 Hello members of the Grace Church Community Council. I've missed your faces. Pastor Marks, thank you for opening the chapel to host this important meeting about COVID-19. They said we could gather together in small groups, so here we are, guided by spirit and by the strength of our leadership. Amen. Amen. I also wanna give thanks to the Lord that I am alive today. As you all know, I'm a nurse by profession, but some of you may not know that back in March, I tested positive for COVID-19. No. Yes, it was such an eye-opening experience. I told the doctor I was in pain. He did not believe me. I said I was in pain. And he underestimated me. Why was my pain not real? Why did he think I was imagining my pain? When in fact, I know that my pain is centuries old. I told him that I couldn't breathe, that every time I took a deep breath, it felt like a thousand needles were piercing me through my chest. I told him my throat and neck were swollen. He asked me if I was suffering from any stress. I said, well, who isn't? He then said in a nonchalant tone, Naomi, did I say that right? Great. It looks like it's just a panic attack. I said, no, this isn't anxiety, sir. I can't taste anything. And I lost my sense of smell. He then asked me about my preexisting conditions and family history. I was growing really tired of his overt biases towards me. So I was like, well, let me see, doctor. I got conditions embedded into my DNA that I ain't even asked for. Meanwhile, I'm living a healthy life. I can't say much about my family history, but I do know that it's comprised of systemic racism, poverty, redlining, food apartheid, PTSD, and trauma. He then interrupted me with, I'm guessing that also includes diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, asthma, and depression, right? I looked at him real hard and said, doctor, you may not recognize me, but I work on the third floor in pediatrics. And I know we have a limited supply, but you need to test me for COVID-19 ASAP. He was like a deer in headlights. He left the room to grab a COVID test. And all I kept thinking about was if I was a regular black patient, he would have sent me home with a psych referral. He came back in, shoved that swab up my nose, and told me to go home and quarantine for a week until I got my results. A week. Now, my new, this was in early March. You know, right before DC started shutting down. So I panicked. I was out of sick days. I already took my vacation and I only had one personal day left. The White House had just declared a global pandemic and I am an essential worker. If I don't work, will I lose my job? And if I get really sick, who's gonna feed my three kids and my diabetic mother with dementia? I'm a widow and I got family down south. Who was gonna help me? How could I quarantine at home without putting my family in danger? They weren't trying to give me a bed at the hospital. And when my results came in positive, they just told me to quarantine at home and to come back if my symptoms got worse. But where was I supposed to heal? By the grace of God, I stand here today for you as a survivor who had a generous coworker who let me quarantine in her guest bedroom. And while I was away, my mother's home health aid volunteer to work longer days and even slept over some nights. She considers us family. Even my oldest son, who just turned 17, stepped up and took care of his siblings. Lord knows how scary those days were as I laid up in a strange bed, not being able to fully breathe. But I thank God I had family who looked out for me. This is what community does, my people. I gathered us here today because I need you all to realize that what we are experiencing is a capitalistic pandemic. It is imperative that we take immediate action. But before I go on, let me ask y'all some validating questions. Raise your hand if the following is true for you. Once your hands are raised, please keep them up high in the air. How many of you have ever felt that your healthcare institution did not prioritize your health? How many times did a doctor refuse to give you pain medication because they didn't think your pain was severe enough? Even during childbirth or a major surgery, how many of you have faced health discrimination because of your pre-existing conditions? How many of you do not trust this government? That's right. Every hand is up and it's within reason. Why should we trust this government with our health? Amen. Remember when all those nurses were furloughed back in April? I wasn't one of them, but I was disheartened by the fact that the hospitals were firing nurses during a national health crisis. This is because hospitals are businesses, my people. That's right. And just like a business, preventing bankruptcy during a pandemic means you must cut costs like staff salaries. And here's the catch 22. Some sources revealed that many hospitals CEOs were pocketing extra money. If you're wondering how that's possible, just look at the CARES Act. For those who are unfamiliar, the CARES Act is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which designated a total of $175 billion for COVID-19 response efforts. It offered reimbursement to healthcare entities for expenses or lost revenues. Hospitals were allocated $100 billion from the Act itself and additional $75 billion in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program. Interestingly enough, most of the multi-million dollar PPP loans were granted to private and non-profit hospitals with less than 500 employees. Not surprising, huh? However, the real downfall of the CARES Act is that funding allocation was based on past revenue. This disadvantaged many hospitals in underrepresented areas because black indigenous people of color populations generate lower revenues due to under-insurance and under-treatment. This is why the hospitals in our communities are receiving less relief right now. Did they even consider that we're the ones that need the relief the most? Did it not matter? As I mentioned earlier, this is a capitalistic pandemic, a clear case of racial capitals. It's ironic, right? This CARES Act, they don't care about pre-existing conditions. They don't care that we take public transportation every day. They don't care that we live in inclusionary zoning and affordable dwelling units that tightly house hundreds of low-income families in every building. They don't care that the majority of us are considered essential workers and are putting our lives on the line. These are the social issues that we face every day. And this is why black and Latino people are dying at disproportionate rates. The most blatant truth to