 dialogue, coalition building with other networks. For those who are just joining us online on HowlRound, we're here at the Mina Theater Makers Conference 2023. I'm Kate Morhini, I use she her pronouns. I'm here as a member of the Monatma board and also in my role as artistic producer at Northeater in New York, a company that develops, supports and produces the work of artists by Mina descent. I'd like to just start us off with a with a land acknowledgement. I'd like to acknowledge the people of the land on which we're gathered today, the multiple Ohlone tribes. Despite the atrocities of colonization and genocide, native communities persist today and are active in preserving and celebrating their culture. And I want to name that a land acknowledgement for me comes with a larger responsibility and accountability to the legacies of colonialism and white supremacy and a larger commitment to working to active actively dismantle colonialist and white supremacist structures. I'd also like to acknowledge as many have already today the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the genocide currently occurring in Gaza. I want to express unwavering support for the Palestinian people's right to sovereignty, freedom and dignity and support for the right sovereignty, freedom and dignity of indigenous people everywhere. You can read more on Monatma's website of our official statement of our full statement, but just wanted to share that before we before we begin today. And thank you so much to our guests in in person and online for joining us today. I think this as has been mentioned earlier in the conference, the creation of Monatma was really greatly influenced and supported by other theater networks and theater movements, particularly by talk theater networks. And so really excited for this conversation today. To kick us off with an introduction, it is my honor to introduce Emilia Cachapero from Theater Communications Group, who has really been so instrumental in bringing our communities together from the very beginning. I'm really grateful to have you with us to introduce this here. I'm actually going to stand if that's all right with y'all. Can I grab the music stand? I want to stop. And then once afterwards we'll give everyone a chance. How y'all doing? It was a juicy lunch, nutritious lunch, right? In terms of food, conversation, intellectual, whatever the energy when I walked into the room was like buzzing, so good on you. I'm Emilia Cachapero. She, her Shah, Shah is actually the Filipino all gender pronoun. I identify as Asian American for political purposes, although Filipinos are actually racially not Asian or Mongolian. So you can look it up. That's another conversation. I'm with TCG Theater Communications Group and I'm the director of grant-making programs. I actually have the great job of giving away other people's money. And we are so privileged, actually, in honor to be able to support Manatma and this particular convening. So thank you, Kate, actually, and the producing team for inviting me into this panel and actually asking me to share maybe what's been in my head as I've been here with you over this last day or so in years, actually years. And being here is resonating for me in so many ways on so many levels. I was born here in San Francisco actually to Filipino immigrants. My father came to San Francisco in 1931. Some things are different, you know, and many things are the same. His immigration journey was during a different moment in time politically, economically, and culturally. But many challenges and uncertainties remain the same for global majority immigrants who arrived in the 70s, the 80s, and forward. But the immigrant story is, you know, another story. So I went to high school here in San Francisco at Lowell before Asian Americans actually were the student majority and a lot of the about race within, you know, that school. Another story, totally. November 6, 1968 was a life-changing date for me and affected how I see the world, my ethos, right? The night before on November 5, my cousin called me and she told me that there was something important happening on the campus and I should be there. For those of you who know San Francisco, Lowell is really just a five-minute jock from state, right? It's a hop away, right? So I was a high school student then. I ditched classes after a homeroom, ran across parking lots, and I got to campus just in time as the police on horseback were being joined by police coming out of vans because it was a student strike. My cousin was there with others from PACE, the Philippine American Collegiate endeavor, and all were shouting, on strike, on strike, shut it down, right? Really loud. And I remember running with a group of black Chicano native folks towards the student center, down the center of campus, and there's these police on horseback, horseback, right? Crazy. And actually to connect the dots, Evan made me think about this, between then and now, actually Nataki Garrett's father, Dr. Jimmy Garrett, was then a student leader who organized several black student groups across the campus to become the black student union. And the black student union became the leaders of the strike who partnered with the Third World Liberation Front, composed of PACE Chicano students in Marasa, students in the Native American Students' Union, which became AIM or became part of the American Indian movement, and many, many others. This was the longest student strike in U.S. history lasting from November 6, 1968 to March 20, 1969, and it changed academic institutions forever. When the strike ended, the administration, in response to student demands, established a College of Ethnic Studies, the first in the U.S., the first in the world in that kind of way. The administration also agreed to accept all students of color for the fall semester of 1969. I graduated high school early and went to state because I wanted to be there in that place with that membership. Sacred ground, actually, in its own way, right? Many people have no idea of the sacrifice those activists made. I actually could only be there that day because I had to go back to high school because of my parents, but other folks there, you know? People did time and that record, that police arrest record, is with them to this day forever. Relationships were stressed to the point of breaking. Word would come back to members of the Third World Liberation Front and the Black Student Union from the police saying, we have bullets with your name on it. You know, so it's real. It's real. In yesterday's town hall, folks were talking about power, taking power and empowerment, and this is something I think about a lot. It's worth getting actually a little bit granular for a minute, maybe about what power means and how we can use it. There are lots of definitions of power and maybe let's consider two. One, power equals access to resources and decision making. Also, power, the ability to define influence, change, or shape reality. And a question central to racial equity and social justice movements is, what power do I, do we, have to create change? Big questions. And since the 70s, activists and organizers have referenced four types of power. I have to give a shout out to PSA, the People's Institute of Survival and Beyond, and Malcolm Shanks, who is a great mind and brilliant. So