 For those of you who don't know me, I'm Joan Landcourt. I'm the board president of Company One, and I'm really excited to be here with all of you. Clearly, our idea that, you know, this was a conversation that people were interested in is true, and I think that, you know, given what's going on now in Boston with Boston Latin and all over the country, you know, there are clearly a lot of difficult conversations that we need to have about race, about class, about gender, and a whole host of inequities that are literally tearing us apart. You'll forgive me, I'm not a stage person, so I'm going to use my notes to put a little context and frame around this evening. Company One's founding mission is based on the belief that theater, both on stage and in the classroom, are powerful tools that can be used to further the cause of social justice. We've always focused on telling the stories that aren't being told, and giving voice to those on the so-called margins, and by helping to create new narratives. This kind of theater can expose and explore issues that are really at the heart of those difficult conversations. In fact, it can do more than just facilitate those conversations. It can give us a set of tools and experiences that can help us take more effective action to end those inequities, most of which are held in place by institutional structures and systems that pervade our daily life. Besides the obvious entertainment value of our shows, and our current production of an octarune is a perfect example of that, theater on stage and in the classroom can do four crucial things that really enable more effective activism. First, it increases awareness. With live performance in a room with other people, we can experience profound emotions, and we can be challenged and provoked, opening us to new insights and new awareness. And second, in the classroom with that new awareness, we can engage in those difficult conversations, exploring and deepening our understanding of the issues that we learned about on stage, and that we can also begin to identify the systems that need to be transformed. And third, in both the theater and the classroom, we are in face-to-face spaces with others. We see that we're not alone in wanting things to change. And that helps us find the courage to make those changes, to take the actions that are required. And finally, through these shared experiences, we begin to understand that to build the civic power required to transform institutional structures so that they support equity rather than inequity, we really need to take action together. That's the connective tissue that threads through performance to classroom, to activism. And that's the conversation we really want to begin tonight. How can we think more broadly and more intentionally about how to use theater on stage and in the classroom to increase the likelihood that after the show and after the classroom and after those difficult conversations, people will come together to make the changes that we want to see? So to that end, we're going to hear first from James Millord, one of Company One's fabulous teaching artists and an alum of the Boston Arts Academy. And then our apprentices are going to share a piece of their work with you. Following that, Mark van der Zee, a Company One founder and our director of education, will moderate the panel discussion and we've scheduled a good chunk of time so that you will have an opportunity for Q&A. And finally, Linda Nathan, a prominent educator and C-1 board member, will make some closing remarks. But before I turn it over to James, I really want to thank some of the key board members and staff members who literally have burned the midnight oil to make this evening possible. So thank you, thank you. And James. Good evening, everyone. I'm not going to use the mic. I am a stage person. And to start the evening, we are going to get up and warm up, as we would do for any theater class. The purpose of us warming up is to get our bodies loose, to set the energy. We do that also to build community with the students, to set rapport. It serves a variety of purposes and reasons. But tonight, I hope that it just gets us in the right mode, loosens us up and gets us ready for the conversation for the evening. So the first exercise that we're going to do is we're going to just simply stretch up, we're going to stretch up first, right? Everybody's going to stretch their hands and get on their toes. And reach up high and you're going to act like you're going to twist two light bulbs. You're twisting up two light bulbs on your toes, on your toes, and you're just moving and you're just going to let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go. And then we're going to just go to what is called a shakedown, right? This is how we perform a shakedown, okay? We're going to shake our right hand and we're going to count to eight, like this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yes, we're going to repeat that. We're going to do that with the left hand. Then we're going to do it with the right leg. And then we're going to do it with the left leg. And then we're going to do it with our hips, right? We're going to count down from eight, in half to four. And then from four to two, and then from two to one. When we get to one, everyone, when we get to one, we're shaking it up. What we're going to do is we're going to jump up and slap high five to the person next to you. So whoever's next to you, right? You got to get ready, you got to lift them in place, right? Get a bit, lift them, lift them in the eyes, lift them in the eyes. So get ready, get ready, get ready, right? And we're going to get ready to perform this shake then, okay? So let's start with the right hand, left leg, left leg hips, okay? And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one! Shift the energy for the evening. So we're going to say T three, deep breaths. On the third one we're going to hold it for ten counts before exhaling. We're going to inhale through our nose, exhale through our mouth. And on the first one, you're going to ready? Deep breath in, exhale through your mouth, breath in, hold this one, deep breath in. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Release and give yourselves a round of applause. Keep this thing going. Next up we have our C1 education associate friend. Let's give her a round of applause as we walk by. Good evening everyone. Good evening. My name is Fran Dossilvera. I'm an education associate with Company One. And I work with our out of school programs, which include the professional development for actors class. That is instructed by two of our board members, Ross Thomas Clark and Victoria Marsh, who are both here. And I also work with our production apprentices, these lovely board people. We partner with the Department of Youth Engagement and Employment to employ teens from all over Boston, both during the school year and in the summer time. We hope to expose these teens to what it means to work in a professional theater company. And also to help them with engaging not only with arts organizations, but also with community partners. Our teens started in December and already they have prepared, planned and hosted a community engagement event at the Dorchester Boys and Girls Club. They've also done a ton of workshops already with Company One staff, including our street team, our marketing team. And they have also been doing a lot of activities about what it means to work in a professional setting and how best to collaborate and work with one another, which are skills that we think is very important to start building as early as in high school. They've been doing a lot of wonderful work so far, and you guys are going to get to see a little bit of that tonight. But I'm going to stop talking so they can take it away. Hello, my name is Eriq Green. I am a junior at Newton North High School, and this is my third year in the apprenticeship. Hi, my name is Emma McDonald. I'm a junior at Stone International, and this is my second year as an apprentice. My name is Eriq. I am a junior at Sodin International. This is my first year as an apprentice. Hi, my name is Kanisha. I'm a junior at Tech Boston Academy, and this is also my first year as an apprentice. One of the first things we did when the apprenticeship program started, we was reading Doctor Room. After we collected and read the play, we discussed our feelings and thoughts as well as the different themes of the play and how we connected to the characters. The two characters that we felt most relatable to our society were Minnie and Dido, two states who were breast-fed on the plantation. They were the inspiration for community engagement, even for you that we hosted at the Dorchester Boys and Club on January 16th. Like Minnie and Dido reflected on the difficulties of 1859, we reflected on the notable news in social issues of 2015. We did this through the lens of social media because we feel like our generation has a voice, and where many of us get our news today. We began the event with three short videos to introduce the youths at the Boys and Girls Club to an Doctor Room and challenge them to creatively express their thoughts and opinions. Please enjoy the videos that we, the apprentices, collaborated on. The first is a Minnie and Dido performing their last scene together in an Doctor Room. I'm worried about you. Wow. I think you can get too worked up over the small stuff. Don't freak. I'm gonna do that and move on. She's an adult. You can't change her. I'm George and that's a little plus. Y'all know these slaves and everything. Got to take time out of your day to live life for you. What do you do right now? Meet the pack. Did you look at your slave to make and give ready for your life time? But it sure is helping from this year's swamp and that's got to mean something. The next video is our reaction to the Minnie and Dido scene. Come on, come get that. Real talk. She's not crazy. She wants to get a new life. Ha ha ha. Why are you guys laughing? Because she can't. She can't get a new life. Like, if you're not being a slave, then what exactly is your job? Alright, we did it. You're