 somewhere. There you are. I believe Monica, the original, were you in the original production of El Paso Blue? Yeah, she was in the original production of El Paso Blue. Oh man, can't believe it. And Daniel, I hadn't seen you in a hundred years, man. Exactly, a hundred years exactly. I'm keeping tabs on you. I see you around. There you are. There you are. Alright, so people are coming in. Let me let me do a brief introduction, so let me introduce the pride of El Chico, a poet, playwright, writer, live from Astrid in Oregon on his goat farm. We are welcoming Octavio Solis, ladies and gentlemen. The way this will go is that I might just start with a question and then I'm gonna let everybody, you know, ask their own, you know, questions or share anything about, you know, what they want to hear from you. And you're happy to hear anything, anything you might want to say. I know you mentioned in our, you know, email communication has been really hard to write for the last several months, of course, with everything going on. Incredibly hard. So I'll just, I'm just gonna ask one question and I'm just trying to steer this in a positive direction, but I do want other folks to to to say hello and ask you as many questions as we can in the hour that we have, which is despite everything that's happening, can you tell, can you tell us, like what's giving you joy? What's giving me joy is the garden, the garden and my animals. I find great solace in being able to walk away from everything that's happening on TV and on the internet. I've hardly left my farm for the last 14 and a half weeks, since early March. My wife does all the shopping because I have a tendency to get every horrible, bad cold. I catch everybody's cold. Why? I'm a chronic nail biter. I'm a nail biter. And putting your fingers in your mouth is the worst thing you can do for this. And it's just, I tried to quit. It's just impossible. So when I go out, I have to wear gloves. I wear a mask. And so, generally, you know, I, oh, hello, Dee. I stay on the, I stay on the farm. So I've seen everything grow very quickly. We've got lettuce, all kinds of, you know, kinds of lettuce, arugula, we got leeks. We've got these amazing strawberries, little, tiny, but savory, really sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet strawberries. We got fruit coming in on our apple trees and pears. The goats are amazing. The goats give me, you know, in the end, what matters is that there's something that depends on you to live. When you're on a farm and you're dealing with animals, they depend on you to live. So you have to take care of yourself. So you're there for them. And they have no idea what's going on in the world. They just know that, you know, sun comes up, they go out, we feed them their hay or their alfalfa and they eat and they're fine all day. They love us, they love our company. And they have no idea what's going on in the world. They don't, they don't, they can't measure the tumult. Neither can the weather, you know, the weather when it rains and it's sunny is gorgeous, you know, it's, it's kind of, it kind of belies the kind of turmoil and trouble and weird feeling that we have inside. Because of what's happening in the world, a lot of it unavoidable and a lot of it needs to happen. But it's, but I take comfort there. Also, you know, in the, in the absence of theater and in the absence of any kind of ability to write, I'm doing a lot of reading. So I've been reading a lot of poetry, I've been reading some nonfiction and some novels, those sometimes directly connected to what's going on out there, like a reread Citizen by Claudine Rankin, which is powerful. I just started Beloved, Tony Morrison. I read The Thousand Automs of Jacob DeZoet, which is a fantastic book. God, I can't remember the author, but he's the one who rose a title. What was the title on that? The Thousand Automs. The Thousand Automs of Jacob DeZoet, which is by the author who wrote Cloud Atlas. I read a wonderful book of poetry by Octavio Quintanilla, who was the poet Laureato San Antonio, is a young man with tremendous talent. He's incredible. And, and his poetry really touched me at a time when I really needed to hear about, you know, parents and dealing with our parents. And a lot of his poetry deals with personal issues, as well as border issues, you know, identity issues. But he's so wonderful. And, and then I just started, but as I said, I just started Beloved, which I've never read. Right. I really, really like one of the reasons we started this, well, you know, this was sort of an idea as to not only maintain community, but to document the moment that we're all in. And this hour that happens twice a week now, where there's only five more sessions left until we take a break for the summer. But the part of it was to get people together and to start sharing ideas and generating thoughts about the craft and how we get inspired. So it's really great to hear that what's bringing you joy are the very simple things that that it's interesting, the contradiction you bring up between like the serenity of home life versus the chaos of the world. And I realize I'm very, very lucky. It's privileged, basically, because there are a lot of my colleagues, a lot of people that are living in the two room apartment building in New York and feel like they're under house arrest. And so I feel incredibly lucky to be able to have a three acre spread that I can go all around. But actually, most of my time is I spent sitting here at this desk in my office reading or whatever. Or it's inside my home in front of the TV watching, you know, streaming the next great show in the Black Death. Watching Black Death. Watching Black Death, which is incredible, incredible 24 lecture series. I just finished it today. Oh, wow. Just finished it. It's really cool. It is. It is. And I hope I get college credit for it. I kept waking, nudging Jeannie, my wife, who is, of course, ultimately the thing that really gives me joy, because she's here. She's here all the time. She keeps things in perspective and she has just become the most outrageously fantastic cook, trying new recipes all the time. And so it's just been amazing. But I nudge her sometimes and tell her, don't fall asleep. There's going to be a quiz afterwards. Get a test. So before we're about to see are you are you there? We're going to open it up to questions so people will be able to like raise their hand and we'll just call on people. Yeah, absolutely. So when I was a kid, my dad, you know, I used to buy my nails, too, as a kid and he would rub jalapeno on it. So if you want to do that, too. That just makes it even more delicious. That just makes you want to keep doing it. They make a good idea. I'd love to do that. Because I love hot stuff. Yeah, me too. All right, yeah, let's open it up. We have a whole lot of people here. We have. Yeah, absolutely. And keep ourselves as an orderly. I'm going to ask that everybody use the raise hand function. You have a question