 So everybody can sit on this side on the table. So everyone can sit on this side. We wouldn't want to stand this side so much. Web streaming and everything. You can pick it all up. Great. At a table? At a table? At a stand? Just do it over here. Because we are doing time to all people. We are making an activist act. We are occupying this event. I'll sit down. I'm going to sit down on this side. I'm going to sit down on this side. How you doing? For those who don't know me I'm like a primo. Who are these other people? RJ? Morgan, Muriel. The overarching title of this particular session is Art in a Time with Upheaval. So we want to spend the next hour and a half in a bit of a collective experiment in how we can really examine the process of intervention through creative practice. And as well as the reflexive of that relationship is the impact of social movements, of cataclysmic events that happen in our communities and in our lives and how they affect our creative practice. And so the question of the impact on our creative practice and the impact of our creative practice on social movements and what that looks like and the forms that that takes. So the first thing that we wanted folks to do is to think about a movement moment or a cataclysmic event or something that has really deeply impacted your artistic practice and to just help people get juices flowing, we were just going to share some of ours and then we'll have the opportunity for folks to share with a partner something. So to just think of a moment that was critical in performing your artistic practice and it's hard to come up with one but just something that came to mind for me. So on the timeline it comes in the 1880s with Nellie Bly who's a journalist and it kind of came out of our conversation today of really powerful women. That's Nellie Bly, that's Nellie Bly. Nellie Bly is this amazing journalist who comes in and did amazing investigative reporting in Bellevue to try to sort of shed light on the issues for people that were housed there that were suffering from mental illness. So for me that was really impactful in terms of making me want to shed light on things that I found unjust that I got to learn about and I did a little report when I was in elementary school. But for me that moment was really important in terms of artistic practice to form my practice. So we're asking folks to think about and it could also be a creative moment or it could also be a large collective experience like I have a dream speech. What's your moment Michael? My moment personally? My moment personally? A particular moment for me that had a particular resonance was the economic collapse of 2008. We had been involved with issues around housing and land prior but suddenly our work was given a different resonance and people were like oh housing is a human right? Okay maybe now that a growing segment of the population was affected in the same way that I had been affected personally in my working class experience. So that was a profound moment in my understanding of language and how I express as a maker language to tell my particular story and how that story can have popular resonance in relationship to the art that I want to make. A moment for me that stands out is called the Battle of Seattle and it was the shutdown of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. I was actually a student at Ohio State in Columbus Ohio really far from Seattle. I was involved in activism on campus and in the community and we shut down like downtown Columbus and this obviously happened, most people know this. This happened around the world actually what happened in Seattle but then there were the actions that took place all around the world and the way it impacted my practice was that I had my sort of vision and perspective on change was just really scaled up, just really blew up and I started to think a lot bigger about what we could do and what we could win. Okay go go go. So in terms of the timeline we're not going to get linked in a little order. In terms of the timeline I would say for me it was when I was a student at Hunter College in 1995 there was the threat of well actually that came a little bit later but there was the threat of raising tuition at that time like of $2,000 more which was really incredible for most folks and everybody had a sense that that was going to dramatically change the demographics of like who was able to go on and be the slow like chopping block to like open admissions which meant the right that high school students had to go to CUNY as a college regardless of some of their scores and things like that and their academics and the right that they had in terms of being in public college even though they still had to pay tuition to go there. So for me we organized a massive student strike that had like 20,000 people in City Hall and I was a poet coming out of high school knowing like how important poetry was but this kind of allowed me to work with other poets and also activists and find a community with them and it just allowed us to use our personal stories and like how can I say and connect that to some of the struggles we were dealing with within the movement and then within our own lives our struggles around access personally but also our struggles within the movement itself as women, as women of color, etc. So these moments are also like put in a context in terms of the discussion that we've been having and in terms of like how art and activism dance with each other and how they merge. At the end of the previous session we were starting to talk a lot about the moment and certain moments and certain pivotal moments and transformational moments and it seems to me that people were talking about that art and activism and community work were not really separate that balance all the questions of aesthetics and purpose really can be linked and I think for me throughout my life and also now I'm looking at the intentionality of both arts and activism is to find that portal to find that entrance place into the consciousness of a human being into the consciousness of a community into the consciousness of a society at large Susan and I were talking about that sometimes you don't get to go through the front door sometimes there is a window that is open in the basement in a little crack that you get to go through and sometimes that window has actually been left open by on purpose either consciously or unconsciously by the person, by the organization, by the society that you want to go into so you can find this portal and that both art and activism is trying to find the images, the ideas the resonating idea that can get you through this portal so they share that and that the whole thing that wants to get through has a feeling, another word that came up of necessity that something's necessary there's a great little sequence in Universe's New Piece Party People where Steve Sapp has this monologue that says Martin Luther King Necessary Necessary, the Black Panthers Necessary I thought