 So we're going to have some responses from the stage, and then we're going to come to the audience and we're going to hear your thoughts, big questions, responses, and it's two mics right in the center here for you all. So we're going to start with Sima Suko, who is the new Deputy Artistic Director at Arena State. Good morning everybody. Thank you so much for this research. It is powerful, potent, and even as I sit here, I've read the research several times. And even as I sit here and hear it again, I find myself feeling pulled in two directions of feeling both reflected and empowered, but I also find I feel deeply sad about it as well. I've been asked to reflect on the research through the lens of mentorship, and I think that's because I've been the beneficiary of some tremendously impactful mentorship opportunities. I've had many mentors, some are sitting in the audience today, but for the sake of this discussion, I'll be speaking about two mentors, two mentorship opportunities that weren't just mentors, but were sponsorships. And these were places where my mentor opened the door, didn't just mentor, but sponsored me up. And that was Sheldon Epps, Artistic Director at the Pasadena Playhouse, with whom I had begun a drive-by mentorship in 2011, where I'd meet with him once a quarter, and he then hired me in 2014 as his Associate Artistic Director. And then Molly Smith, Artistic Director at Arena Stage, with whom I had a formalized mentorship through the incredible TCG Leadership U grant opportunity, and who recently hired me as Deputy Artistic Director at Arena Stage. So as I reflect on those two mentorship-turned-sponsorship opportunities, a lot of times people ask me, how did you get that job? Because in neither of these cases did I ask them for a job. They called me up with the opportunity, but that's because we had this robust mentorship in place. So I've been trying to think about and dissect those mentorships, and I've come up with sort of three commonalities of them that led to this sponsorship opportunity. The first is a tiding that with both of these individuals, when we met, when we entered into a membership together, they were ready in their careers to be tremendous mentors and to create space. And then I was also ready to be mentored. I had already founded a company and spent many years trying to prove, prove, prove myself. I was ready to improve. So the timing was right in both of those cases. The second thing was mutuality in these mentorships. And what I mean by that is, while the mentorship may have started with mentor and mentee, over time it shifted and we became peers. And I'll maybe share one story. Through the Leadership U opportunity at TCG when I was at arena stage, one of the questions that was on my mind that I told Molly was to Lord or not to Lord, that was the question. And I had founded a theater company. I was wondering, do I want to stay at my theater company, or do I want to shift to a Lord? Underneath that question was, do I have anything to offer a Lord? And what I feel, could I survive in a Lord structure? So at my theater company I had founded, we had created a couple of methodologies. Consensus Organizing for Theater, which is an artistic methodology rooted in community organizing and audience development. And the Green Theater Choices Toolkit, which was about creating our theater industry. So in my mentorship with Molly, I said I wanted to test these out and see if they can live in a Lord structure. So she sponsored me into a meeting with Edgar, the executive director. We presented these ideas. He said, oh what a great idea. They sponsored me into senior staff. We presented these ideas. They then sponsored me into their own departments, which gave me the space to be able to test out these ideas. The conclusions we came to together were that, yes, to Lord, I had something to offer a Lord. And I could find a way to navigate a complex organization, though I was coming from a small organization I had founded. So that's what I mean about mutuality. I had something to offer in these mentorships that shifted the power dynamic. The third commonality that I've identified in these mentorships was vulnerability. That with both these mentors I was able to be openly self-critical about my own work safely. And I'll share one story. In my drive of my mentorships with Sheldon Ems, I would drive up from San Diego once a quarter. We'd have lunch and I'd talk about what was going on at Moa Lalo Performing Arts Company. He'd talk about what's going on at Pasadena Playhouse. And these were very nice gatherings. But I remember after about, I think it might have been the third one, he said, he asked me how's it going. And I said, you know, I just completed a production and it really didn't go as well as I would have liked it to go. And he said, why? And I said, well, I was thinking about the rehearsal room and I think maybe I micromanaged my lead actor. I saw him sitting across from me in lunch shift from leading back to leading forward. And he said, okay, let's talk more about that. And we started dissecting this and all of a sudden we became two artists who are peers willing to be vulnerable with one another about our work. And I felt that as a tremendous turning point in our relationship. So as I reflect on the research through this lens of mentorship, for me, again, these mentorships that then turned into sponsorships, the commonalities were the right time, a sense of mutuality and vulnerability, safe vulnerability. So that's it. Thank you. For Mayzo, but my mom calls me