 testing. We'll be starting in a few minutes. Great, so let's start. This is expanding yourself and your art through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations. Adriana Gaviria, this session is going to be facilitated by myself and Michael Leone. Hi. The format for for the session is we're just gonna have a conversation, ask a couple questions from each other here. You know, if you, Michael is gonna prompt us and then towards the second half we'll ask questions to a couple of guests there in the circle and the last 15 minutes we'll have a Q&A for those that are watching us on HowlRound.tv. If you have any questions I'll be checking my Twitter so if you want to ask a question there or on Facebook I will ask your question. It could be to any of the guests or anyone in the circle. Michael? Awesome. So when Adriana and I were planning this out we're like great interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary. What does that mean? Do we have to like we started defining it going to definition.com and stuff like that. So I think a good way to kind of start off the conversation is what is interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary mean to you or how do you define it? Yes we need to speak into the mic so if you want to raise your hand we'll walk over. I think that for me it's or the thing that I like about multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary it's not being confined by the rules of one art form but being able to draw out and you're constantly learning from not just within the arts but what methodology is used in science what what psychological studies there are what's happening in the politics so that you're constantly feeding what you're doing from multiple perspectives. Okay thank you. I also think there's there's a different in the words interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary so if you're looking at interdisciplinary literally meaning like if you're a doctor that all of a sudden is going to become a painter you're going to have the eyes of that doctor bringing that and all the skills and everything that you have in your mind into the discipline of painting and vice versa whatever that is and then sometimes what's interesting about that is that when you're multidisciplinary you have to kind of shut off one of them because you can't actually write a scene the way you write interiority in a novel and so how do you both be how can you be interdisciplinary meaning see with those eyes but also understand that a medium is a medium and to use it as at its best and richest capacity you also have to eliminate certain things so I think it's the same thing it's like seeing with the eyes of the other medium or genre and bringing it and crossing over. In an academic setting you can have a slightly different meaning I've never I've only be able to observe the situation where they call an opportunity or a class interdisciplinary it usually means you have somebody from architecture and somebody from theater teaching a class together or there's a project that's being worked on maybe I remember a few years ago they they had a project for the graduate students in architecture building a theater in downtown Miami you know on paper and they involved the theater design students and directing students and we're involved in helping that out we have a project with with the visual arts department that they create a contest among their best designers to put our posters together for our season so that's what I thought of as interdisciplinary in an academic setting is somehow two different disciplines getting together to teach a class or work on a project. I was thinking of the question on kind of a big broader level so it's great everything I'm hearing to help me contextualize but now I'm even more confused so multi-disciplinary interdisciplinary. I also think of bringing back to the questions of our multicultural latinidad in this country and in our home countries our ancestors home countries that those countries are also many times most most of the time three are more cultures and I think of the reflection of theater and art in latin america including united states and I think of by nature kind of our theatrical pageantry innate in our different cultures so there is mass work present a lot of the time there is dancing present a lot of the time it's a theatrical present there's there's dialogue present there's you know punto contra punto people reciting poetry back at each other present there is you know sapate which is all feet present and then you have the whole aspect of performance site specific right it's on a ruin it's in you know whatever in the in the forest in the amazon wherever it is so I'm thinking in that broader sense that huge rich culture cultures that we have that are by nature interdisciplinary it's actually when we get here that you're not allowed to do what the other person does you know you're supposed to stay in your I'm the writer so I even want to challenge that notion about the writing the dialogue or the novel does it have to be different parts of our brain how do you put that you know the letter on stage we did see a play about letters on stage you know how do you fold time on stage is is there an eight hour performance that happens outside maybe is you know or because there are some things that happen indoors that happen over you know three days you go to three different performances anyway I just wanted to open up that all that is in our dna and beyond just of an experience of our of our cultures anybody else so I learned to write my first monologue I wrote for a movement class and I also learned to write by going to museums because I figured that artist has that one shot to give you their story they're using texture color composition scope the materials that they're using and then I thought of that as I was building my monologues and I also think I was totally in love with this like jazz pianist like an idiot so I was into a lot of jazz and I would just listen to a lot of music and there was a mondrian exhibit at MoMA and when I saw that he had based uh boogie woogie on boogie woogie and then when you if you know boogie woogie and you look at it that painting you see it so that became very that like music and art are a natural part of my writing so I don't even think of it as something different like I think like as human beings we take the as I go see a lot of dance as human beings we take a lot of inspiration from life and put it into our into our work through all our senses the way that we see it so I think it's I think these discussions of multiple that just entered multiple to me it just it's a natural way that I learned how to do it because I'm self-taught and and sometimes I think that's kind of like it it happens organically and I think it's more about what Rosa was saying about getting out of our own way a little bit and just letting these natural things things that feel natural to you you know um happen and find the the ways in which other artists in other disciplines found ways to express the depth the complication you know how how do I how do I juxtapose these two colors how do I juxtapose these two characters is is I often think in terms that are not theatrical or not having to do anything with writing actually I usually think in terms of paintings or music when I'm writing and it's just because I taught myself and I went to what inspired me so that those meanings to me it's like yeah that's what we do we put life on whatever if we're using our imagination we're going to use the receipts that sparked our imagination to make our work so to me it just feels very natural it doesn't feel something that's foreign at all I was just saying I have a very brief I feel like Elvis thank you uh thank you very much um now it's not so brief uh but no I was just thinking we were we were mentioning uh Marietti Nifonnes the other day who's a painter and uh never really became this great playwriting teacher without having really studied playwriting so anyway that's all I have um I think it's important to stay open to uh our own innate unfettered curiosity right and not silo ourselves thinking I'm