 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Things Fall Apart, Looking Back to See Ahead. I'm Claudia Alec, and what we are attempting to do here is an interactive community round table using several different platforms. I acknowledged when we were in our prep session that if we were doing this in a physically shared space, I would casually during lunch be chatting with people, very slowly letting folks know how it was gonna work. We'd have a circle of chairs in the middle and then another circle of chairs surrounding and it would be a little bit like a fishbowl exercise. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to frame what we're doing, then I'm going to model what we're doing, and then I'm going to invite our amazing round table and y'all to introduce yourselves and join the conversation. As the experimental wing of the American theater, how do we reckon with the field-wide challenges we have been unable to meet? What have we been unwilling to acknowledge? What's the civic contract between artists and community? How do we pass the torch to new leaders that our field needs? In the midst of pandemic and economic crisis, what are the new structures that we have to imagine? And when is closing something actually a liberatory practice? What and how do we dismantle as we build forward? Hopefully this is going to be a conversation that has people in it that have experiences of having closed things, that have people who have experience with trying a new thing and not being sure if it's going to work and people who have experiences of being in the middle of trying a new thing. The point of this field-wide conversation is to give us a moment to reflect with each other. This is one of the hardest conversations to have. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody ever wants to talk about why the company closed. When it closed, people want to move forward and move on. Why? Because I think some of us tell ourselves this story that closing is failure and failure must be denied and avoided. Rather than failure actually being part of the developmental process and once we acknowledge what's not working, we can then build forward better. I'm going to introduce myself and I'm going to share a story of a time when I closed something and then something I learned. Then I'm going to invite my colleagues in the panel. They're going to be invited to either respond to that learning or they can share a story themselves. I'm going to invite you to introduce yourself as well before you speak. Our audience doesn't know you. I know that you're all amazing. You are all amazing people with these deep practices. So I'm just going to just ask you to please blow up your spot. Please brag on yourself just a little bit so that the audience can really understand why the knowledge we're receiving from you is so wonderful. And also it just helps us to know who our community is just a little bit more in the audience. We're inviting you to join us. This is fishbowl style. Now normally you would just tap me on the shoulder and I would go into the outer circle and you come into the inner circle. What we're doing is we're going to put a link in that crowdcast chat. You'll click on that link coming to the Zoom. Don't worry. You won't come straight into this room. We have another room that you'll go into. You can talk to someone and say, okay, I'm ready. And then you can join us for this conversation. Also we have permission to leave this space. If there's like 500 of us, I don't know what's going to happen. I also just want to encourage you to be using your chat to talk. Thank you for your patience with my preamble. Let us begin. Things fall apart looking back to see ahead. I am Claudia Alec. My gender pronouns are they, they're, she, hers. I'm speaking to you from the calling up Justice Studios based in the land of the Alone people. The people are still alive. My practice is a transmedia social justice practice. So we're consulting with arts professionals and grantors. We're developing theater and producing theater digitally and in physically shared space. And we're also just trying to make a lot of resources and doing a lot of performances in social media that are about disrupting white supremacy culture. This is my story. So in 2008, I was the artistic director of a theater company. It was a hip hop theater company in New York called Smokin' Word Productions. Smokin' Word Productions was, I think our entire budget was like maybe $10,000 a year. Like we were super low budget, but we were producing prolifically doing things just very guerrilla style. And I was offered a position on the West Coast at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I went to the company and I asked them, should we continue? And because I'd gotten permission from the new job saying, yes, if you wanna maintain your other practice, you can. And maybe we'll have to figure out time off for you to go back to New York. So I asked my company, do you want to continue? Cause part of our practice was meeting weekly in shared space over food. There was a real physically shared space aspect to our practice. Also, this was in 2007 and it was just a little bit before everybody easily had access to technology to allow them to collaborate remotely. So we made the choice to shut it down. And it was a scary choice, but it also felt so freeing. And ultimately we felt like the idea of having to have a like of success, meaning your company lasts forever and ever and only gets bigger and bigger and bigger, that actually felt like a really scary horrible idea to us. We were like, that feels like colonialism, that feels like, but that feels kind of monstrous. Like we don't wanna do that. What if, what if success is, we did this dope thing for seven years and now we're doing something else and I can name that it is success because dialect was an associate artistic director of the company. And here I am in shared space with this entire festival and dialect and myself were still collaborating on a field wide level. So it felt like success at the time and it still feels like success today. And that's the end of my story. And now I'm gonna open it up to anyone to say, hey, I have something. And then you get to speak, please introduce yourself before you speak. Can I, I can speak next. I can introduce myself and then I have a question for you, Claudia. Hi everybody, I'm Alison Delacruz, I also go by Dayla. I am currently also on Olone land and I'm visiting family. So I'm realizing how bright this room is that I'm in, but I'm grateful to be here. And I am a theater maker, multidisciplinary artist and also a part of a brand new ensemble called Outside in Theater in Los Angeles. And we are currently building, we don't even, our full space is not even built out yet. But I also am a part of, have been a part of different ensembles over the years and I'm also on the net forward and have had some experience producing in diverse communities. And Claudia, I really appreciated your story. And I think my question is, when you all made the decision, was there any, was there a dialogue between folks about the decisions to cut? Like how did that process work? And I guess my other question is, was there conflict about it? I mean, it sounds like it felt like a good decision for everybody, but I was just curious how that decision making process practice worked in the company as well. Exited. It was complicated. I'm trying to remember if it was a series of conversations or if we had like one deep dive conversation where we were like, this is what we collectively decided? Okay, okay. And I recall at the time being like, I am afraid that I am throwing away all of our social capital because we had a company that had the social capital of Dominique Moriseau. Like I knew, I knew at the time that our company was all of the national leaders that just hadn't gotten a chance to like, that hadn't been plucked by the other regional theaters yet. So I knew that dissolving meant that we were dissolving a story and a piece of what we were doing in the world. So I was, I think I was, some of us were scared also that we were lying to ourselves, that our social connections were strong enough to exist outside of the formality of that company structure. So again, I'll just name, I'm grateful that it turned out right and that it felt like we made the right choice and that it still today feels like we're still in practice with each other, even though it's not through the formal mechanism of smoke and word productions. And from the audience, success is not necessarily perpetuity. Thank you from our audience. I can build on that, I guess. Hi, I'm Anna Schneiderman. I issue her pronouns. I'm also on Olone Land in Oakland, California. And I was the co-founder and executive director of Ragged Wing Ensemble for 17 years. And so I co-founded the company with artistic director Amy Sass and another collaborator, Keith Davis and a handful of other people in 2004. And it was, so I'm gonna share the story. And I guess I just realized I'm just gonna share a story. And it does connect very much to this idea of challenging the myth of corporate perpetuity, which was like a phrase that came up a lot in our process. So I'm just gonna kind of build on that by telling our