 And thank you for your time, and if we could give them a welcoming round of applause. Thanks. Well, so this particular panel is looking at why some of our local theaters here, some of them large, some of them mid-sized, some of them small, are wrapping their heads around this kind of work and why they're approaching it and what particular challenges and rewards there might be in presenting and tackling work that has to do with it. And thinking about this, you know, just today, and kind of almost so many days, the front pages of our newspapers are dealing with the Middle East in some way. It's driving our world, the issues that are playing out in the Middle East and the way that those issues resonate in this country. It seems to me that almost the question is not why are theaters tackling plays that are dealing with the Middle East, but how can you not? And yet there are some, you know, I think there's some real challenges and maybe some reticence that some theater producers have in tackling this kind of work and maybe for some real reason. And yet in the panel that we had just heard an hour or two ago, and we're talking about challenges and the kind of risks that people are taking in presenting work that's dealing with issues in the Middle East, when you hear about, well, you know, my parents were taken to jail or, you know, this person had his fingers crushed by the police or, you know, you've been shut down because the censors have come in and stopped to play. I think the whole context of risk is maybe brings up, there's a kind of different, the whole different dimension that we're talking about. And yet, nevertheless, those challenges and those risks are real and probably the rewards are real too. And so we're going to be hearing from the artistic directors of four very different kinds of theaters here in the Bay Area about why they are taking the risks to present this kind of work. And what are the particular challenges around presenting it, approaching the work, preparing your audience, following up with your audience, getting your right artists on board, and how are they planning maybe to continue to do this work in the future. So that's just kind of setting a context for what we're looking at. And one of the other things that we heard from this morning with Dr. Dabashi was, you know, he quoted the San Jose Mercury News and he was, you know, mentioning about the cycle of tragedy. And the way that that sort of, it's a stereotype and it sort of marginalizes the experience of the Middle East and it seems like perhaps for those of us who are not of Middle Eastern descent, the Middle East we understand in kind of frames of enormity. There's an enormity of tragedy which was, you know, represented in that comment from the San Jose Mercury News. There's sort of an enormity of hope and inspiration that I think many of us around the world are seeing in the era of spring. There's sort of an enormity of intellectual and faith foundations as the three great monotheistic religions. Religions hauled by billions of people across the world come from this place. And all of the sort of wonderful acts of compassion and humanity and the terrible acts of war and violence that spring out of all of that, these frameworks of enormity that maybe those of us who are not of Middle Eastern descent look at the Middle East. And that's our framework. And I think that one of the things that we're seeing today and that the works that these four companies have presented is ways that we are able to understand the Middle East, yes, with those lenses, yes, inside of those frames, but inside of those frames are leo-syncratic individual human beings with lives of their own. And it's providing us with a way of understanding the world, understanding people in the world, understanding people in this country in a way that reveals the full humanity and not a stereotype of a hero, not the stereotype of a victim, not the stereotype of a prophet. And I think that I'm really interested in maybe exploring some of that aspect of the conversation today as well. So I think what I would do is we've heard the names, but I think that some of you will know these companies really well, and some of you may not know these companies much at all. And so I'm not going to make any sort of assumptions as to whom you know and whom you don't know. So I'm just going to ask, moving from my left, if these artistic directors could say a little bit more about their theater and a little bit more about their work that they will be referencing in the conversation. Some of it's been passed and some of it's still coming up. Hi, I'm Carrie Curloff, the artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater, which is a producing organization and also a school. And I was just thinking about how this material, mostly what I have learned in my years at ACTS from our students and one of my favorite students is an actor named Omar Mewali, who graduated quite a few years ago now, but it was with Omar that I started the quest of looking for Middle Eastern players. And I'm going to talk about today, from our end, is a play by Wajdi Mawad called Scourge, Assenby, which was written in French, but he's Lebanese and premiered in Montreal and we did last season of this. Good afternoon. You guys awake? Yeah. It's just so big in here. My name is Sean San Jose. I work for a place here in San Francisco called Intersection to the Arts, and very specifically I work with the resident theater company Campo Sanpo, and we create all the work we have for more than 15 years doing that. And I suppose we're going to talk specifically about a piece of work. There's a young writer that we work with by the name of Shadi Faubo-Humped, and I think, yeah, more than what I'm going to say about things, I think the individual storyteller and personal history becomes very important to the way that we approach any topic. Any questions? I'm Marissa Lowell. I'm the artistic director of Coyote Fire Theater, and we're a movie theater. We do new work, and we've been around for 15 years, and we really work with playwrights, commissioning, developing, and producing the work. And in particular, our first Middle Eastern thing, it was just down this summer, by Anastasian Canary, who is Swedish-Chinese, and that's called immigration, and directed by the one woman every night. Hi, I'm Michael Butler. I'm the artistic director of Center Rap in Almond Creek, or technically it's in the Bay Area, but I think it is on the ninth ring of Sabbath. It's so far out there. Center Rap is the resident company of the Leicester Center for the Arts, and interestingly, we are a city program, so I'm rarely here representing parts of rap, just technically what I am. We have no tradition of doing even new plays, let alone Middle Eastern plays, so we are producing and directing Yusef El-Gindy's, the one of the playwrights working to see this afternoon, Pilgrim's Musa and Sherry in the New World, which is just one of the Steinberg Award. We're doing that as part of our off-center series in the spring, and so this is, I'm just on the beginning of my adventure into this world, and I'm fairly happy to be here, but it's