to ask. It's down at the bottom of your screen. You see the participants button. Click on that. You should get a little blue hand. If you don't see it, there should be a dot dot dot that says more. You click on that and the hand will be there. And at worst, you can always toss it in the chat to the right. So let's start with Marilo. You are unmuted. Hi, Octavio. I'm I'm from Canada. Nice to meet you. I'm currently doing my PhD in theater and performance studies. And I'm doing a course right now that I created myself because of quarantine, where I'm looking at the pedagogy of Maria Irene Fornes. And I wanted to know if you've ever worked with her. I think you have from the research that I've done. And how her work has affected your writing? Well, I'm glad it's a good place to start because Irene has been my mentor, my muse and my inspiration all the way through most of my writing career. I had been living in Dallas writing and I had been sort of exploring the idea of becoming a full long playwright. I had really trained to be an actor. And then I wrote this play and it got done and someone submitted it without my knowing to the Hispanic Playwrights and Residence program at Intar. And I was accepted. So I got this call from her saying, you're in. And I was very surprised. I didn't know who she was. And I didn't wasn't familiar with her work before. So I flew to New York, I stayed with, you know, hopped around for a while from bed to bed in New York on NYU campus sleeping in the dorms. That became untenable after a while. And then finally settled in Brooklyn. But I took her workshop from like, right after Thanksgiving all the way to right before the 4th of July the following year, it was supposed to last a month. But it just got longer and longer and longer because the funding was there. And because she kept also stepping out to direct the show, I think Avenue Square was a show at the time. And this is the 80s, of course, I'm aging myself. And and with my colleagues, we just all just kind of bonded together as we took this daily workshop Monday through Friday at nine o'clock till like one o'clock. And it was it was incredible. And a lot of my pedagogy is modeled after the exercises that she gave. And they're there. I still use them. I use my own version of them. And they've they've been they've been very useful for me in in my workshop process, or even when I'm teaching one on one, and I use them also on myself, a lot harder when you're doing it on yourself. It's just so much harder. It's easier when there's a room full of people, and they're all kind of falling into the same zeitgeist into the same sort of spell of self hypnosis. And even I as a teacher start to sort of fall into it. And it's just like, I'm compelled to the pin. And the pins compelled to the paper like that. It's so much harder to do it on your own. But I think I still think it's possible, because I still use those techniques. It's just a lot harder during this period. And so I'm undergoing a current dry spell right now. But I'll get out of it. I'll get out of it. Amazing. Thank you. Oh, absolutely. But she's been real instrumental. I use her relaxation exercises. I think relaxation is a key component of this. And that leads into visualization. Yeah. And then from visualization, immediately into the writing phase. So those three steps are are are part of my pedagogy of how I approach all writing. There's a book that so I'm doing this course with Anne Garcia Romero. And and we we both we're both reading the same books. And there's a book called playwrights teach playwriting. Yeah. And she's in here. And her whole process is described, like, very detailed. And so we were very excited to find that book. So if anybody on this forum wants to kind of dive into how she works, it's very, very inspiring. Good. Good. Thank you. Thank you. If Alexis next. Hello, Alexis. So nice to speak with you. I'm a big fan, but I'm not gonna fan grow because that's unprofessional. But I started really leaning towards magical realism and introducing that into my work. And I really shied away from it because I really didn't know much about it. And so I wanted to ask, when are moments in your work where you set rules for yourself using magical realism? And what does that mean when those rules break? I try not to apply any rules. I discover the rules as I go along in my writing. I, I create a world and then discover what the physics of that world is as we as I write. So I always allow any kind of random element to come in. In fact, I think the random element is an important component of anything that is called art. You have to be prepared for it. You have to be ready to see a new rule appear. And that new rule could be that, you know, only this character talks to the audience. Whereas before you were thinking what audience, I didn't know there was an audience. And then you discover that. There was a play I wrote called Lydia, where I, I, I had intended to make that my kitchen sink drama. I was going to write, I was doing all these non realistic presentational kind of works. And I wanted to do a play where it was just a family play. And, and it was going to be like everything but the kitchen sink, you know, realism, ultra realism. And I started it. And I realized that Mike, the main character needed to speak, even though she's physically unable to communicate anything that's going on in her mind or in her heart, she could not communicate with anyone in the play. And yet she's a centerpiece of it. And I needed her to speak, because she kept wanting to speak. And so I just let her. And when she did that, then everything about the world changed. And it was a delightful, but it was a surprise. And so it was, though, that's when I felt like, okay, I have something really special going on here, because I'm, I have, I have seated control. I've let go of the narrative and let the narrative now be dictated by these characters who are making up their own rules as they go along. At some point, I realized that that the rules become fixed by the time that act two act one ends, the rule, you generally know the rules of the world in which you're writing. But you have to be ready for surprises. Act two opened up with like a memory scene, memory scene where everybody's acting like ants. And the set looks different. The set looks completely transformed. It's not the same as it was in the beginning, which is, you know, a living room in a house. It just completely changed. And, and that shocked me. And I wondered if, if maybe I was writing a different, a different play was a separate play. But it's part then I realized, no, it's still part of this world. So the world keeps changing and adjusting. And, and creating it's discovering how, how, how gravity works in that world. And, and that's a great place for a writer to be. Does that make any sense? Yes. Thank you. Thing about the thing about magical realism is, is that it's neither magical nor real. That's what I found is that is that it's, it