 Okay, great. We'll get started. Thank you all for coming and welcome to our panel discussion, hosted by literary managers and drama trucks of the Americas. And we're here at the Castillo Theater and All Stars Project, way west on 48th Street. So we thank them for hosting us in this great space. The emphasis for this conversation comes from a lot of different places, most recently a bit of a controversy over the recent art course production of Big River and a conversation that developed between a journalist and a producer that mostly happened over social media. And so one of the things that we thought would be great is it since we are a theater community and one of the things we celebrate is being in a room together and the same air and talking about and debating different topics mostly through plays but also around plays. But why don't we try to convene a conversation but also broaden the discussion to include other ways in which unconscious bias might play out in the work that we do and how we can sometimes even in a theater community where we pride ourselves on talking and listening to one another, where we have wine spots and what is the work that can remain to be done. So I'm going to turn it over to my co-moderator, D. Tran, who is an associate editor in our computer magazine and a journalist and has been meeting lots of conversations about the need over city and inclusion to introduce our panelists and make some ground rules for our discussion today. Right, we're going to, how does light sound a bit? I don't think it's on or not. It is on, just hold it there. It's just not good. Yeah, it's just very understanding. I didn't project. Yeah? No, for the people on panel. Oh, I thought that's... I don't know, I should start by some questions. Right, we're going to tag team this, it's going to be awesome. So, first off, well, we go with John and Roe and you can introduce yourselves. Do you want to start? Absolutely. My name is Jesse Cameron-Allick. Hi, Jesse Cameron-Allick and I'm the literary manager at the public page. I'm editor of the interview. I'm Howard Sherman. I'm the director of the Arts and Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama and I'm also the U.S. columnist for the stage newspaper and play. First of all, I just wanted to set some, I don't want to say ground rules, but just some guidance for the discussion. I'd like to quote, I'd like to quote Taylor Mack by saying, everything you're feeling is appropriate. So, if you feel uncomfortable, that is okay. That is a point. And do not be afraid to, you know, speak candidly and to maybe offend some people. And if we can just make this a safe space for discussion, then we'll hopefully get to some really, you know, valuable insight. So, do we want to? Ken, do you want to? Sure. Let me take your mic. And Laura, hold on to yours. I'll start with you. This is like Christian's all over again. So, Laura, we don't want to necessarily rehash what you went through, but I know I'm curious about your approach to the job. So, what happened when you, you know, got this gig that you're going to be reviewing this? And can you tell us a little bit about, like, how you dove in? One of the things that, you know, we're interested in is drama terms is about the context. Like, what context are we going to be in? Why this play in this place at this time? These are the questions that we're very interested in and these are theater makers who share a lot of interest and traits with the critics. We're just working on, like, different sides of opening the night. Right? So, I just want to hear more of your, you know, personal experience diving in, obviously not milling, that you're reviewing is going to, you know, light up higher, but also having something to say about your research and experience watching the play. Did you start out by going to the library? I watched by noticing that I was production. I did go, wait for this, and he depends on my energy. So, whatever. I went to Performing Arts Library. I watched the original Broadway production on DVD. And then I cracked open one of those binders that has seasons reviews in them. And I read all of the reviews of Big River. The critics were not thrilled. They were just grateful that something good at the end of the season had finally not good, but not bad anymore. They were. They were, like, breathing a sigh of relief. But I don't even know this. The thing about theater is that you don't know what it's going to be until you walk in the room and it starts happening in front of you in the same, you know, in the air that you're breathing in the culture you're living in. And you can't go into that. I mean, I couldn't possibly know that what I was going to say with light and fire was, like, I had no idea what I was going to say. And even the next morning, because it was, you know, it was such a short run, it wasn't the next morning that I was smiling, it was only when I couldn't possibly ignore the feeling that I had that I was going to write about that. And I couldn't actually write about this pretty mildly and it did not. But I'm thinking, what's the matter? Do you feel when you go to a show that you have any responsibility to support the theater? I mean, various critics have talked about what's my job? What's my job? And you know, we don't have necessarily lots of conversations about whether to read the criticism or to read the reviews, but not necessarily the process of going out and when you think your job is when you're going to see a show and you're going to read it. Well, support is a word that you guys use. And I understand that, and it's just not one that we use about, you know, the reason that we're there. We're all part of the same ecosystem. I just don't think that our job is support. Your boss, in fact, asked her, something he said, stunningly, about like, you know, when they're holding each other to account. And I think that's absolutely true. Everybody in that ecosystem is. So, support is good. Holding each other to account is also good. I think that's a good segue to just into the conversation. I can tell us a little bit about your responsibilities at the public and how you engage questions about what's produced and why. Yes, I especially can. So, I'm a literary manager and that essentially means I read plays and I see plays and I travel a lot on quite a little bit and I see plays and then essentially I just have conversations with the playwrights and get in front of them and figure out, you know, what they're interested in and what we're interested in, public theater and trying to find that intersection between the two. And then at the public theater there's lots of other people that's assigned. Public theater is an interesting theater to be on this panel because I think that we may be an outlier in terms of what plays to produce when. Because someone once told me, oh, it doesn't feel like this question at the public theater just sort of happens, which is like a lovely thing to say but it's just not true. It is the question at the public theater constantly all the time. And it's my copyright on that question, or I take it as my copyright on that question. I think it's the most important. What you find right now in your job as a theater measure at the public theater which has a lot of attention, right? A lot of things that happen to the public get covered, some go on to various things. It's such a big producing entity. Do you feel that there are particular challenges in your job or at the public theater with regard to engaging the audience at the particular cultural moment? I mean, you said you were an outlier, but you're about to do challenges with that. There's absolutely challenges. I mean, one challenge I would give you is actually a technical challenge which is that like every theater when you set a season about a year in advance, you know, we announce a season about a year in advance, and we're thinking about a season a year and a half, two years in advance, we're commissioning projects, you know, that have a very long arc so how do you land the project in the right year and have not worked on a project for too long so the cultural moment is passed which I think often happens, I think that's tricky. And then in terms of like, I think there's also the question of wanting to do work about an issue or a community or something that's happening and someone writes a play and that's great that they give it to you but it presents a point of view that may not be helpful for society at this moment. I think that can be really tricky. And what happens when that does happen when you present a particular play with a particular point of view that's not helpful when you work in an institution like the public? We try to make sure that doesn't happen. I do that. I sometimes like when you're producing theater you don't necessarily know