not manning. You know, like on Jemima? Oh, you mean like that grandma from Little Bill? I'm really going to be a slave on a boat. They're still slaves on a boat. They're still going to be mopping up crap. Slavery not like on water? What do they think was going to happen? And they can't even leave. Why is she lying to her friends? Has she not been a slave all her life? But is she lying? Maybe that's what she'll think will happen. No, she said, well go on this boat, have a drink. Well, like, what drink are you going to be having? Are they going to be drinking the soft water they're cruising on? Not necessarily. It isn't going to be naturally, but life will be better. They're not just going on the boat. They're a soul to this guy. Yeah, but at least they won't be stuck in the vegetation. At least they were on land, on the plantations. I was just right, man. At least they got to travel around them. It's not like celebrity cruise line. Yeah, but we didn't want to be stuck in your house your whole life. Well, yeah, I would suck, but I wouldn't try to convince myself nor my best friend that living somewhere else would be better. Yeah, but they were moving around. It's not about the boat. It's about the fact that she's trying to convince herself that life is going to be better. It's like being on the bus, but the bus keeps moving. Yeah, but you'll get on the bus eventually. You're not getting off the damn boat. You're like, I'll have a dream. A slavery? No, to be free. I mean, she can dream, but what good is that doing her? See, this is a problem with our generation today. Please, tell me what the problem is. Actually. Do you agree with this? I think everything sucks is okay sometimes, but some great things happen this year. Some bad things happen this year too? Yeah, but if you keep holding on to the bad things, you'll be able to grasp the good things that happen. Even though they're about to lose everything, if they're still safe, they'll still have hope. And each other. That's too much right now. But you're right. New year, new me. Finally, Minnie and Dita's reaction to our reaction. Whose kids it is? Hmm. Somebody needs to come get them. I don't know. I think they made some good points about what we're going through. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Where did they get off talking about 1859? I like what they were saying about it. But they don't know what they're talking about. Follow our struggle. But that doesn't mean they can't connect to us. How can they connect to us? They're just kids. They might just be the kids, but the struggle is real everywhere, especially in 2015. Girl, what do you know about 2015? Girl, this is theater. Time doesn't exist. Hmm. That still doesn't give them the right to criticize us for having hope for a better life that has nothing to do with being asleep, you know? They should be thinking about their own lives. It's not like 2015 went off without a glitch. Hmm. Bill Cosdy. Yeah. Tamir Rice. Hmm. Donald Trump. Need I say more? Well maybe their experience is what caused them to criticize us like that. Hmm. They don't want to focus on their own lives. Well maybe they should start to focus on what's happening around them and not what's happening to us. Slavery might not exist, but social issues still do. Exactly. So they should reflect on that instead. Stop hating on us and do something. Girl, we got to be out. Massifano is here. Vlogging. Oh, real talk. Yeah. I just want to say that the apprentices themselves wrote the scripts for those videos. Everyone should have a list of topics from 2015 on their creep board. This includes Donald Trump, hashtag Black Lives Matter, gun violence, and Planned Parenthood. With the youth, they had them create an art piece in order to respond. They made t-shirts, wrote poems, and drew pictures. We're asking everyone here to choose a topic from the list and tweet your response. If you don't have a Twitter on the back of your list, there are 140 boxes that represent 140 characters. Make sure to tweet hashtag Real Talk with C1. We'll give everyone a couple of minutes to do that. Yeah, we're doing it live right now. So we got to be out. We got to be out. Real talk. It's not for fame. It's just like... And they were outside the theater. They were outside the office. Yeah. Yeah. All of us mess up. Except you. We got to be out. We got to be out. Did he sound like a bus stop? He didn't sound like a bus stop. I'm sorry? I'm sorry? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So we gave this list to the boys and girls at the Dorchester Boys and Girls Club. And we went through the list and had a really great discussion about how each of these were significant to them. And then they chose one and created some kind of creative response. So we're asking everyone here to choose one. And because we don't have markers and paper for everyone to color on. To tweet your response. Yes. Or a space. Or... I don't have Twitter either. We'll be compiling this into a word and sending it to everyone after the event. I want to thank you guys for participating in this activity. And next up will be the panel discussion. And to introduce the panel discussion is Education Director Mark Banderzy. If you don't mind, give another hand for Fran and our apprentices. If you have completed your tweet sheet. I call it... I'm not on Twitter either. But if you have finished with your 140 character response on the yellow sheet of paper. You can just pass it down to your... Pass them down to your left and actually pass them down to our right because they're over there. And Fran will collect them. And we will try to get them posted in the lobbies so you can take a look at how people have responded after the event. So thank you so much for coming out tonight. I want to echo Joan's thoughts about how important of a conversation this is. And we at Company One Theatre are so excited to welcome a panel that has a broad range of experiences and points of view. Ones that... I don't know about you, but I'm a theatre person and I kind of don't like talking to other theatre people. So I'm really excited that Matt Gray who is on our board put together this fine group of people that are here to talk with us today to convene this conversation and start it off. We're going to be spending... I have four main questions before I welcome them up. I'm just going to get to some business stuff first so that you're not distracted by all of their beautiful faces. So I'm going to ask four main questions of our panel first to begin the evening. And then really the meat of it obviously this is a huge topic. These are huge issues impossible for us to address in an hour and 15 minutes in a really comprehensive way. But hopefully we'll get the conversation started tonight. So while we do have a stopping time tonight we really understand and welcome the conversation to be continued afterward for further events at further productions however you want to be communicating with Company One Theater. So thank you and without further ado Eriq who has been with us for three years now as he mentioned before is going to be co-moderating with me. So we're psyched about that but I'd like to welcome Kendra Tyra Field Summer Williams Caesar McDowell Tracy Strain and James Millord. As I alluded to before these are fascinating people we've gotten the chance to chat with each other a bit in advance which is exciting and they're fascinating people but instead of me telling you all about them we've printed bios in the program so you can take a look at what they do because we want to get right to it. So without further ado we're here we're here and welcome. So while some of these speaking to the broad perspectives at the table while the articulation of these questions you'll see theater you'll see education mentioned in the articulation of these questions but again we are really thankful that the folks on this panel are able to speak to a broad array of experiences like the connective tissue that Company One Theater really is all about trying to find that connective tissue between ourselves, each other, different communities so we know that attending a live performance can open up people to new perspectives new emotions and new ideas it can put you in the shoes of whatever we might consider the other and challenge your preconceived notions post-show conversations happen, they've become popular but what happens after the audience leaves the theater what has to happen for an individual or an organization to translate that emotional and intellectual experience into actions that have the potential for making an impact on social equity, huge question right? huge question because they're so huge we're going to put them up on the screen here so you can keep them in your mind as we start addressing them so I'm going to turn it over I'm going to open the conversation up to Kendra first so hi everyone can you hear me so Mark asked me to talk a little bit about the play in particular how many of you have seen and after okay great so I wanted to talk just a bit about it I'm a historian a historian of slavery and the post emancipation period and in my own work and my writing and also my teaching I rely a lot on stories, a lot on narrative and that's not always the case for historians for me it is, I was talking to Summer before we came over here and I said I actually hated history all the way through high school well into college because I just, I didn't quite figure out until pretty late in the game that the stories I heard from my grandmother were also history right? that even though the little box we would get on slavery or the Trail of Tears in a text book and this is in the 80s in New Jersey was right there I didn't connect the stories I heard from my grandmother to the kind of big abstractions I was getting in these text books and so what really pulled me in is when I kind of light bulb went off and I realized that the two were deeply connected and so I should say my grandmother's stories were largely about growing up in the all black towns of Oklahoma and they were about black and native and multiracial and white communities that didn't conform to any kind of