story. So yeah, so we created the company in 2004. For the first many years, it was like a kind of passion project sort of on the side while we all had full-time teaching jobs. We were all teaching theater in schools. But we had this company and we created Ensemble Theater and we started creating original work. We created our own process for creating original multidisciplinary work over many years. We had a core company, the company kind of like got its own momentum going over several years. We developed an audience. We developed our own kind of aesthetic and style and process. And then around 2012, we didn't have a space. We were spaceless and nomadic around the East Bay and did a lot of shows in outdoor locations and non-traditional spaces. And then we had a point where we were like, if we're gonna really do this, we need to have a venue and there was no black box theater in Oakland. So we created a venue called the Flight Deck, which we ran for six years from 2014 until 2020. And it was shared. So we had 70 arts groups using the space every year. And it was like a vibrant and amazing space with a lot going on and Raggedman continued to grow and create these kind of bigger and bigger shows and bigger and bigger audiences and also connect with a lot of Oakland based arts groups, not just theater, but also dance and music and visual art and film and all kinds of different multidisciplinary groups. It was very beautiful. And we got to the point where, so we just realized that it looked like this total success from the outside and we got all these accolades and all of these funders were like, you guys are doing it the way you're supposed to do it. And yet it was all kind of like hanging by a thread the whole time. And everybody was getting paid but nobody was really getting paid quite enough. And there wasn't enough stability and the kind of like the overwork underpaid endemic. Was very real in our world. And then there were also just kind of like structural issues that we were trying to resolve and figure out like, okay, what's the relationship between Raggedwing and the flight deck? What's the kind of power structures and how do we, it kind of emerged. We didn't like really kind of strategize and plan the structure of it. It just kind of like came about. And then we sort of realized certain things that really needed to shift in order for us to really continue both in terms of folks being able to live and make enough money and also in terms of just power sharing. So we started really working on all of that. Oh, and it's, you know, so it was, it was to find myself and my co-founder are both white women. And so that was also something that we were very aware of. And we were like, okay, you know, the power dynamics need to shift, if this is really gonna continue. So, you know, we realized at a certain point that Raggedwing couldn't really continue to run the venue, that there was not, that that was sort of not working out and that there had to be like a more of a separation between the theater company and the venue. The venue had kind of created its own identity. So we figured out we needed to leave the space. There was this whole long process of figuring out what was gonna happen to the space. Eventually we did pass it off to another organization. And then we were in this process of like, okay, Raggedwing is gonna have this whole new life, you know, post venue, what is that gonna look like? And also I was started to realize that I wanted to work kind of more in a systemic way, like not inside one organization, but more like through this whole process, I had sort of understood the systemic problems that we were facing, not just our organization, but the whole field. And I wanted to work on that more. So I was kind of getting interested in, in working in a more systemic way. So I was wanting to step out of the ED role, but to continue to stay involved in some way, if it was supportive. And then we had this whole process whereby we, you know, I was trying to step out and then we brought somebody else in and it was beautiful. And we were on the way towards creating this really lovely shared leadership model with three people, none of them being me. And I was kind of like, we were designing this and I was about to step out. We'd created this whole new vision for Raggedwing. And then one of those people got an amazing job elsewhere that couldn't really be turned down. And I mean, not that that was the only thing, but that was sort of the turning point where we were like, I don't think we can go through this all over again. And we had a very, very deep process with our, with the leadership team, with our board. And then we, you know, we brought in our artists and, you know, the community and we're just like, what really, what, what is really possible here? And, you know, as a lot of companies do it was, and you know, I wonder if this was a factor in your story as well, Claudia. Like there was a lot of, like it was sort of founder dependent in the end. Like, and we were trying to shift that. We were really trying to shift that into this broader, you know, power sharing model, but like it was, it was, it was delicate, right? And too many, you take sort of too many pieces out and there wasn't the energy for institution building beyond where we were. Everybody wanted to create artistic work, but the kind of institution building was really hard to maintain. So we had a long process about it. We, we, we had all these different scenarios that were potentially going to happen. We, we talked about them. We went through all this whole process and in the end we were like, you know what, it's time to let it go. And once we made that decision, it felt very, very right. And then we went through a whole process about it of, you know, telling the different people in our community. We had a public community ritual, which really felt like a funeral really, but like a really joyful one. And, you know, I kept saying, people kept asking me like, how are you feeling? Are you sad? And, and I was like, yes, I'm sad. There's a lot of, there's a lot of grief here, but it really felt like the way it feels when a loved elder dies, where it's really sad. And there's a lot of grief and loss, but it also feels natural. And that's my child. So I'm going to stop talking right now. I will pause there. Oh, that is amazing. Well, I want to invite Cherie or Jeanette into the conversation. I know that you have some different viewpoints, advantage points. I just, I love the idea of the, of a wake, a performative wake for your institution. Founder Jenga, what piece can you take out without toppling it? This is a comment from our audience. Thank you to Emily. We've actually had some really poetic and amazing comments from the audience. Sometimes a story needs to dissolve before a new story arises. Hanging on by a thread the whole time, that can be so real and it can be incredibly complicated to admit it in order to improve. Again, I think one of the biggest problems of our field is that we're in meshed and supremacy culture that forces us to be in denial of things that aren't working. So it's, it's, it's exciting to have an exchange about how to end something. But it's also, I think, good to hear that the peccarity is some of our structures. That's useful. Well, I'm happy to go next. That's okay, Jeanette. Hi, everyone. My name is Cherie Hill. I go by she, her pronouns. And currently, well, I'm a dancer, choreographer, mother, a praiser. And I currently am director of art and community at Hopemore Dance, The Bridge Project, which is an organization that is based on Ramanthusha Lonely Land in San Francisco, California. I am currently zooming in from Payoku Wicham homeland, which is in Southern California. And happy to be here. And I joined HMD. We're now going by HMD, The Bridge Project, because that's been part of our, I'll say evolution or transformation in the last couple of years is to slightly alter the name right now. But I joined in 2019 as a community engagement coordinator. Part of our work is the organization was founded by Hopemore, who is a white choreographer, dancer, founder. And part of it is The Bridge Project, which is a program to bring equity and cultural driven conversations through workshops and residency programs for artists who have been underrepresented due to our capitalist and colonial and white supremacist systems that we live in. And I will say that I'm hearing maybe some similarities to our stories. I'm not founder, so I'm not speaking today from a founder perspective, but someone who was brought in and then invited to become a shared leader within the organization. So in January, 2020, Hopemore, our founder who was artistic director invited me and my colleague, Carla Quintero, who were both employees of the organization. Part time, we all worked part time to become co-leaders with her. I think she had a vision of wanting to distribute leadership more and share leadership more. So we were invited to become co-directors of The Bridge Project specifically. And both myself and Carla said yes to that invitation and hence started the distributive leadership model that we've been in process with and that's been emerging over the last couple of years. And it's been pretty layered. I obviously