power over, power over is how power is most commonly understood, how we see it, right? This type of power is built on force, coercion, domination, control, and it motivates largely through fear. It's generally concentrated in a single person or a limited number of people. And it's built on the belief that power is a finite resource that can be held by individuals and that some people have power and some people do not. It may rule with weapons that are physical or by controlling the resources we need to live our lives, money, food, medical care, or by controlling more subtle resources, information, approval, love, and in our field, critics and reviews. So power over, power to is built on the unique potential of every person to shape their life and world through the bodies, abilities, and imagination. It is the power to make a difference, to create something new, to achieve goals. It generally needs to be given by another person or a structure. So a lot of times organizations, our theaters, will often speak about, oh, we're empowering our staff to make change, but they have power over to actually negate those changes. So it's a really limited kind of power. Power with, it's the shared power that grows out of collaboration and relationships. Power with can help to build bridges between groups, so families, organizations, social change movements, or across differences, gender, culture, class. Rather than domination and control, power with leads to collective action and the ability to act together. It's contagious. I just talked about the student strike a second ago, right, trying to connect the dots here. Think about the 2020 protests and uprisings and how that was contagious. And it was global. It was not only here in this country. Think about other things, you know, globally, the people power movement in the Philippines that really took on the Marcos. That's a whole other story. That's another story. Took on that regime, right, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, right? Iran was rocked by the biggest protests in years following the death of Masa Amini, right? A huge, huge political movement. Power with needs open communication and the flow of information between people and groups. This is the only power that can achieve transformation, societal transformation. Power within. Power within is the only power that can't be eliminated or destroyed by power over. Power within involves people having an individual sense of their own capacity and self-worth. Power within allows people to recognize and activate power to and power with, right? It connects all those dots and believe that they can make a difference by creating conditions where power can be shared. Time has shown that power with and power within are really the only ways to affect deep societal change. As an example of power with and power within in action, think about networks as a net that works, right? Networks which center mission over organizational structure. Trust, not control. Promotion of the community, not self. Think of constellations, not stars, right? The network as a whole is the driver and the force of change and success is collective. It's not individual. Networks support individuals to step outside themselves and their own organizational imperative and explore broader, more systemic change. Think of networks as global majority theater makers, global theater majority makers, as constellations, right? Think of these networks of color, these folks as constellations. Theaters of color possess an abundance of cultural capital that manifests in deep and long lasting community connections and solutions to the existential challenges that many PWI are grappling with, right? What's not being covered in the recent press media articles about the demise of theater is that so many theaters of color are in fact thriving, expanding their physical footprint with capital expansion, making great strides in advocacy efforts on the forefront of developing exciting programming that speaks to where we are now. But that's another story. Actually, it's a series of six stories that are six articles that are going to be coming out in TCG's American Theater Magazine beginning October 31st and it's focusing on theaters of color in TCG's Thrive program. I had to put a pitch there. But really, the articles are great. I actually was just reading the first draft of them earlier. I've had the privilege of witnessing and supporting theaters of color through the years from an historic gathering of Black, Latina, and AAPI theaters in 2003 at the White Oak Plantation in Florida, which led to the creation of Kata, the consortium of Asian American theaters and artists and other coalition building. The 2018 gathering of theaters of color in St. Louis where Black, Latina, AAPI, Indigenous, and Mina theater makers protested a horrifically racist and problematic production with red face, yellow face, and many other forms of harm at Muni. And Muni is the oldest and largest outdoor music theater venue in the U.S. So our folks led that protest and the walkout. It was an amazing time to be there. I've also had the great privilege to attend the many gatherings of Swana and Mina folks over the years and it's my privilege to stay in community with you all. World building and world changing requires collaboration. And our practice as theater makers is world building. What networks of color are doing collectively is embracing a culturally abundant crew of people to imagine together in order to avoid siloed outcomes. To provide a dimensionality that you would not get with groups made of the same people. The stakes are different for us world majority people, right? The stakes are very high. Working with and within is a cultural, political, and economic imperative. Working with and within can be the only path forward. Let's introduce themselves. I'm actually going to combine our first two questions because I know Leslie has to leave us in a bit. So we'll start there. I'd like to have everybody begin by introducing their names, pronouns, locations, any organizations you're with, and also introducing the network, cultural movement, or theater you're a part of. What's its mission? Enroll in the community. And if you can share for you what are the biggest need or needs facing your communities right now. And recognizing that, you know, none of our communities are monolith and so, you know, none of us can speak for everyone. But just in terms of what you see as a need in your community. And I'd love to start with Leslie before she has to leave us. Oh, no, we're having an audio issue, I think. Leslie, is your mic on? I hear it very soft. Very faintly. You have very, very faintly. Do you want me to join Zoom from my phone? Yeah, in the meantime, let's just wait one more moment. I'm getting thumbs up Okay, in the meantime, let's turn to Meredith. I'm Meredith Suttles. She, her, her pronouns. I represent Black Theater Commons, which is a network of folks who represent the African diaspora, theater makers, theaters, and institutions, like, see theaters. And, you know, the kind of... Can someone speak on the Zoom? Hello? Do you mind if we just leave in seven minutes? Okay, back, back to you, Leslie. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for your grace. And what an honor and pleasure to be here with this convening, in particular, with these esteemed guests as well, especially during this time of such violence in our world, specifically around the Old Middle East. So, and I want to share openly that I, I support them in solidarity. I appreciated your statement that you put out a golden thread. That was important work. And thank you, thank you. Caught to stand in solidarity with you. I'm humbly, I have been on the board and now serve as the board president since just pre-COVID with the Consortium of Asian American Theater and Artists. And I'm grateful to say that we're rebuilding our staff, which has been huge, a huge development. And, and that includes a really wonderful, a couple of additions. Kayla, Kim, Vodapak, and Jay Ching. So we're happy to welcome them to our staff and our community at Caught to. Caught to's mission. We envision a strong, sustainable Asian American Pacific Islander that includes our native communities, a theater community that is integral to the presence of our national culture. And in the words of the mission statement, it's, it should be evocative of our past, declarative of our present, and innovative towards our future. And I can share that as we plan for the next conference festival in Hawaii, since pre-COVID and now this coming May 24, it has sent us on some very deep conversations and structural changes around our decolonization and support of Kanaka Maole and Pacific Islanders in the Hawaii Archipelago. And when we talk about what we're facing, we're facing devastation in the Hawaii Archipelago, but how that resonates out to all of our communities. And to your point, Amelia, how are we really building this conference festival for continued coalition and solidarity building with all of you, but within our, the word diaspora seems strange now, but within all of our communities, so that in the words of Nolani Ahia from Maui, how she talks about it's the activist coalition solidarity building that has really been the safety net to support those early efforts regarding the devastation in Maui. So we took that as affirmation to keep going with this work. And I'll share too that I serve on the professional non-profit theater coalition and I was taught by my dear mentor Yuri Kochiama to work nationally at statewide and local levels. So we are working hard to put a bill forward on behalf of the theater sector, not just the coalition members, but for all boats to rise literally for federal funding. But that also means we're working and encouraging everyone to work statewide with your elected officials as we build our safety nets and work together to share resource and learnings so that we can maintain our, beyond survival to sustainability and thriveability. I think those are the strengths of our history as people of the global majority and you all know me, I just can't help myself, I gotta keep organizing community. One of the updates I'll share with you coming from our decolonizing processes at Perseverance Theater where I also serve as the artistic director and community member there. We are working to, a clean it community wide, we're working to get all of our arts and culture leaders trained in green dot training. This came from working with our AAPI communities around all the anti-age and hate and violence. Well, that was before, but certainly spiked and to support working around mitigation of anti-blackness. So we're working to get de-escalation of standard by standard stocking training for all of our arts and culture leaders and our community members so that we can create a non-violent cultured community. And so far, so good. We're working with the Juno Arts and Humanities Council to put that training forth because we talk about great productive spaces, but how are we really equipping all of our citizens with those tools and resources to bring that about. And we'll all continue to work statewide with Alaska to do that with arts and culture leaders that have had some of that equity and of standard by standard training. But giving the prevalent issues around missing and murdered Indigenous women and people, this training is critical. And we continue to also commission our Asian Pacific Islander native and for me, Alaska Native and Panakamali Pacific Islanders, those stories are critical to be commissioned. We're still building our cannons. And we know that in decolonizing and re-indigenizing, we honor that the, oh my goodness, the long-held hard-won wisdom of our native Indigenous ancestors and elders who know what sustainability truly is. So we just continue to keep decolonizing and honoring those leaders and working in deep, deep right relations and right purpose. Sorry, I'll have to jump off my flight of being canceled and delayed. So I have to go work to support some relations as some things got pushed off because and so thank you. It's been an honor and pleasure. I'll stay on for a few more minutes. But again, my heart and my love and support are with all of you at this MENA convening and all these beautiful leaders here on Zoom. Thank you, Leslie. Thank you so much for being here. Go to the Zoom folks. All right, I'll pass it next to Jonathan. Hi, hi everybody. So I mean, MENA, we get tag teams in this, but we're both probably about to get the exact same because we both help to run the exact same thing. So I have the privilege and honor of being able to work with Meredith and a few other folks in the field around Black Theater Commons and really helping to build that coalition up. My name is Jonathan McCory. I'm the executive director of the National Black Theater. My pronouns are he, him, my spirit is the she and the work that I think of when I think about this idea of coalition, this idea of what Amelia so beautifully articulated and what Leslie has been animating with this notion. And I think what my community needs in this current moment is creating the stemming, actually, own interventions that allow for us to humanize our grief and humanize the epic amount of grief that we as a society have been digesting, that many people of color, many Black and brown bodies have not actually been able to center or sit with the pandemic. When the shutdown happened, we won't talk about the pandemic, when the shutdown happened, the labor force, the labor ideology that has built kind of the structure of Black bodies operate on this land stopped immediately. And a different kind of sensibility of understanding oneself, how to show up. That's a grief right there. Having to sit with how do I identify myself without producing something? How do I identify myself without doing something that is a productive means? And what do I do with these hands if it's not actually creating some kind of product? And I think that just as fast as they shut us, that we got shut down, the lights turned back on and said now produce like you were previously and act like nothing ever happened. I think all of that psychic distance actually created a harm that harm creates a metastasized kind of sense of a hurt. And I think without recognizing or creating space for us to actually deal with that grief, having a reclamation with it, we it then ultimately will consume us. So I think that I think that there is a need to address the psychic grief on the emotional physical grief that lives inside of the desire to the desire of being asked to return to a world that never actually we were ever going