racial binaries that I was growing up with in you know, northern New Jersey at the time and were quite, quite different so my grandmother's grandparents were born enslaved and in particular one was the child of an enslaved woman and a slave-owning man and so this kind of complexity that I heard stories about growing up and again didn't have a kind of match for in my own learning process growing up stayed with me and so what I'd say about the play it's a really powerful reinterpretation for those of you that haven't seen it by the African-American playwright although we would trouble that category Brandon Jacobs Jenkins of a pre-Civil War Eve of the Civil War a reinterpretation of the Eve of the Civil War play by an Irish playwright originally set in Antebellum, Louisiana and involving quite specifically liaisons across the color line even as it contests what that color line meant and so I do this a lot with my own students I think about I talk about how we can both understand race to be kind of constantly shifting a kind of moving target very malleable if you look year to year to year how racial categories were defined and yet racism to be also real and to hold those two in our heads at once the kind of constructed nature of race and at the same time the powerful impact past and present of racism and so I guess what I would say I loved watching those clips that the interns shared with us and the response and the response to the response and I just felt like the play reminded me of what the play did for me and what narrative and story does for many of us which is to open up to break open the abstraction of slavery or quote unquote the slave to see what does it mean to be an enslaved what did it mean to be an enslaved daughter sister mother brother husband what were the particularities the individual experiences the individual ways that people navigated these systems quite differently depending on who one person's individual subjectivity was and to me that's really the power of narrative and it's the power of this play to open up those conversations for all of us in the present Thank you, thank you I also would like to turn it over to Tracy who also has really interesting connection via her work to this question so hi everybody I'm a documentary filmmaker and at the moment I happen to be working on a the first feature documentary about Lorraine Hansberry who as most of you know is best known for writing A Raisin in the Sun and so when this question was brought to my attention it made me think about the fact that well first of all our documentary is looking at Lorraine as an activist artist and she was somebody who decided to use art her words theater as her vehicle for her activism and so when I saw this question and knowing all the things I know about Lorraine Hansberry it was really interesting to think about the fact that the response to Raisin in the Sun wasn't what Lorraine Hansberry expected and you know it didn't really help it didn't cause any major changes in fact in many ways a lot of the people who came to the play who were white it kind of reinforced certain ideas that they already held about you know this notion of the mother the mammy many of those women in the audience may have had black maids at home in terms of identifying with the characters it was interesting to see that people did identify with the story of the younger family they were rooting for the younger family not to take the money they wanted them to move out and take the home because they really were it's the first time historians believe it's the first time on the American stage that white audiences really identified with black characters but what happened as a result after that a lot of the critics who talked to her would talk about how universal it was and they said well this isn't really a play about a black family because because they could identify and I thought that was really interesting that just by identifying with someone took out the race of it and Lorraine was really strong about saying this isn't this isn't just this isn't a universal play this is a very specific play she has this quote about in order to reach the audience you have to be very specific and she said this isn't just a Chicago family this isn't just a black Chicago family this is a Chicago family on the south side and so I think that she spent most of her life trying to figure out ways to get people to take identifying with other people and translate that into action and so hopefully when you see our film done you'll get a larger sense of that story awesome and so I want to take it and I'll open it up to the entire table at this point to address the last part of this question which is yeah there's impact there but what do we need to do as individuals if we feel compelled how do we take that next step once we leave the theater once we leave the performance we leave the film what's going to get us there to take action here you're all sit inside it well I want to try to say something about that not being someone who's not in the theater but thinking about kind of moving outside once one has been exposed to something have a sense of experience that really generates empathy for them what do you do with it and I actually think sometimes we make the bar seem too high we're asking people to take a particular experience and then apply it in some kind of significant phenomenal way and I actually think it's wrong that we actually need to think I actually like to use this term and use it as a contrast to you know I think the thing we want people to do is actually think about what I like to call the microinclusions what can by having experience in something actually change the little thing that you can do that actually allows you to recognize the humanity in another person and sometimes we make the bar so high that people begin to kind of become paralyzed in their ability to act so for example one of the things I found myself doing even in my own teaching sometimes is I might be working on a concept around something and I may have people discuss it but often what I'll do is I'll turn to people well first explain it to me in language in which you feel most eloquent first right so you understand it for yourself and then translate it for us and give it to us and that little act a little act of inclusion is basically saying to someone else the place where you come from originally the language that you hold originally has value right it has a place here so I just cautioned about wanting too much and not creating opportunities for people to realize the small acts actually mean something and having permission in a space to create those any other thoughts? I would just say very quickly that there's I think an opportunity for whatever the institution or organization that is involved in presenting also has a responsibility for helping to not tell, not teach not guide but say and this could be a thing this could be a way that you become personally active that's not necessarily prescriptive and not necessarily about an individual working against the mountain but in this interaction on your T-Ride home about this and how do you weave it into your daily life and I think that's a part of that for Company One Theater that kind of post-show interaction where people have a chance to maybe not say it nicely maybe allow it to be messy but to work through it in a way that feels significant so that they're leaving with something that they're going to carry forward personally great thank you we're going to start so I don't know if many of you have been to panels before but often panels start with the details and then end up like really big picture leaving everyone with big picture we're starting big picture and we're working backwards so we're actually that was a huge question so as we move forward we're actually going to get into some more specific specifics and more detailed work so Eric is going to open us up for this next question that starts to focus us a little bit more hi everyone so this next question focus to summer first and then we'll pass it on and it talks about rather than focusing solely on the craft of theater in specific courses how can we use theatrical art of creative storytelling of the creation of new narratives so that students can collaboratively collaboratively engage in the struggle to redress the inequities of race and class and gender thanks Eric so I'm of two minds I think when we talk about the craft that's weird language in terms of thinking about facilitating or teaching a way to do something and I think there's definitely place for that but I also think more important than that is kind of getting getting it to happen organically which it will and then ultimately being able to say and this is the thing that you're doing right so you don't have to kind of go in with the knowledge of understanding an element of this craft in order to be a part of the doing of it and then having it express to you later I think sometimes where we get hung up is I'm going to use a metaphor that might be bad so just go with it if you're trying to teach someone a math concept and they don't have the ability to understand the concept but you break it down to them in a word problem and they're able to understand it in the context of that word problem where there's a real everyday practical application and then you're able to say to them look what you just did here is actually called this and so you understand the concept you understand the doing of it you just need it to wrap your own frame around it for you to get it that to me feels like the work of the teacher and the work of what needs to happen in that classroom environment we have to kind of allow the individual, the student, whomever to come to their own understanding and then give them language and it's common and we're all saying and this is a part of this craft and this is the thing that you've already demonstrated and you don't have to understand the term fully in order to see how you have been able to do it to start because I think for me if I feel like I don't understand the concept or I don't get the languaging of something I might get hung up there and miss the