 to the free, the force of my star shine. Hello, hello, thank you so much for being here and welcome, welcome to this Saturday morning cartoon hour spectacular, co-hosted by the National Black Theater, Penumbra Theater, New Dramatists, and 53rd State Press. We're celebrating Daniel Alexander Jones's two new books published this month by 53rd State Press. Love Like Light, a collection of seven plays and performance texts along with an introduction by Dr. Omi Osum, Joni L. Jones, and Essays and Interviews by Vicky Boone, Jacques Coleyman, Issa Davis, Aaron Lansman, Deborah Paredes, A Price, Cord Arrington Tuttle, and Shea Youngblood. The second book is a stunning conversation between Daniel and feminist scholar and poet Alexis Pauline Gums. I'm Kate Kramer, playwright and editor of 53rd State Press. My pronouns are she-hers and I'd like to begin this party by voicing our land acknowledgement. Much of the work that we published was first developed and performed on the unceded lands of the Lenape and Canarsie communities. Our books are stored and shipped from the unceded lands of the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Shawnee, and Uchi communities. And the work that we do draws on natural resources that members of the indigenous diaspora have led the way in protecting and care-taking. We're grateful to these indigenous communities and we commit to supporting indigenous-led movements working to undo the harms of colonialization. As a press devoted to preserving the ephemeral experiments of the contemporary avant-garde, we also recognize with great reverence the work of radical BIPOC artists who's often uncompensated experiments have been subject to erasure, appropriation, marginalization, and theft. We commit to amplifying the revolutionary experiments of earlier generations of BIPOC theater makers and to publishing, promoting, celebrating, and compensating the BIPOC playwrights and performers revolutionizing the field today. I today would like to thank Gabriel Klein and Rava Robb who are our tech geniuses, Beth Golusson who's been working to coordinate the event and Vijay Mathew and the folks at HowlRound for supporting us in streaming and archiving this party. And lastly, I'd like to thank Erin Salvi at TCG for her tireless support of our work and Niska which supported the publication of both Love Like Light and Particle and Wave. It's now my delight to introduce our performers today. We're gonna start off this event with a couple of different readings from the book and it will be followed by a panel discussion a little bit later. And so our performers today are Rhonda Ross. Rhonda Ross is a singer, award-winning actress, public speaker and inspirational leader. Her current work, The Force Within is a bi-weekly offering of wisdom and inspiration. Viney Burroughs is a living legend in the American theater has given over 6,000 performances on and off Broadway, on television, radio and in films. She originated two roles in Daniel Alexander Jones' plays. Jason Phelps is a multi-disciplinary performer and teacher who has been involved in theater, dance, music, commercial acting, voiceovers and education for over 30 years. And Issa Davis is an award-winning actor, writer and singer-songwriter working on stage and screen. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play Bullrusher and wrote and starred in Angela's Mixed Tape. Now I'm very, very thrilled to welcome Sharon Bridgeforth who will offer a brief invocation for all of us. I wonder if at this moment, everyone would be willing to turn your cameras on so that we can all be together here in the room for a moment. Welcome, we are here today to celebrate the release of Daniel's books into the world. And we know that these books are portals that they take us through the earth, the ocean, up to the sky and they swirl and twirl around us. They create new possibilities and they change us. I wanna invite us to offer gestures wherever you are, whenever you are watching this because energy shifts through time and space. So let us offer gestures of congratulations, of gratitude, of presence, of love to our Daniel and offer them whenever you want during our time together. And what I wanna say is we know that we're here because he invited us, because most of us know each other because of him, because of his generosity, because he's always thinking about connecting people and moving us forward and shining light on us. We're here because through him, we are better human beings and so we get to party together and dance in spirit and make light with our Daniel. We celebrate his artistry, we celebrate his brilliance, we celebrate his family and his communities that raised and shaped him. And we know that in these books, we get to receive the ones that loved him, those magic makers like Lori Carlos and Robbie McCauley and so many others that loved like lightning. They would hit you with that love. That love wasn't always sweet, but you would change and you would be better and you would be more graceful and you would be more considerate because of them. And that's what Daniel does. He gives that to us with every piece of his being. May we celebrate all that are with us right now in light. May we celebrate this moment and every being, every experience, everything that made it possible. May we receive, offer and be hit by the love that is lightning. May we shake and cry. May we dance and fall out. May we get up and be more generous in this moment and always as we celebrate and love our Daniel. Our Daniel. Our Daniel. So now y'all got me crying and snotting on the... Zoom. I'm so thrilled to be here and thank you. Thank you so much Sharon and thank you Kate. We are now going to hear some excerpts from two pieces that are published in Love Like Light. The first is from Blood Shock Boogie which was written between 1995 and 96 and it will feature my beloved friend Issa Davis reading the part of Nicky. And Jason Phelps who originated the role playing the part of Julia Child and I will offer a brief stage direction. Brick during the following text, Nicky demonstrates her skill at hopscotch. She speaks to the characters of light and Luna while keeping an eye on her street. All right, if you go and fight, you got to tell the difference between real and fake. Cause if you can't tell the difference, you ain't gonna know who to bother fighting. Now, most people are fake all the way through. Most people that's fake try to act like they real, you know, perpetrate. If you're real, you can see right through them and they can tell. Now, if you're fake or a sucker, they can tell and they're gonna try and play you, huh? You ain't fake, you just shy, but you got to bust out of that and you can't be being nice to everybody up front like you do. Everybody say you so nice. Well, you so nice, you will keep getting played till you played out. Hold on. Okay, now, real and fake, you need an example. All right, you can look right here on this block and look at Tasha. She fake for real. First, cause she thinks she better than everybody. She thinks she cute. Plus, cause Tasha always biting. Like, look at CCC how she always be saying fresh. Like, that's a fresh jacket, Sylvia. Or, oh girl, I like the way you wear that dress. That's fresh. Ooh, Teneita girl, you can sing, you fresh. And you know I was saying it first. Now she's saying so much, I can't hardly use it. I should slap her upside her head, but I feel sorry for her cause she can't think nothing up herself. Ooh, and you remember when she got extensions? Bite, cause Jamisa had them two weeks before in that exact same style too. Please, Tasha ain't my friend. She hang around, but it ain't deep. I will give her the papers at any time. See, that's another part of fighting. You got to remember you could always send anybody walking, real or fake, whenever you want. Just give them papers and move right on. I don't know though. You too nice. You act like a girl. Sound of a television being switched on. The buildings vanish, the window frame of Luna's room is articulated. The theme from the French chef plays. Julia Child speaks. There's marvelous confections are found throughout culinary history in almost every culture. With a bit of flourish and imagination, this staple confection undergoes metamorphosis becoming a universal symbol of ceremony and celebration. Once you know the basics of cake making, you may tailor them to your specific needs. Today, we will get to baking and make sure that our cakes rise to their fullest potential. Let's begin. With a flurry, Luna and light all become Nicky. Nicky's tail is a record-breaking 200 meter race. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me tell it, let me tell it. Your cake was chocolate and your mother had that little shiny boat on top with all them little shiny Japanese people, because a who? Yeah, because her friend had brought them from Japan. Your brother looked like he Japanese. Don't neither of y'all look black. You look like your mama. But anyway, remember she put them on the cake and then put all these candles on there. And anyway, we had had some cold pizza because your father had to walk and get in the snow. And we had ate that when they go in there to get the cake. And we all started singing happy birthday. And then they walking in with the cake and your father went like this. And one of the candles knocked into that boat and that boat blew up and caught all them little Japanese people on fire. And they started melting. And the fire was all high and your father was like, damn it, damn it. And I was like, you better put that down. And finally your mother grabbed it and threw it in the sink and put it out. I didn't eat none of that cake. Julia Child, Dennis Bessie. Dry ingredients. One cup cocksucker sifted. Two thirds cup candied hands held so. One box powdered cocoa flavored mama's boy milk. Pinch of salt. Grated rind of one milotto. Zest of hand on hip. Liquids. Three tablespoons boy spit. Eight faggots up against the locker. Juice. Two teaspoons extract of faggot with knife in face. Half tenderized queer. Two teaspoons semen. Best frustrated and fresh. Mixed dry ingredients and liquids stir. Pour into pans lined with fresh morning sheets. Dreams stained. Note, you can test them for freshness by smelling. If you sense confidence, discard. Bake in a slow oven until it bounces back when you touch it or until a stick inserted into its center comes out clean. Bon appetit. Mess, a red moon waxes overhead, nighttime on the street. Nikki speaks. Now, who's messing with you? Jeremy? Big yes. Jeremy, no better than to mess with me because I will make him bleed. Like one time he called my mama a hoe. I was like, you better take that back, you Jamaican booty scratcher. And he didn't. And I was on him like, bam, uh, douche. I beat him so bad. His mama, his daddy, his whole generation felt it. Everybody think he all tough. He ain't nothing. Jeremy just know how to perpetrate. And you know, basically there ain't a whole lot of people it's worth for you to fight. But when it comes time, you got to go. You came back down, you can't just sit by because if you don't fight, you ain't worth nothing because you don't think you worth fighting for. If you let people put you down, you gonna be down. And people always gonna be trying to put you down, especially you because you too nice. And that ain't gonna work. Boy, I'm telling you, you got to do whatever you got to do. You could scratch at their eyes, hit at their privates, bite down hard on whatever you could get. But my thing is just kick their butt. My mama said, I don't ever want to hear about how you lost a fight. If you ever come in here having lost a fight, I will tear you up myself. So I don't lose ever. Thank you both so much. It was so amazing to hear those words out loud again. Thank you, Issa and thank you, Jason. We now welcome to the stage the legendary Miss Viney Burroughs and my dear friend, Rhonda Ross, both of whom originated the roles in this play. Miss Viney will be reading Mother Dixon and Rhonda Ross will be reading Eleanor in an assembly of scenes from Phoenix Fabric. Mr. Shadrach Ambrose Dixon. Mr. Shadrach Ambrose Dixon. Mr. and Mrs. Shadrach Ambrose Dixon. What color flower is gonna be at the wedding? Are you gonna have pink flowers at the wedding? Not gonna be pink flowers at my wedding. What color flower is gonna be at the wedding? You gonna wear red flowers at the wedding? Don't wanna see red flowers at my wedding. What color flower is gonna be at the wedding? Is it gonna be blue flowers at the wedding? What you mean blue flowers at the wedding? I'll tell you the color gonna be at the wedding. Just yellow flowers gonna be at the wedding. Sweet yellow flowers gonna be at my wedding. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Watch this chair. Yes, yes. Who's that there? That there's Shadrach. He's a pretty old thing. He my husband. How's that so? Just as so. You just little. He's all grown. Still is so, someday soon. How you know? Gave me a flower, said that's for you. What color was the flower? Yellow, yellow. Oh, yellow mean friend. Yellow mean love. Red mean that. He my husband. No, he's not. He's sweet on salad. Old salad, Jones? What you doing? Taking care of that. Totin' that ax? Taking care. Acts bigger than you and just as Shaw. I'll teach her right. Gonna chop her down. If need be. Set that ax down. Chop her down. You mustn't do. Yes, ma'am, I know. Got a powerful love. Shining hard. At mighty groan. Have to do. Gal. Gal. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Watch this here. No, thank you. What's that there? You knocked three times old gal? Yes, ma'am. You come for healing? Not my own. Wash your hands in the water. Go on. Yes, ma'am. See you in the mind's eye. Seem to me I know you. Don't know. You been to this town? No. Well, I seen you with Henrietta Pastor. Yes, yes. That's my mama. She a mighty healer. She dead. Now, what business you got with me? I've been to many a tent, working revival. My mama call them in. Come on, children, come on. Walk through the avenue. Sweet salvation. Oh, we on our way. We on our way. Oh, the many mansions. Oh, it's a bomb in the upper room. Come on, children, come on. Don't I know it? Clap in kerosene and sweat. Blind Willie Moore standing the back, testify. Was a voice come to me? Hemp me to gambling. Hemp me to go with a wayward woman. Hemp me towards the drink. He moaning in the back, repenting. And then he jerk. And his voice dropped down low like a rumble. And he leaning. And my mama shout, Willie Morris, it's a demon gotta hold to you. My mama, Henrietta Pastor, call him up to the altar and I'd be done run up her head. Let him through, let him through. Blind Willie stumble and moaning with his hands to his face. And when he pull him down, his skin turn gray. And my mama, Henrietta Pastor commenced to casting out that old demon, speaking all his old names from the old book. And just when the crowd starts to bring up that singing, blind Willie choke and shut her eyes roll back in his head. My mama, Henrietta Pastor, done turn to tongues, slapping her palm on top of his head and show enough blind Willie spits that demon up, sprays him out in a mess of blood all over my clean white dress. Oh, the people just gasping. Screaming. Hands in the air, blind Willie saying, oh thank you, thank you, thank you. And my mama, Henrietta Pastor saying, oh, oh bear witness, no demon holds sway over the light. Hands clap, coins drop in the basket. The next night, a new town, a new dress, come on children, come on. Blind Willie with a new name for a new town, standing the back, fixing the testify, chicken blood and chalk and an empty basket for coins. So yes, ma'am, I know all about casting out demons. I don't come for all that. What I come for, real things, things you know. What you want from me, you know the huck and the shimmer, your eyes are old as dirt. Anything true about the light? Depends. Stand at the edge of the valley when the sun first tips on over, the way it pressed my eyes, licked my face, pulled me out my skin, all the flowers, all the trees, all the birds, all us leaning towards that sun. Seemed like then, all that talk about the light ain't so far fetched. The day the light come and folks be rising up out the dirt. Folks like Shaz, tell me ma'am, tell me, true or not? Oh girl, you know. Don't know. Remember back, you remember back, girl. I remember what they done. You, you that little one, you that little one come round Shaz, like butterflies, always make a ring play, just flying up. That's you, true, true. Ella, did you bend to the wedding? Did you get any cake? How nice the taste? Ella, did you bend to the wedding? Did you get any wine? How nice to drink? Ella, did you see my turkey? Which side he gone? Will you help me catch him? Get ready, let's go. Shoo turkey, shoo, shoo turkey, shoo. That's you. Remember back, between me and that is what they done. What's done, we can't hold. What's done, we give over to the land. Choose to one way or another. Do you remember what's done? I see it every day. I see it, I can't close my eyes, but I see it, I see it in front of my eyes right now, every day. Now they got his bones, ma'am, the rising. True or not? Truth be told, what has been found, it can't be turned back, flesh on the soil, turned over and into the red clay of this sweet earth will cook it back into itself. Bring it down to salt and lime, cool by a river of ants and worms, birds come, pluck out the hairs to stuff the nest. And then the dead behind the tree, half way to fly, that's as close to the light as we come, truth be told. What you carry, you got to set out, give it over to the lamb. Shass, shass so pretty, all starry eyes, plum colored in the sweet. That's your husband. I can't lay this down. Lay it on the lamb. It won't leave my bones, it's a fire in the heart of my bones. What is foul is made pure again by sacrifice. What else am I supposed to give? What else I got? Even his bones belong to them. Nothing belongs to them, nothing. This fire ain't gonna leave my bones. Bring me my box. Ma'am. My box, bring it here. Everything they got, they stole rippers. They fly out together from between the trees, these, they hunt in packs, cover their faces, leave just their eyes, silver fish slick in the pitch of night, cowardly pack of dogs, but on the wing above the trees and I, sharp as a blade. It's another hunter. She hunts alone, circles and circles and circles. One will walk off by himself on his way to the field, to the barn, to the outhouse. Oh, on their own, they small as a mouse, as long as they're alive. They own, they small as a mouse, as low to the ground and soft. This hunter, she fixed them with her eye. She moved quick, quick, so quick. They don't feel the blade till too late. Land