to be able to return back to also dealing with the amount of emotional grief that came during that very distinct time where we all had a very still moment, but had life happened and witnessed millions of people pass also even locally close to us, but also nationally and also black and brown bodies had a civic unrest under a happen right in front of us where we had to figure out who are we and to the society which we are connected to. So I think that I think that in order to address the craft making of the artwork or the whole building that means that I think is so beautifully happening in all of our various different ways in order to make any event show up what has to deal with the psychic walls that would divide us and I think grief is one of those psychic walls that would divide us quite quickly and quite effortlessly so that we actually don't center what I think is so possible and what happens so beautifully when we all gather which is that we allow for humanity to be show up. So that's a little bit about me a little bit about what I feel like is show up in the world and I'm so grateful to be sharing space with such brilliant people who have been in various different rooms with being co-conspirators on how humans get to be at the forefront of art making. Thank you Jonathan. Didn't you want this? Sure I mean I will not as eloquently as Jonathan say that healing is at the center of what I feel like is the next thing that has to happen so similar to what Jonathan's saying there is a collective grief a collective mourning happening this very moment in the world and so there's a collective healing and I think that part of what the values of Black Theater Commons is is creating a nurturing space and so I think that collectively as and I feel like having shared space with all of these brilliant folks that's been a lot of the work that we've been doing nurturing one another in this space because it's you know it's heavy you know we are we are in a world that doesn't create create space for us naturally we have to forge spaces for ourselves and you know or our spaces have been taken away from us and so or we've been displaced all of the things and so being able to nurture each other where we are and I think that that is one of the the major things that it's at the forefront of my mind of how are we healing and nurturing one another in this one. Going back to the screen I'll just continue along the circle Opalaniate, would you like to speak? Sure, I'm the Member for Opalaniate, a member of the Nenocoke Lenny Lanabea Tribal Nation and I'm coming to you from the other side of Turtle Island to the east side of the part of Lanabea Hulking also known as New York City in the island of Manahata. My pronouns are he and his, I'm founder and artistic director of EGLE project and our mission is to explore the American identity through the performing arts and our Native American heritage to basically investigate what does it mean what does it exactly need to be an American through the lens predominantly of the Native American experience so that we as Americans can learn a more accurate recollection of our past a better understanding of our present for a just and more inclusive vision for our future and it certainly is an honor and a privilege to be here today. I say thank you to all of you and this is I'm sure all of you know this is this is a really difficult month for BIPOC and especially indigenous people. I just want to just give a quick personal story in the summer of 2019 when my tribal nation was going through a very difficult time during the last decade and you know being the theater artist and with EGLE project I wrote a play and mostly one person show about what our tribal nation was going through and outside of my own company not one theater in Lanabea Hulking or this country would help pick it up or develop it or anything. The only theater that did was a theater in the West Bank in Ramallah called Ashtar Theater under the direction of Imanu and so so they opened our door they opened their doors they hosted us some of the best hosts that we ever had and we'll forever be grateful and we don't need to do more now that they're in their time with me and so you know I hope this discussion is one thing thank you Zahira. Hi everyone I am Kasey Hirselton I am the current president of the Black Theater Network and also the executive director of Mind Your Business Art the Black Theater Network is a combination of educators artists arts practitioners students and also theater lovers so would ask the responsibility of the organization I have I we are charged with creating education and opportunities for artists in general you know and for educators Mind Your Business Art focuses on the business of the arts because as we know it takes money and also structure to keep our organizations growing I just want us for a second to take a breath while we just think about what has been shared and what we have been going through and and what Jonathan spoke of so eloquently we are all asked to just keep going no matter what right we we have so many people transition and each seems like every week is something different that we have to deal with so we are constantly on guard we are constantly under the rest and art is a way of soothing that and making sure that our stories are in the front are told and some of us have even been told that it's illegal to tell our stories that it didn't it didn't happen we're fear of offending someone else's grandchildren and someone's grandchildren my challenges I thought about this is how we do this how we create this is we are looking at we hear buzzwords equity diversity and inclusion but equity and diversity and inclusion does not mean the same thing to everybody a lot of people have a different definition of what they think that is until we can collaborate until we can come together and and create the definition for what it actually is something that we can all communicate in what it is then we're going to constantly be on this wheel right the the blessing that's something that I have come to appreciate is the fact that TCG took the time to say hey what do you all think about this and brought it to the room and helped us speak the language because one of the reasons that I'm hurry up but one of the reasons why minority organizations don't get the funding is because they don't speak the language but when you've got to talk collectively in the room to create these grants of these grads what these grants will look like you gave other people an opportunity to share and you spoke the language if we keep speaking each other's language and we keep coming together and realizing that even though we might speak differently or differently that we all have the vested interest and it's important we will continue to go through those challenges so I'm a soul box it was just on my heart so I had to hear it thank you I'm so glad you guys Delayna oh so you don't do that with them on the lot of gay being here I'll choose to be with each other the idea hi I'm Delaney I'm a proud citizen of Cherokee Nation from Oklahoma um I my pronouns in English are she her hers um in Cherokee we don't do gendered pronouns because we don't believe in that hierarchy so I'm a name in Cherokee um I'm speaking to you from Public Guard which is the original home lands of big Gabrielle Yotama and