how it's going to like an intelligent audience. That's true, but one of our jobs is for the future. I mean like, I think that you can like look at a piece. I'll just take something on my mind right now that I will all erase all the names because I can just say but there's actually a few plays out there on there about Islam and I think that's a really important thing to have on stage. And there's a number of plays that I know my guests are about Islam. They're really, really good plays. They're well written and they take the point of view of examining Islam from the feminist point of view and how Muslim women are treated poorly and treated in great force of work and stuff in Islam countries. Is that the right thing to do right now? I'm not going to answer that, but those sorts of questions that kind of wrestle with it. I mean you have to take an opinion. You have to take a stance. We're still waiting on another panelist that's even had some questions for them that seem to have a meaning right here. It's for Howard. So Howard, you were up there until recently the interim director of the Arts Alliance. The Alliance for Good Genetics. Yes. And in that work you've been doing a lot of writing about race and gender, issues within the theater and also censorship. And so when you're writing how do you know to, I guess, how do you acknowledge and avoid biases and how do you make sure you're covering it fairly? I'm writing is my beliefs and I've never intended to be impartial. I'm writing with bias, the bias being what I believe would be the best perspective, the best practices in the field and what is what I understand to be the best way to move the field towards inclusion and equity. I am a middle-aged, heterosexual, cisgendered Jewish man. I cannot pretend to write from any other perspective than that. I hope that I have sufficient knowledge and empathy that I can use my experience and my privilege to support leaving the theater a better place than I found it when I started. Do I look good? Boys can't look good. So it's an internal compass. I have people that I sometimes will show my writing to before I show it to the world on either of the sites that I write on regularly or for the stage. And I just try to think about is there something that I can say that somebody else can't say or is there something I can say that I haven't seen anybody else say? And maybe it's worth saying. I mean, just for people who don't understand why we do this type of work why is it important to use the microphone that you have to give awareness to these issues? I think there's a historic inequity in theater. I don't even want to generalize broadly to the arts because my dean of knowledge has been in the theater. I had come up in the American Regional Theater Movement. It started really in the mid-60s. I started working professionally in the 80s. And I've come to understand that frankly probably things even that I did or was part of in the early years of my career were opportunities that were denied or that may have in fact denied opportunities to others. And so I just think it's important that we're conscious of it all. And as I say, to whatever degree I've been given a voice either by virtue of the jobs I've had my ability to communicate or simply my own compulsion to tell people what I think I'm going to do that. And if it resonates with people that's great that I've had people who tell me they appreciate writing and my all-time favorite quote a magazine journalist in Canada wrote Howard Sherman's anti-racism because worse than racism itself. So, you know, but I just had to go with my gut and I suppose if I was while I live off base I'd be called and it'd happen by some people and that's fine. And again, hopefully I'm listening. I've had the opportunity to do this work to meet an enormous number of artists that I may not have encountered personally or otherwise by choosing to be an ally on issues of race and gender and disability. And I want to acknowledge disability particularly because when we talk about diversity we often think about race and ethnicity we think about gender disabilities too often left out of the conversation. It's a great thing. And class too. There's so much. We have a late-comer. Do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Michael Delroy. I'm a teacher at NYU. I'm sorry, I was late because I was teaching class. Well, since you have the microphone we'll want to make this a little nightmare again. I have a question for you. Sure. So, the reason we asked you here was because you were in a production of paper. Yes. And so how did you react when all of the things went down? Well, I actually don't read the views so that's been a longstanding choice. But I was at work and I got an email from a co-worker from a faculty member saying did you see what happened in the reviews and things were with the city center and I said no so he sent them to me. And I read the review and then I read the response and I was really taken back by the response, the review which I thought was valid. I did the 2003 production of Big River which was the death west production. Up until that point I had never done a production of Big River. I had no desire to do a production of Big River. And the only reason I auditioned for this production was because it was being done with the death and hearing actors and because of how it was being done it illuminated, opened up the story in a different way. It redefined what this African-American slave who he was because he also spoke something he was fluent in sign language. It opened up what the idea of otherness was because of the death and the hearing actors that's here at the stage. But I never had any desire to do it before that or since because I think this is my own personal opinion as a man of color. I don't want to put myself in a situation where I'm treated in such a way that feels a little too close to how I can be treated in today's world. I'm not interested in being called another eight times a week. It does something as after as we are taught to leave the show behind when we leave the stage door but some of that stuff you carry around and I was not interested in being a part of that story. So when I read the review I thought that's very interesting to question in this moment in time where we are as a nation what responsibility we have to we have to tell them that story at this time. It's not that it shouldn't be told but if we're going to tell it out I'm pretty passionate about the fact that it should be there should be some kind of conversation around it so that it's not like it's just we're putting this out there because it's theory because it was written in 1984 and there's no responsibility about it. I think there's a huge responsibility in this day and age when the country is going through what we're going through as a group of people or in terms of race and how we deal and talk with each other and exist together that to put that on stage and not have a conversation to me felt slightly irresponsible. And that's my opinion. And I just feel that there are those kinds of pieces that we can stand behind the idea of this is a work of great fiction but then I question to whom. It's not to me. I mean, I'm having the idea of smart playing but to once again have my voice or the rest of the people who look like me to all through one person's perspective it's always in a limited way makes me question what it means to me and if it is a work of great work to me so I was very taken back by the response to that and wanted to talk about it wanted to say, you know, I agree that in this time we need to have more conversations it's not that we have to agree we've gotten so on each on opposite sides that we don't even take the time to have a conversation not that we have to ever agree on anything but there should be enough humanity that we have for each other that we should be able to talk about why this is considered a work of art and what it means in 2017 to present this work of art to the public I think that that furthers conversation as opposed to just saying well this was written in 1984 based on this great piece of work and here it is I think that we can do so much more with our art and we have to do that much more with our art today we have a huge responsibility to be able to kind of change the conversation to create conversation to invite people from all different backgrounds to be able to kind of come together and learn something through our art I have so many questions about that that was awesome but we have to move on to our final panelist, Victoria and so we're just switching here a little bit from race to gender do you want to tell me a little bit about the debacle when you read the analysis sweet charity review and how it led to the great essay that you wrote to make it available sure, so in December until today