 Before I give brief introductions to each of them, I also would encourage those in the audience that are wiser than me and say, well, that's not how it is, but like, Nadia, really couldn't speak out. I mean, because like I said earlier, I know this audience and I know the depth of knowledge and expertise that lies there. So, I'm going to start from my far left. I'm just going to introduce you. Daniel Banks is a performer, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He's involved in DNA Works, which is like, he sent me an email and I said, I'm not a nonprofit. I'm an LLC and I said, fine, even better, let's just figure out how we do it. He's involved in engagement projects as well and is pretty committed to working with you. Next to Daniel is Denise Arahu, we'll see a little bit of her work later today. Performance artists, the grants manager at the Tucson People Arts Council, and a bit of a troublemaker in a sweet way. And next to her is Kenny Azal, who's a dancer who's been working in Tucson, an awful lot, deals an awful lot with environmental issues, land use issues. And now has residency in the National Park Service, where she's working on a project called, Sam with a Swarov. Is that the power attack? Yeah, it's Sam with a Swarov. Sam with a Swarov, because Tucson is born by the east and west by the Swarov National Park. So, our base in the smaller comparison due to Tucson, so in some ways the city is sort of contained. So, Daniel, I want to just let you start off. Come on, I know you're well enough, I know that you're really good at improvisation. So, ultimately, we were just asked to sort of, the leading question was really to talk a little bit about the support system that you understand and you see for individual artists. And also, give a little commentary about what you think the aesthetic vocabularies that are unique to where you were. Thank you, Roberto. I'm going to actually ask if I can defer, since Dean Edwards is very new to the Southwest region, and so it's a great humility that I feel I'm seeing up here. I'd like to defer to someone who's been working in this region longer at first, and have that voice be the first voice, if that's something we'll agree to do that. Sure. Okay, my name is Kimmy, and I think one thing I wanted to do just before diving in on that question is just piggyback on the idea of the Wii, and just think for a minute about some of the other Wii in this region, and one of those other Wii's is the Saguaro Pactus, and the other one is El Jefe, who is a lone male jaguar who's roaming Southern Arizona, who's come up from Mexico and lives in this region. And so I just want to mention those species because I think they're very much a part of the Wii, and the beautiful thing about them is that they defy language, and they defy borders, and they defy funding, and I think we have a lot to learn from those species as part of our Wii, and there's a million other desert species that we can learn from. So I just wanted to say that. And then the question, and I'll say the question again. Well, there's sort of two problems, the notion of sort of the static vocabulary that you think come out of this locale, and then it supports the system for your work as an artist. Okay, so moving from thinking about those other species as species that belong in the desert, and also as metaphors, I think that some of this desert aesthetic that I think about in my work, and I am a multidisciplinary artist, I'm a writer, a choreographer, and a visual artist, most of my engagement work comes in the form of performance, and I've looked at water issues in the desert, endangered species, food security through participatory projects. I used to run a small runner dance company, and no longer do because I got exhausted with doing that, and so sort of took the leap to become a more of an individual free agent. I'll be partnering happily with Borderlands Theater this season with a project that is funded by the National Development for the Arts as part of their Imagine Your Parks project, which is a partnership with the National Parks Service. So really looking at sort of the cultural and national history of our region, particularly around the Samaro cactus, and what does it mean to direct with that cactus as a mover, as a culture bearer, as a scientist, what are all the relationships we have with that cactus? So when I think about the arts landscape in Tucson, I think a lot about that desert aesthetic of resiliency, the way that our species here work really hard for water. It sometimes feels like we're just walking and walking and walking for days and days in the desert, and we just hope that there's an oasis. And oftentimes there are, whether it's in the form of a really cool partnership that affords new funding and new audiences or new collaborators that sort of expand the audience or expand the way of thinking. So the hard thing about that is that you're sort of walking on faith, which I think the desert is all about anyway, but whether or not there's an oasis, it's like we all just keep walking and it's like, oh, we've walked this far already, we mustn't stay a fucking show for this far. But I see that a lot with my amazing colleagues that are in the room, that there's this resilience and I think also a kind of spirit of resistance too. Because we're a poor city, in a poor state, in a desert, there is this sort of hovering idea of scarcity, and yet there's this resistance. Again, I think of the Saguaro and El Jefe de Jaguar, they resist border militarization. This Jaguar has crossed the border despite all the things that are trying to stop everything from crossing the border. So I think as artists, we have that same kind of resistance, whether we're working on human justice issues, environmental justice issues. And I think that there's this writer, John Van Dyke, who wrote a famous book about the desert in the 1920s. He crossed the Chihuahuan Desert and the Sonoran Desert and he characterizes this place as, it's all beak and thorn and talon and the desert is at war with itself. You can really look at this place in that way and then also if you hang out a little bit longer, you also begin to see the ways in which desert plants adapt and work with each other. And I think that that is also what I see as a result of that scarcity, is that spirit of collaboration, which is really beautiful and welcome. So I'm Denise Wayhada, I'm a performance artist and I'm just a plenary artist. The project that you'll be seeing a little showing up later this afternoon is called Shitting Columbus. We are the Shitting Columbus Collective, so we work as a collective. And the members of that collective are Cleveland Ali, who's home flagstaff, who's an activist and musician. Ryan Pinto, who is a keyboard dancer and traditional Omaha brass dancer and they are also Diné and of Ryan's Diné and Hopi, the Diné name in the novel. And Rachel Loditch, who's here with us tonight. And Adam Bertarron, who is Yachty and Chicano and myself. I'm Hopi now on the Japanese American. So the majority of our lead artists in this group are indigenous. Rachel and I are not Native American. I'm indigenous on the Okinawan side of the Danway. We were, we have been very interested in a very long-term project, which has a parallel track, a parallel track with community, but we are also respectful of ourselves as artists and that we have a certain region that we want to approach. So we've been working, it's about a four-year project. We're about half way north right now. We will be premiering it in Tucson in 2017. The premise is if indigenous scientists built a time machine and went back to 1492 and shot Columbus, how would your life today be different? So if you go back and shoot Columbus, it may splinter off into multiple universes. What we're asking the audience to do is to walk into a room which has multiple universes, multiple voices, multiple points of view. Sometimes you can conflict the points of view and that's alright. That is allowed in this new universe. We want to create a space of imagination. So here we are on the southwest and we have, there are many, many issues that the indigenous communities are facing, including land appropriation that they have to push off their land, taking of the land and the resources or sources from the earth. The list is very, very long. Part of it is that by creating these multiple universes, we also have a space for these