 Welcome everybody! In-person audience and remote audience. My name is Anna Cange da Carneiro. I use she, her, or Ella pronouns, and I am a Latin American woman with brown hair, fair skin, and I'm now standing by a round table, by a square table, or a rectangular table. I am an assistant professor in playwriting, and I'm head of the MFA in playwriting program at IU Bloomington, where we are streaming from now. This live-streamed event is part of the At First Side Festival of New Plays 2023 at Indiana University Bloomington, which features new works by our MFA playwrights and other events. The festival is curated by me with playwriting and dramaturgy graduate students. Tonight, or this afternoon, we have here with us three incredible guests. Bradley Mikalakis, literary manager at Ali Theatre Houston, Saliza Kalki, managing director at Synchronicity Theatre Atlanta, and Martin Green Rogers, Dean at the Pohl University. And I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna kindly ask our playwrights and dramaturgs to introduce the guests now. Hello, my name is Annalise Cain, and I'm one of the MFA playwrights. My pronouns are she, her, and I am a white woman with reddish hair, and I'm currently sitting at the table, and I'm going to introduce Bradley. So Bradley Mikalakis is a dramaturg and theater producer from New York. He is currently the literary manager at Ali Theatre in Houston, where he helps to develop new plays through the annual Ali All New Festival. Recent work in Houston includes world premiere productions of Cowboy Bob, What a Christmas, and Ken Loegwig's Lenmia Soprano. Before locating to Houston, Bradley worked as the director of literary development at the Foxboro Company, the Broadway production office behind John Leguzmano's Latin History for morons, and the recent revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide slash when the rainbow is enough. Bradley's work has been featured at Delaware Rep, Delaware Shakespeare Festival, and Theater for a New Audience. In addition to his work in theater, Bradley has produced live music events in NYC since 2016. Hello, my name is Lexi Silva. I am a third year MFA dramaturgy candidate here at Indiana University. And my pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a Portuguese and Palestinian American woman with light brown hair and brown eyes. I'm here to introduce Salisa Kalki, who is a dramaturg whose career has taken place in some of America's most exciting and rigorous theaters. She began her American career at the Juilliard School in New York, worked also at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has had an artistic affiliation with independent art here. She was the resident dramaturg at Court Theater in Chicago and the director of the literary department at the Public Theater. She lived in Atlanta working at the Alliance Theater since 2005, and since 2018 has been the managing director of Synchronicity Theater. Salise has a teaching association with Actors Express in Atlanta and was an associate artist at Next Theater in Chicago, working with Jason Lewith. In the 1990s, she lived in Prague, the Czech Republic, was a member of Misery Loves Company at Czech, at a Czech English company, and worked with the Narendi Diavodlo and Diavodlo Pod Paul Movko, while a student at DAMU, the Prague Theater Academy. Hi, everybody. I'm David Davila. My pronouns are all pronouns, and I am a Latino, American, scruffy, gay, jolly. Many would say I'm jolly. My grinder profile says rugged. If that helps, I've got a beard. And I am a playwright here in the festival and at school. I'm here to introduce Martin Key Green Rogers, who is the Dean of the Theater School at DePaul University. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Theater and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to studying at UW-Madison, she received her BA in theater from Virginia Wesleyan College and her MA in Theater History and Criticism from the Catholic University of America. Her dramaturgical productions include Tony Stone and Sweat at the Goodman. Oh, I saw that one. King Headley II, Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Mo, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Ifinia in Aulise, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, Home and Porgy and Bess at the Court Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Hairspray, The Book of Will, Shakespeare- Oh, The Book of Will, Shakespeare in Love, The Comedy of Errors, To Kill a Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer's Night's Dream and Fences at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She was also part of the dramaturgical team for the remount of Jagged Little Pill on Broadway, which is coming here in just a couple of weeks. She is the stage adapter of Jason Reynolds's book Long Way Down, which premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October of 2018. Her publications include the article, Talk Backs for Sensitive Subject Matters, Productions, The Theory and Practice in the Rootledge Companion to Dramaturgy, co-author on A New Noble Kingsman, The Play on Project and Making New Plays Out of Old in Theater History Studies, co-author on Visual Dramaturgy, Problem Solver or Problem Maker in Contemporary Performance Creation in Theater Practice, and co-author on Continuing the Conversation, Responses to Gabriela Serena Sanchez and Kira Alegria-Hoods in Theater Topics. Wonderful. Thank you so much. So today we're going to talk about best practices in new play development with a particular focus on anti-racism and anti-oppression practices. So I'm going to be moderating the discussion, but I will encourage it to make it very fluid so that folks can jump in and ask questions. But I'll start, maybe, you know, to jumpstart the conversation. I would like to maybe ask you to tell us a bit about your journey in new play development and maybe, you know, sharing the highlights and the things that most excite you about that. Thank you. As my very long bio states, my name is Martine Key Green Rogers, my pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a black woman with freckles in her forties, but if you take several steps back, I might look like I'm in my 20s. I'm wearing glasses, a gray dress, and I have short, coily, curly black hair. So I'm guessing should we introduce ourselves and then answer the question or just go ahead and start. Hey, everyone. I'm Bradley Mikolakis. I am a half Greek, half Latino man in my late 20s. I'm wearing a blue vest and a blue shirt and a blue watch. So I realize I'm like kind of like violent bow regarding it right now. And I have fair skin and dark hair. And yeah, happy to be here. Hi, my name is Salisa Kolke. And I've never been on one of these panels when I'm the old guard, but I am the old guard. It's weird. How did that happen? And I have I'm about five, eight and light skin and hair. And I always wear black because I'm hiding my secret grinder identity as a soccer mom. My kid actually doesn't play soccer, but I spent a lot of time parenting these days. So I wear a lot of black. So I try to look cool. Can you repeat the question again? Well, it's basically our journey in new play development. So the highlights, it's interesting because I feel like for me, and this is Martine again, for me, my journey was a little a little bit of a long time coming and that my background is in the classics. And so for a while, that was basically where I lived and had fun being like that black girl who was doing the classics. But my journey into new play development actually happened during my PhD program where there was in Madison, there was a new play festival that was happening. And so they needed a dramaturg. And they were like, Oh, Martine, you do that thing, even though you don't do that thing in this particular way. So come do that thing that you do over there. Come do that over here. And so that is where it started. But then I also discovered that there is a pure genuine joy that I get and helping playwrights write the best play that they can write. And so I'm gonna own I started chasing that a little bit. I was like, Oh, there's joy in that I'm going to go keep chasing that joy. And so in terms of the highlights, you know, that has led me to working at places like Great Plains Theater Commons. And I was I forget what my official title was, don't tell anybody, as I say that on something that's being live streamed. I had I had a title at the Playwright Center in Minneapolis up until like, March of last year. And basically, my job there was to help with help basically be the personal dramaturg for all the many of the fellows, the playwrights who are there on fellowship and like the mini boys, his fellows, etc. And just lots of other really fun places. I'm a reader for quite a few places. And you know, it's just something that I have pure joy in doing. Hey, Bradley here. I guess for me, new play development came up as sort of a necessity in a weird way, because I never studied theater or plan to go into theater really as a career, but it was something that I always loved and wanted to do. So while I was in school, pursuing something completely different, which is now proven totally useless and not part of my life at all. When I was not there, I would I wanted to continue doing theater. And so I'm from New York. And every you know, when I would go back over the summers or whatever, I would work with my friends who were all involved with theater to