this I'm that professionally even within what could broadly be considered our discipline I'm multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary because I work as writer I work as a producer I work as a director I work as an actor beyond that I have interests in things that seem relatively far-flung when you think about the the money that the Alfred Peeve Sloan Foundation is putting into storytelling dealing with stem issues and really having to dig into that and understand it to a distinct degree I mean how how long has the uh stereotype been around that people of letters and people of science are very different kinds of people right but the reality is that a ton of really fascinating stories and sure some that are not so great but a ton of really fascinating stories have opened themselves up to us because people of letters and people of science have been willing not only to speak with one another but to realize that there are blurred boundaries between us we're not necessarily inherently so completely different and foundationally by really understanding the science inherent to a specific story that's being told I then can turn around as an artist utilize that information more fully and tell a richer story and I think that that's interdisciplinary as well not just in the creation of the execution of how we tell the story but why do we even tell the story and what story do we choose to tell right I think uh as as you said we're all multi-disciplinary in many ways I think when it comes to a moment though when we uh there is a discipline that we are unfamiliar with like if I wanted to incorporate ballet into a play I was you know there's no way I'm a ballet dancer right so uh then I'm interested in how to best serve the piece uh incorporating what this new discipline has to offer and how we can collaborate together to begin to create something completely out of our both of our experience awesome so I think we could segue now into what brought you into the room what are you hoping to get out of this conversation um just briefly hopefully um I guess inter multi anything that has to do with crossing a bridge I want to be there I really like the the bridging that's been sort of my whole life um which shared probably with everyone in this room so between north and south that bridge is interesting to me born in south america raised in seattle moved back to south america back to seattle I also my work my daily life is in a hospital so and my theme is type two diabetes I'm a diabetes nerd and I want to bridge that and playwriting and um so that's influenced a lot of of the plays that I've written and directed so this bridge thing and it's really related to the multi and inter because in your life you approach people and you know they got their thick story their layers of stories and and that includes um the doctor that walked into the room they got their story and then the homeless patient that's you know singing on the street they got their story so anyway that's what attracted me to you guys in this circle the inter multi which I think we are um I what drew me into this room was curiosity more than anything um and to listen and hear what that looks like for all of you um I think as performers especially nowadays it's kind of a given that we're expected to be actors who move or actors who sing and we're not just singers and actors and dancers but we have to automatically be this package and I wonder how that translates in other disciplines or if you're an actor who's a playwright or an actor who's a director and a second addendum as a woman growing up I was always pushed toward the stage and to act and to act and I've always thought well I kind of maybe want to direct someday but I felt like those opportunities weren't presented to me as the first thing the first option it was like well you're you're kind of cute and you can do a thing so be the actress but I'm like okay well what if I wanted to be the director and I feel like just mentoring young women especially in with female identifying actors and performers who to be pushed out of those boundaries as well. I liked hearing you say Carmen um the yourself taught that to me growing up was had such a negative connotation that if you did not go to a prestigious school you did not study to be something specific then we're not really invited into the room in the same way and I think I was raised with the notion of I had to be the best at one thing in order to succeed if you wanted to try out different things you were kind of setting yourself up for failure so I am perpetually fascinated by the concept that I can actually do more than one thing because I am more than one thing um and learning to like now see that when I do say that I'm self taught to say that with pride um oh I'm gonna steal that I'm Pedro Almodóvar basically I think that that's something that um I don't I don't know if it's necessarily like study not study but something that I've that I think build multidisciplinary interdisciplinary people is people who get adventurous and trying something that they didn't necessarily go to school for right like I'm sitting next to the creative non-fiction you know studied writer who's written multiple things but has also she's constantly always bringing in that sort of perspective into her playwriting work and it's because you know I and things like I was a performer and then I knew how to direct performers because I knew what it's like to get in there and you're like okay so it's something actually quite beautiful that people who get adventurous or like I wonder if I did this um makes us multidisciplinary and I also think that we have to remember constantly that the world didn't come already with a rule book and this is how the world works I think that we like we make the rules so somebody wrote the rules that there was a writer a director and this and that and then we followed it so we can start changing the rules if we want um yeah I heard you use the word adventurous which is something that I actually like I think um something I'm looking for in this conversation is conversations about fear of embracing a new medium or exploring a new territory or you know venture that you've never explored before um I think that's what often gets people siloed into theater or like into just the thing the one thing that you studied and I'm always I'm interested in hearing how people have handled their own fear of oh I'm not I how do I I don't know how to code why should I try to be a video game designer or something like that right because that is actually like thoughts that I've had and I'm I guess I'm curious to hear from the room like how um you handle that fear and I think what brought me into the room was the cake in the corner if I had to be totally honest I'm hoping somebody's gonna cut it because it's meeting a cake and it smells delightful that's probably what brought me into the room but as far as being multi disciplinary interdisciplinary and this thing that you're talking to both of you what I would say is you know I went to school for acting right but then I taught myself how to write and also my first solo show I produced I did all the marketing you know I I I chose the right like it it's something out of need so it's just like when you speak about fear it's funny because when I was younger I was too dumb to know that I had to be scared so it's just like oh it's so courageous of you and I'm thinking courageous really it's just a necessity like if you're not going to do it who's going to do it and the other thing is like why not you do it like really like we're not in a war zone most of us you know we're not it's it's it's fear of failure is a silly thing that we've been like that's been injected into us by people that that that are smart enough to fail and keep going and they just want to eliminate the competition I think failing is amazing fail fast and I think that the things that are born out of necessity are going to only expand our repertoire are going to only make a stronger artist and failing is good I've never learned from my successes I've only learned from my failures which have been plenty so I'm grateful for every one