 I can't hear you. Are you muted? No. Can you hear me? Yeah, no. Yes. It's so nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I wish it were an actual person. Yeah, I'm sorry for what you guys are going through there. Well, we're all going through. Yeah, we are all going through it. First of all, all righty, everyone. We're live. Have fun. Oh, hi, we're live. Good morning, everyone. Hi, I'm Lisa Rothe. I'm the director of new works against City Repertory Theatre and I'm speaking to you live from the heartland in Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas. And I'm virtually and virtually joining us is artistic director, Stuart Cardin, who just started this job last August, and the illustrious Todd London. Hello, everyone. Hello. Good morning. I'm going to give a brief file for Todd in a few minutes, but I just first just want to say that we're so grateful that everyone could join us this morning. We were just joined us two seconds ago, so he's not quite sure of what we're doing, but I'm just gonna. I just want to thank a few people. I'm going to thank our sponsors to say that Casey represents presents this program in partnership with the Missouri Humanities Council, and with support from the National Endowment for the humanities. And I also want to thank everyone at HowlRound who's helped us put this live streaming event together. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. And its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. So Stuart, if you would like to kick us off with a few words. I would absolutely. I'm so grateful that Lisa, that, that you were able to pull this together. We're living in an extraordinary moment. And this was a part of this conversation with Todd was going to be in person and we were going to stream it. But we were going to have Todd at Kansas City and a Kansas City rep with us. And as everyone has experienced this week, we've had, we've had to adapt and change. And so we had the extraordinary opportunity to launch one world premiere last night to a private audience. And we lifted Frankenstein a ghost story into the air for opening and closing simultaneously. And we were very happy to be able to share that piece with, with a private audience that were deeply moved by the experience and then we're going to do the same thing tonight with our other world premiere by Stacy Rose. Legacy land, an extraordinary piece of writing and an extraordinary production. And it will be a private opening tonight. And it will also be the opening and closing of that production. But, you know, a lot of our colleagues around the country have not been able to thread this window to even get to this moment so we're grateful that that at least we get to see the piece through the emotional of an opening. So that's just a little context of where we are at Casey rep, and the context of this opportunity to engage with Todd, and Lisa has done a terrific job of switching things around to be able to make this possible, even though we're geographically remote. So I'm thrilled that I get to meet you in this way Todd, and I'm really grateful that you're you still were game to share some thoughts and ideas and perspective on new plays in America at this moment. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to turn things back over to Lisa. Great, thank you. I'm going to let Todd talk a little bit about the plays because that was also part of his keynote so we'll do that but I'm and so I'm not going to say anything about that at the moment but I also I just want to acknowledge that this would have been the fifth new play which was started in 2016 with former artistic director Eric Rosen and and the former director of new works Marissa Wolf. So I wanted to thank them for championing new work and developing the blueprint for the festival. And so I'm, again, I'm too grateful. Thanks Todd for joining us and for doing this so quickly. We just canceled everybody's flights. So thanks for organizing your space in Brooklyn with that beautiful painting. I love that. So we're who's it by. It's by Joan Snyder who's this amazing painter who took a playwriting class with my wife Karen Hartman and gave her a print as a thank you for her help as a writer. It's a great backdrop. Yeah, I'm an artist housing so I tried to do my best with some flowers. Sure. You have your and Stuart you've got a whiteboard with you with your children's names. I do. Welcome. When first came into my office and and it stayed up since. Oh, it's great. Thank you. So I, I'm just going to do a little bit of a bio for Todd and then we're going to let Todd run with it. So I know many of you who are tuning in. We know Todd and are aware of his accomplishments, but since we're virtual, and we can't see any of our audience and we're not quite sure who you are. I'm just going to give you a brief file. So Todd spent 18 years as artistic director of New York's new dramatists, the nation's oldest laboratory theater for playwrights. And under his leadership, the company received a special Tony honor and an obi award. And the first recipient of theater communications groups visionary leadership award for advancing the theater field as a whole. He also won the George Jean Mason Award for dramatic criticism. Todd received an honorary doctorate from DePaul University in 2016. He's the executive director of the University of Washington and School of Drama Todd is director of theater relations relations for the drama to skilled head of MFA playwriting at the new school and founding director of the third bohemian and interdisciplinary retreat for artists. Todd has written many books, including an ideal theater founding visions for a new American art outrageous fortune, the life and times of the new American play, the importance of staying earnest. He's made 18 actors 20 years, the artistic home, his first novel the world's room, and his second novel if you see him let me know just came out last month. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit later. And this is not my memoir co authored with Andre Gregory is due out in May. So friends and colleagues, I give you Todd London. Hi. Lisa. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you all of you who are here wherever you are I'm coming to you from my dining room table in Brooklyn, New York, as Lisa said, I don't know where you are but I am really glad we're together if only through the magic of the virtual. It's good to be with many of you in Kansas City at Kansas City Repertory Theater this weekend to help launch the fifth annual origin Casey new works festival, but as so much else it wasn't meant to be. I want to echo what Stuart said I know there are theater artists all over the country sitting at home when you were supposed to be in rehearsal or on stage, or celebrating this opening or that final week. There are years of work that are on hold or postponed or canceled, and we all suffer for it as we suffer for the lack of witness to that work. We are such natural gatherers in the theater, always making that essential invitation of the art, the request I've come to think of simply as let me sit with you a while. Thank you to all of you who, as a plan B or C or XYZ will sit with me a while this morning. Thank you for your Saturday. Just a few words about now, I mean risk is the realm of the theater but it's not such a good strategy when it comes to global pandemics. Risk is our realm and crisis is our norm and improvisation is at the top of the list of skills required for a life in this art. Thank you to all of you who have joined us at the wrap new works director Lisa Rothe who you just met the new artistic director congratulations Stuart Cardin, and the whole team, as well as the brilliant original Commons connector streamers at howl round with the unbreakable column of risk taking improvisational crisis surfers have scrambled to gather us together right here wherever that is, enabling us to keep our social distance while bridging it. And then achiness to this moment, I keep thinking of Laura Easton's festival play the vast in between. In it, a woman in the middle of an eroding marriage travels weekly between Chicago and Seattle, but really lives in the spaces between. She's neither with her daughter, a cusp teenager at 13 or truly separate from her. She's obsessed with a neighbor who's recently caught been caught leading a big amiss life, and she flirts with such a life herself stepping in and pulling out on each trip away from home. She can remember the good beginnings of her marriage and already knows what the ending might be still everywhere she moves is the in between where it's never clear just how to live where you are. That really feels like now to me in between as far as the eye can see, as we trudged on through our collective limbo. So this was meant to be a keynote speech 45 minutes long, but now it's more like a fire side chat with the fire being an office candle. The subject of the chat was the subject of the festival itself plays and origins and what's new, and especially the work of new works. If you're listening now, I suspect it's because you are part of that work, whether you're a playwright, director, actor designer festival thrower dramaturgical advisor administrator spectator auditor supporter helper or hanger around her. The goal is you're part of this labor of newness, and I'm excited to think about it with you to put words into what that labor is and why it's important. I want to start by simply saying the names of the plays and the playwrights