 I want to welcome you to TCG's 25th National Conference. Yep. And welcome to Cleveland. You know, it's been 39 years. It was 39 years ago that 215 theater people gathered for four days on Yale's campus for the very first TCG National Conference. At that time, their discussions ranged from artistic policy to fundraising strategies, from the role of music and productions to the role of theater in communities. That conference really launched the biannual and now annual TCG tradition of convening the field. Coming together now for the 25th time, we honor the game-changing leaders who saw the power of pure connection to make, in the words of TCG's vision statement, a better world for theater and a better world because of theater. Here with us today, we have at least two theater leaders who attended that first gathering at Yale, the amazing David Hawkinson and Woody King, Jr. Feel free. We're going to hear from them in a bit. But I also want to mention that we have leaders here who are here for the very first time. It's their first conference. And in order to, yes, we can clap for those people as well. But to honor this intergenerational legacy, we'll be sharing key memories from conferences passed throughout our three days together. And there is perhaps no greater defining story than the one I'm going to share with you now. August Wilson's first conference was in 1984, just a few months after his production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom had been at Yale Repertory Theater. Our publisher, Terry Nimeth, was tasked with talking to artists who didn't seem to know anyone. And so we approached the emerging playwright as he stood off to the side watching a cocktail reception underway. As always, August was dressed in a coat jacket with a vest, a tie, and a hat. And Terry remembers that it had just been announced that Ma Rainey was going to Broadway. 12 years later, on the Princeton campus, August stood on our plenary stage at the MacArthur and delivered his game-changing keynote address, The Ground on Which I Stand. That was my first TCG conference. And I still remember everyone leaping to their feet for a standing ovation. Nine years after that, at our 2005 conference in his adopted home town of Seattle, August signed copies of his first TCG published play, King Hadley II, for over an hour in spite of not feeling well. It was at that conference that he finally agreed to let TCG publish all 10 of his plays in the century cycle. So we are joining here together on Hallowed Ground. It's made sacred by the game-changing vision of August Wilson and the thousands of theater people who have gathered over the past 24 conferences. And as we honor that legacy, we must also call the emerging artists and leaders who, like a young Wilson, may stand a little outside of things wondering how they fit in. So we are asking you, how will you shake the ground on which we stand? Over the next three days, what game-changing moments can we make together? How can we extend those questions to those watching the conference on livestream? Thank you, howl around. And now I'd like to acknowledge that this time together would not be possible without the support of our wonderful conference sponsors. I'd like to take some time to name them, and I ask you to hold your applause until the end. The City of Cleveland, the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland State University, Destination Cleveland, the Edgerton Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, Intrinsic Impact by Wolf Brown, Jack Prince, Key Bank Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, MailChimp, John P. Murphy Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Nord Family Foundation, Patron Technology, Playhouse Square, the Ruth Easton Fund, Spectrics, and Westlake Reed-Liskowski. Thank you to all of our conference supporters. The names on that list represent just a small measure of the profound support that we've received from the Cleveland Theater community. Over the next three days, you'll get a small taste of the strength and diversity of this community, which itself is celebrating the 100-year anniversaries of Caramu House, the oldest continually operating theater of color in the country, and the Cleveland Playhouse, which is this year received the Regional Theater Tony Award. To help me honor this amazing city and acknowledge the work of our tireless Cleveland host committee, please join me in welcoming Bob Taylor and Raymond Bob Gann to the stage. Hello, everybody. My name is Bob Taylor. I'm the Executive Director of Great Lakes Theater. And on behalf of the host committee, welcome to Cleveland. We're so glad to have you here. The sun always shines. I just wanted to say that I think it is so special that we are holding our first plenary session here in the Ohio Theater. The Ohio Theater was the very first theater restored in the Playhouse Square District in 1982, and Great Lakes Theater moved from its west side suburban location to move down here and become the first resident company of Playhouse Square. So over the past 33 years, our organization has witnessed this incredible transformation to the gem that you guys have seen when you got arrived this week. So thanks to Playhouse Square for sharing all these gorgeous theaters with us for a theater conference. Isn't that wonderful? Thanks, Playhouse Square. We are really blessed in this community also to have a wide panoply of theaters available to us. We have a varied, a wide variety of sensibility, of talent, of taste. We have legacy theaters, we have new kids on the block, and all of us are working together and separately sometimes to serve the varied needs of our diverse community. So we're very fortunate to have that community. And our host theater group has been working the past 15 months with TCG to create a representative experience both of our city and of our theater community, and which we hope will be both pleasurable and fun and memorable to all of you. So thank you for being with us here. It is my pleasure to thank the host theaters that have worked so hard again over the last 15 months. So if I could ask the host theater board members, staffs, and artists that are here today to just stand, I just wanna recognize you so you guys can be recognized. If you guys could just stand up for a second. And again, this, amen. This