on their shoulders, stuff their mouth with cotton while they squeal like a pig at the slaughter. They was on their way, but never come back. One at a time, down to the river, bleed them, gut them, render them, grind them. Down to ash, surrendered, clean unto the lamb. You doing that leave you no better than them. Tender thoughts where they leave you. You ask for the truth, here it is. Who the one tied the noose around our shaz with his own nimble hands. Old man Schumann, there's the truth. I told you the one way to do this be the other, that new gal of Schumann's. Yes ma'am, yes ma'am. His little pearl. He not even from here. Thief all of the same. Tonight she'll walk the river, but won't come home. Your tree of life, that's all that's yours by rights. I take what's mine by rights. I got my way, I make him back to me. My cornbread and honey, no more blood. Always more blood. If not theirs, be yours soon enough. Thank you both so much. Thank you both so much. What an honor to have you re-inhabit that work. Thank you. I am now going to read a brief excerpt from the beginning to Love Like Light, where I talk about the context for my work. I always say every act of imagination is simultaneously an act of remembrance. My work roots in the freedom dreams and deeds of generations of beings from a range of cultural and historical lines. My own mystical journeys and my evolving spiritual acumen have since early childhood led me toward an ontology of immanence. My embodied understanding of time was born of oft-revisited experiences beyond the veil. I was not second-sided from birth as were some folks I knew and many of the forebears I'd known about. Rather, I grew into it through unintentional rites of passage encoded in a series of life events that had the commensurate impact of initiations, trainings, and transmutations. Consequently, I see multiply, the many in the one, the concomitant truths all in motion. My inquiries and imaginings are what I term ancient future. My longings are unabashedly mystical. Afromysticism is an experiential and embodied aesthetic. It is born from and it produces practices containing African diasporic philosophies. I apply the term Afromystical broadly to work I've encountered in the black American cultural continuum that activates interdimensional portals, evokes the numinous, communicates on multiple levels of perception simultaneously, and continuously re-oriented perceptions of time and space. Afromysticism emphasizes the centrality of those re-orienting perspectives, perceptions to the lived experience of freedom. And furthermore, posits freedom as an ever unfolding process, a process of being indivisible from universal expansion. Afromysticisms felt states of becoming contain discernible forms that occur both inside and outside the present moment and inside and outside of the self and community. Afromysticism reveals concurrency. Afromysticism recognizes states of play as sites for co-creative consciousness. And Afromysticism is indivisible from the ancestors. And I wanna just take a moment now to call all of those ancestors who are threaded through all of this work into the room with particular love for our beloved mentor, Robbie Macaulay who we lost this year. I wanna pay honor to her and say thank you for all that she taught all of us. And yeah, now Kate, let's come back and we're gonna do something fun, I think, right? Not that this isn't fun, but yeah. Thank you all for those beautiful, beautiful readings. To hear the words in the voice after having read them on the page for so long is an amazing, amazing gift. That was really beautiful. And thank you, Daniel, for that reading from your introduction. So now we get to do a little interlude where I'll show off some of these books that Daniel has made and I'll explain how we're going to do our trivia game. So first things first, here are the books. There, as you can see, they're sort of sisters here in terms of their look. And so this is Love Like Light, the collection of plays. Some are printed on black paper and some on white paper. It's got a beautifully textured cover. It's truly, truly, truly beautiful. Even the printer was impressed. So. And then it could be used as a self-defense tool. Absolutely. Like, it's got some patterns on it here. And then this is the conversation between Daniel and Alexis Pauline Gums. And I'm just truly delighted by this volume. It's a tremendous, it's so slim. And yet there's such wisdom here and a really tremendous introduction to, it just, it feels like it constellates outward. And so it can be a really beautiful friend kind of guiding you into new realms of thinking and of love. Just also shout out Dr. Alexis Pauline Gums and say what an honor it was to be in conversation with her and to note that she represents, to me, the flower of so much of this work over so many decades that we're in tradition with. She, Alexis Pauline Gums embodies freedom wholly and it is really a delight to be able to share a volume with her. So get with that one too. Yeah. And so then I wanted to explain. So you have the viewers, our audience has the opportunity to win a couple of different prizes by competing in a trivia challenge. And so the way the trivia challenge will work is that I will read here in this moment a few trivia questions and I will also post them on 53rd State Press' Twitter page right after the event. So if you need to return to the text and if you think that you can answer any one of these trivia questions you can respond to us on Twitter or you can email me at Kate at 53rdStatePress.org. And correct respondents will then have the opportunity to be entered, they'll be entered into a drawing and you'll have the opportunity to win any one of three different prizes. One prize is your very own copy of Love Like Light. And another prize is a copy of two different 53rd State Press titles Suicide Forest and by Haruna Lee and Severed by Ignacio Lopez. And then the third prize is a collection of CDs featuring Joe Mama Jones. Is it the full, is it the complete? It's the first five CDs. So we, and then Aten is coming out in vinyl a little bit later. So if we get it before the end of the year maybe that will be added to the prize. You'll get five, you'll get a Lone Star, Radiate, Six Ways Home, Flowering and a New. Okay, so this is your moment to like really pay attention and look deep into yourself as you attempt to answer these trivia questions. The first trivia question, what is the first piece of live theater that Sharon Bridgeforth saw? Two, what Tony season featured all new dramatists, writers, alum and resident for best play? You just have to give the year, but for a bonus you can tell me what all of the plays were. Three, what was Ms. Beiney Burroughs first Broadway show? Four, name three artists working in the theatrical jazz tradition or artists who have worked in the theatrical jazz tradition. And five, name two Austin based organizations that fostered or fostered the connection between art and activism. All right, so hopefully there's a little bit of something for everyone. Sharon, you have to pick one besides your own, besides the question of what did you first see? And again, your options for responding are you can respond to us on Twitter or you can email me at Kate at 53rdstatepress.org. And then we will contact you if you are one of the lucky several. Beautiful. Now I think we're going to segue into the next portion of our party, which is a panel discussion. I'm so, so delighted to introduce our panelists who are Daniel Alexander Jones, Jonathan McCrory of the National Black Theater, Valerie Curtis Newton and Dr. Omi Osunjoni L. Jones. Jonathan McCrory is an OB award winning and a Delco nominated Harlem based artist who has served as artistic director at Dr. Barbara Anne Tears National Black Theater since 2012. He's worked as a director, producer and actor and he was a founding member of the movement theater company as well as a co-founder of the producer collective Harlem Nine. Valerie Curtis Newton is head of directing at the University of Washington School of Drama and serves as the founding artistic director for the Hansbury Project, a professional African-American theater lab. She has worked with professional theaters across the country, including the Guthrie, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Seattle Rep, Playmakers Theater Repertory Company, Actors Theater of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Intamond Theater, Seattle Children's, the Mark Taper Forum, New York Theater Workshop and Southern Repertory Theater. Dr. Omi Osunjoni L. Jones brings Black feminist practice and theatrical jazz principles to her art making, pedagogy and facilitation. Her dramaturgical work includes August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean and Shea Youngblood's Shaken the Mess Adam Misery, both under the direction of Daniel Alexander-Jones as well as Sharon Bridgeforth's Conflama under the direction of Lori Carlos. Her most recent book is the theatrical jazz performance, Assay and the Power for the Present Moment. She's Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at UT Austin. And now to start off our panel discussion, I'm gonna invite Dr. Jones to read from her glorious introduction to Love Like Light. Thank you. I have chosen a five minute excerpt to share with you from that introduction. Joy. Daniel calls us with