reckon with right now is that COVID-19 is not an isolated health issue in our community. For years and years, racial capitalism has been the cause of health inequalities in the United States. Our lives have been devalued because of the color of our skin and socioeconomic statuses. The evidence is right under your nose. Just take Flint, Michigan as an example. Take a look at our history. The Tuskegee experimentation on black bodies. The sterilization of Puerto Rican women. The list is long and traumatic. But look around you family, look at this community. We gotta depend on each other so we can grow and survive. As the city continues to shut down this summer, some of our immediate goals should be assisting neighbors who are vulnerable to the heat and to be on the lookout for families who are living in abusive homes. Pastor Marks has graciously offered a few air conditioned rooms at the rectory. So let's make sure we get the right people in them. Ms. Gloria can join us today, but she sent an email that suggested supermarket runs for the sick and elderly. I think that's a great idea and we should organize it soon. Underneath your chairs, you'll find some cards and pencils. Let's take a few moments to write down some ideas about other services and programs that we can offer. And if you got any fundraising thoughts, those are welcome too. I'll give you all about five minutes to brainstorm and then we can share our responses. Good idea. And family. I just wanna remind you that we are descendants of survivors. Let's keep our faith strong and fight this thing. Let's work towards building a future that values Black pain. Leave it to you to die of the wrong disease during a pandemic. Come on, man. It's 2020, not 1986. You're supposed to die of COVID, not AIDS, dumbass. Weird coming in here one at a time, you know? I mean, couldn't I just still be earned? I'm not saying I'm going to, I'm just saying I could. Whole line of people out there. It looks longer because of spacing, but you know, you'll make your shit like this all day. Like so sad, so much potential. We'll miss you, blah, blah, blah. You know, here we thought we were getting old, but they're gonna say that 31 was in your prime. Yeah, so that's the points on Grindr, but okay. Maybe one of them will steal your earn. Yeah, yeah, and they'll take you someplace poetic, like sprinkle you into the ocean, not realizing it if someone ever actually took you into the ocean, you would have complained the entire time about sanding your ass. Then you become sand in someone else's ass, like revenge now, but I guess they've noticed pretty quickly if you've had stolen, no, they're putting you in a wall. Yeah, that's what your sister said. She came out of the woodwork somehow, so no sprinkling you over a lake or whatever. Listen, Johnny isn't out there, so don't look for him. Yeah, he's got this whole thing where he's telling people that you died because of negligence and he's on this whole crusade about it. You see, they close the centers because of COVID, right? But he says that they only close them in the poor parts of town, in the rich parts of town where people have health insurance, those centers are open, well, kinda open. But yeah, I guess he's got the numbers to back it up. I guess someone did a study, so Johnny's on a mission, but y'all were together for a hot man, and I think he should be here. You know, for a second, I didn't think I would be here until they put you in a wall. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, I was told to expect a call from my public health official. It was the contact tracers. And for a second, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I already got HIV, but it was the COVID tracing people. Yeah, you see, I went to an in-person group because my head was all messed up from right after, you know, and I guess someone there had it. And then I got a second one of those calls in five years. But I'm good. No, Miss Rona. But lately on the phone was really weird too. When I told her I was paused, she was like, and she said she didn't know if it could make it worse for me. So anyways, I just told her I would stay home and not sneeze on any grandma's, and she said, okay. You know, I'm glad you never got a call like that. Because I remember when you were first diagnosed, you could, you were a complete mess. I mean, you could barely talk to the contact tracers because your mind was spinning so fast. Not like that's any different for you, you drama queen, but I don't think you would have liked the anxiety, you know, having to wait to find out if something new is living in your body. You know, but with COVID, the scare is not the same. We don't have those zombie pictures of people with Kaposi's and walking skeletons and shit that they used to scare people with in the 80s. No, no, no. With COVID, there are no pictures of the apocalypse happening on your skin. So nobody's afraid, you know? They didn't need to socially distance us. No, no, no. Everybody just ran for the hills on their own talking about being clean and disease free and staying away from us lepers. Yeah, yeah. The governor didn't need to tell people to do that. They did that on their own. They knew to stay away from the guy with HIV. So maybe you wouldn't have freaked out so bad this time. Maybe that's not a good thing. But anyway, I couldn't do the only part in here. I know, I know that was your one request and I feel you, but she didn't answer my call. So, but it did get me thinking. Do you remember the time we tried to go see her and we drove all the way to Memphis not realizing that Dollywood's on the whole last other side of Tennessee would have been closer to us too. We could have driven four hours instead. We drove 10 to some run down target parking lot. That's the last time I let you plan a road trip. But I remember us settling down, trying to get comfortable and trying to get a couple hours of shut eye because there was no way we could get to Dollywood and get you home on time for you to get to work. And I remember just looking at you, seeing you leaned back in the driver's seat and I was getting comfortable on the passenger seat. Some asshole with spray painting from the wall across from us. And I thought about kissing you. But you were with Johnny and even though I don't get your whole main thing, like I don't care what you say, the guy does look 50, but I got you. I don't think Johnny's right about the clothes centers killing you. I saw you falling off. I've seen you go through some serious movie phases when depression hit you because you acted like a whole child even if you don't want