 What if I said, I am not what you think you see. I am not an actor human. This floor is forest earth. And to the left of that glaring exit light, a river flows, the width and length and velocity of the Egyptian Nile. You are not what you feel you are. You are a spider the size of an eyelash, or an eagle flying 2,000 feet above our heads, or the mother of the newest, freshest pine cone dangling over that aisle. We are riding on the back of a giant turtle, hurdling through the cosmos in a 4.5 billion year race against the tiniest of the tiniest white Easter rabbits. What if I said, you are the single most important breath in my life. You are the first gear that turns the clock of my world. You are the final drop of dew that breaks down the universal dam of miscommunication. I need you with every blood cell and cranial nerve I possess. And you believed me. Does that change anything? What if I said, oops, actually no. We are sitting in a rented space on top of concrete ground, laid upon a planet fast losing her steam. You are barely a breath in the time space continuing. You're here, you're gone. We'd all move on out of here. You do not make an impact. You do not give or take anything of import in your ridiculous little life on this plastic earth. I am exactly what you think you see. I am indeed an actor-human, paid in cash or credit or so much love to say these lines that a writer-human wrote so that I might speak them in my actor-human resident voice. You are indeed the idiot that decided to pay to be squeezed in that little seat in the dark for the next some hours of your life that you shall never retrieve. You may not take pictures or recordings. You must silence all cell phones, beepers, candy wrappers, alarm clocks, and all alarmist in general. Or we will tweet about you and you're ignorant. And so the entire world during our green room smoke break. And you are exactly what you feel you are. That is the truth. Is that the truth? You may think about this while some people are turning the noisy things off. Go on. The truth is a wobbly thing. We shall wobble through our own set of truths like jello on a freight train. And tonight, add a bump to that journey and put you to my truth. I am not what you think you see. I am the wolf. I am the wolf. Because three translates to God and the Bible, infinity and Asia, and funny and theater. I am the wolf. Puppeteers are Korean boys, the protagonists of the story. Thank you, guys, for coming here today to celebrate the launch of this book Brilliant Jews Playwrights, read by brilliant genius actors. And I thank you guys so much for joining us. I want to start by thanking Anna Feinberg, a member of the Kilroyes, who edited this book and who is also the force of nature who made the whole project possible. She's tireless, brilliant, and she has amazing style. I also want to thank Rachel Viola, that inspired connector who had the idea and forged the connection with TCG. And I want to thank our stalwart comrades at TCG and in particular, Terry Naima, Kathy Sova, and Erin Salvie. Thank you for publishing this book, and thank you for making it so gorgeous. So I just want to tell you a little bit about the Kilroyes before I let you hear more of her. So the Kilroyes were founded in 2013 when a conversation at a housewarming party got a little out of hand. And it was like during that teaching announcement time happening that happened every single year, which is that we'd seen all of these conversations and panels about the need for gender parity on our stages. And then the overwhelming majority of seasons that were announced didn't even come close. Now, we think most people genuinely want to do the right thing, but too many of them have been blind to this gravitational pull that's exerted by unconscious and systemic bias that draws them towards the white dude plays, right? And so when producers were asked about the gaps between their goals and their actions, they didn't really have good answers. They would say one of two things. Either the plays just aren't there, or we just produce the best plays, as if the goals of inclusivity and excellence were somehow in conflict, right? I call that the quality dodge, and it's bullshit. And you can take that from me because I'm a literary manager, which means that for the past decade, I've read several hundred plays every single year. And so I know, and I can tell you with utter certainty that we are living in an extraordinary age of American playwright. We should feel odd and fortunate that we have access to an unprecedented diversity and abundance of excellent new plays every damn year. Take, for example, the works in this book, right? So this contains 97 monologues and scenes by female and trans playwrights. And each one is as brilliant and distinctive as the writer who imagined it. It contains a range of compelling characters and stories that represent the country that we actually live in, right? This book is proof