and we would produce our own work. Just because he had no other outlet for doing that. So I mean, we did some classics to like we did a couple of Shakespeare plays, whatever, but it became much more centered around producing my friends and people collaborators I meet New York like their new plays. So we would do, I mean, you know, in the craziest weirdest venues, warehouse spaces, abandoned theater spaces that were like owned by hoarders where they were like literally rats running around like horrible places. But it was a great place to learn how to do that process. And then as I started to segue into working at theater institutions and working in regional theater and then eventually commercial theater in New York, it became obvious that, you know, generally speaking in this country, people who see theater and are excited by theater tend to be of an older generation. And when you look around audiences, that's what you see. And as somebody in my generation, I feel concerned about how what work are we doing to bring new audiences in? What are we intentionally presenting to create a more excitement about this? And so developing new work seem to be a natural part of answering that question. And so I was very lucky to find the Alley Theater, which I've known about for years, and it's a great theater. But what's so great about it and what attracted me there is that they put such a huge emphasis on new work. And we do world premieres like almost half our shows this season are world premieres, and we do a new play festival at the end of each season. So it's, yeah, it's just become kind of my, my main thing. It's fun. Hi, this is Talisa. So I grew up in classical music, which if you know classical music, you literally grow up in it. And, and then when I was at a conservatory, like I, I love to talk. And I'm really opinionated. And a classical music conservatory, you get to be a bad girl really fast if you, if you love to talk and a couple letters to the Dean, like, I don't understand why a modern music concert that is filled with the work by men is modern music. But a modern music concert that is full of the work by women is an exception. And, and then when the Dean stops talking to you after you write that letter, there's a little lifestyle conversation you have to have with yourself about how you want to spend your years. And fortunately, I didn't wasn't working in theater. So I didn't know that all these same issues were there, right? So I read Angels in America and I was like, yes. Yes. Sign me up. And then I moved to Prague and I got all my theater training because I learned how to say I have a big theater background and I want to be a dramaturg in check before I had any theater background. So you know, then I had to do it. So I actually, I mean, because Angels in America because I filmed with Angels in America, and I thought that's what America is. I can't. I don't I don't have a conversation bit. But there are also these amazing theater artists like Garland Wright at the Guthrie who are doing classical dramaturgy. I'm classical music. So in my fake it till you make it way of building a career, I just was like classical dramaturgy. That's what I do. And that that was not crazy, actually. And then the I had some Czech theater artists who actually trained me how very quickly how to be a real dramaturg. They were incredible. I was in like Czech theater bootcamp for three years. And then I moved to New York, and I wrote a letter to the public theater saying hi, I do Shakespeare. So I should be an intern here. And, and they got me an interview that got me an interview because of the Czech credits. And Shelby Jigets, who's one of the who's an incredible dramaturg and one of one of like the the pioneers and trailblazers in in in dramaturgy and George C. Wolf, who's like a genius, both said, No, you don't do classical music, you do you don't do classical dramaturgy, you do new play development. And, and I just do whatever George C. Wolf tells me to do. So yeah. So that's how that's how I got involved in in new yeah, I in new play in development. And I got to work with George, you know, literally doing everything you know, whatever George told me to do for a couple years. And George was behind the move to Atlanta. So, like George said, Atlanta was interesting. So I moved to Atlanta really like anytime I have a life precision, I see if George will still answer my emails. Hi, Anna again. So wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. I think I'd like to go into the process now and maybe ask you what are what is your own process when you when you dramaturg and you play? What are the things you pay attention at what you would recommend to new dramaturgs to observe as best practices, or how your institution does it? So I wanted to start because I don't do it anymore. And I won't I really won't be a dramaturg for an institution anymore. I just won't do it. Yeah, I did it. I did it for a really long time. So now if you get me, you get me. Like that's that's the deal. But when I was a institutional dramaturg, my first rule was never ever ever ever ever. Like, it will it like you could rip my nails out. I won't do it. I won't give a playwright a note on the behalf of the institution until I fed them. So I had a company like won't do it. And then I also have to give them presents. And then I see how we are. I see how we're doing. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is particularly and this is very much thinking about like, institutional dramaturg because that seems to be sort of where we're headed not just me working with a playwright, which is a different thing. But representing the institution, there's a certain element of I'm the one person in this institution who will be with you through your crazy. And in the course of this meal that we're having, we're going to kind of figure out what what we're going to figure out together what the deal is. But that that building of solidarity. So that your office is a safe space is like, really, really, really key. Hello, Bradley. I completely agree with what Salisa said. I think, for me, yeah, I totally agree. It's about relationship building. It's about making people feel comfortable. It's about making writers feel like you are listening to them and fundamentally that you are in service of their work, not trying to impose your own thoughts and ideas on it. And a lot of, you know, a lot of dramaturgs also are writers or have ideas or whatever. But it's that's a completely separate part of the equation. It's just more of like a filtration process and helping to clarify and taking the time to understand really fundamentally what they're trying to do with a piece before you start stepping in and trying to change a piece. Yeah. This is Martin. So I think in terms of my process for new play dramaturgy, it depends on the genre and where we are in process. So for example, what my process looks like on a new musical is very different than what my process looks like on a straight play, which is different than if I'm also one of those weird dramaturgs that starts to venture out in other places, like I do some music, Terji, things like that. And so depending on what those things are, but if I had to give like this sort of short version of what that looks like, I think, especially when it's just my favorite part of the process is always when it's just me in the playwright. And part of the reason why is because that is the time where you can do sort of what Bradley, which is talking about, which is asking the questions like, where do you see your play? What do you think needs to happen next? Where do you feel like? What questions do you have? Like, how can I be that person that you can just bounce ideas off of before anyone else has to get involved? And when I say has to get involved, we already know that if it's been commissioned, there are a whole bunch of a host of producers already involved. But before it has to be something that has to be given over to them to pass judgment on, like, what are the things that you see? What do you want to work on? What is what are those things? And then I think also in terms so in that process for me, just to get granular granular for a second is really asking those questions. And it's the brilliant sort of back and forth and like setting up that schedule and saying, Okay, I'm gonna, do you need me to be that dramaturg that like checks in on you every once and want to be like, Hey, how those rewrites going? Or do you need me to be that dramaturg that just sort of slinks away into the dust until you like show back up magically in my emails? And you know, how active do you want to be? And like all the sort of building a relationship and a friendship that then allows for the later things that Salisa was just talking about in terms of being that person. That's also now your mama turg. When that thing finally gets to production. I have all kinds of port meadows for drama turg. Just know it's you don't hear a lot of them over the course of this conversation. And but then also like, what does that look like in production? And I feel like part of what happens when you get to production is that it's about holding a hand and like not even necessarily like physically holding the hand but really just being there to be like, look, you have like if no one else in this room is feeling this play, I am here and I'm your best supporter and I'm going to act like I've lost my mind. The moment the curtain