 Whether you're a long time LMDA member, someone just beginning your career, or joining us just for today, you are welcome here. Two years ago, as I became president-elect of LMDA, I addressed this body in the opening session of the 30th anniversary conference in New York with some disruptive insights and significant challenges. If you weren't there and are curious, you can look it up on HowlRoundTV, which was there and recorded us. Hi, HowlRound. A year later in Portland, LMDA President Beth Lickers handed me the reins of the organization and said, now you've got to make good, gulp. While there's still so much to do, I'm proud to say that we've made some positive strides in the areas of transparency and access. Having an open call for executive and committee members, expanded eligibility for early career membership fees and conference registration, open submissions for the Elliott Hayes Award, and an open call for proposals to this conference. We asked you what you wanted to talk about, and we created a conference. I do think it's important to stress that this year is an outward-facing conference. Not only because of theme, but also because of location, the city we are, Berkeley, California with its long history of activism. In this venue, the Ed Roberts. Ed Roberts was a Cal student with a physical disability based on contracting polio. He was one of the first physically disabled students to graduate from Cal. He became an activist on campus and in the area. He died and he was a leader in the independent living movement for people with disabilities. He died in 1995. Based on all of his work, people said, you know what, particularly here in the East Bay, there are a lot of organizations serving people with disabilities, but they're spread out and they're hard to get to. What if we put them all? And so non-profit organizations began the long haul of creating this space. The Ed Roberts campus, which was designed and finished in 2010. It's also a hub for a lot of other non-profit organizations that serve people with disabilities. It was important to have an accessible space, so you'll see accessible restrooms, an accessible ramp. This is committed to being a fragrance-free building for people with chemical sensitivities. We're just considering access all around. So when we started to think about this year's conference, we're already thinking about the themes of access. This was already along in the planning last year, which shifted a lot of people's thinking about who we are, where we are, who has access to what. And I thank a board member, Brad Rothbard, Berkeley. Why don't you check out this campus? And so we did and we came here and we were coming. This room is open to the public. It's going to be open to the public today and tomorrow. We're going to be here, but still the rest of the public, dependent to the building, the people who are served by this space, and anyone else is welcome here in this space. And so this is an outward-facing conference. We're going to think about the work that we do as literary managers and dramaturgs and all of the different hats that we wear. And we're going to be like, how? We're going to ask questions about who are we? How are we in community? How do we think about access? Who has access to making art? Who has access to engaging in the art making? And we're going to try to ask ourselves really hard questions about, well, we can think these things theoretically. We can talk about these things, but how do we walk the talk? And we're going to do it in this space. It's about walking the talk. We acknowledge that we are on the territory of the Muwekma, Oloni, and Chochenyo peoples. And so as fantastic as this space is, and as much as it serves, it's on land with a long history. And we want to acknowledge that throughout the conference. I am now going to hand the mic over to Coriana Moffitt, the VP of conferences for LMDA, as well as the conference coordinator, as well as part-time administrative director, covering Danielle Carroll's maternity leave this year. And so she's just all-around superwoman. And Coriana Moffitt. Hi. On top of that, I've made myself have this really lovely, raspy voice. So stick with me through this. I'm so happy to see so many familiar faces and so many new faces. I want to get a chance to meet every single one of you. So I just have some housekeeping. As Ken was saying, this is an open space. Let's embrace it. In this room, this is the atrium. This is where our plenary sessions will be held. This will be live-streamed on HowlRound. And then behind you, we have the Osher Education Center. That's where many of our concurrent sessions will be happening, and A, B, and C, so we'll see you there later. Also, I want to have all of our volunteers raise your hands. All right. These are the volunteers. Thank them. Wonderful. We could not do this without them. They're donating their time to make this happen. I really encourage everyone to introduce yourself to them, say hi, ask them what they're interested in and why they're here. I also want to give a huge thank you on behalf of Ken and I for the conference planning team. It really took a village to put this together, but we have a great village, and I'm so thankful for all of the support. We were on this as soon as Portland closed, and we're about to jump on to the next one. All right. On that, if you haven't yet connected to the Internet, you can visit the desk, and they can give you the password. I'm just doing a little housekeeping here. All right. I don't know if you remember, but there was, we have a history of taking over Twitter at these conferences. So I want to remind you to use hashtag LMDA17 on all your posts, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. We're going to collect them. It's a way that we can digitize and keep track of conversations that happen outside of this space and that we can bring in people who are watching on HowlRound as well. So hashtag LMDA17. I also want to let you know that Anakhtarun is confirmed for this evening. So we're going to be heading over to Berkeley Rep, and we'll have more info on that later. All right. Oh, yeah. So in terms of access and just an activism, this conference you may notice that we have fewer paper materials. We are earth-friendly this year besides me. Forgive me for this. But if you, you can download the PDFs. They're on our website. They've been sent out to everyone, and we invite you to follow along in that way. Also, you'll notice that this campus, they compost and recycle. So I invite you to investigate that as we keep this earth of ours as long as we can. All right. That's all I've got for now. And Ken will fill in anything that I've forgotten. So I look forward to meeting all of you throughout the rest of the three days. Thank you, Coriana. Thank you, Coriana. So we're basically running the conference on three documents. We have our session schedule, which is three pages. It's kind of a grid. We have our session's manual, which gives descriptions of every session. So we're here in the atrium. We have OSHER A, B, and C in the core at boardroom upstairs. These five spaces, all our sessions are going to be in. So if you're lost, just stand in the middle and look in each room and be like, where should I be? Because everything is right here. And if you have any questions, just ask one of us in the T-shirt and we'll guide you to the right space. We also do have a couple of printouts of the session's manual and the session schedule at the registration desk. So if you don't have a screen accessible, just go up there, look over, see where you want to be. We have an open doors policy for our sessions. So when you go in one and if you want to hear something, just be respectful, be quiet. And if you want to step out and hear something else, feel free to move around and just be as quiet as you can as you're moving from one session to the next. We have plenary sessions, all those plenary sessions we're all going to be in this space, everyone together, hearing and breathing the same air at the same time. And when we run into concurrent sessions, we're up to five different spaces just to give everyone a chance to, and us to be able to break into smaller groups to have more intimate conversations and engage in the material. So we're going to try to, when we're in plenary spaces, give you instructions, one thing to the next and put you in the right direction. But feel free, we're in a pretty intimate crowd. 