 Okay, so I'm gonna warm up the mic, so my name is Andrea Saff, and I'm very proud to be a COTA board member and to be introducing our keynote speaker tonight, but before I do that, I just want to acknowledge that there are actually two pre-conferences happening. The one that Leslie was just telling us about focused on Central and West Asian, aka Middle Eastern American artists, and also another pre-conference called Beyond Orientalism. And when we get to our respondents section of the evening, you'll get to hear a little bit more about that from Amelia Hedgepair who is with TCG and who is with us today as well. So the way this is gonna go is we're going to have a keynote address and then three respondents who get to kind of offer the first responses and connect what we've heard to the pre-conference themes and ideas that are happening. And then we're going to open it up to have a conversation with all of you, which we very much want to be a dialogue. We're kind of modeling it somewhat after the town hall conversations that OSF has been doing here in Aschstund. So we really look forward to having a conversation. I also want to acknowledge that we are being live streamed today. HowlRound is here, and we're very excited about that. And if you don't know about HowlRound, you should check it out. It's an incredible archive of theater events and conversations and live streams. Just so you all know, the world is listening. I have the incredible pleasure in honor of introducing our keynote speaker, who is Zeva Rakhman. And I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her. I apologize for ringing off my phone, but the bio is long. So Zeva has a long and illustrious and impressive list of work in the field. And I'm gonna tell you about that first and then her current position. She has led internationally and nationally recognized projects as creative director or producer to promote understanding between diverse communities. Some roles that she has performed include the director for Asia and North Africa of the FES Festival of World Music in Morocco, artistic director of Arts Midwest Caravan Sarai, creative consultant for public programs, Metropolitan Museum of the Arts Labs, Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia Galleries, curator for the Alliance Francaise World Nomads Morocco Festival, project director for Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts Global Connections program and senior advisor for the Muslim Voices Festival. She's an advisor to Artworks for Freedom and on the nominating committee of this Civitella Foundation in Italy and an advisor to PBS's sacred documentary series. She's twice been honored by the New York City government and has been a subject of two television profiles as a global arts leader and currently, Saber Rahman is the senior program officer for the Building Bridges program at the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art and she joined the foundation in 2013 and she is the leader of the Building Bridges program. She also manages the Building Bridges programs, national grant making to support projects and advance relationships, increase understanding and reduce bias between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the United States. So without further ado, please give a warm, generous welcome to Saber Rahman. I'm really honored to be here today to speak to all of you and what I'm going to do is really lay out a sketch of some ideas as I was thinking about what to say. You'll recognize quite a lot of the things that I am saying since you're from, I've been looking around the communities that I touch upon. I really wanted to thank Andrea for inviting me and I am delighted that Cata is including this element, this very important element of the conference, thank you, thank you. It's really terrific at this really critical time that theater professionals from Central and West Asia and the Middle East and the diaspora are part of the conference. And this inclusion is significant because so many Cata members are from earlier immigrant communities. They understand the challenges, you understand the challenges. To create a place for yourselves when there is no map, you know the struggles to face challenges and understand the value of having a really strong network that supports learning and opportunities that can be to grow and advances. Providing a platform here so that's issues specific to Central, West Asia, the Middle East and the diaspora can be discussed in a safe space is really important and it allows really a deeper exploration of potential solutions. Particularly important at this time when the movement is in its nascent consistency but it's growing. This is really a strong gesture of support so so needed at this really tough time in that world. There was a line with Cata, it seems natural for another reason. Which if you think about the lens of immigration into the U.S. and the immigrant experience, it seems completely organic. And there are parallels to learn from communities that have come in earlier. And the community that Andrea and other of you are part of now. So this is a sketch, some quick thoughts, I'm going to talk about immigration into the U.S. and the immigrant experience just for some context setting. Most of you know that the U.S. has and continues to have a really complicated relationship with immigrants. Many, many elements of the immigrant experience is positive. However, there are difficulties to be navigated and there is also some suffering very often particularly in the form of exclusion and prejudice. And that other way that is so painful. Perhaps the only exceptions are Western Europeans when they have immigrated to the U.S. because of course the U.S. was settled by Western Europeans. Eastern Europeans and Asians particularly Chinese and Japanese immigrants were deeply impacted during the second half of the 19th century, early 20th century anti-Chinese sentiment led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It prohibited immigration of Chinese neighbors up to that point. And it was the first law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the U.S. They worked, the Chinese immigrants worked on building parts of our country's infrastructure including railways for the west coast and that was in the mid 19th century. As they grew in numbers so did anti-Chinese sentiment. A fairly common phenomenon unfortunately. And then about two later came the Japanese immigrants and they came because of the political and social upheaval in Japan when the imperial rule was restored and the emperor Meija, is that how you pronounce the term? Meija, was installed on the throne. The Japanese immigrants worked in both skilled and unskilled positions and yet again a ban on nearly all Japanese immigrants was enacted through the Immigration Act of 1924. As we know further catastrophe struck the Japanese Japanese American community from 1942 to 1946 during World War II. Well over 120,000 American Japanese citizens were incarcerated in the camps because their loyalty was questioned after the bombing of Kuala Lumpur by Imperial Japan and nothing to do with them. But it was really the result of racism, certainly of war hysteria and ultimately it was a result of the failure of political leadership and this is something that came out in an inquiry that President Carter, President Jimmy Carter opened in the late 1980s and the result was that there was absolutely no reason to put our Japanese American citizens in camps but they in fact suffered a great deal. As you know the Latino community continues to struggle has been struggling, there are issues on many and now, now it's our turn. And I say our because I'm a Muslim, an American Muslim and remarked to the community in the New York metro area. Today as you know Islamophobia is at its peak and Muslim Americans both immigrants and refugees who form one of the newest communities live in a continuous state of anxiety and fear and we live in a state of anxiety and fear because there's been going violence against us. The increased emphasis on identity politics in this election cycle has been on fear in the community exponentially. We're not alone, we're not alone at all. Those who look like us, those who are mistaken for Muslims, are in the same state of fear and they include Arab Christians, the Druze community, the Yazdees, members of the Sikh community and anyone who really looks like us. Here's my version and we're going to take a quick look back into history, bear with me as we gallop, gallop through many centuries. But I thought it would be helpful to give you just a sketch of, and you'll see the arc, I hope. Islam as you know is the youngest of the three Abrahamic faiths after Judaism and Christianity and has had a difficult relationship from the onset with its oldest sibling Christianity. In the early stages, however, while it was a violent relationship that were growing up against each other and bashing each other badly, there was still respect, which might surprise you. And there's respect for several reasons. One, they were trading also when they weren't warring. They were exchanging ideas and sharing resources and skills. Often through the advent of the event in maritime trade, you know, ships in the Middle Ages underwent a remarkable