 everyone and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today for this last in our journey of the online virtual weekend of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation. My name is Andrea Asaf. I'm the Artistic Director of Art to Action and I'm with Mina Natrajan and I am the Co-Artistic Director of Pangea World Theatre and along with Andrea and Dipankar. We are also Co-Directors of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation and before we begin we both want to acknowledge what Pangea World Theatre and Art to Action acknowledge that we're on the sacred traditional lands of the first people of Turtle Island. For Pangea it is an honor to live, work and create art and community alongside Dakota, Ojibwe and all the first peoples in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. And for Art to Action in Tampa, Florida we are on the land of the Seminole and Tokabaga peoples and we pay respect to all Indigenous peoples past, present and future. As we grow in the work of decolonization together we build relationships at the speed of trust and we endeavor always to move from acknowledgement to action. So we'd like you to invite you if you are following us in the chat on Zoom or live stream to also acknowledge the first peoples of the lands that you are on currently. And you will be seeing Mina and Dipankar a bit more later in the session but right now it is my great honor and joy to introduce this session to you today which will feature Asian American directors and divisors in conversation and practice. There will be practice-based portions of this session so if you are in the Zoom room the artists will invite you to turn on your camera and participate or share. And if you're following on HowlRound or live stream please share and participate share in the comments and chat rooms and also participate as you're able. We'd love to hear about your experience after. So in March 2021 in collaboration with the consortium of Asian American theaters and artists or CATA we actually gathered these wonderful artists who you will see today all of whom have been participants in the directing institute co-organized by Pangea World Theater and Art to Action but we did not get a recording of that fantastic session and it was so good that we decided to offer it again. So Pangea World Theater and Art to Action are both also board members of CATA and we want to encourage you all to connect get to know CATA and stay tuned for the next National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival which will be in May 2022. So this is also the last session of our 2021 virtual weekend. As I said it'll be a mix of practice and dialogue and because the institute is very practice-based we'd like to give you a small taste of creative practice with our artists. So first each artist will lead a short participatory exercise and then in the second half of the session Mina and Depankar will moderate a discussion with the featured artist. So stay with us through the whole thing because at the end we'll also be doing a closing of our entire virtual weekend featuring Nobiko Miyamoto so we want you to stay with us for that. So here are the artists that we'll be creating with and hearing from today. We'll see their slide. Yes Sumi Kim, Denise Uyihara and Marlina Gonzalez. So as I said we're going to go one by one and introduce them or be introduced to them through their practices and we're going to begin with Sumi Kim. I'll tell you a little bit about Sumi. Sumi is an actor and movement artist and choreographer. As a lead artist she created a trilogy of hybrid plays inspired by Asian American visionaries whose lives were cut short including Change based on Kathy Change political activist and performance artist Dick T Bell's Fall sorry and Legendary which was based on Bruce Lee. So Sumi has been featured in the drama review Huffington Post, New York Times, Time Out New York and many others and is working on a current project a dance theater play about gymnastics titled Body Through Which The Dream Flows which features competitive gymnasts formerly coached by Sumi Kim. So with that welcome Sumi how are you today? Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. This is really exciting and nice to kind of virtually see you all. So shall I just set up what I'm going to do or I guess I'm going to talk about this video. I'm going to show you a little video of a performance, a workshop performance of the show that Andrea just mentioned called Body Through Which The Dream Flows. So alongside with being a theater artist and actor and divisor I was also a gymnastics coach for many years a competitive gymnastics coach and a choreographer. After the 2018 news came out about the epic child abuse athlete abuse scandal led by Larry Nassar, physician Larry Nassar that was like the physician for the USA gymnastics program. I decided that I wanted to try to melt my professions as a coach and a theater artist by just conducting a workshop with kids to try to train them to sort of like have some presence and do some theater games and some choreography games. And so it kind of evolved into a piece that I am developing now called Body Through Which The Dream Flows and in this piece in this segment comes it was in June 2021. There are four or five gymnasts in this piece and I workshopped with them in teaching them how to kind of devise movement gave them a sort of a theater boot camp and this opening of this workshop they're doing some gesture work as you can see in this video. And the gestures that they're using in the space their prompt was basically to walk through the space to accumulate these gestures that they had come up with collectively through a choreography generated exercise which we will all participate in later. I just wanted to show sort of a sample of how some of this movement is incorporated into performance. So these are competitive gymnasts they are currently competing level seven, eight, nine and ten that Chelsea peers in New York City. So you'll see towards the end of the video I'm including this excerpt where you can see how the gestures are utilized at the very end over some voice over clips. And she's added that was all of the movement was generated through prompts in workshops with the gymnast and it was that open art studio in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Thanks for watching that and with that I am going to conduct an exercise. Can you all appear please turn on your videos if you'd like to participate. So I'm just going to share some of the practice that you just kind of saw on stage. I like to I like to organically create movement that comes from storytelling as I'm sure is a form in some in some form that a lot of you work or have worked before. So what we would love I would love to have a volunteer to tell a story and within this format of zoom if we can kind of visually see your hands as you're telling the story that will be the first task. So anybody like to volunteer to tell a story doesn't it matter what the story is the more animated the better we're going to take raise your hand don't be shy a lot of good storytelling faces out there. We do have a backup plan of no one volunteers but all right my milk that's right that's my name hi thank you so much for this session. Thanks for volunteering. Of course I've been on the other side of that where nobody volunteers so I know how awkward that is. I think you all want to you just don't want to be the first one to raise your hand. Can you please print out Mollick is that right that's right Mollick should we spotlight him in some way or actually just let's just keep it the way it is maybe so everybody can see Mollick right and everybody else who would like to participate in this exercise just um turn on your video you can just watch too if you'd like to um so can you just raise your hand if you're going to participate. Hi Olga. Okay so what we're going to do is Mollick is going to tell a story and as he is telling a story hopefully hands will be visual in the camera Mollick um we'll just you'll just pick up a gesture that he is using in storytelling and just repeat it okay and a certain point when everybody's kind of got their gesture and they're kind of repeating it will stop and look at them and then sort of accumulate your physical hand life okay so and you can participants you can dive in whenever you feel ready to so go ahead Mollick. So when I was young my mom and I were working on this field clearing this field that my parents own and um there was an apartment complex right behind the field and there was a little child on the second floor of the balcony who was crying and just crying and crying and my mother was really getting upset she was so upset that she was hearing this poor child cry but she kept working and I kept working and she kept looking over and she just got more and more upset until finally she couldn't take it anymore so she walked up to the fence and she said hey hey you come out right now your child's crying come take care of her and all of a sudden the doors open up this woman comes on says hey bitch shut the hell up and don't tell me what to do with my kid and my mom said you do something with your kid you take care of her I'm gonna call the police right now and I was shocked and amazed that my mom was willing to confront this woman to her face like that the child went back inside my mother went and I got back to work clearing out those weeds and I just always remembered that as a moment where she was just so bold and brave standing up for a child who couldn't take care of themselves yay that's a great story I mean not really but yes for us it was good officially it was actually watching your hands more than actually listening and telling me so we use our hands a lot you know um I'm not sure if I made the exercise clear but hopefully you can