to admit it or not. I just, I didn't know it could get so bad if you stopped ticking your meds. Like I don't get how someone does that. Like HIV is not a death sentence anymore. It sucks and it'll eat your paycheck and worse if you don't stay poor enough for government assistance, but you're not supposed to die. I mean, look at me. I'm in the best shape of my life. I've never been to the doctor so much, you know? You found a way to die. You must have. And I think it's easy for Johnny to go run around blaming the clothes centers and it is to realize that it was your own doing whether you meant to or not. It was you. It must have been months. It's not like you just stopped taking your meds and you died. It was weeks and weeks of me calling and you saying you were okay. A little sad, but okay. Maybe if I'd seen you at a group, I would have noticed you getting skinnier and sicker, but here I just thought it was just the shitty lighting on your computer making you look that way. I didn't know you weren't showing up for work. How could I if I wasn't pestering you for free tacos on my lunch break? But you were okay, a little sad, but okay. You know, I called Johnny after I came to see you and I saw that you were all, you know, and he didn't say anything for a while. And then he said that he knew so many kids that died of AIDS during the crisis that he doesn't even remember their names. And then he hung up. I guess when you're the only one that makes it out alive, you're not ready to turn back around for no one. But I think you should be here. Oh, shit, I've been in here too long. Listen, man, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna have to come see you like this. I know it's not about me, but I don't wanna have to come see your name and some cement on every birthday or every anniversary. So fuck it, we're doing this. We're going to Dollywood. Hello everyone, welcome to COVID monologues with HowlRound and thank you so much to HowlRound for hosting us today. We're very happy that you have joined us as audience members and that we are here. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about COVID monologues and then we'll enter a discussion with all of these wonderful artists that you see here. COVID monologue organizers are on the unceded land of the Piscataway peoples, tended to by the Susquehannock, Lenape and Lumbee peoples, currently known as Baltimore, Maryland. The Kikaboo concert and Osage peoples, currently known as Kansas City, Missouri and the Wasaha Nation currently known as Lake Tahoe, Nevada. We ask that you join us in acknowledging these people, their elders both past and present and as well as future generations. We also ask that you acknowledge the communities of the unceded land where you reside on personally today. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of colonialism. It has been over a year since the first case of community spread COVID in the United States. Since then over 31 million Americans have been infected and the virus has changed our society in ways we've never imagined. Before we jump into our discussion, please join us in a brief moment of silence for the 526,000 Americans and almost 3 million people globally who have lost their lives to COVID-19 as of April 13th, 2021. Thank you so much. I would now like to introduce the new project groups that we have with us today and also tell you a little bit more about our artistic process for COVID-19. We are a group of public health research groups with a love for theater and theater professionals with a love for public health. I am Genevieve Demi, the artistic director of Single Care Theater in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm Sareenia Tharmarajah, I'm a theater artist and a public health researcher based at Johns Hopkins. Hi, I'm Jess Rask, a partnering producer and the producer for the Ron disease. And I'm Emily Hurley. I'm an assistant professor of population health at the Children's Mercy Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. In these challenging times, our goal was to bring researchers, artists and you together in a deeper shared understanding of the pandemic's impact on society. We started by searching scientific journals and drawing out the main messages of peer reviewed research on the lived experiences of Americans during COVID-19. And we grouped them into distinct topics. Today, you saw the topics of HIV and COVID and racial disparities and COVID. When we found all this research, we assembled it into research packets for these eight topics that were to be assigned to playwrights that we found through a nationwide search. We also had a playwriting workshop where we brought in experts in research-based theater and we gave some tools for playwrights in consuming literature in the history of research-based theater in public health, in conducting in-depth interviews, which is a tool that many researcher artists use to create this kind of work and incorporating a call to action. But when we gave the playwrights the instructions, we did not direct them to use any particular method. We simply said, we want you to communicate one or more main messages of this research in a 10 minute monologue. So they were allowed their own artistic interpretation, but all the work was workshopped with a group of public health researchers familiar with the work and theater professionals. COVID monologues brings together 35 artists and studies from over a hundred public health researchers. We selected eight playwrights through a competitive application process that was adjudicated by volunteers in the theater field. We tasked the selected playwrights with writing the monologues based on the research and gathered five theater companies based in Baltimore, Maryland, including single-carat theater, two strikes theater collective, Arena Players, Inc. The Strand Theater Company and Fells Point Corner Theater. We matched playwrights with theaters and then tasked the theaters with selecting their artistic teams, workshopping the script and the playwright and with the playwright and then mounting these pieces to be filmed. COVID monologues is a unique intersection of scientific research and art and an experiment whether these disparate industries can work together to build communities and share knowledge and information. This project was made possible by the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and implemented in partnership with the partners of the Americas. Please go to covidmonologues.com to learn more about the project, watch and share all the videos and connect with community organizations. In the spirit of