 I just realized it's working, probably everybody out there is livestreaming this is the same thing, what the hell is going on, how in terms of this engagement with community projects here involved and etc, what was the primary purpose of this, what was the desired outcome? Was it a creative piece together? Was it a celebration? Was it a planning? What about the outcome or the anticipated outcomes? Go, talk about those. Is there anything you want to comment on? I don't know. We talked about definitions of communities, what were some words, phrases or images, just let them chime out, let's fill the air with again definitions of community or community you're talking about. Overlapping, fine, commonalities, what else? Common cause. Common cause. Geography. Geography, fantastic. Neighbors. Neighbors, fantastic. Class. Class, okay, fantastic. Who defined those communities? Was that something that the artist brought to that or the communities defined themselves? Who's giving the label or whatever, yes? We talked about geographic communities and also communities that are created by common interest that go across geographies. Fantastic, okay, great. Maybe proximity, the others, common interest, etc. Anything else, yes? Jenny said this great thing about how we as artists think that we are defining communities but in fact communities want to define themselves. Absolutely. I wish I had a dollar for every grant proposal I've read that says I'm working with at-risk kids and I'm wondering how many of those kids would define themselves as at-risk kids. So, Sandy. We talked a little bit about that sometimes the people involved do not realize their community until we bring them together and show them they're coming back. Excellent. No, that's beautiful. That's one of the things that art can do for that. Okay, great. Yes? We talked about working with other organizations, not even necessarily arts organizations, work is geared towards serving specific communities and of those communities. So we go to the organization and they help us with reaching people. That sounds fantastic too. Again, it's a networking within a networking. Yes, I think also sometimes as artists what we discover once we get inside the community is how many communities are inside a community that we thought we knew. Exactly. Sometimes those are self-defined or sometimes those are discoveries of our own. We know these communities existed all the time. Excellent, excellent. Anything? Let's talk about, let's just have a few outcomes or results. What are some outcomes or hoped for or realized outcomes of some of this community basically? For those that identify themselves as an artist to live that story. Excellent. Okay, and to realize that the story is something. Yes. Exactly. Yes? Dorothy, I thought it just had such a really important point and it was based on what's due to the laundromat which was, the outcome was the first ask the community what they need. Yes, excellent, excellent. Absolutely. Anything else? Other outcomes and the other outcomes up here. Okay, cool. What I'm going to ask for now is I'm going to ask Tom to talk a little bit about a really exciting project that he's done that really has caused in many ways a sea change in the way that his theater company looks at itself and considers itself with something called the SPARK program. And then we're going to ask Calary to talk a little bit about a very exciting project that she's been working on in Louisville as far as it's concerned. So Tom, could you share your SPARKs with us? Yes, yes. I'm delighted to be here with you all today. So SPARK is actually a play that I wrote in collaboration with community. And it feels important to start with the organization that I work for, which in fact is a service organization. So Adventure Stage is a theater program within the context of a larger social service agency that's been serving the Westtown neighborhood in Chicago for 125 years. The theater itself, the physical structure has only been there since 1999, 98. And Adventure Stage has only been producing plays since 2004. So we started off producing, like as the founder I could say, what I thought we should be producing. And it was going out and finding plays and finding directors and finding actors and designers and bringing a team together and putting on what was considered to be good work. The funny thing was nobody who was coming in the other side of the building had food from the food pantry or sending their kids to the Head Start program or sending their kids to the after school program. There are dozens of programs. They were not coming around the other side of the building and into the theater doors. And we really had to figure out why. The settlement has historically served immigrant populations. So maybe it was a language barrier, maybe there was a cultural barrier there. We even prided ourselves on telling universal stories, hero journey stories that would be identifiable. We hoped to everyone on a spectrum of ages and a spectrum of cultural experiences, but it just wasn't happening. At least that particular demographic if you want. And that was important to recognize because that's the organization that allows the theater to exist. So if we're not serving the population that is the primary population that is served by the rest of the organization, are we really relevant? And that was something we really wrestled with. And ultimately changed the way we make work. So we knew that we wanted to tell the story of our neighbors. We also knew that we didn't want to abandon being a TYA company. And so it became, it has become a journey of synthesizing those stories that we hear in the community with highly imaginative, often playwright driven work on our stage. And Spark is the second play that we have developed in this way. And it received its premiere a year ago last spring. So should we talk about the process? Using community directly in the generated process, I think. Yes, absolutely. So we started out really knowing a couple of just basic things. One was that in Chicago there was a lot of interest and movement. Hallie Gordon, who I think is going to be at the conference tomorrow, started an initiative that predates Spark