remember one gesture that you like that you want to repeat okay because I know I noticed that we were just sort of going along with him and and and repeating his gestures so does everybody have a gesture that they remember from the vocabulary of gestures that they can repeat okay cool I'm gonna call on a dress to show your gesture great everybody copy awesome Karla you have a gesture okay so do you remember a dresser's gesture right and then Karla's was so we have one two right Olga do you have one great third one three okay so we have one two three Nina great so we have one two three four Andrea oh good one that looks like choreography I love it super help me out here one two three four five I love the fist in the open hand great okay I don't know how many more we can add without like losing our memory but let's add one more Adeline do you have one ooh good one okay ties into the beginning beautiful I love I love serendipity okay one two three four wait let's wait oh four five six three yeah we have a dance a hand dance so what can you do with those gestures you can use them throughout text you can use them in sections by themselves you can use them in dialogue we can discuss this a little bit more in our conversation at the end of the at the end of the talk so thank you very much handing it back off to you Andrea great thank you so much for that to me that I really enjoyed that exercise and can already I'm already bubbling with how it would build so our next artist we're just going to keep throwing wonderful experiences and our tools at you and before we talk more in depth with all of these artists so our next artist is Marlena Gonzalez who is a multidisciplinary theater and media arts producer director curator and writer of Filipino heritage Marlena strives to bring together the voice of the people and her ancestral heritage through creative expression and community engagement she's a 2021-22 recipient of a springboard for the arts creative engagement fellowship and she is is currently incubating a new play with theater Mu after having co-directed her play Isla Tuliro at Appangia World Theater as part of Teatro del Pueblo's Latino Asian Fusion Festival and she's going to be she's teaching and going to be teaching a new course on Black and Asian Solidarity and Community at the University of Minnesota's Asian American Studies program next spring so Marlena I know you've got an exciting exercise for us welcome yeah thank you for having me I'm so so related to being everybody's company I feel your energy even if we're not in the same space we are in the same time so that connects us in that way and we've learned to reinvent ourselves to communicate and connect even if we're not bodily in each other's spaces so one of the things that I've always felt challenged with having grown up and actually having been born into a bilingual environment where like most babies would have learned their first words as mama dada and mine was in simultaneously mama dada and inai datai or inangala that my brain is always split into at least two languages if not three um but that having been in this environment where English imposes itself constantly to push out the other languages one of my most favorite um and actually very passionate goal as an artist as a writer um and as a creative thinker and community engages how we transcend language how can we communicate with each other without having to slip into the imperialism of English has the the language of choice and how can we connect with each other even if we're not bodily in each other's space and yet connect in an even higher plane so I we have invited debunker um to be our guinea pig and I am going to present a challenge to debunker there is a video that only 16 seconds that we're going to show um and hold up the video as I explain it and debunker is invited and all of you are invited to watch it and then debunker has been challenged with um the creative um imagination of representing reacting to taking on a persona from the video inspired by the video or as a result of having seen the video so let's watch the video and then as soon as that's done we're gonna shift to debunker and we'll see what he's come up with um and then I'll ring a bell when it's like two minutes into the end of debunker's improv to signal that you are now you have two minutes to wrap up your non-verbal audio visual story and let's go to the video my gosh amazing can we put our hands together for debunker um do you want to talk a little bit about your response to debunker like very briefly and for those of you that are in this circle if you could pop in one word in the chat of your response to what you just saw that would be amazing one word debunker how'd you come up with that what was it you were trying to tell us well those names you know it's um brother floyd's memorial right so just you know the idea that uh that we continue with our ritual of memorializing remembering that's where the walminas glass of water was here so I just thought that you know the water in spite of that we continue the ritual and you know the idea they would not let our fists close you know and we want to get up they always pull you down pull you down pull you down but ultimately you know the memorial exists the revolution is ignited and the and and the and all of us standing with black brothers and sisters so that's what triggered in me beautiful beautiful beautiful I'm sorry to put you on the spot I know it takes so much energy to do that even though it's only a few minutes but it really does take mind, body, spirit to put into something that really expresses something from your very core so that would be an example I would say of how I challenge myself and how I challenge the people that I work with to transcend language into transcend words and to really dig deep deep deep down into yourself to step into the space that you're trying to express or that I'm trying to express through you so thank you the deep bunker and thank you Mina and your glass of water and thank you everyone for your words I'm coming I'm seeing them come in just a solidarity breathe struggle for determination vulnerable I mean what 10 what 16 seconds can do to us that's the power of art thank you thank you so much Marlina and the punker for that very moving demonstration and that was very powerful exercise proposal and also execution so thank you so much for sharing that the next artist that we're going to get to create with is Denise Uyehara a performance artist writer and director based in Tucson who has been presented in London Tokyo Helsinki across the US her most recent work focuses on memory time travel crisis and identity she's a recipient of the map fund cola award and many more and just these are just a few of her projects that we're seeing images from currently Denise is in collaboration with tea loving and Jean Genevieve Aaron O'Brien on a new project easy bake a project which explores queer BIPOC liberation and you can learn more about Denise's work at Denise Uyehara.com Denise always a pleasure to have you with us welcome. Hi thank you so much Andrea it is such an honor to be with all of you I'm going to talk a little bit more after we do a little performance study this is actually building on what the fantastic workshops we just had with Marlina and Sumi so so I'll just get right into it I was talking to a friend of mine about conversing in Chinese I am Japanese and Okinawan American but I was talking to a friend and I said I had heard that Chinese people sometimes write in their hand and is that true and why and so we discussed that and so she said yes they do and so you will often see people writing the characters in their hand and showing it to the other person sometimes it's because they speak different dialects and so this is to clarify but sometimes it's a homonym within the same say Mandarin speaking or Cantonese speaking people and they speak the same dialect so it's a way to make yourself understood so those of you that would like to participate I would love to have you jump on right now and share your video I think we had how hi Karla and Malik thank you for coming back Stephanie, Idris, all of you so let's take a moment everybody let's close our eyes for a moment and take in what we've done so far in this workshop and think of an ancestor and think of that person what they look like how they speak to you and if they speak to you in another language or language that you share hear their voice think of one word that they might say to you it could be a moment of healing or of anger or love it's up to you and hear that voice and then quietly open your eyes and look at your hand and then write what they said if it is in Arabic or if it is in Chinese Tagalog it could be in any language and write it in your hand and repeat it and I am as we're doing this because we are on zoom and zoom is such a problematic fantastic way of communicating go ahead and show us what you're writing to the camera and you can even be like you know nice nice right okay fantastic let's pause for one moment so that was a so beautiful very nice now we're going to add one layer of song who would like to volunteer to sing something it could be a lullaby it could be a healing moment it could be anything yes Olga yes okay now what we're going to do is while we do that movement Olga is going to sing and I would also invite in anything else that we've learned today in this workshop whether that be the bonkers moment of intensity in any shape or form or work from the movements that we learned at the beginning those can also come in and it is kind of choreographed for these boxes but it's also something just a study okay and we will do this for two minutes and I'll let you know when it's over okay and let's close our eyes and when you're ready you can open them and begin la gallina busca el maíz y el trigo les