of the vibrancy of American playwriting today, and that we already have right here within hands reach everything that we need to bridge the chasm between the diversity of our stages and the diversity of the cities we start with, right? And so it also means that this book proves one thing more. Any theater that chooses to perpetuate the erasure of plays by female and trans playwrights, they're not suffering from a lack of supply. They're suffering from a failure of competence, you know? God bless them, but do better, okay? Do better, we have to do better. And it's important. It's not just that we have a responsibility to a generation of incredible playwrights whose plays deserve to be experienced and remembered, although that is true. But it's also true that the stories that we tell and the images we present help shape our assumptions about a society about the possibility and potential of each one of us. I think about the election last year. Like many of you, I imagine, I watch in horrified amazement as pundits on news programs actually debated whether the first female nominee of a major party had the stamina to be president, right? I saw her being asked to answer on a debate stage, the question of why she was so unlikable, right? I saw her ambition discussed with grave concern, as though it was a character flaw, instead of the kind of necessary precondition for running for president, right? And I wanna say that as a field, that was partially our fault. We've artificially limited the range of voices and stories on our stages. This repeated erasure constrains our ability to imagine the rest of humanity, and it strengthens and perpetuates unconscious biases. The novelist, Chimamanda Ingozi Adichie, warns us of that though. She talks about the danger of a single story. She says, the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they're untrue, but they're incomplete, right? They make one story become the only story. When our seasons focuses the world on the same people who have always been center stage, we are complicit in the larger cultural message that those people are more important, more interesting, and more deserving of attention. We contribute to these unconscious stereotypes that we've all inherited, which limit the range of possibilities that others can see of us, and most painfully can also constrain our ability to imagine our own futures. It's time we told more stories about more of us. It's time our stages showed all of us, as we actually are, and all of our glorious complicated humanity. Do you want to say this book? It's not just a book, it's also a bomb, right? This book blasts through stereotypes. This book shatters assumptions that limit our potential. This book explodes old, stubborn lies about the field of talent in this country and whose stories deserve to be heard. But you're about to see that for yourself. So I want to give the stage over to one of our playwrights. Where is the fast horse? This is awesome. Yes, thank you for showing up. So first things first, I'm a big cry baby, if you don't know that yet, right? So there's like a 90% chance I'm gonna cry at some point. So if you can't handle a woman crying, you need to leave the room now. Because that's what I'm gonna do, because that's what I do. So first I'm supposed to say something about, brief remarks, about being on the Kilroy's list. So this particular play was on the very first Kilroy's list, and so like, I get this email out of nowhere, and no one knew what was happening. And then of course I'm like, boy, Kelly, Sarah, yeah, whatever, yeah, whatever. I'm in, I'm in. They ask, I'm in, I'm in, I can't, I'll say, you should. So no clue what was gonna be happening. That list was, there's many things, but it was one of the big things that's changed my life, that first list, it really did. The putting down on website, and eventually paper, something tangible that people could hold onto and say, yes, here they are. I can't tell you how many people wrote to me from lit departments, from as artistic associates, and said, oh my God, I can actually hand them a list. This is life changing, and for me it was life changing. This play that was on that list, what would Crazy Horse do? Someone called it The Best Known Unproduced Play in America, because it was just, it got it read everywhere, it's taught in like 30 universities now, which is before it was ever produced. What, that's amazing, right? So our young people are starting at their university from this list, and that's when our teachers are teaching, and so they're coming, this is their frame of reference going into the field, and so they're getting in the field going, what the hell is going on here, right? So that's amazing, what an incredible thing the Kill Moys have done, even if that was it, but that wasn't it. This list got me, got this play read through, Lisa, can we help you in those guys? What's the name of their project? Women's Project. Women's Project, thank