 My name is Millie Galani, I'm the executive director at Silk Road Rising, and I'd like to welcome you to our panel tonight, entitled Building a Theater of Inclusion, Perspectives on Asian American Testing and Producing. The panel is sponsored by the Liga Chicago theaters, Silk Road Rising and Lifeline Theater. The panel came together through conversations with our steering committee members, and they are a depth class and band team of the Liga Chicago theaters. Dorothy Millnie and Alison Kane of Lifeline Theater. Che Yu, Jeffrey Scott and Tim Spiker at Victory Gardens Theater. Adam Belcore at the Goodman Theater. Danny Bernardo of Phillywick Theater and Jamil Corey at Silk Road Rising. I'd like to also thank the Chicago Temple, the First United Methodist Church, and Philip Blackville, who's a senior pastor, who's here with us tonight. They are the hosting institution for Silk Road Rising, and they allow us to do the work that we're doing here. So with no further ado, I'd like to introduce Danny Bernardo, our moderator. Please give him a warm welcome. Yeah, so first off, thank you for coming out on a drizzly night, and I'm just amazed at how diverse this audience is. It's oddly inspiring, and it's great. Like Malik said, this panel and this conversation came together after a series of conversations pertaining to some casting controversies as of last year, specifically to the Asian-American experience. The Asian-American performer Action Coalition did a study, and it turns out, on the Broadway stage last season, only 3% of the casts were represented by Asian-Pacific Americans. And this past year study that just came out a few days ago, that's 3% also for not-for-profit theaters, which is amazing, because on the Broadway commercial stage, they'd always been lagging slightly behind, but for the not-for-profits in the last two seasons, they have started to dwarf. They've been dwarfed by the Broadway stage, and we only have 3% representation. So it's really exciting to be a part of this conversation now when it's so important to a lot of us, and for some of us who've been part of this conversation for many, many years. A couple of housekeeping things, usually at this point of any performance or anything that you'd be at a theater, they'd ask you to turn off your cell phones. I actually am asking you to keep your cell phones on. But turn the ringer off, so it's not to bother anyone. We are unfortunately not able to livestream, but we are running a Twitter feed. So if you do tweet, whether it's a question that you want to address in the panel later, even though we will have a Q&A, a proper Q&A, or if there are any inspirational thoughts or any sound bites that any one of my amazing panelists bring up, please use hashtag APIChicago, and that way it'll get out to the whole Twitterverse. We've got people on all coasts following this hashtag. So, and unfortunately they can't be with us at least through livestream, so it'd be great for them to be able to follow us on Twitter. So I talked about some controversies, and the three that stick out in my mind, well, four, we'll say four, of the past year, the Nightingale at La Jolla Playhouse, a workshop that happened summer of 2012, was brought to the world by the team that did Spring Awakening. And it was based on a Hans Christian Anderson story set in China, but the team set it in Mythic China, which then, because it's such a mythical land, and the majority of the cast was non-Asian. And that caused quite a controversy, obviously, especially because the previous workshop was all-Asian. So they had a forum discussion, an open town hall discussion at the La Jolla Playhouse. Orphan of Zhao opened in the fall at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it's famously known as the Chinese Hamlet. There were only three Asian actors in the production, two of which played puppet dogs, and one played a servant. Locally, we had, this one's going to look a little tough, we had Pippin, a Bollywood spectacular at Circle Theater, two of the biggest issues with Pippin, a Bollywood spectacular at Circle Theater were, one was that there was no Asian or South Asian representation on the stage, but most importantly, there was no South Asian dramaturgy involved in it. There were no South Asians in the conversation, so many in the community felt that it was exoticizing, a culture. And a show at Lifeline Theater, one of our sponsoring theaters, Bridge of Birds, was a story that is set in and around China with the conceit that it would be a storytelling piece told by a multicultural cast, and that caused some upset in the community as well. So we're going to discuss all of these things at length over the course of our time together. But I'm going to ask my panelists who I'm about to intro. Well, actually, let me intro my panelists out. So sorry, I'm just so excited to be having this conversation. We've been in talks about this since October, so it's crazy that it's happening. To my right is Che Yu, the artist director of Victory Gardens, playwright director, so give Che a warm round of applause. David Henry Wong, a clean playwright who flew in from New York this morning to be with us today, needs no more introduction than that, so thank you, David, for joining us. Thank you, Jamil. Corey, artistic director of Silk Road Rising and a good friend of mine, an amazing artist, so thank you, Jamil, for hosting us. And another dear friend of mine, wonderful actress, beautiful soprano, Eliza Shitt. Of course, good to have you. So I'm going to ask my panelists just as a warm-up question. And I know we're all artists, so it's really hard to be able to do this. I'm going to ask for a one-word response. It's really hard. It just, you know, for those of us who have had therapy, you know, think of it as your therapist saying word association. So we're going to go through, I'm just going to say the name of the controversy. I'm going to start with Che, and I'm going to popcorn down this way. One-word response, Nightingale. One word? Yes, one word. Okay, we'll start with Eliza. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't know, it's fine. Catalytic. Catalytic. Clueless. Clueless. Lazy. Lazy. A couple of words. Ron. Why Ron Che? Well, I think if it's set in a country, a specific country, one would hope that the people that are represented would actually be on the same stage. For example, you wouldn't do a white version of Raisin in the Sun. So why would you do basically a multicultural version of a certain story? And the question is whether the story's been told before too, or not. I think it's complicated in that way, and I don't know what the circumstances really are. I just find that if you're telling a story about a certain place, you would hope that that country's been represented by the people with the long-term care. Yes. Orfriend of Zhao. Oh, me first in. Yeah, we'll go with you first then. Oh, that one, Heartbreaking. Maddening. I think... Ergon? Ergon. Yes. It's wrong. To David, why arrogance? That's such a strong word. I just thought the reaction of the RSC to the Zhao controversy, they were sort of like the poster children for how not to respond to one of these controversies. And this idea that initially we're going, well, we were all, we were casting a number of productions. This was an ensemble thing, and we were also doing a break play and somebody else. So, we couldn't cast that many Asians. That's like literally defining how the playing field is unequal. That it's okay for Caucasians to play Asians, but it's not okay for Asians to play anything but Asians. Right, right. So, you know, so Asian, so it's sort of what mine, what's mine is mine, and what yours is mine also. We wanted to. Eliza, Heartbreaking. I've lived in Switzerland for a year after college, and the amount of racism I encountered on the street as a, by that time I'm a grown adult was mind-boggling because it's just, it's a different continent and things are different there. And I taught at an American boarding school, but I had Japanese students, Spanish students from wherever. And I asked my Japanese students, you know, because one day it happened to me, I said, how often does it happen to you that you go down into town and you hear something or people do stuff? And they're like, oh, miss Shin every day, all the time. Whenever they went down into this nice picturesque Swiss village, they would always get some sort of racist comment. And by seeing this come out, I was like, and listening, reading what the British East Asians were trying to say, I was like, oh my God, and that was me in this country 10, 15 years ago having to assert my ability to speak this language without an accent. And that for me, it was just, it was heartbreaking. What was heartbreaking to me too about Orphan of Jal was that the reviews that came out were like, well, there's one, I think it's a gardening, don't quote me, and if I'm wrong, I'll tweet it out. Like just kidding, it was this source and I'll link it. But it said, you know, it didn't matter. It did detract from the story that it wasn't told with Asians. And that to me was heartbreaking. All right, so the last one we're gonna do for this little warm-up, Pippin of Bollywood Spectacular. Did that come to work? Yeah, it's got to work. Two words. Irresponsible and insensitive. Responsible and insensitive. I have to say ignorant, because I'm a little ignorant of that. I'm a little sick of your situation. And since there were expressions of something, I'll just say diligence. I just wish there was more diligence. Do you want to elaborate on yours? Yeah, sure, you know, I mean, it was a case of such, I did not see the show, so full disclosure and we were never approached about. But there was such a clear cut case of cultural appropriation taking place from everything I've heard and the fact that there was no engagement with South Asian community and there was no attempt at what we would consider