 Hi, Alex. Welcome everyone. Hi. How's it going? Hey, Jimmy, it's good to see you, bro. Good to see you too. It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a long time. Really excited to be on this panel with you all. Yeah, definitely. It's going to be a good one. Yeah, so just so you know, we have just about 30 attendees right now. We're waiting for more people. So I want to give it a, I want to give it a good theater, like three minutes to let people sort of saunter in. We are live right now. And we are also live via HowlRound. So hello everyone on HowlRound. And we are. And this session also will be recorded so that way people can see it later on our website. So thank you all to our attendees and we'll get started in just a moment. Cool beans. Alex, just for you. So I will start and say a few things, sort of welcoming everybody and introducing Jimmy and then Jimmy will take over until about four o'clock ish. And then I will take over and we'll do a question and answer and I will leave the question to you. Wonderful. Thank you. All right, if you all are ready, I think we can get ready to get started. I want to thank you all for being here today. So hello to everyone and welcome to band 2020's Band Together panel series. Band Together is an annual series produced by the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund that uplifts the voices of censored or banned writers. We welcome brilliant professors and artists to talk about the censorship of writers who have been censored because of who they are. Today and tomorrow we have a two events co-sponsored by the Dramatist Guild's Political Engagement Committee and the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund that will focus on banned VIPOC writers. I would like to thank my co-producer, Jenna Crisfonte, of the Political Engagement Committee for her work on bringing these panels to you. The Dramatist Legal Defense Fund was created in 2009 to promote free expression in the dramatic arts. We educate the theater and industry and students about their practices to protect dramatic works, and we advocate on behalf of indigent playwrights by defending them in lawsuits related to free expression and copyright. For more information, please visit dldf.org. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce our moderator, Dr. Jimmy Noriega. Dr. Noriega is the chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at the College of Rooster. As a scholar, his research focuses on Latinx and Latin American theater and performance. He is the co-editor of the Theater and Cartographies of Power, repositioning the Latina-Latino Americans, and has published essays in several journals, including one titled, Don't Teach These Plays, Latina-Latino Theater and the Termination of the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies Program. He is also the founder and director of Teatro Travieso or Troublemaker Theater, which operates on the premise that the theater can create positive change in the world. Welcome, Dr. Noriega. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, and I want to start by thanking you, Amy, for the invitation to come speak today and to share the stage with these two brilliant artists who I have the pleasure of knowing and seeing their work perform live. I think that they're some of the most powerful dramatists that we have working in U.S. theater today and around the world, so it's really special to be able to share their work and their experiences with an audience. I also want to thank the Dramatist Guild Legal Defense Fund and the Dramatist Guild Political Engagement Initiative for the opportunity to highlight BIPOC writers. We're talking about Black, Indigenous, people of color writers, and specifically speak about the way that the American theatrical canon, both in academics and in professional theater, has both marginalized and also completely excluded a lot of our voices from being taught in the classrooms or being presented on the American stage. So this is a really nice step forward in being able to open up American theater to really be inclusive of what is happening across our country with multiple communities. I'm excited about moderating this discussion today, and I'll start by introducing our two speakers so that we have an idea of the type of work that they've done and what they're going to bring to the audience today, and then we'll have a loose conversation so that they can share their experiences, but also kind of point hopefully in a direction where we can move forward as an industry. So the first playwright, Elena Romero, is an award-winning U.S. Latina playwright whose works have been presented across the U.S. and abroad. She was widely commissioned, published, and anthologized, including works with dramatists, play service, Samuel French, play scripts, and Simon and Schuster. Her play, Revolutions Revolutions, was produced in Spanish translation at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 2019 under the direction of Mexican director Bruno Vichir, and is a part of a technology that includes empires, a work of art, and her play in progress, The Sleep of Reason. These plays were produced at 16th Street Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, and Chicago Dramatist, and Headland Center for the Arts. Her Arizona-Mexico border trilogy includes Wetback, Mother of Exiles, which was a Cornell University Commission, and Title IX, which was part of the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her play, The Fat Free Chicana and the Snowcap Queen, which we will be discussing today, was banned during a Mexican-American studies ban in Tucson, Arizona in 2012. Romero has participated in the National Hispanic Media Coalition's Television Writers Program, NBC's Writers on the Verge Program, and CBS Diversity Institute's Writers Mentorship Program. She has also received many awards, including the Arizona Commission on the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, the TCGQ National Theatre Artists and Residents Grant, the Los Angeles Film School Scholarship, the Tennessee Williams One Act Play Award, and the Chicano Literary Award, to just name a few. Elaine Romero is an associate professor in the School of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Arizona, and is the playwright and residence at Arizona Theatre Company. And in March 2021, a festival titled Romero Fest, which is initiated by ATC, will feature her work at various theaters across the country. So it's a pleasure to have Elaine Romero with us today. I will introduce you, Alex, when we get to your section of the panel. But I wanted to just start off, Elaine, by providing a little bit of context to our viewers about your play that was banned in Tucson. So in 2010, Arizona House Bill 2281 was passed by the conservative and Republican-led legislature in Arizona, and in essence it terminated the Mexican-American studies program, because as they stated, it was teaching students to dislike certain ethnic groups. And there was a battle that ensued that finally resolved in the courts in 2017, but that wasn't before a lot of uproar happened nationally surrounding what was referred to as a ban on these texts by diverse writers. In fact, in 2012, they removed books from the classrooms in front of students, and it was a number of books that were taught as part of this program. But for those of us who are on this call interested in theater and performance, I do want to point out that there were three theater books that were banned as part of this termination of the Mexican-American studies program, right? We have Zutsu to another place, we have Culture Clashes Anthology, and we have Puro Teatro, a Latina anthology which was edited by Alberto Sandoval and Nancy Soporta. And in this book, we have a total of 20 Latina theatrical voices that were taken out of the classroom, Elaine's being one of them. So in order to begin our session, Elaine, I just would like to ask you if you could discuss what the banning of your play meant for you, and how you saw this moment when the legislature officially terminated teachers' ability to teach your play in a Tucson classroom that I believe is only a few blocks from your home, correct? That is correct. I was living in Chicago at the time and teaching at Northwestern and went to my coffee house in Chicago and said, hey, I just got banned and everybody's like, oh, that's really cool. I said, yeah, it's really cool until you realize kids don't get to read your plays and you wrote it for them. You know, it's their play and somebody got taken from them. And I started having all these fantasies, like maybe I'll go to the cafe down the street and host a reading of the play, and all the kids from Tucson High can come and they can see the play. And then I started to reflect on the play itself and I started to think about what is banable in my play? What would you want to shut up? And I started to think about this one scene, which I'm going to read right now. The play is called The Fat Free Chicana and the Snowcap Queen, and it's about a young woman who goes away to college and when she comes home, she decides that she's going to have her family's restaurant become, she's going to convert it and she's going to make this Mexican restaurant like into a fat free restaurant because she's studying dietetics. So her younger sister is completely flipping out because her sister's coming home and she's just this different person. So the sister's name is Sylvia and then the woman coming back from college is Amy. And their mother has recently had a heart attack. And Sylvia says, you weren't supposed to come back. You went away to college. You were supposed to stay there forever. I was supposed to stay here and help mommy with the restaurant. I was supposed to be the second best cook in town. Amy, I won't be here forever. Sylvia, but you belong here better than I do. Can you see it? Amy, I don't belong here. Sylvia, you're not going to leave. Amy, I'm not staying. Sylvia, you are. You just don't know it yet. It's like this building. Amy, what about the building? Sylvia, it's very special. Could you get me some chips? Amy, Sylvia, you're overeating. Sylvia, it's a losing battle, but somebody's got to fight it. Amy, what's special about that building, Sylvia? Something Ramaldo told me. Amy, you can't believe everything our political activist cousin says, Sylvia. He's got an agenda. Sylvia, I believe this. Amy, yeah, Sylvia. He said our restaurant predates the occupation of Northern Mexico. Amy, what does