am not gonna be able to tell every detail, but I will try to share somewhat of a story that we came on and we gratefully started working with a consultation group called Leaderspring. And we worked with Safi Jarow there for about a year and a half, which was really, really great for us because I think what started as a small vision of taking staff and wanting to share leadership turned into a more macrocosm vision of not only staff sharing leadership, but board also rising up to share leadership as well as artists in the community being brought in to be part of the voice and the vision of where the organization could go and what was desired for the path that was headed. So we've had a lot of input from artists in the community that we serve and our model has shifted to have the SS3 co-directors as well as an artist council that we are just starting this month who will take over a good chunk of our funds for curation. And we're also working with a board who there's been some shifts, some people stepped off and then we've had new people come on. They're all artists. They're all volunteering their time. They're primarily artists of color as well to also have a voice in where the organization is going. And some big things I think that happened was hope as a founder, as a white woman has been really great and brave in stepping back more and letting other people come in to have voice and lead as well as we've talked about too in our community leadership conversations of what does that mean? Because you don't just get to step back and give all the hard work over to artists of color to make it happen that you're still needed within that circle. And so we've all been working on what our roles are massaging the nuances of how do we contribute? Where do we need to step up? Where do we need to step back and things like that? We're also, recently the decision's been made to change the name. We all came to a consensus that continuing to hold a white founder's name within the organization does not match the values of equity and anti-racism and diversity and all those great things that we're trying to do. So we are beginning a process of a name change and yeah, and it's continuing to emerge and evolve. And I heard your story and it's, yeah, I think about we've done all this work and wow, what a decision to then get to a place and say we have to close. That isn't what we're going for. I hope that we will be able to see this through when we've talked about timelines for each of us as directors and hope as founder. And I think for me, my vision is really to be able to hand it over within five years to a whole new group core of people with sustainability in place, hopefully funding sustainability in place, structures in place. And knowing that it might not last that long or they might take it all the way somewhere else or they might decide to break it up and blow it up and do something, you know, like I don't know but so far it feels good to be part of this process to see something go from a sole founder into emerging and shared leadership and then into the next thing of like who is the next generation gonna do something with it and what are they gonna do with it? So that's our story right now. Thank you. Okay, I guess that leaves me. So I go, I'm Jeanette Harrison. I am, my family's on Ndaga and I had the good fortune to grow up on my ancestral homelands on and near them. And I am the artistic director and one of the five co-founders of Alter Theater which is located on the lands of the coast Miwok. And I really appreciate everybody's stories here today and the thing that I think I really wanna bring forward is this idea of if you are truly successful as a nonprofit, you put yourself out of business because you achieve your mission. And so I actually feel like a failure because Alter Theater is like the little sister of Ragged Wing. I think Ragged Wing is like six months or eight months or 10 months older than us. We were also founded at the very end of 2004. And I keep begging us to close. Like please, at this point in time other theaters should be doing our work. The Alter Theater shouldn't be needed. You know, we have a mission of essentially supporting artistic risk and lifting up underrepresented artists. We have a playwright residency program that has sent writers who can't get considered at larger theaters. We send them on to the biggest theaters in the country. Elurisa Fasthorse is the name that I'll mention just because hopefully everybody knows who she is. But she had two commissions with us. And then she went on from teeny tiny Alter Theater with a budget of anywhere from $36,000 to like, I think our highest was like $98,000 a year. So boy, do I identify with that under resourced and always barely scrapping by. But she went from us to become the first Native American playwright ever in the history of this country to be produced off Broadway. And she's still the only one who's made that leap. I watched season announcement after season announcement, theater after theater across the country and here locally and where the native playwrights. So, you know, if I was doing my job, well, if Alter Theater was fulfilling our mission, we wouldn't be needed because everybody else would be doing this work and supporting these stories and supporting these artists and doing it in a culturally competent way. And it frustrates me to no end that we are all still here at Alter Theater with our teeny tiny resources having to do this hefty lifting for the entire industry. I still to this day get so many phone calls and emails saying, hey, can you help us? It's like, dude, you have a budget of how many millions of dollars and you're asking me for a free conversation. I don't know how I'm gonna feed my niece dinner tonight. Come on. So, you know, I really appreciate everybody's thoughtfulness around this, but my grief comes from the fact that I still feel like I have to do this work. And we're not taking care of our arts administrators. We're not taking care of our artists by asking them to work at below living wage jobs, okay. And everybody who works in the arts works ridiculous hours regardless of whether you're at the top tier, the small budget theaters, everybody is underpaid and overworked. And we need a really fundamental shift in our field, in our structures and in funding equity. And I think that Altar theaters role really in the larger theater ecosystem is to identify those pieces of the puzzle that aren't being addressed and lift them forward, you know. Back when we started our commissioning program, we steadily increased our commissioning fee and we published it. And a theater company two and a half times our size doubled their commissioning fee just to match us. You know, if we can do it, there's no excuse. There's no reason. We need to put people first. So, you know, I've been like scribbling down little notes of phrases from people that have been so inspired and I kind of really want to lift those all up, but it would just take, I feel like I've talked too much already. So I just want to say how inspired and awestruck I am by all of you and all of the work that you're doing and I will stop there. Thank you. No way. Annette, come on. Amazing. Emily sends you hearts, Jeanette. I have so many things from the chat that I want to lift up. I just want to welcome Suzanne to the conversation and I can't wait to hear from you. I also, Daylaw has some stories to share. I'm going to make an argument right now. I'm about to say something I didn't plan to say. So we'll see if I believe it when I'm done saying it. I don't think it's a failure that Altar Theater exists. I think it's a failure of the United States that Altar Theater exists without the resources of CTG, without the resources of the public theater. I think that's the failure, right? Because you have, you told a story about how you were ultimately completely necessary within the ecosystem of all cultural production, Broadway wouldn't be able to be producing a play by a Larissa Fast-Force if your company had not existed and been doing that developmental work under-resourced at your own loss, subsidizing the entire field. You're not getting those Broadway bucks, come on. So I just want to affirm your company's existence. I'm selfishly very happy you exist, right? Let me make some space for more conversation and then, oh wait, actually, let me see what I can lift up from this audience. There's so many, y'all have been just saying amazing things. So from Emily, and this was, I think, in reference to something, Cherie, that you said that was so good. Distribute and share leadership more, period. Planned obsolescence and succession intentionality. And she said it was so boss, it is so boss. And yes, passing on a well-resourced organization, can you do that? Because there's actually a difference between inheriting something that's well-resourced and inheriting something that has a lot of fundraising that's necessary to make it happen. And I'll name that there's a lot of leaders of color out there in the field right now. And that's the opportunity they got, right? Ooh, all right, our audience is on fire, but I'm gonna hush and make space for folks here in the space to talk. Y'all go ahead. But we have another hour. We have time for you