research, we encourage you to please complete the post-performance survey by scanning the QR code on your screen with your phone camera or by going to covidmonologues.com and following the survey link. So today you have seen two of these eight monologues, Black Pain by Kristin Eve Cato, directed by Eladrian Wetzel and produced by Two Strikes Collective and The Wrong Disease by Lane Stanley, directed by Ben Pierce and produced by Jess Rass. Artists, if you could introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about yourself in a sentence or two. Hey everyone, I'm Kristin. I playwright for Black Pain and I am a New York City based playwright and performer and I am representing the Jamaican and Puerto Rican community out here in the Monty Lenape lands. And I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Hi, my name is Eladrian Wetzel. I am the Executive Director of Two Strikes Theatre Collective, a theater that was created for and by and about Black women to empower them in their stories. And I've always called myself an admin out. I'm a theater lover, but I'm also an engineer. So it's perfect that I got a chance to participate in this kind of art meets science environment. So can't wait to talk later. Hi everyone, my name is Lane Stanley. I'm a filmmaker and playwright currently based in Los Angeles and I wrote Wrong Disease for covidmonologues. Hi, I'm Ben Pierce is the Director for Wrong Disease. I am coming from the Baltimore City area and I'm a freelance artist around the area as well. Thank you. And of course, we also have Serenia, Tarmaraja and Emily Hurley on the public health side to engage in this conversation about the intersection of science and art. So I'd love to hear first from playwrights about how this process of starting with academic and scientific research, how did that alter your process? How did you, did you learn anything new about your work or how you work? Were there aspects that challenged you? Were there in moments that you found enriching or surprising in this process? Well, usually when I'm writing, like when I'm writing any play or sorry, my phone. Usually when I'm writing anything, I'm character first, story first, idea first. And this process was different because it was information first, it was research first. And it was through the research that I created the character, that I created the situation. It was through the reading of these studies that I discovered the world. And usually I discover the world first and then I do research if necessary. And so for this process, it was very much research first and then building the world through those lenses. And that was interesting for me and I was very new to my process and I enjoyed it. And I feel like, you know, I did, I definitely learned something from this process and it was that it was, it was learning how to create a world based on information that you receive. And I feel like I can definitely do that again somewhere down the line, depending on what the topic is that I'm writing about. So that was really cool. Yeah, I absolutely agree with Kristen. It was definitely a new experience for me in some ways. I usually do a lot of research for the things that I'm writing, but I tend to do a little more community based interview based, like both formal and informal style research, which means that my research is extremely anecdotal and that's kind of the point of it, right? And so for me, part of that is being really rigorous and creating plays about making sure that we're not trying to speak for everyone or represent an experience, right? That plays and films are specific stories about specific people and how can that be clear like within what we're making. But this was kind of the opposite. So where I would conduct, I would speak to a large number of people and see what I saw as trends across those conversations, across those experiences, whereas this was kind of a report that gave me the trends without the people necessarily or at least without the face to face, emotional interaction, which is really fascinating. And it definitely felt like in both of those cases, you're still ultimately looking at a blank page even if you're building on a lot of things and you're still creating a work of fiction, right? And that means that you have a lot of control over the character you're creating and the world you're building as Kristen just spoke to so beautifully. And I think for me going forward, I think like both of those can work together in tandem, right? Like that just because you're talking to a lot of people doesn't mean you can't also find like a more sociological text or like a peer reviewed research article to bring in and work to find like, okay, here are the individual stories that like I've been able to hear and then how are those fitting within like a broader conceptual framework or societal context of like a kind of larger scale conversation about these things which I think is exciting. I feel excited about that. I know that I'm gonna ask a follow-up question which is that, in the early on in this process for everybody watching, we had some peer conversations with the play rates presenting the research and talking about research-based theater and how we're planning on approaching this process. And there was a moment, and I don't remember which of the play rates it was. So if it wasn't you both, you can be like, oh, it was good. If you want to expand on it, feel free to. Where it sometimes play rates felt like kind of an overwhelm of information with all the data and articles and trying to figure out like what direction to pick and what story to pick and where to develop a story. And I wonder if you can recall way back to that moment in October or November of 2020. With this being a different way of working, how you kind of overcame that hump if you felt that kind of obstacle in front of you. I would say I, it wasn't such an obstacle. It was a challenge for sure, but it was more like what Lane was saying earlier. It was exciting. It was exciting to do and I really liked the, putting like these puzzles together and like putting and like making these lists. Eladion was very, very helpful in this process. We had a lot of conversations. We spoke a lot about our own experiences because we both knew we wanted this character to be a black woman. And so I think that was like, the blueprint like, okay, we know we need a black woman. We know we need, and I knew I wanted, I knew that she had to be educated in a sense where she knew what was going on because there was so much like scientific jargon that I wanted her to understand and that I wanted her