 everybody back to Segal Talks here at the Martini Segal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in the middle of New York City and in Midtown Manhattan that looks still like a ghost town it looks like every day one more store closes down and as we heard from and hamburger the producer we should do a festival in December in New York in the Meatpacking District in all the empty stores and which normally is impossible to get to be done or to find some right now it's very very easy I guess to spot these and also talk people into using them so today we have another day of corona of the experience of living through this unprecedented time also tumultuous political time with the election coming up next week was the pandemic soaring around the world France is considering going back and for lockdown also Germany many many others numbers have never been as high in the United States it's hitting so many areas and the role of the arts and what is the meaning of the arts and what is the meaning of our lives of course never has been more questioned what is necessary what is important what has been unimportant and we thought it was important we are reevaluating everything and everybody agrees this is a time of change change has already happened change will happen and artists are the ones who are on the side of change teaching us how to deal with it how to experience it how to find meaning also how to anticipate it and make us comfortable with what might be coming and help us to imagine the future and that is what theater does it's an imagining of a possibility as people who are on the streets who demonstrate what black lives matter rather than really imagine a different world a different place and they put their bodies out on the line as to theater people with the acting on stage in front or behind today we have artists from our ongoing prelude festival since 15 years the Segal Center puts out a festival the only one in New York of its kind that is free and open to the public and it shows work in progress just from New York City artists ensembles it's a work from that takes the temperature of what's New York artists are working on what they are thinking about what they envisioning what the imagination is taking them and it's always been a significant dusting contribution to the field and perhaps right now it has an original urgency we invited David grown and we are in the harm and to to curate it and David is with us here with some of the prelude artists a few words about David David is one of the co curators together with Miranda of the Segal Center's prelude festival he's also a drama talk a critic and a doctoral candidate Yale school of drama where he studies a contemporary theater and performance and so welcome David and welcome all you prelude artists who have already shown work which still can be seen and some is upcoming so maybe we'll go around and we start with may and tell us a little bit about you a short introduction and then we go into the discussion everyone my name is me and to I am calling in from Williamsburg currently even though my home country Singapore and I work at the intersection of artistic civic and contemplative practice thank you Misha hi folks it's wonderful to be here my name is Misha Choudhury I am based in New York but I'm currently being a country mouse up in the Berkshire as well I can I'm a director and a writer and a many tentacled theater maker and I'm psyched to be in conversation with all these wonderful folks today Dominique hey I'm Dominique I'm coming to you live from Flatbush with all the Haitian energy I can serve you on a platter physically in Brooklyn but very much mentally anywhere the South is anywhere Megan the stallion is you can find me I'm a director and dramaturg working at the intersections of theater black studies and trans studies Korea hi I'm Zachariah user I am a playwright a dramaturg and an afro pessimist theorist I'm in Austin Texas because I am currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Texas thank you thank you so now we have those introductions who you know very very short give us an impression of course their real introduction is their work which can be seen or will has already been seen at prelude maybe we'll start to David David when you and Miranda when you put the festival together what were you looking for well the theme of the festival is sites of revolution and we were looking for work that was engaging with the idea of either a major change or a kind of reckoning and you know our goal was really to look at as many sites as possible not only of course the kind of revolutionary activity that you see playing out in the streets from the uprisings this summer to various protests to phone banking and other things we might understand under the rubric of politics but also these revolutionary acts of caretaking of imagination of reckoning between families and also oneself in certain ways so we felt it was important to open up this idea which of course has been so closely associated with a certain kind of experimental theater especially in the United States and really kind of blow it open as much as possible and create spaces where people could engage with the work and something that was important to us from the beginning was creating work that was specifically with was created with the intention of being online of course when the pandemic hit in March and April a lot of people moved or adapted activities that was very exciting and great but we wanted to create something where people were invited specifically to make use of the website and the web and its tools from zoom to google docs to video games in the case of speedrun which is really exciting so people have taken up that charge in various ways Frank do you mind if I ask maybe man to say a little bit about man's project since it's ongoing and I think as with all these other projects and capillates some of the ways in which we've turned the website and prelude into a site where people can you know have a kind of those kinds of experiences yeah that's good may may and of course what does they she tell us about hold which is kind of a bookend of the fist but also of the festival days yeah I I love the theme of sites of revolution right now right and what are offering what are offering to be able to think about what that might be and and and and how to where that actually happens where does a revolution actually happen first I think that was the big question that I started to ask and I I thought about how my body is like the revolution has to happen in my body and in my mind before anything can happen outside that does not perpetuate the same old thing that happens and I think in this time in particular there's just feels like there's a lot of screaming like quite literally the presidential debates the other person has to be muted when the other person is speaking that is actually the reality of our culture right now and and one thing that I started to feel that I needed was a space to practice the things to words where my mind and my body can be ready for revolution and that in itself the practice is the revolution that's that's something that I start to come up with so I work a lot with contemplative practice and I start to think about what can actually hold the day and hold the festival and so I started to think about the ways in which what would happen if