 Good morning everyone come on in have a seat Hi, welcome back. I'm Adrienne Badoo TCG's new deputy director and chief operating officer I'm very thrilled to be here and very excited to welcome you back to her second day at the national conference here in Portland The hub of maker culture and a city that knows how to party Last night's opening party was amazing I walked into the the armory and I was greeted by Darth Vader in a kilt Playing a back pipe on a unicycle come on So I just want to say you know Thank you to Cynthia Furman and the Portland Center stage for their generosity and opening their homes for us to party last night So can we just give a few round of applause for those? Speaking of this amazing city, it's now my pleasure to share a video of welcome from Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici She represents the first congressional district of Oregon which comprises the Northwest portion of the state Welcome to Portland. I'm Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, and I'm honored to represent Northwest Oregon in Congress During your stay. I hope you get to enjoy all that the Portland area has to offer I was raised in a family that values the arts my mother taught piano and painted I dreamed of someday being a ballet dancer together We visited art museums, and I've had a lifelong love for and appreciation of the arts now as a policymaker I've seen the arts and arts education Change lives and build communities Five and a half years ago when I arrived in Congress everyone was talking about STEM Policymakers pointed to the demand for workers with backgrounds in science technology engineering and math And they noted that we need them for the innovation economy, but nobody was talking about how people become innovative I kept talking with educators students and businesses, and I started doing some research It became clear that STEM is not enough There was not enough focus on educating creative thinkers and too often girls and students of color will left were left behind I Found out about STEAM adding a for arts and design, and I started the bipartisan Congressional STEAM caucus which now has 87 members together with my colleagues We've championed well-rounded education that includes the arts and we're showing government leaders and business leaders Why this is important last year? I brought Jane to the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts to Oregon She observed students at two nationally recognized STEAM schools Integrating music math visual arts science film making She toured a new theater space coming to downtown Hillsboro And we spoke with the Oregon arts community about how NEA resources can help local artists and creators Our country faces many challenges more than I can name in this message We need need creative and collaborative problem solvers to come up with new ideas And new ways to solve problems We need to find ways to communicate effectively with people from all different backgrounds We need scientists to be able to find new ways to address climate change And we need everyone to have a stake in building a more just and inclusive society I'm convinced now more than ever that the arts are not only essential to our economy They're also essential to our humanity and to our democracy as Theater professionals, you know the value of storytelling and the power it holds in advocating for your values So thank you keep it up and keep in touch As we continue to advocate for the arts at the federal level We'll need to continue developing meaningful relationships with folks like congressman Susan Bonamici. Thank you Susan Now this is my first time at the conference as a TCG staffer. I Actually, it's like the full circle for me I started as a member of TCG then I joined the board for a couple years and now They drew me in and I'm working for TCG so full circle And it also means it's my first time to address a conference audience from the plenary stage So what else can I say? I want to talk about something I love about TCG and her field That speaks to her theme of full circle I want to talk about mentorship that electric two-way continuous magical exchange When leaders make a deep connection with each other and Both lives are changed forever. I Had the good fortune of working with Abe Riebeck at the theater offensive an artist a hero of mine Who took his work of inspiring outness to the streets in the depths of the AIDS crisis and who has never stopped fighting for justice And now I have the opportunity to work with Teresa Eyring one of the greatest managing leaders of our field and Increasingly a dear friend Abe and Teresa. You both inspire me. Thank you We continue to learn so much from each other and we've come to understand how precious our time is together Our exchange of information and ideas are not only beneficial to our field, but to our lives We need each other that way This exchange like a circle has no end. It's continuous and we are forever evolving Very few theater leaders have responded to the call of that need like the recipient of her visionary leadership award To help me honor her. Please join in welcoming to the stage Megan Pressman. Good morning. I am. Thank you, Adrian I'm Megan pressman. I'm the managing director at Willie mammoth And Adrian has reminded me that this is absolutely a full circle moment for me as well I first really got to know Susie when I joined Berkeley rep in 2010 as the associate managing director Which was a job created by TCG's new generation future leaders grant Right and and today I am a TCG board member and presenting Susie with a visionary leadership awards So this organization is a truly remarkable Source for circular motion Susie is a force During the last almost three decades. She's grown Berkeley rep by 450% and both have become national leaders and national treasures in innovative theater work and in building communities She was the president of Lord for several terms to which she brought new structures And during which time she proudly oversaw the creation of a wonderful and necessary diversity initiative She was board member and treasurer for TCG and over her many years in Berkeley She started numerous community development programs, particularly those for artists She's a truly great champion for mentorship and making space for some of us pushy eager younger folks looking for opportunities to lead She's now mentored 15 Yale School of Drama theater management students several present today and has maintained a stalwart commitment to the next Generation of theater leadership like the members of the Berkeley rep teen council in attendance if they're awake yet But a visionary leader thinks way beyond merely growing a company the complexity of the upcoming show or even the problems of next season As a leader Susie is constantly vigilant about the challenges and opportunities ahead both for her company and for the industry on the whole Daily she demonstrates that a great managing leader can also be a force for positive change in the