the, the things that seem otherworldly are actually grounded in something that makes emotional sense. And then what's real isn't, isn't real at all because it's taking place on a stage anyway. It's artifice. It's all artifice, even if it's a book. And so I find that that that term is useful only up to a point. It's sort of, because every writer reacts to it in a separate way. So anyway, I don't know what else to add to that. That makes sense. It does. Thank you very much. Next question is from Diane Vega. You are unmuted. Looks like I have to ask to unmute. I did. Okay, I got it. I just wanted to thank you for the wonderful video accolade you gave Gatheau-Vision for 35 years. That was, we were honored with an award at the Theatre Bay Area awards. And you were great. I laughed through the whole video. Thank you. And also, you know, we worked together. You directed our second production of Santos and Santos. And, and I remember one time at rehearsal, when we were rehearsing the scene where Camacho's teeth were being thrown on the table. And you looked at me and you went, Oh, my God, that's gross. Who hate that? If the process is working correctly, a writer doesn't know what's going to happen next. You don't know what the next sentence is going to be, what the next line is going to be. And when they turn the page, they have no idea what's there. It's already there in a way, but they, but, but the process of discovery should also exist for the writer. What I, what I discovered is if I can tell what's going to happen in the next page or in the next scene. So the audience, the audience will also get ahead. If you get ahead of the story, the audience will also get ahead of the story. And so you want to keep as a writer, you want to keep that sense of surprise and delight to be delighted about, Oh, my God, look what the character did now. That's a great plan. Because then, because then you're discovering your own writing and your own story at the same time. The writing exercises help that because they create the illusion that you're kind of giving the reins of control to the characters. Let them handle the narrative. They they know how to tell the story, watch them tell the story. And you're just along for the ride writing everything they say and do. And of course, of course, it's coming out of the writer. It's not automatic writing, you're always conscious of the process of what's happening. It's just that you're just giving your own characters agency, which is important to be able to let the characters express themselves however they want. And it may be different. They may say things that you completely disagree with, that are not at heart with what you believe, or you understand about the world. But it's often the things that make the make the character more real, that make the character more interesting and nuanced. And that's what you want to do you want to create a nuanced character, and not a slightly different version of the writer. So I have a question on that then. So then, does this mean that you are surprised when this happens? I mean, are you like, Well, wow, you know, this character went this way. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, of course, when I'm directing the play, and I had always wanted to direct Santos and Santos, I always wanted to crack at it. And I'm grateful for to you and Elisa, Mariana Alvarado, for giving me the opportunity at Theatro Vision, for giving me that opportunity. But it's, I'm wearing a different hat. I'm wearing a hat as a direct. And I have to think only as a director, because the play is done. And that and the actors need me, they don't need the writer now, they need the director to be right. And so as a director, I'm coming up on these choices that the characters make or that I, you know, the writer kind of wrote that I feel like, how do I solve this? How do I get an inkling into what a director confronts when they're dealing with my work, they must also throw their hands up going, Who wrote this crap? So I'm just gonna leave with this. My favorite scene in Santos and Santos was the Day of Black. That was amazing writing. And the visual was so amazing. So that, I have to say that was a really well written, just stunning scene. It's one of my favorite pieces of writing because I tried to do what cinema does in a completely theatrical way. And I create a montage on stage of a moment that is that is, that is several moments all folded and taking place at different times all folded into one, you know, 10 minute moment on stage, leading up to a cataclysmic assassination. Yeah, that was really great. I've had that published in a couple of volumes. Other books of Latino literature called Etchew in Tejas, that was edited by my friend, the writer, Dagoberto Gil, and he asked me to submit that that scene for it. And so it's that that scene in its entirety, the Day of Black, is in that book. It was wonderfully dramatic. I'm just gonna do a shout out to Flaloc, who also directed one of your pieces for us, Lapa Sada Mahica. That was another beautiful piece. First introduction to you guys. Yes. Yeah, that was our first introduction. So, so anyways, you know, Felici Nalis, you're in a wonderful place. And thank you. Thank you, Diane. We have 100 meters up next. Oh, sorry. Good to go. Hey, yeah. How you doing? I think that's a good segue, actually. I was gonna ask you about directing. And I've I have found sort of going along my career, it's like, I've jumped on stage and directed and I did it all because you want to be a better writer. At least that's my excuse, right? And so I wondered how that was for you directing your own work. Where is it different in directing your own work when it and it's not your own work? Well, it's how I started. I couldn't I couldn't get cast and plays in Dallas. So I started writing plays that would highlight my acting talent, such as it is. And and I directed them myself and I cast it cast it with my friends, my students, put it up in a club in Dallas, a new way punk club. And we were performing there. And sort of how I cut my tea, making my own mistakes, both as a director and as a writer. And so when I moved to San Francisco, I started working with Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo, they asked me also to like produce work and they asked me to direct my own work. They wanted me to. And I said, sure. And so I started that way. I started that way actually going all the way back to the African Pacino, I did a production of Prospect there that we that sort of is I think told the established for me that anyway that that I could be a director if I wanted to only just directing plays and not writing, I felt like, Yeah, I get And it's because I've been an actor before. I know what actors want. I know how to talk to actors. I know how I know how to push actors. And and I love their their real gentle souls and the and the risks, the risk taking that they're willing to jump into for the sake of their craft and for the sake, even