 Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us to celebrate the launch of the HowlRound anthology Essays and Conversations from the first 10 years. I'm Jamie Galoon, director and co-founder of HowlRound, and my pronouns are she, her, hers. For those who need a visual description, I am a white woman in my 30s wearing glasses with brown hair pulled back into ponytail. I am wearing red lipstick and a white collared shirt. Live human-written captions are provided by the National Captioning Institute. Our ASL interpreters are Amelia Miranda and Gregory Guietto, and they are represented by Pro Bono ASL. We thank them for their work. I am joining you all today from my parents' home in White Bear Lake, Minnesota on the traditional lands of the Dakota people. Before we go further, I'd like to offer a digital land acknowledgement originally created by HowlRound Advisory Council member Adrian Wong of Spider Web Show. Because our event today is virtual, let's also take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies, structures, and ways of thinking we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many Indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art we make leave significant carbon footprints, contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging all of this as well as our shared responsibility to make good use of our time and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship. Thank you. Now, I'm going to offer a few words about how this anthology came about. As HowlRound approached its 10-year anniversary in 2021, we began thinking about ways to celebrate a decade of publishing essays, live streaming events, and bringing theatre practitioners together to amplify progressive and disruptive ideas. While early in HowlRound's founding, we self-published a handful of books, and we talked about the possibility of releasing HowlRound content in hard copy, the occasion of our 10th felt particularly ripe to return to this idea. As a commons-based, peer-produced, free and open platform, HowlRound would not exist without the thousands of theatre makers who have shared their collective wisdom over the past decade. And putting together this anthology was an opportunity to offer gratitude to the community that has made HowlRound what it is today. The HowlRound Journal Archive of the Last Decade traces some of the ways in which not-for-profit theatre discourse has developed since 2011. Conversations around gender and gender parity met the Me Too movement. Discussions around race and representation expanded into discussions of systemic racism and anti-racism and racial justice, landing in the complex, nuanced and intersectional place we find ourselves now. Throughout the decade, considerations of the climate crisis began to creep in, becoming more urgent and frequent as time went on. Reading back over many of the essays, I was struck by how much our early content focused on the role and possibilities of new technology at the time, as well as the question of theatre's relationship to the digital. Now in our third year of the pandemic, little could we have imagined back then the ways in which technology would by necessity take center stage thanks to COVID-19. All of these themes and more are reflected in this anthology. As the chorus of essays speaks to our evolving theatre field and its relationship to broader society and the world at large. The anthology was co-curated by former HowlRound content editor, Mae Ntaki, HowlRound associate producer, Dean Rollins Harris, HowlRound creative producer Abigail Vega, and myself. It includes pieces representative of HowlRound's core values and features a wide range of contributors and themes. Of course, it must be noted that there are many more essays from the HowlRound Journal that merited inclusion in the anthology than we could fit. So we had hours and hours of joyous and painful conversation about what to keep and what to let go. We started by looking at the most read, most commented on essays, but we allowed ourselves the freedom to bring in anything we felt warranted discussion. Acknowledging that most read, most clicked, most commented is not synonymous necessarily with most impactful. We ended up with 50 essays total and that accounts for between four and six essays for each year in the decade of artwork. And finally, we asked each author for permission to republish their essay and made final adjustments in accordance with their wishes. The resulting anthology we are delighted to launch today is our imperfect subjective best attempt at representing 10 years of incredibly divergent and multiplicitous contributions to the HowlRound Journal. This slide that you see now shows the wondrous group of theater makers that are included in the book. If you would like to ask us, say here that to buy your own copy of the anthology, check out HowlRound.com slash shop. This afternoon, we're joined by four anthology contributors, Nicole Brewer, Will Davis, Lauren Gunderson, and Michael Road. And we've asked them each to share an excerpt of their essay with us and offer some reflections on what they wrote. After we hear from each person, we'll close with a group discussion. So, to begin, I'd like to introduce Nicole Brewer. Nicole Brewer is a tall, fat, black, cis, temporarily able-bodied, community-held mother, an anti-racist theater maker who just started rollerskating again. She is wobbly on skates, but confident she will reclaim her ability to glide, bounce, and bop on skates again. Nicole is reading from her essay, Parents of Color and the Need for Anti-Racist Theater Practices, published December 3, 2019. Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate you and to all the HowlRound staff, thank you so much for your support. I'm Nicole Brewer. I am currently in a rehearsal room. It's White Walls Behind Me, a white board. I've got my headphones on. My hair is corn rolled in the moment, lovingly done by my baby niece, and I have on a multi-colored scarf, my go-to Pumba jacket when I'm directing, and a old necklace with the initials of my children on them. All right, so I'll dive in to the end of my essay. Steps to supporting parent artists with an anti-racist lens. There's such a long history of mistrust between white people and black, indigenous, and people of color communities, which cannot be remedied by a generic, family-friendly invitation to a conference. It's difficult to repair trust when communication is not clear around whose experience and comfort is being prioritized. In terms of parent artist support, there needs to be an active acknowledgement and commitment through written policy about harm reduction, harm prevention, and relationship repair. These tenants provide the foundation of transparency, accountability, and admission, acknowledging both how American society utilizes policies to disable families of color and what is being done to counter those policies. Here are some ways organizers and