to say more things. So Jeanette, if you had another thing you wanted to say, you can say it. Daila, Suzanne, jump in whenever you want. Just one small thing. I so appreciate that validation, Claudia. I just, I wish we were in a fishbowl, so I could just go over and give you a ginormous hug. But I do wanna just also acknowledge that Altar Theater isn't the only one. We exist in a community of small by-talks that are supporting these artists and doing this work. And it is all of us together that work and make these stories happen. Wow, hi, I'm Suzanne. She heard I actually am from Crowdcast and I'm also helping with the chat and also in an art share artist. But I was not planning to speak or be on camera today. I just, I'm so inspired by this conversation. And I had so many things to say and now I have other things to say. First, I think from me as Suzanne, I think it's really important to acknowledge the strike that might be happening with IOTC. And I think, Jeanette, that is a really, I mean, it goes for everyone. And like Claudia said, it's the United States, I think that needs to support artists because we run on artists. Literally like, what did we do during pandemic? We watched TV, we watched recordings of theater. And then real quick, because I'm, for me, I am really trying to actively learn how to take up space fully as myself and also learn how to step back as a white woman but also find that boundary of I take up less space because of how I identify as a woman. And so I'm trying to find that balance. But I wanted to say that I had a question about how for early career artists who are being given these beautiful mantles, like Cherie said, what are next steps for us to help build, you know, build forward to create better theater companies? How do we latch on to all of this great work that's happening? Is it just the art of asking, of putting ourselves out there? Is it, you know, finding those small and large theater companies? I'm just curious to hear from the panel and to hear from anyone else who wants to join the Zoom. You know, what are some next steps so that we can stop doing the same thing over and over again? I can go next and share and I think maybe a little bit about the journey. I just, first of all, I really appreciate everybody sharing first and I would ditto big time what Claudia said. Jeanette, I don't think you are the failure. I think you're actually showing us just the failure of the system and that I heard you say you were also part of a cohort and a cadre of companies who are trying to put forth more artists. And I think that, yeah, I think that I just want to I just also want to support and echo and validate and be like, you're not the failure. The fact that you're sitting here with us on this call to me is a humbling moment of your deep success and that you didn't, and I feel like I've noticed in my career that I am often asked to make choices between my own wellness and what I believe to be the wellness of the artists or the communities that I want to work with. And I think about how this industry is set up in such a way where even when we try to advance into executive management positions as artists, as arts administrators, we don't have the same kind of support for that and what that looks like or even validation that the skills that we bring as executive managers are valid, important and actually helping to expand notions of leadership and help us to address change. And so just super Cherie, just super also just inspired about, yeah, what does it mean to share leadership? And so, you know, I talked a little bit about, I mentioned that I'm part of a new ensemble called Outside in Theater. We have two founders, a married couple, a white man and an Asian-American woman. And there are several of us in a shared leadership model for co-artistic directors. And we are also in a process. And what I'll say is we're having deep honest conversations about what does it mean that these founders brought together a group of artists that they love and we're friends with and wanted to try to create something and in the process of talking about what we wanted to create together, a mission statement emerged and a connection to this moment, this particular moment in theater history and saying, and the question I keep asking my company and myself is, how are we different? So, Suzanne, to your question, it's like, how are we different in this moment? Why is it important for a new company to emerge and discovering privacy being what it is in this cultural space? There are 10 of us and we're still at PWI. And so, how do I ask these questions of somebody who's been deeply embedded in communities of color-making? And I've built diverse rooms for the last 15, 20 years. I am in those rooms all the time. And so, how do I collaborate? And so, one of the conversations that we're deeply in as a company is, what is the space for white allies right now? And what I notice is, and actually my colleagues were trying to put together a panel of like, I feel like we always have these equity diversity inclusion panels where it's about people of color and women, queer folks talking about how we're always left out, but I don't necessarily hear white allies talking about, here's what I'm doing, here's how I'm making space, here's how I'm unpacking my whiteness. It's not just to hear you say, I'm trying to take up more space as a woman, but I'm also acknowledging I'm a white woman. So what does that mean to take up the space I need and also to make the space or give space? And so, I think right now in the middle of this making, understanding that when new groups form, you get the forming, storming, norming patterns of things. But really, my question is how can we acknowledge this moment in history and say, we do wanna be different? So when I find myself in challenging conversations, I will just ask, how is this different? How is this moment, how are we going to address that when we make artistic decisions, the majority of people who have votes are white people in this historical moment, what does that mean for us? And so to hear the story about how a white founder has shifted her place. And I just think about the last thing I wanna say in this middle set of questions that I'm in is also, how do we also create a space where white creative allies can process what it is like, what all the unpacking that has to happen in a way that doesn't recenter whiteness so that it becomes about white allies still. And so I think in this moment of, if we're really trying to create a different process, what does it mean about how we make decisions? What does it mean about, yes, we wanna create this space and I also wanna acknowledge things that we've seen from the field, like affinity spaces. So cool, I want white creative allies to have an affinity space because I need you all to do some work. I also need affinity spaces to also unpack the complexity of relationship between for somebody who is Philippinex, what is and who is Latina passing at times, people lay a lot of different racial ambiguity on to me. And so how do I hold space for the fact that I'm given things because people think I'm part of groups? So what is my responsibility to not just talk with my white allies, but also to say, what is my process in addressing anti-blackness in Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities? What is my process and practice in work that I'm doing to identify? Yes, I have people who are mixed indigenous identified, but I also really need, but I've also heard from those folks that they're like, but indigenous is not my full, that's something, a space they don't wanna take up. So what does it mean for me to say, yes, I'm an ally to you, Jeanette, and I still need to do the work I need to do because it's not just about big companies, right? It's also about what is it peer to peer community to community. So, and then just thinking about because I'm in California and because of all the things, it's like, how are we implicated in relationship with Latinx communities and diverse communities who are surviving what's happening right now at our border? So, Latinx folks, we're seeing on the range of things. So I guess I just wanna hold space for the multiplicity that we're also all juggling and that sometimes the way the politic gets played out in our industry, in our communities, it's like, there's the oppression Olympics ranking and I just, that's not a helpful thing anymore, but part of me is like, but as an ally, what is my relationship to the ongoing work? As somebody who's been in anti-bias, anti-oppression dialogues for 30 plus years starting as a teenager, I have to remind myself, I'm never done, I'm not fixed. And so I wanna remind people who are either early in their racial identity process or for those of us who have been in it for a while, like it's marathon kind of work and it's long. And so part of me, just one of my techniques is, and this is how I'll end is just to say, I really try to celebrate the really little things that nobody else sees me have to do, especially as a leader. Like, yay, I filed our workers comp payment. I got the accountants to pay that bill. Yes, good job, good job, you know? And so yeah, so I'll just end there by saying I'm in the middle of the making of the