who were to have been part of the festival in hopes that you'll seek them out in some other way. In addition to production of Kyle Hattley's two person adaptation of Marie Shelley's Frankenstein kicked off the festival to be last night directed by Johnny Schultz, followed by a reading of my shook. Dan Dean's flood directed by Ken Prastinenzi. The second full production, which will have its opening and closing tonight we heard was of Stacy Rose's legacy land with Logan Vaughn as director, and finally a reading of the vast in between Laura Easton's play with Johnny Schultz again as director. We have a wonderful panels planned with some great compassionate from a surgical minds the best in our profession, and of course barbecue. Apparently the staff of the rep spent some time yesterday reflecting on the wonderful weekend that wasn't as if remembering it after the fact, each one describing favorite moments and meals. If we can't live it we dream it the space is empty we fill it up one way or another. I've only been to Kansas City and the rep wants though I feel as if I know it because I've known three of the former artistic directors, George Keith Lee Peter Altman and Eric Rosen have known them for decades. The legacy who put this festival together has happily been in my life for a long time, as has Marissa Wolf who was the founder, or a founder of origin Casey festival. I was eager this meet this weekend to meet Stuart, the new artistic director and to be there in person to wish him great things in the years ahead. I say all this not to brag on my connections or establish rep credentials but to point out an obvious fact, even in the land of the new new plays new artistic director new decade. We're always building on what's come before changing it, reacting to it, updating it or leaping off from it. Whether we tear down the structures in which we find ourselves are merely remodeled the parts of the house we think time worn, whether we ignore or pay tribute modify or dismantle evolve or revolt. We in the theater are always part of some kind of continuous creation. The setting of Stacy roses legacy land is also its centerpiece a house haunted and defined by brutality and love, as though the building itself remembers its incestuous history, a past that tears two sisters apart even as it binds them together. Stacy's title is the perfect name for the place we live when we are new. We usher in the new while standing in legacy land. It's true of theaters and it's true of playmakers. I often returned to John Gware's ravishing introduction to a 1997 collection of Thornton Wilder short plays where imagines a playwright a parade of playwrights from escalous on down to anyone who's even written one play. Each generation says quote, finish my work, finish what I've started. These are the questions I leave behind. And so we proceed to make the new from unanswered questions with queries to us until the time comes when we leave our own questions for those who come after us to answer. Our questions may be old but our preoccupation with them is of the moment. One era may ask what is liberation how do I get free. Another might be driven to know what we owe to each other, the extent of our limit or limit of our social responsibility. We might be compelled to see the source of human inhumanity or wonder how to forgive evil, which isn't to say that a single question defines a time, but that questions circulate through history, gaining urgency with the events of the day. It's not new, for example, for artists to probe questions of identity racial, ethnic or sexual, for example, the theater has always done so. But sometimes the questions flame hotter as they do today. Sometimes the questions require newer answers to suit evolving conditions and norms. Conjuring questions are our provocations. And as the activist intellectual Cornell West has written, quote, just as hope, just as hope is the fruit of love, provocation is the fruit of vocation and invocation. In other words, our questions arise from the work we're called to do, and from our prayers are conjuring calls for help and guidance from others, including whatever gods we worship. And in prayer, both callings bring forth our questions of provocations. Cornell West offers a great example of how a single line of inquiry can lead to a whole lineage of artists. In his celebratory introduction to a moment on the clock of the world, the anthology of essays that culminated the 25 year lifespan of the important foundry theater in New York. West singles out a terrifying question from the character of mama in Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun, quote, how does one bequeathed to the younger generation, the rich traditions of critique and resistance. From this question, posed by a character full of mature love unparalleled on our stages, West traces an aesthetic very different from that of playwrights focused, for example, on the bleak underbelly of America. He calls this aesthetic line a great caravan of love of truth, beauty, goodness, and sometimes of God that provokes us into habitual vision of excellence and elegance, joy and justice, courage and contestation. In this lineage, he places the work of musicians, John Coltrane and Nina Simone and of novelists Tony Morrison and James Baldwin. To that line, I'd add playwrights Lynn Nottage, Terrell Alvin McCrainy, Jackie Sibley's Drury, Daniel Alexander Jones, Alicia Harris, as well as many others who don't share an African American heritage, but work in this tradition of love and justice, like Taylor Mack, Haruna Lee, Tony Kushner, Chiara Allegria-Houdi's, Larissa Fasthorse, Universes, and the Beat Goes On. Our ongoing questions make the world go round and where they stop is new. Let's set newness aside for a second and look at another choice of words. I love that the folks at the rep chose to call this a festival of new works as opposed to new plays. I suspect there are a lot of reasons for this diction. The theater is absolutely a place for plays, but it's also a place for many other kinds of creation, spectacles, performances, rituals, participatory events or immersive ones, and what we call those things we don't know what to call, theater pieces. The more we proliferate and change, the newer the new gets, the more it spills out of old linguistic containers, the shared codes that help us know what to expect from the art meal prepared for us. So yes, let's just call it work, new work. Let's go back to the words, the roots, even of the word playwright, the right of which first referred to a woodworker, builder, constructionist. Think about woodworking when you think about playmaking, the heft of the lumber, the muscular intensity of the cut. We saw and hammer fit and bang. And then when we've acquired the skill and finesse, we or you because I'm not a playwright nor a carpenter, we scrape and sand and lave and turn the lumber of our love. Funny how these ancient crafts shape our linguistic legacy. The woodworking term known as scribing, which describes the way a molding or frame gets shaped to fit the piece of budding it and how the lines or patterns get engraved when a replacement piece goes in a carving made to match. And with some splendid comic cosmic precision. Another word for scribing is coping. We write to cope. And in writing we must learn to cope with so very much. We have to say when we come together to W R I G H T new work, we are coming together to build something separately or together, each in their own role or roles. And that's something though built out of just created synthetics or old unanswered questions. First thoughts are naive discoveries. That's something we call new to never knew from scratch, even though for the creator, it may be a belly crawl through the dark into the unknown. Kyle Hadley's Frankenstein is a play or performance piece or play with music played by a lone woman museum musician, whose appearances and disappearances are part of the thematic and sonic landscape of loss at the heart of the work. In the story, which mostly follows the novel, but in a contemporary key. Victor Frankenstein makes something never made before. Frankenstein's monster is new, but he's made out of old parts dead parts sewn together in a motley of muscle and bone flesh and feature. Yes, we all know the new can be monstrous. Just maybe to hammer the Frankenstein metaphor home. What's new about a theater creation isn't its parts, which are repurposed and borrowed and dug up from the ruins of previous lives. What's new is the animating jolt, the enlivening spirit discovered only after years of trial and error, long nights in the laboratory, and the kind of burst of insight going of intense labor. The life spark is what's new. It's also what's distinct the part that can't be replicated. The spirit or soul something that makes one person unique and utterly oneself. I call this distinction voice. I spent 18 years as artistic director of new dramatists in New York, where playwrights enjoy seven year residencies. I had a quotation on my door that I understood in a limited way. It's from the novelist DH Lawrence who proclaimed. It's hard to hear a new voice as hard as to listen to an unknown language. Out of fear, the fear, the world fears new experience more than it fears anything. It can pigeonhole any idea, but it can't pigeonhole a real new experience. It can only dodge the world is a great dodger and the Americans the greatest, because they dodge their very own selves. We agree that the fear of the new of the unknown fear of the languages of others is on bold display in our country these days. Can we agree that although we the so called people seem not to agree on a damn thing that we as a people on the right or left or anywhere in between live in a federation of segregated echo chambers soothed by familiarity and the recognizable. So what DH Lawrence means by Americans being Dodgers of the new, then he had us pegged, which is not to say that we don't sometimes need echo chambers I mean choirs need preaching to to keep them singing. We need to hear our shared beliefs reiterated and keep the fires of faith and inspiration and activism stoked, but artistic echo chambers are bad for the evolution of the art form itself. Without the familiar, if they come to depend on certain guideposts for the good, a certain kind of character at the center, a certain kind of violent conflict that feels dramatic, a certain kind of humor that grows from a certain kind of recognizable type, a certain kind of story about a newsworthy topic or subject of agreed upon importance. All this agreement on what makes quality theater actually contributes to its decline. In this context, too much new can be where weird or even scary. We value what reminds us of things we've previously valued. But we learn from that which causes confusion, the confusion that precedes learning, the categorical frustration that precedes new stages of human growth. 