that was really great that that thing about necessity came in so when I was thinking about where I would place myself on this timeline I thought, well, you know the kind of thing that was really inherent you know, for me was like 1979 that year when I first went to the Public Theater in Joseph Pack and I thought, well, that was necessary in my life but was it really that kind of moment that historical moment and whatever and then I thought, well, there was a real thing when I fell into Occupy Wall Street and joined the puppet guild and the arts and culture part of Occupy Wall Street where it really was about finding images, the art that could serve the activism the Public Theater was very much about activism in art which was sort of one of the discussions and this was very much art and activism and I thought, well, the necessity moment actually right now when the floor of my life is falling out and I don't know how to pay my rent and it's like, you know, what is my, you know, what am I going to do next and I said, oh, the four mission thing that came up, that was really great thank you very much for that because I'm going to have a four mission but I thought, okay I'm going to choose another moment that I realize was really, really key for me and it was when I was a child so we'll see, 1979 was here was here so I'm a child and it's a summer day and my mother says to me which is my name, my first name Ayala, put on your shoes we're going to go downtown we're going to do something really important don't tell your father so we go downtown it's a beautiful summer day we go down, if any of you have been in Washington D.C. you know, there's the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Memorial and the Reflecting Pool so we get down there, there are thousands of people around the Reflecting Pool we find this little corner of the Reflecting Pool, like here's the Washington there's the Lincoln Monument we find this little corner by the Reflecting Pool where we squeeze in it's like amazing and there are these speakers but there probably aren't enough because I don't think they thought there were going to be that many people and there are these speakers and they're talking in the sun and everyone is in this state of ecstasy and every once in a while I hear, at first I thought that we were at I didn't know it wasn't happening we were at some sort of interactive performance of Moses because I heard a lot about Frida and I thought, oh are we in a play? and you know, is this, I said to my mother is that Moses? and she sort of smiled and so every once in a while whoa, whoa, whoa, coming out of the I couldn't quite hear what it was but the crowd would go crazy and I thought, oh my god I love this moment and the other thing I realized was that my mother, for maybe the only time in her life it felt like she was with people that she felt part of my mother kind of looked like Amritha that she was a fat shade doctor and I realized this was the only time though she was surrounded by a lot of people especially women who looked like her and she was relating to them and I thought, oh my god she is with her community I couldn't define it, but I knew that and I felt it really, really strongly and so that also moved me and I thought, this is like theater the set is great, it's tremendous you have all these people you have this, I can't hear everything but it's obviously a great speaker with a great voice, you know and the crowd searched and I fell into the reflective pool and these women, oh my god, oh my god they picked me up and they were holding me in the sun and I'm going, oh my god that was the moment and as I look back on that moment through the lens of what we've been talking about I mean, it's really interesting years, years later someone said to me I said, well that was your baptism I'm like, oh my god it was totally my baptism and what started everything and now as I look at it to articulate the context of what we've been talking about it was the fanning of a collective flame so I thought, okay that's something I'm still interested in it was an actualized pivotal transformative moment on time where there was a whole huge history that led to that moment but balanced with that history that led to that moment there was also a future potential history equally long if not longer, that was different and even at that, I was in elementary school even then I had a sense of that looking back at it now I really have a sense of it in terms of what how it was art and aesthetics I've said it, well it had high aesthetics it had a lot of the aesthetics that were found aesthetics, they were the resources that were around it it was also another definition of art earlier that art comes from the Norse earth to be an art without art old English literally is being another one of the other definitions of art that have come up with that it is finding the image or when Plato talked about actually finding the form of art finding the image or the idea that triggers an a sensory emotional and it also ties into culture and the cultivation was probably the first one who said culture as we know it, where he said a culture anime which was the cultivation of the soul was also the cultivation of the community the cultivation of persons, whether it's soul as an entity if you believe that, or whether it's what they've said now, the mirror neurons in the brain, which really operate in terms of people relating and feeling empathy and getting motivated by an artistic moment but that was all there all those types of things were present at that moment and in that day there's also one thing in Occupy that we're really fighting for is the right to the commons the right to the Agora that huge Greek space in the center of Athens that was the marketplace that was where democracy really was which that was the theater before the separate theater got built and I think a lot about Agoraphobia in the society not only the Agoraphobia but about the fear of people participating in their society, in their democracy but also the Agoraphobia of the top that's afraid of of what comes so that moment which was both a gift and also survival because it was a moment of a gift of hope but it was also a real clear indication that there was a long road ahead and that it was going to be sacrificed and that some people might not survive but that the real survival of what this community was what this way of thinking was really crystallized at that moment so August 1963 Washington DC March on Washington Martin Luther King I have a dream okay so what we talked about was these pivotal moments and historical memory historical trauma we talk about where it is in our bodies and how do we make theater out of that and how do we start this organic process because if I have a historical we are learning this it is in your body and then from there becomes the historical memory the historical memory of relocation of abuse of a cycle but it is stored in your body do you get the pain, do you get the color do you