 Welcome, everybody back here to Segal Talks at the Martini Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY here at City University in Manhattan in New York City. And another week on a planner's and the time of Corona is coming slowly to an end what a week it was and still is. Of course, you know, the demonstrations, the black lives matter, the funeral of George Floyd, now over 2 million infected people in this Corona confirmed cases, who knows what the real numbers is they might be double and more in the next country, you know, with 700,000 is Brazil and then the next one is 300,000 or 200,000 Italy. So we are really in dire straits in New York is slowly reopening, slowly reopening. We're trying out how life feels. Everybody hopes we will not go back to normal what it was. There has to be a new normal, things have to change, should change, perhaps have already changed. And theater artists always, as we so often say here have been on the right side of history, on the right side of the struggle, on the complex struggle for freedoms and liberties and had their pulse on what's right and what we should be doing. And they look also in the future, anticipate the future, shape the future and are always, always in the present and also make us a way and tell us stories that are more complex and just the photo, the clip some of the really makes us aware that there's a whole life we talk about them. And the universe yesterday, we had Jean-Luc Nancy, a significant French philosopher here. First time we went a little bit outside, we will do that more. We talked about Corona, the time of Corona in theater and now the aging population who's come out but also kind of the tragic times we live in and that the hero is someone who has a destiny on the destination, but we wonder around, we get lost. We don't know what the truth really is, philosophy is something where we do not know one truth, if that's a truth. And there are many of them in theater always has helped us to look at the same thing from different sides and understand the complexities of life. We had a National Black Theater with us on Monday. We had Jim Scruggs and Tamilla Woodard without very important session. And today we have another significant young theater artist, I think from here, working here in New York City, Avuya Timpo with us. Avuya, so really thank you so much for joining. Where are you? And normally I say what time it is but we share the time zone. Yeah, exactly, yes. First of all, Frank, I'm so happy to see you. It's so great to be here with you. I'm here in my apartment in Brooklyn. And as I was saying, my computer died just before we kind of went into lockdown. So I'm on my iPad. So if you see me looking away from the cameras because I'm on my iPad and not on my laptop. Yeah, but it looks very, very, very good. So it was not a computer virus or was it a computer virus? Do you know? No, I've had computers since like 2007. I'm shocked it has lasted long. And it just said, okay, time for something new. Just like everything else right now. So what neighborhood are you in in Brooklyn? How does it look like when you go outside to the street? So it's kind of, it's changed. I live in Prospect Heights, not far from the Brooklyn Museum. So I'm kind of right in between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. And yeah, it's interesting. I feel like it's kind of evolved. The first couple of weeks was very much, very few people out and about. And over the past couple of weeks, people kind of having a growing comfortability with being around other people. And then certainly with the protests happening in the past two weeks, I feel like that has totally changed the energy and dynamic of the neighborhood. I've walked around a bunch of parts of Brooklyn in the past couple of weeks. And yeah, I think in relationship to the coronavirus people, now that the social kind of the distance breach, the distance pact has kind of been breached in order to protest, it's definitely changed the energy in the streets. And people are, I think, starting to think even more about, okay, what is our next chapter going to be? And you can 100% feel that energy in the streets. And I think some of the fear that kind of occupied people's minds and bodies in the early part is still present. And some is about how can we, what are the things that need to be done right now that we can't even carry that fear with us as we go outside? So it's so interesting. Every week has been its own adventure, has had its own energy, has had its own feelings, has had its own momentum. So yeah, but that's what it feels like. Well, how many weeks are you in confinement? Are you in lockdown? Do you know what? I think this must be going into three months. Yeah, I think probably next week will be three months. Yeah, I was out of town working on a show when all the shelter at home, shelter-in-place orders went into effect. So we stopped, we were in tech for a show. So where are you? I was out in Berkeley, I was at Berkeley Rep. We were doing Jocelyn Bo's school girls. And we were in, yes, we were in tech. We managed to do a run-through in tech, film a performance, and then we sent everybody home. So then I came back to New York and have been here in my apartment for the past three months. So it's hard to believe that amount of time has passed three months. And like an eternity at the same time, I know everybody's feeling that. So did you stay mostly at home? Did you obey the curfews and all of it? And... Yeah, I was mostly at home. You know, it's funny because, you know, like so many artists, there's so many times like I don't actually spend that much time at home. I barely spend any time in my apartment. I'm oftentimes out of the city. So, you know, at first it was just a matter of just getting acclimated to saying, oh, I actually live in my apartment. I should, you know, organize it and clean it and, you know, make it habitable. And then just kind of settled into being inside and kind of being hunkered down on the inside and feeling, you know, watching the world kind of crumble and just watching the death tolls all around the world just click up all around the world. It's been such, I know for everybody, such a surreal, surreal, surreal experience being inside. But yeah, it's also kind of the explosion now into the streets is really quite something but also so inevitable. I mean, we've been watching from inside our houses and watching a government kind of bungle a huge pandemic and living inside with all the frustrations and anger of that, the sadness of that, like we're sitting inside and we're mourning people's lives and, you know, the energy that we spend looking in on each other and checking up on each other, you know? It's been exhausting in so many ways. And so then on top of that, to have the deaths of Breonna Taylor and then Amad Arbery and Tony McDade and George Floyd and the countless others whose lives have been taken away. I feel like it's just recognizing that even in a pandemic like what a priority racism is in this country that even when everything is meant to shut down immediately from the beginning we're having conversations about what does it mean to be an essential worker? Who are those people? How are they getting paid? It's like when everything stops, racism still prevails. And that's something that we're just all witnessing in real time altogether right now. So yeah, it's a very interesting moment. Did you join the protest or what decision do you make? Because you have to think, do I get potentially Corona or not? Do I protect myself, my family? Do I go out? Yeah, no, it's such a big question. And I unfortunately have some health issues that mean that I'm not able to kind of be outside amongst people but I've been finding ways to protest from inside to send letters and sign petitions and make phone calls and send emails and get other people on board and continue just learning and reading myself about all the different kind of actions that there are to take that definitely have