 and welcome to Discovery, conversations about the power of the arts to connect us to each other into place. I'm Victoria Rogers, Vice President of Arts at the Knight Foundation. Today's conversation, we're gonna explore theater during and post pandemic. Joining me today are Stacey Rose, a Charlotte based award winning nationally acclaimed playwright. Her work celebrates and explores blackness, black identity, body politics and the dilemma of life as the other. She's also currently a staff writer for Fox Broadcasting Company's 9-1-1 and Jeremy Komen, now in his 11th year as producing artist director at the Playwright Center in Minneapolis. Soon to be in St. Paul, previously associate artistic director and director of new work at Hartford stage and the founding artistic director of Naked Eye Theater Company in Chicago. His play My Mother Has Four Noses is currently touring the US and he's under commission on a co-writing play, Delicious Animal Magnetism at ACT Z Space in San Francisco. We want you to be active participants in the conversation. It really makes for an interesting talk if we know what your thoughts are. So if you have questions, please submit them throughout the show via Twitter using the hashtag night live and in the comments section of the Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. We'll get to as many of them as we can throughout the conversation. Stacey and Jeremy, welcome to discovery. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you guys. We really appreciate you giving your time today. Absolutely. Thank you. So I was researching and reading up on this. I came across two statements. Theater as long as excelled as an art form for examining the present and retelling stories of the past from new perspectives. And the America Theater has consistently reinvented itself to remain relevant. If you guys have done anything over the last years, it has been to consistently reinvent yourself. So Jeremy, start with the Playwright Center. What has that meant for you and what does it mean for you? Well, I think for us, you know, Victoria and Stacey, you know, has been a long time, you know, very important family writer at Playwright Center. Ultimately, Victoria, we sort of think about it. So Playwright Center is Playwright's apostrophe center because it's really their space. It's really the place for them to be. And rather than just thinking about the work itself, we really try to center the artist. And so for us, this past year and a half, it's really a continuation of how are we, what we talk about is sustain, develop and connect. How do we support the whole health of the artist and their lives and livelihood and sustain them so they can move forward? How do we develop the work on their terms so that each play they're working on, each project, which Stacey's done a number of different kinds of projects with us, that each have had its own process. And then how do we connect them to the theater field so that their work can be seen by thousands of audiences all around the world? And I think it's been always a deeper investment for Victoria really in how we can, not just think about serving more people all the time, but really how can we serve people more deeply? And then I also just think as you're talking about Victoria, as we sort of look at the stories, the narratives that are on our stages, it's been so homogenous for so long. And I'm being diplomatic by saying, I'm all homogenous. And I think at Playwright Center, we have very clear intention to shift the narratives. Who's telling the stories? What stories on stage? Who's in the audience? How do you get to listen? And really looking at all of the issues within that and how that gets to happen. Thanks for that, Jeremy. And Stacey, you know that I and two of my colleagues, Priya and Janie, were able to be at a, I think it was a first reading with live actors of your Play Legacy Land. And it had such an incredible impact on all three of us. The three of us who are talkers couldn't say anything at the end of that play. And I think it gets to your comment, Jeremy, about the importance of stories and who's telling them. So Stacey, you're on a new adventure in Charlotte with your director, Martin Damien Wilkins. The two of you co-founded Queen City New Play Initiative to support local and Southern playwrights in the creation of new work. So what made you do that? And what, how is it working for you? And for you? Yeah, my time at the Playwright Center made me do that. I think what it was is just like being in, being a playwright who has been in a many development process. I don't know if I've been more supported from like a 360 degree perspective as I was at the Playwright Center. And knowing that everything I was doing in the world, I wanted to bring home to Charlotte. I truly believe I am not an anomaly. So I wanted to bring that kind of support back home to Charlotte. And quite honestly, it's a challenge because of my work, I've just kind of been pulled here and there and all over the place. And so I'm really just kind of getting it. Like when I got here last year, I got here at the top of the pandemic when Legacy Land opened and closed at Kansas City Rep. And we were just trying to figure out what was about to happen. We had no clue what was down the pike. But Martin and I had been kind of tinkering with this idea for a while. And I think before you all left the Playwright Center, even after that reading, I was telling you like I'm thinking about this thing and me and a partner of mine are going to put our heads together and figure it out. And so we thought, I mean, we're both home. We're both in Charlotte. Like why not like jump into it? Taking again cues off Playwright Center and how quickly they galvanized to kind of switch to an online season. We kind of started getting our chops and producing in the Zoom