community and Seize the potential for using theaters power of empathy to galvanize us and make us all better humans She also has shown me how important is to find joy in your job to act with Hutzpah and to take pride in the people you train She's been preparing her company her mentees and her peers to seek opportunity and embrace change for her whole career And the days we're facing ahead. We will all be made better by her leadership Tony to Coney shared a few words with me Susie's partner in crime and artistic director of Berkeley rep for over 20 years He wrote Susie medec is a mixture of the barefoot Contessa and Tony Soprano She makes a mean brisket and knows how to use a gun Skills that she has used to nurture and protect the fellow travelers that make up Berkeley rep She is the consummate manager loving and tough Nothing gets past her even when it should Whatever award she's getting you can be sure she'll be sending emails later today to find out how we're all holding up without her Since I left Berkeley, I still call Susie regularly when I face my most complex challenges She's counseled me on taking my first managing director role on how to maintain balance on the hard choices that come with leadership The magic of dealing with the board and even the loss of a parent I've known Susie as a boss a mentor an inspiration an obstacle a Real estate maven an expert traveler a den mother the mayor of Addison Street and a dear friend So however, you've known her or whatever you may have called her to my many peers and I meant that that way To my many peers in the audience Current and former reptiles Members of the Lord board. She's served with members of the TCG board and anyone she's influenced Please stand and join me and in honoring this visionary leader. I actually didn't expect to be moved Told Teresa, you know if this is what they needed to do to get me to a meeting There are easier ways to do it She is standing. I'm just gonna do it. She is standing Thank you, Megan. I just have to say something it's off script, but So Megan used to sit in our board meetings and I and I'd say you know I'm not gonna be here forever and she'd sit there and she'd go and I still like her sick Any case I'm thank you Megan. I want to thank TCG. I want to thank the panel that So it's fit to Recognize my contributions. I'd also like to just thank my husband Greg and my board president Stewart our board president Stewart for being here today to bear witness Although I don't feel particularly visionary and I'm not at all convinced that I've earned this I'm also really happy at this moment to actually have the microphone Because there's a few things that have been on my mind and I don't well why not I Do have to worry. I was told that I had two minutes Yeah, but you know what one of things about being a visionary is that you don't pay attention to what other people tell you There's many people here. I have to say who I have learned from and Many people here have I've had the enormous pleasure of trying to help learn And one of the things that I hope you all share with me is an extent a sense of really the extraordinary Generosity of this field I don't think it is true in every field that you always have somebody who's looking out to give you a leg up And that's something that I think is a rare and wonderful thing about what we do So I've been teaching and mentoring young managers for over 15 years and with increasing frequency. I Hear this question from them Will there be a job that I'll still want When I'm ready to lead a company Will there be a theater that will value me for my leadership skills that will also let me be a person of the theater Will I be able to find a partner who will include me rather than keeping me at arm's length? Will I find a partner who appreciates that I'm not an arts manager. I'm a theater manager Well, I find someone who understands what motivates me is not crunching numbers, but actually making theater. I Always assure them when they ask me those questions. Oh, yes. Yes, don't worry. There will be some Sometimes that feels truthful and sometimes it feels like a lie I have grave concerns because over the last 20 years. I've watched as artistic staffs have become siloed in theaters Operating as if they are the only keepers of the artistic flame and Increasingly relegating all contact with artists to members of the artistic staffs Functions that were handled in the past by general managers company managers managing directors Production managers are now often handled by artistic administrators line producers and a wealth of other people with creative titles. I Been thinking about how we got here when the growth of the field throughout the last 50 years has had so much to do with both great Artists and with great administrators After all where would Zelda have been without Tom Fitzsendler? Joe Papp without Bernie As a field we do nothing in small increments We as a group tend to go full throttle into whatever problem. We've identified it is one of our best qualities But it also means that we swing a wholeheartedly with 100% commitment from one priority to another As a new problems are identified now I may be wrong But I trace this particular problem that I've identified to the day when our much admired belt Zelda Fitzsendler called us all out Oh, so many years ago for having created organizations with great administrative skills While our artistry had not achieved the same high marks As a field we took that concern to heart vowing to reinvest in the artistry at the core of our organizations But I fear that what we did Was exactly what we so often do in this field. We threw ourselves ourselves wholeheartedly into making better theater But instead of simply elevating our investment in art We also devalued the skills and expertise of the administrators who were helping to lead those organizations We started a process of marginalizing the skilled managers who helped to build our theaters We assumed that because someone was a good director. They must also be good at marketing They must be really good at organizational behavior They must really know from long-range planning And now years later We have declining attendance worry some philanthropic trends a complex regulatory environment Fundamental changes in our communities that are unlike anything that we've seen since the founding of our field At the risk of being run out of town on a rail Which you guys would be really good at I? Argue that great art alone is not going to make the theater healthy in America We need great artistic leaders and more than ever we need administrative leaders who will help us navigate these uncertain times So I want to urge our artistic leaders to reinvest in partnerships with strong administrative partners Think of them as among your most important collaborative partners rather than as the naysayers you need to push against They may not be your collaborative partners in making plays, but they are your collaborative partners in making your theaters Think of them