 I can certainly tell you what it's going to be about. It is going to be about identity and theater, mainly. So I'll just say about myself that I'm Skye Gilbert and I'm a professor at the University of Guelph and I used to be artistic director at Bad Times Theater and I'm a writer. And I'm going to introduce our panelists. Wow, your names on my computer are in the same order as the way you are sitting. So this is a weird, semiotic thing happening. So and I'm going to ask you after I read my brief bio of you to say something that you're working on right now or we'll be working on in the near future just to keep us up to date. Mel Hague is a Toronto based curator in Drama Church. Mel is the rhubarb festival director and company drama church at Buddies and Bad Times Theater and the artist development coordinator and company drama church at Obsidian Theater Company. Wow, those are long titles. Previously, Drama Churching Work Includes Venus' Daughter by Megan Swabby, Obsidian in February 2016 and Up the Garden Path by Lisa Covington, Obsidian Theater Company 2016, Black Boys by Saga Collective with Buddies and Bad Times Theater in November 2016. I know those are kind of old. So what are you doing right now? I know you will be hopefully. Yes, well I'm actually in a workshop of the Obsidian Playwrights resident playwright right now. So I'm just at the street who's working on that workshop. Submissions come in for a rhubarb festival every year in the fall and so we get around like a hundred hundred twenty submissions and so I'll be going through those. Does everybody know what that is? Sorry to interrupt. Everybody know what rhubarb is? Well it's such a fabulous thing. Just want to give it because I invented it with some other people but so Mel tells them what it is because Mel runs it now. Yes, so it's the we're in our 40th year. It's an experimental performance festival that goes over two weeks at Buddies and Bad Times Theater. We get about a hundred and fifty artists, thirty new pieces, over two weeks it's wild. And one of the great things about it, the original concept, and I think it still applies to one to some degree, is that a lot of the dramaturgy occurs through performance. So the original idea was come in and wow, no matter how crazy it is, no matter how screwed up it is, you got 20 minutes, put it up, see what happens with the audience because when I when I started working back then there was so much dramaturgy. Now I don't have any we'll get into that but I don't have anything against dramaturgy. Oh my god, what if I did? Wouldn't that be horrible? But there was a period in my, some of my best friends are dramaturges, but there was a period in my life where I was interested in the dramaturgy that happened like within the theatrical experience and a little bit going because we were dramaturging plays in Canada like four years and there's oh so that's all. No one does that. Okay, sorry, and here I'm going to Jean Wong. Now Jean Wong is an interdisciplinary director, curator, writer, and video artist of First Nations and Asian descent. Her works focus on obvious things like gender, class, and race, as well as things a little less obvious like gender, class, and race. Her more recent works focus on indigenizing minds and spaces. She's an inaugural member of the CHC Cultural Leaders Lab where she is part of Revolution City, a project that seeks to center indigeneity in the city. She is a recipient of the 2014 Ken McDougal Director's Award, close to my heart because you know Ken McDougal is a great friend of mine. Jean is artistic director of eventual ashes, the community arts organization Asian Arts Freedom School. Jean creates large-scale performance experiences that empower and elicit empathy. So are you working on such a project right now? I am actually! Yeah! Actually just starting up a new piece right now and I'm going to a meeting to it right after this panel talk and what we're doing I'm working with this incredible choreographer Aria Evans and we're creating a news site specific immersive piece. I'm actually writing the text for it and it's about indigenous cosmology. Cosmology? So is it anything like astrology? No. Oh no. No! I'm very interested in Elizabethan astrology because it's something that I'm working on. It's part of what I do when I think about Shakespeare. So I'd be fascinated to know if there are any linkages or anything but anyway we don't really have time to talk about it now. But I am fascinated. We'll do that on the cosmology panel someday. Yeah, absolutely. Now we have last one on this. Nick Green is a Canadian actor and playwright. He won the Dorn Maverick Moore Award for the Outstanding New Play in 2017 for his new play Body Politics, a dramatization of the history of the Canadian LGBTQ magazine of body politic. He's a graduate of the University of Alberta. His prior plays have included Gay Face, On the Wire, Undercovered, Coffee Dad, Chicken Mom, and the fabulous Buddha Boy, Under the Top, Under the Big Top, and Bearded Lady. And what you were telling me but is that your major project that you're working on right now you're telling me about? No. Okay. So I have a few things on the go. I just completed a workshop of the new play called Happy Birthday Baby J at Factory, which is about two parents raising a baby without a gender. I'm also in the right from the hip unit with Nightwood Theatre co-writing a play with a playwright named Andrea Scott about Black Lives Matter and the Toronto Gay Pride Parade. And I'm going into the Canadian musical theatre projects at Sheridan, writing a crazy new musical. That will be the next come from a way. That will be the next. That's what I've heard. Rumors I've heard because that come from way came from our own Sheridan. I don't know if you know that, the musical theatre, which just is able to just bash out those hip-rots by using the machine. Yeah. Okay, so thank you very much for that. So I am just trying to sell ourselves to the Americans here. So it's why I'm still loud and obnoxious. I'm from there. I have that whole pedigree. You can blame anything you don't like on me on, you know, my background there. Now I'm Canadian, proud of it. Relinquish my citizenship, proud of it. But I'm just going to give a, I'm just going to sound horrible, but a very brief lecture on fictional, fictional identities that will try to make it clear. It should last more than about five months. Hopefully, I'll try to talk slowly. And then I would like to talk about my concept of fictional identities. And just see if there's anything in what I say that makes you go, oh yes, oh no, you know what I mean, or that you want to flag and discuss. So I'm going to start off by saying, I'm definitely not an Aristotelian. That is a start. So that means, so if there are any Aristotelians in the room, if you're philosophers, then you won't like this. Because Aristotle is all about A is A, right? So a chair is a chair, an apple is an apple, a rock is a rock. You don't know that, you're not. So it's like, so I'm sort of going, uh-oh, he's one of those guys who doesn't think an apple is an apple. Yeah, you got me. I'm in the side of post-structuralists and someone also, Korbiski, who I've just discovered, who had a book, Ken Keys has written a book that's sort of based on Korbiski, who basically think that we have to be careful of saying that something is something. And it has to do with identifying things. Why? Because our emotions are prejudice or differences as humans, our preconception, and most importantly, language itself and the paradigms that are in our culture get in our way of understanding or just saying A is A. So yeah, let's go right into theater. So hopefully we'll get a clearer view because we're all theater people. David Mamet came out with a book, I can't remember what it's called, so many, in the late 90s about acting. You're probably aware of it in which he kind of expressed his theory of acting, which as I understand, I've tried to teach it with some success to my students and it's about you don't act anymore or more precisely you don't play a character. He was kind of like in my interpretation of Mamet's most recent theory, which I think is accepted by a lot of American actors or maybe something has now superseded it. But it was this notion that you just go on stage and you're yourself. You don't put on a mask and you express the emotions in the play and you use yourself. And if you want to see an example of it, go to Rebecca Pigeon in the various movies that his wife is in. And if you like Rebecca Pigeon, you may like the technique because she's doing it. Then there's what I call The Obsessive, which is Simon Callow in London and he wrote a book called Something, maybe some of you have read it. What? Being an actor. That's right, being an actor, you know the book. And he talks about being a young guy like me who was all ashamed in the closet like I was. And then theater was a mask that he wore. And he could hide himself. And it was all about I'm not me. I'm someone else, right? This is all fiction, right? So I'm