get the vision and how do you do that and how do you work with that we see it in modern dance we see it in these different techniques of organic storytelling and that is the oral tradition because of weather whether this is a bad time we have generations and generations of storytellers so part of that is comedy and we never talk about comedy here we are in this room and we all are very serious about my timeline I can think of a few things because the one is it when my mother beat up a bunch of gypsies I don't know and then I said no I'm not going to do that one and then I said well you know is it the time when my family decided to occupy Washington DC monuments with over 30 Indians and we all got kicked out and they decided and the police had it coming we all had to hit the ground and roll over and then they made us change our shirts shirts because they didn't want snipers to shoot at us and I said no I should talk about that so I should talk about that and then I said well you know what is the big thing I was like 1976 Spider Woman Theater erupts in my living room and it's the first time I heard saw this theatrical way of sharing stories about abuse and I was very young I was 7 years old and I've used these techniques my entire life but I said no let's go a little further you know that's history what's happening now so then there was I don't know more which really woke up my senses to another generation who was attacking the native communities were attacking something that really that really felt that the youth and I had a back up youth and I realized I wasn't youth anymore so that's the other one but the one that really and this is the one that really when I knew my work as a theater artist was not done was when bloody bloody Andrew Jackson opened up at the public theater now I at the time was working at the UN right so I'm hearing all this stuff they have an initiative at the public theater everyone's saying oh you know this is a terrible but I have no because this day is the Doctor of Discovery Doctor of Discovery is this big paper where basically Christians came came said we are not human in particular so that's it and so and they threw us off and so it's going to be this big apology at the UN so I get my Prada suit on right and I'm putting my makeup on it's got to have good Prada to go to UN so you go to I didn't have getting to Miami there I'm going in there and it's a good day in New York and the star bloody bloody Andrew Jackson gets on and he says oh this is play about Andrew Jackson we made a musical about it and it was like a double take you're like huh so I you know and I love Lucy like how what and so I was like no right it's like nah and then he starts to talk and they said well you know she says the other it's like an idiot an idiot having a conversation right so I'm here and I'm like okay so the other idiot says well isn't there a lot of stuff with you know Andrew Jackson and he says in all of his court oh no that would propaganda I said oh do it so I say oh well isn't there a native initiative there and I'm thinking nah so he goes on they show little fake Indians on stage and I say oh god I don't have time for this I get in a cab I'm going there and I get there and the public theater decided to invite every elder at the UN who's fighting all day to do have some entertainment musical theater so they had them see this play they were crying in the IOs they got up and they walked out so I haven't seen this play and I'm trying to be fair right because I'm a fair person it's a fair thing to do so I go I'm not going to say they're going to say it sound good if she didn't make this musical I say okay so I go and I get a bunch of people together I get my mother I get a professor I get a preacher I know it sounds like a joke right you're going to see a musical theater play and they walk into a war so they come in and we're all going and these are buried as a diplomat there and we're sitting there and I'm looking at this play and I get free tickets and I go in because the elders all say you have to see you have to do something you have to speak about it on the floor I was like you know I mean you know okay so musical theater is a good what do you want from my life I can't make a you know a democratic thing about it so I go there music starts something wow this is really a cool play I said oh god I hope you know I hope it's good and if it is good I'm gonna be so jealous that a non-Indian wrote it right I mean I'm gonna be so upset right so I'm watching and they're doing all those things that you're learning in theater and I'm thinking oh my god this might really be good you know maybe someone got it right and then the ending joke started and then the other ending joke started then they did one little two little Indians and people think it's hilarious and my historical trauma not only mine but everybody my whole family was there my husband by the way the coward that he is he's a managing director he stayed home he said I'm not going anywhere with you and your family seeing a play called bloody bloody Andrew Jackson forget so he stays home so I go I go there and it's the end you see the historical trauma and it just is like it brought back so many memories so many memories of being not called dirty Indian not good enough being who I brought up all of and I look over to my I look over to the audience of all these India and they're crying and people are laughing and then I got and I said okay so then I got scared because I said wow if you can make genocide funny like this and make it nothing we're over at the other end of the UN fighting for our lives in the front line this is really scary I said this is propaganda at its best and I said now I know what it feels like to be a Jew in Germany I said because there's no way this is scary they can attack us nobody will nobody will do help us so then the play is over and of course my mother can't help herself she boos and she goes boo yes right and I'm up to and her girlfriends with her my my stepmother and she's there with each other and this guy stands up and fight words to my family he says you're old you're fat you're not funny oh boy fight breaks out my mother jump you know I'm a little older now she's seven five and she staggers up and she's gonna clock them and her girlfriend grabs them and they're yelling at me they're saying you have to do something so I'm trying to get down and then they say security security ushers come it was and so I and then they closed the door so I decided to say and I'm saying I have like these people trapped and I'm saying because I want to say that we're normal because we're the only people of color in this whole damn place and I'm saying we're not crazy okay this is historical drama and they're like stuck because we're stuck in this theater and my mother and we call the police they're gonna escort my mother out we go downstairs then this woman tried to tell us well you know it's satire and you shouldn't be upset about satire you know it's not really