110, I think, 120 people are going to be engaged with us over the next few days. So just engage with us and do it yourself, spirit of this conference and everyone will find their way. And there's a lot of people to point you in the right direction. So what we're going to do now is kick off our conversations with a fantastic panel. So panelists, if you can come up to the stage and grab a seat. Fantastic. So what I'm going to do first is read short bios of all of our panelists. And I just want to mention that these short bios that I'm going to read are just scratching the surface on how accomplished and invested these folks are, particularly with respect to the themes of our conference. So I'm going to try to read left to right. So Gretchen Fair. Hey. Services Managing Director at the Berkeley Playhouse. She was most recently Associate General Manager at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater. Gretchen spent six years in New York City where she was company manager for over a dozen plays and musicals at the Public Theater. Before joining the public, she had various management producing positions at Encore's New York City Center, New York Musical Theater Festival, Prospect Theater Company and The Acting Company. Gretchen spent two summers as company manager for the Western Playhouse Theater Company in Vermont and helped reopen the Napa Valley Opera House as Artist Service Manager and House Manager. She holds a BA in Theater from University of Vermont and an MFA in Theater Management from Florida State University. All right. That's Gretchen and that's just like this much of all that she's accomplished in her young career. Yeah. This is great. This is like we want audience response. The whole conference is going to be a conversation. So, you know, snaps, yelling out, however you engage in a way that's comfortable for you. Next to her is Carmen Morgan. She is a national consultant leading conversations at the forefront of the field of equity, diversity and inclusion issues. She is the Founder and Director of Art Equity, a national program that provides tools, resources and training to support the intersections of art and activism. She's provided leadership, development, organizational planning and coaching for staff, executives and boards for over 100 nonprofit organizations, including Oregon Shakespeare Festival and TCG and the NEA. That's just three. There's over 100. So, you can just imagine. Do I have to be after her? No, I'm going to skip, Patrick. She is also on the Faculty of Yale School of Drama, where she addresses issues of identity, equity and inclusion in the arts. Her work is rooted in popular education, community organizing and a commitment to social justice. She remains dedicated to community building and activism and has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years. Yesterday, we had a pre-conference there were about four of us here. Carmen and her colleague and our colleague, Lydia Garcia, led 40 of us through a really down and dirty one day let's dive into these issues, no fear, which was really terrific. And so, LNDA is an organization is now beginning its partnership with Art Equity so that we become the organization that we want to be. And it's a continual evolvement, but we started the process. So, thank you. Yeah, no, no, no. This is great and we can totally agree to disagree. For me, you know, it was a little bit dirty because we're all facing places where we have to experience and face our own discomfort and for some of us that's clean and others of us that's dirty. All right, great. So, I'm not going to skip, Patrick. Patrick Dooley started Shotgun Players, our very close neighbor here in 1992 in the basement of a pizza parlor with a few friends and a desire to make great theater that was affordable to folks who made minimum wage. Patrick is directed over 40 plays, including Beardo by Jason Craig and Dave Malloy, Penelope Skinners, The Village Bike, Carol Churchill's Striker and Owners, and the West Coast Premier Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia. So, there were over 40 plays, that's just four of them. Committed to theater as a form of activism, Patrick led an effort in 2007 to make the Ashby stage just a block away, the first 100% solar-powered theater in America. As if you weren't busy enough, in 2016 he became the chair of the Berkeley Cultural Trust and helped organize a campaign to increase Berkeley's arts funding for the first time in 14 years. We just got another one this year. Another what? Another increase. Oh, she's got two increases. Two years in a row. Two and two. And that doesn't happen without some activism and advocacy. Next to Patrick is Karen Altri-Piem, an accomplished director, actor, dramaturg, workshop facilitator, and acting instructor, specializing in social justice theater, new works development, and community access to the arts. Ms. Piem is the director of the Red Ladder Theater Company, to which she has to dash right after this. I forgive her for not sticking around and chatting with us because she totally wants to. But she's got work to do, important work. The Red Ladder Theater Company is a nationally acclaimed award-winning social justice theater company which empowers marginalized populations in our community by helping them develop positive life skills through the art form of theater. While her work may sometimes be seen in traditional theater settings, it is more often found in alternative venues, such as prisons, shelters, halfway houses, community centers, and anywhere you find participants hungry to connect with their creativity and express their artistry. Thank you, Karen, for being here. Next to Karen is Mina Merida, who's the artistic director of Crowded Fire Theater, a critically acclaimed and trepid female-led company dedicated to developing a fierce contemporary theater canon that reflects the plurality of our world. Previously, she served as the artistic associate at Berkeley Repertory Theater, and a founding member of its ground floor program, which we're going to visit some of us on Friday, as board president of Shotgun Players, and founding member of Bay Area Children's Theater. So she's been around. In 2015, Mina was honored to share her story on TEDx, and this year she was chosen as one of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 for asking questions and making provocations that will shape the future of culture. Thank you, Mina, for being here. And to my immediate right is Martin Key Green Rogers, who's a freelance dramaturg who has worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Louisville Orchestra, and Court Theater, and she is also assistant professor in the theater arts department at SUNY New Pulse. She is currently working on a manuscript with Jesse Portillo, entitled In the Studio, Dramaturgy and Stage Design, which is under contract with SIU Press. And most thrilling for all of us here, she is beginning her president-elect year at LMDA. Thank you, Martin, for being here. So this past year, the board of LMDA decided to, if we're going to be serious about issues of access, that we realized we didn't have an equity, diversity, and inclusion statement, which we've expanded now to include land and territory. So we have a draft, and it's