 So welcome everybody and welcome those of you that are out there in the digital world. We're very happy to be able to have this hybrid event to kind of contextualize the festival, have an opportunity to talk more and deeper with these artists. I'm sorry for those of you at home, you don't get to come see these beautiful shows, but there is a beautiful online mini film festival of puppetry. And these are puppet pieces that were made specifically for the camera. Also all of you that are here, if you're not satisfied with the, if you're not saturated yet with all the puppetry, you can also go watch these beautiful pieces that have been curated by Chad Williams of Wonder Spark Puppets. So please engage. We are here for our first panel of three throughout the festival. There'll be two more next weekend, both at noon on Saturday and Sunday with again wonderful panelists that you'll really want to talk more to. And I'll shortly turn this over just to say this is the 11th Puppets in the Green Mountains Festival. This is the third festival in which we are doing more opportunity for these symposium type discussions. And we hope it grows from here and we understand the art is a doorway to so many things. And so those of you that just came from shows this morning, I hope you feel opened for this conversation to hear all these amazing voices sitting behind me. I'm sorry I'm standing in front of you all. I'll move in a second. Yes, there is someone running the box office outside if there's still tickets that you want to purchase. You can do so directly there. There's the merch table with our new t-shirts and our new book. So please take one home with you as a souvenir and support the festival in that way. Before we begin, I'm actually going to turn things over for a moment to Chrissy who's right behind me to honor someone very dear to this community who we recently lost and want to call into the space. Thank you. So I'm Chrissy Coulombra and I'm one of the co-authors on Parenting for Social Justice. And I want to bring into the space Angela Burkfield who is the lead author and the brain child behind Parenting for Social Justice. As Shoshana mentioned, Angela was a big force in the area for social change. And she, you know, the inspiration for the book Parenting for Social Justice was really a series of workshops for parents. And we lost Angela just almost about a year ago to a fierce battle with cancer. And I want to call her into the space as an ancestor who continues to guide us on that path and who worked fiercely and fearlessly for social change. You know, Angela really saw children and our ability to work with children and to have those tough conversations with children as the avenue for building the more just and liberated world that we long for. So I'm just asking that we take a moment of silence to honor Angela but also to bring in the other ancestors in this room who fight for social change who you think of. So take a moment please. Thank you. It felt really good just to be here with everybody in silence a little bit and everyone sitting with whoever you were sitting with in that moment. So I would like to next introduce Lath Moody who will be our facilitator, fearless facilitator throughout all three panels. And Lath comes to us, by all means come on in, comes to us by way of the Root Social Justice Center here in Brattleboro. Specifically the Youth for Change Program which is really working with youth in the area in exciting ways. So thank you for joining us and taking this on and I hand it over to you. Yeah, thank you of course. This is only the second panel. Yeah, sorry. This is only the second panel that I've ever done. The first was Justice May also with Sandglass. Deloc Brathway who did another theater performance on May 7th. That was absolutely incredible. And after that the Sandglass invited me to work with them on this festival which I am extremely excited to facilitate. I will now allow you three to introduce yourselves to if anyone's already spent to the shows, I've seen them. We don't completely need an introduction but I now pass it to you. Decide amongst yourselves. So yeah, I'm Katrin Bluchert. I come from Germany, Erfurt, which is like in the very middle of Germany, green as well. We have some woods there, we have hills there, so things are comparable. And I'm employed at a public puppet theater. I have six colleagues there. Doing puppetry is like my daily work. Yeah, I'm lucky to have this piece. I was showing here two times today. Yeah, it was a great pleasure and now I'm very interested in this panel. I'm Sofia Padilla. I'm from Mexico City, the big concrete jungle. And I came to this festival with Paradox Theater. That is a company that I'm the co-artistic director and co-founder. We founded in 2017 and we also work with Bread and Puppet. So coming to Vermont is like coming back to the origin for us of the company. We did a show here last night and we have another show tonight at 7. If you want to come, our last show, a workshop tomorrow morning. If you want to jump in trying some sand drawings, hands on. And I'm very, I'm a mom and that is a big challenge in my life. And I'm very interested in listening to our conversation. As I said, I'm Chrissy Colombrat. I am one of the co-authors and parenting for social justice. I co-wrote the chapter on parenting for racial justice. I'm also, I come at this as an educator now for gosh, almost 20 years. I can't believe I'm saying that out loud. And also as a parent, as an educator, I spent much of my time kind of in the, what we call now the DEI space, the diversity, equity and inclusion space, leading conversations with students, but also with faculty and parents. And certainly as a parent of three children, three young boys. I'm also very much committed and interested in how to help them be the shapers of tomorrow's change. Okay, if we can then just like go straight into questioning. I'd like to begin with you Chrissy. Okay, great. I know that primarily your, like your target audience are parents, because that's what you're writing the book for. And are trying to affect their