what is now known as Pasadena, California. I'm also the artistic director of Native Voices at the Autry and I've been the chair of the SAGA for National Native Americans community for the past 15 years yeah and I'm so grateful to be part of this conversation and to be in this room with so many wonderful people who are doing the work um you know one of the things that Native Voices has been founded on is you know we are the only equity to get on the country that has developed the and produced a new place by just play rights and by indigenous we include American Indian First Nations and Alaska Native Native Hawaiian um at our heart we believe that stories are medicine and every time we get to share a story on a stage or even just through the page we are creating a different narrative that kind of um that contradicts what's being taught about our people uh so in a weird way we are speaking not just of stories in life but we're also involved in their culture and so one of the things that we're doing it's when I became the artistic director of Native Voices in 2020 I had my office at the theater for two weeks before we shut them down and so a lot of the work I had to do had to be in the virtual space which was a blessing and a curse but at the same time I mean we realized how much access was denied our people growing up on the reservation in Oklahoma while we didn't have running water until I was 12 my parents did not get internet until the pandemic and that's true of a lot of our Native communities and how do we you know how do we bridge that divide if we don't have that luxury of access and so we were able to find ways to uh to navigate that time we're still in the process of figuring that out um if I can say anything you know one of the things that we're doing at Native Voices is during that time we were able to reflect we could lose a lot of our um our elders um which are traditional stories you know they create language the history the culture with them so we lost a lot of our tradition when they passed on um and it just gave us a lot of time to reflect that this system is not and has not ever taken us into consideration and so how do we change that how do we create this new system where artists are being valued for what they bring to the table and not seen as you know part of the you know the factory of telling art how do we get the art out there but they came to consideration once at stake and so one of the things that Native Voices has been doing is we've been indigenizing theater as we know it uh we've created a Native Promotorgy course and that is free to any theater maker that's interested in learning the Native way of storytelling uh it also teaches the different ways of telling stories and why that's so important and not just the art studio instruction that we're taught we're doing an addiction and we're indigenizing our director programs we're doing a director venture program that will indigenize the way directors learn how to direct uh all plays on this indigenous place and we're doing our young native playwrights program that's happening soon so those are very those are programs I'm very excited about I think the challenge is and in a weird way we're seeing what's happened now with the things to you know all the amazing theater that's happening we have so many Native plays that are in the process of being produced at this moment or workshopped uh that Native actors are actually qualifying for their equity weeks which is huge we usually we don't um especially if there's only one theater doing a Native play and it's the only equity it's doing it it's not going to run for 20 weeks they're not going to get the health insurance benefits and so um a lot of our actors and a lot of our designers even have been you know paying the dues and not getting any of the benefits so the first we're seeing people actually benefiting from the units that they belong to um I think you know I and this is something I always you know I still box about is we only get called in um in November when it's Native American Heritage Month or when someone's doing a Native play and it's true because our actors can act across the board not just for Native pieces but in all pieces our directors don't just need to direct Native plays they can direct anything that's what a director does they learn and so being able to get our people just in for those general calls is huge when I know that sounds really basic but honestly that's that's what we need we need to be seen as people and so um one of the things that native voices and also what if the work I do is after is how do we get our people in those rooms how do we create these conversations and how do we uh showcase our beautifully diverse talent so uh I'm very grateful to be in this room with all of you that can use this conversation so thank you thank you moving on to Jacqueline Hi everyone if you want to echo all the gravity um expressed by everybody else on the panel my name is Jacqueline Flotis my pronouns are she her aia I'm Zunie and Zunie and I'm from homeland over in the catholic state called me known as Washington DC and I'm a producer for the latinx data commons and the LTC is a national movement that uses a common-based approach to transform the narrative of the American theater to amplify the visibility of latinx performance making and to champion equity through advocacy art making and scholarship and the things we've been diving deeper into conversation over the last few years is the disparity and access to funding for organization of power in comparison to predominantly white institutions grant makers and I'm going to share some figures uh some members from grant makers in the arts in 2018 when 24.3 million dollars in funding support was awarded to all non-profit latinx arts and culture organizations in the u.s not just latinx theaters and this is less than one percent of those total three billion dollars awarded by foundations to organizations in the arts and culture so that is a huge disparity so we've been having conversations about that and failed to see the founding partner of the national latinx theater initiative which is working towards um we just announced um the theaters the latinx theaters that received grants from that initiative and trying to provide more funding for latinx theaters um so that they can continue to um in vits for many years to come and in that same day um as part of the nlti we surveyed latinx theaters around the country in 2021 and asked them what their most pressing need was and the first one was funding and the second one was access to archival practices when is when we read about the american theater and what's happening in the american theater the latinx theater theaters are often left out of those um as the documentation and so we've been talking more with our circle of scholars about um how to disrupt this and and it's been happening for years and people like the scholars who um work with latinx theater have been documenting it in the network thinking about okay how do we uh work with theaters so that they also have the ability to archive their histories so that as the as our elders uh are looking to move on to the next chapter of their life none of that is lost and whoever is able to come in and take over can still honor that legacy and continue to take the organization to its next chapter