 Welcome back. I've had a nice afternoon. My name is Park Cofield, and I'm the Program Associate with Network of Ensemble Theaters. You may have talked with me about the NET10 grant program in either the travel grant or the exchange grant application process. And if you haven't, I'd love to talk with you at some point this weekend about those two programs. We offer travel grants and exchange grants, and it's a program about relationship building. The exchange grants are coming up in... the intent to apply is in December, and then our travel grants are occurring again this spring. So I encourage you to take a look at that. There are some cards out on the table and information on the website, and I would love to speak with you about that program and answer any questions you have about the application process. Cool. So thanks... thanks for coming back with us. Our next session is Cross-Generational Influences, and it's my pleasure to introduce Rosemary Quinn, Crystal Chanel Trescott, Tiana K. Johnson, and Rebecca Stevens. So this is a session that is absolutely about relationships, and you're in for a treat to hear their story as the... their relationship has progressed. It's truly remarkable to sort of see the ripple effects of the impact of the relationship that was started when Crystal was a student of Rosemary at NYU, and how that space that Rosemary gave to Crystal allowed her to develop a work that went on to have quite a life, and then the students that Crystal has impacted at Prairie View A&M University, and then also through Progress Theater and inviting new members into the ensemble. So I think I'll leave it at that. Enjoy. Thanks. Hi, everybody. I'm Rosemary. That's Crystal. I am humbled to be standing here having just listened to one of my mentors and great heroes through most of my life, Judith Molina a few minutes ago. And I'm humbled that one of my latest teachers, Crystal Truscott, has asked me to talk a little about myself and how I got to where I was when I was her teacher. So I'm going to start with universities. It was a huge dilemma for me of what to do about college. I considered myself after a healthy, rousing high school life. I considered myself a political activist, a social activist. It was the 70s. Social activist, a feminist and an actress. And they didn't fit. And I couldn't find a world in which it fit at all to be an actor and to do all these other things I wanted to do to change the world. So I did the best I could, which was to stall. And I found myself entering the first class at Hampshire College. Which needed no grades, no degree, no credits, no courses. Perfect for me. Where I was able to learn to think resoundingly out of the box and into the greatest of circles over and over, so many different circles. So many different ways to approach problem solving with curiosity and passion and energy. And culminated in still stalling when I got to graduation by having a final project, I did three, as we say, Hampshire Peeps. A project which was about the women in Bertolt Brecht's plays subtitled, If You Revolutionize the Mothers, There Is Nothing Left to Revolutionize. And now I had my dilemma. What was I going to do? How was I going to be the actress that I loved being? But in a world that I could not see actors had any place, I felt that if I wanted to choose to be an actor, I had to be in auditions and in cattle calls in which what I looked like and who I was and how I appeared to others would be designed completely for me what was going to happen next. And then I heard about the work of Joseph Chakin and the Open Theatre in which actors had a place as themselves. Even in interpretive roles, each actor brought with them their whole story. And then also the realm and the worlds of creative collaboration, collective creations, collective collaborations in which actors were as much a part of the making of a theater piece as the writer, as the director, as the designers and that everyone needed everyone and I flew to New York City. I didn't fly, I'm sure I hitchhiked but I got to New York City and became part of the rehearsal assistant for the last Open Theatre project around these heroes of mine and continued to work with Joe alongside Joe and for Joe for the rest of his life and began to work in many different ensemble theaters in New York City, the downtown world was very lucky to originate a lot of roles and to be part of a number of different places where actors who the actors were and what they brought to the table was part of what the story became and what the theater became. At Crystal's suggestion and Mark's as well, thank you Mark, I'm going to read something from a piece that I wrote with a group of actors in 1984 that was done at La Mama. It was a piece that we worked on the piece together for many months for actresses and I one of those actresses at that time is sitting in this room, that is Ms. Sabrina Hamilton and we worked and asked the question, why are the lines so long in the women's bathrooms and that was a very political, it still is a very social political piece and most of the piece was women coming as different characters so lots and lots of sort of sketch comedy, of standing in line and the actresses would be different characters all the time when they came and there was one constant character who did not speak through the whole piece but one of the walls in the back of the stage was the graffiti wall. I suddenly realized I'm really missing graffiti in the bathrooms. I just have to tell you that in the 80s there was fabulous graffiti in all bathrooms that I went to and so we collected them and part of it was this graffiti but at the end of the piece after all sorts of interrupted fractured conversations just one liners mostly throwing at each other women going in and out of the stalls waiting, waiting, waiting the one character who has not spoken through the whole piece comes out, she's the cleaning woman and she wipes the