group represents, as Teresa said, both our Centenary theaters, Caramu House and the Cleveland Playhouse, but also theaters with other very strong histories. Obama Theater has been around for 56 years. Great Lakes Theater for 54, Cleveland Public Theater 31, and then the new kid on the block, Theater Ninjas, five years young, right? So it's a great, great group of people. I'm grateful to work in this community every day. And thank you all for everything you've done to bring, did to bring this conference here for the celebration of our art form that you, that you do, that you work in every day and for the richness you bring to our community. It's fantastic to be have you here. So thanks so much. And finally, it's my pleasure to recognize a man who exemplifies our art form every single day. And my friend Raymond Bobkin, the Executive Artistic Director of Cleveland Public Theater, thanks Raymond. Okay, so I imagine that some of you are still thinking, really, Cleveland? Because that's what I was thinking 20 years ago when I stopped off here, what I thought temporarily for a couple of years. But what I found here was an incredible community. A community that values kindness and has a strange, deep sense of civic pride, but also civic participation, a city that has played such an important role in the history of our country in so many areas, but especially in the area of diversity. And what I also found is that here, artists really are celebrated. We just have such an incredible history and that as an artist, I could play a role in the community in a very, very interconnected community that has incredible need for the arts, but also welcomes them in to really address critical issues and to remind us all of our true purpose. Tonight, you will get a sense, I think, of that Cleveland. You'll get an opportunity at the opening night party to experience not only Cleveland Public Theater, but dozens of other theaters, dance groups, performing artists and musicians all from the Cleveland area. There will be lots of food. Stay late, there will be lots of drink. And this night is going to be based on our annual extravaganza, pandemonium. Pandemonium at TCG is sort of a mini-pandemonium, but it's unlike any opening party that you have ever experienced, I am guessing. So you have to gear up your adventurous spirit. You have to nurture curiosity. You may encounter a play by Eric Kobel on a staircase, or you might meet a goddess in a closet or a ninja in a cabaret, or perhaps you will experience a revelation in an elevator. And at 9 p.m., the desserts will arrive from three great Cleveland favorite places, and then it's dancing with the pink elephants. You'll understand that later. The party goes to 11 p.m. for those of you who are Cleveland tough. Now, it's my honor and privilege to introduce my friend and truly one of my heroes, Joe Simperman. Joe is the councilman of Ward 3. We're in his ward right now, but he works across the city. 10 years ago, CPT had lost a significant funder for our teen program, STEP, where we employ very, very low-income youth. We employ them over the course of the summer to write and produce their own plays and perform them at city parks. And Joe had helped out a little bit that summer, and he called me up and said, we're ready to go. And I said, I just don't know if we can actually go forward. And he said, let's meet. And he said, what do you need me to do? And he led an effort to not only save the program, but to make it sustainable. And this is just one of the many things Joe has done. He led legislation to have a same-sex registry in the city of Cleveland. He, yes, he also led the effort, along with my councilman, Matt Zone, to make sure that city employees who are in same sex, who are registered as same-sex couples, can get equal health benefits. And he has also added transgender to one of the protected groups in the city and continues to fight every day. And I could go on and on. This is just a snapshot of his leadership to build a more fair and equitable city. This man, he is the real deal. He gets it, he understands, he advocates loudly, but most importantly, he walks the walk. The amazing Joe Simperman. Good evening, everybody. And welcome to the great city of Cleveland as a son of the city of Cleveland. I have to do this appropriately. On behalf of Mayor Frank G. Jackson, the 56th mayor of the city of Cleveland, and on behalf of Council President Kevin J. Kelly, welcome to the great city of Cleveland established in 1796. Now that that's done. And now let me speak to you as your brother. I am so deeply moved by each and every one of your presence here and knowing that I won't be able to introduce myself to each and every one of you. Let me, on behalf of somebody who grew up in a family with issues on a street that was numbered, it wasn't named after an animal or a botanical garden. As somebody who didn't know what it was like to dream or imagine until I had the chance to work with people in your field, thank you. Thank you for opening doors that are closed that we call closets. Thank you for opening minds for people, some of us in our own room, who change when we see things happening before us. Thank you for being the force of good and light and love in a nation that right now is desperate for good and light and love. I say this to you. I say this to you because you guys are awesome and you guys are fun and you are going to have such a great time. But it is so rare that I get to actually tell the honest to God truth in my job and I'm not going to pass up this minute. Thank you for changing communities, communities that you're going to visit, communities where storefronts were boarded until places like Cleveland Public Theater working collaboratively with Great Lakes, with Playhouse Square, with performers from Caramu, with places like Near West Theater, were able to transform an entire neighborhood and an entire community and make it safer and better for young people and yes, for people who never have yet bought a ticket. Thank you for changing places like neighborhoods where we have young people who are coming from all different backgrounds performing in neighborhoods of all different backgrounds with programs like the STEP program that Cleveland Public Theater does but also another program called Why Haven, where men who are recovering put on their own