 Welcome everyone, thank you for coming, I'm going to turn you over to Frank, the director of the Cagals Theatre, Vida Sal. So first of all, thank you all for coming and taking time out of your busy lives and the snowing on top of it in New York already, it is an adventure to get anywhere, but thank you for coming and of course I would like to welcome our writers who came from the Caribbean Sea, it took a very long journey and so it's a very important program to us, the Segal Center Bridges, academia and professional theatre, international and American theatre and our mission really is to connect, I think New York City, which on one hand is very global and so many people, so many languages are spoken on the other hand, it's sometimes a little bit local, it's not as open and a variety on stages and languages and stories we see that reflect of the people who really are in the city, over 50% in the New York City are not white people, things have dramatically changed, it's not reflected on the stages so we try to do things that no one else does and this is one of the things what we do here for the two days and we are extremely proud to do that but we also think it is of real importance, Edouard Gilleson was a scholar here at the Graduate Center, a very significant member of the GC community and his influence, his thinking, his writing is monumental, unfortunately I never met him but I think it's also in his spirit and the ideas of the archipelagos, of the Creole, to fight against the failure of imagination, what he said, lots of problems we have, he cannot imagine a different world, plays, theatre and the stories we hear help us to imagine a different world, to make us comfortable with the future or what already has happened because we are late, we just haven't realized how the world already is, artists do see what's happening but often also do look in the future and are a bit ahead and they share with us what they see, this is what we do and that region of the Caribbean is significant for us, we have the many programs, there's Haiti after the earthquake, others with the Judas Miller who's with us here knows that, he helped us translate so many plays and works, we did Hoseplia, Boise often and many, many, many writers especially I think from Haiti so we have a strong connection, we feel this of significance and also the Francophone world is of real significance for us, we have many French writers but of course the French-speaking Caribbean is such a significant, beautiful and part of the world with something to say and perhaps we are not listening hard enough often to what we do, we do hear big programs called Penfold Voices, plays from around the world so we really have a history of intense engagement with work for the stage, the written word also for the stage and so for us to have those three countries to have us all here is fantastic, I would like to thank Stephanie for coming, with the idea that said Frank it's about time, we have to do something about this, working on this, is this a possibility and she has come to us before where we worked on programs and of course we said this is something we would like to do and we would like to thank the French Cultural Services who are really, really a great worker in the vineyard of international theater a little bit hidden sometimes in the shadows or you don't see what she does but she has made so many things possible also this one so we would like to thank your personal engagement really as a person but also of course for your institution and people always think it's about institutions in a way it's true but really it is about the people who are in the institutions and you know that someone leaves some place and it changes so Nick I really thank you so much and also the seizure company and who was there from the very very beginning and so I would like to thank our advisory board Michael who is up there who did brilliant work to give this as his in this function as the director, managing director of the Siegel Center as well as May Adra who is coordinating this event and then we had an addition a little bit late we worked for a year and a half almost two years on this project to make this happen and then Candace came on board and really we thought it would be important but we had no idea how what really it was important until she came and so I really were lucky to have you with us and and so that's a big big asset and we have learned a lot I hope also for your world it is as meaningful what you did as a drama talk but also to put everything together so I really would like to thank you they say in the name of the Greater Center CUNY but also the Siegel Center and our PhD program which is also a support of this thank you and I'll let everybody else speak a bit more about the project but I really would like you all to know that even so we are in a small community here in the small churches you know which we believe in and we say a small church in Finland might be closer to the gods and the big golden domes in Petersburg and the same is true for theater they're the big golden houses and they are full but also the small ones but they're influential they're significant and some people do come so really thank you all for coming and taking your time and it's a true honor for us at the Siegel Center to open this a day and thanks also for Judas again for coming here and Andrew Zachary is here great choreographer and so many others so thank you but especially to the playwrights but I now hand over the microphone to you my last technical announcement is if you have a cell phone take it out and let's see it should be on off and Stephanie so my name is Tiffany Berard and I'm the curator of the act project it is a very big pleasure for me to be here today with with you and to see the fulfillment of the project act action Caribbean theatrical Caribbean theater project that was born more than two years ago when we sat down with Elvia Gutierrez co-director of the Siege Company sipping a glass of rum at sunset or walking on a black sand beach of Trois Riviers and Guadeloupe at sunrise I cannot remember if it was morning or or evening but anyway we had this question how to make Caribbean theater travel outside the insular perimeter how to connect it with neighboring islands and with the Americas how to shift the past colonial east west relationship and establish a present north south axis how to foresee a new emancipated relationship that will connect the Caribbean with the Americas with the whole new world that shares a common historical legacy that of colonialism and slavery that of the encounter of multiple cultures races languages that of creolization to quote Edouard Lisant that of the two mondes that was my goal my wish my dream when I started to conceive this project with Elvia the key to open the doors of the insular world would be languages translating the place in order in other languages to allow them to travel and be heard staged outside of their native islands having francophone and creoleophone plays translated in english would give the text and their authors a visibility in north america not only north america but also in the whole anglophone world that would also enable Caribbean dramatists to share exchange their perspective with their american counterparts and open up a dialogue with an american audience to see how their plays are perceived and received outside the Caribbean when I came with that proposal to have Caribbean plays translated in english and stage read at the martin seagull theater about more than two years ago franc and schur immediately jumped on board and has been seen a tremendous inspiring collaborator thank you frank for inviting us in your theater frank mentioned nicole birmann and laurent clavelle from the cultural services at the french embassy who also accepted right away to join the team without nicole and her incredible professional network but also her invaluable commitment and sense of organization and pragmatism that project would not have been possible so I want to thank all of you here we created an advisory board eight people that I want to acknowledge they are on the program I cannot name all of them but some of them are here with us today aminer fari who over here and christian flow will will come from buffalo who selected six plays from so eight people who selected six plays from martini guadeloupe and Haiti respecting a gender balance allowing new dramatic voices to emerge and especially women voices as well as evaluating what plays may resonate and in fact the american world the american society these six plays have been translated by talented translators and will be stage read today and tomorrow by american