 I'm going to do hair because he's a star on the cast. Coach him. Everyone. Everybody, please. Samples of women. Sharing what it is that you do. Sharing how you do that. There's no way you can ignore Latinos anymore. Work from all around the world you can come and see and talk about. It starts out a little thing. You write a bit. You have to be completely open. Theater for everybody, yes, everybody. That's just what should be done. And indeed my understanding of life, relationships, that has already changed. The survival of theater as an art form depends on that. So thank you everybody for watching our little propaganda video. It's all true. We say my name is Frank Henschkon. I'm the director of the Siegel Center here. And this is a special evening for us. Not only it is the end of the great, great fall season. We had Prelude Festival, a Japan playwright exchange, the device theater workshop, the Danter Project from Italy. And students who did the 68 stages sit in, who we worked with, performing knowledge, six or seven students from the building here, from different disciplines, performed their research as work with their bodies. And many, many other things. So we are very thrilled to coming to a close to a season. And as I worked with Bob Wilson, and Wilson always said, Bob said, listen, you need a good beginning and you need a good end. In the middle of you, don't know what you're doing. You can be mysterious. You get away. But beginning and end has to be good. So I think this is also why we put this event where we have it now, because it is important publishing, I think, for the theater is right in the center of what we do. We do bridge academia and professional theater, international and American theater. And we are a small independent publisher. We know how much work goes into publishing books, how significant it is, what it means for everybody being involved. I think Jackie Kennedy said, if you only published one book in your life, you did something good for the universe. So, and we are now, even though there are only nine books, we are the largest publisher of our place in English translation. No one does it. So as often we at the Segal Center do things, we will not find someone else that won't be presented. Why do what already is out there anyway? So for us, it's truly a great honor to have back with us three-hole press, 53rd State Press, ugly duckling press, and the great Mac Wellman, who is behind so many new writers. We had once a great evening, the Mac Wellman School of Playwriting here. We had the downtown theater, the book event here, and many, many others. And also we collaborated with these publishing houses. So it is of real significance. This is a work dedicated in a way to the gods of the theater. But really, we would like to show our appreciation and our respect. We also are a community, not NYU in Columbia, but we have some resources as little as they are. But for you guys to go out there, publish, have the idea, get through it, put it out there, get it printed. It's such an enormous undertaking and it is so, so very important. And we talk a little bit more about what it really means to publish right now where we are. And the structure of the evening will be, we're gonna have a short reading in the beginning. It's in your program here. Then all the participants, including the artists, will come up here and they will present themselves who they are, what they work for. Mac will then give a little statement, his thoughts on contemporary publishing for performance and theater. And at the end, we will hopefully have also a discussion with you, with Q&A. We always have great audiences. It is important to have great theater and performance, but it's also important to have really good audiences. So thank you for coming and you are a great audience always at the Segal for taking time out of your busy life to engage with the publishers here. So really, we don't take that for granted. It's a very busy season anytime, but especially now. So really thank you for your interest and I think it's also of real importance to our publishers and artists. So afterwards at the archive bar, since it's the end of the season, we have a little reception. It's on 36 between 5th and Madison on the south side just in the middle of the archive. We always think Burgas would like that idea. That's called the archive. And I hope you will join us and we're going to start now. If you have your cell phone, please do take it out. I'll do the same. And make sure it is on silent, winger, silent or whatever, so it should not ring. So again, thank you very much and now we come to the very beginning and to the first readings. Thank you. Annie and Dymar, both of you. It's an algorithmic, sort of free, reliable handle. So I use different algorithms to do the writing and writing. I collaborate to play kind of language games to detect the number. I'm going to read a little bit of what we did with the to be or not to be sectioning the performance. This is done by Scott Shepard or Joan McIntosh, who alternated. So this will be way better. To be and not to be. Such is the faith. To be and not there to be. These is the body. To be and not to be. All is a color. To be and not to be. Those is an exercise. To be or not to be. Some is a man. To be and not to be. All is the fortune. Whether it is nobler by the pause to say to be and not to be. All is the perverse. While to stronger in a name to put the nations and uses of poor appointment and to keep eyes at the life of bodies. To be and not to be. All is the sister. Lest his nearer for the line to speak and words and reasons of hot joy and to fake sighs into the custom of gods and to break and pray them. To play. To bring. Neither lesser. And in the skin there curd we bend the land and the four good officers that love is day in. Tis a true love alone to be and to quit. To make. To hear. Well there's sleep. Oh there's the kingdom. To be and not to be. This is the all. And to stronger but apart to act the means and feet of ready advice or to signify passages with a rogue of months and to working molt them. Their bud to point. No more. And but the land to O'Rool and cruel friends that temperance is thought upon. Tis the brook merely to be murdered. To laugh. To believe. To set. Very to protest. Nay there's the shape. In this countenance of devil which fates may hear where we have seen for these female hent shall pester us rogue. There's the tongue that serves soul of outfair nickname. As what might think the gallows and brothers of queen, the brothers of king's passion, the occasions of sheathed humanity, the barbers' palm, the flesh of providence and the turnip that eager brevity of the strange draws where she itself might her length go with the main abridgment who should fingers chide their consent and reveal for the kind love but that a body of something to father. The mad damnation with who can and no soul chances grows the bride bed and treads us rather let such cunnings we have then believe for secrets that we convey not of. Yet soul does throw schoolfellows of us ever and so the own drop of nomination is gone on at the particular daughter of end and times of potent difference and stomach with all platform their heels weigh so and give the head of matter. Foolish you hither, a crescent forking brass die for thy flames are this my hits to be and not to be all is the grace to be and not to be much is the action. I direct three whole press and it's my great pleasure to introduce Will Arbery who will be reading from his play wheelchair. This is from my play wheelchair. It's a play I wrote for a man named Matthew Jaffee who his character he lives with severe disabilities. His character is living with severe disabilities. His niece Sasha has come in and is trying to evict him from his department for reasons and they're about to leave and he asks her why she has a bandage on her head on her face and she says it's a what it's a bandage because I had a pimple I had a really big pimple can we not talk about this I just had a big pimple I'm sorry I just had a really big pimple ok ok ok I was sitting in my apartment it was after my mom's funeral and I felt this thing rise up in my cheek like that under pain like that throbbing under thing I knew it was a pit bull I knew it was big the next day it showed up it was the size of a quarter I had four white heads and it kept growing I took over my face by the end it had ten white heads I'm not even kidding it hurt so much I wanted to die but I had so much to do my nonprofit was I was sitting at my desk in my apartment and my pimple started to talk to me I heard intense simultaneous devil voices it said the worst thing in the world is doing anything at all it told me to hate myself and so I did it told me to hate everything and everyone and so I did I listened to that fucking pimple the pimple told me that I was going to kill myself one day and I believed it I thought it was the biggest piece of shit I thought I was evil I wanted to do the will of the pimple it was the only thing that got me out of bed I obeyed the pimple I don't want to hurt anyone I want to make the world a better place but I hate everyone and I hate everything hate is my great gift hate is the only thing I have access to right now I was lying on my bathroom floor wanting to die my pimple told me that they're out there