as the people who are going to bring a different kind of thinking that supports your vision Maybe expands your vision and helps you achieve your vision Think of them as fellow theater lovers who were while they are held accountable by a board of directors for different elements of success than you are share your passion for theater and Probably share your passion for the very theater that you're running think of them as being Like any good partner whether it's a husband a wife or whatever The one person charged with making you the best that you can be And that your task is the to do the same for them We do not reimagine our relationship with our administrator if we do not reimagine our relationship with our administrative leaders We are not and we do not start making these jobs more attractive for the next generation of great theater managers I fear we may find ourselves striving to make stunning theater with no money and no audiences So I ask you not have you hugged your partner today Because I know you have But rather have you had a really good heady disagreement with your partner today? Have you reached consensus on a project that because you put your heads together has become a better project? Have you covered each other's asses today? Have you picked up after each other's messes this week and if not? My question to you is isn't it about time? So I want to thank you again for recognizing my contributions. I hope that I can continue to make them for a number more years And in closing I I have a I have a message for all of the Berkeley reptiles who are here today And that includes you Laurie and Kyle and Pam and all of you know who you are We actually want to take a company picture over here after the proceedings attempt. So join us there Susie thank you for your remarks and for everything you've done for the field It's now my pleasure to welcome our next plenary speaker to the stage Jeff Chang has written extensively on the intersection of race Art and civil rights and the socio-political forces that guided the hip-hop generation His books include we gonna be all right notes on race and resegregation Who we be and can't stop won't stop a history of the hip-hop generation He has written for the nation the New York Times and many more and Currently serves as the executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University Please join in welcoming Jeff Chang Good morning Thank you so much Adrian. Thank you so much to the staff of theater communications group For making the space for all of us and for the kind invitation for me to be here It's really a great honor for me to be here. I'm another Berkeley person Yeah And and it's such an honor for me to be able to be here Speaking to all of you to an organization that has played such a crucial role at the forefront of equity and inclusion and diversity and freedom and justice in the theater and the performing arts and to an organization that's always been on the cutting edge of aesthetics In American theater. I've been really privileged to be able to work with TCG for over a decade From a period in the early 2000s when TCG was doing what it always does which is spotting the next thing understanding the future aesthetics and I was part of a new generation of writers and Playwrights and actors and performers who are interested in these kinds of questions. And so you embraced us back then and For me to see a number of my peers and my mentors on the cover of American theater is like that old song on the cover of the Rolling Stone It meant we had arrived right and this is like 13 years ago So for me it feels like full circle to be able to be back here today a homecoming in a kind of a way to address y'all today Now of course We live in different times hip-hop theater in the form of Hamilton has been recognized as having generated something of creative rebirth for For the arts and even the conservatives want to be down, right? But they're acting like snowflakes around this They're acting like they want theater to be Amended to be a safe space for them. These are Trump's words, right? You know it looks like that I actually love this it looks like that because I have an app on my Computer browser that renders all of Donald Trump's tweets in crayon It just makes it so much easier to wake up in the morning and put on Twitter right so So he's saying the theater must always be a safe and special place Right that the cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man My pence and that we should apologize Now nobody understands the need for safety More than those who always live in condition conditions of unsafety, right? No one understands the need for security More than those who live under the conditions of insecurity Nobody understands the need for stability more than those who live under the conditions of precarity Right, but that's why we have to continue to use our art to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable These are not times These are not times for us to apologize There's never been a more important time for us to tell the truth To tell our stories to openly affirm our values of openness and equity of freedom and justice To imagine a better society and a better world now is that time because every morning We're waking up to a different kind of a theater Right the worst kind of a theater The performances are predictable The actors have a very limited range of emotion. The writing is terrible The words don't even make sense like cofefe right like what's going on here Meaning has left the building these are performances that have no generosity that Display a complete lack of imagination like if I was grading my students. That's what I'd write no generosity No lack of no imagination the characters undergo no transformation, right the plot leads only in one direction To a soul-killing body-crushing kind of an end It's only the kind of theater that seeks to perform aggression and Domination so we can read from set of lines Much quoted the other week from HR McMaster the president's national security advisor and Gary Cohn his director of the National Economic Council Right so security and economics which lays out Trump ism and the most cogent and naked of ways The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a Global community but an arena where nations non-governmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage We bring to this form unmatched military political economic cultural and moral strength Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs. We embrace it Right So this world view is supposed to be understood as a kind of clarifying realism And it does it clarifies the way that a punch or a bomb clarifies Right, but what does it aspire to? As some have pointed out it doesn't aspire to very much at all It's a world in which the means are the ends in which all is war In which there's no pretense of higher virtue and where all are motivated by the most base of desires to dominate It's less the invisible hand than the permanent fist. It's an