we were to sit together in the morning and in the evening it's a practice that kept me alive during pandemic and and to be able to sort of know that people are doing that and what it means to be in silence together in Zoom where usually we're talking to each other at each other trying to do something with the time and what happens if we stop trying to do something with the time in order to understand what's actually happening in the mind and be able to watch the mind and practice this and see the stories that we're spinning all the time in the mind to be able to start to understand that profoundly so in the morning 8 30 to 9 I offer some sort of seed of reflection and then the idea is that the sun of the day would nurture it and at night we would have the rain of prayers and so I've asked people to come part of practice even in silence and sitting is Sangha is community and so I've asked who I call queer holies to come through and these are people who I feel like through their art have such a deep access to the divine that like when I'm there in their art I'm like oh I see I feel it I'm there you have realigned me in my spirit people like Diana oh people like Daniel Alexander Jones really blessed us last night oh my god wow I'm still sitting I think I have to work on that prayer for like a year and the idea is that what can come out what can be shared after sitting in 20 minutes of silence what has the sitting in silence prepared the animal body to receive and what is the way in which we receive it once we do that together and how that can be a practice throughout time so I also thought about it as preparing the body to listen to all of these incredible folks were that there is like a way in which by doing so we are more prepared to understand the complexities of their work which like I know much of their a lot of their works and I'm I'm I'm honored to be like they're my name next to these people's names the the final sit will be an hour instead of half an hour usually it's 839 morning and 10 to 10 30 at night and we're gonna make space a little bit more space for people to share their experiences and yeah so that's how it's going thanks for letting me speak very great thank you Michelle if we follow sure yeah yeah I'm really resonating with what man was saying about a kind of a an opportunity to look inward in this moment as well as outward and yeah the project that I've been working on and that I shared two installations of in the parade the festival is called the Chitra and it's a it's a project that emerged out of this moment specifically it was a kind of happy accident that emerged out of a kind of requirement to pivot and make work in the online space and it's specifically been an opportunity for me to think about the sort of panoply of things that might fall under the umbrella of Queer South Asian experimentation that's the I've been calling the project an experiment in Queer South Asian imagination and it's an ongoing series of audio visual experiments each of which has a radically different focus in terms of in terms of content but it's an exploration in collaboration with a sound designer and a video artist and the the project coheres really through those sort of aesthetic considerations but what's been great for me in it's it's been surprising how how much I've someone asked me the other day in another context what my sort of after after all of this which is so much a part of the conversations that I'm having these days there's an imagination of after all of this which I'm not sure is precisely the sort of like right way to think about it but I someone asked me how what I wanted my sort of like daily life as an artist to look like after after all of this and in the moment of being of being asked that I registered strangely that like in terms of like how I'm spending my hours on a daily basis this is actually much closer to the way that I would like to be functioning as an artist in some ways by virtue of like a lot of the a lot of the sort of usual polls on my time having been having been cut a lot of the strings that I'm usually tethered to having been cut and having the opportunity to function in working in Vichitra in particular as a kind of expansive sort of creative thinker in terms of thinking about who I get I'm functioning kind of as a curator and a maker and and I'm learning all kinds of new skills in the making of this piece that is really exciting like I don't know I'm like credited as an audio editor on the most recent episode and I think that like and for me I think from the outset of launching this project the first episode that was shown at Prelude is a is a patchwork of dreams literal sort of night dreams dreams that folks had at night and then remembered in the morning that we solicited from Queer South Asian folks from all over the all over the world voice memos that were recorded and then the second episode is a much more is a single that first piece is multi vocal and the second piece is is my voice a piece that I narrated and wrote and it's a completely different sort of sonic experience than the first one but each of those each of those installations has allowed me the opportunity to lean into a different kind of kind of making and I as as David mentioned been wanting with this project to think really actively about like what what it means to make for this medium and learn from the folks in our universe that are experts in that and so in working with a sound designer and a video artist who work actively in the video and podcasting universes for example it's been a really I'm like oh okay we do actually consume I think theater folks have been like how how do we reinvent the wheel in this moment and it's been interesting for me to sort of like lean into an understanding of the fact that we already all consume sonic and video and video content on a daily basis so I'm like what tools can I draw upon in this very particular in in this sort of I don't want to say niche because that's exactly what I don't think it is but I'm like okay what are the various what are the various kinds of questions that I can ask inside of queer South Asian experimentation and imagination while living inside of this like 30 minute audio visual audio driven sort of visual podcast landscape sorry who wants to go next I mean we'll just go at the same time right yeah so speedrun is a like a short theatrical-ish film-esque piece that makes use of Super Mario Brothers sort of to talk about socialism essentially like the idea came about where I'm thinking a lot about how two thoughts one is that my experience as a leftist and a black leftist in a lot of socialist and socialization spaces has been annoying to say the least there is you would you would hope that in like far left spaces they would have sort of a better kind of intersectional understanding but most of the places these places are white run organizations and have the same kind of mindset as all other white run organizations because being being progressive on one valence doesn't necessarily mean you're progressive on any others so I wanted to talk about that and the other thought I was having was that like it's a Milton Freeman thing I'm not a big fan of but this is a good thought the idea isn't a crisis the idea is lying around and right now socialism is an idea that's lying around very like at the fore unfortunately not in