100 years later, we still don't know what to call the place of check off tragedy or comedy or tragic comedy or what. After Beckett and the post war poking post nuclear playwrights constellating around him critics had to construct a whole new category of absurdism, because those slippery playwrights frustrated all the existing and existential categories. What kind of box does Adrian Kennedy belong in or Maria Irene for us. No box. That's exactly the point. They were absolutely new 50 years ago and continue to be new now. Their absence from major stages stands in shocking contradiction to their continuing ups and down up. I'm sorry, they're shocking. Their absence from major stages stands in shocking contradiction to their continuing and up to this very minute influence. There's playwrights parade and Cornell West's caravan of love. I'd be hard pressed to think of American playwrights, leading longer parades or caravans these days than Adrian Kennedy or Irene for this other than maybe the sneakily influential Thornton Wilder, despite their remaining virtually unknown to the theater going public. Maybe what's new is that which stays new that which concatenates more of the same which is newly different. That's why I love festivals like this one. Like our festival to be even if we have to engage it virtually and imagine it privately. Here we are around our computers, kept at a distance by disease, together envisioning a new newness, bring it on. But I've been winding my way to another point and that's this new voices aren't always new. I'm going to say that again new voices aren't always new they may just be new to us to the people who live where we live and look like we look. They may be new to a theater of one size or another. They may have been making their beautiful sounds mostly unheard through stretches of semi solitary artistic gestation, which could last decades. In a field that often favors the young and new over the long laboring 20 year overnight sensations. The doors that lead truly new artists to audiences to us may have been previously closed. They may just be new to us because we're part of a culture not used to listening to the voices of another culture informs those voices take out of the traditions from which those voices rise. I've had this experience a lot and maybe you have to. It's the time of year they announced the Nobel Prize for literature, and suddenly I stumble upon a new Chinese novelist or Egyptian poet or Russian journalist. And despite the fact that they are major mature international geniuses with massive bodies of historic work. I've just made a discovery. I'm suddenly in touch with the new. I had a high school teacher who at such a moment would have tossed a chalkboard eraser my way and called me an ethnocentric booby. And he would be right. There aren't enough erasers in America to hit all us ethnocentric boobies in the theater. Citizens cannot relate well to the complex world around them by factual knowledge and logic alone. The ethical philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues and not for profit by democracy needs the humanities. The third ability of the citizen. She continues after knowledge and after knowledge gathering and logic quote is what we call narrative imagination. Without the arts to foster this narrative imagination that allows us to walk in the shoes of others. And I quote. We do not automatically see another human being as spacious and deep, having thoughts, spiritual longings and emotions. It is all too easy to see another person just as a body, which we might then think we can use for our ends good or bad. The arts and humanities allow us to quote, see a soul in that body. But how can you see a soul in an unfamiliar body with blinders on and the predominantly white American theater, the sound of our dominant culture is so loud. The gaze of its audiences so defining that even young masters like last year's Pulitzer Prize winner Jackie Sibley's Drury and obi winner Alicia Harris are experimenting with strategies to segregate African American audiences from the way more numerous white ones just to have a chance to speak directly to and heal with the people they write their plays for without explanation or apology. As an 18 speech turned essay called high tide of heartbreak Tony and Pulitzer winner Kiara Allegria who these rights. It is discombobulating and even humiliating to write Latinx characters will be seen mostly by white audiences. It feels like either their brownness or their humanity is the primary performance. The point is this in a theater that has been mostly produced by and presented to a homogenous cultural vantage point. The new is often a product of difference. The other can seem very new, even when they've been here all along invisible to those of us who prevail. The new in this sense is the work of our nation that of speaking across origin difference race and culture and gender ability and age to listen across divergent and even incompatible histories. And it's this work that makes what we do when we gather together in a theater, especially when we gather to listen to and for the previously unspoken or unheard. That makes it so urgent. This urgency electrifies the waters of Dean's flood. The play is a stirring absurdist critical about those who refuse to see even the most evident dire changes happening around them. A man fiddles endlessly with a tabletop model. He's building out of wood. While his wife stands by to brew tea for the day he's finished with his masterpiece, that future quiet time when they can be together and answer the unanswerable questions about life she's been keeping on a list. Meanwhile, the ocean is rising all around them threatening to reach even their apartment on the 16th floor. Meanwhile, their two children both unlike their parents ethnically and in gender expression, living lower down are drowning. The man fiddles, the woman waits, and even their children's calls can't rouse them from insensibility and denial. They don't know who their children are, and they don't hear their alarms. Will the playwrights call rouse us. It's easy to say that theater teaches empathy. Maybe empathy is fostered in the act of making theater. I like to believe it is. But if over the past 50 years theater going has upped the capacity for empathy in our audiences. Why has it been so hard for our traditional patrons to accept the work of writers who don't share their heritage. Why aren't our subscribers clamoring for more plays by black Latinx Asian and Native American artists for LGBTQ artists for artists from different nations with different abilities. Why aren't they picketing our institutions stop with the Shakespeare already down with Ibsen and his heirs we've had enough of Aristotle. I had a teacher in graduate school and distinguished literary critic who didn't throw erasers, but instead lobbed questions at us. One simple one stays with me. Would you rather read a writer who describes experience similar to your own recognizable and what we now call relatable, or a writer who describes worlds very different from your own. I confess that to my shame I picked door number one. I wanted the recognizable, the familiar that which confirms the world as I knew it, rather than that which would make me work to break through what I knew to acknowledge the alien and I don't mean the alien in the sci fi sense. I didn't speak my answer out loud at the time, but I knew the self incriminating truth, and I knew I had to do whatever it took to turn my attention to the merely familiar around. That distinguished and I now see wise professor made the case for the other door, the one that opens to the other, the unknown, the world we might never have stepped foot in populated by people we might never have met. That was the case, not exactly for the new, but for the new to each of us, the different from each of us work on which I now absolutely believe our lives, our humanity, our civilization depends. What then, if this is the work of our lives and civilization is possible in the theater. Here's what I'd suggest. The ongoing labor of