organizations can work to recognize, address, and counter bias and racism to standardize equitable support systems for parent artists of color. Make sure the historically invisible communities have a say and stake in their resources provided for parents and caregivers. Implement institutional wide policy. The problem with case by case parent support is that it allows bias to influence language used to describe working parents, which in turn determines an institution's willingness or reluctance to grant parent support. For instance, bias and language ascribes negative or positive words to different parents for doing the same action. In other words, a white mother who brings her infant to work is hardworking and a mother of color who brings her school age child to work is unprofessional. A father who brings his children to work is a good dad, but a mother who does the same is a mess. Rachel Spencer, excuse me, Hewitt, founder of parent artist advocacy, Lee Powell. shares without intentional parent support and protocol implicit bias will always dictate the words we choose to describe contributors who are caregivers. Develop a written policy. Excuse me develop a written public anti racist ethos outlining your commitment to anti racist and anti oppressive parent support work. Be honest about your institution's past and present bias, prejudice and racist behavior toward parents and create pathways of accountability that ensure those oppressive values don't resurface. Sustain child positive practices rather than child or family friendly practices. Child positive is a term I used to refer to the purposeful inclusion of children in any space by accounting for their needs, abilities and limitations. All of these factors impact how children, parents and non parental people function in a space and determine whether or not the needs of all the participants are being met, valued and centered. Child friendly, on the other hand, is akin to tolerating the presence of children with minimal attention given to how they impact others and the space. Just an anti bias training that provides people with resources to address and mitigate micro aggressions to children from adults and from children to children. Apply principles of restorative justice to how you integrate parent support policies. Both my children and I were invited to the National Pal Summit, me to present on an anti racist principles and my children to engage with other children of parents artists via provided childcare. The invitation to do my heart's work without leaving behind my heart beats. Was a rare moment and one we're fighting to have again. It's now on us to decide where we're going from here, letting go of all that is unnecessary to cultivate embodied liberation for everyone. It's my hope as artists will be guided by as theater artist Douglas turn award puts it, the desire to construct a new, not out of negative need but positive potential, leaving for the next generation and more transformed in just society for all. Thank you so much for that Nicole, and can we just take a breath please. I really want to sit with that last quote from Douglas turn award to build out of positive potential, and I want to thank you for your vulnerability and sharing. I became a mother eight and a half months ago. So, so many of the things that you raise in this essay resonate with me in an entirely kind of different and new way. And in particular, I so appreciate you offering the term child positive. I wonder if you can offer a few words about, you know what you think a child positive nonprofit theater field looks and feels like. Yes, thank you. And welcome. Jamie to the world of caregiving. It's a ride. It's the last day of school for my kids. I'm directing a show and then they're leaving so I can continue to direct this show so I think that that's what was swelling up inside of me. It's just getting emotional about that. But I do think to the point of your question. Right. What do you think a child positive nonprofit theater field looks and feels like is one where there is no shame for having to tend to the needs of children. Right. And those might be your children. Right. They might be nieces or nephews or other folks that are in your care for a time. But really like is there and I mean on a somatic level like in my body is there shame around that aspect of my identity or is there a feeling that I can be supported, even if the mechanisms don't already exist. At the very least, is there a conversation that can be held that doesn't make it seem like I have to choose. Right. So as we as we pivot towards that. And I also just wanted to recognize in the space where my analysis was when I wrote it where I am now. And the binary that I also replicated and played out by giving examples around just a mother and a father and not addressing a wider understanding of who is giving care. So just wanted to acknowledge that. Thank you for that. I'm curious. So, you know, as you just said you wrote the pieces in 2019. And obviously that was before COVID-19 put the challenges of parents everywhere caregivers everywhere into even sharper relief. I'm curious about what you have seen shift or not shift in your own experience and for other parent artists of color in particular, since you wrote this piece. I think I've seen people stop apologizing nearly as much. Amazing. And not just the stopping of the apology, but also like the community that's gathered digitally being like, yes, absolutely, no apologies. Necessary. So right, like, how we are now meeting each other and understanding each other. I think has gotten more deep, I think is the way that I want to describe that because I think it was there. Because people were concerned about their own households, so to speak. And what I've experienced is this deepening of empathy and support and people activating their mics to like tell someone what their kids are doing in the background as well or just to affirm some sort of a witness, I think is the word that I want to lean into with you Jamie to witness another working the complications and the contradictions of being present, loving and caring to the needs of individuals in your space, and also being present loving and caring to those people that you're holding digital space with. Thank you I certainly feel that I will say with my hall around team who just had a asher appearance earlier like literally half an hour before this event started and yeah it feels like a palpable kind of change in my very limited experience which is just wonderful. And let's hope it keeps going further in this direction as we move forward. Before we move on, Nicole, especially since you mentioned you're in a rehearsal hall. Can you just share a few words about something you're working on that we all should know about. I am working right now as a director for Winters I'm doing Winters Tale, which is attached to Shakespeare theaters classical Academy MFA program. That and I think like more