by probably at least 12 months, maybe a little bit longer, called Now Is The Time, which was intended to really look at how arts organizations can be instrumental in the transformative process of getting kids off the streets. And there's been so much youth violence in Chicago that was, of course, publicized nationally. We were not a part of that initial conversation but decided that we wanted to be. So we thought Spark would be the project for that. It wasn't called Spark at the time. But as a playwright I had an interest in the Prometheus myth. And I felt like there was some possibility there to use the mythology as a springboard for exploring violence. The mistake I made was starting with the theme of violence and recognizing that bringing strangers into a room together to talk about violence is difficult because you're laughing so you probably get it. So the director, Reeves Collins, made the brilliant suggestion that we start with the myth and ask them if it was still relevant to their lives. And could we talk about metaphor? Could we understand what was happening in the story and how it might relate to them personally? And lo and behold we got to violence anyway. We didn't have to force the issue. So the initial stage of development was generative in that we gathered small groups. Sometimes we were in classroom settings. Sometimes we were on site and had invited community members, neighbors into conversation. And it was all just content generation starting with the story and then asking follow-up questions. Each session would last about 90 minutes. And in some cases we went back a second time. Once as the playwright I had some good chunk of material to start wrapping my head around. The world of the play started to emerge and we would go back into often the classroom settings and start through process drama introducing the world of the play and inviting young people to help us understand the rules of that world by making them characters in that world, often from the standpoint of the power structure in that world. So then after that sort of stage there was a more sort of me in a room scribbling away. Then I went back into a workshop process with actors and sometimes if a character or a relationship needed some work actors were invited into that collaborative process through circle drama exercises. And then ultimately we got to a rehearsal script and then a performance where, I'm sorry I should back up, there was a stage in the process where community was invited back to hear the play in process to give more feedback and then on into rehearsals and production. So that's kind of, and then, yeah, that's the process. So basically what we're doing is having, again, the intention comes from a desire to involve part of the community that had not necessarily been so involved, the actual breaking down of the stages of that generative process for you and then constantly coming back at a kind of infinite loop of feedback and input for you but then it still resides with Thomas the playwright. So it's a little different from the devised work, which wouldn't call this devising. There were devising elements but I would not say that we, when I think about devised work I think about the actors and the playwright and the director all in a room, all making contributions collectively, sometimes by consensus, sometimes not, but ultimately everyone knows what they own in the piece and this I wouldn't say was like that. I also think I should say that as a community specific piece, as a community sourced piece, the story was a springboard for a larger world so it was not a strict adaptation of the myth of Prometheus. It was a world informed by that and so it didn't actually end up two things. It ended up being a story about gun violence in the streets of Chicago. What, by way of the story circles, it became a story, a metaphoric or allegorical story about the closing of schools in Chicago which is its own kind of violent act in the community. And so I would say as the playwright, I really had to shift and let the piece sort of go where it wanted to as opposed to sort of engineer it in a way that sort of made me my initial impulse. One of the things that Tom and I and Taylor were talking about at lunch is that I think from a theater standpoint, from a company standpoint, we sometimes start when we are looking at how we pick a season or how we decide what pieces we're going to do by saying okay well what are our assumptions of parameters? You know what are those of you who want to have parameters of time, the parameters of subject, the parameters of whatever, which is very different. And then you try to find the word that fits that frame. But I think you're talking about with the creation of this piece something that is saying okay, what is the pulse of this interaction and conversation and then how does that redefine the parameters of what you're actually looking at? Would you say that working in this way on both of these projects has really changed perhaps a way that your theater in the larger senses is going to be creating more? Absolutely. In fact we went, as I said initially, producing three shows a year on a particular budget size to now producing one original play of a slightly larger scale. So we've actually had to get comfortable reallocating resources and really focusing on developing a work with some integrity. I guess I don't know if that's the right word. And it has required a lot of shifting across the board from the way we administer to the way we then produce it. Which I think is very exciting. It's where we say okay, it's not just saying what are we looking for that fits our goal. We're saying how do we change our mold so that it can contain our work? I think that's a good point. Thanks. So going now towering to the project that you did, you had a commission and then came up with a crazy idea. So about two and a half years ago, three years ago, stage one's producing artistic director Peter Holloway was looking at what stage one had to offer and had just come off of a really positive experience actually working with Susan on Wiley and Harry Van Musical. I'm really excited about new work and he said you know what, if there's one story that