a responsible dramaturgy around the show. I'm looking at Cumblehunter. You know, it's so reckless in light of everything we as a community ought to know by this time. And referring to Bollywood as kind of an aesthetic style as opposed to having an actual grounding in the cultural production of a nation and a people, I think also really diminishes the South Asian artistic production and expression. So I know that they've come, they came back and said there was no intent and so forth and it's just kind of a, once again, an aesthetic choice. But I don't know that those are choices that we can make in the vacuum any longer. Absolutely. And that is what I believe occurred. And that's what today's about, which is so exciting. So with Pippin and Bollywood's spectacular specifically, there was, when the production photos got released, there was such an outcry from the South Asian community because in ways it felt like yellow face. A lot of people, or brown face, you know, were telling me there were turbines and thick eyeliner and bindi's and ill fitting colors for a widow. You know, it's these things that if in the conversation, if a South Asian was in the conversation that wouldn't have happened. And it just reminded me of being a kid and watching Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time and seeing Nikki Rooney. And you're not thinking anything of it, but then you're like, wait, that's what you think of me. I didn't, funny story, I didn't know I was Asian until I was 10 and my agent told me, well you didn't get this part because you don't look like the mom. And it just never occurred to me that I was different. And then I went back and watched Breakfast at Tiffany's and my mind was blown. I mean, that's what I saw reflected back at me. And so it's really great to have these conversations now, but these have, it's been going on for so long. David and Shay, you guys have been pretty much the first voices for the Asian American community and the theater. I'm gonna ask you guys just to just talk about, you know, from a historical perspective, what breaking into the industry was like for you. And just, I have a couple of questions after that. As someone who's here to represent so long ago. Actually, the question of how I broke into the field is incredibly relevant to the conversation we're having today. Because I was 23 when Joe Papadise my first play FOB at the Public Theater in New York City. But how did that happen? How does a play go from a dormitory to opening at the Public Theater 14 months later? And it was because around the time that I was doing this play My Dorm, the Public Theater produced a play called New Jerusalem by Len Jenkin in which a Caucasian act was cast in an Asian role. And this led to protests by Asian actors of that day, which predated Miss Saigon by 10 years and of course our conferences by considerably more than that. And so, Joe Papadise being sort of having the values that he had, the Asian actors of that day protested it in front of the Public Theater. Joe kind of invited them in and ended up hiring one of them onto his staff, a guy named David O'Yama who is now reported for Wall Street Journal to write, I mean to find plays for Asian actors. And it was just about that time that my play came across his desk. So I always consider myself a beneficiary of affirmative action because there was an opportunity that was created. I was the person who was fortunate enough to walk through that door. And so I always felt like I have a certain responsibility to that too. But I was given this opportunity because there was community pressure, because of a political act that was in response to a piece of yellow-faced casting. And so how I got my start is incredibly related to the conversation we have right now. Well, I don't have too much to say except that as a beneficiary of what David had gone through, I was actually in Boston and I was working in TV and film and was writing stuff. And one of the things I had to do was to do a thesis script. And I set mine basically in Boston. And all the characters were just basically Caucasian. And the touring production of M. Butterfly came to Boston. And David was given a speech at Brandeis. You probably think? I remember that. Yeah, I was that lonely person in the corner sitting in front of you. You said a few words. But seeing the play and actually having David speak really on the panel that he was talking about, M. Butterfly is processed, like you, I didn't realize that there was this notion of what being Asian-American was. I saw myself as basically everyone else. And there was this history that I was given or I was part of that I didn't realize. And I think as a result of that, what happened was I began to figure out what it really means to be Asian-American. So when I went back to that thesis play, I just decided to make one character the lead Asian. And it came out into a place where everyone's first play was, who are you, what are you, the identity play. And the play was actually porcelain into the world of corn. But that play basically came out because of that. Wow. Did I tell you? You don't tell me. So what is remarkable is that things happen. It's a domino effect, generation to generation, person to person. This is a lineage. And I'm sure where we had left off, there are other people, too, that follows that, Asian and non-Asian, about your stories being told, the way it needs to be told. Because the collective history is American history. American history is not one color, but a rainbow of diverse, beautiful colors. The white story is the Latino story. The Latino story is the Jewish story. The Jewish story is the Black story. The question is, how do we tell that correctly so that we own them? Because these are our stories. See, and I just keep going back to, that makes so much sense. If you guys haven't read Porcelain, it's beautiful. But the protagonist is a character named John Lee. And we find out later that his Chinese name is Lone Lee. And it's just this beautiful moment when you see his journey. Wow. Tears. David, you touched a little bit on the Miss Saigon protests. Can you elaborate just a little bit? In 1991, the West End musical Miss Saigon was set to transfer to Broadway. And I had friends, some of you have seen Yellow Face. I wrote a little bit about this and that. But some of our friends had seen it in London, on the West End. And they were like, oh, there's this Jonathan Price guy who's playing a Eurasian or Asian or something pimping his eyes all taped up. And I remember thinking, oh, well, that could never happen here. And so then when Miss Saigon was announced to come to New York, they announced that Jonathan Price would be decreasing as well. And this led to a big culture wars incident of the early 90s. It really only lasted about a week. But it was kind of an intense week. And those of us who kind of condemned this as Yellow Face casting, there were a lot of things, a lot of complicated forces that came into play. There was sort of the whole weight of the commercial theater that was looking to this as being a big money-making hit. And so we were sort of standing in the way of that. And I actually think the issue of casting is quite a complicated one and a nuanced one. And there's a lot of interesting ways to talk about what does it mean to play a role? What does it mean to play a race in life? What does it mean to play it on stage? And what does it mean? Can you be a member of a race and be playing your own race? I think there's all sorts of interesting questions. But in that context, it got reduced to kind of a media smackdown very quickly, just like who was going to win and who was going to lose. And you felt people kind of run to their natural positions and just kind of put up barricades. And there was no real opportunity for an intelligent or nuanced discussion about it. And it was a little scary, honestly, for me. And I felt like, wow, everybody's so angry. Like the minorities were going, we're angry because we've been denied these opportunities for so long. And some white people are angry because they're like, well, why do we have to give up artistic freedom for this? And I think that I got kind of freaked out by the whole thing for about 15 years. I think I wrote a play, Face Value, to try to process it. And that was a huge flop. And then eventually, I wrote Yellow Face and was able to kind of get my arms around what happened. But I think it kind of blocked me as a rider, just doing original plays for about 15 years. And so what's interesting about it is we, I always felt that we lost that battle, but we won the war in the sense that Jonathan Price did end up doing the role on Broadway. At the same time, Cameron McIntosh, the producer, said that any future engineer would be cast within Asian. And he was, crude as word. I mean, the missile gun ran for the next 10 years and all the engineers were Asian. And then I thought, well, at least people now know, the producer knows that if you cast a white person as an Asian, they're at least going to have to put up with a lot of crap. And then they can decide whether they want to do that. But of course, it's been kind of surprising to me that all these other issues, that all these other examples have been raised in the last year or so. There's been this sort of resurgence of Yellow Face casting. And the last thing I want to say about Miss Saigon is that there's this whole, when the controversy broke, the producers used the, we're really casting the best person for the job argument. So there is this whole thing about, we get a worldwide casting search, we couldn't find anyone qualified to play the engineer. So I was in that car with Nick Heitner about three years later and we were going to the airport or something. And Nick, you know, Nick directed Miss Saigon. He's now the artist director of the National Theater in London. And, you know, we were just talking about what had