opportunity to engage and we don't ever want to be in a space where we allow students or individuals to miss the opportunity to engage Cesar had some interesting thoughts about this on our phone call and I see you nodding your head vigorously as Summer was talking so Those were my thoughts Well actually just listening to this again now I'm actually thinking about something different that is about what is the place of narrative and storyteller in life and if folks have that craft and know how to actually bring that out and other people's just really important I actually think one of the things that happens in particularly in the context of marginalized communities however you want to define those is the key marginalizations that happens is to marginalize people around what they know right so basically tell them constantly they have no knowledge they don't know anything and that continually happens by basically saying you don't know how you don't have knowledge because you can't express it this way and in actuality what we know is true that most human knowledge actually is expressed narratively right it actually doesn't it's not expressed in the more formal ways we do things but it is actually through stories and narrative that people actually construct their understanding of the world share the knowledge that they have about it and somehow I think one of the things we've managed to miss right in our society is the power of those narratives and those stories hold on to them and how we need to encourage them so I actually think what comes out of people learning how to do that and how to support others in it is actually an incredibly important part of any liberation struggle right because if folks can't own their own narrative and their own story then they actually they're not free enough to engage in actually making something like democracy work because what they are basically doing is hiding themselves right and members of the public are hidden from each other then you can't have a democracy right and the pathway through that is actually people being able to have the ability to kind of name their own story their own lived experience for themselves first and then being able to do that with others and I think the stage represents a form of that seeing how that can be done but in actuality it needs to be taken out so that people are actually doing it on the day to day all the time and it's not getting into the space where we kind of hide our stories right and our stories hold the complexity of everything and the push today is to simplify but in actuality people's understanding of the world and people's lives are not simple they're highly complex right and they hold that complexity all the time and part of what we're able to do through I think working with narratives and story is actually shine a light on that complexity and not kind of allow ourselves to be persuaded by the idea that we have to come up with a simple narrative as the thing to solve but it's the complex narrative that we need to be dealing with yeah, yeah, please yeah, that was really so powerful listening to both of these comments I just wanted to add in terms of the classroom one of the things that I do with my students is help them facilitate them essentially to writing their own family histories and I taught I was in California the last five years and so when I got here teaching at Tufts I had a lot more students that came from like kind of the eastern quarter many more students that came from the U.S. south and I was teaching a class on slavery slavery and race in the U.S. and I realized on the first day that about half of my students either came from the south or within a generation or two had come from the south and so I had some students who were writing about their slave holding ancestors and had, you know, reams and reams of, you know, wills and transfer of property including human property made out of people's ancestors and then I also had a number of students writing about their enslaved ancestors and and I very often had students that said but I only have this little bit of information I only have this little part of a story I don't have any paper, I don't have any documents and so, you know, really my kind of central commitment in teaching family history over and over and over again and in making kind of writing about one's own family an option in every paper in every assignment, right is the kind of commitment to showing, right by doing over and over again that it is possible to tell these stories, right and that there are different kinds of evidence different voices and getting those voices and evidence into the mix are what actually moment by moment, you know, creates these kind of small openings, I like that word that you give and then putting those two or three or four individuals together in a group usually impairs and I often wouldn't put someone who writing about her slave owning ancestors next to someone writing about her enslaved ancestors next to someone who's writing about both within the same family which is more often the case than not as the place, you know, play reveals as well and then get them to talk about the kind of unevenness of the Code and Code Archive, right like what do we have access to, who values what, what does paper mean, what does it mean to your family and then helping them find a piece of paper that actually was there all along and what that mean, you know, in the context of a family I know what that meant to my own family to see a document right, but I think there are so many ways that we can kind of essentially use story telling to use people's own stories that are right there waiting, you know, for us I'd like to add in my own experience as a teaching artist in BPS, I find that students who get to tell their own stories tend to experience for the first time, at least in my experience ownership in a way that they haven't had before and it creates room for these students to make connections with other students who are so different from them, whether it's their race whether it's their gender, religion and those connections those connections allow room for people who wouldn't have at all collaborated with each other or found room to to create more conversation or to just grow together wouldn't happen it's crazy how many times I've seen students relinquish so much pain so much pent up energy thoughts that they've hidden from family and friends and they've been able to express it in a story sometimes in front of peers that they really don't know anything about and and it's powerful it's transformative and if anything it opens up doors that wouldn't unnecessarily be open if not through that avenue if not through storytelling and being able to share that with peers so it's a barrier breaker in a lot of ways great thank you, thank you so that being said we're going to launch into talking about Boston specifically a little bit here we know that there are multiple efforts going on in Boston right now to build deeper relationships between live performance theater education and the communities in which those performances take place and the question here is what more could we do to increase the use of live theater and the related educational programming by the communities themselves as they struggle with the contentious problems of race class gender inequities I'm going to turn this I'll throw this right back to James actually as he had some pretty strong thoughts about this well I think it's important for I think it's important for people who have access to venues, space who have access to resources to create their own productions to come into the communities and help be a resource for those who know nothing about that and and are not necessarily I'm not able to get that I think it's important for myself and others like who have the ability to go into the community and share what they have share the knowledge that they have to do that and I think that will I think that will open up some pretty basic opportunities for people who don't know that they have them and so I think overall those who have access those who have resources need to find themselves in the communities without that access without those resources and sharing them and doing it any way that they can especially when it comes to theater you know so great thank you and Kendra I'm going to turn it over to you actually because you had some thoughts about this as well I think I actually said what I was going to say in response to this one in terms of stories telling and family stories in particular in the classroom I guess I just might add that because I think it shouldn't go without saying that there are many reasons why we don't tell some of our stories right and in my own I think a lot about late 19th early 20th century post emancipation period what we think of as kind of freedom's first generation we're talking about deep deep legacy just a couple of decades after this play right of sexual slavery, of concubinage and then of continuing sexual exploitation so I think very often in the early 20th century for instance my grandmother's sisters who were growing up in the 1910's would never really talk about a lot of what had to happen a lot of what they had experience for different reasons right so I think there's actually a great complexity to both the stories we tell and the stories we don't tell and what remains behind and I think this play is so powerful in large part because it kind of lays bare a lot of that stuff that later gets buried Tracy if you don't mind talking a little bit about your work in relation to this I think it's a really valuable perspective Sure I had the great privilege of working at Blackside when Henry Hampton was alive and worked on the series The Century of African American Arts and I produced two of the programs and one of the things that happened in conjunction with the series that was a six part series is that there was educational materials and outreach created so it provided a really great training ground and gave me a lot of ideas for moving forward with my own work when I started making my own films and one of the things that happened one of the connections