 Okay, so we asked the renewing folks of the cohort, so the people who are now starting year number four of their residency and the theater, to just do a little report out. And the prompt was, there were a couple, but the most important being, as a teaching moment for the new cohort, please offer one salient example of what was most or least effective about the first three years of your residency. And so we've given you each 10 minutes. You don't need to use that whole 10 minutes, but you certainly can't go 11 minutes. So just to make that clear. And to start off, Peter and Alisa. I'm gonna go on you out. I actually, there's a book. Hi. Oh, geez. I feel like I'm doing my murder mysteries again. That's an end story for the bar. Should I start? You should start. So I think it's one of the first questions they wanted to ask, how did the residency sort of transform some of my work, the work of a playwright. And for me, and I think in the last three years, and I guess I'll just say that it's definitely changed since I've started to now all of the way that I approach writing work and how I start. I think somehow having the institution in place has allowed me to start work with wanting to work with other artists that I've always wanted to work with. So that the last two plays that I've been working on have actually begun with wanting to work with specific actors. In addition, it's allowed me to sort of venture into some creative risks and writing pieces that I've never written before and have sort of led me, and some actually kind of a way that you just said Kira about like an undoing of what, or an unsouping. I feel like it's unsouped me a little bit or made me wonder how I can expand the kind of work that I make and where it's done and how it's done. I wrote my first immersive piece for an audience of 50 being toured around by a single actor who harassed them the entire time in very pleasurable ways. And so those are some of the things that have changed the way that I work. It's, I think, diversified it and broadened it. So that's all start with that. And I think for me as far as the organization is, Peter's has seeped into every corner of our organization and of our building and who we are and how we function daily. He comes to work almost five days a week, I would say, when he can write there, he does. And part of that is because we have an open space plan, essentially we're in an old warehouse and so you can hear everything going on. So we like our Bose headphones. That was the first thing he got when he started the residency three years ago. But there's a world view that Peter brings to the organization. He's very integrated into the day in, day out. He attends our staff meetings and our board retreats and has been at our board meetings. For me, I think what maybe changed the institution in some ways is to have an artist at the heartbeat of what we do, sitting at the table every single day, reminding us why we do what we do. And I am very, Peter has a wonderful sense of humor and this world view that I love having at the table. It's a very Bay Area centric, I would say, because he is from there and it's just, it's really kind of, I think it's elevated the institution in extraordinary ways that I can't even maybe put my finger on the pulse of that. I throw it back to you, my friend. And as far as the sort of salient learning point or I think something that has really, I was also saying like with the last show that we just opened it in the spring and I've never felt more like a producer of my own work than that show. Literally, I was able to fund aspects of the production through my micro fund, including travel and housing for out-of-town artists, among many, many other things, designing my own workshop process that was perfect for me. And I think part of that ownership and producing thing, I guess the salient take-home thing was that, I think that came from sitting in the building at least three days a week gave me, or four days, usually three to four days a week I'm there and that gave me a sense of ownership of the place by this sort of passive presence in the community of that theater and of the nine employees, or nine or so. 12. And we're all in an open, we're all in an open plan. There's banter, there's gossip at the copier and some people got, there's dramatic firings and it's all exciting. Very exciting. There's just something about being there and being part of that group that also empowers me to really sort of exploit the organization and take advantage of it because I am part of it as a, so that's my sort of take-home thing is that the passive presence has a lot of power. And I think for me, I would challenge what your roles are. I would say to the people, the new cohort, be lenient in your roles, whether artistic director and playwright. Peter's become my partner. He has really, he guides me in certain situations. He's literally stood by my side and produced his own play and we directed it kind of together. We had some challenges that we really were side by side in that process, which was absolutely incredible. So I say to you all, identify perhaps the challenge that you have in your institution, your organization. I hate the word institution. I don't know why I keep using that. But I do challenge you to look at potentially some sort of issue that you're facing and look to your partner, your artistic director, or your playwright and see what you can do in the next three years together as partners to meet that challenge in some way. And there are gonna be a lot of surprises along the way too, obviously. But one thing that Peter also taught me is I walked into the space where I'm now, which is a big old warehouse and he wrote a play for that space. He helped me to understand how to activate the footprint of that space and how to utilize it in a way that I hadn't even imagined before. And it will change how I program the space in the future, how we program it together. And so that for me was kind of a beautiful surprise and a gift that he gave to me and to our audience. Yes. Yeah. Good afternoon, everybody. We're trying to, you could tell we're both in the design world because we're trying to figure out how to stage this. I'll just stand over here. Just to start by saying that something that's been really on my mind the last year is the word gratitude and I'm very, very grateful for this opportunity. I'd like to say that maybe if you're in the field long enough, I think of it a little bit like being in a gang or being in the Serengeti. If you can get through the first like 10, 15 years, you can pretty much get through all of it. So thank you, Jesus, right? And I feel very, you know, if I'm having any sort of anxiety today, I have to say that I'm very moved by memory and by emotion today because, you know, looking at Christian Greenwich, who when I was at the taper and you're just starting your career and my glue and you're an intern for Che, yeah? And so many of you. So I feel, God, I can't believe I'm still here. Since we last saw each other, one thing that's been on my mind is this idea of breath so my father died. And so that shifted all the way that I do my work and I think for those of us who have experienced death, you know, there's now my life before my father and my life after my father. So that really changed the way that I was able to start to breathe at OSF. It's, you know, I asked Chris to talk a little bit just about the theater itself because it's a destination theater. It's considered a rural community. And so if you're from the city, it's super hard, I think, for me to sort of go. And so what's happened is that I've sort of focused on something very important for me, which is there's a big difference between audience and community as Kira so beautifully, I think sort of expressed to us. And those are two very different ways of working and I've really put my energy, the thing that I'm good at is I'm not sure that I intended to be good at it, but when I go to regional theaters in America, I bring my play and I also bring the audience with me because you have to, right? And so part of the challenge of doing that is also, how do you find that audience? And for me, it's deepening the relationship with community. So the context for OSF in terms of community is both the challenges and the dynamics at play is that more than 80% of our audience comes from 200 miles away. So we have a community that we live in, but 80% plus of that audience comes from Oregon, outside of, in Washington and in California. And so in a way, we are truly a regional theater because we are really representing that Pacific Northwest. So then how do you bring an artist, activists like Luis, into a theater that has such a breath of its community or how it sees its community? And so some of the projects that we have undertaken with Luis have actually made him leave our town and explore and figure out going to other communities and engaging people where they are in order to come to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. One of, historically, Oregon has been a predominantly white and actually racist state. It was up until 1926. You could not as a black person live in the state. So we have a big battle there and Luis as an artist activist is really in the forefront of going to communities, going where they live and letting them know how to get to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. So that's been really, really huge for us. So maybe he can talk a little bit about