expansion and improvement. So you could go long a distance, but I know this because I'm like a history walker. I read all sorts of obscure things. So ships improved and trade improved and people travel long distances and traded voraciously. So when they weren't bashing, they were trading. When they weren't bashing, they were exchanging ideas. And it was a very rich period and I'm really talking about when Venice was the centre of the world power. And that was during the Middle Ages, which is roughly the fifth to the 15th century and the Renaissance period, which is the 14th to the 17th century. However, things changed. Things changed when London took on that position of power. Britain invaded India in the 17th century, and Napoleon did the same in Egypt in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. And then began several centuries of Western colonialism through Muslim regions and Asia, every continent virtually that was into the West. The colonizers began their project of disembowelment. They were very clever. And that was their intention to really subjugate these new populations. And one of the things that they did, and I know this because my family is from India, is that they started taking apart very strategically cultural identity. Our cultures form our identity. It's the essence of us. And the British, with great care, started to chip away at that, completely demoralising the competing populations, wherever they occupied. No, also what's starting to happen is that resistance to colonial rule was beginning in earnest in India, particularly from the middle of the 19th century. There was the mutiny of 1857. And the agitation picked up from there. Many people died in the process, but the quits in the Indian movement, it's literally what it was called, the quits in the Indian movement, continued to gather momentum. It wouldn't die down, no matter how many people were killed and jailed and tortured in so many ways. And it was really in the 1940s when there was a visible shift. And why in the 1940s, may I wonder, in 1940s there was something else going on called World War II. So World War II was happening and the Western colonial powers were preoccupied with that. And at the same time they had to mine their lands, that they were occupying far, far away. So there was quite a bit of a rub. And so in the 1940s, because the colonizers were agitating, it was time to start flowing out. And I think there was fatigue from World War II. So it began the exodus by the colonizers. And that included the British, of course, but also the French, the Belgian, the Dutch, the Portuguese, just about all of them, were everywhere. And as the movement of the colonizers started, the former colonies were left with hastily drawn borders, creating haphazardly new countries, tribes were divided, the strangest geographies appeared suddenly. And we're living that blowback today. When you think about the Guardsmen, and so so many people, so just completely devastated by how these borders were drawn. So it was a very tenuous time because the populations had been subjugated, were depleted, their identities were in, it was an interesting thing. They were both proud to have pushed out the colonizers at the same time quite shattered by the whole experience, obviously. The resources of the country were greatly exhausted by centuries of Western rule. Are you still with me? No one's now to come. So I'll keep galloping through the rest of the century. We're in the 1940s anyway, so that's a big fuss. Who were installed after countries became independent, became the favorites of the former colonizers? It was easier to deal with just one person, as Masiya mentioned, and also easier to control, right? So even though they left, they still had their tentacles, the former colonies. One of the things that the dictators did is that they kept their states secular, and they did this by crashing out for conservative Muslim movements. So because they suppressed those movements, they created another problem. And what it did is it made people feel dissatisfied. In any case, dictators as dictators didn't want to do, were doing a very bad job of governing, so living conditions were really bad anyway. Then they were crushing a whole set of people because of their belief. And the dispossessed in an attempt to gain agency found a really found strength in religious purpose. So that's, there was a problem. And they began to recruit others to join their resistance movement against the dictated, right? So it was an action-reaction. And they also started to focus, this is the ultra-conservatives, started to focus on shaping those they recruited into a certain kind of cultural identity. More complications arose as the race for control and influence of oil began after it was discovered in the Arab regions, and that would be in the late 1930s, around course, by the Arab-American oil company and others. And Lord Mithold, we had this new phenomenon, the Metro-Monarchy, and that included Saudi Arabia, I think included, you know, it included the Gulf States. And what happened there is that the Saudis who, the Saudi monarchy, the embedments before the British put them on the throne because they supported the British, they got payback for doing that and they got the throne. So they didn't have a very strong base, popular base. So they went to this fury preacher on the fringes of Saudi society, nobody really paid that much attention to, and said, well, make your deal. You support us and have your constituents sort of come into the fold and not give us any trouble. So that was after Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of Bahá'u'lláh. So, yeah, so another layer, another complexity. And he said, we're building to a perfect story. So, Bahá'u'lláh became the ideology of choice because the Al-Sa'oum family, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia needed to support and so it was a practical decision. And they then, because they had all this new money from oil wealth, suddenly acquired these kind of global ambition. They wanted to do stuff in the world, they wanted to tap more power in front and so on. So they started to export Bahá'u'lláh into Muslim regions. So this, and they had a lot of money to back it up. So Bahá'u'lláh started to go out into Muslim regions, so Central Asia, Central Asia was really very much in alignment with Sufism, which is the mystical island of Islam. And now, of course, you know, it's a quite different story. And also I would say in South Asia, the majority of the population was really more inclined towards Sufism than anything else at all. This is true for large swaths of Southeast Asia. Imagine the map and the development of the planned expansion of Islam as it traveled out on those improved ships in East to its Southeast and East Asia. So we have the spread of Bahá'u'lláh in the meantime. The former colonial powers, the U.S., were looking the other way as Bahá'u'lláh was being exported because it was being into the oil. So we weren't very good at taking any notice of that, newer is going on, but we just looked the other way. And so a change started to happen in different Muslim regions where Bahá'u'lláh was going out. And I know this personally because my mom's family is from North of Kabul from Afghanistan and my dad's family but I lived in India for a few short years as a kid. So the kind of Islam that was practiced were Sufis, our community Sufis, was a very gentle Islam, very inclusive and greatly music loving and fun loving. But then came Bahá'u'lláhism with all ten feet. And I've watched it change because it was religion, shaming all of us. Identity, shaming all of us were not Arabs, right? Because Islam actually was born in Kandari, even in Venezuela. So suddenly we were made to feel really, really bad about how we were practicing Islam and what our identity was. So the Bahá'u'lláhs wanted to Arabize us more. We apparently weren't pronouncing things right. We're more Indo-Version in South Asia in terms of pronunciation and we can't get those deep cut holes there. Those of you who speak Arabic can. We've got a soft palate. I can't get down there but there's some letters we just could do it. So we were told we were doing it wrong and we, you know, and so on. So this whole process of going after our identity became a huge deal, is a huge deal today. And I saw my cousins, my girl cousin, suddenly wrapping the job really, really tightly in a way that is not common in South Asia or Southeast Asia. It was much more the Arab style because they wanted to do the right thing. In the meantime, the western part was still looking the other way, not saying anything. And I have to say this policy has really, really destabilized almost single-handedly the Muslim regions. At the same time another thing was going on which was Shi'a and Sunni, you know, there was that power, the power struggle that continues today. The Sunni and the Shi'as are the equivalent of the Catholics and Protestants. It really was nothing more than a political split because the Prophet Muhammad never designated an heir and upon his death started a whole fight between, you know, people in the south and so on. And so we have Shi'a and Sunnis and the Shi'as are a minority. The Sunni is the larger population. So that's been very well. And