performance and tour how appropriately before and after the holiday of American Thanksgiving hearing Cleveland to speak the truth. And thank you for being so relevant in this time of discordance in our nation when it is so hard for us to be honest about our past and our present and we only need to realize that we aren't going anywhere until we do that and I'm in a room right now with 800 people who are reminding us that there is only one way forward and that's the truth. That's the truth. This past year, we had the privilege through Cleveland Public Theater and Raymond's direction to enliven a church for the second time in two years that was one of the most northern termini of the Underground Railroad, a place called Station Hope. It was a church that had been shuttered. It was a church that nobody knew the history of until a group of 150 people like you and you and you came to this quiet place, opened the doors and said this is the story of Cleveland and freedom. This is the story of Cleveland and freedom of when people treated each other as human beings and not as people who were part of one racial group or another. This is the story of the city of Cleveland when police officers in the time of Cleveland's founding actually aided abolitionists who were taking people who were coming from the south to get out of this country that had backwards views and horrific places where people died and took them to better places. This was a place that was in the middle of the city that nobody knew about until people like you opened the door and said welcome. You said welcome. You said welcome to a person who was 12 years old whose mother spent six months in the hospital as somebody struggling with bipolar disorder. You said welcome to somebody who grew up on a numbered street who didn't know, wasn't focused, was failing out of school and brought that person into theater. You said welcome to someone who when they were in high school played Jerry in the zoo story and Cheswick in One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest and that person still uses those phrases in city council meetings every single day because sometimes my friends you have to go a very long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. Little Edward all the action there. But you said welcome to me. And I'm going to say this to you because the person who brought me up in theater was a wonderful man named Pierre Davenian who passed away this past spring and I didn't get a chance to ever have this conversation because he was too sick by the time I realized he was dying. But had it not been for him and had it not been for people like you across this country there would be people who wouldn't know what it meant to be loved, what it meant to feel goodness and what it meant to feel what it's like when you're alive. I know who you are. I know exactly who you guys are. You guys are the ones who help people like me that you never know you helped but without you we wouldn't be here. So welcome to this great city. We love you. Have a great time. One last thing. Sorry. On behalf of the city of Cleveland, Teresa is now the councilwoman for all things theater in Cleveland. Fantastic. By the way, thank you Bob and Raymond and thank you Councilman Simperman. And by the way, Councilman Simperman has been tweeting the proceedings. So check out hashtag TCG15. There's a really sexy picture of me and Bob and Raymond backstage that you'll get to see. And now to present the first of three awards that we're giving over the course of the conference, I'd like to welcome two of those 1976 conference attendees you heard of earlier to the stage, David Hawkinson and Woody King. I just want to clarify something before we start. I think I'm speaking for both Woody and myself. We were at that conference by accident and we were at this conference by accident. But I want to make it clear we are not the survivors of the fucking conference, okay? There are scores of active and vital people around this country that were at that conference. They are all in assisted care, homes, but there are scores of them. Thank you, Teresa. So today we're talking about TCG Visionary Game Changer Award. I'm going to read this thing because it gets a little redundant. To the individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the field as a whole nationally or internationally, individuals who regularly and beyond think beyond the end lobe to implement practices, new models, advocacy efforts on behalf of the field. Today TCG is honoring Jim Houghton. My dear friend and a man I most admire him. Jim has worn many hats in his career. He started as an actor. He worked in the company thousands of years ago. He's director, producer. He's an educator. He's the head of the Juilliard drama program right now. He's worked on other similar, when he's over the life of his signature life, which he never could figure out how he did it, he worked on a lot of other similar initiatives like the New Harmony Project. He ran the O'Neill Center. He was artistic advisor to Joe Dowling at the Guthrie where we worked together. But today's honor is not about all of that. It's about what Jim has done for the signature. He started in a small storefront in 1991 in Lower Manhattan. Later on it went to the public. Well, let me say this. It started from the beginning. Its focus was on the playwright. And in the very beginning, the focus was on presenting each year one playwright, a body of his or her work. They've never veered away from that. Then he went to the public. And then in his seventh season, he got the wonderful Peter Norton Theater on 42nd Street. The thing that's so amazing. Jim is one of the best fundraisers in our field. And he's one of the best fundraisers in our field because he's so passionate and so consistent and so on the mark all the time when he talks about what he's trying to accomplish. An amazing thing to me about this company has never veered from that. It's done some really interesting initiatives over the years. For example, in the tenth season he introduced a legacy program which inviting back its past playwrights to return to the stage either new works or old known works. In the fifteenth season, he introduced a very controversial signature ticket initiative that was offering tickets starting at $20 to all performances making the playwrights work more