graffiti that has been last left on the graffiti wall which says employees must wash walls before leaving and she speaks to the audience and says there's an order to the routine first you gotta check your stock sometimes you get a cart has shelves, handle, wheels, the whole thing and that makes it easier you can stay back and stand back and remember what's missing tissues, sponges, brushes mobs even the littlest, safest objects can be dangerous I was working in a nursing home when this guy would try and kill himself by eating Kleenex they had to watch him like a hawk and absolutely no tissues in his room you'd be just up there checking and just doing the job and he'd ask for a tissue just like a regular guy there's no tissues around here how am I going to get them what's the point, what's the problem with handing the guy a tissue I don't know what you do for a living but you always gotta be on the ball if you don't get a cart those plastic yellow buckets aren't bad buckets on wheels, fit your mobs fit your sponges, all right in you know, a lot of people say things about cleaning the mirrors okay, newspaper glass plus or what have you Windex, my big problem is not what you use anything works if you wipe the streaks long enough my big question is how do you get to the mirrors if you plan it right and no one's going to walk in on you I just climb up she got a whoosh whoosh whoosh wipe wipe wipe and then you know it's true it's finished but it's a lot of hair but that's not really a problem what's difficult is toilets that's another story let's just say you get back down in there it's not always so easy, you do what you can you get yourself, you know done day to day and then they're clean I mean they're clean, I do the job a lot of those fancy places like motels supposed to guarantee clean you know those sanitized strips well I wouldn't lick that toilet seat she walks away, goes to the graffiti wall writes the next graffiti on it which is now that they can send men to the moon why don't they thank you so LaMama ensemble theater ladies lounge with the actresses I also did a piece on relationships that was in the rules of a boxing match on rooftops called watch my lips another ensemble piece about life is a waitress called and now we are fiction and you know trying to do a million things New York City one of the things I did to support my habit in the theater was to start teaching which I rather loved I was teaching an improvisation class as an agent at New York University and then one day I got a phone call from the director then of the experimental theater wing at Tiskell of the Arts New York University Wendell Beavers who said Steve Wong and I were talking and we thought that you would be the perfect person to teach self scripting would you come in and talk to us about that and I said sure yeah see you tomorrow hung up the phone and called everyone I knew to ask what the hell is self scripting after finding out it made a little bit of sense that yes of course I'd be the one to teach that's exactly what all these actresses or actors or companies and I had been doing for years and years but I didn't really know how to teach it I said yes anyway and dove in I loved the classes and the classrooms and after a number of years I got myself sort of adapt it was always an interesting challenge and always fun but there I was at New York University teaching self scripting at the experimental theater wing well meanwhile I'm arriving to NYU as a freshman from Houston Texas coming with a very rich cultural and artistic background that was rooted in community and the use of art to effect change and all of those things and I had been told throughout my high school career that NYU was one of the places to be I hadn't really made a decision about college one way or the other I knew that I didn't want to well I knew that it was non-negotiable in my family that it wasn't necessarily what you wanted to do but you were going so but I hadn't really thought about I hadn't found the language to talk about the kind of artists that I wanted to be yet when people in my world heard theater they automatically thought that meant you wanted to be on Broadway and I knew even this young version of myself that I wanted to do more that I wanted to continue doing this practice that was rooted in the way that I was raised that saw art as a necessity for life and for community building and for peace building and for progress building but so I applied to NYU early decision I didn't apply to any other school I got in everybody said this was a good place to be and I came to NYU and was frustrated I was mad I did not enjoy it NYU at the time had a system of studios where a student when you entered everyone was asked to pick a studio or you were placed in a studio that focused on certain methodology and you were asked to stay in that studio for I think it was two to three years and then your last year you could kind of explore X, Y and Z while I got to NYU and within my first year I had already gone through three studios that was very outspoken about my experience but some of the things that were a part of that was just that I felt increasingly in a situation where I was being confronted with a lot of assumptions and projections that I wasn't accustomed to I'd come from a community that was very diverse and very culturally engaged and I hadn't been used to seeing myself as an other to anybody and all of a sudden I was put in a position where I was the other to everybody and even as the student I was constantly asked to educate the room about who I was and the complexity of what I represented and I had an attitude about it because I was there to develop as an artist and to explore in all of those different ways so that when I would get in these conversations with teachers or administrators about colorblind casting and how I thought that was a very violent erasure of culture and individuality that even though it was meant to