that. Yeah, maybe just as a little example, I went to, I've made seven trips to Portland in the last couple of years and there've been really, really key trips. Building community, not building artists, but really long-term relationships. How are we gonna do this? And I'll never forget my first time in Portland, I was talking to an Asian American group and I said, you know, you guys should come and I should take you to my favorite little town, Jacksonville, where I was quickly reminded by somebody in the group was the last place in America where an Asian American was hung. Okay, how do we build from there, right? And so maybe good examples are, I did a residency at the Portland State University in the Native American Center. What was most important about that residency for OSF was that we got two people for our fair program, which is, will you, which is? So the fair program is Center Fellowships, Assistantships, Internships, and Residencies, which is 48 to 60 interns from across the country that come to do work at OSF in all avenues of administration, production, and anything technical as well. And so there were a couple of folks that came to the program. Yeah, and that was key, key to getting a community activated, key to getting that community interested in us and to start to do the exchange. The other thing that happened is we brought 50 Latina lawyers from Portland down. They paid for their own buses and they paid for their own tickets. What we put together is what I've been doing more and more at OSF is not telling you how this play is the thing that can change the way you work, but really, how can art and theater help do what you do? So a lot of what I did, just recently, I hosted what's called a Nido's Retreat. 20 non-profit leaders from the state of Oregon came. They saw our shows and somebody administrated it. And I think that's super important now because when I first started three years ago, I was putting it together too, which was crazy, right? But now there's a work with the team and the team put together a really amazing weekend and my job is to really facilitate it. So how can I help you use art and theater as a way of creating social change, creating political change, and in exchange, we start to build an audience from these really, really deep relationships. So 20 non-profit leaders who then go out and get their communities to come, immediately, in this case, has paid off for us, right? Because you start to see the numbers shift and change. Hosting the 50 Latina leaders includes somebody who's on our board, Darlene Ortega, who is a judge for... She's on the Court of Appeals for the state of Oregon. So that also made a big, big, gigantic change. And then in a really kind of smaller way, I'm curating the Black Swan Lab. I'm curating a section of it, which is our new play development program. So bringing that voice into the theater, which is a completely other voice than I think they were used to having. I do these things called noon talks. People pay for an hour to hear you speak, which is always extraordinary, and 150 to 200 people show up and pay and do it. And so there's a lot of events like that. Going to the Dramatrix and Literary Managers Conference just recently, we're hosting a people of color retreat as soon as we get back the next day. So there is so much about presence that I think is important there. A challenge for me is I'm an academic. I just got tenure at USC, so you could just imagine the... Yeah, thank you, that was hard. Seven years of hell. But the push and pull of trying to be an academic, a kind of educator and trying to do this I think is important. But I think if you've been in the field long enough, I think one of the challenges and if you're a person of color who works in the American Regional Theater, you must multitask. It's just the only way to do it. That we come into a theater and we're never just playwrights. We're also community organizers. We're also involved in marketing. We're also involved in everything. So I think that having that presence in the theater, maybe the most significant thing I've done in the last month is shut up. I have a little house in Ashland that's rented for me. It's a half mile away, which I think is super important. Getting up in the morning to write with no interruption is so different than the life that I normally have in the world. So that's been really important. But we had a situation that was shooting in Florida at the Pulse nightclub and somebody on staff really felt strongly that we should put together some sort of memorial. And 300 plus people showed up from the community for it. So when you're asked as a playwright to create an invocation for that, this is a way that we engage with the community as well. So it's our plays. It's our language. It is our job as poets. It's as channelers, as translators, as interpreters to also bring that into the institution. I think Luisa's challenge is also on our end, the challenge is that we just want him to be present on our campus, in our offices, as much as we can. And also being an evangelist for not just our theater, but the theater and the active building community. So the more we can get him into our building, the more we can get him into the state, that's really our big challenge. Another program that Luisa mentioned that it would also be, I'm gonna just say criminal, that this man who worked at the LTI, which was a Latino theater initiative as a co-creator and a co-director of that program has brought those curatorial skills to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And a few seasons ago, we created the Latino play project, which is a very small convening of artists that includes writers, actors, scholars, directors, designers and the communities that he has mentioned, the Unidos and all this community building so that they can also come to a weekend and see work in progress, have conversations with scholarships about Latino theater or where it's headed. As well as look at new work. And obviously as a festival, he's also introducing writers that he's connected with to introducing them to our audiences as well as our own company. So that synergy is really exciting as another facet of the work that Mr. Alfaro is an expert in. So just to wrap up, just to say that I think what's important about the work that we do there that the community is also kind of a family because you are sort of away from a lot of people. And although Bill Rauch, our artistic director is not here today, I think what's exciting is Chris and I knew each other way before we ever got to OSF and we had worked on plays and stuff. So I'm very moved by the presence of Chris, that's probably one of the few Latino if only associate artistic directors in the US and that this relationship really happened because he asked whether I would come. And so I think that's very powerful. So to be in this room and to think about relationship I think is amazing. Che and I have a very, very deep one and I look around, all of you, all of you, all of you. I love all of you. I'm in it, I'm in it. So just to say that what's important is relationship at OSF has been everything. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Let's set your timer, set the timer. Okay, I'll just start by framing this and there's some juicy gossip in here but I won't name names. So the residence first round was fantastic. Of course one of the most exciting things was producing Melinda's play Becoming Cuba and then starting work on more projects together. Like so that goes without saying top excitement events. But we had one of those rehearsal processes within the last few years. Not for your show, no, no, or one of mine. Where you kind of feel like you're in a hostage situation and you sort of gone down the road with a project and you're like no turning back and the project ends and the staff is walking around with Stockholm syndrome and I was going oh my God, this is insane and so I pulled everyone together and we had a long conversation, just a really good full-throated open everybody in the company because it was some of my own staff that also was kind of culpable in creating this environment and so people were kind of owning their thing and this isn't live, is it? I'm not on a website right now, am I? Okay, because I know how you roll. I know how you roll. I got a text from San Francisco in about 20 minutes. And so anyhow we all got together and we started talking and decided that we wanted to come up with a core values statement that was internal, that doesn't show up in a program but is more about how we want to treat one another and how we expect our artists to be treated and how we, the kind of community we wanna build internally within the organization without creating and us them feeling with artists. Cause as Sondheim said, artists are crazy and so we didn't wanna create that kind of dynamic but we wanted something that was a positive document that we could point to and say, hey, you know, whomever it is, a staff member, an artist, these are the values of our company that are based on kindness and hospitality and we need you to stick to these. So we needed that document so that we could enforce a kind of collegiality and warmth within the building because of course artistic excellence is our top value in the company but then we realized we were kind of under articulated on our other values. So I'm gonna hand it over to Melinda. So what I asked is for Melinda to create this document through interviews