I was going to interview the sweet charity and her review of it that I thought was remarkable in both the depth and breadth of the sexism that was presented in it and at the age of 12 I've been talking for a while about doing a study about sexism and reviews that Danielle was right over there the charge of it has been working very hard on because it's something that comes up a lot people like interviews, it's like that instead of our content and something that comes up a lot is what I'm feeling like their work isn't taken seriously or there's very gendered language used in the reviews it's very subtle but it's there or the actresses that their bodies are talked about in a way that feels inappropriate over the top and it's not happening to their male counterparts and so this review was very extreme both in the sense that it kind of in my opinion a lot of criteria of what sexism is both in terms of the language used and also the framework in which it was presented information and the fact that it didn't particularly engage with the material it was more just making broad statements about Cecil Perlman as a director and saying that she took her work too seriously which I think most people would actually say is a compliment and something that you would never say to a man and it just seemed like a very good case study to use here's your review let's go through and explore how it's sexist so I went through and first we have a bad man guy watching his other reviews and to be fair to him there are reviews that he's written or shows by women with their sexism whatsoever that wasn't a case in this one and it wasn't a case of many other reviews as well and I kind of specifically looked at because he was so excited on them that like oh she's too serious and it makes her work bad it's like well obviously I recall that male directors were too serious especially in the school he hadn't so kind of using that to show actually like the very stark contrast in how work by men is talked about in the press so that's kind of the very very short version it was an interesting experience to do but we had like a very very positive reaction to it and it actually became her most great piece ever and it became hopefully a start to a lot of discussion because obviously it's such a bigger discussion than just about a review of gender disparity because I think there have been many other examples of sexism in reviews and I think this one's very strange that I am not the only one and hopefully you know now people will be a little bit more aware of it I think one of the problems is that for so long you know like people being like put an angry Facebook back up or they're like angry tweeted about something but unless you're actually like writing to the editor of the publication and being like hey this is wrong let me tell you why I think it's wrong I think it gives them it makes a very secret to ignore and I think one of the things that's good to be more proactive about is kind of like if you see something say something and you know write to the editors they probably won't answer but if you're all calling their senators now anyway so if you see something and you become that person it's just like hi to me again this is sexist this is why because there are certainly like other reviewers and I'm sure many of us can name had interviews and not great things about women and not great things about other minorities and you know unless you say something they have no reason to change what they're telling because there are no consequences so right it was like didn't they ever respond? if there ever was, is the New Yorker I want to say like two months later like quite a bit out of the bag published blood letter about it let's go into the conversation portion one of the panelists do you want to start us off? maybe check that out so we can get it working have some more flexibility here so we have a lot of threads that we can then pull on I think the one I want to start with is something that the Marco Victoria world is saying that it's important to continue the conversation or to have then views in which we can continue the conversation if you see something say something I think with websites and social media people can say things fairly quickly and look them out there sometimes they stir up conversation or at least more potentially one-sided statements is that really a conversation so one of the things I'm interested in in this idea of see something say something what are the parameters under which you can have those conversations particularly when they're difficult are there certain conversations about representation of any kind of minority or disadvantage status we all have them in one degree or maybe not if we follow this out but can express being in some position of privilege in another position under somebody's foot and sometimes when we have difficult things to say we find allies with which to have those conversations how can those conversations then be on those groups of allies and so produce a kind of meaningful conversation one of the barriers we put out is those people who are making theater and those people who are reviewing theater how do we have more conversations after the show is after the review comes out to keep a conversation going there's a lot of time as we talked about already reviews can bring up some questions that maybe weren't asked and maybe do need to be discussed so the first question about the panel with respect to that is where are the times when you personally are conversations about difference the most challenging to bring up where do you feel about the difference to bring up a difficult conversation about representation of whatever class you want to talk about do you mean internally what are the most reasons for actually having that I think more to find yourself sometimes wanting to say something and not saying anything or having said something and finding your foot in it in a kind of way I actually have one because it's about being both things the things that I'm most ashamed of myself about turning the blind eye to is like I definitely have people say I have issues and I've definitely seen it out there in general and I find that that's a very hard thing to bring up I think that's true for Jews in the country at this moment especially because we like to pretend that anti-Semitism only exists on the right and that's just not true it's across party lines and the way that it manifests itself sometimes in local circles is very difficult for anti-Semitism to play because of the nature in which it was attacked and the local government and there had been some other reviews also concerning Jews that had a similar sort of tone and it's funny that was the thing that people had trouble with in a way that even if they disagreed with the fact that I mean honestly there are a few people who are like who should go to hell but there's a funny way anti-Semitism being raised that is completely inappropriate to group up and that means that this entire piece has no validity whatsoever and it's also mostly coming from Christians and it's just like in today's world where we're so we're liberals that are trying to be so conscious of not like mansplaining or any of those other terms that people would feel so entitled to tell somebody Jewish no no from there and you're completely wrong with bringing it up even though I can't support anything that I'm saying and even though it was like two sentences in the most entirety then I am not very disturbing I'm going to follow up on that a little bit do you feel like it's on time without responsibility do you feel like it's your responsibility as someone who maybe shares in a part of it of something anti to speak up and how is that different from recognizing a bigotry in an area where you don't necessarily identify so bringing up something that calling out anti-Semitism is that the job of Jews oh there's everyone I think it's like the ideal world versus the actual world where most logically a person who's most affected by it can't support it up I you know I have some Christian friends so I talk with them a lot and you know I think they're great I hesitate to ever use their ally I think there's a kind of condescension to that I think it's kind of like don't do it either do the thing or don't do the thing do the wrong thing but like hit something I don't necessarily like doing something I can do a lot of likes on Facebook and I think I don't want to speak for all Jews here but yeah I feel like there's probably an internal pressure that's different for the person who feels it personally but I don't necessarily think that even I don't know I think I like it's part of that sure let me bring it back to our roles in working in the theater producing and creating theater working as artists in the theater writing about theater do we have