racist so a guy from the audience comes over and says I understand your racism and decides to debate with four Indians who are just angry and want to debate anybody because Indians can debate forever and so then I felt like I was in the producers because then somebody turns around and says let's kill the actors and you're like don't kill the actors please they just want a job and it just escalated and they're all huddled all the actors and huddled they're afraid to go outside because Indians took over this thing and it's all not a bunch of us and it was really like the coach and like we were going to lack of a bit scalp these people and that's what they really thought and I go over and the lead guy the guy who was in vampire Lincoln vampire and he says and I look at him he's like really upset and I go and I shake all of your hand as a fellow actor and I say I understand you know this is a play you're an actor but this was a terrible play and this was offensive and I really hope it's a flop you know and I just want to let you know that but I think you're extremely talented and I was right I said I think you extremely talented and I think you're a great singer but good night with you and he looks so we go outside and now we're kicked out of public theater police are there and I'm listening and he finally comes out and he looks at me he shakes and his tears in his eyes and he shakes my hand he says thank you and then my family goes after me and he goes and he sails off into the night so I go home right and I tell my husband all of this and he just looked at me says wow another night with the Miguel say so at that night I just said you know I really believe that that was my pivotal role that you could say politics forever you could talk you know write papers forever you could do all of that stuff but the point is I you know I was in theater to make a change and I knew this can never happen again and that's when I started working with Nina and Nina and Morgan and really trying to make a protest piece and we made a protest piece called Loops Bloody Bloody Loops and it brought up a lot of things about images it brought you know you know Peter Pan the Chugga-Woga-Wog song looking at things on television and like empowering other urban kids when you're the only person of color in the room of what do you do you have to fight and you spend a lot of that time fighting but how do we empower you how do we empower them to do something creative with that so 2008 Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is when really I knew that like I had a political life more of a political life more of a political arena but to get or to create other than standing naked in front of the gap and saying you know down with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson so then everyone wants to come up now to talk about the other part so thank you for listening to some of our moments and so we just wanted to give an opportunity for people to share with a partner you know they're a moment for obviously there's like a big spectrum of like things that were you know just think of something that you want to share with someone else and we'll give a couple minutes each side and we'll tell you when to switch about five minutes top we'll tell you when to switch and just turn to the person next to you oh oh all right oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh nobody was there I saw it I think I did when my parents told me every time I saw you were not with any of that time and I grew up knowing that I was going to have to help you out. I never threw my toys out with quite a lot of sugar. You didn't want me and so you didn't make me don't put me in that kind of thing. I never had the experience when I was a kid. I would have made an end to the law. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. I would have made a decision. Think about her more and more. I mean, I, I, even now, I've just been like, I've just been changed. I guess, like, yeah, right? Right? I couldn't go outside of my cell all the time. Right, I'm not even that experienced. Like, oh, it's just something that I wasn't aware of. So, if you haven't switched already, switch. So, I'm going to have to understand that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But that relationship to her, she's kind of got her pain out of me, but just with her that I'm in the center of Vermont and really nailed the time I grew up in just trying to do things like that. Including taking care of the rich. I was expansion and raised two people for us. My mom was on the other side of that and we were going through Washington and the other direction. We did get in touch. I never really been in touch with them before. They were in town so I was like, you have to go back and drop in the water. But what struck me was that while they were off here and they were in the center of the area and they were coming out of the water. It was like, you know, we were just like, you know, in a different way. Yeah, yeah. So we want to now try to put these things in some type of historical context. I mean, an individual has had a great political influence on my political development, personal development, Gracie Byrne was the person who politically helped me understand the difference between insurrection and revolution and understanding revolution as evolution and growth as evolution. And so we kind of want to put this in a historical chronology. And so what we're going to do is we're going to ask everyone to come up. And this down here being like present day right now, well, I don't know what the date is, but whatever the date is, 2013 today, August, July, is right here. And then down there is Nellie Bly, and I don't know if anyone's that old, but, you know, 1880. But, you know, we're going to ask you to stand in chronology and a little bit of negotiation too, check in with your neighbors, see where folks are. Morgan is here, that's in 63. So, and the woman here down here in 2008. 99, you have two minutes, we have 95. What did you do? Oh, oh, oh, what did you think? What did you think, Martin? 