of them and it's like good do your video game and mess it up because then the set your next video game is going to be awesome and I think we've gotten after fucking Reagan everything had to be like so perfect and this like veneer perfection and that's really boring to me that basic bitch stuff is just like I have no time for it so I think like out of need we become multidisciplinary and to me it's much more interesting not to have resources than to have them because that's really to me where creativity happens and where mistakes happen and where growth happens so that that to me is a connective tissue of really building a very strong career and cake um so a couple things I uh you know we have more access to information with a lower barrier of entry in terms of finances than we've ever had before in human history right so first and foremost if you're interested in learning about it you can right I took a couple of different recently in the past couple years a couple of different video game writing courses because I'm interested in doing that too but the reality is that if I didn't have the funds available to pay for that online course I could have also just picked up a couple of the books that I used in that course I could have tried out different things um you can use twine for free in order to write branching narratives right which you don't only use by the way if you want to try writing branching narratives for a game if you want to try it for a different sort of like a for a performance piece right and you want to have the audience choose at this point like choose your own adventure okay let's go this way right like what you guys do right I don't know if you all use twine I don't know if you want to talk about that at all okay copy that you know I do recommend though that you check out I do recommend though that you check out twine because it's it's very very basic coding it's nearly nothing when it comes to that and it really helps you organize the decision branches where it's like okay if we go this way then this happens you really keep the the variables in mind yeah no legitimately legitimately we can talk more about afterwards twine twine is a really really useful tool um no but to speak more broadly to the question of interdisciplinary I've always I've had these conversations since I was a child I was lucky to grow up in the theater and around television I was trained as a as an actor first and foremost although my mother's a writer I was been around writers right so I got into writing um really early on and then I went on to study film and television production and then I continued to develop as a theater artist on the side of that right and then when I graduated I did the theater artist stuff and then I moved back here and I'm actually back here now in this room because I'm trying to more formally rejoin the theater community after spending a number of years really focused on film and television work right um I feel like the different hats that I wear even just within what it is that we do broadly speaking as a writer a director a producer an actor working in film and television documentary and in in fiction work uh in theater in various forms of theater Shakespeare improv there's all sorts of different ways that we can slice this question of interdisciplinary right and multidisciplinary um all of it makes me better at all of it right if I follow that curiosity and I'm listening to to my voice inside so I'm not just being pushed which I've felt that pressure too in a different way than what you're describing but if I'm not just pushed into one area where it's like this is what people want you to do right now so just keep doing it because it's an easy thing to do um and I listen to myself like you were listening to yourself it sounds like and oh I might be interested in directing at some point stay open to that and then your your experience as an actress will make you a better director if you write your experience as a writer will make you a better director and your experience as a director will make you a better writer you know because you are to to karman's point just a person and actually to your point also we're not the labels that we put on ourselves we're just people we're just artists in the broadest sense we're just we're storytellers right and all of these are tools and whatever the am I allowed to swear because this thing I did okay great whatever the fuck you want to put in your toolbox because it's going to be a useful tool for you don't let anybody stop you from doing that all right thank you so let's um so just taking just listening to what you guys have to say so what if you are an artist and there is a discipline that you are really curious about and you want to open yourself to that and you have a project and you want to include that in in your project how do you go about that so i'm gonna ask paul who has a project called we have a day and just talk a little bit about your your process and thanks for everybody giving your your opinions and your your experiences out there i appreciate the the back and forth so the honesty is really powerful and learning too from folks um so i have a project called we have a day and it is both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary i love mixing and bringing uh different things together in theater um i have a hard time just watching straight up dialogue on stage for 90 minutes that's tough for me to do and especially if it's dialogue you're just standing there sitting on a couch i it's hard you know i want to see people sweat i want to see movement i want energy expressed on stage um so for myself this project we have a day was really about um having the best collaborators inside a multidisciplinary piece where there is a um choreographer a full live band a dj dancers and actors so it's like a musical in a lot of ways except for the interdisciplinary part where the choreographer is also acting right so he is playing himself he's actually not a trained actor but he's actually the the the choreographer is telling his story about coming from the mountains of Santiago de Cuba right being tricked into becoming a dancer by people by the the school the dance school telling him he was going to learn karate come learn karate because we need men to join the dance school young boys to learn how to dance so really you know we're asking all the all the boys to come out into the playground and learn karate okay you're the most flexible you're going to dance school to learn to be a ballet dancer that was how he got he got sucked in so i wanted him to tell that story right is a tall black dude who you look at him long dreads you would you would like you know he's very masculine six four this guy's moving beautifully on stage but he never talks because in his role uh in in dance he's always just moving he's telling a great story with his body but i want to hear him talk to and i want him to dance right um so having him tell his own story as a choreographer as an immigrant as a black man um and dancing at the same time was was outstanding he wasn't the greatest actor he forgot a bunch of lines um but he came from a very authentic place which was his own voice um the same thing goes with uh the DJ um DJ ladies this is uh another black woman from kuba who took a balsa across the ocean right and was lost at sea um left her family and her daughter in kuba to be a dj and could have died easily um and then there she is in the middle of of the ocean and she ten years after that is playing for president obama in the white house so who could tell that story yes i have her tell a little bit of the story and then i and i also brought in an actress that actress um is telling ladies's story ladies is telling a little bit of it um but then she comes in and then she's singing the actress is singing the text that based on ladies's story um how do we get to the songs this was really cool this is what what's an asset about having rosalba roulon in the room um rosalba is an excellent director of actors but she can also write songs so and she can direct um composers and so she took my text based on ladies story and she found a song in it gave