than that particular project what I would often for folks is, as we are out coming out of, you know, the pause and finding this hybrid way of working to remember not just me but other folks who were doing anti racism work that were anti hyphenate artists that we do more than one thing. And so to be thinking about people for more than just your healing work how do you bring them into your institutions to actually engage in the practices that they're helping other people to strengthen for me that's directing. So thank you for the opportunity appreciate you Jamie to share where I'm at what I'm doing. Appreciate you to thank you so much Nicole, and we'll hear more from you later. Next up, we are going to hear from will Davis will is a transgender director and choreographer focused on physically adventurous new work for the stage. Will will be reading from his piece queering the room, some beginning notions for a queer directing practice, which was originally published October 24 2014. Hi. I'm in Cornwall in the UK. I was just sharing with everyone on a birthday trip for my father's 70th birthday near visiting his homeland. So that's where I am a little anxious about the internet so please just let me know how it's going. And who am I, I am, I'm well. I am a happy looking short white trans man, I have a lot of tattoos, they have very, very short brown hair. The last haircut I got really coincided with fleet week so I was worried about that. I'm sitting here in this Airbnb in a black t shirt just about all I wear and behind me is a very precious oil painting of a sailboat. And now I'm going to read to you a little chunk here. So number one, make work from the center of your desire. The idea of working from the center of your desire has been a big part of my coming out. The very idea that there was a center to find was a radical thought for me for a long time. In my life and in my art. I've lived a long time at the periphery waiting for the gravitational pull of someone else's desire or someone else's vision pull me into action. As I have come into my own identity and pieced together the core values of what it means for me to be a queer person redefining my relationship to gender. I've been able to inch closer and closer to center and building a home for my artistic vision. Great front of mind once said, our work should look like the people who make it. I often think of that when I stand in the room of new collaborators in one way. How can the piece not like the people who make it. But in another way rehearsal is a unique invitation to lift up that particular alchemy of the bodies and minds assembled to do the work. We should encourage the visions of the artists we work with and make space for their impulses with the work. Part of querying the rehearsal requires that I get interested in the taste and the style of my collaborators. It feels like my job to find unique ways that the material can be transmitted through the artist instead of projected onto them. And my aim is to build rehearsal room where there was a rigorous invitation to show up inside the work. Oh, thank you for that offering. You mentioned to me in correspondence leading up to this event that this idea that you just shared of making work from the center of your desire has become a central part of your directing practice. Can you expand on this a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. When I was revisiting this and revisiting the idea of 2014. I was thinking about, and I was writing this, I was trying to mirror the way getting closer to my understanding of myself as a trans person as a queer person was also allowing me or unlocking some part of myself as an artist. I'm trying to talk about how those things were colliding. What I what I was saying to you is that this idea of capturing the work in the collaborators not to project on to them is something that when I think about what a queer rehearsal room is has become kind of the central structure of how the work is made. I think about I think about how the project of the theater is about representation, you know, that is what it is. And so, and so the ways that we are working with that become very important and complex and rich. So the actors walk into my rehearsal room. My primary interest is in them as people. I want to know how they are going to wear the character. I want to know how the character is going to be the thread that gets threaded through the needle is actor. And, you know, a kind of nuts and bolts way to talk about this is it's one of reasons auditions exist. We're doing Richard the third. We don't wait for Richard the third to walk in the room. We wait for the actor whose specific lived experience gives us Richard the third that lights us all up. So when we get into rehearsal, I want to make sure that the actor does not feel like their job is to pass as Richard the third. I don't care about that. There is no Richard the third. I don't want them to disappear. Think that their job is to disappear inside some idea of the character. What I want is for them to take the character and to figure out how they can more deeply become themselves with with it as a vehicle. I think of my job as a director being about creating just the right platform for people to more deeply, more fully be themselves. That's what's interesting to me. And so when I think about this little piece I read and thinking about it as part of a larger essay about queering the room, that idea about passing. I'm realizing has become really central to my idea of what I want performance to be. I also know that I'm just borrowing from Brecht probably one of the queerer creators of art that I could beat about in the western canon. This idea of wearing the character, this idea of not just a duality but a multiplicity. And the last thing that I was thinking about when I was writing to you about that was, oh right, that's what the theater is. It's the third thing. It's the fiction of the story. It's the reality of the space you're in combined. They make a third thing. And the theater doesn't exist without it. So the performance is the character plus the actor, you know, or a kitchen sink drama. No one's ever hired me to do one, but you know, could be cool. A kitchen sink drama, the reality, the realness of that only exists because there's the fiction of the kitchen sink plus the reality of the building, the theater building. That's what realism is, you know. So for me as a queer person and as a trans person, I think about that all the time about how lucky I am to live a life where I'm always experiencing that more than two things are true. How much that folds into my understanding of what theatricality is. Yes. Thank you for that. And I'm feeling so much resonance with what Nicole offered at the end of that conversation to around like being the ability to be ourselves and to be to hold multiple things. And we are showing up in that fullness, right. And so it's fascinating to think about