1363. All right, there we go, there we go. Yes. I'm sorry to feel really bad. Is everyone kind of fine in the year? We're strutting down into the future, it looks like over here. Nice. Nick is always in the future. Nick is always in the future. He said we're strutting to the future, I said you're always in the future. Thank you very much. He's the closest to the future. So who is on there? So you want to say, could you just share a little bit about the moment just very briefly? Yeah. I was just sharing the story last Tuesday on the cover of the New York Times. There was an article about a man in Louisiana, we all revere named John Berry. He wrote this book, Rising Tide, and he started working for the oil companies about six months ago, and everybody in Louisiana wrote him off. And I said, man, he's not a trader. This guy's an infiltrator. I promise you. And sure enough, he came out of that experience in six months, and he has led with the Orleans Parish Redevelopment Authority, the flood protection zone. They sued 100 oil companies for 150 years of damage to the wetlands, and have found a loophole in the law that the companies actually signed in a contract that said anything we do to damage will be over repair. And so it was just this moment of watching somebody that you really respect, kind of getting accused by the public, and then noticing that he put his integrity on the line, and his job on the line. And so he came out of that, and he does not have a job anymore. And his integrity is still in question, but now there's a suit against 100 oil companies. So it's just like a really nice one. It's been out of the opposite end. So Mae West, I must have been in high school. And seeing a Mae West movie on TV. And then being like, who is this woman? And finding out that at the same time that she was on, she was doing these wonderful, wild performances that became great, important to my aesthetic. She was put in jail, and that she would sit in, and she was in jail, I think she was in jail a bunch, but the image that always came to me was on Roosevelt Island, that old, dilapidated building used to be an insane asylum. At one point, she was put in there, and she would knit in her finest shoes. People would come in and visit her, and she'd be knitting in this horrible place, and just the contrast between those two things. So that's me, too. I think it's a T-9. Right, right. I guess in the interest of our live stream videographers, we'll just kind of move down the line here a little bit. If we're somewhere around the 64 mark, be around where Morgan is, if y'all to the left or right want to share. Anything? Okay, this is probably 1944, and I was with my grandmother, who was a designer, and she put some flowers and fabric and all kinds of things in front of me, and she said, anything you dream you can make with your hands. Nice. Let's move down here to, I don't know what year this is, around... 86, please. 86. 86. Yeah, someone who owns that year, why don't you want to say something? So, I'm on my knees in Berlin. It's not loud. Clean it up. Clean it up. Don't scare Loslyn. That is a bad excuse. That is a bad excuse. I'm speaking French, you'd taken me a half an hour to get the nerve up to come in this room, cause there was one woman sitting in the room, she was sitting on a chair. I was sitting next to her on my knees, her name was Arienne Muschion, and I didn't know why I was there, but I knew I had a question, and it finally came to me. She was very nice, this babbering person, person and I finally said what about this company thing and she looked at me sternly and she said well what are you gonna do without a company I mean don't get me wrong they make you miserable they're always leaving there's always a problem but what are you gonna do and I had an epiphany in that moment where I realized that every great production of a theater or dance I'd ever seen was always by a company and that was turning for me. Can we move down to the 90s? Anyone in the 90s? 2001 last final? Anyone have any burning moment they'd like to share? I can give it a shot. In 99 NATO started bombing in Yugoslavia and it was the first time having the anti-war activists and growing up during the time of the Vietnam War all these people I knew were for it I'd never known so many people who were for military action so I started having people over to my house in small groups and asking them questions and sharing stories to try to understand and the woman who was the editor of the country's largest anti-Vietnam war rag I knew her she came and said a reminder of the Holocaust the fellow who won an arts program for a major bank in New York came and said most of this reminded him his dad his dad is a bully and I know it could be easy to laugh but these are very very intense conversations and I was asking people what does it remind you of why would you be it what do you think and so I gathered hundreds of emails from people who were involved in articles and journal entries kind of started to meet that community from all the countries there and did a play and asked 35 friends including my male man and my brother and we did a one-night performance Rodney Macaulay at St. Peter's Church where they read as themselves these texts from there to try to understand it in the next day I flew there to interview men who had committed these acts and made two trips and interviewed scores of men who had done and participated in terrible things for the next year and a half and in my heart row to play oh called just war but I haven't read it on paper yet and that's when I decided to be an artist and do nothing else thank you Marty that's like a perfect transition so we've found ourselves on this calendar together and we've made the calendar with our bodies and today we find ourselves actually also probably for the first time in this configuration in the same geography and we want to take this moment to now recognize I think Morgan got to it a little bit where she talked about being there that day in Washington and in kind of reading that history back that led to that moment that's a little bit of what we've just done we want to take some time now with the time we have left to actually now together that we're all here together to start to create that calendar into the future because there are some trajectories that were on in this geography and the geography of the US that are pretty readable anticipatable and so it seems like we could do something together right now make some things together or just imagine some things together that may bear fruit so we came up with a few scenarios that are sitting on that calendar way over there they're sitting out ahead but we think they're probably gonna happen unfortunately but fortunately we're all here together and we have some ideas and some creativity Lenina do you want to share our scenarios and what we're gonna do is there's six of us so two of us from this team will go with each group and there will be three groups and these teams will create a response to the scenario and there's also an option for another imperative necessary scenario right sure so so I think that when you hear these scenarios they're not gonna be something super uncommon because a lot of what happens like history repeats itself so these are narratives that have repeated themselves and that's one of the discussion that we had as we were coming up with them so the first scenario and this kind of came out of some of the discussions this morning is going to be dealing with issues of gentrification and development and displacement so you're in a community and a developer would like to destroy the last remaining affordable housing unit that is housing about 400 families in the community immigrant families within this housing unit are actively being targeted to be evicted from their homes as the developer is still negotiating and trying to figure out how to demolish this property so that