happened back then. And he was feeling bad about it. And, you know, he said, you know, he was a young director at that point. Anyway, and he said that he was so embarrassed by the camera Macintosh, sort of saying that he'd done this worldwide talent search and his words to me were, you know, we'd always intended to bring Jonathan. He was our friend, which I thought was so honest and true. That's how it happens, right? We're all in the assistant theater. That's, you know, you did it with your buddy. You're coming to Broadway, you bring your buddy. That, and, but, you know, from that I feel like whenever a theater or a producer says, oh, we looked and we couldn't find anyone, I think the burden of the proof is on the theater because lots of times they're just lying. I want to elaborate something. A big struggle about protesting against this was your, the potential of putting all of these actors out of work, you know, that could be getting it. What were some of the discussions had around that? Cause I know there were like, especially what you wrote in Yellow Face, there were so many people that were militant and trying to get your support. Were there, was there any fear of that backlash? Well, you know, okay. So when the Yellow Face controversy erupted and camera Macintosh sort of said he was going to take the toys and go home that he was going to cancel the production of Miss Saigon and then the argument became, oh, look, you know, we sort of lost all these jobs. I mean, for my money, the idea that Miss Saigon was going to be canceled was always sort of a faint. It was a really good faint, you know, and it sort of scared the New York theater community. And, but I don't think there was ever, I don't think that in and of itself really deterred the Asian American protesters of that day because I think there was the sense that, I mean, he's not going to cancel it. And A and B, it was sort of a more important issue. It was more important to get the issue out there, even then these sort of jobs that really nobody had even cast in anyway at that point. And, you know, I had this crazy idea at one point which nobody liked, which was, okay. But we need to, this is a musical that's based on like sexy exoticizing of Asian women. So all we have to do is get no Asian women to audition and then you've totally screwed the show. That would be like that. Well, it wasn't one of the concessions was that he wouldn't appear in Yellow Face. Yeah, I mean, Jonathan Pite didn't end up, you know, taping his eyes in everything when he was in New York and that was, I guess, better, something. Then you said, why is this white guy white like singing about the American dream? So I got, so that goes to me, that goes into choosing a season and choosing stories that can be told accurately. Like in argument against, for example, Pippin of Bollywood Spectacular was do the research. If you can cast it or accurately or have South Asians in the conversation, that's when you should tell it. I know on a personal anecdote, when Portion Music Theater did Pacific Overtures in 2009, they scouted for the whole year before they announced it to make sure they had enough Asian American actors to be able to fill the cast, which I think, well, I mean, selfishly being part of that cast was awesome. But it was very irresponsible. So what are some of your challenges, Che, like having Victory Gardens, being the artistic director of choosing your season and challenges as a director when it comes to casting and selection? Well, first and foremost, I mean, I'm not basically inventing the wheel. I mean, Victory Gardens has been here the last 38 odd years. And Dennis Darchek and R.C. who's here, they were the ones that basically championed the notion of what new plays are. And Dennis had a very strong social political agenda, which is basically to reflect the plurality of what Chicago really was. So what is happening is I'm basically doing the version 2.0 of that, which is basically now, what is Chicago's face in 2012? And again, also not reinventing the wheel, David and I also came from one person who basically championed this kind of theater, Joe Pat, and in my time is George C. Wolfe. George Wolfe always told me when we first met and finally he produced my work, he said that he believes that an American theater should only be called an American theater if Americans are represented. And the Americans I see across the street in the alleyways, everywhere has to be represented. It was something that I held on and also with my relationship with Gordon Davis who really believed that there is such thing as this thing for social dialogue. So saying all these things, this is what I'm basically carrying to Victory Gardens. I do have an agenda and my agenda is I would really love to see the population of Chicago reflected in my theater. It's a golden gleaming dream, but that's what I wake up to, that's what I think about. I wake up to also knowing that the city is segregated and it's our job as theater artists to figure out how to open these invisible borders to create bridges. I'm not alone, there are wonderful people here who have their own theaters and who are artists who are doing the same thing, small scale and large scale. So the question becomes how do we start doing that? I think the only two things I'm doing is trying to figure out how I can reach out to communities which reflect Chicago while at the place that we need to be doing. Secondly, if there's some place which have a second or third production, I've asked the playwrights whether they are interested in seeing a non-traditional version of it and we did two versions, two different productions this year. Once a world premiere play which is non-traditional set in Chicago in 1920, Philip Dawkins' Failure, a love story. And the second play was actually Equivocation by Bill Cain. And I said, why don't we see a non-traditional cast who, you know, in Elizabethan England? He agreed. So that is a wonderful way that we can start creating conversations and dialogue. Again, I think we're doing one bit and I just hope not to be the only person in the classroom doing this. And I encourage, I think, all my fellow Chicago theater artists and administrators and leaders to do that as well. Absolutely. So this is a part of a bigger conversation, obviously in the theaters, in the global and national theater scope, but I mean, specifically to Chicago, you spoke about how segregated the city is, which, as Chicagoans, we all know and feel. What are some of the differences you notice working in Chicago theater versus any other city you've worked in? I think Chicago, traditionally and historically, has been tribal. I mean, that's the way the city has been built, which is kind of fascinating. And I think that's wonderful things that happen too because in each theater company, and let's talk about theaters, too, is that each theater has its own DNA, which is so special and unique. But I think the big challenge for us is, how do we start mixing the DNA? So, which is a wonderful, exciting thing, too, because one theater company's members could go to another one to work. I think two theater companies can benefit from this. And the notion of that dialogue and building bridges is actually very exciting. I think insularity, at some point, you'll be, I would only think that you will start repeating yourself. And you know what happens when people start in, if breathing. That's just a good thing. This is a world in the country where you can get online and speak to and chat with someone in China and in Pakistan. So, if the fact that these borders are so radical, our city needs to basically take up the challenge and figure out how we can find different ways of colliding. I think collision is a wonderful thing. I'm seeing it in every theater company. The group does it. Charlie's Theater is doing it. The thing is, I encourage even the smaller theater companies to think about, what does it mean to live in a plural, inclusive America? Remember, just November, America had a wake-up call. They finally saw the true face of what this country is. And those who didn't believe it lost the election. Yeah, I wanna piggyback on what you're saying about the smaller theater companies picking up the torch. I was talking with Beza Daboo and Manita Gandhi yesterday from Disconnection, Victor Gardens. And we had a great chat about multiculturalism and some of the discussions happening after the show. And Beza brought up a really great point, brought up by a friend of ours who is an African-American actress, that the big theaters, for the most part, are doing it right in terms of casting multicultural of doing the outreach. And it's the smaller theaters that I'm finding that, or that we're finding that are having a little trouble with it or not necessarily doing it as much. And the question that I'd like to bring up later is, is it a matter of resources? Is it a matter of just, we're all college buddies and we wanna bring our friends in. But so using that as a segue to the other side of the table, what's great is that so many of the faces I see in the audience are people all run into at O'Connor or TPR or their Asian call went out and here we are sitting together. So, Eliza, as a nation-American actress, what are some of the challenges you are facing? This question, I feel like I have to go backwards a little bit, just to, I keep this short, but I think these are really important points. I am the child of immigrants. And immigrants with faces like my parents were not really allowed into this country in big numbers until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. My parents are now naturalized U.S. citizens. And from 1790 to 1952, the only immigrants who could naturalize were, correct me if I'm wrong, there were whites of, I think it was like, whites of good morally upstanding whites is how it was phrased. So it's not until 1965 that we start seeing 1965 that we