world. And what we didn't expect is for it to take off in the way that it is. It took off quickly mainly because there were so many people looking at us, looking at this little organization in Charlotte by virtue of us doing things on Zoom. And there were so many connections being made with artists from here and elsewhere, which was the intention. So right now we're on a bit of a hiatus to kind of just breathe for a second. Because we just kind of had to galvanize ourselves, come up with the plan and execute. And now that we've executed, we're kind of stepping back and going, this didn't work so well, but this went over huge and works really well and doesn't require a lot on our small capacity in terms of staff. And then we might want to rethink this because maybe producing eight play readings in six months is probably a lot. So maybe. Just a little. For a brand company, maybe. Maybe. And so we're really kind of, yeah, refiguring out ourselves. And so Stacy, when you talk about, I mean, I grew up, lived for years and Atlanta was born in Louisville, Kentucky. And I've collected the works of Southern authors my entire life. It's just, it's like bread in my bone. But when you talk about Southern playwrights, what does that mean to you? Yeah, so for me, I think the story of the United States lives in the South. And I think a lot of the time and what we're learning in this, that the other pandemic, the racial and social justice pandemics that we're simultaneously going through that a lot of the time the South has gotten bastardized for like being exclusively the most racist part of the country and exclusively the most uneducated part of the country when that nothing could be further from the truth. And so in supporting Southern playwrights and aiming to lift those stories, not just of black folk and white folk, I also would love to support people who are telling immigrant stories in the South just to kind of give a more broader, like a broader view of what it means to be Southern now and what it meant then, but from a more complicated lens. And so in knowing that and knowing ourselves in the South and knowing Southern stories in that way, we get a better understanding of who we are as a country. So that's kind of what drives me because I mean, when you get, you have all of these amazing black playwrights in the world, honey, our whole story for the most part, black American playwrights begins in the South, like for a lot of folks. And so making those connections are things like I'm interested in great migration stories and what happens to somebody who lived their whole life in Alabama for whatever reasons had to leave. Like my grandmother fled an abusive husband in the South and moved to Baltimore and then moved to New Jersey. And the story was so fraught that nobody told it to me till I was 37. Like what does it mean to hold on? Like the South holds so many secrets and past lives and so much, like it gives me chills to talk about there's so much richness in stories of the South and I just, you know, I revel in the ability to kind of lift those stories out. But I think about Charlotte, one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Where are we going to officially? What is it, and then what that means to the town and services that can be offered and housing and all of the other things and all the stories that will end up being in that phenomenal city. So Jeremy, you and I've talked a lot about living into our values and what that means for us. And what does it mean, you know, for theater in general and how does it play out in the work that you're trying to do through Playwright Center? I think it really is, what is the change you wanna see happen in the world? You know, again, as an artist service organization, we have the opportunity to focus on, for example, inclusion and accessibility as two of our most important values in everything we do. Financial accessibility, internet accessibility, locational accessibility, so that when we also say things, I think, Victoria, Stacey, as you're talking about, there are these defaults that get made also, yes, North and South, but also I think sort of urban and rural as well. There's so many vibrant artists in rural communities that get left out of the equation altogether. So we have the opportunity, I think, in a way, Victoria and our values to really live through that by sort of not assuming a default by in fact going out and having deep and meaningful conversations and connections with artists around the country. So I think that that inclusivity is really, really critical. The other piece of that, I guess I would say also is, you know, the part of the awakening, Stacey, I think that you're talking about too, is not really an awakening for a lot of people. It's what we've been living with for a long time. A lot of people have been living with challenges around deep and pervasive systemic racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, et cetera, in this country. And the art sector wants to believe that we are separate from that. It wants to say, but we're this and we're that. And when those assumptions means that we're not actually doing the work, we're not inventorying ourselves, we're not taking a deep, meaningful look at what practices needs to change. And for me, I guess Victoria comes full circle to thinking about our work at the Playwright Center, which is we have the opportunity right in front of us to be part of the, I don't know about the word solution, but at least be part of the work and the effort and activism to address and advocacy, to address some of this systemic inequity and to really figure out not only in our practices, but who are the writers that we're supporting and giving opportunity to so that when an eight-year-old, I will just tell you, I'll share a thing, that'll be very anonymous, but we have a bunch of