 No, and these are places that are still waiting to be produced. So hopefully maybe something will happen tonight where one of these will go off for full production. So I want to just say a couple of things that we haven't had a chance to do and I'll make it really fast. But I have to say a couple of thank yous as we close up tonight to the staff here that made this possible. Because very long ago, quickly, obviously David Dower is the moderating rock star of the century. So great to have you. So much organizing and is not here. She's in a show tonight so she's going to come later I think for a little parting but she's not around. Aaron Washington who is one of our fellows this year. The Jane Matthew who is all things Twitter and has really really such an incredible commitment to that third circle being a participant. So it's so appreciative the J for what you've done. And then I know I have one more in my head but I want to make sure oh let's see I think I got everyone Kevin Becerra. He's our producing fellow and he really did this from beginning to end and just stellar producing jobs. So thank you Kevin really really terrific. And then just thanks to all of you. So the next thing I want to do is introduce Jason King-Jones who put this together and has directed these little things for you. You're the afters. Yeah great. Great. I welcome everybody. And they're an intern with us in the Institute for you know through like April or something right? Something like that. Okay great. So I'm just here to introduce the actors and then we're going to get started. So when when I call you please stand up just so that we can recognize Keith Herbie and hey Sean Wilson, Steve Nixon and Young Sun Cho and Vanessa Ratulis. And then over here we have Yasmine Tauzon and John Twill, Shantay Tab, Akeem Davis and Janna Valentiner. Naira's here and she's going to introduce the first play. Liz are you up and ready for it? Thank you. All of you to a little bit of Sherry Kramer's Bay of Fundy. I love Sherry Kramer. One of these the thing I love about the theater too is sometimes you get to know playwright through their work or sometimes you get to know work through a playwright and I can't remember actually how this one happened which I love even more. Somehow both the playwright of Sherry and the play of Bay of Fundy kind of converged me and I love them both and that's I think what theater does is bring people together through work and bring work to people as a vehicle. So this you're going to see 10 minutes of this play. I'm not going to tell you too much about what goes on because you'll have to you know do it yourself somewhere and see it fully on stage but I just want to say that one of the things I love about Sherry I think also one of the challenges is that she is a Shavian writer. She has Shavian wit. She has Shavian smarts. She writes a lot about big ideas and in this play you're going to see both you'll feel that sense of language and her love of language and also the challenging theatricality of this play. A table expands to gigantic humongous proportions and water overflows and nausea through the play and so it's a challenge to stage and also it's very dense dialogue about big ideas which just to give you a little snippet of what those big ideas are it's really challenging the way that we see ourselves in our attachment to things and how can we reconsider our attachment to objects in this world. So you'll get a taste week and talk later if you have questions but I just put this out there because Sherry want to be to say she will cut for food. Bay of Funding by Sherry Cramer setting a dining room stairway master bedroom in front doorway of May and Paul's stately home in an American city by the sea think opera set size for everything scene three Paul May and their friends Hank and Nancy walk on stage holding their plates of food and their elegant crystal wine goblets and sit down to dinner at the table an extraordinary antique mahogany table you have never seen a table like it. More fish anyone? I'd love some. I know I can always count on you Hank. You've got a mythical hunger too. Did you know that Paul seduced me with a myth? How sweet. Which one? Prometheus. Right right steel's fire gets chained to rock has letting liver pecked out. That's just what I said. I said fire rock liver but it turns out that in the oldest version it's his heart. Prometheus heart is pecked out every day for years and every day it grows back just for stealing fire. Well that's the strange thing too. It turns out that fire is the very least of his crimes. It turns out that Paul why don't you tell Nancy and Hank what the myth of Prometheus is really bad. They don't want to hear about Prometheus sugar. Well all right then. I'll tell them. Hunger, worship the gods you had to sacrifice a whole oxen and poor people couldn't afford to so they couldn't be blessed by the gods and because they couldn't be blessed by the gods they couldn't have good fortune and so they stayed poor people who were too hungry to sacrifice their oxen and on and on and that's where Prometheus comes in. He tricks the gods into being hungry and he feeds the poor and that's why they punish him. More fish ain't Nancy please have some more fish. You hardly had any. Really? I couldn't eat another bite. Our Nancy's got an appetite like a bird. Don't you like it? Oh no it's perfect. It's exactly how I like my fish. If I had made it myself I could have made it more like I like it. Exactly. They all eat. Nancy uses her napkin constantly to wipe up real or imagine drops of water or rush away crumbs especially around Hank. She tends to caress the table too. A little more than might be normal. She likes to run her fingertips across its polished gleaming surface and follow the contours of the pattern in the carved edge. Hank, look your glass is making a ring. Hey I've been meaning to ask can you come tomorrow morning to help to the church