 I'm Paul Root-Walby, Director of the Center for Ethics. This is part of our Ethics in the Arts program that we call Ethics on the Stage. Our Director of the Ethics in the Arts program, Carlton Mackie. Also today is going to double as an actual commentator and guest star of this event, and I'm very happy to have him with us. This is a performance and discussion or a reading and discussion, by the way, very stark play starting shortly at the Alliance. It has some really interesting twists and turns in it and some deeply social, racial, historical, gender, ethical issues. It's got it all. So I am sure that you're going to want to see it if you don't already have tickets. It's really... One of the great pleasures for me of doing this is I get to read the scripts ahead of time and then I get to see the shows. It's been a wonderful education to read these scripts and then not being in theatre myself and seeing how they get realized on the stage. It's just been... How many years have you been doing this? Since 2010. Yeah, so we've been doing it for three years. So that's just been one of the delights for me and I'm really curious how they're going to actualize this one. This is one of the ones when I'm reading one. Really? They're going to do that? Let's see how they're going to do that. So I think you will all be delighted by it. We have a wonderful panel of guests. Leah Gardner, who's the director of, by the way, Vera Stuy. Salisa Kalpi, those of you who have been here before, have met before, the director of new projects at Alliance and the person we work with on this program. A woman who needs no introduction. Pearl Klee, playwright and artist in residence. Is that your...? Playwright in residence. Playwright in residence at Alliance and Carlton Mackey, who I introduced to you already, who is not only the director of our Ethics in the Arts program, but in his other life, what I actually pay him for is to be the assistant director of the Ethics in Servant Leadership Program. He is an extraordinary teacher and mentor to some of the best students here at Emerson. So this is going to be a wonderful evening and I'm going to ask Salisa to introduce it. This is a tricky wicked of a play. Usually with a play, we have a director, we have actors, we have lights and costumes and sound, and you put the play on. And by the way, at Meet First Dark, we have to make a movie. And not only do we have to make a movie, the movie has to feel like it was made in 1933. So we did. What was it, two weeks ago? We made a movie. This is a play about making a movie and you have to make the movie. So the movie is called The Bed of Bell of New Orleans. You have to buy a ticket and you can, my colleague Celeste over there is selling tickets. So there's a lot of, there's a lot about this play that we're not going to see tonight by design because the movie isn't quite done yet, even though it's very old because you'll feel like it was made in 1933, actually it was made two weeks ago. And this movie, this fictional movie, has the cultural weight of, say, gone with the wind, except it was made earlier and in black and white, right? So it has been playing on TV. It is a huge deal. And it has made its star, Vera Stark, who plays a maid, it has made her a star. And the play, along with having to make a movie, is a tricky wicket of a play because it takes place in 1933 when it's written to be a screwball comedy. And we're not going to do the funny parts tonight. So you'll have to come to the theater to see the 1933 part. And they are hilarious because it's a screwball comedy about things that people did not talk about when they were writing 1933 screwball comedies. And so our playwright, Lynn Nottage, did it for us. And it's so in the period of time and it's so completely politically incorrect, act one. And my intern said it best when he said, he watched, he watched a run-through of the show and he said he had to go home and ice his cheeks from laughing. Okay, so then the second act, in the second act we have to make a TV show, a 1973 TV show on the stage, which has been found in a dusty compartment or file cabinet or something, somewhere probably in New York. And it has been resuscitated to be shown by a panel. Not unlike the panel you have tonight. So we thought, oh, we have this amazing opportunity to be at the Center for Ethics. Let's do the panel part of the play at a panel. So that is the plan. But in order to kind of set up the panel, we thought we would really delve into what we never get to do in theater, which is really just talk about all the issues that are raised in play. And so we're going to start out with Pearl and Carlson who both read the play and thought about it and you and Susan had long, long, Susan was our artistic director, conversations about this play and the issues that raise. And usually when we're writing marketing copy, we say, it's so much fun. You'll laugh a lot. That's what the marketing department told me to say. But because I'm at Emory and we're at the Center for Ethics, I can say, yeah, that too. But it also is incredibly thought-provoking. We've had some of the most amazing conversations about representation and race and plays and theater in the rehearsal hall. And it's all done in a very entertaining package. But it's kind of nice. We've all been looking forward to being here tonight and really getting to talk about some of the more substantive issues that are in the play. So with that, should I turn to Pearl? Is that enough of a setup about the play? Sure. Some of the things that play makes you think. I think that's interesting that you said that about marketing because when we first started talking about the play, and they asked me to read it, and what do you think about it? So in order to say what you think about it, you have to talk a lot, like Salisa, to say, this is what it means. But that can't be useful for marketing. So what I said was, okay, what does a marketing person need to know about this play? And my quote for the play, which I subsequently began to see on billboards and things, Pearl Clegg says, Vera Stark is a fabulous force of nature. Which is true. But it's also such a condensation of everything that the play is about. That sometimes I want to say that Pearl Clegg could have talked a little