this session's electoral politics but it's still like kind of you know the specter haunting American politics right now and so when we do pick up this idea as I think we inevitably will I do want to talk about the fact that like black people are you know kind of very early like progenitors of a lot of socialist theory and they are kind of left out of the conversation a lot and so when we do pick up this idea that that doesn't continue to happen um yeah and then oh don't make talking now maybe talk a little more about the uh the technical part yeah and I think for another big part of it is how does um and this is a recent thought that you and I think are coming to is like what are the what are the possibilities that slavery has made possible right a big theme in this play is this idea that um the white folks in it have had more time to let their ideas of revolution and anger ripen into something else right how does slavery allow that to happen and how does this sort of idea of socialism which like we've had versions of in the US right I'm thinking about the um the new deal and the way that like my grandfather and tons of other black people were just left out of these policies and the policies were made in such a way that black people could not access them right how does slavery enable um the notions and ideas we had on the civil society and how do those ideas of a civil society shout out to frank loberton leave black people out right absolutely similarly right like the long long history of black union exclusion um is very much on our minds of this and so yeah we think that like and so how we kind of take that to speedrun is that speedrun is this kind of like interestingly socialist practice kind of which is that like individuals get like credit for speedrunning if you don't know beating a video game really really fast and you're doing and using whatever strategies you can maybe even breaking the game a little bit to be able to do that it's like a community and people get credit for like achievements but people always remember if you if you push the like conversation forward the community always remembers you like if you come up with a technique and so we I thought speedrun would be a speedrunning would be a good way to explore that and for us the tech came into play which is that our original idea and the play has written has a literal speedrun in it but uh where something you would speedrun Super Mario Brothers while the play was happening but in traditional speedruns they get to um talk about like their audio like they get to talk and like you know it's react to the speedrun as they're doing it so they usually don't get auto detected by you too is like a copyright algorithm and so we were a little worried about that to be honest so we decided to you know as we are all doing in this time uh innovate find a new thing so we got to engage our very talented designer Elizabeth Kroshenko who just looked at the scenes that we needed and when we would like cut back to the speedrun and just made them out of like just animated them completely and so that was a really like nice addition to to the piece and I feel like it helps a little bit because the piece is so much like about Super Mario Brothers and but like slightly different being able to see Super Mario Brothers literally just be slightly different uh is uh I think adds to kind of the atmosphere a little bit I have a question for uh Zachariah and Dominique something that struck me about your proposal was this invocation of afro pessimism of course with Frank Wilderson's book this year that term has gotten a lot of attention um but you could you could think of a long you know you could look at Orlando Patterson as one inception point of it and I'm sure other people have um taken back further I think Dominique you mentioned Cedric Robinson um you know so how does that body of work one how how might you define it briefly for people who are coming to the coming to the term for the first or you know very um nascent time and and how does it inform your work yeah um Zach and I have two I think like two divergent paths in afro pessimism um and two sort of like separate interests mine is rooted a lot more in um like the anti-blackness of gender and so and then how gender as an idea and as a concept is a position uh for the captive and not for the slave and what that means when you apply concepts of like gender to the captive body and what that does to it right uh because we think of concepts of like gender and sexuality and disability emerging at the same time as slavery in the US when actually it needs to be when actually I think a better way to think about it in frame it is that slavery as an institution enabled these things to grow underneath it um and so to me for me at least afro pessimism as a theory and I think if you want to if you want to get into it maybe read his first book and not afro pessimism there are a lot of reviews of like afro pessimism as a book without engaging his his first text red, white and black um US uh US antagonisms in the history of cinema or something like that um and it's a theory that articulates the sort of fungibility of black people around the world and makes a case that slavery as an event created a split between people we recognize as humans people who operate inside of communities and know each other and people we recognize as slaves and I'll slide to Zach for the follow-up. Yeah kind of the yeah in the place I come in I'm interested in it kind of a little more from a from a class analysis and also from a like more traditional philosophy background um so right like when you think of like the enlightenment and creation of the human the human is always defined as like what what is it defined as what is it compared to essentially right like the humans defined as free self-determining etc right so in order to know the the limits in the domain of that freedom you have to look at like the unfreedom who was made unfree right and that's like the creation of the human is also the creation of the slave as an ontological category like if afro pessimism in a nutshell to me is that like is the ontological precondition of the world that we live in that the slave experiences violence constantly and for no reason other than the coherence of the world and as such afro pessimism is trying to chart what that all is how that affects us and luckily us as in black people and how what we can do about it and really the best answer we have is to end the world as we know it and do something new and that luckily there's a there's a nice generation after the wilderson generation of the original afro pessimists who are starting to do some of that work and especially a lot of women and non-binary folks who are especially doing that work on gender which is great and it's interesting on one hand is something very personal on dreams meditation that looks inside on the other hand your work of speedrun looks at structures and over centuries and systematic repression you know like two poles what do you guys think what is the the role of the artist at the moment that that unprecedented moment that we experience right now what what what can art do I mean I'm so excited by what y'all are saying and I'm always thinking about these structures and forms that have been imposed along the way that we just accept as true right so I'm thinking about how