 Regional VPs, please come to the stage, regional VPs. Hello everyone, hi. We were supposed to have a break and we didn't get a break. So if you need to stretch, take a stretch if you want. Yeah, stretch it out. Yeah, this feeling should continue throughout this conversation because we really want this to be open space rules. Because the reason we want to do this panel was because we wanted to invite some of our regional VPs to come up and talk about the themes of the conference, access, activism. And there was a little nervousness about how do I represent my entire region and how could I possibly speak to all of the concerns and challenges that are facing my town or my gigantic region. And so they're not going to do that. I'm going to ask each of them to first introduce themselves. I'm going to introduce myself first. I'm Joanna Falk. I am the VP of regional activities. I'm a freelance dramaturg in Toronto and my preferred pronouns are she, her, and hers. I had to look at my name tag to remember that. And I'll just get each of these lovely regional VPs to introduce themselves and what region they represent and then we'll explain what we're going to do, how we're going to do it and how you all are going to be involved. Hi, I'm Scott Horstein from the Southwest region. Although I am based up here, I teach at Sonoma State University which is about an hour up the road. I'm co-VP of Southwest along with Elise Griffin who is down in Los Angeles right now. I am Nikisa Etemad. I'm the regional VP of Metro Bay Area. Welcome to our crazy region. What else am I saying? I'm a freelance dramaturg here in San Francisco. I'm she, her, his, and hello. I'm Marin Robinson. I am the Chicago Metro VP, she, her, hers, and I'm the resident dramaturg at Timeline Theater. Hi, I'm Jessie Baxter, she, her, hers. I'm the regional rep for the Northeast and I am a connectivity manager and dramaturg at Company One Theater in Boston and the literary director and co-founder of Frushing Theater also in Boston. I'm Laurel Green, she, her, hers. I'm the president of LMDA Canada and also our country's regional rep. Although Joanna, you know, you're up here rep in Canada as well, so that's great. And I'm also the director of artistic programming at Alberta Theater Projects in Calgary. Great, so what I've asked each of them to do is to think about hot topics in your, in their region specifically. So things of activism and access that are working challenges that they see in their regions, things that need action immediately. And again, because they can't possibly represent gigantic swaths of the country, once they've presented some of their hot topics, we're really gonna encourage you all to talk about your regions. If you don't hear it being represented up here, tell us about what's happening in your area, in your town, in your region, challenges of activism and access or things that are working really well in those terms, in that regard. Okay, so Scott. Okay, here's one topic that is very regionally specific but might be interesting or relevant elsewhere, which is in Los Angeles, some people may be familiar that we were producing in small theaters, 99 seats or less under the equity waiver system for a long time. It was initially created as a way to give the thousands and thousands of talented screen actors a way to practice their theater craft. And after a series of events and discussions, the equity waiver system has been abolished, which is leading to a lot of new produce or your considerations for small theaters in the Los Angeles area. And so I'm not an expert on this issue, but when thinking about what's hot regionally, that's what comes to mind. And even though that system and situation is idiosyncratic to that region, it may be relevant to other producing considerations that might be regionally specific in your area for small theaters having to do with either the unions or guilds that you work with or other conditions of producing that affect what the producing and the dramaturgy of producing of your work. So I will be kicking off a session dealing with that. Hi there, so one of the challenges that we have in the Bay Area is our geography. And it's very hard for us to get to each other because the Bay Area includes, I think, how much, 200 miles across, probably. And so in our regional lunch, we came up with some action that we're gonna try out that we're asking literary managers and dramaturgs or affiliates of local theater companies find a date that's great for you to host a regional meeting. And as long as it doesn't overlap with the other person's proposed date, we'll have about six different people have stepped forward already from local companies and we're gonna have six times we're all gonna gather as a group. And as we learn each other's schedules and what's easy and what's not, perhaps it'll lead to proper regular meetings among ourselves because meeting like this once a year is not enough for a lot of us. We need compatriots, we need advice, we need colleagues, we need drinks, we need things to help sustain us because dramaturgy is not an easy field in the theater. The second thing I wanna bring up about my region is that we've had some success with activism, largely in part due to the brainstorming of my friend who pretends he's in the Southwest but he lives here in the Bay Area. We've done LMDA partnerships with Fools Fury Theater Company here in the Bay Area. We've employed, I think, about 20, 15, 20 early career dramaturgs in the