to be able to convey and to communicate to her people, to her community. And so we knew that she had to have, she had to come from an educational background somehow, whether it was, whether she was a doctor or a nurse or someone who really understood these difficult terms and how to deliver it to the people in the community who don't quite understand it from that level. And I think, so that was the challenge. But I really thought it was fun to do and it wasn't such an obstacle. And I feel like it was because of the conversations Eladion and I had, it was because of these anecdotes that we had ourselves and these stories that we had ourselves. And so I think that, so yeah, I don't think it was an obstacle. I'll go ahead and disagree with that, but it was a fun challenge though. And it was really, I learned a lot about myself and my voice through this process too. So I was grateful for that. Yeah, I agree. I think that there was so much freedom, at no point where we handed like a giant stack of papers and said like, you need to incorporate all of this. And I think that that would have, like if there's specific things that we were trying to get across and like a large number of specific things, there's only so much information that you can fit into a 10 minute monologue that's also trying to tell a story and have a character and all of that, right? And so I felt a lot of freedom to find what stood out to me, which also felt like a big responsibility to highlight like what in this research do I personally think needs to be heard that might be really different from what you think should have been highlighted from the research, right? And so that's a little bit tricky too. But I mean, ultimately, I think most of us are trying to say something, trying to convey something that is real through all plays, right? Whether that's just like something that we have experienced, some kind of human truth or emotion or if it's more fully of a political message play. So I guess it didn't feel new to me to try to sneakily embed facts and perspectives into play. Yeah, especially because like I said, I think if that was really specifically given to me of like these three facts put them in, not that it wouldn't have been possible to do creatively, that's just a little bit of a different thing to me. But yeah, we had a lot of freedom in this process. Yeah, I second that. The freedom made the creative process a lot, like a lot easier for sure, for sure. And probably I think later in this discussion we'll get into kind of what the ingredients would be for future projects like this. And it seems like that's definitely a takeaway of like balancing the information and the creative freedom so that the artist can be artist. And I know that as the project leads, those were many conversations we had and kind of sorting out those boundaries and allowing for that freedom of letting the artist be artist, but also staying true to the research and where do those lines fall and how much do we let go of those? How much do we let go of that research or hold on to it and like entering that negotiation? I'd be, since HowlRound is a theater platform, I'd love to hear from the public health researchers about what the typical life is of public health research? Where does it go? Who sees it? Who consumes it? What's its impact and how this project is different from the typical life of public health research? Do you wanna start? I can start. You can go ahead. Okay, it's a great question. We always try to publish in peer-reviewed journals and the main audience of peer-reviewed journals are other scientists. So that's where the bulk of our work lives. When we talk about health communication though, I think as a field, we do a good job with getting headlines out that have new statistics or really kind of nuggets of information that the population might need to know just for our own health and safety. We don't do a good job of fostering understanding of the stories behind the data and the lived experience. And as public health researchers, we do do a lot of research that tries to become more contextual, that really tries to get in depth about what people are experiencing when it comes to their health because that is essential for us when we go to design health programs, when we go to try to make services better, we do need more than numbers. We do need to understand the stories behind them and we conduct a lot of that research, but the understanding that we gain from it doesn't really go outside of our circles very, very much and very widely. And it's a shame because it is something very close to what theater tries to do is to communicate stories. And I think this project was so special because we were able to kind of take the world of stories that we were working on and give them to the hands of people who are more expert than us and actually communicating them in a way that engages an audience. So to get more than just the facts, more than just the headlines of how effective the vaccines are, to get some of that context about what researchers are learning about the experience into an artistic performance was a really great way for us to just, I think, communicate that information beyond our circles. I'd be curious for directors and producers, if there's a couple of components of this project that were different, one, making film theater during COVID, of course, but also workshopping a piece that is about things happening in our world right now. If this process was different for you, if this work meant for you or your organization, what felt special about this project or meaningful that you're taking away from COVID monologues? I mean, I can go first. I think this felt especially, especially special. This felt really special because obviously Two Strikes Theater Collective is a theater that's meant to amplify and support and encourage Black women's voices. So obviously it was a wonderful treat to be able to work with Kristen, right? And like she said earlier, we had a lot of good conversations, which you don't always get a chance to do when you're directing. You normally get the play, you direct it, you present it, you don't always have that direct conversation with the play, right? And we were almost, Kristen's work, but we had a lot of conversations and wanted to make sure that like certain things were included in the work. And so not only did we use the actual, the research data that were provided, I read the research too, just to make sure I had an understanding of what Kristen was coming into. But because we're living and breathing this stuff right now, I remember sending Kristen and the