da la comida y les presta abrigo bajo sus dos alas se están quietes y dos y hasta el otro día duermen calentitos y y oh y oh cuando tienen hambre cuando tienen frío la y si y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y and find a way to end and thank you thank you so much that was um so like to do me so much uh And I felt, I had, well, I'd love to hear from you all in the chat or right now. What did you observe? We could back some up what you saw or heard. I'm just gonna say that real quickly. Sorry. Go ahead Olga. I heard my grandmother and I heard her word and then I heard the song and then I realized I didn't know all the words. I had to look it up and it was so weird to look at the words and go like, oh, wow. I hadn't thought about it in a long time. So thanks for that, Denise. Thank you for that beautiful song. I was so moved by it and I love that it was also a struggle because I think that's part of the process of learning each other's language and remembering. I was gonna say, I think the beauty of our hands on the camera and gesturing with our palms was just the most powerful thing I've ever seen because I kept like peeking in to see what everybody else was doing. It's just everybody like connecting. The word that I had that I heard from my grandfather was bangon which is the Tagalog word for rise up. And that's what I just kept writing on my palm but the rhythm of your song caused that one word to mean layers and layers of other forms of rising. That was beautiful. Thank you, Marlene. Some fantastic things in the chat. Kayla said, pyo pyo. Find a way to end beautiful transforming gesture to thought, to word and to gesture again. Thank you, beautiful. A moment to synthesize lovely song, Olga, repetition, power and poetry. Let's all just take a deep breath in. There you go. So much power in this room and so much creativity and I say response and healing which I really, really appreciate especially in these times. I'm now going to hand this back over to Tupankar and to Mina. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. All three of you, what beautiful exercises you shared with us, what beautiful practices that I think all of us could actually use these practices are probably going to use these practices and add them to our own repertoire because they're so beautiful and each one was so kind of for me also exemplified the people who come to the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation. And because I think one of the things we're trying to do is to get away from try to be in a decolonized space and in many of our cultures there is no separation between theater, the making, how we make the theater, the making of the theater, gesture, word, language, movement, dance, it's all, there's no separation. It's not fragmented in the way that Western theater practice is. And so I just was, it's like beautiful. And in a way, you could each one of your practices even though it comes from such different places there was also like a little congruence, a little resonance, there were resonances in each other's practice which was gorgeous and beautiful. So thank you so much, the three of you. And I'm really looking, we are really, both of us are really looking forward to talking to you. So now we're going to go to the conversation session where we'll be having a conversation with Marlena, with Denise and with Sumi. And so before we begin, we are clearly going through COVID times otherwise we wouldn't be in these little square boxes, Zoom, we would actually be in the same room together, meeting and exchanging practices, just like this. And so one of the things that what we would like to do is to kind of grow to pre-COVID time to 2017 and watch a little video of the Institute of the Year and this is 2017 was the year that Sumi, Marlena and Denise all three of were at the Institute. So we'd love to actually have that play for us for four minutes and then we'll come back to having a conversation. All over the country there are beautiful people who have big ideas who are working and we are part of the field. This is a place where this field comes together and has a chance to realize itself. What we do is not exactly recognized and respected as much as it should be. And I think what we're trying to do here is raise it up, telling stories as a way of healing ourselves and also being visible because many of us are invisible in this society and we can only come together in this society and we know about each other's stories. In a small exercise, I chose a small exercise to start with the concept of only one object. In this case, a chair, beginning with one object, which was a chair, and the construction of a small mechanical exercise and the construction of a structure of movement. What? Here's Amina. Asidori de itchi. It's an itch, but are you? Don't get it. So slow motion, sustaining the movement that you're doing. People are always looking to us for methodology and ways and where do we come to be students and to share that experience as learners and teachers. Tip of the tongue, front teeth, lower and upper, lift and respond to your teacher. The work that we do teaches people, young people, how to value each human being and not see the core other as listed. You have three minutes to do this. But you take care of it. The people that were invited to this, and I feel really honored to be part of it, is working with those that are very serious and committed to working with community and art for change. I think what makes this event special is that it is building upon at least four, maybe five years of research and knowledge building, and it's done in a really smart way. This is the only one of this kind. That construct out in the mainstream, it doesn't make space for this. Not enough, or it appropriates and thinks it's making space. To make space for what that is and let it come through and honor it, don't question it, don't make me explain, but just honor the being of it, it's so revolutionary. It's the only place and the only space right now that exists, I think, in the world of theater and the world of arts, where people come together and it's safe to not have to speak the dominant language and still be listened to and not be afraid of losing people's attention. It's safe to be older or younger or shorter or taller because that's really where the convergence happens. I think where we're divergent in our cultures, in our speeches, our matters of lifestyles, our beliefs, our faiths, when all of that converge is what's happening in this space right now. Everything is done with so much love and so much hope. I think the times that we live in are very challenging. And for me, very frightening. And I fear for our planet. And being in this space is like a cauldron of power, of love, of hope. What's being generated here is the antithesis and the antidote to those oppressive forces that seem to want to destroy us. And to be able to do that to the craft that I love is such a gift and I'm so grateful. Boy, does that make me feel nostalgic. Act of us being together, dancing together, having a conversation and these exchanges that happen, you can tell that there are exchanges happening outside of the institute as well as inside of the institute. And that's what makes it so beautiful because there's just like this true exchange happening. So I guess this was like our practice before the pandemic, right? And so we experienced a tiny slice of your work in the Zoom virtually. And then we're also at a point where theaters and artists are actually moving indoors now. So I thought we would actually jump in and start with this whole question of what we're doing right now. And just ask the question, how has the pandemic influenced your practice? Since we just saw your practice and we also saw your practice before this COVID, are you modifying your practice? I mean, how have you modified your practice during the pandemic? And how do you imagine this impacting your work long-term? So I mean, that's really a longer question, but if each of you can kind of take a little three-minute dive each into that question, that'd be wonderful. Who'd like to go first? I'll start, because I actually wrote some of my responses, so I don't forget. So I would say, and I'll be honest, I'm reading right now, so I don't miss out on the things that have been going through my mind, tech-wise I've observed and learned from, I reinvented new ways of creative interaction. So very recently, I had the chance to participate in Theater Moves 24. Our playfest, where six playwrights were asked to write a 10-minute piece based on a prompt. The directors, and I had the honor, the amazing honor to be assigned and to work with the amazing Leslie Ishii. I know you're out there, Leslie. So we had local and national actors had 10, eight hours. We had eight hours to write, they had eight hours to rehearse and produce it the following evening. And necessity is the mother of invention. You know, it's actually when you don't have anything that you realize how much you have as far as the immensity of your creativity and this pandemic really has cost all of us to step up our game and to also find new ways to connect with audiences through new and innovative ways. That 24-hour playfest was fully produced on Zoom with all of us in different time zones in different cities, different languages, different orientations. And that the Zoom experience has now become a global experience. So at least for those of us who have done technology or have technology, I think the challenge is and the irony of Zoom is we see each other's faces fully but it's a representation of us. In person, we've learned to smile and express ourselves with our eyes because we're masked and our bodies as we remain have seen in our mask presence. And how do we make sure that we are not aggravating the marginalization for those folks that