quote-unquote include it ended up really reinforcing this same kind of white male normative standard that everyone else just erased themselves to do this play that was really written for white people and so I was very outspoken about that experience and was getting a little disenchanted I would say about performance opportunities and just finding a space where I could really begin to figure out this thing that I wanted my career to look like that I had no model for at that particular moment. I knew it wasn't an industry night, I knew you also had an industry night at the time when you were graduating senior, all of these agents would come and there were so many people who were just on it they had headshots and I just knew it wasn't me but I didn't know what else to do and so long story short I'm in studio number four and it's still not there were some beautiful things about the studios, I'm realizing now that I was very fortunate to be able to kind of create my own degree plan I think in why you probably would appreciate it if we'd agreed on that beforehand as opposed to as I went from place to place and I was working with a fellow student who was doing a student independent project and I said what studio is that were you doing an independent student project I said you're not in classes you're just getting to explore what you want to do and who you want to be which one is that and she said ETW and I ended up being in her piece and she said Crystal you've got to give ETW a try and at this point it was kind of last straw I mean I was a junior so I wasn't going anywhere but I felt like I was kind of running out of studio options so I landed at ETW and one of the first classes I signed up for I was in was Rosemary's self scripting class and I thought what? Crystal came with a warning teachers agreed that she was a good student excellent student and lovely woman but had an attitude I'm glad you said it first had an attitude and that sometimes it was hard to figure out how to warm her up and get her excited about doing what she wanted to do I think we all had the sense that there was a lot that Crystal was angry about that we hadn't heard about understandably but she came into my class and one of the first within about the first week I understood why there was a warning and I understood that I was so eager and curious to find out what was who Crystal was and we got into sort of a tussle about an assignment not really Crystal was always an extremely respectful student but we got into enough of a tussle about an assignment that I said okay you have a different assignment I want you to come to class I want you to come back next class and I want you to have written what it is you want to do not doing it just what do you want to do so Crystal came to the next class and she spoke to us and said I want to be a character in front of an audience and I want for the audience to realize over and over again that they have completely made up assumptions and expectations about this person and I want those to fall and I want those to clatter and I want those to disappear I want this transformation in the audience's perception of that person and to realize all that they have mistakenly placed on another person and the room was so silent I will always remember this moment because it was so clear to me first of all that it was clear to Crystal and that it was clear to all of us that not only was she going to be able to do it but it was going to be phenomenal so I said okay next class let's see that monologue next class I think the first assignment was on a Wednesday and so on Friday Crystal walked in with a woman named Peaches the story of me and Big Mike my babies did so you know I had an abortion when I was 15 right some fools said he loved me and I was so stupid I believed him know what my definition of a fool is believing that no matter how many sorry brothers they say are out there only the good ones will be with me that was me believing only the good ones would be with me I was a double fool for listening to some bitty old white nurse telling me that an abortion was the best thing I was 15 I look back on that I say how she gonna know what's best for me she ain't even much know me and that abortion give me nightmares to this day all the babies I got now and still some nights I lay up thinking about that one baby so anyway it mess with me I decided the next time I was gonna have sex was when I got married and here I am 24 years old with four kids all by myself I hadn't planned on getting pregnant for at least another 10, 12 years but I met Big Mike when he was 16 when I was 16 and he was 18 and he said he loved me and he wasn't lying my mama said if he loved me for real he respect my decision not to have sex till I got married he was seeing right and I told him that so we got married three months later and lived in this small apartment in the projects my parents like to die and I got pregnant the next month you know my parents like to die mama said I got pregnant faster than the lord allowed and don't you know when I first got pregnant I ain't even want to be having no babies I was 16 ain't been married but a month I wanted me and Big Mike to have 20 something years worth it before we had kids but the doctor said you gon' have a baby unless you do something about it and I said well I don't know what to tell you cause it wasn't no way I was gon' have another abortion and I didn't know what Big Mike would say cause everybody say a man think a woman trying to trap him in a marriage but I didn't want to trap Big Mike I love him but I was scared so I told him while he was in the bathroom I say through the door I'm gon' have a baby and lord Big Mike got so happy I didn't even much hit a toilet flush so I let myself be happy because he was and we spent those nine months happy together she goes on and on cause there are four kids to come you see so she's got a long story to tell but um it was really the