is overpopulated with the clean the pimple hates how clean it's getting I hate it too the pimple told me to get out of here to sell everything to take you with me somewhere far away and try to be simple and messy I don't know how long it's been since you were really out there but there's more going wrong than you might expect the world's not on fire but people are cracking open in ridiculous embarrassing ways I hate this Uncle Gordon I hate being here I hate doing this I'm sorry I'm sorry if you can tell how much I hate you and myself I don't think hate means not helping I remembered you I remember that there was something good about you I see and I remember it makes me sad I never expected to hear myself glitching like this I understand now that the greatest love affair of my life has been with my own decay I'm passionately in love with my own rotting that was a stupid thing to say anyway eventually I got a fork and I started piercing my pimple I started stabbing at it slowly and bent hard and it oozed and broke and I heard the pimple scream as it as it died and as it was dying I pointed out everything I'd ever done in my life that was shitty and petty and selfish and deceitful it knew about how I'd squeezed my cat so hard and wished it would die it knew about all these times I emotionally cheated on my big boyfriend it knew how sometimes I would watch myself grieving and wonder whether my grief was beautiful and marketable and cool it also told me how and when I would die and the pimple died but the hole won't stop bleeding on my face so now I have to keep this bandage on my face and now almost everything I say these days is heavy with the weight of my death I have that wisdom about me isn't that cool fuck anyway it's important to surrender and we are given ourselves by God how wonderful how wonderful it's getting and then I think I really do think that someone hit me on the back of the head I could hardly understand them do you see the way they look at me I have these horrible nightmares these shuttles in the sky getting higher and higher falling off the tracks and plummeting down but I realized recently I remembered from the dream that there's always all this time before the shuttles goes off the tracks this time and people are just looking at me all these beautiful young people across the car the edges of their eyes twitching someone looks away someone doesn't no one sits next to me and then I hear someone say this is the street where it lives which is what I heard one day when I was 5 playing in my yard it it this is the street where it lives and I ran into my house and my father was weeping and praying just to fill in the lap through he's spilling out of his head and he shouted at me and then her uncle says no Sasha that's my memory and then she could stop it hahahaha can you turn our panel right away Lex, you have to go a bit earlier right so we maybe put you here yes you sit here you sit here you sit here you sit here you sit here you sit here we're going to get Mark's mic you put them on right away and and our idea was that just for the beginning everybody will introduce I have to go and then we know a little bit more who is who and so let's get the evening started maybe a bit about you and then we come back to you with your statement I'm Mac Welman I teach playwriting at Brooklyn College where many of these scary people have come from and you're a playwright I do that yes I'm Annie Dorson and I've never unfortunately been taught by Mac Welman well not directly and you are a I'm a theater maker Matt Vey from Ugly Duckling Press we'll we'll probably know more about it soon when we get to talking but we do a performance series publishing series so that's why I'm here although I used to be involved in theater and I translate some theatrical works now and then I'm Kate Cramer and I'm running 53rd State Press I'm also a playwright and my preferred pronouns are she or I'm Corinne Donnelly I wrote a play called Wood Cause Out to Wood that's being published by 53rd State in I don't know a few months I use they then pronouns Hello I'm Rachel Couternailbuff I founded and I direct three whole press I'm also a writer and I write plays and I go by she or my name is Daima Mubash here and I'm a playwright and I wrote part of this and yeah so yeah I'm a playwright Will Arbery I'm a playwright I wrote wheelchair published by three whole press wonderful so we have a little idea who you really are and who said to us about the evening listen Frank there are enough readings all over the city they are not important but let's talk about publishing and at the center and this was always the idea of this evening so give us your thoughts publishing your first theater and performance sure when I moved to New York in the middle 70s and started looking around I noticed after a while that there were almost no new plays being published I thought this was very odd and I talked to a publisher friend of mine Douglas Messerly who ran Sun and Moon Press and we did an anthology of plays that was just a start and then I think I published six or seven others but even before that when I first moved to New York I did an anthology that came out on cassette tapes and it was I went to all these strange writers including Jackson McCleod some of the language poets and for the hell of it I called up somebody named John Cage who lived in the West Village said can I record you and he said sure so I had a huge tape recorder and I lugged it over to his apartment and recorded him reading writing through Finnegan's Wake which was kind of amazing in his apartment and that made a huge impression on me and I think that publishing plays is very important because the theater changes completely every ten years or so and it's very important that new work be published and these people are doing a wonderful job of making all of this happen so I'm delighted to be here in support of their efforts God help them what do you feel is still missing basically the New York Times stopped reviewing plays as literature in the McCarthy days and they never started again that I think is terrible and there's not enough coverage of plays as written texts I also write poetry and novels when I get fed up with theater I write a novel, when I get fed up with fiction I write poetry, when I get fed up with poetry I write a play again writing is writing it all should be treated equally and it's very important to do that and these people are very important in making this happen I open the floor to you what are your reactions I was just going to say that 53rd state press would not have I don't think existed had it not been for Mack and Karen Keithley-Sires founded the press in 2007 very much with the idea of preserving and documenting the work of a coterie of people who were coming out of out of Brooklyn College especially and so I do think that the press has at its core this idea of preserving what's happening in the moment here in the downtown theater I have a question for that maybe is to Mack or for anyone what is I agree with you about the literary part but what is important about the work experimental or difficult work that is made for the theater but not necessarily in the form of a play that is literature I mean there's a distinction and the theater makers seem to like to make a distinction between drama and what you know readable drama and what they're doing but I'm just curious as a devil's advocate question why publish it in the form of books because do you think you're doing playwrights as much as productions of plays you know I think so because I don't make such a huge distinction between poetry and plays and often times I would stumble across a play that had been published and it made a huge impact on me and other times I wondered where I could find it because people don't for a long time we're not publishing them and they're still not publishing enough I think I think all writing is performative to some extent and plays need to be read and it's important to have a text that you can go back to and look at again and again and again because sometimes especially if it is difficult it's important to put it down and then go back and look at it again can I jump in here I think all of the artists who are on stage right now are answers to that question because their work all exists in this kind of third space that's not only meant for the stage and not only meant to be read but meant to be read and then sort of considered for the stage if you look at I mean if you look at the excerpt that Annie Dorson just read will you hold that out so people can see it and same with yeah or just the page where you were reading from and same with Will's what do you do with the script that is so visual where the layout of the page says as much as the language itself actually well could you find the section that you read from and Diana too everyone who's here who has a script like I think it would be really exciting to hold that out what do we do with this aspect of the work and how can it reach people and I think all of us are working this is so exciting really seeing the work in process the binder three hole press by the way is called three hole press because of a three hole binder which I don't always get to say but here we are yeah if you look at work like this how can this kind of work be as legitimate as a play that you