any fundamental responsibilities when we work on something when we write about something to look at and to and to ask those questions about whose stories are we telling and whose stories whose telling the stories who can tell the stories who should be engaged to the stories who's missing in the table I think that's a really great question but it depends upon what your mission is listen if your mission is to make a commercial theater that everyone can dance to and that's your mission then no of course who cares about representation who cares about anything I'm sorry I'm saying if you can sell tickets I'm just talking about the commercial theater that has written out but they don't have to their goal is to sell tickets so you take this on course I don't have to know what the mission of on course is or anything like that it's a mission of a big river that does not you know sort of consider the 21st century and Trump and everything like that that's their goal and they achieved it but of course if that's their goal you did a great job pointing out the flaws in the context of the 21st century and they shouldn't be blaming about it frankly I got a little off track it's an interesting sort of thing what our responsibility is I think I actually have to split it my professional responsibility my personal responsibility because in terms of my professional responsibility I work with public theater I mean representation is the thing and anytime I come up against anything I mean with any sort of one of the phobias one of the awful sort of things of course I'll rise against it because that's just morally where I go but if it's like I was in San Francisco on Saturday night at a house party and I'm some really, really liberal person I'm a I'm sorry to see me for lack of a bomb and call me a neoliberal I'm talking about a black person and she was a white person and I considered I was just like I'm not going to have this conversation I'm not going to go there that's not what I'm going to do and I think that's an only thing to do so I will say that was cowardly I think it's cowardly when you decide not to take a fight I was drunk and I decided not to fight and that was cowardly I should have sobered up and had that argument because it makes the world better Lori had some response to one of the claims that designated I did my more immediate response is I'm just going to get drunk if you don't like it you said everyone and I mean I'm thinking of producers not individual producers but as a group I mean you should be thinking of everyone because anyway, this Chrome has a thing that it's not programming you know more generalize like 50-50 each production the balance of an entire season the balance of like over 5 years is at 50% and he's thinking about all of the different ways that you can represent diversity achieving a balance in a cycle makes so much more sense that you can track your time but I do think that there is a responsibility for critics I mean I can't score I do I can't represent it and it's not enough you know that and I do think that that's a responsibility for everyone in the ecosystem if they don't show it I'm just going to say I don't want to just totally out about this city center because I did a concert version in October and we had a sense about my short run but if you look at the cast it has representation of many different backgrounds and it's not about race race doesn't come into play at all and that to me is the ultimate where it's the best people that they thought of an audition who had the talent and the skill to do the job were hired so it wasn't about race I'm very frustrated when I go over on the show and I see it on all white cast where race is not an issue or part of the story I sit back and say oh Hamilton oh on your feet but you see the most diversity when it's race specific for people of color but when you're talking about and I think a few directors that when he does a show on New York City it looks like New York City and that's what I feel like we've gotten somewhere when the most talented people get the jobs and that we don't based on this kind of keeping something one all white color because that's the easiest thing to do and so just to say New York City has done both I feel we're strongly about to be river but I also have to say I'm able to come and do a silent show the third time I've been on Broadway is the first time it's had two men of color in the show of this show that's something that I've wanted to be a part of because who knows when that opportunity will come along again when the producer will think oh I can just cast across the board and those talented people will not look at this specific composer and think right over I have a question to that do you find as a performer when you're involved in a project it's been assembled with a conscious diversity in mind to try to get people in the room to find the artistic process is different I think it has to be because there are people coming from different places you're in the room and it has to do with the creative team being open and available to have those conversations once again those conversations are not always easy to have we all struggle with how we say certain things in the context but I think in a creative space depending on the creative team I think the more people you have and the diverse backgrounds in the room the more perspectives and the more exciting to me that art is going to be because you have more opportunities for many different things that you might not think of given your own specific experience so I find that those rewards are exciting Howard do you want to talk just a little bit about improving in the arts it's been around for 30 years trying to remember instead of an artificial casting project and would you talk a little bit about you can see in trying to get to this to having members points of view in the room as often being fruitful to art making and addressing the issue that we're talking about today which is how we break out of our silos of comfort and engage with people who have to come out to be well first of all acknowledging that I just finished my time with the crews with the arts so it would be to fully represent feminism it's going to just be clear it seems hard to remember but you know some of what we, I mean one of the the focuses that we had over the past few years while I was there was we got involved in a lot of issues about authentic representation which is that when you have a role that is written for a person of color that it is played a person of that color that it is not casting white people in Latinx roles it's not about looking at play set in India with characters with Southeast Asian names and casting white people in those roles the challenge that this goes back to inclusion of the arts was known as the non-artificial casting project which ultimately became a name that's a problematic name it's worth pointing out because it suggests that you have to go against tradition and tradition was white so it moved away from that idea but that you can't ignore race and ethnicity at this time as Michael said it would be great to reach the point where we don't have to think about that and occasionally we see productions which manage to albeit be color-conscious the whole concept of color-blind is sort of out of the window now because you can't ignore it you can't ignore it when a play calls for characters of color you can't ignore it when a play doesn't call for characters of color which would introduce actors of color but the idea that we take this historic inequity which is so favored white European stories and consciously work to open up the repertoire to allow other people into the process of telling those stories we are a long way from having a sufficiently large literary repertory that then everybody again can play whatever roles come along problems in the repertory are still far too narrow and so when there are discussions about well if people of color can play in Washington and Lafayette and so on then why can't white people do August Wilson well that's nonsense the problem that August Wilson wrote this play specifically so that people of color could express their experience on stage white people haven't had that problem so right now the effort is to A. make sure the plays that do call for people of color are played by people of that race ethnicity and whenever possible not to treat the cast of characters page of a script which typically only mentions color when people aren't to be white but to treat it as something that has more fluidity just with race and ethnicity but with gender with disability so that there can be more variety of people who are allowed into the club of people who are allowed to be on stage and that same effort has to be made for people backstage and by backstage I mean everybody including director