first moment for me where I was able to articulate what I wanted to do how I wanted to do it and I was given the space to explore what it would look like so this one character of Peaches became my senior student independent project that Rosemary and ETW supported with you know great abandon you know just supported in a great way and it also became an opportunity for myself and other students to have conversations around race and stereotype that were really roaming through our classrooms and our creative spaces and all of these types of ways it became an entry point to discuss all of those things and so it also taught me about what I wanted work to do and how I wanted work to engage that I wanted it to live off of the stage and the performance as my independent project was so popular I would come back to Rosemary I think I had like two or three days to do it and I said oh can we add another show on this day because we were sold out we kept like breaking fire codes I don't know if you ever knew that oops but we would as a small black box and we just crowded as many folks as we could in there and and the dialogue continued and it was the start of a career but I didn't know that I didn't know that I just knew that I had really supportive professors so the least of my problems was the fire code my big problem was that I had recently become the director of the experimental theater wing and that all my friends were in the downtown theater all around me producers the other theater companies I had promised them I wouldn't just call them up every time there was a good student I was in trouble so I called Mark Russell and he said Mark I know I told you I was going to do this but I've changed my mind you have to come and see peaches and he did and that was the beginning of my professional career Mark Russell with Roberta Uno at New World Theater co-commissioned peaches through the national performance network and before we graduated we began to tour this project right in the first place that we did with New World Theater was in partnership with co-festival which Rosemary already gave a shout out to Sabrina but was there at the beginning when we were still these college kids figuring out how to do it and so the touring began and engaging with communities began and having the same conversations with theaters and presenters that I had been having with NYU over these years about race and community and identity who knew that it was my training ground but it was continued you know continued to explore race and gender in class identity and community and then it became not enough just to tour and perform and engage with those communities we began to go into schools and I'd always said I would not be a teacher you know there were other people in the ensemble who loved kids and I said I don't have the patience to be a teacher you know I'm looking at my student who's laughing she's like indeed but I said I didn't have the patience to be a teacher but eventually you know I did some adjunct here and there but what happened and probably what was meant to happen is that my ensemble practice found its way into my classroom practice and there began to be a call and response where I couldn't see either of them as separate right it seemed like both of those spaces needed to needed to exist and so fast forward to today the next part of that call and response is that I have students who are coming out of the classroom into my professional practice that who I've trained who I have tried to as best I could because I got it from Rosemary create a space where they could learn methodology and practice but also explore the kinds of artists that they want wanted to be and give breathing room and space for that and now we work together as ensemble as ensemble artists so I'm going to ask two of these folks to come up and share a bit as we go on to this kind of next generation of exploring race and class and gender and stereotype which the dream is to lead to conversations about healing in progress so this is a brief excerpt of a piece that we're currently working on in touring called The Burnin which is about a whole lot of things it looks at two nightclub fires connected across time one in 1940 and one in contemporary space and these identities that straddle time that help us to look kind of microscopically and in the moment at shared space and time and how it works but this excerpt is of two women in contemporary space who at this moment you know there's a character whose name is Boo can you give a shout out another character her name is Broadcast Broadcast can you and they have this problem right now in that they are struggling and vying for the affection of a very unworthy suitor a man of his manhood the time came when I really did believe that it was all my fault that I spent all the mess starting he started telling folks how hard he had tried with that crazy broad and then he finally had to quit me I'm walking down the street hearing my secrets on the lips of folks who lack of a moment I understood as intimacy I had to call him a hypocrite to his face and remind him that no matter how lonely and hurt I was I never told a soul about the night he wet on my lap over how quickly your own dreams go down the drain once the reality of being a black man hit him at 13 and here were my untold stories on the tongues of folks who laughed at me for not knowing anything about love so when I found him looking like he was in love sitting on a bench in the middle of a park with a woman who reminded me of how I used to be I want to say to her wait until he says he's gonna call but don't he envies you more often than he makes you feel special and where is the sense in that wait until you got to the point where you finally believe that maybe he really does love you and then he do something to make you feel like a burden just wait, just wait I ran away from the scene realizing that he is an imposter of love so I went to the place