been mobilizing from inside, you know? So how did you spend the three months as an artist, as a really, as a working artist, a working director? How did you spend your days? You know, it was so interesting. The first couple of weeks, excuse me, the first couple of weeks were really, as I say about just figuring out what it means to, I mean to reorganize all the energies and vibrations of your life into a space and I'm here by myself in the apartment and so just finding a way to kind of like be present and still inside of my apartment was, you know, a little bit of, it took a little bit of adjustment, making sure I've got my groceries and making sure that I could just live inside of this place and set it up to be as safe and as healthy as possible. So that really took a couple of weeks and also I feel like the first couple of weeks was just checking in with people everywhere, just like calling family and friends in different parts of the world and just saying, how are you? What's going on where you are? Are you safe? Are you healthy? Do you need anything? How's your family? You know, I think it was just like a moment of, excuse me, just connection with people. And then over the course of the next, I would say two months, the thing that I put in my brain pretty early was that, you know, the institutions, the buildings in which we create are closed. And so the way that we create is also a little bit of a standstill, but even through that, that we ourselves as artists are still standing strong and hopefully can kind of continue to take care of each other help-wise so that everybody can remain healthy, you know, throughout the rest of this pandemic. But I think having, I put myself in a mindset of the buildings are closed, the institutions are closed, but we as artists are alive and well and strong and healthy. And so I found a lot of freedom in that, that even though we are not able to gather, which is such an essential part of the work that we do, I said, okay, what are the things that, you know, there's a number of things that we as artists, certainly us as directors do in isolation that we do without other people, whether that is reading or researching or just talking to people, just living, you know? So I said, let me just kind of focus on those things, the things of just life and know and appreciate that that is part of, our kind of preparation and work as people in addition to as artists. And there were, sometimes I will definitely admit, I was like, I do not feel like reading anything. I don't go out and writing anything. It was very difficult to focus. But then I also feel grateful that there's a couple of other projects that I had been working on that we said, you know what? Let's keep working. Let's keep developing. Let's keep, you know, at some point we will be able to gather again. We'll be able to be in the same space again. We'll be able to create together again. But in the meantime, in the places where we could, let's keep working. So there's a musical that had been developing and we still have meetings and just get together and kind of keep the momentum of that going forward. You know, other projects that were kind of in early stages and we said, let's keep going. Let's meet regularly. Let's work on the script. Let's work on the dramaturgy. Let's do research. And there's some other audio kind of related projects that we've been able to kind of continue working on. So I figured for myself maybe a couple of weeks in that it would be helpful to set a routine for myself in the day so that I didn't feel like I was wandering. And that was incredibly helpful for me. So I feel like I've been able to kind of keep busy and also really figure out how to just stay present because I think certainly for myself and I'm sure for so many other people, we're always trying to think of the things we're gonna be doing in a year from now and six months from now. And just having to say, okay, actually we literally don't know what tomorrow is gonna be like. I feel that same way today. Like just kind of learning and figuring out how to just remain, both remain present in the moment and then also think about what do we want the future to look like when we, if let's say we go back and there are things that do look the same, how do we want to exist inside of that? And also where are the places that we want to kind of see how the entire structure and model and methods of how we make theater can stretch and grow and be different. Cause the thing that we talk about a lot is what does it mean for us to be inside of a model of theater that is 50, 60, 70 years old? What do we want the next 50 years to be? And I think that that conversation that kind of got opened up over the course of the early days of the pandemic certainly in other industries, now we're having that conversation globally about you know, race and racism. And what do we, what will it mean for us to actually finally have this conversation and this kind of national reckoning about what slavery is and how it continues to pervade every single morsel of our daily lives. And what are we gonna be willing to do to uproot that system so that we can make a pathway for something new, for something better, for something equal, for something just, you know? So it's been, I feel it's so tragic that it took us to be in the middle of the pandemic in order to be able to have this conversation at this level, but I feel that, yeah, it feels necessary and essential in terms of how we think about moving forward. So you felt that conversation never happened inside this theater before? I think that conversation happens in the theater frequently. I think people have the conversation about how do we, you know, I think that artists of color, black artists as well have put the theaters in check and said, hey, why don't you have more black planes on your stages? Why don't you have more people of color working on your staffs? Where is your audience of color? Like we have that conversation very, very, very frequently and it has manifested kind of minor adjustments and changes, but at the level of transformation that is actually required, I feel like people, same as how we are, you know, the conversation is going around like the police department, like are we gonna make a reform inside of the police department or do we get rid of the police departments entirely and build a new system? And I think that, you know, the theaters have been having a conversation that is about making kind of incremental small changes and also that the logic of that change is, you know, I think very oftentimes the theaters, particularly the predominantly white theaters saying that, you know, they want to, I think sometimes they think that they're like doing black people and people of color a favor by, you know, by producing the work of black people as if they are not, as if, in a way, not recognizing the kind of greatness and the power of black artists and artists of color who are coming into those institutions and ultimately making those institutions better because we're expanding and stretching what the notion of a play is and all of those kinds of things inside of those institutions. But I feel like, you know, as a director, we deal with so many different kind of facets of how the theater is structured. We're dealing with the board members. We're dealing with the development office. We're dealing with the marketing. We're dealing with the audience. We're dealing with the casting. We're dealing, you know, it's like at every single level there is some sort of racist structure in place. And I think hopefully now will be the time where we can have that conversation about what is the American theater actually and on whose backs have some of these theaters been able to create their prosperity and how have they been able to do that? So I feel like that is kind of for us the next chapter of the conversation on a very big level, not an incremental small level because that I think we have seen before and been doing