that was made with Artists for Humanity back in the night it was like 1998-99 and the students from Artists for Humanity made images of different people profiled in the series and even then I did a little segment on Lorraine Hansberry and so I always remembered this little square that was created with Lorraine Hansberry's face on it and it was made into, they took all of the squares of different people for the poster for the series and then on the other side it was a teacher's guide anyway so fast forward to two years ago and we're launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise some money for this documentary and I live in work I live in Midway Studios and Artists for Humanities now is just up the street and I thought it was a really exciting opportunity to revisit them and check in on their history square and what we ended up doing with them is they found this square and they created Kickstarter rewards for our campaign they were some of the high-end rewards handmade art by high school students and in addition to that we went up there and the students talked about Lorraine Hansberry provided materials they didn't just make the Hansberry squares but we also talked about the south side of Chicago we picked places where Hansberry lived and worked and so we talked about the south side of Chicago we brought materials for that we talked about Greenwich Village we talked about Harlem and we brought imagery and things for them to read they even incorporated pieces of the actual play into some of these montages that they made for Kickstarter rewards they also used that Hansberry image to create a t-shirt as part of our rewards and so we were really excited to work with the students and we look forward to continuing moving forward with some other ideas that we have to further open our place up to them so that there's videos that we hope we'll be able to create on other materials Thank you I was just going to add about the power story and kind of public policy issues when you're trying to deal with issues of race and stuff like that we just you can take a really boring subject like transportation which a lot of people don't think is boring a lot of people spend a lot of time working on it it's extremely important how people are able to get around the city and our organization has been involved for the last year helping this city of Boston really implement a different kind of community engagement process around transportation planning and one of the key things we've done in this effort is really to bring artists to create opportunities in very different ways and one of those sometimes it's not just can someone tell the story can we actually follow a person through their story right so one of the eye-opening experiences we did for folks that became part of the campaign you can actually see the GOBOX in 2030 site is this whole thing of having someone from the transportation department actually take a ride and follow the commute of different kinds of people that experience there's not someone sitting down telling the story for how to tell the story but they are embodying their story through what they do in the day to day sometimes what makes these issues so hard to bring forward is we are translating the visceral into words into other kinds of things but it's actually being in the living story for a little bit of time that makes it so much more powerful and sometimes makes it for the other people for sometimes who I should be careful when I say other there I don't mean other in terms of racial stuff I mean people who are like struggling to figure out how do I take this complex issue of racism and think about it in a policy framework or consider it sometimes it's hard for them to actually grasp that and understand it because they don't have experience with it so it's not enough to just give it to them cognitively right and sometimes it's not enough enough for them just to kind of have an emotional response to it but sometimes it has to be an embodied experience that then really triggers something and you know theater plays with all that for the persons on the stage I think they can take that out so that people are having all three of those kinds of experiences and that creates a different understanding of the issues awesome awesome thank you so I think James and Caesar bookended their responses to this question in a way that's going to lead pretty well into our last moderated question and then we'll open it up to you guys this question this last one is really meaty and I'm not going to turn it over to anyone in particular this one is going to be more conversational and hopefully lead to conversation from everyone here so and maybe in the twitter sphere and online wherever they're watching from so take it away so the question is what role the structural racism and institutional white privilege play in deciding the content of temporary performance the theater curriculum and in turn the cultural conversation there are lots of groans well we're having this conversation so I guess that's what we actually have to have this conversation right here right now so it's a major part and again as someone who's not in the theater world I just kind of think about it in other realms is it is the substance of the American experience right you cannot go anywhere touch anything in this country that's not tainted by racism right everything you do has that in it and the question so much isn't you know how does it rate how do we what role does structural racism and institutional white privilege play in deciding contemporary things I mean I like the way it's phrased because it assumes that there is a role right so the role is there it happens all the time the question for me is really more about you know how do we shift that role over time what is it going to take when has it become such an urgent issue that we can't be gentle about it and we need to be forceful about it and when is it something that we need to kind of just let go what is the equivalent of the the kind of beautiful multi-faceted strategy of Black Lives Matter how does it actually manifest itself in all kinds of other places right so what does that look like in the context when one thinks about theater where is the place in which we have to stand up on the stage and take over the performance versus we have to be within the broader dialogue around it I actually think particularly in other medium forms we are things have gotten kind of pretty bad right I mean it's pretty scary now what is acceptable public discourse in this country things that maybe people would have thought and not said five years ago now feel very free to say and to actually push even further so in this and I think we have kind of passed the point of being gentle about how to respond to these things we need to be really forceful and aggressive around them because I think we are in a really dangerous space right now some of it is humorous you can look at it and say that's humorous like the white guy playing Michael Jackson you can do a lot with that there is a lot of double meaning that one can play with but they actually what does that mean right and there is all these struggles I think that artists themselves are dealing with about how truthful can artists be particularly artists of color and both naming something not only for people who are part of the press but also naming something for the community itself it's huge incredible fault lines in the conversation that are out there and I think it's someone like like Lupe Fresco who is doing some really kind of interesting work around like his own bitch bad which is really if you listen to it and you think about it and watch it he is threading that thin line between what we own our identity, the usage of language meaning and this what does massage mean and he is dealing with all that in his soul by really playing with the things that we think we shouldn't play with right and so I think the creative world of artists has a lot to offer and disrupting some of this stuff but we need more of it we need more and more and more of it and I think the arts more have the ability to liberate us from some of this but we need it because I think where things are going is incredibly frightening from my standpoint I think they're just frightening I might add that not only do we need the artist and we need the art but we also need the right people to consume it so I find tricky in the question is that the role of the structural racism and the institutional white privilege keeps a lot of the progress at bay right by way of the art is there there are people who are fighting against it but the people who actually need to be a part of those conversations that are a result of that art are choosing not to engage with it in several different ways and so what is the work that's being done not on behalf of the artist and not on behalf of the art but on behalf of those who need to be forced into a space of discomfort in order to in order to start writing some of the the wrongs for lack of a better phrase and that's the question I feel like I am personally wrestling with I think wrestling with institutionally because there's a great value in continuing to you know push the envelope and continuing to just kind of dropping off the edge of the cliff to see how far down things will go right but at some point at some point that pushing and that pulling is not going to be enough because you're pushing and pulling with the same people and if you're pushing and pulling with the same people how do you then engage those same people to bring with them people who might have the difficulty who might really feel disturbed who might really need the conversation afterward I don't know if I'm answering the question but that's the role I feel like you know like I'm fighting in I'm fighting in opposition to it but my work is not with the art my work is with the audience I'll invite everyone to address this I I personally I work with I work with company one and I see firsthand how these kids from the inner city when they get exposed to theater for the first time how deprived they felt feel for being for not having access for so long