 And hello to anybody who's started joining us for this conversation. Hi, my name is Julia. I'm from the Playwright Center. Glad to have you here. We are going to be starting at seven o'clock, so in about 13 minutes. So you're in the right place. You can just grab a, grab a glass of water and then it'll be good to go. We are not going to see or hear any of you. But if you do drop a comment on Playwright Center's Facebook or HowlRound's Facebook, then we will see those. Thank you so much. And hi everybody joining us on the Playwright Center page, the HowlRound page, or on Facebook. You're in the right place for our conversation tonight. We'll be starting in about 10 minutes at seven o'clock. So you are where you need to be, but you can take a little break before we get started. We are not going to see or hear any of you, but if you can hear me and you can see our slide, then you are going to be able to see and hear our panelists just fine. Hello, good evening to everybody who's signed on. You are in the right place for our conversation this evening, whether you're on the HowlRound page, the Playwright Center page, or on Facebook. We're glad to have you. You will not be seen or heard. We are just going to be streaming out. But if you can hear my voice and see this standby slide, then you are all set and have everything you need to watch the conversation. Hello, good evening to everybody who's signed on. You are in the right place for our conversation. And hi everyone, good to see some names popping up. I think Facebook only lets me see a couple people's names. So I can't greet all of you, but hi Barb and Crystal and Janet and Candris. Good to see you all and everybody else, whether you're on the Playwright Center page, the HowlRound page, or on Facebook, we're glad to have you. You are in the right place for tonight's conversation. We'll start in about four minutes at seven o'clock. You won't be seen or heard. So we're just streaming out to you. But if you can hear my voice and see our standby slide, then you have everything you need to watch the conversation. And hi everybody, I'll do my little spiel one more time. You are in the right place to join us for tonight's conversation, whether you are on the Playwright Center page, the HowlRound page, or on Facebook. We're very glad to see you here. We'll be starting in just about a minute at seven. So we will not be seeing or hearing any of you. This is just a stream, but you can also comment in the Facebook with questions, which we'll talk about later. But that's kind of our way that we get to engage with you. Like to see the likes coming in. Thank you so much. Hey Shannon, I'm going to just turn off your video just for the moment before we get started. And in just a minute, I'll turn it over to Jeremy. Hello, hello everyone. How are you all? I wish I could be with you in person and see you all and connect with you all and give you a hug. I miss everyone so much. It's lovely to have you with us tonight. Thank you so much for being here. And welcome to the Playwright Center or a version of it online, at least for the moment. My name is Jeremy Cohen. I use he-him pronouns. And I am the producing artistic director here at the Playwright Center. And on behalf of our board and staff and now the over 2,200 playwrights we support each year, I'm so pleased to welcome you to the first conversation of our summer series Black Made That. We have folks tuning in online as we've been able to hear and see from all over the globe to be with us tonight. So just on behalf of everyone in Minnesota and the Twin Cities and certainly at the Playwright Center, we are just sending you much love and health right now. Wear a mask. And in the middle of this moment of justice and activism, art making and transformation, we are gathering together this summer at the Playwright Center to hear from an extraordinary set of artists. For us at the Center, we are an artist service organization. And so we think of the artists that we exist to serve as the leaders in many, many ways. So we value the centering of what we think of as artistic leadership and really artist leadership and how we make our decisions and how we think about our programming. And I can't think of a better artist to guide this moment with us for us alongside us and in front of us than the extraordinary Shea Cage and this amazing group of artists that you'll get to spend time with tonight. Coming up at the Playwright Center, we have in this summer series three other amazing conversations during July and August. The next one is on Tuesday, July 28th at 7 p.m. Central and focuses on transforming artistic relationships, looking at new models of partnership between playwrights and theaters and how we change some broken systems going forward. This discussion includes brilliant playwrights Pearl Clegg, oh my god, and Harrison David Rivers and Vera Starbard as well as artistic leaders like Alyssa Adams and Leslie Ishii from Perseverance Theater. Details on this and all of our conversation can be found at pwcenter.org. I want to thank our incredible partners at Hellround TV for live streaming tonight's conversation as well as the three others in this summer series. These live themes are being produced for the Hellround Theater Commons, an incredible, incredible commons, an incredible place for discussion and discourse, especially right now. I also want to send a special thank out to our supporting sponsor for this series, Knock Inc. whose underwriting has helped bring tonight's conversation to you free of charge while ensuring that we can of course always pay artists for their time and for their work. Tonight's discussion will be approximately about 75 minutes long. There will be a Q&A section in the middle of the conversation. So when Shay gives you the word around 745 or so, you can send your questions to Shay and the cohort in one of two ways. You can email us at questions at pwcenter.org or if you're viewing this live on Facebook, post your question in the comment section there and we'll be able to get it and direct it back to Shay there. And again, that email one more time is questions at pwcenter.org. When I moved here 10 years ago, Shay Cage was one of the first artists I met in town and I have reflected on that moment as one of my first true knowings and understandings of the Twin Cities and how it was going to become a home for me. Shay is a writer, an activist, a theater and film performer, a director, raised in Mississippi and living in Minnesota for a while now, and it has been called a change maker, one of the leading artists of her generation, a mover and a maker. Her poetry has been featured in several publications, including Blue's Vision, the St. Paul Almanac and the Family Housing Fund's Home series. Her plays include five solo works and a number of other pieces, including a forthcoming commission about human trafficking. She holds both Emmy and Ivy Awards, a McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship, a TCG Fellowship, five Artists of the Year recognitions, and international words for film features. She was a co-founder and co-writer of five plays with Mama Mosaic Theater and has been using art to elevate black and brown narratives through true roots for over 20 years. And just recently, and what has brought us together tonight, Shay led and launched The Incredible A Moment of Silence, a living historical archive and celebration of blackness, launched through the commissioning of over 50 black Minnesota voices during this moment of transformation. And you can find the anthology online at blackmnvoices.com. That's blackmnvoices.com. This project is one of the primary catalyst for bringing us together tonight. So please, please, please, if you haven't seen the work of these incredible artists and Shay's vision, please log on and check it out again, blackmnvoices.com, read the essays, listen, reflect, and share out the work of these amazing artists who are based here in Minnesota. I could go on all night about this incredible project, rather than do that much more importantly. Please help me welcome to the screen the one and only, Shay Kay. Hey. Love you. Have fun. Me too. Thank you, Jeremy. I'm just so tickled and excited to bring these amazing artists on. So I'm just going to ask Shannon Gibney, Danez, and Jacoby Johnson, to open up your screen so that we can see your beautiful faces. I am just thrilled to have some audience, even though we can't see y'all, we can feel y'all. So we just give you our energy and our love. Shannon, where you at? I think somebody made it impossible for me to turn on my, I keep on trying to and it says, okay, okay. You know, black faces. So I just, I mean, I am, I love, I