and help us set up for the rummage sale? Of course. I'll pick you up at eight. I'm sure going to miss you next year. You always do such a good job. Miss me? Why? Well when you move away. Nancy we just put the house on the market. Yes but just this week in this climate it could take a year or two. Or it might sell right away if the right buyer comes along. I think that's optimistic. Wildly optimistic. Don't you Hank? People are taking their houses off the market all together. I wouldn't do that. You and Paul shouldn't do that. That would be a mistake. Oh you're doing that. I won't feel so badly about not working the actual sale next week. What do you mean? I won't be able to run a jewelry booth this year. You always run the jewelry booth. May please don't do this. We're going to the Bay of Fundy. We went years ago. We were so happy then. So we're going back. Sorry. The jewelry booth like you did last year and at all the years before. Yes you will talk about the Bay of Fundy. You will make all these plans and in two weeks you'll have us over for dinner and cook something. You'll tell us is a famous recipe from the Bay of Fundy but you won't. I'm talking about the jewelry booth. You always run it and so I don't know why. We just can't count on that instead of me begging someone to fill in for you. So they have to get a babysitter or change their gynaecological appointment and they offend their lives and then of course you always show up and it's humiliating because whoever I begs to come is standing there and here you come and you push the push. You don't have to push. You push without pushing. If you're wearing a scarf it just completes the outfit perfectly instead of drawing attention to the fact that you're wearing a scarf which is the way it always looks when I wear one. Your old old money. Stop kicking me. Hey I'm not supposed to say it but I am tired of not saying it. Everybody knows how old your money is. It's so old it's practically prehistoric and that is what pushes Martha or Sissy or me out of the jewelry booth at the rummage sale this year. More fish Nancy. What I want is for Mary May to stop lying about the Bay of Fundy. She is with friends. Hank you look like you could do with seconds. Absolutely. Paul passes the silver platter to Hank who works himself a whole fish head and fins still attached and puts it on his plate. May you know as well as I do that you aren't going to the Bay of Fundy. You know it and I know it. Even Hank knows it. I'll make a deal okay. I'll pretend you're going everywhere else. You always pretend you're going but just this once could you not pretend? I wish we could ask you along but you know how Paul is. He likes his privacy on the road. More fish? Have some fish. Do you're okay? I don't want more fish. That's our man always eating like a bird. What I want is for Mary May to see to say she's going chicken or steak or something other than fish. I'll tell you what I'm hungry for May. I'm hungry for an honest answer. I'm hungry. Nancy. Bird is so hungry all of a sudden. Maybe she should eat some fish. For the peace. Hank passes Nancy the platter. She spears a huge fish with the fork. Oh good. I'm glad you like it. Of course I like it. It's my recipe. I gave it to you last year after you came over to our house and liked it so much you asked me for it. No hair. May. This is my recipe. Almost all of the recipes you say you get on your travels are mine. Of course there's some truth in that because next door to our house is just about as far as you've ever traveled. You didn't go to France last year or Bhutan the year before or even San Francisco in the fall. You have not set foot outside a 25 mile radius since I've known you. It's not a secret May. Everybody knows it for you to share your secrets with when they're not even secrets. And you got when you went but really didn't go to France. And in anger she slams the heavy two-pronged serving fork with a thick handle down on the table near the edge. The edge of the table splinters and it breaks off. I'll answer you again. Tell her again. I told you not to talk to them sweetheart. I said the way a man's eyes get glazed over to just forget. Yes that kind of blade through the side door is over and he started to breathe really hard through his nose and then he got very quiet and he told me dreams I never imagined. I couldn't imagine what. May runs her fingers lovingly along the edge of the table as she walks around it. It's one of a pair of tables made in 1835 from a single tree. The most perfect mahogany tree ever found in the Amazon. A tree with a name the red mother named because this tree was the central feature in a village of a tribe of Peruvian natives who were all cut down in the rake that preceded the cutting down of this tree. The red mother called this for her characteristic but exemplary red hue was sent to America where she was made into two matching tables each with 12 chairs and two matching sideboards, two matching brake fronts, two small carving tables and two teak hearts all from this one perfect tree. These two perfect dining room sets were packed and placed on board a ship sailing for Liverpool in 1838 a special order for Lord Harrington who had two daughters of marriageable age both of whom had expressed the desire for new world mahogany no matter what the cost. The ship sank in a storm less than four days out all hands were lost naturally all cargo as well three days later against all odds one of the two tables was found standing upright on its legs without a nick or scratch or blemish on a beach near Plymouth washed ashore by the full moon tide was found by a young man who taking advantage of the laws of salvage carted it away and from its sail began one of the most lucrative furniture businesses of his day it changed hands only twice and belonged to the Gordon's of Philadelphia for over a hundred years until Mrs. Mariah Gordon decided to punish her husband for