start seeing really big numbers of native-born, native-speaking, non-white U.S. citizens. And I bring that up because I think at least for those of us born between here from 1965 up to about 1980, I think I'm kind of typical of this group, not everybody. And forgive me if I don't have you, but I am not a trained actor. I have a bachelor's in chemistry. I think most of my, you know, my fire-breathing, aerialist, beautiful friend Amy Chen in New York City has a law degree. The lovely Christine Lin from Chinglish is an engineer. I mean, we come from this type of beginning. So the challenges I've faced are accepting for myself that it's a viable option and convincing other people that it is an acceptable viable option for me to do something like this. Well, because most artists, when they go to their parents and say, I want to be an actor, you know, most artists' parents are, whoa, you know, the opportunities for you as a Caucasian or you know, anything else is slimmer. But for us, mwah! At the same time, the thing is, I mean, I'll be honest though, like, theatrically, like when it comes to theatrical versus commercial, theatrically for me, I'm like super way behind, partially because it's not as easy for me to get on stage. On the other side of that fence, on camera, I have, I've been the benefactor of race on the on-camera side. There's no question about it. When it comes to industrials and, you know, commercial, I mean, U.S. bank, all this stuff, Walmart, I mean, I cannot say that my color hasn't helped me because I'd be a complete lie. So it does cut both ways. It helps that on-camera is a faster moving target than theater. So that's part of it. Just knowing you as a person, you're very passionate, which I love and you're so well thought in. So, and I preface this by saying, one of the catalysts for this conversation was, like I mentioned, Bridge of Birds at Lifeline, you had a hand in that conversation. And again, we have people from Lifeline here to respond as well if we want to keep the dialogue as we keep the dialogue two-way. So do you want to respond? I see that in the open. So this, what happened? I'm glad you said that Saigon was scary because this was kind of scary. I got wind that Bridge of Birds was gonna be done by Lifeline. And if you don't know Lifeline, it's a wonderful theater and they adapt literary pieces. And I don't know how I found out it was about China, but in my mind I'm like, slam dunk, I am in that. And I read a wonderful book. And then, and also another thing that was part of it is that I have worked with Allison, I don't know where you are in here. Allison and I worked already together as colleagues in a stage reading. So this was an Allison managing director of Lifeline Theater, the largest non-equity theater in Chicago. This was somebody I knew. And I think that's something to always remember. We are just all people, despite all these labels or titles. And Allison told me I was gonna be multi-culting and I'm like, sure, I'm Asian, my stuff gets done multi-culting all the time. I got so used to it. I've been in those productions until we were doing something at Silk Road. And I was talking about this with another Asian-American actor. And I was like, yeah, they're gonna do it multi-culting in this person, because I talked to them, I'm not allowed to use their name, because I'm kind of paraphrasing. They looked at me and they're like, I hate it when they do that. We've got the talent in this town. And for about six weeks, I still defended my position in Lifeline's position. Lifeline was full of people that I knew and respected. Scott Barsani, sort of like, I was like, are you kidding? We don't have nearly enough talent. People can't do a production of 300 pages of tracing through China, not making multi-culting. And then the adaptation comes out, it needs six people. And then I was like, oh, I'm kind of, and then it made me realize too, I have no right. I'm no right not supporting my kind. I was like, what am I doing? So it was, Eliza introduced me to the conversation and I reached out to Allison and Dorothy. And so this is, I mean, I just wanna applaud you for your bravery, because I know it was really scary. It's tough when we spend so much of our time just being thankful to have work. We're just thankful to have work. And that has come up in so many of our conversations as a steering committee. And I feel like in our many conversations that our community has been seen as so submissive just by, so being able to stand up, it's hard because we're just thankful for it. And to their credit, Rob Cosleric, who's the casting director for Lifeline, approached me and I was booked and it's that difficult thing of everyone was pretty much booked at that time. So I gave him everyone I knew at that time. So they did the reading, the outreach. I do want to point out though around the same time, because I auditioned twice and every time I auditioned I was the only Caucasian in the room. But at the same time I was also auditioning for Pretty Windy, I mean Fin's right here in the front row. And it wanted Ninjas versus Pirates Romeo and Juliet and I show up to this call and I'm like, holy mackerel, they're all these Asian-American Juliet's. Like, you know, there was no slam dunk anywhere based on race and it was such a wonderful experience to be like, and that was really the thing that I'm like, I have no right to not say we don't have enough people in town because you were paying us with beer, I think. Beer, but it cost all of us. You did the right thing and everybody showed up and I'm like, they're coming every summer. They're coming every semester. They're coming all the time. Awesome, yeah, I wanted to just say we really wanted to be mindful of time and I know we have a lot of actors in the room as well that when we open it up, we can definitely keep the dialogue going. I just again want to applaud you for your bravery for speaking up and start essentially initializing this conversation which is great and why we're here now and it's moments like that, it's moments like that and it's the big joke, not joke, but the funny story of how Danny Bernardo came into Bailey, where Chicago was they were, which is related to that, the company before I joined it was doing Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson which is one of my favorite rock music, it's fun. And they put out the call, they had cast out of the ensemble that was already there and they put out two male calls, one that could play guitar that could lead the band and Andrew Jackson, I don't know how to play guitar. So I was like, you know what, eff it, I'm gonna submit and I wrote in the notes, like is there anything else about you you'd like to say? I was like, yeah, I'd be a, I'd eff the role, I'd rock the eff out of this role and they called me in and then from that conversation they're like, who are you, this is awesome and that's how my partnership started. So it's sometimes it just takes that initial, you know, to get change happening. I want to segue to my, I want to segue to your friendly. What Jamil? Sorry. Like any couple friends. Yeah. So Jamil and Malik started Silk Road in response to September 11th, which was a really great thing when America wasn't ready to see South Asian, Middle Eastern faces little own stories. But you guys have thrived and you guys are so successful, you guys do such great work and I've been blessed to work with you guys. Often, so in terms of choosing, I mean, you know, actually about choosing stories and choosing plays, by your mission statement into Middle Eastern, Asian, South Asian work, what are some of the challenges in just doing it and being in it? Can I go back to Pippin for a second? Yeah. Absolutely. I just, I guess I'm going into it too. Yes, absolutely. If there was something, you know, once again, not having seen it, but you know, read about and all the responses. There is a very rich and complicated relationship in South Asia between Islam and Hinduism and it's not to be taken lightly and to mix sacred images and sacred metaphors in a very sort of reckless, haphazard, completely disrespectful way because once again, there's this sort of artistic license to do that. And then to kind of throw Christianity into the mix and also this very kind of, you know, frankly, just sacrilegious manner and think that this is all okay in the context of the sort of artistic whatever of putting the show together. I think is even beyond irresponsible and is beyond insensitive because it is trampling upon sacred meanings and it's trampling upon a history that is oftentimes fraught with difficulty and suspicion and distrust but also with a great deal of love and affection. And all of that got wrote up right now of, I'm sorry, come on, I keep looking. You know, of the story. And you know, I think we as art makers and theater producers owe it to the larger community and the specific communities that we are deigning to represent to do better and to know better and to not be so utterly insensitive in the approach. So I just needed to put that out there. Malik and I had this really kind of crazy idea. We took trade routes and to the best of my knowledge, this has not been done before. So we took this ancient trade route, the Silk Road, which essentially connected China to Syria, Turkey, the Balkans and if you include the sea routes from Japan to Italy. And we thought, you know, this is a model of what we would today call polyculturalism, which is the term that I actually prefer to multiculturalism, although, you know, with all due respect to multiculturalism, polyculturalism to me is about the overlap, that intersection of culture, that collision, that meeting, that engagement between cultures, which is very representative of our experiences of living here in Chicago. For me, multiculturalism may have run its course a bit in that it's more about cultural silos, it's more about sort of a mosaic of cultures