saying those are two opposing views and they very much affect the way we think about theater, especially now, because there's something called reality theater. This is what I call it in a candy of people like Jordan Hannity, Daniel, sorry, what's his first thought? I'm blanking on Yabi, Yabi Jane, right? Robbie, sorry, Robbie Jane, Jacob Zimmer, who has well done theater like this. And I would define reality theater, I think it might be happening in states too, or it might have just happened, maybe we're over not behind the times. But at any rate, people go on stage, they play themselves, they talk, they improvise, no play, no art, no fakery, no fiction, just reality, right? Okay, so those so to me, those two things are coming. So and sometimes these people from that group, I've caught Jacob Zimmer on this. He said things like well, I'm tired of that fake theater, I'm tired of theater with characters and plots and all that fake stuff, I want real theater about real people. So the two are opposed, I'm saying, and it's kind of a Simon Callow, David Mamet School. So whenever we get to my theory, I feel we live in a world which overvalues reality in a very Aristotelian way and thinks we can get to it. So how does this apply to identity? Previously, in terms of identity and sexuality, there's been essentialism constructionism. essentialists believe that our identities are biological, like male, female, gay, straight. We're born that way in its biology. Constructionism believes that those identities are constructed. And just to just to make up, just to get to very quickly, I'll talk to myself a bit as a drag queen, and then I'll try to wrap up. I'm a drag queen. It's a made up identity. It tells a lot about me, though. I'm an effeminate gay man who has constantly to deal with people being afraid, angry, upset by my femininity in real life. Have to stop doing this with my hands. Drag is a fictional identity. It's not real. It's not that speaks to my daily experience of exclusion. So and I think there's an example of someone making up something about themselves that I think is more true than fact. I'm male. That's a fact I have a penis. Sorry to mention it, but I do. But that's not really a much relevance to me as the way I perceive myself inside. I perceive myself as a boy or a girl, but not as a man. And drag helps me, that fictional identity helps me with that. So I'm not, I'm interested in fictional identities. I'm interested in the idea that identity is fiction. I'm interested in the idea that if you say I am Italian, that's a good example. We may offend the Italians in the room, but you know, it doesn't mean anything and it means everything. So in other words, it means nothing in the sense that in reality, there are so many people who will say you're not Italian. I'm Italian. You were born in Yugoslavia. Or you know, it's not now Italy. You're not Italian. But the reality of being an Italian to that person who thinks they're Italian is incredibly important and it is real and it is fiction. And what is fictional is important. And that's what art is based on. It's all about playing games, making up things. That's what theater is about. It's not about being real. Being real is kind of impossible. So when we talk about identity, we have to talk about, we do need to talk about things like privilege, which is like, does that person get a grant? Does that person have prejudice against them under the law? And that has to do with what privilege people have and that has a lot to do with the way they look, right? And that's very important. We must discuss that. But I'm suggesting separating that from something called identity. And then we will stop accusing people, which I think is the mean part of not being that. Saying you're not Italian. You're Italian, I'm Italian. We're different kinds of Italians. We have different concepts of Italianness. And let's not get into a culture war worse, what happens around identity issues. A war war. And hurt each other. So anybody have anything to say about it? Are you all Aristotelians? Or do you think that I've gone in the wrong direction with this fictional idea? No, no. I don't think you're going in the wrong direction. I don't know if it's yes or no wrong direction. That's definitely about the wheels. Do you want to modify or anything in what I said or one question? Yeah, so I'm a Jamaican, my mother's Jamaican. I'm mixed race, which includes black, South Asian, white, a variety of things like a veritable martini shaker of a human being. And so people perceive me as white, perhaps, as Greek. I've gotten Latinx, I've gotten very, but never Jamaican. Like very rarely, only other people from Jamaica would ever read me as that particularly. So there's something else, I think, a layer in this idea of fictional identities, which is the pressure of external, which impacts how I am able to access my Jamaican identity. And where privilege comes into that, is that I have a privilege of choosing whether or not to reveal my Jamaican identity. So I do it a lot, like it's sort of ingrained in me. But I do walk through the world with a choice of identifying as Jamaican. And does that make me identify as a person of color? And I actually do question that every day in spaces as to what I am being perceived as. So it is a question of both my internal identity. I was talking to a friend of mine, Audrey Dwyer, about how I would look in the mirror for a long time and try to figure out whether or not I looked white. And she said, well, white people don't do that. And I'm like true, true. So there is something internal in me that is delineating me away from whiteness as a center. But is that how I am being perceived? And that's where the privilege lays in is that I can, in certain circles, pass as white because of how I'm being perceived. And so I think the other layer is the societal expectation and how we can move within our fictional identities. How much access do I have for the identities which are internal in myself to be external? And I actually think that's where the theater is, is in bringing these identities into spaces where they are accepted or not accepted. And that cognitive dissonance almost, that can appear when I think I am walking into a space as one thing and I'm received as another. That fascinates me, like utterly fascinates me. And it's something like, and because of the person that I am, and like, that's even before I'm thinking about whether or not people perceive me as queer, which I also genuinely don't know. I also could look like any straight woman walking down Queen West. I mean, like, fashion is really fluid right now. So there's all these layers of how I am feeling at being perceived and that's where my internal drama comes from, is in navigating that. Got it. I know that, for instance, to me it reminds me a little bit of being a straight acting gay man, which I would never not know about, because I'm not one, but they have a choice, you know what I mean? Whereas us queens don't, but they have a choice because they don't have, if they tell people they'll know, right? And they're sometimes surprised. With me it's usually right. They kind of figured out you are gay. Yes, but then like in that, in that choice there is also a burden and a shame of like, if I don't, if I choose not to reveal this, then maybe it could just come up, like, and a fear, or whatever. Out of, out of, or yeah, or maybe then I was lying. Right. Like that's a big reason why I don't talk to anyone I went to high school with, is to have to deal with the idea that they would think I was lying for four years when I wasn't out. Right. I just didn't know. I have no idea at that point. I thought it was very interesting that someone came to me, someone sent me this weird letter because of an article I wrote, a week of weird things, right? And it said, should you ask a person if they're gay? And the implication was if they are gay, should you ask them? But basically it was basically should you ask person if they're gay? And I said, in terms of gayness, in terms of my politics, yes. If more people had asked me if I was gay when I was young, it would have helped me, though it would have been very torturous. It would have been dangerous, it would have been felt unsafe in many ways, but it meant that I would have gone gay. I'm not gay. And it would have made me start to deal with it. I don't agree that someone should say you're gay or you're a faggot, but I think you're allowed to ask a question. Are you gay? In my view. That's my own opinion. I have to answer another topic here. Does anybody else want to talk about this? Do you look like you do? Yeah, I do. Go ahead. I guess I do. Yeah. For me, in hearing sort of the conversation, it gets me thinking about actually sort of delineating what identification is. And the reasons to identify or self-identification. And they'll touch a bit on it, whether it's an external thing or an internal thing. And for me, one of the things I think about immediately is someone self-identifying as something or not self-identifying as