his latest and most humiliating indiscretion she demanded the table and the divorce settlement and then immediately donated it to an auction for a local charity a young professor's wife volunteering at the auction was seized by an uncontrollable hunger to be someone who sat down to dinner every night at a table that was perhaps the most important and valuable table in the world when the bidding began she left the small area where she was offering coffee and pedophores and in a matter of minutes and to the amazement of those assembled the table was hers stop saying that Nancy it can be fixed I watch antiques roadshow I know what happens when you repair something there goes the value up in a puff of smoke this was a table myself that could make it upright to shore the American miracle that's what he called it and I've destroyed it more fish end of scene make more meaning with 140 characters any other tweeter I know so if you want to introduce the bird okay hello everybody my name is Alana Brownstein and I am here to advocate for etymology of bird by Zakiha Alexander right on which is an amazing amazing play that has had a production a while ago but this is a play that I as Polly stipulated blood for rooted for and got said no to and it's a play that also I think my advocacy for it in a lot of ways set the stage for a deep rift between me and the people I was working with because they couldn't understand why I liked it so much so I put myself on the line for it once I'll do it again here I am and as part of this I know I only have three minutes but I'm going to use all of the three minutes because I have more than 140 characters to say I read you this from Zakiha the playwright she says this play came about because I became obsessed with the relationship between the cops and the often black and Latino communities there is a repeated violence another kid gets shot the cop gets off and it's baffling the tension between the community and cops is always so hot and rarely do we get to the bottom of it the fear the lack of mutual respect so the cycle just repeats but on a larger level I was also interested in exploring a love story between neighborhood kids who are innocent even though they might not look at from the outside I have never seen a believable love story told from the point of view of kids who looked like me and the kids I knew growing up and I don't mean the cliched violent kids from the hood I mean the kids with families support who may not always have economic stability I wanted to tell the story in a structurally surprising way so the first act germane is the protagonist when the second act it's birdie and it's about what happens after first love first heartbreak first tragedy and the community around that it's about growing up and I will just finish by saying that Zakiha is one of our great playwrights who has gone away to tv she writes for Grey's Anatomy and she's great at it but I think you you you should produce this play and bring one of our great playwrights back to the theater man child in a land without a promise but building a spirit like user semi my rhymes is like then blowing all kinds of destruction I ain't the kind of man who's gonna swallow reductions more truths to spit than you could possibly know just wait a bit and I'm a bloke much more flow than Jericho I know you be thinking he ain't gonna make it the tractors don't know I could ditch it and take it this life was a gift and I'm not trying to waste it I know they be thinking that I ain't gonna make it also means center breaking the law or sending transgressor transgressor pop sticks his head out the window hotter than an oven out here and it's only July you can't raise a finger without breaking a sweat you're actually sitting out here studying you've always been a cold-blooded child just like your mother I got five more pages of vocabulary and a practice test some seems like it's never going down night like this reminds me of what everything you too young to know that's how come I know I'm old ice cream pistachio cardio the doctor keeps saying know what that fool's saying gonna tell me to walk around the mall told him you must not ever been to Flatbush before he also said you were supposed to watch your sugar you can have some fruit some pineapple that's how they try and kill you keep your way from all the little things that make you happy isn't that something put together and make a word that never touched my ear before you have to think about how it sounds this is an easy one that's like voice right right box means voice here does it mean talking like right now with vociferating close pop I give you a clue fairy it means caring for me I can't figure it it means to cry out it's a puzzle just gotta put the pieces together them ladders with something else how they just move letters around and there you go you got yourself a meaning I'll never know I'm going don't smoke a cigar on your way there either birdie you are not my wife doctor said you supposed to look at your books and stop telling me what to do one pistachio in a cup with extra nuts x means um it means out like exit right and pergates that's like growing up like purging like okay so extra gay I got I got hey I got dreams they be looking for life I got dreams inside they be looking for life your name what's up bird how come you gotta play that so loud that the whole building can't hear you how don't you go inside huh you don't even live here and it was fine so you came out can you turn that down please that shit to do oh people shaking their heads and rolling their eyes they could move it's a free country I took a step closer to that armpit stain having any blasted my shit up as high get as high as it could go nodding my head to the beat like what she's doing homework like the slaves going to the graduation party on Saturday I'm on shit different night you're really not gonna come first probably cash and doughy and with