see this is its own art form and I think all of us believe in that so deeply and there isn't enough space for that I so I really thank Mac Wellman for taking that so seriously and I think that's part of your pedagogy as a student studying with Mac Wellman I was always so curious why you never assigned or you didn't assign plays to read as much as philosophy and history and literature and I think that's because historically playwrights have also been poets and philosophers and novelists there's much more room for interdisciplinary conversation that feels like it's missing today except for the people in this room one thing that occurs to me I don't know how to explain it but good writing always looks good on the page if it looks bad on the page it's probably not good writing I have no idea why in terms of layout or font or the size of the page all of it all of it all of it strange text there very beautiful I don't know I have a strange relationship to this conversation about playwriting because I'm not a playwright and almost all of my pieces are generated in real time by an algorithm that I helped to develop guided the development of and so this frozen thing here that's now in print is one of I don't know 100 billion possible outputs that the same algorithm could generate and in each performance the text is different the structure is the same the text is different the word choices are different the book is always the same unfortunately so it's a funny thing because when I was sort of coming up and getting trained as a theater director we were all so insistent on the performance is the art form and any attempt to capture it either through video recording or through publication was going to be some other form you know that was not better or worse but was a different thing and so I wonder I don't know I mean that's also maybe this is sort of interesting to me because I also feel somehow that there's that in my work I've become interested again in plays surprisingly and very recently since this I would say you must have fallen down and hit your head daily I don't know I don't know if I mean any of the other writers want to talk about how they view their playwriting practice in relation to the performance and the publication as part of the writing side of it this is the publishing this play because it created a lot of questions lots and lots of questions about what is a performance after it's published because this particular play is kind of impossible and because of publishing because I knew that this play was written for to be published I was able to I think go wilder go harder and think in a different way and at the same time I still have questions about how this will be performed and it should be you know and I think it can be very very simply but it was really really exciting to be a part of a process that sort of upends or picks at the seams of what theater industry is here because oops whatever have gotten curious someone who came across this book and was like well why did you get it published because when we publish a play that means it's done and I was like oh really cool so but I know that this particular book might be done but there's all kinds of ways that people disrupt a performance or disrupt the idea of a published play even after it's successful even after it's on Broadway so I think that this particular thing that we're doing is upending what industry thinks it is and I think that's exciting it's really exciting to think about the way that we describe the published or the paper version of the play as a kind of laboratory for what could be later that there's some way in which the page space offers more a larger and more adventurous playground than the contemporary theater and that it's somehow like the impossible is more accessible on the page my experience with this is almost like the opposite this was written for a very specific person and we initially basically it seems unlikely not out of the realm of possibility but probably unlikely that we'll be able to do it again and I think Rachel offered this after seeing it first, she saw it first so staged reading and and then she read it and then she offered it to me and this book became a sort of like memorial to a night to December 19th 2016 at Dixon Place that's what this book is and so there is this sort of like I don't know I think it's cool because I'm most excited by the like dual lives that are possible in the theater and I love life on the page because I love reading and so I think it was exciting for me to think about writing a script that really rewarded readers like people who interact with the page so I think a lot about you know like sound and the way that sound has many lives in a space I can say a word like here and you don't know if I'm saying here or here necessarily on the page you know but when it said you don't and so to sort of like let homonyms and all of the dualities that are possible between page and stage exist was I think one of the projects of this play which makes it exciting that it has now or it will have a life, a published life I think yeah there's an element of that in both Will and Daima's work too that I want to highlight I mean Will you wrote your play to be performed you never thought it would be published but the whole second half of the play is written for furniture to speak and so when you see that performed you don't know that a character is actually called chair then a stage direction or fan and you know we saw one interpretation of that that night but I still think it's so exciting for a reader who's never seen that to read that and wonder how to direct that and so there's even though your play is so possible and was so and happened I feel like it invites for both of your works like Daima said it and everyone here invites so much creativity as a reader I think reading scripts is the most creative active way to read and I wish people outside of theater knew that I that's like my that's my project as a publisher is how can people outside of drama and performance and dance know that this work is really innovative and evolving and exciting because I think we all read new fiction and poetry but I it doesn't go both ways the bridge it's a one way bridge and how can it be a two way bridge if it's alright I would say something also about the process for some of the emergency play script books not knowing by Mike Taylor for example starts at page 44 on the cover and that maybe gives you an idea of some of the ways that attempted to create a book that respected the form of the performance that Mike created with a number of people collaboratively with a lot of complicated mixing of video and live performance so and also like a ton of references to the wild bunch all kinds of weird stuff that had to go into the book and had to be formatted in ways that represented the kind of collisions going on in the piece and that Mike Taylor did not imagine that the piece in the kitchen would ever be a book or be a play that would be in a book but having approached her in sort of a similar way that we approached Annie after learning about the performance and seeing the performance we were interested in how do you deal with this weird thing that happens where it doesn't usually doesn't become a book or doesn't become a play where there's no original text exactly from which to make which can be published and also then to make the next step possible which is the re can work created in that manner or in those manners be accessible for a possible re-performance the way that a play is different directors read it different people interpret it differently you put it on the stage in different places at different times different casts so can that be done can that be done with performances that aren't scripted to begin with and that was one of the things that we are most interested in that is one of the things we're most interested in this play script series of which and one thing I wanted the other thing we were interested in is dance in particular and notation for dance so the series also published this work by Hijikata which is actually one of the dancers' notebooks one of the dancers' notebooks for learning the dance this Bouteau dance in the late 60s that would otherwise not be scripted except through communication with the choreographer and keeping of the notebook as a kind of personal place of reference for how the dance is to be done so and this is a bilingual publication with the Japanese and the drawings and the English translation so one thing that interests us in the series is not only the play but also the any kind of performance dance etc that can potentially become a book that we can then as Max said revisit I love the idea that in Annie's case the book is just one performance of the text and we worked a lot together on figuring out how exactly to make what looks kind of like a play but you'll see there's also lots of code and all sorts of stuff in there and to make the page work a little bit like the rhythm of each act in the algorithms in the algorithmic acts I think right? so anyway and then the other thing that we do in relationship to that is have this I don't know some of you might know this the emergency index which still allows performers to document their own work and that's a very different thing but it is about the publication and the possibility