it through. Yeah, through the lens of your of your directing practice and you're coming into the fullness of yourself. So thank you so much for that. And will before we move on. I'd love to hear a little bit about something that you're working on or excited about that we should know. Two things. One is, I'm writing a book that is about this is about rehearsal room practices, as I understand. So that's exciting for me just chugging along my my own little train book train. I don't know what will come of that but you know, speaking it to the world. And the other thing is when I think about this idea of stepping into the center of my own desire or finding myself. I'm not here in this essay, an aspiration to be there to be in the center, I'm nowhere near the center, you know. So I say that in preface to the other thing that I'm working on right now is for the first time I'm generating my own work. So I'm making a very little musical about horses. That I'm, these are hard words to say, writing and performing and singing. And I'm trying to put on stage a manifestation of my dysphoria. What it's, what it's like to live in an internal space and try and externalize it. And for me, transness and horses are, they're not late they are the same thing for me. So I'm doing a lot of fighting for the first time. That's what I'm doing. That's so exciting. I can't wait to read the book. I've seen snippets on Instagram but I am, yeah, we're ready for more. So thank you. So next, we are going to hear from Michael Road. Michael Road is a Jew. He is a co-founder and member at Sojourn Theater, the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, and the newly formed co-lab for Civic Imagination at the University of Montana. In addition to Road's creative work at theaters, museums and community sites across the nation, much of his current practice focuses on supporting local capacity for equitable cross-sector culture-based partnerships, working for public good in civic and municipal systems. Michael will be reading from his piece, The New Work of Building Civic Practice, published July 9th, 2012. Thank you, Jamie. I'm really, really honored to be here to be among this incredible group of writers. I'm Will and Lauren and Nicole. It's really a privilege to get to share a virtual room with you for a bit and such a privilege to hear you speak your own words, all of which have been meaningful to me, you know, long before we're here together in this space. And Jamie and the HowlRound team, thank you for your amazing work. My visual description is that I'm a white guy in my 50s wearing glasses with short, salt-and-pepper hair in the beginning of a beard. I am wearing a blue button-down collar shirt, and I'm in a rehearsal room with a black wall behind me. And that's me and where I am. So I'm going to read this. My colleagues so far, I just want to talk about their work. I don't want to read mine. I just want to talk about Nicole and Will's, but I'm going to read a little bit. I'll try to. Here I go. So this is a couple of chunks. Currently, within institutional theater organizations, community partnerships are most frequently developed to implement programming that surrounds main-stage productions. Programming exists to deepen dramaturgical reach and impact of the work selected and presented by the artists. Institutions sometimes retain partners beyond singular projects, returning to them for help on other projects when content seems aligned with the partner's constituency or mission. When they are inter-valuable, they can effectively build new relationships around meaningful shared interests, and they help arts organizations broaden the scope of their presence in the local communities, but they operate in a mode of discourse closer to a monologue than a dialogue. The initiating impulse, the voice that puts out the calls so to speak, is the artist. The non-arts partner has a choice, listen and respond or not, but rarely does the invitation to conversation to co-creation come from the partner. I think as artists and organizers involved in a collaborative form that demands arguably one skill above all others, we are at a moment where we can put that skill to new use. That skill is listening and we can radically alter our role in our communities if we employ it with greater intentionality and generosity. Arts organizations do not have to engage with non-arts partners solely through lens of project-based needs. Partnerships can be relationship-based and projects can originate from a different type of exchange. Producing new work for in the theater does not have to only mean making new plays. It can mean producing new relationships, producing new forms of events and processes, producing new ways of crossing disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. I've begun to define civic practice as activity where a theater artist employs the assets of his or her craft in response to the needs and visions of non-arts partners as determined through ongoing relationship-based dialogue. In addition to teaching artists and the artists already engaged in community-based practice around the nation, there are many, many theater practitioners who are hungry for the type of engaged work that civic practice offers them and have the skills to undertake that work meaningfully. University theater programs across the country are seeing exponential growth in demand for courses that deal with civic engagement, community-based practice, site-based collaborations and applied theater. In fact, the field of applied theater is swiftly gaining traction in this country after years of use overseas, subsuming terms and areas that came before it often problematically. The challenge of the trending term applied is that it suggests those who use theater tactics for something other than, though perhaps inclusive of, the creation and presenting of performance are in the service game, while those who make and show are in the art game. But our field needs the strengths of varied impulses and the strategies of all forms to cross-pollinate spiritually as well as aesthetically. We can engage with civic business, social service, community health, education and faith-based partners in ways that are relationship-specific and have a starting impulses, not just the content we, the arts organizations have chosen for presentation, but a broad spectrum of activity that places the assets of creativity and collaboration in service to and in partnership with collaborators old and new. There is capacity building to do in our field around skills, partnerships and leadership, but the hybrids at the intersection of civic life and artistic activity offer us individually and as a community of practitioners, the potential to make our arts organizations truly central to the vitality of community life in new and deeply impactful ways. That's what I wrote. That is what you wrote. Wow. Thank you. You know, in the early years of HowlRound, maybe even during