 Good morning and welcome. Thank you all so much for being here and for joining us. My name is Sarah Field and we'll be facilitating this panel on the Public Humanities Manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the Education Department. But before we get started, I know I'm to be at the panel tonight. Hi, guys. We have a very special guest joining us today. It's just lucky for us when you have a meeting in Chicago. I'm going to let him say a word to you about what he's here for. It'll just take a minute. But this is someone that, oh my goodness, the timing for Jeffrey Sweet to be able to be here with us for this particular panel. And Jeffrey has such a distinguished career that I actually have to read a little bit to you. But you will want to know this. I'm going to go way back because it's the timing, and it's quite wonderful for you to hear this story. Jeffrey's father was a scientist, Roger, for the University of Chicago. Aided Supreme Court Justice or a War and time of car feast speeches. What a pop. The question, by the way, is, in terms of his theatrical career, he gardens 13-time produced playwright. Or you might know him as a winner of the Writersfield of America Award for his daytime television writing. Or you might know him as a journalist or a teacher or the guy who wrote the history of Second City, right here in Chicago, or his many political plays, which I particularly find important. Or as a lyricist, a winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award, he wrote the book to the musical version of Mauritius, also played Love. Some of you are not old enough to know that, but some of us are. OK. And also, he does a one-person show that maybe he'll even say a word about. Kind of an interesting subject. And has written about the dramatist toolkit. So he's a writer. Solving your script, what playwrights talk about when they talk about writing, which was fairly recent. And I could go on and on and on and on. But I have to tell you, Jeffrey is in town for a special award, Shinde, which he'll say a word about. And we were just talking online, and I said, you should come hang out with us. And he said, I would love to know what the dramaturgs are doing. And so he's making a detour to visit with us today. And Jeffrey, we are so honored to have you. And you really should tell them what to do for us. I'll be very brief. Years ago, I wrote a book called Something Wonderful, by the way, which is an old history of Second City that I've taken years ago, 1978. And some of you may know that Viola Spohn invented theater games. Her son, Paul Sills, used the games to create Second City. And for the first time, Hull House, which is where Viola trained, had a tribute to Viola and Paul. And the Sills family asked me to come in and be one of the speakers in one of the original Second City cast members, Paul Sand, who's in his 80s and still making great theater. He was also there. Dan Castleman, if you know the sense since he's the voice of Palmer, since he's the second city guy. So anyway, yesterday it was a gathering to celebrate them. And so I went and celebrated at Hull House, which is where Viola trained. My solo show is a thing called You Only Shoot the Ones You Love, which is a quote from Del Close, who was a Second City director. And it's a piece about my dealings over the years with the Second City community and how they distorted my life. And I had the pleasure to do a lot of work in Chicago. I live in New York, but I consider myself a Chicago playwright, which is weird. So anyway, I'm so pleased to be invited to join in. And Jeffrey's going to stick around for lunch if any of you Chicago people want to come in. You just do it, right? Because what a happy circumstance for us that he would stick around and play with us. Thank you, Jeffrey. Welcome. Well, hi, everyone. Again, thank you all so much for joining us here today. Again, my name is Sarah Thiel. I'm the Public Humanities Manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And I want to start by just talking a little bit about the impetus for this panel and for this conversation. So in the conference description for 2019 LMDA, for 2019 Lambda, Chicago was called, and this is a quote, city of contradictions, one of the most segregated places in the US, yet proud sanctuary city, a site of wealth and privileged juxtaposed with poverty and disinvestment. And a symbol of the greatest community cohesion and some of the worst systemic injustices in the nation. So I started thinking about the work that we do with the conference theme in mind at Chicago Shakespeare in terms of the way we cross borders and the way we try to make our space accessible, make the work of Shakespeare accessible. And I know that so many of my colleagues in the city do that work as well and do it so, so well. So I wanted to have a conversation with my colleagues about the work that they do and how they envision their own work crossing borders in Chicago. So these amazing theater artists and theater makers have agreed to join me to share their work with you and talk about how their work bridges those gaps and crosses those borders. The structure of the panel today, my thought was that we would, I have some discussion questions to sort of lead us off so that these folks could get an opportunity to talk with one another. And then about halfway through by 1230 we'll open it up for questions that you might have. I'm just curious how many folks are coming from outside Chicago