though of a stranger's play as just the emotional risks they take is are incredible. And so I love actors. I love the that whole craft. And I'm jealous of them because I had wanted for a long time to be that myself. Then I saw I started directing, I did a production of Prospect there and it was really satisfying. But then I started realizing that that what started getting in the way is that I would there's numerous I should also say, there were other productions of other plays I did that were mine. I did a first production of El Paso blue. I direct I directed Ballad of Poncho and Lucy so many shows that went through Campo Santo and Dick description as well. I directed a production of Dreamlandia, the second production of Dreamlandia with people from Campo Santo in it at at Dick House with the description. Another one of my other artistic homes in San Francisco. And I directed Prospect when it went to the Magic Theater. So I had some history as a director, but I was known as primarily as a director with directed my own work. But I learned very early on, through making this mistake, I would direct someone in a scene. And in the middle of while they while they let them really give them license to act the scene as fully as they wanted to in rehearsal. At the end of it, they look at me like, so how do we do? And I'd say, you know, let's change this line to this line. Let's I want to cut that line and that and and instead of being excited, they would look extremely frustrated because it was like, holy cow, are you watching me? Are you rewriting? What about my acting? When are you going to start paying attention to my acting? So I decided that as a director of my own work, I had to develop a procedure or rule. And that's that assume the play is done. When you enter rehearsal, you know, it's not going to be done. But while you're there, and you're working with the actors, let the actors then bring up the possibility that is there a different way to say this line or I'm having trouble with this line, but be the director first, where that had first, solve the problems. First, in fact, what I thought that the procedure I came in with was, there's an issue, it's an actor problem first, the actor doesn't understand the line or the motivation behind that moment, help them. The second, if the problem persists, it's a directorial problem. I didn't guide them correctly. I have the scene staged wrong. I addressed a different issue in the scene. Instead of the one that really needs addressing. And so address it as a director. And if the problem still persists, then it's a writer problem, then go back and go into the room over there, or go home, work on that scene, come in with a new scene. Because my impulse as it initially as a director was to assume that any problem that arose, any hiccup that arose in the rehearsal was a writing problem. That it was like, Oh, God, that actor keeps stumbling over that line. I got to change it. And the actor would say, stop, stop, stop, stop. Let me get the line. I'll get the line. Don't change it. And so that's sort of the procedure that I that I used to to work in. And I found that that that really served me well. At some point, though, I started working a lot with other companies and, you know, juggling several plays at the same time. And I just couldn't direct my own works anymore. And so I opted out so that I could be in in the room as only the writer. And, and also, you know, I have great relationships with so many directors that allow me to be in the co-pilot seat. Among them, my chief director is Julia Carrillo, who really gets my work, and who's not doesn't have the ego to say, Hey, you know, sorry, that's, you be the writer, I'll be the director, who will listen to me. And at the same time, I'll listen to her. She's a fantastic, natural dramaturg. I found that also true with Richard Hamburger at the Dallas Theater Center. We had enjoyed great five, six year relationship, working on two shows. And it's also true with KJ Sanchez, who is a recent discovery and is, I learned as a marvelous director. So there are people that I have this kind of relationship where they actually know that I have some directorial chops, and are willing to listen to me and go, Yes, good, good point, great way to solve that. Even with Bill Rausch, who directed Mother World recently, we're having an issue with how to direct the character, an actor in this one moment at the arena stage. And he struggled with it so hard, he didn't quite know how to tell him. And he called me from the other side and said, I'll tell you come over here. This is I'm trying to tell him how to react to the death of to talking to his father and how he should deliver this line to the ghost of his father that'll make his ghost finally let go and break away. And I've been telling him that maybe it was resentment or anger. And, and, and I said, no, it's it's something completely different than I said, maybe it's this. And both of the actors, the actor and the director kind of went, Oh, that's it. That's it. And we did the scene. And it was amazing. It was amazing how we closed it. So some the good directors know that I have some territorial chops. Richard Hamburger said that, and I found this really useful is that my plays are already directed from inside. And that a good director starts to read the cues from that. And I get that directly, I learned that directly from Shakespeare. Shakespeare almost has zero state directions. But it's directed already from inside from the text, you know, the distance the characters have to have from each other, you know, you can infer when they sit down or when they're leaving, you can infer so much from that. Because I too have also issued stage directions. Because I learned that, you know, many directors, the first thing they do is they cut all the stage directions. So I have stage directions in there that they cannot cut. They cannot cut them because absolutely necessary. Does that help? Big time. I make sense. Thank you. I appreciate that. Next up, we have Vanique. You're on mute. Hi. It's a pleasure to meet you up, W. Hi. So my question is definitely a lot more in your process. Make this accurate if I'm getting this wrong. But I think earlier on you were speaking about how and it might have been before the meeting began in conversation between you, it's a look and I'm sorry. What's what's her name? Thea Thea Thea. But you were talking about yeah, you were talking about how it sounds to me like what you're doing right now as a writer is consuming your consuming material and content. You said you're reading a lot. You're watching the next great show. But it sounds like maybe you're not putting a whole lot down on paper. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's that's exactly accurate. So I guess my question has a lot to do. I'm in New York City and I'm I'm very, very active out on the streets. And I'm wondering how when something this this this big when a force this big is happening, whether it's right outside your door or globally like it's happening right now, what is it that is maybe keeping you from putting something on paper right now? I'm talking with other writers and it seems that things are moving so fast that it's hard to really connect with a particular topic or subject matter. It sounds like also the relevance continues to change. Where are you as a writer in this? Yeah. Well, you know, I tried to work on and I have like four or five commissions, and I stopped until my agent I'm done. No more commissions. I'm not writing any more plays after these four or five that I have to finish for these companies. Because that's going to keep me busy for the next 10 years. And I want to write more fiction. And but I have I have my marching orders from these companies. And some of them are going to are already asking, where are you in your work? Well, in some I'm barely at the research process. I'm writing this, I'm writing, you know, I've been doing research for this play commissioned to write about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and what made the Rio Grande, the Rio Grande, the border. And I think it's it's opened up a huge kind of work, because I've done a lot of research on that. And it's it's huge. But then this happened. First, the pandemic, and then the demonstrations in the street that is happening actually globally for change for any great positive change. I'm hoping that that's the direction that things finally move to then lean toward. And but you know, I just I just stopped and I had to just watch. And I tried to write on it. And I haven't been able to. And I think it's because there are times when we need to just shut up and let the world right. The world is doing its writing right now. The world is doing its I mean, we're not doing any theater in in our theaters. Because there's a bigger performance going on in the world right now. That's a lot of performance art that's happening in the streets right now. And it started way before that when those guys with their you know, AR 15s marched to the state capitals and demanded that their state open for business. And that's political theater. And but so is this. And it's huge. It's vast. And anything we do is going to pale in comparison to that. And the changes are happening daily now daily. We're in the midst of I was talking to Lala before this, we're in the midst of two really three black swans in history. The first one is Trumpism. No one could have predicted that this man would become a president. No one thought this would happen. And that they create this movement of Trumpism. The second thing is this pandemic. Even though there are some scientists, specialists who were warning it's common. It's common. Be careful. At some point, you better prepare for a pandemic. Nobody really kind of prepared for it. And then it hit and it hit hard. And it took everyone's work away. It just changed up ended all our lives, not just in this country, but globally as well. And there been there's been a lot of loss of life. And the coffers are getting empty in state, local and federal government. And then the third thing is the death of George Floyd, his murder has what was the spark that that that was like the final straw on the camel's back, that included Brianna Taylor and Ahmad Aubrey and Amy Cooper, too, that just sort of created this incredible, spontaneous movement that really has no leader. It doesn't have any leader. The people are the ones who are leading it. It's a people movement. But you asked why didn't it happen before? Where was it for Eric Gardner? Where was it for Oscar Grant? Where, you know, it happened locally, but not at this level. This swell, this groundswell. It's a unique black swan in history that is upending everything, all the assumptions we have made about life. And I think we need to pay attention to that. I think we need to watch that. Yeah. And, and, and to write on it. Now, I'm going to end up writing if I start writing now, I'm going to writing a play that's going to become irrelevant completely. In a couple of hours. But historically, you know, I'm looking back at the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And, and I had this idea of running a play of somebody who has done the research and has found their original land grants from the king of Spain that said, this land in Texas, this, this ranch land belongs to me. And, you know, to this person, this Mexican American, and goes there and says, you have to give me your land. It's mine. So it kind of deals with it. Tengentially with what's going on now, but it's, but it's, but it also has, is outside of it and separate from it. But historically, I feel like it's kind of resonating. So yeah, I've been doing a lot of reading and trying to examine, I've read, I'm reading this book called The Black Swan. It was written in 2007. It uses, as it's Black Swan, the crash of 1987. Didn't even realize that just another year after that book was written, we'd have another huge crash in 2008. And then, of course, you have this sudden halt to the economy, which is unprecedented in history that we're having now. And he has no, he just has no clue that these, these events are about to happen. So anyway, I just think that right now, we have to get out of the way and just watch history perform, watch history break away from all its previous models, all the predictable models, because we're going into a realm of uncertainty. We thought we could understand that the world was understandable, explainable, controllable, and it's not, none of it is. And it's a scary place to live in, because we're right on the question mark. But it's also really exciting, because previous generations could never have conceived that this would be where we'd be now, and we are alive now to deal with it. And one thing I've learned from watching these documentaries on the Black Death and, and I also have a book that is a study out of UTEP. I came out in 1984 on the 1918 pandemic as it hit El Paso and Tucson and Albuquerque and Phoenix, those four desert towns and how people reacted in 1918. It's remarkable how they, they reacted so similarly to the way people are reacting now. And, but anyway, I, I just feel like, like all that reading that I'm doing is helping me kind of get a little grasp of, of the world. Even though I think probably the reason, ultimately the reason I can't write is it's, the world is so uncertain. This we're in a spell of uncertainty. And, and well, I'll find my way back. Oh, the thing I was going to say, ultimately is that all the lessons of the, the things I've seen on the Black Death and the 1918 pandemic and the crash in 2008 is that people are ultimately resilient. They're so resilient. They find a way that they want to move back to the normative to what is like a life that they can be one day repeated over and over so they can make money and feed their families and a job and all these things. Everybody wants to find that place again. What's interesting is