at the same time there were a couple of other things. I won't dwell on it too much, but I will say that at the same time Russia and the U.S. were fighting for their power, their influence, so proxy wars were being fought in Afghanistan and so on. And the rural poor, these men from the inner parts of Afghanistan were recruited to be fighters, to fight the Russians to get them out, right? And you may remember that because Reagan was in power at that time and everybody, the news cycle and government officials were talking about the heroic which I mean, the fighters, and the rural poor. They were trained by us, they were highly weaponized and they did the job, they got the Russians out and we said thank you very much and we, you know, I'm just spending a lot of money and time training and so on. The project was done and we, instead of staying and doing something after military action, we pulled away and we didn't do what we should have done which is to actually help with social development, build hospitals, rebuild roads and so on and help the economy there. So that created another problem. Here you have these very highly trained, weaponized guys who suddenly didn't know what to do with themselves. They became the mercenaries and they are the ones that are hardly there, very experienced fighters and they're the ones that the petrol monarchies will call on to go and do all the heavy lifting, the heavy jobs, I mean, they're in Syria, they're all over, they're all over because that saves the, you know, some of the Arab states, the petrol monarchies especially and others, us as well, from committing our military on the ground. So it's a lot, it's a big, big mess and the reason I'm telling you this is that I'm just building a whole picture of you just to tell you why we're in this state. At the same time, right, we have the internet that came in, into allies and in ladies and was it the ladies? I think it was the ladies. And also Al-Jazeera came into Arab regions because the BBC shut down its Arabic-speaking program and so the head of Qatar put some money together and he launched Jazeera and I think this must have been in the mid-90s and that really was a very important moment in the Arab regions because until then remember the dictators that we, you know, were buddies with, they had state TV and they kept building controlled information so Arab societies only really had that source of radio too of course but that was primarily it until Jazeera came along and Jazeera opened a whole other perspective. Very, very interesting development and the internet was opening up so suddenly people in Arab regions have another view of the world, you know. So this is, I'm going to stop you on the political side of things but I just wanted to give you to summarize, you know, up until today. So what's interesting though is in all of the political machinations one of the things that is like a through line is this strategy of pulling down, pulling apart cultural identity and rebuilding it in the way in which a particular ideological movement or political movement wants it to be to reflect their values. So this brings up another point which is the representation of Muslim identity. The colonialists have all along and actually Andrea and I talked about this a little bit represented the East as uncivilized, as exotic, as backward, as unreliable, untrustworthy, you know, shifting and potentially dangerous. And one of the people who wrote a breakthrough book about this is the thinker and author, Ahmed Said. His book Orientalism really confirms exactly what I just said in his own words that Arabs were represented by Europeans as extremely different and inferior and therefore in need of the West's rescue. And that became the justification actually for a lot of the colonialists to go and colonize and that's what they pivoted on. And this representation of the Arabs dates back and the East, other parts of the East, dates back to the Age of Enlightenment, the 18th century. And I said it became the rationale to go into these regions and take over. But this distortion, this perception continues today and has become the prevailing perception and it's dangerous as it supports othering which is really dehumanizing. And this is the point is that somebody said to me once, you know, there's a friend talking about politics and in that context, I should give you the context that you don't really come. You're not human enough is what he said actually. So the question that many of us are asking is, now, where people in the colorful states, your artists and theater makers, my colleagues are here, is what response can artists make through their art and such a frauds around a certain time? And how can it help us? Well, actually, it can help us a lot because what artists do is they serve as our witness, as our eyes, as our ears, and our critical thinkers. And they do this for some of the most pressing issues of the day, of the era. In effect, I feel that artists and makers are our first responders. They take on, for communities, they take on issues they think them through. On other hand, they sift to the essence and they present them so we can hear, see and feel them in diverse ways. And this can provoke us to discover a new, reflect on long-held positions and awaken our common humanity, one hopes. So, I think this is also a way to invite us to consider what we will do about an issue. It's not just communicating the issue, but it puts us on point to say, okay, we've given this to you, you're thinking about it, you've learned something more, what are you going to do? So, in that way, it can inspire us to act. It puts us always in large and help us to be on the right side of history and do our part to help create a more hopeful future. I'm going to shift a little bit and talk about my current birch, which is at the DARS II Foundation for Islamic Art, and I take care of the Building Bridges program, as Andrea said. And I have to tell you that our days are spent in the Building Bridges program. We are yet to the ground to learn what artists and producers and presenters are thinking and doing. And I'm happy to say that the good news is that there's a groundswell of activity, of artistic activity. There's a great deal of movement much more than ever before. I think that what happens in tough times is that it shakes us up so much that we get out of our everyday clones and think about what more we could be doing because one feels helpless. It's like being in a centrifuge, spinning at a really high speed. We've got the 24-hour news cycle, all of that's going on. So, in fact, there's a lot of very, very exciting creative activity going on. And one of them, I'm going to give you a couple of examples. You know about them, I think. One of them, in theater, in particular, since you're on theater makers, is a commission that Ping Chang and the company were long known for documentary theater was recently commissioned to do. And it's a work that LaGuardia Community College, which is part of the City University of New York, commissioned Ping Chang to do. And that was to create a work based on real stories of New York-based Muslim immigrant college students. The students whose stories are featured are also on stage as the performers, which is really terrific. You get a real, real feel. The New York Times reviewer states that it is an exercise in empathy this work, a lesson in human understanding, and it draws on real lives. So it's really moving. And the other example I want to give you is the work that Andrea leaves at Art to Action. And she's doing some fascinating work with the military and with war veterans, which is so applying theater to help them with their mental health issues. They come back shattered. They come back with brain injuries. They come back with psychological, obviously, deep psychological issues like PTSD and other things. And she's working very closely with Intampa, which has a very large veterans community to use theater to help them. So it's very exciting work. And we're thrilled to support it. One of the things, one of the last things I want to say is that... I got a lock in my shoe, by the way. But a lot of you know Andrea, so I'm not going to go further. You can also have a chance to talk to her. But I'll say in closing that it's been and continues to be really inspiring to discover the fresh ideas and really exciting voices that are emerging in theater within the central administration in the Middle Eastern communities and in the diaspora. It's hard to keep up, in fact. It's hard to read scripts. It's hard to...all of them, that is. It's hard to go to every single performance. But there is a... Lots is fluctuating. And there's a buzz around the work. The energy is powerful and it's infectious and ever so hopeful. So, as Dean of Edela, who is half Palestinian and half Italian, I think he's a comedian and a social commentator who said recently to me, he said, you know, they don't work all activists. Every single one of us in our own capacity. And we're committed to helping our communities to bridge divides, our communities and the border, the Muslim community. So, he said that I should march on. And I would have to say, thank you for all that you do, all of you, every single one. You march on. Thank you, Zaba. Please give her