with every member of the Huntington Theater. Well, that was my idea but you said, yeah, you said we need a core value statement. Yeah, yeah, I just said create a core value statement, sorry. So I thought the best way to start was to talk to as many people in the company as possible. It's a staff of, it's over 100 people, right? Yeah, really 100, 110. It's a, yeah. It grows and it shrinks. It's a significant number of people are employed at the theater and there's departments with people and there's three different spaces where people are located and work and but I wanted to talk to as many of them as I could. So I had some individual meetings, just one-on-one with people, some long lunches. Sometimes I'd join a department meeting and I really tried to, Anna Divier-Smithett, I just, I said, here are a few questions. Could you talk about what matters to you most? What's your personal core value that you bring to work every day? Has it worked for you? What do you see in the theater? How can we articulate your values? And I really just tried to, I just wrote down as specifically and exactly as possible and I, over the course of several months, I probably met with 75% of our staff and I made it clear that I would meet with anyone that I had, sometimes relied on people to come to me and of course, as you can imagine, it was really intense. There was a lot of information that came my way that was intimate and personal. I was really careful with how I documented it. I made clear that everything was anonymous. I didn't have anyone's names attached but I ended up with a, probably a 15-page document of just quotes. And then I started going through all that and making categories and remarkably, you know, when you come down to the most basic part, mostly people want the same thing. And so, you know, it was a whittling down process and we first had, well, there was a document that was things that don't belong in the core values document but that should be noted and revisited at some point. And so, you know, pointing to institutional challenges, people feeling unheard or stuff like we need more parties. We don't have enough, you know, having fun is a core value, how can we have more fun? So there's a whole, like, list of things there and then we ended up with at first two documents, one which we thought this is what we'll share with visiting artists, right? When you come to act, direct, design, stage manage, you come from outside the Huntington family. This is a document you'll get in your packet and then we had a document for internal which was more nitty gritty. And then we kind of eventually got to the point where it's like no, actually one document can accomplish everything. So we're in the process now of dotting the i's and crossing the t's and also this kind of new intense conversation about how are we gonna roll this out? How are we gonna introduce it and roll it out? And of course, you know, there's a whole HR like, ah, what does this mean? So the question now is making it clear that this is not a punitive thing. This is a celebration, right? That our values are something that we want to share and celebrate and that they're aspirational, right? That we will fall short of extreme kindness at some point, all of us will. But as, you know, talking to the managing director, we wanna be able to, if staff feels overly challenged by a visiting artist or a visiting artist feels just not heard, or that we can point to the document and say, we don't kick the cat in my house. So we understand that cat kicking is happening and we would appreciate it if you would not kick the cat. So let's see how we can move forward without kicking the cat. Our staff, we forgot to say, is made up entirely of cats. You know, how can we support the artist and protect the staff in sometimes unlikely situations but that do happen occasionally? Does that, did I? Perfectly, I'm excited. So yeah, right now we're looking at probably August, like kind of maybe having this document ready for the first day of rehearsal of the Sondheim that everyone in the staff will get and everyone who comes to the theater will get. I wrote it better, but it doesn't matter. That's been late in the game of the residency. It's towards the end, it kind of came up as an issue but I think I feel like it's been a really important part of the integration into the company because sitting across from someone who's really digging deep and saying, here are some issues that I'm having, here's where I don't feel hurt, this is what I want, this is what I want to share, this is what I want our company to be. That's been really amazing. Yeah, and the reason we wanted to share that with you all today was just, it was a surprising thing we hadn't planned for. It was purely the result of the fact that Melinda was in residence at the theater, that Melinda was at the table with us as we were trying to solve this kind of level of conversation with artists and with staff and we were lucky enough that Melinda, who's an incredible writer, could be the one to articulate those values and so that's why we wanted to share that example. That's why we wanted to... How we do. We're different. So Aditi and I are at the end of our third year of our first term that we had known each other for over 20 years before it began. We, our families have Thanksgiving together. You know, as an actor, director, playwright, Aditi and Mixed Blood, we were all woven together. We are both docile, conflict averse, risk averse. We have no control issues so it's really worked out quite well. But in the first month, actually, of the residency, we were already scheduled and did three plays in rep of Aditi's world premieres on another show that she had written and directed later that season and she directed another show in the second season and we did a sort of two-year national initiative called Disability Visibility in which we gathered plays and distributed and awarded people for doing them. That was a great effort. But as a playwright of an organization, Aditi said, I wanna create character and narrative for the organization. And through media and social media, that's what's happened. Really sort of changed our profile as well as sort of being the dramaturg of the website and other ways in which the world comes into us. You know, and like other people said, we meet weekly one-on-one, Aditi attends staff meetings. And externally, Aditi is the organization's greatest cheerleader and internally, the organization's harshest critic, both of which are really good. It has been wonderful and, you know, while Mixed Blood, I really aspire for Mixed Blood to be a champion and anchor of the block on which we live, which is quite a block. There's 4,000 people that live on our block and it'd be easy to become an island rather than anchor in that neighborhood. And Aditi really wants us to be, you know, the greatest theater in the regional theater movement and both of those things because we work together can happen. Yeah, so two of the things, I have little nuggets before Aditi talks. One of them that was really interesting and the staff of the foundation will know that after we found out that we were gonna be involved in this and before the board had actually voted on it, Mixed Blood's board who really insists that we have capacity components to restricted grants, unanimously advised me to decline the grant because there was no capacity that came with it. And as you see in the second round of the cohort, every organization gets $15,000 per year for the organization, that's true, yes. And I will just say that as that came back to our board, so there's probably three quarters of a million dollars that will go for capacity to the organization, participating in this cohort over the next three years, our board took great ownership and having some sort of, I don't know if it really happened but they actually believe that they were able to trigger an effort that led to three quarters of a million dollars going to the organizations that are here. And so, but the one really interesting thing at the convening we had here 18 months ago or thereabouts, there was an inner circle of playwrights and everybody else was on the outer circle and one person said, okay, so we have salary and benefits, we have a job and 13 other playwrights that did spit takes and collectively gasped because what someone was suggesting that what the playwrights are doing is having jobs. So my nugget of takeaway is don't think of it that way. The playwrights at that in the first cohort didn't want that to happen and it was a really good learning experience for the leadership of the organizations. I'll give it to you. So, I mean, I've been involved with Mixed Blood for so long that I feel like I have been, like Kira was talking about writing for that audience from when I first started writing, I've been performing for that audience, I've been creating work for that audience and that audience courtesy of a lot of the things that have been happening the last few years like radical hospitality, which is, I don't know, I kind of assume everyone knows, we don't charge, you can come to our theater for free. Which has really radicalized our audiences in really cool ways. It just, it expands you as an artist, so it's like the coolest thing in the world to get to be the playwright in residence at the theater that's been my home forever anyway. The thing that happened when it was formalized with the, you are now officially the salaried playwright in