 Hey, that was a nice little ending there to jump in on. All right. Hello, everyone. I see a lot of faces out there. Welcome to green new theater 2020 part three affectionately titled y'all. We got to fix all of it. This session is being co-facilitated by groundwater arts in partnership with HowlRound and First Peoples Fund. Many, many thanks. We're thrilled to shout out the work that First Peoples Fund does. We're hosting this call on Zoom. And we got 16 folks here so far. And I bet that that number is going to go up as people join after they get some food. Yeah, so we're also live streaming on HowlRound and on Facebook live. So hello to all of you who are joining us there. If you joined us on the first green new theater calls throughout the summer, welcome back and thanks for joining us again. You'll notice that a lot of the language may sound familiar, especially in the beginning. So thanks for your patience as we create radical access points for everyone to join us. So let's get into it. This session will last approximately 90 minutes or so. And because we all know that digital fatigue is very real. Please feel free to leave and come back, stand up, turn your camera off, do what you need to do to take care of yourself at any point. And as a heads up, we, let's see, we do have ASL today. So if you're in the zoom call and need that support, please message us specifically Annalisa in the chat. Just so that if we do end up kind of breaking into smaller groups or anything that we can keep you together. We hope folks will participate in the discussions that we have later on, because so much of what we hope to do with green new theater is based on relationship building and decentralized processes. So we're going to take a moment now to introduce ourselves as facilitators. And while we do that, please introduce yourself in the chat box using your name, pronouns and any land acknowledgments you'd like to give. For those of you watching on howl round, please send us an email to introduce yourself. And to those of you on Facebook, please comment. Thank you. Thank you. So if you're watching on howl round, please send us an email to introduce yourself. And to those of you on Facebook, please comment. Visibilizing our access needs to us as a, as a method of accountability. So I want to take a moment to highlight amplify and shout out unsettling dramaturgy, which is a colloquium of mad, cripp, disabled and indigenous dramaturgs from across turtle islands for modeling what you all will witness us do momentarily. So the link to the unsettling Facebook page is about to be in the chat. And in the comments, as soon as Tara puts them there, she is our amazing link dropper in the chat extraordinary. So I'm happy to go first for the team. My name is Ronnie Pinoy. My proun pronouns are she her hers. I am Laguna Pueblo and Cherokee and live on the traditional lands of the Piscataway, also known as Washington DC on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. I'm a light-skinned woman with long brown hair wearing a black shirt with some embroidery on it. That is white and pink. I'm sitting in front of a black background with the groundwater arts logo and contact information on it. And at this moment, my access needs are met. I am producer at Octopus theatricals co-founder with my other teammates of groundwater arts. That is my dog Penny. She says hello as well. I'm an advisor for the New England foundation of the arts theater project and a composer as well. And I'll pass it on to Anna. Thanks, Ronnie. Hi, everyone. My name is Anna Lathrop. My pronouns are she her hers. I live on the unceded lands of the Lenape Nation between Upper New York Bay and Nayak Bay, colonally known as Graves End Bay. It's a visual description. I'm a white woman with blonde hair wearing a blue and white dress. And I'm sitting in front of a black background with white text in the upper right-hand corner with the groundwater logo and contact information. At the moment my access needs are being met. I am a design research facilitator, a social services designer and co-founder of groundwater arts. And I'll now pass it on to Annalisa. Who can never find the unmute button. Hi, everyone. My name is Annalisa. My name is Annalisa Diaz. I use the pronouns she her. And I'm calling from the traditional lands of Piscataway Nation, a land that is only known as Baltimore, Maryland by the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. These lands have also been cared for by the Susquehanock, Lumbee and many indigenous nations who are still here today. As a visual description. I'm a brown skin woman with long black hair. Today, I'm wearing glasses that are blue light glasses because the Zoom situation is, and I'm not having it. I'm sitting in front of a black background with the information on it. At the moment my access needs are met. I'm the director of artistic partnerships and innovation at Baltimore Center Stage, co-founder of Groundwater Arts, and also an independent theater maker. I'll pass it over to Tara now. Yeah, I'm Ado, he's Jay, Tara Choloshifkados. So hello everyone, my name is Tara Moses. I am a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. I am also Miss Gogi Creek. I use she, her pronouns, and I am calling from the Miss Gogi Creek reservation in the site of the 1921 Burning of Blackwell Street. These lands are colognally known as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I am just about one mile away from the Arkansas River. My access needs are that I will need extra time to respond as my attention is split in multiple areas because I'm monitoring the Facebook and the email. Also today has been a day, so we a little slow over here, but that's all right. Other than that my access needs are met. My visual description is that I have brown skin, I have very long, very dark hair that's pulled back today in a ponytail, and I have on my bright red glasses because again it's been a day, and I am sitting in front of a virtual black background that it's black and it has the Groundwater Arts logo. For those who may not be able to see it as it is pretty small, it says Groundwater Arts on Facebook, GroundwaterArts at gmail.com, and then hashtag Green New Theater. So I am the Artistic Director of Tulsa, Co-Founder of Groundwater Arts, a Director in a Playwright. And so for everyone who was not with us on the Zoom account, but tuning in on HowlRounder Facebook, you can participate by commenting on the Facebook Live. You can email us at GroundwaterArts at gmail.com. That's all one word, and I will drop that email into the boxes and on the Facebook. And so I'll be monitoring those channels, dropping all the links that we share here, also there, and then I will also be vocalizing what y'all share on the Facebook or through email. And if you are unable to get on Facebook, if you went on HowlRound and you want the link shared, please email us and I'll send them to you. And then tomorrow on our Facebook post, we'll have a lovely Google Doc with all the links we talked about today. Great, Anna. All right. Zoom, the platform that we are using today and many, many days, is headquartered in what is now called San Jose, California on the traditional lands of the Olone and Timmy and Peoples. We acknowledge the lands Zoom resides on because the work we create together on a digital platform does not exist in an ether or in an imaginary void, but is made possible because of physical land and the Indigenous people who steward it. Finding the unmute button myself too. GroundwaterArts is an artist collaborative working together to reimagine the field through a climate justice lens. We do this through many different kinds of projects and we're here today to talk about our key project right now, Green New Theater. Green New Theater is a movement-building tool that outlines ideas, strategies, and principles that will help individual artists and arts institutions working in the American theater change how they work in order to adapt in the face of the climate crisis. You can find the full document on our website at groundwaterarts.com, which Tara already dropped in the chat. Yes, the document consists of six principles. They are community accountability, decolonized leadership practices, publicly transparent budgeting, right relationship to land and history, sustainable resources, oh that's what we're talking about today, and immediate divestment from fossil fuels. This call is the third in a series of six calls that will span nine months. As those of you who have joined us for more than one call already know, the calls are intentionally spaced out so that everyone has the ability to opt in and opt out as their personal bandwidth permits and because deep change requires the capaciousness of time and care. We hope that over the course of these calls we as a field will feel more equipped to move toward justice, both at an individual and institutional levels as we look to rebuild. The Green New Theater document itself was created in collaboration with a wide array of perspectives that center black indigenous people of color and disabled people, as those are the folks who are on the front lines of climate change and have been leading climate justice movements for decades. The document itself models community accountability and you can read all the names of the wonderful wonderful people who volunteered their time and expertise to the document. Each call will model a different principle of the Green New Theater and our call today will be centered on the third principle, sustainable resources. We'll post a full link to the document in the chat now. It's already there. Already there. So for today's call we are super proud, myself especially, to partner with First People's Fund. So what they do, they do a lot of things. They