 Happy that it has, and we're just, I mean this is kind of a time to just learn. It's really a time to learn from each other, share stories. Stories are kind of our currency at 10,000 things a week. We're so excited to hear stories, to share with you what we have learned over the past 25, for me almost 30 years of doing this, and the things that we still struggle with 25, 30 years in. And we're just excited to hear what you guys have to bring to the table too. We first have to take a moment and thank TCG. You guys said at 10,000 things, there are just six of us, and we're actually a lot more comfortable putting on shows than we are conferences. We really appreciate that. So thank you for your understanding and patience and things don't go quite right, but we're going to try. And also I wanted to say, well this is our home actually. At 10,000 things we don't have offices, we don't have a building, we work in a church basement, but this is where we do most of our publics performances, which is why we're meeting here. Here we go, right? Everybody knows in the round, this is kind of how we do it. The one way we thought this would be a little different than at your normal conference, it has to do with the name tags. One of those of you that have been to a conference know that thing where people kind of like do this little like name tag lamps to see where you're from. And we in 10,000 things we're all about leveling the playing field all the time. So we thought what we would do is just have you put your first names on it, and the one distinction we've kind of made is everybody who's from a theater that has tried this before, that has some kind of experience under your belt, you've got a red name tag, and everybody else that's just interested in learning about it, your name is in blue or green. So that way you can at least know like, I want to answer this. There's stories to tell, so hopefully that will facilitate conversation. So what I want to say, and here and look at all of you, is that all of you already, and if you've never done this before, know so much more than we did about your years. So try to try this. And I'm not going to tell the whole origin story about how we did the good person of such one at a homeless shelter in Santa Monica because I told it so much my brain's going to explode and a lot of you heard it. If you haven't, you can read the first chapter of it. Watch the first little part of the TED talk. So what comes to mind so vividly is, so there were like seven hours, some really good actors in LA, really great actors, but we didn't have a set designer or anything like that, and we were in the parking lot, and we were taking stuff out of our trunks, and we were going to walk into that homeless shelter, and we are set, we didn't have a set designer, and just like thought we'd have two poles with a clothesline in between, and we'd like hang little pieces of cloth on it to make the different scenes for this break to play. But we couldn't get the poles to stand up, so we went to Venice Beach, and we filled up like 40 plastic bags of sand to like weigh the holes down so they would go like that. And so we were all like these bags of sand to this homeless shelter, and we were so like overwhelmed and we didn't know what we were doing, and I know we all looked at each other, at one point we're like, thank you, we went ahead and went into that, that homeless shelter. But I did know that you three were staying last night, I feel like you guys are all kindred spirits, and you're all coming here from the same kind of impulses that I had back then. But the three things I knew was that if I was going to spend my life doing theater, I'd do it just making art for wealthy people. That was the first thing I knew. And I really didn't want to leave people out, and I felt like theater just left so many people out. And at the time for me, who was in my mind was my grandpa, who was actually a farmer in Iowa who was really smart but he never went to college, he lost all his land in the Depression. I never saw him without his engineer overalls and a seed corn cap. But when I tried to imagine my grandpa going into most any theater I've been in, I just felt like he would feel really uncomfortable and really out of place. So I didn't want to leave anyone out. That was my first thing I knew. The second thing I wanted to find, see if I could find an audience that actually cared about the story that we were telling. To whom the story might actually matter to their lives on some level. And at the time LA audiences, and I think all of us, I too am guilty of this, people that have seen a lot of theater, you go to theater and you kind of watch it at your critical distance and you're like, I don't know about this interpretation. It's honestly just a little bit. That synthesizer doesn't really work. I've watched plays that way. To those people in the whole children. Like I just sensed, even though I hadn't spent much time with all those people, that those people got condescended to all the time by people who just saw them in the street or anywhere in their lives. So I felt like that we had to make this little piece of theater that we were doing as good as we possibly could to really match the depth of their long experiences. That we had to... So I felt like that was something else that I knew. I tuned it. Here's all the stuff we didn't know. We didn't know if anyone would come. So like what we've done is we've gone to the hospital or we've had little flyers. Which is not the best way. Amazingly there were like about 20 or 30 people there hanging out. But they had no idea that we were doing a play. Like knowing my flyers, they were just kind of