he mean occupation of Northern Mexico? Sylvia, you know exactly what he means. Sometimes sister, I think you're forgetting who we are. Amy, I haven't forgotten Sylvia, but I know you. You'll remember. Inside you, there is somebody who will remember everything, and it's stronger than other part of you that went up north to get an education, and instead she was erased. That's why I banned my play. You know, my family, my mom and I talked this morning about this panel, and my family was north of the border, the border crossed us. We were in New Mexico, and the U.S. came during Manifest Destiny. We lost our land, our language. Many things were promised to us in the Treaty of Guadalupe de Algo. And this play, a comedy, makes reference to that. That there's something about the history of this border and this land. And this is a history that students aren't taught, and it was a history that I learned from my own mother. It wasn't a history I learned in school. And so that's why you banned this play. And that's why you banned Latino voices, because they're going to tell you, oh, you know what? California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, guess what? Those used to be Mexico. What happens to a kid's brain when they hear that, when they learn that? Suddenly they're not the other. It's like, oh, man, we're from here. What does that change? And I think those are the things that I thought about when I dreamed of hosting the play in downtown Tucson and having the kids come to us. You know, I just kept thinking I can't take my play from them, because we're taking their knowledge away. You know, that program was started to raise the rates of graduation. And the rates of graduation went up for Latino kids. And so, you know, it was a direct assault on us, on our history, on our memory, on our memory. And it's the writer's job to own their DNA and to bring that forward. It's the writer's job to reflect the world that they see. You know, that school is really close to me. Like, kids walk by my house, you know? And so I felt a personal connection to them, like, literally watching them walk by every day. And what does that mean? And so, you know, I realized as cool as it seemed, you know, it really wasn't cool. You know, this idea that it was racist to teach from a Latino point of view, to write a play from a Latino point of view, that that was somehow inherently racist, because it wasn't supporting the dominant paradigm. You know, what is that? What is that question? Thank you very much, Elaine. I'm going to move on to Alex that we could get his voice into the conversation and then we'll tie together the issues that everyone's bringing up. So it is now my pleasure to introduce Alex Alferro. He was only two months old when he and his 15-year-old mother were almost killed in a bomb blast at a bus stop in the violent streets of Guatemala. This began their brutal journey to the United States. Most of his life, Alex was forced to live in the shadows of society and through his perseverance and determination, went on to achieve a college degree and became a well-respected social worker in a specialized field, as well as a spoken word artist, while trained actor, writer, director, and producer. His one-man play, Wet, a documented journey, is about what it means to be an American in every sense of the word, except for one, on paper. It captures the desperation that DACA individuals feel when considering the very limited options of adjustment of status by being forced to navigate through a broken U.S. immigration system. The play examines the mental, emotional, and psychological hardship that one man has to endure in order to secure his livelihood in the only home he has known, Los Angeles. Since opening in the fall of 2017, Wet, a documented journey, received rave reviews and won Best Solo Performance of 2018 from the Los Angeles Critics Circle Awards. Wet has played in several stages, including the Kennedy Center, New York's Lincoln Center Education, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Theater Centers, as well as in various universities throughout the country, including ours here at the College of Moisture. Wet also had an eight-city national tour. Alex has been a speaker at the Ford Foundation and was featured as a performing and teaching artist for human rights, I'm sorry, for human rights watch students task force. And just for those of us in the audience who might not know about DACA, we're referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which was an executive order issued by President Obama in June 2012. And it allowed certain individuals with unlawful presence in the United States, those undocumented individuals that were brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to become eligible for a work permit in the United States. And this was groundbreaking and changed many, many lives. Of course, since then it has been challenged in courts. I was most recently announced as part of the cancellation under the current administration in September 2017, though that case is being deferred for further litigation. So I want to welcome Alex to the panel. I want to ask him if you can just start by speaking about your journey with wet and the backlash that you saw when it was performed and the different responses from audiences and from producers that you had as you were trying to get this show toward across the country. Thank you, Jimmy, for that introduction. And thank you for allowing me to be part of this panel. I wouldn't necessarily say that the show received initial backlash. Quite the contrary. It was received very well in Los Angeles. It received an incredible amount of support, which was something that I wasn't expecting. Only because being undocumented in the United States at the time was not something that was so open. It wasn't being openly spoken about. Documented individuals and undocumented individuals in the community were not vocal about their status because for all intents and purposes, our parents had trained us to never speak on such things, right? So it's a censorship of the self, right? If we're talking about being censored as writers as creative beings, we were conditioned to censor ourselves from a very young age. I'm not a mother who became a U.S. citizen maybe 15 years before even DACA came to be, which put me in a really, really interesting position in my family. I alone was the only individual that didn't have a legal status in my family, whether it was extended family or immediate family, cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, whomever. Everyone had a legal status. There were either permanent residents, U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization, and I was the only person that had slipped through the cracks, which then, you know, the term that was coined was mixed status family. I didn't even hear about what it meant to be part of a mixed status until I started doing the show throughout the country and people were using this term to describe me and the position that I was in. At the time when I was a kid, I was just simply told, you know, don't tell anyone that you don't have papers, because if you tell someone that you don't have papers, you're going to tell the wrong person, immigration is going to come. Not only are they going to come and pick you up, they're going to come pick me up, and then no one's going to be able to take care of your brothers and sisters. So that was an inherent fear that I had going into doing the show, but I had an incredible amount of support from my artistic home at Ensemble Studio Theater Los Angeles and Atwater Village. And Lizzie Ross, who is the co-artistic director there, was extremely supportive, along with the entire company. They did an incredible job to work within the confinements of the censorship because we didn't want to expose me in such a way that we were going to have ICE agents storming into the theater and possibly arresting me for speaking things against the administration. And so even in the writing of the show, I had to censor myself because there were certain things that sitting with the team going, well, we maybe don't want to say this because we don't want to put out a different type of image. We want to tell a story about what it's like to be in the United States, to call the United States your home without having any real status. And so initially, I didn't want to have any kind of exposure. I did this show more out of an artistic obligation, I guess you can call it. I wanted to do this show because this is my purpose. This is what I have chosen to spend my life energy on. I love being an artist, and I did it because I had committed to it. I thought it was going to be a quick three-week engagement. It was going to come up. It was going to come down. Very few people were going to see it. I did very, very little in terms of wanting to promote it because I was scared. I didn't want to put my family at risk. At the time, I was a single dad. I was the primary custodian of a 15-year-old daughter. And if anything happened to me, her livelihood would be at risk and I would potentially be putting her in a situation that would not be good. And so I was really surprised, not at the backlash, but at the support, like I said. The backlash didn't come until later. And the backlash, in all honesty, has been sporadic, but it has been there. And it hasn't been flat out like having this play being censored like Elaine's work and Luisa's work and many other Latinx writers' work. But it has been very low-key in the way that they kind of said, well, you know, we have to postpone your engagement. Or I've been approached and I've been asked if there's an English version of it because there is a lot of Spanish that's peppered into it. I've been asked to tone down on the language. Sometimes I've been asked if I'd be willing to consider removing certain poetry in certain parts of it because it may be deemed offensive. I've also been asked, you know, I've also been flat out told that it cannot be produced at a certain space because the board members of the theatrical space are not in alignment with the message of what the show is about. And so, you know, but this has happened, you know, in the three years since this play debuted back in August of 2017. I don't know if that answers the question, but it certainly does. And I think what you're offering out there for us to start thinking about are the various forms of censorship and the various forms of silencing that actually happen within the Latinx community