one more. Now she was going to do that. I didn't know you were going to talk to her. I'm going to invite up our respondents. First, I'd like to invite Emilia Katchapiro to join the table here. And Dr. Michael Malak-Najjar from the University of Oregon. And everyone, see, you almost made me... from both bread productions. Please come up there. Give them a warm welcome as they take off this conversation for us so we can then we can have a dialogue together which will be co-facilitated by being an atrogyne from Pangeo Theater. I just want to lift up and acknowledge that this is the first time where the two pre-conference cohort groups are coming together. The Central and West Asian Middle Eastern American Artists Covert and Beyond Orientalism Covert and all of you who came today. And it is deeply significant to me, actually, that Beyond Orientalism chose that as its title, that movement, that work that TCG is doing. With the history of the theory of Orientalism being written by a Palestinian Edward Saidou. And it seems like a perfect way in a sense to begin our conversations, to begin our connections and our building from everything that Zeba shared with us to this conversation. So I'll actually invite Amelia up to the mic first to offer the first response. And then we can just go down the line. So please welcome Amelia Katchapura from the studio. Thank you, Zeba. There are so many triggers and things going on in my mind and probably in all of your minds actually right now. It is absolutely fitting the Beyond Orientalism title. There are so many parallels in our work, in our communities, in the way that our people have been impacted by racism and colonialism. I think that we are in such a common moment of time now where we are reclaiming our history and really self-defining who we are. The other night when I was infilling in a different Beyond Orientalism event, I said that there's this Buddhist saying and it's if you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, travel together. And so I thought about that so much during your keynote and in this gathering, incoming here today and thinking that the only way that any of us are going to get where we need to go is by traveling together. That's allies, that's the API community, that's the API community. Obviously those are not all monoliths, right? I really usually self-identify frankly as Filipino rather than putting on the API app, which I will, but I believe that Filipino culture is distinctly different from many of the other cultures. In some ways we are really closely aligned with the Latinx community because of the Catholicism and because of that they came in, I think you talked about just how the oppressor comes in and destroys. They came in and they destroyed the culture, the artifacts, textiles, the language, the alphabet and the alphabet was really only reclaimed within the last 40 years and that colonialism happened long, long ago. So at this moment of reclaiming I think who we are and redefining it. When I was at a meeting at the LARP that Malik was kind of part of organizing that was I guess the precursor to a little bit of this event here, it really struck me also the parallels between the movement that you were all going through and the movement that started I guess in the like 60s and 70s, you know, where it really was happening because there was an artistic bubbling up or it's actually more than that. It was the artists who came together with the activists and artists and activists were actually all the same. That again in Billy the other night I was saying that there would be like I know the student strike at San Francisco State and I was still in high school but I ran across the park a lot so I could be part of that. Pretend I wasn't in college but it was weaving together poetry readings and music and dance and then you would go and protest. You know that and in our communities I think if we go back to any of our communities in the home country art is not over there at life over here, art and life are woven together and I think that's the other thing that we need to hold and think about is it's intrinsic to our culture and our form of movement and the way that we can possibly change so we need to embrace our artists very closely. Just really quickly because I don't want to steal time from all the other folks too just with the beyond Orientalism movement because not all of you may know what that is there have been a lot of cases of yellow face, brown face and white blushing in the theater community and then also in film and media and there was a moment in time where I think a lot of it was a critical moment for a lot of people within the API community said just enough, enough yet another thing just enough and there was a critical mass of people so it's not actually only TCG theater communications group but we have four partners the Asian American Arts Alliance Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and then also APAC I'm going to forget the acronym but it's APAC it is all of the artists and actors and they do an incredible survey on casting and the low numbers of API actually not just API but people of color low numbers in theaters so look at the website but we all came together and really sense that there is a moment in time now where there is critical discourse it's in our face all the time and there is a national movement so there was a forum that started in New York where we had a panel conversation it wasn't just the community talking to ourselves but we had artistic directors and allies and other people and educators in this conversation the first regional forum was just in Philly the other night literally like Monday jeez and then the next one is going to be in the Twin Cities October 17 and then it's going to be Chicago LA is running one Boston Seattle has had ongoing work throughout so it is a way of reclaiming our name, our space our culture and uplifting the work that we're doing so I'll stop there, thank you I usually don't need them but I guess this is for the next so I'm Evan Occikan, I'm the director of new plays and marketing at Golden Thread Productions where based in San Francisco we are the country's first theater company focused on the movies we're celebrating our 20th anniversary this year which is pretty great it's kind of actually incredible if you think about it and Taranajaki Azarian couldn't be here she's a rehearsal or artistic director really came up with the identifying the Middle Eastern theater movement as this umbrella term to bring together these very very different cultures and I think Emilia sort of what you're saying about Filipino versus Japanese versus API is very much alive in our community as well when I first got involved with the story of my first meeting with Taranajaki after being in San Francisco for four or five years and refusing to meet with her because I did not want to be boxed in she finally showed up at the magic theater where I was working everybody says I have to meet you we have to meet so I did as one does and as the most angry young man I sort of was over it before it even started and I said I think the next thing I said to her she doesn't remember this which I think tells you a lot about her I said I don't care about Middle Eastern theater I only care about good theater and her response to my surprise was well at least we agree on one thing which really stuck with me that I had internalized this idea that community theater that something that would be named Middle Eastern and that it couldn't be as professional it couldn't be as good I couldn't get to where I wanted to get to as an artist if I actually claimed that part of my identity that's some internalization right there and you know I'm seeing a lot of heads nodding you know what I'm talking about I think this is the right audience so Zayla first of all I want to thank Doris Duke Foundation for all of this and also for the support you've shown it's incredible that there is this wing of foundation that is really focused on this work it feels it's such a gift and because it's not just about being seen as artists it's not just being seen by audiences it's being seen by funders as worthy and as something that is important is a big thing and I think so I really want to say thank you um the thing from your comments that really stuck up to me was this idea of immigrant communities and that that's something that can bring us together um because when I think for myself I've been working professionally now for um 15 years the people I look to as I'm building this career are Chi there's Mona Chen, Mayor Drolis these are all artists of Asian descent so the fights that they've fought or are still fighting let's be honest are the fights I'm fighting the details might be slightly different but they are the people that's the Mona is the person I call when I'm trying to cast something and there's a problem and some artistic director is trying to get me to cast something other way and I really feel like it's you know she's the person that I lean on to say hey can you help me out um so I think that overlapping narrative both for representation but in terms of the kind of you know work we have to do out there is incredibly important and I think we can find that we're fighting a lot of the same fights and thus