 Good evening. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. It always feels odd to come into spaces and say good evening and people stare at you blankly. So I thank you so much for that offering. Welcome to this evening's panel interrogating whiteness. Part two, because one wasn't enough. Tonight we'll be exploring some controversies and interventions in the theatre. My name is Sylvia Spears and I'm vice president for diversity and inclusion at Emerson College and I'm happy to be part of this conversation. Facilitator, moderator I don't know if this is a group one can moderate, but I'll try to facilitate. Let me provide just a little bit of context for this evening's conversation. Unless you are living somewhere deeply embedded under a giant rock you know that we are in a period of unprecedented and incredibly complex conversations around race and identity in the United States. So it makes sense that these conversations, questions, issues and concerns are being reflected back at us back to us through the arts and more specifically in the theatre. In the past year the theatre has seen its share of controversies regarding racial representation on stage with some productions being cancelled which in and of itself sparked controversy around the limits and implications of race conscious casting. Artists and producers are in some sectors working together to create productions and initiatives that actively respond to questions, illuminate questions complicate the questions through theatre. As artists and their audiences there's much to be learned from these conversations both the controversies and the interventions tonight we seek to examine both. So first I want to thank you for your willingness to step into this conversation as we explore what we need to do how we might position as vital spaces for civic conversations of consequence. Consequence is inspired by art. So I thank you for entering into the conversation and I thank you for your commitment to increased understanding through a process of productive inquiry. That's my hope established in this space. So as you will see we have an extraordinary group of panelists here this evening to illuminate these issues maybe even complicate them just a bit for you it won't be tidy my friends. So I'm very pleased to introduce our panel. So we have Summer Williams co-founder company one and director of an octaroon. Ms. Williams has been with company one since its inception in 1998 and active member of the board of directors Summer is a producer director educator her most recent project is an octaroon now playing right here notice the set in the black box other directing credits include colossal intimate apparel premier of we are proud to present. She's the teacher of drama and a director at Brookline High School and holds a BA in theater as well as a masters in education in theater and urban ed. Ms. Williams serves as a member of the board of directors of both stage source and the Coolidge corner theater this is the short bio just so you know for everyone they're getting the short bio so please welcome Summer. Next to her we have Melinda Lopez playwright and performer Melinda is a playwright in residence at the Huntington Theater she is the author of Becoming Cuba seen at the Huntington Theater and the Elliott Norton award winning Sonya Flew. Her work has been seen at Williamstown Theater Festival Steppenwolf Central Square Theater Coconut Grove Playhouse and Boston's Playwrights Theater at the Tumpelle back the night will premiere at the Boston Playwrights Theater this month. Her one woman show Mala will be part of the 2016-17 Arts Emerson season please welcome Melinda. Someone almost jumped right out of their chair in the back there. Yes that was you. I saw a little. Let's see just a quick note there's a few other things I should have said about Melinda she's an actress and has a beard and regional theaters across the country works in film and radio teaches theater and performance at Wellesley and playwriting at Boston so that's just the footnote and interestingly folks have actually sat in the order of my notes magically. Now that's some magical directing there Ralph Pina producing artists and artistic director Mar-Yi Theater Company Ralph is the producing artistic director of Mar-Yi Theater and off-Broadway theater based in New York City focused on developing and producing new works by Asian-American playwrights. Recent directing credits include developing a new musical at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco the often of Xiao for Mar-Yi Theater Lloyd Seuss the Wong's kids in the street of the space Chupacabra can I get it right? Go I had a practice which is coming soon right here at Arts Emerson that play received an off-Broadway Alliance Award and is coming to Arts Emerson as I said he's currently slated to direct the premiere of A. Ray's Pomat Mat new play House Rules for Ma Theater in March 2016 Ralph is the recipient of an obi award for his work the romance of Magno Rubio he is a member of the ensemble studio theater please welcome on the end we have Polly Carl co-artistic director of Arts Emerson and also director of HowlRound Dr. Call is a co-artistic director here curating an annual season of international work for the downtown theaters of Emerson College Dr. Call develops dramaturgs and presents an eclectic array of work from diverse artists from around the globe Polly is also the director and co-founder of HowlRound we are being streamed on HowlRound at the moment a knowledge commons buy and for the theater community distinguished artists in residence on the Emerson faculty Polly has developed a creative producing curriculum for Emerson college students to fully explore at the professional work of Arts Emerson and HowlRound thank you so shall we begin yes indeed so as many of you may already be aware there are all kinds of issues surfacing in theater communities across the nation from as I mentioned earlier shows being shut down questions being raised about who can play what parts who has the right to play what parts what is written and how it might be interpreted or directed so here are some just some questions to get us started how are these questions currently all of the panelists around race, identity, representation coming up in your work and what are the risks and opportunities associated with stepping into that space of controversy or intervention he was not in so he gets to talk first well my theater produced Jesus in India Lloyd says play that was probably the source of controversy it was produced at or it was attempted to be produced at Clarion University and they cast they had an all-white cast when Lloyd's play specifically required two South Asians to be in the cast and he subsequently pulled the rights and was then thrown into this big controversy accused of racism and reverse racism by this community and Clarion University the president of Clarion University hired a press agent to put stuff out in the press about Lloyd and that became a huge issue and then we got hate mail at the theater because we produced it but but we embraced that opportunity so I think we didn't shy away from that rather we engaged we friends of Lloyd contacted the dramatist guild and had them issue a statement supporting Lloyd and the playwrights rights we also had TCG the theater communications group in American theater issue a statement supporting Lloyd and there was a petition signed by theater practitioners and playwrights from around the country supporting Lloyd still we didn't get to engage with Clarion University because they didn't want us to however it did start this big conversation around what is appropriate color conscious casting and what are the playwrights rights and how malleable is ethnicity in theater is it something that you can play around with those are important I think important issues that percolated up because of that controversy and has remained with us today other thoughts other folks I am super aware of every conversation I have now regarding race and theater and I wasn't a few years ago so I think that's one obvious and simple way that I have race conscious appropriate or inappropriate casting has come into my consciousness I had the experience of being cast in Brandon Jacob Jenkins appropriate last fall playing a southern matriarch and I remember talking with the director and saying can we do that is anyone going to believe it is it going to skew the play in a way that the playwright didn't intend and she sort of generously said just do your job but I do remember just shut up and do your job you know Brandon has he has to see all the headshots of actors who were in his shows and I remember having mine sent off with the pool and thinking if he doesn't want me in the show I won't be in the show I wasn't anxious about it I thought that's the playwright's prerogative I was very aware of it I was really aware of the whole process and then I felt like what I needed to do was become part of this family however that meant so I think I'm talking specifically about my experience as a performer I have another set of experiences as a playwright I'm very aware of all the Latino characters I create I know their background I know where they're from I know why they belong in the play why their voice is important I don't always have actors of color