the time you wrote this, if my memory serves, we were lucky to partner with you all and fiscally hosted the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, the organization that you are still very much a part of. And I wonder if, for those who may not be as familiar with CPCB, if you could just share a bit more about it. Yeah, sure. I'm going to, it's now a collective, and I'm going to use a few words from that collective rather than sort of just my own words. But we work with municipalities, state governments, arts agencies and nonprofits to support local projects and programs that use the arts to support equitable community development. But we had a big shift in 2021. We concluded a year long collective redesign with artist facilitators from across the US. As a result of that process, CPCB shifted its leadership model from three core decision makers, Rebecca Martinez, Shannon Scafano and myself, to a leadership circle of primarily practitioners of color, that also includes Quenna Barrett, Simone Boyd, Stefania Fadul, Ashley Hansen, Nikiko Masamoto, Mark Valdes and Anu Yadav. In addition to working as artist facilitators, our whole leadership circle, all 10 of us now make all organizational decisions using consensus, democratic and somatic processes with a continued and deeper commitment to centering justice and equity through all our partnerships and projects. Wow, that's a wonderful evolution. Thank you for sharing. I really think that the sort of relationality that you're speaking to, which feels like it's at the core of what civic practice is, is very much expressed in that. Yeah, that organizational structure, structure shift. So that's a super exciting development. So in this piece, you define civic practice. And I kind of want to really think about that, that binary you set up of, you know, the art game, the service game, and the idea that civic practice is sort of working to undo that perhaps unhelpful separation. I'm curious about how your understanding of civic practice and really its practice in the field that's placed in the field has evolved since you wrote first, since you first wrote this piece, which was 10 years ago. So can you speak a little bit to that. Yeah, I really appreciate that because I kind of, you know, I don't know about for my friends colleagues on here but you know going back and reading something that I wrote 10 years ago, I'm like oh there's some cool stuff in there and wow the stuff that's or the stuff that like, I mean first of all, that piece. Really, I wouldn't even think to be in conversation about it today without talking articulately and explicitly about structural and systemic racism and the history of white supremacy in all the fields that it's engaging with. When I look back and I try to give myself a little benefit and say well it's kind of implicit, you know I did but like, no, I mean it's not there, the word race doesn't appear in that piece. The word justice doesn't appear in that piece. So I think about the work that was attempting to invite arts institutions and artists to think more deeply about listening in service to more equitable relationships and and justice focused practice. This doesn't go nearly far enough in that text. So what I think about now is how important it is to bring an analysis and an intentionality to any time that conversation is when I get to have with institutions or artists whether they're in the arts or not. I also think about how when I when I wrote that it was partly out of a frustration of feeling arts institutions warrant. Historically white and large arts institutions were not thinking about practices of relationship and equity in a way that it felt to me like some practitioners were and particularly historically deeply important. I mean arts organizations around the country organizations that had been marginalized and not funded. So I wanted to try to insert that into the conversation and, and it doesn't have the same need now that conversation because it's it's happening all around. I mean organizations are I think through leadership transitions and just the times are more and more engaging in their own locally contextually specific ways in relationship building I mean even if I think about the work Jacobs doing at long war you know the I could name a ton of people Stephanie involved to more others, like, it's not about civic practice it's just about relationship institution community change I think about the work Tamil is doing up at the Yale School of drama that Nicole's a part of with her there's just incredible leadership where I don't even think the term is as I still use it sometimes but I've more moved into the thoughts of civic imagination. That's kind of what I care deeply about now and figuring out how our artists across disciplines, making opportunities in other sectors for creative imaginative and collaborative work that is moving justice and equity values forward, and not just trying to deploy culture to survive as a nonprofit institution. So I think about it in some maybe expanded and more purposefully analytical ways hopefully now. Yeah, I am sure you're not the only person who read their essay and had a moment of, Oh, yeah, it's been a while and some thoughts have shifted and evolve so I really appreciate you. Yeah sharing so openly about you know what has shifted for you and what you see missing and where you are now civic imagination I want to really, I want to hear more about that and sit with that. John, can you share a little bit about something you're working on now that we should know about. Sure. Thanks. That's a nice question. I'm a part of an initiative called one nation one project, which is being led by Lear de Besson and Clyde Valentine. I'm the civic collaborations director there. It's a national initiative. It's 18 cities around the US. It's a collaboration between local artists local municipal government and local community health centers. It culminates in the summer of 2024 with massive sort of public spectacle focused on actions around health arts and municipal government that's been really exciting to work on and then I have this book slash performance thing. Will I want to talk to you at some point. I mean everybody here but I'm working on this thing that I'm calling. Composals for you who are designing virtual realities genetic interventions artificial intelligences and therefore our futures. And it's sort of meant to insert. I don't know things I and I think a lot of folks think are important into like my nephew's mind as he sits in a very highly paid job in Washington DC for a corporation, you know basically designing my children's futures. So I'm thinking about that a lot. Wow. Yes. Thank you. I'm so happy you're thinking about that and I want to learn more as I'm sure many folks do. Okay, so we are going to move right along here to to hear from Lauren Gunderson. Last but certainly not least, Lauren has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list