different voices to exist. And also as we begin to tour what we hope to do, that as we go to different communities where there are indigenous voices, they can be part of those multiple universes as well. We're in the research phase which is funded by the network ensemble theaters and through a travel and exchange grant. And also by the ASU and the Herbert Institute. The production itself is funded by the MAP Fund. We're very, very helpful for this, thankful for this support. It's been a big difference in our ability to work together in a professional manner. We also wanted to thank the ACA and the FDA for just their support in just being there as we develop this work. So in terms of resources locally, they are small, but we decided it really pushed us to move beyond local. I also happen to be the grants manager for the local arts council at the risk of never working in this panel again because I'd be the one that gives those calls or emails good or bad. I'm originally from Los Angeles and I just knew that moving here that any of us that worked together, we would need to move beyond local funding. But it's also really forced to look at working very closely with the communities that we hail from. So since Kali and Ryan are today, we actually did an entire field trip over about four days to the territory, to the coal mines, to interview people. And their voices are part of our, they are informing our production. And then finding ways to create work that we felt was able to respect what we were hearing but also to be, to have a creative space. Did I answer the question? Thank you all for going first. My name is Daniel Banks. I'm co-director of DNA Works Without a Kidding. It's over there. We moved to Santa Fe in 2010 because Adam was offered to create the dance program within New Mexico School for the Arts, which is a charter of public-private collaboration arts school in Santa Fe that opened in 2010. And two years ago, I was asked to bring back the Performing Arts Program at the Institute for American Indian Arts, which has been working for 20 years. I'm a kinesthetic learner and sitting down at a chair behind the table separated from everybody is extremely elated for me. Also, I know there are a lot of performers in the room. If time allowed, I would get us all up on our feet singing and do a giant story circle because that would actually be my, really my art form is to facilitate community voices rising together. Since we have limited time, I can copy it a shorter version of that. I'm assuming everybody needs a seventh inning stretch, so let's stand up. And take a stretch. Separate those ribs. Feel all your ribs just, yeah, up on your toes. And now as you start to come down, see if you can connect to the person next to you physically in some way. Find some physical way that everybody in this room can connect. The panelists over there, you need to connect with the rest of the community. Okay, is everyone connected? And now, actually, everyone is connected to the mic. So, thank you. That to me represents, and I hope you won't mind if I stand, but I think better when I'm standing, that represents to me both our aesthetics and how we overcome the challenges in New Mexico. Just to... Is anyone else here from New Mexico? I know Colleen's worked and lived in New Mexico. Anyone else here? Okay, great. So, I don't want to speak for New Mexico because that would be silly having only been there six years, but I can share some of our experience there. There's only one equity company in New Mexico, and that's in Albuquerque. It is impossible as a theater actor to actually earn any kind of a wage in New Mexico. You can combine that with film, but, for instance, in Santa Fe, there's little to no paid theater in Santa Fe. And I won't go into... I mean, I'm sure we'll have Q&A, and folks want to know more about that, but I just want to put that up there. You actually can't be a professional theater actor in New Mexico, but only doing theater. Number one. Number two, as most folks know, New Mexico is, unfortunately, really far down like 49th and 50th in terms of welfare for young people in the country and poverty in the country and keeps oscillating between 49th and 50th position. We're tragically underfunded. Really, I mean, more than 50% of the people when I say I live in New Mexico, they say, oh, you live in Mexico? How's that? How'd you get to Mexico? I was like, no, I actually live in the United States. It's called New Mexico. And I would say about 60% of the people here in Arizona when I say New Mexico. So they're like, oh, Phoenix? New Mexico. And I say that to be funny, but it's not funny because it actually means that it's an area of the country that is very still not known to people except Santa Fe, and people still think that's in Arizona. So it's challenging. And there is not enough arts funding in New Mexico to sustain professional theater companies. There are music and dance companies in our work in New Mexico that have figured it out. But as far as theater goes, we're kind of honest to me whether that be play theater or ensemble theater, probably the most successful list is Theater Brotesco, which does quite a lot of touring, actually more touring than performing in New Mexico, and has a 20-plus year history, so they figured out how to make it work. But even so, I'm not entirely sure that they have full-time company members. I think that there's, you know, people do many jobs, many things. So in terms of the aesthetic vocabulary, our aesthetics, in New Mexico, there's no difference between aesthetics and practice to me. They're really the same. DNA Works had a kind of an operating principle which is that we don't go into anywhere that we're not invited. We don't look for an area that we want to work in and say, hey, would you, you know, or look for funding to go to someplace. It's really invitation-driven and it's community-stakeholder-driven. So the projects that we've done in Santa Fe so far in New Mexico have been requested and driven by community partners. And so that same thing that we just did here is exactly what we've done in New Mexico. In six years, we've partnered with over 25 different organizations across the state. Many of them would have never sat at the same table in each other. So we bring it together and then we say, okay, so how do we find the resources to do this? And part of what that means is Adam and Calvin and I were just having this conversation earlier is that Adam and me being people who embody multiple heritages, multiple cultures, multiple subject positions, academic speak, we serve as bridges between communities and so we are able to bring people to tables who normally don't sit at tables together and we're able to talk in the vocabulary of each of those communities so that they find their common interests. And that is both the aesthetics and the practice. The work that we create, we create also for that to happen in an audience context, not just in a pre-production or production context or funding context, but actually what does it mean to have the sort of the theater going audience, again they use the word theater very specifically because that sort of signifies the building and seats and tickets and orchestra, balcony, red class distinctions. The audiences that are familiar with that kind of context, what does it mean for them to go to the south side of Santa Fe which is mostly where the bios are and where working class folks live where there are affordable ones and what does it mean for them to see a story by a play by Goodwin Mayoka that was workshop at the O'Neill Festival but is very much about a Chakrano family in San Antonio and have folks sitting side by side and then have a community dialogue afterwards which all of our pieces do and have audience members say that's me on stage, I've never seen myself on the stage before and then other audience members say I learned more about my neighbors tonight about how it was 20 years ago and having those conversations being witnessed by each other so that kind of humility that I think performance can engender in the audience having actual people who live in geographic proximity to each other experience each other as humble or humble. That does something to over that changes the dynamic and then I think also part of part of this and this is why I regret though if you wanted me to be on the panel or not it's because we are an LLC when we formed