going to be continuing to evolve. So I've asked Martin to just start us off by reading it, so there's some context here for what we're doing organizationally at LMDA. And then we solicit your feedback throughout the conference. Thank you. And we are very serious about wanting your feedback, so please let me know if there's something that you feel like we can do better in terms of this statement. So if you want to just see it or whatever, please let me know. I can email it to you, whatever, so you can take some opportunities to just digest it. LMDA aims to help create stories within the theater and all other art forms in which dramaturgs are employed that reflect a broad spectrum of authentic experiences in our diverse global community. As such, we believe in the power of intersectionality defined as the interconnected nature of social categorization such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage and are committed to provoking, addressing, and advocating for issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and land territory. Our membership is dedicated to fostering an environment of respect, celebrating our differences, and seeing the principles above reflected in the composition of our meeting room, programming, and recruitment. Thank you. Thanks, so that gives you a little bit of context. In the year yesterday at our art equity workshop, we committed as an organization not to just like spend eternal time wordsmithing this statement, but then to develop as a result of this conference and the conversations we have together as a community to develop an action plan. So we can say we're committed to this, but what does this mean? What are we going to do to be able to walk this talk and actually make an impact in our organization but so that affects the field, so that affects the community in the world in which we live. So this panel, what I've asked the panelists to consider are what are the most pressing issues for them in their work and what they see in the world in terms of our themes of access, activism, and art. These are very passionate people who are passionate about many things and one or more of those three As, access, activism, and art. So we're going to start now giving each panelist three to five minutes to just start to give us some insight into their work and our themes. So what I'd like everyone in the audience to do if you've got something to jot down notes on is jot down for yourselves. What are the most pressing questions for you in your work with respect to why we're gathered here around this particular theme? We're going to invite people to engage with some, we have some post-its up there. We have some action sessions embedded into the conference in which we're going to actually, not just talk about these themes, but like figure out what we can do individually in our work as a community. So this kickoff panel is meant to get us all thinking and we're going to pursue these things and these most important questions throughout the conference. Make sense? Cool. All right. This is an interactive conference, interactive session. So I'm going to ask Carmen to start since we got the gears turning yesterday. And what's most pressing for you, Carmen? First, let me just say thank you. Thank you, Ken. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you, Martine. Thank you, LMDA. Do you all hear me? There's like a... Yeah, there's a lot of you. Okay. I was just thanking LMDA for this opportunity. It's great to be here. Yesterday, one of the things I shared was that I feel that as dramaturgs, you all are inside of spaces and have such a wonderful opportunity to be strategic, to use your access in these spaces for good. So thank you. I think it's your leadership in the field, your commitment to these issues. I feel that it's a game changer. I think that it's important. So thank you both. I'm going to start with what is very real to me. Some of you may know this, and I certainly led with this yesterday when we did the training. Unlike a lot of you, the arts isn't the field that I studied in. I think that it's wonderful. I think that it's necessary. But I come out of a community organizing background, a civil rights background, and came into the arts really about 10 years ago by the invitation of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, asking the question of whether community organizing skills and practices can actually inform institutions. And the answer was yes, and I think that it continues to. But because of that, the pressing urgent issues for me are the pressing urgent issues in my community and so many communities that I'm close to. It's what queer people of color are struggling with. It's what non-binary folks are struggling with. The number one targeted community are trans folks and particularly trans women of color. So I'm preoccupied with that. And so I come to this, the arts community, with an appeal really, because I know what it's like, you know, I know activists. I still consider myself an activist. And they do incredible work. I mean, I work with folks who chain themselves to the federal building. We are out there protesting in the streets. Direct action. We are litigating from every vantage point. But what I know is, really, and you all know this, the arts is where we can change people's hearts and minds. And so I see myself in this interesting, I would say, kind of arc in my career, maybe in the second half of it or even more than that, I don't know, really turning my attention to you all as artists. I know right after the elections, I was really honest with folks. The day after the elections, I was in New York and with a group of folks who were, you know, a group of artists who were emoting, crying, ringing hands. We were literally pacing the room. And one of the things that I said to them is, folks, honestly, you all are going to need to stand at the breach. Artists are being called upon to stand at the breach. I see your work go slight. I see you all becoming sanctuaries. Sanctuary, theaters are now sanctuaries for folks who are being targeted. And I see some theaters saying, we're really clear that we're a social justice organization, first and foremost. Can a theater be a social justice organization, first and foremost? So for me, that is, thank you. Thank you, my sister. So for me, that's what's pressing. That's what's urgent. What our communities are having to respond to and the lack of sometimes systemic structural supports for them, we're turning to the arts. We're needing you all to stand in the breach. So just two more quick things. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to do some little bit of organizing that we can do. Right now, we are dealing with many arts organizations where there is a really big gap between their own capacity and really what the community needs. Some of them are well-intentioned, and they're beginning to say, hey, you know what? Maybe we should reflect the community a little bit more. Wonderful. But you know what the community needs, the sense of urgency that's coming from the communities, there's a huge lag time there. So these organizations, some of them very large, it's taking them a while to turn that corner. So one of the things that we need is we need folks on the inside of those organizations strategically who can really support and hold them accountable. So that's one thing. And I just, I feel like everybody in this room, you all know them, you work with them, you're on the inside. Don't let things go unchecked. You'll be okay. Speak truth to power. What do you have to lose? You know, if what is informing you are the needs of our communities on the outside, when you are in that room and someone is misappropriating somebody else's culture, or yet another racist sexist thing is being said and going down, speak up. So that's one piece I want to ask. The third