luxury condos office space can be built so that's the first scenario scenario number two there is a major hurricane and this hurricane has now come and destroyed an entire community it's housing it's businesses it's infrastructure there's lots of people who are displaced there are a lot of families that are divided and can't find each other what are we gonna do to build it back scenario number three there's a young black man who's also queer and he's in a neighborhood that you know he hasn't always been in and he meets a group of youth like himself white youth who beat him up and kill him and in the court case it's seen as self-defense because this person shouldn't have been in that neighborhood so how does the community respond to that the one thing I add is that in the interest of the urgency of the drama you live in that housing development that's under threat it is your community where the hurricane has occurred this is this young man is is your friend daughter son cousin so it could come it could come to you anyway any form you know all of us are gonna facilitate different ways to do this and we're all going to go into groups mine is going to basically be about historical memory and where that lays on your body with something asking a question and see where we go and everyone has a different way of approaching it yeah let me now take a group and I think we'll be really open to whatever process we come up with in there and you're gonna go with me and then the third group is Michael and Rachel and we're just gonna count off and three is in a sign you so you don't have to do any of that cogitating what scenario you want the scenario is imposed upon you it's not usually one you get the juice so who's our first participant on this we're right to facilitate one two three one one two three one two three one two three one two anyone else joining us one ones go with Morgan and Muriel twos we'll go with Lenina and I and threes we'll go with Michael and Rachel and the scenarios are so we'll hand the scenarios we have 20 minutes to respond okay You know, something that's bigger than even just a point if it's just us dealing with it for now? We're just a collectivity. Next, I'd say it'd be to create other, to delegate areas like specific neighborhood or specific like organized tasks based on ability. What structures are sound? Canvas. Canvas theory. Yeah. Talk to people like glad to see them, but also there are people probably already organizing, so try to contact them however you can. Probably there's no phone, there's no electricity. Yeah, what resources are where and who has them and how do we help distract them? If there is water, are there boats, mini boats that you can use to go around or who's on the top routes to see each other and who needs rescue immediately? What's more urgent? Probably working in couples because it's such a dangerous situation. Find out what communication tools are out there that work to the work. I mean, I think the response is also like a cruise. And I had to really think about that. Why am I angry now? Someone was abused 20 years ago. The guy said, well, why now? So if we think about that whining and if we put yourself to think about it for a few minutes and think about that scenario, someone's developing to take whatever it is. There's no right or wrong here, but think about whatever it is. And then we'll go in a circle of whining. Okay? So let's take that three, you know, three minutes. Okay? Okay? Okay, let's just go. Yeah, let's just go. Why now? Why would you be angry about that now? Why now? Oh, because it's a problem that has escalated to the point. What emotions make you angry? Okay. Sad? Oh, furious. Furious, good. Why now? Does it make you angry, sad? The heart feels hollow. The heart feels good. Okay, be a little more specific. Is it painful? Is it sadness? Yeah, sadness. Sadness. And remember. Electrified sadness. Sadness, good. Why now? Agitation. Agitation, agitation in anger. Agitation in fury. Naive agitation. Naive. One word. One. Just give me one. A word. No, I can't. Just give me a word. Why now? That's good. Fearful. Overwhelmed. Funny. Disgusting. Good. You know what I mean? That was what I was going to say. You know, just occupy our time in a productive way. Right, yeah. What we realized is that if there were, that there were dance parties that were held up. I don't think there were dance parties that were held up. I don't think there were dance parties that were held up. The life here doesn't really matter. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. I think we have to go into that part. Yeah, I think that's a really important part to ask. That's where we turn to, you know, and what are other equivalencies of that? You know, it's like, okay, so that's one example. You know, like dance parties like in the queer community. Okay, that kind of like cross boundaries, you know? But what about the isolation? I see these as being like, there's this, there's a one point, and it's just sort of a floating point, which is like this, the beauty, there's sort of a beauty, beautiful freedom of that floating. And it's like, is that space, like how, I don't know how to express or how that space is like, that's the action against that is like, is like taking away that sort of this sort of beauty or this sort of that space. And I don't know how to address that at all. But I mean, just the, to me it's like, that's almost like a dramaturge of just this sort of like, this is the action. And then there's this group, which is like, how do you communicate with this group? You know, as to the idea of this individual floating through that sphere, basically. I don't know. What made me think of, I'm a teaching artist in a lot of inner city or whatever places in Brooklyn. And so in Brownsville, We are five minutes. Many times I've been kind of like a classed by, like a lot of aggressive energy. Like literally I'm in front of the school and my kids are like just aggressive in teaching. It's all about this aggressive thing. And I've learned that it's like, they need this. This is actually, it's a tool for them to have the strength because their community is very tough and very hard. And so it's not like you can't be this way. Like this is not okay behavior. It's not like that. But to say that there's another way, that there's other options and give them some other things. And I think that there is this aggressive thing that you know, there's this whole group and this is like out of fear, whatever they have this aggressive thing that happens. And to just cut that off might hurt them in their communities. You know what I mean? Like in the project it's like, it's tough. You know? And you can't just be a wimp in some ways, but also you can't kill people. You know what I mean? But I just think that that's also an important conversation. It's not like, We're being set up here. We're at an ice storm. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. That's another thing. I mean in winter it's hard that there's, you know, this crisis. One of the things that happens is that people panic. So you need to grab those tools because somehow what you need to try to see is to work with the panic. You know, like that kayak. And I thought that Molly Smith, you know, you cannot lean outwards. You need to lean inwards and go with the people in, into the panic and then try to use it. Somehow you take advantage of your storytelling or whatever it is, charisma and try to manage that moment because one of the things that's crucial at that time is to get everybody out of panic. And you need to navigate those hours which, you know, they're eternal. Sometimes they last forever. But, you know, we're going to get the help. We're going to be okay. But we need to do this now. So, and there's no doubt that we need to do it. So, there's no panic. Okay, go. Go. Go, tell your story. Tell your story more. Oh, okay. Okay. To them. Not to them. All right. We are pushing it, you know, the exploration that's softening any of these things and we're telling what's going on. And it's always that I need to predict what's going to happen next. But this is something different. This is like being invaded, like that sci-fi movie where they came and they were like locusts and they just beat everything. Because there's a time limit on this. I feel at the same time, I think there's a shift. But these people are doing it while they still can. They're doing it through the banks. They're doing it through student loans. They're doing it through us. It's greed, but it's also racism. Okay, one minute. How are you going to share back? One minute. Okay. So, I want someone to come up, take one movement and go. But you can just do one thing and continue to do it. And say the word. I feel powerless. I feel insincerated. Do it four times. Okay. One minute. Go. Keep on going. Keep on going. It's like we're all in terms of like a trial and error. It's like it's not aiming at all parties and we try, like, it doesn't do folks feel like they want to try to bring a lot of different parties together or do something that works with the community that we're coming from or, like, you know, or black community, or you are always the audience. Right, and whose stage is that? Like, is that the stage of the observers or is that the stage of the participants? Like, what is their stage? That was their stage because that's where the action took place. You know what I mean? That shifting place. What if you divided up by community people selected how they wanted to be a reenactment of the trial in some way? How do you repeat the event? Tell your story. Tell your story to me. Tell your story to me. You will get a reward and you get to judge whether or not you're a killer or a killer because whatever the process of doing that and how you do it is, like, you know, wait, what do you mean? There's something about that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. process where people can come together and people can come to terms with the ways in which we hurt each other, like every day. Alright, let's come back together so we have time to share with the other two groups. We can pull back into this space so that we can best connect with the live stream. This is audience space, this is presentational space. We have three minutes to share back. It won't take very long just what we did was we started doing story weaving and talking about development, we did some warm up and then we took a story and then from there one person takes that movie to show the frustration. Our scenario was what? The scenario was a developer wants to destroy the last remaining affordable housing unit that houses 400 families. Immigrant families are being actively targeted for deportation as a developer. So we're taking one story and we're weaving it and pulling it apart and I'll call everybody at 1x100 with the movement. So tell your story. I've been here for years. I've seen these things come before but this one feels different. This one feels like an invasion. This one feels like that science fiction movie where like you know those themes that look like insects were going to come and they're like locusts and they're just going to wipe everything out because their time is limited. But somehow you know that they're going to die, their planet is going to go away and they're going to die and their time is limited. And this is what it feels like. It feels like somehow these people are losing their lives. And they're just going to rain everything they can. And they're just going to spit everybody to death. To keep it going. It's always. It's always. It's always. It's always. It's always. It's always. I don't know what to think in this. Because I don't look invited in this. Because you can't remain invited? It's always. They're just doing it all the way. They're just doing it all the way. They're just doing it all the way. They're just doing it all the way. I've got his stretch out. Oh yeah, we've got more people. Can you start? It's a while with this. Alright, Bolly, you're off the hook. You have a blog. So, we got into a discussion that took place in a couple different time periods. The first time period was the waters have just receded. It's that first moment of quiet. And then we sort of had some discovery from there. So what are some of the things that we're doing in that first moment? We're canvassing what's going on immediately around us in our community based on our needs and what's available for resources. That's step one. Compiling a list of skills that we have that are actually useful in crisis situations. So like actually if someone knows first aid or someone knows, you know, like that. We're going through such a situation too. Because it's a dangerous situation. And gathering people to same places that are building food are not going to crash into us. Yeah, and then just assessing what's working, what we can use as communication tools to put up the needs and what the skills are. So there's sort of this identification as just another citizen. Or non-citizen as it were. And then looking at that liminal moment where we're all under the tent now. We're dry. We have water, some access to food. Tipping over into the citizen artist. And in that moment we start to discover what might we have to offer in that moment. Polly? In that moment we might have to offer up producing capabilities. Like how to make more with less. So we try to put ourselves in the mode of like we're in a, you know, this is a production with minimal resources. What is the, what's the show and what contribution can we make in what we have our access to? You had a good one. Well, I'm the gatherer of the children. And we don't have pencils, we don't have paper, we don't have crayons, we don't have anything for set design. We have no musical instruments. But we are going to create poetry and songs. And we're going to do some improv and we're going to do some dance. I'm a comedian so I'm going to start telling jokes. I'm also going to document. Nothing brings