directors and actors we'll have the delicate task to give flesh and blood to the characters through the stage reading coordinated by kandice tobson get vacary our dedicated external artistic advisor and thanks a lot kandice to be here when frank said we need a dramaturg I was just are you sure and now I see that he was right we need a dramaturg and you were an exceptional one thank you act is as you see a huge collaborative project that gathered I don't know 30 40 people to make the dream come true and build bridges between artists languages culture thanks to theater I want to thank all of these people who are part of the project and tell them how grateful I am to work with so talented and committed people I'm now anxious to hear to see to taste and savour the fruits of a very long harvest but before we move on I acknowledge also the face foundation in New York and contextual network in Paris for their precious support that made this project possible and of course all the caribbean dramatists who are here with us today and the ones also could not come to New York gyrgis junior from Haiti who is a director of the catrochema festival that takes place right now has to be in Haiti. Jean René Lemoine Haitian living in Paris is currently in France because he has a production and Gaëlle Octavia was just part of a big literary festival in the Caribbean and couldn't go to New York you know and and escape from her work and her family to be to be here today and tomorrow but we'll have a virtual presence you'll see how but we have you know four of them today with us Luc Santéloin who is here Charlotte Boimard and Magalie Solignar the authors of the day my father killed me Luc is the author of street sad and Daniele Francis with the author of she devil so they will be able to participate of course read I mean hear their work in English and see how it resonates in another language on a neighboring land and to enter in dialogue with you so thanks for being here today I know it's not easy to to come especially with a with a not a rainy day but snowy day so thanks thanks a lot for being here I'm going to use this one good good afternoon thank you for being here today as we said it's it was a great adventure so far and I think it's the beginning of a very long adventure for many of the playwrights that have been involved in the project so I work for the cultural services of the French embassy here in New York we promote artists from from France or artists who are based in France it doesn't mean that they are French and as well as artists from the Francophone countries and in fact artists from the African continent we promote their work here in the United States and in the field of the performing arts which is the field of work working for in the specific field of playwrights and contemporary writing we start very at the beginning with the translation of work so this is phase one of this this long adventure starting with these playwrights that gather emerging as well as establish playwrights from Haiti, Guadalupe and Martinique and I won't say more you're going to hear the the word I'm very happy to work with the team here and Candice and Stephanie and Frank and and all the people who are involved in in the project my work after will be to keep on working with the playwrights and presenters American presenters of course scholars to make sure that the work circulate and one day maybe one two productions here in the States that's the work I do um wish me good luck and here is Candice oh and yeah sorry well good afternoon good afternoon again okay my name is Elvia Gutierrez and I co-directed the Caribbean theater company Sillage together with Gilbert Lamor who cannot be here today as he's currently in Montreal allow me to tell you a few words about our company Sillage is anchored geographically in Guadalupe and the theater we produce is deeply rooted in Caribbean oral tradition drum music and dance while remaining open to regions of the world we might find where we might find affinity with our traditions and culture such was the case of our latest Guadalupe career production the play le sac de lita rewriting the colonial legacy and interconnecting the different Caribbean zones while enhancing our cultural specificity is our goal we work at connecting Caribbean theater with new audiences through multiple projects that include subtitle theater performances educational workshops bilingual anthologies of francophone Caribbean theater translated in Spanish and English the project act is part of this opening to the world this interconnecting path that leads us today in New York after several years of work I saw act be born develop wings and then take off with Stephanie Vera well that is a poetic vision we know how much work you require strategy events of this caliber and we also know how many committed people it takes it is remarkable how Nicole Birman from the French embassy opens so many doors everywhere for this project she simply seems to be in possession of the master key to all the relevant places I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contribution of Frank Henscher in all his stuff in every aspect of this project not only the logistics but also the conception in the human dimension in our hope is that act opens up a dialogue between the US in the Caribbean not only today and tomorrow but in the future thank you thank you so much so I'll introduce myself I'm Candice Thompson Zachary I'm a choreographer and cultural producer here in New York I'm originally from Trinidad and Tobago but I've been working in the US for about 14 years and I've been instrumental in presenting and supporting Caribbean dance in New York City and you know what I really saw in this project was a chance for Caribbean and Caribbean American performers theater makers producers to have a dialogue that would not otherwise be possible so the French Caribbean also being separated by the language barrier and by distance having them come here having the works be translated and it was important to me that Caribbean American and Caribbean people in the field of arts and culture would have a connection to what was happening and would be able to be in dialogue with what was going on with this project so for me the most important thing was creating those bridges creating those those conversations and and making sure that the playwrights were received and that the work really landed in New York but also landed in the Caribbean American community here in New York so creating that bridge was really my way of contributing to the project and making sure that that it landed here and that it was able to make an impact so I think that's all that we have for the panel I want to just invite us to give them another round of applause for all of the work that they've done in putting this together and I'm going to transition into our first event which is a roundtable discussion on women and in Caribbean theater so I'm going to invite our producers and presenters to switch spots um with our panelists who I'll invite to the stage we have Amina Henry we have Magalie Collamon Christopher I have Ramola Lucas and Danieli Francis who is um whose work you'll see tomorrow so and just a bit about how today will run so we have this panel that's going to happen now for about an hour we'll take a short break at four o'clock we'll have our first stage reading which is Street Sad by Lucente Ola that's directed by Paul Price another stage reading at 6 p.m. and another one at 8 p.m. so I'm really happy that this conversation gets to sort of inaugurate the event um and especially kind of grounding the work that we'll see in the voices of women um and in the work that women produce in this field um we already talked about no cell phones on I'll let you know we are live streaming so say hello to the world um yes um so yeah let's transition into our panel on women and in Caribbean theater I think being charged with putting this together like I was saying before I really wanted to bring women practitioners who were from possibly different Caribbean backgrounds either from the Caribbean or um relates to Caribbean through identity or through heritage um and allowing their individual stories and their individual perspectives to be the thing that was named in the room and that was brought to everyone's attention and put in place next to the other perspectives that were that are possible and that exist so that they can you know we can see them side by side they can talk to each other and that similarities or differences could be made visible um and especially in receiving uh the work especially of Danieli whose work will be seen you know it's a chance for you and the