that a performance that one does just once oh thank you once I know it's square hate that just one night or one brief or maybe a durational performance that only two people see because it's done in some kind of basement somewhere or a field that you have to travel very far to but that that is somehow documented on paper and not toggling back and forth from existence to non-existence on the web and potentially that way people could actually that the performers in this book could actually communicate with each other and talk about their work through those connections and as Max mentioned poetry this book is the selected performances of Cecilia Vecunia but it is actually also in a way a book of her poems and that those things overlap a lot of the texts are poems but then there's descriptions of how and reactions of audience members to document how the poems are performed how they become performances how they become texts for performances so I'm interested in all of this this kind of potential of the book to do that though I also wonder who you know some people read them it's not the easiest it's a lot easier to sell a book of poetry or even a book of poetry even a book of translated poetry I have found it because Ugly Duckling does a lot of other things poetry, mostly poetry and a lot of translation so my experience with that is that more people will actually buy a book of poetry by someone who didn't even write it in English and that translation process is like the theater to play or play script process but nonetheless just more people buy them and read them in my experience maybe that's not true for the drama like the play play I think only actors and directors read drama I think for three whole I've noticed the only way of getting someone to read a play who isn't in the theater is so analog it's literally like bringing a book to someone's lab and then they'll read one of these plays and then they'll say I didn't know I could read a play and then they'll recommend it and it's like the slow slow slowest work and that's why I'm so amazed at actually how long Ugly Duckling press has been around because I thought that I could kind of do this from my desk and now I see I'm so happy that Derek who runs the McNally Jackson Theater section is here because I feel like I've discovered that the way to create more openings is by talking to people like going to bookstores and literally saying like do you read new plays and have you read this play and will you read this play and let's talk about it and that so much has come out of those really slow conversations but I feel like it's interesting that Max said every ten years there's a new definition of theater a new form of theater because that gives me hope for like everyone working to carve out more room in this landscape that Ugly Duckling press has really paved the way for but it is actual work it's actual work I have a question for everyone here which is what becomes possible when your work is on the page and in particular for the writers like now that your work is published do you have an ideal vision of how someone reads your work like because it's not limited to the context of a live event do you want it to be read in one sitting do you want it to be returned to do you want it to be read in the morning like what is your ideal way for your work to be encountered do you have one as a book for this particular play no I feel like I've asked quite a bit already I hear the call ever and what I'll say is no because the one story is I'm really glad that this play was published because I'm not sure that some of my family would of course they'd come to New York and see something if something was up you know but my cousin who I rarely talk to has read the book and she's someone I never expected to come to me and say I completely understand you and she read the book and Facebook me of course and was like I completely got every word that you were talking about and that was a magical experience because sometimes being in New York and being an experimental kind of theater maker I think that I may not be accessible to everyone and and this proved all of that wrong and so having something that people can read has sort of equalized what drama can be and that also gives me hope right I think it's really interesting what people do with your work one of the first plays I ever wrote I wrote it as a kind of joke I thought it was really silly and we had a reading of it at this theater and a couple actors read it and they turned to me and said that's really moving really moving what the hell are you talking about but I oftentimes I find out what the thing means by having it performed and I don't know what it means necessarily until it's performed if you are absolutely sure what it means then you shouldn't do theater I like to see what people do with it and sometimes things turn out well and sometimes they don't that's very interesting to me maybe a question coming back to the concept of the book for the three publishers what was the most complicated book or project you struggled with conceptually how to put something on a page where you said how could we even do that so we get a little bit from your thought process because I think one of your contributions truly is to reflect the mise-en-scene of text on a white page so what project you struggled with what solutions did you find and what was exciting about it I'm interested listening to this conversation to be reflecting back on the books that 53rd State Press has published and to think about how the landscape that we've begun to build over the past 10 years reflects on this conversation because I'm hearing like maybe three main impulses or three main notions behind publishing plays an idea of documentation of documenting something that has happened and may not happen again or may not happen elsewhere an idea of dissemination and of making something available to a much broader community and then an idea that the page space has this sort of radical potential to reshape the way that we're experiencing theater live also that it has a kind of formative presence and I think that 53rd State Press has fallen into those three categories that we have an expanded documentation series which I haven't brought any examples of that tonight but Neil Medlin's Popstar series is a wonderful example of that which he has full page which spreads with pictures and with descriptions of how the play was written alongside the play itself little books like Corinne Keithley Keithley's Montgomery Park to me is a play that's imagining into a new way of making theater and of imagining it and also in terms of documentation and in terms of thinking about dance the field guide to eye landing but it's interesting to hear those three strands coming back in through all of these plays and I'm very excited to publish Corinne's play because it feels like it's of the nexus of all three of those in terms of being a play that's I think it's going to be challenging to put on a page I mean it is challenging to put on a page but it is so much about that pageness and about the movement between page and sound or between paper and the world and that it's also doing wild and strange new things and can reshape or begin to shape performance also going forward I've been mulling on your question Frank the hardest project I think for me the hardest one was the first one because it was really by fire I knew these publishers existed ugly duckling 53rd state plays in verse there are a few others but and I had experience in publishing as a writer but I had no experience in indie publishing which is just completely different and basically all that I knew was that my friends and my peers in the theater were writing exciting plays so I asked Alicia Harris can I publish your play and I didn't really know what that meant but she said yes and then I worked with a graphic designer who was my mentor and we printed this book and then only after it was printed was I like oh shit I have to store these books somewhere and then I realized I could I had to find a place that was big enough to store them and I had to talk about that with my roommates I kind of finagled that and then I realized okay now I have to ship these books how do I do that and then I had to buy a printer and then I bought a printer and then I spent a lot of time mailing things and then I said oh I have to have an intern and just like every step of the way I wish that I had talked more with Matt fight people before starting this otherwise who knows what would have happened but yeah the first one like literally every step of the way it felt like very dramatic and a big learning curve it was really exciting but I just had no sense of what it would take from the beginning yeah how really hands on it is what was it like for your first book we started we started scenes and actually the first performance related publication we did was The Emergency Gazette maybe someone here is old enough to remember in the late 90s when there was like the few off-off Broadway things that were being printed about like reviewing downtown theater just bolded and there was this gap and so we did this broadsheet that was free and all the theaters in the Lower East Side and everywhere and other cities too and got out to the rat group and all that so that whole project was sort of our first theatrical