more about all of that. I don't in any way need to speak for this play. This is a very complex, interesting play. But there's so many issues that you can talk about in it. Issues of color, issues of discrimination, issues of identity, of how you see yourself and how others see you, how they define you, and how you allow yourself to be defined, which I'm sure we will talk more about. But the thing that really struck me, as I read the play again today, thinking about coming here, is that should I stand up? I'm so sorry. I'm looking at somebody's looking at me through the people like that. One of the things that really struck me is that part of what Vera is angry about and what some of the other African-American actresses have started this play are angry about is they're only asked to play maids. They're only asked to play maids in the movies. They're only asked to play maids. And they're very complicated, very sophisticated women. But they only get to play maids all the time. Now this is not a discussion that is unfamiliar to me in the present day. The last time I had this discussion about the maids and how come we always had to play maids, that discussion was around the health with Biola Davis. Most of you saw the health. Every woman that I know, African-American woman that I know, had a very strong opinion about that movie, about the casting of Biola Davis in that movie, about the response to Biola Davis. And we not only had it when it was all African-American women, but we also had it when we would go to the movies. If you went to a movie where everybody in the audience was African-American, it was a different kind of experience. Many of my friends had the experience of going to see it in an integrated setting, which made the white women who were there uncomfortable sometimes, because a lot of what was going on was not very good about what these women were doing in Mississippi. So they would turn to my friends who had never seen them before and apologize for the old days. I'm so sorry, that was so terrible, wasn't it? Now, you're trying to watch a movie and someone's trying to talk about racial guilt and the old south and all of that. So it raises very complicated questions. For me, it raises complicated questions because I think Biola Davis is an amazing, amazing actor. And I also see pictures of her in her real life and she is like so suave and so sophisticated and so wonderful looking. And then I go see the help and she's like, really not anything like that, which is a tribute to how great an actress she is, but also makes me wish I could one time see her in something where she got to be, how she looked in LA Magazine where she was so fabulous I couldn't believe it was her. So my comment that I kind of just want to say about the Vera Stark with the maid issue is that it's a very contemporary issue and I want to share with you a letter that I wrote to Biola Davis who I do not know. After I read an article in Newsweek where she was talking about the reaction she had gotten to playing a maid in the help and she was kind of hurt by it but she said, you know, I did my job, I don't think it's a problem to play a maid, all of those questions. But it made me really think about the dilemma that she was in in terms of also wanting to play a person more like she was. So being a writer I wrote her a letter. April 16th, 2012. Dear Biola Davis, as a long time admirer of your work I followed the run up to this year's Oscars with great interest. But of all the interviews and articles with and about you, the one that made the most lasting impression on me was your comment in the January 30th, 2012 issue of Newsweek, concerning the paucity of roles for quote, a 46 year old black actors who doesn't look like Halle Berry. I have an absolute understanding and awareness of the image I project and there are just not a lot of roles for women who look like me, end quote. Your statement made me feel sad and mad and equal measure, especially since I couldn't even figure out how to lodge an effective protest against such an injustice. So I paced around my living room raving to my husband about how I longed for a character as sophisticated and confident and powerful as you looked in the February issue of the LA Times Magazine. A character with a sex life. The Newsweek article also said you were quote, the only actor at the table who hasn't had a chance to experience romantic chemistry on screen. When I finally stopped fussing my husband said calmly, I think you're looking at this all wrong. He was asking for trouble, but I took a deep breath. How's that? I said, she doesn't need a protest. She needs a playwright. Well, that's what I am, a playwright. So it's my great pleasure to send you my new play, What I Learned to Play. Which will open the season at Atlantis Alliance Theater this fall. The main character, Evie Madison, a 50-ish black woman, is worldly smart, well traveled and much loved to play. A romantic comedy set in Atlanta in 1963, 1973. Catches a group of longtime friends and political insiders at the moment they are fully realizing just how bright their light is which will now be shining not only on their victorious candidate, but on each of them as well. I invite you to read the play hoping, of course, that you will see yourself bringing Evie to full life for the first time here in Atlanta in September. Failing that, I offer this play as your proof should you ever need it that there is at least one writer whose life's work is about creating wonderful roles for women who look just like you. Best wishes for continued success with your work and thank you for taking a look at the work of the actress. With great respect and profound admiration, I am Pearl Clay at the Alliance Theater. So I think my lesson from Vera Stark and from Viola Davis and from all of these women is that while we fuss about it and think about it and try to figure it out is that we have to continue doing the work that we do. So that's what I had to say about Vera. Did you get an answer? No, I never did. We got it. You know, they got agents and all of that. So I did my best to go through the channels and get it to her. But if I ever see her, I'm going to say, don't ever say nobody's writing for you. Because I know that I am and I know that other women playwrights