there. It was sort of like there was a lobby and then above was this balcony of offices and work phones ringing. People like shouting each other across the balcony and walking across the space. So we didn't really quite have a sense of if anyone would come. We didn't know if anyone would like it. We had no idea. We had no other experiences of other people to draw on to go, yeah, that might work. That might work. We were just kind of following our intuitions. We didn't know that people would fall asleep during the show. That people would get up and leave. And we didn't know then that that didn't necessarily mean that they would have liked it. It just meant that life was a more important theater and they had to sleep or they had to go get food or a job interview, whatever. We certainly had no idea that people might talk to us during the show. And that was one of the delightful things. We had no idea that it would be much better to do it in the round than like with rows of chairs and a state of like proscenium style. Because you quadruple your front row. We had no idea about that. We had no idea that we could actually take this same play and we could do it also at prisons. And we could do it at rehab centers and adult education centers and immigrant centers and for people in reservations and people in domestic violence shelters and in small towns and rural areas. We were just kind of like matching this play to this audience. That's kind of what we were trying to do. And we certainly didn't know. We had no idea that that audience was going to give us so much more than we ever gave them. That they were going to change us profoundly as theater artists over the course of our work. So that's kind of stuff you guys already know. Going into it, you already actually know like 10,000 times more than we did back then. So for those of you just contemplating it, that can give you some confidence for sure. I certainly didn't realize that I would be spending the rest of my life kind of collecting these stories of moments when we really connected with an audience in a profound and revelatory way. And moments where like it was so excruciating and there was no connection going on at all and things were just terrible. But I have a big bag of these stories now and I think a lot of you are starting to accumulate them as well which would be so great to hear. I think one of those things, the very first day of the troopersal process, the way we kind of start out is we go around the circle and people that have been in a show before share either an exhilarating moment or an excruciating moment. And I mean, I will also say that a lot of those performances that you are kind of like an idiom, you know, like there's some really great connections, there's some just connections, but there's always a few on every tour that are just really revelatory or excruciating. So I thought with the way we would start out we're going to have a couple days to get to know each other. But I wanted to ask people from the ten theaters that are already doing this kind of work if you could pick one person from your theater to share with us one of those moments a really exhilarating one or a really excruciating one. You would do that. And then with what time we have left we probably won't have time to hear from everyone else, but those of you that are just interested and new to doing it, if you might at least have a chance for a few if you just stand up and share why you're here, why you decided you want to try to learn about it and what you think it might bring to you or your theater. We have some independent artists here as well as well as theater companies. So just a sentence or two about like why what you hope to get out of it. That would be great. So while those of you from the practicing theaters are thinking about a story, we're going to start out with one of our veteran 10,000 things actresses Karen East-Champson. Karen for life. Karen doesn't show us with 10,000 things and when they talk about exhilarating or enlightening experiences, I think everybody goes back to their first show. And my very first one was Waiting for Goodell and that was what, 15 years ago? And your first show, first time you walk into a prison, first time you walk into a, all those things throw you, always, always throw you. And so we're starting to build up a little okay I get how this goes, I get how this goes. And then we went into a prison called Lighting Eggs here in Minnesota. And there were two women in the show and we had guards on us immediately and they got us into a room, isolation room, and we were like why is this prison different than the other one? It's predominantly sex offenders. And so that files and rapists were the majority of the inmates and it throws you. And we go okay, okay. Now, most of the prisons we go to, unfortunately, people of color are the predominant audience. These guys were all white and it was like an audience with my dad's. And I realized I can't just perform the way I normally do and I really internalized and I did that trick that actors, your audience isn't with you if you're just focused on the text, focus on the character, focus in. And I really did that and we were in a very small space even tighter than this. It was in a chapel. And I got to the end of the play where Vladimir at the end is basically saying, all I want is someone to see me. I just did the line and I looked up and they were weeping. And this light went on in my head that of course they show day after day waiting for something different to change internally or externally and you just want someone to see you. But especially with sex offenders people do not want to see you. And I did and I