characters of color and I'm clocking now that sometimes I'm less interested in knowing everything about the characters who aren't which is interesting and probably a flaw in how I work those are two things that occur off the top of my head which both have to do with being inside the process as opposed to what Ralph is talking about being outside the process I think there's differences between those two things there's this sense as conversations within the theater or outside of the theater start to percolate there's approach avoidance if you will we should have the conversation know the conversations uncomfortable to what extent do you think that the risks whether they're personal professional you know kind of limit the conversation people actually having conversations around race as they think about what their work is who they're casting I think actors for one thing avoid that conversation because they don't have agency in the theater they seek work same with playwrights and directors they're all looking for these theaters to hire them so confronting these theaters about their practices is a scary thing and it is a risk that's why I think it's taken time for the kind of activism that we need around these issues to sort of coagulate but it is now I think is the time where people are saying enough we're backing our claims with numbers we can now go to a theater and say in your entire season you hire two actors of colors and 38 white actors but yet you receive state funding in which case and in your mission you state that you are an equal opportunity employer well that's a law but in your mission you state you seek diversity I don't see it in your stages in the last 5 seasons and we had actors google the seasons of 30 theaters every year and look up every single actor and then google their photographs to see if they're an actor of color or identify as an actor of color because actors equity will not release that information you cannot get a diversity report from actors equity about how many people of actors a theater hired for the season because it would create a riot that's how bad it is so in New York 2% of all roles available went to Asian-American actors where the Asian-American population of New York is nearing 12% 6 or 8% went to black actors and so the rest of that are white actors we're talking about economics here a livelihood that's what makes this thing a real issue it's a rights issue but it's also equal opportunity and so we need to hold these theaters accountable to that and that's what we're trying to do and I hear in what you're saying the challenge of operating at the level of individual decisions being made in casting as well as all of this operating within a structure designed to achieve to perpetuate what it has created so you end up in this space where the intervention at the individual level will never have the kind of impact that the intervention at the systems level could or might have and the risk is high because the leaders of institutions theater institutions, cultural institutions in the United States are predominantly white and male that's why it's a risk absolutely and not only that but I think the as are the boards of directors most of those companies what is so exciting about I think this moment in time is that outside of the world of social media is it used to be that all those decisions could sort of be made quietly in behind closed doors and I think that that's really what's exploded in the last couple of years and that is no longer possible it's no longer possible to kind of get away with that the reality that the demographics in this country have shifted dramatically and the leadership demographics in the theater have not shifted dramatically and so there's this incredible dissonance and I think inside that dissonance is a tremendous amount of frustration and anger and a lack of equity that we now must address and it's actually happening honestly in the work we do with HowlRound we get a pitch almost every single day about some inequality, some injustice some event like this I think we read about it almost every week there's some event that comes up like this and so it's really we're at this kind of explosive critical moment where we actually must change not just the practice but the infrastructure that perpetuates the practice I'd also like to add there's, I think this is where it gets tricky for me because we have to acknowledge that a lot of this happens by choice right, there are institutions that are making these decisions there are companies that are making these choices and so how do you not only dismantle the policy and the practice well you can put Institute A let's bring in all female play rates of color for X season or let's this show in this particular way but that still doesn't necessarily address the source issue which is someone is making a choice to present the world in this singular way and so how do you then start to undo whomever is making that choice and that leadership position, that board position I wonder could be called into question in the real way, in the way that it is perhaps high stakes for artists of color by way of livelihood is there a way to kind of start addressing this by way of audience participation right, allowing the audience to say this is something that's important to us this is how we're going to prove that it's important to us and we're going to make sure that our dollars kind of count and have an impact if it's not, if it's a theater that I love but I don't love their practices how do I do something that can actually have a bottom line effect? San Jose Rep a pretty big regional theater closed last year because they didn't have the audiences and they are in one of the richest counties in America in Silicon Valley but they were doing Hello Dolly and all these other all these other musicals and yet the community is made up 50% of single people below 30 these are these and a lot of them a lot of them immigrants from India, from China working in the computer industry none of them saw that theater as relevant to their life so in making those kinds of decisions the audience does respond the community does respond and say you are not relevant to me and they closed what's your audience at my yee? 50% Asian 50% not it's a mix I think in the beginning we were probably 70% Asian and as we went along we just brought into the New York theater community and the thing what's nice is we also don't have the silos of Japanese plays only attracting Japanese audiences so it's a mix which is nice it's nice I think educating the audience and getting the audience to buy in is huge I mean I know in the Boston community with the Wimberley and starting a program at the Huntington of doing world premieres or first or second productions in the theater in the south end there's been a huge buy in from the audience and I was talking with Charles Hoglund about the geometry there some of our largest financial financially successful plays productions in that space over these 12-15 years that's been open plays by women of color local women of color Lydia Diamond, Kristin Greenwich me it's both the buy-in sorry it's both the buy-in both the buy-in from the audience these are people from our community and the fact that plays by women and plays by women of color can be financially viable right this is a model it's not you're not doing a favor to these artists by doing their work right you're not setting aside one portion of your programming where you you know you're gonna lose money right but you you got to check off that NEA box yeah right it's actually it's a financially it is an incentive for those producers you know San Jose or wherever to both cultivate their local artists and cultivate their audience to hold those artists close and look at the artists who are telling stories that are representative of the larger community but the diversifying of the audience is huge and incredibly necessary and and there's expensive and there's a lot of issues around that as well access yeah I also think sometimes that diversity is treated as a concession by these theaters instead of an incentive it's also they treat them as one-off so that if you do a Latino play you expect the Latino community to come but they if they don't then you blame the Latino you know Latino artists saying you're not a viable person but it's you have to reach you have to engage the community you have to keep doing this program programmatically and not not as a one-off like I you mentioned choice you know I the the the center theater group Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles is in a community that is over 50% Latino but look at the programming of that theater where is where are the Latino plays it's insane it's insane and I don't have a problem naming theaters noticed so Ralph you have a long history of creating opportunities for Asian-American representation on stage and yet somehow it seems like the the theater just woke up to some of these issues that culturally specific theaters have been talking about addressing working on for a long time what what are your thoughts about this kind of parallel universe where you've been doing the work and oh wow this is an issue suddenly surfaces yeah it bubbles up every now and then and you it always sort of catches you a surprise but then I look at this as a civil rights