are. So, you know, I don't want I always feel badly when actors feel like they're not offered roles and those roles aren't being written. Sometimes the roles they're being offered are not being processed by people who even see them in the way and would be seeing them or writing about them. So I always want actors to be aware that there are people writing different kind of work than they might be offered and that we're doing it right here in Atlanta. So, welcome. So, I appreciate that we couldn't have planned it better in one sense because you were talking about doing the work. And I'm an artist and Dr. Wolf is giving you some introductions to the other work that I do. But tonight I'd like to speak from the perspective of an artist who's trying to do work at the intersection of helping people explore and examine the way in which they've been formed and shaped to understand their identities. I believe that art is a powerful force and I believe in the power of art to change the world. And that is where I start and I stand and that's kind of like my proclamation, you know, that I offer before I say anything. But I'm also raising a son who was biracial and in beginning to try to understand or preempt or think about his identity in context to my own. I've started thinking about the question of how would he answer the question who are you? And as I begin to think about that question I begin to ask myself that question. And it's the question that in reading this play and I'll begin the comments that I have to make tonight with posing them to you. Because though this play has a lot to do with race and Pearl and I are speaking from the perspective of, from the African-American perspective questions about identity and the complexity of identity and even how we shape, how we see ourselves is not a question that's unique to the African-American experience. It's not a question that's unique to being African-American period. So it's a question that I want to pose to you all right now. You don't have to answer out loud but I just want to ask it out loud so that you can hear it being asked and I want you to sit with it and then I'll offer some other questions. I'm going to, well look at any opportunity. So the question I have for you tonight is who are you? Now when you think about that question and when you think about the answer that you give the first answer that we may give may be from a religious perspective. I am Jewish. I am Christian. We may offer one that is connected to our ethnic or racial identity. I am black. I am Native American. I am Portuguese. I am, you know, feeling the blank. It may be an answer that we say immediately that is directly connected to our sexual orientation or the way in which we express ourselves sexually. We could say something about, you know, our sexual identity. Those are the answers that we give may change if I were to ask you that in this context or if you were standing in line at the grocery store and someone asked who you were or if you were at a place of worship and someone to ask or if you were in the quiet recesses of your own mind and someone asked you that question and what, in thinking about this play and in thinking about the title that we even used to kind of examine the work that we'd be doing tonight I kind of tossed in emails to Salisa and we came up with what is our so-called identity and the passing and the complex landscape of identity formation because for me and the work that I'm doing and the work that I do with my students about how our identities are formed and it's a constant dialogue both between how we see ourselves in dialogue with how we see other people and in constant dialogue with how we think other people see us and sometimes we're performing we're behaving based on that when we're in isolation or we're in other people if I'm standing next to my sister right here it's both an interpretation of how I see myself in her eyes that if I wasn't sharp it may influence even how I see myself and how I answer that question because I'm acting based on what I may perceive as her perception of me now imagine if it is the baseline understanding of ourselves that when we enter a room the context is and we bought into the belief that the people who are looking at us see us as less than them how might that shape the way we see ourselves what would it mean if we walk into a room and the baseline perception is that people see us as better than them what would it do if we see if we walk into a room and the context or the situation is based on our sexuality or laws that we are we don't have to actually identify based on something that is who we are but we can pass to get along it's this constant dialogue in these contexts that we're in that I think we find these characters it's this ongoing dialogue of both how they see themselves as Pearl mentioned how other people see them and how they see other people and that is one of my students here who we've done an exercise called the Ethics of Identity and I had them write down on a piece of paper take two minutes and write down exactly how you see yourself like who are you so they started writing down and then I listed all these names of only categories from the senses only options that you could choose I wrote them down on the piece of paper and I said write down the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of these groups so they wrote some of them were hesitant let me tell you but I told them they didn't have to share it with anyone and then I asked this question and it's a question that I'll pose to you all tonight as you think about your identity and the complexity of it airports are the world's best place for people watching Atlanta airport so I had them say imagine that and we all look at people in airports imagine that you are in the airport you're walking by and there are people just like the sea of people and you enter in line and you're about to exchange a ticket and there's someone behind you and you're just getting on the plane I just said how would the person behind you describe you what would they say about you write that down and then I asked them to see if what they wrote down based on the person who was perceiving them would be the same as what they wrote down in the very first exercise some of them