going to be a very great learning experience really this whole weekend. So thank you for that. I think what I'd like to do is, you know, rather than like interview Carrie and then interview Sean and then just moving down the line, I'd like to kind of throw out a few questions and then ask, you know, make sure that each one of them is responding with kind of a hopefully creative conversation that's also occurring here at this table, and then we will move on to the next question and the next question and we'll wrap up that portion of it around 205 to kind of make sure that we've got plenty of time for Q&A to hear from your experiences and thoughts around this in a good 20 to 25 minutes of that towards the end of this session, so just to kind of lay that out. The first question that we had in front of us as we were looking at it is like, you know, why do this kind of work? And, you know, maybe it's because it's on the front page of the newspaper, but maybe there's something else. So maybe Carrie, you were mentioning that it came from someone that you promised you to add in the MFA program. Maybe, I don't know, maybe talk a little bit more about... Well, the question you asked is really the better question, which is why not? You know, we spend our lives, we're just talking about this, you know, having discussions about diversity in the American theater, which usually means the same three plays and the same three cultures, and you know, this represents an enormous part of the world. It's amazing to me that it's taken us this long, but theater always goes out of individual relationships. You want to work with specific artists. They lead you to other artists. People tell their own stories. I started my career as an archeologist working on ancient Middle Eastern stuff. So, you know, I studied sewer and Babylon and Assyria, and I love that part of the world. I came back to it through lots of different people, but starting with Omar, I got to... I worked in Canada a lot and heard about this player who had come from Lebanon when he was 18. And so I went to Montreal and started looking for these plays. He's written this tetralogy, so there are four of them, and they get weirder and weirder. They're really surreal, dangerous plays. But Scorch just knocked me out. I mean, it's a Greek tragedy by every Middle East about twins searching for their identity, and it was made into quite an amazing film, actually, last year. And once I met him at Washi, who's a very magical, particular kind of writer, I just wanted to sort of keep going down that path, and I'm sure one of the things we'll talk about, it depends on, you know, if we're talking about plays in English or not, translation is a big issue, a really interesting question, and how you find translators for work from all over that part of the world is particular. But this one really captured my imagination, and I brought it back to SOT, and we have a trustee who's Lebanese, Lionel Tarif, and this meant a great deal to her. We started to just read more on the play and more and more people. It's a big community here. As you start to put the feelers out, come into the mix and say, that's part of my story, and you should make sure you know this and you should talk to that person, and then you start casting, and there's a huge pool in this country now of Norwegian actors. So I was really committed to that, to making sure that Around the Table was a kind of rich world. So there was an Egyptian actor, and an Iranian actor, and a Syrian actor, and a Lebanese actor, and a Greek guy. Well, speaking of translation, Marisa, that makes me think of the invasion, which was originally written in Swedish. Right, right. Tell us a little bit about that, the process of journeys. Yeah, so, you know, actually, this is funny, because I actually heard about this work from reading an article, and we have times about it. You know, the title was something about like a openly political playwright, and I was like, yes, who is this? And he'd only been done in the US once, in New York. And so we were really excited to be able to do this work here, and he was incredibly... I mean, he's, I think, we're still living in England, or... Right, okay. So he was very, very open with us about, yes, making your own, and doing what you want, and the translation, so he speaks fluent English, but he chose to have it translated by an American writer. And he talked about that as being important to him, so that it kind of carried that incredibly relevant, like, of the moment piece that really uses the kind of, like, vernacular and slang of the characters in the world. And he felt like, he said that he felt it would be a bolder translation and so I think that he has a very close relationship with this writer, who also translated one of his novels. And it was interesting, because in our audience we had him, I was so startled that we had not only a great representation of folks from the Middle East come out, but also folks from Sweden who were Swedish speakers and had been doing his work, and were really excited to see it staged. Absolutely. So, Sean, what brought you, I mean, I know that a lot of what you do is based upon the relationships that you develop in the audience. Is that true? I mean, I think it's interesting and thank you for having this particular panel of folks. I think in creating work, especially new work, you know, for us it's always to reflect the world that we live in. And so there's kind of a non-specificity to that. And I think there's obviously this whole, these past few weeks have been filled with people clearly working from the inside. If we look about this subject matter we're clearly working on the outside of it, in terms of that. I mean, I think it's just part of the each of us, it's the United States, right? So each of us has to lead our place into the storytelling map or narrative that this country allowed at a certain point. And so just like any other movement, I think the world has to wake up and it's just going to have to tell more and more stories that way. So we've certainly never went into thinking what we tell Middle Eastern society. We're not capable of that. I think also our expertise, is not in looking at things politically per se or historically in that sense. So it has to become very personal and personal then hopefully to be political in that sense. And so it's interesting I guess just to sit up here and try and invert the equation how we approach it. At the heart of any of the storytelling Brad was saying is the human experience of it that's what we want to start with and then I think I'm a believer in the more specific you make the storytelling oddly enough to the more universal it becomes. And I think in our case working with this young man Sharif Al-Wahamde he worked with us for a long time and he saw how other writers told stories about their own past their own histories, their own memories their own struggles and it's also hard for us to be representative of international things. Us meaning our group Kamposaka which is very squarely grounded in San Francisco frankly and grounded in being the strange citizens of this United States which ends up having