we wanted to get it done quick so legal shield very much we're a legal zoom and we formed as an LLC and fresh out this became our business sponsor but then as we began to explore we realized that we didn't because we're small we wanted to stay small we wanted to actually we were creating intellectual property and we wanted that as a collective to be as an ensemble by the ensemble not by us individually and that causes problems if you have a 501c3 and a board decides they want to go to you or something so many of our friends have had that experience and so then we learned about social entrepreneurship and actually did a fellowship on social entrepreneurship how do you have a way to generate revenue that then you can take that revenue and filter it into your so called good profit or arts practice and that's been very successful again doing what we just did here but with a larger community of stakeholders inviting people to be not financial stakeholders but social stakeholders so really leveraging that kind of social capital and social equity and having ambassadors and these are all things that I've read about that some New Yorkers are doing and other organizations are doing and I've attended a couple theater communication groups events audience engagement, audience revolution so having ambassadors who we ask that they hold theater parties and have an inner party before a performance and then bring 10 people with them to the show and actually businesses are really hungry we found that business owners are really hungry to be engaged as people so we would go in and we would ask them for money we would simply say we've developed relationships with business owners and we'd go in and say what are you working on we'll talk about these pieces oh do you have a poster and so we began to realize that we were providing a service to them because then if they have a poster and postcards at the front and the owner of the business they still are some small businesses that they'll say what we'd like to tell our customers about it can you give us information so we began actually bringing that out there and asking businesses to be ambassadors and then this gives people an opportunity to interact with their customers on a social cultural level not just on a monetary level everything that we've asked of people has been on leveraging so-called social capital and that has then led to people offering financial capital but we didn't start with the ask we created on one of our last productions Casper Donis by Irma we created a a an associate producer a community associate producer board and all that we did we asked seven people that we knew from various different cultural groups in Santa Fe they would aim and their name to be famous about the title and we would talk it up and that's all that we asked of them and then we said if you want to bring Gallo if you want to bring friends to Gallo that's great but literally we led with I'm not asking for money and it worked and we oversold that theater we sold more seats in that theater than I've ever been sold before just by asking people to be connectors of people in the most segregated city that I've ever lived in and I see the nod back there so again I'm making this up there's a reality check so I can say more about that but again it's it was interesting I was asked to write an artistic statement for a for an award and I found that I was writing an artistic statement that I was also talking in this very auditorial way but there's a point at which the production of art I mean the the creating of the art and the creating of the context in which the art is going to be received and viewed to me there's no distinction between the two it's about creating a kind of a cultural awakening or some kind of although someone else named it but it really became clear as I was writing this statement that I was not going to get the award because they just wanted to hear like the aesthetics how can you evacuate the sociology and the politics from the aesthetics they couldn't want to I have a question for you guys and then we'll open it up to you all of you but I like that last comment because in some ways what I was talking about is that it's the one what you're creating is sort of a concept of the week whether it's in relationship to the land or whatever it is the essence of the piece that you're working on but I just sort of found this story earlier and I'll ask this form of questions for you guys but I was having this story earlier working with Chris Breyer who I think is an advisor to you guys on a project that was funded by a rock color board about a decade ago about looking at the support system for the new work development and there was a lot of I talked to a lot of artists it was really great and a couple of things that best they made for me is sort of the importance of having networks of trust and especially as it comes to feedback loops on your process so can you talk a little bit about that about how that how do you have a network of trust when you're not on the coast and you're not at and you're in the desert you're on the border and you have these other sort of yeah how do you address that need for us part of it is that the networks of trust also include the communities that we're working with part of it is that for us going actually to this is all indigenous land and I thought it does give a learning experience for me but also really interesting dialogue about how we build these trust we've had many discussions in our group about how we can change the model of how we create work so that it is also involving Native American practice in it as part of it including a prayer at the beginning and a real intent and building the empathy between us we're just for working and also just personal building the work it is hard because we're in Tucson is isolated in some ways so definitely we definitely create a lot of studio time that's something that actually is lacking a lot in Tucson there's not a lot of places to show and laboratories to just try to work we're using today as a laboratory we said we can ask, we're invited we said yes, we will do it regardless of where you are in practice because we wanted to create that dialogue so you are further our building of the work and we do try to have a high bar for a lack of better term we just decided this is important to us aesthetically but in that process working with community we're finding ways to always have a community inform our work we're not creating a vacuum and it is very much the art is the making of it as well and we together it's interesting that's why we're willing to go long term but in that regard it also forces to think how can we sustain ourselves monetarily and also just in terms of energy and so that's been a pacing process and a long term process that instead of just like oh you do this tomorrow and we'll be done we actually had to really think it through and have dialogue when we go to let's say to the Navajo or to Hona Abad Miras and we talk to people we just get some feedback on it we interview people Adam Pergeron is doing a lot of interviews and just to ask them what's been going on is part of our project so I'll just talk briefly about the project I'm working on now which is working with Saguaro Cacti and the first thing I did was to give myself the task of standing with one for an hour and it raised a lot of questions about performer and audience if you if your audience is a cactus what's the feedback that's there or if you are the audience for a cactus what's the feedback so it raised a lot of interesting conundrums for me about who's performer what does performer mean is that really a performance, is there an audience so that I mean I say that kind of as a joke but it really had to make me think about that so part of what this project will do is we'll invite others to the park that same kind of experience of one hour or whatever you can do sitting or standing which then is like is that dance, yes is that theater, yes I mean some people might say no but it's a certain kind of performativity that's happening but then sort of just a larger question about feedback there is no dance critic in Tucson there are theater critics now but you cannot get a review of dance in the city of Tucson and part of that is because most dance performances are they're only two or three nights they don't run for a long enough period of time so it's been really