were the same some of the adjectives that they used to describe themselves were the same and some of them were totally different and I asked them how would they perform and why did they say that they would perceive them in this way and how would that impact their performance if the person started acting and engaging with them on the way based on what they wrote in the last exercise and they had to think about that so what I'm offering and what I'm sharing in the work that I'm doing and I can talk more specifically as it relates to race but what I wanted to open up this conversation is for us to not just think about these characters on the stage that we're going to look do a song and dance and perform but I want you to think about from the seats that you're in what is your own ethics of identity what is your own complex negotiated dialogue that you're having with yourselves and other people constantly how does that impact how you see yourself and what can you do about that perception based on how you engage with other people so the work that I do seeks to open up burst open the seams of looking at diversity and make it even more complex the title of the work that I've created based on the stories of a lot of people from across the country and across the world it's called 50 Shades of Black what is blackness in this context but I want to ask largely what is any of our ethnic identities and how we come or our identities based on our sexual orientation because those are the two things that I look at mainly in this work it's called 50 Shades of Black and it's called a critical examination of sexuality and skin tone and the formation of identity so what are the ways in which you perceive your identity what are the ways in which you perceive other people perceive that identity and how are you negotiating that performance or that identity in the context that we call the public and the sphere in which we constantly engage with other people on a regular basis we continue I do want to ask if anybody has a question or response or something they would like to say to you to Pearl or Carlton I think it's just moving on right now doesn't feel right to me I have a response to Carlton and that is I don't know if you've heard India Irene's new album Song Conversation she has a song called I Am Light I Am Not The Skin I Am In I Am Not Is That and that's very good it's very interesting that you brought that up and if I may respond to it I haven't heard the song I haven't heard the album but interestingly enough the first time the album was an online dialogue about the image that she shot for the cover and whether or not she had undergone any skin lightening because the India that I knew from I Am Not My Hair India looked more like me the image that I saw online she looked several shades lighter than me and now granted I don't know if that was manipulated or if that was people just starting controversy but because so many people decided to comment on it and that was an engagement it made me think about why is that still a conversation that's relevant and what is it about what is it about people's preoccupation with their own skin tone and that of others that that still impacts how people see themselves and how we see each how we see each other because her album is brilliant it's some of the best songwriting about her did you see the online thing about the artist who had people come in he could not see them or she could not see them who the artist was and drew them from the person's own description and they had somebody else come in and describe them and they compare the two pictures it sounds to me very much like the kind of thing you're doing but a little more and the people if you want to say more for the people who haven't seen the people's perceptions of themselves or the way they describe themselves was almost consistently negative but there was a big gender difference women describe themselves when he drew the women's to self description the picture was much less flattering when the woman's friend described her the difference was much greater than when a man described himself as a woman's friend an hour worth of stuff to say I'll just tell you I wrote a textbook many years ago on gender and sexuality my favorite cartoon in that book was a man and his wife both standing in front of mirrors both of them were sort of middle aged and a little bit overweight a little bit wrinkled, a little bit droopy and what she sees as herself as a pair and the man looking in the mirror and he sees himself as Arnold Schwarzenegger I would say no there are many I think there are many more options certainly for black actors and actresses now than there were at that time many many more the realms that people are choosing to work in often dictate what roles they're offered if you're in a big budget Hollywood movie world then there's a different kind of role that's going to be offered for you and I think that's what Viola Davis was reacting to that world saying that people in that world she's working in so successfully don't perceive her as a beautiful sexual woman they perceive her in a certain way and she was acknowledging that in terms of the roles that she's being offered in that world but I think that's a choice to move around in that world that there are other options where you can say I love me, I'm going to go over here I'm going to work in independent film I'm going to work in this and I think she does a lot of other kinds of work but in that specific Hollywood big budget world what she was saying in there she's never going to get the romantic lead that's always going to go to Halle Berry in that particular context Will I be able to? Or would someone like it? Sure there's lots of black women writing screenplays lots and not just here all over the world there's black women writing screenplays directing movies all of that so that I think it's there's a whole world of people doing a whole world of roles all over so it's not it's not so much that I need to move from playwriting to screenwriting there's lots of bright black women writing wonderful screenplays and making movies with wonderful screenplays so I'm going to stick to the stage I'm good at the stage Do you want to make a comment? Hi guys I am a theater director but I am also a producer of