don't have the technology or the access or the internet or the Wi-Fi to actually participate in these kinds of events? That's, I think, the main challenge for all of us right now. Thank you, Marlina. I hope you were writing in many other languages. Other than English. All right. How about Denise Assumi? I'll start. So you saw a little bit about the gymnastics piece that I project that I've been working on. So during the pandemic, I was still coaching and I was kind of looking for an exit strategy because I'd been burnt out in long story but what ended up happening is we were coaching these kids and trying to teach them through Zoom and I started doing some creative movement with them over Zoom and kind of having the opportunity to do some creative movement exercises that there's no space and time to in a practice setting. Everything is like discipline, discipline, structure, you know, technique, technique. So that was really kind of an eye-opening thing for me. And then something happened to our program that we're still kind of, a lot of people are still reeling from. The head coach of our program was suspended and fired and accused of emotional abuse by former gymnasts from years past. And this brought about a lot, a lot, a lot of kind of just, you know, big questions about the culture of gymnastics and stemming from the fallout from Larry Nassar trials. It became this thing that kind of like took over my life for that time. We were all silenced, we're not supposed to, we were not allowed to talk to this person. There were all of these things that were happening where the kind of the corporate heads kind of came in on us. And so the project that I started working on that I put on hold, I decided I need to sort of dive back into it. Alongside that, I did plan, the pandemic did afford me to plan my exit strategy, which was to become a freelance artist with doing choreography for gymnast, but also like how, asking a really hard question, what can I do to help change the culture of this dysfunction of gymnastics and abuse, whether it's emotional or physical abuse? And how can we break free of just being taught to obey and be voiceless? What does it mean to actually normalize talking about your body as like a young gymnast or athlete? You know, you're literally growing and changing in front of everybody's eyes when you're wearing a leotard and exposing your body yet. You know, it's still not normalized to talk about like the menstrual cycle and the body changes and stuff. So in tackling all those big questions, the creative dance workshop that I decided to embark on during the pandemic became the space in New York City, a studio where, you know, the cap is still seven. It's running now for the second year because of the pandemic, everybody's still masked because we're in New York City and a lot of kids are not vaccinated still. But it has become this thing that has really transformed my practice for me as an artist because it's like a real true exchange of like, I'm learning how to be a better teacher and a better coach and a better mentor by working with these girls and they're learning how to be fully embodied and present. I'm making them do voice exercises. I'm teaching them relaxation and meditation and devising techniques, generating their own choreography and to sort of empower their own and liberate their own personal kind of their voice. So it has been a real life changing experience that only came about because of all of these really hard, hardships that we've all endured and gone through, especially being in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic during that time. And it became like a safe haven and a space that we could just sort of be together and be quiet and to be creative and forget about the day-to-day trouble. So I feel like it has really taught me a lot about really truly coming to the place where there is a real confluence between art-making community, organizing that activity within your own community and sharing, devising and creative techniques to a generation that would not have the opportunity to do it. So that's basically what's been going on with me for the last year. Well, Sumi, that is so moving. And I remember when you were in the midst of all this going on about a year ago and just amazing how you've transformed it into something that can be both a type of activism, but also within your artistic practice and stretching that. That's really inspiring. So I'll speak a little bit about what's been going on for me in 2020, we moved back to be all back together in Tucson. I'm originally from Southern California and everything was on lockdown. I was in still, I'm working with Corey Press, which is a local feminist press. We have been creating Postcards to the Future, which is based on Letters to the Future, a book by radical black women writers. And we've been doing social media pushes around that too. This was before, but also during and after George Floyd. And it was a way to protest in place because a lot of the people working with Corey Press and some of the older artists were not feeling comfortable protesting because there were George Floyd protests, which I did go to here in Tucson, but some people didn't feel safe around that. It was a very moving experience and I learned a lot from it about, well, first of all, that Zoom and social media and the internet is very helpful to have, but it's also, I was really, really glad that I could go to a protest in person. So I realized I was eventually gonna miss that and need that. And so now two years into the pandemic, I definitely feel that I need to be creating more work again in person. Last year we received, or in the spring, we received a map fund to do a project called Easy Bake. My collaborators are Genevieve Aaron O'Brien in Los Angeles and Tee Loving, who was trans here in Tucson. So the three of us have been working around the idea of queerness. And I don't know how many of you remember Easy Bake Ovens, but they were this iconic thing from the 60s and through the 80s. They were basically like little ovens that were sold to kids. Let's just be clear to girls so that they could bake miniature cakes that you could bake with a light bulb in it and then it would come out. So it was both amazing and fun to want one or have one, but it was also very gendered. So part of what we're looking at is that gendered message that was coming from it, but also around how we can examine and maybe change or transform or look at identity, queer identity. And I also should clarify that I have been queer by identified since, oh my God, too long since the early 90s, but that I do have a cis gender male husband and we are legally married. And I like to clarify that because I think it is a place of privilege that I have, just like we all have certain privileges and I don't want there to be any weirdness I guess around that. So I come with that privilege, but also my collaborators are also queer trans and queer identified. And really we are trying to look at how do we work and engage the community that is dispersed right now. And so one of the questions is, maybe it's not a performance on a stage, which was the original proposal. Maybe it is performance installation in which we create a space where things happen in that space that perhaps a change or transform identity and that maybe it's only a few people at a time coming through and it might be a gallery space or where it's aerated. All those things we've had to take into consideration and for good or for worse, we're in Tucson, it's super hot in the summer. Don't wanna go outside, but in the winter it's actually a beautiful time to be creating because you have the advantage of being able to create basically all winter long outside. Thank you so much. That was beautiful. Just to learn about your process and what you're doing right now and how you've kind of pivoted. I mean, I feel like this time has forced all of us to go outdoors and then we're now having to make the decision of what it means to come back inside or should we or maybe we shouldn't right now. Like what you were saying, Denise or be in Zoom and write plays or work and how we work in classes. The kinds of issues we have are so different from what they were before. So it's really, really interesting to learn three different ways of doing that. Pankar, if you wanna ask the next question. I think what I'm asking is about the process which you're already sharing. So I just wanted to go a little bit maybe deeper. Actually, I often think, what if there is no, nothing to go deeper is deep right now because these are some deep artists right here. Maybe begin with you, Sumi. Well, you shared the power of movement and how your choreography sort of disrupts this culture of silencing and oppression. And I know that this particular trait is not found in all your work, but there is a certain kernel of bursting out the silencing, bursting out of status quo and through a movement choreography. So would you like to share how do you really change through your choreography, through your movement, this culture of silencing? How do you devise your work based on this, your process? Well, first of all, I'm not a classically trained dancer. I think I'm just a dancer in my spirit. So I don't have a lot of rules that I'm being governed by when I move. I just like to move and I can mimic movement and then I like to move. I can mimic movement and then I like to improvise. And I think that improvisation is so important. And that's one thing that I'm really getting these kids comfortable with because I'm also doing a lot of floor routine choreography. And so I traveled to different gyms and worked with girls from different clubs. And if I asked them to do anything in the vein of improvisation, they're like, they look mortified. I mean, and they could be like elite gymnasts who can do anything you