greasy paper bags y'all try calling your ass man I couldn't even pick up what's up birdie go on with it give you all the sauces and in the in the in the two fortunes kind of heat like the black make a black nigga black heat and what do he order act like that birdie think about something expert games in this way up in essence real and unreal all at once Suzanne and Monica is speed the plow is written by UNESCO I love it dear the further adventures of Suzanne and Monica by Alex Lewin scene one a private screening room lights are up nothing is on the screen Suzanne has just come in Monica is here sitting and reading adventures in the screen tray just thinking about and I was thinking you know what I'm sorry I cannot make it through this book I was thinking about fathers and sons and about how it's a father's instinct to encourage his son to get laid to pat him on the back applaud his efforts great job son you got some pussy but when it comes to their daughters fathers don't want them getting anywhere near a penis and it's like what I'm not allowed to be a sexual being to be predatory or even you know just horny or curious just sentient and sexual right and do we get that encouragement from our mothers do mothers like hang out with their daughters after prom night and go good job sweetie you got some dick oh sex and almost men and it damages women why is that you know what else sexual beasts I mean it you look when a black man kisses a black woman it isn't dainty or sensual or even romantic no it is adivistic primitive all slobber and panting tongues attacking the fetishization of african-americans you've been around you tell me why is it that in industry run by jews and homosexuals nobody dares make movies about jews or homosexuals have you noticed also jewish actors are only ever hired to play italians work your fucking ass off right to get into the entertainment business and you say to yourself all right this is the way it is and i'm not getting down on hollywood and this is how people consume art interact with art or what passes for art and yes that art reinforces stereotypes but it isn't always damaging you know because here's what my mom told me men seduce but women women put themselves in a position to be seduced you think that's true i have to say i think that's largely true but it warped me i won't get into how we get into how it worked me some other time but it did it fucked me up for a little while having that foundation to start from but we play the cliches of ourselves all the time don't we men still sit around and watch football while women do the cooking and we are progressive people it's not like we long for the days of i don't know father knows best or whatever we're not trash we're sophisticates but we let men have the stage they crave so desperately because what's the use in fighting them you know blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth if that's okay with everybody i don't know who are you i'm monica grant monica did they tell you i was coming nobody tells me anything anymore well i'm here and you are monica monica grant you must be my new sponsor i scared the last one off you know she had a new baby it was other than rotten fruit but no she shouldn't worry it wouldn't live but you mind waiting outside only the producers and the director and i are allowed to watch the dairies we watched them already how much you're blinking someone will talk to you about it who are you i'm your double you me i'm glad to make your acquaintance how was your day pardon me how'd it go today hi i worked i did my work what are you gonna do now it was saying hi monica good night you want beer damn little girl watch you why i used to avoid beer until it became who will be a little uh you know chunky as they say i hope it lasts beer and combos you know those little pretzel things with the processed cheese i could eat a whole room full of them committed to my work susanne i'm a serious artist aren't you gonna have one with me your sponsor got it tomorrow right i'll be sending in for you 5 30 a.m great yeah have you done this before this is my first gig not counting student films i went to yale you know casting office fondue uh no mr weber hired me mr weber yeah william weber yeah i didn't know studio heads were in the business of casting standards i'm also your stunt double for what the fight scene i guess i haven't actually read the script i didn't ask for a standard i know they offered and i said no i'm a pro i'm not one of those i i mean i don't stay in my trailer until it's time to take i do a job yeah but they burnt you in anyway i'm also your standard you said that already there's this thing that happens with women i made a study of it they get nominated for academy awards four or five times in the space of like six or eight years glenn clothes for instance or jane alexander martha mason julian more and what happens they never win and then the chances disappear there is a crime i'm sorry but there is and if you're going to be in this business i'm not saying you have to surrender to it but you do have to know it and accept it i'm sorry but you have to and for women yes i'm your breast double i'm sorry why did you fart did you no i did not fart what you just did that's something i never do i'm sorry no you did nothing wrong you don't apologize i don't understand what you're asking of me show me your breasts i want to see the parents breasts they're intended to pass for mine well do it excuse me excuse me i don't just whip them out for anybody to see it and for how many men did you whip them out in order to get this job i wait tables for christ sake so did i for ten years and i'll thank you not to take the lord's name in vain i was serious yourselves too we all make subject of ourselves don't you sell your body and worse your mind golly you're right i love this and i'm gonna call the shop please don't patronize me this is so uncalled for you know