film and I just produced my first film called mother of George which is actually showing here in Atlanta at the moment which is a great film you have to ask yourself to sort of speak to what you're saying you have to ask yourself and I'm sure I'm just curious how many people in this room know how many African American women have won? not for best supporting not for best supporting not for best supporting not for best supporting so for the lead lady right for the leading lady how many won? I think so just Halle right and Halle won for a underprivileged mother who was she or wasn't she on drugs I can't even remember she was but she was a drinker she was a drinker right the three best supporting roles that women have won what roles were then a maid what else an abusive mother and then what was the other one what did will be played a crackpot a crackpot but my point is I mean I think we all know what my point is and then Pearl talks about and rightly so the number of African American women and men for that matter who are writing for the screen the question is how many African American women and men are in positions of power where they can take these films and put them on the big screen and employ African American actors and by racial actors and people who just don't get to work a lot and then the other point that I wanted to make was you know when you are in our industry and I can speak for the four of us here I mean we're all very lucky because we are working in our industry and Pearl is working and we are lucky people of color in this industry out of the five of us you think how many five hundred are not working so when you look at your retirement plans as an artist in our industry as people of color our retirement plans don't necessarily look like those of people who work all the time I am a working theater director all the time but the theaters in which I am asked to work normally really the last five years I finally started to work at the much larger theaters my pension and I am not ashamed to say but it is shameful is two hundred and thirty four dollars a month that's the reality that we are dealing with as artists right so just something to think about when we think about the Vera Starks of the world and the Violet Davis of the world our voices are real and our stories are real and these experiences are real so I just want to say it is a privilege to be in this discussion tonight and I am also very aware of the year we are in 2013 it is Obama's second administration and the play the second after this play takes place in 2003 ten years ago and I think I'll just set that up because I think that we are all and one reason why I was excited that we could start talking first so that we would all have our heads full of what are we talking about in 2013 and what room are we in and being in Atlanta and having the tools of sophistication and conversation so now we are going to go back to 2003 and this panel that has come together in a fictional play to talk about a movie that is not real but is terribly real to them and has been played on TV for years and years and years and is an important cultural artifact this movie, The Bell of New Orleans in which Vera Stark, who is the subject of the play played a maid called Tilly who was very beautiful and she was enslaved and the movie never really talked about her enslavement, alright, so that's enough and I'm going to turn it over to our fictional panel who will seem very real and I'm going to let her our moderator kick us off we have this academic debate going on, something I am familiar with where everyone is certain that they are right in really the absence of much information one is never more certain than when one does not have the facts on their side and that's true not only in academia yeah I guess my question is why does it have to be something big that destroys a person it seems like it's all of these worlds having assaults with this constant burden carrying a weight in the beginning and all of these small assaults are then pushing them over the heads and so it's really interesting that I'm searching for this one thing that destroyed her when it was under these things I have a comment or maybe a question with her did you read the article that was in Sunday's paper Kerry Washington and Cicely Tyson I did and Cicely Tyson made a beautiful story of when she was cast in Trip to Boundful because she'd seen it something like 40 years prior and made the comment at that point in her life I want my trip to Boundful and she either spoke to her agent I can't recall who and then 40 years passed and it's offered to her by Horton Hood's daughter which was lovely but I'm wondering are we focused too much on the woman the person, the race and not enough on the narrative, the story I mean I've been professional actor for 20 years and I've lost as many roles to women of color as I've gained because I'm a white girl but I'm always most impacted by the story by the narrative and your comment in your letter to Viola who I just, by Rona had the pleasure of working with was profound which is there's a playwright for you and I'm wondering is there a self correct that any of you see as possible if we get to where we focus on stories good stories, important stories narratives that matter or do we really do need to make it the woman, the person the color, the male, the female I'm just curious I think I'm not quite understanding when you're saying we focus on who is the we to do the focusing are you saying to make certain work accessible to certain people or what are you saying I'm saying as a culture can we come back to a place where we'll get to a place where it is really good stories told by excellent storytellers the best person for that best role are we going to get there I guess in my lifetime in my niece and nephew's lifetime that's what I'm wondering as a dramaturg I really hope not because to Carlton's question who am I so I'm someone who owes her career to a man of color I owe my career to George C Wolfe I don't know why he wanted a white girl from Wisconsin to do his new plays at the public theater but he did thank God for me and I I've gotten to work on a lot of plays that deal with the complication of American narratives about self and American narratives about American identity