a means of survival. And I think about here in Canada, we have the Indian Act where a government is basically externally saying who is indigenous and who is not. And so many generations of people who did not identify as indigenous as a means of survival, in order to avoid various oppressions and discriminations. And you know that happens in queer communities too, as you just touched upon with people who can choose to identify as straight or queer. And there's that kind of identification. But there's also this identification of being true to your heart and who you are inside. And that's not really fictional to me. That's actually getting in touch with your inner self, with your blood memory, with your ancestors, or whatever it is, those kind of connections. That's a whole different type of identification, which isn't fictional. But you see, that's where I would go, hey, this is why I try to push, because I'm actually my real advocacy, even though I'm this queer artist, which is true, is art. I mentioned queer stuff. But I'm actually advocating for art, which means to me, I think art is more important than life. Fucked. I'm fucked. I live in art. It's where I live, right? So for me, anything that you've made up is probably more real. I know that sounds like me just non-aristatelian wanging off. But in fact, I honestly believe that what's in your heart is fictional, but it, not your heart, but what's in my heart, you can have whatever's in your heart. But I think what's in, I'm going to tell you what's in your heart. But what's in my heart is fictional, because I have all sorts of ideas about who I am. But it's so important. And it's art needs to be reacted to. It needs to be taken seriously. It needs to be, like our images of ourselves that we project, Oscar Wilde said, he was a very deep man, the mass is more important than the truth. And anyway, so that's what I want to say was, by saying fictional, I'm not trying to diminish it in any way. I valorize fiction. Like I think that that's the point, is that when people go around saying this is real, they're devaluing real, because then people end up getting to arguments of what's real and sometimes they're impossible to figure out, because everybody's got facts on the reality side, on different sides, right? But um, but um, anyway that's all, that's all I would say, but that's still, but I know that if you go fictional, so you're just saying, hey, it's fiction, you know, and that's devaluing, but do you want to say anything else? Not on that? Oh, move on to Nick. I'm really nervous talking. I feel like there's a lot of really smart people in here. Oh, come on. So I'm going to talk about my, uh, it, so I read your paper. Oh my god, so that means you're smart. Yeah, um, uh, and um, I can talk about my response to your paper as well as what I explore in terms of identity in my work, I'm no expert on identity, but I'll just mention your work that you, oh sorry, you mean your theater work? My theater work. Okay. I also have a background in social work. Um, so in your paper, something I, that stood out to me were two things. One is the sort of use of the word fictional identity as opposed to gender performance in a way, right? Sort of departed from Butler's notion of gender performance, talked about it as fictional identity, and also where you referenced Foucault in terms of discourse existing, you know, philosophically, but also having material consequences in some contexts, right? So the discourse of justice has a material consequence in prison. And I think that is where a lot of my interest in part in the discussion about identity lies. In terms of identity can be philosophical, it can be intellectual, but ultimately it has material consequences, and that's where discussion and privilege comes in. And a lot of my focus, for instance, has been on masculinity, and the performance or fictionalization of masculinity is one thing that isn't real, that is performed as fictional, but has incredible material consequences. And to my mind is performed in attempts to access power. And, and so much about identity, or fictional identity, to me has to be discussed within relation to the center or the power. So I'm a Femigay guy, too. I mean, I can butch it up, but even then I seem, then I seem like a slightly straight passing Femigay guy. But, and so I experience pain, and I experience oppression in some contexts, but there's also the possibility of me using that fictionalized performance as a way of accessing power by oppressing women. And so, to me, and in theater, if you're going to be exploring that fictional world of identity, to me it's about responsibility of understanding that post-structurally speaking, what is fake and what is presented to the world as, you know, a fake identity has consequences and has a context that has to be observed. Because once you put it out there, it starts the process of becoming material. Okay, um, now that was... Now first of all, you just casually cited Foucault. He's doing it because I'm writing all the way about this, so he's doing a Shakespearean rhetorical technique. It's all through Shakespeare, what the orator does is they start by saying, I'm stupid, and don't listen to me because I really don't matter much. And then they proceed to be eloquent, not when I'm waking up. Okay, so, um, but you've moved us into an area that I wanted to talk about, which was appropriation. Now, I did want to open it up, so I know it isn't time yet, but how do I don't have time to open it up? You, would you tell me? How much time do you want other questions? I don't know, at least 20 minutes? Do we have an hour and 15 or something? So at least 20 minutes, maybe longer, but see where you're... Okay, um, so I think, I think you just slide right into appropriation. So, I'll tell you that I, I right now am, um, because you talked a little bit about the privilege of putting on certain masks and how it, and how that's related to power. And I think that, well, so I'll set you two anecdotes. One of them is, um, trying to read a play by Amarai Baraka at my very white school, right? So I, my school has almost no people of color now, sort of, but you're, when I was teaching this 10 years ago, no people of color. So our white students sitting around in class and I make them study, I'm a big admirer of Amarai Baraka, Lee Wright Giants, and I make them study Dutchmen. So, um, I wanted to read it out loud in class, and I had one of the students say, we can't read that loud. And I said, well, I'm, I said, nobody in the class is black. And so, for me, as a teacher, it was a moment of going, hey, we have two choices. We can either not see what it's like to hear Amarai Baraka's voice, or we can, um, hear it and not be black people reading it, right? So that's an issue for, I thought it was an interesting issue. The other issue is, um, I'm thinking now, and I'm mentioning your opinion, because I'm teaching now, I'm thinking, I'm teaching Rana Boy, Rana Boy, something, I can remember the last letter, 95, by Jordan Tannehill, since he's a hot player, everybody loves him. So he's got this monologue, um, that he's written for a young black man. And when I read it, it's, it's as far as I understand, it's for a young black man who's a drag queen, and who thinks he's Rana, or at least wants to perform as Rana. For me, total identity in terms of like drag queen, right? Like that's my experience of being a drag queen, it's my experience of identity, but it's also Jordan Tannehill writing a play about being a young black man. So do I teach that? Should he write that? That's my question. Am I going to get in trouble with some people for teaching it? That, that, that's a stupid issue. Let's just say it this way. Should we? Is it right? Is it, is it just? How do we deal with that? How do we deal with Jordan in his play? I know. I mean, I think when you, you talked about, what did, what did Thomson say? What did you say that Thomson said? Oh, Thomson's quote that I always repeat because it, it, he knows that I do it. I'm sure I've told him I do, I know, he knows I do this. But is what, when I asked him about appropriation about, because Thomson has a, is a, is a great wonderful writer and indigenous person. And he, I asked him about a CDC program where a white guy was writing about residential schools. And I said, what do you think of that? And he went to Thomson's invitation, but it was like, you know, well, you can do what he wants, but how do you might get it wrong? So that was, that is actually the tack that I take. But I don't know if people agree with that tack or not. See, I would modify that. It's like, you can do what you want. You might get it wrong. And you might be critiqued. You might be punished for it with the public vlogging. Well, I don't know about public vlogging, but I mean, you might have to have, have some difficult conversations. Like I think that a lot of the times writers will come to me and ask if they're allowed to write in a certain voice, if they're allowed to. And I don't know what permission I could give them. I'm