we can actually help each other um and how do we go through this so that these umbrellas that are not flattening our communities but actually raising each of the specific communities and also helping the other community come up as your own community is coming up so that is the question I have for this week very much um the two questions that you posed that um really stuck with me was and this might be my interpretation of what you said but who owns the identity who owns the Muslim identity for a long time I didn't tell people I was Muslim because I didn't think I was Muslim enough I'm Turkish I'm queer I'm from a very secular family uh my grandmother is very very much you know traditionally Muslim has gone to Hajj prays five times a day my mom will touch a hijab if you know you forced her to she very much brought her family to have the right to not wear it was the first person in her whole knowledge woman to go to middle school because she refused to not go so that's sort of my background and um I have a lot of questions about so I now I actually stand up here and I say I'm Muslim and not to say that I practice every day not to say but this is what a Muslim looks like this is what a Muslim sounds like and any Muslim narrative that doesn't include people that are like me are not of interest to me um I Muslim plays Muslim stories must have multiple views we must we cannot take singular narratives and call them Muslim call them Middle Eastern call them Asian the idea that there must be many and that we need to create space for that is really important and in terms of the identity for me is there's also a question of West and East because I feel like I'm spending a lot of time talking to other Muslims or Middle Easterners about who I am and trying to prove that I am enough and then I'm also talking to a lot of non-Muslims and non-Middle Easterners about who I am and that I am enough which is a bit of an hypocrisy because the term Middle East is in itself very problematic if you think about it like our way of claiming the term because it takes England as the center of the world as far as I'm concerned they're the Midwest so there you go you know and then the last thing I was going to say is what art can I make that was that thought like a real important question what it is that I can do to help or to expand and for me representation is really important but it can be a real trap when we are forced into a place where we must only show good characters because as a queer Muslim man I have many many I have questions feelings, complicated things I think about Islam and some of the cultural cultural things that are out there which is another part of the claiming of I'm a Muslim I think that helps but also for me it's not about good or bad it's about flawed and complex I want to continue to create work and I think we can help each other view this and hold each other accountable where the central Muslim character might get to be as flawed and complex and still likeable as a straight white man has been for a hundred years on our stages and I think that's what I can do I'm linked to activism I was another kaito that I kept thinking that it was lesser if you were an activist artist and now I feel like this is the activism I can do and I want to sort of say I hope that we can help each other do it let's make some characters and stories that are flawed and difficult and complex and don't fit into boxes I think that's to me the most important thing so thank you hello thank you so much for letting me be a part of this amazing panel I'm very honored, thank you so much for letting me share my thoughts with you and to be with you today my name is Malik Najjar I go by Michael Malik Najjar because somewhere along the line my parents thought it would be safe to give me a regular name so but somewhere along the line I found my birth certificate and I was like wow okay who's this guy and that led me down the rabbit hole which is the rabbit hole of identity and the way that we identify ourselves and as I did that with time growing up I realized I'm a son of immigrants my grandfather came in 1907 with his wife she died his wife died unfortunately and he went back remarried, had my father and then my father came so this immigrant narrative has been very much a part of my life and having a name like Malik Jamil I know what it's like to have that name and then to know how frustrating it is to have this birtherism in our nation that scolds us for being different you're not allowed to have a name like Barak you're always said you must be born somewhere else you can't be an American with a name like that and so that's a very frustrating experience and I want to say thank you so much You touch upon so many important issues and of course we all give thanks to the late Edward Tsai great scholar who let us all down a very important path what happened to the Japanese was a result of racism war hysteria and a failure of political leadership and I feel that that's exactly where we are right now and that is a very frightening place to be I'm of Drew's heritage my family has been Drew's for as far back as I can remember and so this hysteria is engulfing us and I'm grateful that you mentioned the different communities like the Yazidis and the Druze and the Christians and the amazing quilt of humanity that makes up the Middle East and Asia I think that it's unfortunate that our nation is not wiser and more intelligent about that part of the world I hope over time we can educate my students are hungry for this knowledge every time I teach these classes so I think that the hunger is there it's upon all of us to educate the next generation that way to reach out to them because they want to know I think it's a mistake to think that they don't another thing that you talked about was this continuous state of anxiety and fear another thing that especially Muslim Americans are facing right now with so many Americans African Americans are facing right now we're in a very precarious state and I believe we're at a tipping point and that if we go in one direction we may very well fall into the abyss of this continuous state of anxiety and fear as the norm not the exception and I fear that I think that we need to be very careful that that does not occur and the idea that our cultures form our identities I really appreciate that you said that because we are so much beholden to all of those who came before us and also to all of the multiplicity of identities that we carry with us and Evan you mentioned that all of these incredible ideas that we are complex multi-dimensional and so I'll add one more thing Evan to your list of what I want to see on stage is multi-dimensional characters too often we have the cardboard cut out the two-dimensional one-dimensional character that appears on our stages and all of you who are playwrights and artists I'm just going to beg you to always look for the dimension in all of the characters in your plays no matter who they are and again not just writing good characters real three-dimensional characters that have feelings and thoughts no matter from whence they are background that's very important and it's important for us to not just take the easy way out I thank you also for talking about the perversion of Islam and what's happened to this amazing faith and how it's been twisted in so many ways and denigrated and how we've unfortunately allowed that to occur both overseas and here and that's something we all have to fight against and not just think that that is the norm we've seen it happen with so many so many groups before us and we need to fight that now and I appreciate the solidarity of being in a room with all of you because the Asian-American community especially has fought for so long against so many of the injustices that have occurred it's truly horrific how the Asian-American community has been treated in this country the history is quite fraught with so many problems the African-American community is facing them as well they have and they are it's not like it ever stopped or it just began and I also say that there's so many leading lights is Tim Dang here Dang I just wanted to say you're a leading light of this community you're a leading light of our theater and I remember looking to you as somebody as a theater student saying I want to be that person because you show this away to how we can bring our identity and our theater together in a very meaningful manner and so I think we're very grateful to you and to all of the scholars and artists in this community that have fought so hard to create such lovely work over the years so I guess lastly one thing that I would like to leave us with are these amazing thoughts that you led us the idea of provoking us to discover a new, our identities a new the world a new to rethink our health positions to awaken our humanity to inspire us to act and create a more hopeful future all of these provocations that you've given us today that we can all take with us and think deeply about in the future especially in this very broad political time so thank you so much thank you for allowing me to be a part of this panel with all of you and thank you to this amazing conference for allowing us to be a part of this pre-conference work we're grateful, thank you thank you to