stage one in Louisville can tell, it is the story of Cassius Clay as a young man. Muhammad Ali is known throughout the world and he is a loved, beloved son of Louisville. There's not a lot of information about this young man growing up on the west side of the city and he said that's our audience. I want everyone to know that young man and identify with him. So we started on this project and we started going and we commissioned Idris Goodwin who's fabulous and I just got the feeling that this project was something really special. The stars aligned and stage one was putting all of our heart and our resources into a project and you could just feel it in the room. And I had the impulse, talking about impulses, I had the impulse to share that and I had a couple of ulterior motives and I'll just make sure I'm remembering the ulterior motive. The first ulterior motive that I had was to connect and to connect people to come into Louisville to see the piece but also to connect people in Louisville with some people outside. Stage one in the last seven, eight years has had to kind of turn inward a bit to keep things going, to survive and I've been really lucky in the last and they've given me a lot of space and time to go out and go to gatherings like this on my own but there are many, many, many people on that staff that haven't had the chance to come and join me and I thought, well what if I bring the gathering to them? What if I bring that to the stage one staff? So that was my first thought. My second impulse was to connect TYA with the adult theatre that was happening in town because when I looked at the calendar, it just so happened that Cassius Clay was going up and two and a half blocks down the street at Actors Theatre in Louisville, they were doing the amnias because at the vanishing point which is a piece that was based off of interviews with the citizens of Louisville's Butchertown neighborhood and I thought, well that has to be kind of cool we're both doing these Louisville pieces and I wanted to break down the perceived barrier of those of us that are doing theatre for grown-ups and theatre for kids. I thought the students that come see shows at stage one grow up and go to Actors Theatre, it's so clear so I wanted to kind of break that down and then the third thing I wanted to do, what was the third thing? The third thing I wanted to do, and this was actually a student's idea and I have this impulse to share, I want people to come and Susan Zittaleri, if you're asking people to come and participate, you have to invite them in as co-creators and co-collaborators. So instead of just saying, hey friends, come see these shows, come participate in the weekend I got on the phone, I called Tom, I called Courtney I called people that were kind of in the region and I asked them to contribute. I said I have this half idea, I need to flesh it out I don't know what this is, what do you think it should be? And Tom gave me some ideas talking about spark and Courtney gave me some ideas talking about shaking right now and what I ended up with was instead of one panel of speakers I ended up with three or four questions and in between questions we rotated the panelists so we ended up having 11, 12, 13 people that were contributing to the content rather than kind of coming to take it in so they were really kind of included in an integral part of creating the weekend and it was really quick you know folks came down on us Friday night they saw the show at Actors Theatre and how great is it to see each other's work, right? I wonder if that happened. Saw that, we had a quick conversation on Saturday morning as a community of about 40 people I'd say 20 of those were folks from the local community in Louisville and then we saw and in this corner at Cassius Clay that afternoon and did a quick chat with the playwright and the cast about that process and then we were kind of off it was kind of quick and dirty and great and really inclusive in that one. So we're talking about again, going back to the best of this concept we're talking about bringing together a convocation in this case regional artists into the community as well with material that springs from that community so I think and we begin to also look at that it is this continuum between generative through the vessel if we will of production into what had been considered outreach and if we begin to look at this as a single continuum instead of separate entities we get a kind of nourishing flow I think that happens between all of those and if changes profoundly our idea of the difference between and this is something to come up in last night and is increasingly in my mind what is the difference between access and inclusion and I had very recently just a profound experience which I'll share with you guys on that I had the experience of this fall going or the spring going up to Boston where all three plays of my trilogy were being done I only got to see one but that was Mother Hicks was done by Emerson and The Taste of Sunrise was done by Fulac Family Theater with Wendy Lament just being the brain job behind all this and then Central Square did The Edge of Peace but something profound happened to me when I was watching Wendy's production of The Taste of Sunrise I've seen a lot of productions that had access to the deaf community but there was something so hugely different about this and it changed me profoundly what I found out is that she had a co-director that a third of her full fully a third of the cast was deaf and that she had deaf designers now the inclusion of deaf designers meant a whole different way of seeing particularly the lighting design and I suddenly it was like all of a sudden the difference between inclusion and creating the community that couldn't fully realize this play was very different from access about inviting the deaf community to come see us and so as Tara and I started talking about let's really challenge ourselves to look at what's the difference between inclusion and access and how does that impact what we have with the community and Tara do you want to chat a little bit about that and then we can open this up a little bit we've got some sort of driving questions that we want