you. In New York, there's an amazing reading of Liesl Tommy, so I got to do, I mean, who doesn't want to do a reading of Liesl Tommy? Gosh, these amazing things happen, and now the play has just finished its first world premiere production at Kansas City Rep, and they did an amazing job on it, and I'm saying all this because something also, there was a lot of, I was on the first list, so we still have some baggage. There was a lot of stuff about like, well, it wasn't done perfectly, it wasn't properly invented, it was too, I read a whole thing about how, well, there's only one person without a fancy MFA, I'm like, oh wait, that's me. And how like, it's impossible, I'm like, oh, I'm right here, I was a bit homeless, it's working, and so I think there was some blowback, and they've been amazing at, like, it worked for me anyway, without my MFA, I don't even have an undergrad, I don't know if it's any of that business. It worked amazingly for me and changed my life, and I want that to be very clear that even with a first time grass roots, absolutely flawed system, it still had career and field-wide impact, and I say that so that you all know, just do it, do it, get together, and have a party, you've been too much, and commit to really stupid things, yeah, and then do them, and do it wrong, and be flawed, and make mistakes, because it's gonna change lives, and it's gonna change that field. And so that's why I gave you that whole long story, to get to that, now, next, read your monologue. So here's the tough thing, I've got to read, so you're lucky, I've got a super short monologue, because so my play is about the clan members, the modern day clan, and I told everybody at Kensea Rep, I need a t-shirt that said, I told you so, because I wrote this play five years ago, yeah, about this particular branch of the clan, which is now, here they are, influencing elections, I spent a year and a half talking to them about what their plans were, I wrote them down, y'all didn't listen, it was in the play, and here they are, it's all come to fruition, so it was hard to find a monologue that didn't make me sound like a raging lunatic, so this is like a dark dramedy in one act, it's about two twin siblings, Jurian and Calvin, who are the last of their tribe, and facing extinction, the last two members of their tribe, and then after their grandfather passes, they have, they're facing their inevitability of being gone, because they're siblings, so there's no more to be made. Then, so suddenly, coming in, is the new KKK, the new Ku Klux Klan, and they have realized that racial preservation is something that both sides can get behind, something we're all fighting together, that these two people, who are facing racial extinction, are actually part of the new gentler clan, which is all about pride, not hate, they're using their own language. We're about cultural pride, we're about just celebrating yourself and being who you are, so that's all crazy, a lot of craziness. We get to the end of the play here, after being mistakenly arrested, Calvin, one of the twins, realizes some things about their lives and what they've been fighting for, as two people are so invisible on this earth, as most Native Americans are. Oh, I'm gonna do the actor thing. Change to actor mode. Tonight, when the federal agents were taking us out of the clinic, all I could think of was you and your stupid meme. So I yell, this is what crazy horse would do, and for the first time in my life, I fight. The Indians were all cheering, and I felt fucking great as they wrestled me into the car. And then this huge bed looks me straight in the eye and says, what the fuck is crazy horse? It was like he grabbed my heart with his fist. Then the guy leans in and says, is crazy horse the ringleader? I say he is the greatest Lakota war chief in history. He defeated Custer. They're carving the world's largest monument in his honor. He says, too bad, you could have cut yourself a deal. I rode alone in the back of that car and shit got simple. Everything in my life has been focused on meaning something to the world, and I thought you, sister, screwed it up by going crazy. But in that car, I realized we have been fighting all of our lives against an enemy that doesn't even know we exist. We've already been mowed down and forgotten for mulch. We lost before we were even born. So I swore, if I ever got back to you, I'm never gonna let you go again. We're gonna do it tonight on our terms, together or ever, one to two. My name's Eugenie Chan, and I am a playwright that has also, like Marissa, been embraced and gifted by the Kilroy's on a couple of their earlier lists. And I want to tell you that the journey of being a playwright and a person is, as you all know as theater artists, totally weird and unpredictable and a huge adventure with twists and turns and dips and dives and rises and all that kind of stuff. And to be embraced by the Kilroy's, a group of