um uh Freud right if you look at the id the super ego that's actually a construction of our psyche that places one in dominance of another and that that in itself will help us well will encourage us if we think of our psyche that way we are just going to replicate that same structure outside of ourselves in our society continually and um the the scholar that that brought that up I remember like being at a conference and hearing this paper and she was basically saying like we have to go to Fanon we actually have to go to Fanon who you're right it's like like we actually have to like couldn't like tear this we have to stop the thing we actually have to do so I mean artists you know if you're asking like what artists have to do like we it's our power of imagination we also we kind of have to imagine ourselves out of this right in or imagines ourselves into the destruction in which we can survive like yes to destroying the system and then how do we survive beyond the system um in or who should survive beyond the system or how like what what who will uphold the systems or what the how are the systems upheld and you know like I remember I was um um uh at another call where Diana Milošević uh from the Doth theater of Belgrade was talking and and I I I remember what she said she was like we have to outlast them that's our job is resilience we have to outlast it you know so it's both like I don't know I'm thinking about how artists we both have to figure out how to outlast it um and also like how to imagine I feel like Dominique you're like so excited you want to speak oh my god I want to hear you say oh yeah um I was just going to say I think and this is not to the to the question that it's just something that you said that it always makes me think about it is like the the actual reality is right like the state is not keeping us safe and there are people who are surviving without it right now right like abolition as an idea is a thing that is already present in communities what do you do when the cops don't come to your neighborhood right like what do you and the people around you do when the cops ignore you what do you do when the only time the government like recognizes you as a person is when it's time for you to cast a ballot that is going to get a bomb dropped on someone right like what do you do in those in that other time and like the the thing that you're talking about is already existing how do we continue to lean into it and I think more importantly is like how do we convince um the people in power that like the thing that they should be right is abolitionist and that this state thing isn't serving anyone and that maybe we can do something else and I just want to thank you for bringing it up man yeah but how do you how do you get people to like like divest from the thing that serves them or they think it serves them I think that's our I think that's what our job is which is that I think you were right on there with political imagination which is that I think that like when we're doing our best work it's like it's it's like adjut prop is like we are putting like these like new ideas into the world we're like shifting the like over to windows so that like I mean you know 10 months ago abolition like prison abolition was like among real non radical circles of joke right they're like oh yeah sure we're gonna do all the murders and rapes and everyone would just say that and that would be the end of this discussion right like now we're actually able to have a conversation because we like because various things that happen to shift the over to window left that's that's what we do we make sure that like when when events happen the ideas lying around are our ideas so that they get they're the ones that get picked up and so I think injecting like you know the the best thoughts we have into into discourse is what our job is and recognizing what the things are too like I feel like I feel like it's part of us being like I think our job is also to be able to see it and name it and be like this is actually what's going on we've been duped to think that this is blank but really this is blank and how are we not feeding into it again and again and again right that's what I'm always thinking I think about how I think about trauma porn right on stage and I think about how like that discourse of it or the the way I see myself as an Asian femme depicted and like what what that is in terms of like how how how how deeply I want Asian performers to be hired and yet the only thing they get to do are that which is within the white imagination like continually always even like all the time um and I think about like like how how much more do I have to be complicit to gain enough power to change it and by that time will I have been complicit long enough that I am too tied to my success absolutely I think about yeah I'm to reference uh Jimmy brought up earlier the uh the first Wilderson book with specifically with uh Black bodies the way that they were most often early seen on film was just in recordings of lynching so it's just sort of like yeah there are these like these ways that like the we we do have to change what the the thing is used for and it is one of those things where it's like what level can we engage with the thing without uh and change the thing without being changed and that is definitely like I feel like our eternal struggle question um it's only like you know speedrun you guys all of a sudden are creating video games um make sure as I'm created as a sound editor for the first time may end in a way you are a curator for your series you know which is a long um a durational um site performance in a way do you feel it's this is a moment where everybody does something they haven't done before and um and how does that uh affect the the the work well I've never done this before it is something I do right so like I've never done hold before per se but it is something I do I feel like um I feel like this is actually a a practice and a community that has emerged from my life and um you know I I like how you say like curator of a series and I'm like is that what I did I thought I was making a community I thought I was asking my elders and my friends who I needed to pray for me to pray for us oh I guess that's also a curator of a series but but the the change of language and the frame upon it um uh for me helps me contextualize performance as a site of healing and as a site of gathering in a way that requires participation of doing nothing and like so so I guess I guess for me like yeah I'm doing something new and not and not and what that means to me is um like thinking about emergence and thinking about um the next step being that which has required everything before and to go about something in a way that um and these are principles that I've always had right the principle of like I will do it in a way that no matter what happens it was worth it so with each of the people that I curated I sat with them for half an hour we meditated together and then we talked and we caught up and it was this building of something that is underneath that that didn't get shown but it was there it was underneath it um and so I think it it to me it's like yes to yes to the new but but coming from uh lifetime of practice is corona changing the way you work that's the question short term but long term also this isn't really uh