orientation towards death One never gets respect by demanding it Right One doesn't get loyalty by demanding it One doesn't receive trust or generation by requiring it at best One gets a deference. That's kind of temporary not kind of definitely temporary Right more likely as Rebecca so and it puts it one becomes the most mocked man in the world Respect and loyalty and trust and generosity Generosity comes to do those who do the hard work of giving it and earning it And it's always easier to tear down than to build up And so we've seen what happens when one tears down civility. So here we are right. We're in Portland City of roses bridge town But moving under the flag of free speech. We've seen terror born of hatred We've seen those who use free speech to spew hatred and provoke violence who are eager to claim their rights But not their responsibilities I live in Berkeley and so I've seen this kind of rise of a kind of street theater about a block and a half away from the rep Right. These are performers who dress themselves as rebels to even adopt the language of the oppressed They adopt the language of hip-hop One of the white supremacists known in the disturbance circuit calls himself Based stickman and I wonder what Lil B or dead prez would think of that These are shock troops of hatred whether Milo or Ann Coulter or base stickman And they've come to our communities armed to the teeth to stage their spectacles of domination They're meant to remind people of color Queers women and all those who believe in justice Dignity and freedom that their place is to remain silent and oppressed They're responding to a call to preserve the status quo using the chosen tools of the establishment And so the logic of racism of sexism of homophobia of capitalism is Uncloaked in these spectacles of street theater hatred against us has been given free reign Violence against us has been made acceptable Provocateurs mock our values of openness and inclusion. They turn our towns into battlefields for the culture wars And so from Portland to Maryland our death toll rises We face systems that reproduce inequality and racism and sexism and homophobia that do the greatest harm To those least able to shield themselves That rely upon violence to support themselves. These are systems of accumulation of Alienation that separate us from each other that take life as not something to be taken care of and nurtured and protected But as a zero-sum game in which the winners take alls and the losers take nothing So at a turning point In this moment, we can't remain on the fence. We cannot be binds by standards as act up taught us Silence equals death and Rebecca writes about the difference between silence and quiet Silences impose quiet is something we ask for that we develop for ourselves So silence equals death exclusion equals death Inequality inequity equals death and so in this moment privilege shows up as disengagement in the refusal to take a stand in the refusal to show up as In I refuse to see how anti-black racism preserves my own privilege as In I receive are refused to see the inhumanity of a system that leaves so many displaced and unsheltered as In I refuse to see the humanity of the refugee or the migrant As in I refuse to acknowledge the ways that state violence is inflicted on black bodies on queer bodies on Muslim bodies on poor bodies as In I refuse to treat the bounty of the land the air the water as a Kuliana as of all The right and the responsibility of all But instead as a scarcity that I must hoard for myself as In I refuse to join the rest of the world in ending global warming I Might choose to visit the glaciers before they're gone or that Pacific Hidah way before it's underwater right, but I refuse to join the rest of the world in Solving the brought the broader problem Privilege is having the choice to isolate To draw the line to close the gate to build the wall To say that all that matters is my solitary sovereignty and what I can accumulate before death claims me And so as artists as people living in community in this moment. We must choose Art reflects the infinite ways that we navigate life It's about finding feeling in the multitude of variations. We experience ourselves In the ways that we experience each other in our world We stand against the machines of domination of violence and death Against the machines that breed isolation and division amongst us. We choose to engage We choose to protect life to shelter life to embrace life We are all here today because we believe in this We believe in art We are also here because we believe the the ugliness right the violence of inhumanity Canon must be transformed We're here today because we believe that art and culture changes things That cultural change might even bring about political change We believe in art because we believe in life and all its variations and all of its beauty We learn from an early age to see difference We learn to tell the difference between ourselves and others and so when we're kids differences just difference And it also may be the beginning of something else Learning to see difference might be the beginning of empathy which produces the possibility of community But as we get older We humans sometimes begin to attach meaning to difference meanings that are not so neutral We begin to become aware of the way that we've been sorted into systems, right? Systems of freedom and slavery of commitment and neglect of investment and abandonment of mobility and containment But then rather than confront those systems sometimes some might choose to draw a veil over those systems pretend that they don't even exist So racism is supported by a specific kind of refusal. It's a denial of empathy It's a mass-willed blindness and this is how inequity comes to be reproduced in each generation In 1952 Ralph Ellison described the condition that black people face as one of invisibility He wrote I'm invisible understand simply because people refuse to see me and for decades This is a primary condition For all people of color all marginalized folks, but we fought through and we began to change things a Little over a decade after invisible man a group of black artists who were inspired by the civil rights movement Including Norman Lewis formed a collective and they called it spiral a Spiral could go inward and down like water down a sink Right and this is the view that Ellison actually had of history that the vicious racism of the South might not just be that of the South And the US but the future as well a Spiral down towards death, but these artists thought of a different kind of spiral One of the artists in the collective Hill Woodruff referred to what they were talking about in these words He was referring to the Archimedean spiral. He said because from a starting point and moves outward embracing all directions Yet constantly forward. It was an image of perfect natural form the embodiment of beauty diversity Organicity inevitability a spiral up towards life and so they began to show new