women writers and theater artists who came together to promote other women theater artists. And I mean other, the generosity is huge and the grassroots part of it is huge and the impact. So I can't underscore that because the Kilroy's are busy theater artists with 100 million jobs in addition to their lives as artists. And they're the real thing. Real, they are selfless and they're also fun to work with. Totally fun, like cake drops and everything like that. Parity rates, they are great. So it's a gift and such an honor to be part of this collection. And again, the gift is even beyond the ones that I receive as a single playwright. But I can take that book and I can learn and I can find those plays on the new plays game exchange and learn from that as an art. It's great, you go in there and it's like all this, this wealth of inspiring writing and artistic endeavor. And I can also take that as a resource in this book, into my classes, into my classrooms for all high school students, university students, adult artists and people who just love the theater or want to know more. So really, it's a gift that keeps giving and I'm very, I'm just so grateful and honored. And when you feel that generosity, it's amazing. That's all I can say. So I'm about to read an excerpt from a play of mine, Madam Ho, and the impact of the Kilroy's being included on their list is immense because one of the things that Madam Ho is the beginning of a trilogy of a look at 150 years of Chinese American history on the West Coast, which I believe is very particular, but I also believe it's a window into the social history of the West. And this particular family is actually my family. It's really personal, finally as I get older, okay, now the time has drilled down and don't avoid things. And because we were here since the gold rush and we came here by through poverty and through unknown means too. And part of the unknown part of that is that it is a history buried and suppressed in shame because we were sex traffickers. We were the people who started as prostitutes and gamblers and then we continued that by being brothel madams, by being pimps, by being the people who brought over the women who were kidnapped and enslaved from China. So you're talking about a system of self exploitation that is also a story of survival. And because of that, I get to be here with you today. There's no way escaping that fact. There is nothing, that's the reason why I'm here. So being on the Kilroy's is great because as I started to look into this family history, which I was always told because I'm sort of the youngest of my generation, of this multi-six generation family now, now I'm fifth, now they're like smaller ones. I remember my older cousins being told in no uncertain terms, don't you ever, ever ask me or talk about this with your grandmother. You'll be just like, hmm, hmm, you'll be basically excommunicated. And we have a big thriving extended family. Family's very important, which is the reason why I also live close to home in San Francisco. It's very big. I tried to leave, I tried to leave, never worked. I lived in New York and I was like, no, I always came back. So, just, okay, I like them. They're crazy, they're crazy, okay. So, when I started to delve in the recent years, I started to have a home maybe a long time ago, five years ago, or even the ideation of I need to do this to 10, no, 2010 or 11. And I started to ask my uncles with trepidation, and it's very interesting, by then they were their 80s, late 80s, and they said, because I remember their voices. I remember their thundering voices. You never say that to my cousins. I mean, it was threatening. And I just knew, well, everyone's getting older and to a one, they apologize. It's a very patriarchal family. It's weirdly patriarchal, given that we're so many generations in here. People marched in the free speech movement in Berkeley and still oddly patriarchal, and in a way that's hurtful to the family. My uncle's 201 apologized and said, you know, we're really so sorry that we were so ashamed of this, because all the people who really know are all gone, but I'll tell you what I know, okay. And they knew, so very little, because they were kids, so I'm piecing together this history. It's all fragmented, you know, here's states from outsiders, and they're all in their 90s. And so through the Kilroy's, this play's got a lot, a lot, a lot of attention. A lot of people asking, it's being taught. And all the Kilroy's is becoming, I understand from some professors who would have written, it's becoming a canon, like reteaching all of them. We're going on the replay exchange website, teaching all of them. That's the backbone of our class, which is wonderful in the Cal State LA, I think. So, and then it became clear to me that, you know, it's great that it's getting attention, but I think this play needs to be done this year, because these people who have contributed so much of their