and choreographer the producer and so because we're fighting against a very very entrenched experience in American theater which has not allowed for that anyway I did an interview with Denebata and she, it was just I had a teeny tiny board count so almost we had this great conversation I wasn't helping her out but like half an hour later she texted me because the subject of color blind casting she didn't like that term but she texted me to tell me the term she preferred which was white supremacist casting that's my commodity Denebata I have a thousand questions and I can walk for three hours but we have limited time so Denebata has a couple of questions and we'll open it up to you I wanted to talk about just having conversations with Laura and Victoria like you call that something that you found was very problematic but it seemed like the other party was open to having that kind of conversation so when we're trying to have these very uncomfortable conversations with people who may not watch or admit that there's a problem and I have this same issue on my end when I write about representation and yellow based in what people play Asian people that people get very pissed off at me so how do we break I guess how do we get past that divide how do we make them listen level I don't know but I think some of the things that are important to at least acknowledge as part of that conversation they're two things one which is the theater community can be really clicky and I think that's something that we kind of don't acknowledge like you see as a community but not talking back about like there are subgroups within that and then a lot of conversations are limited to those subgroups and if you don't know something in that group then you're probably not even aware the conversation is happening so I think like that that's something to be aware of because like I remember when the first children came out I saw it all over Twitter and I'm sure many people in this room saw it all over Twitter and people who had no idea and I'm talking about people who you would think would be like very interested like all of my actresses friends had no idea that it was this and all of them were very interested to find out that it did but there had been kind of no effort made to include them in the conversation and that's actually like one of the things that people tried to address for so long especially around conversations with gender they weren't actually including everyone in the community like not including all the women in the community they were just some playwrights who went to the same university talking to each other and to try to make it so like everybody who has some skin in the game has a seat at that table they think that's important I think it's also important to look at how so much of the air is connected like reviews are not isolated from the rest of the like press machine on a show and kind of the rest of the way a show is talked about and then you have to address it not just like the one big thing happened they kind of address all the little things that play into it like I think something that really does about how work by women has talked about this seems much more subtle and something that's introduced a lot that we do is women saying I never get asked about a process I get asked about being a woman but I never get asked about a process I never get asked how do I write what are my what influences me none of those questions the men get asked and I think to kind of start to look at every little bit of press there's a difference and it kind of squashes individualism and treats people like their group and I think the more you treat people as a group you're treating them as an abstract and I think that makes it easier for something to not be addressed which is why sometimes when there is a basis it makes it easier because it's like an actual concrete object rather than some abstract thing of like oh the women so again it's like not really answering a question but I do think there's some things to be aware of when attempting to answer it that it would help if they got it or some more it depends on what kind of conversation you want to have because there's a difference between the conversation where I want to call someone out on their bigotry or I want to make something note to the public to the masses about something and there's a big difference between that sort of conversation and I notice something that I call a colleague and I want them to fix it and I'm like if Jess got something wrong and I'm like and I notice that she's acting in a certain way that I think is offensive or something I'm going to take her to the side and we're going to build her own silence and we're going to have a need to make conversation about it and I think that's the way to make the biggest change you really want to change something and take someone to the side and talk about it in terms of the clicks in the theater because I don't think of it as clicks but what I do think of it is the word I used earlier are so many cone of silences but I would not have a conversation with just anyone about play I just wouldn't do it I do not have that luxury in my job because theater people all gossip and people are all going to talk to someone else so I don't know who you're going to talk to so I talk about certain things definitely it does make it difficult to have real conversations I have one, it's super quick but just the other thing kind of going off of what you're saying is also I think it can be helpful if you try to bring things in a positive way and offer like some sort of positive solution rather than just saying I mean I need to burn it to put out what you're saying is wrong but I know it's a lot of times with women people are very good at how it would be like oh sex is a mad it doesn't necessarily mean that they support women and I think sometimes it's equally important to be like hey theater company you've gone two seasons now where you had no women to also be like hey you know what I think it's really great like I love like X playwright and you should like that sort of thing I mean it's like equally definitely equally important it's just putting out what's wrong and how inclusion is something people can do about it it's hopefully going to be a solution and not going to go off of it I think you bring up a good point in terms of how we talk about sensitive subject matter and what's the role of personal responsibility and professional responsibility and when is it responsible to have a private conversation and when is it responsible to have a public conversation because it's just that important and how easy it is to know what it is to the issue of what we think of shows where anybody who follows me on social media I have a lot of Twitter followers I don't know I can never say what I think of shows I don't say what I don't say that I don't talk about it I tell people what I see or what I don't do because I just decided there's plenty of people saying what they think of shows and I just don't feel compelled to tell everybody whether or not I like something or not but coming back to a deep set I asked about the conversation I look at my right I can't possibly get in a room with enough people to really affect a broad conversation that's what I like my writing can reach more people than I can ever possibly talk to and I've decided the most radical thing from my writing is when I hear from teachers professors saying I used this in my class or thank you just gave me material for next week's class because a textbook can't keep up and sometimes there needs to be something to respond to and whether they're responding to Laura or to Victoria or to anyone they may read it's a starting place for conversations that we would not be able to make happen unless we were relatively famous in influential individuals so we can have an effect by putting our voices out there away and I think it's probably true that we have affected conversations and we'll never know about the conversations to be affected so I don't have to physically be there but I may and that's what I'm writing is just for maybe somebody's going to read it maybe somebody's going to share it and yeah all that social media stuff of seeing how many likes how many shares and how many comments and on my Facebook page I do still think the attitude of as long as the conversation is respectful I have no problem with differences of opinion people tell me they don't like what I wrote it's only when people attach that's my step in saying wait until I page my views like what you said Howard is reminding me of what Victoria said earlier which is it's easier to share something when it's like an essay or something that's really early written because then it's just like a shorthand if it's easier to get your point across I think so many of these