actor a bunch of different like news articles about Black women and how they were impacted by COVID and about talking about Black and Brown communities that were directly affected by this horrible disease that's happening right now. So the fact that we were able to kind of not only leverage the research, but also use those realistic, those real stories to kind of help to support the actual work is something that you don't always get the chance to do when you're directing a piece. So I think that was that really helped the process and I think it really helped Kristen develop a very interesting and real character to talk about a very real disease that's happening right now. Yeah, I'll piggyback on top of that. It's funny listening to Eladrin and Kristen talking and how many similarities there were between our processes and everything, even though we were talking about two specialized issues, the talking about the really personal stories and the lived experiences and using anecdotes and all of those things were all within the process. The Lane and I, we had lots of conversations as well in development through the process. Ours was a little bit, I'd say one of the few differences though within ours was we very quickly latched on to the idea of because the HIV pandemic is ongoing along with the COVID pandemic being in the moment and it being more actively affecting people and the stigmas and all of the different things involved were seeing that repeat of history where the institutional memory has kind of disappeared in the last 10 years as leaps and bounds in HIV research and medicine has made it a much more literal condition. It's not the death sentence that people used to think that it was. So that was something that we really focused in on and the idea of the funeral and all of that and having a point where they just kind of slammed together in the moment to really create a real but also very interesting, because theater can be real but it also needs to be interesting too. And that was the perfect scenario that Lane came up with of the funeral and trying to balance the two. And then within the theater world, we did have conversations of the history of HIV plays and their effect on the theater world, especially as there's a classicness to them but it is one of the more recent sort of theaters subgenres of a while. So having these conversations not only about the data but then also about all of these different arenas and how they sort of intersect with each other were really vital to the process and how we helped sort of like Kristen was saying, like what was the model that we would, that we kind of developed into this to create this very finite story to cover all of these different things? Yeah, Ben, I think it was just, it was a really, it had to be a delicate balance, right? Very much. Yeah, you don't wanna go too far to the, too far on one side to have too much research specific information because then that's not interesting. That's just, you might as well just read the, read the research article, right? At that point. But then you don't wanna go too far. I mean, you do wanna lean on to the personal but you don't wanna lose the whole intent of this project, right? Was to convey very specific information. So it really was a very interesting marriage and balance of those two, of those pieces. And I think we, I think we, I think we got a home run. I think we succeeded. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think so. And one thing too, within ours that we wanted to bounce because again, going back to that history of HIV plays and where we are with that pandemic, there is a history of very, very dark and dour plays. And we wanted to balance that out a bit so that it wasn't just a downer piece because again, it was that keeping the interest but also like adding to the canon of stories that are not just sad stories as well. Like, yes, the friend had died and everything but there was a lot of great things that also happened in those lived moments as well. So, like Eladrian said, like that was an additional balance that we tackled as well, Lane and I did. Yeah, I wanna add something to what Ben just said that really I feel like, you know, that's what I was aiming for with this call to action. It's like, you know, it's, Eladrian was talking about, you know, it was so, it's that we're writing this and it's happening in real time and this is actually occurring at the same time. And so it's like, you know, writing this piece while this pandemic is happening, it's like, well, I felt it was a duty to connect with the audience, to connect with the community. And so, yeah, I just think you've been for mentioning that, you know, like when you said it, you know, this is why we wanted to add this element. That's why I wanted to add that element because I think it was important, definitely. Cause, yeah, it's bad. Black pain, they don't respect it or not, you know, like, but what can we do about it? So yeah, thanks. I think on that note, it was really important to the team to really dive into the heart of this project being communicating those real character lived experiences. And I think everybody on the team did a wonderful job communicating those ideas and it definitely brings the emotional core to the front that I think will help audiences connect more deeply with those experiences and those characters and see themselves and their experience also as a story worth telling and worth communicating to the people around them. And so we hoped with this project to really inspire people to think beyond what they saw here to themselves and to their community and what more can we do together as we weather this? I think also with the end pieces, we definitely wanted them to be artistic and not really on the research side because at the end of the day, we can just read that research paper. So I think we gave a lot of leeway with the artists but I think what was interesting in how some artists ended up using the research a lot and even taking quotes from the articles themselves and the interviews themselves and incorporated it into the monologues. But then on the other hand, some artists took major themes and maybe the structural issues of their public health problem and integrated that into their monologue. But whether how research oriented they were, they all came across as really strong artistic pieces. And for me, I think it was important that even if you showed this monologue and didn't say it was research-based or anything that people wouldn't question it as a piece of art and could just consume it as a piece of theater, as a monologue. Yeah, I