for being 15 and 16 or 17 and going to the theater for the first time and knowing that this was the Paramount Theater was right down the street from downtown crossing every day and for some strange reason all the schools that you've been to nobody has ever taken you there but for some strange reason when you're talking to the kids from North or something like that it's like oh they've been going to this theater that's in your backyard since they were four and you kind of feel like wow that kind of sucks for me you know and so there is a real life impact you know I think it's important for you know to stick to I don't want to go on I think it's a but I think it's important for us to acknowledge the fact that there is institutional white privilege and I mean institutionalized racism and white privilege and that they play a direct effect to the classroom when when students in BPS do not get exposed to the arts because it's the first thing cut when other schools and other places are getting it from first grade up they feel like it's a necessity and you're telling these kids who cannot identify with geometry and social studies because it's whatever you know but you give them a Lorraine Haynes Berry play or something that they can identify with but they don't have that opportunity it's impacting them it's taking away from their experience from their growth from their development and so you know if a lot of times I like to say people who are benefited who benefit the benefactors from white privilege or institutionalized racism they don't beside having a conversation that's as far as people going to go and so it's not going to be anything any direct action unless those who are in this room who are part of this conversation and can identify with the realities go and speak out and do something major about it go be intentional about doing something about it and not simply talking because when we talk we continue to have the structural institutionalized racism for white privilege and you know we go home feeling like maybe this was great for conversation but I got to go back to the schools where these kids feel like they don't have the same access or resources or anything that other people are having that they see clearly don't think that the students don't see it they see that they are being cheated like second-class citizens even in school from sixth grade on maybe not first or fifth grade but they get into secondary sixth, seventh, eighth grade ninth and up they absolutely can identify with being second-class citizens in just school not at the workplace not with the authorities at school with many other points of view not trying to cast anything on anyone but white 30-year-old females that go into the black all-black neighborhood to teach these black boys and you're expecting them to have a real life experience and they cannot connect with this 36-year-old young white woman who God bless her heart because I have spoken to her and I know her heart is sincere and she wants to be part of the change but for some strange reason these boys the barriers the experiences that they have they do not allow for her to penetrate that experience and so you know when the institutions that have the resources to send these people into these communities are only sending people that they know are coming from certain places or they're not necessarily reaching into the communities and pulling people who are on the streets and grassroots shout out to Art Semerson for doing that but then there's not any real change or impact and that just sucks because then people like me and my students just know it just sucks and that's what we're left with and so that's what matters. I would just quickly add that kind of connecting with what you said but in a different way it's really important for people who care about change to support projects whether it's theater or filmmakers or other creative endeavors by literally supporting with money. None of this stuff is going to change unless we who care get our friends and other people in our networks to support projects it's like we have to go to the opening night weekends of films that we believe are important we have to support plays like Octo Rune we can't just say oh it was great that happened I'm so happy to see it and then never take the time to actually go there buy the ticket and then encourage other people to do the same I also would encourage people the only way this is going to change is if you literally do check out these Kickstarter campaigns and Indiegogo campaigns for not just big projects but smaller projects to help foster new generations of people who are trying to tell narratives that haven't been told before it's really challenging like when I think about trying to convince people that a documentary about Lorraine Hansberry would be important it's been surprising to me that I've been working on this for almost 13 years to prove that there's value in this story even somebody who says even someone with a story a piece of art that's so well taught across North America still was problematic because the depth of her story is hardly known she's just perceived as an icon and even me trying to provide new information about her and explain why this woman who is black, young, female secretly a lesbian secretly a communist all these different things that most people don't know about her part of this story and her words and the issues that she faced resonate with people today and young people whenever they find out about her they're so excited and sort of stunned that they don't know anything about her but the gatekeepers for whatever reason, maybe I wasn't expressing myself well enough did not seem to get that and so it's really important for other people to value things like a Lorraine Hansberry story or a play like this or company one to really come out with your pocket books and then and show people because then once once people feel like oh okay people like this this is oh they're interested in this then they tend to come around you know but first we have to like prove to them that this is worthy and so it would be great if we got past that point and we just like supported our own projects I just think that would be a helpful thing for all of us I'll just say very quickly I think it's just so when we think about institutional racism and privilege and what roles they play we're also talking about what role history plays what the proximity of the past how close it is and I found a couple quotes from Brent from the playwright here and then also from Elle Borders who played many and she and so I'll just read this from Elle Borders she said I'm occasionally frightened by how accessible some of this is for me some of it feels like things that my great-grandmother went through when she was sharecropping in Alabama and of course the playwright talked also about his own upbringing and going back and forth to his grandmothers in Arkansas and so I mean for many storytellers for many people period right African-American people we're drawing upon stories that are very close right very close and we can pretend in abstractions that they're in some distant past but we're just talking about a few generations in the context of this particular the legacies of slavery for instance and lastly I guess in terms of stories some stories have more power than others and stereotypes are big stories with lots of power and wealth behind them right and that's why it's so urgent and it's so urgent that we tell our own stories and that we have diversity of representations of what it means to be anything but particularly what it means to be black today in America or in 1859 Thank you At this point we'd like to turn it over to you guys for some questions or thoughts that you have we do have two microphones one stage right and one stage left if you'd like to come down and share your thoughts there if you're in the middle of the room and you feel like it might be too much you'd be too disruptive to stand up and start to try and scooch by people you can raise your hand and we'd be happy to repeat your question and then if we don't capture it clearly enough you can feel free to correct us but we'd be happy to have you Summer You're the director of an octaroon here in this very space running for the next three weeks but might you want to comment on that? Absolutely and there's definitely commentary that I don't want to give away because it's very very loaded so the octaroon Dion Boussico was considered abolitionist in nature when it premiered and there were certain things that were very unique about what he was doing as a playwright at this time as an Irishman who came over and spent time in Louisiana on a plantation and there was this very popular book called the Quadroon at that time that he kind of pulled text from and so the advent of the camera was a huge fascinating piece of technology where people were coming to the theater and they were seeing this camera work on stage and the camera is an integral plot point in terms of something that happens that was kind of mind blowing because it was something people hadn't seen before and eventually something that people would have access to one of the things I kind of liken it to what does that mean for the theater today and it would be like watching a hologram concert of Michael Jackson in Tupac in your seat right there just like too big to imagine that's how it felt for audiences then another thing that Dion Boussico did at that time that was it's problematic but it's also it was revolutionary thought at that time that any person of color i.e. African American black person indigenous American was played by a white person in paint right Boussico described the color so in his notes on the play he would say um Dido a honey colored girl a high yellow woman of 30 a dark black strap man of blah blah blah and even listening to the language I think I see all in your faces like oh that doesn't sound good that doesn't sound right but at that period of time that was revolutionary thought because what he was implying is that there are many different types of what this brown skin means and therefore there are many different people and