went, no matter how different our journeys, no matter how different our backgrounds and our uprisings and our places, there are moments of connection that you can only experience in that type of setting with theater and it changed my outlook on everything I've ever done and 10,000 things has made my life so much better. I'm now a female instructor. I just worked here too. We did The Tempest and I wanted to talk about a performance that we did in a federal women's prison and there's a moment in The Tempest where Ferdinand and Miranda get married and when I started to think about it I found it kind of frustrating that the wedding doesn't actually take place in the lines. Like I feel like you get kind of ripped off by that so I decided like it was going to be a wedding and so they like recessed down the aisle and she threw her bouquet and we did the woman come to us after she was crying and she said, I'm never going to see any of my family members anymore because I've been in here so long and I've missed all these moments in their lives and then she started saying after she looks like a daughter and this is how I know she really identified it and it hadn't occurred to me that it was a simple thing of like a life cycle moment that you're missing by being in prison and getting to see that in play and having that be so meaningful was just like I still am getting shows talking about it and that same show we did also there was that moment where Caledonia had things about freedom and we had made more of that moment that you often do and where you cross-brow and you're singing and he's singing freedom, freedom and all the women stood up and started clapping and the warden was the only man in the room and the states even and all the women are cheering and clapping and you can see his face like doing to call the guards and you know it just made me kind of feel like what does that mean to kind of awaken somebody's power that way and to kind of tap into that so those were both just really memorable moments and Michelle talks a lot about bringing those moments into your next rehearsal process and that's really stayed with me as I started to do this work more is how do you then carry the faces and the kind of you're growing understanding of that audience into the next time you're making a moment thinking you know how do we make this moment meaningful who do we think is going to be moved by this by this rehearsal Thank you very much Thank you so much Thank you so much Okay, true north tried their first time at it So we did a show called An Iliad which is a play for one actor and one musician and the Sunday before we opened the actor who hadn't had a chance to see a 10,000 things production he said yes to the shows and he was like what the fuck are we doing it's so hard to understand that moment right before we actually get an audience the first time I had seen shows but I hadn't done a show so I was terrified everyone was scared and our second performance we were at a men's shelter we were getting there at seven and this is an interesting organizational thing so the lady who we had organized it with seemed very interested and then she kind of dropped off the pace of the show behind the desk we'll know and we get there and you go behind the desk and you know I do and so we're like we're doomed this is going to be a catastrophe when we set chairs up and I turned to Tom and I went we have to go out there where all the guys are just sitting waiting and tell them there's a show tonight and tell them don't see the show and he's like I hate you and because of that they came in ready to see him ready to be in this space with him about ten guys peeled off to the back and just slept through the performance which was it's unsettling the first time but we had fifty guys actually come in to see the show and there's a part so this is like Tom's redemption when you find you realize how the actor how amazing this experience can be towards the end of the show Hector is killed and there's a moment where heck you bub just wails and then sings her grief and Tom is on this really powerful moment where he just lets go this inhuman wail and nothing but men in that performance space and one someone from the show and she said that moment was really terrifying because the men were quite quiet but at least half of them were crying and then Tom started crying on stage as well and so that's when we knew it come together we found something that we could never have found in a traditional theater yeah it was quite revelatory and terrifying absolutely the most terrifying process about it so I'm from Baltimore Center Stage and last year was our first inaugural tour of this kind of work and I we did and one of the in my process let me tell two stories in my process of finding out what partners we were going to visit in Baltimore I came across this shelter called Earl's Place which was I didn't know this I just read about them but when I got there it was a house with 20 maybe 25 men recovering addicts in this house and when I walked in immediately I said my god this is a really small place literally they're living with couches weight bench in the back kitchen in the gear and I'm sitting there talking to the organizer Diane is her name about the work and in the process as I'm talking about you know familiar with the show we have these two trash cans that somehow were supposed to be a part of the set and all the while I'm talking to Diane she's getting excited I'm thinking how am I going to make these trash cans so as we're talking one of the guys is sitting on the couch reading a newspaper and when we were done I had already made a decision we're going to make it happen I