children through like suggesting what you want to teach them. But can you talk about hope more on how you directly engage with children outside of your writing? Yeah, sure. So, you know, I certainly engage with my own children. And also with the children that I work with in schools. A lot of that is really through one, trying to figure out what children are curious about and interested in. I think they are very observant beings and will often have lots of thoughts about the world around them and be very curious. I think that's the perfect entry point. But also thinking about kind of what using literature, using story to kind of bring up conversations with children is another way that I've often done that with kids. And I've been fortunate to work with little guys from like kindergarten, but all the way through high school. And so as students get older, I find that really listening to what's on their minds, like what they're worried about, what they see in the news, what they're feeling in their own social circles is a great entry point for conversations about the kind of worlds that they want to live in and why things might be the way they are. Does that answer your question? Yeah. And then to add to that, like a second question, you were saying that like children are absorbent sponges that take everything around them. And that includes all like lots of things that maybe you're like, I kind of wouldn't want you to absorb that just yet. And so children will probably come to you with very difficult questions, which relates to what this part of the festival is about, children and tackling very difficult topics. How do you suggest, or how do you in your own tackle these difficult questions with your children? Yeah. For anybody who has kids or works with kids, you know that like they always ask those questions at what feel like the worst time, right? Like when you're like, I'm not ready, I wasn't ready yet. Part of that I think is trying to be ever ready as much as I can. And that really I think is about having those conversations with other adults in my life myself. Right? Thinking about what is it that I believe about this or how am I understanding this? Really kind of examining that so that when that question comes up, I've got some place to start from. And then, you know, I think it's really being honest with kids. I think sometimes we're afraid to be honest, like really honest about the situation of the world. I think there's a way to be sort of honest and the word that comes to mind is sort of discreet. But I just mean really clear. You know, I think about like answering the question that you are asked and then waiting to see what the next question is. Maybe not always filling all of the space with all of the, all of your adult thoughts about it, but really at answering the question that's asked. And then seeing where kids want to go with that. And naming sometimes like this is a hard question. These are questions that adults grapple with. And I'm so glad that you're asking that. I think letting kids know it's okay to ask questions even when they, because they can sense it for uncomfortable. So even when that feeling is going to come up saying like this is a hard one and let's work together and I'm going to try to answer your question and let's have a conversation. Yeah, it certainly reminds me of my mom. She usually went out when I would ask her like a difficult question or she would like just like start talking to me to like explaining something to me that she felt I was ready for. She's like, I'm going to tell you part of this, but there's more that you need to know later that I'm not going to reveal because you're not old enough just yet. Yeah. And then in like a similar form, Catherine and you, Sophia, like in your performances, how did, there were both of your shows were pretty similar in theme of refugee migrants and their travels and troubles and tribulations, which are having those refugees are leaving from somewhere that you don't want to be at for usually very harsh reasons. And it gets pretty happy in your shows, but it's also still absorbable. Like how did you develop your ways of making your shows absorbable, especially for children? You still want to, how we all said at the interview that I had with you, Sophia, on Wednesday inspire compassion in these youths. Yeah. How did you develop these while making the show? I feel it was hard for us to decide when we were creating the show. We had all this board in a whole wall with all these ideas brainstorming about possible scenes. And it was really hard to choose which ones because there's so much stories that deserve to be told about migration. So it was hard for us to select which ones. And we had this dilemma of we want to be fair to this topic and to all the people that have left their homes forever. And this is in honor of them. But how can we do it so that it's not just leaving the theater like wanting to jump off a bridge, you know, like how can we do it in a way that we inspire compassion and bring some hope also at the same time to being fair to these stories, right? So it was a difficult trying to find the balance. And I feel that same balance is what I always try to find when I'm talking to my kid. And he has all these tough questions about war and migration and all these topics and relationships and all these incredible questions that he has. And I'm always like, I don't want to paint in painted pink for him because the world has these very hard things as well and I want him to feel prepared for them. But at the same time, I don't want him to feel hopeless or helpless. So how to manage those two things. And I feel that I always try to approach being honest like you said with him. But at the same time, what can we do in our tiny daily life to change a little bit of that big, heavy thing like war or things that can make you feel very helpless. So what can we do from our daily lives in our little place and then that gives me a little hope that he might not feel helpless and find a way to feel that he can make a difference in his actions and choices every day. So that's how