today? Great, wonderful, welcome. In lieu of reading any sort of bios for our panelists, we have bios printed. We've got extra copies there as well as some materials on the table so you can connect with these folks afterward as you so choose. So I'm gonna start by letting our folks here introduce themselves. And we are waiting on one panel to get caught in the construction season that we call summer in Chicago, Chicago, so let's just start. Yeah, sorry for the repeat of those that we're doing yesterday. But my name is Heather Gray and I'm the director of New Play Development at Victory Gardens Theater here in Chicago. I think you also wanted us to talk a bit about what we do. Yes, and so many of our folks here from outside Chicago maybe a little bit about the mission of your organization and sort of how you see your work facilitate them. Great, so we're a theater so we do plays but a lot of our work is included both in social justice work but also in reflecting our world on stage, that's the VG motto. And what that means is if you look at our seasons they're incredibly diverse and that's both in voice, style and identity. And so that also filters into the Ignition Festival which we do which is our new play festival but also we do a very large amount of audience engagement as a general term but what that means for us is we do a talk back after every single show with the audience but we also do about eight public programs and our public programs are where we bring in artists, activists, community leaders, community organizations into our space to talk about what they do using the play as a jumping off point. So using the themes in the play to get to know the people in our community. And so the way we do that is the idea is you don't really get to know the places you walk by every day underway from the train but they might be on a panel and you might get to know that they were hiding in your neighborhood. And when we did Cambodian rock band just as an example we partnered with the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial which is one of the largest and only one of two Cambodian Heritage museums in the US and they're stationed right here in Chicago in my neighborhood and I did not know it until we partnered with them on Cambodian rock band. And that's sort of the idea is we're getting to introduce community partners by using our plays to have a conversation about our city and both our world. And so that influences a lot of both Victor Gardens mission but also the programming we do. We'll never do a play that you can't talk about after or say, oh, that was cute because how are we going to staff eight panels on cuteness? So that's pretty much the work we do. So hi everyone, I am Neil McNeil. I'm the executive director of Definition Theater Company has stored right here in Chicago. And so our mission, we are an anti-racist multicultural ensemble theater. We were founded by six graduates of the U of I University of Chicago, Urbana-Champaign. I did not go there. But we are all about telling underrepresented stories. We're all about telling stories about the people who are part of our company, a part of our sort of vision of telling really socially relevant language driven stories about today, about the world that we live in and about the people who are here. We are actually going through an exciting, so we were originally an itinerant company which means we traveled all throughout Chicago mostly on the north side to do plays. And now we have a building that we're purchasing. So we will be one of a few theaters that are gonna be located on the south side of Chicago potentially in the Woodlawn neighborhood. And so that's just an exciting journey that we're on right now. But our mission is really from the actors on stage to the administrators, to everyone involved in our projects need to look like the project. Most recently we did a play. We were actually a resident company at Victor Gardens Theater. We just did our last production there at Ethiopian America, which was a first generation play. Did you see it? I don't know. Oh, nice, yes. Directed by Sophia Nair, who's an Indian American woman who is a fierce talent, one of my new favorite people. But it's really, we like to tell stories that aren't often told on stage. My artistic director who isn't here, he is a first generation Jamaican American. And so these are the sort of plays that we wanna sort of reflect out into Chicago. And we're very excited to do that now. And on the south side, we definitely felt like we were telling these stories but we were not telling it to the people. Even though they traveled and they saw us, there's no better way to be a part of a community than being in that community. And so that's where we are now. We are all about training up the next generation, teaching them about all aspects of theater because people of color are often not taught that this is a profession that you can go into, that it is something that you can make a living doing. And so we're trying to break that barrier down and actually be a place that trains and educates and helps to propel that form. So that's us. Hello, I'm Katie Yeoh. I am the founder and executive artistic director for Artists Breaking Limits and Expectations. We're ABLE. And ABLE does theater and film work with and for actors with Down syndrome and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. So we have a couple different branches of our program and I'll probably talk the most about