Stephanie, so they explain a bit why I'm up here today. I've been asked to respond to the research through the lens of intersectionality and the complexity of diversity. So intersectionality that holds that no singular experience of identities, it sums up an entire person. So when I look at the research, I was really pleased to see that the researchers included this concept pretty fundamentally in the work that's being done in terms of gender parity. It can't be disassociated or uncoupled with other forms of multiple and simultaneous discrimination. So I helped to develop this project and do early fundraising for it and there was a consensus in the field that this issue of gender parity is not as important as other diversity issues at the moment, which was very disheartening to me as I assure it is to everybody because I think gender parity movement and women's equality has been asked to step back so many times. And I have faced personally where there have been certain types of minority positions that have been put in a hierarchy of importance, which I think is just not useful to anybody and doesn't promote genuine, authentic inclusion equity. So what I take from this is that with all of these steps that we can make to improve the day-to-day circumstances that would make gender parity possible, we also need to parallel that with examination of what bias and unconscious bias is. So in my particular perspective, I've been very privileged to have the career that I have and given opportunities that I have, which is ultimately and completely tied to my education, my socioeconomic status, and circumstances of my birth. I don't acknowledge that, but not all women look the same as what I want to say, women who it is not a singular experience. And to that also, gender in the 21st century is a different complexity than it was in the 20th century. So that I believe firmly that fight for feminism is not about preferencing one gender over another. It's about eliminating discrimination based on gender and gender presentation. It does not match. So since identity is so complex and it can't all be tackled at once, and diversity is equally complex, we do have to take steps towards rectifying systematization of oppression and discrimination. But I would challenge us all as an industry and as individuals to recognize that we all have unconscious biases and unconscious biases. And while we are putting systems in place to make the field more equitable, that we understand and sort of examine why or how we can say, I trust you even if you don't look like me. I used to be afraid of numbers as a kid, and when I came across statistical analyses and data reports, I found that they could be complex and heavy, but summaries and recommendations are what I always be holding on to. What excited me most about this report were the recommendations because I've been experiencing firsthand some things in motion with the insight of an institution like TCG, but also seeing that there's clearly so much more work to be had. I'm going to share two points from the study that were particularly resonant with me as I think about my own journey to this point. One, familiarity and trust in potential. What a theater leader needs to look like, white and male, because white and male leaders have been the long-standing majority in top positions. Before TCG for many years, I worked with a very small and nimble yet fierce arts service organization dedicated to strengthening Asian American arts and cultural workers in New York City. I received calls with folks who had brilliant Asian ideas. Asian director for traditional performances as part of diversity day for a corporation made up primarily of white men calling upon the small Asian arts group, and I as an Asian woman was ready to deliver, and that was where I was placed to be of use. There are a lot of folks striving for diversity, but are we asking the right questions and who are we asking? And I think that this report really hits the nail on the head in many ways. I had many questions back then, and I definitely still do now, particularly around intersectionality. I'd see lots of women on stage and wonder where are the women of color on stage, and how that women of color in leadership positions in the theater offstage on my personal path to leadership roles ahead. I learned that I had to be nimble with what I had. When I didn't see myself in spaces, I tried to create my own pathway to access and look to community. I looked to folks who understood and were invested in making change beyond just diversity for the sake of looking like the next big thing or something that was cool. I have so much respect for folks continuing to do the very important work on the grassroots level to serve the community, but this report really goes to show that there needs to be a balance in representation on a much larger scale. When I quickly saw that this wasn't going to happen with me hoping and praying that folks were going to see me beyond just being an Asian American and a woman, but that folks should be able to see me as those things. And then saw two culture fit. Sounds kind of trendy, but... Now, what to do when someone is diversifying a larger institution or rather what systems are in place to really thoughtfully support diversifying leadership? You know, whether I like it or not, I've been socialized one way or the other to read the male experience as this kind of universal experience. That's something that we should hope to measure to when it... And it gets really dangerous when a theater's culture gets so