residence rather than just this person that's always hanging out and they can't get rid of you, is I think the weekly meetings, which we met often anyway, but the weekly meetings, we argue a lot and it's really productive. It's also a running joke, how much we argue, but it is actually really productive and we both get like a bit wiser from it and sometimes we get pissed off and sometimes we just get wiser and that's great. And I love that and I love having that greater investment. I love that the theater allowed me to bring what I'm good at to the things where I thought I could be of use, which to me was the storytelling of the theater. I feel like the theater always had these amazing stories and they were on the inside and all of us inside were like, oh my God, these stories are so, but we were not super good at sharing them with the world. There was like a PR problem there and I felt like that was something as someone who specializes in storytelling that I could contribute. That's for any of you who are gonna get embedded at that level where you're making something your job, I think, and I did, I was like, give me social media, give it to me. And that was, they didn't write away because they were like, but we have people on staff who maybe wanna do that, you know? And it was a lot of trust earning and weedling and it's when you're an artist in residence, I guess my nugget would be figuring out how to interface with the more traditional staff that has, this is what we do, and making sure that they see you as an asset and someone who's just there to make things better rather than this weirdo who's gonna mess them up. That has been an ongoing process, I think, and a really good one because once they figure out how they can use you, it's great, like, you know, it's great. But definitely there's some trust earning there, and, but it's exciting, it's exciting to get to be in the game that way. And then the other thing that I think is super magical about this is I used to, I mean, I used to make my living predominately through acting, which is a lot of hustle, and I mean, I didn't have time to write, I just had to run around auditioning all the time. I don't do that anymore, I get to be really selective about the projects I take and they're almost entirely artistically based. Like, the last time I was on stage was at Pillsbury House because I have my place and I have a salary and I have where I'm investing my time. So I get to be really selective as an artist and that actually is great in that, I think over the course of the last three years, I learned to use that freedom and also to use the development funds to pursue things that are really, really important to me to be speaking into the world about rather than pursuing the gig, you know? And that's really empowering. So if there's any, and it took a while for my brain to switch over to, oh wow, I know what I can do. I can just decide that I'm gonna go research that and I don't have to ask anybody. And I can, you know, so that development money is an astonishing gift. You can, I mean, I got to commission this amazing Serbian composer to work with me. You know what I mean? Like it's crazy. So I just would encourage you to start thinking really creatively, I guess, about what you can do with that artistic freedom. And this is funny, because this is a thing I was talking with Madeline about several months ago at New Dramatist, but it also allows you sort of as an artist to start creating your own mission statement as an artist rather than thinking yourself as just a freelancer who comes in and does stuff, which has also been very kind of artistically empowering. I think that's it. And I think one of the things that's happening this season that sort of is a sign of the evolution and maturation of our partnership is that we're doing a world premiere of a play a Didi wrote that was commissioned by a different theater that I'm directing. So two years ago, the two of us being in the same room for eight hours a day for four weeks would have been more challenging than it is now. And so we've really come a long way. And so that other theater that commissioned the show is actually doing the second production of the play that it commissioned. And it's actually worked out to be a lovely national experience within an internal process. A shout out to South Coast Rep. That's, they're awesome. Yeah. Thank you. How's everybody doing? Good, good, good. I'm Marcus Gardley. And I'm in Chicago. And what's really great about this residency is two things. One, it has inspired me to not only dream bigger, but to constantly dream bigger than I thought possible. And it's also allowed me to face three of my biggest fears in the theater, which are, one, I really hate talk backs. Two, I really feel like my work, even though I write in a black aesthetic, is meant for all people, literally everybody. And most of my audiences tend to be older white audiences. And I really am afraid of people coming to talk to me after my show. So what's really kind of interesting about Chicago is all three of those things they don't play with. Basically, every show at our theater, there's a talk back. The audiences, we are situated in the north side. And the audiences tend to be predominantly white and have been. And people, because of the theater, my picture is in the lobby, very large picture. They know what I look like, and they come after me. So I've had to face these three fears. And it's completely changed my life. And I'm so grateful. What's really great about working with Che is I have these really crazy ideas, which I hope he says no to. And he always says yes. So what recently, you may have read, it was in a high-round article. But I was really shook by Ferguson and the things that were happening around black men and police brutality. And I already had written a play about the Great Migration in Chicago. And we were going to produce that play that year. And I told him I couldn't do the rewrite because I needed to write about Ferguson. And without missing a breath, he said, do that. Write that play. And I remember walking away saying, oh, he's so crazy. He was supposed to say no. And I wrote this play. And it was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. And I never forget the talk back. I stayed after the first talk back. And the only older black men in the audience stood up and said, we just need tanks. We need tanks. And we need to blow each other up. Very scary. And the older white gentlemen stood up. And he said, we're all fucked. He says, if this is the play was about the beginning of the United States 100 years before 1776 in Virginia. And it was basically the wildest slavery, hottest slavery become a thing. And it was a very powerful play. And people's response to it was pretty extreme. But the more they watched it, I never forget that it was one audience people gathered, and they began to protest in the street. And there's something powerful about writing into your fears. And that was the big lesson that I learned in that play. And then the play we most recently did at the theater, it was black and white people watching a play together about slavery. The play was sold out. We were turning people away. And again, I was afraid, OK, I'm writing the same thing. I'm not, I'm forcing these people to deal with the history of our country. And I'm afraid of their response. And their response was so overwhelmingly positive. And people were crying. And it was just a really amazing experience. I'll never forget, I was walking past the box office. And the box office lady was saying to some of the white patrons, I just want to warn you that black people are going to talk during the show. That's what black people did. And the response from the, from, it was so great to see white people from the North Side and also some African-Americans from the North Side. A lot of African-American, predominantly black women from the South Side engage in this work and talk together as the play was happening on stage. You could feel them having a discussion. And to me, it really emphasized why I write in the first place. And I'll never forget, somebody found me. I was trying to run out of the theater after the show. And a black woman grabbed me. And she said, oh, the black woman, she says, it's OK if I shout during the play. And I said, yeah, everybody's talking. It's OK to shout. She says, no, I mean dance. Is it OK if I dance in the play? In the black church, we say shout is dancing. You got the spirit in dance. And I said, yeah, just take a back, get one of the seats in the back. But you can dance. It was the greatest compliment I've ever gotten about a play because she needed the freedom to express in her body how that play was making her feel when people came back. But I guess the big gift that I want to give everyone is, I think there's something really powerful in writing into your fears and actually using this opportunity to face your fears. No longer did I have to worry about because this opportunity that I was learning about reviews or how I'm going to get another production of this show, it gave me the freedom to actually do some of my own stuff. And so thank you so much for that. As far as this community, we started in the first cohort working with three community organizations. One of the organizations fell through because it was run by an older black woman. This is in Englewood, which a lot of people consider one of the most violent neighborhoods in Chicago in the