conversations have been padding about like the Mikado started from a piece of writing which then became a conversation so speaking of Mikado River I wanted to talk about classics and when we are we when we're representing problematic works to a modern audience and what obligations do presenters have to their audience or do they have any obligation to re-contextualize it just like a high-piece fact just say I'm a film I don't even know I have a couple of questions one, when we were on the tour of West Bedford River we went to Houston and performed an outdoor part between the public and the mayor of Houston asked, he didn't demand he asked that we take all of the Edwards and public production and all of the public who didn't know the context and didn't know what was going on I looked at shows like show and they placed in Extremesco Theater but I also looked at the original text of the opening of that show no one doubted the original text of that show before and I think that many people would have a problem if you don't know the opening song but the original lyric was not color folk and no one does that anymore because there is an understanding of how that's going to be received in the world in which we live today so I just wrote with these pieces that are historical or based on some time in our history that they're not saying they shouldn't be done I have a choice of whether I could see them or not but I feel like we're missing a valuable opportunity to come together and have a conversation about it and so easy, it's so easy with social media we will just throw things out there and dispute things with no responsibility for it and I feel like what's great about this experience is the experience that happened in the Big River View actually was a big part of what I'm saying here now so I think when we have an opportunity it's much harder to look someone in the face and say some of the things that we say in writing so I think the more opportunities we can have to have conversation where we can actually look someone in the face and have to own and have a accountability for what we say I think those are the opportunities that I'm looking for in a whole different thing but I do feel that with my sort of experiences we should have some responsibility for the stuff that we do He knows not just Big River Achilles which are two useful, by the way, very confused concepts I'm like I'm happy you all are but like it's Merchant of Venice but take Merchant of Venice you can reduce Merchant of Venice but hey, it's Merchant of Venice and that's fine to do but people will say things about it because it's a really freaking anti-Semitic show you can't draw the anti-Semitism out of Merchant of Venice every other line is dirty dude but like the public theater we did Merchant of Venice we actually leaned into it and showed the anti-Semitism the anti-Semitism what it did to the world I think that you can produce any classic piece if you want you just have to take responsibility for what happens afterwards it's like there's no censorship you can deliver a speech that's horrible and sexist or you can make a play that's really, really racist you're just going to have to deal with it afterwards I'm really sure it's not the right answer Do you like programs that are done by each member you know where it is like I was actually at a day and I didn't have this feeling like I know it's an interesting key but it's something where I felt like I was probably more knowledgeable about that you're an average audience member and there was a part of me that was like oh god, there's some people who are going to come see this play and they're going to walk away with like springing ideas I have a really short answer we don't program to our audience so this is a bigger question but in terms of responsibility the big question asked a little bit and you just produced it all the time is like are you catering to your audience or are you trying to read a conversation with your audience or respond to artist impulses and I think that's really cool it's something really passionate about that you want to share I mean all of those things are at play I think it's completely legitimate question we should probably open it up to get some audience questions we started a little bit late so I'm just going to ask your indulgence and then I'll just hand it over does anyone have some questions that anyone wants to ask all the people you said so we're in the season of when a lot of theaters start announcing their seasons and so we look at some seasons and there's a lot of different things happening I've been seeing a little bit of a trend in New York and some of the regional of all white playwrights and all white directors so the playwrights of color being put in a second stage or sometimes one master playwright of color in the main stage and then all white season otherwise but a lot of these theaters are doing really well with gender parity this season specifically so I guess my question is this when you're dealing with all these different things like gender and race and disability and what not, how do you choose which foot to lead are you responsible for all of them all the time sometimes other times like how do you choose let me just recap that quickly for folks who are watching the live live stream it's the question about programming and trying to find some equity in programming whose stories are you telling and because we live in a culture that is where the white thing still has a bunch of privilege and when something is unspecified is there an assumption that that goes to the positioning privilege how are theaters programming are they consciously programming are they trying to achieve equity in a good representation of voices is there a marginalization going on in terms of what stories are told on what stages and what's our responsibility in responding to it either in writing about it calling it out or when we have a voice in the room to try to pitch something or call out like where are we finding the balance either in the given season or in the course of a few seasons and also how do we prioritize what we call out because of one season's gender parity but it's not racially diverse and we don't have to talk about that or we just head and head to events your loving is being angry about the question I'll just say what's on my mind I think that if you find yourself in that situation there's a problem I was going to throw one under the bus because I'm another group because you want to satisfy them you have a problem and you actually need to back it on and I would actually estimate it I think this is the problem with New York City Theater so I can choose the problem with theater in general is that if you're screaming oh we need a woman, we need an Asian female playing right here and then your staff is messed up there's something wrong with your staff I'm guessing that your staff is all white your background is diverse in terms of gender and race and ethnicity and sexuality and stuff like that you will naturally come to equality in terms of your season plan look at the staffs of these theater look who runs these theater and then look at what they're programing the fish rock from that I actually wanted to add to that I also think that people think of gender parity or racial equity or all of these things as a one-time goal and now we're good forever it's not a one-time goal you need to do it consistently so if you have gender parity in one season awesome, the next season can have racial equity the next season can have a little bit of growth the next season don't program any white dudes so just it needs to be a long-term goal and you're never going to reach it but that's okay because diversity is ever evolving so but yeah we're also bringing up the question what's unconscious and as Jesse brought up if you have a very homogenous staff you're not going to ask certain questions because it's not part of your lived experience if you have a diverse staff or a lot of different places and hopefully people who are here will love it because they're coming from different places that's just naturally going to come up you're not going to what happens when you start to indulge in the tokenism program for an ally or your compensation but it's asking well I don't know to raise the question but I think it's more that you know looking at staff composition I think it's a challenge for a lot of organizations particularly in the theater or the program some organizations have made a conscious choice to diversify the staff in particular being on staff and staying up hopefully you can do that in success of hiring to diversify a really small staff and when people stick around an organization a long time that's harder to do and then you need to get close to being outside of the program and I think everyone's grappling with it but