that are co-existing with each other, but very much within their own, you know, particularism and specificity. And I don't know how 21st century that is anymore. So we took these trade routes and we thought, you know, we wanted Silk Road peoples to represent themselves. And so we would be a playwright focused theater, of course, as these gentlemen here know, and we would follow something that I call the playwright protagonist imperative, which was that the playwright and the protagonist or central character would be of the same background and the playwright would be from the community about which he or she is writing. And, you know, it would not be celebratory work, it would not be, we are not a self esteem project, you know, although we all need self esteem. It's not about being great to be Chinese or it's great to be Indian, but really complex, complicated, sometimes controversial pieces that examine an experience and examine cultures within the respective, you know, the context in which cultures and communities exist. And playwrights who may have, you know, who may be at odds somehow with how identity politics play themselves out in today's America and maybe want to subvert those identity politics or somehow rewrite them or reimagine them. So, you know, that was sort of the genesis of the Silk Road idea. So we coined our own identity politic and sort of debunking others, which is Silk Road peoples or Silk Road stories. So all of a sudden, you know, me with mixed Arabic heritage, Malik with Pakistani heritage, everyone on this stage shared an identity, shared a story that we were calling Silk Road, you know, Silk Road stories and Silk Road narratives and bringing that to Chicago in this very 21st century sort of diasporic ways. So how mostly Americans, primarily Americans of Silk Road backgrounds are telling their stories. So a big challenge was selling that to the communities, which we never really thought would be as big a challenge as it turned out to be, to tell the Chinese person that your story and an Indian story and so forth are sort of part of this larger story and that there was this connection through these trade routes and blah, blah, blah. And early on when we were doing Valina Hasu Houston's play T, which was our second production, which is a Japanese-American story about Japanese war brides, we went to the Chinese and Korean communities and leadership and the Filipino community and of course the Japanese-American community. And a few people said, you do know we hate the Japanese, don't you? And I was like, well, I know there's a system. At the beginning of a journey where, you know, we had to learn how to kind of parse out representation as it comes from within communities and how people wish to identify or self-identify or be identified or be represented and that it is a much more intense challenge than we probably ever could have imagined. But we've seen success with that over time. It was at first you couldn't get the Indian to come to the Japanese play or the Japanese person to go to the Eric play, blah, blah. And now we're seeing that cross-pollination and also the fact that conflicts are with Silk Road countries. 21st century America, the Islamic world, China, India, Korea, if you look at sort of hotspots and this need for bridges, this need for building empathy and understanding and connections, this is in many respects, I believe, the century of the Silk Road and kind of a reimagined, reinterpreted Silk Road. And we have to be telling the stories of Silk Road. And we cannot afford not to. And so I think that the challenges, well, I truly believe you have been more than worth it and we're very proud with what we've been able to accomplish, but there just needs to be more and there needs to be, you know, more theater companies need to be doing this work and more theater companies need to be taking these risks. Absolutely, and just a lot of the pushback I hear to that is, oh, well, there's not an audience for these types of stories, but here you guys are, you know, 10 years later? Yeah, yeah. Wow, there is an audience for this panel. So that's the challenge I put out to the small theaters out there and the big theaters that are in the audience right now. And make investments in communities and work with people. That's something that we do all the time and also bring the communities to the next story you're telling because, you know, no one likes to feel like you only come around, you know, when you're telling the Korean story or when you're telling the film. So I think that if people start feeling an investment, you know, this is why this conversation, you know, has to be about sort of organic intrinsic changes within the community because when we do it cosmetically, when it is engineered, when it is sort of forced, it's not sincere, it's not genuine and that's ultimately very transparent and I think communities respond to that. It's tokenism or it's, you know, it's somehow paternalism or, and it doesn't work. That's such a great thinking for that segue. So I'm gonna have a question that I want to open up to the panel. What do the words authenticity and representation mean to you? And you at home can think about that as well. And then the Twitter page. Yeah, whoever wants to, whoever has a fire in the belly can say something. One thing I just want to bring up that's kind of about this, I was speaking with Kirsten Bryant, I don't know if anyone knows her, she's Associate Artistic Director at San Jose Rep now. And I believe she was the director, correct me if I'm wrong, of either the first version or an early version of Kite of a staged production of Kite Runner. And she spoke with the playwright just to make sure everything was on board. So she was the director and she's not Afghan at all. And then they had their dramaturge. But I mean, a dramaturge only has a certain job as well. I mean, they have to make sure the structure is working and there's continuity. And so they hired a cultural consultant. And I think this is an idea that can't eventually get more play. And, you know, you can't let small theaters off the hook cause people work for free all the time is for the experience and for the, you know, energy you get off of working with other people. But I think this is something to keep in mind more and more. You don't have to have an ethnically appropriate team, you know, behind stage. If you, but you can't get somebody who really can help you say like, she can't do this in the play. You can't mix that. You can't put, you can't put her in white because if she goes and talks to her dad wearing white, that means she wants him to die. Like, you need people like that because otherwise, you know, but, so that will help everybody, I think, if they can. That was one of the things that Lovina Giovanni who is the artistic director of Rossica Theater, when we were talking about Pippin, and she saw it, she said one of the most offensive things and I might get the colors on your head and say, don't call me. But she said that she's the, there's a character named Catherine Pippin who is a widow, but she was wearing blue and white. And that in Hindu religion, that would just never, those colors wouldn't be appropriate for her and that just spoke to me. Anyone else? Authenticity, representation? You know, there was, in the 80s and 90s, there was this sort of notion of an authenticity holy grail almost. You know, that there was this, that there would be the writer that would come along or the subject matter or the play that would really be authentic and everybody was sort of working and then people would find about, you know, my thing's authentic and yours not authentic. And I think that we problematize the notion of authenticity generally in a constructive way, which is to say that any of these communities, none of them is monolithic, right? And that there is a wide range of views in any community and therefore no one writer, no one work can represent an entire community. So then the question becomes, okay, does that mean that it's like a total free-for-all? Well, no, that's not quite it either. Because I think any of us who works with material from a particular community, we know that in some sense, like, okay, I'm Chinese-American. So a lot of my most vociferous critics are going to be from the Asian-American community because these are the people who have the greatest investment in what it is that I'm writing. And so it's not that, but when you come to something, an informed situation, if you're informed when you're writing about a particular community or culture, that doesn't free you from controversy. If anything, it will cause controversy to take place. But you have to be informed enough to make intelligent decisions. You have to know why it is that you've chosen to do certain things and be prepared to defend that. And by the way, you can be wrong at certain points too. But it's the kind of, what's most galling to me is when people come into these situations with that kind of arrogance where it's like, well, you know, fuck it, I'm just being an artist. And so, and then they get surprised when people criticize. So, you know, you can't have it both ways. We very much define authenticity as that act of self-representation. So what, you know, and you can shoot 100 polls in that, but the fact that historically celibate peoples have not been able to represent themselves in the West and have often been very poorly represented and sort of misrepresented and not represented and whatnot. And voiceless and invisibilized. We wanted to empower, you know, once again, the writers. We wanted to, and as writers, as playwrights, you know, people are probably going to have a somewhat contentious relationship with their own respective backgrounds and communities and want to explore that. So that is their authenticity. And that is, to me, an authentic relationship to one's heritage and to one's identity. And whether