a lot of swimming through a sea of several different migrations I think in seeing these sort of paths and seeds of other people's works whether it's Chicanos or Black folks or Japanese whatever it is how you got to the place that you got to and I think he saw his own story and his own past and that he's Palestinian so I think that also has there's something heightened in that for him in terms of of homeland, history, identity, all that in a weird way I sound so general about it but I think that moment that you sit in a theater especially if you grow up in the United States and for many of us you don't see yourself reflected often enough I think the moment that you see yourself reflected in any kind of refraction where you go like listen to that August Wilson story about this guy telling a very particular story in the 1940s but it's about his grandmother I relate to my grandmother in that same way if this is not too much of a stretch of I mean that's kind of the moment that I had that makes me interested in doing theater and I think for us Sharif had that story and so he came into it in many different ways trying to tell stories and ultimately the strongest story he had was the tell a story about him and his father and his mother and a lot of things and so I think we you do that and then you put it in the hands of the people that know that story that's interesting really not from Omar Metswale he's also part of our company as well as Cherries and he directed that I think there's something there's something this cool about the growing legion of stories that this country is filled with and the fact that these two younger men were able to lead us a company still very young ourselves but into a new era of storytelling and that's why I'm most excited to be on the panel is actually the part where we get to look at the real life and what else and what other stories are there and what other stories are there when we first started the thing we did a play by the guy who probably also leased a few words categories I'm a Chicano writer and so I think it's easy to go like other Chicano plays I think we very purposefully set out to tell stories that reflect the world we live in you know if you live in the Bay Area it's a lot of stories so we're never going to get to one hundredth of them but the ones that speak the truest and the loudest are the ones who want to be part of telling and Cherries who knows that story so I think it's less that his play it's more about his voice and the voice that he's in the inspiration of the people it's just it's a weird it's a weird bottom of the mountain thing that we're all in because we're trying to tell many many stories from many many people in the way that the United States works is the most of the land that's already plotted out to people so it takes these ways for people to go oh now there's lesbian stories oh no black folks in stories stories oh no Latin people in stories stories oh no Asian American stories so I feel sort of oddly fake up here so now we tell Middle East and so I don't I could never report that we do that I think we work with people that live in this world pretty honestly if you broke it down yeah Cherries Carles Denier born tomorrow Egyptian so in that way yeah but he ended up he wrote this play his first play that got produced called Habibi so beautiful and so honest that I think it could be in any in any play festival or book about you know immigrant experiences of Middle Eastern experiences as far as I could tell there's me in that one so Michael I am interested in asking you this question because you're going out on this one for the first time and as you were saying it's not really something that you're it's usual for a center rep to be doing and so maybe obviously about how you come this play and why and why now and so it's here there it is yeah you know in some ways the risk for us is not so much doing a Middle Eastern play but doing a new play and maybe that's a good thing in a way but that's in some ways where the bigger focus is on you know we've launched this it's part of this off-center second stage program that we inaugurated three years ago because I was really feeling the need to have an opportunity for myself frankly and for our audiences to you know entertain come in contact with me work work doesn't have to be as frankly sell as many tickets because I have to upstate so you know it's a little to do that in 2009 but I thought it was a really good opportunity at the same time and did it without any budget staff and sort of has to pay for itself so it's a really interesting it's still kind of a commercial venture in a weird way but definitely the focus is to do new work the play came to me because I don't have a literary department actually so it's always like a weird sort of personal recommendation based kind of way that it happens David Bichard an actor in Seattle that I work with many times in our play right had encountered this but I think with that festival music or the icicle music yes you know I talk we talk to people all the time that's good, that's a good idea and he recommended it he just loved the play and he really spoke to me about it as a rather than a Middle Eastern play and I responded to it as a great play but frankly also feeling that having an opportunity to have a conversation about this issue felt extremely important and that anything that could let people even if they don't have a conversation I just think about developing empathy and understanding for this situation was really important and I like the play so much because it's basically a romantic comedy that uses that genre and that powerful attractive story to explore a kind of culture clash between the expectations between the method and Middle Eastern values so it was appealing to me on a lot of levels and that's basically what led to what's so interesting is that truly I was asking this question for the first time we did not like all meet on the phone and rehearse what we were going to say before we got here today so all of these questions are real they're not rhetorical and so I'm really hearing them which is really interesting and maybe really gratifying that I'm not hearing from anyone of these four artistic directors it was like gosh we really felt like we needed to do something Middle Eastern so let's go find something I'm really hearing that it's about these stories, these playwrights this we want to reflect the world and this is obviously a huge part of the world so why wouldn't we do it as Kerry was saying I think that's really interesting and yet or maybe and along with that as you found yourself going down this path and given the sort of complex histories of the Middle East and the passions and the volatility and frankly some of the sort of history that's been out there with I just so remembered and I did get a chance to see it in New York my name is Rachel Corey and I think we all saw what happened with that company in New York and the decision to pull the play for a while and then they got beat up for that and then they did it and just like there are unseen perhaps landmines and I wondered if you found any landmines along the way or