twice, including 2019. She is the two time winner of the Steinberg at Can you play award for I and you, and the Book of Will, the winner of the Landford Wilson Award, Otis Guernsey Award, and the finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize. She has a playwright screenwriter, bookwriter and children's author who lives in San Francisco. She graduated from NYU tish as a Reynolds fellow and social entrepreneurship. Lauren will be reading from we are not a mirror theater must lead with women's stories published April 24, 2013. Hi everyone thank you so much for making this space and time for this wonderful brain trust of inspiring visionary folks both looking backwards and forwards at the same time in this way. So I'm Lauren Gunderson. I am a white woman I'm 40 I have pink glasses pink lipstick and pink streak and brown dark hair and I'm sitting in a teal room. Yeah, I will just say before we get started that when I read my essay. And now I know to specifically include and affirm all people who identify as women. When we say the word woman. So specifically trans women and non binary folks, as we're talking about something with gender so here we go. Here's the thing theater should lead culture, not follow it. In the theater we are making today solely reflects society, then we're failing it. We're not a mirror, we're lens. We see what's coming we embody it we catalyze and we make the better future happen because we tell its story first, or we should. Unfortunately, with regard to women their stories and their valuable lives valued on stage, the American theater right now is a mirror, not a lens. We look backwards, like mirrors do, we look at ourselves, like mirrors do, and we show the world as it is not as it should be. That doesn't sound like an urgent art form to me. That sounds safe. That sounds easy. Sounds boring. Generally, a third of the roles go to women actors versus men. 20% of plays produced are by women versus men. Only six women have ever won the Tony for directing. Now, are we storytelling artists catalyzing a better world or are we tractors hauling the old guard forward. Are we defining our age or merely maintaining the status quo. I'm not saying all theater needs to address this issue. And if it does that it be with serious frowning faces feminism can be fun funny heartwarming thrilling suspenseful and poetic. We needn't be righteous to be right. We still have fun and entertain and do the great old plays of your but for the love of God if theaters stats on women are as bad as the US Congresses, and we are not doing our art right. Thank you, Lauren. Amen. As you showed at the top you wrote this piece in 2013. And I'm afraid that your appeal is still a politely relevant. However, let's don't necessarily want to start there. I am curious if you can speak to the ways in which you think the theater field has made progress in this regard so as an example of where you see theater leading culture, instead of following and where we have further to go. Yeah, there's so many so so many ways sorry I jumped on you because I was like, You know, I, I have ended up very grateful to have ended up on a couple of lists of the most produced playwrights in America. And being at the top of them, I get a lot of questions. But I always direct to these people who are asking me about oh what's it like to be on the list and how did what you do to get there and I was like look at the rest of the list. The list is mostly women, which is the best news and great news. I think it points to people are starting to see where the holes in their worldviews are, which is the entire reason I started writing plays at all when I was a very young kid, I looked around and said, the only plays that I was ever taught in school, were by men except for Lorraine Hansberry. The only most of the plays I saw were by men I don't recall ever seeing one that wasn't a children's play but it was an adaptation of a book usually by a man. So that's what started me on this journey of going, there are so many stories that aren't being told, and the ones that are where women are stuffed into a story that's what it felt like and so saying, Oh no, this is not the art form I love. This is not the art form that claims to be universal and beloved and a place of empathy and a visionary art form for the future and the best of us are better angels, so to speak. I think that is a continuing process. And, you know, look at Broadway this last year, like Broadway is not everything, of course, but look at the plays we have Lynn knowledge, like slaying three three shows, like everywhere. You know, and Antoinette Landau and I mean over and over we just see so many so many great examples of this. I just hope that continues and I hope to my earlier point and as many of us have said, making sure that gender is as fluid and diverse as as it actually is. So we are as inclusive as impossible when we talk about who's not getting the opportunities and who's not seen. Yeah, thank you for offering that. You know, in your piece you offer some questions for people to consider while season planning. I'm just going to, you know, name a few of them here. How many roles will be offered to women compared to men. How many plays do we plan to produce that are written by women compared to men. How many of our productions will be directed by women compared to men. How many women designers are we hiring compared to men. Now, perhaps in addition to, you know, what you have just offered around taking a more expansive and inclusive view of gender and moving beyond the gender binary. Are there any additional questions you would add to this list, nine years later. Well, certainly there's no mention of whiteness in my piece, or transness or gender expansiveness, etc, etc. I think there is a chance for, I mean this was the easy version, just count the women, just count them. How many, how many do you have. How many of you invited, how many do you know, you know, and using as a way to check to check leadership and to check decision makers, but the category can get ever more finite and fine and that's, I think the point. Yeah, and certainly when it comes to casting several of my trans friends have said, you know, there aren't a lot of roles written specifically for trans actors. But why don't they call us in for a role, just a role a leading man, a leading woman. That's, that's, that's where we start how many, how many times has that happened at your theater. How many times have you had a black man in a leading role that was perhaps like some of my historical plays that I assume would be a white actor well let's challenge that assumption disabled actors, visually impaired actors, every every level so I think the, the offering there which was a shock to me when these numbers were posted. And all those many, many years ago was a chance to actually let the numbers do the talking there can argue with them. So that helps when there are so many ways