we do that in two ways, one is internally really being very hard on ourselves and challenging ourselves about whether or not we did that but also asking the people we're bringing into the space artists, audiences everybody like did we we set out to do this, did you feel like we accomplished that and really we are by no means by no means good, great, perfect whatever you want to say about any of this but I do see I think the thing that I've been with the company for 20 years and I think the thing that's kept me going is I have seen change and progress whether or not it's internally as a community whatever it is even if it's tiny I've seen things move along and if I stop seeing that move along then we have a lots of problems everything's moving too slow but just making sure that there's at least some little uptick on the dial great, well thank you to our panelists thank you to our audience if you want to keep following with gender explosions up to you check us out on state source we're going to be putting out some new materials and dreaming up some new stuff so thanks everybody