to deal with one of these is inclusion versus access and I think it's important to think about first of all we talked about kind of widening, cracking that term open because it's easy to think about those two words relegated to kind of the disability community and thinking about it that way and so I would say kind of yes and to that I know for me access is really important if the people you are interested in having a dialogue with can't get in your doors then you can't get any further than that so you cannot replace inclusion with access and I think they work together and I think they're a stepping stone you know for me to have the impulse of having this meeting festival and for Susan to say make sure that those people you're inviting are an integral part of creating it along every step of the way make sure that that dialogue is inherent was so helpful I just lost my thought it went out of my brain but I mean you're talking about not just organizing the old model of how you structure a panel or how you structure a conversation you're really talking about how this found what those primary points are going to be and it was interesting how many people were willing to wear those multiple hats it's easy to think about well Idris is going to come in and he's going to talk about writing and in this corner cash his play well the whole reason that stage one started working with Idris was because he had a show in the human festival two and a half years before that so bringing that into the conversation Naomi Azuka has been working with the children's theater company in Minneapolis for years so she wasn't able to join the actual conversation but in talking to her about what we were about she had a lot of really fascinating things to say about creating story for young people and connecting into that and I think that if I had thought about kind of thought about it in a one dimensional way of these people will just kind of come and participate it was much different than what I kind of cracked it open what do you think how do you think I should do that you know I got much richer and much deeper participation from everybody Tom in terms of the ways that you guys are dealing with this difference between inclusion and access I was thinking you know in the spirit of yes and I think there's for us initially was this sort of knee jerk concern about the pendulum swing of the organization and suddenly we would only be serving what is in effect a very small audience those people serve by the settlement house which is not very many people and certainly not enough to support an organization of our size we're still a very small theater but certainly that was not that is not a community of people who are in a place financially to support us so we have to think about access get them in the door but what it has been how it has been transformational is that we're now rethinking not only the pieces that we want to create the new place that we want to create but what are the opportunities for us to to expand to have a fuller presence in the community and to be partnering with other theater companies that are in Chicago that could also we think say something unique to this community and also again it's about speaking to that community but also connected to some larger themes that everyone has a window into so partnering with other artists both locally and also nationally and internationally I think as an artistic director it's helping me realize what the new frame for the kind of work that we want to be programming is and it has the potential to transform what we look like as a staff the languages we speak when we answer the phone I mean it has ramifications that I think we as a company are willing to move on we just have to really be thoughtful about the pace at which we can actually make that happen and realize that every step as small as it may be is a step in the right direction if we're not there next year and look completely transformed in the eyes of our community does that mean we failed? No I don't think so I think it means we keep working at it You know I think it's not even so much of a factor of money it's a factor of time and it's also a factor of just troubling or challenging our assumptions about the ways that we have preceded for that's great I think the whole notion also how do we create these reflective spaces and at what point do we create the reflective spaces and again trying to open that conversation up is interesting Talorie in terms of what do you think some of the long-term benefits might be from the gathering of the little army so that it's more than a one-off how do we continue how do we keep those conversations going what thoughts went you down on that? I think we really by the in the short time that we were together we really self-identified we did identify ourselves as a group of regional artists that wanted to keep the conversation going one of the most poignant moments for me was at the very end of our gathering we realized that as a group we had been talking in the abstract about the communities that we were serving in a very us versus them dynamic and we said the next time we meet it cannot just be the artists in the room that want to serve our communities it must be an integrated diverse conversation with people that are part of that community as well and that was a really valuable place and a tricky place to stop because we kind of cracked that open in me I don't know it's time to leave but a great guiding light towards our next gathering together as a group of regional artists that wanted to stay connected That sounds great How do you keep that conversation going in that? Tom, just very quickly in terms of do you have another Spark project or have you got it similarly? Yeah so the we've committed to creating one piece like this each year and we're realizing we have to get better and better about our planning of that process because a year is not a lot of time to make a play as you all know so we have our current show which if anybody's coming to what theater world this weekend you will see it's called Worthy it was a piece that was created in similar fashion but in honoring the creators of that process it was a devised process and