definitely agree. Especially again with the playwrights in those early conversations, there was some question like, is this a PSA? Is this a, what is this? And I think really having something that stands on its own that doesn't feel like that is a story that isn't just disseminating information with a face saying the words, that it is actually a story that has a deeper meaning that has a deeper relevance and kind of hits the human experience in a lot of different places. I am gonna pivot into the, I think both public health and theater are these industries that really strive for relevance. And we all dream of making huge social change and making impact and changing lives for the better. And both of our industries are tackling that from like completely different angles. And there are intersections, but there's also like these completely different angles that we're tackling that from. And so I'd love to hear from everybody who has thoughts about this. We do have this audience. One, we're creating this theater from data that exists that public health researchers have done. And then on the other side of that, Emily and Serenia have a survey for the audience, for you all that is also collecting data to really like measure the impact of this project, which theaters have audience surveys and things like that. And we like try sometimes theaters as institutions try to measure that impact. But in this way we have this cap of like actually soliciting measurement and feedback from the people watching, whereas I feel like it's theater as many times we're like, I hope people liked it. I hope it meant something to somebody. I hope it changed somebody's life. But we never really know, unless somebody like an audience, one audience member is like, that was so meaningful to me that changed my life, which is such a special gift when it comes. But so I'd be really curious, we have this data and quantifying and measuring someone's experience artistically, but also measuring impact. And then also what we each do as industries to strive to make impact and to change lives and to make a difference in the world. That was, that's a question apparently. But if anybody has any thoughts on that, I know Emily and Serenia have some of that data. And is there anything that we as theater artists can learn from that and what can the public health industry learn from theater and art making? I mean, I think we have learned so much through this process and we've heard our public health colleagues who have attended the performances have learned so much about this process too, because you said it so beautifully, we're all really caring about some of these really big issues that we wanna tackle. And we're pressured a lot to put what we learn in boxes and really try to make it very clean. And we don't always take the time to sit and think about what our findings mean within people's broader experiences and within their real lives that they're living. People are so complex and they don't fit into the boxes that we like to put them in all of the time when we make our conclusions. And to just take that time to sit for 10 minutes and listen to a person with a story that's living out a finding that came out brings a whole new perspective for us and our work and grounds it in what we're actually like trying to do with this information. And I think from the theater side, the playwrights and directors have already talked a lot about what they've learned from the process. And I hope that theater artists will sort of go to public health research more often to inspire their work. I know Lane talked about doing interviews in the field as part of the research when creating plays, you know, anyways, but a lot of the techniques that we use and who do we talk to? How do we find them? How do we set us at our own biases and try to learn about what we're trying to get at with a research question from these folks? I think that whole process in doing that as a researcher, I always find art in it, but I hardly ever find artists that are going to make it into art. So I think our process of researching the human experience can be something valuable to theater. And it's already overlapping so much with what theater artists already do. We just need to learn from each other more and share our experiences in the work. And then as far as the surveys, you know, I know there's always audience feedback surveys, but I think one of the things that we really want to learn from this survey particular is not just what people thought, but who thought what, who did we reach? Who, what spoke to certain types of people and why, who didn't we reach? And when we're looking at public health messaging, we wanna reach everybody and we wanna reach people who might not necessarily be on board with a lot of the public health measures we're trying to put out there, especially for COVID. So I think learning about who our audience was and we had people of all ages, backgrounds, professions, students, we had people who had different political leanings. And I think when we go through their comments and go through their, do some analyses about what they felt about different monologues, we could really understand who, who we reached with this information and how we might want to, you know, improve next time to affect people that we might not have gotten in our enthusiastic audience this time around. Yeah, for me, I've been doing theater as a kid. So actually much longer than I've been a public health researcher. So for me, I think I've always seen the fusion of the two. And I think I've just gotten a lot of pushback about putting the two together. And I think meeting Emily was one of the moments that I really confirmed that, you know, these two things can go together. And for me, public health and theater are really similar in that we're really looking at a problem and we're collecting these stories. And as researcher, as a playwright, I think I'm doing the same processes. So even though these disciplines may seem very different at the core, I think they're very similar as Jenny we've mentioned before. And this project has really given me, you know, the fortitude and the strength to keep going in various topics. The interesting thing about research-based theater, I think it really communicates public health issues that may not be really relevant to people. I may open their eyes, but with COVID monologues, everyone kind of knows about COVID and has a unique perspective with it, which while there might be watching it or taking part in the artistic process may bring to it. But, you know, COVID at the end of the day is an infectious