all the facts are correct or whether, you know, all the history and traditions are, I think it becomes irrelevant in their telling of the story. I mean, that might be something we want to, you know, correct in a table read or, you know, with a dramaturge, but that it just resonates true to the writer and to allow silk road writers that space to really explore their voice and, you know, exercise their voice and not just be given that one chance, okay, you're out now, this sort of thing, but that this has to be part of a sustained trajectory and that institutions, you know, really ought to, once again, make that sort of investment. I think all too often in trying to fill a slot or in trying to, you know, check a category or a box or whatever, someone gets, you know, sort of thrown a bone and that's about it. And the, you know, the commitment to the artist sort of stops, starts and stops there. And I think that, you know, we end up short changing it obviously that's not just, you know, specific to silk road artists, but in our conversation about diversity, because once again, it tends to be defensive, it tends to be accusatory, tends to be all these things and you're saying I'm a bad person, I'm a liberal and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and I thought it was for Obama. You know, we're just not going to that deeper place that, you know, we might otherwise go with someone, you know, somehow deemed mainstream. Jay, did you have me? Nothing at lightning. I do agree with my colleagues. Great. All right, here's the scariest question I came up with for myself, like, because I like to work, you know, and this question, like, could it put me out of work? If a story can't be told authentically, should it be told? I, you know, there was, we just did an evening of skits in New York as a benefit for a Mali writer's group and they made an evening called, the, what is it, the Orphan Nightingale, The Orphan of the Desert of the Nightingale. Yes, that's so bad. And everybody read, you know, little skits. And there was one. It was like, the Orphan of the Desert of the Nightingale. About what? The Orphan of the Desert of the Nightingale. The reason why Asians are not always the best choice to play themselves on stage. So, you know, we started out with, I can't remember who read this sketch, but it was, they were gonna do like, but the conceit was this theater decided to do an Asian version of the Three Little Pigs. So then they'd be like, well, I'm gonna blow you down. But now I'm gonna stop and make some origami. So there's often this desire to like appropriate Asian stories in particular because, you know, there's so fun and exotic and you get all these like great things you can do to no dance and you'll hit a dance. So yeah, if you can't, if you want to do that and you can't at least, and authenticity is a complicated concept. So, but let's, if you can't at least hire Asian actors, no, don't do it. You know, once again, do that question of authenticity and as David just said, it's really hard to define. I have been in the awkward position so many times since starting this company of having to explain and explain again and again, you know, our mission with regards to play, but that playwright protagonist really I mentioned. And, you know, so someone will contact me and I just wrote this play about Gaza and I spend time there and I'm, you know, I'm very much in solidarity with Palestinians and you know, which is great. I'm not Palestinian or I'm not Arab-American or I'm not, and I'll explain to them, well, you know, we have this rule and I applaud you for the work you're doing, but that's not a play that we would produce. Just like a company that, you know, does plays buying about women or buying about LGBT people, you know, whatever they get. It's a wonderful thing in the nonprofit sector is that we can define our missions as we, you know, see fit. Well, I have this one exchange when I'm using the Gaza example because this was actually what happened and she doesn't live in Chicago, so I assume she's not here. She stands up in the back. Ah! This really ended up sending me like, you know, 15 emails and all this name calling and you're worse than the Ku Klux Klan and you're like Hitler and you're trying to, you know, you're erasing my voice and denying, you know, I stopped replying like after the third email. But she really worked up and she kept saying, you know, you're demeaning my integrity in your sort of take. And I'm like, you know, like the third response and like I said, it went on, but I said, you know, God bless you. I hope you win the Pulitzer. I hope you get on Broadway and all of that with your play. We're not doing it because we don't define that within the context of authenticity as once again, we define it as we have the right to define it. You may disagree with me and once again, that's your right. So that story was not told on Siltrope State. So it was not told on the right. Right? And, you know, so I'll get that and you know, and our definition of authenticity will be disputed and once again, you know, it's kind of like the casting question. What is the right answer? And I don't know that there is a single right answer, but I think that companies and individuals and artists and you know, have the right to arrive at answers or you know, on their own. And we should always do it in dialogue and we should always be open to change, certainly. Anyway, so this is my thought. White Snake, Green Snake was just done. It's Mary Zimberman's latest production. Started at Oregon Shakes and went to Berkeley, he's going all over. Tonya McBride, isn't it? And I forgot the name of the other lead. That is another Chinese fable, which they were required to use some of their ensemble members. Mary at least had enough authority to White Snake and Green Snake, both there's supposed to be Chinese women, she was able to cast them. Casting anybody. I just spent three months at Paschal Rendicke. Casting is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I guess the one thing that I feel really strongly about is make your leads, and I wrote about this. Make your leads, your leads. Give the most empowered character on stage. Keep them, could you? Like, because I understand when you have a cast of 30, sometimes you're not going to be able to do whatever. But I think there's this habit to take the lead and stick up Caucasian in that role. And no offense, but you guys get to like, it's your basketball, like 90% of the time, you get to play the power person, the hero, the protagonist so much. I mean, I'm not saying I think everything should be multi-culting, but be very careful which times you take the power and the story and the resurrection away from somebody else and give it to somebody who has had that opportunity many times already. Absolutely, it harkens back to what Jay was saying about. It matters when, like at what point is this piece in production. For my piece, Mahal, it was really important to me to have as close an all-Filipino-American cast as possible with the Filipino-Americans. And thankfully we do, but it was that question that the director and I went back and forth. Well, that actress was really good or that actor was really good, but the community doesn't have a play like this. And they're looking to have that play. So it's really important to have that representation. So it's tough. I don't know if I would have said, okay, well we have this Chinese-American actor who's great and we're gonna cast them if we would have still gone forward with it. We are at about 15 minutes till the close of the events. I really, I mean, thank you guys so much for bringing so much great eloquence and great insight. So I just wanna open it up now to the whole audience. Is there anything else? I think something, Danny, you were kind of heading towards when you said, you know, I like to work. So I don't wanna lose work for myself by asking, should we not stage particular shows unless we have actors be authentic? And I feel like I think maybe what you were suggesting is like, oh, so I don't have the right then to be cast non-traditionally in a typically white play or whatever, right? Is that what you meant? And I feel like that is a frequent kind of, sort of a rejoinder from when you wanna have problems with non-traditional casting or casting authentically. And so how do you guys respond to that? Can I address that? Because I feel like the only consistent position on casting, because whenever you get into authenticity, you get into aesthetic judgments, of course you're necessarily subjective. But the only consistent position on casting is that we are seeking to create a more level playing field and create a more equal opportunity for actors. So if you look at the APAC statistics, for instance, this from the last week, okay, it's 3% agents, but it's 20%, all minorities, 20%. Okay, like in what industry would you go, that's acceptable, right? So what we are trying to do is create a more level playing field, which in practice, at this moment, means creating more opportunities for minority actors. And if you don't do that, you go the way of the Republican Party. You become, you shrink your audience, you're signing sort of the deficit for any industry. So there are really practical reasons to do that. And that's why when you have roles for minorities, you cast them on minorities, it's great to have minorities play roles that aren't defined as minority, but you don't have white people play roles for minorities because you're trying to expand the opportunities and create a more level playing field. And I would attempt on that, something that's starting to gain kind of normalcy is putting out your casting notices and saying, you know, this person, age, but then now, like if it's Caucasian, they spell out Caucasian, they spell out everything in there. Whereas before it, you just had to, me as an actor had to assume, it says Anna, but