comes down after that first, you know, after that first preview, like I am that person for you. So just tell me what you need me to be and I will be flexible and be that. Okay, I'm done. Yeah, it's like emotional support dramaturgy at a certain point, for sure. And you know, in therapy, therapy, yeah. And you know, it's also important like in an institutional setting, there's, I mean, it's not just about the play itself and making that as good as possible, but it's also bridging the gap between an artist and an institution that has its own systems and beliefs and ways of working. And it's just about making that process as comfortable and easy as possible for people. So the artist can just do the work and not worry about that stuff. There's, at least for me, I don't know other people's experience, but there's a certain like aspect of kind of being a line producer associated with being a dramaturg, especially if it's in production. Yeah, I think, and I think what the three of us share is there are dramaturgs who like I'm having so much. Yep, yep, yep. But there there are some dramaturgs who are not good line producers. And there are some dramaturgs who are not good, who don't like being in institutions. And I think what is great about the curating of this panel is we all dig it. But especially right now, with so many reckonings, especially the, the we see you white American theater and the racial reckoning that's going on and on really hard conversations about best practices. That's a really tricky place to be. And I will say dramaturgs are never the highest paid person in the theater. So, you know, you're really spending a lot of time advocating while you're like, I don't know, can I afford the expensive peanut butter this month? Right? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a tricky thing. I would say, you know, the, like there have been there was there's one really exciting moment in my professional life where the player and I were actually communicating telepathically, like I joke that that will happen. But this was because one of us had to take over rehearsal and we were watching a process implode before our eyes. And we were sitting, we'd, we'd screwed up and we thought that the, the director would feel more supported if we were at opposite sides of the room, like sending, like sending, come on one more day, you've got it. But this director did not have it. And they were kind of mad at the cast and the play was going down. And the playwright and I had this incredible telepathic exchange that went something like, it's your play, you take over, it's your theater, you take over. No, no, no, it's your play. You got us into this mess. You take over. You're the one who asked me to produce the play at your theater, Missy. You take over. No, you take over. And finally, the playwright one, because he was like, you are both more employed and older than I am. Go. And I was like, okay. And then, but like there were no, we weren't even looking at each other. And later we were like, Oh, yeah, don't know. That's exactly what I was thinking. I mean, it was, yeah, because like our child was threatened. It was like being a parent. It's like, well, it isn't like being a parent because you are not the parent. But but you are in it, you're in when it's good, you are in it with the writer. And if you're if things are cooking, that you're being in it with the writer is wonderful for everyone else. Like you being in it with the writer is great, raises money and helps marketing and raises group sales and makes the writer really happy and creates a great opening night dinner. I mean, there are all these benefits to you being in it. But if the chips are down, you being in it means the writer is going to have a great product and emerge from this experience. Still excited about making theater, which is also, I think, a goal, right? Like, don't don't let a career go go down on your watch. This is Martin again. I want to also pull a little bit of the question that you asked earlier about, you know, sort of fostering and shepherding new dramaturgs into the fold a little bit. So part of where this is coming from this answer is coming from my track as an educator. And so obviously sort of bringing new dramaturgs into the fold by virtue of educating them. And then also, you know, as a past president of LMDA and really sort of I put a lot of time during my tenure as president of LMDA, really thinking about how are we fostering both, you know, equally early career, mid career and late career dramaturgs because they are of equal importance. But one of the things that I was thinking about is that for me, like, especially as an educator, we can theorize about what dramaturgy is all day long in a classroom, but you don't actually know what it is until you get in there and you do it. You like you just have to get in there and do it, which I think is sometimes the most frightening thing that I can say to students of dramaturgy they're like, wait, wait, wait, I got to get in there and do it. Yes, you got to get in there and do it. And so I do this thing that I know probably is going to horrify some folk right now. But I have a tendency like I will purposefully bring student dramaturgs into professional settings with me and then give them best them in the in that space as much power as I have in that space. And I will do things like unfortunately, like hi, Camille, I know you're probably watching this. Camille was just on me with with me and on Tony Stone at the Goodman, who's one of our BFA dramaturgs at DePaul. And I was like, so I was like, just so you know, and actually, I warned Camille, I was like, just so you know, at some point, I'm going to say, Dean life is really busy, you're going to have to do it. So be ready. And then I purposefully then sat in rehearsals for a little bit and let Camille get comfortable. And then one day when Camille's least expecting it, I was like, bye, have fun. And it's not funny because Camille was like, what? And I was like, you got this. They will ask questions. You have been here the whole time. You know what's happening. Just do it. And then, of course, because I am a Mometurg at heart, then I signed into Zoom and watched what happened. And Camille was amazing. Because back to like, sometimes you just have to do it. And then the thing that was so amazing is that Camille came into her own in that space. Really, like everyone treated her because back to you got to set people up for success. I already told everybody, look, one day I'm going to leave and Camille's going to be here and you're just going to have to listen to what Camille says. And I trust Camille. So you need to trust Camille as well. The end. And they did. And so and that was the beautiful thing. So by the time that process was over, Camille was like, Oh my goodness. I feel now like I can go back into DePaul and look at the way that I do this very differently because of the fact that I've had this experience outside of this building without my peers. Because like the other thing that we do, which I actually think is really great, is that we have them do it in pairs. But I was like, one day you're not going to have a pair. And you're going to be in that space by yourself. And what are you going to do? And so anyway, done. Hello, this is Anna again. I wanted, I think to sort of digging to the question a little bit more. Many of you have mentioned the importance of building relationships, because dramaturgy is a relational art, right? And that's, I think that's where also the anti racist and anti oppression work comes in. And the difficulty of actually doing it. In my experience as a playwright in some new play development realities, I got faced with like challenges and ways of doing and ways of making that would more often, you know, try to cater to certain aesthetics or dynamics or audiences. So I'm wondering if you have thoughts or, you know, to share how do we make these difficult conversations possible, less messy, and, you know, so that we can all evolve together, you know, as a community with diversity? This is Salita. And this is why I'm a managing director now, like all the stuff you just said, because you know, if you're invited as a playwright into a space, and you're mandate from whoever's inviting you is change who you are to make and what your work is to make your work more compatible to our audiences. That I think is a really, really problematic transaction, unless you're really a friend about it, like you are, you know, and I think actually, media navigates this a lot better, like if you're working for Disney, you know what you're doing, right? And like, there's a certain transaction there of you're going to be and you know, if you're writing for a house brand, you or I'm thinking about law and order is probably a less problematic example. If you're writing for law and order, you're writing for law and order, like there's no you know exactly what that is. But that brand, because I know a lot of writers who've written for law and order, they are so specific about this is what you have to do. This is what we want you to do. And this is what you get to do. And the the get was you can do whatever topic you want. But you would within whatever topic you want, you have to stay in the formula. And then artists can say, I cannot deal with that. Or yeah, that sounds great. And I want to pay check. But I think sometimes theaters are not so explicit. And, you know, seeing artists