and really complicated plays about American narratives about race and I really don't think we're done I think we're just probing the surface and I think that the Obama Administration opens up a lot of questions about identity and that America for a while wanted to tell simple stories and now we want to tell really complicated stories and I think as a theater artist that the novels do that well but theater does it better so but there are two different if I can interpret what you said through the lens of a sociologist which is what I am there are two different questions here one is the politics of art okay so it's all the social structures that support art it's all the competition within art it's all of the politics of the way in which certain plays get made and who funds them and you're never going to get rid of all that for great stories that's always going to be part of the equation so within the politics of art itself I don't think we can ever get rid of and I'm not sure that I'm sure that everyone in our community would speak with someone outside of that world would love to get rid of some of it but let me tell you something as someone who works at a university let me tell you we'd love to get rid of some of it in the university I'm sure those of you who work in corporations would love to get rid of some of it in the corporation that's just life politics in that sense is part of how we run complex organizational forms and if anyone could figure out how to get rid of it so I think that part of your question their sympathy but the beauty of some of the plays that we've had the opportunity to talk about here was that they were really steeped in that kind of politics and by that I don't mean you know our congress I mean the politics of relationships and the politics of the relationship between people in settings and in particular situations of particular organizations and that's what of course makes theater so interesting that's what turns it from just entertainment into something I want to have an ethics on the stage program I think there's also that other thing about the stories that we tell is that a lot of what you were talking about a lot of how we determine what stories we're going to tell and do with who we're telling that story to so that as a black writer if I know I'm telling a story to a completely African-American audience because black is so non-specific that could be a black Brazilian they might not have any idea what I'm talking about being a black girl from the west side of Detroit so if I'm going to tell stories as an African-American writer to a west side of Detroit that's right I did that for you but I think that we are aware of certain things that you can assume that most of the audience will know if that audience is not an all one race audience then you're aware that there's certain things that you may think that everyone in your immediate community knows but other people don't so then the story kind of becomes am I going to make sure that the story is wide enough a net so that everybody gets it or am I going to say I'm going to tell my specific story and then assume that anybody that's really interested will take the time to figure out what I'm talking about most of us look at other cultures and we know that there's going to be a moment where if I'm not Japanese I don't really understand so I've got to look it up I've got to figure it out and I think that's true of us as all American people too that there's so many different kinds of stories where we bring all those things that you're talking about to the story that when we actually get to the narrative we have such a hard time looking at it through so many racial, sexual, judgmental lenses and I think as a writer there's only about five stories that we tell we're either telling love stories we're telling war stories we're telling family stories and sometimes race is a part of those stories but most of the time I don't believe that writers sit out to say I'm going to tell a story about race every now and then you do and that's usually when somebody made you mad about race and you want to fuss about race but most of the time I think the stories that I want to tell I'm talking about people falling in love I'm talking about people trying to raise their children which are the same stories everybody tells all around the world so that the specifics that are political are only based on who we're mad at or who we're being oppressed by at that moment and that depends on where you were born what neighborhood you live in how much money your parents make where you got to go to school because of things but within all that you're still telling those same five stories you're talking about falling in love having babies arguing with your mom all those things that we all say and I think that we'll get to a point where we don't think every story is different because the person telling it doesn't look just like us that we'll understand that most stories unless they're about race can be told by almost anybody and you know every now and then they'll do a mix up version of an American play usually a white American play and cast all kinds of people in it sometimes all black folks like tryptoboutical and it does just fine and the exotic nature of oh my god this play has an all black cast I think that will fade and people will realize if it's a good story anybody can hear it anybody can tell it anybody can receive it unless it's specifically dealing with race unless it's specifically dealing with gender then you've got other questions but those five stories that we all tell as human beings I think we are more and more realizing that it doesn't have to be our specific story and I think most of us who are not defined in this country as the mainstream have grown up that way we read all kinds of stories and identify I remember reading Gone with the Wind as a little girl in Detroit and my mother was just through and I was loving it I mean it's really well written and all that and my mother saw me reading it very political family I grew up in and my mother said if you're going to read that book you need to understand that the people you need to be crying about are not Miss Melanie and not Miss Carly but Miss Prissy and Mammy because that's you so don't you be trying to