so the three pieces that we've created in this way each have a very distinct components, tones the flavor of each feels very unique next year I am writing a prequel to Spark which just the world of that play a lot of people were asking how did we get here and other people were asking where did we go so I think I'm taking after Susan Zeter an exciting trilogy opportunity but I think the thing that I want to come back to is the way this process has opened up conversations around with playwrights has allowed us to really look at the audience we are serving so not only then are we part of this larger social service agency we also have a commitment to middle schoolers so our target audience, our young audience is fourth to eighth grade that's how we define middle schoolers and what it's meant is that the work we really want to empower those young audiences to be thinking critically about the community they live in and get excited about the possibility of being more engaged civically so the work tends to explore I don't know if we are an issue oriented play but we certainly want because these young people are about to enter a new stage in their lives where they are operating more independently in the community we want to encourage them to think critically about who they are in their community and so the work tends to have a social justice sort of component to it and that has been really exciting to bring playwrights into that conversation because I think it really gives the work focus we are able to really even though we don't always know where the content is going to take us we always know the kind of impact we want to have so we've been talking about a number of different strategies here for evolving community in the generative in the production and in the follow-up we have a huge community right now here what I'd like to do is open this up now for a bit of sharing if you guys have a project that you are working with right now or have worked with recently that you think is another model on this basis of how we create something that is actually a dialogue of creative contributions with a particular community let's get some more of these models in the air and talking about it or if you have a specific question for any of us within this let's get some of that so yes James I'm not going to talk about a specific project rather than talk about it in the abstract I think that some really things have been useful to me in terms of going out and listening to community one is not going in with an agenda or expectation and so in other words it has been less successful for me or useful to me to have an idea about the kind of play I wanted to write and then go out and try to find people who will reflect back to me what I already think I want to hear so rather to have a broader idea whether it's a historical moment in the community something you want to have your reflections on or just feelings about something I plan then that the play or deal itself that the stories are the story of great play and I think that as long as you're willing to be surprised as a generative arts whether you're a writer, a collective whatever your role is I think that's where the richest things can happen it's also been where I think the community feels most heard and another thing I would just offer early in my work with Cornerstone by Theta Company in Los Angeles as many people know I think one of the most useful piece of guidance I got was to remember you have to be both invited into the community and ask the lead you probably don't get to stay forever you are a guest unless you want to do the hard work of really becoming a member of that community but you are really a guest and it's so intimate that we think we are we moved in but eventually we don't belong necessarily so just knowing getting in and getting out there are kind of ways of saying that I think that's that helped me through some of my mind I think that's fantastic and I think the other thing James is really pulling the importance of knowing not just me it's a given that we have to listen it's a given but how do we listen and how do we listen creatively within that and how does that listening then maybe shape entirely differently where we thought we would go so I think those are terrific okay other thoughts yes please well sort of picking up where James talked about doing the hard work of really being part of that community we're actually quite a large theater relative to the size of the community that we're in and we're the only theater doing anything like this in the community so we are doing that hard work of being in it so Andy and I are working on a new play now that incorporates a lot of D of the systems that you were describing a series of story circles with specifically targeted pockets of the community so we have a program called building bridges where we partner with community organizations whose work is reflected in the work that we're doing so we may partner with the the Jewish Federation Girls Club well we've been partnering with these folks for many years now now we're going back to them and asking them to organize story circles that we will then go and interface with the play is just now beginning we just had our first story circles in the last couple weeks and we are producing in a year Andy do you want to have that in addition to going back with the building bridges partners the conversation last time thinking about wanting to think of how right now we can embrace other ways of creating work in towns is not necessarily like Shakespeare I know that was something when Jerry and I started talking about this project that I was kind of interested in exploring my own work but also being kind of that's new to me and that's kind of scary but then thinking about in addition to the community partners the building bridges partners other organizations locally who I admire and appreciate and kind of fan oil and want to work with like how can we bring them into this process so in terms of the kind of generative creative piece having a youth arts organization that does a lot of work but their main focus is a spoken word in the youth poetry and a dance organization attack organization that has a long history so