love making black space. Yeah. And I was telling the folks at the Playwright Center and these wonderful artists that have said yes to being here, knowing that they could be in a hundred other places of importance. No, we can't. Well, what kind of, you can be outside. So there are no rules right now. I mean, I know, you know, we can be formal, but I know that, but I just want to have fun. I feel like we're all caring a lot, not just us, but the people in the audience. We've been through a lot in the last month, the last couple months. But there's just, I just can't even tell you guys how giddy I was waking up this morning for this. And there's been some heavy stuff on my heart lately, but this brings me great joy, not only to lift up a moment of silence, but it's just rare that you get these kinds of spaces with artists that, you know, are so loved and appreciated already in the community. But I hardly, I hardly even get like five minutes with them. So now I got a whole hour and 15 minutes. So I would like to just frame the conversation briefly and get on in it. We are going to love on each other's pieces and just give each other love, love energy, love stares, and frame it in the sense of Black made that. So Mike, I am a mother of two children, two black brown boys. And we are often talking about the power of Black and our family, ever since they were little. And my brother who's a pastor, he invited us to his church once and he showed this film that has never left these kids. And it was called Black Made That. But it was, it was just like hip hop version of like everything you you know that you might use, but you didn't know that somebody Black made it. And I just, it just really transformed sort of their concept of what they have been learning at home. And it's sort of the reality of like our infinite possibilities. So everywhere we go, especially when we travel, I'm like, Black made that. And they're like, Mama, Black made that, you know, they're using the ironing board today. And they're like, Black made this. So I just, I really want to uphold, you know, so that's where our title comes from for anybody that's like, why did they name it Black made that. I want to shout out Sarah Boone because the ironing board is something that we do use often. And the ironing board as we know it is thanks to Miss Sarah Boone, a Black female. And also before security systems became famous or known, the African American nurse Mary Van Britton Brown invented and patented the security system for her own home. She was somebody that lived in Queens, New York. And her husband was often working in a way. And she came up with this patent. And I just want to thank her for that as well. And there's a whole list of other inventions. And I just encourage anybody that's out there, particularly allies on the line, do some research, pull up some stuff and teach these young ones and some old ones of some of the things and inventions, the mighty inventions that we use every day. And we don't give a praise and acknowledge it to Black folks. In particular, we have Black folks on the line who are makers and creators of literary works. So I have asked you guys to introduce yourself. How y'all feeling? First of all, how are you feeling today? Do you guys have a noise in your spaces? Can we open our mics just for a second? Just say hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Y'all feeling good? Yeah. Yeah, I just had dinner that I didn't have to cook. And my kids, you know, didn't, you know, throw everything on the floor. And yeah, I'm great. I get to be with you all and talk about the major issues of the day, share and art. I'm very well. I'm very good. Fantastic. And you Jacoby, you good? I'm good. I'm good. I have not had my dinner yet, but I'm gonna have it after this. I made some homemade gnocchi, which I've never done before and I'm very excited about it. So that's what's up. That's what's up, Danez. People are getting creative in their home spaces, just so you know. How you feeling? I'm feeling good apparently. I wonder if it's Jacoby's for gnocchi later. That's how I'm about good. I just had me a can of Campbell's. It was kind of sad, but I spiked it up. I spiked it up. Okay, so I, so I've asked each of you to introduce yourselves actually with a piece so that I'm not spilling your bios at the top. And I love that. I just think sometimes when we get a chance to introduce ourselves with our own work, followed by however we want to formally introduce ourselves and maybe say a few things about what we feel most proud of. So however you want to do that, I just wanted to start off by reading this small introduction that we have on our, on the website. So for those that are listening in, I haven't been to the website. We see the website as a growing historical archive. And so this current state, you know, so you might have looked at it last week and it may have grown a little bit and then two or three weeks from now it'll continue to grow. And what I always am reminding people of in these weeks that we're still living and breathing the new reality is that we're not living in a past moment. Yeah, we're right in it. We're still responding even at the memorial site. It continues to change. So I want to say George Floyd's name. I want to center his spirit in this space and all of those that have left our presence have been taken away much too soon. And so I just want to read, I want to read the introduction and then I'm going to pass the mic to my comrades starting with Shannon to bring in the strong literary work. What a blessing to have a 55 plus black artist as part of this project to uphold our own narratives for us to be able to say we ain't waiting on nobody. We putting it out there for us to say black made that and it looked good and it feels fine and shiny and rough and rigid and just continues to be generative. So if you go to that website and you look at the first thing that you'll see is photos that are from the movement that different photographers have taken and then you will see you'll scroll down and you'll see an introduction from me and it reads we are gathered here in this virtual space of blackness to speak our names to breathe air into our narratives and acknowledge their rightful place in history and in this moment. The writers here are essential necessary culture bearers to the geography we call home, Minnesota. We look not to other establishments to make room for us for we will make our own bed scented with rose water and patchouli and this living historical archive we will document this and all that is held in between. In a state where there are less than six percent of us we find each other and we plant gardens in each other's chests. We will meet the morning sunrise with a roll call of our loved ones those who have survived the pandemic the bullets and the never-ending list of isms that threatened to wear us down we will say his name George Floyd daily our existence as black bodies and white space is threatened yet daily we lift up our joy our truths our voices as an act of resistance I invite community to pause and bear witness to what some of the leading black voices of our time are saying feeling and existing at this moment of deep historical transformation a space where we stand together in mindfulness and emotional liberation where we process and heal our trauma and green flourishing deliverance where we wake up and face the sun with hope and cosmic dreaming where we can still hear our ancestors whispers in our ears where we sing to the babies on the shores of these 10,000 lakes and they hopscotch and dig marble holes in the soft brown dirt where we are full from auntie's garden blessings and we can rest in hand woven hammocks around dusk reading these pandemic survival uprising stories to each other these blue black phoenix rides and making a way when there was none we thrive in the presence of black oh we still hear stories there is laughter and deep debate politicking and scribing there is performance and revival here for art is always at the center there is remembrance and always there is a moment of silence for George Perry Floyd for Breonna Taylor for Philano Castile for Jamar Clark for Christopher Burns for those lost to COVID-19 for mothers who stay up late waiting for daughters and sons will never return may your spirits find peace and black space I invite Shannon to start us up with our first piece an introduction of yourself thank you Shay that was beautiful I feel like it really uh set the tone thank you um I'm gonna read um a piece that I I wrote actually for the Star Tribune to reflect on um the George Floyd murder and where we're at right now I always go back to Baldwin and this is