issue it's a fight for equal rights and those kinds of movements are protracted they are over a long time I'm I come into this in sort of in the middle of of of that movement other people had done this before me and the goal is to keep passing that torch until until you see that day until the dream is that the dream is here you know I dream a dream and and that's how I look at it because otherwise it will just defeat you if you let if you if you look at it as these kind of huge obstacles that are thrown in your way every year or so but yeah you keep going and I think you work harder even you work even harder to get to get that message across and and you do it and you do it you prove it by putting up place that that don't suck in theater you don't self-marginalize by doing bad plays so I am holding everyone in our company you can't do a bad play you have to be better than everyone around you it's amazing how the the discourse dynamics around this issue models replicates exactly the issues around race in hiring not it's not okay just to be good it has to be superior so the standards are even raised because you know what what the consequences are yeah if they're not so what so what what are the implications for folks like you Polly who as a curator you know how do you encourage authentic artists driven representation of communities of color in a way that's responsible how do folks in in that role do that work well I think the it feels to me like the the role of the curator historically has been so much about you know things that are a reflection of you know me as the curator you know so that it's about what I like and my taste and and I feel like I don't know I just feel like that era of curation is passing by and of way that is a relief to me because I actually don't want to take responsibility for deciding what everybody should think is good art and so I feel like the I think the the role that that we have to take on in the in the curation is is really you know it's about it's a ton of listening it's about listening to communities you know and neighborhoods it's about traveling you know nationally and internationally and really being aware of what's out there I think there's some way in which you know if you're not looking you're not gonna find it and and so there's always that excuse of oh I don't I couldn't find that or I couldn't cast that part or I couldn't and I'm always my always my question is well how hard did you look because you know like we you know we had it we've had a really incredible experience in the work of Holla round to be partnering with the Latino theater Commons over the last four years almost now and I can't tell you the amount of incredible Latino work that's happening around the country and it's been happening and you know one of the one of the things that you know happened to me personally was you know as I started working with the company I was like oh my god I can't believe how many things I didn't know about until I started working with the Commons and when I started working with the Latino theater Commons I you know I I actually discovered I had known the artist but I was like one of the great ensembles in our history in America is the Latino theater company and I didn't know their work and suddenly I go out to LA and I'm like this is some of the finest work I've ever seen and I've been in the theater you know many years at that point and so I know I wasn't looking hard enough and you know we're we're bringing Latino theater company here at the end of the season with the wonderful piece and that so it's I think it's you know you have to actually think outside what you already know and I think in weird way we're trained often in the work to refine our aesthetic or shrink our aesthetic and I think the work is to actually expand our sense of the world and and so I think the work is out there the artists are out there the stories are out there and it's our job to be listening and looking and finding so so Melinda as a playwright who has written range of culturally specific characters how do you approach this complicated work of casting of the casting process and how specific are you you mentioned earlier you know writing Latino characters how specific are you and are there circumstances where where fluidity and casting is comfortable acceptable makes sense useful so my place Sonya flu has two characters who are Jewish in the first act and Cuban in the second act right so you can't appropriately cast that right I mean you probably I mean you probably could but you know and I I was aware when I wrote those characters that with all intentionality we were going to cast actors in those parts because the thrill for me is seeing actors literally transform in front of your eyes it's I love to see multiple roles played by the same actor I love to see very quick transformations I I want to see actors reaching and stretching I want to see them using huge language I want to see them juggle on stage I want you know we talked about magic right for me that's that's my hook but the other thing is is that I write very specific women with a very particular cultural background and you know when we're casting Cuban women you know or Cuban American women and I see I have a whole day with incredible actresses and I know within I know within one minute if her background is Mexican her background is Argentinian her background is Puerto Rican and in some cases you can't tell but but I know it because it's my culture and it's my language I had mentioned earlier you know I saw protection of disgraced at Huntington and I did not know watching the play what the background of the actor playing Amir was I didn't know if that actor was Pakistani or if he was Iraqi or if he was Saudi Arabian I did not know his background he was the role he convinced me he was that part and I went I suspended disbelief and I entered that world I bet though that the playwright knows I bet that that playwright knew right so for me as an audience member because it's not my history I might not have that degree of sophistication so when I'm looking to cast a role where I know that woman it's everyone who casts a role you don't you know it's all about compromise right and so you hope to cast the best actor who gets closest to the role and almost always it means someone who has the Latino background but you know in the case of Sonia Flu it didn't I had two extraordinary men who transformed into you know two extraordinary Jewish men who transformed into two extraordinary Cuban men you know I I'm not gonna hold out for the you know one-legged beauty queen with you know who's nearsighted and can juggle because that's the part that I wrote I think it's a job of an actor to convince the audience you know that said I think the issue of access is incredibly important you have to be really practical in the theater so if we're casting a show where we have access to actors from New York I'm not gonna consider anyone who doesn't come really close to my ideal if you're casting a tiny little show in a theater in you know this middle of the US if I'm part of that you know I'm gonna have more flexibility with it we have aspirations and then we have to get the show up right opening night note doesn't change so I believe in the voice of the playwright I believe in the power of the playwright to put forward their parameters I will always stand behind that you know but I have concerns about theaters and communities that don't have a lot of people of color not taking on plays by writers of color because they fear they can't cast them I would not want my plays to be not to be produced in Kansas or well there's plenty of Latinos in Kansas but maybe not a lot of Latino performers so I you know I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't want to shut myself out of that dialogue with an audience but again that I'm one person and I'm only speaking for myself I think so much of it has to do with the context that gets wrapped around it though and that's what you can't control unfortunately I hear your point but I I also get nervous contextually about you know wherever you are and you feel like well I don't have that person and you may not have that person because you legitimately don't have that person or you may not have that person because you haven't done your due diligence to actually find that person or to cultivate that person and grow that person and invest in that person and so making sure that you have done your work on that and I think is important before you make the leap to say well I don't have and so I'm just going to go ahead and do X but I'm not producing my play right right someone else is producing it you know it's like you someone you like you said someone picked you right and so what do you do with that right you have to there's there is an element of faith every time every time your play you know or leaves your backyard but you know this is the different so you know playwright actor producer director right right in terms of the different hats that you wear when you're thinking about these things so I'm just gonna say and I just want to say that that's what so you know kind of really was unique about what I think Lloyd did and Katori did as writers Katori Hall was wrote a play called the mountaintop and it was cast with an African-American Martin Luther King