used to this climate. So, you know, the culture fit point in the report was particularly interesting because, yes, it reminded me of the times I'd get calls almost randomly for Asian musicians quite out of context to plug into a corporation, absent of diversity for this kind of quick plug and play version. And my own questions about large scale institutions, even like TCG, I had heard about before being able to proudly call this place a true culture striving to work towards change. I do want to share also that unlike many reports that I've reviewed in the Wellesley study, it was very heartening though to see such thoughtful recommendations laid out, but also knowing that this work has started already at so many different places and it's going to take so much time. Particularly on the section of what individual theaters and service organizations do, I was really happy to see that, you know, there were so many things that TCG was hitting, ranging from correcting instances of gender and racial bias, opening up conversations in the context of different programs, creating opportunities, but that's just one institution when this report covers so many theaters. So just to share on an institutional end some of the things that TCG is currently doing to hit things on the gender parenting note, a lot of our major decisions are focused around this, grant making publications, choosing speakers for conferences, American theater and our continued research on gender parity at the intersection sections within our national conferences on gender parity. And this is the key I think for TCG we have sessions like men for gender justice sessions. I think it's important for women to support women, but male allies are just as important in different cases. Another thing for TCG in particular, through the work of the Equity Diversity Inclusion Institute, is thinking beyond gender binary, particularly in building analysis, including trans and gender non-conforming identities. I think that's really key. To summarize, there's a lot of things going on in the works within the institution. I wanted to share a little bit about my personal point of view. As a late-stage millennial, if you will have the privilege of being able to be in this room with folks from different unique journeys, it's easy to feel at ease with a lot of groundbreaking milestones for women, particularly in the media, but I'm not satisfied, and I don't think that we should be, especially with... Thanks again, Carrie and Erin and Bethany and the team at Wellesley for this, because it's definitely a start and there's going to be a lot of pushback, and hopefully the pushback, yes. Hopefully we can pull from some of the findings here and work together as a community. It's not about pointed fingers, it's really about, hey, there's something going on here, and it's 2016, and I am in my 30s, my early 30s, and yes, I'm still aspiring, but I want to look towards the future and not just hope that things are going to change, but work with folks to actually make change. Thank you. Amy Kaufman, I'm a freelance director and a board member of SDC, I live in New York City, and I agree that I also read the report over and over again by sitting in this room with all of you and hearing you guys sort of go through it live and sort of set me a little bit reeling, and I feel like there's something that you guys brought up that I sort of like shifting what I was going to talk about, and this might be a little all over the place, so I apologize for that. Well, first of all, I just want to say, you know, Zella's name has been brought up several times today, and what's lovely about being in this room with all of you is I don't really know many of you, so the story I'm about to tell, I've told a lot of people, but not to you guys, so I'm going to say this. I'm a little bit late to the party about being outraged at the statistics women in the theater, and one of the reasons that is is when I came, when I graduated from UCSD at my MFA there, directing, and I returned to New York City, and I had an interview with Zella, I was supposed to, I was interviewing for a job with MFA actors doing a Shaw piece, and she took me through, you know, this interview, and at one point she asked me, she said, so you know, how's it going, how's it going when you're back to graduate school, and I said, hey, no, it's okay, it's hard, it's hard being a woman director, and she just looked at me, and she said, what? I said, you know, it's hard being a woman director, she was like, well, I'm not going to get the job, but I thought the takeaway to me at that point was, wow, right, I'm talking to this woman who's basically responsible for a regional theater and the non-profit event, so she started in what, the 50s, you know, at a time when all sorts of things were against us and more, you know, and I think she even translated Russian documents in the World War II, okay, so just a moment like, here I am, you know, a Debbie Tom from Phoenix, Arizona, coming, you know, saying this to her, so anyway, I learned, I thought, okay, this is a great lesson, I'm going to put my head down, and I'm going to do my work, and I'm not going to talk about being a woman, and I'm going to, and hopefully recognition and jobs will come because of my good work, et cetera, so I did it, put my head down, and I did my work, and yeah, I mean, you know, it worked. It worked for a while, and then I looked at my head, you know, up through the grindstone a few years ago, and looked around and thought, like, here I am, it's still here I am in