challenging and I think it's been sort of in some ways a detriment to the dance community but also then there's this question of the learning question of who's the dance for and what are you measuring what's your gain and measurement in terms of who it reaches and how so I tend to go outside of the dance community for my feedback there's a very strong literary community in Tucson very strong visual art very strong theater presence in Tucson and I get some of my feedback in that sense but I do think that question too of like who are we making the work for and what's the objective has a lot of weight in terms of what the work is and then how we review it or critique it or think about its success so there's one main newspaper in San Fe that mostly covers the touring productions at the big major house we've gotten a lot of advance publicity but I don't think we've received any reviews there's now a new independent periodical that a woman named Francis Madison has put forward and she's trying to cover all the performance that she can to sort of balance it out so much in the same way that we were just speaking we have created very different notions of what feedback looks like San Fe is a very very small town in some ways in other ways it's a series of spheres that never interact and so but the small town notion is really I will often joke if you sneeze on one side of town someone will hand you an anchor chip on the other side of town everybody knows what's happening with everybody there which is sometimes a bit and sometimes not a bit so our feedback loop is do people come you know are we actually able to get people to do the performances because that's a common complaint of a lot of the smaller independent community based groups is that they can't actually can't audience this so number one do people actually come because word of mouth is really the primary source of information in San Fe number two do the rooms look like this in terms of being of representation of all of the cross section of San Fe and its environments and then also we can prove here is about the peace we will often when we're working on something and if somebody meets us and say oh aren't you the guys from DNA Works or oh DNA Works we've heard about you aren't you doing the peace and when people outside of our immediate spheres know about the work that means to me that something is working within the community because again it's word of mouth and we have some trusted colleagues that we've built in Brooklyn while we've been there but I would say that for the most part our practices and our sort of those of our work is very different from a lot of the different groups there and often times our collaborators are in our pieces so it's a little hard to have the outside people that we're close with are usually involved in what we're doing and those relationships are really driven by bringing bread together eating together, meals, community meals we have a big table that's not quite this big but almost this big and we just try to fill it once a month with people and that's just our way of building our creative community and our feedback community and we talk at those tables about our work about other people's work about the work we're trying to do about the struggles that's how we build our network of trust is around the inner table and that's our feedback before I open it up I have a story to tell my dad is from Tucson but I grew up in the Bay Area I've been in Tucson for about 10 years but when my dad was alive we'd come down very spring to see my dad and we'd go to Yachty Ceremonia and Old Costco and those of who know where that is basically an enclave of Yachty community that the city has sort of surrounded that's where they do the Easter Yachty Dam Ceremonia so I don't know if you're going that that's a little kid and being totally like these kids look like me they're what are they, they're Indian okay okay okay but more than anything else the ceremony was like they put out a closet there and they tap and they go back and forth and I don't know I didn't know what the hell it was but I was mesmerized and for me that became the beginning of my love of theater and I put that in the context to sort of in a way talk about one more thing then I'm going to actually call upon some people to talk about this I have a question about Tucson is a strong festival culture Paul and Nadia have a producer that they call the Paulson Precession which is an annual precession through downtown about 100,000 people who honor the dead so it's a hybrid of sort of like day of the dead prior people aerobatics, circle arts and the dog I mean it's all good I mean everybody goes down and walks through town and what I know is one of the nation's best for Morris she's in the back and she produces things called Folklife Field School and Tucson Meet Yourself but this notion that heritage practices are very active in the line as they do is that I like to use the term but I think it's from you behind all I don't know about you there's a notion of a contemporary tradition that in some ways the heritage of our desert our indigenous voices Latino voices are still rematched and constantly in new forms so that was my rule and they wanted to call you out but they wanted to call out these experts in the house so let me just well since I mentioned her name she's a dancer she's got a solo performing speech she's been working on about being a performer and a parent so she's worked with Ordered Men so these my colleagues that are in the house so I'll ask some questions about the C9012 but let me open it up for questions and remember we're all connected we've already so don't be shocked yes sir should bigger companies have what businesses have which is a strategic plan in order to really engage their communities after people go to the audience and they watch that first show or that first performance what's the next call to action so what are we asking people to do beyond go to the theater to really establish a sense of community and really train these audiences to become full time supporters of the arts so what are some strategies well I have a thought but I think Holly probably probably has better insights she's like a big time producer presenter one of the things though and because I'm so investment engaged in my processes I also and I think I learned this from college maybe I learned this from Stephanie maybe I learned it from you I'm not sure I learned it from somebody in the alternate world can I understand the notion of being a guest and a host and that when you really as a presenter you're always a guest and as you start as a guest I remember having this free to opera America people and I said you're a guest and they go no no no I really know how to host really well I rent carpet down and I can really do that I said no man you're a host in the locale of your city and then that's where you start and then you know how to be excuse me you're a guest in the locale of your city and then you know how to be a host which is to sort of bear that in relationships that we're all guests on the planet and then we can host eventually so I didn't call everybody to add anything I would just say a couple of things because I think that's a great question and we often invite people into our spaces without saying anything before or after don't allow for the time to meet even before they get to the spaces and we've been very fortunate in this past year we've been working on a long history about sustaining audiences and one of the things that we've learned from that is we want to meet with you before you can come before you even think about coming so what we've been doing with our artists is saying we're just going to party we have like a little afternoon gift together come it's free and you're going to get to talk to the artist and have a little drink and have a little food performance and traditionally what we always thought is we need to have the Q&A that's not the real thing people don't want the Q&A they want to hang out they want to say what did you think about that so now we like wiped out the Q&A we say afterwards come right across the street and Pippa Pujo which is just the bar across the street we have the rooftop we're going to have food and drink and just come and hang and people like came from so many I met a guy who said I took three buses to get here so I could come and hang out and then it really made a