where I knew they had been together I got rid of all the removed I attempted to start a fire but he walked in so I only had enough time to doubt everything with gas and then she called the angel home so you see now Crystal is a little different than Tiana's entry point I went to school from musical theater at University of Northern Colorado and even in undergrad I knew that I wanted to be a part of an ensemble company a part of a working company of actors and I didn't really want to go to New York but I ended up there anyway and then I ended up in Houston and was a working equity actor in Houston and I found myself constantly having to reassure myself that what I was doing wasn't just for self praise that it was for the good of society because even in undergrad I thought about completely dropping theater as my major and going into women's studies and all of these things so four years goes by in Houston and one of my best friends sends me this breakdown and she's like you would be perfect for this they're asking for this specific type and I sent them your name just send off your stuff so I get the pitch and I'll give it what conference is that pitch from I don't know but it basically it was a run down of the burnin and it had little clips and videos of some of progress theater's work and I remember I was sitting in my car in a parking lot and just like chills all over and just thinking like oh my gosh like this is it like this is I have to be a part of this in some way somehow and I've told Crystal this before but she turned my world right side up and she wasn't my teacher in university sense however the last year of my life has been more educational than any experience that I had had previous to that yes I had a great knowledge of technique and how to use my body and things like that but it has been the most soul driven work being a part of this company and especially as each month goes by and we get to tour and go to different conferences you know I just find myself thinking I could never go back to I mean like my husband just told me like hey your equity dues and I was like do we really I mean you know like do I see myself in you know working out the alley again not really unless it's like a crazy amazing thing that I feel needs to be said because the thing is is you know I always tell Crystal that I'm not going anywhere so you better continue to write stuff with white people in them to some extent because because I mean like this is my life's work that she has been I mean so gracious to let me be a part of to share in this process and you said it earlier yeah I'll wrap it up but you said it earlier in the thing today about performance theater versus freedom theater and this is really freedom theater for me so hi I'm Tiana and I too came from a family that is very rooted in culture and history and community and with that fast forward to me being 19 and ready to go to college I stumbled into prayer views doors and bumped into Dr. Truscott who trained me and I feel like I was always a very focused student like I knew I wanted a in every class like that was the there was no going lower than that you know and I actually remember an argument that we had about grades and she was trying to tell me that it can't just be about the grade it can't just be about the grade and I hadn't considered myself an actor I consider myself a dancer who was trying to perform in a different medium of sorts and so she was sort of my entry point to that and teaching me that it has to be more about the what kind of artist you want to be and the grade will come after that and I didn't understand that at the time but I have to say with growing through that process I began to understand that and it's because of that legacy that led me to wanting to go to graduate school and I'm now at a graduate acting student at Southern Methodist University and so now I know that the art that I do and the kind of artists that I want to be must be in community development and history and must change people I don't know what that means for me as far as how I created but I think that she her legacy has brought me that step of knowing what kind of art I want to do and knowing that it's a possibility so I just feel really lucky to have witnessed all of that and big thanks to all four of you I have a quick question there was a there seems to be an evolution you know like the arguments that you had very different from the arguments you had like a trajectory and is that a is that an evolution do you think in culture in the academy or is that just coincidence no I think it's a keen point because I think my you know and I said I said attitude and I don't want to conflate it to that because it was really a seriousness and a frustration with wanting to do all of these things attitude is what was said about me right but what was actually going on was the weight of all of what I wanted and what I wanted to be and not having a space in a place that was supposed to be about giving students a space and so I think the evolution for me is that I as an educator came in very keen to making sure that the space was there so my students never had to worry about space so there could be these new arguments you know that we could start in the middle of that conversation where I was starting a step back that it's a conversation about okay now having been without a space and being able to create a space now here's the beginning of that conversation you know and I think even you know with Tiana who's a you know she she says she sounds like me she's like I don't know about this teaching thing but I'm like yeah but but then that there'll be a different argument there you know between her and her students I mean I think that that's the point of you know being descendants artistic descendants you know and the genealogy of all of this is that that's the dream in a lot of ways you know even if we think about in terms of our parents that they want us to