other players that are here to see what your colleagues across the across the ocean are doing right so and a chance for us here to see how the kind of stories that we're telling in New York uh about the Caribbean and how we're expressing Caribbean identity how those relate to what people in the region are doing so um that was my my main concern my main goal with putting this together so I think we'll start with you Danieli if that's okay um yes everyone should grab a mic uh can you share with us a bit about your view on the role of women in Caribbean society and then how you take up those issues in your work good evening okay I'm very very happy to be here and um a little shy to be to come for a tiny island and and arrive here in a huge country like United States and it's my second time here in United States my first time was this year in March in Miami where I could present another playwright with Vanessa who is here who invited me in Miami um I can tell you about my vision my own vision about women uh in Caribbean in French Caribbean and Martin Carribean Island um what people say in the in the in our common imagination is that women are a poto mitten a poto mitten is a Creole expression to to say that uh women are central are very central in their family and um and um and that's come from I think if come from slavery slavery on or colonial period and uh women are very important in in their family but in society that's what that is my vision uh we live in in the very macho society where women don't really have the power politics or economic power they don't really have it and um and they they have um a lot uh evaluated they they are they are they are changed since the the 30 40 last years they changed a lot and uh and they are doing for me a sort of revolution for me and um what I observe are special issues that I observe is um a sort of a violence towards women resistance of that women uh that always fight to get more to get emancipated or not not or everything everyone um and that violence uh is directed to the body of the the woman and their and their power and that's so uh to explain you I I was born in Martinique and I grown up in Paris in Paris suburbs so and I get get back to Martinique to install in in Martinique uh 15 years ago so I I I lived in the country but also I have a vision a different vision that woman who raised there and uh when I came back in Martinique that was shocking me that there were a lot of uh men who killed their women and I I found that very uh shocking for me and I was thinking a lot about that why uh this violence towards women and to body women's body and that issue interests me particularly because myself I lived uh violence uh from my father and this issue is very important for me and uh another and then in my work if I I excuse my English but I do my best I get it's good okay so in my work I'm very interesting in uh this issue the violence issue and uh women power also and uh that's that because I and I raised in Paris and I was a lot uh um asking myself about my origins why was I French but black but not really French because the other French told me that you're not really French and when I was back in Martinique they told me that you're not really Martinican and I was between two cultures like that and who I am and that is the first question who who uh directed me to theater because in theater I was able to to um think about that and write about that and tell about that and the first play that I I wrote was a play about slavery because I I discovered this story in university I was 19 when I discovered really discovered about slavery history because in France at that time we didn't talk at all about slavery and uh it was very important for me to discover that because it was part it was um the central uh question of my identity and to understand why I became French but why I'm not really French like the others and then uh this this was my first play right I didn't really know theater but I wanted to uh how you how you say that scream I wanted to scream about who was who who I am and uh that's how I wrote my first play right whose name is in Creole Nick Pacamo whose mean nigger never died nigger never died that come from a poem I discovered from a martinikan poet and uh um in in that play right um I was in that play in that play I was um explaining or um showing how we came in uh how we became slave slaves and how things was happening on the plantations plantations and um I was very and then I was directed for the first time by Luc Saint-Élois who's the man who and um teached me theater the first time I went to on the on the stages with him and uh I'm very very happy for that thank you it gives a way for my life a sense to my life and uh I was very interesting in that play about women rape because I was telling me that in fact we are children of rape women weep a rape between Africa and Europe and this is us and so I discovered it was very important for me and um the second the second play is names is a uricane uricans um um uh I I took about 15 years to write that and it was very long but it was important for me it was telling talking about incest in said because I I lived incest and I was really it was in a big issue for me why things like that can happen and I was um and I and I wrote a play about that and uh because uh we live also in a society where silence and um the power the the the man power the father power is important and uh and I was wondering how can you uh live after that how can you resist to uh uh silence crime you can talk about that and this silence is important for me like like in the slavery history because they this was silent too the silence is very very very big issue and where there is silence I want to write words if I may it seems like the basically theater for you is your way of exploring your identity but also exploring all of these issues that women face in society that they can't talk about that and this dichotomy between how much power they have in certain aspects and how much power they don't have in other ways and the power and basically theater was your way of maybe implementing change or starting change or starting to change what those narratives were like yeah yes does anyone want to respond to any she said a lot does anyone want to respond to any of the the points that she brought up I think it's essential for theater to take its role in society as the promoter of change and your work is emblemic of that the importance of that as a producer as a writer I am passionate about art and social change and if you look at the heritage of theater among people of the diaspora our plays are about change about keeping the stories alive and about change and so you're keeping the heritage alive that's my input um so I'll see okay so I'm the one non-theater person here um so my experience is in film um and I would say you know you know you mentioned the providing a space for us to have a conversation um even across Anglo, Francophone, Caribbean, but film and theater um so I'm from Guyana and you know interestingly the number one killer of women in Guyana is men it's domestic violence um so you know this is something that we're struggling with as well and women you know in as you said in the family they're they're it in society they're made to feel less than who they are all the time um and I I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I'm a filmmaker myself but I do curate um films for various reasons and in curating I get the chance to see the types of stories filmmakers are telling about women um and they're role in society and one thing I can see about filmmakers from the Caribbean is that they the types of films the types of stories that they choose to tell um are kind of like the real what it's really like to live in the Caribbean because images of the Caribbean that are projected to the world white sand blue waters glorious people smiling and having an amazing time and it is that if there's no it is that but it's not that's not all that it is and filmmakers and and um playwrights I think um that that have come out of the Caribbean have like really walked on that on the darker side of what it means um to be Caribbean and the stories that they tell like really highlight they choose to tell stories that really highlight violence against women violence against children just what you know what the underbelly of all those years of colonialism has has left basically all the things we don't want to you don't want to talk about we don't want to say out loud that's silence yes um woman willy let's let's switch over to film since since we're there um so maybe I'll talk a little bit about what kind of interest women