heart and their vulnerability and the fact that they're saying, okay, do it, Nifu, because no one in my family calls me Nifu, do it. Just we know you're a playwright. We know eventually it'll get up on the stage, okay, go, do it. And so I thought, okay, gotta do it, gotta do it. All right, gotta self-produce, okay? And gotta self-produce so that it goes up this year because we're talking about people who are almost 100 years old. So that's the fight, just need to do it in San Francisco. And so I started writing grants and doing individual appeals and stuff. And I have to say, the support, I mean, we're still doing that, right, fundraising, but the support has been remarkable and gratifying and it's helped so much to be part to say, this play has been honored by being embraced in this collection of women's dramatic literature because people have told me that. Oh, okay, we see that, okay. And because of that, it also, just how you assemble by putting yourselves in the driver's seat, that is a lesson to someone like me, who's like, okay, wait, I'm a playwright. I too can be in the driver's seat and I need to be. I need to learn the skill. You've done it, right? So I can do it with the artists and people have assembled, the community grounds well. So that is a valuable lesson in and of itself. What you can do as an artist by organizing through your passion and your vision with other artists. And that is a very powerful source. Don't forget your power as an artist. So part of the reason we get to open in October is by being part of this collection of women writers and we get to open in San Francisco at an independent producing house. My company is Van Ake, which is dedicated to the untold stories of the Chinese and the American West because I'm a Westerner. We're banding together with another playwrights collective that I'm part of that six new plays or Bay Area six playwrights. My company and this other member company, we are inspired by 13P. We're co-producing this. So we have an independent theater, exit theater. And then we're going to take this to Chinatown for free performances. During the day when people can actually come see it because they've said things like, why don't you do things at places we can go to and at times that we can go to because a lot of us, we've got multiple jobs, we've got families, we live far away or even as we work here because that's where we can approach. Oh, so sorry. Okay, I'm gonna zip up. I don't think you're saying that. No, no, no. I gotta zip up. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. No. We're sufficed to say free performances in Chinatown at Cameron House, which is a social service agency founded during the gold rush to rescue Chinese slaves. I'm sure my family and them, but it hits. So without further ado, what kind of show are you hoping? October. Okay. So play Madame Ho inspired by the life of my great and my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, both brothel madams. And this is a story. Madame Ho is a woman, a madam who runs a brothel in the Barbary Coast Chinatown like my forebears. And the play tells a story about Ho that's supposed to be for humor. It's okay, even though it's my family, that's why I did it. We are not Ho's, we are Chan's and Lee's. Okay? But she's a madam who tries to raise her daughter Daisy right with the struggles of the brothel. It's women and all the exclusion laws going around the time. So her daughter Daisy's hormones are exploding as she lies awake at night and listening to the sounds of bed squeaking. Because people, you live where you work. The men and women crying and sighing and making other unexpected sounds of joy and sorrow. So here is a, this is a couple that she overhears a laborer tired after a long day's work who admires the bound feet of Rose, his favorite woman, his favorite sex worker. Both the laborer and Rose are completely dressed laborer. Like little pieces of jade, precious, precious. Curve of your foot, very pretty. So many crinkles and folds. You smell like fermented rice. The rice I slurred the day my son was born. He must be three now. Or seven. Or eight. Or could he be 13? He must be tilling the fields. Perhaps he is riding the water buffalo, naughty boy. I must have the scholar write a letter. Send it back home. Scold him. I must tell his mother, keep a careful eye on him. Make sure he keeps the pig well. He must not slack. He must be a good son. He must be. His mother will see to that. His mother's feet are cracked, dry. I will send her extra money for ointment. His mother's left foot is ridged with scars running north to south. She stepped on the side. I had to carry her on my back. We plastered the wound with fresh mud and herbs. Clumsy woman. I did not even know she had hurt herself. She kept threshing. The harvest is in, she cried, such joy. Sometimes her feet are bitten by leeches. She lets me pull them off. My, how thick and hard her feet are. How happy I