visions of movement Imagine new forms of consciousness that then Cohered into the black arts movement and then we saw this flowering right of all these different types of identity and arts movements From that and within that and intersecting with that Chicano movement the Native American movement Asian-American movement Feminist movement queer movement people began to rethink their identities. They're very cells. They're communities And so in this picture Louis depicts an uprising of the people against the white supremacy that he was seeing in Alabama and the KKK and A decade later the multiculturalism movement was announced in the Bay area by Ishmael Reed and his colleagues the men and women of the Yardbird collective Which included poets like Al Young and playwrights like into Zaki Schange And they argued that the US had never been monocultural and white only That it had been shaped always by all of the peoples who made it up and that this was nothing to fear Nothing to fear. It's just a shift in consciousness to make But if fear is what you must do then as Flavor Flaves said a decade later, right? Armageddon's been in effect will get a lay pass and Then it's the greatest story to me still ever told right how Abandoned forgotten kids of African descent African-American Afro Caribbean Afro Latino Puerto Rican youths in the Bronx and other neighborhoods in New York City built from the ruins of civil society a Kind of cultural movement That over four decades later continues to allow people all around the world To be able to be seen and to speak These were revolutions of being They said we are here. We've always been here. The only urgency now is for you to open your eyes and see and So too these were revolutions that demanded seeing they were revolutions not just a being but of seeing That we see each other in our full humanity that we recognize each other in our full humanity And so they were revolutions of consciousness. They did not require bloodshed They only require that we stand up as ourselves Proudly that we never apologize for our right to be and that we learn how to see each other in our full being And so by the end of the 1970s Tony K. Bambara had coined a motto of sorts For the movement he said she said the responsibility of the artist the work of an artist is to make this revolution Irresistible Now in the years after Obama, it's clear that we've reached the point of history where people of color are hyper-visible or modernized folks are now hyper-visible and Ellison was prescient here as well. All right. He also wrote when they approached me. They said only my surroundings themselves or figments of their imagination When they approached me, they see only my surroundings themselves or figments of their imagination Indeed everything and anything except me and So the kinds of images That preceded Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown Renisha McBride Rikia Boyd Tamir Rice Alex Nieto so many more As Allison as Ellison said when they approached me They see only my surroundings themselves or figments of their imagination indeed everything and anything except me And so the movement for black lives has called upon us to see each other Right so that we can find away from the death spiral into the life spiral This is the work of our time Right now we're caught in a bad a bad circle a bad loop of history a cycle of crisis like a wheel in reverse and So it takes us back to 1992 25 years ago the Los Angeles riots and This takes us back even further To 1965 over a half century ago the year of Selma The year of the peak of the civil rights movement the year not incidentally that the national endowment for the arts was chartered Right the year of the last national consensus for racial justice and cultural equity It's in 1965 that the civil rights movement headed Zina and then in August a California highway patrol officer pulled over two African-Americans two blocks from their home in Watts the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and In the chaos that followed both of the men and their mother were beaten and taken to jail and The crowd tossed rocks and they tossed bottles at the departing police car and after the car was gone a six-day uprising began and So 1965 was also the beginning of the post-civil rights era and It's an era that's been defined by a rich vital culture born of demographic change But a politics that's been mobilized around racial backlash It's been a period of resegregation sometimes slow and creeping sometimes loud and violent and so from 1965 to 1992 2014 on up to now we seem caught in a cycle of crisis There's a crisis There's a reaction. There's a backlash There's a sense of exhaustion and Then we fall into another crisis And the question is how do we escape? How do we escape this death spiral this cycle of crisis? And so we need creativity in this period We need the arts to help us find new imaginations new words for our time And we're asked in this moment to build bridges across the divides to try to close the growing gaps of inequality and segregation So let's talk about some of those gaps right now. We can start right here at home in the arts in recent years the arts world has been pushed to deal with what it euphemizes as issues of diversity From Oscars so white to current controversies around the content of plays and paintings And yet this word diversity it's become so toothless Diversity is a fact Right diversity is just a fact And so has climate change and yet leaders find ways they find new ways every day to say how they Believe in both even as they're working so hard in the opposite direction to make things worse, right? Diversity means nothing without equity and so we can comfort ourselves with a picture of diversity While tolerating the reality of rising inequality and rising re-segregation and so What we've been pushing for right have not been a focus on issues of diversity, but issues of equity and Equity real equity shows up in three kinds of ways representation access and power Representation on the stage and in front of the camera. Yes, but also a seat at the table Access to institutions of power and advancement. Yes But also to the traditions and the ways and the practices that have helped us to survive The power to raise one's voice and be heard. Yes, but also the power to make decisions and representation access and power show up as distributed unequally Here's a couple of ways they show up, right? All of the largest museums theaters and dance companies in the US the largest ones of top five have budgets of more than $23 million, but only five Only the top five Of the largest African-American and Latino museum theaters and dance companies in the US I have budgets of More than 20 the than five million dollars And here's something that's even more disturbing in some ways, right? The New York City Office of Cultural Affairs Department of Cultural Affairs did a survey of a thousand New York arts organizations and 69% of those polled Agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. I