filmmakers in particular that you've seen the kind of issues that they're taking up and then possibly also what is the experience of women playwrights and women filmmakers I mean and you're a female curator like you know what are those experiences like trying to get some of these stories to screens on stages well there's so there's an interesting happening thing happening in the in the english-speaking Caribbean and I'm not an expert on this so this is from my experience um most so starting from a I would say from an institutional level most if not all of the film festivals are run by women in the Caribbean all the ones that I can think about are run by women and the film commissioners the few places that have film commissioners they're women so um no so I think that you know there there isn't or from my experience it hasn't there is not an issue of representation or lack of representation of women in the in in the field um on that level um then you come down to the actual the filmmakers the directors and the cinematographers and the editors and all those so that's where you know there's more nuanced or there's more variation in terms of representation of women um a lot of um there are a lot more for example women directors um there are very few women cinematographers very few and the ones that are and the ones that are there are in high demand because women want women to work with to tell their stories this just is just this little community that that they're building and then with editors even editors are few like women editors are also you know from what I've seen they're not that many of them and then when women start to tell stories the ones who are directors the stories are usually very personal um and speak to you know they're they're either very personal or they speak to children or they speak to children um maybe they're teaching something or maybe they're telling stories from a child you know like involving the perspective of a child because they connect even if they don't have children it doesn't matter it's like those are the types of stories that they tell like stories that are heartwarming to children or or maybe not um and also stories that that that represent their personal their personal journeys in life um so they're very specific in in a lot of instances um there are some women who make films that are more you know speak to a broader audience and are kind of commercial but they're in the minority it's mostly like it's mostly like women use film as as as a process um like literally they're telling stories of a journey and they're they're that they're living at the time that they're telling the story yeah is that Caribbean women or Caribbean American women or both both I mean and it seems like a similar thing to what you expressed Danieli like using the process of making theater as a way to sort of like work through some of your own demons and work through some of the demons that we're facing in society yeah I mean uh you want to jump in about facing my own demons sure if you would like um I mean I think that's true I was thinking about what you said and I I think that my work has become more and more personal the longer I have been a writer um I don't know that my writing was particularly I mean all of all of my plays are about me on on a certain level but um I think I'm more consciously attempting to to kind of discover who I am if you will uh the longer I'm I'm the longer I'm writing um and sort of unpeeling that onion uh if you will as a as a Jamaican American writer and what that means um because I feel like in the past several years I've tried to write plays that are that are really about being Jamaican and in fact they're actually very American plays um so I've I've been interested in exploring that particular aspect of my identity yeah I mean there is um you know a difference I guess I mean in the in the kind of work that someone who is living and working and born in the Caribbean might make and issues that someone who's Caribbean American might make I don't know if those resonate with the kind of work that you do it's like that difference or that dichotomy um I think it goes to a question of audience um because uh I know that I'm actually not generally speaking if my plays are produced or if I'm producing my play um I'm not speaking to a Caribbean audience I'm speaking to a very American audience um and so I'm very careful about what I choose to represent um I I think I don't know that this is true of other Caribbean nations but I know uh in my experience growing up whenever there was anything vaguely Jamaican happening it was a joke like like everybody laughed like it was comic relief it was supposed to be funny um and so I've been trying not to do that and have it and and to present people who are actually people as opposed to um kind of stereotypes of what you think of when you think of a Jamaican person and it's addressing that issue of how we're represented in theater and film that inspired me to found conchell productions um my company we produce works written by Caribbean Americans which is a challenge because every time the word Caribbean comes out they think I'm talking about Caribbean writers but I'm talking about Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinis, Guyanese, Martiniquez, people from Guadeloupe who live here their parents came here to give them opportunities and yet living here they're not quite American and when they go back home they're not quite from Maltenique not quite from Guadeloupe they're not quite from anywhere so what is their story and the honest portrayal of who these human beings are and who their family is is what I'm looking for writers to put on the paper and I've discovered that audiences care if they're not segmenting you or you're a Caribbean writer you're an American writer you're a Guyanese American writer you are a Trini American writer you're telling this unique Jamaican American story or this unique Puerto Rican American story or you're an American and your parents came from Puerto Rico two generations ago and yet your perspective of the American experience is affected by your upbringing and your heritage and it's the as an artist as a writer and an actor I'm primarily a professional actor I didn't feel welcome to express that and yet I was raised to express that so I did you know and it took years of like overcoming the fear of rejection for me to say I'm just going to tell my story and if you don't think it's American enough somebody else will and it was my experience going to Great Britain and seeing the work of writers like Winston Pinoc where she's writing about the British Jamaican and these women some of them speak with British accents some of them speak with Jamaican accent and they live in London and I was like you think like me oh my god so it's seeing these women declaring I am of two places and my stories will be about people like me that made me think I'm not crazy by feeling that my story means something and so this is a platform for people who are looking for an opportunity to say I am hyphenated and you're going to see it in my work thank you for sharing that and you produce hear her call Crimin American Women's Theatre Festival why do you single other voices of women in that identity we're a new company we were founded in 2018 and I couldn't imagine having a company that didn't showcase the voice of the female writer that's implausible to me we are silenced by other groups I am showcasing women and I feel blessed by the opportunity to show how we process the world via theatrical works and last year was our I mean this year we're still in 2019 we had our first event this year and we had six amazing short plays by six amazing completely different women um a Haitian American writer Dominican American writer Puerto Rican Puerto Rican American writer no Cuban ah okay Cuban American writer Trini American writer and Jamaican American writer amazing pieces and the audience was thrilled and I knew I was starting something great and this year we got we're expanding to we had a one-day festival last year and this year it's going to be four days at York College in Jamaica Queens and I'm I put out our submission yesterday because it was December 1st and a call for submissions to get these voices out there and we also do a festival for for men and women it's the reading series that we are producing it's all about money quite frankly you know it's all about starting somewhere and we're gonna go far because the audiences are hungry and the artists are feeling empowered and I yeah that's why I'm a woman I'm gonna showcase women first and foremost I mean I was gonna say I do think that there's a way in