this section didn't change any of the words but says this is a song it is it's a song she gave it to yosvani terry and said yosvani this is a song compose the melody yosvani goes yeah it could be a song right um uh it's my mother yeah my yeah it's my mother yeah my he took one line and created a melody out of it and so now the actress who's playing ladies is singing this song and so this is uh an interesting interdisciplinary multidisciplinary uh docu theater multimedia we're actually interacting with the screen at the same time we took live footage of um hold trips through the campo and filmed uh the participants uh family members and so ramon the monchi the guy playing the dancer is actually interacting with the screen with with his uncle who just had just died right right after we filmed this he's talking with his uncle the uncle's responding we use the responses as as if they're having a conversation so it's also multimedia it's multimedia interdisciplinary multidisciplinary two composers a dj and a four person jazz band four actors three dancers we are the other thing about multidisciplinary was how do we get how do we tell the story how do we tell the story with multiple access points we're telling the story in three languages english spanish and yoruba folks who don't understand um spanish are looking at the super titles but we didn't translate the yoruba neither so we want the dance to interpret the song so the dancers are doing a piece for yamaya or ochun right and that is corresponding to the story of one character praying to yamaya to save her in the middle of the ocean with the song going the dancers the text that to me is amazing that's beautiful that that is like a vision right that was the vision that i had so in in order to have a really dope multidisciplinary piece i don't think you should put it all on yourself okay yes experiment do things you want to do but get the best people you can to do the best type of work if you can't afford it that's fine i'm not a ballet dancer either i can't do modern dance right um i can write and i can act that's what i can do uh but i think if you have the opportunities to bring in the the best people um to do those things now they're not always going to tell their own story not every choreographer wants to act that's why they're dancing but the the last thing i wanted to say is i came to this um this gathering in la in 2017 and brought up an issue about the lack of afro latinos and in our community uh being on stage right and a lot of the responses that people were telling me before were like oh well there aren't that many latino afro latino actors we don't have that pipeline i said well okay so we could just erase people and forget them on stage or we can start taking chances on bringing people from other disciplines to act and that's what i did um and and i felt like we're going to sacrifice a little bit of the quality of acting but the authentic story and our community will be well represented so which one do you want to do because i'm not going to do the black face um and and i felt like that was really really important that we did that so this this show was not only multi disciplinary and interdisciplinary and multimedia but it was also kind of addressing the afro latino experience in our community thank you so much of what you said made me think of things i'm trying to organize them in my head um two words come to mind uh one is necessity and the other is serendipity i think it's two ingredients that often lead us to reach out beyond our discipline um i was listening to npr yesterday or the day before because i'm a middle-aged liberal and it's the law uh and uh they were interviewing this guy who must be about 80 now and in 1940s he was this uh i think his name is coan he was this jewish guy from new york who fell in love with uh latin drums bongos and such and he used to go to birdland and all these places in new york to yeah i think so yeah latin he's founder of latin percussion and and serendipity was that just around the time he wanted to learn how to make bongos uh the the the embargo against cuba started and they couldn't get any real cuban drums and uh the necessity was that he really really wanted to do this and the serendipity was that he would have to do it himself so he became uh this amazing amazing drum maker by calling up his musician friends and saying how do you make a drum and now he's this this established person and makes this incredible percussion instruments and uh anyway i thought that was an example of uh and sometimes it's just taking advantage of opportunity we're gonna go see a play this afternoon by rudy goblin and rudy goblin was a dancer who along with my colleague michael yawney started making these shows and then suddenly became a writer and now he's going to Yale to study the playwriting uh that may be just because he's rudy goblin and he's amazing but uh the the necessity sometimes comes from the heart uh that's enough for me i had other ideas but i want to i want to get our landl to respond to thank you for putting me on this pot here uh but i really first of all i want to thank you um for what you're doing for incorporating the diversity of who we are as hispanic because hispanic is not only one race hispanic is a multitude of of of race um that create this community um also want to thank you for what you just said regarding not using blackface not trying to to put an actor or an actress who is not black to pretend to be black to pretend to be an afro latino or an afro latina uh and stage i i think that's the that's the very important um and um and i congratulate you for for making that that statement as well um the incorporation also of the religious aspect of who we are of afro afro latino also an awesome thing to do because the religion aspect of the afro latino is something that that has been demonized unfortunately over the history um and many people have this false idea or false notion that has been imposed through society and and people is that everything that the black community or the afro latinos do in terms of their religion is evil and and in reality is not is that what they make you think is that what they make you believe uh and so uh and and by you incorporating all those elements into it you are making a statement to the public and saying this is okay this is this is all right i mean this is not something that you should reject or just put aside something to learn you know from on the history and and the experiences so i really i'm really pleased to hear that and i wish you know a lot of people can be able to um open up also to to have that diversity uh involved into and and stage which we don't see and the last thing i want to make to the comment i want to make also you because you made it you um stated is that um i have heard people also said the same thing and that is well um we don't have um black Hispanics that can get can do this we don't have um black Hispanics afro latinos actors or act actresses to perform a particular area or uh in my case with the uh Ernesto Gamboa project we were looking for a company with an um that had afro latinos in in their understaff and the answer that i got was uh well afro latinos are not interested in in in pr i mean that's that's a racial statement right there and i'm and this is not this is not from an Anglo this is from an Hispanic person okay so um thank you it's from our own community so what you're doing is an awesome thing i mean i and and you have my support and this thank you thank you Orlando and or i um i want to speak a little bit to about what you said or i i or lando and i didn't know each other but when i was talking to people in the community and thinking about who i wanted to connect with i found you online and so when i spoke to or lando or lando was like well i don't really do theater and i'm like it doesn't matter because we we have to have this conversation together and we are all yeah we are all involved in this together and like rose said it's in our dna that we work um together as a group even if if we go outside of our primary discipline whatever that is um which leads us to vicki i would love for you to talk