it doesn't say Asian, so it's not me, because I just assumed it was white. But now it's, people are getting much more sophisticated in how they put out their casting notices. And that is a help to everybody. Absolutely. Can I just piggyback on all of that? I ask it. I'm not reading so it gets me right. Um, there was a production of 5th of July. They went to the Wilson 2009 at Oak Park Festival Theater and they were having trouble casting the role of Jed. Michael Weber approached me and he said, I want you for this role. And I looked at the script, I saw who was related to who, and I knew who I was gonna cast in what roles. So I took the two roles that I could cast, like non-white, and I want you in this role. And we started talking about, we were talking about the projects, great. And he's like, did you not see the casting notice? And I self-censored myself, like I did and I didn't submit, because I didn't think I would ever. So I hold it on high authority that I'm the first Asian-American to play this role because it's a Vietnam War that is this lover. And that created such an alo, like in talking to the audience after, it was this great internal dialogue, having to negotiate that, but there was nothing about it in the play. So, own it. Jen has. Hi, I actually just had something happen to me this morning. I'm from Maine, which is 98% white. That's one of the reasons I left. But it's actually true, but this morning I was looking through the community theater that I worked with all through high school, which really turned me into the person that I am, and saw a picture of the King and I where the King looks like Risley Adams. But if you are in a small town, that is 98% white, what then becomes more important to tell an authentic story using a cultural, I'm nervous now, consultant, a cultural consultant, for a group of artists that will then learn something that they didn't know before, but they're not authentic in that way or not to tell the story, but then you have a group of people who then aren't given the opportunity to learn about a culture that isn't their own or are given the wrong stories, I'm not sure what the right answer is. That's a really good question. So, if I can phrase that in Chicago, but when you go to the small town, shouldn't they be able to see a story that's not necessarily representative of the culture How do you make it authentic? But the opportunity is for them to see this story. Again, it goes back to that. Jen, okay, so I was the one who said, if you can't cast it with Asians, don't do it. But, so I guess I should put a caveat to that. I mean, I do feel that there are situations, for instance in high schools, where generally in a lot of high schools in America, everybody plays everything and in colleges everybody plays everything. In that context I'm perfectly comfortable and I'm comfortable when you go to other countries or I guess small towns where you just don't have that acting pool. So I think there is a practical application too, but I still think that even in any of these contexts, the burden of proof falls on the theater to prove that it tried to find people because otherwise they lied. And I think too, you're distinguishing between academic theater and maybe even community theater too. And I just want to point out too for the audience, Jen Adams is the co-artist and director of Halcyon Theater and they did founding devotions a couple of years ago. And they found all the agencies and found that they needed it. It was great. We actually had a controversy because we had trouble casting Hannah, who I ended up playing. And I had a conflict and things were dragging on and she kept putting out notices. And I finally reached, I can't look at you, you're gonna make me cry. Sorry. I had to reach out and I'm like, you know what? If you're gonna cast this with a non-Asian, I'll drop it, everything. And she was like, oh my God, it never occurred to me to not use an Asian. I was like, who are you? What planet are you? But I feel like people are all over the board and we're just trying to help this side of the board kind of sweep over to that part of the board. And just a really quick house evening through I just asked Jamil if we could run a few minutes over just because we started a few minutes late because I know a lot of people have things to say or things to ask. So if you do need to go right at 8.30, please, you're more than welcome to, but if for those of you who have stuff to say, bring it, anyone else? So probably the greatest Hindu epic is the Ramayana, right? And it was done in Seattle, commissioned, original production. And I think the only role that was, forget South Asian brown, was the introductory narrator, the little boy that came out and kind of introduced the story. I sent people to see this. I've seen the script, I have the script, and it's a wonderful script. And the people I sent were Indo files, very, very, you know, and up in arms about seeing this. What I got back, and I did a lot of my own research, was that it was a wonderfully told story that was authentic, accurate, and respectful. I was fortunate enough to have a discussion with the artistic director of the theater, which is how I got the script. And what I learned from him was that in Seattle there was not apparently the pool that they were able to draw from, but they were really impassioned to tell this story. They partnered with all the South Asian scholars they could get their hands on. They worked with the artists to the museums, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and that that was how they became accurate in their storytelling. And frankly, that kind of thing to me is something that I applaud, and it's a great example of, yeah, they didn't have the South Asian actors, but they told this amazing story that their largely white audience came in and loved and learned a lot from. To piggyback on that, in Chicago was a staging of the same story, called Sitaram at the Harris Theater, which partnered with South Asians to produce the dance, but in the case of, in its multicultural casting, cast a white man as the hero and had a black man play his servant as the monkey god, and had a Latino man play the demon who was vanquished. And so in multicultural casting, we have to remember that our audiences are not race blind either. And America has a history that plays out on the stage that you're watching, regardless of this being a Hindu mythology. So I think that this multicultural casting does play out in multiple ways for different types of audience members. And we do have kind of the pool to be able to draw from in Chicago. I want to bring up a production of Tempest, that was again, because I talked to Kirsten last week. She did a Tempest and she could cast her Prospero, but that was it. And she said, I'm not doing a black Caliban and a white Prospero, I'm just not doing that again, because it becomes about imperialism. The guy calls her up in the theater, he's like, I've got the perfect Caliban, but he's African-American. She's like, okay, I'll at least see him. And he was right. He was the perfect Caliban. She said, okay, again, I got one more copy. Your Ferdinand has to be black. You can, but so as long as you as the director are aware, and you don't know Tempest, Ferdinand is the love interest. So as long as you got Caliban that, but also your love interest, the one that's propelling the play, also of the same color, there are many solutions to this problem or challenge or puzzle. Absolutely, and I'm gonna pop quite around. So I'm gonna, like, if it's not a question, leave this panel if it's a comment, like, come on, brought up, and you guys have responses. Feel free to jump in. Sorry, raise your hands. I, the gentleman with the best. Yes, go to me. Okay. This room filled with theater people, actors, directors, producers, writers. So it represents a sea change in Chicago theater history that has come about not overnight, but over many, many, many years. The kind of things you're talking about, authenticity, casting flexibility in a classic like the Tempest, whatever, are things that within my professional career and those of a few other people here, were impossible. I've been doing theater in Chicago for about 45 years. The first Asian play that I can recall being done here was a late night, second stage production of a one-at-play from the Yuan dynasty, which is Chinese 13th century that was done at the Goodman Theater as part of its original rock chauffeur's back there. I think he was still a box office treasurer. Late night in the rehearsal hall. And there wasn't even a question of attending to cast a Chinese classical play with Asian actors, let alone Chinese actors. Didn't exist in Chicago's professional community in 1973, 1974. About 10 years later, the Chicago Theater Project for which I was literary manager did a play called A Class C Trial in Yokohama by American playwright Roger Cornish about military post-World War II trials of Japanese officials for war crimes. It had equal numbers of people who were supposed to be American GIs and Japanese characters. We had a call, we had a few Asian-American actors who auditioned for us, but not a sufficient number to cast six or seven roles at a professional level. So we made the decision to cast it, but we discussed it with all European actors, none of whom appeared in the Yellow Face, none of whom spoke Pigeon English. We found other mechanisms to distinguish between the characters who were supposed to be Japanese and the characters who were supposed to be American. That was about 1983 or 1984. By 2005, I co-produced the Masrayana, a world premiere with Rasaka Theater Company and Prop Theater Company, cast of about 13. And that time, we could have a complete cast of Asian actors. I think 11 were South Asian. We had one Japanese-American ringer and I think we had one Filipino ringer. We also had a South Asian classical dance company and South