this position, and because I had my nose in the grindstone for so long, I didn't realize that, you know, everyone else is sort of advanced, people of not my gender, so, and so I thought to myself, right, is this crazy that Zelda the Chandler basically built the house, right, that we're all living in, and we are not running it yet. I mean, we are not actually, and there are rooms that I'm not allowed in to, and there are rooms that I don't even know exist, there are opportunities that I don't even know exist, so that was the sort of way that called to me. Anyway, so I'm here sort of talking about, I think, alternative definitions of leadership because I, for one, and I've had many conversations with the people up here, and I don't want to be an artistic director of a Lord Theatre, of any theatre at the moment, it's frightening to me, or frightening as I feel it feels claustrophobic to me, and I, you know, to be sort of tied to a theatre. I really love my freelance life, it's a hard life, but I do, I like my freedom, and so I ask myself, what is leadership then? What does leadership look like then in this, you know, if it's not to be a leader of a theatre? And I've been pondering this for the past few years, and I think the leader is someone who takes responsibility for our community, for their betterment, for their well-being, and for our cultivation, right? So that can mean many, many things. And around that time, I joined the SDC board, and with the amazing leadership of Laura Penn, who we've already mentioned today, that is an organization for directors and choreographers. It's basically like a grassroots activist organization helping directors with visibility and diversity and promotion. And I know it sounds crazy, but directors in this country have a very different kind of recognition, than they do in other countries. This is a playwright's nation, and it should be. Playwrights are incredibly important, but I think that, you know, we are also artists in our own right, so that is something that we are promoting. And something that you guys were talking about in terms of leadership and that kind of mystery surrounding how does one become a leader in this field? And I think that part of the issue in the theatre is we're so in love with our own mystery, and we're so in love with protecting the rehearsal room, and the magic that happens in the rehearsal room, and no one's allowed in. And so I think that's kind of extended to the practices of how we, you know, rise to leadership, or what leadership means, et cetera. And so I think my key part of the SDC, what I'm interested in and what SDC I think is interested in is it is sort of making transparent what it is that we do, that it's not a secret society, that, you know, that we are artists, and that is, you know, I don't know, special or whatever, but that's also not overused that term in a way that cuts us off from transparency. And that goes, and that's with everything, with identity and with diversity, et cetera. So I think that is the form of leadership that I am taking at this moment. During the teacher of acting, and also by Michelle Shea, the Fox Foundation grants the study of connection between healing and acting for the purpose of knowing, more than just falling into the power of what we do, I wanted to know what was it energetically that could allow me as a performer, to connect more deeply with the hearts of the audience because for me, being an artist, especially an artist of color, had to do with people seeing each other in ways they could not see each other in 95 reality and hopefully dissolving some of the issues that separate us from the huge humanity that we're all a part of, and I firmly believe in what we do as an amazing place to research what it means to be human and to tell them the stories that we live out of and creating meaning together. We confront in a community as an audience the questions that face us about the phenomenon of being alive. And within this construct, it made me study many things and it invited me to many opportunities, one of which was to work as a leadership presence coach in a five-year program at Goddard Space Center at NASA for leadership development called Leadership Alchemy, which put me in the cauldron of what it means to be a leader when, of course, I wasn't thinking of myself that way. However, what was at stake for the scientists and engineers there was being able to make such an impact that they could get lots of money to do things to save our planet and to explore space. So there was a lot at stake. And so I feel that the time that we're in right now, there is a lot at stake for us as a theater community because in the future what theater is going to be is definitely not going to be like it was. Something else wants to come forth. Something else wants to be born. And we're in the question of what that is. We don't know what it is, but one thing that definitely is not going to the door is inclusion for everybody. And we don't know what that means. And we do have to, we've lived in, as I've been contemplating all this, in a world duality meaning, you know, the protagonist and antagonist exist at the same time. So somehow we have to make friends with what it is in a way that doesn't drive us crazy. So interesting culture that we talk about, we forget that we made it up. One time a couple people got together and said, you know, this is a problem here. Let's do X, Y, or Z. Somebody else agreed and then became a culture, a family, a tribe, and eventually an institution that at one point was alive. Like