 Matters Online Conference. It's been a wonderful day and we have another great panel coming up now. This one is on challenges and opportunities for neurodivergent inclusion and collegiate arts. So great stuff to talk about. We have the wonderful Michael John Carly here to moderate the discussion. So now I'm gonna hand it over to him. Take it away Michael. Thank you Clay. Welcome everybody to what I think is gonna be a really, really wonderful panel. I'm going to ask the panelists actually to introduce themselves primarily in just a moment. But I'd first like to just share with you just a little bit about my background. And then if I'm doing my job as the moderator that will be the last you hear about my personal experiences. So I wear a lot of different hats in the autism aspect of the world. I've started non-profits. I've consulted for schools. I write, I speak, yada, yada, yada. I was diagnosed back when I was a minor league diplomat during the day and a starving playwright by night along with my then four-year-old son as what we now know as the autism spectrum. And so Clay having sort of brought me back to this after years and years of a theater career that I just figured was long and dead. So this has been a real joy for me to kind of reinvigorate all those old feelings and remember how the arts benefit me so much in two particular areas just having to do with my autism. Number one, of course, was theory of mind issues because before theater, I promised you I was one of those people that could not comprehend that somebody else was thinking something differently than I was thinking. And I remember those first encounters when you're playing with characters and the directors like Michael, you understand that the characters thinking something differently from you and you're thinking to yourselves, are you kidding me? What, why would you say that? And it also helped me sort of resolve a lot of motor skills issues because finally as there was this person monitoring my body sometimes in cruel manners that I didn't exactly appreciate at the time, but Michael, what are you doing with your hands? Well, I never noticed I was doing anything with my hands. And whether we want to go down that road as to what's proper assimilation or what's not so long as assimilation is being done within the context of choices, I'm all for it. And I did want to at least know how other people thought of what my body looked at. And there was nothing like a theater director to tell you what you looked like. So it benefit me tremendously if you're after any more of my information, I of course have one of those shamelessly self promotional author websites. It's michaeljohncarly.com but this particular panel, you're in for a treat because as Clay told you, it's a mouthful of a title. And we know that challenges and opportunities allow the title sometimes converge into one happy little kernel there and sometimes aren't so irregardless of one another. We have professors, we have university think tank people here and we have a couple of students too, so or former students. And I'm a former student of an MFA program myself. So maybe I'll sneak something in but Mark starting with you and then Leon, Ava and Dave take it away and introduce yourselves to everybody. And just thank you all again so much for joining us. Thank you, Michael. I'm Mark Charney. I am director of the School of Theater and Dance at Texas Tech for 27 years or so. I was at Clemson University and I've directed an English program and now theater and dance. I think one of the reasons I'm here is that I'm Clay's mentor. When he came to earn his MFA at Texas Tech, he was the person responsible for our connecting and partnering with the Burkhart Center for studies and autism. And we created under Clay's sort of mentorship, our relationship, we call it Burkh Tech Players. And Burkh Tech Players is an organization that's run sort of equally by those in the spectrum and some of our students. So I think that's why I'm here and thanks for having me, Michael. Thank you, Mark. Dave. Hi, my name is Dave Osmondson. I am an MFA student in dramatic writing at Arizona State University. Today's actually my last day of classes. So yay. I'm a playwright and I'm also a dramaturg and I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was three years old. Okay, thank you. Ava. Hello, thanks for having me. I'm Ava Rigelhout and I will be graduating Sarah Lawrence College, which is in New York State this May. And I am a founding member of Spectrum Theater Ensemble since 2017. So I've known Clay for a while. And through that, I worked with Trinity Repertory Company to produce their first full sensory friendly season. And this year at Sarah Lawrence College, through being a Ruderman Foundation, Ruderman Family Foundation, including an ambassador, I worked to add accessibility onto my campus. And so I also brought my sensory friendly work over to school and helped them create a show, a production of they were putting on head over heels. So I helped them make that musical sensory friendly for that year, along with a panel similar to this of industry professionals who are interested in accessibility for all people and people with autism. Excellent, Ava. Thank you. But I must tell you that, you know, obviously you're lacking a little bit of media control