accessible to the community at large. In the eighteenth season, he hosted the Historic Negro Ensemble Company and presented a whole year of their incredible body of work back in the eighties, I think it was. He launched this, opened this incredible performing arts center. Three theaters, offices, studios, rest round. But it was not just the fact that it was such an interesting multiplex space that we all dream about having. It's that, it's, the whole idea was so consistent with what he's always tried to do with his company. He wanted a space for a cross-section of artists, audiences, and community members to experience the theater and each other. And the space does it brilliantly. Woody, do you want to make some comments? I'm done. They brought me out here to make some comments, too. In 2012, Signature Theater opened its 66 million dollars, 70,000 square foot, Persian Square Signature Center at 480 West 42nd Street. It's a three theater complex designed by Lee designer Frank Gehry including office spaces, rehearsal spaces, and a cafe. It is a theater space in New York comparable to the National Theater in London. The cafe of which I often hold my meetings over coffee and browse the collection of plays by Signature Theater playwrights only. What I know is Signature Theater makes its tickets affordable, probably the lowest tickets in New York. What I know is Jim's commitment to African-American playwrights, August Wilson, Kateri Hall, Regina Taylor, Adrian Kennedy, Brandon Jacobs, Jenkins, who was reviewed in today's time brilliantly, by the way, is incomparable. Jim's commitment to Ruben Santiago Hudson's resulted in major revivals of August Wilson's work, the piano lesson. And I thought Fugaz, my children, my Africa, and a place on the Signature Theater board. I think that's unique. I think that's totally different than most theaters around the country. And Jim Horton, the visionary. We have a short period of time and we could go on and on with all of his accomplishments. I hope you get the gist of why we think this guy is a visionary and change artist. I think the other thing is what I have to say is Jim is the most decent, respectful person. Not only the artist, but the people who work for him. He's an incredible man, which is why I love him. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thanks a lot, really. Thank you, guys. You're amazing. You're amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, David and Woody. Wow. You guys are rock stars and you know it, I hope. Thank you, Teresa, the board. I'd like to give a shout out to my dear friend Kate Lapuma, who is not only a trustee of TCG and the executive director of Chicago's Terrific Writers Theatre, but she's one of my most cherished friends and colleagues. Many of the things David mentioned about signature in our earlier years were all seated or established when Kate was executive director there. So lots of love to you, Kate, and thank you. Thank you. So it's beyond a privilege to be with you all here tonight, honestly. I grew up and was mentored and inspired by the companies and work represented in this room and across the country. I was raised in San Francisco and as a kid I was exposed to the early plays of Sam Shepard at the Magic Theatre, the astounding Tony Kushner at the Eureka Theatre Company, the eclectic and wonderful work of Berkeley Rep, the crazy Bill Ball at ACT, Luis Valdes at the Atro Campesino, not to mention Beach Blank of Babylon Goes Bananas and Bullshot Crumman, and of course the wonderful Del Arte Company in Blue Lake, California. I traveled to Oregon Shakes every year for my annual nine plays in three days chaos and wondered just how they pulled it off. I did trips to the Taper and to La Jolla Playhouse in the Old Globe. I was an actor and a member of the company in the early days of San Jose Rep, which now may explain its demise. In graduate school I was in Dallas watching the work of Adrian Hall at the Dallas Theatre Center and the beginnings of Undermain Theatre in Deep Ellum. As a member of John Hausman's company, the acting company, we traveled across the country bringing Shakespeare, Chekhov, Fornez, and Mark Twain as seen through the eyes of Connie Congdon to eager audiences. We performed in huge, Broadway-sized theaters to small gymnasiums in small rural communities, places that had held fundraisers throughout the year just for the possibility of having a couple of nights of theater. You know, it was that kind of work that we get to do every day. It's the luxury we have. And by some good fortune, work has brought me to nearly every state in this country. And I've been inspired by you in our robust American theatrical landscape. So many of us have collaborated together through New Harmony Project, The O'Neill, The Guthrie, Signature, and we've shared in making our work, questioning the work and nurturing it and have grown mightily because of it. So this award, this Visionary Gain-Changer Award, it's pretty lofty stuff, I would say. And don't get me wrong, I'm very touched to be thought of and to be in your company. But I think all those words relate to results and that's good. But I have to say it's the process of making the work where the fire burns brightly for me. It's the process of changing vision comes to life. You and your collective work are truly the defining vision of our American theater and the thing that is moving the work forward. If there's any game-changing going on, it's in every tiny office, an intimate stage and every theater in this country where you, you all show up every day dreaming about the impossible and then making it happen one day at a time one crisis after another all in the quest to realize the possibility of perhaps one transformative moment where we all rise together and meet our potential audience and artists alike. That's truly game-changing and that's what you do every day. I know tomorrow Lear is going to receive an acknowledgement and I know she shows up every day not to game-change or to have vision. She shows up and lives in the moment she's in and lucky for us, those moments stack up and result in transformative and exciting theater. On a personal note, today is sort of an interesting day for me. This morning my 20-year-old daughter, Lily, got on a train for a four-day playwriting conference at Yale. She confronted her own fears about it