love like light to follow his persistent dance to joy. Joy as divine pulse. Joy, not as the absence of pain, but as a declaration of aliveness. Daniel is forging paths to freedom and joy is the train that will take us there. But as your mama reminds us, not everyone will make it. Not everyone is ready for the work that freedom requires. Some will resist this joy as naive or apolitical, while in fact, it is the heart of political truth. These truths are so profound, so necessary that Daniel can gracefully navigate a willingness to be not understood. This volume is our opportunity to do our own dance through Daniel's inspiration. And in so doing, we not only imagine the physical productions of his work, but we also have the opportunity to experience the literariness of his work. In Daniel's writing, there's a compelling precision that looks like nonchalance. Each word and image sharp, crisp, no excess or dross. What Sharon Ridgeforth calls, quote, a beauty that looks soft, but really cuts, end quote. His deafness with language demonstrates a command of sound that is understood as music when your mama sings. But the people in his worlds are always singing, even as they chat. So this volume allows us to save our language to underline passages that make us gasp, to map the structural landscape to read and reread and reread into the pleasure of text, thereby giving us the saturation reading affords. Love, light, light is our sacred grove where Daniel has gathered several of his long time interlocutors. This gathering is a potent black feminist move, creating a collective, bringing people together for a convening, a ceremony of celebration. An enactment of joy through honoring each contributing voice. Black. Daniel insists on black that is deeply inclusive and resistant to the rigidity of singular definitions. He asks us to live inside unfixateness, for black is the space of the unknown yet to be known rather than an empty cavernous void. Black is the fertile soil of invention. Here, we can see more, not less, as our pupils expand so we can see in the dark. Black is what if, while light is, is. Black is where light is born and a black light as a tool causes a glow that can authenticate currency and art and identify medical disorders. Our black light then detects that which is not visible to the naked eye. In this way, Daniel's work is our black light, pushing us past the world as we know it into what the world could so beautifully be. Light. Light and its many refractions is a central force and theme in Daniel's productions. The titles of his works, the character's names and the stagings all reveal the importance of illumination in his work. Daniel acknowledges Mike Wongan, the master lighting designer with bringing forth what Daniel calls the soul of the piece. Light moves us into the stratosphere for whence we all came as particles of stardust. Love. We can't get to freedom with the strategies that have maimed us to imagine and be beyond what we know. Daniel tells us, quote, we often look to external systems to be agents of our collective transformation and it really must begin within. There's something that happens when you let go of the old and you allow yourself to be undone completely, end quote. Love like light invites this undoing with the sonic inventions throughout that often defy genre classifications and the insistence to be courageous. Parts are righteously suspicious, are rusted with rage and grimy with fear and still. Daniel cares enough about humanity that he challenges us to do the hardest thing to reinvent ourselves through love. Each work in this volume is a primer for those of us willing to open, willing to yield. By the time anyone reads this volume, we will know if humans were brave enough to follow the call to joy profit throughout the work. Can we join this particular brand of life affirming, love commanding and urgency, will love be the light? The choice is in our hands. So beautiful, so beautiful, thank you. And at this point, I'd love to invite the rest of our panelists back onto the screen. And with that beautiful introduction, I'd love to begin our discussion with a question that I think is maybe useful in thinking about all of your careers and the ways in which you've straddled many different traditions. I'd like to know about aesthetic breadth and black theater, that I think we have a kind of myth or a tendency to associate black theater with realism coming out of the black arts movement with August Wilson. And so I'm wondering what does it mean to be coming out of or working in an experimental tradition? And I'm also curious about how you've moved among those spaces for those of you who have been moving back and forth. It's really interesting, Kate. I think about the duality that you speak of goes way before the black arts movement. You go all the way back to some writers like Maria Bonner, right? She was writing in what we would now call an avant-garde tradition in the 1800s. In 1900s. So there's always been a seed for imagination and for escaping our reality to a place where our souls could live and breathe. So our tradition of work has always included that. I think that the emphasis on realism and black theater is that we also had to write about our trauma. And our trauma existed in a sort of daily, every day experience, and that's the way that it came out, right? So when you look at an August Wilson play, for example, and we have to start again way before August Wilson. Yeah, so there is a way in which many plays wanna talk about the pain and trauma of our being subjected to racism and slavery in this country, and it escapes or cuts off the connection to the rituals of joy that came over with us from Africa. So there's a lot to unpack into where this divergence happens between realism and imagination. Our theatrical tradition is laden with dualities, right? Elaine Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois had this ongoing battle about whether or not we could uplift the people who were not model citizens, whether that, those were black stories. There's always been this conversation about whether pageants are theater, whether rituals are theater. So we've just always, we've always had it. And I think part of what Daniel's work does is it calls us, and there are many artists working in this way, it calls us actually to accept that all of it belongs to us. All of it belongs to us. And just to uplift this notion of Valerie was so beautifully expository and in the question around breath, it actually makes me think about this, the saying that Pastor Kendra at First Corinthians Baptist Church said, which was that your breath is your first therapist. What if that was actually the opportunity for you to understand what's happening inside your system? And when I think about how black bodies have been utilizing breath to understand what's happening inside of their system, there's a duality, there's a complexity, there's a nuance inside of that, there's a healing elixir that's wanting to happen and that duality goes into mythic spaces, that duality goes into realistic spaces, that duality is trying to figure out what liberation looks like when it's been codified and been looking at a mirror called Western civilization, when it looks at freedom from a space that's been taught to commodify, to limit, to undermine sometimes the very nature of its freedom and how we as black people and black folk have been actually etching away and actually been asked to trained and conditioned to etch away from our indigenous authentic self. And it becomes opportunities to breathe in into the imaginative self, opportunities to break through their realistic models, opportunities to live inside of the Afrofuturism that our wisdom actually lies, lives inside of it. You think about Egypt in itself as a microcosm, you think about South Africa and you think about Lucy and the land of like, you think about these generative hubs of imagination that sometimes you can't even fathom, we don't even still know how the pyramids were made. We can't, from the ingenuity, we can't imagine that. So just thinking about how that breath was liberating itself into a future that imagined how our bodies could generate new ways of being, new ways of construction, new ways of civilization that we now with the kind of civic and kind of architectural and kind of astute learning that we have, we still can't fathom, right? And that breath, that breath that allows for that therapy to happen, that connectivity to source to happen, that download to happen, I mean, that's a universal, that's a universal elixir. And I think when we think about the pinning that Daniel's talking about and the pinning that artists in this realm and in this anthology are actually talking about, we're actually talking about a quest, because I think it's important what Valerie talked about, joy as the elixir, or talking about a quest of actually centering that breath to codify the manifestation of joy through the elixir of black indigenous thought. And I think that is powerful and that is necessary, especially when we start talking about, I know Daniel made a joke about how it's like a weapon, but like we need weapons of joy that allow for us to really gird and root ourselves to begin to imagine what healing looks like. We've been through a trauma collectively as a civilization coming off and in the heels of the shutdown, not the