Asian musicians. By that time, that had taken 30 years of my own personal involvement, you could achieve, let's call it authenticity. So there's been a sea change represented by this, but there also is a change in audiences. I think the growth and development of a class of artists is ahead of the curve of the growth and development of an Asian audience or more specifically, audiences. I'd be interested, Che, in who's buying the single tickets for Disconnect. I'd be interested, you know, Jamil, will you ever be able to sell a play by a Chinese-American playwright to Japanese-American ticket buyers? Will you ever be able to sell a play by a Middle Eastern author to South Asian audiences? Yeah, that's so, I mean, it's not happening overnight, but we have come leaps and bounds. We've only got a few more minutes for the, oh no, it's fine, it's really inspiring. So I'm gonna take some more, like two or three more points, but I encourage you, we have cards that if you didn't get called on, we have note cards that we ask you that what are you leaving with? What are you inspired with? What change do you hope to happen? Leave them right on them, leave them with us, and we're hoping to start a bigger conversation thanks to Deb and the league about this issue, not just with Asian-Americans, but, you know, all cultures. So, and again, API Chicago is a hashtag, so keep the conversation going, yes. But she's gonna say one thing that hasn't happened to see changes with across the media, and I say that as a critic, there's an article that Time Out Chicago did a few years ago, why is Chicago theater so white? I think we can say, why is Chicago theater criticism so white? Yes. You know, and I think this speaks to what you were talking about, whether it was The Guardian, whoever, that said, oh, it doesn't matter, or, you know, and I saw the Pippin, I reviewed it for the Tribune, and I mean, I didn't have the level of sophistication to know that the colors of the costumes were wrong. I just knew that the story just plain did not track. I mean, there was just no reason to paste this style or whatever they were calling it on this particular story. It did no service to the original as far as I was concerned. But given that, I think that's a larger dialogue that needs to happen, I don't know where we start engaging on that. I'm certainly not in a hiring position because I have a freelancer, a goer, I'm told to go see what I'm told to see. But I do feel as if that's one place that has not tapped up with audience, has not tapped up with representation on stage, and that's not to say in any way that white critics can't write intelligently and feeling we about work from a variety of different cultural perspectives, but I do feel like it's something we don't talk about enough, and so I don't know where we, I'm just throwing the out there, I don't know where we start the conversation around that, but I feel like I would be doing a disservice to myself if I didn't actually point out that I was, maybe I'm part of the problem. No, no, no, that's such a great point. Yes. Yes. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I'm a musical theater student and I'm kind of going back to what people said earlier. Like in college and high school, we like actors like me can play different roles, but it's almost like in my program, I'm the only Asian-American student and the way they kind of nurture me is very, very good. They give me all the classes, they give me all the advice, they're telling me that it's gonna be okay, and that you're good and everything will go well. But I almost feel like though that for people like me who are about to go out and kind of go into the real world, it's almost like we either have to be really, really good that a director has to consciously say, oh, we're casting an Asian-American actor for this big role, or I have to be kind of passable in order to blend in with kind of like the overall look of a production. So I guess kind of just like a question to everyone, like for young actors that are about to go into the real world that kind of have this problem to face and like we all talked about it, it's kind of a downer. But how, like what are we kind of supposed to do? Or like what can we do? Yeah. Beany Wong, I forgot what book it was in, but Harvey Fierstein had just done towards song trilogy off Broadway, which is about white gay people. And just to sum it up, white gay people. But Beany Wong, who was like, you know, very young at the time, like he came up to Harvey Fierstein and said, I love the play, it was great. Why can't you cast, would you cast me as the foster son? And it got Harvey Fierstein thinking and he noted that experience when they cast the movie, they cast a Latino actor. Matthew Broderick originated the role. You know, so it's you have to put yourself out there. I'm in constant conversation with my agent. I'm like, put me out. I mean, like, there's no reason why I shouldn't be submitted for these things if it's, or submit me even if it says white or whatever it says, submit me. So go ahead. One thing, the wonderful thing is, because we are finally coming of age, we second generation native speaker artists. And the thing is, what's so great is you count. You count in a way that 50 years from now, it's gonna be harder because we're gonna have a bigger foundation. There are gonna be more shoulders that all of us are gonna be standing on. So do your art, because inspiration begets inspiration. And we wanna look back 50 years from now and be like, you know, we all rose to the occasion. We've done good, 2012 was what it was, but we showed up. So show up, speak up, make your art. I'll just say one quick thing. So spend some time at Denver working on your shields and a cast of 10 black actors. And before we went on to do this reading, Andre says we have to do much better than everyone else here. And this is a madness of legend in the theater world. And to that, I would just say be more than excellent because just because you have a face and a look doesn't guarantee you anything. You have to be better than anyone else because this is about your art. It's a lifestyle, it's a calling. It's not a job. So please stay in Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, I need to cut the conversation short because this is such, again, like our friend here in the middle said, it's not an overnight change, but it is changing. And we are all a part of that change, which is really exciting and inspiring. So the last, and again, I say quick because we have to be mindful of people's time, as succinctly as possible, and it's a big question, so shoot me after this. What change or action would you like to see come from tonight? Or maybe we just leave it as a question. I think it's that everybody thinks about these decisions before they make them. I think a lot of these things happen because people just aren't thinking about them. And then, you know, and then they just go, okay, we're seeing how they do the nightingale, and yeah, let's put, I mean, this would be fun. We'll cast all sorts of people, and then everybody gets mad, and they're like, whoa, what happened? So, you know, think, yeah. And beyond that too, I'll just say, sometimes go beyond thinking, just do. Because I was in my diversity panel, which is a national panel in New York, and everyone agreed to think about it more. I'm sorry, sweetie. Just do, yeah, try it. If you fail, try again. I think this is a society that needs to be doing things. Stop giving artistic directors so much power. Self-produce, get your work out there. You know, there's only so many productions that any of us can produce in a given year, and there are mechanisms for mounting a show. I mean, essentially that's, you know, Malik and I not coming from the theater. One day said, we're gonna run the theater, and didn't have any of the sort of the guidebooks or the voices in our head, we just did it. So, you know, I would encourage others to take that plunge, and if you're not getting space at X Theater, then, you know, create your own space. And remember that it is, art is about always looking forward. Take me someplace new, you know, that so keep the big picture in mind, and just remember that we're gonna look back now and be like, we made mistakes then too, but that's how it is when you're on the leading edge, and it's okay. What I will say for myself on what action I'd like to change, just to close it all up, is that the reason I love to do theater in Chicago is the community. We are a really tight, supportive community. If we fall, we pick each other up. And I think that that is what distinguishes us from any other city. You look around. You look around in this room. Like, look around us from right now, there are, you know, every color, every actors, directors, producers, there's everyone here. I think the change that we can at least start tonight is to talk and connect, and make sure that these connections keep going, and that this dialogue keeps going with each other. So, and there are many ways to do that. Obviously, please write on those note cards. Keep in touch with each other. I don't know, it's such a small community. It's great. Follow this hashtag. Let us know your thoughts. Closing up, I want to thank, again, Silk Road Rising for hosting us. Deb Klapp and the League of Chicago Theatres and the whole team there, especially Ben. Victory Gardens, Che, especially Tim and Jeffrey, who have been so instrumental in this conversation. Lifeline Dorothy and Allison, who have been so open and receptive to a lot of, you know, really tough conversations. And Adam Belcourt, Goodman for, again, being instrumental in this discussion as well. So, thank you. Some of us will be staying around if you want to. If this is being recorded, it will be posted on Silk Road. Yes, and we'll send out the links to everyone so we can, you know, post it all over. And yeah, so thank you so much for coming.