project it was a broadside or a newspaper a newsletter I mean it was only like every couple weeks we were doing this thing but we realized we had to distribute it we had to get people to write for it we wrote for it a lot of the time because we had to fill it up and go see shows and stuff so the nice thing about we started slow we didn't start with big books but when we did we also had those troubles and that brings me to thinking around the problem of distribution and the audience because my mother's generation totally read plays it was just part of literature and my generation probably less so the next generation even less so like it's not apart from I guess Shakespeare who else? I don't know what check off maybe yeah you read those but maybe maybe you don't I don't know do people still read check off at school so especially as arts and humanities we're moving away from that educational system I don't know if people will read plays in the same way as they still read fiction and it's not what's marketed in the ways that the few of us publishing this kind of work can create distribution systems or audiences specifically for reading plays or reading scripts or play scripts or whatever performance on the page however because we have a very broad variety of those things here represented here for us for me the most complicated thing you know and it's interesting too because like I don't know the drama bookshop but that's like probably about it and I don't know that they're interested in all kinds of drama and in fact I think they're going out of business too they're going out of business but I do think that the poetry audience is very strong for like 53rd state for instance I know a lot of poets who read current Keith Lee and Kristen Kosmos and read them as writers you know and a lot of the people that 53rd state has published or Joyce chose and all of that and you know part of that is Mac's program and like a program that teaches writing and theater right playwright really playwriting new playwriting right now I'm working on a piece with my colleagues at UDP by Ivor Finley Joey Truman and Claudia LaRocca and it is and it's a couple other people involved it's basically a dance piece with a film and weird soundtrack mumbling and bits and bits of text that come through and we're very much struggling to make this why we decided to make it a book we thought it would be an interesting project but it's been really complex and we have image we have like artifacts like the letters written between two of the people involved so all this scroll letter stuff and like all this texture of what the play performance was made from in an attempt to elicit some of the effect of what that performance was like without it being of course you could you know sign on to on the boards and watch a version of it but it actually you know does that give you the same thing but I don't know that if you were there so I've been really interested in this thing of like making what is a performance out of it's refuse out of it's like just disject a member of like what is left over and what is what is what are the scraps that it came to make that play and so forth so are that performance so that's been an interesting project First of all you know congratulation on 25 years actually that thing for us is amazing the emergency index here also as a concept and the way to ask the performers to document their plays truly exceptional and in the sense of the traditional avant-garde of a documentation of writing and the process and also that's alive on a page before we come to audience question maybe a question to writers and also to the publishers if there would be the support that should be that is there if you go to other countries if you go to France or Germany there is more available but US publishers what would you do if you would be get the support that's out there or playwrights or writers for your plays what would you like to see that's not there in the world that if there would be support what would you do I have to go right now but I know one thing that would make a huge difference I think in Germany you have to pay royalties to dead writers so in other words every time somebody does a Shakespeare play you'd have to pay royalties and all that was used in Germany I think until recently to support the arts and nobody thinks of that here and it's ways like that there's just a lot of ways to make money the idea was that Peter Stein would change ten lines of Shakespeare play that was my translation all that old one they go into a fund to support the arts thank you for joining us I know you have to go and really thank you for being such a significant support of the movement thank you but to you all what would you do if you could publish what would be your work I don't know when I started talking to Jelena Glussmann I actually think UDP is so cool really I feel like I have this whole I don't know fantasy because I saw artists in Europe self published books I see everywhere Martin Spangberg has been making these books for ages former partner to Lindstrom and they did this international festival project and everybody is dance collective in Belgium and I just feel like I was always seeing these really cool artists self publications and UDP feels like the better version of that in a way that it's really I don't know driven by artists but it still feels like an artist's book it doesn't feel like the work is being fit into a format that has to do with publisher standards or something like this so I don't know that's not helpful but that's my response like an artist when you go to MoMA you get a book about an artist's work which is on summits on writing essays and photos and drawings that wasn't the thing I was talking about I was talking about Martin Spangberg electing his own writing self publishing, like get a little grant get a little piece of money from the Swedish Arts Council and like make a silver book from collected materials that artists are giving him or make a little book of his own blog posts or like but that's yeah I think I don't know where to begin because there's so much that's broken I mean I wish that we didn't have to spend our time fundraising so that we could just focus on publishing and I wish that books could be free and that everyone could just access them but if I'm not speaking in my fantasy and speaking more in practical terms what I wish could happen that would I think really increase the visibility and forum that we have here plays to be included in any platform where books are reviewed and books are discussed and for plays to be featured in every bookstore not just in the drama section but in the literature section I mean this is what's so inspiring about UDP is that their books, their emergency play script books are included in the independent press section not just the drama section but I think it's about in schools and universities across all levels where we're talking about literature where anytime people are talking about the arts and literature that drama be a performance of all kinds be included in that conversation which I think does happen in other countries yeah already so it's possible yeah and I mean being able to reimburse our artists more so that the publishing plays could be more of a contribution to their practice and to be able to reimburse the people who are contributing creatively to the press like right now everything is volunteer is entirely volunteerism and so yeah to be able to have an actual sort of supportive economy that allows people to make more work I would I mean I think all when 53rd state started and I remember talking to Corinne about it in the early days and how three whole press does your covers like the very specific thing that I think Annie's also talking about feels like an artist's publication and the artists who make this happen are themselves artists they're doing this as volunteers they're grouping these things so three whole press books hopefully one leads to another and similarly 53rd state like the subscription model is something that seems to have worked at times for us maybe sometimes for 53rd state but like the idea that someone would support by actually wanting to read the books and become a reader of that press so if you can subscribe to some of these presses it's a very useful helpful thing and it's something that it's interesting to get a book in the mail like if you give it to somebody a subscription to 53rd state and you get a book now your friend gets a book now and they're like what is this I get to read this thing that I wouldn't have picked up because bookstores are difficult especially in other parts of the country to find the right bookstores and to find the right section of the books all of the presses here are definitely both part of literature and also part of performance so it's interesting that the audience isn't doubled, isn't greater than just one but that seems to be how it is it is pretty difficult I mean certainly things could change with institutional funding things could change with but also the nature of the projects in a way that may not suit if we got if suddenly we became a part of a university for instance that has its own benefits and also strictures if 53rd state suddenly became like was given a million dollars I think you would see like a change in how things looked and were marketed