course of the last three years. Early and mid and late, that's true, it wasn't just early career. In different capacities to work on National Ensemble Theater Festivals thanks to Fools Fury's enthusiasm for dramaturgy, even to the point that now they are funding it themselves and continuing and every time I see Deborah Eliezer, the, our co-artistic director, she says, what are we doing next? So that's great. I wanna shout out to Maddie Gaw who is one of our people. If you'd like to, did she leave? She's wandering around. Maddie Gaw is here, she was one of our people, Michael Mormon, Emily DeDecis. And I think a few others are around. So if you, during this session, if you wanna stand up and tell us what did you gain from that experience, that would be fantastic. So I'm gonna steal from one of my fellows of Chicago dramaturgs who, as we've been talking amongst ourselves, said Chicago is always on fire. I feel like when we come to these conferences last year when I came, a lot of discussion was about Not In Our House and about the sort of movement that rose up around the abuses of a director in power, both physical and specifically gender-based abuses. And this year, we're in the midst of Chicago responding to a critic who has had a pattern of practice of using really harmful and hurtful language that is racist and offensive and hurtful to people of color and to women and body-shaming in our theater community. And so I feel like Chicago is good at calling out the things that it sees and it's good at organizing around that. So it's a problem that these things are still happening. It's a problem, and again, some of the things that are also called out are the lack of diversity on stages, the lack of diversity in directors, and casting issues, casting people that are appropriate. So there are lots of discussions going on around this right now, but especially race and what is the way that you respond to it. And the response that's been happening in our community right now is a sort of nonviolent protest, a peaceful protest to say that theater companies do not have to support hateful language in a critic. We're not going to ban a critic. We're not going to suggest that freedom of speech is not allowed, but we don't have to subsidize free tickets for that individual to come to a theater if that individual is continuing to say things that are hurtful to people of color. So those are some of the big small groups that become active and call that out, those issues, and also the ways that small groups organize and sort of orchestrate themselves to respond to what's happening today. So there's a lot of kind of challenges and opportunities in New England and Boston. One of the things that I personally and the companies that I work in have been wrestling with most recently that I'll throw out to all of you is something that was also raised in the earlier panel in this space earlier today, which is sort of the way that both space and funding are inequitably distributed amongst the companies that are in New England and specifically in Boston. It's a question that has kind of been in the community for a really long time with not necessarily any kind of concrete action that has seemingly made a dent yet. So I'm interested in seeing if other folks have had successes in finding new ways to partner or new ways to sort of disrupt the models around who gets funding, why do they get funding, who gets space and resources, why, where, all of that good stuff. And then a point of success that I am happy to share is around the new play community in Boston, which a handful of years back, there was sort of a lot of inks amongst the playwrights of New England feeling like their work was not getting enough sort of national recognition beyond our immediate community that New York is sort of our closer, larger moon that blocks us a little bit sometime. And so one of the things that happened was StageSource, which is a local art service community for New England, created the new play alliance and one of their many great initiatives was to start working on an anthology of work that actually just got published this year. And so they took submissions from lots of local companies who had done a new play by a living writer within the last five years. They went through a whole selection process for that and then ultimately put them into this really incredible anthology that is now for purchase. You can ask me about it if you're looking for some good new play ideas. They are great. But it was a really great kind of way of kind of activating that particular community of artists around an issue they cared about and then they brought their sort of concerns to bear in that particular way which was great to see. So happy to talk more about that. Thank you. We had a fantastic picnic lunch all of Canada today. And there was a lot to talk about. It's always fantastic to get together with colleagues from across the country and hear about what's going on in everyone's theater community. So there's two broad topics that I thought I would offer coming out that are on Canada's mind at the moment. And coincidentally or not, both topics are panels or sessions that are actually gonna be offered here at the conference led by Canadian artists. So I wanna start with Indigenous Theater. David Geary is doing a fantastic plenary tomorrow on Indigenous activism. And we've got this topic on our mind a lot as we had a complicated year celebrating Canada's sesquicentennial. And when we