talk about Miss Carly to know you want a 17 inch waist because she had a 17 inch waist no that was not you you better be looking at what was happening with Prissy you can never get to just like the story but of course she was correct this is a story about slavery so it's a very complicated deal to be a little black child growing up in an all black neighborhood and identifying with a slave owner she was correct but it also proved to me the power of the writing in that book whether or not you think it's a great book or not once you start reading it you want to know what's going to happen to Miss Carly what's going to happen to this one what's going to happen to that one what makes you into very weird places if you are the people who are enslaved in that story but which also makes you really say about time Brett Butler stood up for himself at the end and walked away or about time this happened or that happened which is when you realize that the narrative is more powerful than even the things that you know even me growing up in a black nationalist household with a mother who said you better be looking at Mammy and not looking at Scarlet I'm under the covers at night with the flashlight trying to read about what happened to Melanie and Scarlet so race is such a complicated thing but writing is such a powerful thing that it can skew all of that it can make you look at things in a way that you didn't think you would even when you go into a thinking you know exactly how you're going to feel you really don't and it's important I think that we keep talking about race when it's on our mind and when it's not on our mind let's talk about whatever it is because sometime it's not going to be race it's going to be and always talk about race you know sometimes we talk about other stuff I mean in all communities as you know we talk about everything so I think that's right I think those are the narratives that are the ones that bring us together and why we can read things from cultures completely different and still cry with those people because it's that human thing I just wanted to sort of piggyback on what you're saying but also circle around to what you're saying how many of you know the skinny about the trip to bountiful story um a director, a black director a man directed the first all black it was his idea to direct an all black cast trip to bountiful and he did it in Ohio at one of the Ohio theaters and then I think it transferred somewhere right and um to theater and he was working desperately with a number of producers to try to bring it to Broadway late at night one night like 11 o'clock at night he got a call from a friend of his who's a white director named Michael Wilson who said listen I just want you to know tomorrow morning and I wanted you to hear it for me first it's hitting the press but I will be directing an all black cast of a trip to bountiful on Broadway and I just wanted you to hear that from me that's all I wanted to say um I think we're missing from the conversation is that your art is how future generations are going to see you and to see your society and what's missing and why is such a like pearl like what is missing and what's going to be missing is future generations looking back on who we are now as United States and not seeing the black voices that are here like I mean we dig up art arts of previous civilizations we go visit monuments we read the Bible which is an artifact from previous civilizations and that's how we learn about who these people were, their values and how the society worked and I feel like when you're not producing a lot of black art when black playwrights are not being produced that means black playwrights are not being published that means black writers are not being published that means these artifacts are not being buried for future generations to dig up I think that's the biggest challenge of not actually having black art out there is that we won't it will not you can't tell the true story of the United States if you don't have black art as a part of that and I mean in our history we are producing history right now my comments are kind of not really in the side but something that you said and something someone earlier said, I mean we think about the power of our own personal stories I mean we talk about these complex stories and things being written as an artist I very much appreciate the value that is whenever I put something in a book or something is made into a play but there is such power in our own personal stories and I think we take that for granted and one exercise that I think we as a people, people of color everyone in this room and I want to go back to those type of statements about the universality of our stories that we don't sometimes we don't find we need to be reminded of the value in sharing our own story even if to other members of our family some of us die and go to our graves of stories that are so valuable that if we just took the time to share them with someone else if we just took the time to share them out loud, if we in some way were just more open to being in exchange and in dialogue with what it means to be us with other people and not simply in our head you know I think about the work that I'm doing now is a collection and as I read these what seem to be very basic personal stories that people are sharing, they're so rich and complexity and I wonder is this the first time you've said that out loud? Is this the first time you've taken time to actually write down that story of when you were in the grocery store and what would it mean if you decided to share that with someone else and what would it mean if now that that shared that became part of our collective moral consciousness, our collective story or our collective narrative or the story that at least your grandchild could be able to tell so that's one thing you are a powerful, dynamic person and your story is meaningful and has value and is ultimately I think the most important thing outside of what is written and that actually makes the screen that is what I personally think but then as it relates to our stories of raised sexual orientation a little bit of this is something I want to put out there another rhetorical question for everyone and I want you to think about it even if it just hits