frustrated and being on the dramaturgical side of things, which is the let's all make this work and make, you know, like these are the mandates of what we're all going to do together. It just felt like, since since I the last couple of years that I was in the Alliance, I sort of felt like I had this resume like hanging around my ankle. And if anyone, you know, if anyone coming right out of school, googled me, they were going to say it likes a list of credits a mile long and some of them were in check. It was ridiculous. You can't get away from that. But, you know, that will always, you know, you're never going to have a pure you're never you're you can have a pure relationship, but it will take a lot of work and a lot of honesty. And it just felt like there were some problems in the American theater that we haven't learned how to fix that are on the management transaction. How do we pay people? What kind of money do we have? What are our working conditions? What are we asking writers to do? What are we being transparent about that we're more challenging? Hey, this is Bradley. I have a lot of thoughts about this question. First of all, personally, I think it's a really strong myth that a lot of places operate under, which is this idea about like catering to a specific audience is what you need to do in order to stay afloat because there are audiences who crave work that are not being catered to. So even if you're trying to look at it from a business perspective, that's not the only way to approach it to keep your own audience. And then to that end, it's more about identifying who is physically around you. That's why I like working regional theater too, because it can be so much more immediate to the community that it serves as opposed to like commercial work in New York, which is just catering to like a, you know, tourists and whatever people who just happen to be there. But you can really look around and see what groups are not having their stories told. And then you can find people who are telling those stories because there are amazing playwrights telling any story you could imagine. There's there's a lot of work out there. And so if you frame it in that way, there's not a need to to try to, you know, shove someone's work into a hole that it doesn't fit into. And that's why I personally, I hate this type of work that's like, you know, like, oh, we're doing Shakespeare, but this is taming the shrew, but it's feminist or like whatever. No shade to the public. Sorry. Calling you whatever. But I don't like that type of work because it's like, if this is a modern story, this is a story that needs to be told. And there are so many people who are working and alive trying to tell that story. And yet, we're not giving them work in order to do a less direct version of telling that story. And to me, that that just makes no sense. And it's not healthy for the industry. It's not healthy for the writers. And it ultimately doesn't create the best output of artwork. So yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of theater institutions are varying stages of learning and accepting this process and how open ended it could be. And so I feel like things generally people are becoming more aware and moving in a good direction with this. So I'm just excited to see what good work comes out and what, you know, writers who have never had opportunities now if they're being given them, you know, what amazing work can come from a writer that's never been seen before in 10 years after they've been produced a bunch of times. And, you know, when we don't have to keep referring back to these like huge names and whatever. And yeah. So this is terrible. This is Martin again, but this is terrible. So I didn't start writing your question down until the part where you said difficult conversations less messy. And so would you repeat your question because I don't think I have the first half of the question. This is Anna again. I asked about the, you know, since dramaturgy is a relational art and in new play. Development is so important, the relationship that the dramaturg develops with a playwright. I'm wondering how do we, you know, include in this conversation relational problems that regard oppression, identity and, you know, either in a one on one relationship or on an institutional level, are their best practices? What should we be paying attention to? This is Martin again. Okay. So one, I think the main thing that needs to happen is that institutions actually need to listen to their playwright when they are advocating for what they need in their room and what they need from their dramaturg. Like sometimes it's actually just that simple. If someone says, I think it'd be really helpful to have someone who is either culturally specific or specific in terms of gender identity or sexual identity, listen to those things and find that person. And here that here is the dirty, dirty, not so big secret about dramaturgy. There's a bunch of us out there. If you ask the right question, you will find the right person. And so I'm going to give you a really good example of this. So I'm going to try really hard not to like call out some folks. I'm going to see if how generally I can give this story without being weird. But I went to an LMDA conference a long time ago, where we were having a joint conference with a musical theater conference. And there was a joint panel in which there were folk from the musical theater conference and LMDA together. And one of the people from the musical theater side who happens to be a musical theater writer, basically decided to go all in and talk about how awful dramaturgs are, how they ruin their play, like all this other stuff. And the thing that I am going to give I love me some Beth Blickers. So we're just going to go and Beth was moderating this panel. And Beth let this Oh, okay. And so Beth did the most amazing thing at after this person had this little rant that they had. Beth was like, did you vet your dramaturg? And she said it in that way that Beth does that has that undertone of did I stutter? But was like, did you vet your dramaturg? And this person was like, what? Did you vet your dramaturg? And this person was like, Well, what do you mean? And so then like, Beth goes through this exercise with us and says, everyone who is in this space who identifies as a dramaturg raise your hand. So we do that. And then starts asking questions and says, if this doesn't apply to you, just put your hand down. So asking questions like, how many of you feel comfortable dramaturging a new musical, like asking a bunch of questions by the time she was done asking these questions, there were two hands left in that space. And really what the what what happened is that there is a real understanding by the end of that that this person did not have the dramaturg for them in that space. So of course, that relationship was not going to go well, because this person needed skill sets needed all sorts of things that this person that they were working with did not have. And I think it actually has to be if any theater is interested in new play development, you are doing nothing but harming and I mean that in all senses of the word, everyone in that space, if you're not willing to put the resources behind it to do it well. Because what do you what what story you're going to get? You're going to get a story of duress and how like everything happened at a cost, etc, etc, etc. So, and I'm not saying that it always has to be fiscal, but just take the time. Ask the questions, get the people in the room that are going to help serve the purposes of that play. And if you do that, you will already be doing the best you can to tell the best story that play right wrote. And I'm done off my soapbox. I'll just add to that to say that from the perspective of a potential, you know, I'm assuming people listening to this want to be dramaturgs or whatever. And so if you're not planning on being somebody who's running an institution, it's really okay to step back from a conversation that you don't feel like you have anything to contribute to. And, you know, there's always a lot of pressure also to get your voice in there and make, you know, prove yourself or whatever it is. But ultimately, it is in service of the play and you need to just be comfortable doing what's best for that. And, you know, so there's a level of personal responsibility for sure. Oh, that was Bradley, by the way. Um, this is Salisa. I also wanted to use an example from way back in the day. So when I when I started, like, I think of myself as the chicken the band situation, right? We're really equitable. Look, there's a woman in an artistic staff meeting. And when I started, I was usually the youngest person in the room as well, right? So I was like, okay, I'm the one woman in the room, and I'm a lot younger than everyone else. And I've kind of been hired because I'm easy to get along with. Okay, I get it. I see that I see what the drill is. Okay, I get it. Okay. All right. Got it. Okay. And I was really lucky to play that role with some really amazing, nurturing, incredible people. You know, so it's fine. I work with all women now, though, I think it's, you know, I think it's not an accident. Like in a certain point, I was like, Oh, you know, that's, that's too bad. I like working with men. But like, you know, where you start, like, where you where the industry is when you start lingers. But I remember this seismic shift, when