already. Mm, yeah. Yeah. How was for you, if I may ask Aboya, the experience, you know, it's so hard to break the theater business for anyone. It's so hard to be a woman, I think, from here. I mean, we work with the League of American Women in theater and we know the numbers have actually been going down. It's compared to 20 years ago, but you're also an artist of color, Black director Young. How was your experience or how is that? Yeah, well, you know, it works. I think it's trying to think of a clear way to describe it. So I'll start, I'll kind of rewind a little bit. You know, when I was coming up, you know, I probably started doing theater and I'm sure I've told you this story before, but I was coming up doing theater, I grew up in New Jersey and ended up going to college in Ohio. And when I was coming up, I was actually always so excited and intrigued by the, you know, the absurdists and the existentialists because I felt like their depiction of what the world was was so on point. It just resonated with me the way that they were thinking, like articulating and expressing how the world looks and how it feels. That work felt the most true to me. And so, you know, my work in those early days was kind of centered in that vocabulary. And, you know, as I say, often, you know, the, even going to school in Ohio, getting a degree in theater, it's, you know, I think so much about all the distorted ways that our, all the distorted ways that were taught history and taught about who we are from the time that we're very, very young. I've said, you know, I, even when I was in college, let's say just in the theater realm, when I was in college, I don't think I read any play by a black playwright. So what did I then learn about what actual American theater history is? It means that I actually didn't learn American theater history, even though that's what they told me they were teaching me. They didn't teach me about, you know, Alice Childress. They didn't teach me about Wally Soyanka. They didn't teach me about ritual traditions and practices, but they, but I have a degree in theater that has meant to teach me what theater is and what our history is. And if you think about even our kind of education system and what we learned, the civil rights movement was, when we learned slavery and it's like, we've just been, just told lies about who we are as people for so, so, so long. So I bring that up to kind of connected to the path as a director in theater, because in a way it's kind of in two portions. One, you know, on a way, way, way larger scale, I think, you know, what we think of as the American theater, and you can probably speak to this way better than I can, is in a way of kind of a narrow window into what the possibility and capacity of theater and the vocabulary, the history, et cetera is at all. But in addition, when I was first starting out, you know, I graduated from college in 2000. So when I was coming out, the black artists who were kind of the most prominent in New York, I got to New York in 2003, were, you know, George Wolf was around, Susan Laurie, Anna Devere. And so I've kind of been able to watch the evolution of black artists inside of white institutions, but, you know, originally did not have much of a vocabulary or understanding of also the black institutions that had been created, the New Year Ensemble Company is a classical theater parlance, the National Black Theater. And so as I kind of continued on my own directing journey, really the places that I was able to work and find my own voice as a director were through either independently produced pieces or, you know, I think significantly through the support of the National Black Theater and, you know, and being able to see and witness also that the way that the theaters of color felt so isolated from what we consider to be the American theater, it really gave a perspective in terms of who does the American theater value and respect and who do they say is worthy of being inside of their institutions. And I had also been inside of those institutions, assistant directing on a bunch of plays at different places so I could see the kind of discrepancy, you know? And so for me, I feel so grateful and really indebted to places like NBT for existing, for having that space for us as black artists to be able to create. And then what happens is, you know, then, you know, you might work on something and be able to kind of have access into the white institutions, but even that journey, I always say, it's like you have to have an army of people. It's not about talent, it's not about anything that anybody's gonna tell you that it's about, like you just know something, you go to see your work, like that's all complete nonsense. It's really the army that it takes to be able to push your and claw your way into the white institutions is very challenging. And, you know, I feel like I haven't had an army, a little army of people who were able to help me kind of make those transitions. So it's, yeah, it's definitely not been an easy process. And now, you know, I think one of the things that I try to do is make sure, and especially, you know, thankfully we as directors can do this, make sure that once we are working, once we are working inside of those white institutions, thinking about what are the different ways that we can maneuver and also transform things from the inside and collaboration oftentimes with other people of color who are on staff or other people, other white colleagues who are kind of on the same page and making sure that we can bring in designers of color and making sure that we're thinking about what's the market, as I said before, what's the marketing of the show? How are we connecting to the audience? Who's in the audience? You know, these are all things that we, they're just constant, constant battles and fights. So, yeah, it's been a journey. It's been a fight and the fight continues. You said you were an assistant director at the White Theater Institution. How was that experience? How did you feel? Would you feel, they said, what's great? Are you here or you have to be thankful or you felt that it was a fair chance? How was the atmosphere for you? You know, it's so interesting. So, and when did I do this? It must have been 2007, 2008. I was a directing fellow at the public and the great thing about the shows that I worked on was that they were mostly, I'm trying to think back now, you know, I assisted on the brother's side, Terrell's play. There was another great play by Naomi Wallace that had all fully Middle Eastern Persian cast. You know, thankfully some of those plays were kind of you're around, you know, other people of color. And so that kind of was really beautiful but you're definitely looking and it's not exclusive to the public. It's theaters all over the country. They're mostly walking into places where most of the staff is white, most of the production team is white. It's a white institution. So, you know, it's interesting going and working at a place like the National Black Theater where, you know, the production manager, like everybody on the staff is in support and in connection to who you are. So the challenges are just, it's a different fight. There's some things you don't have to think about because you know that there are producers there who are really looking out for you and who really love you and respect you and want the best for you. So the experience is definitely different, you know? And that was 15 years ago, almost, maybe, no, 13, 12, 13 years ago, but it's still the same. I mean, we work at theaters all across the country. They still, there have been progress, been progress for sure, but the theaters for the most part still look the same. So, you know, that kind of, at the end of the day, it's like that echo of the protest from Minneapolis all across the country that, you know, I can hear sitting here in my apartment sometimes, you know, it's all kind of talking about the same thing. It's like, what are the places that anti-blackness has just has pervaded every single morsel of our society? And the theater world is just not exempt from that. There's been letters coming out from people in the food world, in the publishing world, you know, and all different companies all echoing, you know, this cry that's coming out of Minneapolis and out of Louisville and Alabama, you know, all the places where these stories are. So that is the, at the end of the day, that's kind of like the primary cry is just, it's just not the entire system of everything, of everything, everything is just so completely skewered and unjust. And so I think, I'm appreciative that, and you know, people are gathering in different ways to be able to kind of make the transformations on the highest level, meaning like inside of, you know, meaning the things that we're watching on television every single day, but also kind of taking the moment to assess in every facet of our own lives, where that is also replicated. Yeah. Let's say, you know, no, let's say a good change, but what do you think has to change? What do you think what are things that need obvious things, what needs to change? You mean in theater, in the world? Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe we start, we start with theater, you know, but in this institutions, you go in because I'm sure also, it's an honest moment, I think, also for these institutions. And so they say, what do, you know, what do we, what can we do because we didn't see the world, the way you experienced it there in their own bubble and their own, like we've said, you know, before like fish, you know, doesn't know about water, you just unaware of it, which is a terrible thing. And it becomes clearer and clearer. And so, but what do you think could really help? What do you feel has to change? You know, what's interesting is, I think at the end of the day, the thing that the protests are awakening or fueling is at the end of the day, it's all connected back to the same thing. Like we, it's trying to figure out how do we actually create an anti-racist society? And also, how do we really, really make an assessment of how did we get here? Because even the people who have said that, you know, that they felt in a way unaware, the images and the messages have been here for so long, people have been fighting for freedom for 401 years in this country. Do you know what I mean? It's funny now, even sometimes as I'm just going through and just reading different articles and stuff like that, I'm like, oh, actually there's so many times where we're just echoing things that people said before or it's like we, this is a moment where we are echoing James Baldwin, where we're echoing Audre Lorde, where we're echoing W.E.B. Du Bois, where we're echoing Harriet Tubman, where we're echoing Frederick Douglass. You know, these are, it's the same messages that have been transformed. And it's really just about, especially for the white people in this country to really make the space to listen, that people have been saying the same thing over and over again. It kind of reminds me of the way that we talk about for people who are progressive, the way that we talk about the audience that is primarily focused on Fox News, for example. It's like there's a different reality because people have been essentially lied to in order to make them think a certain way about a thing. And it's that same kind of balance to think between the white America and black America. It's like people have been lied to about who we as black people are, our role in the society, our capacity, it's been just 400 years of just actual lies about who we are. And so now it's like, okay, are we willing as a society to really invest in dismantling all of those lies and all of the laws that have been produced because of those lies and all the laws that people are benefiting from because of those lies. Because it's like, in a way, it's like even inside a theater, it's the same thing that's inside of the police department. It's like people just have to be able to make that commitment to an anti-racist agenda. And anti-racist agenda, otherwise we won't get it. We won't be able to get anywhere. And I think it's incredible to have a moment of, you know, where it's, I mean, it's insane that so many people are unemployed and, you know, some who knows when people will be able to get back to work again. It's insane that it takes this level of kind of agony and despair to be able to energize this conversation. But in a way, it just can't be swept away. It's like, it's really something that in a moment where everything is meant to shut down that the heartbeat of this terror is like the loudest, it's the loudest thing. Cause it's like, it's the underbelly of everything. So I feel like that at the end of the day, it's like, it's as simple as what is the commitment that we're making to ourselves? What is the work that the white Americans and citizens are willing to do to be in partnership in that mission? And because, yeah, we have been here before and I think that it's gonna be an exercise in the same way that for those of us who have been able to stay inside have been embarked on a mental exercise of how do we kind of maintain sanity and health and all of those things? Are we gonna be able to commit to the exercise of justice? Because, yeah, it's gonna be a long road and if history has taught us anything, it's that we will 100% make progress but also the racist ideas are also going to find a way to make progress as well. So how do we continue to just chisel to kind of be able to balance it out? And I have no idea of who knows what that looks like. I feel like I still have to continue to make space for myself to imagine what that dream is, what that possibility is, you know? This time of Corona for you as an artist in confinement three months at home, as you said, you are also by yourself. Everybody thinks, oh, everybody's back with families in France, but not everybody is. And did it change something? Did it radicalize you? Did it something make more obvious than before? Or you felt, no, that was always like this and now it's just becoming clearer? Yeah, I think it's probably the, I think it's probably the latter. I think, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about here in the apartment is, yeah, how to continue to just be true, to, you know, like how do we continue to be true to who we are and honor who we are and be honest about the things that we want to change and adjust or learn. So for me, it's been time to just reflect on, okay, these are the things that I have been doing. These are the things I want to do better. In order to do those things better, these are the things I need to learn, address, and in order to be the most true to myself and be able to move forward from that place of truth and honesty, and that's artistically, that's personally. So it's been, I feel like I have, yeah, I very rarely make that space to just kind of like sit and have those conversations and reflections. So I have been grateful to be able to do that, but in terms of the fight, the fight has always been there because this is just the world that we live in. We've always lived in this, we've always lived in this place. And it's now, it's like recalibrating how many people are living in the same place as you are. Do you think in your work it will have consequences these three months at home thinking, or do you feel it's a reinforced of already what I did and I'm gonna be even more dedicated to that. So is that, do you detect a change, perhaps also inform what you think about when it comes to making theater? Yeah, no, I definitely think it has changed. And funnily enough, in a way, I don't feel like it has changed me into a new person. I feel like it's actually just connected me back to certain of my original kind of like impulses and thoughts and you know what I mean? Cause as I say, when we think about what it means to make theater, that system, that very large system of the regional theaters and off-broadways want to