and a white Martin Luther King and they were supposed to switch off or something and then the African-American Martin Luther King left and so she also closed that show down and Lloyd closed his show down and I think it's a remarkable moment in our history when the playwright is empowered to say actually no I that's not what I meant and that's not what I'm gonna do and I feel like that's a real that's a very important moment in our history for you know artists to be beginning to control the destiny of their work in a way it feels like a really important moment and to make that decision and that not all artists are gonna make the same decisions and and same decision and so it's an interesting time it's you know in I don't know Rob you you know you I can't think of a number of time where it's happened that many times in a year yeah just the year before I think I don't think Stephen Adlegurgus's play mother with a hat was done in Connecticut with not a Latino actor and he didn't find out until during the run and in which case he had this big you know public spat with the with the director but yes we also recently the Mikado in New York by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan players was shut down because the Asian community in New York organized and engaged that theater and said we don't want you doing yellow face anymore and they pulled that production including the national tour of that and and and did another did the Pirates of Vents as instead which doesn't require Asians it feels like the thing that feels of the moment is that we are now far more interconnected than we've ever been like I feel like I'm able to have a grasp on or know more about what's happening in terms of theater on the other side of the country without physically being present in a way that I've never experienced before and I think a part of the kind of what's bubbling up it's not just kind of the stuff that's in the air about race and representation but also how we're all able to wrap ourselves around it from all of these different angles howl round yeah absolutely yeah absolutely so as I mentioned we're sitting here on the set of an octaroon and the playwright Brandon Jacobs Jenkins intentionally asks actors and requires of actors inhabiting other races how summer how do you create an environment that makes that possible and what would you say the conditions are that allow that kind of you know the people in place of in a way that is you know both true to the script responsive to actors convolutes things for the audience and all the all the right ways what would you say what in your process what how does that work it's it's really it's it's sensitivity it's it's full of complication sometimes it's full of humor sometimes it's full of tears so this is the second play that I've directed by Brandon Jacobs Jenkins the first was neighbors these are they're two very different plays but they both use so an octaroon you'll see black face white face and no other term it's all unfortunate red face and it's very pointed you're watching people prepare to jump into the world of the play in in neighbors the concede is that they're two families living next door to each other one the father is a professor of classics Greek literature I believe who also happens to be a black man married to a white woman and their child and they have new neighbors and those new neighbors are the Coon family and it's Mammy and zip Coon and oh my gosh I'm sorry I'm looking on the girl's name right now but so they're essentially traveling minstrels right and so they come in to the space and they're already in blackface so you're watching black actors in blackface the experience of walking actors through that blackface experience versus the race face experience in an octaroon are two totally different things because the context are so different it is one it's it's challenging because you're asking you're asking someone to do something that is so uncomfortable on so many levels and you can't escape and you can't deny the actors personal vulnerabilities around that it has to be addressed and then to it adds this hole in another incredible layer to the play in and of itself so it it's a process and it's not anything that anyone goes into easily and no one has the luxury to not think about the history that they're bringing in with them when they do it so what's the extent of the of the director's responsibility in in the rehearsal setting to allow for the cultural realities of all of the folks who might be in a cast to be fully respected to acknowledge to bring the you know the context with them their lived experience with them into the creative process to make space to talk about it to not ignore it to sit in the room and say all right we're all used to seeing all of these faces and now we're gonna do something we're gonna alter those faces and we need to talk about what that feels like how you're gonna take that in what that how that might shift your experience and create space for people to have whatever reaction they need to have in order for them to move through it because you have to in my mind walk with so much sensitivity because it's not just about what that show needs what that part requires but it's also again what that actor is bringing to that particular moment and for some it's it's theater it's stage makeup and we're playing and in neighbors it was quite a different experience. So as you think about this kind of general topic this evening how would you say the landscape is changing around what stories are told and who gets to tell them are the rules should there be rules? You just know when it's bad. Well you know I've been in an interesting experience as I've laid around this question of who gets to tell you know whose stories and and it's it's really it's so complicated and and you know I keep thinking about the stories I want to that I want to be told and so for example you know I've had an artistic director be in touch with me several times about doing a play that has six transgender characters and he's having trouble casting all the parts with transgender actors and it's written by a non transgender writer and can can he do the play and hearing about the lack of the lack of authenticity by because it's a playwright who's not transgender and then if one character isn't and what does that mean if one actor isn't and and like so what are the what are the rules so to speak and in a way I feel like I mean I think there are some cases that are are more clear-cut and then I think there are other moments that it feels less clear and the rules feel less clear to me and you know he's calling me and saying can I still produce the play and I'm getting a lot of flack about even taking it on because it's by you know a non transgender writer and and you know again I don't know if this makes me like a moderate Democrat or something but you know my response to him was you have to do the play because even if it's not you know perfect I mean you have one is you have to go to all of the effort of finding the right people for those parts so you have to do all of your work right and then and then I think we we need the stories right so for a person to for a young transgender person to come into that audience and see anybody that remotely looks like them on stage will be life-changing you know and it's our job in the theater to create those moments for people to see themselves as embodied you know and as real I mean that's what the imaginary that's the that's the great magic of the theater right so for me you know I was like wow I say go for it I mean you know because you're doing all the things that you're supposed to be doing and you're doing your your work here and and and it will be the work will be imperfect and so I think the tough part is you know we live in a you know in a particularly in a social media culture that doesn't allow for many mistakes doesn't allow for much imperfection and I think we're fumbling imperfectly and feeling at least I know for myself feeling very fearfully about what it means to fumble imperfectly about how we do this work and and so what I'm I guess what I'm hoping you know as we think about this is how we come to it with incredible rigor and simultaneously incredible generosity you know to one another so I think it's both those things I don't think it's letting each other off the hook for not doing our work and I also think it's having some kind of generosity to know we're going to do that work imperfectly as we try to sort these issues out at a really complicated time and to talk about it yep and to talk about it as frankly and transparently as you possibly can right so not only should that you know do the work and then do the work but then also have the conversation that expresses like well this is how we came to that decision and this is what it looks like and this is what it means and how did it affect you like to have those conversations in a meaningful way feels really important to kind of walk alongside that choice to you know try to go the distance not be able to go all the way there but at least talk about the decision process I hate this question I actually really upsets me so much about authenticity like I just it makes me insane because nothing nothing that I've ever written is authentic I mean I make up stuff and and nobody you know I