not here to give you permission to write in any specific voice. What I am here to help you do is to navigate the, the inevitable conversations that will happen if you do write in this specific voice. So Jordan, were you here? I would say that, well, we should have a conversation about appropriation of black voice. And he should be able to have a very intelligent conversation about appropriation of black voice. Perhaps why he chose to write this character. Perhaps be open to people saying, I don't, I don't think this is real. I don't think this is, like, as you say. And then, but that doesn't mean that the play can't exist. That doesn't mean that he can't, right? Like it's actually that there's this, this, you know, and I know that online critiques and like it can be quite rabid and quite intense. But I think what people are looking for when they ask that question of can you write this about that? Am I allowed to write this about that? Is there actually looking for a permission that doesn't exist? But I remember when we did Robin Fulford's play, Still Kiss, which was one of the hugest hits that buddies ever had. It was about straight guys beating up a gay man in a park. And I was written by a straight guy. You know, and it was about, there was lots of gay men in it, right? And Robin Fulford, in my view, got it, right? And I didn't care. Whether he, and I was actually hard to find gay plays. At that time I was beating the bushes to find gay plays. And we did it. And anyway, so I'm just saying that for me was the thing, was that and I, and I viewing it as a gay man, a lot of other gay men were so I couldn't come out of it going, gay men never act like that, you know? But he also was writing straight characters, right? Yeah, because he was writing, he was very good at writing the bully, the violent bullies too. And so, so there is actually like an identity physician that he might share, like within the that's right play, right? So that, so that like, especially when we're coming into plays about like, saying people of color, because this comes up a lot when we talk about appropriation of the stories of people of color. Like, maybe there is a responsibility of white playwrights to also handle whiteness within the context of these plays and not just, and not just consider, am I accurately portraying the people of color? Because that's not going to happen. Sorry, what's the other responsibility then? Sorry. As, they're as responsible for giving us like, like investigations of whiteness and how that operates within a context as opposed to seeing whiteness as this neutral place and focusing all of their energy on the like, other. That's very interesting. That is the thing that needs to be authentic is the other. I'm like, well, what about like, whiteness is a cultural construct like, and needs to be like, studied and given as much of a like, culture, like it, we're always focusing on whether you're appropriating the culture of the other and doing that, like as you say in real, like, is it real? That I find that people of color actually have a very difficult time writing people of color because they're so worried about that their representation will be seen as the authentic one. Like if a black playwright writes a black character, that's the authentic one. No, no, no. It's one human beings with possibly some experience that may cross over with the character that they're writing. But if anything, they are as if not more beholden to a lot of the stereotypes that have been pulled in of narrative stories. Well, one of the justifications that one of my fellow writing instructors at Guelph uses and has been used online by people writing about this is writing is by definition a mask. You have to put on a mask to write. If you say you should not put on a mask to write, then you are going against writing. I'm just being devil's advocate here. I'm playing that argument that I've heard. So you're actually being anti-creative. Our line here. If you say be careful. Don't put on a mask because that's kind of something you shouldn't probably ethically do. And that's a bit of what I'm coming back to my fictional identities. It is about masks. I'm talking about wearing masks a little bit. And I'm talking about don't we sort of cut away. Now you aren't suggesting. People don't. You agree that basically with Thompson you just said put it out in the marketplace and secondly for discussion and also let's hear about white people too if they're writing a white play. So I get that. You're not saying don't. Don't don't anyway. But I'm just I'm just talking about this extreme position anyway. I'm saying that whiteness is not a neutral position. Yeah. And that's that like that that energy needs to be put towards not seeing it as a like a neutral center. And then everything else outside of that is the other. That it's a very specific choice as a matter of fact. And no I lost it. There was something you said about like about responsibility about like and that the other side of writing that I think is kind of scary now but I think very important is that there is a responsibility for what we put on stage for what we are creating because theater I mean for me and obviously that I'm someone who has studied theater but when we go back to different time periods in our history we look at the art that was created and we think of that as a reflection of the narrative of the time. So the work that we're creating today will people will look back and think of it as a reflection of what we are now in the narrative of our time. And I think that's a that's a really important responsibility as artists. I think especially when tackling something that has like a historical well everything we write has a historical context right but I think in terms of like writing a play about the residential schools or something that's happened the responsibility falls within understanding what lens you're bringing to it. And Mel if I'm picking up on what you're talking about it's it's that a white writer writing a story that is sort of central to say a racialized community the responsibility falls within examining what lens you're placing on it and that if I were to write that story about residential schools my lens has to be examined within that play rather than masquerading as this is a account of what happened that that is accurate and indisputable right? Yes, exactly. And that's what historiography is as opposed to history it's looking critically at history and saying maybe what we know as history is actually just someone's story that comes from a particular point of view. Well Ann I mean I think it's important as Canadians like if we are like if I as a settler am writing a play about the residential schools for some reason that I have a responsibility to really examine how the settlers around in that play are affecting this as well like it's not about like that there's a national guilt and shame that needs to be examined within that story that is I don't know Well what I notice in a lot of plays around drag and effeminate men is that they are often not white in place in other words the character that is effeminate is not white you find it in angels in America dress in crazy right and so if in Rihanna boy if he had inserted a young drag white guy do you know what I mean and what does that person how does that person react with the young drag black boy do you know what I mean like how how is there another you know there's a possibility of looking at his own being critical of his own cultural thing rather than pretending it's just the norm I think that's one of the things we're talking about I think when it comes to conversations of procreation what I think about is for so many millennia on this land it's about relationships it's about community it's about where you're from and in that there's a responsibility and there's accountability to particular people with particular communities so for me for example when I'm creating work or directing work or doing any kind of work I have to ask my grandmothers I have to ask my elders I have to ask my community for permissions you know what can be shown what can I share what cannot be and if there's a whole protocol to that to be able to go to to do these things and for me that's something that's ingrained in me you know that's something that I know I have to do and I think when it comes to these things where people decided to write about things that are not of their own culture the question becomes who are you accountable to who are you responsible to so when Thompson says hey you can write about it but if you get it wrong who are you responsible to when you're wrong you know who are you accountable to and that's where the problem is because when someone is wrong there's no accountability right they can just go off and you know within this world continue to do things and that's where there's a problem and that's where you know a lot of the the critique comes the emotion comes right when you haven't done that and I think something that's also really important is that like to have