I also approach or try to approach this show when I was creating it and the future shows that we are creating as well. Yeah, for us it was maybe easier because our show was based on a novel. So it was already written and was already choice was made. So yeah, what I think is I don't have any children myself but my work is kind of, especially this work is like an offer especially for teachers or for adults, for parents to have a possibility to deal with this when you're an adult, very hard and very dark themes but you have it in a way that it could be a tale, it could be a modern little red writing hood and then from this you could talk with your child about things. And as I invite the children to be part of the performance or I draw for people who haven't seen it I draw or let people, I invite people to draw a garden in the beginning and everybody is kind of who's drawing is, yeah, I like this flower and they go with a heart, they're there, so they are connected and then I come and say, I have to leave my helm and then I come with a, I don't know, what is this? A mop. A mop, yeah, and I put it away and of course that's like, it's a sad moment, yeah? And so this is, yeah, there you can get a feeling what it means to leave home and not coming back and maybe it's destroyed and so this is like an offer how you could, or yeah, how people could talk with their children about, yeah, things like that for example. Does this answer the question? Yeah. And then you again, Catherine, you've performed not in just the US and Germany but in many different parts of the world. Are there any like specific differences to how people, children in particular, like react to those heavy parts of your play? Like the garden being washed away by a wet moth? I think this, no, that's the same. I mean, it's a loss and that's, yeah, it's blue for you. Yeah, I don't know how to say that. It's difficult for everybody. Yeah, yeah. I think that that's the, if I can just, because I think something you said is really beautiful. I think that that's actually the key for getting kids to, getting all people, but I think kids in particular to make that connection, to build that sense of compassion is that it's a common humanity, right? It's loss for everybody when that garden goes. It's, you know, my seven year old was in the audience this morning and I think that this show was very layered so there was some things he was able to walk away with and some things that, you know, will be a conversation probably in a few years that he just didn't grasp yet, but I think the kind of common sense of like it would be really hard to be that kid, right? To have that experience, that that is like uniting and I think helping, helping, I always think about that with my kids and students like helping them connect to the common human experience like you've had loss or you've had hardship, right? You've had things that have been disappointing or scary that those kind of common human emotions are a great entry point for, for compassion. Yeah, the way that you were able to get people to connect to your show and so many different levels and like have so much, like you're rooting for this kid the whole time but just things kept going wrong again, wrong again and they picked themselves, picked themselves back up and then they're like thrown back down like the commander, they came in to, they discovered the girl in her hiding spot and they're like oh no, I've been caught and then it turns out that the commander is on the run as well and she's like oh I have a friend and then the commander's just snatched away it's like oh no and just like those ups and downs when she finally reunited with their mom in the end it was just had me like raising a hand it was a really good one to say I really like, like reuniting artists but transferring, trying to have these written down to Sophia, I, a friend of mine in the crowd asked this at your show yesterday but the main character of your show which was a life-sized puppet that you called Ruben had a camera that they would occasionally just flash the audience or on the large projector that you had or parts of the set what was the significance of that camera? We like to live it pretty much open for every person in the audience to have their own interpretation but I can tell you my interpretation which is that for me this character is like a double layer that is like his lens is revealing all these other characters and other stories so he's like his lens is documenting these stories in the show but at the same time I think it's very interesting before I used to, when we started the show I used to turn to the screen and take the picture with the character towards the screen and then at some point they be proposed to do it towards the audience and then I thought that it was this double layer that he's also taking a picture of the people like what are you doing while this is happening or that's what happens in my mind when I do that One of my friends is three of my friends I invited two of my friends and then they brought one of my other friends and then another plus one was like many surprises but they all had different reactions or ideas to what it meant and one of them was when he was taking photos of the audience that was like what's your reaction to the tragedies that's happening on screen and on set and I had no idea what the camera meant I was trying to focus and I'm not the best at making questions while a production is going on usually I think about it afterwards thinking about the camera wasn't exact I was just like what is that and then moved on because something else was happening I was like oh my gosh what is that but my friends had several different answers none of them were the same for just the same question what is the camera for I love that a lot of people have different interpretations not just from the camera but from different things in the show that's why it's so interesting for us to open the conversation at the end and just listen to people reflections and stories that they interpreted from the images of the show because we have few words because of