are magical, wonderful people but what they like at the core of their work is investing in native artists and cultural bearers and one of the wonderful ways they do that is through their fellowships. And so applications are open right now for the 2021 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship and the Cultural Capital Fellowship. So I'm a 2020 Cultural Capital Fellow. Very excited about that and what I really love about First People's Fund and how they are investing in individual artists who create work in millions of mediums is that whenever we're talking about sustainability we're also talking about not just resources but also being sustainable as a person, as a human, having those access to resources, to support, to funding, to band with, to tax knowledge like what are taxes, that's good to know. And all of these resources play into sustainability. So not to give too much away about our conversation coming up forward but First People's Fund does that by investing in people and giving us the ability to create sustainable work as lots of natives we've been doing since the sun's been in the sky but also to have that support that is well-rounded and holistic. And so through these fellowships First People's Fund's partners with native artists and cultural bearers strengthens business skills ensuring that art, culture, and ancestral knowledge will continue to be passed from one generation to the next. Like I can go on and on and on. I am their biggest fan but what I'm going to drop into their website is their fellowships. And so if you are a native person and very interested please check it out. The deadline to apply is August 31st at 5 p.m. mountain time, 6 p.m. central, 7 p.m. Eastern. Also I want to take a brief moment to shout out once again the Lakota land protectors who are demanding their land back and sovereignty over the sacred Black Hills and we are demanding that is being recognized. So continue to shout out Amplify. Awesome thank you so much First People's Fund. I can't thank you enough. And with that I'm going to hand it over back to Ronnie. So when we were working on this call and thinking about the structure of it we found ourselves having robust conversations about sustainability, frameworks, the anti-indigenous ideas that plague a many sustainability conversation. So our plan for today is that we're going to have a more free-forms conversation which is a different structure than we've had in previous calls for those who are tuning back in. This conversation portion will last about 25 minutes or so. We will try to speak at a speed that our captioners and interpreters can catch up with. I'm clocking myself because I talk so fast, sorry. But if we are speaking too quickly please let me know, us know. So Annalisa will you please launch us into the conversation? Oh this is my favorite. Yeah I think maybe a way to start the conversation is sort of like a bird's-eye view of like when we hear the words sustainable resources like what is that even? What are we actually talking about? And like I don't want I just want to like offer a little thing and then whoever else wants to jump in please please jump in. But so I've been recently thinking quite a lot about this idea of sustainability and like what exactly is it that we're trying to sustain when we when we talk about sustainable anything. And like often so often if you really interrogate it what what people are talking about is sustaining institutions or sustaining that like the status quo. And if you go a layer underneath that then then what are we actually talking about is we're talking about sustaining white supremacy. And like institutions that were built and ways of working that were built for the purpose of whether explicit or implicit but the purpose of cultural genocide, the purpose of extracting wealth, the purpose of accumulating wealth in the hands of predominantly rich white men. And like like if we're trying to incorporate goal sustainable goals around sustainability into our ways of working how often does that then sort of like implicitly become language of sustaining white supremacy? And like what are the ways that we can trouble that even on this call where we're like one of our core principles of the Green New Theatre is sustainable resources. So how do we even trouble that language? Yeah and I think when we are thinking about sustainability has evolved since we wrote this document almost what two years ago and you know at that point sustainable resources even then we were thinking of sustainability as more than environmental and material sustainability right which is a very narrow lens but a very common one. But now I think that our thinking has sort of evolved towards a need of regeneration versus sustainability which in the the zine which Tara has already dropped the link to because she's lightning fast. They talk about the need to move from extraction to regeneration so so that's a great question is what are we sustaining and why and are these things that we even want to sustain? I would argue that right now if we're looking only environmentally only at the status of the planet right taking this very very narrow tiny part we can't actually sustain anything that we're doing right now and if we were to stop all extraction and all of the bad things that's still actually not we it will the planet cannot sustain people at that level so we have to regenerate we have to we have to heal the planet and ourselves. Yeah and I think what that brings up for me so much is this notion of the planet and humans being not the same thing because our environment and our world includes humans and includes us on it so we can't kind of say oh this is human needs and this is the needs of you know the planet writ large and we have to save the water save the planet. It's like no we need we need to take a holistic view and I you know I find that so often with the sustainable sustainability conversation it's either very narrowly on greening a process that has to do with stuff and not thinking about and you know I feel like where I kind of tend to pop off is around institutions but it's true of individuals as well it really connects with another one of the our Green New Theater principles community accountability because if you're an institution and you're thinking about sustainability you can't just be thinking about the sustainability of your organization you have to be thinking about the sustainability of the planet through the lens of your organization sustainability of the humans that you are accountable to as part of that organization so if you're accountable to a community it means that you're thinking about the sustainability of that community that you're part of hopefully. So yeah I think that so many of these things are woven into each other and yet when we see that language sustainable resources we think about okay great how can I recycle something rather than buy plywood right out of the gate which yes that is a thing that should be considered like of course no more plastic water bottles backstage yes of course that is also important but it's a I think it's a it's part of the white supremacy capitalistic machine that no one wants you to look a little look deeper than that right it's yeah of course think about greening your processes but you know it's we're preserving um a kind of status quo by not demanding that our larger structures hold that commitment to sustainability as well. So the question then that comes up for me is okay so what does that mean exactly what does that mean um prioritizing like sustainability within like people and not just physical material things um well there's lots of things to do uh number one is land back let's give the land back so um 80 percent of all biodiversity on this planet is located within indigenous people's lands however only a quarter to about 20 percent of that is actually controlled by indigenous people and so I love that statistic for multiple reasons um because it just illustrates how much um what keeps like what keeps our planet like living is being stewarded by human hands and by specifically indigenous people's hands and then but also how that has a direct correlation to like the undermining of sovereignty of indigenous people not being able to have control over their lands and what they uh and by proxy of course the biodiversity and then also translating that to marginalized communities from the front lines like we I like to look at um like the New Orleans area and how there are so many black activists there on the front lines who are stewarding that land and that water but again are being denied the ability to um like uh oh my god the word just left and I told you all it was the day anyway but being denied the ability to actually careful lands as it needs to do because again we're stuck in this white supremacist culture like capitalistic structure and so give land back that's a wonderful way um let's get rid of this wilderness myth that's another way because whenever we talk about like I think about like the amazonian rainforest as an example I don't know about y'all but I remember in sixth grade if like we always had this like raise money for the rainforest the rainforest is dying the rainforest cafe right anyway um but I also remember not once anyone mentioning the indigenous people who live there who have been taking care of the rainforest um through sustainable practices that go back a millennium and why is that well I just want to throw out people can feel free to turn on their video this is a smaller group than the past calls have been it's a little bit more of an intimate group so feel free to turn on your camera if you'd like um of course internet bandwidth is also a reality so there's that um no I think Terry you're the the