am here. I am to be here in makeup. Happy without her disgusting feet. Happy to rest my tired head on your golden, on your lovely golden lilies. I am indeed a lucky man. He rests his head on her feet and weeps. She strokes his hair silently. Thanks. Christina Anderson, the ashes under Gate City. Simone the believer, this is the description. Simone the believer, an online guru attempts to break away from the internet and builds a community in Gate City, Oregon. During emancipation, the city pushed out its black residents. And Simone wants to take back the city. Simone slowly acquires a series of local black residents who fall under her leadership. In this monologue, Simone posts a YouTube video calling for members to join Gate City. My people, my people. Good morning, good evening, good night, good times. I send you love and blessings. This is yours truly. Simone the believer, in you, in me, in us, in we, as one. I know it's been a minute since I uploaded the video. I've seen the posts on my wall, my timeline, all up in my email. Y'all trying to know where I'm at. And everyone will know soon enough. But first, I want to talk about somebody I recently met. I just met a brother named Clay. He's been watching my videos, been down with my teachings for years, all Moses at the beginning. And earlier today, for the first time, he and I stood on common ground, greeted each other face to face, eye to eye. And it was glorious. Clay recently packed up his life and moved to Gate City, Oregon. And he told me, fate guided his journey. Now you know how Paris is the city of lights. Well, I think of Gate City as the city of disregard. Almost 200 years ago, the residents of this city made a decision that affects this area to this day. Almost 200 years ago, the black population in this city was erased. Googling is crazy. So fast forward. Today in this moment, and you will find my new friend, Clay, a brother who decided to claim a space in this city of disregard. After a lifetime of being pushed out of neighborhoods he once considered a haven, Clay decided to pick up his life and settle in Gate City, Oregon. Fate guided my journey as well. Like Clay, I have settled in Gate City. And I will invite a few chosen ones to join me. Together, we will create a community of like-minded folks to honor the ancestors erased from this city and revitalize the legacy that exists today. Let me ask you, have you claimed your space? Are you sure it's yours? Clay grew up feeling displaced. Do you hold a similar feeling in your spirit? I have a community. You could be the perfect fit. Make a video, 60 seconds, tell me who you are, who you want to be, and what skills you bring to the table. There will be a 48-hour submission window. Be honest, determined, and clear. Y'all ain't half-assing it in my house, OK? I'll contact the chosen ones directly, all right? Be love, be light, believe. I'm out. Woo! My name is Reggie White. Oh, you guys don't have programs, but it says James Wallace. James Williams, he's not here. But I will be reading from Dominique Morissot as the skeleton crew. Yeah, no, right? So this play is about the closing of the last export and stamping plant in Detroit and a makeshift family of blue-collar workers that help each other through the inevitable news. Reggie, ha, ha, ha. Is a foreman who was once on the blue-collar side. He is now on the ropes, laying off people and struggling to help his coworkers. Here, he tells Faye, a coworker, that he finally snapped under the pressure and attacked his supervisor after they tried to force him to push her Faye into early retirement. It was a way he said it that really made me, um, I just, I couldn't listen to him talking like that. I couldn't let him. He spoke about you like he wasn't even, like, like he wasn't Faye. Like you had no name or no, no history or dare wait. He said just like that, like he wasn't even, couldn't let him not. I felt it in my chest, like, like dynamite bursting inside of me. I attacked him, Faye. I fucking, I attacked him. I attacked my supervisor. I'm done. I just, I just, I just went and I'm like, you know, just for a sec, like, like a shock wave went through me. Like I lunged at him, like I was in a pound into the fucking ground. Like, like I was gonna grab him by the collar and crush that shit in my hands. I looked at him in his eyes, like seeing through that emptiness, that lack of feeling, that whatever you call it, that makes you stop seeing yourself in somebody else and not just X on him, like nigga. Yeah, I wish you would say some shit like that again. I won't fucking kill you, except by the same words. Then that shock wave left me real fast. I ain't, I ain't touching at all. I just, you know, I got a little swole on me for a sec. But I came close enough. I would have been, he know it too. And I know it too. I see him looking at my eyes, like, like I'm the devil. I can smell his fear. Like if he even breathes louder than a sigh, I just