all of Lorde was an answer to problems. Then they became institutions which were buildings that got stuck in practices and ways of thinking, et cetera. And then it's a thing versus the people that are in it. And so part of our issues, I think, is finding where the real responsibility or the cause of the problem is. We can't find it because it's embedded in the networks of conversations we develop. Both the recognized conversations and, most importantly, the web of deep, emotional, I don't know, garbage conversations we hold about each other, what's going on that we don't know what to do with. So this is what I'm hoping will change for us during this research because to me, we're at such an amazing place as human beings when we have the question of who are we beyond gender and who are we within gender in terms of, for me I find I'm still trying to step into the power of being a woman all of it and let go of all the programming about how dangerous it is to do that. And I believe that there, what's exciting about, I'm going to call it the feminine versus feminine, is the principle of femininity. There is an aspect of irresistibility that's in it, how that's packaged. We can each explore in a way that I hope will soften the resistance that you inevitably will face anytime you're trying to do something different. That antagonist is there in any sector anywhere. That's what I recognize now. But what we have is something that's so alive in theater that we have the potential through what we do on these little spaces to really cause something amazing to happen. And that leadership can happen from any place because anybody can be called at some point to be, to take center stage where the question is what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with it? And you needed to know what I am, what are you saying or where is it? I went to Strip's College after the Medea Project and blown up and I was asked to teach a class in Art and Social Activism and I'm in the professor's house where they house business professors and I come down to breakfast and there's a gentleman sitting there, a professor, and he says to me, he says, we need more milk? We're out of milk. I said, that's too good, I didn't add. And my good friend Alvin, a classic drag queen that's gone on, she said, girl don't wear, don't let that dress wear, you'll be wearing a dress. And these are people that have taken me along the way. I had to make my own way to theater. I made my life myself, the theater. I thank everyone here. I thank everybody for having me here in Shelling, I adore you, I've learned so much. I'm so glad to be a part of this, but I am a high-frames drifter. I do my own thing. I got hired by the California Arts Council to go into the jails and teach aerobics because again, they wanted a color girl to dance. But I went into the jails and I was amazed that there's so many black and brown women in jail. Right down to one young lady said, Miss Jones, Miss Jones, you remember me Miss Jones? And it was one of my daughter's friends from middle school. And my daughter and I were wondering, what happened to this girl? And I said, well, what are you doing here? She said, do you know how it is? I said, no, I don't know how it is. Tell me about it. She said an aerobics, but they weren't interested in story telling. A white woman who was back in jail, fabulous, a little start-up, just a fabulous body, fierce little woman. And she proceeds to tell us about the trail. And she says, you know, my girlfriend, promise that she'd wait for me and I would do the five years for a dealing dope. And then we had money and we would hang out together and we would be together. But I came home and my girlfriend set me up with boys from high school. I went to this abandoned Victorian in the hate, she says. She never showed up upstairs in this house that was being renovated. She said, poker. And she said, I knew I was it. And they're all looking at me with wolves' eyes. And she said, I thought, OK, I'm going to take off my pants. But I'm going to leave my boots on. I'm going to leave my underwear on. I'm going to leave my t-shirt on. And they're playing. She's getting undressed. But there's a bag on the table. This girl, Tanya, wherever you are, bless you. She says, I'm watching that money. And by now I am like so pissed off at the world and at love and at my girlfriend. She said that there was a moment and time that said it's now or never. She said, I snatched the money. And I started running. And I jumped over the railing. And she can't breathe now. She's like, and we're at a 50 Bryant Street. And she's like, and I ran out to the streets and there was a lady that really hit me. And I told the lady. I said, those guys are chasing me. She said, Miss Jones, I was holding onto the money and the cocaine. And then she said, it was a lady that took me to Davy City away from there. And the women around. And I'm saying, catch her, catch her, catch her. Because she was falling. She couldn't breathe. She said, and I, and we lifted her. You live to tell a story. The Madeira Project is my contribution to theater. Because I think it's time, as Michelle is saying, that we're building something else. Something else is coming. And I find that incarcerated women, what they need is the freedom of voice to say where they've been, because baby, you want drama. You want drama. I met a young woman in prison in jail who killed her baby in a cocaine hallucination. And the Madeira Project's name grew out of that because she said, my husband want to be gone. Because she's