we can my favorite subject which is economic justice um and how you it's all connected I was just watching a thing about um the Diego Luna's new show Panicirco where they talked about Mexico it's one of the most biodiverse places in the entire planet as is most of like Central and South America is incredibly biodiverse and being destroyed because where the money goes is to extractive industries right that that don't allow that ask for mono mono farming that ask for I mean even even the drug trade is using indigenous land to grow poppies I mean it like and to bring it a little bit back to theater I guess if we have to um you know things like wealth redistribution within your institution pay people a living wage pay your interns pay your fellows no one should be making five thousand percent more than the intern I mean that's there I don't understand how we think that there can be a regenerative theatrical ecosystem when the wealth is uh when the wealth is as inequitably distributed as it is in the entire United States of America and who are the people at the top in the majority of our theater institutions white men who are the people who have the most money in the United States of America oh huh I think it's white men I don't know maybe there's a pattern here I'm calling me crazy I want to um tease out something that Tara and Ronnie were getting at and Tara sort of like glossed over this idea of the myth of the wilderness because she like always assumes that people just know what that is which like I know it shocks me too sometimes when I'm like wait you people don't oh right people don't know um the myth of the wilderness for those for whom this might be the first or even second time that you're hearing it just to tease out what that what that's referring to is this notion that like any land is a wilderness and so therefore is like uninhabited by humans or untouched by humans virgin forest is like another sort of way of talking about this kind of thing and um a of all it's false like full stop um that's why it's called the myth of the wilderness and b of all it's it's used as a tool for colonization it has been for 500 years used as this mythology of any land being a wilderness um is a tool to justify taking over land because it was like the idea is that the land is there to be conquered by the white man um and and just to say the myth of the wilderness has also deeply deeply influenced um movements for for um like sustainability or eco like conservation conservation um ideology so things like um Henry David Thoreau and and all of his friends sort of talking about like the national parks and and the the landscapes of the United States being in need of conservation or in need of preservation and if you just do some basic googling and look at the sort of federal legislation and that that was put into place um and that like is still today being contested at national parks and national monuments like Bears Ears um but like the founding of the national park system which was in many ways about conservation of natural environment in the founding of it was also the dispossession of native peoples and and like the forced removal of native peoples from their homelands so so that's like deeply why the history of the conservation movement um has been so so troubled and so um I mean frankly genocidal and and like now the the question about like to Tara's point earlier that 80 what was the statistics Tara 80 percent of the biodiversity is in is like controlled by native is within like native lands with the native people but only about 20 to 25 percent of those lands are actually controlled and managed by those indigenous people right so thank you and I'm I'm just trying to tease that out for folks to make the the the link very explicit that um the strategy of give the land back is like scientifically proven um to be a strategy not only for um you know saving the planet and saving our it's its ability to take care of us as we take care of it um uh oh my god my brain just went in seven directions at the same time I think I have I feel like I've said enough though I think also we're seeing you see a lot of that language in theaters there's a lot of language about going into communities that are underserved or unserved there's this manifest destiny white man's burden that you see in a lot of this language of oh we're gonna go and we're gonna save these poor people by bringing them the theater and ignoring the fact that one they probably already have their own performance rituals that don't involve you and two they don't necessarily need what you're bringing them but we this language is so encoded in white supremacy and in art which has encoded into our institutions that we don't we don't connect them half the time yeah and so it doesn't it kind of feels like we're always uh to give a theater reference I guess six degrees of separation away from decolonization again uh because just in the way that you know Anna was saying that theaters you know kind of take on this well we somehow have this thing that we need to be kind of given this um not Maleficent um wow Disney just kind of went right in my head in this you know oh I'm going to give this to you to all of you um it's the same thing with you know uh first world and developing countries it's the same as settlers and indigenous people it's that same dynamic and you just see it playing over and over and over again and this is just another way that we're seeing it and so you know if we're gonna be really um if we're gonna say the word sustainable and resources um we have to actually decolonize those words to actually get at okay so what is it what does it actually mean um to build sustainability and what are the resources that we're talking about because no it's not this pure virgin myth of the wilderness it's uh everything from land to people to sky to time and maybe this is a great segue for Tara to talk about time as a relative well well look at that so um those of y'all who know me in you know real life outside the zoom squares um or have come to some events where I've been in a zoom square you've probably heard me say that time is a relative um and so by that I mean that time is how um my people refer to it and many other indigenous peoples um is like an auntie like a grandmother um like an actual relation who you take care of and so just like I would never get mad at my auntie needing more time to get in and out of the car why would I be upset with time itself if it needs a little bit more to get something done and so this from what I've been told um is like a radical departure of capitalism in our relationship to time where time equals money equals productivity equals how can that turn into a product or like in the theater right I think of our 10 out of 12s every single one of those minutes has to be used to turn out this product but what happens whenever we think of time as this resource that isn't infinite um that needs to be fed into like another human being um to be regenerative and so whenever we think that way and um adding that within to this concept of sustainability how we currently think about time is not sustainable I mean it's evidenced by the myriads of articles about burnout about zoom fatigue um the you know right now with the uh we see white American theater and then within those lists of demands there are a lot of talk about how these long work days and these six day work weeks are not sustainable for ourselves as humans for our families for the art itself and so we don't need to keep doing that there is nobody saying we have to do it so let's not uh and we're thinking about um capital s sustainability which I like to say that it's more than just you know the uh wood resources plants air but also people time relationships um capital j justice so I like to say with imagination hope this hope imagination all of the things it encompasses all of those whenever we think holistically and we move through this relationally instead of transactionally um but yeah and so I was going to also add on to something that Anna said earlier um and what can theaters do like right now in regards to um thinking about like justice and sustainability and like absolutely economic justice 100 but also like think about the language that you're using whenever you speak about sustainability within your theater do you find yourself moving into that myth of the wilderness situation do you find yourself neglecting indigenous people in those conversations neglecting frontline communities in those conversations um do you find yourself thinking oh no any use of like fur like animal fur is wrong in bed I like to think of this as the white vegan argument whereas there are indigenous people from across the world who have been sustainably and ethically using and sourcing animals for their resources in those sustainable ways for my millennium right so that's always when I usually get people ask them to do that um but yeah taking that really taking that moment to really think about your language and how you speak about the earth and the earth's resources and the completion of resources and are you forgetting those vital intersections of justice that have to do with people and predominantly black indigenous and people of color at that but there's also you know schedule flexibility is an example of sustainable practice or regenerative practice uh working conditions that allow people to be parents is an example I mean there are whole the disability justice movement has crafted whole worlds of working and working conditions and ways of working together that are regenerative I mean so much of this work has already been done by so many people out there it's just not widely adapted because these people have been misrepresented and marginalized by to come back