 There's a delay. Hold on one second. Uh, I think we're good. Okay. Yeah, right It's great. It's watch me work. It's Thursday, which is um the new friday And we're here we've been doing watch me work for 11 years and We want to thank the public theater for supporting us in those 11 years And we also want to thank howl round who came on a few years ago to help us live stream from the lobby of the public theater Where we usually hold this and then Also recently to help us create this beautiful mosaic this beautiful community. I'm during these challenging times What we do for those of you who don't know i'm looking around because oh my timer is on my window So i'll have to go and get it what we do is we work for 20 minutes and then We talk with you about your work and your creative process. It's as simple as that and the Idea is that we get some work done And we talk a little bit about the process to keep you going to encourage you along And uh, if you have any questions during that time during the during the question time Audrey's going to tell you how to get in touch. I probably forgot something, but it's okay I think you got it. Oh I'm gonna go get my timer You get your timer amazing So if you have any questions, uh, and you're inside of the zoom All you need to do is click on the raise your hand button in the participant tab Likely on the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top of your on a tablet or an ipad Um, and if you have a question and you're watching on howl round tv You can actually tweet at us at at watch me work slp with the hashtag howl round h o w l r o u n d Or tweet at public theater ny or messages in our instagram Not that That's it. So, um, it's really simple all we're going to do is work and you can do any kind of work. It doesn't have to be writing work Um, it can be any kind of work. You'll feel like doing and then we will talk with you about your process Um, after we're after the 20 minutes has passed. Here we go. Are we ready? No effort is ever wasted no effort is ever wasted, uh anybody have any questions I know what that it's always good to for me to remember that anyway Uh, yeah I don't see any hands up quite yet Okay. Oh, I see one All right Let's just sit inside Ah, cool. All right All right. First we've got verneeda Are you with us? Are you? Hey, hey verneeda. How are you? Oh, uh, hi slp. Hi Audrey everyone Um, yeah, I said, okay, I'll take the opportunity to jump in here. Um, I'm really grateful to be here today and um I missed Logging in and on time for Tuesday, but I was listening to the live stream um and heard the conversation around anger and um so I am very Emotionally activated after the last, you know, 72 hours or so and this is a question. I would have asked yesterday too but um I've started writing. Um, I have about Uh a thousand words. Um We'll rewrite but I'm finding that I'm like So Emotionally activated about these current events. I want to write a piece that gives a Positive framework. Um That contributes to a broader narrative change around black men and boys In this country, but like all that keeps coming out is like how Angry and devastated I feel right now and I don't know if that means like That's just what I meant to write or keep writing until the positive framework emerges or You know, put it all aside and maybe come back next week when I can You know put a collective coherent concept together. Um, so any thoughts around Um how the channel um That energy when it feels so elevated and active it's kind of hard to Focus in a way. Um, other than like what I really just feel right in front of me right now I love your question It's good to see you again. I'm happy you're here. I'm happy you all are here. I love your question I love your question. Um It's a great question and it has a big answer one is um cultural maybe more culturally specific and this is again just me talking so it's not You know, I know in this country or all over the world we have a A model of one person of color standing for all people of color, but I'm just reminding everybody That it's just me talking This is just my opinion. So I think we're needed um as I have also, you know With all of us been living through the recent events. It reminds me How we um, how to say black people Um specifically and this is not people of color But it's people of african descent in america are not allowed Simple emotions often like anger We do we are not allowed simple emotions like anger And we if you're feeling anger right now To my mind that's okay And if you're writing from an angry place I hear you want to get it into a positive narrative framework and all that beautiful stuff But so often we are not allowed anger. We don't allow um, we're not society doesn't allow us anger Society doesn't even allow us to say things like could you put your dog on a leash, please? Okay, society doesn't allow us anger and we have internalized that to the extent that we If we want to if we feel like I got to keep my job. I got to keep my situation. You know what I mean? I got a smile Um, I've done it a million times Smiled because I didn't want people to think I was You know dangerous at me dangerous, you know what I'm saying? But so brothers out there and I know brothers out there deal with it perhaps more than than than sisters do than women do, you know, okay? But I'm so so this that's