say that theater looks and feels a certain way. And I just love that you had Tamela and James on the other day and that they were able to come on and talk about something like three fifths, which is just everything they were saying was so true. Like where is the space for that kind of work inside of the institutions that are producing the most money, who have the most resources? It makes sense that that was produced and I'm so sad I didn't get to see it, but that it was produced at 3LD and the imagination and the scope and the epicness and the dream of the thing that they created is so extraordinary. And I think that there's so many incredible artists and other institutions that have been supporting all different kinds of work. So I feel in a way just more connected and more excited to figure out how do we also kind of create new institutions, support the institutions that are there that can really hold on to the breadth of work. I mean, I think Segal Center is definitely in that category and constantly thinking about what are all the different expressions of art that exists in the world and continue to make space for artists to be in conversation about that and also have a platforms to investigate that. I certainly felt that. So for you, how did you, you said you grew up in Jersey and how did you have that dream? Why did you say I am going to theater? We're going to do theater in my life. What happened? I think it was a number of things and I have the worst memory. So I always try and like pull up all the great details and some of them I'm just like, I can't remember. But yes, so as I said, grew up in New Jersey and I was actually really into film when I was younger and I would just like love to like take out the camcorder and make videos and I really enjoyed just taking pictures and just kind of just capturing moments. And when I, so we're a group in New Jersey is probably about 20 minutes away from the MacArthur Theater in Princeton. And we, when I was in eighth grade, we went to see a production, it was like, there was like a student matinee of Anna DeVier Smith's play, Twilight 1992. And that play was a play where after the LA riots in 1992, she went into LA and did, I don't know, maybe 200, 300 interviews with different people, Korean store owners, you know, I think she might have even interviewed. I wanted, she did like Cornell West. She did police officers. She might have done Reginald Danny. I mean, I can't remember. There's so many people that she had interviewed. And then she had selected, I'm gonna say maybe like 20 and she performed them on the stage. And I remember watching that performance. And first of all, just being completely blown away because it was so virtuosic. Like her, the technical capacity of her performance was so incredible. And then on top of that, you're listening to all of these incredible stories embodied through this extraordinary black woman. And then, and so it was the performance itself was completely riveting. I was just completely blown away. And then after the performance, Emily Mann who had directed that production came out and did a talk back. And so it's kind of this like just great kind of connection in terms of what the work was and hearing her talk about it and what the role of the director had been in the process. And that was incredible. But the thing that really, I think clenched it for me was, this is all like in a day, it's hilarious, was after the performance, we went back to school. And instead of going back to class, just like going into math, we ended up splitting us into groups. And it must have been amongst the middle school. I can't quite remember. They ended up splitting us up into groups. And we ended up spending, I can't remember how long, maybe an hour, might have only been an hour, maybe two talking about the play but using the play as a way to talk about the kind of racial events that are happening in society and our own communities. And that, I think that part of it was the part that I was like, oh, I like I understood what the both artistic possibility of theater was but also what the kind of political and social possibility was as well. That you can have a piece of art that is talking about people's lives in this really beautiful, cool form that can also be a part of transforming how we talk as citizens and people in the world. Like the play gave us a vocabulary to continue the conversation around the ideas and themes of racial injustice. And so I was just like, wow, that's so incredible. And since then, and it might be a story makeup in my head about how it all began, but that's a story I think of when I think of like how did it all kind of kick off? It was just the capacity, the possibility, the opportunities for empathy, but also like how bad as she was as a performance. I was like, this is amazing. And so yeah, it all kind of began, I think there. That was when I was 13 years old. Mm-hmm. Well, this is in a way also an answer. So theaters put up play, you know, innovative work from artists of color related to social, political issues. It's supposed to be a great work of art and great performance. Then there was a talk back, right? Richard Schach was at one of his manifestos. He's writing what says, every performance now should be shown live on any computer screens and then you can go back to see them, by the way, and every performance has to have a talk back. You know, so that, so you had shown your talk back, you went back to school. So in the place where you lived or worked also, it had an impact. So, and it just shows that theater did something that perhaps even a film or a book or others that didn't have that effect on you. So this is already a way of saying this something changed there. This is something theater can make a contribution. In your work as an artist, what a bit complicated world we live in, that complicated world for you to find a nest to create your work and your way to, you know, what do you want to do with theater? What is your goal and why do you do theater? It's a great question. I have to circle back and just catch one thing, really quick, which is about talk backs. And what's so funny, because even though I appreciated that talk back so much and I think actually student matinee talk backs are always the best talk backs, but regular talk backs, especially when we're doing black plays for mostly white audiences are excruciating. And at this point, I also often say, let's not do them unless there is a person of color or someone who is very adept at managing thoughts and ideas around person of color leading the conversation because they inevitably go crazy wrong and they're just, they end up being just the most, sometimes racist conversations. So it's a real balance. Well, I'll just say for any black artists who's listening right now, they totally understand because we've all been tortured. So you get questions. Tell us a bit, what do people say the white audiences then to you all? Oh yeah, no, people ask, people ask really, I'm trying to think of an example. I wish there were other people with me now because they would be able to jump it and give plenty of examples, but they just inevitably, if we're doing a play with predominantly black actors, that's a black story and we're doing it in front of a white audience, they very oftentimes people will just ask dumb questions that just demean our humanity. And don't, they just, you know, people just don't have a vocabulary for talking about black life. And so they just inevitably botch it up and then we end up being on the front lines of the firing squad figuring out how to negotiate it and how to respond. Do we need to respond? Can we yell at the person? Can we argue with the person? What is that? It's a very complicated web. So yes, it's something very, I think just pervasive that all of us are very aware of. So, I mean, now, I mean, very oftentimes and especially if the playwright is around too, we'll be very, very intentional about what the talk back's gonna be and sometimes