our respondents just checking that this might work we're going to now open up a conversation I'd like to invite Hinen and Trajan to introduce herself while I give this mic to their panelists Hello my name is Meenana Trajan I'm from Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis and thank you for being here and thank you so much for your amazing complex words I'm just completely lost in admiration of all of your words I mean I feel like it's not only in this country but it's everywhere in Islamophobia it's taking us to the Stranglehold I know that coming from India and seeing the enormous amount of anti-Muslim what we see there is just frightening for me because it's just at every level and now artists are being completely under the Stranglehold they're being arrested because they're being killed academic books are being changed books are being rewritten right now as we speak and Hindutva, the Hindu fundamentalist government right now in India so it's really wonderful to hear these words and figure out how we as together can actually counter some of these narratives that exist so thank you we should open it up for questions yes we're going to switch mics because this one is actually open there we go and so yes we are now opening the floor to questions responses, reflections, comments and to what Mina just said it's very significant to me that we are having this conversation in October we as a nation have a very very important decision to make in a few weeks really and the stakes of what Zabel was talking about the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act for example when we have a presidential candidate talking about a whole another exclusion act honestly so this is a critical time it's an important moment we're happy to be here in Oregon to have this conversation not only with guests from around the nation but with folks who live here and are going to vote here and we're all going to go home and hopefully vote yes we're all going to vote we're all going to vote please vote so this is an extraordinary opportunity for the next half hour to ask some hard questions and reflect on what you've heard so we're going to share the mic as much as we can it is limited feel free to stand as you are able and talk loudly and or if you need the mic please move forward if you are able okay we're going to try to use the mic how about I ask for recording purposes if you are able to come forward so that you actually can reach the microphone to ask questions or share comments that would be lovely and we have someone to kick it off yes hi my name is Milya Ayash I'm an actor and a writer from Babe Lebanon I just wanted to say thank you so much Sable for mentioning that Islam is one of the Abrahamic religions because I read online all the time it's a really bad habit but I read the comment sections of YouTube videos and the word for God in Arabic is Allah and this is really so thank you for mentioning that it's an Abrahamic religion and it's really confusing when people think that Allah is just a different God so Allah so yeah that my question to you is why you didn't mention 9-11 as a further phase in radicalization in America because I don't remember the effect of Wahhabi Islam like you do but I remember moving to Lebanon back in 90 I moved in 96 and from America I remember after 2011 that's when the women started wearing more hijabs and I just wanted to hear about that a little more it's a really good question you're absolutely right but I really wanted to focus on the historical because we know 9-11 however you're absolutely right that there has been a shift in terms of identity in terms of within the Muslim community I know somebody for instance who wears the hijab she teaches at the Pride Institute wears it as a political statement she's not religious at all but she is asserting her identity, her Muslim identity what you were talking about by making a point to wear the hijab so I think that in times of in front of times I think that we tend to react in different ways and one of the ways in the Muslim community is we're pulling together, we view it under attack our identity is under attack we are viewed as terrorists we we are told that Islam is a terrorist religion a terrorist philosophy and that we're born to kill so some of the things that I'm seeing amongst the teenagers and 20 something is that they're putting on the hijab a garment of war you know not that they're going to do anything but it's an assertion of identity yes I am I am the M word so yes 9-11 has had a huge effect but it's not just 9-11 it's so much more it's when there are populations that have been ignored that have been created in justice when there is no hope we are when there is exploitation of feeling that one is being exploited it creates a lot of unhappiness and the result is we're going to have a reaction onto that if you look at the white services movement all over the world they have grown exponentially in the last 5-6 years I read one of the figures I think was 600% so again they feel left behind they feel ignored they feel ridiculed and that's why they're standing behind Trump because it's going to make America great again and at the same time you've got different communities you've got Muslim communities young women who are putting on their jobs again as a defined gesture and I should say another thing you're in the audience thank you for being here it's a personal choice to cover and there are different reasons for doing this in the community we'll take another response from the panel and I would just invite anyone else who might have a question or comment to come forward if you're able or signal if you would like to speak go ahead at the risk of sounding it's can be frustrating sometimes actually in all the audience when I got the invitation it defined our Central and West Asian Middle Eastern Muslim everyone who has been impacted by Islamophobia that was what the invitation was which I think is very important in certain ways but it actually made me go because sometimes I feel like we define ourselves in response to what other people are doing to us and that is very important I think Andrea you said this thing you've been using this term both and in our sessions earlier where it's not this or that right so we need to be angry we need to be fighting because there are people at risk but then how do we create spaces where we don't talk about September 11 you know what I mean I don't actually have to talk about that where I don't have to talk about Islamophobia I can actually talk about what I want and what I need and what my art is like and how we create spaces for each other in this very diverse room what it feels like when this happens a lot with a lot of artists of color where I will get together with a bunch of artists of color and talk about white people and white art whereas I could actually learn so much more from just listening to them talk about their art and their needs and their works and I think as we're fighting as we're making these stands and I think the casting beyond Orientalism as we're doing these how are we also still continuing to have conversations and supporting our own wants and needs because that's really important thank you just really turn to other folks and that you've been listening so yes please come on come forward I'm Christina Wong I'm doing this show called the Longstreet Journal I have a can of worms question still formulating my head so there's a play called Disgrace is he here? I can't wait to talk about this so the question is I guess it was I don't know your name when you were talking about as a queer Muslim you're not seeing your narrative and I remember watching that play in the audience mostly white people and going through so many other I know there are other Muslim plays and there's I guess in ways my opinion when I watched it I was like there's a lot of things wrong with this play at least if it is this Pulitzer Prize winning play it's like one of the only narratives that is being presented in major regional theaters at the same time you know there's a lot of dialogue and maybe that's a great art piece we're sitting there talking about it with people I was mostly upset so I guess I was interested in what you thought of that play and anything else that brings up can we make this open for anybody to respond to that panelist as well well before I get to this let me just say I think that one of the things I appreciate about what's happening in contemporary theater today is not relying on traditional linear structure that must have us have an antagonist and a protagonist because inevitably someone has to be the antagonist and somebody has to be the bad guy or the bad woman and so Disgrace sets up that kind of paradigm where inevitably through rising action we're going to have a climactic event where somebody has to be beaten shot, killed, blown up, etc and so one of the powerful things about for instance solo performance I want to have a shout out to our Middle Eastern American and Asian American solo performers who don't rely on that structure who tell stories of their own but they're not beholden to having to be like a play like Boy Check having a man murder a woman on stage or other plays where somebody has to shoot somebody at the end in order to get the