the culture is just culturally specific answer. I feel like if you feel anger right now I think it's Perfectly valid and I think one of the problems is that this country does not allow us to feel pretty much anything Except something that it's going to be pleasing to their bank accounts And anything that happens, it can be perverted and twisted in such a way that makes us look as if we are less than Anything Any way it goes down Okay, so I think that in the privacy of your own home in your own thoughts on your page that is private now and that will one day Hopefully go public Maybe even at the public Um, I believe that if you are feeling anger verneeta or anybody out there regardless of your color or background or whatever we talk to the person we were talking to on tuesday From what I could see did not present as a as a poc. Okay, but I couldn't tell these screens are very small Okay, but if you're feeling anger I think anger is is is is okay Also, if you're not feeling anger, that's okay to you know what I mean? I'm not telling anybody to feel a certain thing if the anger turns into something Else great if it doesn't verneeta, that's okay too Um We uh, again, we're not allowed to feel so I mean I mean the idea that people can Uh go to a governor's house with guns and demand the right to get a haircut And yet a brother can't Just you know You know what I'm saying or a sister or a person So that's where we are right now and I feel like um It's it's okay to get angry about that Or whatever you want to get angry about actually That's my opinion Um and bless your heart that you want to turn it into something positive along the way that is that is that is That is the african-american experience really I mean really can you imagine if if black people were as angry as we should be It's not about a haircut. You know what I'm saying We're not even allowed to be angry about you know We have to hold it together because if we don't hold it together We'll be seen as bad and we'll be jailed and I'll get off that so much because we've heard it a hundred times already Right Go ahead No, I'm just gonna say no it is helpful. I definitely relate to the not being able Or like not being allowed to feel that feelings. I tell you I'm missing my car right now So I can just like go in my car and scream without a neighbor in another apartment. You know wonder what's going on um, and I think this particular story with uh, George Floyd for whatever reason it just hit me but it was it was jumped to close to My brother's birthday And it was almost like seeing a split screen on the left side You know, I have this image of the officer with his knee in this man's neck and then to the right It's like my family's having this celebratory zoom um And you know, I guess the positive framework i'm trying to get to is to be able to highlight an uplift and give reinforcement that our black men our loved are doing well our fathers our husbands our You know community builders Who have a right to be here? Yeah, I I know um and from experience and um You know when people want something when people want a big job done That they think cannot be done that involves perhaps some difficult shit They call me I channel a lot of shit I can run la la I got a big bandwidth for a bullshit and anger and all that kind of stuff But I'm saying to you One artist to another run the anger let it run Let it run and the thing that beautiful space your place thing you're looking for to share Is there but if you don't let the anger run it's not going to come And we won't feel it in your work because we'll feel that you that before the anger even got out You were trying to make a cake that everybody would enjoy You know what I'm saying you got to let those feelings run and this is regard Whatever you're writing, you know if you're writing about what's going on in brazil right now if you're writing about what's going on Uh anything the holocaust whatever could be something that happened, you know, I mean the the holocaust world war two Shit, right? It doesn't have to be something's happening right now, but anything we're writing about You got to let that anger run or you got to let the feelings flow Whatever those feelings are right now for you right now today. They're anger and and a desire to Find that that place So so yeah, don't don't I mean I would suggest that you allow yourself to be free vernita I was about to say don't police yourself, but that's a don't Instead I'm gonna turn it into just an affirmation. I am free I am free. I am free Now what you're gonna do I'm gonna write That's a good answer bingo Thank you. Thank you, vernita. Good question. Thank you. Great question I'm all right. Thank you. The next person is john John are you with us? Yeah, I'm right here. Hi john. I see you. Hi. How are you? I'm well happy to see you Thank you for having this forum I do have a question. It's about writing scripts I I'm not a playwright myself, but I'm an interpreter and a translator And I have 20 some years of experience of working in courts hospitals With immigrants people who are uneducated people that Certainly the complete opposite of my experience And I've done the um, I'm doing what you're telling me to do. I take notes I write cards of people every day. I'm reading poetry again, and I'm tapping into this Literature that I study for years to get me where