which I mean yes others have silenced women but I when I think of Caribbean women or I think of Jamaican women and women in my own family I think there's an element of I know from me that I've had to learn not to silence myself because I feel like when the way I was raised if there's a man in the room you're just kind of feeding them and kind of like you know kind of like taking care of them because that's how you were raised to be even if you're a feminist even if you're a very woke person I find that I slip into this weird did everybody eat kind of thing like if if if like a man is in the room and it's just because of the way I was raised and how I was taught and I don't know that that's even necessarily a positive thing because I do think that I have a tendency to kind of dim myself in order for the men in the room to shine a little bit which again I don't know if this is a Jamaican thing or if this is just the women in my family in my particular family but it's interesting to me that when I was growing up I didn't have any particular Jamaican role models really in terms of literature at all and I don't know that I even had any Caribbean role models in terms of literature and that's something that as I as I get older as I write more I feel that I would like to be a role model for a younger Caribbean American child like oh actually look at this woman and she's doing this thing that I could also do I mean I don't think I have I read well I mean I've read very few Jamaican playwrights I wasn't when I got to college I read Michelle Cliff who's a Jamaican novel or was a Jamaican novelist and that actually changed my life because I thought oh my gosh look this woman who's writing this book and she's Jamaican and it's about and it's set in Jamaica and how amazing and it was such a breath of fresh air for me to not just be dealing with the black experience which is significant and important but actually a very specific Jamaican experience which is slightly different and that's something that I've been excavating excavating in my work quite a lot over the past several years because being black growing up in America is a very specific thing and you're and at least in the 80s you weren't really allowed to I'm black and actually like I have I'm not just black I have other things going on and so I mean like and being Jamaican a Jamaican American black person is actually different than being a black American black person and that's something I've it's taken me up until now really to accept and not try to write plays for black people in the hopes that they will like what I write because they're everybody's different like who knows what what people are coming into the room with but that's taken a long time of me being comfortable enough to be like I'm just going to write about my experience and I'm a black person and I'm a black woman and actually that's enough to just say that no matter what the play is about you said that you would like to be a role model for like I guess other Caribbean American future playwrights or theater makers what what would you want to model for them like what did you think was missing in your experience I think being brave enough to write about I mean again my plays are not necessarily about my family and about my life necessarily but being brave enough to write about yourself if you want to and know that your story as specific as it is is also universal people will still enjoy it it's not just about this is what it is to be a Jamaican that's actually it's just no this is this is my reality and I'm going to tell it and trust that other people will be there to receive it because I certainly thought that a lot of stories that actually are not universal were but actually it was like Anne of Green Gables or whatever it like that's not that's a very specific story it's not oh this is for everyone their human being can be for everyone too human being being comfortable with I guess like declaring that difference but knowing that that difference is also in a way universal because we all have these individual right and not feeling like you have to apologize for for that difference where you come from yeah other people I don't think it's a difference it's a specificity because when you use the word different it's it seems to negate the the the the beauty specificity is what gives us our humanity we can't be a blob of people no one is a blob we're each unique beings and our unique stories don't belong under a label that is defined by pigmentation it makes me think about to be black in France but yes because here what what what I I I see that is that you have the right to be specific different but in France in fact you don't really have it's difficult to be different in in France in fact it's difficult to be black and French in France in fact the this is my my view but in fact well when you're French you have to be unique in fact you you don't have to be specific the the specificity is not because if we could nice and it is a memory prized despised in fact so we are still struggle to say that yes we are French but we are different we have a specific story we have a specific vision of world and we have specific things to say and generally in French commissions or French production they when we you you we don't have really have a national French national representativity okay and we don't see ourselves on French screens we don't see ourselves on French stages or theater and we are systematically like that on on the side we are French but on the side and don't be don't scream too loud just don't be specific so be French there are one way to be French and this is the way to be French and we we always like that too we we don't feel very welcomed we are specificity who are not really really welcomed in in French theater or not this is we are seen as folkloric things but not theater and it's difficult because we are still fighting to to say we have a specific voice and it's a why not a French specific voice and we want to to write about these stories these specific stories because we have a story with friends and and as friends don't really want to hear too loud about this slavery story or colonial stuff we don't have to to talk about that and it's for certain playwrights or novelists it's a fight we fight for for that to just to say a word so to not to be in silence but to say a word it's difficult for us yeah I mean I think I think I actually I think it's changing now but I certainly think that being black when I was growing up was this very one thing so if you're if you're black you have to know about these this kind of music and you have to eat this kind of food and you have to have this particular history and and I know for me I actually to learn it because it wasn't in my family so I had to kind of like oh yeah I totally know what what jazz is about even and I know what like the south is about even though I didn't so I was sort of acting on a certain level because I was too I didn't want to I just think that it used to be that if you're a Caribbean and you just distinguish yourself it was perceived as um oh you think you're actually better than us or something like you're trying to be different um absolutely that was it in fact it's like well no I'm just trying to tell you we just don't eat that food in my family like we don't talk that way I don't know I don't know why but my black is not actually the same as your black even though we're both black so yeah I think it's really hard yeah and I think there's a benefit to being in New York which is why I keep on coming back here I was born here but I keep coming back here because there is a diverse community and everybody's claiming their ethnic truth and I've lived in LA and you don't find Haitian food and you got to struggle to find Jamaican food forget about you know you might not find any other cultural um cuisine in some parts and I've been to the south and there all of America is not owning the ethnic specificity but if you're gonna be in New York why not start the trend you know you think that theater is actually a little bit behind in terms of representation and diverse forms of representation than film even uh just when I think about the kind of theater that I'm seeing right now and the kind of the kind of conversations that I hear in the theater community it's um very much privileges black American stories or Nigerian stories stories like African um stories but it's never oh you're Caribbean great uh so I think there's a kind of flattening that happens when when programming starts oh we need a black voice but actually it needs to be this very specific black voice that people can recognize and people understand uh and we're