making work for the stage has two essential features that of individual creative fulfillment and that of social cooperation. In the land of playwrights, the world of new and mature voices, we can clearly see this first feature how imaginative and emotional freedom leads to individual distinction. There is little in this life more exciting and inspiring than an artistic voice finding its fullness. In my years at Neutrometis, I got to know writers and their bodies work really well. I could see the project of that work, the ways it intersects with their lives, the way one play leads to another to another questions raised at the end of one becoming the springboard for the next. Think of this as the beautiful flourishing of distinct beings. And I first learned it from living in community with playwrights, and by writing about their bodies of work in the spirit of admiration and celebration, including right here on howl round. Isn't this why we're here in this treacherous, terrifying and magnificent world to make the most of the gifts we've got for the time we've got. Because when you scan the walls of a museum or walk the paths of a botanic garden and full flower, you see how profoundly unique each vision is when it appears in relief to another, or stands out in a field of wild biodiversity. You learn what makes a thing, a voice, a person, a talent distinct is how its singular brilliance shines next to the singular brilliance of others. I saw a shockingly original production this month, a remounting of Haruna Lee's Suicide Forest at Maii Theater in New York City, now sadly closed as so much vibrant hard one, beautiful theater is, even in the past 48 hours. I don't have time or width to describe it all as this piece flips from Japanese to English from inspired frenzy to profoundly intimate self revelation and places in between. The writer Haruna Lee plays the central character to a teenage girl trapped in the over sexualized rape culture of the male workplace part cartoon and all nightmare. She also plays a version of herself and presents herself to us in a kind of naked vulnerable revelation only possible in the live theater. The writer's own Japanese mother in the piece, she appears in the piece her mom is in the piece making her buttoe like way through an abstract forest, whereas the mythic mad mad, she lures lovers to their deaths. Haruna Lee's piece takes place in two languages, leaping cultures traditions myths and genres, but it really takes place in the artist's heart and mind and soul, from which it is gifted to us utterly new. Shortly after, I saw another autobiographically inspired work centering on a playwright's mother, the tour de force of Lucas Nathes Dana H crafted from verbatim interviews with the playwright's mother, 20 years after her five month kidnapping at the hands of a member of the Aryan brotherhood. And I saw still another uncategorizable event also steeped in autobiography, Gillian Walker's lush and musically interwoven unpacking of race and color family history and self skin folk. Each work as distinct as it could be each voice unmistakable. Meanwhile, preparing for Kansas City for today. I read Kyle Hattley and Stacy Rose, Laura Eason, and Michelle Dean. In all this singularity, all this difference of voice and project and self, this I found and this again I came to know. When it comes to playwrights a rose is a rose is a rose and so it is for Hattley and Eason Dean. This leads me to the second part of the work of the new. In addition to fostering the singular gifts of the individual artists in this instance the play carpenter, the theater demands social cooperation to an almost unparalleled degree. I've been compulsively quoting director author ensemble genius and Bogart statement that quote theater is the only art form that is always about social systems. He asks, can we get along. Can we get along as a society. Can we get along in this room. How might we get along better. Every play, according to and asks us to imagine a society, and every process of building a play asks it. It's part of what makes theater so difficult and awe inspiring. You have the playwrights in their solitary creative layers. They are plumbing their lives and the lives of others, imagining to the farthest limits of personal ability, exercising a relentless radical freedom to be whoever they are think whatever they think, and say whatever they must. In the solitary playwrights peeling the layers of self in the privacy of their process, and then with a crazy raw vulnerability falling somewhere between egotistic hubris at one end and codependent desperation at the other. They deliver up there nearly born into the hands of others. Directors, actors, designers, technicians, managers, all the rest of us including the spectators and hangers around us who must finish the job, locate the through spirit and deliver the animating jolt that brings the beautiful new baby monster to miraculous life. How does it happen. We know it doesn't happen alone. There is such a thing as authorship as anyone who has faced the blank page knows, but in the human communal art of the theater, there was always a time when writing, like those cut boards must be joined. Daniel Alexander Jones the brilliant and humane playwright director drag artist and diva Chandler taught me that even in solo performance, you're never flying solo. You're always creating from influence and teaching. You're always creating with others musicians designers lightboard operators in conversation with others present and gone, even alone on stage the monologue is in dialogue with the audience. The same is true for a playwright regardless of how her medic their studio or gargantuan their talent. While rewriting perestroika part two of his angels in America epic, Tony Kushner added a now famous afterward, acknowledging the contributions of over two dozen collaborators, without whom the play would not have been the same or been at all. Even as he defensively nervously claims that the primary labor on angels its authorship was his Kushner cites Marx's belief that the smallest individual human unit is to the smallest divisible human unit is two people, not one. One is a fiction. Soaringly, the playwright adds quote, from such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs and also plays. This is the labor of the new. It's also I believe the labor of this life. That is, the fulfillment of individual gifts gifts within these nets, the fabric of our society with others. The one who is never just one however solitary and arduous the task works plays joins with others to form a social order dependent on the best in each. If this is an order for just the few an order of the familiar it's not an order at all. It's merely the box we know a fixed, unchanging thing that can never hold the immensities of which human beings are capable that can never expand as the world inevitably expands a box that has to shore up its walls to keep out the new is sure to break. But the new is a parade stretching back through time. It's a caravan snaking into the future. It's a net of souls from which human life springs and also plays. These life giving forms can only take shape when our eyes and ears are available to the visions unfamiliar to us, and the voices we haven't yet heard. That's why I can't think of playmaking as separate from world making. They are versions of the same enterprise, the clumsy lumbering labor of dreaming alone and then together assembling, fashioning, fitting, hammering and scribing, which is also coping and requires coping, joining the most vivid of these dreams into something that gives life, and is the best of life, because it makes the best of our individual and collective gifts. It's a heavy work. And in Kansas City and all around the country artists and artisans and administrators are having to temporarily lay down their materials, set aside their tools work that has taken years to get to the stage has been stopped. A horrible loss in a terrifying time, but a loss for the safety of all. I don't want to minimize this loss, and I'm living it for myself and for many of my friends. At the same time, I know that the people who make theater, raised on risk, accustomed to crisis and trained in improvisation are also the perfect crew to have around when making a new healthier more just and beautiful play world healthier more just and a beautiful world and also place. Thank you Lisa and Stuart and Kansas City rep. And thank you all for listening and being here, wherever you are. Stay safe and sanitized and especially stay sane. We will get through this together because that's what we do. Thank you. Todd London. I'm not sure if anybody can see me yet, but if you can. I can see you. Okay. And if we were in a room full of people, there would be an outrageous applause. Yeah, would be standing and cheering. So it's just me. Hi Lisa. Hi. Thanks for the applause. Thank you. Thank you so much for those beautiful words. Thank you so. Necessary at this time. So thank you for filling a little bit of a void on this Saturday morning. Really grateful. I have a few questions coming in. Yeah, I'm a one person band here in my artist housing. You know between email and my phone and stuff I've got a coming in. I wanted to. So, so those of you who have joined or late, I'm here, I'm Lisa Rothe and the director of new works at Kansas City rep. And we're here with Todd London, who just gave a beautiful keynote speech that would have been at the Kansas City new works festival. I love how you