to white supremacy um but I think it's really important to acknowledge that you know the the ways that we work within the theater have to be regenerative because what is theater without people yeah and I find so many times that a lot of these conversations about um you know capital A access about um child care people being able to be parents about schedule flexibility all of these things are seen in a lot of theater institutions as being bonus as being things that we wish we could do if we had the money but it's so hard but when you actually think about okay what is the real purpose and I guess I should back up and say the reason that I'm really motivated to say this is that this is a really hard moment for a lot of institutions right where I hope that there are a lot of conversations about okay what are we really trying to do why why are we crucial why are we essential why is the work we do important and you know I feel like that's where a holistic approach about why you exist is so important because if you're not actually allowing the people who work for your institution to be sustainable then how could you ever be sustainable as an institution you know it's um I just this this narrow minded focus of well only this bit is my problem is not going to really allow us to unlock our full potential because I think for a lot of people this idea of sustainability is something that you can only do if you actually have the time and energy and extra resources or you've got that grant to do it and that's not that's not true and when you actually make these changes and I think something that's been so exciting about working on the Green New Theater document is seeing all of these institutions and individuals across the world who are doing this already and who are thriving because of it it's not something you do because you can it's something that you do in order to thrive you know this is like such a healthier better way of working and I think that that just is really the blinders are on and coming at this from a holistic lens is only going to help everyone so that's also another thing is is that moving your theater whether that's your individual practice or your institution towards a just future towards sustainability towards capital S sustainability does not have to be a very scary journey or embarkment because people have already done this work and I find that very comforting that there are myriads of experts of indigenous people of black people of disabled people who've been doing this work and creating theater in ways that are regenerative not just sustainable and like we can follow their example we can give them our dollars to help us if they want to we can move our practices that way not unguided or unfounded and I always find that to be very comforting to keep in mind you know the path has already been laid down um it's some paths been there for thousands of years ready to walk on so you know you don't need to bushwhack the trails of what they say yeah Tara I want to also shout out the work that Sarah Bellamy and Penumbra theater are doing I don't know if folks saw their recent announcement um but it's just I was I was thinking of them um in relation to the sort of thinking about A people who have been doing the work for a long time and B also this idea of imagination as a resource and and how capitalism and colonialism work to to dampen imagination and at Penumbra if you just google you'll you'll find their recent announcement that they've that they're like radically re-envisioning what they think their company does so now that they're now a center for racial healing um where like I mean I don't want to speak for Penumbra so please go look at how they're framing these words themselves but they're historically a theater of color and now what they're saying they're doing is like acknowledging the work that they've been doing all along which is providing space for racial healing um and so I just think that like there's so many examples of organizations and individuals who have been leading this way for so long um and it's like why not follow their lead um the other thing I wanted to uh just sort of tease out a little bit and then maybe it's time to open it up for larger conversation um but just to tease out we've been kind of skirting around um the just transition framework which we had suggested reading or taking a look at the movement generation just transition zine and if you didn't have a chance to do it like no problem please feel free to make time to look at that later but in a nutshell the idea of a just transition for those who might not know this language yet um is that the economies that the dominant economies that we live inside of right now are extractive so they function to pull resources out of the ground and turn people into resources and labor right like we're extracting resources from the earth and accumulating wealth that's the dominant economy that we live inside of now the and what is it leading to climate collapse so if if that's the sort of framework we live in now the question then is how do we get to a more just and regenerative economy how do we transition to an economy where um all people can and more than human people can thrive um and live together uh in harmony and in symbiosis um and and the question of how do we go from extractive to regenerative has been thought about and strategized for decades and again always being led by indigenous black people of color people on the front line so please take a look at the movement generation um zine for many many wonderful um people who are way smarter than me and have been doing the work way longer than me but just to sort of tease out that uh how does this relate to theaters it's like when we're thinking of especially now when we're trying to rebuild or recover or transition in some way to a different way of working how do we do that with justice at the center there there are sort of like in in the climate conversations about just transition uh an example of injustice that happens frequently is like okay we're going to go from extractive to regenerative how do we do that we have to stop carbon emissions cool okay if everybody stops carbon emissions actually what does that mean that means that the united states predominantly and europe who've been pouring carbon into the atmosphere for a century now um you know extracted all the wealth from the entire world and accumulated all the wealth uh and now we just get to keep it and guess what india china all that like quote-unquote developing countries um guess what like you have to stop pouring carbon into the atmosphere and growing your economies so the question then is like actually shouldn't the the nations that are most responsible for the climate crisis have a different responsibility to stopping it and to um to regenerating the world that we live in and so anyway my my point is like those kinds of questions also apply to theater as we're thinking about how do we recover how do we regenerate and who bears the most responsibility for fronting the money for like making the change for doing the emotional labor of undoing white supremacy and undoing colonization i just offer that as as a way of like summing up a little bit what just transition is about but i have by no means said it all is now the time to invite our friends to join us and have a bigger conversation i think it's stopping point you did the thing yeah let's do it everybody yeah so i think uh yes we got a video more videos i want to see more no hey thanks for being here so the awkwardness here is that we had planned a little bit to do a breakout but we're we're going to not do breakouts because our group is you know is a little intimate today so we might just stay in this bigger group and have a conversation together yeah so we had a couple thoughts for jumping off points the first one being anything that's coming up for any of you right now that you want to share any questions or feedbacks anything unsettling i always love those kinds of conversations and especially as we're talking about regenerative um theater and justice um and what all of that entails um but also we have some questions from facebook that we can also throw into the chat right here so this comes from kimberley sky thank you kimberley um and they ask do you distinguish between regenerative and resurgence also the language of care has been used a lot recently in the climate justice movement and coveted recovery do you distinguish between a care economy and a regenerative one or are they synonyms working towards similar decolonial anti-racist sustainable goals um so again some wonderful thoughts and questions from kimberley thank you kimberley i have a quick thought about regeneration and resurgence and then i need to get some water um it reminds me terry you talk about this a lot it was part of unsettling dramaturgy about the difference between reconciled and consiled spaces and how you cannot reconcile when it was never good to begin with it was never consiled therefore you cannot reconcile so actually you have to build something new um and the regenerative and resurgence i think it's not true that no one has been doing regenerative economic regenerative uh resource practices that's not true at all i think actually what we're saying is that there are a lot of people who have been doing it for a really long time but i do think a on a globalized if we're gonna maintain a globalized economy and a globalized production um the idea of do that can i think cannot be a resurgence because i don't think it existed in the first place i think globalization is a natural natural offshoot of industrialization and capitalism because the whole reason why you outsource outsource your labor to the other side of the world is because they