pandemic, because we're still in the midst of it. But in the midst of the shutdown, when lights turn back on and they're asking us to like return back to civilization as if it never had happened, there is a trauma that is being asked to be asked, act like it never happened. And so then how does breath, that joy elixir, those kind of medicines become a part of our ability and our necessity to be able not to return back to this because this is actually a mirroring of a psychosis. And it's just the universe saying, if you do not heal now, we are going to take it even one step further. And can we take the lesson now? Because even the planet, I mean, my friend Keith said this and I will be quiet because I feel like I've rambled a lot, but my friend Keith said, said this very beautiful, cute Joseph Atkins said, this very beautiful thing. The planet is teaching us we have to live in chaos. We do not understand how to live in the midst of chaos. The way that the hurricanes are moving, the way that the highway one fell, the way that we don't know the globe, the climate change that's happening, the planet is in the midst of chaos. And then why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we as individuals who live as a fabric of Mother Earth's majestic wisdom, why wouldn't we then live in the center of chaos as well? Why wouldn't we learn how to harmonize with that chaos instead of trying to control it from our Western and some capitalistic views that are not connected to indigenous practices that allow for us to then change with the prevailing winds? Like joy is the center of the thing. And it's the reason that white supremacy came for that first. Ashay. That's it. I mean, if you think about, so I've been looking at ring shots, right? And looking at ring shots as if you think about that and thinking about how it had to become for first, right? And there's no notion of how ring shots were something that actually translated from the transonic slave trade to the soils of America during the antebellum South as an elixir joy mechanism, as an elixir to remind the body, even though it was enslaved, that is liberated and free. And how in so many ways we have walked away from those kinds of indigenous practices and are trying to neuter ourselves to live inside of the notion of whiteness and reflection of whiteness. And what does it mean for us to re-center those indigenous practices? What does it mean for us to work in against the grain? And what does it mean for us to catalog those things in a way in which that allows for it to be transmutable? There's this beautiful thing that Ronda Ross said before, before we all started the panel. We had a pre-panel for the panel. It was a really light, lovely, it was a love fest. She said, there's a beautiful testimony latent inside of this book that allows for the world to now have history recorded as black brown folks, our history is usually oral, which allows for it to not sometimes die at the vine of the wisdom keeper. And what does it mean? And I think we're at a place where, and this is why it's so great that you utilize this time to create that repository, Daniel, because without it, we start to lose the wisdom keepers. I always, I am a bit of a broken record around this because it goes back to Egypt. And it goes back as a point of material flourishing as you're talking about, of the imagination. And we know from all of his, like I'm gonna talk about historical research that is not racist that that wisdom itself spreads down to the sun people in South Africa and it moved along the Nile for centuries. And the Nile flows from the central Southern Africa up to the Mediterranean, not the Nile around. And so in that spread of knowledge, there was a deep understanding that we have the capacity in every moment that we are conscious to shape our expression at every moment that we are conscious. And what this, what Western settler colonialism did to every culture on the planet, including indigenous European culture, which was focal, which was ritual based, which her, you know, again, before Europeans were white, right? Yes, yes, yes. That there is an understanding that we can remember what we have not ourselves lived. I say it carries across. And so that myth from Egypt is the myth of Isosthenes Cyrus. And the idea that the jealous brother set murders Osiris who is the vegetative God of life, right? And spreads him, chops him up and spreads him across the land. And Isis, his wife and sister in her morning goes and gathers those pieces by hand. And she takes the spell from Toth. And she, through her own pleasure, her own eros, her own life force reanimates Osiris, brings him back to life, remembers him. And in that act of remembering conceives Horus, who is the Falcon headed God, child who is the Avenger of Osiris, who is the reason that the sun rises every morning, right? As a result of the victory of Horus. And so I always go back to that to say that when we look at our history and our trauma, we are a culturated, I would say in this contemporary moment to stay with the trauma as the end result. Remember Isis, remember our capacity to gather those pieces. Remember our capacity to spell the magic word. Remember our capacity to remember and therefore resurrect and therefore birth new life. And it is in that listening process. That's why I love these, so many of my plays are really excuses for people to tell their stories, right? And sometimes those stories get told in language. Sometimes it's gesture. Sometimes it's about the movement of those bodies together, but all of those stories allow us to say, if I tell my story and I hear your story and we hold one another's stories, we are in an act of remembering. All of this, all of this, all of this, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And for me, what binds what everybody is saying is bringing spirit consciously into the work. So that spirit and spirit then it's gonna go or it's gonna go and it cannot be commodified. And that's part of the, one of the things that I think happened with black art making is that it was clear certain kinds of forms were going to be commercially successful. And the push there, spirit got quieter and quieter and in many ways. And what I find in Daniel's work and the work of many others for hundreds of years is that spirit gets to be right there. And Daniel, as you said, spirit may make itself present as a movement or spirit makes itself present as a song or it makes itself present as something that may be understood as gibberish, but that's where the electricity and transformation is. So I just wanted to throw that into the mix that spirit gets to be foregrounded, needs to be foregrounded as a force in the work. Because you also, okay. Just wanted to add one quick thing, which is also to honor, I wanna honor the three of you in particular and say like, I look at you all and I see these carriers of the magic, the carriers of the tradition, the carriers of this knowledge, right? And that it is such a powerful thing to take note that if we look back and Valerie, I'm gonna go to your example, like we can go back in time. There have always been those folks who've taken that responsibility to say, I'm gonna pick this knowledge up and I'm gonna hold it and I'm gonna carry it and I'm gonna move it forward. And I know that that's a very difficult thing to walk with because it means that you then become someone who is talking about spirit and hyper-materialist, industrial capitalist, you know. And I wanna say this because I think it's real. My whole career I've been looked at as suspect because why are you up in here talking about love? Why are you up in here talking about spirit? Why are you up in here talking about memory? Who are you? You ain't black. We missed a whole layer of all the things that I've been told about why I shouldn't be doing this or why we shouldn't be doing this. But what I know is it is here because so many carried it and passed it. They carried it and passed it. And these institutions, and I call the names, I call MBT and Dr. Tier who went uptown and said, I'm gonna bring that, I'm gonna bring it and I'm gonna make the space where that happens. I'm gonna call the number to Lou Bellamy and Sarah Bellamy and all of those folks who made a space where that kind of experimentation could happen center stage. I'm gonna call Hansberry project. You know, what the work that you've been doing for so many years in all respects Valerie and making space, like you said, for us to have it all. And then only with your incredible work with the Performing Blackness series and all of the innovations you did as an educator and a leader. And so we are a small number of many who are out here doing this work and who have kept it alive. And the lie is that we don't have a fluency in this way of working. We do, we know. And for sure, it became of interest to all the European modernists because it undergirds all the forms of modernism, I would say. So there we have it. There's a, in talking about aesthetics for black theater, I think that the idea, this question of a monolith, whatever, wherever on the spectrum, the monolith notion definition sets itself. I think that that's again, part of the attempt to limit our imaginations as to the possibility of our existence. If joy is our central weapon, choice is the tool by which we activate it. If we can be convinced that we have no