Baldwin try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning oh that's not good sorry about that did not know that was there I always go back to Baldwin try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame you would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it's so profoundly attacks one sense of one's own reality while the black man is functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star as an immovable pillar and as he moves out of his place heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation this quote is from the fire next time James Baldwin's seminal collection of essays on race power and politics it was published in 1962 but might as well have been written yesterday Baldwin's prescient observations about the psychology of american racism have always felt like a revelation to me a voice from the grave whispering earth shattering truths in my ear that should have been obvious even after 60 years Baldwin's words still managed somehow to occupy the present tense to have effectively described the roots of white denial and disbelief that not only black people but much of the nation including black brown indigenous and even some white folks are just done with the american police state and its relentless destruction of black bodies that is something else that is divination the white hand ringing what can we do the images circulating everywhere more popping up every day fresh evidence of police abuse against protesters the growing number of injured or even killed the carnage of burning buildings and broken windows and the reliable echoes of that ever loved rhetorical question but why would they bring such destruction to their own communities the reclamation of the bad apple argument the violent white nationalists who always managed to be both well organized and a complete shock to their fellow white folks sense of reality infiltrating protests and communities in Minneapolis and beyond holding rallies in our parks and attempting to burn down libraries and minority owned businesses our political leadership's profound inability to understand the violence that is unfolding that has always been with us but which hasn't had a wellspring big enough from which to burst up till now their shock at watching civil society collapse so quickly the disbelief that this is happening on top of another crisis covid-19 the insistence that this virus is more deadly than racism so protest is a public health hazard the many past failed attempts at reforming the seemingly intractable police state the chanting growing louder and louder i can't breathe i can't breathe all of these are Baldwin stars aflame jamar clark philandra castiel george floyd all those ghosts all those black bodies that we're here to for immovable pillars are now in the move they walk among us and we among them the living merging with the dead they will have their day they will be heard and their voices are what is shaking heaven and earth to their foundation thanks for listening it's beautiful shannon thank you wonderful thank you thank you um how would you introduce yourself i mean i know that people have access to the bio that's online but what would you what do you yourself um as a brown body person you know what how do you how do you what yeah what do you want to lift up in your bio how should i introduce you or you introduce yourself um i would say i usually just say that i'm a writer a mama a teacher and a lover um and a nerd you know big nerd too um yeah thank you thank you so next we will turn it to dinez all right dinez Smith all right uh i'm i'm still a little caught up in the emotions from shannon's wonderful essay from the introduction shape so excuse me uh if i need a moment in one of these poems okay i'm going to read some poems y'all um and then i'm going to get out the way i'm going to put poems short um this first one um i wrote uh back in april um these are both the poems of anthology uh so this one i wrote back in april um when it was only corona times and not corona and uprising times um and yeah i did this out and like i wrote this after uh me and my partner would take like the same run route um at different times of the day um and just like have very different thoughts about uh lick of the aisles when we were both running through it which is like not close to me but is like close enough to run to um and my partner is a visual artist and so that's like where it kind of starts it's like me like looking at their paintings and um thinking about them cool lick of the aisles my love paints graffiti all over the fancy houses in their comics wraps them with monsters fills them with better people i do not color my hands against the mansions that gentrify my sight when i run the water's limit i don't even think of running up on the houses i run past i don't run too slow past the neighbors who would call the cops on me if i looked with too much attention looking like myself this is how the state disrupts me pigs patrolling my mirror the criminal maybe keeps my pace up here through here with uh not a problem no sir no sir just passing uh just passing by just one of the neighborhood's brief phenomena man spinning concrete into rent not my father's race but his skin tone attending to someone else's home in the season of distance in the pigeons with the shadows of eagles the squirrels whirling up trees to mid to fight mid-sky white people masked and comfort and trust in doctors the dog shit like tiny mountains of dog shit in the cars filled with who they filled with in the cop car just riding through because there's nothing to see here cool um and then this is called a live it's four quonsabas quonsabas are um the quonsa inspired happy quonsa everybody um all three three sixty five three sixty six um but quonsabas are little quonsa inspired palms um that are each seven um there's a dispute whether it's seven lie or seven words per line or seven syllables per line um i liked words so that's the google search that i followed um when i did the black made that see that i made that that's like anything black man there's disputes and also about how you do it do you put eggs in your mac and cheese less discuss um i don't but i hear some of y'all do um you know do you like sugar on your grits for some reason okay i won't have it in my house but there is no sugar in this poem's grits but there is sugar in my tank okay um all right alive one dinez stop acting shook when black folks are alive quit the dream of early kill and sooner dirt it's no dream free them boys cage in those sonnets you are not warden not reaper not the fates not their damn mama alive is a thing we can be to look to you are not dead and Popeyes is out of spicy in heaven they'd never in heaven even they biscuits be moist but heaven ain't yours yet then biscuits dry as fuck so god gave you honey and tea and kisses and lovers who spit in your mouth when asked three the body is the body and inside there's a person imagine that imagine black devoid of death imagine us endless until if they kill you they kill you until then they can't touch you we all die even god don't run from death let it chase you play four three girls play in church outside three three girls play in church with a stump for a pulpit reason enough for today you a man passing by auntie trapped in your deacon body don't mean to look like danger but you were born boy but uh but you don't smell like run a man gifted right back heaven enough for now cool and my little palms oh what a wonderful way to start with you shannon and roll right into dinez okay so how would you introduce okay so you yeah so you both so shannon i know you were not born in minnesota but dinaz you were you were born i was born right here right here uh i was just like many of people you know i am a good old southern transplant by way of my grandmother who great migrated her way up here uh and my granddaddy yeah so i was born in st paul rondo neighborhood um and i think that's how i introduce myself like you know like the only thing that's always consistent with my bio my bio at this point um my preferred bio was just like ness smith is black and queer and it's from st paul and that's all you need to know and then i'm google-able you know then i'm you know my resume talks stuff for me but all i really care about is that you know i don't know i feel very blessed to be from here and to have like got to learn to be artists here and like to come up under folks like yusha uh because i think that is like really like the introduction is like i want to be an artist and and what it means to be a mini-apposite artist and a black men in minnesota i think which is to make art that um that is urgent with both its protection and its