I'm just sort of like I've been sitting and listening and I don't know precisely what question I'm responding to um but I I think that I'm this I think that in this moment um I find myself in a place of sort of many different valences of uncertainty I feel like and that that like lack of certainty and surety um I think that I've often talked about my sort of relationship to my work as an artist as I think it's been like a good thesis statement for me in the past to like want to move into my work from a place of um having not yet figured out what the like what the upshot of what I'm making will be um but I feel that in this moment um more than ever like um the idea that I am sort of moving into uh making and creating from like uh like a deeply ambivalent place or an uncertain place inside of myself in terms of like the how shall I say it like in terms of the capacity or scope or like um in terms of what my work like is meant to or can do um I think that in the in I've there's a kind of like man you mentioned ego and id and Freud and I think I've been spending a lot of time this year just sort of like reflecting on um in some ways the arrogance with which I've approached uh my my um relationship to my work in the past um and I don't know if arrogance is quite the right word but maybe just sort of like the ego with which I by virtue of like the ways in which we are required to sell ourselves in uh in the field and in the industry in order to create in terms of like uh artist statementifying ourselves and mission statementifying ourselves and branding ourselves in particular ways I think there's a kind of um like language around like the sort of like prefigurative attempt of my work that I have developed um over my life as an artist that is like this work will do this um that I find has fallen um sort of disconcertingly but also usefully away in the last uh few months in the sense that I'm like I don't quite um you're asking what is the role of an artist and I can only speak for myself but I don't like I don't really know right now in um for myself um how to answer that question in a like from a place of like like I can imagine and I'm so sort of like inspired to to be listening to all three of you in terms of the ways that you're thinking about this moment and I've always um I've also always been really attracted to like I I also um I'm I'm I'm drawn toward the sort of like the the strands of of theory that move us towards um that recognition of like the fact that the um I often think about like this article by Stephanie Smallwood that has that always like that blew my mind when I first read it in terms of thinking about the fact that like that instead of thinking about um like the relationship between freedom and slavery as being like a um how does she put it but like the way in which we think about like uh slavery in the new world having given rise to uh having given a sort of material injection to the possibility of like enlightenment and rights-based thinking in the in in in um in Europe the fact that like in fact um it was slavery itself that like uh that wage labor emerges out of uh like the idea of the owned body um and that kind of like I I'm in I'm super inspired by listening to uh the two of you talk about your relationship to aproposimism that you're expressing so articulately and I yeah I'm just sort of like sitting here in a place of like uh like useful confusion I think the like last you're talking about like what how has corona changed my uh relationship to making and it has I think sort of like disoriented me like totally in a way that not it has disoriented me totally but like the tethers of like man you were talking about like uh if I participate in it enough it how how wedded to the structures of the industry do I become and I feel like having those sort of marionette strings snipped in some ways over the course of the last um eight to ten months I find myself like having to uh in terms of reckoning right I find myself having to sort of like re-ask myself all kinds of questions that had become like the thing is that had meant the most to me had become uh sound bites and like ways of selling myself like my most sort of cherished uh political values had become useful um uh like useful language by which to sort of reinvest myself in um in a particular kind of relationship with theaters and institutions yeah yeah thank you I'm curious on the question of your relationship between theater institutions this is for everyone um what do you want to see from the field and you know what what have you seen from the field that has been inspiring I'll just say briefly from Miranda and I you know we've often talked about what Soho Rep is doing in terms of bringing artists on the payroll there's been parts of me that have thought we should just turn the entire nonprofit theater industry into one large mutual aid sector just liquidate the assets you know turn into healthcare and everything else um and that one runs along a long line I mean that very vague idea for me is probably the product of many many years of thinking about abolition within the context of arts and culture and you know you can you can think off of Fred Moten and Stefano Harnes critique in the university and their comments that you know the university is the privatization of what should be shared um that's a very simplistic um version of their thesis but I'm curious you know just just however um earthy or theoretical this wants to be for you what do you want to see from the field and maybe specifically those institutions who claim and in some cases do serve artists such as yourselves yeah I think about I've been thinking about this question a lot and I think that it really hit ahead for me in the in in May um it's just like that straight week where like black people were dying which is not different from any other week but where it seemed like there was a lot of attention being given to it and I think a big thing that I was watching was this conversation that was happening about um policing and the way that like the like the way that police function right and the call the necessity of the call for abolition as an end to like policing in the police state and the thing that I think started to unravel for me and Zach and I have talked about this a lot is that like the same police that are prowling the streets are the same police that are sitting um on theaters boards and are running institutions right that the the way that policing works um is is a deep practice that so many of us have internalized that black people and and I and also people of color to a larger extent are like policed in these institutions right that our ideas our bodies the way we make the way we think about making the way we engage with like what man was talking about earlier right like this this idea of trauma porn um so the apartment reminds us that like the black pain does not arrest the reader it does not incite a crisis right so what does that mean what are these stories doing what are they are they changing things are or are they in a line in a tradition of work that like you know leads us nowhere and so I think for me one of the big ones is like we in many I'd like to see an ending to the policing inside of these institutions um which might be which might be in a roundabout way and ask to end the institutions I'm not really sure I also think