how this, the quarantine that we're doing in our own houses, we're finding our own sort of internal rhythms, making that normal. I'm kind of like, you know, as soon as I heard that they're going to lift the, the, the restrictions in Oregon, I started going, Oh, really? I mean, I don't have to stay on my farm anymore. I can go out. There was something about it because you kind of get used to it. You create, you create a pattern that is repeatable, that you fall into and you make your own. And then you see a change right away and you go, Oh wow, jostling back to the normal. How much do we want the normal? We want something different. You know, I'll just comment on that saying that as a, as an urban dweller, especially in a place so populist like New York, this has been, this has been a welcome stop, at least for myself and a lot of people that I speak to, you know, it's like most of the time we're on the rat race, we don't get to think, we don't get to feel, we were just constantly moving. We are responding to demands. Now there's this, who am I, you know, there's space to think about that. And going back to what you said, you know, something's happened where all of a sudden this is the perfect time where, you know, everybody's protesting. I don't think that without COVID-19 and the quarantine and having to stop the world, at least here in New York City, that people would have the wherewithal or the time and the sense to metabolize these ideas and say, fuck this, I'm going to get out there, I'm going to fucking break some shit. Yeah. And for one thing, we're all home. We're all have our TVs on and our computers on. We're all seeing this at the same time. Yeah. So that's what I think. And also, this is pent up energy of being constricted in one place. Definitely feel. Okay, we got to do this. We got to go out. And yes, they understand the risks. This is what's also really remarkable. Seeing all the footage of people out on the street, they're all wearing their mask. It's just, it's just great. It's just great to sort of see that they understand the risks, but they're going to protect themselves as much as they can. But they still have to go out and march is still got to make their voices heard. Because they realize that, you know, this is the break from this is the break from history that maybe we've been looking for and waiting for. So I'm with you. I also feel like, oh, you know what? I really needed this. I was working with Emilio and my other actors on key what the novel for over three productions across the country. At the same time that I was doing Mother Road, working at it at OSF and the arena, revising it for that at the same time that I was doing readings of my book and attending rehearsals for the stage version of the book that were for work produced in San Francisco. So when it all ended at the end of February, I was exhausted. And I needed time off. So some things, unfortunately, because of the quarantine, had to be canceled or postponed. But I saw that as an opportunity to just take a sabbatical. It's the real sabbatical. And yeah, sometimes I'm driving myself a little crazy here. But also I'm just I'm just grateful for the the portal that we all have to be able to sort of see the world a little bit from the outside and and see our new place in it. Yeah. So yeah, you I've been going through exactly the same thing, asking who am I? Sorry, that's all right. Hey, we have about 10 minutes left and we have about five or six questions. And I'm going to make sure that we get everyone in. And I want to say thank you, Faniac, for for for all the work with the ground and I'm really proud of you and just stay safe. OK. All right, who do we have next? Next, we have Alex Hernandez. We're unmuted. Here, I'm actually wrapping from Dallas. So, oh, Clif, Clif. So, yeah, so my question was about doing bilingual works. And we've been having these conversations about how do you Spanish or Spanish as a tool to like further the story rather than just like, hey, we're creating a work that's accessible to people who speak Spanish, too. And so just guidelines are like pointers about being more intentional about using that, yeah, as a tool to like further the story or develop the characters rather than just being like, hey, I translated something so that we can have a different community come and see this show. Well, in my place, the way I've addressed the Spanish in the work is I think of it as as music. I think of both English and Spanish as music. So I think of it how it fits in musically. Sometimes the way we talk, the way we code switch has that natural musicality. We just slip it in, but what I don't do is I don't repeat the word again so that those who don't know Spanish can understand it. It's like, hopefully, I'll frame it in a way so that by the context, they'll know exactly what I mean. So I don't repeat the word. And sometimes I'll go, you know what, I think this needs, this entire speech needs to be in Spanish. And if they don't get it, I think that's important. That's important that they don't understand what's being said. They just know that it's something special, that a special language, the language of intimacy in this particular, with this particular group of people on stage or in the scene is going on. And if they don't understand it, they'll still, in some respect, get it in your heart. I saw a production of Don Juan Tenorio at a Spanish theater in Madrid. And they were talking so fast. And I thought of myself as a Spanish speaker. I did not understand their Spanish at all, particularly because it's in the Castilian Spanish, which is really difficult for me to get sometimes. So I'm always like two or three sentences behind. But boy, I just was swept up with these passionate speeches, these love, almost like sonics that became out of those characters. And all they did was stand still and look at the other character. And it was like opera. They just delivered it. And it was powerful and moving. And it's like, I don't care what they're saying. It's like, I'm being transported by this language. Just surf it. Just surf it. And so I want to create that same experience for those who don't know Spanish because I found that there are many people of my community or Latino who don't know Spanish now. You just move one generation, two generations away, and they don't know it. And yet I feel like I'm writing the plays for them as well. It's got to be for them. Because I can see also that in like 50 years, maybe even less, will be the dominant minority. And in fact, maybe in the majority demographic in this country. So I'm kind of writing for posterity as much as I'm writing for now. So the Spanish has to be intentional, just as you said. Of course, it depends on each circumstance. Each circumstance is going to call for what it needs. Because some characters may have a limited access to the Spanish. Others, it may be the only thing they speak. And so when somebody in that family, like Claudio, for instance, in my play