 Hello, all. It's Leilani speaking again and I am still a white woman with long dark hair and big old glasses on my face, just circulating aggressively at the camera. I am just providing some quick context for our land acknowledgement before we head into our performance by stage seeker. So as I mentioned earlier during our first land acknowledgement kicking off the event, we are going to make sure to acknowledge the people's lands and histories of each of the territories we now know as the Stick New England State. The next state represented by the fabulous ensemble of stage seeker is Connecticut. We are honored to have collaborated with a Connecticut based ensemble heartbeat ensemble for the in person portion of our convening last week. The land acknowledgement with grace from stage third stage seeker is actually going to be their land acknowledgement because both organizations do share the space known as Hartford Connecticut, as well as other Connecticut areas. So I am going to share my screen and I am going to present a prerecorded acknowledgement from God three Simmons, who is the artistic director and a founder of heartbeat ensemble. Let me make sure I can do that now. I'm sorry to interrupt play Lonnie. This is Derek speaking. And I just wanted to mention that we do have live captions available. You can open those by clicking live transcript on the bottom of your zoom screen, or clicking the link that I just posted in the chat. Thank you. I don't know where the sound went, but I have the actual file because you all will give me just one second I will pull that up and play the actual file from my computer instead of delay. I'm having a hard time with the sound specifically it's also not playing right from the file. Fortunately, the ensemble does have their landing knowledge on their website which I will paste into the chat and we'll also read. And I will be happy to post the recording once I have the sound figured out in Hoover for this performance session so that you all can see God free offer it as intended. So this is from the heartbeat ensemble in Hartford, Connecticut. We live, work, learn, and commune on stolen land. This land on which we gather is the occupied, unseeded, seized territory of the Mohegan, Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill, Pugsucket. And I'm not actually sure how to say this people's name so I'm going to post it, rather than mispronounce. Skaq to Coke. Thank you, Peter. We also acknowledge the tribes with us in spirit and ancestors, the Podunk, that I'm going to post these names again so that Peter can help me with pronunciation. The Skaq, the Podunk, and the tenexes. We acknowledge the grave harm that colonialism brought to these lands, in particular the erasure of both indigenous and African identities, not only under slavery, but the erasers laws that segregated all people into binary classification of white and black. We honor the spirit and ancestors who have lived and do live now at these intersections of identity and experience. This acknowledgement is the very beginning of a process of learning, our obligations as guests in this territory. We invite you to ask yourselves, as we are these questions, what are the indigenous protocol involved in being a guest. What are our responsibilities. Please do our host tab toward us and are we making space for those responsibilities to be exercised. How will we incorporate what we learn from our host. To what extent are activities and events benefiting our host. I want to ask for a moment for us to contemplate those questions. And thank you all for grace in the face of showing up for the work, even if it's messy and in pieces. Guide me, my each breath, my each movement, to clear this space, unnecessary pain. To cleanse this space for those of us who come here willing, willing to share our stories. Guide me, Great Spirit, as I prepare this space with protection, with certainty and kindness to give them this rare moment in our violent world. To release their grief and admirations that we may all have the heart to bear witness to each other, to see each other in spirit beyond our bodies. I thank you, Great Spirit, for your guidance with this amethyst. I open myself to your divinity and me and may this provide my invited story shares and fellow curanderas to open themselves up to their greatest connections to you. With these dead flowers, I thank all of you, our ancestors, whom have lived and laughed and loved and grew food and medicine, who gave life to generations, the curanderas of our past lives, who lived fully and wholly through hurricane and volcanic eruption, through colonization and attempted genocide, through enslavement and rebellion, through rape and torture, through it all. You came together, great ancestors, surrounding each other with love. In your times of deepest wound together grew infinitely like Jed Babrua. And we thank you, for we knew you had to live and love and dance and fail and triumph and die so that we could live with great reverence to you. We call your names as you appear in our dreams. We call your names in poor water for you, hydration for our souls. And we say, Ibae, bae, intonu, Ibae, bae, intonu, we light this candle in memory of you. Your radiance shines in us vibrantly. May we never forget your light. And with that, as I bring you fresh flowers. Letter to self, I did not solely inherit the intergenerational trauma. My hands were also passed down to me. The same hands that will mend wounds time and time again. Hands that bind up every seen and unseen gash of inferiority. And what matters most is that I don't have to do this alone. The healing part, the crossing onto the other side. What matters most is shame and guilt do not belong to me. Those are two old friends that cannot join me on the rest of this journey. I will have to leave them behind. They just don't fit for where I'm going. I have resistance, my resilience, and the audacity to heal. Have you ever wondered just where our mutual liberation can take us? What will I leave behind? Cut off, burn down to get there. What wounds will turn into wisdom? How will I choose to lighten the load? These are decisions we must all make. Because the thriving of lineage unknown depends on it. I will never meet the man