difference and another person said I don't even know what the next thing you're doing but I like this so much that I'm going to come so first of all the approach doesn't happen once they're in the theater it's way before they get there but it continues way after they leave now I think the other thing is for us we do this with our artists and we do this with our community we ask three questions what do you want, what do I want and they say what do you want it's not about what I want I know what I want but I have to know what you want and then we work on that sweet spot of what we want to want together and that's what loses ahead and gives us to that next step and you are so right Marcine and we cannot do this without thinking there's a next step questions come on yes Mark we talked about seeing coming to as a young child coming to the ceremonies and we got this cactus performance and you know what each of you are talking about and there's something you talked about not having the theater critics and not having the earth structure and something that Carlton talked about when we were in Raymond was that culture happens in all these different places and I actually wonder if you actually aren't leading us into something that we have yet to find which is how we see, how we learn how we create not in a building, not in a theater building but how we take culture how we take art how we make it a part of everyday life which I think in these places that are not the coast but in these places where there's an outdoor and this is a life that happens out of doors but I think it gives me something to learn there's no question there but it's just an observation if I can speak up briefly to that one of our guest artists in a group, Alex Soto who was at the Hona Alameda who spoke in one of our earlier sessions he said let's think about what the moment was like and he said we were sitting at ASU in a room it's a beautiful studio with marley and mirrors and he says you know this would not be our university maybe our place of learning would be outside of our truth our canals of our folk, of ancestors would be the canals that we learn how to create basically a very different way of thinking early on when I first met Roberto at NEO is that way that there's a big tank of artists and presenters and the Native American artist who was in the room came up to me and asked me why are you following basically a white man's way and I just thought it was such an interesting deconstruction of what we were doing just taking it all back so I think because of where we live we have an opportunity because we have living with celeste to now just go forward and think yeah how can we work differently at least what we have which is a closer community where you sneeze and someone says because I'm tired of living that way so that is that has become part of our living with less policy and this is just like what do we have okay let's just work with this whoever's in the room that's important that's what we do thank you hi this is Lauren from observation I've lived in Arizona for almost 10 years I teach at the Herb River Institute for Design of the Arts in the school of film dance and theater and we bring a lot of young artists through our program through U of A and all these various or we've not even been in the programs but there's a gap that's missing between say Gammage and other institutions and those who are just coming out they're young and working artists there's a big gap even for the ACA there's been a lot of artists out there so it seems like there's an incubator space to help younger artists get their footing as soon as they graduate they all want to go to New York, Chicago San Francisco, Minneapolis they want to get out of here as fast as they can so I think the arts those who fund the arts and work in the arts need to think about how do young artists here preserve the future of the arts in Arizona they're all weaving how do you make this a vibrant, thriving like you were saying in Santa Fe you can't make a living way as an actor you can't really make a living way as an actor in the ACA unless you work with Arizona Theater Company and maybe one other company that's household and then all those shows come through Gammage are mostly coming from New York or other places so that seems to be a place of focus that we need to think about and as an indicator it's sort of turning students out into the Arizona landscape how do you have that something that I'll be speaking about in the next time and if I could just change hats for one second from DNA Works to IAA in creating this new curriculum we created a curriculum with three pillars one is performance one is applied arts and one is arts education so to come through that moment we have a minor working for a major to come through the program you actually have to do training at all free so that there is actually a way in New Mexico to make a living as a arts educator just not as a reformer which is ironic but at the same time if applied theater means creating new work with youth or with youth and elders in tribal context then that is actually a way to make a living as a theater artist so we want to as I'm sure you know we told a lot of universities that are introducing applied theater into their programs some colleges have even done a way with their performance programs and they are going only to applied theater now because they recognize that that would be the best way for young theater artists to make a living is taking arts into the community and working in community contexts and I would just say you wanted to great things having Stephen Teppers and Dean at Herberters Stephen and I have been working on a series of projects which include a pipeline for our young people and our young artists to become teachers and also to apply opportunities for those young artists and our student artists to work in our communities and to work on issues based in each of the communities that surround and serve us and in addition to that to work with practicing artists to come in and be community engagement artists and to teach that and so I really feel like Herberters actually leading the way and doing that we are not only just partners and board we are putting money into that project so let me sort of piggyback again and I had the pleasure of working with Mark two summers ago two summers ago he did a professional development workshop at the arts council really looking at Latino and Latina playwrights and the support system for that work and I recall and you can piggyback another layer to the story of the team or the head of the theater department from the U of A was there and basically everybody was saying you're dead I mean you know the rise of ensemble ticketers where you got some great examples is really where it's at you're training people for the lords and they're not going to exist and you better wake up and only because of the anger and he's one of the few Latino playwrights that get on to the main stage in a Lord house and so we just it was in a way that the artist community was sort of giving the finger to the university you're irrelevant unfortunately I mean I look at what happens you really didn't have anything to say in response to that but I think as far as how do we keep young talent here I think we have to utilize the things that we have here that are not in New York or Chicago or LA or wherever people are going for us at Borderlands Theater the environment being able to work outside having the weather other than those three or four months of summer the rest of the year it's an incredible place to do work outdoors that allows you to use fire right all kinds of gigantic spectacle things that you can't do inside of a building it also allows that space for people to come bring their own chairs bring their own food and it becomes more festival and then again, yeah heritage practices that are here that are needed to this area all of that a lot of mass work in puppetry lately and that has a very long history it is a people's art form but it doesn't mean that it needs to lack professional production values and training Eli graduate of the Del Arte Academy in California his physical theater and puppetry and mass making skills are very, very useful to us and at the same time we use just random people off the street there's a lot of what's great about certain types of art forms is you can have professionals creating and making