like, I got really addicted to coke. And he could do coke all weekend and then go to work. But I was out every day looking for more coke. And I started to study about tolerance in women and men and drugs. And this young lady, her husband said, I want you gone. You're junkie. I want you gone. The corner don't want you. And she said, oh, really, you want me gone? And he said, all I want out of, excuse my language, all I want out of this motherfucker is my baby. I want you gone. And she said, really? And she said, he went to bed. She said, and I smothered my baby. I smothered that baby because that's what I could do. And I'm thinking Madeira, you know? I mean, it's like, whoa. This is Madeira, the highest order. And so she would say to me, I'm not going to the gym. I'm waiting to die. I'm going to heaven because only God can judge me. I have to be. Women started telling these amazing stories about survival. And they didn't know. The stories were drift and shame and sorrow. And they were just so embarrassed that they had failed the system. I said, you failed the system that was not of your design. And as I said this morning, listen to men versus women in legitimate theater. It's the same old little shit. Yes, darling, because of baby babies love me. This session, after almost 50 years, theater really incarcerated women. I've been doing theater around the world. I have a theater company in Africa. Madeira in Africa. I'm working with UC Medical Center as an artist. Working with women who are dealing with trauma and living with HIV. And it's something called Performance as Medicine. And it's been an amazing situation with the hospital, with the clinic for them to watch our performances. A young woman, Bianca Henry, wrote The Ugly Duckling. I asked her to translate The Ugly Duckling from your story. And that's what you just experienced. Duck all fucked up in time. And these are methodologies that I developed. But I bring in the myth because the myth is something that we all understand. It's the universal language, is it not? Doctor Me, is it not? And it's the place where I think we intersect with our art of social change, with classic theater. I'm about to go on the road with two of my performers. One who's living with HIV and the other who's been with me for 20 years, she was a former meth addict. But we're going to Rikers, we're going to Princeton, and we're going to Howard to work with classical literature. These women are going to teach theater artists from their standpoint what is classical literature. And I follow these schools because they sent for us. Because it's time. We're building something else here. And women sit at the center of so much whether we like it or not. And women, we have to get with it. Okay? I was at a meeting with Alicia Garza in February at Hamilton College. She wanted to talk about, she was about to get a thing on Black Lives Matter. But everybody wanted to talk about what happened to Huey P. Newton and why he turned out to be such a drug addict and blah, blah, blah, blah. That's her. Well, what do you do about self-care? And she said, I'm not interested in self-care. I'm interested in collective care. And I think that includes all of us. Collective care. It's about me wanting to know how are you doing? How are you doing? If we're trying to do this theater thing, we need to come in. If you're not looking to build your own baby, say go home. We got this. And I'd like for you to just help me end this with a piece that we wrote. My neighbor, Bianca Robinson, was in my first group at the county jail. And Bianca Robinson's daughter was killed in a car in the Tenderloin while Bianca was in jail for prostitution. And Bianca lost it. She was howling Medea. She's howling in this solitary environment. Her baby has just been blown away. And she said, they gotta let me go home. I said, Miss Jones, I said to her, they don't let you do nothing. They put you in lockdown because they're afraid that you will hurt yourself or somebody else. And the rest of us talked about what's going on here. And we wrote a piece as a group entitled Nobody Told Her. And I think you resonate with today. So every time I say nobody told her, you say nobody. You ready? Ready. Nobody told her. Nobody. Now she can't believe it when it's said. Everything's fine as long as there's no wind. Nobody told her. Nobody. Nobody told her. Nobody. That it would all be blown away. Her house, her money, her children, her love, her life. Nobody told her. Nobody. That's the one waiting on the street corner in that alleyway, in that hotel room. Nobody told her. That she's the one who loses it all. Nobody told her that not much was expected of her. Not much. Nobody told her. Nobody. That she's getting on that train in that car. And she's caught in the traffic. And what is this destination? West Highway. Allison Taylor. Cap Street. Sweet Bay. Nobody told her. Nobody. Nobody told her. That while doing time for prostitution, trying to get enough money to feed her baby, nobody told her. Nobody told her. Nobody. The brains would be splattered on the backseat of a car in the tenderloin. Nobody told her. Thank you very much. Good lunch. I know. Sessions in the afternoon. We would love to hear them. There are... We're not from the big area. And she was part of our thick tech on this. And so I really want to thank Rachel. She's also part of our thick tech. Where's Martha? Martha Riches. The trustee of AC2 has been invaluable to us. This is basically a response. I'm trying to make it short and save the rest of my economy for my session. White