were afraid of any or weren't afraid of just went full steam ahead I don't know if there's something different about this kind of war or not I think there will be for me any new play is going to have this set of challenges that will win them down with the possibilities you know title is so important and I really like the title but it's long I'm sure you've heard this before once you've read the play I think you really love it but you know so I think it will the goodwill and the natural ambassadorship of this play will, that takes a little longer but I really believe it's going to have potentially a profound effect on the people that see it and will spread and will do it really hard to change how people not really believe or think but affect some sense of their regard of things you know it's interesting we don't have any landmines but it's kind of like what Sean said it's such an important question to always be asking ourselves is the question of authenticity of voice and what that means as a white Jewish artistic director to be very thoughtful around and be aware of what can be easily cultural appropriation or what has been in our history in this country cultural appropriation as we do work by all sorts of folks who are not our only subject position so I feel very grateful for Torange and Golden Threads support and everyone because we just, I think that in our leading up to in our pre-production of the show we have a lot of conversations and a lot of we have to be really honest about casting about choices around having a resident artist who has played a Middle Eastern character before at a number of different times but who himself is not what that meant and just being open and not kind of coming to the table like listen, I know everything so I'm going to do this play and that feels very important but for all sorts of work that we do and not just shut the doors and say well I can't do anything outside my own subject position because that's what we do let's be thoughtful and ask a lot of questions and engage in ways that feel scary and important I think landlines don't usually come around political issues or manufactured cultural issues so I think no in that sense and I think it also speaks to it's easy for me to say because I believe it because what we do we're interested in telling stories that reflect our world which is safe in a certain way but that can only exist if there are then groups like Globe and Fred in order for us as a whole ecology of us trying to tell stories we actually need both of the muscles working at the same time so therefore it becomes easier for me to say yes, of course that's another story the sea of stories that needs to be told and at the same time it's just like our identity the same time that I say I'm a person of color and at certain times I have to be like shut the fuck up can't be always talking about I'm a person of color I just have to be a person at a certain time I think for the whole storytelling that has to happen for us as whatever community, society, the world and so for us we kind of have the easier task of it we're telling a story that is an honest, heartfelt, honest imaginative, crazy story but like landlines it's very lightweight I think I think it's harder if you're taking on something political and it's obvious in this you know the culture that we live in that Middle Eastern things have a sort of this layer over it right now so I think it's harder for people and it's harder in a smaller degree for people that are attacking that a little more head on so for us you know I'm laughing looking at Joan Holman thinking that landmines my first year here doing the pulp in the woods and getting practically arrested by the Catholic Church so the Middle East was so easy where I'm never in my life and picketed and attacked by that label that was a landmine because it was sort of deliberately provocative I mean you know it's so deeply depends on the play a lot of these are family plays family of families is hugely particular whether it's a Greek family, a Jewish family, a Turkish family and a Iranian family and the circumstances I'm thinking about Mona Mansour's work it's both very particular both universal because it wrestles intercultural and intergenerational issues that we all wrestle with you know good writing is sort of good writing you know the landmines are just as Marissa says if we had done Scorched and just passed like our company, yeah that would have been terrible and but you know I always think the fun of making theater is every play you do whether it's as a writer or director or producer it's like a journey into another world so the best thing you can do is say to people who know that role you take me, guide me what do I pack, what do I eat how does the language work who do you want to go with you so every journey is like that it's just like Kerry said the one day you wake up and you go uh oh I better cast some Middle Eastern actors in the United States and you take yourself to that task and go oh it turns out there's two million of them okay great like I shouldn't trip about that that's going to happen I think for all of us that live in boxes or good prison boxes the more and more we bust out and say oh there's actually a million stories about a million people and a million people can tell their stories so let's do the really good ones and the ones that really need to be certified people and that is a process that hopefully we go through each time we do it whether it's with Charity or if it's with the condom or music or whoever you're working with we'll work with new writers or writers that write new pieces so Michael it's a ramping it's a ramping of your audiences for this production whether it's different or new things if you are planning to do or worrying about or hoping for we're actually looking forward to not doing that and letting the audience sort of encounter the play really freshen up on its terms but it is gentle the play is gentle in that way I'm like Charity said good writing is good writing and you need to be aware that you're in the hands of a good writer it's inventive and and then character relationships great characters a very engaging relationship that begins in the novel that draws anybody in and then all the other stuff is sort of in support of that or that's driving that's driving it so I think it's kind of great in a way to not come to this particular play to see a story about maybe culture crash it's a story like the doctor said in the keynote that the bilingualism that is roomfully happily deliberate but some really joyous embracing of this new adventure it's a story of this Egyptian immigrant trying to encounter America and make it here okay that's deep enough that's everybody's story I think what's so interesting that I'm hearing from the panel is that there wasn't a particular forevoting about approaching this work necessarily and there wasn't really an experience of landmines as people were staying along the way in a kind of particular way of taking the audience by the hand and having to sort of like usher them through or shepherd them through in a different way which is maybe not what people assume in