viewed the Canada 150 celebration, the funding opportunities whose voices were getting heard as part of the programming and cultural mandate around the year, it's been an interesting year and we'll continue to be as we come up on Canada Day this summer. Meanwhile at the National Arts Center after a few years of a consultative process, the first artistic director of Indigenous Theater was just named at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, which was just a fantastic achievement. And representative of a really interesting and exciting community consultative process, as I said again, so that was a real achievement. We've also seen some new forms of Indigenous Theater come to the surface this year on performances that have been touring across the country, a musical called Children of God about residential schooling, an opera about Louis Rial and a project called Making Treaty Seven that's a blend of community and professional artists coming out of the west of Western Canada. So we'll talk more about some of those things at David's panel, but Indigenous Theater is very much on our mind in Canada these days. We also are talking a lot about accessible performances and it's very exciting that Haritha Papuri is here from Sudbury Theatre Center to share her experience of sensory-friendly programming at Sudbury Theatre Center. They are one of four theaters in Canada right now that are offering a sensory-friendly performance for all the plays in their season. So it's a really exciting commitment. And again, accessibility is very much on our minds in Canada. The National Arts Center is also next week convening a gathering called The Republic of Inclusion and this is an event that concludes a two-year study into deaf disability, mad arts and inclusion and that gathering will host artists and makers and activists from across our country and beyond to delve into the topics and the findings of that study. So those are the two things we're really talking about right now in Canada. Yes, we are in all of Canada. Oh, I also just wanted because the Midwest and the Plains regions were kind of lunch caucusing with Chicago and our issues are very different and I don't want to neglect some of the small regions or the dramaturgs who are working in isolation who are feeling that isolation. I want to lift that up too as a potential... Yeah, if there's anybody that's here that wants to speak to any of those that now would be the time we'd love to hear from you about what's... Ow, I'm sorry, did that wake you all up? I know, yeah. What I should also say is once everyone sort of talked about what's going on in the regions the idea is that we want to break out into action groups and so perhaps you have a topic? Oh, yes. Oh, I have something which is... Great. I feel like in the Bay Area like way too much about is just like the housing crisis which I think is on the one hand all people in all different types of work can't afford to live here but also young theater makers have a really hard time finding space to make work happen, that's all. Yeah. So as I was saying the idea is that we wanna lead into some action groups or talk about these topics in smaller groups. So if there's a topic that you feel like you wanna talk about with other people in a room now would be a great time to tell us about that. Like I'm gonna say a topic that I have thought a lot about, talked a lot about and felt hopeless about a little bit is gender parity. I was on a committee about equity in theater and we had great conversations and when it came time to action I will say the committee fell apart because the idea of equity was a challenge. What does equity mean and who are we trying to support or whose equity is more important than... Anyway, if anyone knows how to fix that, how to solve gender parity maybe in the next hour or two I'd love to talk to you about that or if you similarly have challenges gender parity in your region, in your town, in your theater. I'd love to talk to you about them. In Canada we also have had a lot of discussion about and I heard other people talking about it earlier today was what's been called the white man shuffle amongst artistic directorships. There have been a lot of artistic directorships similarly in Canada that were open this year about six of them and there was a bit of a white man shuffle and two of them that used to be run by women and now run by men and so I'd love to have a conversation about how to change a board's mind about who gets in the room and who gets hired and who's worth being an artistic director. So if those topics are of interest maybe we'll write them down on that list there in the back and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts or questions or topics that they wanna talk about and we'll try and narrow them down to about five because that's the number of rooms we've got so those are the things that are important, five things are gonna be important and then we'll all talk to each other and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna tell each other how to solve these problems. That seems pretty reasonable I think because we're dramaturgs and that's what we do. So no pressure so the VP, oh there's someone in the back, there's a hand. Okay, yes, yeah, come on now. Oh, okay we need mics, we need mics, great. Hi, I'm Heidi Schmidt, I'm actually the regional VP for the Rockies. Oh, hi Heidi, you have us here I think. So the question I wanna throw out to the group and I have no