the same to leave it open but yeah I think it's we have even joked about having a real camera and taking real pictures of the faces of the people during the show that would be incredible but it's too dark a little camera and then one of in your show one of the most drawing parts of your show was the sand drawing slow I kind of want to say slow burn but a lot of times it wasn't always like a slow burn it was more like a slow wind I guess because it was it wasn't like it wasn't the things that you were drawing was it was like oh it was emotionally like painful in some ways but it wasn't like meant to invoke pain in a sense it was just very you're able to think and ponder on what you were drawing until it was finished what led you to wanting to choose that as I'm assuming I don't know if it's actually like one of your primary ways of presenting in your works like what led you to using that and why I really fell in love with the material I feel that it's such a playful material I was always afraid of drawing in paper and it's so playful the material that it made me feel less scared of being wrong and since this first time that I tried it I felt that I love this low motion and pace of the ever-changing landscape the opportunity of transforming something into something else and I always like to layer the drawing leaving something from the first drawing behind with a new drawing on top and just like little pieces that remind you of the drawing before and I really like that and I feel that for me when I'm doing it I enter this other like emotional slow space where I have a lot of space to reflect on things in a different way and I've seen with my kid he's very energetic his name is Iñaki that means fire and my mom is like you can't complain that he's energetic you put him in fire and I see him that he has been in a bunch of hours and shows and I see him when he is in this energetic and he starts drawing in sand he like changes his whole emotional disposition and he like slows down and I feel that also even just watching it you are in a different disposition like when you watch the news for example when I watch the news I usually block myself emotionally like it's so much and that I can't really engage in the same way and I feel that this lowness of the sand drawings allow me to engage emotionally in a different way you can take it and try it a lot going back to what you said about like it's like meditative like during the first parts of the show I had seen like the 11 minute like I guess I would say it was edited because it wasn't really edited it was just like the first 11 minutes of the show but I had already seen it and during that those first parts of the show here just like watching the sand drawings I was just like drawn to it just like you know when you like zone out while watching TV and no it's not watching TV something much better than TV yeah you're just drawn in to like every stroke of your finger at first I thought like the way you use your hand use it kind of as like a puppet's hand because you're acting as the puppet it's like you wear the puppet essentially he's the one making the drawings yeah so the way you use your hand while you're drawing is also it adds to like the meditative or like trance like like effects of the sand drawings and I love it thank you transferring once again hold on for Chrissy I have not read your book yet unfortunately you got some time and I don't know how many in the audience have either did you just elaborate on some of like the more specific themes and practices that you wanted to like to bring to parents so if you haven't had a chance to read the book and you can get a copy of everyone's books downtown Angela felt really strongly that and we all felt as we talked through that we didn't want to create a book that was like here are the seven things you do to like create the change maker because I just don't think it's that simple and then we fix the world and none of us would be sitting here but that's not how it works and so and we you know every kid is different and every parent is different and so in some ways the book was an opportunity to just sort of share like here are some approaches and ways that we think about parenting so and in our chapter we both sort of tell our stories like this is who we are and how we came to care about racial justice in particular and then here are some of the ways that we might engage children so you know throughout the book there are sort of chapter sections where there are many conversations like that actually happened one of the conversations that's sort of in there is a conversation that I had with a young kid who was when I was a DEI director at a school who you know was in the first grade and who another child was a black child and another child called him burned popcorn and he tried to have a teacher and the teacher sort of brushed it off like first graders say mean things and without realizing the impact of that particular phrase had on this black child in a predominantly white school and so the conversation is the conversation between mom and kid of like what I was called and why my skin is this dark and why my classmates are not and so really just trying to kind of model a little bit of that like you get asked a question how might you answer how might this go and the book has sort of suggestions also for literature to use to engage in conversation so there's a lot of I think it's a book with a lot of resource that you can use in a lot of different ways and you know I found that just even in writing it it was like powerful to both kind of Andrew and I wrote separately and then came together and we were like oh my god our stories it's like so fascinating the way that our stories were layered or how are some of the conversations that we had both had with our kids who live very different lives and you know come from different backgrounds but we're asking similar questions and that was sort of kind of both surprising and fun but also like oh yeah right that we're all living in this and they're all living in it too and they're asking those questions why are things