and probably the investments would come with strings and you know today the NEA announced that they don't know if they're going to be accepting applications so that's one thing we could at least have an NEA I mean that would be a good thing for a start well but maybe the poetry foundation which got a very sizable support lately many millions maybe there's a way to connect place to them it could be an outreach to them as I'm happy to do that maybe there is a way to have place you know as part of their also beautiful website and outreach but now I think it's time to open up Michael up there thank you for all your help if you could put up some lights on the audience we also have a mic not only so we really do understand you better after an hour of listening but also it is live streamed and live recorded with howl around the evening actually was announced nationwide tonight here because there is a feeling how significant publishing independent publishing artist driven really is so if you have a question you know raise your arm I will point to you take the mic maybe say who you are and we start with you in the middle here just put up your arm who wanted to say something one, two, three okay I sort of had a question that came to mind I am not a playwright or anything else but just somebody randomly in the audience but I am just wondering this is very academic and so on and so forth but I am just wondering from the perspective of what I was hearing as far as playwriting being so dynamic in the sense of I am just wondering what on-demand printing if that is something that is also part of this process because obviously you know you talked about a play and I am just wondering from the standpoint of getting the work out there I am just wondering if that new technology plays into publishing on-demand printing did it change the game a bit I guess not for me mostly because this is yeah I think all of us are working on our own time and so a big part of the equation is how much time do we put in as editors and publishers and I think if we published a new script every time there was an edit it would not be possible for me to do that but there is some flexibility like Alicia Harris's play was produced after it was published and then we published a second edition that included some edits so that happened a year later but really I think I can't speak for Matt and Kate but it really has to happen around the free time that we have so that does really inform the nature of the book I wish it could be as nimble as playwriting is though I wonder if there are zines out there that could do that or playwrights are doing that for themselves oh hi thank you so much all of you for your time tonight I guess this is a question for the playwrights the writers this is an actual question I don't know the answer if you call yourself a playwright is that because you intend the work to be performed and if you are a poet or a fiction writer or a non-fiction writer are you calling yourself that to be performed and why can't any writing be performed why does it have to be called a play or fiction or non-fiction other than for a section in a bookstore or finding it online and because it just makes me think of recently I didn't go see it but Joan Diddy and the White Album was performed at BAM which I don't think is an essay she ever wrote I don't know but thinking that someone an actor would perform it on stage that a sort of non-fiction essay got to be performed anyway so I'm just curious about calling oneself a playwright and what that means and what your intention behind that is thanks for me it means that I have a lot of help I just like I'm usually writing with specific people in mind specific collaborators in mind objects in space in mind so for me personally it's always like really linked to realness like physical embodiment and realness that is like very very specific and and that's sort of what separates it for me just like a lot of help and a lot of like socializing like friends I especially this and where this play came from with everyday afro play which is a whole different thing I write with collaborators in mind which is kind of what he said and I also with collaborators that I haven't met yet and so and I can I try to write scenes or like try to create scenic poetry and so I know that for me I'm a person that can write a novel but right now this is when I'm discussing this I'm a playwright but it's all very fluid but in this sense like when I'm writing plays I'm writing with a whole world in mind from the collaborators to the audience so that's what makes and I prefer actually dramatist because that I guess encompasses a different sensibility than just playwright that makes sense yeah I actually don't draw that much of a distinction and I think that's because I am aware that I'm borrowing from poetry when I write not that I think that my language is poetic per se but I pay attention to the way poets use the page and so I'm thinking about all of the communicative tools that are available to me when I'm writing a script and what feels similar you know in like any medium is that it's meant for interpretation and I'm really aware of that but the difference with a play script for me is that the interpreters of it are the designers and the director versus the sort of like one-on-one interpretation of a person with a page but that's why I'm so excited by publishing is because I want that sort of interpretive possibility to be available to readers not mediated by way of a production yeah Hello I think in a similar vein because we've been talking about this idea of publishing plays for readers versus performance and Max said something along the lines of theater changes every 10 years and we've also been talking about this idea of you know what to publish for someone that's only going to read it I guess my question for the playwrights and theater makers um is are you are you willing to write a piece that gives up the potential to be performed and engage with other art forms the novel poetry etc in a way that other writers like novelists do I think of like Shayla Hetty or something that like uses a lot of you know drama and dialogue you know dramatic dialogue in her work are you willing to go the other way that two way bridge and say I'm going to make a hybrid play novel and give up the chance for performance and then for the publishers is that marketable like where where would you send that who would you market that to is that for the readers is that for the theater community you know I'm interested in that like hybrid and how you feel about that I'm personally not willing to give up the chance for performance uh I don't think um I don't know why I would ever have that impulse I think even if even if there were like these wild elements that were sort of page bound in some way I um yeah I just I just uh maybe but no yeah I think I just love the performance so much I'm addicted to that's why it's what I do so yeah I personally know I think no I don't want to but I think I inadvertently did on accident um I and maybe that's not true I'm afraid it's like a fear it's like oops no one's going to do this um because I mean just to tell you why it's like got 33 characters and it's built from um many different plays that are shaped together to make one play so it's kind of a head spin and in that way yes this is it feels more like a book of poem plays than a play play so yes this is what this is and oops I may have like made it unperformable I don't know yet but I'm hoping not I don't think so so it's in that space I want to add though that this amazing Canadian collective called public recordings red diamonds play and was like this is impossible what can we do with it let's try to do something and just invite a diamond to go up so who knows that that will be a play right I mean as a publisher I feel like your question is the question and I I have to kind of appreciate that our job is to simply bring the work into the hands of more people and we're not in control of what they do with it and that it's net good the more people encounter this work and some people will read it and then 10 years later they'll want to stage it some people will stage it with their friends around a table some people will bring it to their school and then a year later will be taught in a classroom and then after we're all dead it will be staged like we just don't know so I am trying to let go of being too anxious about that and just trust that since the work is so good and since it's so powerful creative people will find a way to bring it to many forms of life I'm a big fan of hybrid text and I would absolutely give up production in favor of like what feels experimental and exciting in writing that said I can't really conceive of a piece of writing that couldn't be staged and I think it happens all the time the easy solution is just for someone to read the impossible stage direction out you know but there are a thousand other solutions and that's what's so exciting it's a challenge to collaborators I'm also interested in like the ways that we can sort of broaden our notions of performance like I think about the first time one of the first times that I met Rachel we read a play around her table just as she said and that was a performance or like I think about this book of Corinne Keathley which is called a Montgomery