so those are the things we've been focusing on thank you and now last but certainly not thank you hi everybody i'm toran jegiazarian um founding artistic director emeritus of golden spread productions your host here um we're here representing mina theater makers alliance i'm a member of the board um and what was the question uh the questions what are your the biggest needs what is your mission and role in the community and then what are the biggest needs facing your community um so i mean we're in the early stages of developing as an organization very much inspired by and standing on the shoulders of our esteemed colleagues here learning from your mistakes and your trials and i'm happy to report that we have incorporated this year we are hoping to submit our application for nonprofit status by the end of this year and that will enable us to roll out some programs next year for our community in terms of priorities i would say that we are still network building um my hope for our organization is to become more representative of the diversity of our community um from afghans to curds to armenians to turds to yemenis and morocans and tunisians and libians i want us all to be able to gather in a room and um hold each other and celebrate each other and share stories i want us to get to a point where we get out of a sort of reactive mode in terms of how us sees us um and sort of claim claim our own stories and and in whatever form or shape they take uh i want us to get to a point where we take license to do that that we um that we are not reactive that we are not apologetic that we don't explain we do uh and we claim space um yeah what else there are a lot of board members in the in the room if you want to add anything certainly more funding more representation louder voice uh yeah power within and power with i'm with you there thank you so now i want to transition us sort of into more of a discussion mode um around how we can how can we can support each other in our communities um in addressing our our needs the needs of each of our communities how we can continue to build our connections to work together towards shared goals along with each of our you know individual goals um and considering the intersectionality of our experiences as people of the global majority how can we forge partnerships and collaborate more effectively towards our goals so we won't we won't go around in as formal of a way um you know if if anyone has a thought please please chime in i'll jump in with an idea that we've discussed before as part of our sort of tcg um cohort that we discussed we've talked about inter-community collaboration and adapting each other's plans to sort of de-center the white narrative and really push our narratives and claim that center space for for ourselves so i i'm a huge advocate of um collaborating on adapting our uh our stories and and staging our plays in our in our various communities collaboration i already mentioned this a collaboration between uh native amer and native american playwright and a palestinian playwright seems really right right now uh we've done collaborations with african-american community in the past but you know certainly there is a lot of overlap between uh middle east in terms of its history cultural background and its current political experience with everything that um is happening in various communities and i think there is a lot of room for uh collaboration partnership uh generating new work but also adapting each other's plays thank you thank you other folks well when i when i think about when i think about the idea of collaboration and i i think about the necessity of collaboration amongst um amongst us especially us of people of the global majority of people of color um i think of really having a conversation like the the necessity of dismantling the idea of tokenism that lives inside of the western capitalistic model um i think about this notion of idea of crap in the barrel having to be actually dismantled as well um and how do we actually i ask myself whenever i'm getting into a space of collaboration how am i uh dismantling my ego to get into the sonic wave or sound of coral of coral music making beautiful artists that to me want to love coral sound because it requires for the self to start to diminish to a place where it can be expansive it starts to feel like it's tethered to the whole um and that and that self being the ego self of wanting the i me to show up and i think sometimes we we we champion especially these folks on this zoo we champion for our culture so hard so clearly so back ferociously but sometimes we we we can we can miss the mark of championing each other um and i think that and understanding that my liberation is tethered to your liberation and that's why these rooms are so deeply important because our collective liberation is actually human not cultural and not uh and not based off of one race it's based off of how i think i think if i was to imagine these folks who i've been in many rooms with um i think that we all own into the curiosity of how am i generating um how am i generating pathways so that uh the the the the the future me um doesn't have to live in a binary because live in the omnipresence of their full humaneness and how do we get to be human in this moment so um i think what collaboration across across the cultural spectrum um i i think about all those things and i think about where to be land in the center of all those things uh to really take care of um not necessarily us but take care of the future um uh and making sure that the future gets to eat and dine at a table that is that will surpass our wildest imagination um so that we get to be the great ancestors now um i just want to add that um i mean part of part of the indigenous experience uh in turtle island that i mean it's become also part of broader american experience um is our relationship with interaction with all the communities that have come to turtle island um you know over over the past um you know 500 years or so um you know we have a rich uh we have a rich history with the african-american community uh with the latino community and that and as i as i mentioned earlier we have established a very deep relationship um with the um with the palestinian and arifrican-american communities as well um the name of the experience especially the tambourine term involves all these communities and it's one of the reasons why we'd equal project have tailored our mission statement uh in that way um and so we have we have a number projects that i think uh would be appropriate for collaboration with anyone from the theaters um that are present today um so you know so if you're all interested please email us at equalprojectarts at the gmail.com and let's get the conversation started yeah um i think in addition to um the artistic collaboration i think there's also very real advocacy that can happen uh i think about in new york uh there's a coalition of theaters of color a new federal theater pregonas and i'm spacing out on who the other ones were but they advocated locally so they became a line item in the city's budget so there was funding ensured now that is no longer happening for a variety of political reasons but it lasted for a good long time also in dallas there's a collection a collective of theaters of color caramia sole rep and