classes we teach and a student was sharing recently with us that she is in the States for about a couple of years from Central America. And that access to storytelling was always like a deeply white, deeply male set of storytelling on television. And so the opportunity for this person to take a writing class with a black writer and also with a Latinx writer meant for her that she could see herself in narratives that she could never see before because it was always delivered in this one kind of way in this very homogenous way. So it's an exciting opportunity by making art actually is the activism of making that shift, I think. Jeremy, I think that one of the things that fascinated us so much at night about the Playwright Center is just the diversity of the cadre of artists that you look to. And not only that, but I was just looking last night at your new Jerome Fellows. Yeah. It's a diversity of them. It's 100%. I mean, that's the thing of it. It's 100% BIPOC artists and truly BIPOC artists and that, yeah, it means something. It also means though, this is the thing, right? It's one thing to say that, but then Victoria, I think, and Stacy can talk a lot about this, but then you have to do the work because you can say words like inclusion and accessibility, but you are actually inviting artists into your space. And this is the thing with Knight being such a great partner of ours that Victoria, you and I and Priya and others and Janie talk about all the time is how do we walk the walk? How do you actually invite people into space so that it is safe, so that it is brave, so that it is different than the experiences? What is the neighborhood around that feel like to move in and out of space? Who is greeting you? How are people seeing you? So these things are really, really critical. And I think kind of one thing I'm excited about about our partnership together to Victoria is like we're really examining in a very deep way how this stuff actually plays out in real time, in real space. But you got to do the work. You can't just use the words. It's performative and it's gaslighting and it's got to change. It'll be interesting as we go through this and what Stacey is doing in Charlotte because I remember it was so poignant for me after your reading when you said I couldn't get my play produced in Charlotte. And so working now to make that happen in your city and for other Southern playwrights, what else is needed in your city to be able to actually do that? I mean, to produce the plays. You can work with them now. You can help them, but what is that thing that's not there that lets you sort of come full scale on it? I think that there's quite a few things, but I think that there needs to be a lot of playwrights and that there needs to be a shift in thinking in terms of, I think what Charlotte tends to do is take the arts and dump them all in one big bucket and call it the arts. And I think that there needs to be a separation not just because, you know, just to kind of be separate. It's just really to understand what each art form does and the specific importance of each art form. So it's, I'm not sure how that happens. I think what I'm attempting to do with my organization and the specific focus on new plays, which are the fundamental building blocks of theater, even if you're making device work, all of that, it begins with text and idea or something in your building from there. And I think it draws such a specific focus on theater that my hope is that it will draw in the existing theaters and kind of get those spaces interested in telling new stories and stories that arise from the area and really shifting their perspective in the ways they plan seasons, in the way they decide what's in those seasons. I have not been here before a long, like a while. So there's a lot of learning that I have to do to really understand what this community needs, but I will say that there is an influx of folks here that are from places that are far more, that have a far more substantive and varied theater scenes than we have. We don't have a Lord, which isn't a terrible thing, but we just don't, right? We don't have kind of a huge theatrical hub here outside of Bloomingthal, which usually hosts touring shows since COVID. A lot of theater companies here are struggling. And what I'm hoping to do is to begin conversations among that group, like to reinvigorate the folks who are members of the Metro Atlanta Theater Association and really get them in conversation. What does it mean to have an enliven theater scene in Charlotte? Where should that be centered? Everything has always been centered uptown. That needs to shift. Not everyone has that access. It feels like everything, it inherently feels inaccessible to people. So really kind of doing the work that we're doing with the hope of planning speeds of the ability to create something different, to inspire someone young to start a new theater company, to inspire, you know, like just to kind of create, to see the possibilities and hopefully kind of let things germinate from there. I'm hope I'm not being too vague, but that's kind of- No, you're not being too vague at all. But it truly, I truly think is if we keep at this, I just see the relationship that Playwright Center has with the Twin Cities Theater community and it gives me hope. Yes, that's a different city and it's grounded in theatrical tradition and all of that, but it's possible here. And I think because we don't have any institutions necessarily defining what theater in Charlotte is right now, I think it's a good time to figure out what the hell is it and define it for ourselves. And that's amazing. Yeah, because as you both know, because Daisy, you live there too in St. Paul, when I think about Theater Mew and the New Eyes Festival and all the work that Theater Mew is doing has done for decades, I think