climactic event I just appreciate the fact that artists are finding new ways to tell stories and not relying on those structures that force those kinds of plays to come because people who read plays don't always revert to choosing those plays because they're so dramatic, they're so rich yes they are in many ways but they will ultimately have to read towards something like what occurs and the problem I have with that of course is why is it that the one South Asian character in the room has to after being pushed far enough act out and violently attack a non South Asian character which I will say and I have this critique for other places as well it's unfortunate that that trope keeps repeating itself especially with Muslim characters on stage inevitably you push them too far they're going to do something wild and crazy and it's going to lead to terrible consequences yesterday the term theater of terrorism came up and it's that sense of the theater of terrorism relying on terrorism that comes up over and over again because it's a dangerous way to look at the world that we must end up having an antagonist that does something violent and sadly that antagonist ends up normally sadly being a Muslim a South Asian an Arab, you name it, a Latino an African American that's not good enough anymore I think we need to break that mold and move on that we don't need anymore in our theaters I totally agree and hear what you're saying I think though if you pull the lens back what we're looking at is a symptom of structural racism that we can only have a certain kind of story on stage and yes a certain kind of selective story that is on stage when we get to a point where there's going to be equal stories out there to the number of stories about straight white men or families within the white community then we will have some kind of shift but this is exactly the structural racism that we need to combat so everyone out there do your anti-racist work and I think it's really important that actors are activists I hear what you're saying and that artists need to do their work but my point of view is that it is your and our responsibility as people of color to lift the load that maybe not everybody else is going to lift that if we see the challenge of the problem we have to pick it up and change it nobody's going to do that for us we don't have the luxury to wait for somebody else to change things for us we have a response from the other yeah I just want to agree with everything that I'm hearing and add that oh I'm a PhD candidate in the theater at Oregon and I please are not just an autonomous thing that you put on your shelf there are representation of a moment in history and of our culture and they become relics of those things and when we observe a pattern of acceptable villains and a trend in an acceptable villain what we are also observing is something that is accepted by society and when those representations are then rewarded and awarded that is an incredible it's a profound aggression against the people who identify with those communities yes that's actually kind of an interesting thing because for me in terms of that repeated narrative in terms of to answer that question really quickly I do see myself in this grace I actually recognize myself in certain ways in that lead character my problem with this grace amongst many things is that it's a bunch of hateful people doing horrible things on stage every single person in that play behaves horribly and all we talk about is the fact that a Muslim man hit a white woman so I think that's interesting that it is the most produced play in the country why is it that way that is being produced over and over again I think this is the systemic racism you're talking about as if it's the only acceptable one as far as I know no Muslim has ever directed this grace it's kind of the same to me that I have never been asked I don't know if I would but the fact that I'm not on the list to direct that play and other than the support is production and she's the only person of color I know who's directed that play yet Joe Hajj did it I didn't know it was Joe Hajj I don't think so I think it was the king brother of the senior so it's like that's sort of what it feels like I think there are more questions about that whole process that is not actually about what the adaptor wrote that I think we should keep on the table we have another question from the audience which may continue this conversation or we should do hi my name is Rose Kim I'm a university student I'm 21 and I'm so really young all the time it's funny I was recently doing a school production it's a war play and it's a cast of white men and it was really hard for me the whole process of being involved in the production where I had so many problems whether it was homophobia or even homophobia in the very play that tried to be a voice for it it seemed like but it really just seemed like I want to play to invite people to empathize with the white men again and women in queers and Muslims being the butt being like yeah it's just the juiced up moments are the violent misogynistic moments so that the playwright can shove in some words of ideology and so as a student who's still building her career negotiating a lot of authoritative power as someone who doesn't have much as a student or feels like anyway even though I know I have it's a negotiation but for people that might be in my situation or have been there or are established career people and what advice do you have for someone navigating the structure of the structure of theater making I think thank you for just really being very vulnerable in a public space and so that's a very great thing to do incredibly great thing to do so thank you for that I think what you're looking for is maybe here now you know it is coming and finding people that are maybe in your peer group and then also maybe a generation or two after you and asking these questions what do you know now that you wish you knew when I was when you were 21 you know so it's coming to things like this it's talking it's interacting it's finding that sense of community and our communities are not perfect at all and there's a variety of points of view in our communities but nonetheless there's a baseline of experience at the short and in the jargon that won't have to explain yourself over and over again so thank you I just wanted to add being at the university myself and the theater department you know I think that it's you're a student there and you have every right to voice your concerns to the professors there and to the administration and say I have problems with this play or I have problems with this character and ultimately it's a choice you know you don't have to take that goal and maybe you shouldn't if you feel it's in some way going to violate your sense of the world you know because like I I like them as people and I work with them you know I know it sounds like you know they never mean to you know they mean because it's highlighted so absolutely and I'm sure they don't think they're doing something wrong but maybe they need to have somebody from not their community stand up and say I don't feel this place in the best interest of we as students or my community and I just feel I need to say that and that's important we need to stand up and say those things I was cast in a lot of roles that I found questionable when I was an undergrad and I wish I did that so I'll just encourage you to have that agency stand up and say I just don't believe this is the best choice I'm also going to respond to that and I might end up as a school right now and we're dealing with a lot of these conversations and one of the things I think that is really important is that we have to start talking with higher education or the education unit as a whole they are training our artists of the future and we need to be having this conversation we need to be holding them accountable because they're students who are paying tuition money we're spending three to four years in very violent situations because of this so as much as it's so fantastic that we're having this conversation in the industry we need to look to the places that many of these students are getting harmed and leaving this industry so I do think that that is a component that I think we need to start considering of talking to that educational aspects they are their future that means and it's also I would say difficult many for many students to compromise their three to four years in an institution by standing up so I think we need to support we need the support of the community we need the support of those who are actually working in the industry to come in and say this is not going to stand in the real world so you can't be educating that so I hear you we need that help I've been standing up in my institution and it has been a long difficult journey through them but they've listened they've respected but I've also brought a lot of outsiders in to be able to help in that conversation so know that you're supported and that there are people here who will help you if anything I will come talk to you but it's not acceptable and it should always be the students who have to be able to say something because we're there to be educated they are there to educate us I'm going to piggyback