that saved my mother's life by the tree. I find peace that he would be proud of the fruits that blossomed from the seed he unknowingly saved. What will you leave behind? And what will you take with you when it is your time to choose? Keep me whole, keep me strong. Feet shaved, my knees ache. I walk so far through the valleys and peaks of these mountains, through the deepest of sea rifts. I've climbed and swam and ran and wandered, all to return back to you. To return back to me. Where I go, when the highs like 25, too cold to cry outside. Body seems to care off. Broken guns and dead roads, they tried to bury me. Earth requires a sacrifice, sacrilege, take it in blood. They expedite and extra eyes sits in my belly. Just let me grow in your light. How extra white, attempting to tame nature. Uniform confuses taser for gun, that gun was really a pager. A paper, a CD, a cigarette, a blunt wrap. A prayer that sounds like, don't you die on your knees. Don't let them shoot you in your back. Don't beg a cop, please. You grew from concrete. They tried to pull you from your roots and hang you like strange fruit. While you were reaching for the sky, showering you with hate. Live it, you didn't die. Nature is my journal. It's been a lifetime and a verse somewhere you dispersed you can return to. As flowers bloom beneath you, bequeath blue skies and sunlight. May your ancestors receive you, lead you in life towards safer roots. Furrow soil you on songs of truth. Surrender, like spells to words. I once spelled the bird and witnessed her come to life. After freeing her from a cage, I watched her take flight. Surrender, like suspended belief. Surrender, like a falling autumn leaf. Surrender, like the tides to the moons. Surrender, like the ocean to Oshun. Surrender, like the waters to the winds. Surrender, to this spiritual hymn. Surrender, like fire releasing embers. Don't you die atop that hill, hold on until forever. And remember, desire for control renders you powerless. Surrender like sand slipping through an hourglass. Taking a moment to ask folks to take a breath and sit with the performance we just got to witness. Inviting our guests from Sage Seeker to turn on their cameras and be present in the space with us. And I am going to turn things over to the folks from Sage Seeker to contextualize this performance and share whatever information they'd like and invite you all in addition to listening to this informational session to think of any questions you may have, reactions you may want to share, et cetera. I will be monitoring the chat and I defer to our guests and the artists if they would like to take questions via hand raise or other function. Awesome. Thank you all so, so much. My name is Jasmine Augusto and I'm the founder and lead curator producer. I go by different types depending on what I want to do for that project of Sage Seeker Productions, which is based in Hartford, Connecticut. And for many years we have been, I'll be inviting two of our collaborators from this project on really shortly but I wanted to just give a brief introduction to contextualize this project and then invite Habin and Machario on and ask a couple of questions. So Sage Seeker Productions has been a company that I started in 2018 but I've had over 15 years of experience curating, producing cultural events, festivals, working with many different folks, elders, teens, really from Hartford, Connecticut but also branching out and collaborating with artists across the state. And in from 2018 to the February of 2020, we did a series called La Salafem that really centered black women, women of color, queer folks of color, their stories and centered around these collaborations between artists who had never worked with before, would never worked with each other before in the state, bringing together live music and dance, poetry and choreography into these intimate duets. And in when the pandemic hit, it was like, holy shit, right? All of us were trying to figure out how to do performance. And Longworth Theater had been in New Haven, Connecticut, had been an awesome collaborator in the past and we've been talking about what was possible with collaboration. They were going to host my first ever New Haven based La Salafem and we tried a virtual one in the May of 2020. And then by the fall, they were like, look, we would love to essentially commission you to do a project of your desire. And it was kind of this open-ended thing. They were like, we have a budget, you know, I think it started with 10,000 and ended up being 15,000 but it was kind of like, what do you want to create with that? And you can have our theater space and our team to support you. And I took a while to marinate on what I thought could be important for this moment where we're in a space of isolation, going through a lot of reflections. And I had come across this book called Remedios by Aurora Levin Morales, who is Jewish Boricua and I'm Boricua myself. And she had talked about this plant, Jerbabruja. And the plant, despite harsh conditions, even like the puncturing of the plant, it literally would just survive and thrive throughout anything. And even in the puncturing, the plant itself would protect itself and grow around that puncture. And so she uses this as a metaphor for the history of Puerto Rican women through time, through generations. And I kind of took that concept and I use that as kind of, as a prompt and as a kind of question, as kind of an invitation to a number of collaborators to kind of get into this. So how could they share their own stories, their own, you know, how did they connect with that in terms of their own stories around the lineage of folks in the African diaspora surviving and thriving throughout time. And my projects have always been experimental, have always been collaborative. So it's kind of like, here's some resources, here's some ideas, and then let's go with it. And so this is kind of, this was a 15 minute excerpt of a larger film that was about 40 minutes. And so I want to invite Haban Maria to come on and Machario Brown. Haban was part of that first. So I did the introductory kind of blessing at the beginning of the film and then Haban and worked with Colleen on a collaborative piece. And Machario actually was the