Park or Opulence an Essay in the Form of a Building and a building is a performance right we're all inhabiting this space in a particular way that the architecture has defined for us and engaging with one another in a way that was scripted by the space and a field guide to islanding is a collection of scores for urban ecologies and ways of inhabiting and proposes hundreds of different ways of inhabiting cities and knowing urban spaces through performance as as a kind of investigative mode and so all of those feel like spaces in which the hybridity of text and space and opening up our notion of what a performance might be is really helpful. One or two more questions and then next. Hi, I am an actor turned mostly theater maker and recently made that decision because I just feel like the possibilities are more limitless when I make from scratch and I'm coming up against the issue of at what point do you put what you're making on paper in order to draw in collaborators in order to draw support and I was just wondering if any of you could speak to if you have experience sort of in the theater making side or in the writing side where I found that it became crucial to really match what's on the page to what the audience is going to experience in order to help the thing grow basically. I don't know if that makes sense because I guess I could just add that my piece is improvisational dance but also there's text and a lot of imagery going on so I'm just trying to figure out the next step in terms of gaining collaborators and sort of communicating that vision without necessarily having a place to perform it yet or do those sorts of things. Oh, no I don't Yeah, they have chances. I think the page space is really helpful in making the performance for me. In formatting my own plays I often feel like I don't know what the play's tone until I've figured out how it looks on the page and so that process is helpful and I think it's like and that making process is maybe a different one than the publishing process which is so much in conversation with the already, you know they're like two sides of the the same coin. I also think about what Corinne a project that you're working on sorry but the paper lift I don't know that this is a response at all to what you were just discussing but what Kate is referencing is I proposed via the sort of like, you know, you apply for residencies and grants or whatever and so I proposed a project where I would compose a piece each month totally orally, I compose it and then give it to the performer and and it has been something I've avoided at all costs and how much I dislike the project has taught me how much I need the page because I think it revealed to me what is satisfying about writing which has so much to do it turns out with layout on the page and with my being able to hold the scope of a project and seeing what on the first page speaks to what is on the last page, you know what I mean and there is something that happened when the oral piece accumulated it became unwieldy and I could no longer recognize my writing as my writing or as what I would call good for myself you know what I mean but I don't think that's an answer that is just my relationship with when it's time to write something down this is, I was working a night job and I really wanted to come on time to this panel but I just came so I was late because I had to leave work anyway which is luckily two blocks away this is probably a boring question but I'm just going to ask it I'm, my background is in video art slash filmmaking photography and then I end up making performances like the past five to seven years so I guess my question is like I've come more and I've made a play two years ago, a big play and I'm sort of in this hybrid space between art theater, film and like just floating on the margins but I do feel like the writing really is what my works about but I feel like I'm not almost in any world and I don't think the art world is so great at like always respecting people making performance in it you know and so is, I guess this is more like a boring question as I said so if I were to think about I've self produced films and my live play I would like the text to circulate other than me making it as the zine but is there space for people like me or is it more like your play right at a novelist's point like I don't publish, I don't write that much I write a lot of weird different texts they're all for performance but I think what becomes a film for me and what becomes a play they're like the text actually does dominate so I want to think about these spaces I just I'm curious about that someone who doesn't like I'm more an artist but the writing is part of art it's probably a dumb question I don't think that's a boring question at all I think that I really want that exact occupation and space caught between so many disciplines to be viewed as incredibly legitimate and I think I was talking about this with Annie before we started the panel but I think all of us in some ways have a really cynical relationship to capital T theater and also a very earnest relationship to theater we're trying to make it on our own terms and I think I want I wanted to make three hole because I think there are so many important artists who are really informed by other disciplines and care about theater and text but don't identify with contemporary play writing or theater culture for so many very valid reasons and it's really hard to promote your own work it takes so much energy psychological energy and so I wonder how can we as artists do that for one another you know and you might not want to make your own zine but I mean how can you make something for someone else and then suddenly it doesn't it becomes more legitimate I think when we make space for each other and I think that's what these presses all are at various stages of like institutional scale can I I will say the reason why I'm here is because I as a just a sort of not healing but just sort of meditative outlet for myself I began writing every day and posting it online on my website as just a like I don't really care I'm just putting this out and then randomly I got an email from Rachel saying I want to publish your work and I didn't there was no I wasn't something that I hated even thought of really and so I guess this is very esoteric and like kind of woo-woo but if you put it out there like literally something will happen it has to and it sounds like you're on your own course and so am I and a lot of times I have no idea what's going to happen the next day but as long as I'm doing my practice I trust that my practice will serve something I want to give a shout out to also Will Arbery who is just edited his own anthology through 53rd state coming from this exact impulse in some way will you talk a little bit about that actually 53rd state press there had been this one thing called the occasional and and it was edited by Paul Lazar and he asked a question and then all these amazing people responded to it and I thought it was so cool and it was so moved when I read it and then I asked because it had been a while and there wasn't another one it was like it really is occasional but now but yeah it's just available for pre-order now and actually this row of these three people are all included in the and Kate helped me edit it and there's just like a lot of amazing theater makers and performers and it was really fun it was really fun and yeah I just agree with what you said like just like reaching out to other people supporting them and giving them a platform just makes everything feel more real in this amazing way just wanted to add one thing that you're probably the perfect reader and audience member for these three presses for you all 53rd straight up deducting and a number of others publishing in the realm of what seems interesting to you including a few very small artist book oriented presses which you know I'm sure all of us could recommend to you so if you become one of the readers of those presses I think you are it is easier to find a way to get your work out into the world as you see how people are doing that that are sharing your interests it's one thing to self publish it's very difficult and you can do it through Amazon you can do it through all these different ways but the thing that a publisher does that Rachel is alluding to I think is and I think all of us have done actually because we've all kind of worked together also as colleagues in the field as you know the work of these artists comes into conversation with historically different work worked by their peers you know in a way 53rd state has established like a whole maybe sub aesthetic or a particular aesthetic that's been going on for a while and has made that available in a way that is really laudable and I think three hole is doing that and creating communities each of these presses creates communities of viewers readers artists performers etc so I think it's important to become a leader in order to know how to make your text appear in that world in the world you want it to appear you know become one of the participants of these kinds of things yep yeah I've mentioned subscriptions yeah I think everybody here probably except maybe three hole but after tonight they will we have the book table we have the book table there's a book table outside I