it's not just a singular experience of slave so even though it's tricky and wrong in a lot of ways it was still progressive for its time if anyone else if anyone wants to riff at any point just jump in jump in there great anyone yes and um James I am a teacher in Dorchester which I also feel very privileged of teaching our brothers and sisters and probably avoiding the girls' class rather than the sisters and um I can definitely know that they are second class and they'll show up and say you have to do it what is it what this is great but I have to find myself very soft trying to carry many of these roles of you can do it after school program the voice of many things I just wonder really narrowing down to your lives and the work 13 years to sustain this and just reading what you all do how do you as however you identify yourself in this world maintain yourself on day to day basis and being healthy and strong and not being so angry and pissed off how do you you know and I know how I do it it's in many ways I don't have too much wine you know rants with the rants but I find myself being exhausted by this and not having money to donate to you because I'm still sending money to my family it's like many layers of success of the black person who's trying to get it but how do you maintain and sustain and answer these questions on role great I'm just I'm gonna echo that last question just for those folks who might be listening who are not in the room and who didn't catch all that over microphone it's rich stuff but how do you maintain how do you maintain the stamina to keep going to keep moving forward while maintaining your health both physical and mental health without just throwing your hands up in the air getting too pissed off or just throw you know giving up is that did I capture it yeah that's great awesome I'd start off by saying first and foremost it's more than a passion for me so my heart is truly dedicated to the work so yes I have my times where I'm truly exasperated and these kids get on my nerves and oh my gosh I gotta do another lesson plan no you know but I think having the right team of collaborators with some pretty awesome people shout out to all of y'all that I know I work with some pretty awesome people who are able to help me sustain the energy throughout the ups and the downs and all the trials and in-betweens without having that network of support I don't know if I would be able to continue at the pace that I'm going so that's a huge anchor for me and then secondly I would say you gotta have fun right? like these people that we are trying to impact and trying to help transform their lives or help them to lead them to transform their own lives they need to see us living our lives in a real way and I tell my kids often when I'm having a shitty day that I'm gonna have I'm having a shitty day but we're going to change and shift the energy just because I had this moment beforehand that might have sucked doesn't mean that we can't have an awesome moment right now so when they see that and they experience that when they come through the door and they're like Mr. I've had a shitty day can I say shit? oh I mean whether or not you can you've done it sorry good job James I just realized did hell around throw a rating on this is that are we okay? yeah sorry about that yeah so yeah but when they're able to see that they're able to draw from that experience and and own it themselves and I think that's that's why we do this right that's why we do this for those small rewards of seeing somebody's life actually changed or transformed by what we do and so I don't think there's ever going to be time in your life where you're not going to get exasperated and want to throw your hands up but you know you just got to have the right people in your corner and know why you're doing this so yeah I would say that knowing why you're doing it is kind of the key through all of the ups and downs I think that for me personally when I I think about the fact that the reason I decided to make this film wasn't really anything to do about me it was about the fact that when I was introduced to Lorraine Hansberry when I was 17 when my grandmother took me to sea to be young gifted in black I saw someone who truly inspired me and I couldn't believe I didn't know about her and I thought back then wow people need to know about her because there was someone I could identify with growing up in the suburbs of central Pennsylvania and so years later all these things happened and then I end up deciding that I want to be a filmmaker in part to make a film about Lorraine Hansberry now it's hard to believe that I actually am making that film and a film hasn't been made before this time given that I first saw that play in 1977 and so I think about the fact that there are going to be other people when they learn Lorraine Hansberry's story that other young women especially will be inspired by that story but in the more practical level I've learned the hard way like last year I didn't take care of myself and I got really sick and so now I'm trying to do better and do all the things they say you should do and I'm actually trying to do it and it's kind of working I think we're all crazy which helps because I don't know how else you go on if you're not in this world I mean this world will make you crazy I think this is actually one of the I think you've raised an issue that for me is really a real challenge in the work because the story I'll make it very personal I won't generalize I look at my own life, my own family I grew up in so I grew up in Colorado and Louisiana back in Louisiana every summer rural Louisiana different time but the narrative that was woven through my life through church, through school and everything else is lots of people that helps you get to this point your job is to help lots of people get to the next point okay now we did that in the that story was told to me by everything around me that had a contained integrated system in place to maintain that and we carry that load now without that system and I think it is killing us because we don't know how to say it's a little bit too much I can't do all that I can just do this and be okay with it because we know the consequences sometimes of not doing are sometimes horrible and so being in this situation I find myself sometimes realizing choices sometimes seem like even small choices don't feel like real let me put it this way the cost behind each choice does not seem appropriate for sometimes even what the little choice is it seems like it carries so much more weight around it no I'm not going to go to that event at that school and see the kids that's not just about me saying I'm not going to go because I'm tired it's about setting up a whole bunch of people for disappointment and do I want to carry that disappointment so this is actually I think one of the things about privilege when you have privilege you don't have to carry that there's a little more balance between the choices you have to make and the cost behind it and when you don't have it the cost behind the choices even smaller choices is really heavy and so I find myself sometimes I know I do more than I should and in doing more than I should I don't necessarily be in the quality of what I could do the things that I do and I have to live with that kind of imbalance so I don't always feel like I'm bringing my best self to things sometimes I find myself sometimes I really admire to be a musician and I remember when I was in my musician space and I was focused on music I knew how to bring my best self to something in that thing but then I was just like not paying attention to a whole bunch of other things and I was at a time in my life where I could get away with that I learned more, did more and realized boy that's hard to do and so I think the answer for me and I know for other people I talk to it's really hard right it's it looks on the outside as if we don't and I think, let me say another way I think for someone like myself you know I've managed to have a lot of opportunities you know I come up from a family where my father was functionally illiterate he worked in you know me packing plant my mother was a nurse's aide was the first person to go to college you know we lived in poverty but moved up to middle class because there was a union you know and things that allow some opportunities to happen in my life and I managed to kind of go through a lot of my education and have lots of kinds of opportunities that I managed to kind of get into you know and you know how I talk about it it's interesting I managed to get into it not a lot of agency in that is it yeah but there is but there was right but that's me not having to hold the narrative I guess the point I'm really the point I'm really trying to make in saying all this is that I just I think we I carry I think a lot of people like me who feel that we can't let go we can't stop at certain times but when we do often sometimes it's abrupt sometimes it's not done in a way that really is supportive or helpful the other things that you're in you know that ability to say no in a way that is about no ahead of time as opposed to no toward the end because you're totally exhausted and the person is going to feel sorry for you so it's okay then I don't have to carry that burden myself and the loss that goes with it so there's a whole lot in it and I just think as black people we this system around us is in some sense burdened with a lot of stuff that we don't know how to talk and support each other around that makes it hard so I hear what you're saying and I just like identify with it a lot and you know wish I was a little crazier sometimes because I embrace that side of things because then you can feel like okay I can just you know act this way do this thing and I won't have to worry about the you know the kind of consequences of it yes the hundred people sharing what they personally experience on the stage I don't think we realize that earlier there was a question that had to do with what institutional forces could do how they could go into the community and make a difference I think they should stay like that