on what everyone else said so my name is Bee and I just hosted Beyond Orientalism the Philadelphia Forum what's your name? Rose and you go to school here where do you go to school? you don't want to say but what I will say it's easy for not easy but all of us are giving you really good advice even further find the ally in the room that you trust that you can talk to one on one and talk privately to that person about your concerns first sometimes it's really scary to be in the rehearsal room and be the only person of color and a female and feel like if you say something you're not going to get passed ever again I've been there I'm still there sometimes so find that person that you trust, that teacher that you trust and really put together a list a careful list of the concerns that you have in the script, exactly those moments that are problematic and be able to articulate why and have it not be something that comes from just pure emotion but you can actually say for these political and social reasons this is problematic for this production which has to do with being associated for it and as the director and it's interesting because for the whole process the writer, the playwright and the director wanted to do was do a take on Brex model book for the whole production and so I've been a part of a very extensive notation process where I've articulated in essays about how the play as I felt it was not inviting the audience to criticize the actions of the men rather but empathize with the men and there was still so little being done and in the end any minute that I squeezed some of that out into the space really and physically you know my peers would ostracize me oh it's so difficult here's my suggestion find an Asian student union on your campus beyond that see who is at the city or in a major city or state level if there is an Asian advocacy board for instance in Philadelphia we have Governor Wolfe's advisory panel on Asian-American Pacific Islander broader Asian affairs we have an actual committee that was started because people started sending him letters so that's something you can do because if you're not being heard in the room find a way to amplify it through other Asian affinity organizations so that's what I'll say about that if you want to reach out to me again my name's Bea you'll see me for the next day and I'm out for it day and morning Amelia Katchapero has been a great friend and mentor at TCG we have just a few more minutes together so I want to make sure that the people who've come forward to speak to you and we'll be wrapping up soon I have a kind of like an inverse question of this I have a play, a three person play in which an American goes to a Voterani village and he challenges the culture and he unwittingly reaches a series of events that ends in violence and what I found interesting is like the critics' response to that was so negative about an American being portrayed negatively like the pushback was that Americans don't act like that overseas an American would never be that ignorant an American's a man who's traveled the world wouldn't have a closed world view and so it was one of those so I guess when we talk about how Middle Easterners are being pigeonholed in a sense on stage the Middle Eastern artists representing the white men on stage and when we don't put them in a flatter like what is our responsibility and what is the provocation of that conversation and how I just wanted to get your thoughts on that anybody on the panel want to respond? I don't know if this is answering your question but the thing that there is a big problem with criticism in this country as in there's a real lack of diversity in critical circles which is something that they're working on and trying to move but not fast enough so although they carry a lot of power I guess that has landed me in a place where I don't care what they say I mean I've been called the last show that Golden Thread, I directed for Golden Thread set in Afghanistan we were they said that we were taking advantage of the pain of the Afghan people and the person who said it was a straight white man as a critic and I was like who the hell are you to tell me you know but you know he said that we figured it out it was fine you know it's I guess it's about which fights are you willing to fight and that's becoming a fight that I'm just not willing to fight and I just want to say Rose and to piggyback that I'm so sorry that happened to you if you didn't gather it's happened to almost all of us you are all alone and I think you should try to find ways to fight it but if it turns out that you don't want to that's okay too you know what I mean I really believe in activism and in fighting these things fighting the fights that you can win is really important and it's up to you and I think you should find all the resources there are incredible people here who can guide you and give you the courage and build you up but I just feel so much it feels so sometimes just such pressure on young people of color to fight these fights you know and that's hard and I just want to say I see you, I am so sorry that happened and it's really hard and use all the resources that are in this room to feel better and then fight it if you want to that's how I feel so I just want to say one more question and then I'm going to ask if it's appropriate Zaba to have the last opportunity to speak after this question I really just wanted to thank all the panelists here today and the speakers and specifically what you said earlier Rose really resonated with me you know I want to lift up also something that Amelia said towards the end in terms of this is going to be more of a badass version of it I guess in some ways we don't really have the luxury to sit around on our butts quite frankly and wait for other folks to do the work for us and you know I'm just going to briefly share you know many years ago let's just say 2005 the internet was not as popular as it is right now and I was a BFA student and I was dealing with a lot of things on my own within the conservatory program and you know I struggled I struggled by myself and it was only when I actually had to go out and do the research and I found by some chance a woman named Berta Udo at the time you know just you know on the online I don't know monologue books and I was like what it's yellow oh my gosh I got her an email and I just kind of poured my heart out in some ways and she wrote me back very quickly and in that email I met brothers and sisters I didn't know existed Tim Dang I hadn't even met you that name Andrea Asa I was like who are these people years later I was at my first concert festival and it really changed my life you know I'm not forming as much anymore but I'm proud to say I am with TCG I am the associate director of equity diversity and inclusion I'm proud to be working here with everyone and just thank you and just know that this energy between this triangle square community whatever what have you you know there's going to be more out there and I'm just going to lift up again sometimes it's not about sitting around and you know your colleagues within the institution may not be able to direct you to appropriate people you know but this is certainly a start so thank you. Thank you very much for this really rich and thoughtful session Rose everybody else who asked the questions and made comments and thank you for coming out here and listening so intently and commenting I would add in closing that you know we're a story telling species and the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that we tell each other really shape and help us understand the world around us so theatre in particular is a powerful means to really get those stories out so thank you for watching too and keep going. Thank you to Cata and thank you to the Doris through Charitable Foundation and to Hal around for live streaming please come to the next pre-conference and Cata event which is the green show at 6.45. Presented here over the next week that is to defy the work that defies these models and tropes so if you don't have tickets for your shows please reach out to Cata by the new booth the new place Cata lounge where you can hang out there's snacks and things like that but you can get information about buying tickets particularly 11 Reflections on September which is our action show Longstreet Journal which is Christina's show Muggle and People Plants so you don't have your tickets for some of the shows that are sold out new tickets have been released please know there are no holds on anything buy your tickets now because once it's sold out it is sold out unfortunately so please support each other in the room and see each other's work Again thank you so much for being here the theme is size makes shifts leading change in the American theater the Pan-Asian diaspora is groundbreaking and shifting everything let's move the needle continue the conversations as Snehal mentioned the lounge is open a long time each day tomorrow starting you said at 2 but after that it will be open during the main conference from 8.30 a.m. on there's comfortable furniture in there bed tables, food snacks so take a load off keep the conversations going and keep them courageous thank you so much we're going to see you at the green show