some other folks that have been really doing similar work in advocating for the budget process for theaters to ensure that they are going to be getting funded so i think the work happens on a lot of different levels and i think for for everyone to think about what is my part of this is my strength okay i'm gonna do that advocacy work because i love the numbers and i'm gonna really hound you know the local government or is it the artistic collaboration or is it the whatever because i think uh there are so many strengths in all of our respective communities and we should work to our strengths in that way thank you thanks yeah i think the thing that keeps coming up for me is show up for each other uh that's the the base of it to continue to show up for one another in all of those ways right and collaborating on the on the artistic front also collaborating and advocacy but also in resource sharing right i mean jacklyn you were mentioning the archival and i was like immediately i'm like oh we'll talk to you a little later black theater comments have been doing archiving work for a long time so i got you we'll talk but like that's yeah there's just that you know talk about your process right the learning the the celebrations and the pains that all of us have gone through in the formation of our organizations but really just showing up because so often we're isolating in spaces and that's intended to be that way right and so the more we can show up in spaces for one another in support of the work and say no oh you didn't know how important this is for this to be here at this time in this space and this you know we have to continue to show up um in all of the ways i don't know if you can hear yes as we talk that i didn't share my pronouncing or hers and that i um i'm right now in Manhattan but i lived in Detroit Michigan which is the land of the i actually did the research because i wanted to say it right bolder why than me the odor why which is the otter why and the chipper why one of the things that we did awesome um as many of you know this is Chicago but one of the things we did was we created a cultural bill of rights right and we submitted it because if we submitted it to the mayor lori like but then um which he adapted but if we come together as a collective and we create these policies that's how we will preserve not only will we get funding so we will also um create some some outline of how we move as people of the global majority and i think that would be one good thing that we could work on together we continue to collaborate like thank you very much for inviting me to this program it is just wonderful so i appreciate that but i think that we should come together and also create some policies and see how we can move the needle forward or um to to really make a change you wait for more thank you thank you yes yeah agreed this this conversation feels very much like uh like a jumping off point for continued continued action together yes other folks thoughts yeah yeah plus plus one to everything that has been said um and yeah i would love to you know gather us all and you continue to have people with conversations and i just want to go back to what meredith was saying about sharing our resources and supporting our work that's like what i had um on my little screen as a note could there um and yeah thinking about like you know like very basic terms like baking like if i don't have sugar who here has sugar how can i share the resources the LTC have over um that that anyone may need to continue to move their work forward and an example uh we've been in conversation with Warren Turner who recently produced the weekbook dream festival in New Orleans and had a uh aquavatine new play fest like reading within it and you know she's thinking about the next festival and the LTC has done numerous new play festivals and so we're like we can support because we know we have like rubrics of how we evaluate these our steering committee is set up to be able to serve as a programming committee you know all of these things that that we have had experience doing um anyways and you know it doesn't like it doesn't cost us anything um to share those resources and so i think that that's something that is really important to us and to me and yeah just being very transparent of you know if you're applying for a grant at a foundation that we've worked with like let me let us talk about it and you know let's talk about um what those grant sizes look like and what their relationships look like so i think that's yeah just hit it on the nose with that thank you yeah i've been thinking a lot about about sort of resource and also information sharing i know that you know as i mentioned before i think monatma like really has learned so much from the wisdom of pretty much everybody in this group in terms of the way the way that things have been done in the past what's worked what hasn't and so the more that we can continue to transparently share you know and and ask each other questions right post post questions about about what we're doing and and and share information i think will be would be helpful yeah i want to also acknowledge that we've historically benefited from tcg and national conferences as a gathering space and a planning yes you know uh planning space and i'm actually curious if this next year there will be an opportunity because in some past years there was like an extra day for by talks uh are you at liberty to discuss any uh i'm being filmed oh actually uh the next tcg conference is going to be in chicago june 20th and 22nd and we are in conversation with the community in chicago chicago theaters of color to get their take the pre-conference day is juneteenth so we want to be respectful uh of what might be happening in that city during that day but that doesn't mean that something can't happen or shouldn't happen um so uh we will have more information about that um right after the new year actually so yeah definitely we'll just we'll just stay in touch yeah yeah thank you great other folks have thoughts about how we might support each other possibilities for collaboration just no just one thing kind of just jumping off of jacklyn which you mentioned just another person that comes to mind who's actually also in dallas uh teresa colin wash and the bishop um arts theater uh company uh she is a powerhouse um and incredibly collaborative and has really done the work of saying listen if you're similarly jacklyn uh if you're applying to this funder then uh i'll be your thought partner we'll bounce around the ideas we'll work through the drafts we'll make sure that when you're doing those pitches with the program officers that you have like talking points uh and she's taken it on herself and i think that is incredibly generous but it's something that many many people can do the bulk of you all are based here in san francisco and there is a wealth of uh grant making that is in this community here and so how can you help each other access it jointly and individually and there are also a lot of grant makers of color reading some of these foundations who are accessible and there is grant makers in the arts conference that actually is happening in a few days i'll be there but just to stay abreast of the changes because within philanthropy a lot of people will say oh well the funders the funders