of the United States. And you're talking about it from multiple levels, right? Just the act of self-censoring, right? Was it a danger to put yourself out there? Was it a risk to put yourself out there? Yes, but you're talking about this artistic objective that you had to tell that story. And Elaine also speaks of often in her writings, right? Speaking about the soul of the Southwest, the soul of the people of the Southwest as represented. So my question for each of you, right? We're on a panel about being banned, about being censored, and it seems that each of you and your lives and your work have somehow been legislated by the state, right? Elaine, the Arizona legislature took your books out of the classroom. Alex, the U.S. Congress is determining what your status is within this country, yet each of you is still creating work that speaks about our community, about our history, and is actually trying to bring to a public forgotten stories, silenced voices, marginalized communities. So can each of you speak a little bit more about that imperative that you have, that part, that art and theater in particular plays, and being able to work against the state when it actually is working to silence us at such a massive level? I definitely feel like I think a lot about my right of speech, and I stand here today as me, not as a professor of a certain school, not as a member of the Dramatist Guild, not as a playwright in Residence in Arizona Theater Company, but I can speak for me. And I've learned that that is how, you know, I've taken all of my associations off of Facebook to protect my own First Amendment rights and my ability to express myself. I think self-censorship is huge. It's interesting, Alex, that you bring that up because that was something that I thought about. Coming here, you know, all the times in my life I've been asked to censor myself, or I've been challenged because of my blue eyes that maybe I wasn't really that thing, and I was trying to be an imposter. Another way to try to get me to censor myself from the stories that are in me. And so I find that, you know, we're always asked and challenged to see ourselves and our stories through the eyes of others, and the challenge for the writers to see ourselves through the eyes of ourselves and to tell that truth, because that's the core truth. Everything else is just this made-up thing, like, oh, you need to look like this, you need to be like this, your characters need to act like that, and that's another kind of censorship. If we start to embody those things, we're embodying our own censorship of ourselves, and we're shaping and morphing our characters to fit some kind of outside view of who we are and not what we know to be true. Absolutely. I agree with what you're saying, Elaine, especially because, you know, I asked that question, I posed that question at the beginning of WET. I asked the audience to see me in the fullness of my humanity so that I may see them in the fullness of theirs. And I know that that's easier said than done, especially because of the climate in the country right now and the division that is so deep within ourselves as a country, right? Because I do consider myself an American, regardless of a piece of paper, regardless of whether I have a plastic card that allows me to come and go and do things like vote. And people have asked me that question in the past. They're like, you know, why are you doing this? Why are you putting yourself at risk? Why are you exposing yourself to potential danger and harm? And the answer is very simple for me, is that when I get over my own fear because it is scary, right? It is scary to put yourself, even like what you said, having blue eyes, that whole imposter syndrome, it's like, should I really be telling these stories? Yes, you should, because this is your heritage. This is your truth. This is your history, right? You know, I tell people I am not my circumstance and I have never been my circumstance. And like what you were saying, if you allow, you know, if you allow the associations to determine who you are, then who are you really, right? You stand here, ask yourself. I stand here, ask myself and I ask myself, am I my circumstances? No. And because I've never been my circumstances, people have ridiculed me in the past and I've said that I'm foolish to have this dream. And at the same time, I just keep going because I'm not going to allow whether external circumstances like the US government to prevent me from speaking and sharing my voice. Because I can do this here or I can do this in Guatemala or I can do this in the middle of some mountain in some secluded place. I'm still going to be me. I still have to wake up and I have to face myself and my work should and is a reflection of who I am, whether I'm writing about immigration, whether I'm writing about Los Angeles and the riots in 1992. I'm constantly pushing myself to see myself reflected in the humanity of others. Thank you very much. So I keep on hearing each of you reflect on both your positions as playwrights. Alex is a performer who tells the stories, a lady who creates wonderful stories for actors to carry that message to an audience. And I'm wondering after these experiences where you either were censored both by self by external influences, you were banned. What takeaways did you take from that moment realizing that you were being silenced and you were being censored? What takeaways did you kind of walk out of that experience with and how has it influenced the work that you're creating now or the way that you're going to move forward with the type of work that you present? Well, it's interesting. I had a couple of things happen. When I was in grad school, I arrived my first day. I had a graduate opportunity fellowship, which was for students of color, and a professor said to me, I hear you're here on a graduate school opportunity fellowship and I just want to know what the opportunity is. And he sought to drive me to quit, and I didn't quit. I didn't quit. I just kept going. I said, okay, I heard that noise. I wrote a play about Latinos and we cast a student who was from Mexico and he said, well, you're going to have to dye his hair because nobody's going to buy him as a Mexican. And, you know, those little things lingered in my brain because they were fighting me to, like, shut up, shut up. Stop writing what you're trying to write. Just stop right now. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be here. And that is such a great motivation. And so when this came down later and the Fafriciana and all that, and then other times when I've gone and showed up at my play and Latinx characters have been swapped out for other students, other actors of color or actors have removed lines, not by accident, but, you know, or decided the language was too rough so they were going to soften it because of whatever, these little bits of censorship happened to all of us all the time. And even we have all these rules and guidelines, but in the end, we're always up against something where somebody's trying to change it. And I think that, you know, you become like purified by fire as a playwright because everybody that fights against you and tries to shut you up just makes you louder. And it just emboldens you to keep writing what you need to write. And for me, you know, when I set out to write the trilogy of plays set on the border, and there are many more border plays than that in my body of work, but when I consciously did that, I thought I'm going to write three plays that have to do with social justice set on the border from the point of view of a Latina. And that's what I did. And, you know, I feel like, you know, and I feel stronger because, you know, fabric, she kind of kind of lives on its own. It wasn't part of a trilogy. It wasn't part of anything else. But, you know, and I even wrote that play because I was pissed off because I've written a serious play and nobody wanted it. So I wrote what I thought was a silly comedy, but serious me found her way in there. And I started talking about what I really believed about the land and the border. So what we believe can never really be excised from who we are. It just always fights its way in there. And I think if we just like face the page and we go for it, the truth is going to be there. And I feel like when things like that censorship happens, that makes me not want to write something dumb. That makes me want to stay true to what I really believe. You know, there are kids in cages down the street from where I live. I'm not going to not write about that. You know, I'm not going to just like ignore that. You know, I'm not going to ignore that this border wall is like, you know, 75 minutes away. I'm just not going to. And nor should I, you know. And you know, nobody owns these stories. But like if we hear them and we have our ear to the ground and we become like the prophets of the land, which I think playwrights are, then we're just going to keep telling our truths. And the more we do it and the habit of telling the truth, it just creates more truth. Just like lying can be a habit on the national stage. Truth telling could be a habit on the playwright stage. I want to add to that by saying that, yes, I agree with Elaine that, you know, nobody owns these narratives, but our personal narratives, if we have the platform and we have the gift and the ability to write, it is our responsibility, especially if we don't want to see our stories and our narratives being told by people that don't look like us. People that don't have the experiences that are closely knitted to our hearts and to our histories. And so, you know, I can't say that I have no business writing about anything because you're right. I can write about absolutely anything that I want, but do I want to write a story that does not belong to me? Do I want to write a story that I have not invested my energy into? I wouldn't think that that's a form of censorship. I think that's more of a sense of respect, right? It's like I could write a story about situations that are happening with BLM right now, but that's not my story to tell. There are other writers, there are other people that have their ear to the earth as well, and they're writing those stories, and we should do our part to open the pathway so that those stories can flourish and can be put on the national stage, right? The way that we are creating opportunities for ourselves, especially because I do run into situations where, you know, we do a lot of talk backs after the show, and