feel my organization is diverse and Yet 78% of board members and 79% of leadership staff in the same organizations Are white in a city that's 33% white So again the picture of diversity and the reality of inequity If we want to get to the heart of the matter We can remind ourselves that since the massive defunding of the NEA During an earlier period of the culture wars because we're still in it. We're still in the culture wars right now The agenda of the state has been the push funding of the arts towards two sectors, right? Towards the corporate sector and the philanthropic sector And so the culture wars have left us with is this neoliberal doctrine that says if it's not good enough to make money It's not important enough art to make Right or you're left to your own wealth or the wealth of your friends or others right and So while crowdfunding has become a thing in recent years It's never been enough to sustain massive arts making for an extended period of time and as for the philanthropic sector Here's what we've got of every foundation dollar 11 cents goes to the arts Five and a half cents goes to arts organizations with budgets of more than five million dollars One cent goes to arts organizations serving underrepresented communities and less than half a cent goes to arts organizations for social justice work This is inequality that's deeper than our own vast income inequality in the US right and It's reflective of course of all these other divides that have been happening over the last half century So we can move next to talking about the next generation of young Americans who are coming up Who of course demographers say are the most diverse generation the US has ever seen prompting a little bit of jealousy in Me because we were a part of the last generation that was the most diverse generation of Americans that had ever been seen But I try not to hold that against them because I teach them every day My own struggles Big fat book my struggle And so this is the most diverse generation of young folks that the US has ever seen but they're coming of age in a Resegregating country the peak of desegregation in the schools happened in 1989 Which was a great year for hip-hop? All right, and it's not unrelated actually right and What we know is that most students of color are attending majority minority schools But that whites are still the most segregated group of all the average white student attends a school that's 75 percent white So we have an entire generation that's coming of age with re-segregation as their reality One of the biggest discussions in the global city right now is over gentrification And so we can take the case of the San Francisco Bay area right where I call home Which has begun become ground-zero for a lot of these kinds of discussions and what we've seen there of course is galloping inequality Here's the racial gap Income wise now between white and black median households in San Francisco County Displacement of course is the story behind these numbers But people who are displaced have to go somewhere Right, and so now Oakland is the fifth highest rental market in the country Oakland, California The domino effect of displacement continues so folks are forced out of Oakland Further out into the Delta into Antioch or into Oakley or into Stockton into the Valley to Tracy And what we know is that this is happening all across the country Right that people being displaced out of the cities and into the aging suburbs Suburbs with names like Sanford, Florida or Ferguson, Missouri We've seen the suburbanization of poverty and the colorization of suburbia and homelessness is skyrocketing in Oakland homelessness has grown by 25% in the last year alone and So this is the moment that we're in right this moment of severe precarity precarity defines our time and The term gentrification is too small to understand what's really at work gentrification centers the wealth that's been Moving into the cities the gentry that are moving into the cities But it disappears those who are being forced out of the cities And so gentrification is part a small part of the larger problem of resegregation and All of this all of this boils down to the fundamental question of life expectancy What we know is that a non hispanic black male can expect to live seven years less Than the average American And here again is why we say black lives matter and so we fight every day against the weight of history We're always fighting against the weight of history we can talk about the way his history has come full circle even right here In this place where we are right now The history of Oregon country is one that begins with race. It's haunted by exclusion and genocide The first displacement came with the genocide and removal of native peoples from their lands The pious the Coast Salish the Chinook the kelma the Athabaskan the Klamath the Modak so many others and At the same time that white miners and settlers were attacking the tribes They placed language into their constitution stating that no free Negro and mulatto not reciting in the state at the time of the Adoption of this constitution should come reside or be within this state or hold any real estate This law followed the infamous lash law which literally gave whites the right to whip blacks every six months until they voluntarily left the territory Oregon was founded as an all-white state and territory and The constitutional language here that you see wasn't repealed until a statewide vote in 2002 Over the past year on a half. This is a history. That's been coming back full circle last January 2016 the Mount Hur National Wildlife Refuge was occupied by Amon Bundy and a group of white rogues Claimed that the feds had stolen lands from white ranchers The Burns Paiute tribe had to correct them. They said hey the land had been taken by whites about 140 years before this But 40 days the Bundy's were allowed to trash the property destroy indigenous artifacts cultural items their occupation costs taxpayers nine million dollars and they were acquitted of all charges in October Portland remains the whitest city major city in the country. These are maps from a city From the city itself showing 2010 census data Right, you can see communities of color are largely on the outskirts of the city such as the northeastern tracks that boarded the airport And we can match that with the poverty maps There's a large correspondence and this in turn reflects the long-term legacy of racial segregation in the city This last map shows the areas where diversity is decreasing Right, it measures the diversity here the index It's the likelihood that two people chosen at random from the same area belong to a different race or ethnic group And the areas of diagonal lines show where diversity is increased or decreasing Right, so many of those tracks happen to be in areas where median prices for homes have been rising the fastest Especially in these areas just east of downtown and I don't show these maps to denigrate the