ask them to do. You show them something, they'll do it, and they're amazing. You ask them to come up with eight counts of their own movement or a pose, they're like, no way, Jose. And so I'm like, how can we break free of that idea? Starting with these kids, starting with the fact that they are so gifted and amazing, but so oppressed in like kind of tight end, tightly wound in this space, in their childhood. So I'm really kind of looking at, and I asked the kids that I work with in the dance class, how can you translate that freedom that you have when you're dancing alone in your room to like the stage or the rehearsal space or like the floor? And so we just, I just started doing, throwing all kinds of exercises at them. And I really think, and I remember doing this at the night in 2017 with Theo. I remember that he made us dance for 30 minutes without stopping, and they kind of like dig into a trance. I think that's a real, really important thing for everybody to do, no matter how old you are, where you're coming from, ability to able body or whatever, it's like, just move, just move every day. Just put on some music. I find that that really connects you to who you are. And with these kids especially, it sort of gives them this impact. I don't wanna say empowerment, but they are like getting to know who they are. And if you know who you are, if you can check into your body, if you can like understand what it is to breathe and to scan yourself of injuries or like trauma or, you know, oppression, then you're going to become a more, just a stronger human being. So I'm trying to do that with these kids to get them to improvise, to get them to just like translate that ability to just play into movement and take it into their life. Well, that was a long answer and I'm not sure if it was very succinct, but... It felt like unsilencing and... Yes, yes. I often come from improvisation and then kind of go, oh, I like that, I didn't like that and videotape myself doing it. And also use text, a lot of text. I use, I take phrases or words and I kind of create movement from phrases or words. And the gestures that we did earlier from storytelling, those type of things, you can distill and make them very small, repeat them over and over again, or you can expand them. And I feel like that's also a very good device to use for non-traditional dancers. And it becomes this sort of like composition or theme and variation that you can use that's sort of tied into the personal storytelling and your own mythology, so. Yes, philosophically in Upanishads in India, there is a saying which says, why does it take the longest amount of time to cover the shortest distance between you and your soul? So ultimately, we learn all these vocabulary, ultimately to disrobe and get down to that truth, naked truth of what do we want to say with our own nomenclature? And I hear you, I hear the power of the work that you are doing and it's so inspiring, so inspiring. I always feel if I, in my schooling years, which is still continuing, I mean, if I had teachers like this, I don't think I'd go into a classroom. I would go to Sumi, go to Denise, go to Malina. That'll be radical, radical education. May I take a look at how much structure and how confining the way we learn, like music is, reading music for us, not really being taught to improvise, and then the fear that you have later in life of like expressing your own ideas. Yes, yes. I'm even knowing that there are other cultures that have that very different way of accessing the different forms. Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much Sumi. I mean, I know that, you know, we can spend days on each of your work processes. I would like to, so that Denise is not the third person in this sequence. So I want to jump to Denise. You know, beyond that calm, exterior lies some Vesuvius of fire. So Denise, about your process, you know, I've really been present to your method of creating and I've seen your finished products. And I think one thing that I remember having a conversation with Leslie when we participated in one of our improv with you and your mentee created for us, layering. No, we are not talking about what you know, costumes you're wearing. About your layering, that's when I think of your work, Denise, I just, like you just take, you know, it's like layered, you take an action, you put it, then you take another action, you put it, then you take a improv, you put it, then you take a clothing, you put it. And then ultimately when we see together, it's like unbelievable vocabulary that emerges from it. So would you like to just share a part of your devising or your work? How do you arrive at those? And when do you know that the layering is over? Sure, sure. Thank you for that question. You know, in preparing for this panel, I actually thought, oh, we're talking about, you know, like it made me really think back to where did all this come from in me? And I realized that, you know, I've always been creating, always wanted to tell stories, but around the time when I was early in college, I switched from, because I'm Asian-American, I was in biology, but then I switched to comparative literature and I did that partly because I knew I could get out on time, but I could also walk across the campus to the radical people, the drama people, the art people, and take, you know, acting classes. And there was an audition, a South Asian British director wanted to audition us for FOB which is the David Henry Huang play from the 80s and there weren't enough people. It's only a three-person play. There weren't enough actors who auditioned. I was one of them. So she had to change it and she said, we're gonna do Conference of the Birds, which is an adapted from a Sufi poet, whose name I'm gonna say, because I feel like it's important, is Farid Undin Attar and it was adapted or co-opted by Peter Burke and Jean-Claude Carrière. And the thing that was, I realized in retrospect was so important was she made us improv all the time. We didn't even look at a script for like the first two weeks. And that was my experience into theater and also the graduate students who were also in the ensemble said, hey, you know what night we go to this barn and we don't pee all night and we have to like do all these crazy performance pieces and this Polish director named Jerzy Grotowski is teaching us, you wanna come? And I was like, oh no, that sounds really weird. So in retrospect, that's what was going on and that energy and that way of entering into work was right there in the space because they were bringing it in. So that's what I always thought. That's what I thought theater was actually because I didn't know any better. So not to pee the entire night. It was not to pee the entire night but it was just that intensity. And I think what I learned from that is that when I moved to Los Angeles and started just doing theater and was straddling between Highways Performance Base and Los Angeles Theater Center and Mark T. Performer and doing both legitimate theater and performance work. I just always thought that theater and performance was whoever was in the room, that was who needed to be there. And it was highly improvisational. You were generating work, you didn't need sets or lights or sound. Basically you just needed to create a language, like you create a language and then you present it and you share it and the audience begins to understand it and go on that journey with you. And so in the, I think the layering, I started to realize that's what we were always doing when we were ensemble on stage together in different places in a space. We were like simultaneously creating music or singing or someone would be like dancing in the corner. And it was all happening at the same time but with a skilled director, we were able to weave it together. And all those things, I got to work with choreographer Vic Marks who said, that's new information you're adding every time and that it's not necessarily specifically dates and times that you're going to convey. But the new information that is found in your body will be the information that you can use and add through these layers. And I do feel that the world is super complex and very contradictory. So I also believe that I had a mentor who told me what's Marta Sevigliano who said, you know, human beings are able to hold contradictory ideas in their minds. Their brains will not explode. And you can present that information and they can take it in because we do it all the time in life. So. Yeah. Denise, I just an addendum to your sharing. I also remember, you know, I was asking you while you were creating and you were just like electricity, you were just going. And I asked you that I said, what do you mean? You added another layer where suddenly Leslie was pouring water from top. And I said so, but what does that mean? And will the audience know what it means? And I remember you saying, it does not matter what it means because you never know how the audience will receive it when they see all the layers. So it is not that you semantically explain every layer but overall it becomes a sort of a melody. Yes, yes. I think so. And thank you to Bunker for participating in that. You were so game and brought bringing in a traditional martial art to it. Singing, there was also blue lipstick on the bunker. But yeah. And Leslie, thank you so much. And Mark. Legendary. Yeah. Yeah. It's all those things. I saw the cream when I saw the blue lipstick. And that was a piece that my mentee, Marcus Nahara, who's a fantastic artist in his own right, he wanted to do that piece. So that's what we came up with. It was fantastic. You need to answer the question. You talked about my blue lipstick, which was not the best thing. That was it. This is the blue lipstick that, because there was like high camp going on in that, you know, and then there was