love towards our folks um here and i really just want to say i appreciate you know dinaz i um you know of course read your work um you know your poetry as well as um an essay just gutted me was it in uh the atlantic the one yorker joint yeah that one just gutted me oh my god like in the best way possible and um but it's different when you see somebody read their own work you know it's just it's different um so i really appreciated that it was it was really moving thank you that's funny that you say that shannon because even at my kid's school they were saying that they had some work some of your work and they were going to read it in their classes i'm like no get her in here to read it herself and they were like we will so oh what a joy what a joy okay jacoby hey hey hey um so we're going to turn it over to you jacoby uh for whatever you want to share with us and i can't help myself but i i i may i know i i might a lie i might have to drop some of you guys's bio credits just so because there may be some random on the line that's just like i just stumbled on this line and these people are amazing i don't know who they are so we might have to um okay the the space is yours jacoby cool um this is a piece i wrote a couple years back when we got the verdict around um philando castile's murder and we realized that we were again going to be denied justice for that and i sort of went into a long depression like a three four month long i was sort of you know acting out in ways that i hadn't before and being a person that i wasn't really proud of and uh i was sitting in rehearsal one day for a play i was doing over at the jungle and um i realized i needed to write some stuff down and exercise this a little bit in order to move on so this is a piece that i wrote called where the fear comes from i am trying to love myself more and it's harder than i thought there are people in my life who tell me i'm worthy of love and i believe them up to a point the point where i look in the mirror or make a joke nobody laughs at or make a mess of the love i've been given those moments amplify and replay in my mind like b-roll of a bad film but i'm trying to love myself more because i love the world even when i hate the world and the world hates me i love the world and because i am a part of the world i am trying to love myself more because i have been loved in my life lovers have whispered in my ear i love you in the night they have held my hand in the dark they have kissed my lips in the rain and i thought to myself i wish i loved me the way you love me i'm trying to love myself more so that i can love someone else without fear that their love might fade without fear that someone will love them more without fear that my love isn't big enough or deep enough or real enough i want to love all the way without half measures or conditions or lies so big that the wall between us can never be broken down or left over i'm trying to love myself more because my country does not and my people do but with conditions and my family does but we don't discuss it and god does but there are too many to pin down which one and i want my thoughts to be my own and i want to want things and i want to dream in color and i want to feel real and i want to stand tall and i want to hear i love you and believe it fully and i want my soul to burst open and i want to show you what's inside and know that i exist i'm trying to love myself more and it's harder than i thought so yeah that's hey it's i we've been um he he's been showing the boys a lot of documentaries and uh and i particularly love the learning about the relationship with James Baldwin and Maya Angelou and and just all of his his interviews where he talks about love and like the process of loving oneself and then falling in love with oneself again and uh just the way that he talks about it is something that it hit a chord in me the first time i heard it um but so something is resonant uh in your peace with one of his interviews that i heard thank you for that particularly in a at a time in our in our nation and our cities where um yeah we have to question how how weird how we're loved and uh where do we get that where do we get what we need to fill us up so we gonna pour into each other and this time we love you we love you um i'm gonna just um i'm gonna say and clearly the O'Neill loves you too as you're a finalist this year so congratulations i'm just giving y'all some love some loving shout outs from your bios and Shannon minnesota book award winney winner um your book dream country and see no color both our award winners uh dinez um featured on everything under the sun including uh the late uh the late show uh forbs uh annual 30 under 30 lists uh wow home your book homey and don't call us dead i mean just y'all you guys black made that oh oh oh look what he holding up your i was on tour once this was two years ago and i don't know where your name popped up and somebody was like you know dinez can you introduce us and i was like what um well i just love that i i uh am friends with important people um and not because we get awards but because our community loves us um so thank y'all now we get to the juicy part where we get to interview each other and these interviews can be whatever but you know it's like you know whatever a juicy question is that you want it can be simple or complex um you know and dinez you get ready because you start you kicking us off you can ask a question to any one of us uh that's it and then you know then the next person will go and uh you guys you can answer it however you want so if it's something that you're like not right now not in this space you can you know you know how we do that you can okay okay i got a question and i feel like i'm low-key looking for advice because i have found it extremely difficult to access my creativity um i think in like the whole season of corona um and particularly i think like um since like stuff you know since the murder since george poids murder i think essays have been easier for me because there's still like a thing about information there that kind of feels like i can trust um or something in pros like pros to me is like sort of maybe this is my own bias but sometimes for me feels like the like lowest stakes for creativity even though i can be really creative in that space um there's a different kind of allegiance and so i just have i think i've felt a little bit disconnected from my artist self um in these times and so i'm wondering for y'all um how have you sort of found yourself keeping that tether tied between you and your artist self um or like what are your rituals so like bringing that back to you when you feel distant from it so shoot that interview question at what one person to jump it off oh that's one question no brown table we can get a couple in so who do you who who to answer it first okay shannon how you feel about that question i feel like that's a really great question that a lot of people a lot of creative people are really struggling with you know um i feel kind of strange maybe guilty i don't know um i'm a little i'm privileged because um i'm a professor i teach at minneapolis college and um i've been able to structure you know basically like my paycheck so that um i can get paid through the summer and i don't have to teach so um i spend that time writing and then um with my kids i've got two kids and basically a single mom and then i'm been here in michigan with my parents um and they're helping out with child care right that's like for me um for women writers you know like child care i was um i love this book i think he's brilliant i'm reading um ibra max kendi the book that everybody's reading you know how to be an anti-racist um and uh it's it's really good um but i was listening to this podcast with him and um it's a podcast about writers and their process and everything and uh the woman was asking him about you know what are the conditions that you need to write and how do you like to do it and he's like yes well i like to start early in the morning and then go write all day i laugh so hard i was like you will only ever hear that from a male writer you will never i don't even care if you don't have your woman and you don't have kids no woman writer i know can like write all day like you know we've got all these community obligation right shay i know you know exactly you know so um you know i those are the kinds of um you know uh social constraints cultural constraints that get in the way of especially my long form writing i mean i think first and foremost i would consider myself a novelist um and so that those you know i can write individual essays i can write individual pieces sort of more piecemeal but