what's so special about this movie the nude scene is actually a good scene when you make time to read the script you'll see and now here i am fighting for the privilege to show my apparently two saggy breasts for the world i'm sure it's not about the rotundity miss baxter and you're comfortable starting your career this way 60 years from now somebody wants to write in my biography that i did this thing when i was right out of college so what the nude scene is the reason i pursued this project i know of course you know because billy weber knows and they know i never would have done the movie if i'd known that people were gonna pull this kind of son of a allow me to share with you a trueism my rinson all new men in this business will treat you like the commodity that you are fine everyone knows that it's as old as hollywood the real hard truth will be treated twice as badly by women when we see each other tomorrow night i want you to ask me how my day was because i will have spent it half naked surrounded by several dozen men who pretended not to look of course i've read the script and it is a good scene and that is nothing at all nothing whatsoever to do with me if you're selling your body i'm renting mine i'll give you $50,000 to not show up tomorrow just disappear i'll explain everything to billy when the shoot is over nobody will blame you you won't be black old what would it take to disappear what would it disappear thanks for the beer i'll just see you soon end of scene and freud taking a walk in the woods and a girl of the violinist calling her mother from a phone booth saying she had finally heard and that one page i thought i want i want that play so the play came uh we um workshopped it for a couple of years we did a reading of it at like friday afternoon at like three o'clock i'm going very deadly moment we have this audience of about a hundred people and it was maybe of the my experiences developing plays at playwright center one of my most memorable play readings like we just all just loved that play and i thought for sure it would um go right to broadway um and that was probably in like 2005 or something so uh anyway this is um a play that's really truly about um how we listen how we hear um how we listen to not just music but to each other and so this is just a little beginning i think it's the first scene of the play so well this is the board by kathleen tolin time various place music is a simultaneous and a successiveness of tones and tone combinations which are so organized that its impression on the ear is agreeable and its impression on the intelligence is comprehensible good and that these impressions on the ear have the power to influence occult parts of our soul and of our sentimental spheres and these impressions this influence makes us live in a dreamland of fulfilled desires or in a dreamed hell and so on and so on what is water h2o and we can drink it and wash with it and it is transparent we use it to swim and to ship it drives mills and so on and so on i know a nice and touching story one day a blind man asks a guide how looks milk the guide answers milk looks white the blind man what's that white mention a thing that is white the guide says a swan it is perfect white and it has a long bent neck a bent neck how is that the guide bending his arm into the shape of a swan's neck moves the blind man's hand along his arm the blind man exclaims now i know how looks milk part one daybreak a boy sits at the piano a woman runs a vacuum cleaner across the stage and moves off stage the boy finishes the phrase they have met taking out their trash i've been been well this is going to sound appalling but reading about music you told me to read schoenberg's letters i did you did that's incredible no it's because i asked you if there was something i could read about music yes yes it's just you know most people you tell them to go get schoenberg's letters and read them they don't just go out and do it well you said there's so much there yes and i don't well not that i've actually you know listened to schoenberg's his music no actually i haven't listened to really anything and well years i've been well afraid to listen i'm sure i sound like a lunatic no i'm a self-unfraid often up well even leaving the apartment oh i mean i do it yes but it can be absolutely terrifying sometimes associations difficult loss that kind of thing and and it takes a while to find your way back or or you don't want to go back or can't but to move ahead that too can be a conundrum yes so actually listening you know to music well initially that might be too hard reading about it well that might be the thing to do find it well possible in spite of your firm declaration your firm stands to not impossible to keep from going to the notes in your head though i myself never found it necessary to make such a declaration to not listen but i can't imagine the need to do that and for instance i just can't have the radio on when i'm listening i'm having supper with a friend and you know music under conversation well that's impossible for me yes is this recycling oh yes thank you it's quite all right it's a condition they can't not hear it in their head yes i don't remember this to have been the case with me i mean the condition maybe it was come to the library you can listen there second floor anyway schoenberg his letters when you mentioned them i'm i'm very grateful way back and i thought maybe because i imagined that he would be impenetrable in some way aloof and that would be helpful really sure but he was incredibly yes so human and funny and passionate but still somehow so comforting complete lack of interest in me and what people want and what they expect it's such a relief when he writes about music what it is is how you can't pin it down yes ineffable yes a bed in the open window above it lies on stage margaret lies in the bed listening to the sounds of the night end of scene