don't have labor protection and it's cheaper um so i think for me that in like that part of the the frame it has to be transitioned to become regenerative because i don't think it has something else it's not growing from something it can return to i think but i'm gonna grab some water i was just gonna mention again because i'm a fan girl of movement generation um if you google their course correction series that they just did this summer and have a moment to go back and listen to some of those um i think they also may be putting out resources on course correction um but they talk in some of those about systems of bioregional governance so i was just gonna trouble a little bit of what anna was saying about an assumption like if we're gonna stay in a globalized economy then this down the other thing and i'm like but are we like maybe we're not maybe we do not need to stay in a globalized economy um and and a different way of thinking about how economies could work as suggested by movement generation and many other people is this idea of bioregional governance so it's doing away with like globalization as a structure and doing away with nations and arbitrary borders and and refocusing our ways of relating to each other on bioregions so what is that that might mean like a watershed area that shares uh an an ecology and therefore also an economy these are very close to the ways that in many indigenous communities have always organized themselves with like bioregions that they inhabit um and that's all i want to say i've been talking too much and i want to hear i want to hear from other people yeah and what i was just going to offer in terms of the conversation is that i think it's a small enough group please just please just hop in but if you feel like you're having trouble kind of finding your way into the conversation please message me or use the raise hand function and i can interrupt and kind of get you a spot to come in so please if someone wants to start us off that'd be great eric can you also drop that language into the actually i can do it why did i ask anyone yeah hi there i'm michael francis i work with ronnie at octopus theatricals um and i'm business manager for fiasco theater um i think that what what i have come up against in the past week specifically in a function of octopus theatricals that facilitates um fiscal sponsorship and support for organizations is that when i use terminology specific to sustainability um and edi i get baffled responses from people and i want to educate people and i have BIPOC members of my team part of it but there seems to be and the only way i can say it is a branding conflict between terminology and people's acceptance of terminology and like i've been fine with words because i think words are things but you've you come up against people that are confronted by words in a way that is is so antagonistic that you you spend 30 minutes just getting around a word and i can't believe that i have i've been confronted by this as much just in this last two weeks after a huge racial justice reform movement but it's something i'm coming up against so can i just check for my own understanding of what you said are you are you i think i might have like spaced for a moment so i apologize um are you saying that you're coming up against um like a perceived conflict between edi and i stuff and sustainability stuff as though they're separate no the weirder thing is like i think fundamentally these organizations understand edi um sustainability but then you say terminology to them um and as a colleague of mine adam who i know a lot of ground mortar folks know adam has reminded us as a group when we're in these conversations that these are no longer breakout conversations these are conversations that are organic to the general operational structure of any brick and mortar company organizational organization or movement so i guess more what i'm saying is like the branding of words has become something that people are pushing out against and part of me wants to be like get over it this is what we're calling it this is what we've identified it to be and then the other part of it is like how do i like just move things along for some people that are catching up i think i think a lot of things one of the things i will say is i think right now in discourse in the united states words are particularly charged and our language is evolving very very quickly and i think a lot of people have come to realize that a lot of our language is perhaps rooted in system interlocking systems of oppression that we didn't realize and so we actually have to go back to our vocabulary i mean even when we were discussing this call we were like is do is it is it sustainable is that our word is it resources is the word resources talking it like prefiguring extraction is this like so i do think there is a bit of a um we're in a moment right now that is like really critically looking at language and asking our language to evolve and i think when that happens you do run into to people when you say there i think uh when people are faced with their words being wrong it feels like a personal judgment um i feel like i've observed i'm in grad school right now so that's like my entire life um so maybe that's just that's just my observation but i do feel like that's something i'm seeing yeah and i for me i think a lot of it is uh people are at different points on their work of actually bringing um so like putting words aside for a second there's a way of operating and being with each other that you could look at and you could say oh that's actually decentralized oh that's decolonized leadership oh that's publicly transparent budgeting oh they actually are really thinking smartly about sustainability and regenerative practices but in the actual practice of that organization that might not be the language that's not what people are talking about they are just doing it right and there are some folks that are doing that and some folks that aren't and a lot of times when two organizations come together and i think that like fiscal sponsorship is kind of like such a oh great and specific example of how these but up together is the um what one organization is doing and how they talk about it which are often not the same thing and another organization what they do and how they talk about it are very different and it almost feels like a little bit of a okay here's my values one sheet this is how we operate and if this is not how your values operate maybe it's not the right fit um and i don't know if that's because that's a kind of a what was this called sponsorship the kind of rubric that you're um kind of saying to someone is we're going to offer you fiscal sponsorship if we believe that you are a charitable organization that we understand that you are transparent about your practices and what you're doing and we'll support you in this way but it's going to be tough to figure out that relationship if one step further the values aren't in sync and then it's just going to be really hard to work together because if you're seeing that huh and you're paying everyone uh terrible wages and we can see what the donations that are coming in and yet the checks that are going out or strangely you know you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see when something isn't right with an organization so um i think that it can be as it could be as simple as saying here's our values and if you're going to work with us these are the values you we expect you to hold with our team and that we hope that you're going to hold within your organization and if that is creating some discomfort we should talk about it and within the words like even define what they mean which i feel like frankly is half of the green new theater calls is really saying so when we say decolonized what are we actually talking about um i'll just leave it there i don't know if that's helpful but that's just what's come to mind for me it was also something to keep in mind and then we can transition or who knows what comes up um is that english is a colonized language the whole point of the language in the first place was to put us all in little boxes is what they wanted to do and so whenever we're talking about things that don't fit in with any colonial framework which and lisa regenerative practices injustice does not fit within a colonial framework we have these butt's heads because we don't know what these words mean um we have different definitions of things uh we're thinking again like michael you talked about brand like the branding of this language and like i know with thin groundwater we've had these discussions of like well how do we make the green new theater like sexy and palatable palatable for the people whereas i'm sitting over here in my little room of flames like i don't care if it's comfortable or not because what we're trying to do is take something that is inherently decolonial um and try to make it fit into a colonized box so why do we want to do that and so i like to uh welcome those points of friction and just call it what it is it's okay you want do you want me to make this more colonized for you is that the problem here and if that's what you want let's talk about it and let's figure out where that's coming from and then how we can all bring up to the same page great with that um yeah i would love to hear from from someone else uh as well like what is this conversation bringing up for you alison yeah hi um first of all thank you this is such a great discussion you all are so so smart um as a native person i just the colonization of theater um i've been thinking about that a lot and i am very hopeful about it but um i'm seeing a lot of theaters releasing their seasons and i'm disappointed i mean there's a christmas