more people are grappling with it because it's been called to question because I feel like we're having some studies that show that actually just having just to talk about the gender issue that's kind of what I'm most over saying doesn't mean that they're going to do waves by women or by women and that has actually made things back up some of the racing behind that is because they think that's like they control the lives of people who are not as well-steamed and then they'll lose their jobs things like that I mean only for his other reasons in terms of how sexism works in our society they do think it is more complicated than just for women on your staff I mean I think you should absolutely be doing that but also acknowledging that sexism runs so much cheaper than that and women can be sexist too or they can actually respond to something because there's so much kind of external effects in society in a way that still not necessarily works with health women and I suppose important to think about I also think in terms of like the check box thing I'm like oh let's get us in let's get us back but there's a way in which how we're having this conversation can actually I think be making that potentially works because I think especially for actually the people who are supposed to be trying to help there's this thing called the stereotype which I know people have heard about I think they need education I went to an overall school and did a lot of research about how kind of girls learn that but they still do a lot and one of the things they talk about is the stereotype which is basically like because there's a perception that the girls are not as good as now they're treated like they're not as good as now and therefore they are not as good but the other thing that they found was when they were doing an experiment test if they asked the board one of the chiefs was like what is your gender but it didn't say how to identify themselves as a moment there's worse one down and I wonder a little bit about how that affects society at large and we're having all these conversations about how we aren't treated fairly if someone back comes into play too but I think it's an interesting question for you yes so that people who are seeing theatre are engaging in a that I don't know exactly what I'm asking but I feel like that's part of the thing that when we have a more diverse and democratic audience we can look back to a more diverse and democratic theatre and how producers are engaging in that will help us call in and have more of the conversations that can actually be programmed with the content that's happening so I don't know if any of you have thoughts or ideas about that how we can engage with that more if you're finding that that's part of the importance as we are moving forward and becoming better at programming awesome, thanks for bringing that up because audience is one of those things that we're moving about so it's recap we can hear more diverse audiences how do we get them and do we need them yes obviously we need them otherwise the theatre will die and I agree with you 110% you said it really well the audience reflects what's on stage to save the audience you have a democratic audience as you said earlier just to be aware of for a second, it doesn't matter how cheap you make your tickets if the subscriber base gets access to the tickets first and buys up all the cheap tickets that's how a lot of the profits in the city brought it also doesn't matter how cheap your tickets if people color young people are scared to go into your theatre so sorry, I just made another problem but I agree with you I had actually, again, interestingly enough with women it's a little different because they already know that we buy the majority of the tickets and it hasn't changed what people are programming and it's like the other thing though it's like we talk about New York being diverse but it also smells like a very segregated city and that's the truth I'm surprised I hear a lot of people say this thing's like oh I want this theatre to look like the subway but if the subway is the only place in your life that you're encountering diversity then that just proves that the city and the diversity life is the same as it is you know so I just think that's a thank you for all that there's also chicken and egg thing where if you have an understage month to come you have to put it on your stage first to give them a reason to come and the payoff may not be immediate that's the thing where diversity is the wrong thing but it's not productive it's not just that it's also that people know that it's there I think that it's responsibility of producers to hire marketing people that actually reach out into the community and say this is something that we want to give you an attitude that we want to know that you belong here that there's a place for you here and there's stories that are going to be told here that you will want to see that is you know on the wrong way never enough that was mostly something that we actually that usually is because they hired specific marketing people to actually reach out to the African American communities and the church groups and all the people that let them know but those people, the money that they spent on most of them they will spend on other shows too if the intent is made to let them know there's a place for them people don't want to go but they don't think they're invited so I think that it's a responsibility for producers to say come to theater I think there's a promise of possibility to make sure that there are grants and things that can make you live in school kids like when I was growing up I grew up in a suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio I went to see every tour that came through every symphony it was all free we never had to pay for it that was a part of why I love the arts today it was because I was exposed during our age to everything and those opportunities were there I think if we're not going to be losing it got to be in more of our national level that it's the producers responsibility to make sure that there's another generation of theater goals that are up and coming and being kind of raised on what's out there so that when they become technically adults they can still come back I can actually not on stage but if you have a question would you like to get to like Jeff's question of it and what a lot of people have been comfortable with which is that I think one of the reasons people do big rubber or do mohado or the king and I it's not because they necessarily think the novel texts are great and infallible but that they're recognizable and they make a lot of money and I think what I think about is like a lot of nonprofits maybe we don't, the public I know don't necessarily have problems because they make books of money through donations so they don't think about their bottom line but they're not a lot of big-name commercial producers in this room meaning these conversations maybe aren't as important to them because it does not affect their bottom line so I'm just kind of wondering where this conversation falls when it does become difficult to get those types of people's attention because we're not spending millions of dollars investing in it Do you want to say that commercial producers do have this conversation? Yeah, that's not what I mean No, no, I think it's a completely legit thing to think about because Broadway productions are so expensive they're expensive to produce they're expensive to buy tickets to very few of them actually pay the money back to the investors three quarters of Broadway productions actually lose all their money I mean, there are people who donate money to the theater in nonprofit theater, they're called donors in commercial theater, they're called investors they all lose their money so I do think though, obviously there's a problem of access to something like Hamilton, you know, this is great buzz that came out of the public theater and now costs $3,000 to go technically buying tickets on secondary market, it's a thing but there's an impulse there to create a piece of theater that appeals to a better audience because there's a better city on stage in telling this the story from American history during the lens so yeah, I do think that the conversations would be had, it's not so segregated, it's just a different model for how to pay the bills I'm biased against a commercial producer so I'm just being a friend with that I have a commercial producer friends you know, the ones I allow to be my friends no, I'm kidding, and they don't they talk about the bottom line the most though and so taking your hypothesis that the bottom line is a priority which is the hypothesis but the not commercial producer so we don't know that for sure I would say the bottom line I'm not quite sure exactly