men you see on the chart. Well, that's Los Angeles. A lot of us have kind of given up on it. A lot of us are just doing activism. Okay, so here's my thought. Lord theaters are nonprofits. Nonprofits are tax exempt. They're tax exempt because the government is determined that because they get a social service to the community, they should be exempt from taxes. And who pays the taxes? The people, or the majority, were paying taxes. We are not represented. Basically change the face of the center board. There's 50% not people of color. Here's a woman, a woman of color. And now there's two places. Latino, people of color in the season. I don't think that's ever happened before. So as we go into the session, I think we can't forget, this is a nonprofit. We are the majority, people of color within the next 20 years. So as a strategy for moving forward, I'm very proud Matt to discuss with her here today. Interest and writer, thank you for holding this space for all of us. I think one of the things that stood out to me was the notion of having to burn your space. And I feel like as an actor and writer, it's very interesting in where you can get your story started, but when you want to share it, the question that people ask is, have you been a playwright? Which in my case, as an actor, I had to write my own monologue to give voice to the things I wanted to say. So in many weddings, I felt like that's me writing. However, I'm not in a formal program, which I felt was very limiting in the way people saw who can write plays and content that could be for theater. The other thing, as Ms. Rodessa Jones just shared, I've, from New York recently, I lived in Los Angeles the last two years and moved to the Bay three months ago. The interesting thing is in a way, what I felt most comfortable is skid roam. It wasn't theater. It wasn't anywhere else because that's where the stories were. That's where the vulnerability is. So as far as experience and who gets to tell stories, there are so many people in those communities who are homeless, who are artists, who are individuals with stories, but oftentimes aren't given the space to share them. So I think in some of the change, I mean some as, you know, part of the younger generation, this movement is being inclusive and where you seek the talent that can potentially have the content to bring in the audiences because there's a lot of people, friends of mine, where we're more interested. But how much are you going to say this from your point of attention? Okay, no, no, no. I'm just saying just looking for where inclusion and where the stories can come from versus what looks good on the resume and what's quantifiable because that doesn't always bring in the news stories. Thank you. The Jews. Just a lot of truth. Great. My name's Laila Reinhasser. I'm a former board member for the Playwright Center of San Francisco, former executive director for one of the most productions and soon to be announced artistic director for another theater company. I'm speaking from the experience of smaller theaters, which in this community, there are hundreds of us, and we are struggling a lot. So my four thoughts that I had quickly were cost of being in leadership in a small theater company means paying out of pocket. So a lot of us that are in those leadership positions, we pay hundreds, thousands of dollars into making our productions happen because we don't get funding. The second thing that I want to talk about was peer mentorship. So there are a lot of opportunities for those mentorship. I find that in a lot of ways we end up finding peer mentors. So you're learning as you go, and I think that's an important aspect of mentorship. And then the second thing was that Bill and I are not a founder in those smaller theater companies. That skill set is still there. Doing everything from marketing and website development through fundraising, through everything. So I just like those things to also be discussed. And then the last thing was, it's a comment slash question. In terms of personal familiarity where we're talking about that was the one area that women had advantage and one of the quotes up there said they decided, well, because of recommendations, et cetera, et cetera. In the converse of that, does that mean that women had less favorable recommendations? Any other questions? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Emily Murase. I work for Mayor Ed Lee, as head of the San Francisco Department of the status of women. And this is true to me, but the issues are not. And I just wanted to offer two potential resources. One is we've created the San Francisco Gender Equality Principles Initiative. We've talked to architects. We've talked to advertising creative directors. The issues are very similar. So it's at wwwgenderprincipals.org with very granular level interventions that folks might want to think about. Secondly, one strategy that we found very successful is to start out on a challenge to major corporations to increase the number of women in leadership, also out of corporations to adopt some of these granular level interventions. So I recommend that as a potential strategy. Thank you very much. On the lines of potential strategy, my name is Kristen Van Genhoven. I'm the Artistic Director of WAN Theater in the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. One of those founders who does everything. And this idea has been brewing over the last few days that I've been talking with a few people in order to reframe the future of leadership. I think a leadership institute