practitioners here and elsewhere around the country which is also really encouraging with that in mind this might be a good time to kind of open it up and extend the conversation out to you all for both questions and comments and maybe sharing of your own experiences with this producing work that deals with issues in the Middle East or coming from we need microphones go to thank you so much I am Fabia, I'm from Syria I'd like to first thank you for all the effort you are to produce the theater play I have questions that if you follow the image or the plays that were before the Arab Spring and after the Arab Spring from what we have really, article, the news and most of the production or anything written about the Arab you find something have changed the perspective have changed I have noticed that the appreciation and respect for Arab people or the Middle Eastern people have changed so do you think that has affect you the vision or even your audience how that affect your job that you start to pick different subject and do you think as I don't know if I'm right that I have seen that even the theme itself in the play I find a lot of things speaking about for example before the repression of women how much their religion affect women how they see us in general and suddenly I have found a lot of politics came up and start to see another thing happen that so do you think that affect you and your audience how they receive this I think what you speak to is that now like a sort of new generation like a youthfulness hunger and a kind of on the world stage that I think I feel at some level that that we need to be kind of pushing actually a demand for more Middle Eastern work on stages and you know again and on to Taranj for her work and her vision that is pervasive here but for me it's I don't know it kind of brings up a sense of like this should be a directive for all of us actually that it yes yes yes yes it's the stories that are relevant but it's also it's pressing for us particularly to Eric's brain I mean I think it's a great question because it's a great question for us in the world right and I think as practitioners creators of theater pieces for like witnesses in form of witness and journalists of sort so with us it's like that in terms of its delay like an event will happen it takes like three years for it to land into our consciousness about how it affects our culture and then we can start responding creatively to further the dialogue in some way so I think to initially answer your question for sure for sure yeah I think every one of us in the world feels a little bit more like that since all of the events have happened and then how will that affect the work I don't know yet too because in the United States we're so like you know we look down at our own things so much it's going to be hard to sort of go like well look back up child and there's the rest of the world and how is that going to affect you all and so I don't know how that's going to affect the rest of the the way we tell stories I would imagine too it'll happen quicker you know you know because what you say is exactly I mean it's in the zeitgeist and sometimes we don't even know what's in the zeitgeist we hear it we read it we don't even really consciously know this is something we're thinking about and then you read something and you think that's what it is and you know for me one of the most puzzling things about studying the Middle East is to try to understand tribalism what is that I get this Alawite Sunni Shiite situation in Syria which you it's in your DNA and all we can do is parse it in the New York Times and try to understand what is that because we ostensibly live in a culture but it's a culture of law so what washti was trying to do and scorched I suddenly realized was this question about vendetta so how does vendetta work right why is vendetta such an ancient thing and why does it follow tribal lines and why where does the law intersect with it which is of course what Greek tragedy is about I'm just going to say that when electros deal with this yeah so I love this stuff because that's what I was weaned on but what I realized in telling the washti he also loves Greek tragedy because the question that the Greeks tried to ask and you know we as Americans are so naive we think if you just let people have free elections democracy is going to happen we somehow don't get it look at our own democracy why don't we get a messy difficult process but we don't seem to get it and so you know this question of whether vendetta and tribalism can actually be interrupted by something that has a different kind of representation is huge and the question of women of course is even major because you know from much in the Middle East women have so much less access to voice and education you know I think those things that's what drew me if you want to look at the sort of bigger political things that Irish people were writing about I would love to work more on that because it's so hard to wrap our heads around I mean I think Karen brings up a great point too though obviously the the breaking down of laws and hope of that is beautiful to all of us then it butts up against sort of our theories around law and structure and anything messy obviously it becomes much more difficult like there should be a billion stories right now kind of running constantly about Gaza Strip and Mexico right now isn't that where the most contention and you know actual real life drama has been going on for years and years and years and we can barely read it in the newspaper so in order for it to get out of our stages it's harder but I agree too again with Karen that it's in the air so it's going to sooner or later it's going to pull back down and it's going to come into someone's story political stuff is hard but I'm talking to an audience of people that know that much better than I so it becomes very that's what the landline says and you know it becomes an interesting thing hope hope hope becomes a beautiful thing may I ask a question so I just want to shift the conversation a little bit of focus on you've talked about you know Middle East as an international concept and work in translation but Habibi is an American story and Pilgrims is an American story I'm interested in your perspective on why more Middle Eastern American players are not being introduced and how can we help to make that happen sorry so baby there's a baby over there what do you want me to do I think that's the I will put myself to that task too there's not enough space I think part of it too is like again like working two muscles at the same time like we can over here look at the big scope what are the stories, what is the world telling us to do and then there needs to be enough rattling in the cage can you tell a funny story can you tell our story can you tell our story we're here can you tell our story okay you're not going to tell our story we're going to tell our story and then we get like 50 of those stories you go like she's really good you can tell her stories next if she'll tell her stories so part of it I mean we have to work in this kind of unconscious concert together you go like