and just applied and off she went this morning. Brave, brave, brave is what I say. And tonight, my son, Henry, opens in Anything Goes in the After Work Theater in New York City. There's two things about that. Henry has special needs and has confronted his autism for over 22 years. He's an angel and a champ and a lover of theater. And After Work Theater is the only community theater in New York City home to over 350 off-and-off-off Broadway theaters. After Work Theater was started about four years ago by a young guy named Evan Greenberg who wanted to create a safe space where anyone, anyone could be in a play. Everyone pays 500 bucks, that's what funds it, and that's it. They're in. They make theater and just as the name says they rehearse after work and on Saturdays. So tonight they're going to open up with Anything Goes and that audience will be filled with friends and colleagues and family. And that stage will be populated by nurses and professors and professionals from every walk of life who happen to be some of the most courageous storytellers you'll ever see. It's incredibly moving and represents the core of what we do and why we do it. We honor each other in this work. And for me, Evan's work and every member of that company is a game changer and visionary. Transformation and tears will be witnessed tonight in that small, tiny, off-off Broadway theater. So for me, making theater any theater is a miracle, truly. And we say level up over the course of this few days. Shoot, I don't know about you guys, but I contend that showing up is the level up. That's where we all live every day, where you live every day, where you show up. The act of making theater is self-aspirational. You are the miracle makers. And I'm very, very, very proud to be part of your community. This gives me a moment to thank you all for your vision and for your truly making it possible that a little boy from San Francisco could be so inspired by you, all of you, to listen to the tiny, tiny voice in his head that just maybe he could find his voice and just maybe be part of your community. So lots of love to all of you. And thanks to you for all this honor and the many years of work and the many more years to come and all best wishes for the coming days. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Jim, for all the work you've done to advance theater and champion this singular voice of the American playwright. While theater may be the oldest form of storytelling, this digital age gives us new platforms for a story seemingly every other week. With the game changing so quickly, a sense of humor may be our best navigational tool. That's why I'm pleased to welcome our first plenary speaker to the stage, Baratunde Thurston. Baratunde is a technology loving comedian who has contributed to Fast Company and NPR, served as director of Digital for the Onion, and authored the New York Times bestseller, How to be Black. He co-founded Cultivated Wit, a startup that exists at the intersection of comedy, creativity, and technology to make the world more fun. Please welcome Baratunde Thurston to the stage. Thank you for it, man. Yay! We have this evening learned a few things together about ourselves, about the place that we're in. We've learned that Cleveland keeps goddesses inside of its closets. We have learned that there's always one over exuberant gentleman in the back of the house excited about the alcohol to be served later. We've learned that the leaders of the theater community in this beautiful and vibrant city have a requirement that their names must contain the name Bob. We have learned that politicians are capable of finishing their remarks at the same time and making great points when they do so. Thanks for restoring our faith, Councilman. It was great. And we've learned that some awards are big, like a visionary award would be big. Other awards are also big, like a game changer award would be pretty massive, but sometimes you have accomplishments so big you just smash them together in a Venn diagram known as the Visionary Game Changer Award. Congratulations, Jim. Congratulations. We have learned that this gathering is 39 years old but this gathering is number 25. At first I thought it was a mistake. Like a math error. And then I remembered no, theater people, of course. My people welcome to TCG 15 and give yourselves a big round of applause. So happy to be here. I'm going to share some stories with you. In my beginning which doesn't start with me, it technically starts with this adorable little girl. That's my mother. Arnita Lorraine Thurston at age 4 in Washington, DC where she was born. You can see the resemblance. She's adorable. I'm also adorable. My mother's mother was named Lorraine Martin and she was the first black employee inside the U.S. Supreme Court building. A fact that I did not know nor did my older sister know until 2005 when our mother passed away. Our mother's father was born at the very tail end of slavery and worked for the government of the District of Columbia designing and working on the roads and highway systems at the time. My mother would end up protesting outside of buildings that her mother worked in that her father could not even work. My mother was sent to a private school in rural Pennsylvania when she was 8 years old and she didn't like it. I know because she wrote letters that I will now share with you. Dear mother I am having fun but I do not like it here. Now that's code for I don't like it. I am mad at you subtext huge among 8 year olds please send me some cookies and a sparkle plenty doll please send it because I do not have anything to play with yours truly Arnita. That's a sad letter. Why am I showing you a sad letter from my mom's childhood? Because the letter's not ended. Her letter's over but the letter that her mother received was just beginning. You turn this page over and there's this other letter. If your little girl is dissatisfied we'd be glad to have her bed for children who are anxious to come. Signed. What you are looking at ladies and gentlemen is an early prototype of the NSA wiretapping program. Circa 1948. It turns out it's a clear and present danger to these United States when a little black girl wants cookies and a doll. Because she might want voting rights and equal pay next. And that's a slippery slope. So sister is on it. I asked my mom in