it's not necessarily a talk back, we can do a moderated conversation, you know. We figure, we try and figure it out, but they can be very difficult and painful. But in a way, you say, this is also a way theaters fail like artists of color, not having a competent person there who protects them, who guides the conversation. This kind of a referee and shows a yellow card or, you know, or a timeout and those. So that's a very, very important note, actually. Yeah, but yeah, but typically, I mean, it's always amazing to have the conversation with students after the matinees. I think they're always so, you know, those can be a lot, a lot of fun. But to your second question, yeah, it's interesting. I feel very oftentimes as a director, I feel like my job and goal is to, especially if we're working on a new play, for example, to create a space where everybody can create the best work and kind of become the greatest version of themselves as an artist in the room so that we can create something just kind of magnificent and beautiful and thought-provoking and, you know, whatever the purpose and function of the specific pieces to be. But I think it's exciting that we get to continue to, on the one hand, think about what does it mean to tell stories? In my case, mostly stories about Black people, about people of color, and to be able to share those stories with our audiences, to be able to create moments of connection. That's kind of in the narrative zone of what, you know, making theater is, but also in another zone, creating just incredible experiences that capture a moment, that capture an idea, that capture a philosophy, that capture an emotion and that create an experience that is exciting and unpredictable and that connects you to the deepest part of yourself as an audience member and who knows what that looks like, who knows if there are 600 people in the audience for that, who knows if there are three, who knows if the piece moves around. I was joking, I was talking to Ashley and Tatsu the other day, we were just, you know, talking about what it means to like, where are the places that we want to create and where are the, who are the people that we want to be there? So I think the conversation continues to kind of stretch wide and far, but I feel, yeah, continually grateful to be in conversation and communion with artists as we kind of create moments of expression without any dictate of what that needs to look like or feel like. When you mentioned Anna Devershmis, but what other artists influence you? Whose artists, what artists do you look up to? What artists were significant for your artistic development? You know, I think often of someone like George Wolk, whose work I always loved as a director because I feel like he, there's always such an energy, just an immediacy to the work that he creates and it's very transformative in the sense that it, it feels like it makes its own rules as to what it wants to be. Do you know what I mean? And he has such an energy and a vigor and for the work he creates and you see that every moment of any production you see of his is totally and completely dynamic and purposeful. So I feel like he has definitely been a huge influence and someone else who when I was growing up was a huge influence too was Julie Tamor. I think Lion King must have come out when I was in high school at some point but I had also been able to see, maybe like on PBS or something, some of her other pieces and the kind of the imagination and the scope of her work I always thought was so exciting and yeah, it was so imaginative and epic, and I think about actually even other art forms, Pedro Amodovar, that's the poster behind my head is a women on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I remember seeing that though and just the way that he used color in his film kind of manifesting his vision of what real looked like in this totally vibrant, cool way. I was like, what is this? This is incredible. So it went down a rabbit hole with his films as well. And actually someone who I think about a lot now is a novelist, his name is Ben Oakrey and I think I actually have it here because I was pulling it up this morning thinking about this conversation. I'm gonna read you a small thing, Frank. So Ben Oakrey, he's a British Nigerian author and he wrote this incredible book called The Famished Road and it's so beautiful and it kind of tells a story in Nigeria that has where he kind of juxtaposes or plays with the kind of the human world but also with the spirit world and how those worlds are in conversation with one another which kind of fits into the tradition of Nigerian mythologies and cosmologies and reading his work also the dream and the possibility that he explores has always been so exciting. And so this kind of section I wanna read to you is a section in that now just for fun because I think it's so amazing. I always read it like at the beginning of any process because it's so, I don't know, it's so energetic. But I'll just read you like a couple lines. He says, my wife, my son, where are we going? There is no rest for the soul. God is hungry for us to grow. When you look around and you see empty spaces, beware. In those spaces are cities, invisible civilizations, future histories, everything is here. We must look at the world with new eyes. We must look at ourselves differently. We are freer than we think. We haven't begun to live yet. The man whose light has come on in his head, in his dormant son, can never be kept down or defeated. We can re-dream this world and make the dream real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves. My son, our hunger can change the world, make it better, sweeter. People who use only their eyes do not see. People who use only their ears do not hear. And then it goes on and on in magnificence. But I think about that passage often. And even when we first went into our kind of lockdown, I just took that phrase, we can re-dream the world and make the dream real. And I'm staring because I just posted it up on my wall. And I think it's such a perfect kind of quote also for the moment, not to say that we shouldn't have to fight for justice, not to say that the fight is not gonna be hard and that we're not gonna have to kind of keep our eyes so specifically on the things that we are fighting for because it's gonna be a real fight as it has always been. But just that sense of, what's the possibility of this moment without being naive to what the challenges are and what the historic precedent has been, but also what's the possibility? So that's a thing I've been holding on to as well. Yeah, that's very meaningful that in the invisible spaces that contains future cities, future lives and to have that at your wall when you're here outside the sirens and you don't know, is it a police car, is that an ambulance or someone who's gonna be brought to a hospital who's going to die and they hear the voices of demonstrators, it's quite a time. And I think it's a good, it's a very important quote what you have there and then really thank you for sharing. And I really do hope that this time is a time that will bring change. I know you had that fantastic project of black classics, right? So tell us, but did you, were you able to do those, to direct those and how did you select those? Yeah, so yes, we did this series and the first round was at the Siegel Center. And yeah, it's been so incredible. The, we have been exploring... Tell a bit about the idea, yeah, oh, sorry. Yeah, how it started, right? The idea behind the play classic, yeah. Yeah, it's basically the idea is that when we think of the classical canon that there are a lot of plays and a lot of playwrights who have been systematically left out of what that canon is. And so in a way, what we think of the canon is not the canon because it's incomplete because it doesn't include litany of black artists. So the idea behind classics is to bring the, to expand our notion of what the classical canon is by investigating and exploring