South Side. It was run by an older black woman and she had a stroke. And so the entire program fell apart. So I was very disappointed in that. We were doing some really great work there with the kids. But she was really the foundation and without her it wasn't going to continue. And the big lesson that I learned there was that I needed to not only be in the community but I needed to pass down some of the skills that I had. That really for a community to survive, it needs to be a village. And that was the big lesson there. And so when we were working with iGrow, which is this amazing organization in Chicago, this older couple, they purposely found what they considered the most violent street in Chicago, bought one of the homes on the street and with the neighbors they remodeled this home. And this home doesn't have locks on it. It's for the neighborhood. People come and they, believe it or not, everybody on the street in the morning, they do yoga together as a community. It's very powerful. So we've been working with them a long time and I asked them, I just have such a great time with them. So I asked them, I said, what do you guys really want? Which I should have never asked. She said, we need iPads for all of these kids. We need iPads for all of these kids and we need four desktop computers and we need to get them job training courses so that when they interview for jobs, they can't get the jobs because they're too nervous because they feel like they're never gonna get the job. So I said, I'm gonna get you all of those things. So it caused me to face my other fear which is asking people for help. So I was trying to sell this script art, this movie script, I was in LA trying to sell this movie script. And so I said, I'm gonna use the opportunity of talking to all these rich people and I'm gonna face my fear and ask them for help. And miraculously, everybody that I asked, I never got the gig, but everybody that I asked gave me money. And I raised, we bought four desktop computers and we got all the kids iPads and we just now start this program, this job training program. So that fear of like really facing, asking people for help. So I'm not afraid to ask for help. So if you run into me at the bar, I'm gonna ask you for something. But that was really great. And then I think the last thing is I've been doing a workshop with local playwrights which has been pretty amazing emerging playwrights. And we've had one of the young people get into a grad school and then one of the older playwrights finally got her play produced. And that to me has also been really a labor of love, like really seeing these writers grow and really it's them. What's so great about this group is we teach ourselves. I'm not a teacher, it's like I'm just another playwright in the group. And together we improve our work and it's just been really amazing. So that's been my three years. I don't have much to add only to say that as you can tell, the fact that we are all friends and good collaborators, I believe that the artist always takes the lead. I mean, that was the gift that was given to me and to Louise when we were in theater companies of our own. And I'm just merely passing it forward. The other thing that Marcus fails to mention too, probably is that he's also been mentoring some of the people of color in our building to actually become future theater leaders themselves. And there's always a relief when there's a good cop compared to that cop right here. So the fact that they go to him asking him for questions and for guidance, he's been wonderful. And I think if there's anything I could say to the artistic directors here who are in the second cohort is, it's like having someone in your home give them the run of the place. They will always surprise you. And sometimes the things that they want and the things that they articulate, these beautiful artists, actually help you see things very differently. And always asking artists to basically take the lead. And I'm sure that's gonna be more than the next three years that Marcus is going to discover. And sometimes the fact that we're so alike about what is art and community, he's doing the things that have furthered and accelerated my plans for the theater itself. I'll just also say one thing that Marcus mentioned. We've been doing a play of his every year. It's just been a boon not only to our board, our staff, our audiences. They're beginning to see this person in the lobby, in the boardroom. And when he gives a speech or when he talks to some of the staff members and including audiences and board members, are just so relieved in a wonderful way to see this person, this artist in the midst. And I think it's a continual dialogue. So no matter what happens, we do each play that Marcus writes. There's this dialogue that the audience have with Marcus. His one of his earliest plays was, which I asked him to write basically, was we need to address gun violence in the South Side, which Faye also managed to produce at her theater, the Gospel of Loving Kindness. And that play itself was actually remarkable in many ways because it brought a lot of people to talk about the worst thing that could happen in Chicago is the violence. I remember one audience member says, a white audience member says, well, why should we care about this play? And this is just black and black violence. And then a white audience member across the aisle basically said, sorry, an African-American audience from across the aisle basically said, I don't think so. A bullet has no zip code. It will hit the nearest body, you'll find. And that is the kind of dialogue that Marcus has brought to the theater and that play toured along to many, many communities too and encouraging young people to talk about what is gun violence. All that to say, make them feel at home and welcome, watch them surprise you, and listen and let them take the lead. That's what this residency is all about. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jerry Genocchio. Here you are. Hold this, then we'll share. Producing director at Kansas City Rap and that, there's as many titles as there are job responsibilities, right? What producing director means is that whatever the artistic director says has happened, I have to make that happen, which is why I'm here today. So, I'm thankful for that. Our relationship with Nathan Jackson has as many, the lore of how he started his relationship with Kansas City Rap has as many stories as there are people in this room. My story is, about 10 years ago, when I came, 11 years, when I came to Kansas City, Nathan's high school teacher was one of my college roommates. And he said, there's this great guy who just is finishing in Juilliard and you need to know who he is. His name is Nathan Jackson. So, that's how I think we came to know Nathan Jackson. There were lots of other reasons. We produced his play Brocology and then when our first cohort assignment came around we were very fortunate to get. We produced When I Come to Die as part of that. And one of the great things that having the first round of cohorts did for us is having Nathan with us was since our board had already had experience of us producing a new play with Nathan and our artistic director for years had been trying to launch a New Works program. When we got the association with the Mellon Foundation through that first cohorts, all of a sudden the board got it. They got it like, oh, we could produce new work and there's no, it's not a coincidence that our New Works program was shortly thereafter funded by board members with a long term gift to add a New Works director and to support a New Works program. So, that was part of the outcome of that first, of our first experience is that we now have an official New Works program Origins KC that Nathan is a part of, I think, you know, in the first time with Nathan with us figuring out how to integrate him into the office. What could he do, what could he do, what things should he be doing with us as well as writing his plays. We, the first three years was figuring that out. How do we let him do that work? Versus our expectations, versus his expectations and what's a program like this really, how can you best really put it in place? We have another play commissioned in the second three years. The second three years, we really have a great understanding. Nathan is involved in our Education and Outreach program. He mentors students at a high school that's predominantly minority high school, mostly African-American students in playwriting and also just being a theater artist. He also is a member, he works with development and marketing in outreach, how to expand our audiences within our community in audiences that don't typically come to the rep. And I think one of the things that has been the best, the more that we can see that those audiences can see themselves in the rep, then they can also start coming to the rep. And he's been a great resource for that, as well as in the artistic process, one of the things that, I'm a straight white guy and that's just what I am, right? So, and I also recognize the privilege of that and that I'm in a position at the company where I get to make some decisions. But I also have the responsibility to say, yeah, this is me and I'm at the table, but who's not here at the table with me and how do we bring them to the table with me? And having Nathan at the table with me by just his force of nature, forces us to give weight to his suggestions that may not