mean what I don't even know what that means it makes me it makes me feel like like I will be silenced for fordoing what I do by some you know I don't know the social media whatever thing I can't even talk I'm so upset and I think at least for the create you know at least for the people who write plays and the people who who inhabit those bodies on stage right who come to the theater and put on costumes and engage with an audience which is different than what the how producers program a season but there is no authenticity I mean even your autobiography is a story that you make up in order to achieve an end and that depends on your aesthetic as an artist and it depends on what audience are trying to reach and it depends you know I'm gonna tell my story differently to a different room and and I think I chafe against anyone telling me what I'm allowed what story I'm allowed to tell I violently so if we burst this bubble of the fact that you know we're not it can't be authentic because it is story it is you know representation of a representation and you can add the multiple layers how do you then address the complexity of issues because they kind of coexist so so what are your thoughts about how you engage folks around these issues in a way that doesn't do what you feel well what you're reacting I think you write you you have a lot of different people writing stories and you produce them like you know at your theater right or here and you you bring a community of different kinds of storytellers like company one I mean that's a diff so you talk about that right that's different it's different than yes it is different in terms of I mean I too chafe against authenticity it's also the word used by the Gilbert Sullivan Society to justify their production of the Mikado because it was written to be authentically Japanese played authentically by white people so we had to engage that and we had to engage them and explain to them the history of how Gilbert and Sullivan came upon the Japanese influence in that that there was a Japanese exhibition in London and they saw a nice Japanese print and they decided they wanted to do something about Japan it was it was props and costumes that inspired Gilbert and Sullivan to write about Japan they had never even been to Japan so that kind of appropriation I you know it's it's it's something we chafe against and certainly be held to authenticity even in our own work I don't believe that there's anything I mean I don't know who defines it first of all whose version of authentic are we talking about so in in in you know the experiences of our writers as varied as they are you know that the when we do work and it happens in a space and interacts with an audience that atmosphere is authentic for me that engagement with the audience that's the authentic experience and how how the text translates across the footlights that's what you're after I think real engagement and and and I go by one rule no for whom you make and know why you make and for whom you make I think that's the golden rule that I've followed in running the theater company that was a good segue you know the footlights the magic that happens across the footlights so we've been talking kind of within the theater but it is in the magic that happens across the footlights where the interaction really occurs so does it matter to audiences do these internal conversations matter do you care is it of interest to you who does what and who gets to do what do you feel invested concerned distressed about these controversies so now it's the panels I mean it's the audiences opportunity to chat with our panelists you will note that there are two mics one stage left one stage right here and we ask that you come on down and pose your questions at the mic so everyone can hear you and so folks on how around can hear you as well so questions for the panel you must be brave I have a question yeah for Ralph so well it's it's actually for it's for all three which is struck by the injustice of a playwright needing to come in and confront a producer about about production choices it's that how you know that we talked about the power and balance and and I feel so wrong that you know the playwright needs to be so vigilant and I just wondering if you guys had any thoughts on that well you know I have the Wong kids was done in Iowa and Lloyd gave the rights and they actually rented our entire set in costumes and then we assume that they understood what Wong kids meant until we saw the production photos and they were all white it was an all-white production that happened a year before a year before the Jesus in India incident so Lloyd has experience right with not being vigilant right and so in fact he wasn't that vigilant with Jesus in India he didn't find out until they posted cast photos he didn't know and at that point Lloyd was also Lloyd had a play in New York running off Broadway about Charlie Chan in which he has a white guy playing yellow face so he was in the middle of this kind of racial sensitivity in his head when Jesus in India happened and that's why he felt he could not let that go because it would feel hypocritical after showing this new play in New York then saying well then you know this is fudgeable and so he went in and you know exercises rights and the playwright never gives up his or her rights to her work even if a producer licenses it the playwright owns that material forever and ever and can do whatever he or she pleases with that play so that's the power of the writer thank goodness for that I just want to say there's something to me about the conversation around the authenticity and I completely hear and understand your point of view I think there's a bit of a slippery slope and that people can say well I tried to be authentic but that didn't work out so I did this instead right and what that's actually doing is dishonoring the work of the playwright and I I think we need to make sure and uphold that if a playwright is choosing to be specific as to who is in that story and how that story is happening to that person and whether or not the who that person is has a deep influence on what the story is or not if you say that you have ex-person right that it's the producer's job to figure out how to honor that to the best of their ability no matter what yeah also I just want to say diversity shouldn't be easy it isn't easy you have to work at it and so when people look you know with out around the street for the actors that they need and can't find them there and give up well that's not enough it's not supposed to be easy you're supposed to go out of here it's supposed to be difficult and you have to go out and you have to put out resources if you're committed to diversity and it has to be risky yeah like it's not gonna come in a nice clean package you know it's there's something about discovering new talent from new places right that are not on backstage or not on stage source and if never even come into a theater before there's talent there it can be found it can be grown it can be cultivated you have to do the work to do it yes so from someone who's not in the theater and doesn't really understand the internal workings educate me about attitudes toward playwrights control that are you know maybe we can step away from the third rail of race and gender and that stuff if a playwrights licensing term say I want full control over the cast I'm gonna sit by your shoulder you know that guy's got to be more than 250 pounds this one's hair isn't curly enough you know that was kind of whiny I mean is that is that in the range of reason or is that playwright being way out on the tail of the curve and possible to work with and you know if I guess helping to understand what the what the prevailing attitude is or what you wish the attitude were towards the playwrights control over casting you know separate from the stuff that gets everyone's hair on the back of their neck up around race would help elucidate this a lot for some of us I don't know if I have a great answer when you in your example I think Sam Hunter is his name I think he wrote a play called the whale right about a quote-unquote morally obese man right who's trapped in his apartment now if for some reason there's some director or producing company that cast someone that is 200 pounds in that role they have missed the mark right they're they're missing a point in the storytelling so if the playwright if there's not a mechanism inside that company to say like wait a second we're doing something wrong here or the directors that have that mechanism hopefully the playwright is there within reason right and not just kind of saying oh that person has a green eyelash and I don't want that on my stage right as long as that person isn't being particular in a way that is not in service to the play I think they have every right to work to kind of telling the story if the company is finding it challenging to tell that story and that's what I think so there's an if kind of around that for me and standard dramatist contract and even with the contracts with the agents specify playwright approval over casting it's a collaborative effort you work with your directors you work with to arrive at the right people so that the demands are not unreasonable but the playwright does have a say in the final choices made it oftentimes