carol that's being produced again over and over again and it just seems as though white american theater is just kind of waiting okay let's let them have their moment and we can all move on and do what we're doing anyway um so i mean in terms of what we're talking what you're talking about today with i guess healing things i mean we're trying to fit into a western construct right in theater but we want to take charge we want to we want to have some kind of some kind of voice in it too so i it's just interesting listening to these discussions i just have so many questions to ask you guys i can't articulate it right now but um yeah that's just what's coming up for me now is wow um i just you know i don't see like native people being put on boards of major theater organizations and you know we had one we had lorissa it's like we should have two or three on every major theatrical board in my mind um to make up for what's been happening so let's leave that there i just want to throw out also if anyone has like not everyone likes zoom discussions and some people formulate their thoughts after you feel free to send us an email with your thoughts or your questions because this is all amazing yeah and also using the chat as well is also great um yeah i was just going to say allison that um i'm internally nodding and shouting i'm just trying to kind of fit in the box um i mean all four of us have uh been in and around you know predominantly white institutions and felt that friction of what we were trying to do and what was possible and how much to work within to change how much to you know say screw it and do something else uh even within people who you share values with there's going to be disagreements about what to do um but it's you know i find a lot of healing energy in finding a few people um who okay great so you see the same thing i see we have you know there's so many i think i've just been so heartened with this crew of people at ground water to see just how many people are thinking about this and working on this and it's just a matter of numbers and time and and doing that push but it's yeah it's hard and that fiction fiction friction is real yeah yeah julie hi everyone um i just wanted to say something i've been thinking about a lot today is uh scarcity and abundance um and that operating from an abundance mindset can be a lot more fruitful but i also think about or and how many people and organizations see scarcity where there there is none um but i at the same time this is a moment of scarcity for for the theater world in in some respects um it's much harder to bring in income for for shows and new expenses and you know all of that so there's the opportunity of having more time and and space to reflect but then there's also there's just actually less money coming in the door so how i don't know i guess i've just been turning around how do we take the first few steps forward the first baby step and what does abundance look like in this moment and not just emotional abundance but also actual abundance i know very few people who still have their jobs so you know thinking expansively and creatively about compensation is is nice and also how you know what what do i do federal unemployment is gone and my theater is not going to help me so anyway that's a bunch of stuff there we go yeah no and i i would love to weigh in on the um on the the real kind of pain and i mean this moment right now uh has just frozen so much activity exactly and just made it so that we live theater the way that we've known it can't happen and all of that all of the structures that have been set in place for good or for bad are not operating and money is not coming in the door in the same way i think that um when you're talking about an institutional level i think it's different than on an individual level right so like on the as a something i've been really heartened by that's been happening in this moment is the way that people are pivoting not always because you want to pivot right but because this is part of this moment but partnership with different um art forms that aren't as strongly affected like film or with organizations that have a mission that are um how can i say this that are less affected by this either in the corporate world or their nonprofits that are operating differently and thinking about okay how can my how can partnering with this organization for like advance both of us i think that there's there's been so much um i've seen a lot of great work happening from turning around to those around you and finding ways to make something and to turn that into income for families um on an individual level on an institutional level um i often think that there's knowing um a lot of the kind of 990s of a lot of institutions there's a lot of different forms of wealth that are tied up in different ways that um i don't mean to sound callous and insensitive to the plate of institutions right now because that is very real um and i know a lot of leaders of those organizations who are really struggling um i will say that i know that there are choices right and that i think that there's i've i've seen leaders who really show their stripes when times are hard you know and i think you have values when you follow those values even when shit gets hard arguably that's what leadership is but um we don't have to get into or we can't get into that i don't know all i want to say is that i was on the phone to someone from ceo rep and she said that they've basically turned into a community service organization because they're donating labor they're donating their building um to community partners who are delivering meals and things like that and it's really changed how they see themselves and within a within their communities because now in this moment they can't produce theater but there are still they do still have things to offer i'm also curious to turn to this conversation in the chat i think that there's something really inherent in the 501 before we get to that and just offer julie um i i don't know if i heard this and what you were saying but and i don't know like what community geographically you're located in but if if you are like having real needs you might look into like mutual aid networks that are in your geographic region because because often to make this point again like disability justice movements for racial justice have been doing this work um because the systems are not set up for us and they so like they're the systems are working just the way they're designed to um and so it's you know no shock that in a pandemic the the many of the dominant responses were like well just fire everyone um you know like preserve the institutions forget the people um but i just wanted to say like offer that maybe if you like do some googling of mutual aid networks that are probably already in existence in your community that might be a place to turn to thank you i'm i'm in the bay and i don't know if anybody else is in the bay area it seems like folks are mostly in midwest and east coast but um i'm happy to drop some links that i know of in the chat in case that's useful to anyone can i just quickly i'm sorry i'm just gonna um as far as i don't know organizations that are 501c3s or llc's or llp's but what i will say is that regardless if you're on the east coast central um uh pacific what i have found with the two organizations that i run which is octopus theatricals and then another 501c3 is that local banks are being incredibly responsive to you right now i was with chase for my 501c3 fiasco theater and with octopus theatricals which is for profit but also has a fiscal sponsorship wing we're with bank of princeton now the thing is i do have a relationship with bank of princeton but i started and count for fiasco that's based in brookland with bank of princeton because they process ppp immediately they didn't do the things that had happened to me when i was applying initially which was trying to make 501c3 um organizations and fiscal sponsorships have to clean ownership because we don't have ownership that was one of those big flaws in the application we'd always have to put in ownership and it would sort of bounce us back but i will just say that look for a local bank and most local banks even if you aren't necessarily in their jurisdiction will take you on for an account and will process ppp loans and relieve quicker super helpful thank you and i interrupted you you wanted to do some say something about the conversation in the chat uh well shreen i think was about to say something do you want to jump in shreen uh no we shouldn't have that conversation first because i was actually going to ask about something else even though i've been talking in the chat about that specific thing well don't forget your question don't forget it yeah i would all the only thing i wanted to say well we don't have to talk about it but it does there is a conversation happening in the chat about um how the there are structures in place things that necess that are required for 501c3 organizations for example board governance that then create that then create systems of oppression within our institutions and something we've talked about a ton at groundwater as we like grow is that 501c3 doesn't really work for us and LLC doesn't totally work for us and in corp being a corp like that doesn't really work for us there is no third model that bridges these gaps and part of the reason why there isn't this third model there are iterations of it but part of the reason is actually the federal tax code so so when we talk about things like sustainability we have to keep in mind these larger forces at play that maybe we don't think to turn to like the tax code or uh you know these other types of federal regulation that we maybe