like, you know, very intense things, the storytelling and, you know, waterfalls and things. So, you know, but it's kind of, and then at a certain point, it's like, just figuring out as a director what you need to cut away to make the piece make sense, coherent sense, which is, I did learn partly from traditional theater training, but from just watching directors direct my work and things like that. Because it's like, I feel like it's important to have both and to balance it and to have one eye inside and one inside of the work. And so, it's not, so when you're creating layering like this, Denise, you do not have a clarity of the arrival narrative, right? You don't know where you're going to arrive. Even Sumi talked about, you know, improvising initially, you know, as a process. So when you're layering, you're not necessarily have to have figure out what each layers are, each layer is. Yeah, I don't think, I would say also to Marlina and Sumi, yeah, I think we all just, it's a journey. And I think even though you might have a script that you're working with, it's still within that there's a, there are your interpretations and personal way of making it personal. And I think that voice, which is something Sumi was talking about of having, finding that the voice and presence through the work and making it personal to you is empowerment. And Sumi, I was going to mention when you're talking about gymnasts and what they go through, it reminded me so much of what actors and particular female actors go through about feeling that they had to be a certain way. And I didn't experience that because I wasn't a theater actor. I was more like a performance artist. And I always just assumed that everybody was making their own work, but I realized now they weren't, they were being told what to do, which is, it's fine. It's a different thing, but it's, I think it's really fantastic to have, to be able to create. Yeah, thank you, Denise. Now we come to my peeps in Minneapolis. Malina, I know that your room does not look that neat. You know, the way you have decorated that, you know, your room for the, it's a performative decoration. But Malina, I wanted to, because I know of your work, I know circumstances with which you have created throughout your life and what you shared in your presentation today. I know it is, but I'm not asking you for a specificity of it, where you said that where when you don't have anything, you realize how much you have, you know, in the context from the land where you hail to your work over here, you have, you know, your politics of location is so strong in large white spaces, in your own space, you negotiate and you constantly create this powerful language. So how, what makes you continue to create the work that you do, whether you have things or not as a part of your process? I think so I grew up in the third world, the third world. I grew up in Manila, experienced martial law. And when things are taken away from you, is when you, I mean, this sounds so cliche, is when you realize how valuable they are. And the ones that get taken away from me that you didn't care about, you realize you just needed to release them and thank you, world, for taking that away from me. But I think the experience of Scar City teaches us abundance. The experience of fear teaches us courage. I remember as a kid, people would always say that I was brave, like, you know, you get these injections and I'm always the first one volunteering, offering my arm because I wanted to show all my cousins and I was not gonna cry. And I was crying inside, but I, you know, they stick the needle in and I put on this visage of courage and it was only realizing that I wasn't really being brave because I was performing already and that the people who were really brave was my cousin who would like jump on my mother's lap and cry his head off because he did not wanna be injected. He was the brave one because in spite of it, he went through it. I was not being brave. I was just like, okay, I just went with it. And I think in the work that we do, we're so much into like performance, right? Meaning you get seen, you get heard, your words get interpreted, people applaud you or people boo you for the work that you've done. But really the very essence of it is listening. Before anything else, before anything else, even in the morning, before anything else, listening is the first gesture to honor where you are and where you stand because if we don't listen, I mean, we can hear like we, especially here in Minneapolis when George Floyd's murder happened and we were surrounded by the cacophony of protest and media news was reporting about it like crazy. Media could hear the noise, but the media was not listening. And that's the huge difference. As artists, I think we become powerful writers, directors, actors, performers, musicians, dancer, choreographers, designers, and it becomes an ensemble when you're listening to each other and when there is one member in the ensemble or the crew or the cast that doesn't seem to be listening, that's when all hands on deck, then you focus on the one that doesn't seem to be listening because if there is somebody seemingly out of sync, that's where the work is first before everything else. I mean, we like to cast or direct to work with people that we love and know already, but I think the real adventure is in going somewhere that you don't know is gonna happen. I wanted to, like as an example, one of the things I did this summer is through the, our space has spoken for fellowship with Twin Cities Media Alliance and we had to create public performances based on a community storytellers stories that were told to us. I was partnered with the most uncanny, most divergent, different artists to work with. Orco Elohim is a sound designer, a avant-garde rap artist, hip-hop artist who worked with Chuck O'Reilly who curated a show at Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and Orco was into Afro-futurism and I told him like your whole aura is sun raw and I was in the beginning was scared because I didn't know what to do with him and he didn't know what to do with me. Like we were not speaking the same language and I don't mean English. I meant that our process and our thinking and the diegetic time involved in our creation were so vastly different. We clashed so much, but we were being very polite with each other because we didn't want to ruin the timeline that we had to deal with. But in that clashing was so much learning that we realized there were stories between us between an Asian-American and an African-American artist there was so much that we are not saying to each other because we were afraid. We were so afraid to turn each other off. We were so afraid not to meet our deadline and we were so afraid to just be honest with each other and to say what our own stereotypes are of each other. And that was more of a learning experience than trying to actually make a performance. And the result of it was that we each realized there are ingredients in our own lives that we put on the table and find a way to combine. And so, I mean, to this day, I say that was like one of the hardest partnerships that I've ever worked with because a lot of times I'd be like, what am I even doing? And like, can I just be partnering with somebody I've worked with before? And yet now I'm so intrigued to work with someone with him again because what we came up with was nothing anywhere close to what we would have expected of each other. So I think that a story only becomes one when there is someone to listen. Conversations only become conversations when there's someone to respond to it and somebody who's responding back to you. If we wanna aspire to be responsibly, socially conscious artists sharpen our listening skills. That's the first step to true engagement. And then ensemble creation, like I said, is like we connect first, not just by listening with your ears but with your skin and your nose and your sense of touch and your hair and whatever it is, like listen with your entire body and then you find that connection and allow yourself to be surprised. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marina. I mean, that was just so, coming from such a deep place and so authentic. I mean, I feel like you really kind of like, actually have led me to my next question, which is like, you know, like the world, I think what happens is it's so difficult, we find it so difficult to build solidarity. And solidarity starts also with listening. It starts with, you know, just really listening to each other's stories and really hearing each other's stories in a way. And so I just find, I mean, that story was so illuminating because I feel like often we are so frightened. And, you know, different countries have totally different ways of looking at this, but one of the things I really do think identity politics is something that is, you know, in this country, it could be race, but in another country, it's caste or it's, you know, it's other things like that. Or religion that divide us, the things that we, and you know, so there's something really hugely empowering about it and then there's also something really limited about it as well, right? Because we don't want to be boxed ourselves as people of color or as South Asian Indians or whatever that is. So I just wanted to, and I know that's why in the Institute, we bring together people in such a deliberate way. We bring together people, so such different people in such a deliberate and intentional way so that actually that listening can begin and we can build solidarity. So I guess I'm really interested, especially with this time that we're living in, when the world itself is so divided, we've like really experiencing that everywhere in the world, not just in the United States, it's everywhere. And so how do we move forward to build