not a contentious issue because you're all you've been working on this play for a while you're on the same page so so that that that's there and it also depends too on the I mean you know it depends on what production it is like sometimes if it's the 50th production of your play you're much less attached to how it's being cast and how it's being done if it's the first production of your play you're very very hands-on and in the case of even I think you know in Lloyd's case I mean colleges and universities do a lot of plays and often you know playwrights are more and less aware of that so I mean so it really kind of depends on what theater is doing it which production it is to to the degree that how involved and I think in Lloyd's case you know not unusual that he wouldn't be involved until he realized something was awry but there are you know character descriptions on a script and and that is part of the script and part of what you know should be should be followed yeah and but there's also now this move push for playwrights to be specific if they want the characters to be of a certain ethnicity and not to leave it open because the default is always mostly not to go with a white but you know the famous examples Beckett and Mamet especially you know he I know David Mamet will shut down a production if the casting they cast a woman in a role instead of a man right so he won't he he still won't allow that to happen and Beckett has been dead and still can't do Beckett any way you want to do it because the estate will come after you so some playwrights have a long reach yep and some and some don't and some don't yes so I want to actually take it just a little different direction if I could it seems to me that a lot of what's happening in terms of you mentioned that the theater is just waking up to these issues and in some ways the culture is waking up in a different way or we're hearing it differently we're hearing it more I just struck by all the conversation around Cam Newton and around Beyonce at the Super Bowl like wow what happened there but it seems that the part of what we're talking about on this panel these these instances are actually about the fact that the institution of theater hasn't woken up and what's having to happen is the conversation is having to come in such extreme and and maybe on generous but because out of out of enormous frustration over years of no change and so you talk about power you know summer you talk about that who's making the choices and the people who are making the choices haven't changed and what you know that the title of the panel being interrogating whiteness what we're really doing here is politely saying this is what's happening because you as the leadership of the theater haven't changed and I think it could you guys talk a little bit about what that's what the the relationship between these issues and what the you're experiencing in the culture around this and how it has to do with I mean we say this this fragility word but what's what is actually causing the kinds of problems that you're experiencing or that the field is experiencing or we're seeing in the culture as it relates to who has decision and and what is and isn't awake I think it has to do with the retention of power right just wanting to hold on to power voice I'm the person who can make the decision you are not right like it's so steeped in the nastiness of elitism that it's that's that needs to crack open in order for anything to actually feel like it has a lasting long range wide range effect am I think I think too that the assumption of privileges being challenged in a way consistently and probably has to do with the awareness of the national conversation that people do feel empowered to say hey you can't do that anymore whether it's art of individual artists or or audiences saying you know you know you can't do a season without any female playwrights anymore right so the the privilege of choosing a season the privilege of producing this show the way you want to the privilege of casting who you feel like you want to cast I think that's being interrogated on a much broader scale yeah but I yes the people that make the choices make those choices I don't think that they acknowledge their own biases and and so keep making the same choices but they they continue to make those choices because there's a market for those choices so and it needs to be not top-down revolution but sort of global the audience also has has a role in to play in in changing the dynamics in theater you have to demand of your institutions that they reflect the community you live in you got to put that's that's that will change theater faster than you can say theater but I think the ugliness of it is that there are some people who don't want to see that chain absolutely right what that change indicates is the way that you're comfortable sitting in the theater that's right because there's someone who's not going to know your theater rules right and it's going to make you want to turn around and shush someone yeah you have no right to shush that person right but so it's going to shift the way you consume your art and all of a sudden your thing is under attack in a way that you may not be ready to kind of release to younger people people who are different than you etc etc and I think that also has to be examined because you're exactly right the audience is a part of the machine that's kind of keeping things status quo and their stake in the game is well this is my thing and this is how I know my thing that's right and this is how I want my thing yeah but does it but also is it isn't the country itself isn't ready to I don't that's this has been one of the biggest you know under current of American society for I don't know how long and and nobody's really talking about race and ethnicity honestly at least not in the mitten not in the flyby states and so though that will until that happens they don't want the change and it will always be this kind of bicostal well we were also very comfortable you know we as a nation and believing that we were in a post racial post racial error yeah you know so wow people really have to keep talking about raise yeah you know can't we just bask in the glow of its oh it's fine we've made progress yes well the raucous president that did it magically Polly were you gonna say I just was gonna I just quickly I was gonna say you know we're an art form that has prided ourselves on our exclusivity and I think that's been at the heart of how we formed ourselves as a as a as an art form as institutions we have a whole history of you know the higher ticket price the better seat the more you donate the better you're treated I mean it's a and I think Ralph keeps saying I mean it's a it's a human rights issue and you know who did the arts belong to and I think we have a history in this country of the arts you know not belonging to everyone but belonging to a kind of you know a kind of exclusive club and I think and I think you know the people that get to our privilege to enjoy that exclusivity don't like giving it up you know and so and that's no you know that that's we have a history of that in this country and so I think the theater is a reflection of that and that's really that's what has to change is that that sense of the art form as exclusive yes yes so I'm hoping that each of the panelists might talk a little bit about what your vision what your dream what your goal is what is it that we're striving for in this effort that we're talking about is it a colorblind society in which black performers can perform in a white role women can perform in a male role is that the vision is it a different vision from that and I'm asking the question in the context of race pride and those sort of sentiments that I have when sometimes I go to the theater and I see some things and it even it either evokes race pride or makes me very angry I had the good fortune of seeing an octaroon and there's a wonderful wonderful scene where the lead actor puts on white face the black actor that puts on white face and I've been thinking about that play for the whatever we can have since I have seen it and I said to myself a how would I have felt if that were a white person putting on black face or how would how does a white person feel about seeing a black person put on white face so I really would like the panelists to just sort of talk about what are we striving for what are we moving towards here who would like to jump into that I will then everyone will forget what I said it's great so so I'm gonna tell the truth about myself a little bit and I think tell the truth about my company company one theater a little bit for me I don't think I have never actually except for one moment which definitely coincides with our president Barack Obama his you know the first election when all the votes were in and I was like you know watching at a bit of like party it felt like a huge event and and then the poll numbers came in and Barack Obama's president and I got a text from my dad saying welcome home and that just like it landed with me because I often don't I often don't feel American if that makes any sense and and I I would love to feel a sense of feeling American and also being able to feel proud of what that means and feeling that it's inclusive and feeling that it's not