city I love Portland and Portland is no different from any other city in this country and like my own home of the Bay Area The same places that are the front lines of resistance are on the front lines of increasing inequality and re-segregation And so these are the kinds of contradictions That we are being called to confront History doesn't need to be destiny But it surely won't change until we face up to it and choose to act Lately in the news there's been talk of a strange kind of futurism Sorry, slow down Okay, I Want to talk about the strange kind of futures and we talked about the past and the present Let's talk about this futurism right the rise of these luxury doomsday bunkers Doomsday bunkers for the extremely rich These are people who have accumulated so much wealth that they wouldn't know what to do with it But for the fear they've accumulated as well Right for years. They've said to themselves. I made this I made this Right now taking into account all of the labor that supported them making this right and So now they talk amongst themselves about uprising in which those people and it's always those people violently revolt against them in which they are the targets of some sort of apocalyptic vengeance and rage and Perhaps the saddest thing about this is what it reveals about what they believe about themselves or what it may Reveal about what they believe about themselves that since they can't imagine any kind of generosity They can't nurture it within their own view of their future Right, and this is maybe what the neo-marxist meant when they said it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism And so They've taken to refashioning these abandoned missile silos in the Midwest to build themselves Bunkers where they can protect themselves from society It's the ultimate escape hatch and it's complete with simulated exterior windows With pools with climbing walls and of course dog parks And so this is a logical conclusion dog parks. Yeah, I'm from the Bay Area. We have a lot of those and this is a logical conclusion of Capitalism and racism and systems that support inequality complete and total withdrawal from the social from almost every kind of time Responsibility a future where some live bunkered away from the many and where all else is imagined as nothing, but ruins It's the imagination of the death spiral and Here's the strange truth in this strange historical moment that The best remedy may be more art The art can be the remedy to the orientation towards death and why it's because in these moments when we Are blinded by spectacle by illusion to each other Where it seems most that we can't see each other and only instead see our surroundings Ourselves or figments of our imagination that art may allow us to see again It may allow us to close the gaps again In its mimicry of life art helps to close the distance between the self and the other It helps us to come together And another way to say this of course is that through art we learn once again how to experience empathy and Empathy is the first necessary step towards equity now. It's important to say empathy is not enough Empathy creates the possibility of community and the possibility of equity but empathy is empty without action and Equity requires work. It means making the values of pleasures the ways of knowing and being that the arts and culture enable To be valued by all it means fair representation Inclusion and access and fundamentally it means shared rights shared responsibilities shared power It comes down to forming relations between ourselves and others that are not based in domination Exploitation or extraction but in exchange Generosity and trust the building blocks of community the essential elements for a spiral that circles up towards life And so here's a picture of Beagle Rockefeller Who? Had one of the first hip-hop theater companies along with her partner quick-step Right, and it's called full circle And we can think about equity beginning in the circle the circle is a powerful metaphor for community in the circle All points are equidistant from the center in the circle. We can all see each other The circle is also the space of creation the cipher right where tradition returns and innovation happens Where the relationship between the individual and the community is restored where the community? affirms itself reaffirms itself and test itself and Emerges transform to the five percenters zero is the cipher it marks the completion of the cycle the highest attainment and So this finally brings us to the work of the late great gracely bogs and are thinking about the idea of revolution Grace argued that we need to think of revolution as not something. That's one in bloodshed or the violence easier power Where we replace one group in charge with another group in charge But as she put it the next revolution might be better thought of that as quote advancing humankind to a new stage of consciousness creativity and social and political responsibility Her revolution will require us to move away from finding new ways to divide and rule To consign some to death and instead pivot to life to honor and transform ourselves in our relations to each other She insists that we rethink how we see each other and how we choose to be and be together She urges us to move beyond feeling empathy into acting towards Mutuality that we start from seeing each other and move into acting for each other For those of us who believe in justice and equity and freedom It's always going to be our special burden to explore and advance new imaginations that arouse desires for change All that the forces of reaction have to do is Reappropriate what we've done to preserve the status quo So our constant struggle is going to be to overcome that stasis and that requires us to move people To seduce people to inspire people to manifest ideas of a nation in society that has not yet been To make revolution irresistible Luckily as artists, this is where we feel exactly at home, right? Art as many people as said is a gift It's something that works at the level of the exchange But at its best it continues to give long after the act of making it and sharing it has passed It's a gift that continues to give right. It's the epitome of generosity And so no wonder its impact is so hard to measure. How do you fix a value on something whose? exchange value multiplies over generations and across geographies remember to that revolution is the closing of a an old circle or Closing excuse me of a new circle, right? It's one that's begun as a movement out of an old circle And so just as the artist before us initiated these revolutions of being and seeing So we can move out of this cycle of crisis and death into a cycle of abundance in life out of resistance and the transformation I Love the city. I love its people out of its spirit of generosity Portland is a city that deeply believes in life that feels deeply that indeed has felt like the pulse of the resistance Right after last November's election. I found