kind of bringing them into the process of having these conversations but when we create this piece it seems like languages that we can use to tell it is really exciting and scary too but like wanting to kind of bring that expertise into this process so working with this attack organization spoken word organization to fundamentally inviting them to the table to help us create a piece and at this point we don't know what that's going to look like so just when does ownership or authorship fall into this I'm just kind of curious and particularly in terms of the continuum of what this piece is for any of you guys that are involved does that become a thorny issue is that a thorny issue in any way with either the projects you guys or James I know you've done so much of this ownership authorship future life well for me it's always about being transparent I mean I say to the people that I'm listening to I'm a writer of course anything you say may inspire something they use it I ask them to sign releases if they know what it is they're involved with I've never done a piece where I felt like I was not the play mate if I felt like I wasn't and I think that would open up something where I would have to look at but certainly I have plays that would create this way that are published in other places do that don't have a relationship to the original community I think I do something similar to what James does when people sign a release but my specifics in that release is that their story is their story and they're free to do whatever they want with it what they are giving me is the non-exclusive right to do whatever I talk with it in the context of what will become my play and again creating how do we create these as safe places where people really feel empowered to be able to give that depth of feedback or sharing and yet also knowing that it's lively it's a little different how do you find overcoming or have you guys found initial suspicion or initial pushback to that and what are some strategies that you work past that anybody? I'm a recent say Convert or whatever of StoryCircles and it's come up a couple times in the room and I don't know if people are aware of what StoryCircles is or that all of the rules and guidelines are available for free online to anybody who wants to learn how to use them and it's been very valuable even going to prisons and working with people who are not used to sharing their stories and being heard when you share them I've used those techniques and they have been extremely well received Hopefully, yes This is kind of a simple thing but whenever we're beginning a relationship with a new bridge partner I always make a point to visit people in their offices to have these sorts of StoryCircles in their home turf so that they are at their maximum comfort level That sounds like a very practical kind of thing to take One of the things that came up in our weekend in Louisville, Jeff Frank joined us from First Stage Milwaukee and he said that he was working on part of the Wisconsin series and he had been working with a playwright to create a new play working in relationship with the community and he said that at some point during that loop of feedback there was a draft of the play that had been created and it was shared with the community and it was really clear to him and to the community that the draft of the play had gone in a different direction than the community was kind of interested in going in so he had to have a direct conversation with the playwright and say I don't know if this is a good match and he started over and he said we're still going with this theme we're still connecting with this community but I think there's a brighter that's a better fit for this particular project and I think personally that's incredibly courageous I think that it's very useful to not be an expert when you're listening I think that people respond I think it makes you more empathetic I think it makes you more curious and again it just goes back to me about not having an agenda and I think that helps build trust but I think it's a process and I would just go back to as artists process is something we know how to do bringing those participants into the process over and over again going back to them sharing sometimes what I will do is bring invite all of those people in and do an actor a performative event of verbatim transcripts readings so they're hearing actors say their words and it gets them a step closer to eventually saying a play which may depart very far from the world but they have the experience of I just watched somebody else pretend to be me and I guess how it feels and I think that intermediary stuff can be very useful yes David I just had had a little spark here in terms of thinking of the second iteration of some of these pieces that are generated in this way and whether information about how they came to be might affect the second iteration of it and the preparation and the involvement in the community whether that process could happen in each place if that process was disfigured or more transparent I know one of the things that's kind of exciting me right now as a writer is being able to take an idea or a script and break it down to its component parts and say you know we're going to work on this little piece here so you create like a little mini community some of you guys know I call it now the play formally known as A.D.A. Tricks we've had a tight change since New Vision with New Voices but what we're able to do there is to break it down I've had an ongoing relationship with the Lucy School which is a wonderful art space pre-K through the fifth grade and I've been up like five times working with these kids on aspects and you know first one is I just wanted to know how does a kid, how does a child look at principles of aerodynamics and what does it mean to them things like you know lift, drag, thrust those kinds of things what are kid dreams of flying so really gathering that information for me much more generatively and I think I've taken a lesson for the bottom line ongoing relationships with groups of kids where you get direct feedback that's been a fantastic part but then we broke it down even farther and we said you know