at me needing to kind of to label myself African-American because you're you're there but you're not quite there right and that's not negating my blackness right that's just being able to say that I was born here I am of here for me in terms of the theater and for for company one theater I'd love to see us embark on this kind of the new frontier of American theater meaning that there is an opportunity for us to see produce engage with right develop consume as audience members new work that has there's a multiplicity of voices there's a range of whose stories gets told but those stories and the range of those stories aren't predicated on the skin color of the person who's telling them but they can still be American stories so that I can I can find myself represented on stage and not necessarily know that this play is going to be some sort of historical piece about my blackness or some sort of future prediction about my blackness or something about the plight of my blackness but it can I can just be a person in a living room drama that does not negate my blackness but is also not centered on it and not because I don't want my blackness to be included but I want it to be included in a way that whiteness is included and therefore not at the center of everything right and that's a risky thing for me to say personally because I'm about to use a phrase that I don't know if I believe in black theater quote unquote is totally my jam it's what I do it's what I love I love telling those stories right so it's not about erasure but it's about understanding that there is there's an opportunity for us to press this thing forward in a way that is generating work that is powerful and strong and evocative and representative of all without needing to necessarily be so plot driven about what it is on my skin at that current time of the storytelling that's just something that interests me because I find that we don't have it company one theater produced a Ray Pomont Motts Edith can shoot things and hit them and there was a whole lot of crap that happened because the the the story centers on to Philip brother and sister to Filipino kids and someone reviewed it and said well but that didn't have anything to do with about you know being Filipino I didn't talk about what it meant for them to like go to school and be Filipino well that wasn't the point that was that was not the point that was not the story that was telling and and how how could you negate that for your own well I was seeking this information out of this play and you delivered that and therefore I find that problematic that's that's a really tough place for us to still be I think sorry I'd like to see 50% of the theaters in this country run by women 50% of the managing directors women I'd like to see more actors of color coming out of graduate programs in directing acting theater management it's a real problem the lack of opportunities for training young people to go into the theater and people aren't going to go into the theater unless they can make a living at it and I think we have to be offering our women our actors of color our young talent ways that they can survive you know television is so far ahead of the curve right now I mean you know what you see on television you don't see in the theater and I think that's disgraceful and you know is it 2046 Latinos 50% of the population sure yeah half let's let's go for half and and more specifically where is that handsome man who asked the question yeah I would I would love to be able to go to the theater and see a an absolutely colorblind street car name desire and not think about it so I think I would like to see access for actors of color in every role and women and that's what I think I would like to see I would like to see I would like to see equity that's what we're asking for stakes equal partnership in what happens to our to the future of this rubric that we might call American theater I don't even know if that exists but we need to be stakeholders in in whatever that is and currently we are not we are on the margins with other people deciding where to steer this ship and us going hey hey hey hey we're drowning and that's been that's been the case for decades of sometimes I think we even self-marginalize we self-marginalize because it's the only way we're gonna get noticed we have to say I am an Asian American theater company therefore I should be part of the conversation because otherwise you won't have Asian American theaters part of the conversation I have to self-identify as an other company so I don't want to do that anymore I want to be part I want to be at the table when those things are being decided that's equity yeah I mean I guess I don't know what to say I mean you all said it lovely and I don't think about odd I guess I don't think I don't think about that question is like what I want for the theater I think about what I want for the world and I think about what I want for the country and so I just think I want to live in a more just culture you know and more equitable and I feel like the theater you know telling stories in a way that represents who we are as a nation is is a contribution that the theater can make you know and so I guess I don't want any percentage this is I shouldn't say this because it's being live-streamed but I'm just gonna say it anyway I don't want any percentage of the country to believe you know like one word out of Donald Trump's mouth you know what I mean so like I feel like I'm actually trying to like create that world and that's what I'm kind of interested in and so I think having these kind of conversations and and really creating a theater that looks like the country that is respectful of the journey and the struggle of what it has been to be of other genders and other races and other ethnicities is this you know is the story of America and I want to make theater that's that story you know so I guess that's so that's kind of what I feel like the vision is in terms of the work we're gonna move into rapid fire response because I see we have some folks backing up here so if you'll ask your question hi thank you very much for your time my name is Mara Melinda's previous student by the way and on the one hand I champion new works because I think that's such an exciting thing to be part of and I've been blessed to have been part of several new works here in Boston and to give embodiment to some of those characters but I also have a fondness for classical works works that have a history behind them Shakespeare I'm a big Shakespeare geek and I love it but I don't see a lot of other actors or directors who look like me and I'm just wondering in your work how you engaged with grace or gender or class issues and classical works is that Mara was that directed at one of us in particular yeah do you do new works only I don't deal in the classics I mean you know I mean I think you know I mean there's nothing better than taking the classical works and turning them upside down I feel like you know there are directors like Yael Farber out of South Africa who's doing that we've had we didn't her miss Julie you know reimagining entirely string Bruce miss Julie and then you know the us I don't know if you saw if any of you came to the Asangwa ensemble but the South African company doing Carmen doing midsummer night's dream and it's completely different in the rhythms of the culture and the reality and so for me that's as important of work as I mean a lot of us here have a lot of experience in the world of new works but that work as is as important and I think that's why Hamilton is the show right I mean it totally reimagined it's not it's a new work I realized but it's taking an old story and making it entirely fresh and and so I think taking old stories and figuring out how they are reflective of this this this time is you know I feel like we've done a lot of that work at arts Emerson and that is as much a part of you know as much a part of the work as doing the new place you know OSF yeah Oregon Shakespeare Festival is doing the translation project and they have commissioned contemporary writers and assigned them each of plays to translate with very specific parameters and a lot of those writers commissioned are writers of color also Desdemona Chang is at this in this season's slate for OSF to direct Winterstale so and and Ed Iskandar who is also a director in New York has been has been dealing with classics as a director of color but not enough yeah I I personally think it's a huge waste of time to do classics as they were done yeah I don't see any I mean I love the reimagining whether it I mean even the colored museum right the Huntington did the colored museum last season the season before which you know it's a contemporary classic reimagined so there's lots of contemporary there contemporary classics and there are the Shakespeare and I think it's often about bringing in a director of color that that's what gets the thing ignited so yeah okay great thank you I have a question about what summer said about the audience being part of the mechanism I attended the press performance of an octaroon it was hilarious great show very funny very thought-provoking and imagine my surprise when after the intermission I noticed about a third of the audience had walked out and I thought this was very important and interesting