that like for a lot of um white institutions specifically how are resources being moved and how are they being moved around to support I think explicitly here like black theaters Asian theaters Latinx theaters right like how how are we thinking about who we are supporting and who gets that support on a state level on a donor level and and one big one for me is like I just like to see more money going towards um hashtag defund white theaters maybe um I'd like to see more money going towards theaters of color who are doing the work that we need to be doing all the time right without without like any fanfare without having to make a big press release about it how do we support those institutions both as artists and like thinking about this large like in a large-scale way how do we make sure that those institutions are supported and taken care of is like I think um my two sort of like industry wide thoughts also unions I feel like arts administrators need unions um because they'd be working 60 hours a week and they're supposed to be working like 40 and 60 is low 60 is a low ball number for like how much work arts administrators do I think an arts admin union would be very very helpful right second of that and I'm like very much right really like kind of workers cooperative about it which is that like I think that functions of hierarchy in a lot of these organizations are what allow the policing to occur um I mean there's larger right like societal and like lipid mill economy issues but I think that like we would it would be a huge step for it to be right like we feel like everyone gets who works in theater it's not necessarily like another industry where you you don't maybe like um become the marketing exec for an airplane parts company because you love airplane parts but you everyone in a theater loves theater you don't why else would you you know you know take the honestly like low pay compared to like other industries like half the people in theater are like people who are theater people can never who not do anything else uh which is and I'm certainly one um but the other half of them are like marketing and development execs who are just like who love theater and will and love it so much they'll take less money the fact that they don't get to you know vote on like the things that matter to them in the institution and they just have to like market or develop for whatever right like the the the essentially the CEO of the nonprofit says they have to do is um you know a little ridiculous also especially the way that like um people of color at a lot of institutions are kept out of artistic departments means that they don't get to decide either so like if they so if a person of color who's like super interested in theater finally gets to work at a place they want to work it's rarely a decision making place so yeah like my like big thing that I would love to see is that if we only changed one thing I think we should change a million more things than one but is to sort of like in these institutions like democratize and like kind of flatten the hierarchy so that everyone can get a say in like making this thing that we all obviously care about otherwise we wouldn't be here yeah so maybe we can get a big closer to also David's original question what are you guys uh i'm working on also at the moment and now after your prelude what is on your mind what is what is your imagination what is your vision about the piece of course we show excerpts but what are you all thinking about what you're working on what would you like to do which perhaps you couldn't but what is on your minds as projects again I think I'm just I can speak to I think I've turned to a sort of I'm thinking kind of granularly about like it's been uh it's been useful for me to have the opportunity in making these episodes of this project which is sort of what is on the horizon for me by virtue of having like made made this ongoing series I'm like oh everything that I make falls under the umbrella of this series now which is nice I'm like cool anything is anything I make is the queer South Asian imagination so that is going to be the next episode of the project but I'm working the fourth episode is that's coming out in December is a collaboration with some queer karnatic musicians um and it's been really like I don't know there again I'm sort of like feeling a kind of it's been really wonderful also I want to shout out Cameron Neil and Jeremy Bloom who are the core collaborators on which other who I didn't mention earlier I just they are the video artist and sound designer that I was speaking of in the abstracts but it's been really wonderful just to sort of like lean into these unusual collaborations that I might have had the opportunity to and really I mean to be frank like what I'm making is not theater right now it is happening in the context of uh like it is happening this being commissioned by theaters because theaters are who I know but it's like it is they are visual podcasts they're short films they're not um I think that there's a useful sort of collapsing of those boundaries that has been helpful for me because I feel like I've always been that person in like theater rooms when the question is asked like there's when there's a sort of preciousness around what theater is I'm always like is it is it as like distinct as we imagine it to be from these other forms um but um yeah so I'm working so I'm like doing a thing but I never would have had the opportunity to do which is just sort of like kind of uh like sitting in conversation with um granada classical musicians and like developing a new sort of like half an hour long composition um based on these sort of seventh century eighth century ninth century texts um uh about like um there's this woman in the there's this legendary figure in um uh in karnatic music um and in the south indian tradition named avayar who is a young girl who like uh asks to be re asks to be transformed into an old woman um in order to she's like all I want in life is to be an old woman so I can just bypass the whole like having to get married and having to like have a man in my life thing um and she's this like little so she's this sort of like um kind of deliciously child like figure in an old woman's body and also there's a like can I become an old woman in order to uh like desire the god like there's a like the the god that she um murugan who in the south indian tradition is usually portrayed as a young like a young boy she's like I want to become an old woman so I can be this sort of maternal wise figure and like love the god from a like motherly place so that project is just an opportunity I'm working with Rupa Mahadevan and Shiv Subramaniam and we're just like um it's like you know it's like we're making new music that's that's what the that's what the piece is new compositions based on these old texts and they're all about these sort of yearnings for different kinds of transformations so like an old uh like these various uh writers in the granitic tradition who are like I would become I yearn to become like uh a step in the temple like stairway leading up to the temple rather than being one of the devotees I want to be a step in the in the temple so that I can like look directly up into the mouth of the god or so we're just like looking at these various different kinds of transformations and it's