don't know how we're going to do it we're going to make it happen what made me do that because the guy was listening to us one of the men was listening to us and as soon as Diane and I finished and she said well I would love them we're interested we hope we could be a part of the tour the guy says I'll be there and I said what he's like I don't know what it is but if you're going to come here so the day of the tour we're coming into the space and literally couches couches we had to rearrange their living room and when I say the space was probably a quarter of this how pretty much was and they're sitting on their couches and we do end game and literally one of our the dressing room area one of the guys in the wheelchair came up his bedroom right there on the first floor which moved all the actors I mean the actors were I'm still getting emails from these actors about how this would change the life so we're doing end game and you know you never know to your point and to many people's point you never know how this work is going to resonate with these audiences especially but the short of it is at the end of this play these guys were crying and we have a post a pre and post conversation so in post I said so you know what did you see what yourself did you see in this or did you see somebody you knew and the guys raised their hand one guy said man I'm just so moved and I said really he says yeah it's about the couple in the trash cans he said oh tell me more about that and he said well you know what I was an addict and I had heroin I was just like the husband I was always wanting to share share share share but then when I didn't have it or I became stingy and he said so that relationship between that couple really reminded me of my addiction and when I'm generous and when I'm not and when I'm myself and when I'm not and then he said and then the second thing that hit me was this community you know as much as we want to go with alone everybody in this room needed each other in some way shape or form that's what I felt and all of a sudden all the guys those 20 guys were like yeah, yeah and we had a half hour discussion after that that production simply about what they saw whether it be with their addiction or with homelessness and from that moment on I'm giving children's now because I realize you don't have that kind of connection here on a proscenium stage with the lights down that's the purpose of this work and when I tell you the actors that I use last year are saying, hey can we come back next season can we come back because everybody's transformed now I approach the work in a way that I've never approached in my career because it's about what can I bring into these spaces and how can we intersect with these communities that we don't often intersect we see them from a distance and when they're going into their spaces in their comfort zone that requires an owner to listen from on their perspective and most importantly from us because we're visitors when we go in their space so I was really transformed and I look forward to doing more of this this is so great thank you guys 10,000 things just like oh my God yes all right we'd like to go next oh girl oh okay great great do you want to go Andrew? I'll go from Griffin Creek in New Orleans so we just did our first production the first place we went to was a treatment facility called Bridge House which is an all male treatment facility and we were all kind of freezing out pretty bad before we went in because we just had to cut our play in half because like right before we went in we were like oh this play is three hours long pretty dramatically and so we were kind of walking in with like this new script and then we'd go to the place and we'd start talking to some of the guys there and pretty immediately once they're kind of aware that a play is happening they start setting up they start setting up the chairs and they start setting up and they start asking us like well is this right is this how you want it and we're like oh that's perfect and then they come and we start doing fight call and they stick around with a fight call and so it's like this whole kind of experience is unfolding for both of us at the same time because they're like what the hell is going on? and we're like what the hell is going on? and so and then the play starts and you know pretty immediately maybe because it starts with a drunker and it was a way that people could identify but they lock in pretty quickly and so like you're doing the show that develops when you can talk back to the actors and you can talk amongst yourselves this is really almost natural unfolding in a way that kind of feels like we've kept ourselves away from in a lot of ways and how we practice theater because this ease and this camaraderie between actor and audience is so instant and so you know natural and then you walk off stage and one of the audience where we grab you they'd be like you got this man you got this man you got this man you got it you got it you got it and then and then at the end you know when we kind of put a feminist twist on it somebody in the audience goes shots fired at the end of it you know there's so grateful and so involved in what they're seeing and the actors are so like oh god this is this is something so new something something I've never felt before I want to feel this way all the time and then as we were striking you know they helped us strike all of our stuff out and it was amazing you know I think so many of us do theater because that's the kind of belonging that we look for we kind of forgo these material greatness and all of that and we kind of make this work that specializes to create the community that