idea if we can solve it but we're here to talk about access and activism and all of those things and I feel like there have been a lot of really great conversations about sort of wow, now the mic is actually working about sort of goals or things we want to accomplish or messages we wanna get out there. My question is really about process because I'm working as a freelance dramaturg or I'm hired on for a specific project not necessarily with an institutional role. So I think what I'm interested in is maybe brainstorming ways to advocate for such things from a bottom up approach as opposed to being someone who has an institutional voice in the room where decisions are made. I feel like a lot of the times I'm coming into the room to implement decisions that have already been made rather than brainstorming the how and the what and all of those things. So that's something I just wanna throw out into the mix of how to do that from a freelance perspective rather than from an institutional perspective. Coriana do you need that again? Can you just maybe say that one more time for Coriana to write down? Yeah, I think just the question of how to approach institutional change when you're not necessarily part of the institution on a day to day basis. I'm Joan Robbins and I'm part of that silent rural Northwest contingent. The question I have is what I got cut off from saying in my hot topic which has to do with serving multicultural theater from the point of casting and producing in general with a predominantly non-diverse pool of students in a university setting. Hi, I'm Bernardo. This is a question that is kind of angle from the Southwest of the US but it does go to I guess all the corners and off the mainland. I'm interested in hearing about the development and or the production of plays that are less Anglo-centric and maybe more bilingual and not in ways that are where languages that are foreign aren't sprinkled around like a small percentage but rather a substantial portion that represent local communities. Hi, I'm Brad Rothbart. Wow, I'm getting feedback here. I guess there were two out of our table our Metro Northeast, everything with New York table that I kind of want to lift up. One was the question of for freelancers of theater workshops and festivals and the announcement of drama turfs and the impenetrability of that. How did those people get that job? Where did that come from? And why don't I have it? That kind of question. And the other one that we were talking about was the matching I guess of playwrights to drama turfs. The idea, should it be the playwright's decision? Should it be focused on issues of race, on issues of class? Where do we put that point? So I think that it would be awesome if we could have a space for people who identify as early career drama turfs. Because there isn't one, this conference. And so if we could do that, that'd be cool. Did everyone hear that? Early career drama turfs. There isn't a space or a session in this conference for them. So if they all want to get together and talk in a room, that would be great. Hi, I would like to pick up an issue that Martine raised this morning at the beginning of the day about the question of decolonizing the classroom. So this is really a question for educators and in particular the drama turgi classroom and even more particularly the training of drama turfs. So my question is about pedagogy, decolonization and the drama turgi classroom. Okay, I'm Amy Brooks with Roadside Theater based in Central Appalachia, which is a region I would really hope that LMDA will eventually give its own dramaturgical region since it has a distinct and isolated drama turgi. So thank you for bringing that up. And so because I come from a region with a history of extractive exploitation, I'm gonna bring that question of extractive practice and money into the room and ask, how do we avoid extractive practice in our drama turgi and our art making? How do we make sure that the communities who create the value, the songs, the stories, the culture enjoy the benefits, the financial benefits of the art that we create? And how do we make sure that the communities whose problems we're dramatizing are involved in that problem-solving process so that those communities are enjoying the benefit of the art making and not necessarily people working 300 feet above the ground? I've been working in a corporate setting for the last year and hearing, oh, hi. And hearing, my name is Leah Webster, she. And I'm from the Northwest. Anywho, it's occurring to me hearing you guys discuss some of the same topics as I've heard at the previous conference that I attended. But this time it's occurring to me that a lot of them are HR problems, diversity, inclusion, accommodating, chronic illness and disability. And I wonder how we could align ourselves with the behind the scenes HR people at the institutions that we work at. Hi, I'm May-Ann Teo, I'm based in Amherst, Massachusetts as a professor at Hampshire College of directing and dramaturgy. And also I'm a freelance director in dramaturgy. In Europe, most artistic directors are dramaturgs. And I think that we would all agree that dramaturgs actually hold the essential processes of understanding the context in which we are making and why we make and how to make. So I'm wondering if we could talk about the culture and how we as dramaturgs look at how we can shift the culture into leadership. Because I don't think that we see ourselves as leaders to the point