not just like shocking but interesting and I read reviews of the show and nobody talked about it and you folks have talked about you know bringing playwrights to task about doing the work but being generous producers of shows doing the work and being generous how can you encourage audiences to do the work and be as generous that's a great question well I think we encourage it in a lot of ways there's only you can bring a horse to water right so we work really hard at company one to wrap a lot of dramaturgical material around everything that we do right and so we have a really fantastic double team of dramaturgs Ramona and Haley who are there and they create a lot of contextual support for the play right so people have an opportunity to read things about the play to watch a video about the play to come into the lobby read more materials talk to someone there's someone who stands out there and says look you know if you want to talk about the play here I am talk about the play so a lot of that work happened right if you are coming into the space and you're not quite sure what you're going to see and so the and I'm gonna blow a little bit of it for some people but you come in it's not major it's not major it's not major but you know you come in and you have a seat and someone does the curtain speech and they leave the room and then nothing happens that's disarming right automatically people are like well something's wrong right because you said thanks and enjoy and I'm not enjoying right automatically something is off right and that's on purpose and then you're met with a barrage of f bombs like right and if you have a certain Constitution and that doesn't fly you're already shutting down to what the experience could be right and then I won't say what it is but there's a moment where there's sound that is loud and brash and hits you with the n-word about you know I don't know in four four time essentially right consistently about 35 times in two minutes if you if you aren't willing to stay and fight and engage and want to have the experience you're not going to have it quite frankly that's that is an agonizing thing right because I am proud to say that I am part of making all of those decisions right and I stand by all of them but it's really difficult when the people who need the work the most aren't willing to wrestle with it and that's a part of the challenge of changing that status quo the challenge of changing the audience and how the audience consumes their art and a part of kind of shifting the dynamics so for those people who were like I can't and I won't so I'm leaving probably as they're leaving they're complaining about what they're leaving and maybe why that even got made but I promise you or I'd like to believe that they're still thinking about it and so even if they aren't able to stay in the fight all of the rounds that little bit of fight that they were in will have an impact hopefully and that's what matters the most but that it sucks it sucks but you also that sort of thing takes time it takes time to shift to shift that constitution yes we're I'm gonna try to get through those hi everybody I really appreciated hearing each of your visions around what you'd like to see the theater become in terms of being able to tell a lot of different stories using people from different race class and gender backgrounds I think one of the things that I have a really hard time trying to figure out is how do you escape the legacy the structural legacy of how people's humanity is defined whether they're women are black in terms that are very defined by the white dominant culture so you have a white voice or you have the white as it comes to race the white voice of the white gaze that defines who you are and so those stories really are repeating even though they're using black actors or these that you're being defined in a way that is structurally based versus based on somebody's humanity somebody's humanity has really been redefined based on the white dominant culture and that legacy is still with us so I just want to know how do you want to how do you escape that in terms of really telling stories that are really true to humanity across a lot of different spectrums. Our response to that is to put together a writer's lab whose mandate is to return that gaze and to speak from their own truths and they're all writers of color and so they're that lens that they see the world in is different and their voices are empowered they have their characters their characters that they write characters of color have agency in the story and they're not these caricatures and two-dimensional tropes that have existed in the past I think that's our solution to it is to bring writers the generative writers into the mix to try to overcome that legacy. Last two questions here we have two more people and then I see Kevin's getting ready to give me the hook. Sure too so speaking on the point of the change can't come without change in the leadership that made me think in the same vein this topic in the educational setting so how what's gonna be different what are we teaching our young people so what is the right my right to tell someone else's story what I think about how transformative the learning in the situation where I'm working on a show can be in the sense that I can learn about someone else and other people so how do we how do we handle that what do we teach our young people to listen empathetically and understand and speak to someone else's story without impressing our own bias into that. I don't know I I mean we all know the arts slashed in schools there's no time to you know kids don't have art class they don't have music they don't study you know I mean I don't I mean that's a I made a joke coming in here that I felt like I felt like I was coming in as Hillary Clinton into a Bernie Sanders rally because of my you know but I feel like Bernie Sanders where I say you know really really the end of thinking the public schools it really really needs a revolution that's very focused on it arts curriculum and that's so lame such a lame answer to such a perceptive question I don't know. I think it's a live process I think it's something you you will struggle you you should be struggling with and asking throughout your life because the world changes your perception changes you grow your life experience changed so that's a question you should ping yourself by forever. Yeah we we talk in a class the creative producing class that we do here you know there's a wonderful thinker named Charles Baxter who talks about imaginative empathy and the ability you know to have imaginative empathy I think is the purpose of I mean to me that's the purpose of learning and teaching is to teach that in especially in the theater and to the only way we will you know we will solve some of the problems that we've talked about tonight is if we can you know truly begin to see ourselves in you know in the in the spaces where other people live right and so that imaginative empathy is I think to me it's the it's that's what education should should be about and I hope that's you know how we keep thinking about what stories we tell and how we tell them through that lens. Exposure you might wrestle with how but the exposure is so important. Last question of the evening. I'm not exactly sure how to articulate this question but as an audience member I sometimes feel uncomfortable with especially actresses of color I guess I don't really know how to explain it I feel like it's a very maybe this is more in film but a lighter complexion dominates both theater and film and it makes me uncomfortable because I feel like it alters a mainstream like perception of what beauty is and I feel like it has a really strong effect on the black community as well and affects the way that we think about colorism in ways that we're not even like aware of so I guess what I'm saying is we talked about earlier how we are looking towards a more colorblind world of theater but how how do you represent a variety of color and race and gender but still like make sure that all of those areas are still represented without showing I don't I don't know exactly yeah it's clear no it's great it's a really great question it's a really great question because what you're talking about is a spectrum right and honoring the spectrum of people and and I don't I don't I don't know number one and I think I think you have to have a certain level of awareness right you have a certain level of awareness and therefore that awareness will make you proactive about it right I have a certain level of awareness and that awareness makes me proactive about that and so thinking about what we've been taught as the ideal right and then figuring out how to uplift illuminate new ideals so that it's not singular is important and and hopefully I I don't know what you intend to do but hopefully in your work right you'll be able to kind of figure out what it means for you to kind of break down those barriers as to that singular ideal but the fact that you're aware and thinking about it means something to someone and that's important thank you thank you to our panelists thank you audience for your willingness to engage we promised it wouldn't be tidy so my hope is that you leave here and continue to talk and to think and to question have a good night