people will say to me, how come you just don't write this character as an English speaking character? I didn't understand anything, and that turned me off to your show. I liked a lot of the things that you said, but every time you spoke Spanish, you turned me off to it. And I respectfully say because I'm honoring the authenticity of who this character is. And I'm also making peace with the fact that to some people, my work, they are not the audience for that, you know, and that's okay. We want the work, I want the work to be inclusive, and sometimes people are just not going to get it. But that's not something that is being done on a deliberate level. I'm simply honoring the truth of what I am seeing and what I am processing as a writer, and what I'm healing through the writing too, because a lot of people come up to me and say, thank you for writing this story. This is my story. I see myself reflected. I don't write for it. I don't write because I want that exchange. I write because it's what I'm meant to do, and if they can see themselves reflected in that and they can find healing, then that's one more person that we're touching and one more person that we're reaching. And I think that's the goal, right, is that we're honoring our purpose and by honoring our purpose, we're being able to shed light for other people that may be looking for the opportunity to express themselves or to find comfort in the stories, like what you were talking about the excerpt of your play, right? It's like we all know that person. We all know those people that go away, and then they come back and they want to make all these changes, and then they find themselves meeting resistance. I find myself meeting resistance sometimes even from my own family. And my own family tries to censor me because my own family sometimes doesn't understand me. And my duty as a son, as a brother, as a nephew, as a cousin is to be humble and to love them and have compassion for them and say it's okay. Listen, I know that this might be a little weird for you right now, but let me give you some time to marinate on it and you'll come back around. And I think that that's what we're trying to do as a country, right? Is that we see how things are going and we're doing our best to hold space with love and light for the people around us. Thank you. I love hearing the two of you speak because so much of what you say in your work resonates in the way that you're talking to the audience right now, right? Sharing ideas about healing, about truth, about community. So I want to move us into that idea of resistance now, right? That idea of being emboldened, being emboldened to be louder. Let's be bold right now. Let's actually talk about it. What needs to change? What has to happen here in the United States to ensure that Latinx writers, that BIPOC writers are getting circulated, are reaching their publics. And I'm talking at multiple levels, at the educational levels, right? We need teachers and professors who are teaching these plays, who are training BIPOC individuals and students to actually enter the industry. But we also need to change the professional stage. We need to do something out there and each of you has experienced many challenges that actually gives you an avenue by which to think about what changes might make us reach that more kind of inclusive and equitable American stage that we're talking about, right? An American stage that is not just white. An American stage that truly embraces the multitude of communities that we have. Whether or not it's in English, right? So let's be bold. What needs to change? I think we need to keep leading even though sometimes it feels like it infringes upon our writing or our time. And I think that, you know, a lot of times, you know, every writer just wants to like lose themselves in their work and not think about things. But you know what? I don't have that, I don't have that luxury right now, nor have I really ever. And, you know, in reflecting on Black Lives Matter and on my career, the number of panels I've done, the number of grants I've given away, and realizing how much of my life I have spent trying to help and support other playwrights as part of what is expected of me from the greater American theater community. And thought, you know, and then I've reflected, I wonder if like a white playwright has all these hours of their career that they spend doing this. Like I wonder that. And, you know, I had that reflection recently. And it wasn't like negative. It was just like, we keep pushing those edges in those corners. And I know for me it has been about advocating for playwrights. Not just for myself, but literally closing the deal for somebody to have a production at a really nice theater that's not even looking at my play. If you can do that, do that. You're going to feel great. You're going to push the field forward. And you know what? You just need to do that. And I know it's counterintuitive. It's a competitive field. You're like, yeah, but that's my space. That's another la la la. Shut up. Do your work and promote each other and fight hard for each other. Fight like hell for each other. Because we can't be in that space fighting like hell for ourselves. And I just have to trust there's another playwright willing to be that person for me, and I'm going to be that person for them. And we're going to ascend that way. That's what I really believe. And I do, of course, we have to fight to teach writing. We have to fight to teach these plays, all of it. We have to upend the entire canon. We have to make sure our libraries are ordering these books. We have so much to do. And sometimes it can feel so very overwhelming. But we know we're here and we exist and we have to keep, you know, if I look at the statistics of my career of how many Latina playwrights were actually produced, I would just be in a corner somewhere crying. But instead I wrote 90 plays. I'm glad I didn't know that statistic. Screw that statistic. I defy that statistic. I love that. When I was a kid, when I was growing up, I was fascinated by Shakespeare, even though I didn't know anything about Shakespeare. And an educator once said to me that I had no business trying to understand Shakespeare, because Shakespeare was meant for scholars. And Shakespeare was meant for people that had higher education. And unless I was willing to go out and get a degree, multiple degrees, that I would never truly understand Shakespeare. And that's something that stuck with me for a long time. And me being the person that I am, I am a disruptor by nature, simply because of my presence, right? I died coming to the United States at the Mexico-U.S. border and some random stranger brought me back to life. So there was purpose for me on this planet. And I think that, and I mentioned the whole Shakespeare thing, because I think that in order for American theater to truly be inclusive and needs to be diverse. And not just in the administrative point of view or context. It has to be diverse in every sense, including casting. I'm currently working on my new play, which is an adaptation of Othello, because when I was 16 years old, a white educator told me that I couldn't do it. And so I taught myself how to understand Shakespeare. I fell in love with Shakespeare. I fell in love with Othello when I became an actor. One of my goals was to play Yago. It's always been my dream role to play Yago on a grand stage. And then I was told that that wasn't going to happen for me because I looked like this. And so I decided to write a version of Othello because I'm also a lyricist. I'm an MC. I'm a product of hip-hop culture. I love hip-hop culture. I identify with it. When people ask me about my Latinx culture, I have to tell them that my Latinx culture is intimately tied to hip-hop culture that originated on the streets of New York City. And then it became gangsta rap in the early 90s on the streets of Los Angeles. And so I'm a product of that culture. And so I decided to write a version of Othello called Old Dog that set in 1992 during the five days of the LA riots. And I made my Othello an Afro-Latino. I made my Desdemona a Korean-American. I made my Casio a Pakistani Muslim. I made other characters non-gender conforming because I decided that I wanted to create opportunities to play with my friends. To play with the people that I am coming up with as writers, as actors, as directors, as producers. I wanted to create opportunities so that I could work with the people that are the closest to me. The people that know me the best. The ones that I have shared stages with and frustrations backstage with. The ones we have celebrated when my friend got cast in a Netflix series a year ago. We threw a party because we were so happy for her. Because these are the people that we have to uplift. Because like what you're saying, Elaine, I have to believe that there is enough pie out there for all of us. And guess what? If we run out of this pie, there's so many more that are waiting to get put into the oven. And we are the pie makers. We are the bakers, right? And we're creating these pies and creating these stories with dignity, with love, with compassion so that we can create opportunities for people that look like us and even people that don't look like us so that we can all have an opportunity to live our dreams and accomplish our goals. You're making me think of this moment I had with somebody I really respected. He might have been the person who discovered me as a playwright and I was out there with a theater doing my little play. And he said something like, you know, Elaine, you're a really good playwright. Have you thought about writing about something else? Does it always, like, have to be this? You know, and like, basically, you can pass. Why don't you just pass? You know, but I hear like, you know, there's that, you know, even when I'm asked to write something that's not Latino, like I had a recent commission to write about the Nineteenth Amendment. And I ended up writing about LaCrescia Mott. And the funny thing about when I was writing the play, which actually they ended up shooting it as a movie, it's called A Sentiment. There's a moment in the play where she says, because she's fighting for the right to vote, right? She says she only wants to be called one thing. And that one thing is, citizen. And I realize how sneaky it is, man, to be Latina. Even LaCrescia Mott wants to be a citizen. You know, what is that? Like, I kind of just love it. Like, there's no way to escape who we are. So