those relationships where you're responsible and accountable to somebody or community it takes time it's not something that you can just start and then you know in a couple months start writing something you know and that's where problems come because we're in such a rush for our society that often that's how it happens and that just increases the chances of being wrong well I realized that race is different than sexuality or whatever that but when I was writing some of my when I've written some of my some of my early novels were about very much about the details of the gay life being a slut meaning being promiscuous and I got a sense from some gay man that was like and still I think this is true I'd say magnified by like a thousand percent but back then it was even like why are you telling our secrets this is these are the secrets of our culture like for instance I talked about bear culture when nobody really knew about bear culture and I was critical of bear culture because it's actually as like all fiction it's as silly as it is wonderful and as mean as it is kind do you know what I mean it's just full of contradictions but um but I knew people were like and I had some straight friends but I've never heard of it this bear thing there's this whole bear thing in the gay community yeah it's pretty big and um and they're they are pretty big but uh yeah but then I would have some gay men who'd be saying I don't think straight people should know that so it's interesting and I think around sexuality in my sexuality sometimes I feel like those secrets should be I'm not saying it should be revealed in New York is but I'm saying it's interesting because in my culture and maybe I'm wrong because people get mad at me that I'm feeling like hey we have to kind of put it out there a bit though sometimes it also leaves us a bit defenseless people feel that's one of the other problems because I feel we can be attacked because you've revealed and how the culture works you revealed what goes on inside the culture right it's very interesting to me at any rate um so um is there anything else to say about that well that just makes me think to like looking at theater so often my big question when I walk out of something is what is the point of that play existing right like and so well sometimes there's commercial theater that you're like that exists because it was fun and it makes me feel good right and it and a lot of that commercial theater makes me feel good because I'm a white middle class person right male so I can relate with that I see a love story of people who look like me it makes me feel good I walk out right a play about bare culture or I think of also say a play what was it called it was about the pausing culture yes hey that's a sob culture bare so people know what pausing is it's gay men who try to it's this partial fiction partial reality of gay men who want to be HIV positive who want to be given the gift of the HIV positivity a very visceral play yeah this one it was a British play called very difficult to watch for me and or bare culture at a certain time now I think they'd probably there could be a musical I don't see that but but what is the point of this play existing what are we doing in in presenting this identity this performance to people what's the point and what's the audience and I think something that stands out to me about the discussion of appropriation responsibility someone writes a play about a different culture or community and cast their lens on it my big question too is what's the audience because if that play is then going to have a run in a house where the subscription base is 90% white people then there is no responsibility because ultimately the community wasn't even engaged in the telling of that story so that play exists people learn they leave they have the information through a white lens and the damage is done in my opinion in that case so this so in terms of telling our secrets who are you telling our secrets to and why like what's the point that's where my question comes up yeah period yeah no I I totally get that um how are we doing for time oh my god oh we gotta have an hour left yeah not before the discussion period yeah so I can't remember what I was gonna say but I have no idea about all that now it's gone um so um I think that so when we when we talk about one other topic that we're gonna talk about which I'll just briefly touch on is um casting so in terms of non-traditional casting I'm wondering whether if you guys have any opinions on where we are oh yeah oh sorry this is the comment I wanted to make sorry it leads into this a little bit okay and I think we have to look at the fact that we we are here at the LMDA conference and who cares about us except us not maybe wrong and I mean that about theater in general just listen to me for one second but I know because there's this huge thing called the cult what do we call it the cult the mega computer commercial theater commercial of musicals what's online there's the capitalist culture all around us making money which we're not doing we're not I'm not getting it for the money this capitalist culture absolutely is weighing upon us and people still have an attitude of your plays aren't being very well attended why are you doing it you know if you were successful you would be making money like Garter Binsky who was arrested are you aware of Garter Binsky yeah and anyway he was a big producer named producer went to the states and I always used to be told why don't you make some money from your work and they say Garter Binsky makes money from his work he's now in jail because he's a criminal that's how he made money from his Broadway shows but um so what I'm saying is that you have this incredible culture which is incredibly oppressive which is straight and white and it's all about money and they don't give a shit about political practice especially in the age of you know whose name I'm not going to mention right and here we are I'm not saying I shouldn't use the word political because here we are discussing very important issues and sometimes I just go not that we shouldn't discuss them but I just go God aren't we rigorous on ourselves and out there they can do anything they want and they will laugh at us and they will be angry at us for even bothering thinking about it right I just think it's important to be aware of that right that there there is a vast capitalist culture that goes hey who cares you bankers you playwrights playwrights are still figures of fun in movies you go watch a movie and you will find that oftentimes the character that when they're trying to represent a nerdy intellectual who has no relationship to the world they'll go oh he's a playwright and that in itself is a laugh right okay so I just wanted to I don't know if anybody has anything to say about that but for me it's a difficult question like on the one hand we can't I don't want to hold back on us but I mean there are people like the mar who talk about how we sometimes kill ourselves like we we're so critical of each other in the world that is that is trying to create art or being lefty or just being opposed to capitalist culture that we kind of that we're ineffectual because we're so busy you know what I mean? so yeah I just think it's something to think about not that we shouldn't be critical of each other we shouldn't be rigorous with each other but there's a whole world that's not rigorous at all and they're winning they win every day right? oh sorry that depends how you define winning if you see making mega money is winning but I'm sure they're winning that's absolutely true but that doesn't mean that that play is more valuable than a play that had a small audience and didn't make great returns but changed some opinions or represented some people or well you're speaking to the converted I believe in small I'm a big I'm a big thing of 10 people saw my play it's a star I love my play they loved it you know what I mean? so I was going to start talk a little bit about um but does anybody have any feelings about where we are in the world of non-traditional casting because I feel that one of the problems the thing that I want to discuss was I've been told well this is the way you deal with non-traditional casting which used to be called colorblind casting and it can also refer to gender too is that what you do is you if it's a play which is old and has no politics then you are free like usually Shakespeare's thought of in this category or perhaps Shah though that's I don't know no coward so you know you can do non-traditional casting but if you're doing a play about the deep south and racism unless you want to make a particular point about being non-traditional casting and to have a play be about your non-traditional casting you're in fact going to probably have white people by white people and black people by black people because it's about whites representing blacks and the white should be white and that kind of actually black so I'm wondering if you guys have any opinion about that is that is that a