all of a sudden, male playwrights were demanding fiercely women directors to work on their world premieres. And it happened. It happened in the late 90s early 2000s. And now women dominate the new play industry. But I heard from the, the, there was a really amazing playwright at the Alliance who asked for this. And he said, I don't want someone who's like me. And I don't want to take care of another guy. And I will take care of another guy if there's a guy in the room. And he he was like, I know this is very gendered and this is very sexist. But if I am surrounded by women, I know I'm going to be well taken care of. And I know my play is going to be well taken care of. And I was like, Okay, there's so many gender assumptions right here. But also at the same, like at the same time, this was not, this was not an isolated conversation. And also suddenly, all my female directing friends who were really good at new plays, like that hadn't changed. They were doing new plays in New York, like all you know, we're all running around. And you know, they went from I can't get hired to I do not have 30 seconds in my dance card, because I am like, there was a shift. And it was from selfishness and gender stereotypes. But also it was about who has been struggling to do the work with writers in a peer relationship. And who like, who, who is interested in real collaboration? And who is going to be someone that I can work with where I don't have to, for I don't have to worry about gendered behavior, because I just want to work on my play. I don't want to work on that. And then a lot of women started asking for women to direct their world premieres. And now a lot of women direct their world premieres all the time, like, but I've seen it happen in like five or six years. So it really, it can be good that like really that question of what do you need and what do you want can sometimes have if it can feel like a selfish question or can get sometimes into like who has real power in the room. But that is how change happens. Those questions actually if they're if they're asked with intention and they're answered honestly, that is how the profession changes and keeps being really dynamic and keeps being authentic. This is Anna again. Thank you. And this is my last question before we open up. I think I want to go back to the question of education that Martin raised and and one of you mentioned also the question of skill set, right? So when you think about skill sets that dramaturgs must have for new play development, is it enough for us to think about just, you know, analyzing structure and know a lot of, you know, content and cultural context and interpersonal relations? Or should we think about a training that also includes intercultural competency? Would that something be necessary? That is something valuable in your opinion? I think it would be valuable. But oh, this is Bradley, by the way. I think it would be valuable. This isn't really hard for me to speak to because, like I said, I never trained as a dramaturg or anything. I've never studied theater. So I don't even know what the process is currently like, to be honest. But I mean, I don't know. I like I feel that there's so there's just such a slew of different stories, so many different people's experiences, so many different people to work with, I truly believe that the best way of developing a sense of intercultural competency is through interacting with playwrights who are writing from a different perspective and working on their work and really being active about just listening, hearing what people are saying and learning throughout the process. I mean, I am certainly still learning how to do this. And I feel like the education part of it never ends. And you can always get better at that. This is Martin, educator. It's interesting that you ask this question because I think the answer is quite simply, yes. And the reason why I say that is because I feel like in some ways, dramaturgs are also brilliant chameleons in spaces. They can help talk about plays, what's happening in the plays, the world of the play and some of the most amazingly beautiful ways that like, you know, span all sorts of audiences. And the only way that they can truly do that is if they do have intercultural transcultural, like all sorts of different kinds of like cultural competency trainings. And that is something that was really important to me when I was running the dramaturgy program at SUNY New Pulse. And it's still something important to me now. Like when I bring students into spaces, you know, I'm always looking for opportunities to bring BIPOC students into the space. But I'm also here for like my white students too. Like, you know, Camille came in Camille is does not identify as black, but helped us tell an all black story on Tony Stone. And one of the things that Camille actually said coming out of that space was that they learned a lot about what storytelling is by being in a space full of people that do not look like her. Because there are some cultural differences in the way that people go about storytelling. And this gets back into the questions about structure. Like, we have a tendency to privilege Eurocentric cultures in terms of how we think about structure and what they should be. And so let's get out of that by asking people to do other things. And it's cool and it's great. And like you learned something new and yay, that's what we're supposed to be doing is dramaturgs. But then in the same way, at the same time where there's that's important, I also, you know, force is a very strong word. But I, I, you know, highly encouraged by the way that I structured my curriculum to make sure that students were taking things outside of the theater school, like outside of my school, they needed to take philosophy classes, they needed to take like an Asian literature class, they need to take this, they needed to take that because get the ham and cheese sandwich out of this building because the stories we tell are outside of the building. So anyway, I get all passionate about this because like I really feel that we have to be preparing our students in the best way possible. And yes, the techniques and all those things are super duper important, but also just living life. And learning generally what is happening outside the theater is the best way to come out being a new play dramaturg just saying, Finn. So I just want to pick you back on what Martina is saying. I would say vital, necessary, important and having the humility to say theater training doesn't actually know how to do it. And you have to look at other disciplines like Synchronistic Theater is in our residency right now with an ex her name is Phyllis Braxton. She's brilliant. Read her book, just getting published on Amazon, but she is a specialist in intercultural conflict and communication. And we found her through the IDI inventory, which is a group based out of Maryland. And she knows she is an expert at intercultural awareness and conflict and roles and measures and training. And it's something you can get better at. Like it's not it's not about is about living. Yes, but it's not like, oh, I've been graced with this awareness to be more woken. No, like there there there's there's training that you can do that is that is not all that expensive or all that hard. And it's difficult because you have to live it every single day. But and then I think again, to your point, get out of the theater building and live life. And a great training is to say, what is it? What is it? What in this town? What is it? What is an experience that I'm not super familiar with? I'm going to go make myself do it. Like, you know, for me, it's like going to sporting events. I feel massively uncomfortable. But sometimes I just now that I live in Atlanta, I make myself go. And I, you know, yeah. Or I made myself go to the Yankee game. That was really fun, actually. But like that used to make me physically very uncomfortable. But I thought I can't I can't be an American dramaturg and not go to major sporting events. That's that's completely limiting my access to the culture that I'm trying to be a dramaturg. And it's really elitist and really snobby. So, you know, like just and that's like a really dumb example. But it was a really good example for me personally. What's the thing that scares you? Because great theater artists, so many great theater artists talk about I work on the things that scare me. So if you if you think about that and not scary, like I'm going to be hurt physically, but what, you know, what are what are the things that that scare you? But it's it's a muscle. It's a discipline. It's a sociological discipline. It's an academic discipline. It's one that if one strives to get better, there are resources in the world and with the internet that you can find really easily to practice those muscles. This is Anna. I'm going to open to questions if anybody would like to ask a question to the panelists. Hi, it's Lexi again. So I wanted to ask all of you what the best advice that a trusted mentor ever gave you on the industry or beyond if it's something that still serves you every day. Something that was really meaningful to me. This was said to me by, this is super general, but I feel like it's worth hearing, especially for younger people just getting into the fold of this all. A really good mentor of mine, Mariah Aitken, who is a director and actress who I worked with a lot early in my career, like