i can't get into like a whole big novel without having blocks of time like two to three hours um and so for me it's really been about um creating the conditions to make that possible you know um and again i feel like uh i'm a lot more privileged than a lot of people because i i have some options that other people i know for a fact don't don't have what about you what about you jacoby do you have you been writing over the last couple months or did you come to a standstill um you know toward the beginning uh when you know things were being canceled and we were just you know pulled up at home i sort of realized that i needed to get that weight off me the weight of feeling like i needed to be creative right now um i had to just let it go you know there were so many people um trying to get things from me and ask for things and you know figure out how to respond to the moment and i realized i just needed to be still and allow it to be what it is so that i can regroup and think about it um and then you know i think you know after the murder of george floyd i just realized there was something that sparked in me just in terms of i'm you know very new to the game i've mostly been acting you know career wise and you know now i'm doing a lot of more a lot more playwriting and that's very exciting for me but i realized that i wanted to i've been dreaming very small in my life and i wanted to open it up because i was afraid and i didn't know you know dreams can be a scary thing because you don't know if they're going to work out and i realized that you know forget all that i need to dream out loud and say what i want to name it and be specific and not be afraid of it so you know then i just now i've just been writing and writing and writing and sort of basically i'm like when we come out of this you know as theater whenever theater comes back and we do that thing again i'm like i'm about to be words are going to be my weapons these pages this computer this thing i'm i'm ready and that's what i'm talking about that's what i'm saying that's and it's that reclamation that i feel what is the excitement that's happening now i i i experienced what you're talking about uh dinez when i had my first child and everybody was like oh my god you're gonna be so creative it's you're gonna be a mom you're gonna have a baby inside you and you're gonna be writing and i was just like i didn't write anything for i think a year and a half after my first child i didn't read a book for a year that was for me that was worse i read but i didn't i couldn't create my own material and then i realized um that i cheated i so my cheating mechanism is to actually put myself in spaces and that's what i've done over the last couple months put myself in spaces with artists that i admire that i know are teaching a workshop or doing a simple something and then even if i'm like facilitating then the exercise i do too and then i have the makings of a piece and there's something about having that prompted space so um that really got me going and then the playwright center gave me an opportunity to write a piece and that just opened the all of it start pouring out and i was like okay so sometimes we do need to be nudged by other people jacobi you're up for the second question so uh you can direct a question i interview question to anyone um and let's see okay yeah so a short concise question and a short concise answer i wrote my questions down because i'd be getting nervous oh my god you prepared i love it okay here we go so i have a question for denez um i just find when reading your work one of the most exciting things about it for me is just literally the format the way that the words appear on the page and as i go from page to page i don't know what i'm going to get and what participation it's going to require of me as a reader and so i wonder my question is you know how does that formatting bit come to be is that an afterthought or is that very much a part of the process of writing it um i would say it's an afterthought because i think the thing about writing to me is like it's all one big thought or it's like all the amalgamations of the thoughts right there are like things that come to you in the first draft and there are things that come to you in the 10th and that's all part of the making of that thing right um so i would say from poem to poem um i would say i think it's very rare that some of those more graphic decisions are there from jump because normally my first thought is just to get the the poem out the lyric out um sometimes it comes coupled but not always and so there's so i think some of those shape decisions come partway through the editing of trying to figure out okay what is the best body the best bridge between my brain and whoever's gonna read this thing how do i make that happen um but i really think what i do like you know i love thank you for that uh for that love but um and i do feel like i'm dabbling that but i feel like i'm like you know like coke zero compared to like um the Douglas Kearney's and the Dario Harris's of the world folks who are really bringing in that textual visual art question into the space of poetry um so i think i'm really what i'm really trying to do it is like kind of a half-knack a nod to um what they're doing i think Douglas Kearney for me um but thankfully we have him here in Minnesota now um but he's one who really excites me in that way to think about uh how a poem is a piece of art you know um is is sort of the body uh remade into words again you know in that divine way okay now shannon what you got what what question is is um you want to nudge toward somebody um i guess my question would be here dallas shea what do you feel like is the most exciting or a really maybe not the most exciting what is a really exciting um trait or development that you see in black arts in minnesota now and then also what's kind of like a liability there's something to be careful of oh i don't know about the liability but the excitement part i see i mean i just see vibrance that's a quick that's an easy one for me there's something vibrant about uh the black arts right now and i mean i've eegee said a while ago he's like there's a black arts renaissance that's happening here and the thing about it that is really like makes me want to jump outside of my bones is there is uh permission you know and i think jacoby you kind of touched on it a little bit it's like you know sometimes when we had that fear that we don't even articulate or even know it's there it that thing that's holding us back or like well i'm not a writer i'm not i'm not you know and it's like we sometimes black people feel like we gotta get all the accolades before we can claim the thing i'm like you better claim that thing and then move inside that thing fully and i just love it it's not just young people either i see the elders coming up and they're like i just start writing i'm i'm doing some storytelling can you listen i'm like yes i mean literally you go i go to places and people are coming with pieces like old school back in the day dinez and i'm like all right and so i just that's it i think there is nothing more special than that um because it's not just about those that you know have a certain formality of schooling or whatever there is a license to get our narratives out there and i believe we're unstoppable right now so thank you for that my question is for all of you guys but it's a short one i know we're we don't have a whole lot of time but we have enough J. Otis Powell bringing his spirit into the room um J Otis we're gonna go drive and see him um on lake superior and Duluth uh soon just kind of hang out at the beach um where his ashes were spread so i'm gonna my question is simple it is um what is the most what is the best thing about uh black for you and a word a phrase or a short sentence i'm gonna start with jacobi go to shannon and then we're gonna end off with dinez and don't overthink it either it should be one to pour out of your mouth best thing about black cocoa butter hey okay cocoa butter um shannon for you the best thing about black and however you contextualize that about being black the color black all that is black whatever tradition tradition tradition dinez bring us home timeless outside of time that's what it really is yes outside of the spacetime continuum that's what i mean like that's why we always late is because like i know exactly what you mean i do for me i think it uh it is it's truly powerful beyond words i can't sometimes i tell the kids i can't even you know they're like we'll be watching you know a documentary and they're like are you crying i'm like yeah but their tears of joy we're just so powerful we have done