we've always dreamed of and I think there's something really special because that community can transfer to the audience so fast and some of these people especially some of the places we tour to you know that community is something that's never been there and so the fact that you are offering something that provides belonging and that provides focus and that provides thought and so easily and so quickly and so generously it's just an amazing thing and it's pretty you feel it pretty quickly pretty instant Hi everyone my name is Bea and I'm here with Delora Shakespeare and it's our it's our second year doing community tour work and everyone's story just reminds me so deeply of the transformation and the generosity with which our audiences invite us into their space and one of the one of the spaces we go into is Baylor Women's Correctional Facility which is a women's prison and Delaware I think the only women's prison in Delaware is the only women's prison in Delaware so there's a minimum to maximum offenders and they were our final audience for our first year and they were astounding and just so receptive and joyous and this year we were able to do two-month acting residency I got to teach for two months a population of women in the prison and then we also brought As You Like It into prison and part of the acting workshop was coaching my students to play second brother at the end of As You Like It so as a group they all play second brother into this canyon but I think the most important part was having this through line of last year to this year the women who came into the acting class remembered the joy they felt of our last year's performance and really wanted to connect in the moment they left to their feet and you know gained focus in this room and as soon as they were done second brother's speech the whole like all of the population just erupted into explosive applause and support and the acting class themselves those ladies formed this tiny family within an environment that often I think engenders a certain level of competition or higher value or toughness and so week to week sharing spaces that I think they brought into the performance and one of the things one of the students said to us at the end was that she hoped I'm sorry that she hoped that when she gets out which she will and she's been in for a decade when she gets out she can't wait to see us on the other side it shows how great she's doing and one of the models for our show that we had was that he says to Orlando at the top of as he liked it and he says to him hereafter in a better world than this I desire to see more love and knowledge of you and this student expressed that sentiment to us this is Madeline she was our director to know that the work we do does inspire people to transform and also inspires me to just be just a better human because this is this is beyond acting and this is beyond anything I've done so thank you hey! I'm just appreciating that that was theater to reach out and want to form a partnership with us and they have just been a model in how to do this and do it right and we've been so trying to work the mobile and it's been doing and you guys have been doing it like for six seven years but anyway you don't have to tell I'm just appreciating my because you have to I'm sorry but someone wants to tell a really good excretion you need to love that too unit you've been doing Shakespeare for a really long time and we have moved away from it recently by way of a collaboration with Joe's tub of the public he's a cabaret photography music's the last winter the middle of the winter is snowing I'll never forget we brought a musician in Mali, Missouri around to the community and we went to a federal facility in Brooklyn how Metropolitan Detention Center and they've been going there a couple years with just Shakespeare this was the second time we had brought a musician to their space and it's it's a so many of us men and women and we were there for a big we had a conflict with women first had a break and then conflict with men and it was really important for us and for Mali to have a simple but very interactive show so she just chocolate with her tambourine and a microphone in a very small amp performed different for us like personia so she can kind of be with everybody the population she's a she's very great amazing women they're just hanging out and Mali likely Mali who said if you're so important it says we have a chance to bring down before the show they're like yes, yes, yes so the guys were brought in and it was all ready so much of a part so I had just been there with a kid we had just Romeo and Julia just take it from here and from the minute she started talking the guys were just so alive and just so happy to be sharing their talents as a community together it was just really beautiful but I will never I don't know how to explain this other than to say it was like they had been playing together as a band for years she would just like she would just like yell at her or she would start singing and the guys would talk to each other and then immediately we started following her and they were singing one of the best it was it was a joyous shared experience and like lovingly you know playing feel for everybody I didn't want to leave they didn't want us to leave and I can't wait to bring more music back to them so it was a joyous experience let's start extending to other art forms as well do you want an excruciating story just asking two tours yeah awesome so ours is actually from the same prison the women so it's a shared women's and men's federal I want to say one thing that's been really moving to our new age company we've been around for