mind this whole concept of work. I love the idea of the play carpenter. It was actually reminding me of Zelda for the Chandler's like artists citizen, as it were, and so as we're moving into this and that the theater demands social cooperation in an almost unparalleled degree. And so a couple of questions that are coming in is just kind of starting a little simply. One of the questions was what is missing in our landscape, whose voices what forms, and where are the holes so that simple but also slightly. That's a huge question. The huge question. Okay, and then you know what, and this is actually three people have emailed me already and forgive me for those of you who are joining us who don't have access to, to asking questions to me because this is all happening so last minute. If anybody would like to send an email, if you wanted to send to Lisa dot m dot rothi at gmail.com. You have questions. Please jump in. We've got about 45 minutes to have this conversation. I'm going to go back a second. I'm going to go back I should because it's related to what just happened in this conversation. And speaking about how technology actually can impact our ability to gather in these uncertain times. So as you said we're creatures of gathering. And also, you know, Greek theater was very ritualistic and people were required to attend the shared experience. And one of the things that's coming in about what is lost in translation with screens, or is it related to the value of what you're, you were talking about called with witnessing and believing. I believe you use witnessing in a political context can witnessing heal cultural divides transcend the echo echo chamber effect. And just talking a little bit about at this moment where we are here we are in a virtual reality. How art can stay alive as we're forced to stay apart. Okay, we're starting with a small. Well, I, you know, I wish I had some grand wisdom that other people don't have. I mean, I think we're all, you know, we're all swimming in the unknown and you know, I guess it's hard. I was thinking this morning that you know what each of us has been going through as far as I can tell I certainly did work were related to like the stages of grief, you know, even then thinking about this weekend are you know, which is being to us and little in context, you know, oh, I, I'm going to get there we're going to get there we're going to make it happen we're going to bargain, you know, oh we'll get there and then I there was a time when I was going to send you my speech to read because I knew you were there. And then there was a time when it became really clear it wasn't going to happen. And everybody was bummed out and then there was a chance to go beyond. So I think, you know, there's just so much happening in real time that it's really hard to know and I appreciate the questions. And I wish I were, I were smarter and had more of a crystal ball what I do think is that, you know, just even following Facebook, which has gone from seeming evil to seeming necessary and about 72 hours. I'm reading the beautiful incredible statements from theater leaders and artists all over the country about why they make the decision to shut down acknowledging and confirming the the cost to the artists themselves. And I'm going to contribute to the work that has been done to get these plays and these projects to the stage. It gives me a sense of, you know, I really really really believe this, I believe that theater people are among the most beautiful wonderful, you know, people in the world, partly because of our naive belief that what we do is important and can and I feel like that is on is on just broad display these last weeks as people are sending these messages out and making these really hard decisions. I mean I saw it in Stuart, you know, I read it yesterday in this beautiful statement from Rocky Garrett at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which is a huge mechanism that has to shut down affecting hundreds of people's work. Everyone who's had a play they've been working on for years and then pushing onto the stage and then it shuts so all to say yeah the cost is really real. And yet, there is in theater people, you know, just this incredible mother courage marching through the fields ability. You know, and that's in a very strange capitalistic context this isn't a gift economy context that we, it's going to happen, something's going to happen. Right now, you and me, Lisa Rothe and Todd London, we are the Casey Origins Newark Festival. There we are. Okay. And next year, we will all celebrate, you know, there are, you know, we go through this, this is the world when when September 11th happened, we were both in New York and it felt like it was for many people, the end of the world, and the end of something so unsurvivable at the beginning of something so unsurvivable, but we do survive it. And, and I think theater people are more, I'm not answering about technology because I know fuck all about technology but here we are, we have these. I mean, think about, you know, I mean, if we lived in plague ridden London in the 1500s, there were only 100,000 of us to begin with so as a much smaller community, but at no other time in our history have we had so much information so soon, the ability to connect. What would we be doing if this were even 20 years ago, and this happened, we would know much more slowly about the dangers of the disease. And we wouldn't be able to talk to each other at all except on our landlines one at a time. Yeah, so I don't know that's a non answer, but the question is so big and it's an improvisation and I hope that, you know, in two months we're all sitting around somewhere in barbecue together. Me too. In my house, everybody's invited everybody's now is invited to Brooklyn to brooklyn sometime in, in June, question mark for for barbecue. Thank you. Thank you. Bad barbecue because we've got, we've got, we've got a bunch of bottles we can ship them to you. Please do from shipping is still happening. Maybe. I'm going to just go to, I want to go back to just some of your work a little bit that outrageous fortune, right, your book examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today. And the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not for profit theaters. So, this book came out at the end of 2009. So just over 10 years ago, which really tried to help us understand why, why really new work work that makes a difference to us all was getting it harder and harder to make happen in the mainstream theaters in the US. So I'm just wondering from your perspective of what has changed since then, what have you seen in the field since that time. And are we ready for a sequel. I like these softball questions that you're throwing me. Well, a lot has changed in strangely in 10 years, I mean, I think the book and another project gateways of opportunity gates of opportunity that David Dower was working on for the Andrew W. Mellon foundation at the time. And so called attention to the financial struggles around new work and around the life of playwrights. And I think others including the Society of Directors and choreographers picked up the question for directors and, you know, in my mind, I mean I was living I often live in the world of playwrights. But I think there's a bigger picture to the book which is the lives and livelihoods of independent artists at all. You know it's that thing it's like, it's like the Howard Zinn thing you know which is like we hear about history as a history of power and success and corporations and the winners in a way. The history of the people who actually do the labor, you know, not that people working in institutional theaters don't do the labor they absolutely do but, you know, you make the plays you direct the plays you act in the plays and then your cut loose. And that was in the context of that and I think I hope that the work that we did through a theater development fund on the book with Ben Pesner and Johnny boss and Tory Bailey leading us helped to call attention to some of those issues. Around new work, you know, there's been and there was leading up to that a lot of attention called to like, how do we continue the life of new work, how do we get beyond just what was often called premier it is how do we circulate work as the National Network does with their rolling world premieres and their expanded network of theaters. So that kind of thing but then there's a lot of other stuff that has changed that's so interesting to me. So one thing is for playwrights, television has changed. It's gone from being a kind of dirty little secret that you know people turn to at a certain point of their faith flailing career because all careers flail at times. And it's gone to like an end in itself a wonderful end that allows people to not only exercise creativity and their skills, but also to take true leadership I mean we have playwrights leading, you know, multi million dollar budgeted shows, and really having a kind of power that they're rarely granted in the theater which won't even hire them for artistic director positions. And that's been a change and that will have, you know, huge impact on the theater if it hasn't already. It has. We also something that I'm fascinated by is two things that kind of have moved simultaneously since then, which is artists taking initiative to assess the field and map the field, especially in terms of its equity, and diversity and inclusiveness to artists of all stripes. So we have not only