happen if it's just all of us white guys here at the table. Well, should we do a black play? Yeah, okay, what's February like? Those are the things that we have gotten away from, but having Nathan's voice at the table gives the horizon a much greater view of what could be possible. And that's been the second round has really integrated Nathan into our daily operation, which has been a great ability to put in place what the Mellon Foundation has allowed us to do to see within the community, within our board, within our company, Nathan's involvement. And we'll share a little bit about our salient example in a moment. Yes, a little bit, because I realized I forgot my notes over there. So let's move. Look at them, they're right here. No, no, I don't, no, no. How do you talk, I'll get them. Okay, Jerry, yes, thank you. So Jerry kind of broke down the way that I think the theater has benefited from that. I'll just talk a little bit about myself and my writing a little bit. See, that's not even the right, oh, that's the right notes. Right, I'm there. This is also what the producing director does. Is that what you do? Yeah, I try to. You've never brought me my notes before. I tried to. You're in there somewhere. So anyway, real quick, I don't even know how you need this. So one of the best things, one of the best things, quite personally, is a couple of things. One, I get to live in my home city, which I love my home city. If not for this, I'd be off somewhere else doing something else, maybe living in L.A. If you like L.A., that's fine, but I didn't really want it. My wife cannot stand L.A. So the fact that we get to live in Kansas City with our children, with our family is huge. And the fact that we get to connect with that community that I am from, that I understand, and now even getting a greater understanding of the community. Because when I was in and out of it, I didn't get it. But to the point of now meeting new organizations and meeting these people who have been there for years and even understanding how my city is laid out. Even understanding why it's weird what the theater itself is on a street called Truce. And on one side of this, Lily, right on one side of the street is like the richest area in the city probably. And then the other side is one of the poorest areas. And this year, I was just thought of that, oh, that's just the way it is. And then I did some research since I've been in Kansas City, like, oh, that's not just the way it is. Somebody made it that way. And understanding then how that has affected my work that things aren't just the way they are. No, there's a reason for everything. And there's a plan. So little stuff like that was great. And just being able to connect with not only the community, but also the artists when we did, when I, no, when I come to that. No, the sticky traps. Before that we had artists that came into town. And little things like being able to be there and having my house. These artists that travel and have to sit in that hotel room Sunday night and eat, I don't know, whatever gross hotel food. I say, no, hey, come by my house and I'll cook. And we would, every Sunday have the artists who were in the play come by the house and we talk. And we, this kind of became a Sunday sit-down, we called it. And every Sunday we get together and we could talk with these artists of color about whatever. Sometimes it was about sports. Sometimes it was actually relevant to what was going on in the theater community. So that has been great. And, oh, what was the last thing I was gonna say? I will just say, and then you can talk about that. One thing that we learned, and I think is very big is making sure, again, communication and communicating with each other because the plan changes. And the plan changed throughout that first three years. And having expectations is great because I know what the theater wants from me. They know what, I know what the theater wants from me and they know the other way around, but dude, stuff changes. And we get opportunities, they get opportunities, I get opportunities and we have to adjust and say, okay, this is going on, I'm going out of town for two months, how can I still be here and be able to help you out? Or, hey, I really enjoyed doing this aspect of theater when I got here, I don't like this anymore. Can I not do that and do something else? And that's cool. It's just about communication and being open and honest with each other, one. Most of the things he's talking about are talk backs, having to do talk backs again. I don't mind the talk backs. The talk backs is fine too, that's probably fine. And talk forwards, we also have this making of the play where every night, before the show, we get to hear about how the play was put together. So Nathan's an integral part of that too. I think the sailing example from our point of view and that we learned by doing this that I think is certainly the best is working with the artist that's in residence with you and understanding not what they need to work, but how they work and being able to accommodate that. I think there was some expectations like, okay, well, where's Nathan gonna sit? We gotta get him a desk, because he's gonna be here three or four days a week and we're gonna be this. And we quickly learned that you have to base the expectations off of what the artist needs to work and provide those things for the artist to do their work, which may have nothing to do with where the theater is or where that person is going to sit. Although he does have a place to sit and he does stop by on a regular basis and that's really cool. He has two places to sit, that's true. So that's my thing is the biggest learning for us was support the artist in the way the artist needs to work. Thank you. All right, I would say what was most effective was I feel the way that people in Dallas, the city of Dallas took ownership over the residency, that they really felt that this residency was theirs and they were invested in, they had faith in it and they questioned it and they really felt like they were a part of it and it was theirs. You know, I feel like on the one hand, Dallas has a rich theater tradition going back to Margo Jones and Dallas Theater Center, it's very old regional theater, obviously, but on the other hand, I don't think it has as much, and tell me if I'm wrong, I don't think it has much in terms of new play development, was that right? Like new play development, and definitely not writers from the region being produced by theaters, certainly not the flagship Lord Theater. And so I felt like when I was developing this new piece that we developed over the three years as Musical Stagley, we did a lot of workshops, like every four or five months we would do workshops and that audience started to grow and so a lot of times people were like, oh, change this, you change that. Or, you know, I don't know about that. You know, there's definitely one person like, how's it going? You're gonna be able to finish it, you know? Kind of thing that happened a couple of times, but I felt like they really had ownership over the piece and I feel like in a city like Dallas that has a lot of business, a lot of commerce, a lot of new people moving in, I think we're trying to raise the stakes for art and culture and I think that's really important. So when this piece premiered, they felt like it was part of them and when I did add a few projects in New York, when those projects premiered, they felt like they were part of that, you know? When artists have come through, we work with a lot of artists. We start a writers group like some of you all did and it's been great because again, a lot of great stories there. There's a lot of good, there's a lot of bad and there's a lot of ugly, you know? It's all for mix, the great fodder for theater and there's great talent there but they often haven't had exposure to certain types of craft. And so we've been developing, I've been working with these writers and now we're doing like adult playwriting classes and teen playwriting classes and some of those writers now are teaching those classes and I'm not old but you know, I'm kind of like the older guy, you know what I mean? Just kind of with the wise, you know, the beard or whatever, I don't have a beard now but anyway, you know what I mean? So that's been great and also a couple of the writers that I've worked with are kind of going off and starting their own theater companies and of course I can't take credit for that but I feel like we were, this residency was part of that, part of that, they're doing Shakespeare in the bar, they're doing like crazy stuff like pieces in garages for two week run in a garage and you know, that kind of stuff. So it's been really great how they've been taking what I've given them and they've moved it on. So that's been awesome. What else do I want to talk about? What were the other questions? What was the other question? There was another question. Oh, what, okay, what I learned. Yeah, what I learned. What, yeah, yeah, what I learned, yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting. I want to piggyback on what Kira said. I feel like when I was a little young girl I was really like, I'm writing this and if you don't like it, who cares? I don't care who my audience is, you know, that kind of thing. But I feel like I'm now more, I can never not be me. I'm always gonna be me. So I feel like I'm definitely more sensitive about who the audience or who the audiences or communities