solidarity? So, you know, when the world itself is so divided, how do we kind of like, what do we do? Just as artists, maybe what your practice is and maybe, Sue, me, you can jump in and you can go this way, Marlina and Denise. Are you asking me to go first? Okay. Well, I don't know. I'm gonna take it back to what I've been talking about, gymnastics and movement and stuff, because I've kind of been, I'm sure we all have many different hats in lives and careers, not just one or the other, but because I'm a theater artist and I'm engaged with enlightened people like yourselves. And I think in this sort of like, I'm sorry, sometimes meet heads that kind of sports world. Politics are pretty different. And, you know, they're not into truth seeking and whatever. So, I'm finding interesting to kind of figure out a way to bridge the gaps between that, between the two communities. But I do think that because I'm making a theater piece about gymnastics, it will bring in hopefully people from the sports community and people that normally do not go to the theater or they do, they're gonna go see like the Simone Biles tour, you know, like that type of huge kind of rock star status performance. And I'm hoping to bring in people into like a smaller space that's kind of a little bit more intimate and experimental and like kind of, you know, listening to the truth coming from these kids. And that will help to bridge in some small way those communities. I think that making work that crosses boundaries so that you're not always having the same audience come in where you can maybe reach the people that are not accustomed to seeing live performance or that don't have the privilege to do that. I think that's the way to sort of to help come to a better understanding by having your stories told to people that don't normally listen. Well, that is, I mean, I feel like you've taken it in such a unique direction. And also it's like, this is such, the work that you're doing is so, so unique for lack of a better word. But I seriously, and the way you reach out to people and bring in audience, I really love it. It's beautiful. Thank you so much. And Marlina, do you wanna take that question on? I know you build solidarity. You are like a master or maybe a non-gendered word here, but you're really an expert at building solidarity. Cause I know I've seen you do it. You do it and you do it in a way that, I mean, your play was totally Filipino and it completely had, most of the play was in Tagalog and you invited me to come and direct the piece and drive it to, I can co-direct the piece with me. I mean, and then of course I turned back and invited you to co-direct the piece with me. Because I'm like, I don't understand half this play and I need Marlina. But I feel like you practice it at a very visceral level. So I would love to have you speak about that a little bit. Well, thank you for your trust in me, but I think that I'm a master of any of that. I think that if anything, the reason I keep going into them is because I feel like I don't know anything about it. Like there is like as much as like in theater, they say you have stage fright, beyond stage fright. I always start from a point of fear. You know, fear that I don't know the answers and therefore the only way to know the answers is to like go ahead with the fear and find out the answers. I wanna show you something. This is very random, but I'm gonna move my computer. This right here in the background is a painting in progress by a Twin Cities based visual artist, Takumba Aiken. And the reason that I have this now is because I visited him one time and we were just talking, and he goes like, pick any painting, which one do you like best? And I chose this one and I gave it a title. And he goes, well, now that you gave it a title, then you're gonna have to have it. And he just gave it to me. And he said, but then here's something I'm giving you. Like, I'm not giving you a completed painting. He goes, this painting is not finished. So I don't know if you want it. Maybe I should finish it first. And I'm like, no, I really love that it's an unfinished piece because then there's something for us to start with again. And I think that I find myself doing that all the time. It's like, where are we incomplete? My father used to say, find a gap and fill it. I think it's always led me like, find the gap and fill it. Where is the gap? Where is the synapse? Well, like between one synapse and another, where's that empty space and what message goes from this synapse to another? And where can we revise, rewrite the narrative? Because the field of all possibilities is where there's nothing yet. And that's where I like to go in first. But it's frightening. I mean, I'm gonna mention again, the experience with Leslie, I know she's still here, but with Leslie Ishii when we did the 24 hour festival, we were all given a prompt. The prompt that I was given was, made me really nervous. It was like, today I met a Karen woman named Karen. And immediately I'm like, holy shmacks. I cannot write about this. First of all, I'm not Karen. And secondly, the prompt itself was so fraught with like, you could be easily derogatory with what you write in there. And you have eight hours. And I slept until three, and then I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, okay, what do you have already? Like, what's in your cupboard already? You know, when you're like, during the pandemic, groceries are empty, the shelves are empty, you have to go to your cupboard and find out what's in there. What dish can I make out of what I have in my cupboard? And I just started from there. It's like, what is it that I have that starts with this? And I remember that a story was told to me about this Karen woman and how she left her son behind when they were escaping from a truck and it started there. And then I remember that I was dealing with my daughter who's now in Brooklyn who just moved into her place. And that threw in there. And then I looked at the profile of the actors that were assigned to us and I took bits and pieces of each of them. One was a Feng Shui art consultant and like, oh, let's put Feng Shui in here. I had a picture of the apartment of one of the other actors and the placement of her apartment told me it was so clean. It's like, I wanna see it messy. So let's make this character have a messy house. So bits and pieces of it started throwing in there. And then Leslie, of course, brought in her magic. And I don't know how she did it so calmly because she was directing from the airport the whole time we were rehearsing. She was online at the airport. You could be like, okay, flight so-and-so, boarding in 15 is like Leslie, we've been online for like four hours you're still at the airport. And she was just like, yeah, I don't wanna risk it. But the magical experience of it all is that we were all coming in from a strange place an unknown place. None of us have ever worked together before. I knew Leslie through the Institute but we've never really worked with each other before and we couldn't even see each other. And I think what came out of that is like when you look at the places where we're very divergent is like that's the most interesting place because the story hasn't been invented yet. You know, it hasn't been birthed yet. So why would you wanna create something that's already there? Like create something that's not there yet. That's how you renew the world, right? That's how you are born again. And I'm so right now I'm so obsessed really with working on Black Asian solidarity. When I did the project with Orco, his real given name is David Bullard but now referring to Ms. Orco. And some other conversations I've had through the summer since George Floyd happened that this horrible chasm between Asian and Black narratives is something that we need to address so urgently. And the minute I decided that that's the direction that I'm going to focus on at least for the coming year that all these opportunities started falling on my lap without my asking for it. And I knew that that's where I need to play. And- Thank you so much, Marlina. Yeah. I really appreciate that. And that's really important work that you're doing. So we have about two minutes left. So I just want to make sure that I give Denise the chance to answer that question. So take us home, Denise. I know- I'll take you home. All right. Two minutes, just two minutes. I will have to tell off what Marlina was saying about fear and then listening. I feel like the older I get, the less I know or better yet, the older I get, the less that I know, I know. So, you know, like I used to be very, this is my identity. This is who I am. I'm these labels, you know? And then I just realized, you know, identity is more relational to quote one of my mentors. It's just, it's not, the axis of my identity is not here inside of me. It's, and the axis of identity is not in you over here. It's actually in the space between. And I started to realize that as I traveled internationally and just even across different communities, the way that I'm perceived is very different the way that I think that I am. And it kind of, I have to take that into consideration in particular Black Asian relations as you were saying, Marlina. And just anything, even within my own community, we're so different as people and that I can't just be so stubborn about, this is my belief, it's gonna be this way because it's really about listening, deep listening and respecting and understanding and still trying to create work. Because you know, we wanna do that and I feel that the work is something, it's healing, it's, I don't even know if it's healing, it's just this thing that we do. And that's what we'll leave us with is this is the thing we need to do is create the work and keep creating. Thank you. Thank you so much. You three are just amazing, amazing. What