up morale. And I suggested working with shadow puppets. I think that RJ was just at one point we were kind of like going a little bit back and forth about not being so egocentric or thinking that our role particularly as artists is so important in this moment. Because I think we were talking a lot immediately about like survival, like, oh, God, we got to get fast, we got to get water, we got to get, you know, and we were like, well, okay, but then like what kind of response are we giving as artists? Like once things are a little bit more settled and we know that certain things are in place, like how can we come to it from that direction? And then, you know, we were, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to develop that because we were still so in survival mode, right? But so what did come out was like these ideas of like, you know, that you can just work immediately with children right there in that moment or you can, you know, do like a shadow theater because you don't need any, all you need is light, you don't need any particular props, so that could be something. And like something I didn't say that I was thinking about was like, you know, one thing I remember doing was like making a lot of, you know, learn jelly sandwiches, you know, like, like putting smiley faces on them, you know, with like a marker and, you know, while you're putting in a paper bag, you need more spirituality or creativity to an ordinary task, so. Somebody's thinking. Our scenario is, you know, quote-unquote modern day lynching of a young black queer individual by other young people, other peers of an opposite or of a different community. Yes. I'm sorry. Read the whole thing. Yes. And they were, they were, they were, it was found not guilty because of self-defense, for reasons of self-defense. And so what we thought about is the way that we thought about Trayvon Martin's case and how it was publicly, you know, it was a very public process, the judicial process was open for the world to kind of look at it and see it as it was progressing on so we could give live commentary as it was happening and that what would it look like for us to stage a concurrent alternative to a reckoning system in which we try the case in a public forum, not like, you know, pundits talking but actually setting up in a way in which the cases argued from or presented from those various sides and have that as a space in which we move concurrently with the cases developing in the judicial system but in a public sphere in which we're kind of re-enacting and bringing it back to, as Michael's saying, put up more channels of conversation that are a little more nuanced and don't really make their way into the public court system. We talked about sort of the why in trying to understand as artists in the context of this circumstance and systems that lead to this situation and the conditions around it, is our goal, thinking about the word activism, is our goal to make dialogues between people who self-define as others in relation to these issues, is our goal to do something that is more traditionally activist in terms of make change in the system and actually get involved in advocacy in a variety of aggressive or passive ways and just trying to sort of pull apart what the responsibilities slash needs were in relation to the different artists who might come together around this, which led us to make conversation about it. It's a third possible goal in being envisioning and embodying an alternative to the criminal justice system, like what would our system of holding each other accountable for the ways we hurt each other and, yeah, hurt each other. Ultimately, how are we going to hold each other accountable and create systems of reconciliation and justice that are different? So, yeah, that's where we landed. So, we built that and we have flyers for everyone later. What was this Friday? These three different approaches is that they all kind of go through a different window in the basement to the experience. Like, Muriel very much was about, let's get this in the body, the actual emotional experience that people are feeling. Let's deal with that first. When we went around it, people have different things like people were angry, sorrow, whatever. We kind of went with overwhelmed because that's paralysis. And paralysis is like somebody sitting down on other things. Like, I really wanted to, who has said opportunity? Is that you? I really wanted to get because I thought, oh, this is the scene. The person who feels overwhelmed is going to meet the person who goes, oh, this whole, you know, is opportunity. It's like, well, you come from a different perspective than I do and would also allow the person who just feels powerless and overwhelmed to actually maybe get angry or whatever. But the whole idea is that to actualize so you physically feel that trauma through. So you know what the trauma is, you know where it's coming from. So this could be used in two ways, this technique. First of all, to develop a piece that you want to put in public view, to talk about, to be a protest piece. It can go from one grain, one story. And then you start to develop it. You know, you don't have to have a script. You can have it on the body. Now, you can also go into communities with the same thing. And you can talk about, and you know, where to be stricter with you. You can talk about violence against women, rape. A lot of times I do a lot of stories like this, a whole day of suicide stories. So who knew a suicide? You know, on the reservations in our communities, a lot of suicide. So what has saved you? You know, then it gets so heavy, you bring them out of it. Let's do grandmother stories. What has brought you back to spiritual content? So this is how you could use the first part in showing it as a protest piece or using it in your communities. Yeah, we have about, this is about our time for the day, but before we close, I just wondered, but is there any like lingering questions, thoughts, reactions? Appreciations. Appreciations, however you want to phrase that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Cool. Aren't enough people? Lots of. I'm not sure what's up next. Up next, I just want to say thank you. I want to introduce Michael Rode who's here, got stuck in some travel. I'm a Shogunah, soldier in theater, Northwestern, welcome Michael. Winter Miller who came from, who's up in the region. Winter is a creator of a piece called Indar Four, which some of you may have heard of and joined us for. So there's going to be a break now. Until four o'clock, it's about 20 of. We'll meet back in the pavilion. The next part is a brief talk with these co-authors, Nancy Abrams and Joel Primac. Sorry. Primac. Their book, I believe, is on the table in there. I sent a link to some of their work as a short TEDx talk. You can look at that in the break or not, and there'll be a short talk with them about their work and how it relates to this context. So four o'clock in the pavilion, we'll be next. Thank you.