so much and it's it's a shame that our history our full history is not taught in this country but yeah powerful beyond words okay so we're at the point where we bring the audience in and audience folks um we know you guys are having a good time eating your snacks and you know listening to the good words but then so we have a little space for some questions from the audience um and as a reminder i think germy made a let you know how you can send your questions in but as a reminder you can send them to uh at pwpwcenter.org or you can those of you that are watching facebook you can put the questions in the comment box under this video um so we'll just see how much time we have we're going to end off our time with a couple of more interview just maybe a couple more questions um and maybe a couple of short pieces to close us out but let's see what the uh what questions are what any questions from the audience um and it could be that you just you know you're having fun and you're not you know thinking about typing any questions we can we'll continue to use the time uh to love on each other and to share some of this amazing work with you um julia all right great uh the email address is actually questions at pwcenter.org so uh you send that to questions it's spelled out at pwcenter.org otherwise you can those of you that are on facebook you can put your questions in the comment box right under the video all right so as we prepare for some of those questions i see a couple coming through um i'm just gonna say um jacoby i want to just arm you as time allows maybe one more question to somebody after we get back an interview so i'm juicy all right our first question is from uh michael and his question is question from a white writer hoping to responsibly write black characters any advice to make sure they respect the characters they are creating oh all right who wants to take that one me so shannon uh yeah so shannon wants to take that one and so shannon give your did anybody else want to say something on that one or we'll move to the next one after that okay so shannon um yeah whatever concise response would be from you okay so um that that's that's a big one to unpack we could probably have a full hour conversation on that so i just wanted to direct you to um two pieces that you can access um online one is by jacklyn woodson um in the horn book and it's called who can tell my story um you need to read that and then you need to also read an excellent piece by alexander chi uh that was published in vulture uh yeah i see dinez nodding um last year maybe a few months ago but he he just broke it just google alexander chi vulture you know identity in writing i don't remember the name of it but he just goes through and he's like yo if you're from the dominant cultural group and you want to write about a cultural group outside of yourself that has been historically uh marginalized these are the questions that you need to ask and honestly and deeply and here's why so those are just two resources that i would direct you to thank you shannon um yeah i got a lot to say on that um but i think you just hit them i think it's like study up and um and read on those we have a question directly to dinez from crystal and the question is what do you want to see uh what do you want to see your accomplices and training due to continue this powerful moment movements momentum especially in the sense of intersectionality so what do you want to see your accomplices and training due to continue this powerful movements momentum oh um hmm okay uh i think i don't know i really feel like uh folks are moving and really smart and informed ways haven't learned from both elders and ancestors and more recent struggles as well um i don't know if i hope for anything different than what folks are finding themselves putting their energy towards you know i think the best lesson for these times is like um find your lane and do it well you know i think um uh you know i think we all sort of find where we plug into these moments and i think that's all we can ask ourselves um what do i hope that folks do in terms of intersectionality i don't know i don't know if i don't know if those people are like my my peers you know i wish like there are black people that i wish like would just like get it through their heads that some of us are queer and trans and i don't really you know but i don't know how much i feel like in partnership with those folks and you know um uh you know i don't i don't know if i feel like i'm in community with black men who need to like learn that black women matter you know um and i know like in a big sense that is like who i'm fighting for who i love um but i don't know if that's a keep doing i guess i i guess i i want folks hold the biggest possibility for freedom and justice as possible in their hearts when they're like thinking about who they're doing this work for um and to really like ever just expand um who you feel like you're fighting for and if you feel like uh you can ever look at a group of people and feel like you're fighting for one and not the other then i don't think you're doing the work right you know especially when we're thinking about these black lives matter moments right how do black people matter at every intersection of ourselves and our lives and of our um of our need for well-being and peace um so yeah so i guess yeah ask bigger questions i guess yeah maybe that's what folks can do ask bigger questions ask questions that include more people in your fight fantastic why don't we direct this next one to uh Ujikobi it's from Erin i'm curious about how and if being in minnesota in the twin cities the setting environment the people inspires or informs your work as black writers and also what is it about minnesota that has felt like a creative home so i think those kind of go together and a little bit of like why do we stay here what is it in minnesota that is like our creative space our zone what would you say to that jacobi do i mean because i'm up here from florida i was born in florida moved up here 2011 um and the thing about this community is um especially the black artist community is the support and the kindness around each other's work uh i know as at least as an actor there's so many times where you get brought into a space and you never are trying to they're never trying to put you in a play together they're always trying to get you into that one slot that they have for you that you know and there's only one or two maybe one black man one black woman if they even have roles or black women in this play and the thing that i love is i have found that the actors i've been around the writers i've been around are very incredibly supportive and they want to see you win there is not this thing where they're like you know i want you to fail so i can succeed you know they want everyone to succeed and they want uh us to be able to actually be learning from each other not in competition but to be in community with each other to really be together and so i think that is something that makes this community special and then also just our ability to do our own work our ability to gather even in this space and to uh be in community with each other and to uh uh i don't know to really just hold each other up and make sure that we good whether it's in your work or in your personal life um yeah i love it um i think also for me um i just i mean i my i always my i found my mentors here and um and i just feel like there's an ability of this of these cities to kind of embrace you and take you in you can find some of your people it might not be a ton um and then the last thing is probably that i feel like i can be my whole self i mean i imagine i could be myself in other places too but uh my experience here you know there's not like oh why are you directing now why are you writing plays why are you trying to do film why you know it's like i feel like i grew my arms here and in a space that allows you you know there's a garden that has you know things move out make room for you as opposed to there's too many of us here there's too much there's too many carrots you got to go somewhere else so um shannon and deniz did you guys want to add anything onto that just in terms of what what um yeah what is about minnesota that felt like a creative home i mean i think it's you know i mean there's a lot of different things i mean i i think you know not to get to you know i don't know in the weeds but i i mean i do feel that you know there is this arts infrastructure here you know that is really um amazing um and that is not present in a lot of other communities around the country um that really keeps people not just black artists but you know