will you continue to write and tell your stories and then we'll tell those stories together I mean I don't think well certainly none of us up here are situated in a place that says let's focus on this as the type of story telling I mean it's the thing with any group, any minority right we have to speak loud enough until you listen to us and you're not going to listen to us then we're going to speak louder or we're going to tell it to each other and we're going to tell it to each other long enough that you're going to come in you're going to become interested after a while but I would just hope more I mean it's not like it's not happening I mean we take a few from you like we are in every year you know many many voices every every year so I think about you know what you need to you know do this and then you know the the component of I mean it sounds so corny maybe it's naive but the love and understanding that the play has and it's calling for you know maybe that's subversive to like make us think when we count on this play we watch it oh this is just a play about young lovers trying to make it and then oh no it's actually got all this other stuff but I'm hooked in on this very human story maybe that's I don't know the answer to the question why there isn't more I'm not qualified to that but we're just thinking about my own experience of why I chose this play I mean let's be honest now most of the American theater does the same three plays you get Middle Eastern plays to talk about plays like women or anything you know I didn't get an amazing job I mean I think it's about getting names out there over and over again you're with the array of possibilities you know I think people don't read plays anymore in this game you know I mean you've sung some an artistic different play and you're lucky if anybody ever reads anything I don't know why so it has to do with keeping that pot boiling as you have as artists as actors who want to do those plays are ambassadors and say you want to work with me here's what I want to do I mean very often that's how a play gets done all kinds of different cultural plays read this you know and after 3,000 plays sitting under desk you read that one because that person you know and so partly just you know finding ways to make sure that the work you do gets out there gets published gets you know gets seen you've laid a huge amount of traction just here and it's happened around the country in a relatively short amount of time you know it is a really ridiculous thing that you know it took 50 years for American plays to get released and they all have their little fashions a little fashion of Asian American and now that sort of disappears you know partly more and more they will just be American stories and there are most of the American stories and performers to tell them but it's partly I think in this country just familiarity do you know what I mean it's like realizing your neighbor it's one gay marriage is going to happen no matter what anybody pretends your neighbor is gay and they're going to like it you know it's familiarity then you want them to get married then they're not the other anymore you know the Middle East has been made the other in western culture for so many thousands of years that that is a really that's the big interesting challenge about the Middle East is and I don't even like it that we call it the Middle East they're totally different cultures I hate that you go to Turkey it's one university you go to Syria it's a different you go to Lebanon it's totally different history you go to Iraq so I'm not even sure that's so helpful I want to say too, I mean what was interesting with Invasion was you know it was Americanized and that the transfer had originally or, no not San Rachel had written it to me in New York because that's where it was done first but everyone was like let's make this about the Bay Area and so we got permission from the playwright to just change a few words here and there to make it relevant to us now in terms of like locations and I loved that I loved that choice because it felt like we can't even push it off to the world at least exactly the world on the West Coast so it was so, so timely us now here in San Francisco and that does seem extremely important, both things seem important but to cultivate a sense of our own engagement and culpability now here Everett? Before I ask the question I'd like to um I did the I was the art person when Scorch was selected so I was sort of excited outside of the question I had is do you feel like an artistic director? It feels like on the artistic side there's a hunger and interest and sort of great support of a lot of old writers you know we, CRC, certain writers come up interested in when we set it to your teams, I'm going to do this Middle Eastern play what was the reaction for the marketing people what was the reaction from the fundraising people and how were sales I mean and I don't, that's a real question because I actually feel like until Middle Eastern plays start selling well, you know then we won't make that next step because we we want to make it so that it's not as big as this in a way and I know a lot of artists don't think that way but you counter it when you bring the play out and your marketing people go ooh, you know or not I'm just really curious about how that could actually happen yeah, thank you I'll be really honest with you it wasn't it wasn't, didn't go that well really? well, yeah it's just awful how sort of reductive it gets down to you know the names of things it's just hard and there wasn't any real resistance it's just wow, that's going to be difficult, the fame of the the play and the name of the play right, I'm sorry but this is the truth this is the guy, there's we're used to thinking terms of ticket sale okay yeah that just strengthened my resolve though obviously we need to do this so it's terrible it's good to be honest with you if we're not honest with you anybody else can I follow up on that one just a comment person I kind of want to get back to the landmines and ritual quarry question because I it's hard for me to believe that that guerrilla is not in the room but I want to tell you about 20-25 years ago before 9-11 Middle East only had one meaning in this country and that was Israel and Palestine and the conflict there and it wasn't just landmines around you it was bombers aimed at your head if you took off that subject that's what it was I was part of a group that did that in the late 80s with enormous rewards every Jew and Arab in the big areas of the play about Israel and Palestine because they were full of so much tension about it they really flocked but it's enormous and none of you has mentioned a show that goes there or that goes to the U.S. role in Iraq and I'm pressing the question of whether there are not boundaries there are not things that would come at you if you touched this region in a more dangerous way I think you're absolutely correct and I think that's probably it's not consciously why we get what Terry said that it's easier to come to a place to commune if you're talking about a personal story that's about family absolutely for