don't even try. And I would love to see LaCrescia played by Latina. Yeah, just hearing the two of you speak just it resonates with me a lot of right. I think it's something that you as a Latinx person carry with you as all the people who have told you no or who have tried to stand in your way. Or who have tried to told you you can only play these certain roles or why don't you direct these types of plays. Right. We constantly have people who are trying to make us fit in and assimilate into what they think the version of the American theater was when in reality, if they were to let us in, they'd actually be able to finally see what the full expanse of American theater truly can be. So my question has to do with that, right? Each of you were able to stand up against those voices that told you no or those voices that tried to box you in. What would you tell BIPOC writers and playwrights out there right now, in particular young writers, people who are trying to find their own voice. What would you tell them about their work about overcoming challenges about how to face the onslaught of bias and discrimination that they are inevitably going to run into until we truly do transform what our American theater is. That's an interesting question because I think about that a lot because I still feel like I'm just getting started. I feel like I got a late start in my field because of life because for 30 plus years, I didn't have a social security number. So even if I wanted to do something, there was no way that I could ever join any of the unions or have any sense of legitimacy. And so what I would say to young writers or writers that are starting is the same thing that I tell myself, be patient with yourself, love yourself, have compassion towards yourself, know that your writing is valid simply because it's your creative expression. And yes, you're going to be told no, and you're going to be rejected, but you still have to just continue creating the work. Take it as practice, right? Take it as something, you know, when you don't have a thousand eyes on you, you have the full expanse of your creativity because there is no external judgment, there's no external expectation, there's no, there's no one in your ear telling you that it has to be like this and it has to be like that, or that you have to meet a certain deadline, you have completely control into what you want to write and what you want to create. And I can't remember where I read this, but I read somewhere that your first draft always comes from the heart. You pour it out of your heart, right? And it's in the revision that the story comes together and the revision requires your mind. So if you come with your heart, that's a good first step, right? And then you go back and you work at it, and if you don't have the tools, you just go ahead and do it and you figure it out as you go along. Elton John was quoted as saying, you know, I'm a big fan of learning as I'm earning. A lot of my career was earning as I was learning, right? And so I feel that way, right, is that there are people that don't have the privilege of a formal education. There are people that don't have the opportunity to take advantage of this connection or that connection because oftentimes education institutions provide us with that, right? But that shouldn't be a deterrent. And that's one thing that I remind myself, right? Because I remember when I was first starting out, even as an actor, you know, people would say to me, like, you're never going to be an actor, bro. You're never going to do anything in this business because you don't even have a driver's license. And I'm like, well, I don't care about all that. Eventually something's going to happen. Look, man, I remember one time one of my mentors said to me, he said, look, the situation in the United States is getting really bad. And I mean this would all do respect, but I really think that you should probably consider self deportation. And I really considered that because at the height of when things were really bad in my life, I was homeless. You know, I had lost my daughter. I had nothing. I had nothing. And I remember having a conversation with my mom and I said, mom, you know what? I think I'm done. I think I can't be in this country anymore. I think I think I'm just going to I'm going to take you up on your offer. If I could borrow 600 bucks, I'm going to buy a one plane, a one way plane ticket to Guatemala. And I'm going to take my chances over there. And she said, Mijo, what are you going to do in Guatemala? People are starving to death over there. I said, I don't care. You know what I'll do? I'll take whatever little money I have here in the United States. I'll find some empty space and and and I'll buy some black paint and I'll paint the walls black and I'll turn it into a small black box theater and and I'll teach theater to the kids. And I'll start my own ensemble and I'll write my own plays. And she goes, Mijo, pero te vas a morir de lambre. So what? At least no, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be happy because I'm going to be doing what I'm doing. And and I'm doing what I love to do. And she said, I, Mijo, I wish I understood you. Well, you know, I, I, what do you tell the younger self or the young playwright question, you know, I want to say there is no perfect note. You know, I think a lot of times people think if we can just get the right note from the right person, everything's going to fall into place. And the most important notes are the notes you have for yourself. Where do you cringe when you listen to your play? Where do you get lost? Where did you not tell the truth? Where did you get scared? Where did you back away from the conflict? You know, all those things, like you have to ask yourself, it's a, you know, rewriting is a self examination. You know, it's, and if you try to do the patchwork of, oh, take everybody's notes and, you know, look for the note behind the note. Don't just, there's a reason somebody's making a suggestion. Figure out what that is. But don't, don't give your play over to that patchwork of other ideas that aren't from you. Yeah, yes, listen, read like crazy, go to plays like crazy and then body plays like crazy. But in the end, you know, it is that dark night of the soul to write a play. And, you know, and I also, I really practice beginner's mind. I like to say, I don't know how to write a play, never done it, you know, always go back to that beginning, go back to that humility of like, I don't know, because once I know that I'm only going to do it that way. And wouldn't it be beautiful to find a play a different way? You know, one time I was on a retreat and I remember I was so exhausted from another retreat that I thought, oh my God, I'm here to write this commission. I'm so tired. I can't write. I can only think of wetback. Wetback is in my head. And I sat down to write and I saw the play typed out of the corner of my right eye, like in the Samuel French version. I'm like, I don't know if that's some dead playwright taking advantage of me, but I'm writing that play. That's what I did. So you never know how your play is going to come. And as long as you don't know, it might come out of the corner of your eye, you know, you know, so I feel like don't know, please don't know anything. You have a great MFA. Great. Forget that. Forget what you know. Forget your credits. If you're too depressed to write, read your credits. You did something already. Like, you know, but don't you know, it's, it's so hard. Like, one of the things I love about being a Latina playwright and being shut out for so long isn't has made me so strong and powerful. I just love it. I love all those notes. I love like, oh, now we get out the women in here. I love it. It's like, great. You made me a better playwright. Huh? I love it. Elaine, I love the attitude in Alex. I just love, love the passion. And I think that's one of the things that that's really echoing today from the both of you is the passion for what you do, the passion for the stories that you tell, and the belief that you actually have that you're demonstrating to us that theater itself can help shape society. It can help change the world to make it a better place for everyone. And I think that that's something that's so important that that we shouldn't lose track of, especially right in this discussion that that we're being put on here to to kind of cover which is censorship, which is banning right. How do you carry that passion on that's necessary because to be bad to be censored is to also be told the world you're trying to craft and to make better should not be allowed. So right, your forms of art are resistance for the greater revolution. And I do want to take a little moment to pause and talk to the audience right now simply. I think we're hearing from our writers right what's coming from their hearts and what's coming from their from their actual sweat and labor in this playmaking process that it's up to us right it's up to us to teach these plays it's up to us to read these plays. I mean teach in all the levels right those of you who are professors or school teachers, you can teach them in formal classrooms, but if you're an artist out there who maybe has never read a Latinx play on read one and then tell a friend about it, and then tell another person and recommend it so right, I pointed out the works that were banned I love that you can go to a book and say these were all banned why not start with these, or look up our wonderful playwrights right now look up their work see if you can get a hold of either text videos, even interviews anything where you're amplifying the voices of the artists means that you're helping them to achieve their goal of spreading the message disseminating this message of what it means to actually defy statistics to to embolden ourselves as artists for for a greater and new US theater. We have just a few more minutes until we're going to go into the question and answer section so I just want to flip the script will quickly and see if Elaine has a question for Alex and if Alex has a question for Elaine. Alex do you want to start. I guess the biggest question is, um, how, how do you stay so optimistic, in spite of being, you know, you have all these strikes right quote unquote strikes against you right, you're a woman. And you're a person of color. And, and, and you're telling stories that that people out there would say that you have no business and telling how do you keep those voices out of your head, because as a