this way or why is my skin different or why are those people whose skin is different treated a different way so the book corner has both sample conversations resources to use and also just some kind of I would call it foundational ideas really about particularly in the racial justice chapter about kind of things like I'm blanking sorry I just have a six week old so sometimes my brain just stops working because I don't sleep anymore yeah just some foundational foundational kind of concepts that might help parents as they're as they're engaging in these conversations if it comes to me I will spit it back out later first not hearing you can buy the book online you can also buy the book online yes if you're not in Brattleboro and everyone's books you can get that book online anywhere you get your books for sure yeah so much about your specifically saying keep reminding me like back to my childhood like with my mom and stuff this is mostly like a story that my mom like tells to me again occasionally um like one day when I think I was in like yeah kindergarten or first grade I came home I like told mom like I can't remember whether it was like kid or like one of the teachers I was probably I can't remember exactly the context but and this could be like like me trying to like insert something in my memory so that it makes sense like you know like you know those like surveys that you sometimes take as a kid that are just like like what's your what's your race I do know and I wanted it was either that or like someone like insisted that I was black and when I was younger my mom was very much like you can choose what you want to be labeled as and I want to be labeled as mixed my dad's white my mom is black and like I can't remember whether it was like the teacher or like student that was there who's like no you have to give the pick one it wasn't listed there and you have to pick one I was like it's it's not there so I'm guessing like came home and let mom know about it and I don't remember whether she did anything about it if I know her she probably did but but I don't remember it very well at all but she does but those moments are so formative right like we I think so many of us can remember some of these moments and actually funny you say that because there's one of the stories I tell in the book is a similar story of like getting one of those questions and having to pick a box and feeling like none of the boxes described me and going home and asking my mom and her answer you have to read this book to find out but her answer was sort of outrageous and so part of my story in the book is like the ways in which whiteness really the ways in which sort of white supremacy convinces that the whiteness is the answer right and that if we can check white that's the best box to check and how we kind of help kids sort of break that down but one of the things in the book is also because I think your piece about like we have to help our kids feel agency right it's scary it's hard for adults like the news right like it's hard for us and so like we have to help kids feel I really think it's really important that they feel a sense of joy and agency and that like social change feels like exciting and positive and not all really sad and depressing because then no one will do anything we'll all jump off the bridge I would too and so you know one of the things that's in the that's in that chapter is just like there's this great biracial children's like bill of rights which is like you have the choice to choose whatever identity you want right like no one gets to tell you you have the choice to kind of change that over time as you learn about yourself and my my children you know my husband's white so might I share that with my children like you have a lot of space and choice and people will see you with something and name you with something but they don't get to do that you get to do that and so really in the book we try to sort of hold that like here's the reality but here's also ways to do that to help kids feel empowered like getting them to know activists and artists having them see works right where they can figure out what's my avenue how do I make a change maybe it's maybe it's through art maybe that's my avenue maybe it's through something else maybe it's through storytelling like really making sure that kids feel like they have agency in it all and that it's not all doom isn't it like I was just wondering like one main point is that you like the kids or everyone learns that every person is different like there's no no coupled things yeah no boxes and there's like no groups like the white we are not one box and there's it's such a so many different people and that you if you meet somebody that you always be interested in the person that is like they in front of you and that doesn't matter what it looks like and yeah of course we have the older we get the more and experience experiences we have and of course we take it with us and then we try to look at somebody according to these experiences but I think we lose so much or we miss so much if we just stick to what we have because we meet somebody new yeah and so it's worth looking at them like as somebody new and that that's maybe something it's worth giving the kids as well you know don't don't try to make boxes although it's easier what seems to be easier we miss so much yeah and that's so and have respect for all these differences I mean it's not like how I do it that's like the right way to do it it's like the range of possibilities that's yeah that's what was just connecting with what you said it's definitely like I've noticed in like my because my computer cannot recharge I've noticed in like my age groups like being labeled as normal is more like a norm is more of an insult now it's like oh you're like boring there's like being labeled as like different or strange or weird is now more of a I mean of course you're like it's kind of weird it's more in like endearing in some ways and during being like in friend groups and such so that that's where that applies but also just it's not labeled as like an insult