about Panambra and the Center for Racial Healing and I think about Ananya Dance and I think about Springboard for the Arts and the new space, the spring box space they've created. It's an unending series of, it really is kind of folks thinking about how artists can gather together and the power of art not just being, I'm going to compose a symphony or I'm going to make a play, but also how these stories are told and centering the artists, thinking about how they can live, make a living, have health insurance, especially in a time like this. And with so much, I think, it's hard to, I don't know, Stacey for me, it's always hard to think about the stuff without taking into account wealth and equality and obviously here I am, I mean, I usually do a land acknowledgement when I introduced myself at the beginning, but part of that land acknowledgement is I'm coming to you eight blocks from the public murder of George Floyd. That's where I'm talking to you from today. So right here, right now is an opportunity not just for organizations, but Stacey as you've done there and Charlotte for artists to be leaders in some of these really critical issues that using that artistry can really do. So it's good. I've got two questions that are relevant to this. Three, one, from a Tony, how do I get my daughter in the writing class? I don't know whether Stacey, that's two years or two years, but we need to come back to that and maybe post something online that will tell people. But this one, arts funding is usually the first thing to be cut in education budgets, true. I used to teach art, my budget was cut. As a result, most school districts with impoverished communities don't have access to the basic educational components of the art industry. Do you feel this is a barrier to using arts to connect with community? And if it is, how can that be broken down? So if we have a whole generation of kids that aren't being, don't have that kind of access, at least through the school systems, then what are other ways that we look at doing that? Because I do think arts are crucial to connecting communities. Yeah, one of the things that I am interested in working on, which kind of seeks to subvert an issue that a lot of Charlotte arts institutions had, was that they were reliant on a lot of money from banks and corporations. And when those institutions wanted to pull out, things kind of collapsed, like we almost lost our opera, for God's sake. Like we almost lost our symphony, and that makes no sense. So kind of shifting to more, and again, I'm still trying to figure out how this happened, but more of a community-based investment in the art on the level of the micro donation. Like there were a lot of micro donations that came in, especially when we were first starting and kind of continue to float in, that are just about as much as your Netflix monthly. But things like that to kind of keep and tease out programs where at least you're getting enough to pay the playwright leading it, or at least you're getting enough to pay for the script that you are. You know, just those things can be, even things as simple as that, can be lifelines for communities. And so really changing doing the work to change the conversation around how artists funded and how artists should be paid. Because I think one of the other obstacles we face here is that a lot of our artists here are nine to fives. So like it's really hard for me. Like I love having blended casts, but most of the people who I cast, they have a nine to five. So if rehearsal isn't after five or six, I can't cast those people. So really kind of changing the conversation around arts and arts compensation on the level of just humans and communities and growing and letting communities grow and understanding and understand like, hey, if you're just contributing $10 a month per household, we can do these things. And kind of breaking it down that way. But that's my scrappy tie in the sky idea that I'll probably be devastated over in another year. Check back with me. So you see, I have one other thought too, which is, and I'm curious to get your thought on this, which is what is or ought to be, and I know there's no one right answer here, the role of like arts organizations or artists who are making work and what I might call like civic practice. So part of the question felt like it was around access for education in certain impoverished communities and like how do you actually get access to that level of professional development or training or just being able to see art. And for me, I always think about the art making as a civic practice because in my mission statement and in the vision statement and values of our work, that's what's there. It's baked in to say, if we decide that we're doing this only for six people, it's okay, but we have to be real clear about that. And I'm curious what you're seeing there in Charlotte or kind of generally as an artist, what you feel about, I guess, the idea of civic responsibility in some way. I do think that the work we do, seeks to, and the work that I am eager to expose this community to, seeks to kind of generate or continue conversations around issues that are very... Uh-oh. I think we lost her for a minute. Yes, and we'll come back to that moment. And we will come back to that point because it's, I think it all relates to another question that we got here. And you mentioned the beautiful work that Sarah Bellamy in Penumbra Theatre is doing on focusing on that healing of artists, still producing work, but looking at wellness. And so when you think about civic responsibility and community, one of the questions here is, how can arts be used to heal and advance in a way that addresses underlying issues? Whether it's fractured as a result of rising wealth and equality, racial injustice, and these deep-rooted issues that so frequently you guys