plays by black playwrights. And we're defining classics as plays that were written before, I think we've said 1990. And really thinking about the definition of a classic as a play that was written in a certain time that resonates, which themes resonate with our own. So it's been a great adventure. I mean, from the four plays that we did, gosh, that was maybe two or three years now, Frank. We've been able to do those four plays and it's really expanded and I'm so great. They were all produced. They all became produced, the plays. We haven't produced them all. We did, we did a- Maybe tell it that our listeners the plays. What are the plays you selected? Yeah, so it's so interesting. This really all started because I was assistant directing on a production of Shuffle Along that was on Broadway that George Wolf was directing. And he is the one who mentioned, he said, have you ever read these plays? One was by a man named Bill Gunn named the Forbidden City. And then the other was by a woman named Kathleen Collins that's called The Brothers. And I hadn't read the plays. I'd never heard of those writers before. And so I went out looking for the plays, couldn't find the plays. And so we put the series together as a reading series to explore the plays. So we did those two plays, The Forbidden City. We did the Alice Childress play Wine in the Wilderness. We did Ron Milner's play What the Wine Cellars Buy. And then we closed it out with Kathleen Collins's play, The Brothers. And since then, last year we were in conversation with Juilliard. And so Juilliard did a production of The Forbidden City with its students. And for us, you know, we kind of think about there's four pillars. But actually, before I get there, I should say the team now has really expanded. And so the team now includes A.J. Mohamed, who's an incredible producer and dramaturg. He's one of the producers on the Fire This Time Festival. He's also a researcher at the Schomburg. A brilliant dramaturg named Arminda Thomas, who's such a fantastic, I mean, completely amazing, also historian of black theater and black art. Dominique Ryder, who is a director and just such a light and enthusiast of black art and black theater and black history. And then lastly, Brittany Bradford, who's an actor and also a producer who is also so committed and is just so inventive and smart and thorough. So we've kind of grown and expanded since that time. And we're able to do another reading of an Alice Childress play at Tafana in February, right before everything shut down, which very ironically enough was a play that took place in 1918 during the 1918 epidemic. So yes, yeah, this is a brilliant play called Wedding Band that Alice Childress wrote. But when we think about the kind of the pillars of what classics is, there are four of them. One is to kind of continue to do readings of the plays, which are just a great way to get people together and explore them and get them out in the open that people know that they're what they are and kind of what their histories are. The second component is to get the plays into production in theaters around the country and around the world. A third component is what we call the education and also the narrative component, meaning as I say, when I was in college, I didn't read, maybe I read one black play, I can't remember. I think students now obviously are reading Dominique and they're reading Katori and they're reading Terrell and Lynn and so many incredible contemporary playwrights are part of the curriculum. And I mean, and of course, August Wilson and the Rainhandsbury, but making sure to get these other plays into the teaching and the learning so that when we're learning about what theater is, we're not learning it without including Adrienne Kennedy. We're not learning it without learning Bill Gunn. So that's another major component. And then the narrative component is how do we continue to kind of get the information around the plays and the playwrights out into the world. And then the last pillar is publication. So some of these plays, as I say, even after George mentioned those two plays and I went out to look for them, there's only one copy of The Forbidden City in New York and it's, actually I met somebody, a great guy who runs the Metrograph Theater, Jacob Perlin, and he has done such incredible work around the film work of Bill Gunn and has also kind of created a kind of small archive of Bill Gunn's plays as well. But the plays are very hard to find. I remember it wasn't easy, you know, but we did it so you were really going around so I don't know where it is and it took a while. Yeah, totally. And then scanning, scanning all the pages, making copies in the library and scanning. So the last component is the plays that are really hard to find, you know, figuring out who has the rights to some of these plays which is also its own adventure and then getting the plays published so that we can get them out into the world a little bit easier. So yeah, so we have a really extraordinary group of people who have come together to kind of keep that mission going forward, but it's exciting. And what's great is that we're always just learning new things and learning new plays and like, you know, it's great having, you know, AJ and Arminda on the team too because they will just pop up with like an article from, you know, 1898 about some great play or great performance or, you know, a great piece of writing. So it's been it's been really beautiful. And the other component that we really want to make sure to include is plays from outside of the United States so that, you know, we're including plays by M.A. Césaire and Soyinka and Amartya Adu and thinking about what are also our black storytelling traditions that might not look like what we think of now as a play, but that are really kind of the roots of the kind of manifestation and growth of what theater is, what ritual performance is, what community celebration looks like. And so including plays inside of the, our kind of more ancient traditions inside of our catalog of the classical canon as well. Yeah, maybe we should do as Seagal Center publishing project, we are open for business if we want to put the analogy, why not? Let's do that together. And I was easily saying, we could do that. I want to reach out to you and say that officially. You know, I can take it back, other people heard it. And but at the time, you put one, but listen, Avoya, you did such great work. And I also remember that beautiful feast you directed with us, the Yoruba musical that came out of the National Theater and the Royal Court in London. We tried to get it to people in New York. Nobody was interested. It's such a beautiful work with five writers over five centuries, the dance and music. If there's ever something is a musical component that should have been done in New York, it's shocking that nobody was interested. And this came from the National Theater in London. It's not even had, you know, had a good business card on its side and it just shows, you know, there are barriers. It's impossible to get through, but we have so much respect for you and for your work and really thank you for sharing. And I think that quote is really beautiful. Send it to us. So we put it up on our website under the talk of today. And, you know, keep on the work. Nothing lasts forever, not the good things, but also not the bad things. So this will be over one day and it's good to take the time to prepare as a maybe as a closing question since we are coming to an end to the young avoyes out there who are still maybe at Ohio, interestingly enough, Edwin Kennedy, Ohio State Murders, you know? Yeah, yeah. And when she writes how terrible she felt studying in Ohio that it was the worst time in her life, how she felt ignored at the university and often actually, yeah, I mentioned also white women often, you know, the worst, the white girls. But anyway, so a lot has happened. We shouldn't ignore it, but there is a line. Actually also an incredible work