don't think of yeah because you know since we're everyone most everyone who is here is affiliated with an institution or was affiliated with an institution or plans to be affiliated or hopes to be i hope to be affiliated with an institution post pandemic and such um i mean that's really the million dollar question is the board of trustees because the theater as we know is a hierarchical model and it starts with who has the judiciary and the financial responsibility the board who's on your board well i don't know about y'all but a lot of boys i've seen a lot of older white men and then older white women and that's about it um and so whenever we're talking about like sustainability and creating these massive structural changes it has to come from the top down because unfortunately theater um does not work on a relational model on a circular model but is still hierarchical as we currently know it again not all theaters is wonderful examples of not and so a question that i pose not a question it's a challenge to pose for artistic leaders um and for those who are embedded within institutions is what qualifies as someone as a good like board fit whenever you're trying to do these massive structural changes and i know right because we're like so often myself included like stuck in that scarcity mindset it's oh no we definitely need the coo of at&t on our board because they give us lots of money we have to um but there's so many examples that we don't have like that like we don't have to do that we don't have to continue to center the money but we can center like capital our resources what can an individual give to an organization that can help move us forward into our goals and so as an example there's a nonprofit here in oklahoma and they work with um individuals who are unhoused and so on their board um it's a board of 17 they have three people who have been and or are currently unhoused individuals because who are the best individuals to move that organization towards justice people who live within and experience what they're trying to do and that also takes out that white saviorism issue which that's a whole nother zoom topic for a whole nother day in the nonprofits um or alice and you know dropped into the chat about being with the susanians national museum of american indian um and also i don't know if you want to talk about that briefly at all um yeah sure um i'm pretty unlikely candidate for that board i thought i'm not a wealthy individual you know from a business or banking or a law background usually find those types of people right on our corporate background on those types of boards but my friend was a tribal leader uh she still is a tribal leader from san manuel and she invited me to um be considered on that board because it's very important to the leadership of that museum that they have a native voice on their board so we have um we do much of our work is in repatriation which is helping facilitate the the transfer of sacred remains and sometimes actually you know people people's bones and and our relatives our ancestors back to the appropriate um tribe where they originated from and uh everything from the curation of of objects um our educational programs there has to be a native person there has to be native voices involved in those decisions so um that's what i do we don't get paid for it we um we got travel paid for when we have our meetings um but we're not compensated for our time i consider it an honor to serve on something like that because i i feel it's a very important thing to have um i think going back to the discussion with the foundations if a foundation when they give to an organization they can actually specify you know in their in their grant application you know your board must consist of you know this amount of BIPOC folks you know in order for us to consider your application they can do that i think that kind of change will help but that's the way we function at NMAI i i'm not sure about the african-american museum i know um they have a lot of folks on that board as well um we're also trying to move what we age off our board we only serve for six years so we're also trying to get other native folks on all these other boards the susanians as you know is a huge institution so we're trying to get our folks on you know the folk art museum the american history museum all these museums so that's that's kind of what it is in a nutshell yeah but i think the core that we've all been talking about is the system itself like the nonprofit system itself is broken it ain't working and it hasn't been it's not regenerative it's not centered on justice and it's very colonial so like whenever we have these conversations we hit those walls of frustration it's like yes let's diversify our boards that's definitely an access point um but what happens if more like when that's not enough what happens when although the nonprofits as though the theaters are coming together to move towards justice but our funders aren't so what are we going to do i mean i don't know if we can call the melon foundation and be like yo bros let's have a chit chat um i mean that's what i would do um but it's so we have to again think regeneratively and think relationally with one another and who we're trying to work with to move forward and that may or may not include funders that may or may not include board of trustees that may or may not include 501c3s and that is fine um but again i think like where for myself i'm finding that like struggle is taking something that's inherently a decolonial con a concept necessarily concept like it's very real like we can hold it but a decolonial thing and trying to fit it into our colonial boxes and so like obviously there's friction obviously doesn't work so it's we have in my mind one of two choices number one um do we try to like do some construction on this box to make it fit in there like do we i don't know add another box try to send it or other or do we do something completely different just scrap that start with start the land start with the roots start the foundation and then build something new and something different um in the ways that we're trying to head towards and i think right now it's an interesting time because the theater is on hiatus as it rightfully needs to be um but it's also a time where we can think about restructuring think about change um think about what are the things that we're going to prioritize once we can come back together what are the things that we can do right now because there are indeed things we can do right now like ana mentioned um the example of theater opening its doors there's multiple theaters opening their doors right now for people on the street who are protesting for their right to exist and live and theaters are being part of that movement um there are oh my gosh i forget to tell my brain what theater it was but there was a theater that donated their building back to the indigenous people of those lands and that's going to be used as a community center and a way to uplift the indigenous people of that community that's amazing and they did it right now COVID be damned so it's just like this is just a very exciting time i also want to keep there while also being very cognizant about how this is not an exciting time for a lot of people um and you know especially in my brain thinking about indian health services being 50 underfunded and disproportionately impacted like it's not a fun time um but it is i think a capital t time lots of times lots of things i think also having income like wealth redistribution can happen within your institution um someone i someone had posted you know they fire everyone except for the people who have six figure salaries working at the executive level like these people maybe they shouldn't be making six figure salaries maybe everyone should be making five figure salaries like if if someone isn't if you are in a position to if you have some amount of power or you have some amount of influence pushing your institutions to have wealth redistribution within that will go far because the person who is an intern today might end up on your board later if they can stay in the theater because they can make a living doing it which right now they can't and racism is not sustainable i'm i'm about to climb on the soapbox i saw you dropping that mic what i wanted to offer is that we have about six minutes left and i want to make sure that anyone who didn't get a chance to jump in had a chance if you'd like yeah shireen um i'm gonna try to be fast uh but i mean so and then this maybe is pretty specific but like uh we're a small ensemble and we definitely put care sort of at the center of our work and like from the beginning really because of how small our budgets were like uh and that we make work over time like the flexibility model was always there from the start like we took everybody's schedules first and then made the rehearsal schedule over a long period of time so that people could still work and we took a really um we have been working really hard to get everybody up to 15 an hour for every hour that they are in rehearsal in performance every meeting um because we believe in paying that first of all that it's a minimum wage and like also like that's uh but we just worked really hard to get there and now uh if we're having a little bit of a growth challenging moment where we did that everything feels great and now everything is starting to there's some things not everything is starting to feel really transactional like how so for if i do five like social media posts does that equal 15 an hour like what is so there's been a lot of this like which feels like we're reinforcing a capitalist structure when we was like ours the spirit of it of what we were doing was the opposite of