things, it is easy to get very frustrated and I'm really trying to hold onto what is the celebration I can have today because I need to be ready to help myself meet tomorrow. And I'll end there. Oh my goodness, y'all are dropping so many jewels. I'm gonna have to re-watch this video because I'm trying to take notes, I'm trying to keep up and there's just so many useful observations coming out of this conversation because it's so complex because I'm gonna name it. Y'all are doing something that's really complicated. You are not designing your company practice to survive and thrive within white supremacy culture. That's something you can do. You're designing to transform the culture. That's running a marathon while you're changing your shoe. That's complicated. And it does mean that sometimes you trip and fall. You skin a knee when you're doing that process but like it feels like there's, I like to resist cultures of urgency but I will admit the ongoing genocide makes me feel like this is an urgent matter and that you're all engaged in deeply urgent work. And you said, Dela, how can we do things different? How is this different? I love that because that allows me to accept all of the proof. We know people are like, theater is dead. It's like no theater isn't dead. Theater was never dead. The idea that rich people can make a system where only rich people can make theater and that can be a sustainable thing for entire communities. Well, that was never a good idea. You were keeping it alive with a lot of subsidies and grants and philanthropy. So we gotta do something different. I'm gonna tell a quick story and that is Penumbra Theater. Penumbra Theater, African-American theater based in Minneapolis, a theater that is just, I don't feel like I would have all my August Wilson plays if Penumbra hadn't been doing what it was doing, right? So Penumbra's going out of business. I'm at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the time and I'm just making the case to somebody to be like, no, you don't understand. Like they're a theater to us. If they go six years from now this institution is in trouble. And so I convinced them to let me throw a fundraiser for Penumbra. So we produced a staged reading of an August Wilson play and raised, I wanna say like $7,000, $8,000 and it all went to Penumbra Theater because that's what my argument was as a predominantly wide institution we would not have the play that we were currently making income and profit from if that company didn't exist. And it was actually, it served our bottom line to make sure our field had that institution. So that story was inspired by yours and stop talking like anybody else and join the conversation. Can I jump in? I wanted to build a little bit another response to Suzanne's question and build on some of the things that you said, Delo which is like this question of like what, where to put yourself like the, in the ecosystem. Like I feel like part of Suzanne's question is like, people starting or emerging should we start a company or like, what's the best way to do this? And I just feel like in my experience, there just wasn't, I mean, there probably still isn't but they're saying, whatever, 18, 20 years ago there was not a lot of like pathways or kind of ways to do things. And it really just was like, okay here's this model, it's like Berkeley rep, ACT like we just sort of figure out how to do that on a smaller scale like little by little step by step, but I feel like I had this illusion at the beginning that it could be really different because it was small and because, we were creating it and like, all these things but like, I guess, what I found out is that over time as it grew and became more complex and had more obligations and all these things that there were both these like external pressures that kind of, just the pressures of money and the nonprofit model and all these kind of external things that made it really hard to stay, to operate in our values even though, we were really trying to do that. And then there's this other thing that was like it's also just like inside of us. It's like, well, just because like, we all have these great intentions and we're trying to make something better and different doesn't mean that it's really gonna be better and different because white supremacy culture is inside of me too and it's inside of all of us. So figuring out how to be different, like you're saying Dela is like really complex and it makes me think about this like hospice and midwife curve. I don't know if you guys have seen this. I'm not quite sure where to reference it but it's like a graphic that I've seen about the just transition like the economy transition and there's like the hospice curve which is like taking kind of old institutions that are doing things in old ways and like dismantling them, taking them apart, helping them die and then there's a midwife curve which is like creating new structures and building new things and developing new models and we need them both. Like you can't, I mean, there's sort of, I feel like for me at least there's this sort of desire to like just do the midwifery and like just like forget all the old stuff and just like jump straight in and just, but you also need the hospice. So, and I was talking to somebody recently who's like has a fairly high up position in a large theater but was really like turned on by all these ideas around solidarity economy within the arts and stuff like that. And I was like, great, like stay in that spot and keep doing this learning and like take it apart from the inside. We need people like that who are gonna be actually hospicing the big institutions as at the same time as we need people that are building new models like what you're talking about, Dale and what you guys are doing, Sherri and like a lot of different people, finding these new models because you can't just like, we're all within capitalism. Like we are within it no matter how much we wish we weren't like we're within it. And so we have to like find these ways to build new models while also, you know, taking apart the old ones and sort of figuring out where for each one of us like where's our best spot in that ecosystem at any given time and it might change. I've got to say this from the chat. Virhul Singh, come on with that fire that dramaturgical fire. We need death and doulas for theater organizations. Wow, that is powerful. And I love it. I just interrupted someone who was about to say something. Go off. I can, I'd like to speak something into the space. I think there's a lot of excitement about new models. And I just wanna point out that they're not really new models. A lot of what we're talking about right now with distributive leadership and consensus-based decision-making and all of that, it has been part of this land since time immemorial. And if you look at indigenous practices, that's where this comes from. So it's not that the models are new. It's that, how do I say this without getting myself into trouble? But I'm just saying that we really need to recognize, especially because there's a language around decolonizing. And if you are decolonizing by saying you're inventing a new leadership structure or new leadership model while directly pulling from indigenous leadership practices, that's, yeah, all the things that Claudia is doing right there. It's speaking of emojis here. And I just also wanna point out too that, Alter Theater has been around now for 17 years and we've had a collective, we didn't have an artistic director. I went to the ensemble and I said, I'd like the title of artistic director and I thought they were gonna be like, screw you, lady, we're the artistic director. What are you talking about? Because I knew that I wanted to start setting up the organization for transition and for me to go on to the next stage in my career. And I knew that wherever I went next, I would probably have the artistic director title would be meaningful, even though it's kind of meaningless for what it is that I do, because I don't pick the shows. I love, Cherie, what you were saying Cherie, what you were talking about, about collective curation, because that's what we've done since day one. That's what has enabled us to support and choose playwrights like Diana Burbano, who's about to have a name who is as big as Larissa Fastwars. So if you don't know her, get to know her. 2020 kind of stalled her career, but man, she is just, she's going. And I just also wanted to bring us back to this idea that the models have always been around. And even if you're looking just in traditional theater, in the Bay Area, I just want to lift up the San Francisco Mime Troop. When I have questions about my God, how do you get a collective of people to make decisions and move in the same direction? I call up somebody at the Mime Troop and I'm just like, I need coffee, I gotta talk. And they've been incredibly generous and don't do that. Don't call people up and ask for free help. But nonetheless, I just want to lift up and point out that we have people who have been doing this work. So even though the fact that certain organizations and theaters are getting attention for doing the work, because a white person has decided to do it, doesn't mean that the work hasn't already