as much it's not as offensive like that's I think it's certainly progress when I was younger like someone call me weird I think I'm more self-conscious now than I was when so now I take it more to heart but I was like why thank you when someone would call me strange but like yeah meeting meeting new people is if you never meet a new person in your life like you're gonna get stuck in the same ways over and over again and either you like become kind of infinitely content with a situate with your situation that might not be the best and you don't know another one and don't want to leave that one for fear that it's worse or that it's just uncomfortable not even really worse you don't you don't you don't leave that spot and for everyone else it's boring not just like like people looking in just like you don't want to do like you don't want to do that's people know that that's like an incredible thing to go do like skydiving like I guess skydiving is kind of a bad example because people are just afraid of heights that's you know that happens from falling but also people know that it's like going skydiving is at least like 99% of the time like a safe experience like people help you and are trained professionals and you can jump off that yeah my mom and my grandfather did that and I was like yeah but then at the same time this is another example at the at the like an amusement park once um they like my child sitter and my mom well my mom wanted to go on like a bungee cord ride it was I don't know how many feet tall it was just two enormous beams and then like a globular cage in the center like gigantic like wire bungee cords connected to and we walked up to it and I was like nope and I mean of course it's safe um my mom was like come on let's go on away that I've never seen anything like this before this is completely new I'm like afraid you're going to launch up into the sky and never come back um so she took my child sitter begrudgingly so she could go and I mean she had a blast but I was freaking out the entire time um then so like kind of um moving on um like one last question before we go to audience Q&A um the this was this is like a question that I got just like talking to y'all now with the survey that I referenced earlier it brought me back to um the survey that you present in your show Sophia the one that non-us citizens have to go through to get into the US very questionable questions on that that had just people not just me but like many people in the audience just like confused about just like why would anyone even need to ask these questions me um me um I expressed this to you right after our interview just like you could just say no to like you could just say no it was why would anyone say yes to these questions even if they had done some of these things it didn't make any sense there was like like uh of course like like 99% of people had done none of these things you could just say yes and does and then not come sorry people would just say no it was like oh I've never done any of these things but they're so bizarre and they present you were saying that they present these questions to every single person that comes in even small kids please like elaborate like let us know some of those questions they're just like elaborate on like some of the system and the ones we have in the show they're just a bit an extract of like a very long long long questioner yeah like if you're comfortable let us know some of those questions maybe Davey knows he tells them in memory because he tells them every show but are you a terrorist are you tracking drugs are you kidnapping people are you using child soldiers are you doing political killings are you coming to be a prostitute yes have you been involved in prostitution or are you planning to get involved in it while in the United States I'm very repetitive and sometimes they're correct response because of the wording so I think there's a lot of intentional confusion in the questionnaire I was asked if I had an intention to kill the President of the United States direct question 30 something years ago in St. Albans, Vermont and I looked at this man and I was shocked and I think I said no no thank you which wasn't and then for a fun story they took my fingerprint and there was not a lot of a print and he said what are you doing professionally and I didn't say poverty I said I'm a professional thumbsucker and Eric was sitting next to me and he thought that's it I couldn't because I had to respond to the stupidity of these things it was rising me the anger and the stupidity of that I had to come out with something like this but it's a real risk to do it you have to keep your emotions in check so much because that will just kill your chance and I was lucky because it's so long ago and you were white and I was a white European actually even when you like me for five days I'm now in the US and I had to answer a lot of these questions just for the flight and for the visa and then finally I got my visa as I'm here and then there was this sentence don't try to be funny when you're there at the border it's just you know no jokes no jokes no jokes high level of intimidation don't try no funny ideas but with that I'd like to present or bring any questions from the audience that we have if there are any well coming up with the thing that you just said did it did that interaction with having to obtain the visa to come to the states alter the way that you view your show at all since it is about border crossing actually I thought that these questions are so absurd I can't take them for real yeah I'm sorry I couldn't answer any with yes because I'm not from the mafia and I'm not good in building bombs I didn't kill anyone and I'm not big time in drugs but yeah actually I think it's a bit silly yeah so no it didn't affect my work but yeah it's just a different cup of tea I have a moment from your show that I keep coming up to me that I didn't realize was going to be so profound but I keep thinking about it so it must be speaking and it's the thank you moment where we're all on the mat just for anyone who didn't see