choice, to choose joy, then this is like the 21st century Willie Lynch speech. We will hold ourselves in bondage because we refuse to choose the thing that will heal us. And we accept and kind of take in over and over the poison that is killing our spirits. And I think the other thing for me is that we have our own control. Yeah. We get to decide, that's what Dr. Tear did, right? She just decided, she had control. She made a choice. And then she, you know, that Baldwin quote, you first have to decide who you are and then force the world to deal with who you are, not their idea of who you are, right? So we get to choose and then we get to force people to deal with who we are. And when we forget that, then we lapse into depression. Then we lapse into backbiting and eating our own young and crabs in a bucket mentality, as opposed to a sense of abundance and choice and joy and love and community and how all of those things work together. You know, when I fall down, you all lift me up. When you fall down, I lift you up. Jonathan, you were talking about pastoral language, right? And for me, I've been working on this idea more and more clearly that, you know, heaven is ours to have right here on earth because we can strive to be our fullest, whole, healthy self right here. If I'm trying to make the conditions for that for you and you all are trying to make the conditions for that for me, we're in communion and in community, we're lifting up the whole self. And there's a way in which our work is such spiritual work that, and that's the part that gets forgotten. And that's why we have these kinds of like either or dichotomies. And then there also becomes the question of this, like there's now, there's now a school because it's, I feel, it's like skin folk and always skin folk. There's now, I think a kind of ingrained sensibility of these dichotomies of like people who have fully indoctrinated themselves into the capitalist system and fully indoctrinated themselves inside of that commodification and that divorcing of really, and really looking at success from a wealth pathology versus I think something that Dr. Tears said that love is the only currency that you can take to the bank. So what does it mean to actually build your wealth based off love instead of building your wealth based off of the blood and the toro and the sacrifice and all the other things that you can possibly think of? And it just makes me think, how do we return the dominant structure back to being embraced by the sun? How do we allow for this cycle of like building family, building community, building each other up? How do we radiate it out? These are things that I think about. How do we radiate out this notion of home, autonomy, joy, love? So that every black artist who has a knowing that that is a successful way of being, that it doesn't mean, like it doesn't mean, and defining sex, not sex, but divining, that's gonna be a part of it, that's gonna be a part of it, but defining success based off your own terms instead of the terms of the counterparts that are around you. When I first started working at MBT, that was a very necessary thing I had to define for myself because to Daniel's point, there was a sacrifice that had to come to bear when I chose to go a spiritual walk of holding up an anchor for my community. And that sacrifice has yielded a lot of beautiful love in my life, a lot of beautiful joy in my life, a lot of beautiful wealth and ways in which that I would never have imagined it from the acquisition of crystals, to the acquisition of my spiritual health, to the acquisition of joy as a wealth idea, the acquisition of just the people around me, right? And me loving myself as an acquisition of wealth, right? But that's me having a conversation with a different relationship to success, to being present, that I think we are, again, conditioned to kind of like gird ourselves with. So I think that's a very important conversation to have. We started thinking about these works in this anthology, how it's conjuring up a necessity for us to have a conversation with our blood memory and blood trauma and allowing that blood memory and blood trauma to rise to the surface and allowing our shadowy self to have a conversation with who we are as what we visibly show people out into the world. I think that's why this conversation and this book are so important. I think that there are many young art makers who do not really know about these lineages, about these possibilities, about how to make a choice that defies everything that they're being taught or told about the world. So I'm so excited that the book, because a book can get passed around and so on, you know, our performances are vital and nothing can replace that live experience. And it is going to impact immediately those people who are able to be there. The book can go around, around, around, around. And so the story of how to live lives that are not wedded to commodification and commercialism and capitalism, people need those stories so that they recognize they got a posse, even if they've not met them, you know? And that that posse will support them because some of us are moving into sites where we get to decide on grants and we get to do other kinds of things that can support young artists. So I think this is really important, this gathering we're having right now, because it gives people a way to see how you can live, enjoy outside of the paradigms that have most often been given to us. And I think that Jonathan's point about your own definitions of success is incredibly important. You know, and it goes all the way back to the African Grove. I say. William Henry Brown was trying to do what white folks did. He was getting his ass kicked for it. I say. Stuff was getting burned down. They were getting beaten up because they wanted to do what? Shakespeare. They thought, oh, if this is what the art is and this is what intelligence is, I can do that. Let me do that. Which still centered a kind of white approval, even though they were making the word for black people, they were mirroring a white aesthetic. And William Henry Brown eventually said to himself, if I keep trying to be what they are, that's not feeding my spirit or feeding my people. So what if I define success for myself, define my story as central? Then he started writing. So then we get King shot away. That's right. And it goes from there, but it was a moment of turning from, yes, I can speak Shakespeare, I can understand Shakespeare, but I have my own story. Yes. And success for me is sharing my own story. Yes. And so that's again, that thing about not having to choose. That's it. I love, Valerie, you said this thing of the moment of turning. And I'd love to hold that for a second and say that, it's been one of the things, Kate, the invitation that Kate gave to bring this volume together. And I wanna note too, that 53rd state is an example of this as well. An independent press that is determined, like choosing a way of valorizing work on the part of artists around the nation who are not doing it necessarily in that same mainstream or commercial way. So there's evidence, evidence, evidence. But that moment of turning, the turning away from, and turning towards something. And I think about, there's an image in my introduction where I talk about my late mom, I had a memory of her showing me how sunflowers follow the light. And I can still feel her, I was like seven years old or something. And she guided my head up and showed me, like the relationship between the head of that sunflower and where the sun was. And she told me of, as it moved, the flower moves. And I think about this in terms of Exodus from the way of doing things. I think about this in terms of, the idea of the Maroon society as an image, what would mean for us to leave and gather in the sun. And that to me is an invitation. And this is partly where I stand in a bit of controversial territory. I wanna invite everybody to follow blackness and light toward this redemptive feeling because I think the trick bag catches everybody. And a lot of these identity markers, and I say this oftentimes are born from the auction block and chattel slavery and ideas about whiteness and ideas about blackness and ideas about otherness and racial categories. And what would happen if we invite ourselves even a little bit to remember that there were ways that people were on the planet for tens of thousands of years prior to the advent of these systems. Yes. Tens of thousands of years. Can we remember another way to be with each other? Can we hold the space to tell our stories of the traumas that we've been through without repression, without consequence, but as an omitment to say, these are the things we all inherited. And here's what we choose to do. I think that that controversial point of telling our stories, making our productions for a wider community, there is something that our people get from hearing our stories. Yes. And there's also stuff that other people get from hearing our stories. They can get the truth. That's right. For one thing, they can get the truth. So, Daniel, I understand that sort of controversy that happens. I say in public all the time, I love black people. I love us so much. I want everyone else to love us too. That's right. And that's why I make my work so that everybody can love black people. That's right. And the honest truth is that once