about unconventional partnerships for example it's up to me to talk about unconventional um partnerships great uh so i again i think that that um paul said something really smart the best advice i've ever gotten was work with people who are smarter than you if you're the smartest person in the room you failed um which i have run with that um and what's happened it's um i've had many opportunities especially recently to collaborate not only multiple disciplinary in the sense of like in the arts but also with people outside of the arts which is the work that we do um actually i think that a bunch of the work that we that gets requested from us like we have maybe a theater going hey we want to work with you guys but usually it's people like from ngos or from different organizations that are like hey we are looking to cause empathy with other human beings and we know that you guys make art that does that with people um so a big part of our work has been to collaborate with non artists and try to get to communicate the thing that they do um a main thing that we have to understand or that i have learned is that um the audience is not stupid and just because you're the theater artist doesn't mean that when you collaborate with someone that they don't have amazing input on what theater is and when we're talking about theater right like you have sometimes you get the best ideas from the corporate guy and it's you're like you're the corporate guy but sometimes the corporate guy is the one that's saying hey wait i don't understand what you're saying what are you trying to communicate to me and you're getting like i think that's something i'm gonna say something really gross i'm embarrassed here all the time but um but like sometimes we get into the theater circle jerk and this sort of like we're so smart oh my god we're so good at what we do that sometimes we forget that the reason we do it is to make the grander community um and i think that uh one is learning how to what i've learned is how to speak in other people's languages and understanding that that's not false that is communication so i'm not gonna it's it's understood making things in the terms that somebody else can i mean that's what theater is i'm making a play so that you understand this point of view um i i wish there was this was more conversational uh because right now it feels like a monologue and i know that in five seconds i'm gonna want to say something a little bit more intelligent but i think i think that the the main thing i've learned is know what you bring to the table and know how that i don't know anything i didn't know anything about liquor and now i can you know and then now this story about rum came into my life and it's actually not a story about rum it's a story about exile it's a story about immigration it's a story about people what it means to leave everything behind there's a difference between saying we always say this if there's you can say in a sentence you have to leave every my my grandparents left everything behind you could do that or you can put someone through the journey of actually leaving everything behind and understanding that that story didn't come necessarily from um us just we've always wanted to tell stories like this something that connected us was that we wanted to tell the same stories but the fact that somebody was like somebody needs to understand why this rum exists and why this like somebody needs to know the story and it wasn't a theater maker it wasn't that person and for people that are watching you're talking about i'm talking about the umpado experience right now in downtown right but yeah i'm talking about that and what's happening is that now other people are like but we want you to tell the story of where our how our company came to life how how why my mission exists like that's what's what i find very exciting now about the future of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary is that now people are asking for theater makers to tell their story there's a there's a new hype coming up and i love it to storytelling which is the nature of who we are we are storytellers since the beginning of time and i do hope that that feeds back into the theater because these were ideas that were presented to theaters and they said no but that's not this but that's not this and we are we are inherently multidisciplinary multicultural code switching that's what we do we are theater is all of that it's many things to many people it's putting all kinds of experts in a room to talk to each other and make a thing but when you go and you say you know there's i think one of the best things that was ever said to me was that uh talents is just guts and desire and it's the guts to kill the fear to go study the thing and there are different ways of studying and sometimes that studying is putting different kinds of people in a room and it's the desire to put those people in that room together but if you're gonna say i'm theater like what is theater you know um so there is a hope that all of this kind of collaboration that's happening outside can then feed back into whatever whatever theater becomes in the second half of the 20th century 21st century um for both of you for i i don't know who dealt with this but when you go across cross disciplines to business which seemingly would be antithetical to to what we do uh in theory a great idea but both these disciplines both these areas have management structure and power structures that are already built in so does that have to be dealt with from the top who makes decisions about what happens before you start to be creative something that's great is that you're the expert in the room about being creative that's the one thing i was ready to come in with like oh we're talking about corporate and like when you work in the theater it's like people with money like there's something that we've that we've been inherited and so what what has happened and it it happens like she can talk to you especially about the storytelling and how she has to deal with like the part of like these are the words that are being said about us but we got a lot of freedom we got a lot of liberty and what happens with them is that they're executors and so nobody told me you can't do that thing you can't if anything they're like okay so then how do you want it and when do you want it and it's like oh all of a sudden all of a sudden it's not creativity out of limitation it's creativity with like making sure that you're actually telling the thing that you're not getting gluttonous with opportunity that you're being specific and they're they don't have they don't have the limitate at least in our experience so far they don't limit you and like is that the right choice they're like okay you're the expert so you tell me what comes next and so there's this weird freedom that you get that has been tremendous it was my grad school i'll add one thing which is that i think you can't just go seeking a corporate partner you have to align like the stories have to align the mission has to align the ideas have to align or it's not going to work i think that anyone coming into this that thought this was just about selling rum this is not their story to tell and if that's what you think you're doing then it's not that thing and vice versa right so like it has to be aligned it has to be authentic and it has to be real you can't just be like i'm going to go find someone with money it's that's the serendipity i think that you're you're talking about you know it's like you're prepared to do the thing you've been trying to do it your whole life here are these people that want to do the same thing let's align i mean you know you don't just add a little thing yeah other people could talk to you sorry um but to her point is like we don't have to lose our integrity because money is involved at all and i have yet like i i'm hoping that i never get put in that position because so far every single thing i'm like yes i want to fight for that i want to fight for that thing and i want to tell the story and the best tool that we have is that we can make you feel and understand another human being they have