are. And I feel like I can still go into that and still be authentically me. When I feel like when I was young I would worry about that. You know, like, no sell out brother. You know, that was the whole thing. You know what I mean, Kevin, yeah. So, but, but, but, so I feel like, you know, with this, with this piece, staggerly, I feel like I was really mindful of what are the multiple access points into this piece? You know, kind of what Michelle was saying, like, you know, what is the language? Are there different ways for different communities in Dallas to plug into it? That was really important to me. And I feel like it wasn't specifically about Dallas, but I feel like there were definitely connections in terms of like migration and racism, systematic racism and that kind of thing. And I think the other thing that was really great for me that I learned is that I feel like I was able, I think someone said this, I was able to dream big and it was a, not all my pieces are like this, but this was like a very big piece, you know what I mean? And I feel like maybe behind closed doors, you were like, oh no, I don't know, but you never said that to me in public. Like, let's just go for it, we'll figure it out. You know, let's do it. But I also feel like I was given the opportunity to help fundraise and to help get out there. And it wasn't, it wasn't my responsibility. There was a whole department, but I felt like I was able to actually get out there to funders and also not even just rich people, but like working class people, middle class people, with church members and kind of get out there and speak to them. Here's the idea. This is what I'm trying to do. This is what we're trying to go. And so that just gave me a really good understanding of how to be your own advocate for the piece, you know? And I think also I feel like I've been able to, how it shifted my work is I've been able to articulate more what I want to say to staff members. A lot of times I've had a lot of experience being commissioned by an institution, but never being part of the institution. And so now I can kind of, I'm more clear about how to articulate what I want artistically to the production department, to the development department, just by being in the institution. And I'm still me. So I think that's been good. I would echo all of Will's experience. If we had not developed and produced a premiere by him, the program would not have been a success. That the act of having Will's voice be alive in the institution creatively, at times messily, and often very publicly, was very, very significant for the staff. And as Will mentioned for the broader community, Will and his wife and his kids all moved to Dallas. They actually really live there. Which also would have been a failure, I think, is if Will had done a three or four month drop by every year as compared to actually like this is his home. Because our staff and our resident artists and our board, our audience, Dallas is our home. And so that I think has been incredibly meaningful to our community to have a writer of Will's stature say my family and I are a part of this community. We want to live here, we wanna make art here. That's been hugely gratifying to donors, to audience members, and to all the folks throughout the staff. I also think it's funny when Will says things like, he had the opportunity to work with development to raise money for his project, which was more than a million dollars that we needed to raise, it was a big, big show. And for our development department, our marketing department, our education departments, they would just say, how the hell did we get so lucky to have a writer who would come to them and say, hey, how can I help? And he's a great fundraiser, he's a great advocate. He is an immensely gifted educator. And so having those resources, all those skills that Will has deployed in the service of art and in a very personal way, that's huge for us. And he can do that in a more authentic way than the many, many really talented writers we work with throughout the year, but all the rest of whom are just coming in to do a production by being guests. They don't have the same capacity to invite the community into that dialogue and to support it in a whole variety of ways. Just on a day to day level, one thing that I really learned was the importance of, well, being there, it's really important. And maybe you can write it at that institution, maybe you can't. So in the first few years I would write, I would come in early morning like six, seven a.m., not a lot of people around, find a little nook and do some writing, but there's a lot of things happening so you never know. That two week there might be a teacher's training or something for seniors or whatever, it's like, oh, sorry, I have to move. So I don't necessarily do as much writing there, but I didn't realize, and this is probably obvious for a lot of the artistic directors, but I didn't realize how much work it's done, not just in meetings, but in seemingly spontaneous interactions. So if you have two hours of emails to do, instead of doing at a cafe, come to the theater, allow three or four hours and then, hey Will, I wanted to ask you about this or that kind of thing. It was so much progress was made in things that weren't necessarily scheduled, but you have to be there, not every day necessarily, but you have to be there for those kind of spontaneous occurrences to happen. I think that was something I really learned and something I think we were able to progress. And that was a surprise, that was a surprise to me at least, when we started the residency, we said, okay, Will, you are on our senior staff so you should come to weekly senior staff meetings and a variety of those kind of formal things. Season planning and those meetings invariably, it wasn't until actually Will was in the room that I realized how much those meetings are about budgets, how much they are about calendar details and how much they're about coordinating department schedules. They're very rarely content rich meeting. They're essential, but they're not necessarily artistically content rich. And so everyone was happy to have Will there, but frankly he didn't really have that much to contribute because they were so, the details of marketing strategy, he might have a point of view about, but he's not gonna actually get in there and execute it, so it's just not the same thing. And what interestingly happened is that the more time went on and Will began by just being present and by having his work happen, he built these relationships about the staff and then started generating programming and programmatic opportunities, either ideas that he had that then we implemented or programs that were existing where he then said, oh, can I be a part of that thing? So it's been fascinating that what I thought would be a structure and kind of, oh, the key thing is make him a part of the senior staff actually turned out to be not the answer at all. Hi, Kira was worried you wouldn't wanna hear any more of her talking, so I'm gonna talk more. So in three years, Kira wrote three plays, brand new plays and we produced all three and in a seven year period, we produced five of Kira's plays, which is actually kind of a big commitment when you're a small theater company that only does three plays a year and but I will say, I'm really glad we did that because now we have this body of work that really addresses this really complex problem of what kind of play do you write when you know your audiences are gonna be that diverse? It's not an easy question. I'm not saying it's the only way to answer it but now we have a really solid body of work for people who are interested in this. We also got this group of actors who all over the five productions got really familiar with Kira and her mind and her humor and the style that's necessary to bring her very unique, made up worlds, complex characters to life and they really love her work and I think they kind of take a pride in having help to shape how that comes alive. Then we have our audiences and I've been surprised, well, I don't know if I've been surprised but they've been really willing to come along on the journey. They, you know, I was kind of like, is this gonna be too much Kira Oblensky but they over this period of time have become really fond of Kira, both are non-traditional ones as she was telling you about and are paying audiences so it actually, I think there's something audiences kind of love in being able to get to know an artist over a period of time as the few repertory companies that work with the same actors over and over again have found as well. So that's been one cool thing and the thing that Kira's gonna tell you about at the very end that's grown out of that is her idea that we need to create what we're calling play local. It's a local playwriting movement to support productions by local playwrights much in the same way that a local food movement does and so she's gonna tell you about that. It's a really cool idea that she came up with. I would say for me as artistic director the biggest thing for me has been, the biggest impact has been having a full-time artist, another one on staff and to have her ideas and creativity bubbling through our organization, board meetings, staff meetings, email exchanges and it made me go, why don't we have more of this? Why are there not more artists? Why not more creativity of artists in our organizational life? So what it made