it and still playing non-professionals into performance and it all looks very beautiful but yeah I'm looking forward to continuing to work more with the environment where it's just blowing people's minds and that's as simple as that but it's like blowing people's minds with like the everyday and the ordinary also because I just spent all last week with Maribel in a folklore intensive and she has this great way of talking about folklorists hidden in plain view and so like if you take the theater out of the theater it's a new way of seeing but you're seeing what's there you're seeing it now as a spectacle awesome I kind of just wanted to speak about the issue of keeping young artists here being a young artist that is still here who has not moved I think that a really wonderful way to do that is to change the perception of theater and what is here and what isn't I think that that starts into what people think and I kind of low key agree that universities are irrelevant because universities and establishments like this are training artists like me to do theater in theaters to try to be on Broadway to try to master the Shakespeare and master this and all of those white players and I think the reason that I chose to stay and the reason that I think a lot of more younger people are trying to stay here as a local is genuinely engagement with the community and those are the issues that keep me tied here and specifically me because I'm Mexican I know that my roots are here and the work that I want to do is here and it's getting you involved with the work with the community with the problems that need solving because we have these wonderful young minds that just think incredibly and we're teaching them to bureau it and it makes no sense to me that we're establishing with the money is to kind of invest their time and their money into creating your own work as a young artist and not just work about yourself but the work around you and the world that you live and where you come from we have stories and they are important and they are to you and your home space and your experience and people around you relate to that so I think that that's where it starts at least for me and for other young people telling ourselves that we're important that we have things to say that we have things to share and that we can help solve these problems in our community I was going to add I think part of the challenge is that we all have to especially those that don't live on the coast and are working in the in-between areas we have to challenge the narrow very narrowly painted definitions of what success looks like in this industry and that the only way of success is to go this very particular route that leads you to a very particular destination and so we have to figure out ways to not just validate not just have that as a system of validation but look at other ways that you're working your artistry, your purpose, your mission can be validated and not be seen as less than the other route where we fail is that we create these unsustainable visions of what success looks like because if everybody achieved that success then the world will be destroyed in weeks and we're seeing that we're seeing everyone chasing this American vision of what the dream is and it's leading us to our demise and part of that is that everybody wants to be the star and the fame and want to make whatever figures or whatever and ultimately it's been finishing our capacity to be relevant and to save ourselves yeah I wanted to talk also as one of the young artists from Tucson Eli or Tariah so like Mark said I did a program so I was a young artist here in Tucson and I left somewhere else during training but I came back and I've been working with them and I want to talk about this acute a few one two specific instances in Tucson with William Marcus the high school I went to had an excellent theater program and some of the seniors this year so my friends when I was a senior they took it upon themselves to create their own theater company called Hacking Innocent in Tucson to talk about the issues to report to them and that they weren't about to talk about in schools issues with bullying with gay and lesbian stuff with things that couldn't talk about with violence in schools that they weren't allowed to go into stuff in the classroom and they created their own company and they went out and they went to different spaces and they asked us hey we have the shows, they emailed and they show up and they're 18 or 17 and they show up and they're like hi I'm so and so from so and so and they're like oh you're so young what are you doing? we have our own company we have our own stuff so one way to speak to the issues that have I'm sort of like nervous I'm like guys my friends are going like this but I guess the point is they were in an environment high school where they were fostered to really have their own boys and go you can go do it and have a support system for those kids because you know I don't know how many of you have heard of them they've got one little show, they're real new but they already do it ourselves which is not what stuff we want to talk about and then the other one I want to say is I'm volunteering at another high school on the south side San Miguel High School and we're doing an adaptation project with these kids and it's the third year of their residency of having an art program at all so these are kids who they're kids from the reservation from Pascua, from the Mexican-American kids who have never been exposed to art before at all and we're doing a project using Mexican-American folk tales and stuff from their culture and really giving them the tools and stuff that has meaning to them and I just wanted to share those two experiences as one of those young artists like I don't know how I train and I do stuff with the community here to do something but it's hard to say there's the pull to these bigger other places oh the coast California is great so many opportunities in New York I'm a delarsion I do clown, I do that kind of stuff I'm laying on a fringe I don't want to be a big on Broadway on stage with all my friends from my age that's what success means to them that's what they're talking about schools like I said the university trains actors to be in a theater that no longer exists or this shouldn't so I don't have an answer but I just wanted to say those things the issues that I want to talk about where I want to find my voice are Mexican American issues the border issues of things where I need to say these things I need to have my voice expressed and that's here in Tucson so I came back to find that to work with because I had connections with the community already as a younger student in high school I got the opportunity to work with some university students and they welcomed me in like Mark uses kids from high school some of the kids in Borderlands were younger than me they were 17 and still in high school and they loved the arts they loved being able to do that kind of stuff to be out there and have their voices heard and I felt like I had that opportunity in Tucson to do that great let me get that gentleman over there and make a comment thank you one of the challenges that I told you the story about me coming back to Tucson I actually think that one of the challenges as a presenter as an engineer, as a producer is to really be engaged with the circulation of ideas not only you guys are coming here great we got to do some show and tell but at the same time Aaron down to Tucson you made them all swoon and so this is about the circulation we do not want to be always isolated even though everybody here and especially this panel does get out and circulate but I think there is that value that is really important to the work I just felt I needed to defend the universities and colleges as being a presenter at a small liberal arts college in Connecticut not certainly from this part of the United States but there are so many different routes and paths for individuals to make their way into the theater I am not a faculty member even though I do teach part time for the theater department and we would be fooling ourselves if we were to be telling our students that they are going to make it on Broadway and we are practical we train them in a broad range of things in the theater to be prepared for the theater today and what is the theater today and again so many different styles so many