we've got some puppets and some things let's have the kids build them all first and go and have them and bring the designers from the theater out to look at what the kids are doing so that it begins to inspire them we had a lot of flying effects we knew we weren't going to get that at the Lucy School so we formed a little partnership in Denver with a group of people in mind who is a player and also an aerialist and said give it to your movement students to try to figure this out and so we went up to three days and just blew our minds so you know those of you who are playwrights and you're saying well if I don't give in to who is just the voices or I don't get into the bottom I need a place to go develop my work create your place find those places find the people that do have the answers or can help you you know generate that kind of little piece so we look to building communities in maybe less likely places that don't take a lot of money that don't take a lot of time that don't take a lot of resources but they give an enormous amount of resources I think one of the things that's neat about that is that any point of entry that you have in this feedback loop continues to feed itself so I know that it's ruleable when people found out that Idris was looking at telling Cash's story, the excitement that that generated the idea that he was willing to go sit down not as an expert and say just tell me about your neighbor tell me about what it was like growing up tell me about your friend that really got it going and we were talking at lunch about access and inclusion and at one point we broke it down sometimes I think our marketing departments think about access so they say we're here to let you know all the things you need to know about access but really when you think about community engagement it can sometimes be that deeper level of inclusion not just our doors are open but the invitation is explicit it is personal and we are interested in not just your butt in the seat but in all kinds of different ways that you could contribute to this process and keep it going I think one of the fun things about Spark is that that conversation didn't stop when that production and it's feeding itself and is an ongoing conversation with the community as well any questions, questions, comments concerns elements, areas where you feel you need more resource or in this kind of work who came to your play in Chicago was the audience more of the people that were coming into the social service organization as I said that subset is actually a small subset of our larger audience but we did see an increase in participation in that group and then the other subsets would be schools in fact we most of our performances during a run are weekday morning magnates and then for the number of weeks that we run we have weekend performances for families so I would say on the whole yes it was a success and that we did bring more communities into our space for that conversation sorry one thing that occurs to me too that there's a difference if you're a playwright in your theater right and so continuing the conversation for you is different than many playwrights here who don't get home and that's what I meant more about going into meeting a community it's harder when you're a freelance you just want to acknowledge for all the freelancers in here it can feel like a liability to do this kind of work because you don't have access to ways to continue your relationship so I just want to say that out loud because it is a difference thank you because when you said that the thought in my head was being a resident playwright is a luxurious position and it does give me a very keen window on the audience that I serve and the audience I'm trying to bring into our space I'm defining as a geographically located playwright who is interested in being a member of that community so I do think that is an important distinction that not every opportunity presents but I think working in a social service setting has made me question what the role of artists in community is and being in a place and being able to speak to the needs of the community that are my neighbors helps me identify function I feel like I have a purpose as opposed to something that's just sort of tickling the back of my brain so I get it out there and then wonder who the heck cares about it which I think is also very valuable I think it's a different place to be and I think your point is well taken James on this too I mean those of us that either have an established career or an established theater or an organization that we represent it's the whole idea that we were looking at and those verses there's a certain kind of privilege that this gives us that immediately comes with some velocity and so that cannot be underestimated but at the same point I think once you begin to open up that conversation and you find like-minded folks within that and you are as in the case of Flint looking for those community partners that just said boy it never occurred to me that this could have an artistic or a theatrical outcome that can be mind blowing for those partners in the community too but I think then creating a structure so it has follow through and it has a way of them being able to come back and see the impact of that becomes huge there's also a thin line between what is exploitation of those resources and that's where we get into a little slippery slope Carol I'm just sitting here thinking about getting it right and it goes back to intention you know why are we exploring a particular story and is it mind because I'm going to be the writer of that story and I'm asking you to help me write some kind of a story or is the intention to represent and to give something back to the community in order to strengthen that community bond and at some point there I think there is a responsibility to avoid absolute exploitation that sounds like I've just said of the binary universe if you're just writing your play it's like no no no but where I want to represent and honor others I've got to ask them back again and again and again and say have I got this right and if not there's something that I've missed or it isn't saying right but why are we doing that