you start to love black people, you start to love yourself. Regardless, it is this kind of, one of the original senses, many on this continent, but one of them is the construction of capitalism based off of black woman's body. And that until this society starts to really reckon with that reality and start to repivot who they invest in, how they invest in them and how they love a black woman for being fully themselves, not being a angry black woman, not being all the tropes that have come of vixen, all those tropes. Until that gets reconciled, there is a shadow of unwholeness and an illness and a sickness that is running through the veins of our society. That is running through the very core of our society. And what's really beautiful and powerful about eight conversations like this and works in anthologies like this is asking us to reconcile and reckon with that very unfavorable truth that we run away from. The thing that society doesn't necessarily want us to talk about. And it begins to start to activate what I used to, I have this beautiful love with butterflies and talking about, hey, let's have the butterfly effect. Let's activate everyone's butterfly and get them flapping. And also that like the pandemic could have been for folks an opportunity to cocoon themselves, to break bones, build new muscles, build new possibilities that they never thought they could have. So when they come out of the shutdown, come out of this moment, they're able to flap in a different kind of way and do a different kind of service to the planet. Well, there's an actor that D Watts, I was at a show for, in Guzzy show, I'm at the Atlantic theater and there was this beautiful moment where I professed this moment and said this out loud. And he was like, well, what's also really beautiful about a caterpillar is that in his DNA is the butterfly waiting to emerge. And the question that I say is that works like this, doing ritualistic theater, doing works that return us back to the indiginality of self-reading texts like this, having conversations like this is potentially awakening the DNA that's laid inside of folks. And to your point, Omi, what you were talking about, it allows people to say, I'm not a stranger to this world. I have common folk that speak my language that there is a universe of a cosmology that loves me, that knows me, that is already lighting a candle for me, doesn't have to see my face, know me exactly, but the spirit of me is what they're holding. And I think that that's what's really important. Really important is that you knowing that there is this destination called home. There's a destination that you can call home and call into being and you can strive to. One of the reasons why my commitment to MBT is so strong National Black Theater is because I feel like Black Theater deserves to have an Ailey in New York City. Black Theater deserves to have a destination where a Black artist can imagine. Doesn't mean every Black dancer is gonna go to Ailey. Doesn't mean every Black dancer is going to be on Ailey, but the idea that an Ailey exists as well, resource as it is, as nationally, internationally and global that it is, allows for a Black dancer, no matter where they are in the world, to imagine differently on the soil. And we need that also with inside of a Black Theater context. And I think that that's why a conversation like this is equally important because it allows to radio out concepts and ideas that allow for a future Black leader in the arts or future artists in general in the arts to start to lean into the curiosity of the imagined self versus the constructed self. I think, Jonathan, that I appreciate the idea of wanting to have that kind of beacon. But you know, I'm out here in the hinterlands of as far away from New York as you can get. So for my thing, I do think about young artists, but for me, it's how can I be that where I am? How can I open them up to the possibility that they could take into their own hands the story making from where they are? And so, again, I think it's all of that. I think it's every artist in every town in Hamlet as well, all trying to be beacon stokers, right? We're all trying to light the fires where we are so that there are fires in every city, in every state, so that young people don't wither in the cold and in the dark, that there will be light and heat because we are here. That's the thing that I'm trying really hard to help folks know. And I think that one of the things that touched me so much about Daniel's book is his sense of his place in the line, right? This question of lineage. His place in the line is so strong and he has gone back to really investigate who influenced him, how they influenced him. What's the thing he's supposed to pass forward? What's the thing he's supposed to let wither? Because even in those relationships, there are things that need to die, right? There were things for the moment, they were for that season for a reason. But now you're not there in that season anymore. And so deciding what goes forward, deciding what you got and that doesn't need to go forward, deciding how to build on that notion that Omi writes so beautifully about theatrical jazz. What is it to have repetition and then change? What's in that moment? For each of us, we repeat our mentors and then we own it and then we change what our mentors taught us. And it becomes a new thing that includes us. And I think that that's one of the really beautiful things about your journey as an artist and how you record it and how you call out and give voice to your place in the line. And also what it means to go from being that young artist who was mentored by those powerhouse women in particular and now to be moving into the place of elder wisdom and having a different role. This book is a huge, huge contribution to what it is to offer wisdom to those coming behind. And again, Omi is so on point about the fact that the literary anchor of it means that there are generations and generations who will step into line behind Daniel Alexander Jones. You and Omi have me wanting to write a book. I don't know what I'm gonna write it about. But you all have me wanting to write a book. We need that book Valerie. I wanna speak to the thing of lineage and thank you some of that. That means so much to hear this and thank you so much. And I'm very much overwhelmed right now with love for this room of people and trying to take that in. Cause I know that that is one of the things I think in the lineage that didn't happen is my mentors didn't take in what they did. They were so committed to keeping the work going. And as we know, there's so much trauma and struggle in that process. But being able to stop and say, and I hope that this book, and I know it does, communicates to their spirit, you did good. And that is why I will always call their names. Nothing I do is original. So if we value in the West, the meaning is originality, then don't value what I do. What I value is this thing of continuance and innovation, like what you're talking about, Valerie, that we keep the river unblocked. We keep it flowing. And I'm proud of the things I made, but I also know that Miss Viny Burles is in my work. Yeah. Robbie McCauley taught me how to stand up and say the hard thing that Laurie Carlos taught me that my body knows more than my mouth does. I see. That Rebecca Rice taught me that sometimes you got to get in the room with those fools and you have to shut your mouth and be patient and wait, right? You know, that Blanche Foreman taught me, make a space that is your space inside any space you enter when you open your voice and you sing. It will change the atoms in the air. And Dr. Constance Berkeley taught me that freedom is elusive and that we must continue to tend it like we would tend a garden. And so I call their names and other names and Jessica Hagelder and I can go on with the names. And I do go on with the names because it's so important to call them in the room. And two, there's this sense of like, I love that thing of like, Jonathan, you talked about coming home and Valerie talked about like everywhere they're being a beacon. And one of the memories I have, and I don't know if you remember Ms. Viney and Rhonda, but when we were working on Phoenix Fabrika, Pillsbury House Theater, then under the direction of Noah Raymond and Fay Price and Pillsbury House is a settlement model. So the theater is in a building that also contains youth services and a free health clinic. And there's a church that meets there on Sunday and there's a AA. So it's like the theater is in the space where everybody comes to deal with the things that happen in their lives. And there was an open door policy for rehearsal. So anybody could come up in there when you're working, which it should be, right? And so there were these three little sisters who were like in the youth group thing, they had to be like nine, 10, 11 years old or something like that. And they would come in and file in the back and watch our rehearsals. And, you know, we said hello, but they didn't, they weren't trying to talk with us. They were watching the work. And then at one point I came in with some stupid idea that I was gonna change something in the play. And I said, you know, Ms. Viney, would you do this, Rhonda? And I hear, uh-uh, mm-mm. That was, I turned back to the little girls and they were like, she wouldn't do that. I