for the Ohio State Murders. We try to stage it all part of it at Edwin Kennedy evening. It's also was in Catanio from Lincoln Center Theater and others, but of course, it didn't happen this spring. We wanted to do the penbled voices. But what do you say? What do you say is of significance, is of importance? What should we focus on? Maybe to now to say the white audience or the artists or what do you say to us, pay attention to that. That is meaningful. In a way, I actually almost flip it around a little, Frank, and I would say the thing that, one of the things I'm really excited about is for us as black artists to come together in our kind of, in all the power and brilliance that exists inside of the black theater community and continue to create new pathways and to continue to support the pathways that exist for ourselves inside of our institutions and to continue to, as the great Camilla Forbes who I was speaking to the other day mentioned about what it means to go toward where the love is and continue to fight the fights that we have to fight inside of the white institutions but also kind of live inside of the greatness and the power of the black institutions and the black artists. And I feel like our possibility and capacity is just limitless. I feel like we stand on the shoulders of giants and our ancestors speak and live through us in every single moment. And I feel, yeah, I feel very present and I feel like, yeah, I feel like I, like it's up to us to be true. And I think that's where all of these movements are coming from is that sense of like, we know that we are powerful, we know that we are strong and any body, any person, any of the systems that seek to negate that all have to come down because we just can't go, we can't go forward. So I look forward to that kind of continued fight in collaboration and in power and we'll see what the next day brings. Yeah, yeah. And to look at those invisible spaces, as you say, and the stage I do think is one of those spaces that helps us to communicate, you know, something between the living and the dead, Yankot said that, but also between the present and the past in the future. And something appears on the stage and it goes beyond what it only is about. It stands for so much more and in the symbolic way, imaginary way and also in a real way. And we need to see that change. And if we don't do it in the theater world and performance world, who else will? So this is of real significant importance. I remember when Tom Twinkle Pearl took over commissioner of the arts, he came out of the Queens Museum, he did such great community work and he did a study how was the distribution. I think there were 2% were non-white in the office, in New York City. That's right. What does that mean? People decide what to do, 2% and the majority of New York City is no longer white. You know, since I think it turned five, six years ago, officially without even the unofficial count, you know, we hear 160 languages on the street. They're not reflected. We don't see them. We don't hear their stories. They are no subtitles in Spanish, you know, like the Gorky theater in Berlin, every show has Turkish subtitles. It is our audience to speak so great German, but we want them, they are important and maybe that will help them to feel more at home to create as Jean-Luc Nossi said yesterday, some kind of a belonging, a Heimat place where you inhabit, you don't just visit like a tourist and go back, but if you spend time and where you engage and you're one of those workers. So really, yes, thank you for joining us. Keep on your great work. And let me just think, Frank, Chris, very quickly to that point that you just made is about like, as we, because we recognize the injustice of that thing in the present, but also what does it mean for us to go back in time and look at the places when the NEA was formed in the 60s? What are the ways that that money didn't go to black artists? What are the ways that someone had to come into the NEA and say, actually, we need to allocate those sources. And then there's a moment of progress. And then what does that mean for the Reagan administration to have come in and cut that section of the NEA out? It's like, all of these things are so, and that's the thing that's like the systemic part of it that's beyond, this is the way it should be. It's like, how do we get rid of the systems that have actually put this imbalance into place? Cause that, I mean, that funding statistic is crazy. It is crazy. How little it is, it's less than one theater in Berlin for the entire different forms of the arts. It's like 160 million. I think the show in Berlin has 300 million. And then also, I mean, on the other hand, there's perhaps even more money in the US around for the arts, get supported from museums and orchestrate so many, many things in a great way. And we also like that. But the big difference is artists in other countries, they are part of the decision makers. Institutions are run by artists. They're not run by people who started arts administration or come from finance. It's not run by people who are on the board because they donated money and they can do that. No, that artists are in charge and they have a different awareness. And I think what's also missing is that connection that artists are at the table, have a place at the table, all artists, but especially artists of color. You try to get a free rehearsal space anywhere on the big institutions. You go to MoMA or the mat or others and say, I would like to rehearse my show there. If you see, we'll not get it or you will have to pay an enormous amount of money. And so, but still they got at least some support. So something is wrong in the distribution of everything. And I hope this moment also will serve as we say as a shake up and as a trembling earthquake. And that's Fukushima melt on what we have now and Richard Schachner always caused a friend of his that, you know, but we look into the reactor, the roof is blown open. It's a catastrophe. We now see everything that virus has exposed what already is out there. It's a catalyst that brought it together. So I hope it will, it will bring change, also good change but we have to work for it and fight for it. And I really want to applaud you for what you did and what you're going to do and congratulations. And our listeners, thank you for listening. It also went a little bit of a time again. Tomorrow we have Woody King, Jr. who I think 50 years, he had a new federation. What did he learn in that time? What did he do? What did he go through? What does he think about the time now? I can't wait to hear from Woody and of his legend in his field also and what he's continued to be working but also his overview. And then we are working on the lineup for next week. It's all together, but I think Peter Schumann from the Great Breton Puppet Theater who has done a great work in political theater, worked with Puppet, put a socially engaged theater out there in Vermont. Tanya Bruguera, a significant artist from Cuba who also does performance and performance work. As part of her outreach and community work. And many, many others from Malaysia and from I think from Netherlands and Iran and Hopazeta from Rwanda. So it's also going to be again a mosaic from the artists and fellows around the work. So I look forward to next week's. Thank you guys for listening all and listening in. This has been a long time. It's week 11, next week will be week 12 where we talk every day. And I feel it's important that we do listen and that we know what's going on, that we see the world, how it really is and then wait, work on how we want it to be. And so it's important to have you listening and supporting our artists. And hopefully it also contributes a little bit to your day. And this time of Corona, thanks to Hallround for hosting us every day. Sia and Vijay and Travis to Sanyang and Andy at the Seagal team and Avoya, all the best. And I hope all the stuff you're working now on will see the light, this light.