thing that I want to say, and then I'm going to hand this off, is you all, you know, there are about 15 open artistic director positions, leadership positions right now at this time. Is there a way that we can be strategic and organized to demand of these theaters that they've got to have women in the final round? They've got to have folks with disabilities in the final round. They've got to have people of color in the final round. They've got to have out, open, queer-identified folks who have great politics in the final round. I just want to read the name of these theaters. Can I do that? Because there is a letter that's going around and we need folks to sign on to the letter. We want to send the letter to the board of directors at these theaters, and we want to send this letter also to the search firms. And in fact, that's another need. That's another need. Because there are folks who are saying, who are the search firms that are doing active recruitment? And I know that there are some folks out there that are really well-intentioned, but we have also heard stories that we just need more intentionality. So I'm going to read these. These are theaters who either have openings now or they are coming up soon and they have gone on record as saying that they are going to be searching for new leadership. We need to be filling these positions, folks. 17 theaters? This is a moment. Theater under the stars. Alabama Shakespeare Theater. The Geffen Playhouse. American Conservatory Theater. Berkeley Rep. Denver Theater Center. City Theater. Pittsburgh Public Theater. Georgia Ensemble Theater. Woolly Mammoth. Ordway. Theater Works Silicon Valley Theater Works Colorado. Shakespeare Theater. 10,000 Things. Looking Glass. And recently we just heard, officially center stage. Kwame has decided to leave. Folks, 17. This is an opportunity. Let's do something. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Carmen. So we're going to try to do a couple of things at this conference, which is to think big picture. And so that's part of the bigger picture. But often, you know, we think that, but then we got to work locally. And so the next four people are in this community, in the Bay Area. And so they're going to talk about what's most pressing for them in the big picture, but also what they're doing specifically in this community. So I'd like to hand that mic to Karen next. Maybe it's Fedor here? Yes. Fedor's going to, we're going to talk about her project on our program, but she will be the point person for this particular project. Thank you. Great. So when Ken was asking us to think about the issues that are of concern to us, what I find to be problematic sort of certainly popped up for me with regard to art, access and activism, because all those things come together every day and all the work that I'm doing. I would say that over Red Ladder's 25-year history, we have always been committed to providing access, which is why the majority of the work that we do is in men's and women's prisons, in juvenile hall, in women's shelters, in foster centers, et cetera. And what I'm seeing more and more because in the last year or so, a lot of our work has really shifted into the prison system. We're very fortunate to be one of a handful of arts organizations in the state of California that has been contracted by the state as part of the State of California's Arts and Corrections program. Thank goodness for Governor Jerry Brown who reinstated the program. Initially with a $2 million pilot three years ago that we were part of, that has expanded now to $6 million and next year we'll go to $8 million. And so currently, we are in six prisons across the state every week and starting next month we will be in eight prisons throughout Northern California every week working with men and women and I want to get to the issue of trans women of color so many of those that we are working with are housed in men's facilities. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But what I have found to be so concerning to me in working with this particular population is that the reason that so many of these folks are there, and they are artists, we created an ensemble of artists and so we are reconnecting them to their creativity, providing them with those tools and setting them free to use those tools to share their voices and to create devised works that speak to the issues that are important to them. And so over a three month residency, three month period of time they will develop a piece that speaks to what is important to them and what it is that they have to say. And so what I'm finding for all of these artists with whom we are working is that so many of them are there because they bought the lie. Many of the people that we're working with were sentenced as adults at the age of 16, 17 and are now serving 25 years to life for having had impulse control issues as an adolescent, right? Everybody has impulse control issues as an adolescent. And the problem is that they bought the lie, right? So from the time that they were very young someone or someone's or their community the power structure told them who and what they would be and put them in a box that said all you're going to amount to is a gang banger, is a thug, is a sore on society. And they didn't have any other models to show them that that was not necessarily the case. And so they became the only thing that they thought was possible for them. So in engaging with them in our workshops the first thing that we want to do is reconnect them to their creativity and open up their access to their imagination because the only way that they're able to make another choice for themselves is to first imagine that it's possible and to imagine those other things that they can be. And so then we're seeing these young men and women who suddenly are thinking very differently about their role in society and what they can become and what they have to share that with other people and to make sure that others understand sometimes what it is that they've gone through but sometimes just their own perception of the political climate. We had a group of men down in Soledad create a piece that was about a zombie apocalypse which they created because they looked at what had just happened politically with the election and what they realized is that for as much as our country is going to Hell in a Handbasket out here their lives day to day inside are not changing very much and so in their piece here was this zombie apocalypse that took over the entire nation and the heroes of the story became the men and women in prison because they were the only ones who were sequestered from the rest of the madness and so what's important to me because we have always worked preschoolers up through adults with autism you name it and what I'm seeing more and more is how much the preschoolers we work with are fortunate to be able to have that kind of work because if these men and women with whom we're working had had opportunities to connect with their creativity earlier to imagine earlier that they could have a voice in our society and share that with people to be able to adjust people's worldview then they might not be in the position that they are in and that sort of brings me to the next concern that I have with regard to access so we're doing our best to provide access to all walks of people as artists and what I'm seeing as a challenge is access as audience members because as these men and women are developing their works from a dramaturgical perspective I always consider your audience who is your audience who do you want to be able to see this piece and while we know that the act of creating art is essential to the well being of the individual our company is founded on the principle that creativity is the most fundamental human impulse fish swim, birds fly human beings create, we make things