writer myself I have a hard time sometimes, because the moment that a critic gets into my head, or some type of criticism after reading or, or sharing with people. That's why I'm very private about my process I don't. I'm part of playwright groups and stuff like that but I really don't play well with others in that sense. How do you keep those negative voices out of your head. That's such a great question, because I think in the end, we have to protect that space and that relationship between the self and the play. And once other voices come in, we don't have the same relationship to the play. So first we have to acknowledge that, that once somebody else comes in, our world our life with that play will never be the same. We'll always see it either through their eyes, it'll be hard to find our way home. So first we have to know that. So we have to really honor that time period while we're developing the play before we show it to people. So we can really know the play and the play knows us. So we have that intimacy with the play as if it was breathing, like it had a heart and it was real, and it is real right. So that's part of it. And I also think like I also do a lot of practices. I do yoga, I do Pilates, I walk, I do these things to center myself. And one of the things I really like to do is to not think. I really believe in not thinking. I believe that I write the play in a direct way without like trying to put on, oh, this play needs to be about la la la. Don't even go there. Write the play that comes forward. And then as you rewrite it, if you need to sharpen some of the political thought, great. But don't go to a place where you're analyzing the play and trying to write it at the same time. That is death, the playwright. And so for me, I've learned to like, yes, take my notes. And when anybody gives me notes, I just write everything down. I look very like I'm really paying attention and I'm being real. And then I look for the note behind the note. What were they really trying to tell me? Are they, you know, and then I, if it's useful, then I use it, but I never take a suggestion because that'll always look like a band-aid on the play. Everyone's like, that one section is weird. Like people 10 years from then will know that that wasn't your section. Like everybody just knows that that's not the real you. So like, don't even try. Like if we could absorb all those notes, great. If we could like take everybody's suggestions, great. But in the end, it kind of kills the play. So for me, I've just learned to be true to that voice and trying to find ways to stay intimate with the play. I was really lucky to study with Irene Fornes and I really feel like because of her, I learned these things and I've been able to maintain those as a writer. You know, just thinking just doesn't get you to the play. So your ability to analyze a play, and mine is great. I'm a good dramaturg. I admit it. But in the end, that's like a totally different skill set. That's not for me when I'm at the desk. Those are just those two things, just they don't go together. Thank you. Love that. So Alex, I do a lot of that. I do a lot of the, you know, getting in my own way. I had never looked at feedback as something to consider after the fact I've always looked at feedback as something that I need to consider because the other person might be right. And so you've just given me gold there because I don't have to look at it that way. I can look at it as examining what about this specific moment do I need to work within myself? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's so like not about like it's not about ignoring feedback. It's just like if we couldn't be great, but it's like figuring out like what does it speak to us in the play? Like there are places in my own place, some of them publish where there are moments where like you like why didn't I never feel that? Like if you could just listen to your belly as you listen to your play, you're going to know where to fix your play. Your belly is already telling you what's wrong with your play. You know, nobody could be more critical of my of my play than Elaine. Trust me. I know that. So I want to ask, I would like to ask Alex, if you could dream a kind of theater, what would it be? Tell me about the theater that you dream of. Um, it's it's it's big, but I don't know how big I just know that anyone that wants to come in can come in. It's free for anyone that wants to come in to see the work. And and and the tech people come from diverse backgrounds and the actors come from diverse backgrounds and everybody is getting paid. Awesome. And you know, no one has to worry about whether or not they can afford gas for their cars because they have to make red because everybody people can have a sustainable living. And the spaces and the spaces is big. It's beautiful. It could be turned into a prescenium. It could be turned into a round. It could be turned into a three sided thrust. It could be turned into anything that we want it to be. Um, it's got it's got, you know, 3D monitors and 8K lighting designs and all of these things. So it just it encompasses every single women desire that a theater artist like myself could possibly need and want to tell the best stories that we can possibly tell. It's a place where everyone is welcome. It's a place where it doesn't matter what your social economic background is. It doesn't matter if it's your first play or if it's your thousand play that you're watching, you're welcome there, your love, you're appreciated, you're you're you're wanted there. And it's a place for development. It's a place where we teach classes to the community. If you want to learn to write. If you want to learn to act. If you want to learn to create sets, if you want to be a stage manager or producing director or a graphic designer, a lighter or sound person, you can do all of that in this theater because the programs are there because the knowledge is there. You know, they say that those that hold the knowledge are the ones that are the gatekeepers. And so why not open the gates to our theater and allow the people to come in and to feed themselves and to know themselves to express themselves. I want to play at your theater. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's produce the Romero trilogy there. Hey, Nick is asking us what is the most important quality of playwright can have. And the first thing that came to me was what I said a minute ago about beginner's mind, like no matter what we have, no matter what we've accomplished, like to just always go back to letting the play be a play on its own terms and not trying to dictate the play, how to behave and be a good play. Let the play tell us what a play is. Don't go in there and tell the play what a play is. I would say that the most important thing for a playwright would be love what you do because the moment that it becomes labor, the moment it becomes a job, you know, there's something to be said about just loving and enveloping yourself in the work and so love what you do. Amy, we've now moved into the question and answer part, so I'm going to hand over to you. No, I think and thank you, Elaine for that. And I hope you all get a chance to take a look at the chat because there's just so much love and so much passion for you all. So thank you so much and thank you for, thank you for everything you said I know I'm energized and I know that everybody who's watching is now energized. So let's take some questions. This is from Victoria. What gives you the drive to continue to write on those really hard days where it seems entire institutions are against you, but drives you to hold the weight of representation on your shoulders. This is a similar question but it's a little bit different. I will say this, you know, at some point I had this great revelation that only I could write my plays, which seems like such a simple idea. And that if I chose not to write them those particular plays would never be written. And the motivation of that and the drive of that has really kept me going. It is a fire under my ass. You know, and I, because I feel like hey, I almost think it's karmic like I came into the world owing these plays. And it's my job to get down there and do those plays and get them out and do right by them and find them their homes. And this Romero Fest is quite an emotional challenge. I mean, here at theaters come to me and said, we want to do a national, international festival of you. Who do you know? And, you know, that's like an amazing gift. And oh my God, terrifying, right? You know, how do you be true to all this body of work that you've made and still know that it matters to keep making it? You know, you have to keep your hope and you have to have faith in the future and you have to know that what you're bringing is unique. And you have to at some point say that weird sound on the page, that's my voice. Oh, that's what I sound like. I don't recognize that it's weird. Oh yeah, kill it. No, that's you. Listen to you. And when you really hear that voice and you realize that's me and only I sound like me. Oh my God, is that a beautiful thing? And then you want to keep making that sound? Because it's part of that symphony, right? Of the whole. And that's why each playwright's voice matters. Never silence yourself. Never take away your voice. Don't take yourself out of the running. Other people will do it for you. You don't need to do them that honor. I want to say that some days are easier than others. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to be completely transparent. It's hard sometimes because I feel like what's the point, right? There's days where I really get down on myself and I say what's the point? Look at what's happening out there. Babies in cages. People are being murdered for no reason. Black lives are being taken for no reason. And then I remember that there once was a time, not too long ago, where I lived in the shadows. I lived in the literal shadows of society where my voice was censored. My voice was silenced because I did not have permission. I did not have authority to legally be present in the country and to express the things that I express now as a creative being, as an artist, as a writer. And so I remember that and that humbles me. And that reminds me that although I've come this far, I have a responsibility. I have been put on this earth for a purpose. And I've gone through my trials and tribulations so that I can be in the position that I'm in today so that I can tell the stories that I'm telling. And that drives me, especially on the hard days because there are those days where I just want to stay in bed. I just want to, you know, turn off all the lights and cover up all my windows and just sleep because it does get really hard. And then I remember that my voice is not just my voice. I'm also speaking for my ancestors. I'm also speaking on behalf of my parents. You know, my parents are immigrants. My father came to the United States as a 19 year old person. He died in the United States at 35 with nothing to leave behind. But that, you know, my mother became a US citizen after many, many years of not having a status in the country. I owe it to them because they're the original dreamers. And I owe them a debt of gratitude and the way that I pay them back is by honoring my purpose on the planet as an artist. I do so agree. It's ancestral. You know, I had this huge grant one time to write a play and it was insane. It was $100,000. I mean, how do you get that? I don't know. And that's pressure. And you're like, how do I write my play now? Oh my God. And I had decided to write about Padre Antonio Jose Martinez from New Mexico, who was a priest and a political leader at the time of 1848, which was during that invasion we talked about where manifest destiny came and took over northern Mexico. And in my research, I realized that this priest, this Catholic priest, probably had had a child and a lover and all these things as I was doing my research. And I had been invited to stay at his house, at the priest's home and house because there were a lot of papers there. And I remember sitting in that house late at night and saying to myself, I don't know what to do now because you don't seem to be the hero I thought you were. And it sounds like you had kids and it sounds like this. And I swear he said to me, don't lie for me. And I remember I just sat down to write the play and that love story and that complicated person became the heart of the play. And I think that that thing found its way through the DNA, through the history of our New Mexican history. It found its way through the DNA. You know, my grandfather had a fourth grade education and he made sure my mother went to college when she was 16. All of his kids became teachers. His mother had actually been a superintendent. But she had put him to live with her parents and when she went to get him, he didn't recognize her. He went to go with her so he disowned her. She disowned him and he never got an education. But she was a superintendent. And so that wound of education, that wound of what happened drives me to educate. It drives me to be educated. And those kinds of things, they live in our DNA. The story of Padre Martinez lives in my DNA. That's why when that story came to me out of the Aethers, I knew to tell it. And I feel like that's the attentiveness. It's an attentiveness of the soul that the playwright must have. We're listening. We see stuff way before it happens. When I wrote Wetback and I had the murder of an immigrant by a white supremacist, everybody was like, oh, nobody would ever do that. Just kill somebody for no reason. I sent that play to like 60 theaters. Everybody's like, that would just never happen. And now, sadly, the moment we're in proves that it could happen. And I don't want to be right. Just tell me I'm wrong. I want to be wrong about these ideas. But the playwright knows ahead of time. And I think it's because of that that the playwright has a responsibility to that vision that they see where society's going. And they're like, oh, shit, this is where we're going. We better put the stops on, or. And the playwright is writing or in really big letters. This is what I see coming. Pay attention. And that's why we look like prophets. Like, oh my God, how did they know that? Because we were paying attention to the society we're in. And I think it's not just me. It's not just you. Our field. We're the prophets of the day. We know what's coming because we're paying attention. All of you listening, you know what's coming. And that's why you write now. You don't give it up because you write now because you know right now what's coming. That's why you're writing. So like, if you delay that, then you're losing that moment of prognostication. What just part of our job? Thank you. That actually brings up the next question, which is so interesting, right? Because you're talking about the right now, the historic moment. And one of the questions coming up from Aviva, Neff, is in this era of isolation, what is feeding your soul? So for the both of you, are there any artists working right now in any medium that are just making you go, yes. And that's your question, right? How do you feed yourself in this moment of isolation, whereas theater artists were fueled by communion and community? I had to, the first few weeks of this pandemic lockdown that we've been in here in Los Angeles were extremely difficult for me. Because they echoed a lot of sentiment of what was happening in Nazi Germany. And people are like, well, that's an extreme thought. I was like, no, it's not. Okay, like what Elaine was saying, if you're reading the writing on the wall, my guy and my girl, you see what's happening out there, right? You know, they were talking about tanks, they were talking about martial law. There was a point in time where, you know, my mother is one of my closest confidants, and she kind of keeps me level. You know, I called her and I'm like, Ma, you know what, I think I'm just going to go to what, my love for like six months and I'm going to wait out the pandemic. And she was like, what are you going to say? The same answer every single time. What are you going to do with her? You know, like, at least here in the States, you have internet, you have friends, you know, you can't come out, but you can call your friends and I'm like, okay, you know, you made a point. And it wasn't so much about looking outwardly. Partly, I had to learn to look inward. I had to learn to like inside myself, and I have been in good company within the characters that I create because I've been, I leaned into my writing. One of the silver linings of this pandemic is that it's given me an opportunity to really focus on being a writer. Really focus on writing material and obsessing over it and writing poetry and writing short stories and, you know, writing these narratives and becoming really close with our characters, with my characters. Because a lot of people that don't do what we do tend to believe that these characters just come into our heads and that they're fully fleshed out. Ah, yo, we got to build a relationship with them. We got to ask for permission. Yeah, can I tell your story? You know, we got to get to know them. We got to sit with them. We got to understand them, their nuances and their tics and their desires and their fallbacks and their setbacks and all of those things. And so, you know, I've spent a lot of time getting to know myself through the characters that I'm writing. And so, you know, I've been keeping company with myself and that's one of the gifts that I've gotten through this really hard time that we're all collectively living through. I completely hear that. I think every writer longs for that alone time and, you know, just shut out the noise of the world. And, you know, it's interesting if you're BIPOC, that's not really happening because the world's coming to you and saying, hey, help us figure out our racism. Hey, help us with this. And so we're trying to like juggle like that sense of like community and holding up the whole community and then listening to the voice, our voices in our head and all of that. One of the things that has given me breath as I work with this company called Arizona Theater Company with Sean Daniels, who's also a playwright, but he also loves new plays. And so we've just been making our whole theater about new work and playwrights and celebrated playwrights. And if they have a reading online, then we do a whole bunch of ancillary materials and panels and different things. So we have so much going on like if you want to listen to Arizona Theater Company, we're like a full time job. And I kind of love that. Like, you know, we make playwrights our job. And that's been really beautiful to be engaged with this company that I've been part of for a long time. And that's been my artistic community. And then, you know, and then it's just been me, you know, different company, different unexpected commissions coming in and different unexpected opportunities. And just going with what comes and also just listening to the what I'm also completing in my own work and and feeling those responsibilities. And also the civic responsibility I feel right now is so huge to be a citizen in this moment. Sometimes you feel like, oh, how do I take a second to do my work when the country's falling apart when the fascists are here when, you know, and you're balancing all of these things as a citizen, but also knowing that you're also trying to be true to your work. And I mean, some days I win that battle and some days I lose that battle. But for me, these practices of yoga, walking and Pilates, it's like, OK, here are all my practices to say centered. So whatever comes at me through the television or through my own work, like I'm able to manage it because I am balancing my own, my own being, you know, and I actually learned how to cook during the pandemic. I was never very good at it. And now I can like make my own gluten free flour and crap. I don't know. It's a different Elaine. Elaine and Alex were at about 11 until the end of the session. So what I'd love to do because there's such great questions that I'm reading here. I'd love to do a lightning round response. So it'll give us give both of you together about two minutes to respond to each question. And that's OK, so that we make sure that we get through what are really good questions that I'm reading right here. So I'll go ahead and read one out loud, which is from jazz. It says, why is it, do you think that white playwrights and white artists scholars seem to take BIPOC voices in traditionally white spaces to personally. So why do they take it personal when we occupy those spaces that are traditionally theirs? I mean, my quick answer, my personal experience is that, you know, I've been told on several occasions directly and indirectly that theater is an elitist platform. And the theater should not be accessible to people like myself. And so when we say F that noise, and we're going to do