assisting her when she was directing projects. I remember one time I said something to the effect of like, oh, like I had an idea about the show and she was like, why didn't you say that? And I was like, oh, I didn't think anybody wanted to hear that. And she was, she was just very adamant about saying your voice is valued in this space and you're good at what you're doing and you need to just speak out when you have these thoughts. And I feel like that invitation was really important for me to just feel comfortable being there and that you are, your voice is part of the equation. And so that invitation won't always come, but I feel like it's good to operate under that thought, not just flagrantly saying anything that comes to your head, but feeling like fundamentally theater is a collaborative process. And it's not like a lot of other art forms because it doesn't exist without a whole group of people working together to do something. So if you're there, I just encourage you to make your voice heard and everybody's specific perspective can contribute to a process and yeah. So when I was living in Prague in 1983, I was working at a really great theater with this amazing like a Czech film and TV star. And one day in rehearsal she said, Lisa, you're going to come with me to the drag show on the boat. And I said, yeah, yeah. And she said, because you're American and you will understand how important it is that we can do drag in Prague and I want you to see it. I hadn't been to a drag show, but Susanna needed me to be the American expert on drag to see what was an incredible and seismic shift in the artistic, political and social justice life of Prague. And then it changed my DNA to be on the boat that night because everyone there wasn't being progressive or woke or gay friendly or anything. They were like, we have survived communism and now we get to have drag shows on a boat in Prague because the world is spinning forward and no one is going to take our drag shows away. And I thought, I'm not actually the person. I'm so not the person Susanna needs me to be in this moment, but maybe if I will live my life right, I will live up to what she thinks that I'm doing. So I think when you find people who expect more of you than you could ever dream of for yourself, keep them close, remember it and walk in the path that they are laying out for you. Or sometimes I say when I'm teaching is, listen to the world. This is Martine. So I'm going to start with a bit of a word, well testimony, in the sense that one of the things that I have learned over the course of my years on this planet is that mentoring never stops. So one, there are people that I'm about to give a quick shout out to who have been a part of my life for over 20 years and are just, are there for me even now. Like I had a little bit of a crisis of faith a little while ago and called one of these people and this person has been in my life since grad school. And like it's one of those things where, mentoring never stops and I hope that I can be for former students the same, that person that they are for me now. So one, trusted mentor Sally Shed at Virginia Wesleyan College, because she was the one that looked at me and said you have the soul of a dramaturg. I was young. I had no idea what the ham and cheese sandwich or dramaturg was and was like, I need some explaining please, what is that? And then she said what it was and I am not kidding. It was like the heavens had opened up, angels had come down and like man has started raining from heaven. Cause I was like, that's a thing that I can do. Like, wait, what? That's a thing? I want that. All of that, can I have all of it? And like really worked with me in that like the curriculum at the school that I was attending at Virginia Wesleyan was a little different at that point. And there was no real like dramaturgy track. But she was like, if this is what you want to do, we are going to figure this out and we are going to shift some stuff around and we're going to sub some stuff out and we're going to set you on a path. So like, hey, shout out to Sally. Also same thing with like, I call them the Patrick's, Patrick to it and Patrick Sims. And the thing that they, one of them was my master's degree advisor, the other one was an advisor for me during my PhD program. And the thing that they both taught me which is the main sort of takeaway that I want to share with everyone is that they basically through their actions, the way they live their lives and what they tried to instill in me, my takeaway was that you never compromise your integrity, your identity and your morals because it's just theater. Like those are the only things you have in an industry that is going to try and shake all of those things, take them away from you, shake them out of you, all those things. Never do it. Like, and they taught me that it is okay to say no and to walk the ham and cheese sandwich away. And that is like the best gift anyone can ever truly give you is to remind you, you actually have agency. You know what I'm saying? All right, I'm done. This is Eric Margaritia, assistant professor at Indiana University of Bloomington. He had pronouns and I was just wondering how has COVID era, the virtual zoom, has that impacted your work with dramaturgs or dramaturgs work as you've seen it? How has it, whether it's less? Thank you for that question. This is Martine. So here's the weird thing about my journey. I was busier during the pandemic than I was before the pandemic, which is like the weirdest thing ever to say. But part of what I think happened is that there were a lot of places. So there are two things that you should know about me as a dramaturg. Number one, I live on the fringes in the sense that I love me some digiturgy. And the way I'm defining digiturgy is how dramaturgs interact with technology, but then also how we interact with storytelling in terms of that. And so because I was living in that weird fringe land anyway, like all of a sudden the pandemic happened, people were shifting to zoom and all other forms of like sort of filmed storytelling and that like I was able to shine. My life just shined. Cause I was like, yes, here we go. The world is ready for me. But then also what ended up happening is I think there were a lot of theaters that didn't have something else to do quote unquote for a while besides develop new plays. They're like, well, we can't put anything on a stage but we do, we still have all these actors and we still have all these things. So we might as well just go ahead and do the thing that we'd either started contracting people to do or like let's do that. And so I found myself so much busier than I had been before that, which was really weird. I think I had maybe like a whole month and a half where I was like, oh, what am I gonna do with myself? Like this is weird. And then it just got busier and it stayed busy ever since then which is really, really strange and weird. So American theater has been hemorrhaging playwrights since Netflix discovered streaming in a way that is frankly is a new play, professional disgraceful. It is disgraceful that a generation of writers has found more success and welcome. And while I am so happy that these writers I love are making media money that it is not accompanied by the theaters that love them making, you're filling up their inboxes with pleas for plays is really something I think the American theater has to grapple with. And I live in Atlanta where we produce like Atlanta actually hasn't done that with its playwrights. Like the playwrights who come out of Atlanta Atlanta who rate for TV and think about Tofa Payne, Lauren Grenderson, Steve Yackey is very like, he doesn't live in Atlanta anymore but he will always be in Atlanta and for us, you know, they have homes like they have home. If Steve Yackey writes a play actors express is gonna do it like that, right? It's like not, you know, he, yeah. But that's not true in a lot of places that feeling of your home is the theater. And I think that because playwrights are resilient and it is the age of the playwright and playwrights are amazing, as they often do, they took the pandemic and they wrote like maniacs and they kept everybody busy. And now the wealth of playwriting, that's the one thing that didn't go away. Producing went away, audiences went away, directors went away, everything went away. But the playwrights were clogging up everybody's inboxes. So now it's up to the producing theaters to get their acts together because otherwise all these new plays that Martina's talking about will be filmed and they will be Netflix miniseries and we will have to live with that again. Hello, Diana Grisanti, I'm a playwright. She, her pronouns, I'm a white person, blue eyes, brown hair, glasses. This is kind of going off what you said, Salisa. And this is something that I've been mulling over. This is a general question about artists but also playwrights and dramaturgs in particular. How do we create to quote politicians thriving middle class for artists? Because it is so much feast or famine. So how do we as an industry do that? I mean, that's a huge question and I don't know. I don't feel fully equipped to answer that. But what I will say is that there are places in this country where that's more possible to happen currently and places where it's not as possible. And whenever I talk to young people who are trying to get into theater who have dreams of going to New York, I really