different pathways so many different learning styles for each individual that there are so many different ways to make your way and we should have that full array and I think our students do go out as a world with an understanding of their art form and how to make the most of what they have with other skills that they get from us you know working within the community a variety of things that are available to them on campus now there are some schools that I do agree very limited it's sort of the Broadway is the goal but there are many others and I think the majority that are not so again there are so many different pathways I was really struck by this idea of the building a culture of of the we and it's funny that you said that I just had a conversation with one of my mentors earlier and she said what we have to go away from is the us and the them but that is I think if we're honest with ourselves that's the hardest part of our work because we all fall into that colonialism of the us and the them whether it's the presenter and the artist or the artist and the presenter it is the hardest thing to move past because at some place at some point we always fall into that place it's the hardest thing when it comes to collaborations and spoken as a person who really believes and then trying to build the lead I think that's what I come into this space looking at as a goal that as we move forward and the artist going into some other communities how do I help cultivate that culture of the we because I feel like we're building something together I never feel like oh it's the us and the presenter I feel like because they have expressed interest in presenting us then that's something we're building together and I'm really challenged I'm challenged by that from a capacity standpoint it's one of the things that make it the most difficult thing to help cultivate Hi everybody I wanted to just reflect on that as well you know part of each new generation of art that is made is all about changing the way people think and constantly redefining eras of the inner and through presenters or whatever mom was a journalist in the 70s and she reviewed a lot of pieces back in the day and playbill and all of that and I remember for color girls she reviewed that I remember Timbuktu and Jeremy Golder and her kid and the wiz and Stephanie Mills when I met when I was 11 years old so I'm not so young anymore at that time that form came right off the back of any get your gun in all of the kind of traditional ways that were on Broadway and then here came this explosion of new art that people said would never make it and so I think as creative people and especially now in this time of the 21st century there's enough going on in the world where we are now global citizens and because of the world is a smaller place due to technology we know a little bit more about a lot of things and so I think that we're the world is ready for us to express ourselves and to make these changes and to be brave enough who would have ever thought that a 20 year old would be find themselves sitting in in Broadway paying $300 to hear some black and brown people rap for three hours in George Washington clothes do you know what I'm saying who would have ever dreamed that that would have happened you know so anything is possible anything is possible and it's such an honor to be here because learning about the land that you're here making the community work for you and opening up people's minds to look at the space in the sense of the space that's how we do back home you know but you know that's how we are you know part of our culture back in Kentucky is you know you sit on the porch and you talk and after supper everybody comes down a prison instrument and you sing and goes down that's what we use as our platform to communicate and share our stories with each other that's the way you just make use of what you have and not to really worry about you know big institutions trying to define this template that we have to fit into because from things that I see I think that even though that's a kind of comfort zone and a easy fall back I think every institution is open if you can try to figure out a way to have them understand what view of the story that you're trying to tell that's don't forget on Broadway eclipsed the story about the luncheon Nigerian women kidnapped and raped is a Broadway show so to make assumptions about bringing up our Congress killing our own landscape that's awesome because we're here that's why it's on Broadway and then not yet yes and actually what I was going to say fits into what you all are talking about because as a playwright living in Tucson I have really become aware of the stories that are told in the American theater right? I moved to Tucson I'm not from Tucson and I was moved to tell the story of the banning of Mexican American studies in the Tucson Unified School District and it was kind of a crazy thing to move from Chicago to Tucson as a playwright who wants to make it as a playwright because I thought well I'm interested in this story but who's going to want to do it borderlines at that time was interested in doing it and it was awesome and we moved here to do that but in living here I really think about how many of the stories about the Southwest or even stories about Chicanos or Latinos are part of the American theater how many of those stories are actually represented in the American theater and how important is it to me as a playwright to tell those stories right now I'm fascinated with Tucson stories right now because they're lacking I'm fascinated about stories about Latinos or Chicanos because they're lacking and we are a presence in this nation and we have to challenge the idea of what a theater story is what a profitable theater story is who's finding what stories and why are those stories being funded why is it only this particular story that is a producible play I was really surprised that when I wrote my play one of the one of the Tucson reviewers loved the play so much who is not Latina that she nominated it to the National Association of Critics Steinberg Award and it was actually passed on through past first round so that is telling me we are broadening but we have to keep doing the work we're doing the work here in places like Tucson New Mexico Memphis is what's going to make that difference somebody needs to be here and do that work and we're training young people to work with us what was amazing about writing stories is from the beginning we involved community members from the beginning we interviewed them we got their oral histories you know that we're going to come their stories were part of the production but that's how I did we did it because we really wanted to be about the body and not about the people and then another thing was that you know Mark was talking about the 35 community members one of the installations those were all non-actors they were community members of various ages and we pushed them beyond their comfort zone and they went to rehearsal and they were in the play so I think that that is the way of creating a theater audience in a place where there isn't people that I normally don't go to theater you know people are hungry people want to participate they just sometimes need to be nudge sometimes they just need to be invited sometimes you just have to kind of drive them because their cousin is doing it so they're coming along but I think that that's how you create a theater audience and I would love for theater to do this throughout the country about all the different communities in the country and what was amazing to me is the play Massif's very Chicano centric was produced in Oakland at Laney College so there you go schools promoting other stories you know the community college and the kids in the play were not Chicano's they were a beautifully diverse group of kids and here they were passionate and committed to learning the ways of the Chicano and to and the play is a difficult play it's a challenging play to learn to study even as a Latino but they learned the ways of the this reclaimed indigenous cosmology that I think brought in their horizons beyond anything else that they had experienced thus far and that I think is the power of theater and that is I think why we do what we do and that's why we're in this room here because we are generally interested in that and I think we just have to keep doing the work