just wanted to say that I'll be out there and we can take credit cards and we can take cash and all the books are discounted spectacularly for tonight so please do support the presses I'm also with buying books that is important it's a democratic process it's very important I mean in the 60s we wanted to write everybody published there were hundreds of art journals it was a great time think of the time of Benjamin Franklin Philadelphia had 25,000 people they had 17 daily papers it's a part of being a good citizen it's to read and also to publish and to write often there is no audience we are publishing a book by a Polish playwright Witkiewicz all 23 plays for the first time in English at his time nobody read his plays nobody performed his plays he was never in theatre he wrote it for an audience that wasn't even there but it was in written form when it was first published it was already no longer kind of new but somehow it was preserved so this is also important work that they all do from our workshop of the device theatre from the dramatist skill to be learned only if you have something in writing on a page as a play and you put up legally it exists you have a right it shows your creation if it's not putting down in the word somehow it's legally at least it's not even fully there so it's also a very important factor that it shows clear who owns it, who did it what time it was done, what was put in the form and then I just noticed as a last comment when you put the book down take it back up the balance of the table changed you see so it has a materiality it is also part of a universe you create changes so what more reason do we need so really do thank you all for coming by the books before we end the evening we have two more artists to hear from for just one minute we are a little close to eight but we could do that yes no I mean we go to the end of the readings now you're closing yes precisely so we all go back now and we're gonna do the closing readings I guess we do this is from my play wood calls out to wood the exercise of the play was to translate Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights the painting the triptych to the page which then of course had another interpretation when it was staged and so I tried to replicate the viewer's experience of encountering the painting and I thought about approaching that in three different sort of like layers or levels so approaching the painting as its materials approaching the painting as like swaths of color and texture and then finally approaching the painting as narrative with some of the like characters emerging from it so I'm just gonna read the opening monologue which is from that first section of thinking about materials of the play okay if you were a tree maybe you'd think that your only job was to breathe in deep and to lift your arms up up up in exaltation ensure okay that's part of it that's the forest part of it the trees also become books and bookshelves trees become tables for breakfasting it can be hard to think about that part of the cycle in any case I was felt in 1460 as much we know and then began a process a very very long process of becoming a surface many dark years of not knowing what would become of me I was sure it was the end and maybe it was definitely it was but also you know obviously not and of course I had to wonder very deeply to wonder why the ugliest inside parts of me made to be painted and studied and hung on a wall and all the other parts well I still don't know what happened to those and yeah it took me a long time to accept that it's all still me or that maybe even that something within me was seeking the saw wanted the sanding needed the studio but I had something coming to me yes something that I could only get from being made into segments and rearranged and hinged back together again well I know how all of the sounds I do but I think it sometimes how even there in the forest hundreds of miles away something in me was calling out to that painter a painter who and I should say I don't really believe in coincidences who had the very same name as my own which would the both of us would be coming yes it took a long time it did but once again finally I throw my pains open and I exalt in what I am saying oh yes oh yes in every weird note of it and then that character draws a curtain back on himself so I'm reading from the immeasurable want of light and so I will read the first this play loosely tracks a character called Mocker who exists in a far away galaxy that's kind of like a very dark galaxy and an artist colony at the same time and so there's I also know there's a narrator throughout this play that sort of connects all the plays together and so I'll read I will read the first bit of narration to sort of describe the space and then right into the first monologue a black body undresses slips into a pond of liquid substance tiny letters shaped lights out of their face neck and arms words bubble into sentences into whole mercurial texts until the entire pond is overflowing with viscous luminous the body exhales assume that you're refreshed despite being in complete darkness two two two six three decimal point six four this is the number of the weight of mass that I carry to be here to be visible to you in this space this is the number now right now today tomorrow or next week next month next year the number will have increased let's go backwards a bit in 2016 the number was two one three zero eight zero decimal point three six so that means the weight has accrued at an interest rate of four point five percent which added nine five eight three decimal point two eight times my question is how do I exist underneath that weight and still be visible am I visible to you can you see me how do I how do you know how do you know how do you know how I appear but there isn't yet any light I think it's because of the weight let's go forward a bit or maybe out dark matter is an invisible invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum it emits no light itself but it's where light is made this substance takes up eighty percent of the universe but we actually can't measure it yet undetectable yet essential massive only observable by watching other celestial bodies act and react in relation okay stepping back on course we'll go over how this happened I made up for this I sought an escape from serving other people food hopefully many many people on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday night the more people I made happy through my undying love of making them happy the closer I would get to one zero zero which is a good number if you when you add it up it's seven zero zero dollars after seven days of making people happy by knowing them that you are happy serving them the only downside to this math is that it costs me more than one zero zero to be happy making other people happy do I need to explain that the taxation the debits the subtraction the division the separation energy divested from itself and rerouted to another source sadly mimicking the sun with warm fluorescence as I hand you your delicious plate of monkfish and manila clams with Hubbard squash chorizo and a parmesan broth maybe it was simple work rage flint against stone with the right amount of force just the right angle and explosion happened to me inside me quite undetectable to this human eye I got heavier I gained weight mass no longer able to radiate enough life to serve food despite warnings from people I learned I leaned into this reversal I grabbed it forcefully with the desperation gaining mass exponentially should have been a deterrent failing wardrobe misshapen body getting all out of sorts I kept reaching and falling back and down now I'm here with this mass of two two two six six three decimal point six four this is the number this number is the weight I carry to be here to be visible to you in this space did I make the right choice because what I carry is debt a financial albatross Nelnet Sally May Chase Bank Bank of America it doesn't matter the name of the debt but the size of that number sure does mean something I mean it's almost the weight of a sun or three or so oh sunshine I can no longer admit any light to make other people happy by pretending that I was happy serving them dark matter that I have become I chose to carry this weight to admit no light to instead be gravitational and black and heavy looking more like Octavia Butler or Audrey Lord or better still Maya Jalu not fuckable whatsoever don't get me wrong I feel all the love that they bring I should never even compare myself to them at all because I am not will never amount to their weight in the universe they whole sway in their own galaxy it's just on days when I must choose between buying a tube of toothpaste or a loaf of bread I re-realize that being fuckable is required to be funded I still chose the weight this debt over admitting sunshine I like my invisibility I see you but you can't see me yes actually this is fun don't worry I'm used to the weight now learning it to carry it gracefully here I can observe and work and speak and be true true is black true is dark and true is matter ever ever expanding so hopefully see you at the archive bar on 63rd on 30 36 and again a really big applause for our publishers it's a celebration of their work and to the artists who came to mouth thank you