said, excuse me. She said, no, no, no. And then the other one said, yeah, because in that part where she said that, and then the way she looked and she said, mm-mm, not that. You shouldn't do that. That's gonna make the play bad. And I was like, I have my dramaturgs in those little girls who felt that that was theirs. And it was theirs. And I trusted their wisdom because they were in that room and they got it. And then all the adults were telling me, no one will understand this abstract play and why do you have it? And I was like, these little girls came in here and ruled the play, right? So it's, to me, that thing too. It's also about making the work accessible and this abusing us of this idea that we don't understand abstraction. Yeah. Mm-mm. Come through. Mm-mm. Yeah. Mm-mm. Come through. Mm-mm. When I directed the mojo and the say so, and we were trying to solve the end of that play that the transformation of the preacher to his essence, when I would tell people at the end that the preacher who's a vulture is a snake, slithers off the stage, and they're looking at me like, what? I'm like, you have to see it. You have to see it, the conjuring that happens and the way that he is stripped of the layers to reveal his true self. That's a ritual that you can't actually describe. You have to experience. And so in the work, I can imagine Ayesha having conversations about whether or not it was good structure, whether or not it was solid storytelling, and she just knew that it was the story she needed to tell and it needed to be told this way. And that's one of the great things about those women is that they knew what they knew and you could not move them from their knowledge. No, he's gonna be skinned and reveal his true nature. And Daniel, you and I have talked about working with Lori and it's like, no, it must be a red coat. It must be a particular kind of red coat because on so and so had that kind of red coat and I'm writing my family's history. So we have to go for that color red coat. They were like very, very powerful guardians for their vision and also very generous in terms of sharing practice. They wanted you to know how to make it for yourself but they also wanted you to be fierce in your defense of a vision. That is so. And fierce for their healing. I mean, when you uplift that kind of specificity and that kind of clarity that both of you and Daniel have been talking about that is a clear destination of saying, this is not about, this is not just a work for me. This is a offering. This is about a healing and that healing and offering are very specific. Like, if you know of what an offering is and some spiritual and religious sex, like if you're above, you can't give a certain kind of orange. Can't just give any or you get a certain kind of apple. It can't just be any old kind of apple. Like the honey, the core has to be taken out in a certain kind of way. The honey has to be poured in to the red delicious apple and then it has to be placed on this kind of like, there's specificity in creating conditions for healing. And all of us have that inside of us, that intuitive voice that helps to name it. And when you just uplifted that kind of specificity, Valerie and Daniel, it reminded me how works of the black tradition of the works that lean into indigenous practices are really a deep manifestation of one seeking healing, one seeking exorcism, one seeking a release and inviting and giving the privilege of others to go on that journey who might have a similar scratch, a similar need, a similar scar that needs a salve, that these works are salves, that the idea of manifesting it becomes a salve and logic is not always baked in into healing, but specificity I think is. Daniel, I have one question for you as we're running out our time. When you got the commission to write the book, when you got the charge to write the book, after the excitement, what came up for you? What was the thing that was both most frightening and most exhilarating to overcome? Thank you for that question. I think the thing that was most exhilarating was feeling the force of joy that moved through all of these works. And you brought up Ayesha. And Ayesha was one of my great teachers and also of Ronda Ross. We both took class with Ayesha. And I remember, I've told only this story so often, I remember Ayesha being in a class with us and she would, we would be giving oral presentations, like getting up there to give our little distillation. And she had just come back from Mardi Gras and she had a Harlequin mask and she would sit in the back of the room while you're up there giving a formal presentation, you know, on, on like Sonia Sanchez, the Bronx's next and the violence or whatever. And she'd be there like, bugging Ayesha's dick. And what I loved is that she was always understanding the need to have a leg butt in the room, the trickster in the room, to keep us from being too stuck in our certainty, to be able to play and to see the magic that would emerge. So that kind of thing and just remembering the food that was cooked and the gatherings and the mess and the crazy stories. And so that this was a testament of life. And the hard thing is just, you know, I think that the challenge was, was a sadness because I also feel how hard it is to do the work. And, you know, I won't lie and say that it's been easy to do this for 30 years in this way because there are so many times where I don't feel the impact of what I'm doing because what I'm, the impact is not in invisible sight, right? It's like, it's gonna unfold maybe and someone who was part of the worker and witness to it. And so there was also this sense of, wow, you know, the work of my foremothers, not a lot of people know it. So I felt that responsibility because I was like, you know, it's deep. It's deep to always be kind of left off of the conversation when you know that what you're doing is actually in service of the bones, hopefully, of the bones. So that's my response. Thank you for that question. Are there final thoughts or words that we should bring forward during that panel was, you were all stunning. I am totally blown away. I'm so, so grateful for all of you thinking here in the moment. Maybe is there anything, any, you know, that I know that Jason and Viney and Rhonda are here. Is there anything, and Sharon, is there anything you wanted to maybe add? I would love for anyone, yeah, everyone else to come back. That I have no major plan for these final moments of our gathering together. I just thought that we could, that it might be a moment for Daniel to say a few words for anyone who's still with us at our party, to say a few words. Absolutely. I wanna say thank you. I wanna say thank you. Thank you for doing the labor. Thank you for the spiritual guidance that is within that. Thank you for being courageous, for fighting for your very life to get to this moment and in all the ways that you carried us with you and all the ways that we get to stand with spirit, with the architects of our work, with the ancestors that dreamt this moment and thank you for always reaching back, looking forward and pulling us ahead. I love you. I would just also just say thank you. And one of the things I hope, and I don't actually have the physical book, maybe Kate, if you don't mind, if you could just kind of show the gratitude cages, right? Like there is like, I just hope that people will read those pages and there are many pages of gratitude of the people to just again say this is a we thing. This is a we thing. And I hope everyone who is, was ever a part of making any of these works feels themselves valorized in these pages. I think we should call that, that should be your book named Valerie Valorize. Valerie Valorize. My students say, Val does not validate. That's right though. It's beautiful. Daniel, do you have any parting words for us or should we? Just thank you, thank you, thank you. And you know, please buy this book. Buy Love Like Light and please buy Particle and Wave also. And then buy all the books and I would love to just say people like, you know, do if you, I would love people to do this work. I don't know what it would look like or be like, just do it, play with it, have fun with it, like read it out loud. And then also go and look at that list of my mentors that I name. Go and look at the list of the people's names I call in that gratitude list and go find out what they make, go find out what they're doing because I'm certainly not alone. I'm like, I'm part of a large constellation of artists who've been working in this way for years who will continue to work this way. But I'm very grateful that this is a place where people can come and get a jumpstart. And I just want to again, you know, thank Ayesha, I neglected to call her name Adrienne Kennedy. Like so many incredible folks who's work, you know, broke this ground and who didn't live to see a book of their own work necessarily. I want to, you know, just pay homage to them. So, and thank you, Kate. Thank you everybody who came. I should say to our listeners who are still there, two discount codes, Love Wave, L-O-V-E-W-A-V-E for $7 off of both of these books or Illuminate I-L-L-U-M-I-N-A-T-E for $5 off of Love Like Life. And so those are the codes. We'll tweet them out. And thank you all so, so much for being here today. It was a pleasure, my honor. Bye. Pusheo. Pusheo. Pusheo. Thank you so much everyone.