where we should be writing American theater, which we should, thanks. Hello, I'm Kari Berkley from the Bay Area here. I'm based at Stanford and I'm interested in how we can do community engagement work without being engaging in tokenism. You know, we're going to do this certain play about a particular set of identities or communities. Let's reach out to them once. And then once that play is over, we're not gonna keep engaging with the community. So how can we keep our involvement in local communities sustained and in a way that benefits everybody involved? My name is Vivian Black from New England, broadly I will assume me from Philadelphia. I'm interested in this idea of theaters as sanctuaries. What does that actually mean? How deep does that commitment go? Is that something that said in a mission statement and not thought about again? What does that mean for the people who are struggling outside of the theaters right now? And what can we do to sort of double commitment to that and make it meaningful and not flowery? Hi, I'm Rebecca Adelsheim. I'm from Chicago, she, her, hers. I've been thinking a lot about po-show conversations lately and how they have started to feel like an obligation in our community. And I wonder if we could talk about some of the intentional practice and goals behind our po-show conversations. Po-show? Anyone else? That's a lot. Apparently there are more than five problems out there that need discussing. So, we met before this, believe it or not, and talked about so, how are we gonna break down into groups? And so, we talked about the open space idea about conversations. Laurel, can I get you to explain a little bit about open space and how that works? Sure. Great. So, Zuso, from having the experience of attending the BAMP conference and also the Denver conference, so if I forget a tenant of open space that is important to you, please shout it out. I think we will also, in a moment, kind of sort out how we will choose which topics we're going to get to. I think if you wanna have a conversation, you can stand up and say, I wanna talk about... It's great. So, we've got lots of... Po-show talks. Yeah, so we've got lots of spaces that we can then... So, someone's gotta own the topic. Just because you shouted it out just now does not mean it has to be you, but when we review our list, we do need someone to anchor a conversation about the topic if we are electing to move it forward. There are three breakout rooms behind us as well as this atrium space, which I believe could be divided into many different areas, and as well, we also have an outdoor terrace. A really huge outdoor terrace. Many, much open space in the sunshine, and that's up on the second level. Is that correct, Ken? Fabulous. Awesome. So, once you have claimed your topic, you will need to declare where it is that you're going with your topic, and then anyone else who wants to have that conversation with you can come and find you and you can begin the conversation. And what happens if no one else comes to have that conversation with you? I mean, how often do you actually get the time to just have that conversation with yourself and think very deeply and reflect on those topics, and then if you say, you know what, I'm done, I've solved gender parity, you can go join another group and let Joanna know on the way down. Yes. I just wanna also say, because I saw Corinna eyeing me, that if you do claim a topic and then decide where you're going to have the conversation, you can just jot it on the little pieces of paper over there so that if somebody does wanna float to a new one, they can find you. Let's make sure we do that, so that can happen. So some tenants, yeah. Lunch on Saturday for early career dramaturgs. Awesome. I will say some other central tenants of the open space model of organizing a group is that cross pollination between the groups is encouraged, so you can feel free to bumblebee if you're in a session and then you feel like you wanna go on and see what they're talking about in the next room. Just quietly and respectfully move between the groups, bringing with you pieces from each to cross pollinate. And also that when you're in a group, look around the group and do the mental math if there's five people in the group, then you should probably be speaking one fifth of the time. So it's always good to just check in and say what's the group math in terms of whose voices are heard in the conversation. The great opportunity of open spaces is that it gives people who are passionate about a topic all the chance to speak about it in a small group. I would also love that in each group, someone could assign themselves the role of being the note taker. It could just be on a post-it note, but we just wanna jot down any, especially action items that the group decides upon and anything that any commitments that come out of the conversation can be tracked and then added to our conversation wall. So maybe now is the time to, we won't take a break, but also have a look at the list, have a think about what you wanna talk about and if you wanna lead a session, then maybe in 10 minutes, five minutes? Oh, Ken's giving me, we're gonna put them up there, we'll reconvene, and then you're gonna name and claim a topic in a room, I guess, or a space, and then people will join you or not. Sound good? Okay, great, so five minutes, have a think, and then come on back. And you can add more topics. Add more, for God's sakes, there's hardly any up there.