Lydia, he was not an English speaker at all. He just knew Spanish. And so he only expressed himself in Spanish. And it was how other people behaved that we understood what he was saying. But there was a moment where Lydia says, no, in English. I want you to tell me in English. Tell me what happened to him in his tongue, in your son, what your son speaks, what your daughter speaks. And Claudio then was forced to kind of, in this broken way, use this English that he then, because he didn't have access to it, he made it lyrical. He made it the English matter even more. So and what he couldn't, he found he used the Spanish word. And then that Spanish word would land with it like a grenade into the scene. So I think of it more in terms of not only the psychology of the character, but also in terms of the music of the scene, of the play. And don't try to think, I don't try to think of it in terms of making sure that everyone gets everything. Some people are just not going to get it. And there may be some Spanish speakers in the audience that are just not going to get the play a lot of the play. Because I do write for largely English speaking audience. If I were living in Mexico, I would only write in Spanish and not use any English at all. But here, because I can see who my audiences are, and especially as I move into the regional theaters, into the large resident theaters and I see the audience, I go, hmm. So now how do I deal with this? I have to, I just made my piece with it and I said, I'm writing for an English-speaking audience. But I'm going to make them work. I'm going to make them work at the Spanish that they get by keeping it, by keeping the truth to that. Does that help? Yes. Thank you. All right. Our next one is from Natalia Delgado. You are unmuted. Hello. Thank you so much for speaking truthfully. I really appreciate it. So I wrote down my question because I sometimes forget. I lose my track because there's so many good questions that are being thrown out there. So I need to stay organized in my brain. So what is one piece of advice that helped you move forward as a writer during your early career? Because I'm experiencing this shift of creativity and how I, how I create and how I consume. And so I also have been reading a bunch, watching a bunch of documentaries. And I kind of feel like my brain is a little full at the moment with the information. And I think I'm just trying to figure out or transition into, from primarily being an actor slash teacher to writing more and potentially saying more like of a producing aspect or I don't know, just, I guess encouraging more voices to speak up and for me to listen. So what was it? What's a piece of advice that you have for an early career writer like me? Don't be excellent. Don't even be great. Don't even be good. Just write it, write it down. We put too much pressure on ourselves to be like right out of the gate, to write the perfect opening line for the play, to be as good and as, and as excellent. And then we read the work and just even the first page we read it and we go, oh, this is terrible. And we ball it up and throw it away. And we start again and again and again. And that's because we set high bars for ourselves. We want it to be good right off the gate, right from the get go. And just let go of those standards. Quit being so damn excellent. And just tell the truth. Just write as messy and as ugly. Trust it, trust, have faith that your first draft is gonna be horrible. It's gonna be ugly. But in there are gonna be the kernels and the structure of a great work. And then the editing process is all about applying excellency. It's all about looking at that line and go, okay, this line is a complete trite line. I've heard it, I think in another play. So how do I rewrite this to make this mine? Then you apply the craft of that. Then you can take the time with that. But to be writing and then crossing out constantly what you're writing and going out, it's wrong because you don't know what you're crossing out. That may be the absolute perfect line. You just don't know it yet because you don't know the story. Wait until you have a body of work and then go do the editing. Then look through it, sift through it and go, well, this scene is actually a scene from another play. I'm gonna take that out and move it over here. And this line, well, that's not a bad line, but I think I need a better word. So you can go to, you know, thesaurus.com, get your rojettes, thesaurus, look it up, find a better word. Maybe it's a word in a different language, like Spanish. That's when you do that. But right now you wanna get caught up in the onrush of language. You wanna explore the mystery of being, you wanna get caught, you know, I think that the characters that we write about are already all inside of us. There are ghosts and you have to be ready to listen to them. That's what the process of writing is to me. It's what Toni Morrison called the chaos of the needy dead. And you just gotta be, you just have to have your ear cocked and trained for the needy dead and to listen to them and then write what they say. And it may sound like it makes no sense. It may sound ugly. It may sound like it's bad writing, but do it anyway. Because it's closer to the truth than actually writing the well-made play. I've read a lot of well-made plays and they're dead on the page, you know? But the writing that is alive is always messy. Painters, when they start painting, they start by slapping paint on there. They don't even know what they're doing. Nobody can tell what they're doing. But out of that, they find what the painting is, what the real work is. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, then I feel like, cause I asked those questions in like, like in a variety of different ways to different playwrights. I have asked Susan Laurie Parks and she said the same thing. She's like, just write, like, you know, just trust your gut and trust your heart. Cause a lot of truth comes from the heart, but our mind tricks us and wants us to conform to the societal expectations. We're also the repositories of memory, of genetic memory, the memory of our ancestors. We are the repository of all that. And it's memory that is desperate to stay alive. That is what is resonating when you're sitting down in front of your computer or your writing pad. And so you want to keep that memory going by writing it down. That's what I mean about ghosts. These ghosts are, the real stories aren't out there. And they're not out there, you know, that you can find in the paper or the torn from the highlighting. The real stories that matter, that are going to be the stories that you will want to work on for, you know, years are the stories that are already in here. Thank you. Thank you. Is there like little scrolls rolled up and slipped into the flutes of our bones? Loots of our bones. Okay. We're past the hour, but Octavio, do you have time for maybe? I'd love to take more questions, of course. Yeah. Got time for