sure I mean I think there's that on the one hand and then on the other hand I think how many people outside of you are armed and skilled to write those kinds of pieces I don't know I don't know that answer because I don't know those that's not a soft folly that's more just what I'm versing you guys out here may know more people that are ready it's hard enough to get a story in the newspaper so I don't know how you get people to produce those play I hear you and I don't know and I think that has its trickle down then who are the people that are skilled and crafted enough to write a skilled and crafted piece in response to that that furthers the dialogue or in some ways actually starts the dialogue I think it's a great question a question I have no answer I'm trying to think I mean we're about to do this play by George Walker that's really scabrous about an American Sniper who comes back from Iraq and I have no idea what the response is going to be I mean it's not news that none of these veterans can get jobs in this country when they come back and snipers are the worst in terms of employability because they have what they call the eye and that gift which has allowed them to rise in the military and kill at long distance with the incredible precision means they are pariahs when they come back to states and I wanted to do this play because such a troublemaker and such a fantastic writer sort of in the Joan Holden vein I think he's a writer who's probably been very much a cook by you I don't know what I have no idea how that will land and you know in the Bay Area we pretend that we're so we're not the ones sending people to Iraq so we can be very liberal about it it's not ours seriously you know we have this project called computer of war and we've had two NFA students who are in Iraq right now and when they came back and did this project it was absolutely amazing because it was all for the point of view of war is that it's for veterans and so you do a big collaboration where you get people into the audience who are veterans and you know I mean that's a whole other question of who we license our wars out to in this country and the rest of us let it go by you know let alone in Israeli point of view there's a wonderful there are a bunch of Israeli writers writing about like you know Mati Lerner's play the death of Yitzhak which we have Rabin which we worked on which the you know Jews in this town hated it's very very critical of the Israelis he's an amazing writer he has enough trouble getting his plays done in Israel now you know I mean part of the question is we are incredibly culturally myopic in this country you know about all kinds of other cultures it's just the Middle East you know I suppose the Middle East we should be less myopic because we're so involved but I mean we just did a Finnish play at ACT and everybody was like what a lot from where and it's Finland you know where was that so difficult it was incredibly peculiar so you know under my thin front I would say I mean Scorched, you were there when we read I mean our team really enjoyed the play so they really wanted to do it they're much more nervous about other things I like that's another question I wonder given your respective experiences about program what do you think has happened not so far as the question of stage but stage in theater in terms of the location of theater namely there is a place called Zizong and people come here they're invited on a Sunday or Friday to come here and watch their theater or given a contemporary political event such as Tahir Square Tahir Square was not just a revolutionary space it was a theatrical space people were just going there to perform poetry, play, drama, etc we had something of that as a party in New York that again was an occupying space you had an audience or really the play went to the audience or the audience coming I suppose something like that must have happened in Oakland I'm not going to hear that in our part of the world we have a tradition that theater went where people were in the Bazaar people were doing the grocery shopping so you had performance on Friday, Thursday evening people went to the cemetery for loved ones to stage Tahir right there on the cemetery I wonder if something also here we have situational theater any number of a a synoptym of sort of changing the idea of theater where is the theater to perform I just wondered that in this particular moment in this theater we are whether this idea of theater here is the play that is happening you will go by the ticket and you come I mean last night I saw some fantastic plays but they were like 12 and a half people sitting in the audience what if that means to be perceptual completely with you absolutely I think we're in the midst of weighing experimenting trying that very idea I think absolutely and it's not so far from why we would ask a question like where are the Middle Eastern writers I think it's in that same arena meaning if the people are there don't we need to bring the story to the people bring the story back to us and yet absolutely we talk about classes racist issues you know theater perpetuates it as much as any place where we have this hidden set of rules and agendas and obviously economics play into it so only a certain number of us are going to go to that thing or once you're in that thing then only you go and then we do that silly thing where we only crave for each other I'm absolutely with you I think we're trying to do that but right now we're going to do our own next year two things in theater spaces and the rest all along spaces from our space on mission and up 6th street and up market and gallery hotel lobby cafe street corner market store I think that's right I think there has to be right and in the way that you're saying in a basic historical outchemical way there's obviously something there that's what we're trying to create in this weird way in here but it's the same idea but then in the moment that we are in time absolutely also I think just the fact that people don't want to sit in places like this obviously speaks to it so that's such a beautiful thing that you just said that is that is both very cultural specific and very much of now you know it isn't an American tradition because we're founded as a pure country where people didn't want play houses anyway and you had to hide out to do theater because theater people were prostitutes and renegades so we don't really have a tradition of public quite that way I mean that is such a beautiful way to put it when you just said that you know on this Thursday night everybody's at market and that's what they do I mean I'd love to see that tradition created and that would be a very particular new way of saying this is what it means to be American you know that it isn't just a commodity that people go by but actually it is something that a community could do in public together I don't think that's particularly a tradition in this country no I think about them the mine crew has certainly been doing years ago but that's a different thing because that's saying we as this company are going to go into this park what you just said is so amazing which is