summit is in order. So I think to keep our eyes open, you should all keep your eyes open for something that really addresses the nonsense bolts of the skills that have been addressed in this report. As a beginning, as a next strategy, as an action move, as a Berkshire leadership summit for aspiring women leaders. So I put it out there so now we can have it. We're really interested in working out in the theater area. But what I want to ask and kind of throw to you is a question about resources and costs. Because that's certainly something that's come up a lot in our conversations. And really, where's the funding? Where's the funding for the study? Where's the funding for next steps? You are the goddess of next steps. Yeah. So hold on. I'm going to answer this because it's really important that we hear this and that those of you who can make something happen keep making it happen. We started the study with zero. We went to the Tullman Foundation. I hope Alex is listening on this howl around because Tullman led it. The Valentine Foundation led this. Lots of individual people on our Indiegogo led it. We were determined to really support a long-term research deep dug and to make this convening free. So we are still $30,000 away from the goal that we need to complete this research. And all of you listening out there if this is important to you figure out a way to help us match this and get this done. It will get done because it's fierce. And once it gets done that $30,000, then what we want to do is convene a wider discussion among funders who care about this about where those priorities are and how we can direct resources towards some of these granular things that could get supported in the American theater in the future. So, $30,000. Thanks, Rachel. This is how I do it. Final three. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Julie Kvelt from the Artistic Director of Counterpulse. One thing that came to mind to me today while I was listening and also some of the provocations from the panelists around building something new was looking towards where women have leadership and how women have leadership. Not only looking towards the places where men have leadership and how women can aspire to attain that type of leadership. And I think it would be an interesting compliment to today's study to look at how women are actually taking leadership in the arts field and how we can learn from what's coming from that leadership. Instead of just saying, oh, you're not the AD, you're not the AD, therefore, there is no leadership because I don't believe that's true. It's not my experience. So how are we taking leadership is something I want to discuss in the breakouts today. Fantastic. Thank you, Julie. I'm only Jones and I'm an artist scholar and I want to say first that this is just fabulous having this experience into all people who made this possible. Two quick things. One, to underscore the need for more study so that now I know I need to go on the Indiegogo campaign and put in some money and encourage people to do that. This is one of many very important things that came up. Will those women who appear to be next in line to be ADs or EDs do they want it? And five years from now, will they have gotten that? So a follow-up study I think is really important. The second thing very quickly I think it's important to note the variety of presentational styles that were part of this gathering because changing the skin color, changing the genitalia of leadership does not guarantee a change in gestect, it's not changing diversity in the way some of us wanted but the presentations here suggest the kind of variety that I mean when I say diversity. So I want to thank you. Thank you everyone. My name is Sarah Williams. I work for Berkeley RAF and I just wanted to speak to some other research and initiatives that are being developed by Lord in particular. This conversation like we said it's not new. People are talking about it but my generation are talking about all generations and Lord in particular looking at how we can expand access to and education about leadership positions and so from those conversations what kind of has come out of that in addition to more questions is a program that's really focused on mentorship and I'm hoping to talk more about in the mentorship group but it's about giving women and people of color access to those top leadership positions through training programs and so we're working to get it funded because kind of one of the quotes up there that I saw earlier was about you know we're tired of working for free but there's these programs that does take money to make sure that people can be compensated for the work that they're doing and so right now one of the biggest barriers I think is getting those programs funded and they're really fantastic ideas and we all want them to happen but we can't just make them happen out of thin air so something to think about as we talk this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. As we've just said just a huge yield of gratitude to this amazing group of people for this time and it's amazing to hear. So we're just here for this morning we thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of our hearts for coming spread word and keep the conversation going if you signed up to be part of a breakout session this afternoon please as you walk out of here head on upstairs to a room that's called The Roof our E.U.F.F. but it ends up on the roof for lunch and then we will steer you towards your breakout session so thank you everybody thank you