skills because you've clearly got the press banging on your door wanting to hear about, you know, your opinions as we go through this panel here. But Leon, welcome. Hi, thanks. Good to be with everyone. My name is Leon Hilton. I'm an assistant professor of theater and performance studies at Brown University. So I'm coming to you from Providence. And yeah, some of my academic work is looking at representations of autism, disability and neurodiversity in theater and performance. But I'm also kind of interested more broadly in how questions around neurodiversity can sort of shift our understanding of what performance means and sort of theories of performativity and how we understand those terms and related concepts. So, and I've also been kind of collaborating with Spectrum for a couple of years now. And it's really great that they're local. So it's been really nice to have a connection between our department and this really exciting, I think, innovative and kind of theater company that's like, you're really at the forefront of this conversation. So happy to be with you all. Excellent. Thank you, Leon. You know, I forgot to mention also, I too am a native, former native of Providence, Rhode Island, and it was where I grew up. So there's been that connection as well. But Leon, maybe we should stick with you if you don't mind because, you know, how you just described your work, I think it sounds to me like there's a challenge and an opportunity that you could probably jump right into to start us off. Would you mind? Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, when we sort of were having a conversation and preparation for this panel and you asked us to sort of think about this question. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the challenges that came to mind immediately was trying to think about, you know, so often I think work and disability, maybe or particularly around autism and neurodiversity happens under the auspices of maybe some other kind of, you know, an institution on campus. So maybe that's like a medical school or a public health school or an education, you know, school of education. And often the conversation around disability happens in relationship to these sort of like helping professions, people who are training to go into therapeutics in some way or medical fields. And I think that one of the things that I'm particularly interested in is how neurodiversity really can be understood more properly as a kind of social or cultural or political movement. And, you know, what does it mean to kind of carve out a space for thinking about neurodiversity that is separate from the kind of, you know, professional training in kind of therapy or medicine or other kinds of fields in which experiences of autistic people or neurodiversion people are necessarily at the center of who's making the kind of decisions around those kinds of questions. So, I mean, I think one of the challenges that I've been trying to kind of work through or think about is, you know, how do we kind of create disability cultural spaces that are kind of autonomous or kind of working on their own terms? And so, yeah, that's like a challenge. And I think, not to say that, you know, I'm collaborations with medical schools or public health schools or other kinds of, you know, neuroscience research isn't an exciting and important aspect of this work. I think it really can be. It's a favorite conference, you're good. But I just think that, you know, it's really, you know, how do we really foreground the kind of artistic integrity, right, of this work and not be attached to any kind of other motivation, right? And so I think there's a lot of complicated questions around that and I'd be happy to kind of talk more about that. And then I could also talk about an opportunity, I don't know if I should keep going, but I could also pause there. Well, I tell you what, what I'd like to do, especially is sort of come up with follow-up questions for all four of you. And I've got yours based on what you told me. So I'll come back, definitely. Ava, can we go next to you? What are some of the challenges and opportunities that you especially as a present student see? Yeah, so I think as Leon was saying that I came up with some ideas from our meeting about this panel and to make it a little bit more general, I think one of the challenges and opportunities is just generally that schools need to become more aware of the vast differences of disabilities and accessibilities, et cetera, both physical and mental disabilities that are on the college campus. And I think that's one of the challenges because people can be aware of them, but because there's so many and there's so nuance, many people feel it's like trying to solve global warming that you just don't know where to start and that, and so they don't start anywhere. And it can be a struggle, of course, because what can really help with one person with autism might not help another person with autism. But that also can be an opportunity because you can work with people and talk about and try many different things, such as some people might not like sensory friendly shows and some people might really like them. And so I think that's what was really interesting. And so it was also interesting when I was working with Trinity that they had some of their