might kill him dead. And I might have, Faye, I actually just might have. I just stand here and froze. Not knowing if I really reached him at all or if it was all in my mind. But I see him looking at me stiff, like, like I scared the shit out of him. Like he was under attack, like, like I'm that nigga. It's nothing but silence between those four seconds. And then I just say, no deal. And I walk out. I'm Reggie, nice to meet you all. And this is a monologue from G.A. Park Spearless. So, I know, right? I was doing some good shit. So after some really dark times, D had a vision that led him to take a self-actualization course, lose 30 pounds and get into a prestigious college. Now that he is at the school dance with the girl of his dreams, now he's at the school dance and the girl of his dreams and her twin sister. I once looked at Cashew and it sent me to the hospital for three days. I just licked it, you know, like, I didn't even put the whole thing in my mouth. And my face got all puffy, like. Last week I picked up a walnut with both of my pinkies just to see what would happen. And I didn't die, but my hands puffed up and I still can't bend my pinky knuckles. My counselor says that's why no matter how much weight I lose, I'm still fat in my head. I mean, why I think I'm fat in my head because there's some sort of unconscious association going on with food and death. And also maybe that's why I use food to address anxiety because there's this unconscious association with food and death and I've gotten unconscious death wish. I'm talking a lot. I talk a lot. My mom says that this isn't interesting for other people. It makes them think I'm fragile. And I'm not fragile or maybe I was fragile, but now I have no fear. I don't. I do. And this is a selection from Fernanda Capo, King Liz. Liz Rico, 40s or 50s. Black or Latina, a successful sports agent is attempting to convince Freddie Luna, a potential client, to sign with her. Liz is certain that Freddie could be a star, basketball player, a high earner. Liz is at the top of her game here. She knows how to pander to her potential clients' egos and when to remind them that she's the only one who can take them where they wanna go. She's also asking Freddie for something in return. It's all part of the game. Let me tell you a little something about who I am. My mom died of cancer when I was three because my father couldn't afford her treatment. So when I got a full scholarship to Yale, my goal was to grow up to be someone who could pay to kill cancer. Now, I've got a penthouse on the upper west side, overlooking Central Park. My neighbors are Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. And I got a house in the Hamptons' next door to Commissioner Adam Silver. Within the last three years, my current client, Roster, has collectively made over 900 million dollars. I am the only woman to have been on the Forbes Most Powerful Sports Agent List three times and on Time Magazine's Most Influential List twice. Nobody can stop me. No one, not even God. What I can offer you as an agent isn't anything you can buy. It's my marrow. It's the tenacity that led me to this table. I will fight for you to be successful the way I fought for myself to make it in this world that doesn't want people like us to succeed. I make that promise to you in exchange for a commitment. I need you to promise me that you will stay out of trouble. I'm my tiptoes. I'm Bobby Steinbeck. And I'm reading from Mona Mansour's play Unseen. Conflict photographer Mia wakes up in the Istanbul apartment of Derya, her on-again, off-again girlfriend, after being found unconscious at the scene of a massacre she was photographing. Mia can't even remember being there, but she wired photos of the site hours before she was found. The two women resume their volatile push-pull when Mia's well-meaning Californian mother arrives in Istanbul from the US trying to help unravel what happened to her daughter. Here Jane, white, early 60s, or mid-70s, finds herself alone with Derya, Turkish, early 30s, in an attempt to try to understand her daughter and calm herself down. Jane remembers a story from Mia's childhood. There was always a part of her that was drawn to fragile things or had a capacity for looking at them. I don't know, maybe it seems to you we couldn't have had anything terrible to look at in our neck of the woods, where Mia grew up. But I mean, how do you measure these things? People's suffering, is it measurable? Is it just about what each of us perceives to be suffering? I think about those things. We had a dog when Mia was about seven or so and he was a rescue and crippled or something from the start. And we did everything. The German shepherds, they have this thing, it's well, part of their breeding. It's resulted in this hip thing. So we got him an operation and this animal physical therapy, they have that. And even a heating pad for him every morning. So he could walk, but it was always