I am right now, which is speaking in two languages So my question is this Because of you and and you know, you do these script things and I read your play I incorporated a script of Of whatever it was into my last blog piece. So my question is where do I go for guidance about Writing scripts because I it's I just instinctively did it, but I don't know if there's you know Something I should follow some type of things I should do to make a script really Pop up the page because I hear these scripts all the time I say them in two languages But is there anything that I need to do when I'm writing a script incorporating it into A piece I'm writing like a blog post or something that To make it sound cleaner and make it sound more real Because I can't in a sense I can't say exactly what I've heard people say because that's the trust that they have of working with interpreters It's all confidential. But how can I incorporate? actually what happens in a In a in a script and that I can include in my writing piece if that makes any sense so I mean if I want to make sure I understood you that you're A translator you're working with people who are entrusting you with their stories. Is that appropriate? I mean, I just want to okay, and you want to you feel moved to include Aspects of those stories in your own work. Is that correct? Yes, yes, I just want making sure that I understand because you use no word scripts and I just want to make sure So you hear stories from folks and you feel moved to include Well, I mean you could So you don't want to include it like a a documentary kind of thing it's not going to be like So-and-so that I met yesterday mr So-and-so that I met yesterday said this and this is sort of his story like a journalism piece you don't want that you want it to to sort of It to move from the factual and the person you know into sort of into fiction or Dramatic fiction dramatic literature. Is that correct? That's it. Yes I would I mean if you can do things like Respectfully, that's the first word Respectfully because it is someone you know and met and has as you say has a trust in you Start creating characters So you have the person mr or miss Miss beauty. Let's just say miss beautiful, right and she's told you something and start creating a character based on them and think about Most all the Writers that we love, you know, think about like, I don't know Charles Dickens and you read about Charles Dickens life and how he went through this and that and the other And then you read about the care they read his novels and you read the characters in his in his novels And you think wow, you know, these are based on people, but they're not the people So your character isn't miss beauty as she appeared to you in that actual situation She is somebody else with a different set of circumstances and different desires start stepping away from the character And imagine maybe miss beauty imagine these people that you spoke with and have interviewed as people members of your family You love them and respect them that much It's a tricky territory. I keep using the word respect because a lot of times we One might have a tendency to use these people You know like like a mine like a mine owner in South Africa might send those people who are less educated down into the mines to gather things bring up And then they can be appropriated and I know I've heard many conversations about in America We could all appropriate each other stuff But it's all free for all and they're writers who have said this and I've Heard them say it in live, you know, you know, like on they're on stage And I'm in the audience and I have to hold the chair to sit down because I don't want to shout from the audience and scream No The playing field is not equal And often the people who appropriate for profit. It's not a level playing field are people who are not POC people who are people who are educated, for example And people who are I'll just say white folks That's what often happens That's a historical fact. That's just Information, you know, so if you're working with people who you have said are less educated and maybe POC You got to be really you got to have your respect your respect in spades and that is intentionally said You know what I mean Because we can't hear you just taken okay So so as much as you can't think of them as your family as much as you can't step away from the character Allow the person you met. I'm sorry the character step into character Allow the person you met to be a springboard like a character that a person that dickens Charles Dickens might have met and then be it build Like a mofo from there to have so at the end of the in your piece you have a character not just What that person said which is sounds like what you want to try to go for right? That's exactly it. Yes. Thank you. Okay, great sounds like it's gonna be a great project Thanks Thank you john All right up next we've got Andrea or Andrea. I'm sorry that I don't know Are you there Andrea? Hold on one second. Oh, there you should be unmuted Can you hear us? Did me? Sorry my yes. Yes. Yes. It's you Sorry, my connection is pretty poor. Oh good I kind of wanted to go off of um verneeta's beautiful question A few weeks ago. I finished class susan lori and I had a class with oscar use this And we talked about your your play cycle fathers father comes home