shows altered and some of them just with a sensory trigger list. And I think it was really great because not everyone wants a full altered show. Some people just want like a warning, like there's going to be a gunshot here. And also many people with PTSD in Rhode Island from veterans, et cetera. Also we're not expecting that but we're actually very happy at the end. They're like, wow, this was really helpful during death of a salesman. So I think that's a challenge and an opportunity for any institution. Okay, excellent. Thank you. I get the question for you. Dave, can we go to you? Sure. I think in terms of challenges, I think one challenge that I notice a lot of my students who are on the spectrum is feeling seen and feeling like there is someone who's on their side and an ally and something that I tend to do is I'm very open about my autism. I think there was one class where I kind of just said it as a thing that not a lot of people know about me because a lot of people don't know I'm autistic right off the bat. And I had a few students come up to me and say, thank you for being so open about that. So I think there is an opportunity there in being more open about our autism as professors and people in higher ed to help students feel seen. And I think another challenge to take that a little further is having LGBTQ students who are on the autism spectrum be seen. And I think there's an opportunity there of how can they navigate not just the theater community which is built very much on relationships but maybe also even the queer community. That's just something that I can start thinking about. I don't have much else to say but I think there is an opportunity there to be an ally for not just students on the spectrum but also LGBTQ students on the spectrum. And actually I'm going to have to point to a question now in addition to the follow-up question can you maybe just elaborate more on and whether this is the queer community or your students with autism what you mean by being seen? I mean, I think I know but I would love to hear you sort of elaborate more on that. Sure, being seen I think another way of putting it would be being acknowledged as if to say yes. But is this identity? Or is this through just knowledge secondhand that oh, that person's queer or that person's on the spectrum? I think it's identity. I don't have like a fully formed answer but yeah, I would say it's identity. Yeah, like basically just communicating to students like you are not alone, we're all together, et cetera. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. Mark, thank you for waiting. What's your challenge and opportunity? You know, as a director of a program I always look at the opportunities sort of based on the connection that we've made. The beginning I think what you have to do is have students who are really interested in helping to reach out with populations that are other. And I understand what you're saying, Dave in terms of being seen, R started with a theater and dance in the community class. And so when I took over a couple of years into it we realized that if we weren't serving the community we really weren't serving the population we should have been serving. So we put together a course called theater and dance in the community and we went all over wherever people needed us. We had graduates working with undergraduate students and we were sharing the idea of art. Well, three of those classes were with the autism center the Burkhart Artism Center. And we realized that there was a terrific connection there there was a terrific need there. In the middle of the first semester a young man who was 11 who had never spoken before said, I want my voice to be heard in the middle of an exercise. When you have, I mean, that's a wonderful moment, right? That's the sort of thing that swells your heart. You're not gonna have that all the time but we had this success enough with our students who had no training on how to work with students on the spectrum but just came at it with all their heart, right? So the opportunities are plentiful. We as theater artists and practitioners or dance artists and practitioners want to learn to communicate with every sort of population that we can. And so we found that creating the Burkhart players which was run by students in our program and students on the spectrum equally with an artistic director shared, boy, we learned a lot. We learned a lot. Our students learned a lot. They learned a lot. Suddenly we became part of this bigger thing. The challenges are always seemingly financial. Right now, this has gotten to be such a major thing that out of 52 graduate students who have assistantships and fellowships, something like 11 work with architecture with the Burkhart Center, not all of them 20 hours but a lot of folks work there and we're adding two extra productions a year. We're adding workshops. Believe it or not, financial isn't really a challenge. You can put this work together with people who are just willing. So I think the biggest challenge, Michael would be to begin this. I mean, start this. Have somebody who's interested in starting it and you don't have to have buckets of knowledge to communicate with people who are willing. That's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you, Mark. I'm gonna go in reverse order and I'm