myself here in Portland. I was exhausted I was emotionally spent I was really trying hard to process and The students and the staff and the faculty at Lewis and Clark invited me in They welcome me and I found myself at a round dining table where everybody was trying to metabolize the shift the sort of new world I Trying to find a true north a new true north and their desire to step up and confront These new conditions helped me to do the same I've been thinking and writing about loops of history about cycles of crisis and Thinking that eight years ago and some change When people came together to elect Barack Obama and it was announced that he had won people poured into the streets There were spontaneous Celebrations there was music in Oakland folks were doing their side shows We were feeling ourselves right when Trump was elected people took to the streets in rage and defiance. I Was staying right here in downtown And each day I was speaking with folks in the area of folks in Portland who are working through this deep soul searching with care With openness and each night. I went to sleep with the sounds the shouts The hollers of the resistance Happening right below my window and these things brought me a lot of comfort And I think this is why they target us Right. This is why they target us in Berkeley in Portland Everywhere Everywhere that we're trying to make change Why those who want to preserve the status quo preserve inequality and privilege and terror and the death spiral? Why they target us everywhere that we're active in dreaming because they know our power and it's the power of love a Revolution is based in love and life It can build places of dignity of justice and equity. It can become infectious It can become unstoppable it can become irresistible and There's no better place and time than right now and right here to begin to build the revolutions That will help us to turn this history around Thank you very much Thank You Jeff. That was truly inspiring I'm Kevin Moriarty. I'm the chair of the TCG board and I am very proud to have this Opportunity to serve TCG with my fellow board members at this critical moment for our field each of our theaters at this time are facing so many challenges securing appropriate Capitalization and the necessary financial resources to make art Expanding our audiences and engaging our communities in an authentic way Creating organizations that are equitable diverse and inclusive Providing a dignified living wage for artists and the people who create and make the art that we all love These challenges are made more difficult at a time when resources from the Government and from foundations are increasingly scarce when the NEA is under attack when societal forces are at work to Divide us and weaken our ability to come together around art Sometimes it can feel like we're alone But we are not alone We have a collective that brings us all together We have TCG The mothers and fathers of the regional theater movement many years ago Created TCG we as a field created TCG all those years ago in order to Provide us collectively with resources that we could not have on our own access to field-wide research and to Surveys that allow us to understand best practices National advocacy for arts funding because it requires speaking with a large Collective voice to have power in the halls of government and artists need power Convening's that bring us together so we can lift up the great and good work that we are doing and share those ideas with each other So that we can challenge each other to ever be better Publishing the books and the plays that would not exist In the marketplace for us to be able to experience understand to confront and to produce American theater magazine and art search which connect us to what's happening in the field and allow us to move throughout the field resources that empower our member theaters to make proactive structural changes to create greater equity diversity and inclusion TCG speaks with a collective voice with our voice TCG makes us stronger Because we are stronger when we are together and gives us hope We need you TCG is you and we need you we need you to Contact us and let us know to reach out to us when you face Critical challenge and needs so that we can together mobilize the community to support you We need you when you experience great art and good work in your communities to lift that up and share that with us so that We can amplify it and celebrate it with you And we need Financial support. Here's what happens when you join a board You learned a couple numbers. Here's a number that is a member for all these years. I didn't know dues From members account for only 17% of TCG's expenses We need your Financial help. Here's what you can do. There's an insert that's in your Packets and it says hey, there's four ways that you could make a contribution You could text us you could go online. You could mail in a card You could just walk up to the registration tables in person You can just walk up and say I just want to make a donation right now even in person the one that is the sexiest and most fun and that maybe some of Our member theaters out there are either doing or will or will start to do after after today Is that that phone number up there where you can text they tell me all you have to do is you just take out your Phone right now. You just you just type in a dollar amount and hit send. That's it That's what you have to do You'll get a text back then with a little link that you can connect up on you. You can type some fun things some like sexy comment or Fun emoji or something like that, but you can truly just type in a dollar amount. We'll be quite happy About that Hey, and here's the thing that is kind of fun and special. This is like that that gift moment if you make a contribution this weekend while at the conference of $100 or more Then your name will be included as a sponsor in the published version of Tony Kushner's the intelligent homosexuals guide to capitalism and socialism with a key to the scriptures or I hope your name will actually be in that in that book and also TCG will give you a free copy of the book It's an incredible play packed just dense with ideas and inspiration and you could be a small part of that And you could contribute to the idea that great plays make a difference So all of us on the board at TCG all of us in this room who are TCG Thank you for the art that you're making For the good work that you are doing in our communities for the challenges that you give Us to be ever better, and we thank you very very much for your support So before we break I want to remind you housekeeping about two performance opportunities tonight August Wilson Reddors project The new blackfest hands up is playing tonight at 730 here at the pavilion ballroom and also at 730 Tatro Linnea de sombras Amarillo is going to play an encore performance at Portland Center stage at the Armory Thank you very much for being with us at the plenary this morning. Have a great conference