just a funny walk. And people would see him and assume we were horrible people. And he was in pain and why do we just put him to sleep? They'd say that. And Mia was always just, well, she didn't care what anyone said. She said one time, and she had to have been no more than 10, she said to me after one of those people had offered their opinion again, she said, it's hard for them to look at him. Because they're afraid for themselves. I mean, who is this kid? Can you believe she said that? I can't believe she said that. I always supported her doing this work because I thought she could bear the cost of witnessing and someone has to witness, you know? I'm sorry, but I think I'm just a little exhausted. This is from Men on Boats by Jack the Black House. Men on Boats charts John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition sanctioned by the US government to chart the Colorado River and its cannons. An ensemble cast of 10 rides a raging river in its quest to map the last blank space on the American map. In this monologue, John Wesley Powell, the one armed leader of the expedition, was done, a fellow crew member in his place after a disastrous run on the run. Well, for sport, some of you are here for skill and some of you are here because you get a kick out of killing bears and some of you are here because you got your ass out of the army on a good note and some of you are here because you have nowhere else to go. You know why I'm here? I'm here because my friend, the fucking president of the United Stullage of the Air and Lands of this nation, I am here because I was given a job and in case you didn't know, it's hard for gifts to get jobs around these parts so I run more rivers than any of all of you put together. I did the fucking Mississippi up and down I was 17 years old and I've done more tributaries than you can name on both if you are sorry hands. If you wanna go over what we could have done to save the no name and be my guest, but instead of that, I'm going to focus on the marvelous forethought we put into dipping up most of our supplies between each boat and I'm going to thank God that none of us perish today and that none of us broke any crucial bones and of this expedition if we focus on anything other than wins, so if you don't wanna go down to the wreckage tomorrow, then I'm sure I can rely on one of your fellow crew members to be a good sport. You got your fucking clip done, rabbit dude. Thank you, Jackson, he's passed away. You always brand this sort of things in. I just wanna also just really shout out to my cohort of Fox Foundation resident actors, Bijan, Marissa, Reggie, Bobby, and James Williams who's not here, it's a blessing, that's all I'm gonna say, but here we go, Tanya Barfield, right halfway. Erica and Vicki's relationship spans a lifetime of love, marriage, parenthood, and heartache. As the play shuttles back and forth in time, we see various moments from their lives. This speech refers to an event early on in their relationship before the play begins in which Vicki broke up with Erica. At the time, Vicki told Erica that she loved her and Erica offhandedly responded that love fades. Note, Erica has an intense fear of heights. I don't want it to fade, so I don't wanna overuse the words. Because someday maybe we'll wanna have kids. I mean, I want to, and I think you do too. We're dating, we're dating past tense. But you can just tell that we might be one of those couples, major, not minor. And don't you think, don't you think that we're gonna, we might, I think we might. Watch our kids get married. We might make chicken soup for each other in the rain. Don't you think we're major, not minor? When you smell the coffee brewing in the morning, you'll think of me because I'll be the one making the coffee. And when you close your eyes at night, you'll think of me because I'll be the tiptoes that you don't hear tiptoeing to bed. And I'll be the one whose lips will bring you kisses and the smell of oranges in January. I don't want it to fade. I'd give you more than a life if I could. And I'm not supposed to say that because how long, how long have we been dating? Not that long. Even though I just know. You might say you're young, we're both young. And you don't know what's a lifetime. But I'd give you days and nights, the sun, moon and clouds. If I could on a stream, you could fly them like a kite. They'd fly you. That's what in those three words, you say I was afraid to say. That's what I wanted to say. Take me. You wanna go hand-gliding or sky-diving or parasailing or whatever. Take me to all those places you wanna go. Thank you. I'm not a jurist, you just feel good. Thank you all for joining us and staying a little late there. If you feel like you like one of the books, that all these models came from, I believe they're from sales type. Yeah, right and all to the right. To the right and enough to stick around and sign them if you want. So thank you. Thank you.