to do the fundraising have to do all this have fun but we can we can do the human i know you have a question so we'll leave questions for the for the last 15 minutes i want to hear from teo who's going to talk a little bit about the longer you are in this industry the longer you are creating there are certain needs that come for you in your career trajectory we're talking about financial partnerships or stability we've talked about going into other disciplines or collaborating with other people but what about for yourself as an artist hello everyone thanks again for this conversation it's definitely deep thought-provoking and and mind-blowing as as well um so for me i my whole career has been based on devised theater and that's that's how i've sustained myself by and created work for myself and i knew that was going to happen when when i was in school i knew that i was going to have to become a writer even though i did not study writing in that aspect i am self-taught and by the way just because i got it so i did get a bfa but and maybe at the time that i got that bfa 80 of what i knew about the theater came from that education but today and then 20 with self-taught but today i think that's flipped 20 came from that bfa and 80 is self-taught most and there's and there and i will say that and not to uh this any any cultural institutions because we're actually sitting in one but i did have to teach myself a whole and i do have my criticisms about cultural institutions and a Eurocentric approach to theater training and and learning that being said i do have a bfa and and i and i and i earned it uh but yes uh in reference to self-teaching self-taught uh i you i had to and i encourage young people to uh move beyond the the piece of paper or what i think krs one day uh once called actually it was at a at a lecture he did here uh at fiu what he called your receipt after four years um so so it is it is really important that we continue to teach ourselves and we continue to to learn and uh uh expand especially as as for me as an artist and as a theater maker and yes i am influenced by visual arts i'm totally influenced by music and movement that is and you know to the point where people think i i get introduced all the time as a oh here's telkas and he's a choreographer and a dancer i'm not at all uh i'm a theater artist but but i do but i do dance and i and i use dance in my work in reference to interdisciplinary and and multi uh discipline um but and and the the longer i am i there hasn't been a single theater piece that i've created that i have not posed a new challenge on myself every new piece i need to and i have to do something that i have not tried before uh whether i fail or succeed is is not the point the point is to expand keep it interesting and expand my knowledge expand uh my my my my disciplines uh if you will um and and then this is the last this last piece that i created uh and it's also okay so i'm gonna go back a little bit to to the to the training uh it's also um i believe again i strongly believe in in in in getting a degree um but i also uh like we said uh who did you say was self-taught uh oh almodovar and and basquiat you know i yelled that out um it is important that we there is such a thing that's as that i call cultural training that we come from culture that is in our dna that comes that comes from not only not you don't acquire it in four years you acquired it in in four thousand years or maybe four million um and that's deep now that being said that has to be also watered from an an exterior event that brings it up an example uh you know all of a sudden i can you know i've never taken uh afro-cuban class in my life but i can somehow do it i can somehow dance it um because it is in my dna um but that had to be triggered by me seeing someone do oh i could oh wait a minute i think i hold wait a minute whoa and i i got it right now not not that's not to say that i cannot go on and train i just actually started training at my ripe old age i am i started training in bomba dance and i picked up and i have actually all i wanted to do was was learn enough to throw down at a bomba jam and and i got it pretty pretty quickly i threw out in my first it as a matter of fact i put it in my last show uh but so yes i could continue to push in the boundaries and challenging myself um this last piece uh that that i created with the combat hippies which is a group of of Puerto Rican uh veterans uh two from the iraq war and one of vietnam era veteran and he's a percussionist who's played with anybody uh he has a really impressive uh uh a bio uh from tito puente to winter marcellus um i i decided i was really really tired of of the uh not only of the aspect of the Eurocentric training and that that frame and that that model as a matter of fact uh rudy came to me at the age of 23 as a b-boy and i cast him in the show and and his his uh he's still uh one of my sons actually yeah yeah um but he culturally trained because to be a b-boy a b-girl you don't you don't learn that in college and you and you need discipline you need effort uh and you need training and a lot of hard work you cannot become uh a good uh uh breaker that's b-boy b-girl is a break dancer for those of you who um who understand a misnomer um and um that is cultural training and the iraq war veterans that i've been working with um the veterans that i've been working with got the same amounts of cultural training that in this piece that we developed over a year and a half uh i worked with them actually a little longer than that because we had created with two of them had created another piece but in the four years that they worked with me they got serious training serious training and they not and and and and i did not let them get away with uh and uh with with i was not okay with them not reaching the level of an actor i was not okay with that um i pushed them to that point of learning how to write because they they wrote the piece i i did a dramaturgical work on it as well as uh their performance and i worked them hard and they were like damn i i might as well should i should have gone and got a bfa um because i'm that serious about that about the training um and the the art form so this piece i actually my new challenge was was directing in the round i've never had never directed in the round i really wanted to move away from the Eurocentric proscenium theater i was uh i said if i have to direct in the proscenium again i'm i don't know what i'm gonna do yes so i created which actually it's it was double edged short because i love the final product however when we began touring i kind of had to adjust to the proscenium theater anyway so i had to go back and reblock mad stuff but uh but um you know the show is being represented uh by uh Tommy Kriegsman an archetype out of new york city and he knows that our preferences to do it in the theater but if i have to adjust to the proscenium or at least a thrust more but i haven't adjusted to full proscenium but i have adjusted to a thrust stage it is actually i was looking at the space on leo this would be perfect um but um um that so there's new challenges so i guess i touch upon a little bit of what everyone spoke of in reference to training in reference to interdisciplinary and and reference challenges thank you so now we're gonna open it up to some questions rose well i i had more of a comment or comment um just responding to you know all these wonderful um threads of conversation so just to pick up one thread was you i appreciate the movie you're on your beyond your degree so i also i got a bfa i was like 21 and then i started to live you know because you have to um and then as a 24 year old i moved to south america for 10 years and i really had to start to learn to do stuff on my own so moving beyond um the degree and kind of um comparing it not comparing it but another track self-taught but i just want to introduce another a third track which is the idea of the maestro and the aprendiz right that's the way of learning so it's not exactly self-taught so before there was uh schooling you fall around you know the cobbler and zapatero and then you learn to do that and then