the count which was started at the with the by the Lily Awards by Julia Jordan and Marsha Norman, but we also have all kinds of counts the Asian American performing arts coalition a legal professional theater women, you know, individuals like Portia McGovern looking at women designers and directors in Lord theaters. So they're, and then out of that, or, you know, simultaneous things like the kill Roy's list and ways of getting work that has been previously less known, or less seen into the field, and also holding the mirror up to the to our field to say, this is what we are this is how we present ourselves, even though we sometimes think we're often think we're doing the best with the best intentions. What are we actually doing. So those are our real changes. And then of course I mean the most significant one that I've been thinking about in the past really just year or two is this incredible and moving and hopeful generational leadership around the country at the institutional theaters, more and more women leaders, which is interesting because it's a field that was founded by women like you mentioned Zelda pitch handler, and then was turned over to actually to from Kansas City and Patricia McGregor McElrath, McGregor McElrath at Kansas City Rep, you know, in nine events and Margaret Jones is that it is a field that was founded by women. And then once it became mature, men were brought in to take over. And then now more and more women and people of color are moving into positions of leadership younger artists are moving into positions of leadership. And that's amazing. And I, you know, and I'm cheering from here and like, and I can't wait to see what happens and what this means, especially because I think the new leaders have a really different sense of like how new work sits, what it means to have a community that isn't just subscribers and patrons but it's actually neighbors and people that you want to welcome into your theater so so many changes, I'm, you know, talking really fast to get some of them in. And you kind of were then answering all the questions I was asking before and what's missing in our landscape whose voices what forms some of that as well so thank you I have a, I have a question from Laurie Walter Hudson. Okay, from India. So you talked about your experience getting to know a writer's work and can over seven years at new dramatists. Seven years. Seven years. Oh sorry seven years. Okay, I was, I was 18. Is there something in the idea of audiences getting to know a writer over various seasons that could build audience empathy. She says I think about James stills 20 plus your legacy. Love James still shout out as a playwright in residence at Indiana Repertory Theater and how he's become a local celebrity. He's become a highlight of every season for subscribers signature theater in New York City has that same goal, get to know a writer and know them better through their body of work. What do you think about the idea of launching a program that centers a playwright in residence at every regional theater in the country. How long does it take to pull audiences in, and is that idea limiting or liberate. So what a great question Lori, thank you so much. I think many things about that first of all, one of the other changes that came about after outrageous fortune and David Dower's work was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched its national playwright residency program which actually, and actually Kansas City was with Nathan Jackson was one of the early recipients of that which was a three year salary residency for playwrights. And part of that was to provide stable lives for playwrights and also to integrate them into the lives of the theaters, and also to integrate them into the local audiences in the way that Lori is asking it that program is about to announce its third or I want to say maybe fourth third round I think it might be fourth but I think it's the third round of residency. Some have repeated so there are playwrights like pro clay in Atlanta who was spent six years in residency there I think will power may have spent six years in residency at Dallas Theater Center. I think it's a great and wonderful idea. I think that the research that theater development fund and your Bay Area we're doing around triple play was an attempt to get theaters. Theater administrators and artistic directors in a way out of the position of mediating between playwrights and audiences, so that they could speak directly to each other and get to know each other. I think you know it goes back. So history nerd about to speak. It goes back to the roots of a big impulse and the founding of the regional and resident theaters, which precedes them in a way goes back to about the 20s in places like South Dakota, and North Carolina, which is the notion of regional playwrights regional that come out of a community and then and thus speak to the community. And I think you, you, you cannot, we cannot underestimate the power of that or the necessity for that. I don't know when it happened that we came to think of the theater as a mass media. You know, for a mainstream audience, the theater has always been local. So the idea that we have local theaters that sprung up in the 50s and 60s, and later in the 70s, that would all call from the 75% of playwrights who live on either coast, especially in New York and LA, and they would be able to speak to all those same audiences. I don't know where that idea came from. I moved about four years ago my family, six years ago, we moved to Seattle from New York and then move back four years later. And in that move, I saw, I just woke up to the fact that New York and Seattle, they're not the same place. And because we drove there and drove back, all those places in between are not New York and Seattle. And so why wouldn't. So I think it's a beautiful idea that there are playwrights who live and work over time in these areas and audiences really get to know them. And, and what that does and then I will stop this answer is it so something happened in the in the institutional theater and I really learned this from Tori Bailey at Theater Development Fund. There was a moment where we stopped talking about audience development. And we turned all of that work of audience development over to marketing departments. If by just selling plays or selling productions or selling the theater well, we would develop that audience, but audience development is a conversation that happens over time. We sit around in our artist echo chamber and we talk about things that are maybe years before our audiences will see them or understand them or know them or get enough access to them. And so that signature model or that profile theater model in Portland, or that the Indiana rep model or that the residency model of it just, it just does the work we were meant to do which is to speak to the people of our communities in an ongoing way. And it takes it out of the hands of, it's not that marketing departments are bad at that work they do it the best of their ability but it's not their job. It's not their job. I want to go back to what you were talking about actually the founding of all of this, right in the conversations that were happening in the region. And, you know, here we are in, we're in Kansas City, and that that conversation to I had this conversation a lot with my, one of my teachers and mentors, Zell of the channel, who I mentioned earlier, when I was an MFA students at NYU. And she was, as you say, I believe you said this anyway the great founding rabbi of the regional of the regional theater. And she was able to achieve so much due to her unsurpassed skills of persuasion, and using what you called her dazzling Talmudic mind. So I know you spent some time with Zelda, and many boxes of her writings and speeches I just want to just hear a little bit about that project some of the takeaways of the time that you spent with Zelda and with her writings. And when we can expect to see what you've compiled in print. Well, okay. That a bad question. No, it's a, it's a, it's a great question. It's just a, you know, there's just, there is so much to mourn at this moment. And, and I mourn the loss of Zelda, the Chandler and I mourn her, the loss of her in our lives and that sort of thing. Some time before I moved to Seattle in 2014. I, Zelda reached out to me as someone who, you know, has written about the, the movements that you helped found. And I was one of a long line of helpers in her many, many years attempt to create a book, a collection of her years of writing. Essays, speeches, sometimes grant proposals that were in effect, extended essays, and ways of articulating the underlying principles and changing dynamics of the movement that she helped found and led for 40 years at arena 25 years as the head of graduate acting at NYU. A little time as the head of the acting, artistic director of the acting company in there. And Zelda had this amazing ability that I think of as an ability to fix the bicycle and theorize about the bicycle, while riding the bicycle downhill, you know what I mean. It's like, she just had this incredible mind and was a very active leader and all that kind of stuff. So I worked with her for on and off for a few years, she actually encouraged me to take the job that I took in Seattle and we would talk on the phone, she would send, you know, literally, literally, I think there's like 18 boxes of her work gathered by her longtime assistant Angie Moy. And at a certain point, and