to argue bias, but numbers are very clear and stark and help us see the world as it is. Great, thank you. And before we move into a discussion with the full group. Can you please share a few words about something you're working on that we should know about. Sure, I too am writing a book what is in the water friends. Will and Michael's book sound far more interesting because I'm just a writer writing about writing so Lord help me. But it is, it is quite fun to do, as well as writing the books for several musicals including one about the Supreme Court called justice and adaptation of the novel the time traveler's wife. And, you know, 1000 other things I just love this art form too much to not be working on 1000 things. Jimmy I know this is outside of protocol but can I just say that Lawrence play justice, which was in Phoenix a little while ago. I took my daughter to. And it was really meaningful for her. So I just want to like since we're in the parent child and theater world just to say like my 11 year old girl was really moved and has talked about it a lot so thank you for that makes me so happy. Thank you. My seven and six year old boys were less impressed. They were like, is it over. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that Lauren and just want to acknowledge that we've now been joined again by will and Nicole and Michael. So thank you all for sharing. I know I was taking a whole bunch of notes. I saw many of you sitting and reflecting and nodding heads and I'm sure those of you tuning in, I hope we're doing the same. I want to have a conversation together now and start by asking each of you to share something that is resonating with you from what your fellow theater practitioners just shared. And I'm just going to pick somebody to start that that is okay. I wonder if will can you kick us off and then pass it when you're done to someone else. Absolutely. I can't help but try and think of you know, what are ways some of these threads tie together that's just the counterpiece of me. And so I was really hearing a call for really seeing the people it is that you're saying you want to serve and seeing yourself in that act of service and trying to unpack a little bit what that two way street should be, you know. And that seems so to me I just that seems so obvious, but so but so lacking. I think, you know, I thought that idea that has served me so well is to try and approach things from a place of curiosity instead of from a place of defensiveness and keep bringing the the moment in front of me curiosity about that but also curiosity about myself in that moment and trying to continue to sort of shared space between myself and anyone else, you know, in any situation and how it is that we can build from there. And I felt like I was hearing a lot in that regard about the shared space in the Venn diagram, you know. I am going to pass this question from Jamie to Nicole. Thanks. Well, appreciate that. I think I came after you for last season at Baltimore to fall poster. So we'll just keep the trend going. I wrote down taking my phone notes. Your job is not to disappear into the character. How do you more deeply be yourself from will I wrote civic imagination from Michael and I wrote we need to be righteous to be right. Um, so I think similarly, I'm my connection is through the quotes and how those quotes felt like medicine for me they feel like medicine for me and I want to reflect back on those words spoken into the space as I continue to grapple with. I think the seductive quality of protecting myself versus being myself, like I can control the protective aspect of me, but to just be present and to allow the complexities of what it means in terms of these identities. It's something that I'm sitting with. I'm very grateful, very grateful for the vulnerability and the conversation. I'd love to pass it over. Lorna passing it to you. Amazing. Well, I was going to talk about you. So that's perfect. I was feeling so much of the talk about parenthood in the arts. It's something I have wrestled with and all out denied and embraced and every version of it because it is is not easy to balance that and to feel like you are constantly choosing between two baskets of things you love very, very, very, very much and can't live without. But I will tell a tiny story because the whole time I was thinking of we were workshopping a play called We Won't Sleep A Musical, written by Ari Afsar and myself. And there is a song called In the Name of Motherhood that is one of the hardest songs that Ari had to write because it's kind of about her mom and it's kind of about every mom. But it's the mother who sings this and we were lucky to be in New York and had the incredible Myra Lucretia Taylor singing this song, which to be in a room with her in any capacity is a gift an unforgettable one but to have her sing this song. Now it just so happened one of the other ensemble members lost some childcare and her toddler joined us for rehearsal and was a delight but you know, a loud babbling curious delight. And Myra started to sing this song. And at the chorus, which the lyrics are in the name and the name and the name of motherhood and it's basically about a mother not understanding their child. And instead of ignoring the child she sang the whole song to her. And it became the most like the best theater I've ever seen. That's that's it. I'm done. I don't need to see any other play ever in my life. And of course, also the magic of when Myra singing then turns all of her focus and her talent and her voice to this two year old. The child was wrapped. And I was like, Theodore is amazing. Oh my God. So there's something about those moments don't happen without the inclusion and the affirmation of young people young minds young noises. I don't know what's not perfect and oh the moment is kind of ruined or was it perfect because that moment was there. So I was thinking about that constantly and I don't know if I'd have the bravery to bring my kids and not try to be perfect and they're quiet and but it was such a beautiful moment that I wish something like that for all of us. Michael, that's on your mind. I think like will I'm having this trauma of Portugal impulse to look at the threads. And what's really standing out to me from this conversation I keep coming back Nicole to your child friendly and the signal of child friendly, but the non, but to the reality, signaled by the phrase, but without policy, without culture, the signal doesn't actually do the job. So I'm thinking about how all of us spoke about needs for change. And it feels like we were all saying, so you see something you perceive it, which maybe as theater attempts to say leads to empathy. Without action, the narration of perception and the narration of empathy doesn't actually get us very far, which of course is one of the challenges with storytelling for social change in general in traditional theater contexts, but it's another challenge