artists from all different communities um here um and i do feel like i don't know i you know you have this love hate relationship with um where you're from you know i'm in midwestern or through and through i'll never live anywhere else um i'm so like the west coast is like too flighty for me the east coast is too mean for me like i'm just you know i'm i'm just and the midwest pisses me off right within minnesota pisses me off with the whole you know minnesota nice and all of that stuff and but at the same time it's like this is the landscape i know this is the landscape i i recognize and i think that there's some things too when we think about creativity and again what are the conditions that really make creativity possible and especially allow it to flourish sometimes are the things that you don't expect like say i'm gonna say something very unpopular here six months of winter i'm just you know like if you're shut in that whole time right what are you gonna do like i do think and i talked to a lot of artists who talk about how those winter months are really this this space to sort of you know with the season right like go inward right and like you know uh a rebirth almost you know and also how we build community as black people in the winter time and that's not necessarily for us to tell all y'all out there but we know you know and i think that's there's some special things about how we do come together um in the winter but also in crises you know and it's like sure you know there's a bunch of things we can uphold as artists and how we've been taken care of but we also have had to deal with a lot of ish in this in this state and uh so there's some connective tissue some scar tissue that we share in common um that kind of holds and bond bonds us together so yeah dinez anything from you can i just add one more thing i i just want to also say that i think that in the twin cities because we've been whited out for so long and because there's um these huge other ethnic and cultural communities um of of writers you know like new york chicago los angeles it's like you know you've got not you don't just have the latino writers right you've got the columbian writers over here in the port of rican and it's like there's so few of us writers of color and indigenous writers here that we really had to bond together to not get whited out in a way that i think makes a very particular form of um of artistic community by pock black indigenous people of color community beautiful uh yeah i don't know if i could say none that um that y'all really said better i will say growing up here and i think this is sort of building on um shannon's point about just there being such a great infrastructure um to be an artist here right um there i remember growing up here there was just a reverence that folks talked about other artists from here with um even in my little like baptist you know like not too far from mississippi family where like the question was like what are you going to do to have a job when you grow up um and that was like scared halfway scared of queer people and all this other kind of stuff you know like there was always a sort of reverence that i remember my family and i think they learned it in minnesota that they talked about folks who did work in the community that that person was a storyteller or a poet or a playwright and that was something you didn't like that you put respect on you know like oh that person is a teacher and we like respect that um and i and i and i have found as i started to move out of minnesota that that maybe was something unique to hear that that we did treat our artists with a certain type of reverence and respect um even in the infrastructure right that that to have an artist was a livable dream um here you know and that there there was a city that was ready to support that dream um in some ways um not to say that you know that we should be like thankful to these grants and all that but like i am i feel super blessed to live in a place with so many theaters um with so many publishers with so many folks who are thinking about not only art but how to feed those artists um and that like just growing up in there i never i feel lucky to be in minnesota because it never made me question um the value of artists not only in our lives but in our communities and like in every sector of what we were thank you for that and i'll i'll just add activists on that too artists that are you know not just kind of you know moving through life like you know the way that you say something with that that yeah you know i i actually got down on my knees and and that was in one of my prayers just this week uh because i think that is a that's a privilege that we're not you don't we don't feel like oh my god am i the only one that's you know um to be able to have folks that will show up on your back mon and just talk and we build and plan and then we change stuff um there is one more question that's laid in but we won't answer it now i answered at the end but just and i will just maybe reshape it into one uh one person so the question was uh aside from the people on this panel who are the writers or actors or creatives work who you who inspired you're inspired by so maybe just thinking of one person i know there's a long list for all of us but maybe it could be one person or it could be somebody right now you know what i mean or somebody once upon a time um so if we can maybe each get that in before we're done we have about 10 minutes left and um i so jacobi we kind of put you on deck for another interview question so maybe you can ping that interview question to someone uh we'll keep it we'll still keep it pretty concise in terms of the answers and then um yeah we'll see if we can get just a few more snippets of pieces i think we might we're doing good in time we might actually um yeah and you can pass if you you know if you want to but uh yeah let's see where we go in terms of time so jacobi you're up cool my question is for you shea uh just thinking about you know as you uh are a change maker and an activist and a you know spacemaker for people how have you navigated being in um white predominantly white spaces particularly as an actor what are the sort of things that you do to make sure that you are you know navigating that space but not compromising who you are and what you know your mission to be oh i just show up and i just say black may death just kidding i'm silly i i um oh that's a good question i just honestly honestly i just i have to thank my um my ancestors my grandmother my aunties that raised me and uh they just instilled in us from the very beginning to be be yourself and i know it's so easy it's much easier said than done but there was something in that that when i can't you know as i move through life i just try i really try to push against who i am versus who i'm not and so if i come to those as i've come to those spaces and they also instilled in us that we can be anything like so i you know i remember my early days i remember laury carlos who is may she rest in um in peace but she she was like you think you can do everything i was like i can you know i was young but i really thought i could and i would show up at these auditions you know i remember showing up with it like weathering heights or something and i was like i'm here for the audition and they were like what role and i was like any role any role you know we're thinking outside the box right so i just kind of can't so i that's it i think i've been privileged to have that kind of upbringing and that doesn't mean that i'm ignorant of you know the energy in the room the assumptions the expectations etc i try to i really try to question them but i also am learning that we are we are each other's army and so you know sometimes i think and particularly in minnesota you know we're meant to still feel like we're the only one or isolated when there's like only two of us and i'm like girl i don't know you but let's go on let's go on lunch break let's figure out who we are together let's talk you know talk so we can have some kind of shared experience and i know we're not monolithic but it's like pot up don't act like you don't see me i see you you know so uh we be i'd be potting up real good because i think that we we are each other's armor and army and protection so thank you for that question i think there's a lot of trauma that a lot of us carry from being in some of those spaces that that can attack us but we we strong we powerful and once you do that enough people know like she coming in the room she herself and don't try to make her do those random accents you know when you didn't talk to her about that and what you trying to do you know so we're