high school dressed very appropriately for the times a dress cut below the knees a basket presumably filled with positive affirmative thoughts toward the great American democratic experiment. She didn't stay looking like that. This is my mom and her friends gathered marching south on 16th street northwest outside of what is now known as Malcolm X Park in a 1968 African Liberation Day parade. Most people in a march look forward. You don't want to trip over someone. You want to keep your eyes on the proverbial prize but my mother looks at you. She knew she might end up in a PowerPoint someday. When you have a mother like this, it affects the media that you consume as a child. I did not have typical Saturday morning cartoons. I did not read typical pop up books. See Dick or Jane do simple verb thing and move on with your life. The very first book I can remember reading as a child was this. That'll fuck you up a little bit. Got me on my stoop protesting cocoa puffs because they got to be racist. I don't know how. But these messages get in. This is a shot outside the home. This is what I like to call local grassroots economic activity. It was very popular in the early 90s in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. Now white people are very popular in that same neighborhood. It's different, different strokes, different strokes. Family photo, middle school. I went to the Sidwell Friends school from 7th through 12th grade. My mother is pictured in the middle. My older sister, Belinda, is with her back to me. She's in Lansing, Michigan. She was in the newspaper business for 25 years. In fact, when she took her job as the assistant managing editor of the Lansing State Journal, she was one of 25 black assistant managing editors in America. And the year was not 1800 anything. It was very recently. She left the newspaper world to start a yoga studio. A donation based yoga studio in the hood in Lansing. Now you can either take that as a great testament to her community service and commitment to sharing an art with people who truly need it, not just those who could afford it or you could take it as a massive indictment about the prospects for journalism in these United States. I give you choices. I give you choices. Since then, I've been involved in, learned from, and helped create a few very interesting institutions and organizations. I studied at the Improv Olympic in Chicago for a summer, which was so great. As a child, I was in actually a childhood theater company called City at Peace, which got teenagers to write their own stories. Give it up. Yeah. One person who knows it and the rest, because I told you to. Thank you. You heard some of the other stuff in the bio, and I do have a podcast that's very new. It's called Our National Conversation about conversations about race. We don't have much to talk about. Most significantly over the past few years, I've been spending time building this institution cultivated with several of my onion colleagues, and I left to advance the cause of comedy and storytelling and technology and try to bring those together more. The name was inspired by an old poet from Rome named Horace, who said these words are cultivated with one that badgers less can persuade all the more. And so we're trying to take that power of humor to connect with the power of technology to amplify and bridge them together. It's often easier to hear such a message. Along the way I've learned a few things and want to share some of those lessons with you. The first has to do with kind of a general life lesson that sounds obvious and then you play it out and it gets more interesting. Having a clear identity and point of view, many of you run theatrical organizations, you are on stages yourself. When I joined this theatrical organization America's finest news source known as the onion I thought I got it and people often say this is such an onion story you know and those people are always wrong it's never what they think it is. Most people think oh it's politically absurd it's goofy it makes fun of a president therefore it must be in the pages of the onion. And what the onion did very creatively is they invented a mythology, their own fake history to ground everything the onion ever does back in that history. Now the history of the onion is one of a Prussian tuber farmer who immigrated to this country and knew only two words of English, the and onion. He saw an opportunity to monetize attention by pimping out readers to advertisers and the rest is history. The onion's modus operandi has been as media satire as an all-seeing, all-knowing condescending I whose motto is Latin for you are dumb. All the news that fits a print versus you are dumb. And from that comes a lot of the humor out of those pages regardless of the platform that that humor exists on. Now when I wrote this book I tried to channel some of that mythology, some of that grounding essence into a message that I thought would be as clear and as effective as what I learned from the onion. And my scientists my scientists came up with this. It's true, it's true. So who are you really the only question that matters in life in general? There are fun ways to play that I have learned some formally, some informally, some by accident. I want to share a couple of those cases with you. I wrote a book that was weird for me. I was a product of the internet. I blogged and tweeted and I balanced my phone before I came into large public events because of the mother that you saw who raised me so right. But this book is an act of absurdity. There's no way to be black. So let's write a book about that. And it's mostly a memoir, but it's also a bit of lessons learned along the way. There's chapters like how to be the black friend, how to speak for all black people which I'm doing right now. This is exhibit A to be the next black president. I'm looking into the future as well. I also knew that the question was too big for just my own experience to adequately address. And so I built a panel of experts who I called my black panel. And these were black people. That's it. That was the requirement. They were black people. And they had lifetimes of combined experience in blackness. And so I recorded my interviews with the black panel. I asked them questions like when did you first realize you were black, how black are you, can you swim, like