and make the differences that are due there. And I have three examples. In terms of touch, there is a plantation very close to touch. That story is hardly ever told. Theater has a role there. It has a big role to add to that. I don't know what I'm saying, but let me come back to that for a second. In 1900, there were annual celebrations of the Black Presence in Boston. It was led, or for a period of time, maybe 20 years. These celebrations were led by a man named King Dick. His name was actually Richard Boston Stahl. And he connects the theater history because during the war that he was in prison in Britain, coming in in 1812, were replacing the soldiers who had been there during the Napoleonic War. And they had entertained themselves by doing Shakespeare. Stahl and Stahl collapsed at the wards at that time, was that again? So there was a Black prison ward. And Stahl and Stahl, who was called King Dick because he was a quite tall. There might have been other people. But anyway, he was tall. And he was an iron fist. And he did the best Shakespeare anybody could ever see. Everybody wanted to come to his performances. That's another place where, in terms of macro inclusion, the macro world can generate stories, the ethical celebration that can start to make everyone feel the sense of identity, the sense of connection that does not hire obtruse dividers into those who are superior and those who are inferior, which is really the backdrop that we're almost doing. Well, I think it's a second one. Thank you. I just want to say those really quickly. So a debt of gratitude for the term microinclusions, but also sharing the space and sharing our voices with the entire room and giving us access. And then, yes, yes, go. Great. Great. And then kind of transferring from, thank you for those thoughts, so transferring from microinclusions to macroinclusions suggestion that folks might be able to stay in their own communities and make a difference that impact the whole city, not just stay in their own communities, but make a difference in their own community. And three examples being there is a plantation near Tufts, also the Boston Common, which had historically the Royal House at Tufts, historically annual celebrations of black presence on the Boston Common led by King Dick. And then the North End is the first settlement of the black community in Boston and the potential of theater having an impact in those places citywide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Oh, so I just wanted to respond to that. I'm so glad you asked this question. Barbara, is that your name? So for multiple reasons. But one is that we've just launched. I'm the director of the Center for Race and Democracy at Tufts. And because I'm a historian of slavery, what we've done this year is we've launched this big project on the public history of slavery and freedom, particularly in Medford, right? Because some of the history is covered with the meeting house here and then out and conquered. There's the new Robbins House Museum. But the Royal House, as you mentioned, is five blocks from the Tufts campus. I take my students there every semester. It was land that became part of Tufts University, came off of the Royal Plantation initially. Related to that, we're kind of trying to connect both the history of slavery at the Royal House with a broader history of African-American communities in that community. So for instance, the West Medford Historic African-American community that was established shortly after the Civil War by former slaves moving northward and also a number of other sites. So I believe so powerfully in the power of place-based learning if you are anywhere where you can take kids out, take them out and unpeel back these layers because there are so many and it's so powerful for people to feel this is my place too. So depending on, we have a question over here and depending on from Matt and depending on the breadth of the responses, this one might be our last question for the evening, understanding that of course there are many layers to peel back and we're only scratching the surface here tonight but hopefully leading to further things, so. Thank you, so there's so much that upsets me about Oscars so white, so much. But I wanna focus on the thing that got me as a holder of a British passport is some of the most offensive stuff that came out of the mouths of white European actors. Charlotte Rampling, Julie Delpy. The fact that it's Joseph Fiennes who's going to play Michael Jackson and Michael King. And it causes me to reflect on is there, I sense that that happens on a broader scale that theater in Europe does that to us in America. I say this is not even being an American and so my question is what role is history and how theater in history is playing effectively a Michael King or Charlotte Rampling telling us what our history is and how and appropriating it and owning it in a way that we're not. And so can we get past a world where theater history is the cradle of history is the cradle of civilization starts with the Greeks who stole it all and stole it all from India and elsewhere in the world. Yes, so a small question. Yeah, that one may end up being our last one. Or maybe not, you've stumped them. So the question is, if I may, the question is about does, do we ever, to what responsibility does theater have in stripping away the cradle of civilization identity that we tell in these stories and how can we give credence to all stories, am I getting that, Matt? Am I getting that, Matt? Right. So how can the American theater transform or take ownership of that in a way that European theater seems to have owned that process. Are you gonna follow me? Anyone? Yeah, Barbara, Barbara. Barbara's gonna be easy. Hold on, Barbara, because I have a feeling that, oh no, I'm taped. Thank you. One of the ways in which, actually the primary way in which American theater and European theater claimed supremacy over theater was to take over and claim the history of the Greek theater. And you had mentioned that. They connected up to the classics. And also beyond the classics, the second phase or the English phase was through Shakespeare. Black theater, when it was trying to establish itself went back to Shakespeare. So you have the African Grove in the 1820s in New York doing Shakespeare. You have King Dick, whom I mentioned earlier doing Shakespeare at Broadmoor Prison in England. And successively as black theater performers tried to establish themselves as privy to the universalism that Greek theater supported, they also worked with Shakespeare. One of the things that's not quite so known but could be an entree and something for all of us to pay great attention to is that the Greeks drew a great deal of their myth from Africa and from Egypt. They were translators. They were not originators. So if we pay more attention to the original role that came out of Africa, we can do a great deal to transform American theater and talk about universality in its actual roots rather than its borrowed roots. Thank you. That there's something to me about remembering that theater as we know it is a gift of colonialism, right? And so as a gift of colonialism, one of the things that it made theater in this country was something for the privileged and not for the people. So figuring out now in 2016, wherever you live, wherever you're working, what are the institutions that are really about serving the people and not serving the privilege? And that's the way to, I think, possibly think about dismantling. Great, thank you. I just wanna take a moment. I know there's a few more hands, but we've got to wrap things up for tonight. Again, understanding that this conversation is just beginning here, and we hope that you will continue to have conversations like this one with us in the future. I'd like to take a moment really quickly to thank Arts Emerson who we are partnered with on an octaroon, but also this event tonight. So I wanna say a thank you to Arts Emerson and Howell Around, which is housed here at Arts Emerson and is a theater commons worldwide and their participation in live streaming this event. I appreciate that. I'd like to thank the Company One Theater staff, the Company One Ed staff, Fran, Peter and Nicky for helping to make this night possible. The Company One Theater teaching artists, one of whom you heard from and saw from today, but we have six others who are out doing Yeoman's work in the city, working with high schoolers in the city. I'd also like to thank the Company One apprentices, Eriq, Kanisha, Edna and Eric. So thank you to the apprentices. In this program, you'll see that we've listed some supporters of our education programs, the MCC Bank of America, the Boston Foundation, the Boston Cultural Council, Social Innovation Forum and Edvestors working with BPS Arts. So thank you to all of the supporters of our education programs. And I'd like to thank the board, Matt, Joan and Linda Nathan for helping to really put this night together for us. And with that, I will turn it over to Linda Nathan. Thank you. Thinking about all of the issues that I think at the end, you all were just beginning to get warmed up about. My job is the money. Now you heard this panel, you heard two of the panelists talk about how important it is. It doesn't matter if you can give $5, $50 or $500. What matters is that you give. And that you give because you care about what Company One is doing. I cannot begin to express what it feels like to me as the founder of Boston Arts Academy, I have one of my former students, I'm gonna cry on this panel. So for all of the students at Boston Arts Academy, Company One has become the professional theater that they can graduate to. If you haven't seen an octaroon, you must come, you must buy out the house. I had the privilege of seeing it in Brooklyn and I can honestly say and I said it to Summer, this production is better than New York. Yeah Boston, we can do better than New York. So there are brochures outside, come to an octaroon, support Company One, be a member, dig deep, we need your donations. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Thank you, have a great night.