it was a huge moment in my life. She called me in Seattle and she said I might be going into surgery. I'm not sure I will be able to continue the work on the book. Would you make sure that it gets done. I can't do it. She didn't go into surgery she lived for another year and a half or so I think she died at 93 or 94 years old. And, but after that she didn't work on the book anymore. So when she died a few years ago, I took over finishing the book for TCG your communications group, which was an editing project but it was also really. It was a life giving thing as you know from, you know, she was such an important person in your life. She was a more distant important person in my life, but for a long, long time. And you become really intimate with somebody when you live in their words there are hundreds, hundreds of thousands of words. So that work is going to is due out in the fall from TCG. It's been I've delivered it we're going to start editing any day and never know when that day is. And, and it's a great read for people and I say not because it's mine it's hers. It's a great read for reminder about why we're in it. What the human work of the theater is. It's just, it's really the most so nourishing kind of editorial work I've ever engaged in. I can't wait to read it. I mean I just a sliver of it you know we would start the beginning of the new year, every semester in the great acting program and she would have these incredibly eloquent and deep, beautiful speeches, and you know, Zelda was a complex figure in many ways and wonderful. And, but those speeches were always so incredibly inspiring to like kick off the new year, you know, especially your second year when you're a mess and everything's falling apart. So, yeah. So thank you for that I look forward to to hearing that. Liz Engelman. Okay. Hey, Liz. This is a wonderful ritual that we went through. It was a, it was a conversation around a table yesterday at our, at our artistic meeting we were just before we knew that we were canceling actually the productions. And, but we knew that the festivals can be canceled. And I just started imagining what that would have been like. And what the weekend, how beautiful and great the weekend wasn't how wonderful people were anyway. And what you're imagining now is the highlights to be as we still try to make theater in this unimaginable time. What might it look like, looking back. All of your friends are coming in with. Oh, so Liz Engelman is one of the great dramaturgical minds in our country and one of the great spirits in our theater. And of course, she's going to pose a question about looking ahead and imagining the future. Yeah, I really wish I wasn't having to field some of these questions about the future and what this is going to bring about but, you know, I can span this out to we can have like a series of fireside chats. I have to answer it all now. Yes, with a dwindling audience I'm sure it'd be great. You know, I, so I've been teaching I've been teaching at the new school and like faculty theater faculty, I mean all faculty across the country we're dealing with the closings of schools. And it's particularly impactful in fields like the theater that demand us being live together. And I'm especially especially feeling it for the students who the graduating students and the culminating MFA students who have their final productions or their first production full productions or their public readings or their performances or their showcases or whatever whatever. And, but one of the things that I've noticed in the few days that we've been trying to problem solve some of the months ahead with our students is that, once they like us like the rest of us, once they get over the initial or once they get kind of through the initial disappointments and angers and historic kind of the frustration the fuming at the world that is out of our control. And once they kind of let go of all that's unmanageable. They are so frickin brilliant at thinking of other ways to do their work. You know, so one of the things that it maybe this is an answer to this is question that I imagine is that we will find the depth of our global intimacy by getting used to connecting in different ways, which has been something that's been saved for sort of the conference room, you know, that we will find out of necessity in the way that in the meantime, media maybe artists have been finding out of their personal necessity ways to expand what we think of as live and what we think of as gathering. And I'm resistant to it. I mean, I have a my brother, who was a management consultant years ago he was working remotely he had a team that was like, all over the globe who he had never met who we worked with for years but he had been working live. And years ago he said to me something like well the theater should really learn to use these tools because you're going to I was like, fuck you, the theater is about being together live in space I'm not going to use these tools. But now out of necessity, those of us who haven't may have to may have to think about space. You know, it's not just the old Brooks empty space with one person watching and one person performing. Space is something really different. What does it mean to be in between space. What does it mean to acknowledge. And I'm a retreat person and I know this angle man who asked that she runs talk to you late retreat center so we want to be alone in retreat with other artists, you know what I mean. We want to be alive in nature and in buildings with people, people next to us sweaty people. And, but, you know, maybe that like I this is great talking to you like this I mean when do we get to do this. You can have your coffee. I have my coffee. You have your artists up against the couch. Yeah, yeah, so it opens up because necessity does and then because we are an artistic community, we find ways to use what we've learned. I don't mean to sound all Buddhist about it but it's, it is a way of accepting what is, and part of what is is that we're cut off from each other in physical proximity. And part of what is is that we live in a world that has tools that we may have been, or I speak for myself reluctant to turn to artistic context. And, you know, and of course there have been artists who've been acknowledging that what is for a long, long time who have been so far ahead of us and now we're like, going on their websites to find advice about how to teach remotely, you know, or how to create remotely. But you know, the world keeps changing, and there we are. Yeah, I think I mentioned to you my, my wife is a literature professor and is a modernist and postmodernist and was just like, oh gosh and it's teaching online now. And, and at first there was no one on the screen and then all of the students started showing up one by one, and as opposed to a distancing mechanism which I think she thought that was going to be. But actually there was an intimacy, which I think we're all craving. Yeah, right now, very much. I'm glad you told that story because I, I refrain from telling it because it's yours to tell but it's wonderful. Yeah, I know. So shout out thanks Margaret. Morgan Janess reaches out and says she doesn't have a question but she has much gratitude. Thank you for this. And for you usually incredibly your usual incredibly well articulated insightful truth and inspiration. It's needed at this pivot point. So thank you. I just wanted to thank you Morgan should ask Morgan should ask another one of our leading brilliant big hearted dramaturgical guides through this crazy life. I love you Morgan and thank you for that. Thank you for being with us. Laura Eson would have been at the festival. Thanks for your play Laura. I wrote just to say that your beautiful thoughts have felt like a bomb this morning. And she's grateful to you and for all you've given to our field, and also to all of us at Casey origin to make it possible to still have this experience this morning. So thank you to you all for joining in. It's so funny having this conversation having no idea actually. If anyone is listening but I'm glad that glad that Laura is there and, and I have to give a shout out to my wife Karen Harmon because she read an earlier version of this address and she and as of yesterday she was like, you know, it's really incumbent on you to spend more time talking about the place since people aren't going to be able to see them. And I, you know, and I of course I would want to but I thought it was ridiculous to do it in the context of a live speech because I didn't want to give stuff away. Sure. And everyone will have seen them. Yeah, reductions and the readings. Yeah, exactly. So, Laura and Stacy and Dean and Kyle. Thank you for your plays. Contributing to the how do we stay together during our separation question. She would pitch. Can we use this time of isolation to prepare for when we're together again. We take this time of force stillness to rest a little more. Can we ask theater people who go go go to just get a little sleep for once playwrights finally finally exclamation finish our outstanding commissions. Yeah, can we write or at least start that passion project we've long thought about but have never had time to work on. Can we read the work of others we want to get to know better but again never seem to find a time. Yeah, huge huge. And so those are some of the things she's thinking about how about how to use this time. Yeah, during these unprecedented times. I love that list and I love the question. I, you