two years it's just the culture of sharing among the established leaders who've been doing this just those of us who already started doing this and keeping going so as Karen said you always remember your first tour because in our first tour the first prison that we went to was this women's federal prison and I directed the show it was the Glass Panagery Silvia played Laura Genedia played the John Calder and one thing to do in a format where you have lights on is that Tennessee Williams has constructed that play to build up and build up and build up to the meeting between John Calder and Laura where there's a major light change that calls for the rules that have been established in the space where anything can happen so we were like can we do this without changing the lights at all I guess that would be really going to work and so seemed to be the ones that I'm playing when the first blowout fight happened between Amanda and Tom that's when that's when a lot of our audiences really started and they like they were such a wonderful audience and but as we led up to the moment between Jim and Laura where in our production they were circling in the middle and it seems like when the kiss is about people were shifting and received a very quiet and I didn't know I didn't know what their feelings were toward the jump collar it broke out into applause and it was the longest I've ever seen a kiss after one kind of magical thing that happened there is that their experience started to mirror Laura's this was the only time this really happened to me so clearly with the audience where after that kiss happens Jim immediately starts saying whoa that was a mistake and you know he's trying to explain that he has this just as Laura was and so when the moment finally drops that he says Betty the name of his girlfriend and they turned up and so Jared and this Jim like sat down on our fire escape and he said oh I'm a stumble John and this woman next to him was turning hmm and one one excruciating quick one is on that same tour we went to a senior center in the Bronx and one woman came in to the space like 20 minutes into the show talking on her cell phone continued her conversation sitting in the front row near the other person kind of watching this play later in the second because that is a huge way that we make lights happen and all the lights up so everybody from a theater that's done I've been working on the tour now three years it's been around four years but the story that I want to tell you well one part excruciating my excruciating is just the moment you wonder if anyone is going to show up we did a show at in Kent Hamilton which is in the north in San Diego County and it's far I mean it's like making a trip to Los Angeles for us so planning in advance to be able to go out there a lot so I could not do a lot of footwork and talking to people and kind of getting ahead of the show so I was really really dependent on the partnership with the elementary school we ended up with the same night as the World Series so we have 12 people show up it was like the second show of the run of that year so that's like a true dating story where your heart just drops when you don't see bodies in the room but I would say on the other side of things I think this year we do have this year we did 12th night and San Diego County is you know like 40 something percent of you know so and I'm a native San Diego so to me we are reaching that may not ever you know to our theater or into a theater at all ever and so this year we made a partnership with the library in the neighborhood that I grew up in which is about the third or the last U.S. I've been so I mean in fact I used to volunteer at that library when I was in middle school and so it was you know for me personally what was wonderful was that we were able to go into that space and you know present 12th night bilingually and in a way that made narratively made sense it made sense coming from Mexico to the U.S. and so when she spoke in Spanish it was her and her thoughts it made sense because that's how she thinks but to sit in the room and to see the different audiences but especially at this location no way there were people in that audience that had driven from Tijuana over they came over to the border that day just to see the show and Spanish and we also there was some music they included a very traditional song and you could just feel everybody in that room like lean in further and just feel so connected simply because we found a way to make them feel part of what we do in the world of theater they were they were so grateful and so thankful and we had people of all ages and all types the other thing I will just add on to that that I think is the other part that you get a little nervous about is that maybe English-speaking audiences would now feel disenfranchised due to this process which yeah there's a couple people out there but I'm like this wasn't for you anyway so I'm not more into it so we went to the Kultian community the Kultian community was super excited they didn't understand Spanish but they understood the experience and and so they were super excited and going to all sorts of places and just seeing people being able to put themselves in being the other in that scenario was just amazing so I'm really super proud that we did that it's been a challenge for us as a theater to come up with it so that's my story the shows that you would do and it will always be a part of this work it never goes away is when the audiences show up because and when you go to Nancy's session about putting together a tour you know we all have picked up some tips to help with that but it's between shows because it's like when