up and when we are connected to that creativity things in ourselves, in our lives and our families and our communities get better and problems get solved and when we are disconnected from that fundamental human impulse that's when things go off the rails and so the people that we are fortunate enough to work with have for a long time been disconnected so things have gone off the rails so we're looking for that reconnection so we've been able to work with a large number of people as artists and then it's important to them to be able to create work and to be able to share that work we had one person who was in our program in a jail a few years ago and they had worked over several months to create a piece they were ready to perform it for a public audience that was going to be coming in and he was scheduled to be released for two days before the performance and he went to the judge and asked if he could stay in jail for two more days so that he could perform this piece that he had created and the judge said you've been incarcerated you're due to be released why should I let you stay because of course it costs money to keep people in prison why should I let you stay it costs work that every problem I've ever encountered in my life is due to the fact that I've never completed anything I've started I've never come to a successful conclusion in my education in my relationships in my jobs in anything and I really really feel that it's important for me to be able to finish what I started here and be able to perform this piece thankfully this compassionate judge and he walked out the door right after having performed the piece that he created so it's important to be able to provide that opportunity to create the artwork but what I'm finding more and more is that a lot of our communities in which that work is being created don't necessarily have access to the audiences to whom they want to share their work so how can we afford them the opportunity to get people in the room that need to hear their words and it doesn't just I'm not just talking about in an institutional setting although that is certainly a problem for me so that like when I have a group that was supposed to have their final presentation today and there were going to be people coming from all over to be able to see it and I get a memo at the beginning of the week saying oh I'm sorry all programs for this week have been suspended because we are going to be conducting random searches throughout the facility all week long cancel all your programs for this week and we'll start back up again next week right so the effort that it takes to be able to get people there to see the work that's being done at a moment's notice can be tossed out the window but it made me think about the work that we're doing even on the outside in the theater companies that we run and the fantastic work that the artists are doing and who they need and want to have hear that work and are those the people that are in the audience do they have the opportunity to speak to the audiences that they want to reach and whether that isn't happening because of ticket price because of theater accessibility because of the opportunities that aren't there in the community to be able to bring those people in who need to hear those stories how do we improve the access to our audiences so that the people who are fabulous diverse theater artists are creating work for are getting the chance to hear those stories thank you Karen let's move on to Mina I think a lot about isolation I don't know how many of you were at the TCG conference that just happened Jeff Chang did a remarkable plenary speech which was so inspiring to me and he talked about a lot about isolation and how we are in a moment of both privilege meaning we are allowed to isolate ourselves we are allowed to think about self accumulation for self and also to think of alienation and separation from so I've been thinking a lot about that in terms of what our job is and specifically for crowded fire Jeff Chang said our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable which I think is really brilliant and to that end it's you know crowded fire to give you a really quick history since 2009 we've done about 98% playwrights who are women queer identifying people of color so we have a history a deep history of representation on our stage last year alone 75% of our casts were people of color were women directors and playwrights and yes so all of those things and to what Carmen was speaking about I'm going to get a little emotional here it is to me not just about representation on the stage it's actually what is happening within that organization so like how does how has tokenism then diversity how those two words become interconnected and how are we using that as a badge in the same way that organic became a badge for a period for our own theaters to say hey we're doing this work it's on our stage which is great that's a first step but then Jeff Chang also spoke to power because it's not just a question of programming it's also a question of who's making the decisions who is in and choosing who is in a position to power to choose the programming and how we are allowing access for people and our audiences to come into our theaters and how do they feel included if they're looking around at a sea of white faces who are primarily 50 or 60 years old how does that feel so I was also going to speak about these 17 roles because when I think about our local ecology I think about three of those roles are right here and I think a lot about I'm thrilled to hear about the letter I will absolutely sign it and I think the minute the person who is running the organization shifts it is a chance to fill that gap and to shift the entire genetics of an organization and that is not something to be afraid of because look outside at the people that are walking around this is an America that is changing and we're in a moment of fear right now it's like a paralysis and at the same moment that these very fervent conversations are happening in the circles that I choose to include myself in I was a little bit bewildered and a little scared about some of the other conversations that were happening at the conference so I'm going to be a little bit vulnerable here for a moment but what I was also hearing was about being fearful about choosing to be safe so I was hearing some of our leaders talk about in this desire to reach over and be a bridge and have discourse with the conservative community and the liberal community that's really important but also in order to do that we were looking outwards so we were thinking about okay how is our programming going to be about then bridging to that audience or community the conservative community but also not making an acknowledgement about the fact that our own institutions and organizations look and feel a certain way and it became sort of it felt a little bit like a somewhat disingenuous turn to that focus as opposed to saying okay yes it does take courage to put people of color on our stage yes I am going to get hate mail yes I might be afraid to put more on my own personal Facebook page because they're going to see me as the face of the organization and see me as someone who might be radicalizing that community because I have these concerns about activism and access so I was hearing these in a lot of the rooms that I was in also who were filled by people who are leaders who are artistic directors who are managing directors and I want us I want to put our field in like high alert to our own blind spots and you as Carmen said are in the room you are actually shaping decisions and you have this opportunity in this moment of leadership change and in this moment where we need to be a bridge but we also need to be a battery and a point of inspiration for people who need to see their culture affirmed