from war and um He talked about in that time in the development in the writing of that play what Happened that now we see continuing, you know with trayvon martin almost as Not the beginning but what really propelled the black lives matter movement forward And and your response to that and how It impacted what you were doing at the time And just as I was that that last day of that class I had just finished a play And then the very next day was the first time we had seen the footage of amon arbery And so i'm i'm sitting on this play that feels just too Real and it feels like it's hitting the nail on the head I've spent so much time working on it so much time developing it And now i'm just sitting And i'm and i'm i'm not necessarily stuck but i'm just trying to Read the moment and and read the room, you know and see When is the right time? And I was wondering if you had Any advice thoughts about What to do when you have the play but When is when is the moment for it to be to be read and shared and especially when it's When it's happening Well, I would Okay, so what's your ideal situation now? I mean, what's funny about this? Well, we're kind of all on a kind of hiatus So would you want to invite your friends? On a zoom call and read it that way I mean, what what were you what are you hoping to to do? Unmute unmute yourself There you go. All right. Oh Hold on. Let's see. Ah, there you go. Okay. Um, yeah, I've been thinking about doing readings I just like i'm really trying to avoid being triggering Especially for for black actors like asking them to I have a whole I'm sorry. I I never I try not to talk while people are talking but triggering um That's a that's a concept that's relatively new I kind of feel like it's like new math my son does new when we homeschool him He does new math they're teaching all these strategies for addition Because why I asked the teacher because basic addition is too hard Oh, it's too hard. Guess what? girlfriend Like life is hard. Maybe, you know, some brothers and sisters Need to be triggered. What because what what what you watch the news You don't want to be triggered triggered. What reminded that the world is difficult Um, I'm sorry. That's a whole thing. I would if you're worried about triggering people Put the play away write something else. Okay I mean Triggering people what we're supposed to make things easy now for people so they won't get their feelings hurt Right Floyd's on the street with a Cops knee in his neck. He's dying He does not use a contraction He says I cannot breathe You know when you say you you make a conscious choice not to use a contraction Because you don't want to sound like you don't know nothing And you want to be heard. I cannot breathe man I say like I said to Renee, you know, let us not let us worry less about triggering People that's again. That's my opinion. Okay on this specific subject So we get some folks in a room and they're triggered. Maybe Feelings will be felt You know, maybe feelings will be felt. Are we trying to keep each other from feeling feelings? To my mind, that's why the art scene including theater film tv Visual is so often so fucking lame these days because we don't want to make anybody really feel anything We want to make people think of things. I was reading one of my favorite writers today And also a writer who happens to be my mentor. I have a mentor James Baldwin And we have James Baldwin. You only need one mentor and he says When you're pessimistic, it's because life has the the the idea of life has become academic Yes, everybody. Let's crawl up into our heads and not get triggered Right So we can just think about it and it can be an intellectual exercise. So if you're play triggers people I don't think that's a bad thing Andrea Okay, if you feel like you're hitting it on the head and it's too fresh for you Or you won't be able to really deal with it and get a good rewrite and all that out of it I can pause for a couple of weeks put it away write something else work on something else and bring it out When you can get a little bit of perspective. I'm sorry. I I react to that that phrase that the idea that we're supposed to soft pedal this shit And not hurt anybody's feeling. It's very different from other situations, you know Where people have gone through domestic violence or physical violence or whatever and they they are managing a lot of things But this is this is not that And I think we You know getting triggered in this situation is not something we should avoid Whose feelings are we trying to protect? Yours mine You know Brother out there, you know, right I mean I get I mean talk about getting triggered. I get triggered when people do shitty writing Because they didn't go for it I'm like, yeah, all right So I'm here to encourage let us go for it together right, okay It feels too fresh right now and you don't want to be like hitting the nail on the head give yourself a few weeks That's a fair thing Okay It will hopefully it will always be triggering Hopefully it'll always make people feel something rage confusion despair fear anxiety You know Yeah I hear you Thanks, I talked a long a long time about that But you know, that's the subject I feel very strongly about this like we have to like make everything nice and palpable Because what we're actually saying is we have to make it marketable Marketable that's what we're saying really we got to have people leaving the theater going. Yeah, hooray. I could laugh at that I saw a play about racism when I laughed I felt good at the end of it. I felt okay For example Instead of I feel the Fuck I feel fucked up. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do now Yeah, good. You're feeling things good good good Or whatever subject you want to write about it's not just racism Jesus Thanks, okay. Thank you. I know she's ranting today. It's ranting. I thought obviously we're Wednesday ranting Wednesday Ranting Thursday I'll rant today. Okay This is what we're here for Thank you All right, we got about 10 minutes left Um, and we will go to mc I'm see are you there? Yes. I'm here. Can you see me? Yeah Can we can see you? Hey, hello. Thank you so much for everything everyone. Um I wanted to go back to the what you were talking about The idea of I love that as writers We're free to go into different characters to create characters that are anything from Um With lives so different than our own But at the same time, I'm very aware You know about what you were saying about respect respect for people and situations and cultures That I wasn't born into So I'm working on something that said in the 1930s There's a chinese immigrant There's an african-american musician and there's another character a white character from the south and When I brought this up with some friends, you know as the daughter of immigrants You know, they really liked that I could inhabit this this Chinese immigrant character. I had a legitimate I was allowed and They trusted what I was saying But when I tried to I was experimenting Well, what if I go into the point of view of this african-american? real-life character a musician Who found himself in shanghai in the 1930s? Then I got oh be careful You know and there And and I want to be sensitive and then of course. I'm not a white man from the south But I'm putting my characters together in a room And I want to feel the freedom and the exhilaration You know when I saw I saw your play father comes home from the wars a couple times and it moved me so much, you know And clearly, you know, I want to be able to write from the perspective of a dog too and get into the dog's head But I also want to show respect And care and sensitivity Your thoughts Please Yeah, um Just a question mc. Did they did they have pause when you talked about being the white male? I'm guessing southern earth the white southern earth person. Yes, uh less But no, no, it was just Well, I didn't write that characters fully uh, okay, so You know, so right, but it's really the exchange between the chinese immigrant and the african-american musician And their their worlds they've never you know Yeah, um that this is this is a great question and it's respect and I don't know. I don't I'm not a latin scholar I don't know what actually the word respect means like if I had an oxford angostiction or I'd be able to flip through right now Maybe someone has one and they can they can tell me or I'll look it up later on my phone but the the the notion that you You You got to go there This is a skill. This is a craft skill Thing, you know, you can't you don't want to just slap a care I mean, it doesn't sound like you're doing this at all from what you're telling me and I can I can tell that by the um, because I have little ways that you know Well, the the sound of your voice conveys a certain kind of feeling even over this contraption the sound of your voice conveys a feeling Um, that is somewhere where you want to go. You got to go there So, you know what I mean? It's the same if if when I write characters who I who I was not, you know, born into I got to really leave myself and go Into them You have to be willing to leave yourself behind. You also have to ask yourself. Am I doing I mean this Maybe you should ask yourself this first. Am I doing this for money? Do I think this is going to be again marketability? No, no, I'm not suggesting you are I'm just saying this is a question that we ask ourselves Why am I am I doing this to because I think it's going to be the next hot You know what I mean? Or is this a story that I'm like so moved to tell You know, so you've got to be willing to leave yourself behind Maybe you'll never come back I don't know but you have to leave yourself behind and do more than walk around in their shoes I I don't know the the words for it. You have to take yourself out of yourself And enter the big self which is where you have access to these people and creatures who are Who don't look like you You know, so it's a it's a practice. It's a big practice. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead And just the mechanics when I'm writing it down So my my chinese character speaks he's just learning the language So he speaks language. Which one you see there's nothing for granted here. Go on So when I write it down because I'm writing in english I'm writing it down the way I hear him speaking which is in broken english and at times Now, um Of course that can and I'm so glad you brought up how you feel about triggering because that was the other part of my question But you answered it really your thoughts. Um, but so if I write from this And I'm also writing from the perspective of you know, the 1930s and the way people talk to each other was different and and in some ways or maybe the slang they used or things that were considered Like if I have them hurling epitaphs of each other I'm not but if I did Is that being insensitive and not showing respect? I mean I Well, no, no, it's it's it sounds like it's something that might happen in a scene if they start doing some name calling Yeah, that they see your language. They start doing some name calling. It is an exchange Yes comes out of the scene. Perhaps. I mean, I don't know if you know, you know So that sounds like it's kind of part of the scene But you you you started talking going down a road and then you stopped and you went down this other road Your character your Your chinese character, right is learning english and he speaks he correct Yes speaks what you said is a broken english sometimes a pigeon And then you said and I am writing for and then you stopped and went down another road and I So my other I can guess what you wanted to say, but I'm not going to Yeah, so and then and then of course It's the southern character who's hurling these And the the chinese character doesn't even know what it means but then You know what i'm trying to convey and I I can't But I want to be sensitive and respectful without Taking away the sort of our freedom to How does the how does the character of african descent speak? You approach that question didn't ask it Well, actually since he's a real life figure. I looked at his memoirs. I've taken things directly from how he speaks And he was born in kansas city He speaks you mean you take you took things directly from how he wrote them down Yes, which is different from how he speaks You got to go is he talk is he talking did he talk these out and whether I inserted some of things from his memoir But then I embellished too. No, no, no. I'm asking was his memoir a written document or was it an oral It was oral. Yes. So he told his story to someone else who I guess This was um, let me see his name is buck Clayton with the bacy band and I love him and um Told to nancy miller elliot. Mm-hmm. Who is that? I don't know. Mm-hmm Maybe maybe you could find you see are you familiar with the wpa project where the where there were all these legions of awesome Writers who went around and collected the slave narratives Predominantly white people well meaning and learned went around through the south and collected slave narratives if they hadn't done it We wouldn't have probably all this wonderful material, right? But the material is Come through an ear that is perhaps not You see what I mean? So fine. Yes, that is because people writing down what other people say In likely if I'm writing down what you say it's going to go through my ear And I'm going to write it down Which is always why I tend to repeat questions to make sure that I understand what you said you see So you're writing things down the way he spoke It's the way perhaps that it was written down I'm When I did foregain best people say oh, that's how they spoke people wrote Not necessarily Right, but you got to go beneath you got to go deeper. That's what I'm saying when you got to go there You know you you understand what I'm saying. So you're writing His voice is the voice from his memoir yes and The southern guy you got to go there too. You got to really go there. We can't you know, yeah We don't you know the hurler of epithets. What else does he do for crying all out? Oh, he's confused No, he's considered a The white guy is considered a criminal element Okay, okay He owns a bunch of seedy seedy bars and stuff. Okay. Okay, cool. All right You know round him out too though, you know, you said that he's the least Sculpted of your three characters, you know, you want it you want to give him maximum time of day also You know what I mean because that because because give it short changing any of your characters I'm pretending now. There are only three characters in your play which may or may not be true But short changing any of those characters is what makes it See me You know Yeah, you know what I mean? So you really got to go there. I mean, yeah, I went. Yeah I went in the heart mind and soul of the dog. Yeah, I didn't short change a dog You know, I didn't short change the kernel. I love the kernel people didn't get why I love the kernel The white guy I was like sitting in rehearsal everything the kernel says I love people like look at me like what? Like because I go there I see so you got it. You got to just continue to go there Every character is well rounded fleshed out Loved by you. Yes If you can say at the end of the day every character in my play. I love every single character Okay, thank you. Yeah, thanks. Thanks everyone. Yeah I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank you All right, it's six oh two. This is like a fierce one man That's because Tony was on yesterday. We're like, yeah, everybody's Yeah, right Oh, Eslipi, thank you for another great week. You're the best. Yeah, thank well, you're the best You guys are the best. This is wonderful and gives me great joy. Yeah Um, so next week as a reminder, we'll have all those links up tomorrow at 3 p.m For you to sign up for our monday through thursday 5 p.m classes And we'll have a couple of guests next week too. Yay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'll have a wonderful weekend Oh, thank you for the heart Thank you