the funders there's a core group of us within that organization who many years even people before me who have been working in towards racial equity and funding equity and it's a slow slow boat to turn but there is a critical mass of global majority people within the grant making and philanthropy sector that are very very much aligned with all of the conversation that's happened today thank you um unless folks on on the zoom or here have other thoughts i'd love to open it up to questions and thoughts from the group before i do that any other things that folks want to share all right i'm going to go ahead and open it up to questions and also just thoughts ideas from the group in terms of ways that our communities can can connect and collaborate and show up for each other going forward i have a oh sorry i'm curious you know i think we we talk a lot about sort of um i think we're talking a lot about uh fundraising granting and how we sort of show up for each other in in movement spaces i'm also really interested and you alluded to this a bit before about how we can support each other in our art making too like are there ways that um you know we've talked about resource sharing and are there other ways i'm curious that we think we can be in in collaboration and partnership on the projects we're working on you know i can think of can think of multiple multiple projects that might have have overlap in our communities in ways that we might be able to partner but i'm curious if folks have specific ideas or pitches in that in that vein i just want to i don't know this person's name that's something that was said on zoom about that like we can tell stories that aren't intrinsically related to our racial or ethnic identity like i can perform roles that don't have anything to do with that yeah and i think just seeing a critical amount of theaters do and create those kinds of opportunities for artists um i'm just not looking at that thank you yeah yeah yes i think that's such a such a start yeah so just to repeat for those those uh who might be in the zoom space i think the correct me if i'm wrong the question is um how how to uh you know you're just recently hearing about stories by and for these communities um interested in in continuing that how do i how do how do we start yeah and i would like to know how to get yeah so is is the question kind of how do we how do we get more of our work produced how do we and and i'm curious to to sort of expand on that question how do we support each other in getting in getting our work produced yeah i think i think i mean for me i can briefly say i think that you know um there can be there's um that that each one of us right can advocate for the the pieces in not just in our own community right but in other communities in the different spaces in which we had in which we have power right um and in helping to move move that needle um but i'm curious what what other folks thoughts might be on this question how do we how do we support each other to get more of our work produced i mean i'll just hear uh another um you know the story about during the during the pandemic when just about everything was shut down um the we do the project collaborated with other native organizations here in the east coast to create data theater thursdays and when we presented a new need to play i think about every week during the pandemic it provided um not just um a sense of community which obviously was was tremendous and also work for the actors but it also created some money and income for artists who had no other livelihood during that time um so you know on one hand it's like well what what does it take well hopefully shouldn't take a pandemic where thousands of people are killed because they shut down for us to finally do that but unfortunately i feel like now that we've gotten that we've started to go back to quote unquote normal you know we get enticed by a lot of the um you know a lot of the more affluent white institutions and people go to work with them and thus our community gets dispersed and we don't have that quite a solidarity that we that we had and everything else was shut down so i do think that's one of the challenges moving forward is how can we get that sense that same sense of solidarity amongst ourselves um even when there's not a um a crisis going on on the other side i believe i didn't hear you say you were from like boston and or island i mean you know we're in new york city and we have worked with a number of natives from the new england area um you know some that were uh litmuck and um you know mashby waltz and noak um so we certainly have um it's really provided platforms and resources to help bring their work um of supervision and and developing um certainly here in new york just jumped in real quick um i think yesterday god was it only yesterday uh at the town hall one of the things that was talked about was um the focus on hyper local right and so i think the local connections the hyper local work is essential to see who is in your immediate boston is a huge theater community uh and so to just see who is maybe at those theaters who is menna swana uh and might want to host some kind of gathering and you start very local there are a ton of artists i'm sure plus folks within um theater staffs and then it'll ripple out but you've got to start hyper local um the one name i'll throw in this space is megan samberg again ron's boston playwright theater and is a co-conspirator with me on my directors and many other things um and i just want to say that uh what boston is a difficult space to move i know on the diversity conversation from many conversations with her um but having said that i also because i know you're sort of coming from armenian back i know obviously water town and the community spaces there have been very supportive of armenian i believe our time oh we are a bit over time and we need to wrap up so i want to say thank you i'm always grateful for the wisdom of everybody in this group and so thank you so much for for being a part of this i also this was my um i i take responsibility for this there was uh something that tcg had shared that i that i neglected to read at the beginning so i'll just take a moment and and read it um says dear colleagues we're writing today with joy and celebration of the fourth annual convening the middle eastern north african theater makers alliance and the reorient festival we're hoping your time together is full of care connection and creative inspiration we're proud to be one of the co-sponsors and wish you an abundant few days together we also write with heaviness in our hearts over the last month the violence in gaza in israel and the armenian exodus from nagorno karabakh have inflamed wounds with deep and painful roots we also know this violence ripples out to make people throughout these diasporas more vulnerable there are ways we can offer care and support please let us know the work you do is always vital and especially so now for while theater may not write foreign policy we do have a critical role to play as proponents of peace building mutual understanding and liberation we can humanize find common ground and speak truth to power we can repair and reimagine our relationships to each other thank you for the work you do today and every day i think that's actually a really beautiful