valid theory of non-traditional casting does it work or is it's I think I think that the central the central tenet of colorblind or non-traditional casting is still with whiteness as a neutral choice and anything made outside of that choice is is is the political choice and so I think casting Shakespeare all white is a political choice actually and I don't think that like you know in Philippacan Obsidian theater talks a lot about deracialized casting where you are casting a Shakespeare play with people of color but they are not playing people of color they're playing that character in this particular British court and they have to like you know kind of take their mind away from all of the things that are making that they're bringing on stage simply through their presence as a person of color on that stage so I don't get that so that doesn't that suggest that you black body on stage and a Shakespeare play oh no I get that but I'm just saying does that mean there that you that you don't want to cast people of color in not anything that's not a play about people of color no not if it's not if it's not if it's not thought about and it's only seen as antithetical to oh well we don't want to do something boring so let's bring in people of color and then maybe that'll inherently make it interesting but if you don't let the people of color actually impact like through their bodies through their like the story that is being told on stage then it's just but maybe then what I'm complaining about is something good because I would say hey you often have the black effeminate guy well you're doubling his otherness your extension that would seem to fit your as a positive thing your theory because if you cast the black guys the effeminate guy then he's got you're accentuating his otherness of being effeminate by being of color and that's a good thing because that's using that is that you know what I mean and I don't know if I agree with that D it's a it's a I mean I think I would have to know more details about the play like an example that I have is when production cast Aaron as a black man but also cast one of Titus Andronicus' son as a black man and so then all of a sudden Aaron's whole thing about being like slave and being you know held down by Titus Andronicus and his family is kind of muddied by the fact that now Titus has black sons like so so all of a sudden this thing where he's like okay like I'm I can bring like he had he was gonna wear Malcolm X glasses and he was gonna you know like really bring the all of a sudden it gets muddy because he's talking to another black guy and he's like so all of so it so it seemed like oh look we're gonna have lots of but it actually cut undercut his conceit you know I totally get that I'm just worried that if you and I know that if you are thinking about race constantly in terms of casting and what the effect that it has and maybe this is a racist thing for me to say then you are going to end up with every place about that maybe shipping but I don't know do you understand what I mean because people are are saying think about this don't think about the play that's not what you're saying you're saying it feeds into the play I'm saying it feeds into the play and it's an entire other layer of of of of tension of history of grounding that is so critical to the play itself actually it's not what the play is about it's what the place foundation is and like sometimes that could be race sometimes that could be gender sometimes that could be sexuality but like if we ignore this foundation and just think of the play as something we can I don't know put on air like like it's it's the it's the stage like it's the stage it's interesting because then and I know we're going to open up to the audience but to me this brings up a play that I was just involved with which was an adaptation of Vatican's Lulu which was very much about saying we don't want to list we don't want to hear these stories anymore we don't want to hear any stories about women being raped we do not want to have those stories do not want to view them that's kind of what the play was about Brenda I didn't write it but someone else did but I was in it but so that's to me interesting and and part of this kind of discussion like are the classics kind of over or do they always need because of the fact that they hold so much baggage do they need to be constantly reexamined is that what it is when we throw them in front of people should we never do a play before 19 2000 maybe that is not but critically that unless we're being critical of it and ripping it apart okay well there's stuff to feed on oh and then we had Duvam go ahead and hear did you want to say anything about I think that what's standing out to me and listening to Mal is is that there's a difference between being thoughtful in non-traditional casting and erasing race and to me I have a question about a play that you can interchange people racially and there's not a political context to that because there's never been a time when race isn't political so if there is that play that it's so easy to admit you know substitute in and out different people based on their race that and it's not political I have a big question about what that play is and why it's being produced today like who cares and I mean I have my stance on classical theater but again the the theater that interests me has value beyond just being a trip to the past and so what is that play where race is I think that's a very good important or political so the premise that if it's not political you can do non-traditional casting is like well it is political if you're doing non and if you erase that you're just erasing race for identity or whatever it is yeah and and back to your sort of going back to this black effeminate character I think where my issue is is if that character is the same disregarding race then I have questions about how that character is created right I think we're supposed to we should open it up okay sorry about that so I know there's some stuff I love to say on the panel but I hate picking people you're up front with the lovely brown hair so will you speak all right so I would love to hear you all comment on and I think that's a conversation I have with my students all the time which is coming from this question about versus reality where you started with the mammoth sent out a lot of acting given that in contemporary theater performance and in the culture at large I think you see loads of performance that are about playing a fictional role there is a role that's been created and I'm going to play that versus about playing myself or a version of myself right and putting that into the world right I don't know how to navigate anymore the conversations I'm having around a demand that within the context of fictional performance right a created world a fictional play right that the people you cast play the roles have to have had the life experiences that the characters have exactly right have to have those experiences be that person all day and I'm like now I understand this part of our field and our culture it's important I'm not devaluing it but given that in our culture in our field we are going to do some work where we are creating fictional identity we're putting on masks right um the demand that people who perform those roles are those people actually to me an NCF argument it negates theater I think it's a great argument that Trudulian made it's actually the argument that you know it goes back while you're making it that they're saying you cannot make theater because theater is a lie you're not allowed to be oh yeah this argument about lying and truth is inimical to theater as it's going on for centuries so I know what to do about that because I also am certainly sensitive to the vast need to open up casting right to have people you know non-giddy performing trans after people of color are getting way more opportunities people getting to express themselves through masks they play because we do we can't ourselves no I get it it's not as well I get that as well okay what do you think of this well is this is this a straw man she's setting up sorry or is this a real question do we do we think that we really have that this is an issue that we have to choose with whether or not a person has had that experience or not to play it or is it go ahead G no no look out look out yeah well I think my as a director my first reaction to that is that you know these days I think that rehearsal times are really short we just don't have enough rehearsal time so if someone has that lived experience in some way it just makes it so much easier and if someone doesn't it takes way more rehearsal time that isn't there and you can see that on the stage the difference right away I mean I would what I would say about it add to that is that I've been kind of using that and it hasn't had anything to do with race or sexuality for years as a director in the sense that I've always gone what is the primary feature of this character like what is it they're going to have to play