their own sense of self affirmed on our stages and wherever our stage may be and so it's a call to action that I feel most deeply and most fervently that I wanted to bring forward and it has less to do with my like the theater that I'm within it has more to do with what is happening around us because we are all interconnected thank you thank you Mina let's pass the mic down to Gretchen hi so I'm with the Berkeley Playhouse and the Berkeley Playhouse produces musicals for intergenerational musicals and that is something that we're very proud of but the heart and the soul of what we do at the Berkeley Playhouse stemmed from education it started in the living room of Elizabeth McCoy's home and I think that we have something what I think about is how lucky we are that we have the youth that we do classes, camps and youth productions as well as our professional season and for us we have a chance to really focus on what our students are really passionate about and we feel that we'll do the musicals and we'll find themes though in these musicals that resonate with what's happening today and try to bring some social justice into that we've also started a new works program where we are commissioning for both our professional stage and our youth stage and anything that we are really that we are commissioning right now has a social justice message it's adapting something like Analyst in Wonderland and really focusing on Alice and you know empowering her instead of making her a victim or in our youth stage Robin Hood is a female and her journey through that and so we I think we have something really special that we can focus on with our youth and our success we we do pay what you can performances we have done it this past year and we really believe it's important for our community no matter who you are that you're able to see these productions and so all the grants that we're going after really are for access it's for being able to fund more performances within that production so that next year we can actually do two performances per production and those are our best audiences before to get in line to see these shows because they know that they won't be turned away at the door and for us to be able to see this entire community they're experiencing musical theater for the first time there's nothing it just makes us feel like this is what we're supposed to be doing everyone should be able to see a show along with that we've also started up again our student matinee program we do stipends for buses because we found that for students the problem is not maybe the tickets or the tickets might be free but it's access to get to the theater it's the buses and so we have gone after grants to allow a stipend for the buses and so now we get children from 75 miles away who come to our student matinee programs it's the first time they've been on a school bus it's the first time they've gone through a tunnel it's the first time they've seen a live production and we get incredible letters from these teachers and students saying that it was the most magical day of their life they wear their Sunday clothes I mean they wear their best dresses and they feel so proud that they can be a part of something special so for us it's really trying to make what we're trying to focus on is access and allowing everybody to come to see our productions it's really educating our children and trying to reflect what's happening in the world in the productions that we're producing and another thing that we're really proud of is our you know it's casting we really try to have everybody represented on stage but I do agree that it's not just about casting it's about your your organization and we have a full female a leadership team which I'm very proud about these women are fierce and fabulous and we work together and we listen we talk about all these incredible issues every day to make sure that we're staying on point with our mission and that we're reaching out to our community and really focusing on what's important for them so thank you Gretchen now Patrick we're going to talk about both organizations that have been running for 25 years but then also what it means to sort of step up and represent for a whole community I mean first of all I just want to say like what an honor it is to be on this panel listen to all of these incredible I wish I had my notebook out to take down a lot of the things I'm sure a lot of people will share their notes with you great please share there's so many things that people say that I'm kind of a scatter I'm going to have to throw a lot of things out I think a lot about what it means so first of all as a straight white male what I've really been thinking about a lot in the last few years is how important it is for me to be quiet in the room and to listen and I feel like that's making space for there to be for letting things just be quiet for a while because a lot of folks are just used to someone like me taking over a conversation and so just allowing the room to be quiet I'm actually the only male on my staff but so what I'm learning right now is to be quiet and to allow other voices to come up and allow more ownership over the direction of the organization the other thing I've been thinking a lot about also I mean since the beginning is what does it mean to be a 501C3 as a community service organization and what does it mean for your organization to be of service to your community and that means getting to know who is who your community is and how you can best serve them whether that means putting solar panels on your roof so that you're not making a bigger carbon footprint or buying all of your baked goods from the local bakery or making sure that you're not just you're cast on stage but that your audience the people sitting in your audience are reflective of the demographics of your community and not just the whole of Berkeley but like South Berkeley where we live which is really the only community in the in Berkeley that has people of color left in it and connected to that also okay I'm going to kind of shift to my activist thing really quick here I have a I was working actually for my aunt who's a congresswoman in New York City before I came and to do theater and so I've always had a real activist spirit in me and I feel really strongly I've been thinking a lot about housing and affordable housing and what you know and you see it just because our artists are actually like not able to stay I mean most artists actually are living way below the poverty line they don't see themselves as people who are living below the poverty line but when they look at actually what they make and where they're like oh my gosh you know how am I how am I living here and so I've been thinking a lot about how we as an arts organization and as a community in Berkeley can actually spend time at city council meetings and I go to a lot of city council meetings and I think that's something that as as artists that we need to like get outside of our theaters and go to those meetings and get on those panels and start affecting policy because those that policy that you are affecting that has a massive ripple effect on your on your community on the people that you want to be serving and so it's not for me I don't feel like it's enough that we just are making great plays I feel like that's really important and we make great plays but it's really important also that we are leveraging the fact that often as artists in the community we are able to kind of intersect these worlds of the people that Mina referenced that Jeff Chang I'm like we want to we want to make the uncomfortable uncomfortable but a lot of those comfortable people have lots of extra time to go see theater and to buy tickets and to do all that and so they're in your audience and so you know and they're at making decisions at those city council meetings