want them to have a realistic idea of what that is like and also to understand not just how hard that is but once you understand how hard that is and how almost impossible it is to really make a living, how comparatively easy it is to do it in other places where they are still doing fantastic, amazing work. Like Houston, for example, is a place where, before this job at the alley, I was working on commercial theater in New York, working on Broadway shows and I can honestly say that whenever I've worked in regional theater, it's been so much nicer for the artists, for the staff than it ever was in New York even though it doesn't have the same level of prestige and fundamentally at a lot of these great theaters around the country, you're working with literally the same artists that work in New York too. So I think it's also about reframing the mindset of what it means to be a successful theater artist where you can do that and I hope that more people have that realization so that I want more great artists and writers to be in Houston. That would be so, so great and whenever I talk to people coming out of these programs, I try to tell them like, it's a really nice city, you can get your work done, we support a lot of new work and so I'm hoping to see that shift and I think it will naturally just happen just because it's becoming so unaffordable to live in like New York City or in LA or whatever it is and so I'm thinking it's just gonna happen but we'll see. Thank you. This is Martine to add on to that. I'm gonna say my name, I'm sorry, that was Bradley. So this is Martine. I think to add on to what Bradley just said, I think honestly, and I hate to be so reductive about it or not reductive, reductive about it but we need more artists need governmental support and not in that really messed up way where like what happened with the NEA for or like we're like none of that like actually just let artists make art and like help pay them for it because I think one of the most atrocious things honestly that I am still reeling from that happened during the pandemic is the fact that when everyone retreated into their houses because they had to, what did they start looking to in order to, they started looking to all art forms to entertain themselves yet no one wants to give money to the art and I'm like what the, like back to what the hemorrhage is like what, what, what the what? And so I mean, I think, you know I know people are like, they're probably somebody watching this right now who's clutching their pocket book and being like, oh, they're coming after me with taxes but we kind of need that to happen honestly and truly because the only way we're gonna really create a thriving middle class is that we actually support artists and the only way that's gonna happen is like I love Chicago theater, let's just be real like there's a lot of stuff going on there and it also is one of the worst paying markets I've ever lived in. Like it pays so terribly that like part of me also feels like some of these places would be a shame of themselves but I also get it, like if they're not if the money's not coming in there's no money to give. So like let's help bring some money in and more than likely the only place where that's really gonna start and really gonna happen is that if it comes from local, regional, state, federal governments. Back off soapbox. Yeah. So when the chips were down in the pandemic the federal government passed the employee retention credit and I worked on all the pandemic relief programs and all of them are gonna contribute to an earlier denies for me except the ERC credits, which were a pain sort of but they were rewarding you for employee retention sorry, Salisa being a management wonk but so the employee retention credit was applied to any business that was affected by the pandemic and it reimbursed you for keeping your staff. So you got the salaries back for 70% of your staff and if there's some kind of equally enlightened program in the world of tax credits well most of his nonprofits don't pay taxes but you got the money reimbursed. So the government led you to do what it wanted you to do which is to keep people employed and then it paid you back a percentage of the salary and if government funding can move away from project support which theater people will do bake sales and sell kidneys to do and move into infrastructural support and then another of my soapbox just make healthcare universal and invest in education but that's larger but just for if you registered and wouldn't it be great if you registered as a non-prophep theater and kept your status intact and had a 501C3 and we're around for five years that you would be eligible to reimburse 40% of your staff costs and that they had to be making X amount of money to get this and your staff had to and it had to be full time or it had to be three fourths time like something very real and then you get the money back so that that and that and then knowing theaters all that money that they get back would go to pay actors I mean that's how we all are like theater artists are always wanting to pay the artists to do art or pay themselves but if there was some kind of government program that rewarded infrastructure I think that would be huge and what I learned from my time in Prague which was right after it was the early 90s is that if you as a society commit to an atmosphere of change, change can happen and it's here and we saw it during the pandemic like the ERC credit is size if we had actually as Americans actually talked about it or thought about it would never have gone through it just had to happen or the economy was gonna fall apart, right? So if there's some plan that has equal energy of if we don't have this happen the arts economy will fall apart and if we do have it happen the arts economy will grow and it has to be big and it has to be not it has to be like every 501C arts organization that meets certain criteria that is mostly economic not are you do you have this agenda or that agenda or blah blah blah are you have, you know it just has to be legal definitions or maybe like a percentage of your budget has to be spent on education that would really make sense that would really be helpful that would be great everyone would have great thriving education programs so okay that's my soapbox but in a way not project funding project funding makes people feel really good but you know who will raise money for projects arts organizations like if all I had to do is raise money for arts programs I would be such a happy managing like if I knew that our staff and real estate and benefits were taken care of or half taken care of and I could run around Atlanta raising money to pay players and actors my job would be so much easier and we would make so much art because that's very like people and corporations and local entities want that to happen but no one wants to pay the air conditioning bill but let me tell you if you're making theater in Atlanta Georgia the air conditioning bill is a very high priority or the art is not happening right well the sort of last thing I want to add to that that I think is super important to really actually wrap our brain around is that it also isn't necessarily productive for artists to be flopping from project to project to project because then sometimes these projects aren't necessarily being done because those are the projects the artists want to do that's what they could get the funding to do which is not the same thing and so like you're spending all this time on something that's not really speaking to your heart or to the site guys or to any of these things and so I think you know it's always like I'm that person like I actually have one of those I have a goal list for myself of things that I want to do and like on that list is to be a donor who gives money and just lets artists make their art no restrictions you do you boo like that is the kind of donor that I am at this moment and that I'm trying to be especially as I'm starting to like somehow manage to like I don't even know how I managed to do this but like now I have some spare change and like some spare change in my pocket mostly because I don't think I have to pay my student loans until what August but like in the meantime I'm like okay let me let me actually just give unrestricted money to artists so yeah, yeah. Thank you. Hi, Eleonora Wickey, she, her I'm an assistant professor here in the Department of Theater and Dance at IU. This is also kind of a question about institutional structures but from a little less financial perspective thinking about the kind of historical problems that has existed with the pipeline in terms of getting new works into full production I'm interested if there are any particular changes you have seen things that individual institutions are doing that have excited you in terms of, you know, finding selecting new plays rethinking how workshops and readings function anything like that. So I used to run the Candida National Graduate Playwriting Competition at the Alliance Theater which is the brainchild of Susan Booth and she asked that question. So one I think you should never use the words problems and new work pipeline in the same sentence like don't talk about it. Don't give our precious time and energy to people who do badly. Only talk about all the amazing places that do it really well and then the funding will follow, right? But Susan just said we're not, you know she wanted to