more than anything are they just the angriest person in the world on in there so then that I want an angle I want a person to anger is right there you say hello and they go what the fuck you know I want that kind of person to play that part I want somebody to have to go can we find your anger and they're going oh my anger is there somewhere I've been afraid of being angry no you know and then you're in fucking trouble right like you want people who can access what is important about that character and I usually make an intuitive reading of what is the most important aspect of that character and I'm drawn to that actor who can do that and then I don't have to teach them that so that to me is related to some degree do you know what I mean like that you have your hand up yeah hi Amy Brooksberg it's my favorite she-her-hers I'm glad that you acknowledge the vast capitalism that we're all working under because that's a really important factor so my question for you as a white artist who elects to put on these masks as needed to convey the story of how you try to recognize communities people of color and for example this being a personal phone release as a feminist in white how would your portrayals simply be created to be benefiting those communities materially financially and they don't have that kind of side-checking and also how do we read that in a world like I have to cite American info I'm sorry I don't have Canadian statistics but by the life expectancy of say black trans woman he's 34 years old in the United States how is this created to be anything then that he used to portray that community are you talking to me as a white artist it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's mostly a it's a it's a it's a and what difference does it make when you know that the American young pop theater overwhelmingly serves the 15 percent whiteness trans-educated so well I mean for in my view any kind of representation of difference is to some degree valuable especially if it is abhorred by a lot of people so well well in my view though racism and sexism and homophobia are different there is enough within them that is similar that it serves in my view like I mean I I can't when I go to see a play about racism I read myself into it sometimes as we all do right and say I felt abject because of this because of my own reason why I feel abject right so to me I'm not saying that they're the same but I'm saying if you're dealing with abjectness you know just Butler's favorite word if you're dealing with that then you can deal with it in many ways they are connected and I think it's very important not to disconnect them to say they're not the same they're not the same but to not to disconnect them and say we're warring groups right that we have different interests because we do share our abjectness they may be different degrees of abjectness they details up that you don't understand what I mean no I mean I I don't think it's unbiased and I and I also would say like like sometimes thinking globally about things like that can be very very difficult I try to think real locally when I think about how I can help if I see a community that is not being represented on the stage for example at buddy's in bad times theater like if I'm working on a play perhaps that is written by a cisgendered playwright then I will make sure that trans artists are involved in some way are they the designers I don't know are they like doing sound design are they consulting like I make sure that if they are not the driver of the project then that team is stacked this is the way that dramaturgis can be like agents of change if I'm not working with a trans artist of color like I am thinking real locally real micro about what power do I have to hire within any room that I run and how can I make that room the most useful room both to the work to the communities because it's actually one in the same so it's so thinking micro because yeah like when you start thinking macro it gets really overwhelming very quickly any other questions yes I've been noticing more and more that playwrights have been able to be agents for change in terms of just how they lay out their character descriptions and the preferences for casting I'm wondering if you have thoughts about other ways that playwrights can advocate for certain identities or representation beyond just casting because I feel like we've seen and yeah I've seen more of that in terms of just character descriptions but it does seem like if we're also talking about audience and also talking about all these other things like is there well I I personally think then I'll be going to speak sorry I'm going to speak but I think it's about for me it's about form it's always been about form so I would start challenging immersive theater for instance I hate that term I did not like throw donuts I did not like sleep no more right I thought it was a fine date play for people to come and get drunk with their dates then have sex afterwards and socialize and they got to run around a dark warehouse which was a really sex say and I felt that it was so anyway immersive wow that was immersive so radical right its form can sometimes make us anything that that begins to play with narrative but but in ways that are not trendy like in other words immersive becomes trendy and they're all the immersive plays are the same so I know I think form is important I think it's possible to pull people in the situations that they haven't been in and to make plays work in ways that one of the things I do it's a time-worn technique though I think we really need it now is make the unsympathetic make the evil characters sympathetic and the good characters evil because right now everything we see is it's about the poor people who are good who we from the moment the play starts we know they're good and we feel sorry for them and we hope they win that's not life we don't know who's good or bad people are mixed up the great writers wrote about people where he went do I like that person or are they really evil that to me is really radical and really real I was only to say about how we can radicalize our play writing yeah I mean I think like beyond beyond casting of your play like in your contract do you have like how many tickets need to be given away how many community events need to happen around this play are all of these relaxed performances how many relaxed performances do you want like how many times will you let audiences I don't know use phones like what are things that can make people who don't usually go to the theater more comfortable within a theater space because actually depending on what theater you're walking into if you've never been there before it can be an incredibly alienating experience and I think playwrights have a lot of power or can have a lot of power like if you're coming up on a production there's like when I was working with Saga Collective on Black Boys their contract had a ton of community outreach that we needed to hire a second Black producer specifically to work with the community to bring them to the show and it was a tremendous amount of work but it brought the community to the play in a way that Buddies itself could not have been able to do and if it wasn't for Saga Collective itself we wouldn't have done that yes so Peter Scott, she rehears I read a lot for a lot of new play development workshops and recently I've been getting by primarily by playwrights of like the whole this person can be played by any race or this person can be played by any director and I've just started saying nope we're not I'm not doing this I'm not even entertaining this for a second round mainly because I I just cannot in 2018 in the world that we live in today think that some person can be like you know what it's fine as long as this person is the other like well I'll just like I'll be able to get production and because like that's honestly what it boils down to in a lot of ways and so I'm wondering is that the right course of action like is like what happens when I do say no to all those people but also what happens by you know opening up that space of people who are from those communities being able to like talk about themselves but it's just big choir industry question but also what I've been doing I'm talking too much anybody here yes you absolutely I think it is a good idea to say no to those but I think you need to explain why like you need to hold some sessions to talk about like non-traditional casting and like because I think people are doing that because they think of it as like a I don't know experimental or like form-moving decision and I think you know without opening like a discussion so people know that why that might be a weird thing to do then you're just going to keep getting them and people are going to be like oh well they only want writing from people of colors and they're not like it's actually that specific thing like saying that that race like like exactly what you're saying so you've got to open the space I think for learning within that within that trope yes