do focus on. Dang that. The shenanigans, I told you I was gonna be the one with the shenanigans. It was just like, my whole internet was like... You don't have anything of value to say. It's wrong. We were just talking about kind of Stacey how like arts and artists can be used to kind of address some of these underlying issues. I was just thinking too, given last night's performance of her play, but I was thinking a lot about Rihanna Yazzie and the work that she and others have done certainly with new native theater there in the Twin Cities. And also just thinking about, I mean, talk about, you know, a community or a set of communities of people who haven't been represented in any way on stage and are also, Victoria, to your question, I mean, Rihanna is training up a new generation of artists. We're thinking about what that work looks like and what the writing is, what those performances are in different kinds of ways. And I think it's an incredibly exciting time. I really, Laura Zabel at Springboard says this all the time, artists are leaders. We have the opportunity to pay artists to help actually solve some of these bigger systemic global crises. We have throughout world history being storytellers. We've got two minutes left, guys. I told you this 30 would go like nothing flat. And I had three other questions, but one of the things that I think is underlies all of this. You know, when you think about individuals and corporations and foundations, plus people buying tickets, you know, where does the funding make the biggest difference for you? You know, so often with foundations, it's project funding and my, when I was on the other side and even now, it's this, you can't do a project if you can't support the core work that you do and pay your staff. But what is that, what are the types of grants or funding that enable you to really have impact with the work that you're trying to do and how are you able to move it forward? It's honestly that. I mean, it's honestly being able to, and I think what the struggle, to name the struggle that I'm currently going through, it's just paying staff who like, I do a lot of work for my organization for free. I shouldn't be, but I do. And then I pour my own money in because I have to. And I can't ask people, like I can't offer a stipend and ask people to work 20, 30 hours a week. So I think that like, that's the foundation of it, right? Just to kind of have meetings and like constant meetings during the week and planning all of that stuff, that's, that pulls people's time. But when I can say here, I can compensate you or you can take some time off, then we can work on this thing. Also, professional development funding in terms of just learning the ropes, right? Of really running this organization effectively are things that I think will give us wings over these next three years. I also want to just, it's so nerdy to say it, but I'm gonna say it anyway, which is Jenop, Jenop, Jenop, really, the way that you've always talked about it with us, Victoria, is if we've been in conversation, we trust you to do your work and to do it the best you can. And we'll ask questions, but we're, this investment is an investment in the energy of that organization to take care of artists and community in St. Paul. And that is extraordinary for us. I wanna say, so Jenop does that. It allows us as organizations to figure out that work and not do any of the sort of program chasing where you're creating programs to try to chase dollars or anything like that. The other thing that I'm just sharing kind of more audience-wise, and I'm sure anyone who's listening probably knows this and feels this, is that there really isn't inequity in that system in terms of who feels they have access, who actually has access to those dollars. How does that happen? What does that look like? So the question earlier around wealth and equality is also systemically and historically, there's a number of organizations, usually of a certain size that are more eligible or have more access to that funding and who are actually really doing the work. So I'm really curious in my own kind of thinking and learning to Victoria about like, how are we shifting who and how people have access to those dollars? That seems really like a very critical part of the conversation. Yeah, I think that it's a conversation that's going on inside of foundations and I know other people, I mean, when I make my own contributions, it's looking at the work that's being done and wanting to be a part of something that's much bigger than me. So that you really look at we, and frankly, I learned years ago as a fundraiser, you don't have to be rich to make a difference. That it's all kinds of dollars that make a true difference when you put them all together. I'd hoped we could talk a little bit about how tech, how both of you are thinking about the use of tech because we've watched some, I've watched so much theater on Zoom and access it online and that whole thing of how do you create, what do you create for online that isn't just a replication of what you do live because there's no way to replicate live for me in that sense of it. But our time is up and I really thank both of you. I knew it would be an interesting conversation so both to Stacy and Jeremy, it's a joy to work with you. And again, thank you for your time and to the production crew. The beats of the top of the show were created by former night colleague, Chris Barr and the music that will play us out is composed and performed by the amazing Akron Jazz artist, Theron Brown. The next Night Live episode is being hosted by VP Ashley Zahn. She's the VP of Learning and Impact and she will be talking with Dominique Harrison. That's April 15th at one o'clock. I hope you'll join in. Thank you so much for your questions today and for logging in for this conversation. Be safe.