and how do we keep that conversation alive and open because we come in as the artist and somebody makes that assumption and I think that's an absolutely critical point so I wonder if Carol has just given us a way to think about some concrete action items and I always like to start with what when you're thinking about making a change and when I'm thinking about making something more inclusive I like to start with what I've already feels good where I already feel like I've gotten something right so I wonder Susan if we I don't know do we go back and do our small groups? let's do it don't we have about five or six minutes but go back to your groups for a second and just take it in has this conversation really sparked a new thought of something that could turn into an action item and that might come from something that you're already doing that feels right that feels connected with the community that feels great where there's just another step in the future because we all know that these conversations can feel one step forward two steps back two steps forward one step back so there might be something you're already doing that feels good that can propel you forward good just for five minutes huddle up and then we'll have just a moment to pop corner control ideas anything that can bring you to something after that so so so so okay guys so let's just take a forward one of the things that we need for a conversation about was that before you even get into a conversation about the art making with the partner there's a pre-talk that is about not only what do I want but what do you want and so that we open up that and we really hear that before the ideas rest before we come in with our own assumptions excellent something else that came out of any one of these groups anything else? David we had the notion of we contact these groups under a specific need or a knowledge set or emotional whatever it would if we continued working in that way it would be interesting to try to involve a member of that group on another project that was just about being human together not just knowledge but we're all in trying to build a better community come and help us work with this other group of people to do it so that we're not always clustered around the issue we're clustered around we're making human capital in terms of that what a great way to build resources even about how your process is going exactly this is kind of a question for Tom and you were just talking about this do you think spark being generated from the stories of that community can it play someplace else will some other community be interested in those stories? I do think it can because it still lives in that mythic realm so it's not it's not so geographically the world of the play is not geographically specific to Chicago it's a mythic world it's actually an underground world and and so the characters are wrestling with issues that we heard about specifically through the story circle process some of the language that they use is specific to the story circle process the world that they are contained in is larger than that but the piece we did before that which is called Augusta and Noble the year prior is very specifically about the intersection of Augusta Boulevard and Noble Street where this element lives and it is sort of more geographically shaped the interesting thing is how many plays do we see that are based in New York and we're putting them on stages and Tucson and wherever I think it's about pushing pushing to the bigger questions that communities are asking I do want to just relate it to that, I can say with Cornerstone's work the dozens and dozens of plays that you never get produced the play I wrote for them was one of the first plays ever by a second production and it is very specificity and I want to second pull part of what you said we never question that a play set in New York is universal and a play set anywhere else can only be done anywhere else but is that because of the rhetoric that comes out of those plays to say this is all about the people who live here or it's all about this community or all about this culture and so we when you hear that as a producer you're like I want to take that and sit it down in Phoenix and will the people of Phoenix are they going to dismiss this because this isn't their community and or their culture and so we have to be very careful about the rhetoric that we use when we start talking about these about these community devised and created plays to say it's about humanity it's not about and from the art to go deep enough and to go to go deep enough and universal in its specificity so it does speak I want to say too I think we as a theater company as a part of a social service agency see ourselves playing a different role than a theater company that might want to produce something where the story takes place in New York you know what is an audience what's the relationship to the audience after that show is it about the intellectual capital that is built or is there something that we want to see happen in our community that the theater company can be a part of that conversation I mean I don't want to get ahead of myself we aren't quite there yet but I do believe we see ourselves as storytellers but we also see ourselves involved in a larger civic engagement movement where young people who are sitting in our audience are on the verge of becoming active members in their community and what role do we have to play in supporting them to be the fullest members of their community and I don't know I just wonder if we're thinking in those terms I mean I think we are but is our audience thinking in those terms or are they just thinking about talking about the play on their way home and then doing the next thing well recognize whenever we bring people together for a live performance we are creating community whether that community is a permanent community that's divine rich regionally or geographically or just temporally we are a community so I just encourage each one of you to keep linking those communities to other communities and we're out of time so let's go to the next event for our next meeting grab a copy of water thank you so much to our panel for water