been done and the models don't exist. I feel like many of us have had the experience of say, literally saying the thing out loud in the room and then a white person repeating what we said and the entire being like, yes. And then later, people telling a story about the smart thing that other person said and how you should learn from them. Nam-yoh-ho-renge-kyo. So just yes to what you are saying, yes to the fact that these are not, ooh, I'm gonna quote one of our audience members. Alicia, Executive Director of the Network of Ensemble Theater says, thank you for acknowledgement that these models and this way of thinking and framing being an ongoing continuation and honoring of indigenous knowledge and culture and tradition. Just yes to that. Cherie, I just wish that I could be a fly on the wall watching y'all do the thing you're doing because the thing you're doing, like I said, I think it's really complex and beautiful, but it's hard to do. And my response to Suzanne's question is, because it's a really good question. I think that one of the things that I would love for young early career folks to start doing is to stop buying the grift, the lie. I'm at that age where I now remember when I was 18 and thought, well, all you have to do is break your body and work for free and say yes and be the shiniest and best person and you will be rewarded. You will become the movie star with all of the money. You will have that curve that brunch and budget was saying in that earlier thing where it's like you have nothing and then suddenly you have everything. So I would love for our early career people to stop investing in the dying model and to stop saying yes to success that their parents or the field think are success. I would argue that doing a job that doesn't look like success today, if you invest in new ways of building, you're building the success of like five, 10 years from now. That wasn't totally articulate, but I hope you, I just knew what I was saying. And demand that you get paid, a living wage. Just ask for it. You'll be surprised what may happen. I also, I really appreciate this and Jeanette, I appreciate what you said and it's just making me think about what are ways. I was in a conversation the other day about how do we move beyond land acknowledgments. Claudia, I might have been in this conversation with you but it just, so it does make me think about, yes, so much of the practice that a lot of the practice I have around group and engagement is built on indigenous models. And so it's just making me think about that honoring and then also how to move beyond just the acknowledgement but like what does it mean to provide resources to your company or other folks in terms of like, this is a way I wanna pay it forward because I know I honor that I'm benefiting from circle practice that comes out of multiple cultures but I know a lot of it is indigenous practice or I know a lot of the way that I think about community is based on being raised in a community with indigenous Hawaiians and what that means and the way in which that practice happened. So I wanna say that. And then I think the other thing I'm gonna say to young professionals is follow your path. Like I'm having, I don't know if anybody else on this round table feels the fishbowl feels this way or anybody who's watching but there are moments when I'm watching things right now I was like, so that diversity, equity, inclusion stuff that some of us have been doing for 30 years. Like now it's hot, now you wanna pay for it, now community is good. So I just wanna honor that that moment also is happening and that for if I had listened to other people and Claudia what you said, like, yeah, if I had listened to the voice that told me what I was supposed to be doing, I mean, I made a choice as a younger performer not to audition because I'm bigger bodied, I'm tall, I'm not gender conforming. I just was like, I have no desire to put myself in situations where I'm rejected. I'm already rejected in the world. So what am I drawn to? Where am I going? And so the thing I also like to tell emerging career folks or folks who are trying to shift is like, what is the thing that makes you interested? Like, what do you want to learn? What do you want to do? What do you want to make? Go find the people who are doing stuff like component parts of that or pieces of that because that is how, that's the room I want to be in. That's the place that, I mean, because I said yes to opportunities and I did ask to be paid, those have been the most beneficial thing. Like I didn't take the route that I felt like a lot of people I knew were taking and I see the benefit of that now. And so I just honor, I was on a journey. Somebody early on was like, just do you go and do the thing that is you because the you that is you is going to make the difference for other people. That's how we get out of this cycle is that we're not trying to make ourselves a thing. We're trying to actually emerge and do the bet, bring the, all of us get to be in the show. All of us get to be, everybody gets a moment in the circle, right? And so I think about that in this practice. And then the last thing I would say is as young as you are right now, Suzanne, everybody should be mentoring somebody. Everybody should be having a met, having, not that it's a ladder, but who are my elders? Who are my, who are my youngins? Because I need to be thoughtful about what am I, what am I making for them? And so what am I, and then not just for them as if they have no agency, but this other question of like decentralizing, what do they need? What do they, what are they telling me? What do I need to listen to? I heard some advice yesterday from a younger artist and I was like, oh, they hate that. I don't wanna do that, but I gotta listen to you because you're telling me a truth that I'm reacting to. So maybe I need to pay attention to that reaction. So I just offer that and just appreciate, yeah, I just, I'm appreciating y'all so much. Just like, because yeah, my 20 plus year old self, you know, 20 years ago self, I wish I could tell them, like, it's cool, you're doing the right thing. You're actually doing the right thing for what you wanna become. I just wanna echo so much that's been said. It's, I just love it, so much great advice. And Suzanne, thanks for your question again, that it's something I think about all the time is just not wanting to like pass on these toxic, abusive, oppressive structures and ways of being to the younger generations and not to myself either. Like, I don't wanna be a part of them, you know? So I just love all of the talk around wellness and asking for what you need and taking care of yourself and being unafraid to create, you know, to create what you feel is right. I think that's been for me, especially during the pandemic and the racial uprisings, like more courage and strength to say this is not right, the structure is not right, you know, how we're spending our money isn't exactly right and we need to make it right and how can we do that? So I think, you know, the more you can have the confidence to take care of yourself and to speak, which I feel like this younger generation actually, I've seen a lot come out of speaking their voices and posting on social media. There's been, you know, medium, there's been so many prolific, I guess. I don't know if I wanna call it outings, but just people speaking their truth and putting it out there for us to hear and there's been major changes. What happened in American for the Arts was a major change to get, you know, someone to step out of that high leadership position and to, you know, be called to focus resources on equity was huge and I don't know what's happening now at this moment, but I hope, you know, it continues to shift. There's things that happen within SF Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, because staff spoke up and just said this isn't right. You know, I think finding your allies and finding your community and who is able to speak on your behalf and supporting those people. I love what Center CCI, Center for Cultural Innovation, these grants they have for people who are speaking against the grain and who are making themselves public around practices, harmful practices within organizations in the arts. You know, they're giving them a little bit of money and to do that because they get that it takes risk and it takes heartache and grief and it can be stressful. And I believe that's such a great model for philanthropy to start really funding, you know, the folks that are putting themselves on the line at times to do the work to make these changes happen. So I just wanted to lift that up. I also just wanna bring up like spirituality because I think so many times spirituality is left out of these conversations even when, you know, we refer to our indigenous brothers and sisters and folks. Spirituality is huge and so many indigenous practices giving thanks for the land, giving thanks for the elements, giving thanks for everything you have, being appreciative, you know, taking care of yourself realizing that there are higher powers than the United States White House and president that there are forces that can, you know, make things happen. We don't bring it into our work and we don't