it anyways, right, and our presence is disrupting. That's why we're disrupting, right? Good trouble, right? Because we're choosing to go against the status quo that has been invisibly created without our consideration. And so when we take up space in these traditionally white spaces, it seems like an intrusion. It feels disrespectful because we're not following convention. We're not following standards. I think it has to do with white fragility. I think it has to do with the habit of it being somebody's space. And like, oh, I don't recognize this person, this voice, these actors, and this fear that somehow it's going to be replaced like there are not enough pies to use Alex's thing. And, you know, we have to practice abundance in the theater. We have to. And we have to believe in our abundance that if we share with another that we're not diminishing ourselves. My success is not your failure and you're in my failure is not your success. If you can just know those things, really know them inside and out. I think that'll help you get there. But there is this idea like, oh, now it's not going to be just one Latino. It's going to be five and they're going to take over and and all this stuff. And, you know, so I feel like, but there is fear. There's fear of being erased, just like we've experienced eraser erasure. There's fear of being erased that, hey, will my white story matter? Will my plays matter? Oh, they want to find a Latino here or there that must not want me anymore. Like, we just have to stop thinking that way. And that leads to this to this next question, which is a long one, but it but it circulates around once one main theme, which is, what can new play development organizations do to foster your bull just sorry to foster your voice, both in the submission and selection process, and in the room. The person asking the question does say that there's a big ask which is, what do people do wrong when developing your plays and what sidelines your voice in developing work. Including us not talking to us from the beginning before somebody's hired. You know, I can't tell you how many times somebody's been assigned to my play and he sometimes I'll even know the person and it's so awkward. Like, I know talk to me. I know actors and every little crevice of this country. I can get you a Latino actor and any state talk to me. Don't just swap out another BIPOC person say, hey, I got you this other BIPOC person. I couldn't find a Latino, but don't do that. We're not interchangeable. You know, I think like, get to know me in my play. You know, I might have somebody representing me and helping me with stuff, but that doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to you. I want you to know me. I want you to ask me what I need. I want you to ask me about directors. I mean, the hardest thing is when directors get chosen and you don't get a way in. And little theaters tend to commit more crimes than bigger theaters. Bigger theaters know like, oh no, they would never do that. The little companies just trying to do their thing or maybe they chose their play at your play because they had somebody they wanted it for. Like, there's a lot of reasons people choose your play. And I think being, you know, coming to you and saying, hey, you know, we chose your play because we know Gabriella would be really good in it. Like, they already did that. That's why your play is there. Like, so we also have to listen and understand why our plays have landed where they've landed. Because a lot of times there's a lot of backstory about who's being served by your play being chosen. So it's not just about me, but we also want to have these conversations. Because a lot of times your play is being used to break in new actors, to train people. Like, you know, there's a point where, like, you feel like you're on the treadmill of training everybody in the whole United States with your work. And you might write really deep, complex work like me and go like, how am I going to support my community, grow new people and have my work respected and honored. And also just like, just trust us that we know our work and that we care and get to know us. I mean, I think don't be afraid. Like, like, no, let us know that you really want us and our work. Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that. I think you lane beautifully. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. So Dennis is asking, where can people read your plays? How can they get ahold of your texts? I can be found through Susan German, my agent. I have work, you know, with Samuel French play scripts. I have a new little short play with dramatist play service that I'm really excited about. Smith and Cross has published a lot of my work. But you know, find me and let me know what you're looking for. And we'll find you the right play. You know, maybe publish it may not be new play exchange is great. It's a great way to find us to ask about more of our work. I only put up a few things there and then it's a good way that I get a sense of some of the things. I think new play exchange is a great, a great place. So I'm still, I still consider myself a relatively new playwright even though I've been writing for about 10 years. Most of my work has not been published yet with the exception of wet, which is going to be published as part of an anthology that will be released, I believe next spring or summer. That's going to be part of the anthology of Los Encuentros de las Américas 2017. But you can find me on like, if you Google my name, you can find me on like Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff. And I constantly like write and, and, and share my writing through those social media platforms. All right, and we'll do time for one more question so that Amy has enough time to do a closing remarks and this is a question from a student, Sam Kaylee, who I think is a real, it's a great question to look ahead and Sam is asking, what can theater students do while they're still in school to support a more diverse theater community? And what can we do now to ensure that we can help build a better industry once we leave school? I think you asked to study diverse plays. And if you don't have them, you get your school to commission them. That's one of the things that I did as a professor, I commissioned a whole bunch of playwrights. And suddenly my students were engaging with the material that they wanted to engage with. And then we were able to cast the students who would we want, we'd want to cast and also like stick with each other. Like, you have the precious thing of being in school together like learn to like building make your ensemble today. Don't wait, get out of school, build those relationships. You have something you're sharing a unique moment hold on to that like I think that's something I did completely wrong. You know, and I look back and I'm like, you know, I, and I have a great career going everywhere with my plays. But I also feel like, you know, hanging on to the people that I came up with was something I could have done better. I'm trying to collect them today. If your author come to me, I want you to echo what Elaine just said. I agree. And also, yeah, I mean, I started building my ensemble and the people that I worked with one of the first theater companies that I was a member here in Los Angeles were a bunch of people from community college, you know, they started a theater company in their community college. The friends and the people that you're going to know for the rest of your life are probably going to come during that phase in your life. So I would just, yeah, what Elaine is saying is absolutely correct. Encourage you to find your tribe, right, find your people and invest in them so they can invest in you and come up together because like all the people that I play with today, the majority of them I've known for over a decade. I've known since I was in college. And yeah, if you're not seeing, you know, plays that are being done by BIPOC writers and artists, you know, speak up. This is your school. It's your institution. They're there to serve you. You're paying money to be there. And you should have the courage to find your voice to say, hey, we should do this, right. And it's easier said than done. I understand that. But at the very least, if you express how you feel, they should be able to take it into consideration, especially if they're progressive and conscientious of the work that they want to do, if it reflects the diversity of the communities that they're serving. Thank you so much. I know that there were other questions that people wanted answered. I'm sorry that we are low on time, but Alex and Elaine, thank you so much for that. Amy, I'll hand it over to you. I just want to say thank you so much for for your passion and wisdom. And thank you to everybody participating who asked questions and all of our attendees today. Hello, and thank you to all the people on HowlRound today. I just wanted to wrap up by saying, I just have a couple of thank yous. I wanted to give additional thanks to the board of the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund and our president, John Weidman, and also to the to the political engagement committee chairs, Nicole Salter and Gwydian Sulivan, and to Terri Martinez who put me in touch with our panelists today. So really, thank you so much to her. Please come tomorrow we're having another just as interesting and brilliant panel band together unknown legacies black playwrights in America. We'll be talking about Alice Childress and Mary Baraka and more. Please come back for that you could register if you're a member of the Guild or not, you can register on our website for the webinar and again we will also be live streaming it on HowlRound. So thank you everyone. Thank you to Dr. Noriega. Thank you to Elaine and thank you to Alex and everyone have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much for inviting us. Okay, thank you so much. And I don't know. Jimmy, I'm going to email you about some things I have another question for you about your department. So I think the Guild can get involved and help you if you want. And Elaine, it's always a pleasure to see you. You're great. This was like I just feel fired up. I really I loved it. Thank you. You've made me fired up. I'm like, yes, this is what we need to be doing. This was with the DLDF needs. Yeah, like, yeah, we still have work to do. We do. We do. Thank you so much for for honoring our work. We really thank you. Thank you. All right. Take care.