and so you know if we are able to get those folks if we're able to kind of bring them around and we're starting to see that happen now and raise you know issues that are important to artists which are also very important to our community then I feel like we can really make some systemic large systemic changes in our community the other thing that we're all talking about Jeff Chang today I mean that guy who Jeff Chang I mean I'm a Jeff Chang fan boy and Jeff Chang also said something that I can't stop thinking about right now which is that people talk a lot about empathy how important it is that we're like creating empathy with our work but that empathy without action is empty and I'm like that is the truth so like okay I'm having all these feelings I'm having all this empathy for you like but what the fuck am I going to do about it you know and so we have these conversations after all of our plays now where we have an opportunity it's not like how are the lights how did you learn all those lines but like you know really we break up into groups and have audience members talking with other audience members who don't look like them who are different ages than them who take different amounts of money than them and talk about issues that are coming up in the play as a larger group and then we talk then we ask them now what are you going to do about that what will you go not like I'm going to go tell people about this play okay that's great thank you but what else can you do what are the things that you as a person in the community you know can do to like create the change that you've just been talking about needs to happen because of the story that you've seen and so and people are really motivated to do that and so part of what we're doing is like having those having opportunities for people to engage with things at the theater there's like there's organizations that they can you know sign up for this this next meeting for this is here there's a postcard you can fill out and write to your elected official there's ten of them already pre-addressed to all these elected officials and you can write a thoughtful letter to them so those are like even the little tiny things that we can do we want to do to create that accumulation because I do feel like you also talked about like the day after the election like it this is our moment like this is the most important moment I think we've had as arts organizations like we are like communities turning to us and they're like you know who's going to step up and do something and we we have a real opportunity here and I think if we don't take that opportunity we let this moment slip away from us that we will you know next generations will look at us and say like you guys just sat on your ass you know and didn't speak up I'm really I feel really honored to be living in a time where I know what the acronym EDI means and really excited about how the arts organizations like they took the subject of gender parity a few years ago the people weren't saying things like gender parity maybe they were but it wasn't in the zeitgeist and then suddenly it's like how around gender parity, gender parity, gender parity and now like okay now arts organizations are paying attention to that and now you know the issues of EDI we have we started an EDI committee in our organization that's made this comprise of staff, board and company members and brought somebody to speak to our board and company retreat so we could start to bring those issues up and change the culture in our organization we're looking at you know we brought on you know four new company members and we had a conversation as an organization like we're only going to be you know inviting people of color into our organization from now on that's just it because we've had our quotient of white folks I love all those white folks we're good with that we're good with that and it just changes the conversation you know when you change it and it makes it a more dynamic conversation it makes people are like it makes the art better it makes the truth is it's better for the organization I mean it was touching on this earlier it's for our own survival it's for our own good people talk about how the arts can be relevant lowering go for that I wanted last I am in a room to tell not that we have hold on to our preferred pronouns as a matter of course so we're going to do before we open up to discussions I'm going to share mine and ask all the panelists to state their full names and share their preferred pronouns so we start to engage thanks very much so we're going to take some questions from the crowd hopefully open up for discussion and again this is the beginning of our discussion for our whole days so I think the volunteers have microphones so we'll take the first one here right here on the aisle raise your hand high so the microphone can find you can you hear me yeah so please share your name and your preferred pronouns my name is Amy Brooks she her hers and I don't know what EDI stands for could you please let us know equity diversity inclusion thank you yeah, yeah, yeah other questions we are fun people we've got them for a short amount of time now let's get the engagement or if you want to share any comments of something they said that that struck you great we've got a couple in the back and one in front so one, two, three hi Fader Scott she her hers thank you I'm really interested because some of you are like leaders of institutions about how can we start that conversation who should dramaturg what play and like how do you think we can do that but also still continue to maintain those conversations with the communities but with that dramaturg who might not necessarily be a part of that theater so I'm just wondering what your thoughts were about that Mina's going to answer that question I think you know in terms of the EDI work we also are going through massive training as well as having real conversations it's like it starts with what is what are the themes in the play who's a playwright let's be honest about you know who how what kind of intentionality are we approaching the work with who has power in the room does the dramaturg you know how do we diversify and increase plurality in our dramaturg pool of folks how do we also support emerging folks who are trying to figure out how they get in whether it's coming out of school and this is another thing maybe they're coming from a different area in our community so we're talking actually at our company meetings about that about how do we also define access and start reaching out to different organizations that are not theaters and start to think about increasing plurality that way in terms of figuring out who's best for what team I think it is that intentionality and thoroughness around what it is that the themes of that play are about who the audience is and how do we make sure that everyone has space and voice in the room also so that it's not just someone there to put on that organic sticker for that production that it's actually someone who has power in the room for that eventual production I just want to add I don't know if you all have this list but I know the production manager's form is creating a list of all the production managers and all the production folks of color there's the Kilroy's the list of women and women of color playwrights do you all have a list of dramaturgs of color or dramaturgs who are non-binary queer dramaturgs who are queer identified I actually think that we do need that we do need to name that and I also think that I know I'm in spaces where I hear folks say all the time well they don't really exist we don't know anybody actually if we're going to have to make it that simple for folks let's just make it that simple for folks let's just create the list okay so there's a list that's been started exactly I think and part of it is