lighting designer and helped capture sound throughout the piece. So I want to invite them on. And I don't know if I can see you guys I don't know why I'm not seeing everybody but we're both on with cameras on and Haban at least is unmuted. Okay, awesome. So I just wanted to start with if you guys could intro do yourselves really quickly. I think the reality is to that we're all we all have day jobs we all like have multiple ways that we survive and live in the world. So just like a brief introduction and then, you know when you first receive the invitation to be part of this project what major you say yes, to be part of this project. Well, hello everyone. My name is Haban. I'm actually a licensed therapist and a vocalist, and at times a painter. One of the reasons that I can say I said yes and which is ironic about this particular project because Jasmine has asked me to do past projects she's invited me a number of times to do other projects. And I always was just like you know I don't know I don't think I'm ready you know I haven't really been doing my art and keeping up in that way and, you know, I think life has a very interesting way of snuffing joy out of us. And I'm constantly reminded that art is there to replenish that. And so for some reason I was kind of just like overwhelmed by this invitation and I immediately said yes, and didn't know what I was going to do exactly but I knew I was at a time where release had to happen. And I took this as an invitation to let this be the release of that. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you. I work with Jasmine. I don't even, I can't even count the time so anytime Jasmine calls I know it's something that I already said yes before I even know it. It's just the entity that you bring to anything that she's a part of it always positive always. My spirit so I've always loved working with Jasmine. Anything she calls me for. It's going to be something good. And as far as being a part of project and what I got out of it. It just showed me a different perspective to people's lives and the people's stories. I'm from the Caribbean and the stories coming out of pretty much any immigrant communities always the same and just to see that perspective and connection. It was really I that's kind of what I took out of the show. Participate and match what is your, like, like your work because I know that you like what, you know what is the gamut of. I mean, I do production work I do sound and like, kind of getting more into live, live music, spear and recording, but I really do everything that anything that has to do with sound lighting and production that that's where my interest. I'll jump on any project, as long as it's around that scope. Thank you so much. So I have one specific question for have been one specific question for mash. And then if we if we have a little bit of time I would love if anyone who's watching with us this afternoon to ask any questions that you have. If we have time. So, so have been. What was it like to work with a collaborator you didn't know prior to this project and you know how did y'all end up creating together and forming a story that focused around sharing your mother's stories. So, our experience I would say was a very special one it was it felt very healing in itself like meeting for kind of like rehearsals and like the planning meetings that happened before the actual performance leading up to that. And both of us coming from African cultures also played an interesting role, even though we're from different countries. The similarities of experiences, the struggles of African women and and where that conversation kind of led us to building up our actual performance. It's always kind of kind of like how much Ariel touched on the similarities right that we can all share, even though it may seem we come from separate worlds. And we really wanted to sort of illuminate that part throughout the performance as well. It's always kind of nerve wracking because I had not been in the performance space for a while. So it was an interesting component where Colleen is like constantly creating constantly performing, and, and there was really a beautiful sort of invitation to, you know, do what you feel, you know, do what feels right there was still this, there was this kind of rigidity to it which I think is what helped the both of us collaborate in the way that we did and have it be more of a positive experience, and a learning experience. And then just a, it wasn't just a space to vent right or just talk about trauma it was, how are we actively healing this in this performance, what does liberation really look like if we could design it ourselves. It just opened up a beautiful collaborative space, and the goal seemed, we seemed united on a goal. And I think that's what made all the difference in feeling more comfortable collaborating with someone I've never met before. So I want to let folks know that, you know, I only got to do a short excerpt of y'all's performance. Oh, right. Yeah. And, you know, what you could see this was kind of like the, the conclusionary piece, which I thought was really beautiful. Like the lessons that kind of came out of this. But the, the, it was probably the most like theatrical of the three duets. And, you know, can, I don't know if you can kind of describe, you know, some of the elements that y'all brought in and why you guys brought those elements in, especially because you have the most. So for those that don't know, it was a giant altar that was that was designed by our homey Mercury and then split into four pieces so there was a large central piece and then each duet kind of had a smaller altar that they were able to use if they so chose. And it was an invitation. And y'all really had the most items. You know, all these different elements that were added and can you talk to us really briefly about some of those pieces that you brought in and why. Yes, so we really wanted to highlight like different fabrics, for example, in, you know, in our cultures different fabrics, they have different symbols associated with them, even tribes or demographics are attached to certain fabrics in your clothing as well. So that was a component that we did use you'll you'll notice Colleen is wearing