know, I, we encountered it with our students to it's, you know, we now will by forced measure have time that we always say we don't have for all of these sorts of things. And so what are the things on everybody's lists. Yeah, how best to use the time and and then the other piece of it is I keep, you know, there's a piece of advice that the amazing playwright and actor Ellen McLaughlin gave me years ago when I was going through a personal crisis, which was simply she said, feel everything. And I think about that all the time and I think about it now. I mean, you know, right now we are living in real time through this thing but for those of us who write or create in any measure or just as humans. I know that we are this we're going to look back on this there will be a time when we look back whatever that time looks like, and we will use it. This will become, you know, I was telling my students about, you know, go read Red Noses by Peter Barnes, go read AIDS plays. Go, you know, look at Waiting for Godot, which is a different version of the vast in between Laura's vast in between what does it mean to be waiting for something that never comes. We will use this time so feel everything and use the time and then know that you will be used we will be using it later because it's part of our shared history. Yeah, it's funny you bring up Red Noses because I am who is like somebody whoever it was that I was talking to you recently please send me an email. I was just having this conversation because we did Red Noses in grad school. And then after that I saw this beautiful production of Red Noses a Juilliard the Christopher Bay's directed. And I was like, we were like, this is the time to do that and we should do a remote and virtual online version of this. We should play at the moment and, you know, yeah, you know, it is it's like, so some years ago I don't remember who it was was setting up readings of it can't happen here the Sinclair Lewis novel that became a play for the WPA in the lead up to this 2016 election Abigail Katz from the Atlantic Theater company and myself we we set up a series of what we call Constitution out loud right after the election, which was asking people wherever they were to sit together and read the Constitution out loud and then discuss it and their little pocket constitutions, and a lot of people did it and we did it in different places. And I think there's lots of this is a time we could that there's no reason those kinds of things can't happen the red the red noses initiative can't happen, or the AIDS plays initiative boy. When that was going on it seemed like it would never end and and the and in some ways it doesn't but in other ways, you know only the morning continues and the and life goes on so you know, yeah. Great idea. Thank you. I, we have about six minutes left. Okay, I think we might get kicked off of this platform I'm not quite sure how that works or they're going to just let us speak indefinitely. I don't know. But you probably need to refill your coffee, but a few a few questions one is from David diamond. Hi David, he finds that resilience can be a challenge for artists in the best of times. And now it seems that more of us individually and as a community will need to be resilient. Do you have any thoughts how we can bolster our access to what is required of us so we can help our communities. Well, thank you David for that and I have to shout out to David because he has served at some important times in my life as an executive coach or maybe not executive just like a personal coach. I think a couple of things and I've seen some of these, you know, suggested online I loved a Facebook post from Aaron Washington, who's a great spirit of the theater teaching down at Spelman College. It's like, take care of yourself. You know, drink your turmeric tea and, you know, get exercise and sleep and resilience comes from a vitalized spirit and body. So partly there's that I believe so this is this is maybe a bit of a Polly Anna answer and David will write me later and say how could you be so naive. Not that he would. But I believe we've been practicing for this moment, certainly those of you, those of us who share my political concerns about the corrosive political moment and the truly dangerous presidency. I think we've been building resistance. I think, you know, I felt and I saw around me after the 2016 election, a great deal of despondency and fear and I think, even though there's always the danger of normalcy that there's been a must a kind of working the muscles of resiliency and even the fact that that word has become, you know, from she persisted to resilience to resistance, you know, all of these kinds of turns on that idea have really come into the foreground of our thinking. I mean, I don't know what to say David except people just have to keep working people have to get back to their desks and not give into the kind of nightmare version of this, which is that we all walk around like George Romero zombies and, you know, a stupor because we can't shop anymore. But just that. Again, it's that thing that Laura mentioned, taking the time to do the work that we've been putting off getting back to our desk reaching out to our friends. I realized yesterday that I have some friends who are older and possibly immune I realized that I as soon as this is over today I need to give a call to and reach out to we build resilience through by building connection with each other. And by keeping our strength up individually. You know, I was thinking that this conversation to because of today because so much has happened in the last 72 hours that this conversation would have been very different. So, you know what people are asking and I think what the need is right now, this need to connect and to try to figure out how to move on Stacy rose just wrote to say hello thank you for all of this it's helpful healing and inspiring for her to think of the way she can keep going. That's great. I was very useful. I met Stacy very briefly when she was helping produce tribute to Lynn knowledge for the for Independence Kansas for the inch center which is going to honor Lynn neck in May I think. And I was so looking forward to really meeting her at the festival but I was so happy to read like you see land. It's a beautiful play and really beautiful production so that we're going to see that she's in Kansas City with you. Yeah she's good she's here. She's good. Yeah yeah yeah so we have a what they were calling last night and no pinning. No pinning. Yeah, I have a small people, we can't just we can't say break legs too much physical. We have to just say married married for tonight. I think we've got like a minute left and you know I just want to say let's see a couple of people have also said hello. My goodness, there's just a bunch of things coming on Lisa Peterson. So thank you. And also, we're just leaving up but I wanted to leave off with just a couple things. One is you've got this novel coming out. I think we should have another conversation sometime and talk about that. It's out. Everywhere that you can order online, as long as they're still delivering. So I'm gonna get that everybody you can buy that book. If you see them let me know. If you see him let me know I don't even know the name of my own novel she's only 18 years. Where are we more coffee. I want to just say thank you so much for joining us thank you for joining in. Thank you to all of the staff and artists of the leadership Kansas City Repertory Theater to our local community into the theater community at large to all of you. One thing I want to say is it's just possible because I know this has been running on Facebook and various online platforms is just to say if it's all possible and behalf of all theaters closing their doors for the time being. If you've bought a ticket for a show and you're not able to use it due to a show being canceled and if you're in a financial position to do so, please consider converting your purchase into a donation into the organization. Yeah, you know with so many unknowns about the lasting effect of this pandemic, these sorts of efforts will be incredibly useful supporting artists now and in the future. So just wanted to just say that. Yeah, for everybody, you know, I'm sure we're speaking to the converted here. Can I add can I add one thing. Yes, of course, who are in a position to need work being done anything you know that is you know any kind of artistic help any kind of hire an artist. People are out of work now people who are part of the freelance community. That's another way to support people too. Great. Any, any final words that you'd like to share. I just want to really thank you. I want to thank you guys for punting so effectively. This has been really great. It's horrifying to be, you know, sitting here speaking to you, you know, I wish I had known that some of you were here with us beforehand but we couldn't know. Um, just to wish everybody, you know, an easy way through a really tough time. And to keep in touch and thank you Lisa for making this beautiful festival. The no festival festival. And I will see you in Kansas City another time for barbecue and again everybody's invited to Karen's and my place. We're holding you to it in the future. Yeah. So we're sending our our theater artists friends all of our love and support and solidarity as we take care of ourselves and each other in this uncertain moment. So I hope I hope we get a chance to do this again. This was great. Thank you everyone.