I just wanted to say off the space just a question and I just wanted to say thank you for the phrase why isn't it neutral because I was thinking of the same thing being played in talk and there is I don't know if there are two are adult and just like actually in my creation I was writing plays which is a lovely departure from the professional questions that I'm going to be storing with her but I feel like that's a phrase that is a useful tool to give to writers that is shockingly not as obvious because it should be well I know I didn't make that up I'm definitely voting something I did not make that up you heard it you're first I'm absolutely putting someone in here pulled out my sand furs we heard it from someone yeah Mel Hague famously said anyone else and on the subject of why is it neutral the hiring power and community building power the dramaturgs have oh gosh I lost it I just wanted to sort of plug the phrase nothing about us without us I think especially because I'm you know I'm a white lady and I'm queer but that's basically the only special thing about me it's very special oh thanks but but I think that sort of as Peter was saying there can be sort of this desire to you know include everybody without actually talking to any of the people you want to include and so I think then the impetus of action or the the call to action is also partially that as a dramaturgs working with playwrights working with directors to be like as you said getting those people in a room making sure that that conversation does happen yes okay that was a comment what was that question? it was a comment okay that's great it was a very good comment it was a good comment yes so I wanted to go back a little bit to the audience idea and play about pausing and how you were kind of talking about a white player I was talking to a white audience but that wasn't necessarily the story that was being portrayed on stage was that the I don't know the play my joke oh that's those were two separate thoughts yeah well so what I'm interested in with this topic and audiences is how we take plays like this and how we keep the ideas that we've talked about here in terms of responsibility and accountability when we think about the plays that we're producing and casting and how we look at identity on stage and how do we reflect that in the audiences that we have like you were talking about community building and how the song collective specifically was able to bring audiences that whose identity was reflected on stage and I'm wondering where the mix is in terms of like having a play that can still educate people who are reflected on stage and have them learn from that experience about it being like touchy-feely you're learning so we're going to treat you really carefully and also doing plays where people who are often not portrayed on stage see themselves and see their stories and get to enjoy quickly that theater and be like I was seen I was heard it specifically relates to this topic of identity and fictional constructions of those ideas it's like right now I don't see a lot of plays about envies but I want envies on stage and so what are they? non-binary posts okay and so do we put those people in gendered binary roles so that they're on stage that you see actors performing those roles and I know it's the responsibility also us as artists I know this a lot and playwrights so right plays that have those characters but I don't know if you have any any thoughts on audience and how we integrate audience with this idea of identity and reciprocate in terms of that so just going back to sort of what this example you were setting before because I think what I was talking about is representing a community in a theater that doesn't have much of that community in the audience and my statement was just sort of well what's the point which is different than don't do it right to me it's do it but be purposeful in why here why this stage so for instance I think that non-binary characters should be on any stage anywhere no matter the audience but as a matter of a purposeful attempt that's also done in conjunction with some sort of community engagement to integrate that type of work into the canon of theater that's being presented there rather than being this shocking one-off that presents a certain perspective that people who don't know a lot about that community are then going to leave with as truth so if it's a play about if it's a radical play about gender and being non-binary and it's being presented in a house where for the most part people aren't going to have a rudimentary knowledge of that that statement or that community that's going to have an effect right and so it's not don't do it it's just have a purpose in doing it and doing it in a intentional way right and know what is going to become material at the end of that in terms of people's understanding of that identity does that make sense? yeah yeah I disagree you disagree I think like I'm not actually interested in plays that are educating in any sort of way I'm only interested in plays right now that are written specifically for the audience because I think that other audience actually comes and I think we'll actually move the conversation forward if we're not imagining our audience as at that entry level place yeah because that involves a lot of explanation of things that are actually maybe not important but I think we naturally imagine when we're working on plays that are outside of a dominant narrative that we have to explain everything right so what if we imagine that everyone actually already knows a lot of these things and what what is that kind of theater because I think for the last I don't know 15 20 years we've been doing that other the other kind where we're explaining a lot about different communities and so people think they're going to the theater to get an education on a particular and I'm like that's actually not what this is theater is rubbish at communicating information but it is great at communicating emotion now to I don't think we disagree that much my point wasn't about educating because I hate my point is about understanding the impact of your play in that theater yes no we don't actually disagree so if I not at all if you're doing a play of mine where I'm being hyper critical of a feminine gay man which I have a tendency to be sometimes I have to understand that if that is being presented to an audience that isn't familiar with the politics of gender expression as it intersects with sexual orientation I run the risk of audiences leaving saying wow the feminine gay men are awful you know they're bad and now everyone thinks they're bad I just have to be conscious of that but that doesn't mean I'm going to put in a monologue that explains my thesis I'll write that in the playwright notes I don't know I think if in 2018 they're walking away and that's the first of feminine gay men they've seen on stage or ever and the first time that they've ever seen one portrayed negatively like I don't know I want to give them more of the benefit of the doubt like that they're not going to walk away with this being the only like this is one of the powers of me being in 2018 and of like inheriting what Sky does you know like that we're actually on the back of a lot of expressions it's just responsibility again that's all is what I'm saying but it's just because I'm out there you have to be aware of what people are going to be taking away as your message I just saw this play that was I think in my personal view a very bad play but anyway so this might have been part of this badness or maybe it's part of this wonderfulness anyway but there was a character that was female and not white who was constantly referred to as our son whose name which gives you an idea of the play was Peepee so that was one of the problems was every time the son's name was mentioned Peepee we were all just distracted by the fact that the son was called Peepee which may have been relevant I don't know but the son was played by a woman a young woman who has also seemed to be an adult so anyway but but for me as a viewer I was just asking about all we can talk about about the baby this is our lack of education was why why was that a girl you know and I'm yes brought up very binary so why was that a girl like that's I'm just telling you the way uneducated I'm somewhat uneducated because I'm not gender non-binary but I'm also queer so you know what I mean I I know we're done so I came out of it going just all I get thinking about you know was we kept going why why why was that girl called a boy all the time why do you think it was well I think the playwrights about playwrights but I because the the playwright also put in some really offensive racist stuff in the play because it was like who we're gonna put a lot of great so I didn't want to go there they're gonna put a lot of crazy stuff because there was no context for this play but I'm just saying that that one thing that was there but I'm just I'm just doing being a man in the street so we have to end apparently thank you