librarian pieces and I was wearing Ethiopian pieces. So being very specific to our lands in that way as part of our representation was important for us to bring in. You know there was elements of a certain type of dance that Colleen was also doing. She was completely connected to her culture, I believe there's even a harvest connection that was attached to the dance that she was doing. And the element of storytelling so my major piece in the beginning was, I'm basically telling the story of how my mother escaped Ethiopia during the dictatorship. We are doing it over a coffee ceremony, which is a traditional Ethiopian cultural, you know, symbol. Not just coffee as like a product right but the, the, the beauty and sacredness around ceremony and how coffee is used to honor people that come into your home. It is one of the highest signs of respect if if a homeowner sets out a coffee ceremony for folks. So that was the setting of our particular scene to pay homage to multiple pieces of our cultures. And the and what we grew up in right so even though we're far from home. I came here when I was very young from Germany. But I definitely grew up in an Ethiopian household that was not a secret to anyone or anyone that will come over you know my home was a very different space and and I appreciate the fact that that was part of my lived experience in being here. And obviously the symbolism behind the way we left the scene, leaving things burning you know there's incense burning there's coffee still being made was to speak to sort of the unexpected kind of turn of events and things that can happen when people are fighting for their liberation or needing to escape and the things that we leave behind as a result. Thank you so much I just feel like all of those details are really important. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. We do have like five minutes left before they close this off so I just wanted to ask you I know this was such a short thing. I wanted to ask you, you know, how did you determine how to light each segment, and how is this different from previous projects because I know you talked about doing lighting and sound in general. But I know, you know, I know because we talk and stuff that you do, you know you throw a lot of parties you throw different kinds of events that are not necessarily theatrical or in a theater type space. I want to talk a little bit about what that was like for you in terms of being able to play with their lighting system why you chose what you chose and how it changed over the course of the production. So, most of our lighting design is kind of collaborative for the most part, when you're having those pre meetings and rehearsals. I drew off of the stories and kind of like that fear that the story said, for instance, having stories traveling through a desert almost so kind of try to recreate that type of. And we just kind of took that idea and kind of worked with what looked good on camera and what looked good on the set and what could basically bring the whole performance together. It was really collaborating with the storytellers and the performances to make sure that what we were what I was doing what everyone else was doing was complimenting their story and compliment. And just really kind of have a keen eye and focus on really what was being said and how the performance is flowing. You know what what you almost almost imagine what it was like to try to recreate that if that mission with their idea that comes to mind. It's really about color. He did mash. Freeze on you guys to. Okay, okay, okay. I know we have two minutes and we're gonna we're closing off now. I don't I don't see any questions in the in the chat but I wasn't sure if there were any comments or questions I do see the comment from the ensemble of color. So they said, beautiful from one African to y'all feel so great to hear folks talking about who I am. Thank you so I really I really appreciate that comment and that comment is really, you know, for Hobbit and Colleen. And I just, I just wanted to kind of reiterate that, you know, a lot of like black and brown Connecticut artists don't have. You know, we don't have a lot of the opportunities to work with major theaters to be able to work with, you know, very kind of like professional settings of things. A lot of my productions have been like, like mash will bring in all the lights bring in all the sound will create something out of the space that isn't particularly a theater. So I just want to shout out long war theater and for theaters that are interested in collaborating with folks in their in their cities and their states that may not, you know, be traditional folks in theater to kind of create these really these experimental pieces to be able to have the freedom to do that. I think was really important for this project to be produced for everybody to get paid. And, you know, the fabric the fabricators at our feeder, we were able to design and they helped to actually create to build the altar. You know, we worked with their head of production and tech folks to like be able to access the lighting system and the sound and all of that. So I think, you know, those are really important when collaborating with folks in your community and thinking about that for those of you who might be in the audience that are presenters as well. So just kind of want to want it to put that out there and thank you all so much for joining us with this and we look forward to connecting in the future. Thank you. We do have a tight time schedule just as we tried to make sure that all of our artists and panelists and presenters have the opportunity to tech tests and such. So we are going to have to shift here to our next panel. I did want to encourage folks to look in Huba at the performance page and at the agenda there are materials from Sage Seeker Productions. We also will have in our networking time one of the spaces is a debriefing space to discuss the performances and panels and of course Sage Seeker is invited to that. So opportunities to connect the goal is connection. Thank you all for your time and we will see you at what is it 1pm for our conversation about community theater theater in community professional theater, etc. Thank you all.