going to sort of ask the follow-up question actually of you. And that is that, you mentioned the finances as maybe not being the biggest hurdle up there but it is a hurdle for a lot of people and but you pose a good question in the context that just because you have a bunch of money what would you do with it to make it more inclusive to make it more inclusive department? If as the administrator of this panel if I dropped a million dollar donation on you and told you use this money to make your department infinitely more inclusive of everybody doesn't even have to be neurodiverse students of everybody. How do you go about spending that money? Well, we're always doing productions. We always need a place to go. We always need graduate students who are going to work and study to train. We always need some compensation for students who are putting all of this time in after hours on the weekends. I'd love to pay artists. I always love to pay artists but our graduate students who are working are paid and over the Burkhart Center, Dr. Dotson who runs that center also pays their students for being involved. So you never don't want to pay artists. We, the level of sophistication in terms of the theater that we produce that can be more elaborate if we have a bigger budget. We could also reach out maybe beyond the Burkhart Center. I mean, that's where we're sort of landed and that's the population we're serving. But they also pay quite a bit to be part of that center and we may be missing a population in the community who's not paying through the Burkhart Center that we can reach out for. We also could bring in guest artists who are more well-versed at working artists who are well-versed at working like a lot of you. I mean, I could see bringing in each of you to sort of help what we're doing. And we do bring in guest artists. Jason Williams, the sort of famous author of Greater Tuna has a son who is severely on the spectrum. He took a great interest. So he was volunteering left and right at the very beginning. But we'd like to have a more structured sense. I know I want to bring Clay and Spectrum Theater in to introduce nice this year. And that's going to cost some money, right? Because you want to pay travel, you want to put them up. We've done some work with sensory friendly shows. We need to have every one of our shows sensory friendly. We do. And it's not like, oh, let's play with this with one show. I mean, to me, if we're serving a population, so that probably costs a bit too. Okay, thank you. Dave, I'm going to switch back to you going in the reverse order thing. And I hope you don't mind this question. And please tell me if you do or you don't. But I'm old enough not to age myself out here, but I was doing theater in New York during the entirety pretty much of the AIDS crisis. And I certainly can remember how just, as somebody who embraced the theater community probably in part, not just because I like theater, but also because I was weird. And this was a community of people that were okay with the fact that I was weird. And I think that there was a lot of that for the LGBTQ community back then. And as a younger person, I'm kind of wondering, especially if the LGBTQ population feels the need to be seen, that you're seeing that in your population. I'm wondering, has maybe the relevance because the rest of the world isn't so homophobic as it used to be. Has that almost made the need for theater that the LGBTQ community so clearly wanted and desired, has that kind of made the need for theater almost dissipate to the point where we now need to start creating programs to encourage the LGBTQ populations to come back to the theater? Could you talk on that? Sure, I mean, even if there is generally less homophobia in the world, there is always gonna be homophobia somewhere. That's essential, that's never going to go away. And I think there's also a really interesting intersection that hasn't really been explored with queerness and autism. I was talking in the panel earlier today about how I feel like autism is a way of kind of queering neuro-typicality. I think what I see a lot of in contemporary entertainment surrounded the LGBTQ community is that a lot of the, I feel like the narrative of the white straight passing male who comes out as gay is kind of the, has become like the dominant narrative. And I think there is a huge opportunity for more diverse stories within the LGBTQ community, especially in terms of disability. I mean, I think the only, again, I said it's my last answer, I think the only story I can think of that deals with LGBTQ and disability is the Netflix series special, which is great if you haven't seen it. And I think there, it's really good. And I personally, I'm exploring in my work kind of about, again, the intersection between autism and queerness. So I think there's always gonna be another story about the LGBTQ experience to tell, regardless of whether there is homophobia or not in the world. Cause I think there's still so many facets of that experience that have not been explored and I think could be explored through more intersectionality. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna actually comment on that, if you don't mind, because one of the nonprofits that I founded in New York was an organization called Grasp, which at the time was the largest membership organization for adults on the spectrum of the world. And of all of our, I think we had roughly 9,000 fully subscribed members when I left in 2013, but we had an infinitely higher percentage of LGBTQ folks in our membership than the neurotypical world would present. And I maybe was oversimplifying my interpretation of that, and that is just that when you have already gone through the painful process of coming out about anything, whether you're on the spectrum or whether you're LGBTQ to the rest of the world, that maybe that just makes the second coming out process infinitely easier because you know, you're not gonna die. Basically when that after that first coming out process is over and you're like, oh my God, quote unquote, it gets better, whichever one it might be. Would you agree with that? I mean, I think both queerness and autism are stigmatized in different ways. I've generally seen more hostility tour, okay, so I guess I've generally seen more of a hostility towards LGBTQ people. And I feel like with the autistic community. In Arizona now, remember. That's fine. And I feel like a lot of this stigmatization from the autistic community kind of comes more of a lack of understanding, I think, about how autistic people see the world. And then that's why I think it's really important to in plays about neurodiversity to really center those narratives. Because I see a lot of stories about how neurotypical people relate with autistic people. And I think we need to see more stories that center autistic people and how they see the world in order to foster a larger understanding. And I think art and theater can be really, really conducive in accomplishing that. Thank you. There was actually a second point too, which I'll just throw out there before I pass it on. But the whole notion that folks like you and I don't really pick up on gender expectation as much as neurotypicals do in the early stages. And while that's always been thought of as a detriment, I think it's actually an incredible attribute that just allows us to be ourselves so much easier than most folks have it. Thank you for answering that question. I really appreciate it. Ava, I would like to ask you a question because a lot of what you talked about, sort of emanated from this idea maybe you've encountered some college administrations which maybe just have a little bit of a push-pull thing going on and that might be resistant to ideas that you see, I didn't wanna get you fired Leon. So I'm asking Ava this question. And the whole concept of what to you is a no-brainer, why are you hitting a brick wall when you submit these ideas to the administration? And from my experience, at least in the employment world and dealing with corporate types for folks on the spectrum trying to get internships, one of the things that I clearly had to quickly realize was that the secret to success in these matters was making the company or the administration confident that they could make the experiment work. And if you can, and Mark, I might come back to you on this because you probably have a lot to say on this as well, but if you can make that institution confident that there's not gonna be any drawbacks that will have them answering to their trustees or to their shareholders, that it's really almost a salesmanship job that granted because of our diagnosis sometimes we suck at, would you agree with that? And if so, how would you come about changing that or making that sales pitch? And if you don't agree with that, what would be your strategy for changing institutions? First of all, I understand your question. Sure. You had proposed, I think, some ideas where you had brought maybe some sense of the challenges and opportunities of making your particular theater department more inclusive. Correct? Yes, yeah. Okay, so let's say you get the opportunity, you get a pipeline to the president of the university and you have the most no-brainer piece of inclusive strategy to go bring to that president. And to your chagrin and to your surprise, the university president is like, ah, wait a minute, I don't know about this. What I'm saying is usually the secret isn't to tell him that it's a no-brainer, he has to do it because that's just gonna freak him out even more. And what I'm saying is also that he needs to be made confident that the experiment can work. And I'm asking you if you agree with that assessment and if so, what would be one particular thing that you could see yourself changing on the campus of Sarah Lawrence? And if you don't agree with that idea, how else would you go about bringing change on Sarah Lawrence's campus? Well, so through my Ruderman Inclusion Ambassadorship, I aimed to, so the Ruderman Family Foundation is this large, you know, but I'm just saying for the other people, this is a large organization that works with colleges and through with the colleges, Hillel, which is the Jewish organization on campus, they have different ambassadors on campuses to create awareness of accessibility and disabilities. And so different people do different things. One person like, you know, for example, I use a simple example, you know, like built a ramp or another person had an inclusive Shabbat dinner event. And so my event was to work with the theater, theater, not company, theater program to create