science based queries to really get at the heart of it. And because I'm a scientist, I also had a control group. And so there were three black women, three black men, coastal and Midwestern representation plus the diaspora also represented outside of these states. But one white Canadian man served as my control group. That was Christian Lander. He wrote the book Stuff White People Like. And I figured if anybody knows white people it's the guy who wrote that. So here's a little snippet of some of what they share. This one girl, it was her turn to kiss me and she didn't and she sort of ran away laughing and the kids ran away laughing and the thing I realized at that point that I was black and they were all white because this was a small prime school in Boston and that was the first time I ever felt like black was somehow separate from the norm, you know. I think I knew I was black before then because as I say in my show my mom would not have let me not know I was black there would have been no way that she would have let that information slip. It's cold outside, take a jacket and you're black. I was born in Africa so everybody's black. So we don't really think about it like that and I mean here you're like oh is it black? Is it white? Is it black? Is it black? Africa you don't ask. The assumption is that you're black. Therefore what becomes more important is other things what your name is, where you come from, what your language do you speak, what's your culture, what's your tribe etc. So I knew I was black when I was 8 I moved to the Middle East I think the Middle East is the first time I discovered I was black because people would come to talk to you and they'd be like we're going to talk to you and they'd be like and what does that translate to? That means this is a black guy. I've been to East Chinatown in Toronto so it was made very clear that I was Guailal from a very early Guailalian white ghost so you know I know every derogatory term for a white person in Chinese. Important question so that was I had dreams when I wrote this book about how it would be received this was not in my dreams but I'm grateful for it the cover was designed intentionally to be provocative, to be a bit of a banner and to put public readers of the book on the spot and make them ask a question like hey what the hell are you doing with that book? Which is what happened to the white man who was carrying this book before just a group of gentle black men inquired about the reasons for possession of such an object their faces capture the full range of response to the book that are possible according to science my favorite is that one because the others are in some way engaged like they are excited they are confused or they are upset that's an emotional space but this guy over here he's saying I don't need some book to tell me how to be black as evidence by my matching turtleneck and my leather jacket and my hat go on with that go on with that I've got this I have not staged the photos that have started to explode from an audience which wasn't exactly intended but kids across Instagram love to pose with a book called how to be black because it doesn't matter if you're black or not it is ridiculous to hold a book called how to be black if you're black do you need refresher courses is everything are you okay is this like continuing education if you're white do you think that like this makes you a certain thing and it's very sad understanding sometimes people aren't happy about it and then last week last week this great country of ours this gifts that keeps on giving yet also taking but giving but then taking provided us with an opportunity and so we've had one award presented already tonight but I would like to present an award to one of the most incredible performances that I have ever seen in my 30s plus years lifetime achievement award Miss Rachel someone help her someone help her she did inspire something serious in me she went on today show this week and she embraced this term by transracial which is a bit of a complex term around giving where we're at with transgender rights etc and she says I identify as black and I thought alright I could be upset by this or I could see an opportunity here to change my station in life so this is me this is who I am when I was a small child I used to draw dollar signs all around myself I made it rain invisibly ambillionaire I love you all so much one other storytelling fun time experiment that I played with was when I wrote this book I opened up my computer screen to the world to witness the writing from their own desktops not entirely that would be stupid and I would never have finished the book or be here to talk about it and I did an experiment of writing a chapter in public and then as I edited I had these office hour windows where you could just tune in and see how it goes and I came with chat software because there is no vanity author software to boost one's ego while one writes one's own book Silicon Valley has solved a lot of problems but not that one so I used tech support software it allows people to take over your computer when you're writing and it allows them to talk to you which is very distracting when you're actually trying to write so I saved the chat logs and I wanted to share with you some of what this audience had to say as I was writing this book someone from the UK wished that you could stay and watch but it's nearly one in the morning someone suggested a title change for a chapter a chapter about me going to Senegal for the first time I took that advice that chapter is actually called Black to Africa I'm a mixed child of immigrants and I'm not black, but I look black doesn't mean I'm black, help! Rachel Dogell was on my chat room you got to aginate people love to tell you about how bad your spelling is on the internet so that was interesting there was a hotel reference they told me not to stay there this had already happened but it didn't matter I think they worked at the Holiday Inn in Dedim so this is like a buzz marketing kind of thing and there's the great payoff, this is awesome, I'm going to tweet about this and they did and people were like come check out this weird show this dude is writing his book in public but the greatest moment from the chat history around this book is this my girlfriend is Chinese and I'm half Jamaican half