that and so we we brought this up for the first time at our core ensemble meetings and everybody was like yeah that that feels that way and we don't have a solution for it so i just wanted to like we don't have to solve it in the next four minutes but i just wanted to like say that was a challenge that we have currently um are currently struggling with and if anybody has any ideas open to them or just want to put it out there in the world that even in like the moments where you're like really putting care and folks there's still going to be hurdles and challenges that come along the way so this is my favorite time real quick to yell about capitalism um but whenever we think of um goods and services relationally not transactionally i find that these does my five posts equal 15 dollars goes away so it's like what else are we giving one another so to that individual are they just giving you those five posts and they're done or are they giving you their wealth of knowledge are they giving you their energy their positivity their optimism that's helping you then fuel and then what are you giving them also in return are you connecting them to other opportunities are you every now and then baking them some bread i don't know are we past the bread baking point of of covid i don't know and i you'd know anyway like do we just drop off and do those nice things because we're talking about each other relationally right we're not thinking of as an employee contractor i collect said services um you know i mean i'm gonna quote smoke signals here in terminal xb's problematic but um allison you appreciate this but i always like to say all the time you know hey we're indians we barter they're like there's a lot more than many there's a lot more things that we can give to one another because as we're thinking regeneratively as we're thinking sustainably a little green piece of paper ain't it we've already talked about that it ain't gonna work ain't gonna have enough trees to print those little pieces of paper ain't that gonna happen um so we just have to completely reframe how we create things and i like to go back to the root of what theater was um so you know back to Greece for those who come from the european area um you know back to our story circles back to fire whatever it is your indigenous roots go back to those and what is that storytelling what are those rituals it's about being in community with one another being in relationship the person sitting next to you with the fire in the center of the of the circle whatever that is and then it's not transactional it's not we lose all those questions about well how do i support an individual and get that back how do we create regenerative things how do we create sustainability because that's the root of just everything that we do um and so if there's like one last little nugget i could leave um is going back to your indigenous roots of storytelling whatever that is cut a lot of indigenous um and how that is prioritizing the people and starting our brains there versus our brains in the this is capitalism i don't know what's going on um could be a way to spark some cool things some creativity i don't know too much is there for shereen's response well hold on actually i want to ask um travis our howlron producer if we can stay on a few minutes beyond our asl interpreters and capture may have to leave um but i i know that susan i believe you had a thing you wanted to say and then shereen had a response i just don't want everyone to like i don't want the feed to cut out and travis says yes so go ahead shereen go ahead i'll go first um so uh i just want to like we already like just like we embed like ensemble care days into our rehearsal process where we like share sound baths and do like we're like that's like a part of our exchange relationally but we we're paying them for those as like like because there is a certain sense of like yes they also need to eat at the same time like all of our ensemble members so it i totally agree with everything that you're saying and at the same time have to hold i want to find especially in this moment where every all of our folks are really strapped for cash like what is every single way that we can get money in their hands and so like that's the like tension that we're constantly because we do have i do think we have a very strong relational practice in our ensemble but at the same time i know that like okay we have this project budget and i'm going to change some of this rehearsal money into like money that i can use to pay them to like do a yoga class for everybody or do a sound bath for everybody but it's still that like here's that transaction now so i just wanted to like add that level that like there's still a tension there even if like even if there's like really strong relational um practice happening yeah and i can vouch that charene's company um is extraordinary because i got to learn a little bit about them so you should go check out what they do um susan you had something to share yeah yeah thank you hi everybody um i uh what what this has been so great thank you so much um so many things to think about my brain is just on fire in a good way um but i i typed into the chat a second ago um something that just came back into my mind tarot what you were talking about um is that i once had a student and it was in like a gen ed class it was a non major and we were talking about the origins of theater and she raised her hand kind of timidly and she was like so theater is is enacting what we believe and i was like yeah that's that's the whole thing i don't think you mind if i use that forever and she's like yeah go ahead um so shout out to that student whose name i don't remember because it's many years ago um but i also uh um i was something that annalisa said a while back about bio was it bioregional systems was that the word for it governance bioregional governance bioregional governance um and something that i that struck me just a few minutes ago was thinking about um theaters it as bioregional governments like theater communities something that i've really been contemplating and wrestling with and and realizing that i've really been wrestling with it my whole career is um is that the higher the hierarchy within each theater very white supremacist but then the hierarchy of the whole system of theater that leads us all to new york as like this capital golden capital of theater and that every other theater that you work with is a stepping stone to become famous in new york and that it bothers me and it's never really appealed to me and so i most of my work doesn't reflect that but it's something that i i feel like is a this is a good moment to uh to to think about dismantling that that larger system and it's i think it's wonderful to be able to connect nationally with theaters around the country but to think about bioregional governance for theater as in theater communities um so that we're not all literally stepping on each other to get to this one place um so that was coming from my mind but i also wanted to shout out about time so i've been thinking about that a lot lately um and just that like uh rebecca solnett wrote this great book river of shadows um and she talks about time being on time was a construct like time zones were created for the railroad so our whole system of being on time was for capitalism and for railroads and so it doesn't doesn't colonization like it's about the railroads colonizing the american west exactly and so all the local time got wiped like even for white like white people just live in their lives like no more local time everybody had to get rid of it so you don't have time you know it's construct be shout out to arizona because they said fuck your time zones we're not doing it end up one corner of indiana also i will say all of these discussions we've been having about money will be continued in our next call on publicly transparent budgeting in which we will talk about money and rant and it'll be great with that um groundwater team we okay if i wrap this uh sucker up all right it's a beautiful thank you all for taking the time and making space to be with us and each other today a big thank you to our friends at howl round thank you travis for staying late and at first people's fund for your support during this third chapter of green new theater 2020 huge thanks to our asl interpreters and our captioner for today also for staying late it has taken an entire village to make the series happen as you can see we already mentioned that this is the third chapter of a series of green new theater calls and we'd really appreciate feedback from y'all um our goal with these calls is to create low stress generative space for relationship building and connection across the field about what a green new theater could look like so if you have a moment to email us at groundwater arts at gmail.com with any feedback on the format of this session what worked for you what didn't what you think we could do better or what you'd love to experience in a future of green new theater call so the fourth chapter of green new theater 2020 will take place in late september or early october we will be talking as anna mentioned about publicly transparent budgeting and we will be partnering with flux theater and creating new futures so if you'd like to stay in touch with us you can email us join the groundwater arts slack at groundwater arts docs dot slack dot com or follow us on facebook and lastly we'd like to leave you with one final quote by edward galliano did i say that right okay highlighted in movement generations just transition zine quote the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity thank you all and have a wonderful evening and thank you so much for an awesome discussion