a sensory friendly show. And similar to what I did with Trinity. And so Sarah Lawrence College recently has this really new, great head of the director of the theater company, director of the theater program. And so when I was, you know, formulating my idea with my advisor that I get when I am a Ruderman inclusion ambassador, you know, I talked to the head of the theater company and he was, luckily for me, he was already right on board because he wants to create a more inclusive environment because I was also talking to him about regardless of me being on the spectrum. I think a lot of people had this problem of, you know, sometimes feeling like over the years, auditioning for things and not getting cast in shows. And I think sometimes that has to do with being on the spectrum. And I think sometimes it doesn't. You know, Sarah Lawrence is a small school. We would have about 1,600 people. And so sometimes, you know, it's who you know, which is real life, but even more big, more fishbowl-y at a college campus. If the director isn't your friend, you ain't getting cast, you know? And I get that. Like if I, like if I was- I was my undergraduate. If I was directing a show, I would also be like, I'm casting my friends. Like, you know, you want to work with them, but also it's, you know, that first impression can be very hard for people on the spectrum because you got to make it and you got to do it. And it doesn't sometimes come across confidently or as great as you would like to in already everyone, you know, typical, not nervous in an audition setting. And so, but luckily for me, for my project, he was already on board and a lot of the teachers. So at my school, the teachers, they've heard rumors about sensory friendly and like, ooh, did, did, did. And it was the students who totally had like no clue what was going on. So I explained it to them and they watched me work with the, you know, director of the musical head over heels to make it sensory friendly and to add red warning lights. And so, I think it really helps if you have like, you know, so then the head of the director, the president of the college came to me during one of the dinners. So she said, she unfortunately wasn't able to come, but she said, I heard many great things because the dean of students came to my panel, et cetera. And so I think, you know, yeah, so if you have a couple of people that are high up on your team, then, you know, other people just like, how people like to follow people, they'll be like, oh, well, this seems, you know, I guess I'll also join along with them. So I was able to work with, you know, like the tech crew was all very on board because the director of the show was telling them they should do it. And so I think to try to answer your questions, I think it's a little bit better for Leon or Mark, but yeah, so you have to try to find allies in the departments and luckily these people were really interested in making theater more accessible and breaking it open a little bit more to the college campus is getting a little stuffy. Okay, great, that's thank you. If you don't mind, Ava, I would just like to give you one interpretation. You sort of gave a glass half empty interpretation of a certain phenomenon, which is the inevitable clickishness of college theater departments, especially on small campuses. My undergrad was at Hampshire. So I certainly know what that school size is like. But I think there's a glass half full version of that, which is that especially if you can, you know, put on your director hat as opposed to your actor hat, you'll remember that it's not that you just wanna cast your friends, you wanna cast people that you trust and that you know- I've never been a director, but yes I have. Oh, okay, okay. But it is that thing where you wanna make sure that you're casting people that we'll listen to and adhere to your direction as opposed to be confrontational or what have you. So a little bit of that in there as well. Thank you, that was awesome. And I'm sorry if I was really wordy trying to get that question out initially. So Leon, I got a big one for you because you're kind of the big picture guy here. And yet at the same point, I think the people watching this would love to hear from you. It doesn't have to just be at Brown because I really mean that I don't want you to get fired. But if you could give us at least one, if not two, maybe even three concrete examples of where you could see the most well-intentioned theater department trying to be inclusive, going wrong. Hmm, going wrong. Well, you know, I don't know that I- While I'm thinking this through, I apologize. I just wanted to throw a present. While you're thinking this through, if others could think, I would love to see this panel's next step via gestation of where, if you can think of questions for each other. While Leon answers this, that would be wonderful. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it's so much about going wrong. I mean, I think that, you know- Good fun. I don't know. I mean, there's various ways we could take this, right? I mean, I think one of the conversations that people are very actively trying to think about in sort of theater education, theater pedagogy, how we have theater kind of happens in educational environments. But I think also this is a conversation that's happening in theaters more generally is how do we grapple with the question of who can tell whose stories and on what terms are certain experiences represented and who's included in the room, right? When those decisions get made. And I think it's not only about sort of the stories that are told at the narrative level, but it's also about the sort of formal level, right? So how those stories are told, not just what stories are told and who's imagined to be the audience for these stories or performances and also who's imagined to be the artists who are kind of creating them. And so I think that, you know, when we talk about where things go wrong, you know, I think this is not distinct to disability or to neurodiversity, but I think we might think about, you know, productions of plays that have kind of damaging or stereotypical or outdated representations of disability or autism or mental illness, you know, I think there's particular issues with representation that, you know, scholarship and disability studies has sort of taught us to think about, right? So when is disability or kind of used as a kind of metaphorical trope that's actually about sort of producing certain kinds of emotional responses from an audience that don't actually do anything to sort of further the material kind of conditions of disabled people in the real world? That's a conversation, you know, is disability used as a kind of fetishistic representation or is disability used to kind of only garner sympathy for a character in a way that feels manipulative or that feels kind of, you know, there's also this trope within the disability community of sort of like sympathy porn, right? Or like, you know, or- Inspiration porn. Inspiration porn, right, exactly. So I think that, you know, all of those kinds of, we could call them like pitfalls, right? Of representation, certainly I think is something that theater companies, theater departments are trying to be increasingly aware of. But yeah, I mean, I guess I would say that it's always just a question of who's involved in the process, who, you know, whose perspectives are valued and trying to make sure that if you are trying to represent a narrative or story or an experience, that people are in the room who can like speak to that in a way that, you know, kind of grounds the art that they're making in some actual kind of reality, right? So I guess that's like one answer. I don't know if that was concrete enough. It wasn't, but I think you're a big picture guy, so that's okay. I'm gonna stick with you though, because I do wanna ask a follow-up based on that, because one of the things that you, you know, you sort of steered us into, which we hadn't gone into before is, was autism within the greater context of wider disability. And, you know, do you think that there's something at play because we could include disability in the wider spectrum of diversity and inclusion, which includes race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, culture? And when we look at disability within, you know, not to compare, you know, with the other elements of traditional diversity and inclusion, but if you have, you know, let's say at a company and employee resource group, which is basically just a support group for your African-American men, they're going to be all very, very unique and different individuals, but at the same point, there will be some semblance of I'm not comfortable talking to people that aren't African-American men at this company, and that's what justifies this employee resource group and makes it really worthwhile. However, you know, one of the things that I've certainly noticed is that when it comes to disabilities out of all those core aspects of DNI, that's when everybody just throws up their hands and just says, I can't understand it because we have such, you know, a wide range of, you know, you can break it down further with, you know, physical disabilities and non-apparent disabilities, and even from there, you've got an incredible range of things having to do with health issues, psychological issues, neurological issues, and it's really the intimidation factor that I think that we present that really makes us so hard to get the kind of social progress that others can get with less effort. Do you sort of find that as an element that you're seeing at least in theater? Yeah, I mean, I think I could think of a number of different ways to kind of come at that question. You know, one of which would just be, I think it's sometimes useful to think kind of maybe in a historical perspective, like how does the category of disability come to be, you know, understood as a particular kind of identity category, right? So I think we might think about, you know, the origins of like the disability rights movement, right, in the 60s and 70s that is really coming out of a kind of a critique of what comes to be called the kind of medical model, right, of disability. And so here's a moment where there becomes, it's not like the category of disability has always existed, right? I mean, there have been these discrete, you know, experiences that all of a sudden for particular reasons get kind of lumped together. And, you know, I think it would be remiss if I didn't say that I think the reason that that happens has to do with the emergence of industrial capitalism