regular black I think our kids might end up Dominican or something what else would they end up as chairs like the human children so I just want to thank this anonymous user for paving a way forward for us as a nation the last area that I kind of want to talk about has to do with technology I have played with and been a benefactor of my mom was a computer programmer in the early 1980s before there was a program for that and she never graduated college but she found her way into that universe and that influenced me a lot so I think about where performance can happen and does it have to be on a stage is there a way to interact with it and I've witnessed some very interesting examples and been a part of a few myself this is a Google texting software lets you send a text message from your computer and you can see from the numbers counting down that those are the number of characters you have left in your message I mean the second message already what happens on the third Google judges you that is delightful I was like oh the board is hilarious this guy jokes that's really cool at cultivated wit we have created this theatrical experience actually called comedy hack day it's a tech hackathon where developers would normally be coding on something rather serious over a short amount of time we pair them with comedians and also with designers to make ridiculous things on purpose and put them on stage like an apple keynote about a very ridiculous thing so some of the ideas people pitched at our last comedy hack day that just tells you to look up from your fucking phone when you're walking down the street just a lifesaving technology really there was race book which is like a special version of Facebook that filtered out all the idiotic racist comments that happened after there are racial incidents there was alternative mints, mints is a financial software that helps you budget and kind of shows you how you've been spending your money alternative mints shows you what your money would look like if you had made better choices with it well deserved won our San Francisco competition this is an online platform that lets you lease your excess privilege right and it works so if you get free lunch at google but you don't use it you could put it on the platform if you're a dude who gets to walk down the street without being cat called you could like walk with a woman to prevent that for like five dollars so it's very empowering it's like empowering technology and then there's these guys who got this thing which is a calendar app they call it a no ductivity app and this is for the situation where a friend asks for your help and you don't have a good reason why you can't help because you don't actually have anything going on this auto populates your calendar with real events from your local area as well as a few made up ones but I am so busy man I got this thing trying out for the x games cats is playing cats is cats come on come on they'll understand and then there's some fun cases that happen in the world where it's not on purpose it's not crafted but it's spontaneous in many ways flash mob meets performance meets the internet this is a real place in texas big earls bait house and country store big earls does not like to serve homosexuals and they made it clear with signs like this where men act like men women act like ladies and no saggy pants and then they made this known to a gay couple that was dining and the response was beautiful it wasn't a sit in it wasn't a protest it was much more than a hashtag it was let's make big earls the best biggest baddest gay dining facility in all of texas they took over their yelp page and they started adding testimonials about how great big earls is if you are gay and then the media picked up on this that's not the kind of attention big earl wanted but that's what happens when you hate that's what happens the artist the artist will get you the artist with their technology last example the onion did this story a few years ago it's an amazing story I'll let you digest that so this is a piece of satire which isn't real but there were many members of our society who thought it was an elected member of congress thought this was real and posted it to his facebook page and warned that this is what we fight for this is what we're up against and the reason he did that is because he's an idiot and he didn't use his brain before he clicked a thing but the onion audience had fun with this and they did a similar yelp thing they created this place on yelp and started adding reviews to it very detailed reviews but I'm not going to spend much more time on because I'm pretty much out of time but it's like people wanted to be a part of the show and they didn't ask permission they just did it it was beautiful so look what does this all mean I have in some ways been to the future I hang out with people who are building fun new tools I have the luxury of traveling a lot and I have a strong belief that the distinction between those on stage and off stage those who get to choose what goes on stage is breaking down and that powerful metaphor is not just a theatrical one it's very much the technological one we have in some weird way created a world where anti-social people build all of our social technologies how did that happen because we were partying with that guy that's how it happened so I think is very important for us in the interactive world whether that's physically or technologically to shift that power a little bit to be a lot more inclusive especially when you're defining tools that determine how we interact with our families not just how we entertain ourselves so you guys I'm honored to be here thank you so much for having me and if there's one last thing that I've learned from our future it's that it's wonderful Dominican thank you very much thank you very much oh thank you Baratunde that was fantastic um let's see oh here's the great thing there's a party coming but also Baratunde is going to be signing copies of his book in the TCG bookstore so if you would like to get a copy of his book and talk to Baratunde for a minute please do that otherwise we have buses outside that will take you to pandemonium at TCG pandemonium at TCG party at the edge so those buses are right out on Euclid so either go get your book signed or go party and we'll see you all there thank you