pretty soon you're doing your own zapatos and then you're you know start your business then you're a business person with a craft right so we're all craft people so this idea of the having that journeyman's having that aprendizaje you know that word comes from aprendiz so we have the the master and the apprentice right so that is also a track and i think that's you know what these guys were doing with you they were having an apprenticeship so and that counts that's valid that probably is going to impact you in your field more than the classroom work which was great you know i just feel like they're different really i can feel it here like this synapse exploded here but this one exploded here i really think they're they're different parts and and the melding of two really is what can give us our special voice and the other thread that i saw coming out of here about um cultural training was the idea of artista in artesano so from our countries our home countries or latin america and and worldwide so we have some great artesania right we have folk people producing amazing embroidery amazing masks amazing dance work so this idea of the artesano is the people it's everyone's voice it's in our pageantry it's in the fiesta popular it's in the in the everything so when we you know go into a classroom or a school of the dance a school of the folklore we distill it you know so maybe it's not a thousand steps to the right maybe it's you know 20 um but i think just keeping that notion that we are legacy of artesanos and how we use that to become artistas and doesn't mean you have to give up the artesano so in a sense it is it does belong to everyone that the expertise belongs to everyone without leaving behind the you know the be rigorous with your practice thank you um so something to just add about uh partnerships and not being the smartest person in the room i think it's just a great opportunity to leverage the wealth of resources in our communities outside the theater industry and i think about um so often we have like the scrappy artist mentality of like i'll learn how to do it like i'll just figure out how to i am a i'm a producer and i'll learn how to do lights and i'll run the soundboard and i'll figure out all these things i'll write the play myself um and i'll do the rigging and somebody will die because i don't know how to do the rigging um but i think that you know i do a lot of engagement work uh for the theater in boston that i work at and there's moments where we have to be like we actually don't have the expertise here to deal with the trauma that the play brings up so like who's in the lobby to do that who's in the who's leading the conversation that does that we don't have the expertise to engage around this thing we don't have the relationships to go deep into this topic but people do like people spend their whole lives doing this work and so how are we working with social workers and how are we working with not teaching artists but teachers who are obviously have these skills of artistry um and how are we engaging them in the work and how are we um getting as many voices thinking about their work through the theater so that we're not like half-assing it and and doing work because like you know it can become irresponsible at some point when you're just being the artist who's like endowed with divine creativity um so i think it's a really beautiful opportunity to decentralize what the theater is and um and make your work better stronger and more responsible i'm very Eurocentric because my sister and i were talking this morning she goes you know when you're cube and it's hard not to be i i feel that my culture is half African half Spanish but i grew up with my grandparents talking about Spain the same exact way that my grew my parents talked about Cuba right so to me it's interesting because i i feel like i get to live the best of all worlds like i really get the best of all worlds and i think sometimes it's funny because when you're like should we have somebody in the lobby my first very Spanish attitude is like no let them deal with it like i just think it's like you know just kill them all like i just that's awful but it's it's kind of funny too i don't know it's in a way it's kind of like we don't always have the tools to deal with it and i think that that's okay sometimes i think looking for expertise is okay sometimes but also challenging people to trust your audiences and to go along with you when you're doing something that isn't Eurocentric i think is really important too and i think if we're not challenging there are audiences we're boring them and to me there's nothing worse like i'd rather leave a theater pissed off than bored you know or i'd rather leave a theater obviously happy or excited and bored but i just think that it to me it's funny because we have so many different ways of of achieving the same thing and it's so wonderful right because we can use these tools because we can pick up a proscenium or we can go to the round and i i just think i just again maybe because this is the only word i can think of because i'm getting sleepy but again it was like that abundance like how wonderful that i can look at something that they all produces and totally be moved by it and he can look something that i produce and be totally moved by it even though we're coming from two different directions of production i think what comes down to is finding what you need and what your company needs to make sure that you're getting your complete message out there like if you want people to leave feeling horrified you're not going to put the therapist in the lobby but if you want people to feel horrified but then have that safe space back into the world then you're going to do that i think we have so many choices available to us and that's what really popped out of this is so so exciting to live in a moment and in a time where we can dig back 4 000 years and look at something that's super provincial or super of a space and bring it into a completely different context and have that as a starting point for this world and this space to harken back and forth i think that's kind of amazing that we get to play in this arena just something because something that you said sparked something because of what you said okay um like when i discovered bomba i was like oh my god hold on i can tell the drummer what to do and it was like this sort of switch of perspective like this sort of switch of like the way that the music goes is that the drum plays the beat and you move to the beat that's the way it goes the drum says what it goes the drum says the drum says the drum says and the day i discovered bomba that i was like perade she's moving right now she's going and he is following her hold on it's the same ingredients it's the same thing but constantly and i think that's what multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary does is that it automatically uses the same tools and just goes like this flip the perspective that then i think is like it's just it's just not necessarily being like we're going to drag it from somewhere else it's just like looking at the thing and going what if and switching it up that's all hi my name is victor corian um i was asking if people know what is bomba which is is one of afro caribbean Puerto rican dance which is a communication between the drummer and the dancer i think it's back and forth i think the drummer talks to the dancer then the dancer responds and sometimes is it's not a monologue between you know the drummer and the dancer yeah and um i don't know it's it's part of the the the rich culture that we have in just one island i think the same thing happened with with cuba or dominican republic we have the caribbean but each of the island have his own flavor and his own idiosyncrasy and how do i call it it's very african is is basically drums and with these huge skirts white skirts sometimes they put you know different colors and then basically the female is dancing with uh the skirt and talking with the skirt and the feet and then the guy sometimes they use a machete and his feet to talk to the drummers and to talk to the women i mean it's