not we're not willing to deal with this story you know like about Jamaica because again Jamaicans at least in my experience of theater are like a joke yeah can we talk yeah let's talk about this this idea of representation like what roles are available to Caribbean women I want to say and now like Caribbean women players Caribbean woman actors like what kind of roles are we seeing available for them and what kind of representation do we see on stages and screens if anybody wants to respond to that and then how is your work pushing against that in any way I mean the one person who I was sort of like wow she's so amazing growing up that I knew of was Grace Jones she was like the only the only Jamaican who was anybody um in my view of like and since then I'm like I don't even know who the Jamaicans are um Ramola I think I want you to jump in on this one I don't know that I don't know that we have any standout figures like Grace Jones like since since her um you know when when I think about how women are represented in the stories in the films I think especially for the films that are made by women there is there is a it's the stories are nuanced the characters are well developed um you know the stories are they run the gamut from you know there's a filmmaker in Barbados who made a film about a woman who is queer but a part of the spiritual Baptist movement and then how does she she's like having this internal battle with wanting to be with with another woman but can't because of her religion so it's like that's that's an example of a film then there's there's another woman from Trinidad who made a film about her relationship with her father and you know learning about him as a kid and growing up with him and then him passing and how she actually dealt with that entire process so that's that's another film there's there's another woman in in Trinidad again who is interested in preserving like there is French Creole spoken in Trinidad and she's interested in preserving that so she shot a whole film about a relative of hers who is like this old guy he makes his own coffee like he literally has coffee trees in his backyard and he picks them and he dries them and then he grinds them and then he puts them in the pot and he makes coffee she made a film about that it was all in Creole um as her attempt you know of preserving the language so it's like we're doing everything we're doing we're doing it all and the representation the types of stories we tell you know just come from what our interests are and and I think more and more women are finding their voices and wanting to share those those stories yeah so it looks like film is what we aspire to Caribbean film is what we're aspiring to yeah well in regards to how the Caribbean woman is portrayed in film and television in Marica there was a an indie film featuring García Bové um she played a Haitian mother and a woman struggling as a single parent and it was a textured character that lead the the film was named after the lead character which was the daughter I recently went through the experience of being cast in a Netflix project as a Haitian mother and they were adamant about casting Haitian people in the Haitian roles to speak the language and so I feel that there is an awareness that you have to honor these unique characters with people who can actually convey the culture and so things are changing and each producer each writer each creative team that recognizes you can't do a blank stroke of what a Caribbean is you have to say Haitian and stick to Haitian and hire someone who needs who has no side to do the accent and speak the language and if you're gonna say Trini you have to find a Trini or someone who honors a Trini accent not just some person who can do a derivation and butchers that culture's specificity um so there is hope absolutely you just have to um aspire to it and create the world where people are seeing you've got to be specific but like meanwhile I recently had a production of one of my plays that I didn't produce it was like a theater produced it and I had a character two characters that were Jamaican in it and one isn't was an older she's she's like a grandmother character she's a ghost actually she's a Duffy and um she comes and she's haunting her her granddaughter and she's like you need to quit this job basically basically because her grandmother I mean her granddaughter is like a maid for an Upper East Side family so um it was my oh so in the end of the play there is a moment where the grandmother is on stage alone and she's talking to the audience because she's the only one because she's not alive who can like break the fourth wall and talk to the audience and she's telling this very solemn sort of story of her life it's a quiet moment and um the director could not resist um underlaying her monologue with like this vague kind of Caribbean sort of music that was not in the script it was just like oh we're gonna put music here and had her dance all of a sudden which is not in the script either and I kept sort of bringing it up like I just don't understand why she's dancing here like what's happening why is she what is this moment that where she's dancing and this is not Jamaican music also I just don't understand what's happening and she was like you don't like it I love it and so it was like kind of this battle where I was dealing with and they were nice but I was dealing with their own kind of perceptions of what being Caribbean is and so they could not resist making it this kind of heartwarming um sort of weird calypso kind of thing and like and having her dance and do this thing when when actually the moment was not that at all and it made her into a stereotype as opposed to a real person that she would actually take seriously um so as I said I think theater has a ways to go we're not there yet um in terms of we gotta be careful about who's producing the work and you know it's and and it's hard it's hard it is hard to get it produced um and they don't so hard because it's very easy to be cast as that black woman who's difficult and so you're trying to like you know okay it's all of us and it's a communal effort and we're and I get that and I want you to be able to create and also um it wasn't a thing where it was like they just paid me to like produce this play so who am I to be like no you can't produce my play and don't pay me anymore so it's just like one of this one of those negotiations where you're trying to kind of meet the needs of the moment where okay uh you're nice people I understand what's happening here I want to be a part of the team however I also want to remain I want my story to remain my story and I want it to have integrity um so they're just you have to be brave enough to actually have those kind I actually didn't even win that battle they were they just like kept me they just turned it down and I was like I just feel like it's so busy but this moment there's so much happening and I just wanted to be quieter and so they turned the music down um so they weren't like hearing me but I I tried to but it sounds like the kind of they they basically put jobs in a sense jobs on this Caribbean female character right they have to be heartwarming they have to dance they have to perform for us like all of these jobs that hear the sounds of the waves exactly yeah everyone knows that she's from the island so it's like this double yeah this like exotic exonification of this woman and all of these like things she has to make us feel good like that's her role basically and it's also a conversation of the woman's role in the theater right right should we just be quiet yeah and just be grateful um Danieli I feel like I want you to jump in on this because in our conversation we talked a little bit about how you started writing work because of an absence that you were seeing in theater in martinique for women's roles yes and um and I I raised in France and the only black model I have is what I was seeing on tv and that it was afro african-americans and uh these were my my first model but there were not model who are close to me and that's also why I decided to to write stories to to represent also women or my society or my my specific issues and uh I forgot just your question no yet you I remember in our conversation separately that we talked about the like the the last few plays that you wrote you wrote because you felt that you weren't hearing women's voices in theater in martinique yeah yes um we have a big big writer in martinique is mszr mszr write a lot of plays some plays but not really a lot of women characters not very strong women characters and um edouard glissant also I don't really have souvenir of