what can you just do add a question can you tell a little bit about what you do sure I'm Nadia my trip is our function and we also this procession I really this is what a beautiful conversation we just say yeah what a cool yeah like inspiring yeah like it got real GCM here now maybe it stays that way and I wanted to shout out to you like the photo stories project was beautiful really inspiring really great work and I wanted to say that yeah so what my experience has been I grew up in New York I grew up in New York City where arts is very valued but it's only valued if you're of a certain population so it's very it's elitist it's very exclusive and I never felt that way growing up being weird already pretty gish I was like I am an artist you kind of wake up and you're like ah I was born this way right you just art that thing and you're driven to create and I could have stayed in that environment but I traveled all over the country kind of looking for where I fit and what my purpose my special purpose and looking for what I was going to do and landing in Tucson periodically along my travels back and forth across the country and I think in that pursuit that place where we really start as artists it's our job to redefine what is value what is cultural currency like not just the coin of the realm but what really matters to us what is our coin what is our value and from each one of our cultures and our unique voices and perspectives we all have such beautiful different ways of weighing that currency and that value and I think that that is such a wonderful direction to look in and I think that that's our job as artists is to hold that vision to be able to look through the things that people may have forgotten that they don't value and to see the incredible beautiful inherent value in those things and so yeah being in Tucson I definitely um it's been a really big struggle we do circus which I always thought was a really not viable kind of a profession but apparently juggling is the one thing that everything needs to know how to do but beyond multitasking everyone needs to know how to juggle and that's actually how we've survived everything like everything in the kitchen sink like we make we make equipment and we teach kids and we do summer camp and like if there was a way to make you just hustle like if there was a way to make a buck we would just venture down that path and a lot of them we were like wow we're just doing a lot of things really badly because we're doing too many things we're spread too thin thankfully over the past 15 years or so many of those things have come to fruition and instead of being these tiny little plants that we were just like oh my god I don't have water for all of you little plants like one of you is going to drop dead it's going to be really sad just rationing out the water rationing out the airbanks to be able to feed all these things now they've all started to grow and they're pretty healthy and I feel like being in Tucson and vibing on the the special things about Tucson that are that very the resilience of the desert that really DIY that really like coming out of New York like where you can't there's a lot of regulations and a lot of things you can't do coming to Tucson and being like wow there is absolutely nothing you couldn't do because you don't even care right? I mean yeah maybe I can support myself but certainly you can do it which is an incredible value which is an amazing thing and also that sense of success what is success for us as artists is it to accomplish the work or is it to necessarily get lots of aquilogues that's not how you say that word but money and symbols is a success for the work anyway I'm rambling but yeah there are just so many amazing things that everything said all over the place so I just wanted to say something to last question I feel like we're kind of coming to a great moment I just want to add a couple of things first of all as a two type university graduate I will say that the university does work because it's through that training that we're able to go into the communities and actually instruct students non-actors how to position themselves how to articulate how to think creatively I will say that the university does work that's the first thing I want to say secondly I'm a really big fan of what Borderlands is doing and I'll say I'm connected to the big picture Mass works because it's a reflection of what's going on in the community because we are honest with ourselves and we are honestly reflecting what is taking place in that community there's an already built in audience that will go and support you I think the audience that always begins to ignore us or turn their corner when we are self promoting on stage so whether it be a playwright, whether it be a performer whether it be an artist whenever we are self promoting artists can understand that there's enough so they turn away from the issues which is really cool that's the first conversation today what are the issues here to Arizona, to the Southwest education, it's poverty it's displacement, it's indigenous once we put those issues on stage then the audience goes and then lastly those big houses that do bring in those Broadway shows and those hits I have to say it's okay I have to say because we are spending $300 a ticket those production companies are then able to allocate some funds to then support local artists who are actually addressing the issues of our particular community so I think once we understand this very complicated circle but I think once we find where in that circle we are in then we are able to go to the next step that's all I wanted to add I didn't mean to damn the university I didn't mean to kind of like stop yeah I didn't mean to push but this will be the last comment where are those funds allocated I'm sorry I think if we're writing I think if we're writing up grants I think if we do what Daniel said earlier where we go out into the communities and when we become teaching artists there's title one funds there's various arts grants throughout the country you've got the commission on the arts there's a panel about the various grants so I think if we knock enough I think we can shake enough trees and get enough doors open that's one artist perspective if I could just say one thing before I'll bring to the mic I travel across the country and do workshops and meet with a lot of college students and I meet more who say that they want to use the arts to change society they want to be on Broadway and some of these are actually at the major conservatories where they're being trained to be on Broadway and so from my perspective I'm in every single program but I get around I don't think the programs are listening to their students because most of these students are in programs that don't offer any applied arts work or education work and so I think also in terms of our ability to be advocates and to leverage our local colleges and universities is to encourage them to provide these parallel track trainings because it does take training there's questions of ethics there's questions of how to enter a community, be good guests and lead a community but I do firmly believe that this is the future of US theater is a better balance of what theater training looks like and actually creating theater training that is equitable for all of the disciplines and not just the privileged so I just have one comment I'm hearing that we need to create this work I'm hearing moving away from these colonial ideas of us versus them thinking about creating a new paradigm and I'm also hearing that there's no funding and I'm going to disagree with my friend over there who said that maybe if we just write and keep writing then she'll get funding I want to challenge us, everybody in the room and beyond to think about new ways and new paradigms to support each other and to support this work because I just don't know I mean Arizona and New Mexico this is a very underserved region I just don't know how we can support each other that isn't competing against each other like I work for Borderlands but I'm also a dance company so then there's a point in time where we're all writing for the same grants so beyond that grant funding is it an LLC? I don't know I don't know the answer but how can we support each other how can we continue to create these networks and do this very necessary work so it's my big question thanks thank you