because we we come with with knowledge also you know what i mean and i keep telling my kids you know you somebody asked you an ignorant question you know come back with them with some of your knowledge and say what is it that makes you that makes that question come out of your mouth you know put them put the question on them and they're like well mom i wouldn't do that i'm like you will when you get older because i'm going to keep drilling it in your head so thank you for that um all right so do we do you guys have um another little piece maybe something to drop or or doesn't okay so here it's open platform for the last few minutes so you can either share another little something or you can speak to the last question that's on the docket which is uh a individual or a creative that is inspired you um or yeah you're inspired by um or the third option is you can ping a short question another interview question to someone in closing so i will turn it over to shana um i did not have um another piece um what about your inspirations yeah i have so many inspirations and i feel very fortunate i'm constantly being inspired by art artists of all kinds um let's see um not a surprise at all um baldwin is my favorite writer of all time i mean i'm not going to say he's the reason why i started writing because i started writing when i was six and you know you can sort of guess the quality of writing that came out when i was six um but uh i think he made me feel so much less alone he made me feel so much less alone and just that there's other ways of being that there were other ways of being black right that um yeah he just opened up so many possibilities to me um so i yeah i just adore adore his work um and then you know another boring answer but true is morrison i just i don't know what to say never be a boring answer i just it's like um yeah a shade a shade okay we got like four minutes left uh the demands okay cool um i really like i'm gonna do a music answer for folks in minneapolis i really have been loving um do a salah's news project um they are incredible a young jenna clear black uh artists doing um sort of like afro funk rock some shit i don't know their songs make me very horny um and also feel very black and like it makes me want to like go to a march and then march straight back to bed um and so that's all i can really ask for the work i've also been um dipping into um the the zulu zulu slash astro black when they change their name um archives a lot uh and enjoying them um yeah so i've been like really feeling like very blessed by like um you know black twin cities musicians lately um have been blessing my spirit um and it feels like you know i don't know um i don't know we make some good music here like everybody like here it's like once you become here like something about all these white white people in this white white snow makes you like be extra black um and so yeah so i've been like feeling my house with like extra extra black music from here it seasons the food more you know it's like a cast iron sound uh yeah i love it jacoby uh oh yeah i'll say the person i've been uh saying for a couple weeks now people ask me what i'm reading and it's hanif abdukib who i mean he talks about music in a way uh that i've always felt music but did not have the language for when i read his book go ahead in the rain about tribe i was like this is everything i've ever wanted to say about tribe pal quest and he captured it i think he's incredible and he made me care about carly ray jeppson as an artist which i did not expect to happen in my life um so hanif abdukib for me uh jay um i i always say that i receive um inspiration from the elders and then the little kids so i love to put myself in little kid spaces uh because they give they give me the juice that i need uh so right now i'm inspired by my own kids who are finding their own artistry both through drawing and also writing their first little raps uh so i'll just give a shout out to jordan vasliqi and jaylin zay and then i will give another shout out to my mentor jay odis powell who taught me that uh there's infinite possibilities um i'm going to close out with just the the beginning of just the very beginning of uh the piece that i wrote that is on the website that we launched um black mn voices for those of you that have just come on please uh go to the website support the project there's over 55 amazing black voices um to lift up um and uh there's featured works now and they'll continue to rotate there's uh upcoming uh the star tribune has been so excited that they're going to feature um artists every single week throughout the rest of the summer and maybe into the fall uh there's other opportunities that are artists are going to be featured as well this piece is called run 37 days into home quarantine and the walls have closed in and opened and closed again the hysteria of a lack of ventilators or as trump calls them generators masks access to healthcare testing and just truthful and clear information has been suffocating police brutality homelessness and unemployment skyrocketing racist attacks on asians across the world the senseless killing of a mod arbury tapped out relief aid funding cuts and lack of transparency therein the rise in domestic violence inequities hyperdefined challenges of homeschooling theaters and places of entertainment closed indefinitely zooming becoming the new normal artists falling through the cracks in just day to day making ends meet and of course there's the death toll numbers the bodies on ice still awaiting burials and the cases of people who weren't able to have funerals in this time i have friends in this number whose spirits were unable to get a traditional community send off as many of us are accustomed to may they rest in peace i find myself thanking the universe for the gift of prayer some days it's all i got to rise up in the morning and get down again on bent knee to meditate and pray for all that has been lost most days this practice is grounding and restorative it places me in a calm and understanding that allows me to face tomorrow excited about what new can be built out of this rubble but once in a while the thoughts and dreams and late night news spin in an unstoppable tornado of mental madness the darkest what ifs threatened to explode and the walls are closing in ever so slowly just like in those old movies where the water is rising from below and then out of nowhere like a glimmer of neon or light or whatever the hell that thing is that feels like hope in a never ending tunnel of darkness i realize i'm not alone that there are others like me we women of the sun as my grandmother used to say sun kissed and blessed with kisses no one like us can ever understand because our past and present and our simple day today is complicated shang gay spoke truth complicated and the ritual of putting simple pen to paper to illustrate the feeling of being brown and black and female and stuck in the belly of a pandemic who's got it out for you and yours unable to move or yell or holler or break things when the voice inside of you is screaming and shouting and punching the insides of this strangely surreal dank place you've been swallowed whole without notice or warning or not even a tiny pink note that the job issues to say pack your things and leave there was no time to run literally none so you stood in place and looked out at the mess of madness and scramble for balance for safety you searched the faces of your people for answers and like a morning dew falling delicately round sunrise without announcement there is a quiet peace that light that glimmer that neon your sister surround you like a blanket of dahlia's there is something ceremony is happening here their bodies are soaked in protective oils and they wear nothing but their babies on their backs and around their necks i cannot see their eyes for they are closed in prayer and chant and silent song there is union here kindred to our ancestors sway and whispers on boats across the atlantic one by one i orbit each of these women straining to witness the wholeness of their prayers and it goes on we thank you for joining us today i just give love and praise to denette smith to jacoby johnson to shannon give me to all of the other 55 plus artists that are in a moment of silence we say his name again george floight uh and we thank you for being here in this black space remember black made a lot of the things around you teach the children teach the others i say i'm shake cage i love y'all love you thank you shake that palm was beautiful thank you love you love you good night thank you play right center and and howl round we are signing off let's go eat some black y'all yes hey