a privilege to talk to all of you. Such a beautiful, I mean, we're just privileged to know you and privileged to have, to be in your presence when we do meet. So thank you so much, we're so lucky. So thank you. Thank you Sumi, Marlina, Denise, so grateful. Yes. And now I would like, you know what, it's a practice of our National Institute for directing an ensemble creation to have, you know, we've tried many, many practices to decolonize ourselves. And so one of our practices is actually to invite witnesses, to invite elders to, and to kind of recount back in many different ways. Documentation is one way, you know, you can take a camera, you can record exactly what's happening, you can, you know, write, have notes and everything else, but there's this other way that we all know best, which is storytelling and which is a reflection which many, many of our cultures have storytelling and reflecting back as in the form of oral, I mean, our cultures are oral. And we, you know, our written culture came much later for many of us. So I wanna invite Nobu Komiyamoto as our Institute elder who's been at many, many institutes starting 2012 and who we continue to invite back because she is one of the most profound human beings I know and one of the most special. We just love her, her practice is huge. She deserves everything and just deserves to be completely recognized for what she does, which I know she is also, but I also feel like Nobu Komiyamoto is one of our favorite people. I mean, I just don't, I'm just speaking from the heart. And so I wanna invite Nobu Komiyamoto to reflect back to us as a witness. She's attended a couple of these sessions this couple of days, she's really busy, her schedule is busy, but she's managed to come here as much as she can. So Nobu Kom, over to you. You gave me a hard job. But I'm so honored and I love you all so much that I can never say no, even though it's hard to be here sometimes. Like how can I say no to all this beauty and thought and ambition and fearless creativity it's crazy. So what I do, I don't know, I had to just write down words and I'm gonna pick out some of the words and I'm gonna just, I don't know how to capture all of it except I heard words and phrases. And so innovative, adapting, planet, healing, marginalization, listening, watching the world, transforming, reflecting, reinventing, transcending the language of decolon, of transcending the language of decolonizer. Ooh, body, body, liberation, vulnerable, intelligence, rise up, safe, intergenerational, divergent, convergent, process, deep artists, disrupting, silenced, bursting, silence, bursting, not governed by rules, gifted, gift, gifting, amazing, just move, connect to who you are, check into your body, trauma, stronger humans, personal storytelling, own mythology, own mythology, improvisation, I didn't know any better, naked truth, radical education, layering, devising, where did all this come from? Creating a language, creating a language that audience begins to understand. New information found in your body, in your body. The world is super complex and contradictory. Our brains will not explode, I love that. Our brains will not explode. Overall, it becomes a melody. Then this thing, blue lipstick, hi camp, fun. Politics is location, politics of location, experience of sparsity, teaches abundance. Ooh, essence is listening, honoring where you are, listening to each other, adventure. Sunra, in clashing there was so much learning, finding a way to combine ensemble, creation, listen with the skin, nose, entire body, there you find connection, solidarity, and a world divided. If we don't wanna be boxed, we're bridging gaps, in small ways, sports, arts. Go ahead with fear, find the gap and fill it, create something that hasn't been done, that's how new is born, identity is relational. It's in between, this is what we do, create work. I am so proud, I'm so amazed, I'm in awe, and I'm astounded by Sumi, Marlene, the world is in your hands, thank you. Tanya, we just need a bit of silence for your words to echo in our hearts and soul, Nobuko. All I have to say is that you live, and may you live for a long time. I'm trying. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Nobuko, for, that was such a beautiful list poem of reflection, really. And I appreciate your listening, your reflecting back to us and all the wisdom that you bring to it, and all the heart and spirit that you bring to it always. Thank you so much. We're honored every time we get to be in creative space with you. So, hi, Mina and Dupankar, we are winding down not only this amazing session, thank you for moderating such a brilliant discussion that was truly, there's just so many insights, so many wonderful quotes, so many ideas to take away and practices from this session and conversation. So thank you so much for leading that conversation. And we are winding down our whole virtual weekend, it went so quickly, oh my goodness. So I'm gonna invite as we begin our closing process, if you are in a chat in the Zoom room or on a live stream on Facebook or otherwise, we'd like to invite your participation in the chat to just reflect yourself if you've been with us for these sessions, the session or other sessions throughout the Directing Institute virtual weekend, to reflect what are you taking with you from this weekend's program, what will you keep? What are you taking with you, what will you keep? We'd love to see some of those reflections in the chat. And I think we're gonna do a shout out to staff, all staff and tech support of Art to Action and Pangea World Theater. We'd love to invite you to put your videos on so we can see you and thank you and say hello. And I think we're gonna have a few words from Suzanne on behalf of Pangea and Tanya on behalf of Art to Action. Suzanne and I had chatted that I would start. I was feeling a little speechless because it's been a joy to be backstage and to listen and witness and take everything in as we mark out the cues and make sure that all the brilliance that needs to come through this platform does. So thank you for trusting me to support this work. It's been a gift through the last year working with Art to Action. I really think about with my background had as a poet how all this work restores context, how poetry is a tool that does that. And I really am starting to reframe and be like, oh yeah, look, Art is a tool, a tool that restores context, which is so important in all the complexity we live in. So I'm so grateful, I'm speechless. Suzanne, where did you go? It's your turn to try and say some things. Oh, there you are, hooray. Take it away. You're muted, hold on. Oh, hello, thank you so much. Yeah, I was trying to bring up all the staff and we have so many, yeah, little spots. Yeah, thank you so much for such a beautiful weekend. I thank you to all the artists throughout the tech process leading up to this beautiful weekend and during the beautiful weekend who welcomed us into their practices and trusted us as a tech team to hold them over the weekend and support and love their beautiful craft. It is an honor to just be trusted and supported to hold such beautiful work. And also it's just seeing that part of the art being built as an ensemble and also just wanting you all know that that's what the tech team does behind the scenes. It's the strongest ensemble that I've ever been a part of and how we always hold and have each other from all of the amazing staff at Pangea, amazing staff at Art to Action. Yes, staff at Art to Action, Gabby. Yes, and our brilliant note-takers who also were there and supported us. So just thank you so much. And I would also now quickly love to welcome just a star of the weekend, Kayla, really quickly to say something, please. Thank you so much for you all. It's really the honor of our lives to get to serve you all in this way and I can't wait until we're back together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Just wanna make sure that we just really thank everybody, the people who spoke and also the people who didn't speak. I'm afraid of mentioning names because I might forget people, but I do wanna say Gabby from Art to Action. Thank you. Adlyn, Molly, Jenny, Katia. I hope I'm not forgetting somebody, but thank you so much. And of course, Aya from Howl Around. Couldn't have done that without you. Just to thank you. I mean, this is the awesome organization, volunteers, all the work that we've done to make this happen. It just takes, it really does take a family to get this done in the way that we need to. And Andrea, back at you. Thank you. Thank you, DePonker. Thank you to all the staff and supporters. I mean, everybody who supports this in so many ways. We're gonna close out now with our closing slides and it is so hard to say goodbye, but we really hope that you'll all stay in touch with us. We wanna thank our funders and supporters and partners who have made the Institute, the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation possible all these years from its beginning idea in 2008, 9, 10 to all the iterations that we've had. And particularly this year, funders the Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. And of course we wanna thank Howl Around and give a shout out to DJ Cotton whose music you have heard throughout the weekend. And we wanna encourage you all to stay in touch with Art to Action and Pangea World Theater. Your support is always welcome and appreciated. And also you can connect with us on social media at Art to Action at Pangea World Theater on all your favorite platforms. So we hope you will stay connected, stay in touch, follow and stay tuned for the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation 2022 programming and we'll be in touch with you about more of that soon. Take care everyone and we'll go out with some music by DJ Cotton. Thanks everybody.