create a really strong pipeline to produce work of people coming out of graduate school which was not appropriate for every institution was definitely appropriate for the Alliance addressing all kinds of concerns including a lack of graduate playwright training in the Southeast and Atlanta needs people like Houston Atlanta needs people if you're an artist and you have some training move to Atlanta, Georgia please we need you we need you will make you work really hard and love you to pieces and the food is really good. So yeah, so we committed to a production and at first it didn't sell then it sold really well. And I think the play like I was really moved by something Troll McCrini said when he won so his career was blowing up, right? And he but he said when he was the winner he said at every other theater I own an exception. I am a gay artist of color who got a shot and there's a lot of subtext there about gratitude and about we're taking a chance and he didn't belabor the subtext but we could hear the subtext and he said at the Alliance Theater I'm the winner of the Candida National Graduate Playwrighting Competition and there are winners before me and there are winners after me and I have a job and that job is actually articulated like there were and we were still kind of figuring out what it was but what we at the time what we asked the Candida winner to do was to talk to us about marketing and talk to us about their vision of new audiences and it was a great place to try things and it was a very well funded generous program so it was not like every year was not the potential last year, right? Because it was a prior, it was an, you know it was a pipeline program that was an institutional priority of the artistic director which gets back to celebrate the pipelines that are working because there are a lot of them and they're working really well. I'm covering, this is Martine, I'm covering so Bradley can come back and have a seat. Sorry. I apologize, I had to leave the room I have a small bladder, it's actually medical it's not, I'm not just like I have a small bladder I went to a doctor. I'm so sorry. Well, okay, fair enough, thank you. Anyway, sorry, what was the question? Pipelines for new place. Oh, so the alley has a really robust new work initiative which is great. There's a lot of different ways to enter into it. The most obvious I guess pathway is through our Alley All New Festival which is a new play festival that we have every year and it's coming up this June, June 15th through 25th everyone should come, it's really fun. And so that's a festival where we present around eight pieces in varying stages of development. We do two workshops which basically are like four week rehearsal processes that lead up to a very quickly staged version of a new play. We do four readings which are just normal readings with music stands, whatever. And then we do two what we call early draft previews which are a chance for an artist to just go talk about their work, present scenes from it or something like that. And all of these plays are plays, they may have had some developmental work but they're all plays that have never been produced fully at any theater. So that's a really fun part of the process for me because we're much more open-ended on what we can do for the festival compared to what we can do in the season because it is a free event that is just funded by the theater and it's open to the public and we have actually a growing and nicely robust new work audience in Houston too. So it's really fun to hear their feedback and yet we can do all different types of stuff. So we haven't announced the stuff yet for this year so I don't wanna spoil anything but like we're able to show for example a type of work, for example, one of the artists we're bringing in is an experimental theater artist who works in a process that is very different from what we usually accommodate in the American theater. She's a collaborative artist that writes with a group, is very movement-based, there's no script really to speak of or there is but it's kind of a basic blueprint and so I'm really proud that we were able to give an artist like that a platform to create it in a major theater institution where it can be seen by anyone who comes. And then on top of that we also, the alley commissions a ton of work from writers and we try to put an emphasis on Houston or I mean Texas based writers just to keep that pool growing and to tell those stories and it's a kind of an underrepresented group within the playwriting world at large although there are a lot of great playwrights from Texas and UT Austin has a really good program and a lot of good writers come out of there. There's tons of great writers from El Paso that I've recently started working with and so yeah it's really, really exciting and then I mean we're lucky to be an institution that has a lot of resources and a lot of space because it's Houston. I mean if you've never been to the alley it is unbelievable how much physical room there is in that building like not just the theater spaces themselves but like you know we have our own scene shop and all this it is truly, truly massive. I've never seen anything like that. So we have all these spaces where like you can you know if somebody wants to do like a little reading or something or we're working with a local playwright and they need time to develop we have the resources to be able to just like open up a room and we have a resident acting company so they can work with them to develop the show and there are a lot of other cultural institutions within Houston that the alley also works with so even if we can't produce a show for whatever reason there's a lot of other avenues that we can help shepherd new work towards. I'm actually super excited because we just discovered a new one of those which is the Moody Center which is part of Rice University has a beautiful performance space and it's more of like a fine art building and the woman who runs it you know she's just she's more in the fine art world so she doesn't have like resources so we've been so happy because this is a new great space that has a production manager and everything and a shop that they can make stuff and we are talking about trying to shepherd some of the stuff from the alley on the new festival into that space so that we can help people in Houston to see it and they also do completely free performances. So I'm super excited about that too. Yeah that's a basic overview of it. It's a great place. If anyone has new plays that they want to be considered for the festival email them to me I read them all the time. Y'all heard that email Bradley. This is Martine. I'm gonna reframe the question just a little bit because what I wanna talk about are the things that are super exciting to me that I wanna see more of and so if anybody is like anybody out there who's a producer who's interested I'm your dramaturg but what I'm really interested in is like the new play development that happens in the immersive world and the AR VR world and like how we are using AR VR to supplement what is happening in theater spaces that is the new frontier in terms of storytelling and I am here for every single second of it. Like have you ever seen an immersive script? I mean those things are like 400 pages deep because you have to have like all of the different iterations that could potentially happen and I mean that is like the best like and I think in some ways because my brain as a dramaturg is very sort of puzzle oriented in some ways like that kind of dramaturgy is the that is the ish for me. Like I wanna be all up in that and then also just because I'm you know back to the AR VR stuff I'm really just interested in how we start to think about you know expanding like you know how there's like that saying that the performance begins in the lobby or like that kind of stuff I wanna expand even further out. Can it start in my house if I happen to have an Oculus set or can it start in my house even if I just have my computer in front of me or my phone or whatever like what are the things that we could be doing to really actually start supplementing the storytelling experience long before someone even steps into the theater because I mean I think that's also part of what we have to do we have to start enticing people back into our physical spaces and the only way we're gonna do that is by meeting them where they are and everyone's gotten and I'm mad at them because like my introverted self is living my best life during the pandemic and so like you have to basically like get me people where they are which is in their houses and say hey, hey boo hey come look at this moisturized ankle that I'm showing you right now which is the beginning of like our storytelling experience and come on over here baby like you know what I mean so anyway that was a lot oh that's just my thing when I you know like you know if you're showing somebody some ankle like that's that's what I always say like when I go fundraising I always tell my students that I'm about to go show some moisturized ankle in order to get some stuff in the building it's just a running joke hi this is Anna thank you so much we're running out of time I wanna be mindful of the interpreter's time too I want to thank everybody that came in person, audience, guests everybody in students, interpreters and I hope you had a great time and thanks for the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.