a big strong women characters perhaps in contemporary theater there are more female characters uh like in the luxante plays we have we have women and uh yes I think that there are specific stories specific things that women only perhaps only women can can tell and uh that's why also I decided to to to I don't know if I decided it was like that I was I had to I had to write down certain stories and um uh I wanted also to represent um like in my last play la diablesse a strong women's because when we see women they are also they are problems they are weak they have social problems or so violence problem and I wanted to to to to write down this play because for me la diablesse is a sort of superhero hero female superhero Caribbean superhero that was I wanted to write it down because it's it's based about a a legion in in the Caribbean but not only and it's it's about a magic creator female creator who is very seducing and when you are men be careful because she's so seducing that she will take you in the woods and the the the morning after the day after you could be lost or mad or dead and this is about uh this came to me about from a world tradition for my grandmother or people and I was asking my young fellows female fellows about la diablesse do you know la diablesse and nobody knows about la diablesse so I decided also to write it down to to to transmit to convey this tradition or old tradition about that strong magical woman who is who is in a heritage and oral heritage and I wanted to show them a woman who are like them and who is strong and not a a broke woman and uh and uh and I want I wanted to talk about men also and my vision of certain male in our society and a certain education education they give to male to be seducing women and collecting women and take women bodies of women and I wanted to to create to create this uh this uh superhero hero to uh to be strong enough to say to say to the men stop no my body is not yours I decide when what I decide for my body you don't take my body like that and I and and this character was important for me for my personal story but also to to to convey this tradition about this woman and also because we have we are in a modern society where all young people are on their phones and they don't really have nowhere they can they can receive their story or their heritage nor on the tv nor in no they don't have the the the mean to receive their oral heritage who is disparate disparate and it was important for me to write down this story yeah we discovered this the tomorrow night so basically reaching into our past to find strong strong models that we could follow that our younger generation can look up to um to talk about that empowerment of women yeah so I think now we might open it up to the audience for questions or comments ah yeah I might borrow somebody's mic I am happy to be here and I found out at the last minute though I am in New York so it's difficult for us to really get together but you know this is so important what we're doing here today um I wanted to just let you know that St. Lucia we know about La Jablez also so so it cuts across the stories we might have different names for the characters but the essence of the character Jamaica has the version there's Nani who's was a real person so all of that so we do have the stories so you know it's it's interesting that this is so passionate for you and so important to you and um likewise everyone's trying to get all those stories across but at the end of the day the specific is important but the universal side of it because we all can relate as humans and the other people who are not specific Caribbean or who are not black they need to understand our story also so we need to bear that in mind so I appreciate that we're collaborating so the stories can get wider audiences and and bigger so thanks for this opportunity to be here anybody else yes yes in fact I have one question for Daniel Lee um when you work I guess your work has been presented in uh in Martinique um or in Guadeloupe as well what was the impact on the audience I mean if you you were you are speaking of domestic violence or the position of women in the in um in Guadeloupe so how was it received what was the reaction of the audience um the impact very often people tell me that I write necessary plays there are necessary subjects uh issues to write down because we don't we have there there are some some some play about about about violence but I don't know there are a lot of women who come to and whip in my arms after that or women who write down some words for me or that are telling me thank you for talking for us uh I'm uh I'm really moved moved about about that because uh I'm um I discovered that my my personal work that that is the personal vision uh can touch a lot of women and it's a sort of voice of several several women and uh that issues are very important for uh uricans about incest but also when I presented uh La Diabless uh women tell tell me also thank you for us because uh in fact they they they felt very um forward and uh and strong and uh uh Pierre very proud to be what they are more questions yeah this this is a question that has to do with production and something that I've been thinking about all the time that I've been working on French theater and francophone theater and American theater and where the money comes from and why that might have some difficulty make things more difficult for Danieli for example to get her work done because in France including in Guadeloupe and Martinique for the most part theater is subsidized by the government so of course everyone loves this right because the government believes in arts it's France art is great and so on and so forth but it means that work that's outside the mainstream doesn't get produced very often and people don't have the habit you you've all gone out and looked for money right you've gone and found money and you've made it happen but there isn't a kind of culture of doing that I think in the francophone world in the francophone sphere and I'm I'm just pointing that out because where do you get produced Danieli yeah my my work was produced produced by the French the direction of cultural there are affairs in rational regional direction of cultural affairs and and they are obligated they have to produce my work because we are not a lot in companies and I and and and I discuss a lot with them to to probably convict to convince that it's important to do it but in in in France itself but in France is not the same thing I think Luke Luke can talk about that in France is not the same thing I am I live in martinine and I create in martin it's not the same thing that in France in France it's very very very hard we have to find money other ways I mean and I'll add that living in New York even though technically well that arts are subsidized by I guess we'll call them czars people who have money and doing very like specific stories like the rest of us are who are in New York it's the same thing so yeah just pointing that out my name is Vanessa I'm originally from French Ghana I used to work with Nicole from the French Embassy and we invited Danieli in in Miami so I know her play Harry Ken which is very strong I just wanted to make a brief comment actually on about the Caribbean community because right now I'm working on another project which is more on immigrants and it happens that actually the Caribbean community which probably some people or maybe all of you know but is the second largest community after the Asian one in New York which means after Chinese Indian Pakistani Bangladeshi and so on so it's the second largest community in New York and I feel in terms of opportunities this is huge and we have to kind of seize this opportunity and get together as you said and work as a network it's not always easy but I think many different actions and initiatives have been taken in that sense probably more in visual arts have been a couple of exhibitions in that sense less than the on the on theater so I'm really glad this is happening so I think this is in terms of impact and outreach and audience this is quite significant significant and I think we we can build on that but I think you need to recognize that the Caribbean community doesn't feel that theater serves their interests so first you have to tell them that there is theater that will interest them and that hasn't been the case in New York or anywhere else in America yeah I think it's I mean I think it's really tricky when you talk about it's not even so much Caribbean communities as immigrant communities right immigrant communities generally speaking from my experience immigrants are all about like working