bring it into our organizations and it's really lacking. And I think that, you know, if you can, as Allison was saying, follow your path, follow your heart, follow your inner guidance. Don't let people tell you that you don't know what you're doing or that you don't know what you're saying or that the money isn't there or the resources aren't there. This world is full of resources and it's full of light and it's full of love. But we have been taught, especially I think people of color through our schools and education systems to not look for that, to not believe we don't have it, to not believe we don't have the power inside to find it and call on it. And so if you can just access that in yourself, have that confidence, find your spiritual path, you know, find what your inner heart is telling you and follow it and let it be your guide. So many things can change, so many shifts can happen and it starts with each of us one person at a time. So I just wanted to bring that, call that into the space. Yeah, and give thanks and a shea for all the great work that everyone is doing. I'm just going to just acknowledge there's an overwhelming amount of science being dropped in the chat, in Crowdcast. You all are just having so many good observations. I wanna make space for Seth and Emily who have joined us. So welcome to the circle, we'd love to hear from you. And then if there's a chance I might try and voice some of those things from the chat. But if not, I'm just doing, I'm going to encourage people to revisit the video and read the amazing conversation taking place. I love this field. Seth, Emily, welcome. Please introduce yourselves before you speak so folks know why you're awesome. Emily, would you like to start? I can, I was gonna say the same, but thank you. I'm Emily DeDecis, she, her, I'm based in Belfast, Ireland, but I'm from Marietta, Georgia and I moved away so long ago. I don't know the land acknowledgement for there. So I will need to look that up. I have a question that's kind of about what can we do when we run into that toxic resistance? Cause I'm really fascinated by, I've had some very surface conversations about the kind of leadership sharing and that succession intentionality that I mentioned like say in Northern Ireland it's a very different arts ecosystem, I guess. And I think when you start to have those conversations, I think conversations like this can really scare people, people that are not in this room, I'm thinking. And I'm really curious like, how do we help people who aren't ready to remake? How do we help them trust in the collective prosperity that liberation is? How do we actually like, where does that enter the conversation with them? Cause I think there's that kind of, even unconsciously, there's that clutching kind of conscious that thing that happens when it's like, I'm scared and I'm going to grab something and I'm not going to see what I'm doing and I'm going to make this process even more difficult. And you know, so how are we speaking to power and what are those effective conversations like in those rooms? This is Claudia. I'm just going to share the idea that it sometimes feels like you're trying to save a drowning person. The drowning person is flailing because they think that you're trying to kill them and you're like, no, I'm just trying to save you from drowning and then they end up drowning you too. I feel like that that's the story that was brought up for me with your sharing Emily. Welcome to the space V2. Thank you, Claudia. Seth, V2, please introduce yourselves and then please add to the conversation. This is amazing. We're getting to where we only have about 20 minutes left but we're cooking with gas y'all. We've just been sharing some really powerful good ideas. So I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much. My name is Seth Eisen and I'm coming to you from Roma Tush Aloni land and I am artistic director of a company in the Bay Area called Eisen Presents and we center the voices of queer folks, queer ancestors and we've been doing this work for about 15 years. And yeah, I'm bringing a lot today. I don't have any super clear thoughts but I wanted to sort of just jump in the conversation and maybe bring voice to the vulnerability that there is that I'm having. I should just, yeah, it's personal around trying to survive. So I've just heard so much of what each of you shared and the different places that you've been in the process from like going, I'm letting this go and then this is a really big relief or I'm letting this go and I'm giving this to someone else or I can't let it go because then the work won't continue. And yeah, so many pieces, so many threads. It feels really almost too big for this forum but I think I just wanna speak to the vulnerability of being in it in this time and it's still going and also in relationship to the conversation about this morning of hearing about like how the funding model is like finally people are saying the real words about that is just a disaster and it's a horrible life suck. And how to survive as an organization, as an artist, as an artist, an organization that's trying to give voice to other artists. And in this moment, but also as an artist that like I've been in the Bay Area for 26 years and centering my artist practice versus centering my own self-care and thinking about as we get older and continue to have debt, student loans and those all-nighters where you're writing a grant or you're trying to make a program possible. How long can a person just continue to go on doing that even though you believe in the work and when does it stop being valuable both for yourself or for others because if you can't show up as your full self, then you're really not doing anyone a favor. I've been very much interested in shared leadership. Oops, one of my vulnerabilities is how to take the steps towards that without writing another grant without asking for help. Yes, I'm asking for help but and it's been happening this year thanks to our new company manager of a year, Jesse Cohn who's working on this conference. We've been working together to develop one of our programs with one of the artists, Ashay who presented earlier today a program called FAB Labs, which is a program about being sort of like their play shops that offer opportunities for QBIPOC artists to explore QBIPOC histories and to offer them to the world. And so we've started slowly with one small program of expanding it and then teaming up with other organizations. And that's felt like the biggest gift but just in closing, I guess the question is how do we have more opportunities to meet with peers and discuss some of these things and about like when do you know when to fold? How do you know when to fold? Or if it's time to like just figure out other models to just keep going somehow. So thanks for the opportunity. I hope that made any sense. I wanna call V2 in because I know we have about 15 minutes before we're closing up the conversation. So please join us V2 and thank you for the sharing, Seth. You inspire, I wrote down a bunch of things but I wanna make sure we give some space for V2. Hi everyone, I'm V2 in San Francisco, unceded Oloni, Ramathush Oloni land. I'm a dramaturg, I'm a theater, I'm a sort of recovering artist, recovering academic. I honestly don't know who the fuck I am anymore. I'm definitely looking to find ways. I'm also looking for partners and friendships and connections. I'm looking for funding, money. I don't know if I necessarily wanna make theater and art anymore. So I also wanna say, Seth, that I appreciate the vulnerability and I feel vulnerable too. And I hate being online like this, like publicly broadcast to the world. I think we need to have deeper conversations and many of us are here in California. Alison, you're here right now and know about your work and ragged wing. But I think one of the things I'm noting in this time, especially with the pandemic and the uprooting and the breakdown of everything is theater, as it exists, is not really working. So I don't wanna pretend it is. The world is broken. I'm far away from my family. I didn't know if they could make it through COVID this year with the second wave in India. So to me, like, yeah. So anyway, so what I wanna, I do wanna say like, I appreciate organic pathways like the way I found Deborah last year. And we started talking about the fires and she let me in and working with her, allowed me to connect to the land and the ecology here and connect to a very deep part of myself. And so I feel that I'm just following these organic things. That's where my heart is right now. Not in the place of making kind of identity-based theater or telling stories of a community. I wanna tell everyone's stories. And I also wanna say Seth, that I love your work so much. Like, I may not make it to all your shows, but you are fucking incredible, Seth. Your work is so meaningful. And so there's some really cool people here and I love and appreciate you all. And Claudia, every conversation I've had with you has opened something very deep for me around power sharing. So that's all I need to say and let's continue the conversation. Well, y'all, this is why we do this, right? Like there's only so much we can do by ourselves. So this is to a certain extent