the show she asked audience members to come and sit on the beds that have been set out for the refugee children and I sat my son is next to me on this other mat and we all are handed the toys slips of paper that are meant to be toys and then to say thank you for the toys but we're not saying it the way you want and then you get upset about it can you speak about I know that it comes from a book but to create because I was thinking to myself well I'm an adult in this moment sitting on this mat because there's not a lot of kids at the show today but there normally would probably be a child here how do you do that scene with a child the same way? how does that go? normally like the kids they sit there right because it's uncomfortable the whole situation is kind of uncomfortable they go there and say I'm sitting here, do you see me? and then when I go and say look these are refugee children they go and then they go so yeah it's like that and then the build of the scene too I keep thinking about how we're not saying it the way you want how did you termiturgically come to the realization because I feel like it's such a powerful moment a powerful theatrical moment to build the scene the way you do and then to end it the way that you did is that straight from the book or did you come through it with a dramaturg or someone? no it's like yeah I mean in the book it's more absurd like there's a whole bunch of parents coming with their children the children crying and they have to give their toys away you know you do that, you want to give that and I say no I don't so and yeah I think for me or for us it was this balance because I mean there's so many people that really work voluntarily and do it very much from the heart and they are very empathetic and do it like that and then there's people who do it that somebody says oh you're doing a good job oh so many oh yeah so like yeah it's like I'm helping so I'm better than somebody else and I even help more and this I think one important thing about helping is not erwarten to have not the expectation that somebody says oh thank you that's you know because you want to help so then help you know and this person there is in a miserable situation so that's miserable already so they don't need you to be there and no you know some response on what I did you know and that was kind of the yeah this balance to have these two it was so real for me and also to have a child we have to deal with the crazy guilt because so often you know we as parents as parents as well is trying to be stable for our kids right we want to model like stability but then sometimes that can't happen and then just have I don't know it was just such a good moment I think I'm just still processing it yeah I think one part as well is that sometimes people you know but the situation is so crazy and there's so many people and so they are overwhelmed they are overwhelmed and then they do things they won't do like she is exploding and then she realizes what she just said and she's like oh god I didn't want that but now it's out you know and that's like another situation to be to get a feeling for this situation as well for the refugee children but for the other side as well can I ask a question right there I got annoyed about this lady I wanted to scream into the audience I am not going to say thank you you're stupid and I didn't dare to say that because I was afraid I would interrupt the flow of the show and I wasn't sure if you were kind of prepared for these kind of things I would have answered some things you would have you know you could have that situation no, interesting she could have I was so angry and I thought no no I'm not going to interrupt the show great I love that yes I was I was one of the people sitting down for your show earlier and during the show I was trying to like actually adopt the part of the child of doing the best child the best refugee child haven't had that experience but definitely when you had that last outburst that genuinely shook me that put me in that character's shoes for a second genuinely it was powerful I was just going to say it translates to other situations whether the child is on welfare or in foster home there's just ways where there's imbalance there's abundance of wealth and then lacking scarcity but how do you have appropriately so you're it's empowering not ability to people how that feels to be on the other end of that receiving all the time always feeling needy there's a lot of resiliency in the character the girl okay and then one last question so my question is a bit complicated there might not be enough time for it but do you set out to make pieces for social justice or do you just make a piece and it happens to have these themes kind of one and then two if you're making pieces for social justice how do you avoid it becoming over the top or too didactic to like this is social justice work this is social justice art because it can so easily fall into that and so how do you avoid that because the pieces are so beautiful so how do you balance this to both so I think like I'm I don't have a piece especially about social justice as far as I know maybe it's in some story I tell but it's explicit but we don't have it but in general I think to not be very hard on stage but do an offer and then it should happen in the audience and that's for me that's like the best way to do it I can present things and then but the rest is happening in the audience and the less I press to put what I think and what I should think the more I step back from that the more happens because there's like a place to the inspiration for this Migrationist Migrationist is our first show in the company and the inspiration was definitely coming from our fear of the increasing border tensions between our countries and being like well maybe one day the pot of tension will explode and then maybe we cannot see each other ever again or maybe the company cannot continue these worries that sometimes we still have so that was like the origin that we need to talk about this and that's how we try to put an autobiographical part but also trying