disease, which might sound boring to a lot of people. But, you know, this really demonstrates that even in an infectious disease there's so many different stories and perspectives that this show has really brought to light. And I really hope that in the future we can do this with infectious diseases, chronic diseases, social and behavioral parts of public health moving forward. To echo Serenia as well, that's basically what I was gonna contribute is that I personally with the work that I do with other theaters have already seen applications, particularly like Serenia was just saying, in the more socioeconomic, social justice, interviewing type things, like we have a series of one theater we're doing that's called Dialogue for Change, where we are having conversations based on interviews with people and creating performances based on this. And this happened particularly at the, it was in, at the same time as this, we were starting to have the ideas, but I'm so thankful that this project came along at the same time because then it gave me the tools. And that's how I view it is the tools of being able to go into research and do this. So I've now personally added to my toolkit and I'm hoping a lot of people who do see this and hear this, particularly this discussion will now feel like they have another tool of sources of inspiration to affect either things scientifically, sociologically, et cetera. Yeah. Go ahead, Kristen. I was gonna say, I agree. Like I feel like theater has a history of doing, of having like a research-based beginning, like anything from like documentary theater to epic style, Brechtian theater, like I feel like there's just a history of theater artists and playwrights and theater makers and creators who do the research to talk about the things that are going on in the world at that moment. And so, and so doing this project and engaging in this research-based theater process felt very organic. So I'm happy that the research and the health and scientific industry is looking at theater now saying, hey, let's branch together because I feel like theater has always been doing that. Yeah, I was just gonna say that me as a playwright in my own right, this project definitely inspired me to do some more research-based theater specifically on a topic that has always kind of interested me in that topic is the mortality rate of black women when they have babies. So that's in the process of kind of starting the research and creating what that framework will look like. And because of my involvement in this, I feel like I feel a little bit more comfortable in how to approach the process not only from an artistic perspective, but also from a research-science-based platform as well. So I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be emailing like Emily and Sarah and Nia, be like, hey, I got some questions. We'll see how it works. I feel like in addition to content and processes around creation of theater, there's also more that we theater world can take from public health. Just like I feel like where we, and I don't mean to speak for anybody other than myself, but I know within me there is like a slightly mystical touchy-feely current that's a little allergic to like data, like the idea of quantifying a reaction to a play is like, oh, you know, like something just doesn't like it. But at the same time, like even if it's not literally, because I think my mind goes to like a robotic chart where you like check, like, I felt sad here, happy here. You know, like there's, I'm certainly like a middle ground, you know, between like that and the talk back of, because like, yeah, ultimately we do, we get better and better at our work the more that we understand what is actually lodging in an audience's mind, right? Like that's how like audiences tell us what we're actually communicating and whether that's in line with what we intended to communicate or not. And sharpening like how we reach different kinds of audiences, like exactly like Sarah and Nia was saying of like, so I'm trans, I'm working on a lot of trans stuff and like as much as I wanna make, you know, great trans representation for trans audiences, I also want people to see trans stories who wouldn't necessarily want to do that. You know what I mean? Like that's part of changing the perception too. When we're talking about like societal impact, I think both of those are important. And so understanding who you're reaching and how you're reaching them is like a huge part of an activism side of theater making, right? So I don't have an answer to like, what that middle ground is between just like asking people in a talk pack after the show to like my robot chart that like, you know, we put a little thing on their finger and we check their heart rate. I'm sure that's not a real thing. Let's not do that. But I feel like there is more that we can learn more that we can, more research that we can do. I'm sure also that somebody out there is like watching this like, we're all doing that and you just don't know about it. I would just like to learn more about that. I think Lane put it so beautifully. And I think for both of our fields, you know, with the big problems we need to solve, we all need to become more comfortable with existing somewhere between objectivity and subjectivity. And I think for public health, we know we can't solve all of our problems and really make a dent if we're trying to be completely objective in checking the boxes all the time. And for theater, maybe coming a little bit, you know, towards the more objectivity science, everything is messy in these problems that we're grappling with and having those different perspectives where, you know, we're really trying to find truth from those different angles. I think both of our fields can, you know, come together in the middle and try to exist together and grapple with it a little more and really learn a lot. I'm really interested in the call to action aspect of the two fields joining too and what impact that can look like moving forward. Yeah, definitely. Great. Well, thank you all for joining us. Thank you viewers for joining us as well. If you wanna hear more about COVID monologues and talk with some different artists, you can join us for our second COVID monologues conversation on April 20th. And if you're watching this after April 20th, it's on Hallarown's website forever and ever, amen. And again, thank you all artists for joining us and thank you, Sarah and Nia, for being the mastermind behind this amazing project and bringing all of us together. Thank you all so much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.