something that you should see if you don't know because it's difficult to describe uh and the music is it's it's um like it resonates in your in your chest so if you have a drop of african in yourself definitely will move and if you don't you would be like what the i don't know this is not a video of the show but i wish before the weekend ends that people i have a video so i can show to you you need the drums you know without the drums sorry um i had a question for the group um i'm obsessed with this idea of finding backdoor entrances to access your work like to use an example like i you i've used clay in the past and i'm not a sculptor i'm not a visual artist but to help find a structure for a play that i've written and based around a series of prompts but i guess i'm curious if anybody in the room has ever tried a process like that where they've used a medium they're not familiar with in order to help them understand what they're making um so to that i've tried to create a practice of watercolor so and i'm not a visual artist um but if i have a play that i'm writing and watercolor one because it's uh fast it's not very messy um but i only use what fits in a seashell so it's maybe a teaspoon of water and very few and it and it's got my reading glasses the the paintbrush the seashell and when that water's done i'm done so it because you know busy life work so there is something about short by night creative practices so um that's one way of struck of one invoking the muse and then trying to find a structure usually i'll paint maybe the characters or the objects in the play that was to um to write a play that i'm writing another practice that i did while i was gathering myself to direct the journey of the saint my translation el viaje de la santa which is a new peruvian play i started gathering objects so for texture and for color and they were all either rope or wood or things that occurred in nature so that helped me specifically when i was going to direct the scene in a thrust stage it helped me kind of visualize my my um my planning but it was because of those objects so those are just two personal things that i've used i have two examples but i'll just give one uh in the interest of time and hearing from everybody uh i directed hair uh a few years back which if you haven't done it everybody should get involved it's like joining a family it's amazing um and i don't know what inspired me but i was on christmas vacation before i went back to direct it maybe it was summer i can't remember and i wandered into a michael's and went we all need to make necklaces for each other and i bought up their supply of everything you make necklaces from uh and i got to the first rehearsal and two other of the actors in the show had done the same thing and they were it was just an amazing way into the play uh that nobody saw nobody who came to see the show knew anything about but it was it was this incredible recognition that the play was not just about a story in fact it was there was no story there whatsoever it was about family and tribes and uh it was an amazing experience but it started with that and it wouldn't have been the same show but for that you know i just want to go back to what you were saying and also what you you said recently but i want to congratulate you for taking the initiative to really learn something different something new especially the bomba kind of um kind of dance there um in the afro-latino community almost from um mexico a velacruz which thank god that they are and the afro community afro a mexican community are coming out strongly um all the way to south america uh the rhythm is almost the same and and the communication with the drums are the same in the sense that um you have the person dancing to the rhythm and at the same time it has that that dance is basically a way of speaking the the drum the sound the rhythm is speaking to the body is speaking to the heart is speaking to the soul is speaking to their ancestor so it's it's a it's a theatrical kind of performance there of communicating with um bringing the the past scene to the present and and the art the dance and it's so beautiful i i i'm doing a research right now on and and the afro-latino community the afro religion community and that's the reason why i'm and i think i know a little bit more of what i knew a couple years ago um but i also learned about the the bambé the bambé the dance and all that and i and i looked into youtube for a video like that and they were dancing and doing all this all this kind of stuff and i'm and i'm sitting on the couch watching it and i find myself somehow moving you know it's like it's you know getting into getting into the groove it was an unconscious kind of situation there and then i i work up and i'm like oh my god i'm dancing to this too uh but because it really it draws you right into it and the other thing i want to make uh to comment is that you know that uh every time the afro-latino community get together to celebrate something that's theater right there it's organic theater right there because they they are performing um it's something not only tradition and doing any religious ritual but it also acting they're also um you know using every every uh part of their bodies and every element available to them to really create that kind of event or or ritual or dance um not necessarily for the public that that are observing and watching but they they doing it for either the god that they're worshiping to or the saints they're worshiping to and they do it in such a beautiful way imagine transforming that organic theater that people in latin america are doing right now in the afro-latino community bring it up and stage that would be a wonderful thing to to really um create and and and project to um to the public and i'm i believe that uh you will have uh an audience that you are not reaching out right now coming to to um to your theater i just want to add real quick that uh that actually the the uh um the the dancer controlling the drum is is is rooted in in african several african traditions and dance uh as well as balinese by the way the bala yeah balamy yes flamenco as well and just like listening to all of this and realizing that it's just all call and response like everything we do is just call and response you know you make a tapestry because that's the way that you can respond to music or the mandrian or you know interdisciplinary is just call and response it's all of it so listening to this is just like i had just a little personal brain explosion adding to that like i've had monologues that i have the i would i have a monologue inspired by the the jazz pianist playing the piano and then it was i created the rhythm of the woman's speech to replicate she was a singer but then i created the rhythm of her speech to replicate uh cuban jazz piece and then like i've used lotaria cards i have a lotaria play series where i pick a couple of the lotaria cards the mexican bingo game i don't know if you guys know it i love those freaking cards so i pick a couple of lotaria cards and whatever the the cards on the spire i go to the number if it's a flower i think of the flower when it smells like the texture the feel of the flower what that invokes in me if it's a boat i think of a time that i was in a boat and then i create the characters based on those images but they can be something very tactile or something smells um so i guess that is still being inspired by art but art and music i think really like um i pull a lot from that for rhythms i'm a very musical writer there's always a rhythm to everyone to the way my characters speak you know and then the lotaria cards are like a treasure trove because every time it's a different combination so it's wonderful that thank you so much so uh we're going to wrap up this session this this conversation doesn't end because you have the rest of today and tomorrow too if you have any burning questions with each other just look around the room this is a very rich room uh there's future future possible collaborations here and i hope that this session served as an inspiration for what what you can uh think of what your next challenge can