been super fun to lean into that kind of like granular thinking um just kind of like okay I want to deal with this very tiny piece of text this very tiny story um and see what it has to offer up to me in this moment I'm doing a lot of sleeping a lot of a lot of sleeping these days which I don't feel like I got to do a lot of in the before times which is great um melatonin it's so nice um waking up at like 10 a.m with like without knowing that there probably isn't going to be a rehearsal today it's like freeing I don't feel like we talk a lot about like the labor of being a director um which is something I know I learned in part from watching man um I have never seen someone so busy um and so for me one of the sort of big the big first thing that I decided to do was like what what if I just pull everything back and like I actually just go to bed more and I enjoy my room more um and so for me I think like sleeping has become a big part of my practice and a big part of my life in a way that it wasn't and also just like being able to walk around my neighborhood at times that aren't like 10 p.m at night because I'm coming home from like a work day uh it it feels like for me it's less in this moment making art or like thinking about art as much but really just taking the time to check in with like Dominique without any sort of relation to um the labor that I would usually be doing right now which has been very I feel really really nice about I think that's a maybe a joy of being a freelancer right now um and so when projects do come um it's like oh I can actually focus on making this mixtape with Diane Xavier which I'm gonna love doing in February right it's like being able to like act like oh Zach wants to do this thing for prelude yeah I ain't doing stuff right now let's do it let's make like a video game and see what happens with it right though the lack of like normal everyday structure that I think I was relying on before has a lot has really freed me up to do other things um which are both like other things more personally and just like reading again I love being back to like just reading scenes of subjugation by seeing the art man and being like oh I'm still not done with the work right and just sort of that kind of thing right now right definitely one second that um I feel very like um well I quote the communist manifesto twice yes I will um like you know I get to like work a little bit in the morning I get to you know you know proverbially because uh go fish in the afternoon and then like read a little bit at night I get to kind of like my life balance is better um and also like Dominique uses the word refusal a lot to talk about this where she's sort of like no I will not engage with the machine right now because honestly I'm at my house and you can't you can't get me um and that's pretty great and for me what that is is like working as an early career player I feel I feel I part of it is that I'm in school part of it is also just like this time is made like I'm free from the like you must write one play a year and then you will put it you will give it to everyone who could possibly care about it and hopefully one of them will care and that will like move you around and now now I'm writing weird afro pessimistic experiments uh and Dominique had you know I'll call Dominique when I finish one and like this one doesn't make sense yet help me make it make sense uh and then we'll we'll do something with it um so yeah now speedrun is actually it's part of a collection of our pessimistic experiments that I'm working on actually before the pandemic but the pan like has really like made me care about that way more than anything else I'm working on so uh we got three and there's going to be a fourth one they will be somewhere sometime when we feel like it and then they will all be done and then they will want to get you somewhere sometime um a lot of my creative practice is actually as a director dramaturg and so um I I'm in multiple processes right now doing work about Hong Kong protests uh doing uh work about Chinese American history um um Little Shop of Horrors is a live public film gender queered that's another thing that I'm up to and um like there's there's a lot going on it as a director and I doing this was phenomenal for me because it rooted me in a practice of making space um that's coming from my body right and so I'm so grateful to Dave and Miranda for including me in this and people have actually talked about like can we continue like what like does it stop with prelude can we continue can we support can we figure out a community that will continue to do this in some way shape or form that's not just on on my body but that we gather and so that's a beautiful thing that's about to happen um and I'm also obsessed with um doing new things that really terrify me um as an artistic director of musical theater factory I have access to like the most phenomenal singers in the world and I've been asked to do um a piece and make a make a text make make something from a line from a John Lewis speech and then they put it all together of all of these artists and I've decided that I should write the song and sing the song um which is not something I do but I must because it terrifies me so I am involving people to help me out but I'm like I could really ask these 10 phenomenal like people on you know every like to sing this but no I must put my voice out there in some way shape or form so I'm continuing to force myself to do things that scare me um like learn garage band what whatever and I also am going to make an app I'm putting it out there I'm saying it because then I'm like have to do it and the the app is called Zen Master and it will pull you through the different ways um and contains some credit wisdom in which you can opt into what you need like I'm feeling like an imposter and then you press it and then like different game like structures will pop up so that it guides you through that particular thing that you're feeling into koans and parables from all the different places crowd sourced so that people can also like offer that so that's the app that I'm working on there we go David you have another question um you know I'm gonna say what is a closing question what inspires you at the moment who do you follow what do you read what you will listen to in music uh or other shows you see online what what what what uh keeps you is there something that you look up to at the moment what do you do this is a quick sort of uh this is just like I just wanted to I was like oh I should definitely mention that the the third episode of Vigitra is currently running at ours nova not as a sort of like um I was like it it started yesterday and it was a collaboration between my partner Cameron Neil and I and I just would have been remiss if I didn't say it um it's a series of conversations uh with uh it's just it the the frame of the piece is my partner and I I'm trying to situate our interracial relationship in a larger constellation of black and south asian encounters um and I guess what has been inspiring to me is like having these like interviews with folks from I feel like I because I because I've become an interviewer in the process of making this piece um having conversations with folks um that I usually wouldn't have time to have conversations with has been really remarkable inspiring sitting and