giving the entire field a little head start, a little jump start for conversations that are going to have to happen in real time all over the place. I just wanna affirm the idea that these conversations, these relationship buildings, they don't have to happen inside traditional or formal structures. You can just call up colleagues and have a conversation. You can just call someone. It's what I do it all the time, y'all. I'm sloppy. I have to DM you on Twitter and be like, I saw your play and liked it. Can I talk to you? Can we be friends? But that's actually, that's resistant capitalism. When you build strong relationships that are not moderated by organizational relationship, you are creating networks that are resistant to capitalism. So come on with it, yes to that. I also just wanna name something set that you brought up at the top of your sharing, which was about survival. And then I see that Anna might have something. I wanna make room for it. You brought up something around survival and it brought up for me the question of what are you trying to survive? Like are you trying to survive as an individual person inside of a toxic institution? Are you trying to have your institution survive? And is it short-term survival or long-term survival? I gotta admit, I tend to think real long-term y'all. It doesn't always serve me. I'm working on a five or 10-year plan and people are working on it. What's gonna happen this week? So sometimes I'll come in and I'll be like, that strategy will make us fail in 10 years. But they're like, it's gonna make us win this week. Why are you making us fail? And sometimes they're right. So I just wanna make room for that. I also see we've got more folks joining the conversation. I love this. We're in our last 10 minutes making space for other folks. Go ahead and jump in, Anna. I just wanna say having been through this process of like, kind of divesting my leadership position, like moving, changing my position in the ecosystem. I just wanna, I just offered to set privately in the chat to chat, but I wanna offer that to anybody like in the community who just wants to talk who's like, I'm not sure, like, you know how to do this or whether to do this or what it's like. I'll put my email in the chat here and people can just send me a note, but I'm happy to just talk about it. It's a whole process. It's not necessarily easy. I'm not done, but happy to chat about it. By the way, my new resolution is to DM someone and be like, hey, can I death duel with you? Yeah. And we, I just wanna say we were death duel. Ragged Boone was death dueled by Rebecca Novick, who's a fantastic colleague in the field and she was wonderful. And now I'm death dueling another organization right now having been through that experience. So it's a thing. It's really useful. Hey, graduate student out there. I need you to write the book. I need you to go do the labor of gathering. Maybe you don't need to be a graduate student. You could just be a person in the field. But could somebody write the death duel a book that I could buy next year, please? That's amazing. From our audience, Pamela says, redefine success and make space for collaboration. I think I saw Suzanne go right ahead. Yeah, I'm loving this. I had a question, Claudia, about something you brought up, but I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. How do you make that network and DM people without, without acknowledging that like DMing and making that network is also asking them to do free labor. I can, you ask Claudia, but I'm going to say, then is there a conversation in the conversation about, I don't want to ask you for free labor. So can I buy you a cup of whatever, or can I share space with you in this way? Or somebody I could not afford to, to pay her to be an assistant director. And I deeply want to say, I believe we should all be paid. But she was also at a place where I was like, you're developing a new piece. So can we do a swap and you're going to do this, you're going to do this labor for me. And I'm going to do this labor for you. And we're going to do a one-to-one share. So that neither of us is losing, but we are trying to be equitable about that. So maybe it's, so it is, I think in that conversation, that's always my hesitancy of like the random people who are like, Oh my gosh, everybody's telling me, I need to talk to you. And I'm like, are you the 15th person I'm going to talk to? He's never going to see me again and just suck and extract all of whatever. And so I just, yeah, what is the, and I guess my other question to myself and just hearing what you were saying to do, like, what is the gift I need to give myself in the next moment that someone comes to ask me for help? Or what is the next thing I need to remind myself so that I don't, because I'm a giver and I'm a caretaker. I'm really trying to practice. What is that? What are those boundaries look like and how do I, and how do I help celebrate when I've kept a boundary where I'm like, I didn't know you and I'm not giving you three hours of free time. Yeah, good job. So, you know what I mean? So I just, I would offer those little tips. And I love the organic-ness of you don't know what you're doing right now, but you're like, Hey, what, I can't wait to see what you do next because that's what we're, that's where we need you to be. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Claudia, you're muted. I muted myself. I'm muted and I muted myself. Thank you. Dela, I interrupted you, you were about to jump in with about six minutes left in, in the space. So we're, we're starting to enter into that closing type of energy where perhaps the thing we say might be the last thing we say, or we might not say another thing. So I want to make space for, your name has several syllables and I'm not sure where to put the emphasis. So I don't want to mispronounce your name. I'm just going to say welcome and please share whatever you would like to share with us. Welcome to the space and please introduce yourself and, and share what you got to share. Hi, my name is Severin Blake. My pronouns are they all we calling in from the lands of the Lenny Lenape. Colonially known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yeah, there's been so much resonance in this room. And to kind of dovetail off of what Allison was saying in response to the question of like something that's just really hot for me right now. And I popped it earlier in the chat is that like, hmm, the flip side of urgency is spirituality and, and urgency sometimes and like wanting to please or be able to help and give that person a thing in order to give myself that grace. I have to like take a second and be like, there's that impulse. And then stop and breathe and take a second with my heart and be like, and also what do my inside say. And that's something that's like super interesting because of course, like, I can only speak for myself, but as a theater maker and someone who's like work to like use their body. And their heart and their energy in many ways to like share with other people like to use those tools for ourselves because the body remembers, it remembers when it betrays itself to remembers itself in bases or members things from further back generations. Thank you for that. So what I love is when you do a conversation like this well on towards the end of it. Everybody's on fire and you keep going for another two to three hours. Of course, there are different conversations to enter more things to explore. So, oh, and I see, I see, I see more folks joining us. Um, all right, I'm going to, I'm playing with fire. I'm playing with fire. I see that tiara has entered the space. Um, I'm, oh wait, no, no, no, I'm, I think I'm okay. I think I'm okay. I, I, I, is tiara here for the next our chair. Okay. Brilliant. Cause I was about to be like tiara. I love you. And if you have something to say, I'm going to make space for it and be dangerous. I like to say that we are all getting as much as we are giving in this type of exchange. We should be closing out. Um, just, I just want to name such deep gratitude because none of you all were paid money to help us have this conversation, right? We're having this conversation for free. I'd like to think that this is mutual aid. That we are all getting as much as we are giving in this type of exchange. Um, but it's such a valuable exchange. will grow because of the thought knowledge that you shared right here in this moment. Also, kudos for the new relationships you are building. I'm deeply excited about the next conversations. And I know that I'm going to be deeming a bunch of you for further conversations and exchanges. Things that we need to stop doing, things that we have to stop doing, new things that we're excited about doing. All of the things. Thank you so much for allowing us to explore all of the things. All right, so I'm closing us out. I don't know what else is involved in the closing out energy. It's like, oh, I see a hand up. Go ahead, Dayla, go ahead. Can I just acknowledge your labor as the gatherer facilitator of us and the labor of folks behind the scenes? Thank you, thank you. And just gigantic kudos to the audience too, y'all. This was a 135-person conversation. And it was a powerful one. Thank you for it.