to make justice to all these other people and stories that go through that all the time all around the world so kind of our story brought us to that story so it wasn't thought like a social justice but it ended up touching some of that our next show is more about it's kind of related because it's about neighbors that cannot understand each other because they are very different and they don't have a common language to understand each other and they have it's about loneliness and proximity and how it has to do with the pandemic of course not directly but I feel it's related with our experience during the pandemic and how they can overcome their differences to be able to communicate and overcome the complications in their community so it is implied but it's not we don't think it from the social justice put a view but it always ends up up touching it and I feel that our choice to have few words it's actually to not try to make it didactic is the word the new show for example won't have any words and our intention is exactly to make even more extreme the possibility to have your own interpretation of things and the story and to make it more universal and accessible to all audiences but it was definitely difficult to choose which words we were actually going to use for example in migraciones to try to not because we don't have the answers we don't have all the answers we have found maybe for ourselves or for our own worries but we are not trying to teach this is how you should think about migration and this is how we solve the global crisis the constant exodus around the world right so we were trying to find the right words to to not be didactic but also to question yourself and your points of view of all that if that makes sense their answers giving offers to the audience and having the audience do their own teaching their own homework that's what I think what theatre is about we have the stage and we can try and make offers and do different things it's not dangerous if you do it always in the society it would be dangerous but we can try and then the audience has a look and says okay what that means through or ah yes maybe so I think that's why I love theatre it reminds me of a question I would like to ask you just on this topic when you were all naming your book Parenting for Social Justice in a sense it addresses people who are interested in that and want to do that how do you feel you can open up that do you think somebody who's on whose radar social justice is not there but who would so benefit from those topics that's a great question the book was named the project was named before I entered it what I can speak to is a little bit of my experience when the book came out I was working in a very conservative space at a very conservative school there was a lot of conversation about generally they sort of announced oh we have a faculty member do we say that our this faculty member has this text because this title is triggering to our audience which I was like do what you want the book is done and I'm doing this work here y'all are missing the point that that's what's happening but that's on them and interestingly in that time frame kind of came to be friendly with some parents who would not be interested in a book with such a title at all but as they were talking about the things that were coming up for their kids and the things that they were worried about in the world I happen to say like hey it's totally self plug here there's this book that I actually think while you might not like the title I think you might find on the inside about these questions you're asking about how to talk to your kids because really I think the book is very much giving us space to think about how do I engage my kids in topics that are complex that are difficult that I think that are sad and scary and hard for me as an adult and maybe for my kids and so that was and many of those people reluctantly got the book and then I heard from them like when I heard Social Justice I thought XYZ that I see on this news channel but this is not actually quite what you're talking about talking about difficult things and they found parts of it useful they certainly had things that were like I don't agree with your take on XYZ so it's totally fine we don't have to agree actually but I do think the title is not I don't think folks are just going to pick it up if that's already a trigger word for you but I do think that there is it will speak to a wider audience than maybe initially think it does by the title but it's a very good point I mean you know I think the workshops were named that and so it was like a natural progression for the book to have the name recognizable but it's a good point I'm going to pass to Shoshana to wrap it up alright thank you so much for facilitating this beautiful conversation and thank you to our beautiful panelists just saying again for everyone the book is that it's available at everyone's books you're available or you can find it online you can see a whole website online yes you can see a whole website at Parenting Courage it's very exciting and please check out the work of both Paradox Teatro and Vajpayee Teata and do your online research those of you that are here I hope you're coming to the show tonight if you weren't there yesterday are you joining the workshop tomorrow please check in on the rest of the festival but thank you for being here I think this is where some of the most exciting work happens and some of the most exciting connections are made because really I think in the end humanity, social change whatever word you want to call about how we operate together in the world in a more peaceful and sustainable and thriving way is inextricably linked with art and how we practice that in the world and I feel like we need each other always and forever and anyone who thinks those are two separate things maybe you should think again because it keeps coming up so thank you for participating let the conversation ripple out into the rest of the world and into the rest of the festival and to all you at home thank you very much see you at the next event