what that means but if you can vote with your daughter then I guess you can convince people not to go to their place and you don't go to their place and until you affect that in many ways people don't listen, so make them listen another question in the back what was that another response I just had a comment if bottom line was important what was the problem so I call bullshit when we get to that because if everything fails on Broadway then why take a risk and so eventually things like the king and I which is usually geared towards an old white audience Asians don't go see the king and I people will not touch that shit they will they will lose their audience so I feel like eventually the problem will kind of solve itself but you either evolve or you die so if you want a lot of audiences if you want Asian audiences make more Hamilton but if you want traditional audiences do your thing which is not going to be for it I'm going to try to manage this a little bit always a traditional audience because I feel like I'm not a proper theater in terms of what was programmed for decades and decades as people are getting old and dying and everyone is trying to struggle with how to bring in new audiences and also program plays and people don't go see the plays they're not interested in I think everyone's sort of dealing with that kind of one and I never saw some hands in the background but if you think of the audiences you can't punch the people who show up and it's sort of about finding a balance and especially in this country where we have next to no public funding for the arts but you do need people to pay well price for a ticket but you need them and you need people to subscribe and you need people who give money so if you think like there was in New York Bank who I think by the way is a really good critic and it was right after the holding of Hamilton House the Mike Pence thing and some like space of conversation and he wrote this thing where he was talking about you know for him as a gay man he was one of kind of the only places to go with his partner and he's probably a fashionist but for them it was big space in that way and I think to kind of keep in mind that there are people who feel that like the theater isn't like that kind of reason why people are showing up and not kind of grow the baby out of the bathwater in the corner too because you want it to bring in new people but you can't actually afford to do all the old either I don't think it's a big challenge for producers no matter how long they're producing I want to take that one more question in the back when it goes out especially my mind is a conflict and the critics have no kind of reference for these works that they're going to see a few years ago there was a big controversy in the black theater community in which the year time someone would be more so Detroit in the critics and it was sure to follow that in the black theater community I think who really lived here that was like four or five years ago and in 2017 the same the same issue so I just want to hear people talk about how to get diversified there are higher critics of public because I remember Barbara Jefferson I don't know if she was the last guy who would work with me at times but I thought for a critic where are you organizations how do they develop for critics who know what they're talking about let me just, I think you were talking a little softly so I just wanted to recap if there is a great last question to end on since we started talking about reviewers is what's the responsibility of maintaining publications to also higher universities what's the responsibility of being a reviewer to get a great context with which to review a given show for those of you who are working in journalism I mean I should make a problem with the New York Times is that you have too many critics who are also incredibly needed over oh right but historically for the last, as you know both Randy and Sherwood they work within New York Times and not actually convince the states like were you the other section um that's having one of our responses to the question I think the same systemic problem that exists in the theater exists in journalism and there's no question that um we need journalists of color we need more critics of color um how that happens within each of those institutions is also the same way the arts are thinking about what they're putting on their stages if those organizations want to remain relevant and generate ad revenue so that people that like creating content people want to view then hopefully value all in that direction the issue of how quickly the staff change, there are unions involved, it's a difficult situation certainly the job description that's out now for the second screen critic position of New York Times is very broad and it asks people to write in and talk about how they might approach criticism and what their viewpoint is it's not simply send us your clips what that's going to result in it's impossible for us to say I don't think any of us on this panel have the ability or the authority to make those decisions except to say that in the case of newspaper in the case of media it is marked in an imperative as well as hopefully a practical and ethical one as they look to the future and their ability to influence things so there's a nice challenge there's relatively few critics theater critics of color around the country there are some but there's not a lot even gender viewers is important right, doesn't even sorry go ahead and say it as Laurie just said the theater job description doesn't even necessarily require a theater background which people can um yeah you can keep saying I don't want to be the guy holding the but I think it's a challenge and again some of what we've been talking about check boxes but we're talking about in there it's very difficult when you have a singular critical voice on any given review to necessarily represent all of the people who may consume that review and their effectiveness hopefully there are voices that are intelligent, attuned and well-versed enough to provide our victims but unfortunately we're also at a time when the number of critical voices is continuing to dwindle which on one hand places more authority on those who remain, on the other hand it makes it harder and harder to have have diversity opinion it's a challenge at a time when journalism is diminishing to ask for more voices but that's where there's also a question of what's to be self-generated by people who may establish their voices through other means and hopefully we're going to find our way to some cases we're actually seeing interpreters sponsor in-house journalism which is independent in many degrees they're not reviewing but they're certainly writing about the arts not only of their own but in our own communities we're going to have to find new solutions to allow for new voices I think for a time the only thing that I'll say is that I think that segregation is the actual big problem in everything I do respect segregation and in all walks of life if you learn how much you can distribute that group will come around so that's the imperative of diversity and I think that's useful and one important thing is to give money to publications and so forth because so publications are providing money right now luckily with Trump they're getting the money for political reporters but ours are going to get cut when there's a lot of cut so give money to publications with the higher writer that you like give money to independent publications like the interval we don't take money we don't take money we don't take money because you like and then right in the publication to don't have a critic say I want a critic and I know all of you other people do too write a letter like be active and tell people what you want like they will listen because it's about online life speaking of giving money that's just a few years and allllars projects and you don't have to create tonight and you don't need another marketing or if we include theater for the whole city, the programming is as sensitive and amazing as a watch network for a really long time. So thank you to the Steel Theater and All Stars Project for having us here. Thank you to Michael, Jesse, Victoria Howard, Laura, and Michael Margarita-Petran for engaging in this conversation that we wanted to have this kind of conversation. So thank you for jumping in. It's a huge topic. We hope this is the first of more conversations to keep engaging in conversations that are sometimes hard to have. But we must not say that we did and must not say that we have that. And thank you all for coming out here tonight when it's cold and thank you all for streaming and watching us or watching us like that. So stay in contact with us at lnd.org and just thank you again. Have a good one. Thank you.