and and like surviving and assimilating and not really sticking out and particularly at least when I was growing up and I mean that's shifting now I think you're right I think there is a wealth of opportunity but I guess the questions that we need to continue to ask are well how do you present a case to various communities and say no this is actually for you these are stories that that were made specifically for you that that has some value so you you know maybe you'd be willing to pay ten dollars whatever it is to like come see something rather than saving that money for groceries or saving that money for you know like I think it's really really challenging I mean when I think about the Asian I only know of one Asian theater the my rep the my theater company that's the one I know oh yeah I forgot about Pan-Asian I don't know of a Caribbean theater company in New York I'll get on shell productions me yeah from last year so this is new so it's very new and it's very grassroots so last year in preparation for your call I went to senior centers I contacted high schools and so this year I'm going to be working on getting volunteers because we're being hosted by York College they the Milton G Basin Performing Arts Center is co-presenting our festival so I'm going to be looking for volunteers to go into the community to speak to the community to speak to high school students to encourage them to come because one of the most passionate members of our audience were a group of high school students from a neighboring from a Hillcrest High School which is my alma mater oops I put it out there and they were pumped they were like shouting and applauding and they they were active participants in the post-show discussion because they were excited that oh my gosh that's my story that's exactly how my mother talks to me that's what it's like in my household because we had two pieces about you know the Caribbean American child and the Caribbean parent and the battle for power and what's true what's a true way to be so it's very grassroots and I also add that there is actually a very long history of Caribbean American theater unfortunately though it tends to happen in small small communities and so that their names don't get to carry on past the community that birthed them. Raza Productions. Raza Productions, Nandi Kaye who was going to moderate one of the panel discussions this evening, Eway McDonald who's been doing theater in New York I don't know maybe over 30 years. Liberation Theater is headed by a Jamaican American woman Sandra E Daily. There we go yeah and so there's actually quite a lot yeah there's a long history Cheryl Byron is also another name that's very prominent in the Caribbean American community in terms of performance and theater and music and dance and there's actually the Caribbean American theater in Queens they've been around a very very long time yeah there is a lot it's just that again opportunities like these don't happen very often and so unless you're in the small community they had birthed it and the slightly larger community that attends those events the names don't get to carry on so thank you for being here last question thank you all for sharing thus far I'm interested in these narratives and what you had mentioned earlier about being a role model and how and to kind of also segue to Candice's question on preservation of your work in how you would like to be archived how do you imagine your your contributions that you've made thus far and that you intend to make going forward what is the unique way you want your work to be disseminated beyond yourself through an institution through independent independently how do you want to library yourself for those going forward I mean I don't think it's important we keep this last comment brief because we have to transition okay I definitely think it's important for plays to be published because that gives colleges an opportunity to buy them and disseminate them to their students I think that plays should be studied the same way other forms of literature are studied so people should write papers about plays and give them that kind of academic credibility not to say that that the be all end all but I find it helpful I also I also write children's theater sometimes and I think it's really great to get them while they're young and get them excited about theater so reaching younger audiences to me is like a great way to continue the work and their theater journals I've had one of my pieces published in the theater journal and it's another piece is going to be published in the theater journal so their journals for the academic world it's out there you just have to decide to find it yeah from all in a talk briefly yeah um you know there's four for films specifically I don't believe that there is an archive for Caribbean films I've been speaking to a filmmaker who made a film in Ghana I don't know in the 70s it's still on 16 millimeter we shot it at BAM on the 60 millimeter because they have one theater with that capability but her first question to me when when when we spoke about showing the film is is there an archive like where what can I'm I'm moving on where can I leave my work um where it would be kept intact and so it can be enjoyed and we don't have one so you know that that is a huge gap that we need to sort of work on I think that's the problem of theater in general right because it's like a ephemeral thing you know it's this live event so how do you archive it it's a good question beyond publication which is not actually the same like reading something is not the same experience of seeing something and hearing something but Daniel Lee when I say any last uh none of my none of my plays are published so for me for me the first the first time the first thing is to publish them to this this one will be and in English and and and the other play uricanes will be traduced in check translated it's in in check in fact the first uh audiences that are interested in my in my in my work are foreign audiences and the publishers and it's so it's good for me to to to uh to extend exchange about my about my work here in in uh America and in other countries of of Europe is like that also new play exchange it's a website where writers can get their work posted on that site and there's also opportunities to get published because there are calls from different publishers for new works they focus on new works so just go to newplayexchange.org and it's a membership organization but they were at TCG this summer and they're doing great things for new writers and they do have a lot of Caribbean American writers work there was actually an article about Caribbean American writers I think we're going to wrap it up last question okay go so the Caribbean writers still exists they are published at the University of Virgin Islands um and it's been around maybe 30 35 years now the Caribbean writer which is a um um it comes out yearly publication and it has poetry short stories and theater plays as well published in the in the in the magazine or in the book in the journal um and then Opal Parmaradisa who is a writer out of Jamaica has an online magazine called interviewing the Caribbean recently um maybe it's about three years old and that's another opportunity for publishing and lastly a comment about play or Caribbean theater being produced here in New York don't forget Puerto Rican theater is majorly majorly produced here and a lot of times when conversations about the Caribbean happen Puerto Rico is left out of that conversation either by the they exclude themselves or we exclude the non um Puerto Rican Caribbean exclude Puerto Rico in our conversations about what is Caribbean thank you for that yeah that's true I think on that note we're gonna end I just want to do a brief bio read of each of the panelists just to have that on record before we leave Magali is a first-generation Haitian-American actress playwright director producer who was born in Brooklyn New York in 2019 she became the founder and artistic director of Kong Shell Productions Ramola Olukas is an attorney and avid Caribbean indie film enthusiast of Guyanese heritage who resides in Brooklyn New York she's a founder and executive director of Caribbean Film Academy a New York based nonprofit created to share Caribbean films and Amina Henry her recent productions include the animals ducklings Hunter John and Jane and the Johnson's at Jack and she's a playwright and educator all right and then Nellie Francis of course who's here our honored guest you will see her work Laja bless tomorrow at 8 p.m. yes thank you very much everyone we're gonna transition the next thing we'll start at 4 p.m. oh