they don't and with all the lights on American people don't come you can you know you can sort of ignore that as an actor but when they don't show up and you can see the empty seats it is really really hard and yet you have to find that they're going to really like it and they generally really do it's excruciates that feels to you on the stage they're there for you and the other great thing about this kind of theater too for those of you who don't know take away all the empty seats and take away all the other ones and it's a full house so so I think that I mean I think these stories were so wonderful and thank you for sharing and it's really one of the reasons selfishly we wanted to get together with you because we've learned such great things from you guys there's like so thank you for that I think we we won't do anything I want to say to you before we introduce ourselves but we will find time throughout the conference for you to let us know why you're here and what you want to learn and why you want to learn so we will find that time but I did just want to take a little time to just give you a couple more thoughts as we go out into some of you who are interested in continuing in starting the work and it's fun to hear the variations like the Spanish the Hispanic or the Florida Lena floors here floors thinking of maybe starting just an all Asian American version of this where they would do specifically new Asian American plays and take it out into the Asian theater which is still generally a pre-white space in most professional theater so it's fun to hear about all these variations that people are planning and this is you know it took us like a long time to kind of figure this out it seems fairly simple but it really was a process of stumbling and mumbling over 10 or 15 years to kind of finally figure out how to make it work and we're really happy to give it to you I mean it's a gift that we really want to share because it's so cool to hear about there is one string attached that I have to talk about a little bit and that that string actually comes from that third thing that I said I knew when I was walking across the parking lot and that was that I didn't want to consent to these audiences and what I knew in my part is in order to be able to match the truth and the depth of your very hard online experiences the one thing it would take was very best artists the very best actors to make this happen you know and what happened was at the end of that first show one of my exhilarating moments was a janitor who had been like kind of standing in the back of the room in between like sweeping and mopping who was kind of watching the show and he came up to me and he looked to me in the eye and he said thank you for treating us like we have brains in our hearts and I took that in the heart that was that validation of this intuition that I had and that has always been a horror so what I want to say is that and the other thing you have to understand about me and these early years so like this was back in the 90s when audience engagement and diversity and inclusion were not really part of the common vocabulary this was something I wasn't aware of very many people thinking about but the big reaction I got from regular theater growers and theater practitioners and critics when they first heard about it was like oh you do plays in prisons well that must be bad what do you do like little skits about staying off drugs doing the Shakespeare really do they understand change the language and so for me you know after that first show what I knew is oh my god yes they get it and they get it in many ways better than most additional audiences right because they can go right once they get over their suspicions which are very well founded then somehow you're going to preach to them you're going to like try to tell them how to get off drugs or whatever once they get over that and the way they get over awful work that is coming into the room they sense that you are giving them respect for their intelligence respect for their imaginations and respect for their very hard online experiences once they sense that then they get to the heart of the play audiences and the depth of it they just know what it is like when we were doing measure for measure in New York where the public came up to me in the middle after an intermission and said oh yeah this play is kind of like that show undercover boss kind of theater is actually a lot of the stuff you see on conventional stages because what do you do workshops with them do you help them understand and this was again before audience engagement stuff and I my thing was in the early years I was like no they can all they need is the play and they will understand everything from the play they don't need a workshop they don't need program notes because most people like they don't need the program notes and accessibility just from watching the play because I think there is great value after just watching the play and watching really good people to now that that's been established I think in the 20 cities that this is really good theater that the workshops and stuff are great and of course you should do them and they deepen their engagement but you have to understand where I they can just get it from the play and we'll be sure to make it really clear in the work that we do so what when I'm kind of small model it really isn't about student training it's not about giving your students a good experience I mean there might be a possibility to bring in really excellent students with great life experience maybe that could work but it's what I really don't want to have happen is for this to become sort of a set that happens