when it comes to sort of change, whether it's within the operation of the theater industry field, or any spaces that we're trying to to impact. So I'm thinking about the word care, and how the word care, which is deployed I feel like a lot in a lot of kind of narrative and metaphorical and conceptual ways right now. And that's the kind of care that I most believe in, and that I want to put my energy into so I'm not just making child friendly conditions, but I'm actually moving beyond perception and empathy towards action, how does my art and my practice and my capacity building in spaces, help care get to action. And how does it also call out when something is assumed to be enough just for doing perception and empathy. And that's what listening everyone kind of got me thinking about. Thank you for all of those offerings. Yeah, I'm really holding on to the importance of listening and and sort of the self reflection and learning that you all offered I mean I think it's very telling that everybody. I had a moment with your S with with each essay of like this is the here are the things that I still believe to be true in this essay and here is like where my analysis just wasn't there. Right. And where my analysis is in a different place now. I think that's really beautiful and I think that that's a. In so many ways speaks to what I hope how round is able to do in our field as an intervention is to provide a platform for us all to ideate and grow and continue to learn. Right and so it's wonderful to hear. So it's a great institution of, of thought right and, and to hear how much, you know what you originally offered still resonates so beautifully, and how much further, even not further but how there's a space between what was offered and where we are now. So we have about 10 minutes left and in that sort of spirit, I want to ask one closing question to the group. And, you know, we've shared a little bit about where we were at the moment of each of your pieces publication and talked a little bit about where you are now, and I'm wondering if we could speak a little bit to where you hope we will go. You know what stories do you hope the next decades anthology would hold. And let's go in the same order that we started in for that round robin so will I'm going to pass to you. It's a big question. I will be questions. I think, for me, builds a little bit off of. Michael, what you were talking about. I really lament the kind of closed loop. We are the field, regardless of how people employ words like outreach, which has always really bothered me because it makes it sound like where you are is where others should be. But I, I, I know that and actually Jamie, it connects a little bit to where, where you started in some of your acknowledgments, I know that there is a richness to the way we make art that is not. It's just not as available and offered to the culture in a way that I want it to be. And I don't think that has anything to do. I don't think that's going to be shifted by show specific initiatives or you know small, you know, groups that are thinking about, you know, trying to get art into communities that are not part of the theater. It's not part of the theater's communities or whatever it may be, but some much larger seismic sea change understanding around, I guess, access but access feels like even the small word to me. You know, I just, I know that we traffic in such an ancient form. That has been used to entertain us, but also gather us actually us the body politic, you know, and I so I would look forward to reading people's dreams and plans for how to actually unclose the loop and actually make us participate in each other's lives with the theater in a different way. Okay, I think for me, it's, it is a thought that is a twin to yours will and it for me is simply, how do we find our way back to one another. I'd like, I'd like to spend the next lifetime of course the next 10 years in terms of a creative practice. How do we find our way back to one another and all of the various intersectionalities of what that means. So yeah, I've been thinking about Larissa fast horse amazing playwright who talks so much about how the unspoken and sometimes angrily shouted rules of watching theater and challenging that I'm so curious about the other ways to let audiences in thinking about kids and the noises and the questions and the, but other people. Larissa often talks about that kind of indigenized version of an audience is one that like, it's got to talk sometimes and gets up at moments that aren't prescribed and has opinions and the things that that more recognized theater spaces don't so I'm that both terrifies me as a flavor of like, no, no, please don't be, no, no, please don't be loud. Please don't have an opinion. But of course we want that so I'm very curious about pieces about that and how that extends to storytelling what ways of storytelling have we adopted and don't question that we should and part of what will is talking about how that extends to directing and queering directing spaces and how that extends and extends and extends to Michael civic spaces, you know, what are the rules that we assume about how arts organizations or stories or art makers exist and collaborate and what they are allowed and aren't allowed and all that so I'm curious about what that means. And swiftly, as time runs out that a yes and everything, my friends just said, and I would just add I love the next tenure anthology to include a batch of pieces about how the act of theater, not just plays and productions but the activity and interaction of theater has been and is being deployed in all sorts of surprising spaces to help community residents imagine more just futures. And people are writing about that in lots of different ways, lots of spaces. Yes, and I hope the next anthology can unpack learnings and practices that helped us move towards a theater field where resources and power are shared equitably in all directions, contributing to a more just and sustainable world. That is how rounds vision and that is what we are working toward. So I want to say thank you to Nicole will learn Michael want to say thank you to everyone tuning in to the how around team for putting this event together. And of course, to every single person who has contributed to how around over the past 10 years, we are grateful for you. And this anthology would not be possible without all of your contributions. So stay tuned for more book events this summer and fall, including some awesome one on one conversations with anthology contributors on Instagram live, and a reminder that you can use your own copy of the anthology at how round.com slash shop. Also for theater educators, you can check out free lesson plans that we have published to think about employing many of the essays from from this book in the classroom, and you can find those at how round.com slash anthology. Thank you all for tuning in. See you soon and take care.