there are times in the week where an audience is going to be in this place at this cemetery or now this audience of everybody on Thursday night is going to be in this market so let's figure that and let's go there that's kind of I have to think about that that's fabulous I guess my question is about the line of the audience are you exploring and dressing usually the audience is small it was so late we got great audience responses and it's very encouraging for us we had we were really we have 50,000 houses so it's a different beast however we had a great run and we were ready to sell out and I think that I feel that there was a place at the table for a lot of different audiences particularly young audiences and who felt invested and felt that they as Sean has kind of alluded to saw themselves on stage and the Swedish folks and that scenario you described actually doesn't apply to us the thing of the review comes out and then you're packed we were actually the newspapers could die tomorrow and I don't think I'd see any difference but actually word of mouth old fashioned real word of mouth is still the most powerful tool and I depend on it enormously and it actually works I love it I actually feel like there's a real conversation going on within the community and between them and us it's pretty great I was really happy during the Scorch to see who did come but I was also unhappy who didn't come in the sense that you know it did really well but because of Lila on our board and other Lebanese friends of mine and Iraqi friends of mine you know I tried to figure out groups and ways and dialogue and there are people who knew about it but you know theater is such a marginal marginal thing in most people's lives that by the time four weeks have gone by and it's done people in their communities and their schools just hearing about it if it's not something you're already looking for so and forget them they're not really the chronicle I'm saying today but it was played there and I'm thinking about more too I'll play a period so it is a really different thing to think about different kinds of audiences and weird you go how do you build those bridges we tried to do lots and lots of post play things early on with lots of different kinds of people and then encourage them to go out and find people to come back but as with anything you have to do a lot of it you have to do it one time I know this is now watching Electrum because I do a lot of Greeks and the first time we did Greeks I got these letters from the audience before they even saw it saying we hate Greek tracking and when did you see it are they people in slips or something walking around I don't know what they thought now we've done a lot of it and now they're like they know it's fierce and argumentative and litigious and loud and complicated and big women doing dangerous things that's the problem it's volume you have to do enough you have to reach out more than once you know I can't be for us having one show it's like great let's keep going because it's not I remember eight years ago when we did this one show hope you guys will come back we have just one more question hello I'm Rebecca hi first of all I just want to follow up on what Carrie just said about volume more is more in this situation and I want to thank everybody on the panel because what you revealed is both your ease and your comfort and your thoughtfulness but also some of the questions that do contextualize presenting this work both here in a beautiful liberal like San Francisco and nationally where some of the issues are more complicated and the nation is struggling like the NEA has a program to bring a Pakistani company into a rural community in Nebraska and the veterans issues and the Israeli-Palestinian issues and the funding issues the fact that there's less money given to any other international exchange in the entire U.S. foundation and government budgets isn't that so strange so there are issues of funding there are issues of marketing there are issues of translation there are issues of building some kind of a community of allies and many many many many thousand million kudos to Golden Thread Productions and one of maybe three theater companies or is it five I don't know but I mean it's a very small handful of companies around the country who are developing we're developing the artists developing the works discovering the connections just this morning new people that we're meeting so theater companies yes we have a tiny role to play in that but I just wanted to say a big thank you to everybody because more and more and more are going to happen and if there's some kind of you know what that boardings is big on collectivism and staying in connection to develop more and more and more so that there's national advocacy for funding for raising these questions because you guys have now had this positive experience and many companies around the country would not feel so comfortable and so confident you're now people who can share those stories as well as everybody there so I just wanted to say thank you last closing comments come see the play I just said okay I'm throwing down my conlet because I love Roberta so much you know and I didn't go I was a bad girl and didn't go last week to the TCG fall form on diversity because I never want to have that conversation again because I thought supposedly said forget these general conversations in TCG you're not allowed to go to the conference unless you let's say the fall form was just on Middle Eastern Drive and you couldn't go until you've read these ten plays everyone can read some plays on the play but you have to have read the plays and then you're going to go and talk about those specific plays no general conversation about wouldn't it be nice if there was inclusion but something really specific and then we do a whole one with Roberta on Ugandan work and we really wrestle with those incredible artists who we've been collaborating then we do fiddling and swing but I don't know any other way around it I think it's a huge problem that you only get to know other cultures by either going here reading the material meeting somebody who works on the material and committing to doing it yourself I don't know any other way to do it it's trench work that's how it is that's how anything happens it's one on one but you have to make the commitment and we spend we've been told hours at all of the side if we didn't do this it's like we weren't allowed we need to permit ourselves for the next five years to do conferences where we had general no conferences are marketing ever again and we don't have to talk about social media and we don't have to talk about inclusion we actually have to learn something how about we make a commitment to that well thank you thank you for having me we're very happy to work on the panel one last round of applause we have a very brief 10 minute break I invite you to stretch your legs and enjoy some more coffee but please be back in 10 minutes which is when we will be presenting the Middle East America New Plays Initiative Award followed by a use of LED staged reading and a little later tonight a a a a a a a a a a a a a