have you know different struggles than they had you don't want to repeat this cycle of learning the same lesson so that so I think the evolution is is real and that it also is in for me creating a space where that there was the the erasure was not a part of the standard you know that it was really about bringing in everything that makes you you you know into this process and figuring out what you want it to be I feel like someone said earlier I think the real you said this in your talk that the art is the art because of who we are not because of who we are not you know or you know trying all of these types of things so that's short answer other questions thank you I really enjoyed that performance and I'm enjoying this discussion so much wonder if you can talk a little bit about the audiences who have seen that piece and the kinds of conversations that it has provoked well this is about a fifth or a third of the piece so it's really yeah it's less than that is it 200th knit what would you what percentage would you say one one hundredth okay it's a very small portion of it you know and even in sharing this was like gosh how do we exert something that's about the journey or even in the piece that I shared from rosemary's class we were having this monologue itself is about 30 minutes long right so this is long journey of deconstruction of you know stereotype and all these things but and then I might you know kind of put some folks who've seen the show on the hot seat to talk about what those conversations have been like but they're not always easy conversations you know I think it's so there are triggers for some folks there are things that people recognize I mean the piece kind of weaves in and out in my opinion of kind of inviting people in through these archetypes that they recognize and then going on this other journey that that shifts but there's a whole other layer you know I mean these women in the 1940s version of their characters play a different set of women that also interrogates race relations and gender relations between black and white women you know in the deep south in 1940 and so really all of these things so I think I'm gonna stop talking and ask someone who's seen the play to maybe talk or share about that will you yeah I saw the burn in at Imagining America just a couple weeks ago and something that's so powerful about the piece and you're right it's a really really really small excerpt of it and it's so so vast in scope in a good way I think that it first of all has a really distinct call to action in the piece that I think is extremely effective it also this they had some of the amazing work that you do with the the neo spiritual work that you do and a great part about is that there's you know over 15 to 20 minutes where you are actually you all are just singing and are just singing and you don't need to have the intellectual dialogue or maybe yeah like that really that really kind of emotionally distant dialogue about racial strife in this country in the history and things like that because we're seeing it just in the song and nothing more needs to be said so there's I don't know I feel like it's a really really powerful piece and those were just some of the things that stuck with me about it I got to see the piece at Alternate Roots this summer so that I imagine America and one thing that was a real great lesson in this conversation about ensemble work and the university they got to share an excerpt on one night at Alternate Roots but couldn't share the whole piece and then the company very responsibly made the decision to go up to the chapel and have an open rehearsal and run the whole piece again to make sure that the audience could go and finish the journey because they as Brad Kremholtz said yesterday are we making work that vibrates the molecules in the room and in this case this work definitely was vibrating some molecules and really touching on some deep things and so that was like a big thing for me that I really honored to say you're now going to take the responsibility for your work because if you want to open those conversations up people are going to want to have that conversation and so the next day they re-ran the whole piece and then you could just walk up and sit down in the chapel and finish the piece for yourself and I was like wow even roots had skipped that part as conscious as roots is and so that's the kind of thing like what does the work require and are our relationships going to allow us to fulfill what the work requires was brought up for me any last questions I'm aware of time and then that I make sure that we give the work what it requires so thank you all we can begin we're around to do that conversation and to connect it to this symposium and the space but also in just thinking about these genealogies of artistic practice and how it makes its way into the work makes its way back into the audience so for us this doesn't have to be the end if if you move to want to say more talk more, share more, ask more then by all means you are welcome thank you all hey y'all that was the end of day 2 we're here so really quick announcements hey tonight time changes so you get to fall back yes that's right so there's a time change so if you get here at the previous time you'll be here early that's okay, that means you're eager and we will be here an hour later so wait for us so the other thing is when you arrive tomorrow make sure you bring your badge with you and your program the badge lets the security folks know that you're here and it'll just make it easier for you to enter so if you can remember to do that that would be great and the last thing is tomorrow we start at 10.30 so it's a little later we will wrap up by 1 o'clock so you can get to your planes and to your afternoons but some really amazing programming plan for tomorrow as well with that I'm going to say have a good night thank you all so much and we'll see you in the morning