one more. Hi. Thank you for taking my question and thank you for being here and talking to us. I'm, I'm here in El Paso. I'm here in El Paso. I was doing my MFA in, in UCLA when the pandemic hit and so I came back home. And, and so my question goes back, because we brought up Lydia before in, in these talks, and they recently performed it in at UCLA. And I didn't get to go see it, but some of my friends did. And one of the things, I will obviously really excited to get their, their two cents on it, because I really love the plans for the scientists have you here and I'm sure you'll see it here as well. But my, but one of the things one of my playwriting friends told me was that he, he was interested with how, how fear itself it's evolving and how, and I, I feel how society is evolving and how I feel for the better. If it be possible, if maybe in the future, if the character of Susie could be played by two actors being that she does have a disability and there's a lot of actors with disabilities trying to find work. So it was an interesting thought that I might, I wanted to get your, your opinion on. I don't see why that couldn't be a possibility. I think it could work. I think it could work very well. I think it could be really kind of beautiful. Absolutely. I mean, as long as the other possibility, I mean, it doesn't have to be a binary choice. You can, you can have it both ways. That's the magic of this. Yeah, we had, when we did Lydia at the Denver center in its world premiere, we had an audience of disabled. People come to see the show. And they responded beautifully to it. They were very, very moved. And it was like the play was giving voice. The character says he was giving voice to a lot of their most basic needs and feelings. And I, but I was a little nervous. I was a little embarrassed because I thought, oh my gosh, you know, they're, I didn't mean to represent them all and, but with an actor. I didn't mean to represent them all. But, but I felt like when they saw him, they responded to respond in this really positive way that felt a little vindicated by that. So it seems like that would be the natural progression. That should be the natural progression that it moves to. I'm writing another play where. I came across just mentally across the same thing. I'm writing for. Cal arts and for Duende, when the arts, the program inside Cal arts. And it calls for a character who is in some scenes. He's, he's the patriarch of the family, but he is a motherfucker. He beats his wife. He says everybody in the neighborhood are afraid of him. He's got his homies and beats his wife beats his kids and, and everyone lives in fear of him. And then he has a stroke. And for the rest of the play, he is stricken with a stroke. He is, he can barely talk. He is paralyzed on one side of his body. And he still wants to rule over the house. And have the, have the power of his own family that he's always enjoyed. But he doesn't anymore. And everybody knows it. And they want to respect him, but they all, especially his wife knows that she is now the one in power. She takes his arm and his chair. It's her throne. She is now in control. And, and, and where he's, and he's called on to act as the father, as a, as a patriarch of this family, he's called on to do something to, to avenge his own son's death, but he's completely powerless now with this program. Whereas she, how has all the power, and it's on her to try to be the one to, to do something about this, this murder that happened. So, but in that case, I feel like, you know, I feel a little worried about this because it should be a great part for somebody who is disabled, but there's no way. I think, I think, especially because these, because they're shifting so much from one to the other. I just don't know that, that it can be done in that, in that split way without having another active on stage. Which, you know, with, which raises its own sort of other questions. So, but I appreciate you bringing that up. That's really good. And I don't see that says he couldn't be done that way. Did you see it in El Paso? I did. I did. Beautiful job. Didn't they? Yeah. Yeah. They did amazing. And they're all, they're all having, they're all up and doing their own thing. And I'm really happy for them. Good. I want to show you this. Oh. Have you seen these? Yes. The cards. I would. With the. But it is El Paso. And it has the. Now, if you get that in the mask. Oh, yeah. I have a game of Thrones mask. I think Juliette left us, but she said. Have the actress playing Lydia also play the speaking. Sessy. Double cast. Wow. At Juliette. Well, there is a scene where, where at the end of the play where Sessy does speak. Sessy. Lydia is, becomes an inter, an interpreter of Sessy and. Yes. Until Sessy jumps up and then finishes. The narrative. So, but I think it's still work. I think it was. Yeah. Where are we at? I believe we are at time. That is. I'm willing to entertain more questions. I'm willing to entertain more questions. I'm willing to entertain more questions. I'm willing to entertain more questions. I'm willing to entertain more questions. All right. E-mail. They can do that. They can have that. Okay. So Octavia's on, on the Facebook, I think, are you on Facebook still? Yeah. I, I, um, like, like someone said before, um, I also have, uh, I don't quite have the emotional bandwidth now to, uh, because I haven't been able to do that for a long time. I've been able to do that for a long time. I've been able to do that for a long time. I've been able to do that for a long time. And I have been able to do that for a long time. With a lot to just have all these things in my consciousness right now. Um, especially when it's, um, it's, okay. So I have pulled away from, uh, internet quite a bit since I even said no to some other zoom events because it just felt like, uh, We're gonna do a few more of these and then we're gonna take a summer break, but we'd love to have you come back maybe at some point, or maybe you can invite someone you love that you wanna talk to. Thank you again for your time and thank you all of you for joining this session. Can we all give a round of applause or say goodbye, unmute yourselves and just go, hey, Octavio, yes, yes. Thank you. Hey, no, we love you. Hey, we love you. Thank you, baby. Thank you, Octavio. That's that email. That's that email. Hello. Hello, baby. I'm about to, whatever new normal happens, we can't wait to see what you bring us. You have, I have been inspired by your gifts, so thank you for sharing that with all of us throughout the year. You've been an inspiration to me, of course, and to everyone who's here today. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gracias. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Choco. Choco. Not yet. We'll see you on Friday. All right, I don't know who's coming, thanks Octavio. Bye Octavio. Bye Octavio. Bye. Bye. Bye Octavio. Talk to you later, little dog. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.