some of us actually have to come out in a way that feels safe for us some of us might have to come out and say actually I am non-binary and I will bring that into the space when I'm in the space we need that list of folks so we can see who you are and where you are and then the second piece that's the first piece can we get that list together and then the second is some of us when we're in the space we need to say actually no no I'm not the right one I promise you I'm not the right one here is this list we need to start doing more of that some folks are doing it and we actually need to start doing more and just one more thing this is something that we've applied in our organization towards designers and technicians that can actually be applied to dramaturgs we found an anonymous donor and we've started a grant with the ability in the Bay Area around designers and technicians so it's actually a $10,000 bucket of money and so we have a yearly granting and panel and granting process so that we're moving towards that because we also need this in those spaces but maybe somebody out there if you are connected to various donors at your theaters maybe somebody would be willing to step in and do something similar for the dramaturgs a great example of what we want this conference to do which is like there's an idea there's a need what are we going to do about it and put this in while this idea has come up before I think we're now at a critical mass like we have to do it we have a long tradition of institutions that had if they were lucky enough to have an institutional position for a literary manager or dramaturg that person was expected to be able to dramaturg every play and you know that's just not it's not appropriate for certain projects and you need to every artist needs to be able to ask themselves I might not be the right person for this and to have access, ready access to a list where they're self-identified affinities and specializations to be like oh actually there's five people who would be much better at this let's see if we can get one of them to work on it so not just internationally an organization locally and we're going to try to strengthen our local teams and regions to see who also has access based on geography too and if that's not possible who can I reach to to do some long distance collaboration which we can do absolutely so that's one of the things so thank you for that yes question here wait no we had a couple more there's a queue there's like Diane no Laura can you hear me okay good the art equity training yesterday was phenomenal and I'd never seen anything like it participated in anything like it I do participate in the NNPN EDI committee and in all of these different conversations the inflections are slightly different due to the concerns of the given organization what structures are in place for these organizations to communicate with one another and possibly to publish joint things and you know to span the suite of concerns you know I was having a conversation on this very same thing I think some funder was saying what's the next thing we need to do now and listen when a funder asks you what's the next thing have an answer have an answer and one of the things I do what I'm worried about is a lot of duplication so I'd like us to tighten this up I'm also worried about folks you know everyone's got a diversity committee some of you all have diversity and inclusion committees and some of you have even equity committees everybody's got some sort of committee but what I'm experiencing is the integrity is not the same and I'm also experiencing a whole lot of fundraising for this work a whole lot of grant writing and I know I'm going to make some folks uncomfortable but let me just say there are organizations that have been doing this work sweat equity and they are not getting these grants and what's happening now is I know you had a question I'm going to come back to it but because I've got the microphone I want to just put this out there we've got to figure out how this ecosystem does not continue to perpetuate these disparities so you have these predominantly white institutions wonderful you are getting a clue that you should probably open yourselves up and you're going after and getting the biggest grants that are out there to do equity diversity and inclusion and then maybe subcontracting let's just name that and let's figure out a way to interrupt that like you need to be making sure that you're involving theaters of color artists of color in these conversations you need to go hand in hand at the funder and have a joint plan as opposed to what I see happening in some instances but back to your question so how do we minimize duplication and how do we get together I think some of what I've been seeing at these conferences is working the affinity spaces are actually now creating another space where they're all together black theater commons latinx theater commons kata there's a whole bunch of them Leslie Ishii is here with the national shout it out thank you the natural cultural navigational theater project I think that it's now time for a conversation that has a long game and a little more strategic visioning I think that we've got to do the capacity building and the day-to-day stuff for sure but I do think that we now need to link up strategically to share resources to share strategic thinking it's time it's not I don't see enough of that happening that to me feels like the next kind of frontier for lack of a better unfortunately we're out of time for this panel and there are a couple of panelists who have to jam so what I want to do is first thank the panelists for their time this morning thank you all I'm sorry I'm sorry I was so engaged in the conversation I'm like oh it's time but we do have a break if you have to jam jam now I'm going to give some quick instructions so we have a 15 minute break now what we've decided to do for this conference rather than like have a coffee station out there and people don't drink coffee is patronize the local establishment so we have a cafe right here there's zing cafe next door so feel free to do that oh it's here so we're we have these fantastic mugs that say keep calm and trust the dramaturg there for sale at front as well as these lovely t-shirts because our conference registration fees only cover a fraction of the cost of the conference so we're raising money in other ways please spend some time in the space I mean in the ramp lobby you'll see this amazing photo mural get to know the space see what organizations are in this building there's a fantastic sunny terrace out on the second floor so go there during the break and then at 1030 we're going to be in four spaces so right here on this stage Jeff Januszewski is around here somewhere yeah Jeff is going to continue the local theater conversation with another group of panelists in Osher A which is on the left Coriana is pointing that out we're going to be have presentations one we don't shut up the dramaturgy of the Flint water crisis by Jen Plants and then all the worlds are raged theater of revolt and dramaturging social insurrection by Vivian Chase in Osher B the middle room we're going to have a praxis session failing to transform explorations of creative failure and emergent strategy with Mia Susan Amir and Davie Samuel Calderon and then in Osher C so you can see everything it's fantastic it's so accessible we're going to have a round table about dramaturgy and the arts integrated campus led by Scott Horstein so that's what we're going to do in less than 15 minutes so please get some refreshments here at this cafe or next door and also to just know that we saved all the hospitality money for the banquet which is going to have an open bar just bear with us and then you'll get it and it'll be all inclusive at the banquet so thank you thank you to the panel