with education and outreach programs this as I think Barry or Stephanie this takes your A game this takes your A team this takes the very best artists that your community has resources from your theater to make it happen that means as much rehearsal time as a main stage show gets this show needs to get that much rehearsal time the pay that your main stage artists get I would argue these artists deserve higher pay because it's actually much more challenging demanding as rewarding as it is it's also really hard work so if your theater is not ready to make that commitment of resources the other thing I would also really really push for is to be sure there's no condescension involved in this you all in just the same way that you do for your non-traditional audiences again leveling the playing field and what you will find actually is that they really love it right like we have found in the Twin Cities people love watching these awesome artists up close with all the lights on the immediacy and the rawness and the urgency make sure that there's no condescension coming on you know if you depend on critical reviews get the critics to come and go oh my god this stuff is great you should come so that is sort of my my charge like what I don't want to have happen is actually counterproductive and do some damage in a funny way and kind of reconfirm everybody who's experiencing theater for the first time in their standard it's just for rich people it doesn't have anything to do in my life it's like master piece theater on PBS right and you want to blow all those preconceptions away and the way you do it is by investing in the very best artists that your community has to offer to make that happen so that's kind of if I had a story that would be it and then other than that we're so welcome to take it and adapt it and adjust it but don't think he has to offer so and then the flip side because the flip side of this you know we've been talking and this has come up in almost everyone's story that's shared in it in theater to people who haven't seen it the flip side of it is it makes professional to start thinking about if we're imagining all these different kinds of people being in our audience it makes us start thinking about how do we make the choices it adds up this whole wealth of possibilities and choices that you can imagine in these different audiences it makes us think about what kinds of stories we're actually telling are we really I think unconsciously make choices with an upper middle class white audience in the back with their minds because that's who usually comes and the stories they tell often might really only be of interest to people in that narrow part of the community and you want to include them in your community but it's not how you're going to tell the story with only like with no lights and with like four or five set pieces that serve as different things and you know costume changes that have to happen in 30 seconds with a hat like that and it invigorates doing this work and one thing we'll really want to hear about tomorrow in our last session is how if you sense that it's starting to change you as an artist and if it's starting to change maybe your organization has pulled so anyway that that is a great gift so a few little business things before we go out in two days as an example your schedule whatever it says at a breakout session it's actually going to be real lunch from plastic pizza vegetarian all those options I was a good guy you could come there's a good guy I would recommend even though a couple of times there's no space must have been it's like in the 40s and there's no snow but living in the moment enjoying the moment like take a walk and take a look at the river come back there will be beer and wine downstairs there will be someone there whatever awesome can I say we have these awesome volunteers from the U of M it's going to be breakfast on HowlRound TV so hi HowlRound hey watch it on HowlRound TV later and we also so we will email everybody it was awesome managing director and Stephanie Thompson we want all your your guys ideas as well we have our amazing production manager slash and she'll be leaving the it's still a very underutilized resource that you guys have in terms of making the story clear and providing lighting effects and all of that awesome 10,000 things actors and Peter and I we're going to try to do some musical excerpts for you like you do 9.30 in the morning we're going to try to do that and then we have we have been so blessed beyond Shakespeare and we want to encourage all of you to do it and so Pira you know she it's a great time of playwright who's really got to know our audiences and has been able to create five new plays for us that we've been able to look for when you're thinking about play that's not Shakespeare and not all Shakespeare's were either I think but we'll find out about that and so just kind of yes oh yeah and here's me some great veteran 10,000 things actors people who have been doing this work like we were in Cyford there's our sort of fox honest and fellow whatever I could show 10,000 things ever did in 1994 remember aren't you wanna stand up there's a really long time so they'll be fun people to talk to get good stories from and ask questions just there's a dent off the third floor when you're up there I don't think you can smoke up there but you're gonna be out there and then food buys for lunch and for dinner we're gonna try there's a door that you went into trying to keep things moving because things are crazy to watch everybody fly up avoid cut in line don't be polite look to your food nice dinner's really nice yeah so that's it thank you everybody don't forget