and the kind of imperative to work and to have a kind of relationship to labor. So disability is actually a category that gets invented in order to kind of define someone who's quote unquote not seen as able to work or be a kind of productive worker, right? And therefore to qualify perhaps for some kind of social welfare benefits that enable them to kind of survive without having to work. And so I think that, you know, if we understand disability as this kind of constructed category that does pull together so many multiplicities of experiences that are either, you know, there are people are born with them, people acquire them, right? Sometimes they get disabled on the job, for example. But I think, you know, one of the things that's really powerful about thinking about disability as an identity is that it's one that sort of forms through kind of shared experience of marginalization and what is being, what people are marginalized from is the kind of status of the fully productive kind of worker or labor, right? And so I think out of that actually comes a really kind of powerful critique of the kind of norm or that expectation that everyone needs in order to be kind of fully human, you need to be kind of fully autonomous worker or somebody who's able to kind of reproduce yourself through your labor and or sustain yourself through your labor. And I think that, you know, that's sometimes lost when we kind of just lump in disability as a kind of another category of difference in a kind of multicultural inclusion model, right? So if we say, oh, it's like race, it's like sexuality, it's like gender, I mean, it isn't and isn't, right? It doesn't kind of work in that way. I think the comparative value is pretty useless. Yeah, so I think- I think the scheme of things, but I just wanted to sort of touch on the complexity. Leon, forgive me though, we've just got a few minutes left, we've just been told and I wanted to give everybody a chance if, you know, panelists, do you have a question for each other? Dave. So I think this was Ava who brought up doing, Ava or Leon, I'm so sorry, who brought up producing potentially problematic productions involving disability or autism. I'm wondering, hypothetically, if a theater or university decides to produce a problematic play about like disability and autism, how can we as autistic people and allies of the autism community engage with it in a productive and respectful manner that Ava hand went straight up? Yeah, so one thing that I think Clay once said when we were doing a play, a new play or something, if someone once said is, are we trying to do life as it is or life as we wish it to be? And, you know, so I think TV often tries to answer that question, right? Like, I don't know, a lot of people like to watch this show called like this is us, but I see it as life as it is and I don't wanna watch life as it is. I wanna watch either like a really worse life, post-apocalyptic or like really great. And so in my opinion, in my opinion, if, you know, there's like, you know, a lot of plays have like problematic stuff, just when they're written or purposefully. And so you have to see, I think in my opinion, if it's like when they're written or purposefully, just to begin the conversation, like when is that play set? Let's see what it's trying to say, let's see how we can critique it, but what we can learn from it and possibly change if it's quote unquote, you know, shining people with disabilities in a bad light. And so I think we shouldn't just shut it down, but it creates more of a conversation and it maybe should make people feel uncomfortable. That's what some plays want to do and I think that's sometimes interesting if it does. David, that's excellent. Dave, that's an excellent question too. Thank you so much for doing it. I have to stop us cause we're just like one minute out. So I am so sorry, but we could have gone on and on as I think the audience is well clear and just thank the four of these panelists, please with your comments on Facebook because they're wonderful and hopefully you'll be able to, you know, get in contact with them outside of this particular conference. And with that, I will just turn it back over to Clay if he's around and is willing to take it, but just thank you. Thank you Clay for giving us all this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you guys so much. And yes, there's so much more to talk about. I would love to bring you guys back in sometime during the festival to have some more conversations. So thank you all so much again and thank you everyone for viewing. We're gonna take a quick break, but beforehand, if you've enjoyed these discussions and engaging with us, we are looking for support and lead up to our neurodiversity new play festival this summer. So some ways you can support us. The easiest way and what would really help is just to share these videos and to share the word about us with your community on your group pages, on your personal page. So that more people know about us. Other ways you can support us, we have a Facebook fundraiser for Autism Awareness Month on our Facebook page that you can donate to. You can also donate directly for the conference and you can go on to our website, www.stensemble.org and there's a easy way to donate through PayPal there. But thank you all again.