listening to someone I've known my whole life uh 84 year old woman talk about like oh the first time I ever saw a black person was when I was eight years old during world war two in like eastern india when like black american soldiers drove trucks through our town and threw butterfinger chocolates at us and I'm like you were alive during world war two like not a thing that I ever would have had the opportunity to hear from from you so yeah that's having conversations with people has been inspiring to me I'm I'm with Misha and I think it's um I'm feeling um the possibility of being hyper present with the things that are actually happening inside me and with me um um I I held a baby a 10 month baby I'm not desiring to be a parent I've never I've never really had the clock is not there like it's not even on the shelf it's not there um and I held this baby and after that I was like oh this is so sweet so cute oh here we are and then I left the house and I started to cry like it it just it just started to overwhelm like it was such a powerful experience and I started to like ask myself like why am I responding this way and I realized that that it is the the only moment of touch I've had in such a long time that was so uncomplicated and filled with like pure joy and that I I did not need to be in any way defensive and and um I did not need protection um instead it was the other way around um so I'm really sitting with with um experience right now I um I reading or inspired I there are two sources for me right now the first is Netflix finally putting Black sitcoms on Netflix and so it's just me watching half and half and uh one on one and the Parker is in Moesha and just having like going back to a part of my childhood but like a lot of people just a lot of people a lot of non-black people I think oftentimes just aren't for me to um and so it's been great to sort of like have that moment and then I built a um sort of core curriculum for myself with um readings I'm trying to read all of City of Heartman's Canon uh before next year which is to say like the first pass a lot of things finally finishing scenes um and I'm reading this other book called Becoming Human uh Matter and Meeting in an Anti-Black World by Zakiya Amon Jackson so it's a lot of uh it's a lot of returning to readings I've been putting off a lot of like finally having the chance to like watch panels which is great because like I can just watch City of Heartman do a panel now which is fucking amazing she has New Yorker articles which is great um and it's just sort of like finally being able to follow the theorist and thinkers whose books have been so important to me in real time because now they are I think um in the middle of doing their projects more free to speak and like do things like this so that's been really inspirational also just like what Mayan just said really messed me up with the baby that was that's going on my list now so thank you for that Mayan right yeah like Austin Texas babies I'm gonna I'm gonna find one of you I think um but yeah no I definitely agree with Dominique I'm doing a lot of uh you know the theoretical reading situation um I'm kind of working my way through a lot of the foundational texts of afro pessimism either visiting or revisiting uh so that's like the early Wilderson and Hartman who are the two co-founders of the discipline um and reading honestly and I'm doing a lot of like television studies stuff right after school and the thing that has really struck me is that like one thing that's like they did a lot and maybe it was a cheap ploy then but I guess me every time is that like truly they seem to have found the most adorable black kids to be the first black kids on tv so there's like the the first uh the first uh like non-stereotypes of black shows you're called Julia and the son in that is so adorable and so I'm just watching all of Julia because they just like put the camera on him for like maybe five minutes at the time and just watch him play and I'm just like I'm just crying um and so that's that's just great stuff um and then also whenever anyone's asking what my inspirations are I must must always plug um Alicia Harris she is the greatest living playwright and find anything you can buy her uh on the internet and pay her money for it uh because it's all good amazing David any thoughts no this has been fantastic it's it's you know real privilege and honor to have all of you involved with the festival I just also want to thank you know Miranda Heyman the co-curator along with our incredible producing team Sammy Moriali Lucy Palace uh Sammy Pine you know our graphic designer Lena Mitchell our website developer uh Lorena Ramirez Lopez Harry our stage manager so there's a really great team and um Andy Lerner from the Siegel Center as well so there's a really great team behind me I'm just the representative because everyone else is making the festival run and work and I get to spend this time with all of you which I'm really grateful but I am just a mere emanation of um this larger ensemble so and you know thank you all for joining this has been so great and people check out the work also I want to make a plug I did this yesterday I'm gonna do it every day please listen and watch the work with real speakers don't use your little Mac internal speaker make sure you can hear the sound because it's so beautiful not only for you know quote-unquote sound pieces like Misha's but everything even the silence in Mayan you really need you know that dynamic so um and check out uh all these works on uh PreludeNYC2020.com yeah that's important also work that already has people is still there it's archived some of it you can still re-re-experience even so they are released over time it's quite interesting it's like a little Netflix series for um for the New York downtown theater is it but just in a completely different and new way in form we have never done this is incredible um how much shape this festival took and I think it is truly um something to notice and to think about and helps us to create to great meaning so we're gonna have so out the week Bo talks with uh the Prelude artists and also a moment to listen what New York artists are thinking about also significant New York artists emerging artists and we're artists truly from all the communities and um we have to listen very closely and these ideas about also Kelsey talked about it yesterday like Mayan about healing and and Dominique and Sackler the structures the system that isn't um I'm really working and you know the work of Misha and his communities how do you bridge South Asian and American and African I mean how do you how do you really deal with it how do you put it together and what do you produce these dreams he he records of people and um so this is something we all should be thinking about and how we could reflect or we implement this in in our lives so really thank you all for listening thanks for Hullround to keep us on their great digital platform so I hope you all will stay safe and tune in again tomorrow thank you all for participating and all of you guys again thank you for taking the time and energy to be with us and to participate in this really inspiring prelude festival that asks a lot of questions not explaining anything but it's exploring and that is important so thank you all thank you bye bye thank you for having us guys