 Good evening, and welcome to the 2016 Freudian Festival. One more evening. My name is Thomas Deller, and I'm the co-curator of this year's festival with Antje Ubel. And this performance is the first of five performances in a kind of series sequence, not related to our theme this year of broken failure, but just pieces in their own right. We're very excited to have them all. So there will be a short break in between each of the five performances you can come in and out as you need to, but you know what we're telling us. Just how much time we have, so we should tell you if you should hurry in that break or if you can take your time, if you're holding a little bit. And there will be time allowing for a close-check discussion with artists from each of the five projects at the end of this series. So please stay with us after that. I would also like to officially invite everyone here to our closing night party, if it's a dance party, at the Liberty Bar, which is conveniently located on 30th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue, so right around the corner. So stay with us through the night. I come and have a drink at 10 o'clock, and we will be giving out the 2016 Frankie Award, which is an award for, I don't know, distinguished artists from the community, something like that, to Miguel Gutierrez, who recently finished a wonderful trilogy, contemplating the theme of failure as well, so we're really excited about that. So come and wish me well, and have a drink with us, and see you old friends. So thank you for coming, and on to the first project. My name is Keon Park. I'm a playwright, and I'm Artistic Director of Keon Specific Bee. As the theme of this year's preview is Welcome Failure, I'm going to be real upfront, and say we have failed to present and prepare a live performance for you today. What you'll see is actually workshop production that we've captured in video from last September at the Break Arts Media Center. Before we show you the clip a little bit about Pillow Talk, we are a peacemaking theater company. We premiered a show at the performance project last January called TALA, and after we finished that show, one of the actors from the company came to me and said, Keon, can our next play just be normal? So I told him, sure, we'll try this. It was about three years ago that I started writing this play. It was at the peak of sort of marriage equality happening around the country. I wanted to write a play that would humanize the experience of gay men of color, exploring the intersections of how race and queer identities sort of affect our daily lives. A year after that, Ferguson happened and the conversations and concerns with race became a whole lot more serious. And as we started developing the show, we really wanted to also ask to our community, queer communities of color, truly celebrate marriage equality in terms of Black Lives Matter. So that is sort of the context for the development of this show. What you'll see is one night in the lives of these two characters, Sam and Buck, Sam is performed by Roger Feather Kelly and he is a former Olympic swimmer, was fallen from grace, fallen into drug addiction and healed slowly through this relationship with Buck. Buck is an Asian American journalist. He's facing the bamboo ceiling of his career where he is either to be promoted or fired and he has just spiraled on about his life throughout this entire night and said, if this doesn't work out, I'm just going to become a ballet dancer, which is what I always dreamed about. So we are at about 50 minutes into this very tumultuous night and I hope you enjoy it. What are you doing? Can't do this anymore? So far, I've been in my life and I've been in so many problems in this event and for a while, those problems have been made. I've always been working so hard to take care of them. Your drugs are homophobic families, social marginalization and injustice, but no, they're still here and now that we're married, if I fall, you'll fall with me. What are you talking about? The paper laid me off. What? The paper laid me off. I got fired. What do you mean you got fired? I got fired yesterday. We negotiated my severance package this morning, but didn't mean a month's salary. What happened? I've been trying to tell you. My boss called me into his office. He told me they were going digital and that they didn't have the bandwidth to carry me with them. He said that he could get 10 fellows straight out of college. Did you top 10 lists for a tenth of my salary? And then he let me go. He didn't even give me a chance. He said they didn't want more ruggers. What they needed were marketers to help jack up advertisement. He let me go because the news no longer sells newspapers. HR was waiting for me right outside. They said they could escort me to my desk and wait for me while I picked up my things or that I could quietly leave through a back door. And they would send my stuff to me by mail. Look, I'm sorry. That was my life. It's gonna be okay. No, it's not going to be okay. I was on a sinking ship, but I'm just a sailor, Sam. I'm just a sailor. Buck, come here. If I disappointed you, you regret marrying me. Until I got this job, I used to quit jobs. I kept moving up that career ladder. But with this one, I found my place. The place in which I could do the work I wanted to and be free to write and speak my truth. That's all I wanted. And then people recognized me for what I told them. My writing had meaning. My work was value to me, to others, because my work mattered to me. Once they realized, hold me back in my position because they knew I loved it so much they knew I'd still do the job whether they promoted me or not. It didn't matter whether I got the job because I'd still do it. And once they realized that, they looked out into the horizon and lowered the anchors of their great white ship. And they drew out the plank and made me walk it. Like I was dead weight. The Mutiny Buck. They either had to promote you and pay you more or fire you a month ago. You wanted a better job and you risked it to get it. And now you know what you're saying. I feel used. Don't you feel used? Definitely used and exploited. My office has assumed that I am a poor, burnt-out black guy. I'm safe. No, you're not. All I have to do is stay cool and I'll keep my job. I'm safe. You are not safe. That's like saying there's no more racism because Obama's president or that we're normal because we're married. I just got fired. I played it big and lost it all. But the game is rigged. You can't keep blaming yourself for losing. Buck, you're triggering me. Buck, I'm not dismissing your feelings. I'm not saying that they aren't real. But if you succumb to these feelings of fear and anger, that is when you really lose. I'm getting a new job. I'm not going to be a dead weight. Maybe this was supposed to happen. Maybe this was meant to be. You didn't consider dancing until this happened. I'm not ready. Look, I love you, but you have to stop making excuses. Think of this as an opportunity. How is this an opportunity? When I trained for the Olympics, I was told that black people don't swim. I always thought that that was a matter of segregation and how white people didn't want to share the pool with me. But that wasn't it. Slaves were taught to fear the water so they wouldn't escape. And black people took that fear in so deep that they avoid getting wet, protecting each other from the waters so we wouldn't drown. I didn't want to live with that kind of fear. So when I had the chance to swim, I kept doing it because I knew that the real prison was here in my mind. You have an opportunity to free yourself from what you've been told. You have to dance because you can finally do it. Sam, there are forces out there that are coming to get us. And I think we were foolish to get married. We ran into this not being ready. And now look at what's happened to us. What's happened? They fired me because we got married. Our marriage became their justification. They turned our love against me. They fired me because you married a black man. Is that why they fired you? Because you married a black man. Is that why they fired you? I was getting fired when I pressed him to really tell me why. He said the calling of my writing had changed since I started writing about gay issues. He said gay marriage distracted me from what really mattered. He said I was better off leaving and taking with me my issues because I was better off keeping my personal life private. Is that the only reason? Are you sure that's it? Their existence goes against the grain. And when you go against the system, the system goes against you. These evil forces I'm talking about, like nightmares, but I'm not crazy, Sam. This shit, it's real. Don't blame us for this. I'm not blaming us. You are my soulmate. How can I be your soulmate when I'm the problem in your life? I'm not saying you're the bad guy. Put yourself in my shoes. You're saying that our marriage cost this to you. All I want is for you to be happy. I want us to be happy. But you think you'd be happier if you weren't in this marriage, if you want a divorce. That's not what I'm saying. If you think that you can get your job back, if you become a ballet dancer, if you weren't married to me, I'll divorce you. No, that's not what I want. I'm just saying that I wasn't ready for this. But this is the way it's happening, buck. We have got to make some decisions. Do you want to work on this? Or not? Let's just not end this. Let's not dishonor our love. All I have left is faith in our love. Faith that if we respect and honor our love, our love will heal us. Our love will provide for us what we need. I believe this. I believe that our love has made us better people. I believe that our love is a force of nature that has gotten the best of us. I believe that if we stay together, we will make it. Because all that matters is the love. I love you.