you when you walk out of the door but think about the story of when you first discovered that you were feeling the black and I like you to feel in that black with your racial identity or your sexual orientation when did I first learn that I was think about that story think about the implications of it think about it in the context of what we are talking about up here think about the implications of it in your own life and think about who you would like to share that with as a way of engaging yourself in this dialogue engaging yourself in this ongoing collective consciousness of storytelling and narrative that is ultimately formative to what it means to be a human being, America and that totally when you think about it it will blow your socks away into how you even approach conversations about race and it will make them not simply be in terms of this kind of polemic or this dichotomy between black and white or gay street all these things that we seem to think of in these confined parts I would like to say that I believe race is like the thread that finds our I would say the world, the culture, our society and I would hate to have theaters that didn't explore race and particularly I'm very proud to be an African American woman and to come from a race of people who have endured great injustice and are still here and are still thriving despite all that we've entered because I would hate to see race taken out of theater for example I like August Wilson he's one of my favorite playwrights and I would not enjoy to see that play as an all white cast because it's specifically about the African American experience and I think the African American African American experience is so rich that I would not want to see it taken away and not to say that any other culture is not rich as well I think all of our cultures together thread it together make the clock I just want to make a comment about this line of conversation race in the United States is a particular historical story it's very different in other countries and because of the history of slavery here race in this country is much more like England where there's a history of slavery than it is in France historical racism and you actually have a much race is not their primary way of thinking about difference but the underlying truth is that every society thinks about difference and the difference may be ethnic the difference may be racial the difference may be religious maybe class almost always class too and you can have North Korea the same race but profound differences based on culture and history and you can have two different races that have a common identity against the third so it's very very different in our particular story is a powerful one because of the history of slavery primarily which is a very different modern story than race anywhere else except a couple of other places that are so fraught and powerful and complicated and why I agree that in this culture we're never going to completely escape that we'll always be part of our historical memory I think about sexual orientation right now so that's something profoundly changing even as we at this moment it's an incredible thing to watch I remember the moment for me the white I had a different moment when my daughter was 12 she was studying for her bat mitzvah and the woman who was teaching her was a lesbian rabbi and one day Ariel said to me is Deborah going to marry Chris and I said she can't marry Chris and she said why not because it's against the law for two people of the same sex to get married she went what that's the craziest thing I ever heard and what was so amazing to me about it was when I was 12 it never would have occurred to me to question why that was crazy it was so pervasive that first of all I probably knew it I don't remember but if my parent had said to me two men and two women can't get married that makes sense because that's what was so that was the moment that I really realized things had changed in the ether that it made no sense to her why didn't it make sense to her it made sense to me when I was 12 so you have these moments these real moments of change things can change but even if 25, 30 years from now sexual orientation becomes a non-issue in our society we still have this narrative history of it that will always inform our understanding of it and I think that that is even in some ways more deeper and richer in a positive sense with race we've spent the last two days here at Emory and tomorrow with His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been here I might add all of you it was an honor to be sitting with him but he's an extraordinary visionary in our culture because he said we come from a very rich heritage but we need to blend in the best of other heritage so he started all my new monks need to be trained in science modern science and that's the Emory and Tibet Science Initiative where there are now textbooks that Emory and faculty have written that we've translated together into Tibetan but I was just struck by the vision of this man that I'm not going to culturally I'm not going to in-draw he says anything that we believe that is wrong we need to anytime science disproves something I believe as a Buddhist I need to drop that belief and he said by the way he also said by the way he also said which is a great lesson to us in western religions he said part of Buddhist belief is in detachment emotional detachment right so that you can have clarity he said which means that I can't be too attached to Buddhism either what I'd like to say is that I think the whole issue of race will go away when race disconnects from power that's the crux of the problem it's the imbalance of power it has nothing to do with power so let's thank our panel a couple of very quick messages first of all how long does choir boys play it closes on Sunday if you haven't seen it go see it that also has a bit about race but it's mostly about sexual orientation, bullying and really interesting choir boys excellent production definitely go see Vera Stark and please come and again to our Ethics in the Arts programs if you don't have your name put it on our mailing list there's lots of really great stuff that we do thanks everybody and if you haven't check out Carlton's 50 Shades of Black on the back