me do was reinvigorate what we call our artist core. It's a group of very diverse, very opinionated, very experienced 10,000 things actors. There is no more sweat equity at 10,000 things. Everyone is paid all the time, at least $25 an hour for whatever they do, whether it's come to a board meeting or a staff meeting or a fundraiser and we pay them as consultants to brainstorm new ideas for our organization and out of this to kind of answer the question someone asked, they've come up with all these really cool projects that they wanna do for 10,000 things. Creative projects, we've been able to raise a lot of seed money to get that going. So I feel like the creative life of our organization has been just replenished and renewed by the simple fact of having one artist on staff. It also, this Mellon residency addressed something that's always been a big ache for me as someone working in the American theater and it centers around that question is basically why is it that the only people in the American theater pretty much to make full-time salary and benefits are administrators? Why is it only staff? Why are the artists always left out scrapping in the cold? And so being able to pay Kira's salary was a little start to being able to put a salve on that. But what I did is I asked the artists in our artist corps, how can we get that for you? How can we get that for actors? How could we pay actors a full-time salary and benefits? We can't at 10,000 things, we're too small. And now that like OSF is pretty much the only repertory theater left in the country, that model isn't working. So we came up with this idea of kind of creating a twin cities repertory theater. In other words, and so for the past year, the equity artistic directors in the twin cities, and that includes Fay and Noel and Jack, and there's about 18 or 20 of us, kind of got together and we've come up with a pilot proposal and we're in the process of seeking funding for it. It was like a really cool collaboration among all the artistic directors. And then in the pilot version, what we propose is for each season, all of us, the 20 artistic directors would get together a year ahead of time and we'd pick five actors whom we felt that among us, with our casting for the next season, we could give 40 weeks of work, whether it's acting or understudying work. And in exchange for that 40 weeks of work, we would create this entity funded by foundations to pay them a $50,000 salary and give them four weeks of paid vacation and then the rest of the time, it'd be up to them what they wanna do during that year if they wanna work more or not work more. And it's been so cool to see how everyone's kind of gotten on board with this and granted, it's just, we're just trying to, I just wanted to come up with some other structure to address this huge inequity, I feel in the American theater, that really it's like a crisis. It's like, I don't understand how actors do it. I really don't year after year after year, especially the ones that have been doing it for like 20, 25 years and every year they have to cobble together stuff. So that is a direct result of Kira being on our staff and inspiring the artist core who helped come up with this idea that drew all the artistic directors in town together. So it's been pretty cool. So thank you for that. And now Kira, you can talk about Play Local. Okay, just one moment. I mean, one of the things that, it's such a privilege to be a playwright and to work in the town you live in. And one of the things I live in, we're in Minneapolis, which is just like thick with playwrights. I mean, every other person feels like it's a playwright, and it's really by virtue of the Playwright Center, which brings in so many playwrights and we have such amazing funding. So playwrights move to Minneapolis and get all these grants. But then what I was noticing is that, the local theaters just are not doing new play, they're not doing new plays by the playwrights who live in the town. So I've started this little program called Play Local in which I'm trying to just use it as a pilot, use the 10,000 Things Paying Audiences as a pilot, and trying to kind of activate them around the idea of what a local play is. So I'm actually, I'm looking at the local music scene, there's a local, but not a lot of local plays get done. So we've been, we were able to see Christina's amazing play at Pillsbury and we went to the jungle and we have five plans for the coming season. So it's been a really inspiring kind of extension of, for me, of something I feel really lucky to have, which is the opportunity to actually have my plays done where I live. So hopefully we'll start, we'll change some sort of climate thing in Minneapolis and in the Twin Cities and it'll be cool to do new plays. There you go. I feel lonely up here. And Pearl Clegg, unfortunately, isn't able to be here. She is working on our collision project, which is our signature high school device theater piece. And we have Che, who's a former playwright on that project and virtual Lauren was also a playwright on that. So it feels comfortable. But let's see, where to, and Susan, sorry, Susan Booth unexpectedly had to step into rehearsal. So she sends her regards. I know she'd love to be with all of you too. So we feel so fortunate to have Pearl be a part of our theater. And I guess the big piece of what we've learned and it's been said a lot. So I'm probably echoing what a lot of other folks said is I think to be willing to be surprised on both sides is really important. When Pearl came in, I think she had a certain idea. We could wrap our heads around a commission. That's the first thing we did. We commissioned this beautiful play, what I learned in Paris for our audiences. But one thing that's unique about the Alliance is that we're committed to creating new work for every single age group. We start with a theater for the very young, for someone as young as your child, really zero to five year olds. So Pearl started living in this environment and decided early on that she would possibly write for our middle school crowd. So I think that really surprised her. So we were able to get her in front of hundreds of middle school students over the course of two years and really work hand in hand with them and craft this play specifically for that age. And again, this collision project work has become something she looks forward to more and more every year. She calls it the best antidote to cynicism that there is and I think that's true. From our point of view, and it's something Kevin you touched on, we thought this is great. We'll have Pearl sit here on our senior staff every week. One thing, the Alliance, we've done a great job for decades since Kenny Leon ran the theater. We have a really diverse audience space. We have diverse programming, but our senior staff is really white. And we thought, oh, we're starting to feel better about this. We'll have Pearl at the table. But very early on she realized this is not the conversation I wanna be a part of. And in fact, that kind of brought up some of the fear she had about wood being in an organization forced her to lose some of her artistic focus. So she quickly kind of self-selected out of there and the paradox is by not being around that table I think she's had a much deeper influence in a much more profound way than had she just been sitting there. And I say it because she has such a clear-eyed focus on what is right and what needs to be done at the theater that is not influenced by the parameters of budget, constraint or what's happening day to day. So she's been a constant reminder of what we need to do. The other thing that's important and I think there's been a gift is the fact that Pearl knows Atlanta so deeply. She's been there since the late 60s and she's been a major presence in that city not only as an artist but she was press secretary for Maynard Jackson's campaign, the first black mayor in Atlanta. So she just knows the complexities, the problems, the aspirations of Atlanta like very few other people have met and that certainly influenced the theater. So I'll give you an example and one that we're really excited about that I can directly credit Pearl's vision and spirit with helping us create. And that's, I was talking about our white senior staff and we have an EDI committee at the theater and we've been trying to wrestle with these ideas. How can we develop a much more diverse leadership? So Pearl's a graduate of Spelman, we're in Atlanta and Spelman is just this fantastic university and we decided, all right, we are going to start a fellowship program at this university where every year we'll have three fellows that are in our theater and they'll get to self-select into which department they feel compelled in which area they wanna pursue and then after this year we'll have, they'll be able to apply for a two-year fellowship which will pay them a living wage in Atlanta and the idea is to train them for senior leadership out in the field and we'll be doing this. So when it's up and running, we'll have five Spelman graduates in our theater at a time two of which are getting paid full-time salaries and I mean, obviously selfishly we're hoping that some will land here at the Alliance but I think it's really addressing a problem that's a much larger problem with the entire field of theater and I think that we really have proclague to thank for helping us get there. So yeah, I think that's all I needed to say about that. Thank you.