our ensemble program. Our ensembles, we have three, two for teens, one for adults right now, always growing. But our ensembles produce anywhere from two to five public performances a year and we work in partnership with different theaters all around the city, including Banger Gardens, including Chicago Shakespeare Theater and we'll produce anything from original work that has been devised and written by our actors with disabilities all the way up to pieces from the classical canon. We do work by Shakespeare, we've done the Kilburn and Sullivan operetta. We're trying to take some of these traditional pieces and pieces that have a really long theatrical history that have not traditionally been seen as being for people with disabilities and putting them into those roles. We also work on original films that have been written with the ensemble in mind. So you'll see a cast of 20 actors with Down syndrome and not a neurotypical person among them. So we'll do that kind of work with our ensemble and then we also work with community organizations around the city, schools, group homes, other community organizations that serve people with disabilities to go in and bring our teaching artists in to do work with them to develop basic life skills because I'm sure we can all agree theater teaches you more than just theater skills, it's all life skills. So that's the nutshell of it, more of that. Cool. Hello everyone, how are you guys doing? My name is Azabella Ekfer, I am the Artistic Manager for Storycatchers Theater. Part of Storycatchers mission is we teach you how to consider thoughtful life choices through the process of writing, performing, and producing original musical plays that are based on their personal life stories. The majority of the youth that we work with are court involved or justice involved. We have four programs at this point. We have a program called Temporary Lockdown which is at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. We work with youth that are on average between the ages of 15 and 16 years old. They are classified as ATs which means automatic transfers or adult transfers. These are youth that are being charged as adults. We work with them, we work with that population because they are at the facility the longest. And we're able to use data to process traumatic events that happened in their life. We're also at the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville and at the Illinois Youth Center in Chicago. The Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville used to be an all female facility until about three years ago, they incorporated boys. And so we do the same thing there at Warrenville. The program was called Fabulous Females because it was all female, now it's called Word Warriors. At the Illinois Youth Center in Chicago, the program is called Fire Writers. These are, so at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center the young people have not yet been adjudicated. They are there being detained while they await trial or their trial finishes. Once they are sentenced, if they are charged as a juvenile they may be sent to, again, the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville, St. Charles or Chicago. So we're not in St. Charles but we're in Warrenville in Chicago. Mostly what I do at Story Catches is I run our fourth program which is our post release program. So it's called Changing Voices. And we have about 24 young people between the ages of 18 and 24. We're currently at capacity and they work 30 hours a week. They make $12 an hour, although I think that goes up to 13 in a month or a couple of weeks or so. And all of our programs follow the same process. So we teach them how to act, sing, dance and write, create original musicals based on their personal life stories. And the reason why we do this is so that they become agents of change in their lives, their family lives and in their community's lives. With the Changing Voices program, we go out and we tour all throughout the city, mostly schools, churches, but we also have some special projects for instance, some of our youth go out once a month and we actually train Chicago police recruits and sensitivity. They used to have a, it was called Day of Disciple. It recently moved to the Chicago Historical Museum. We've done trainings with the Illinois Supreme Justices. So that's one way that they engage their communities and also engage the system that they affected by. And due to the graciousness of theaters like Victory Gardens, our students, some of whom have never seen theater before or who have never been downtown or to certain areas in Chicago because of the graciousness of theaters like Victory Gardens, Depp and Will, we get to take our youth to see free theater so that they can one have the experience and know what they're getting into but also explore the city a little more. So we'll talk more about that later. Thank you. Can we please give a warm round of applause to these panelists? Woo! Thank you so much for saying yes to come here and talk about our work. In the hot topic session, Desiree Fernandez asked the question, how do we include the excluded? And I'm wondering how you all each envision the work that you personally are doing. I mean, and I know a lot of you talked about that a little bit just now. How do you think about your work in getting people into your theater space or taking your work into spaces where people are typically excluded from what we might think of as theater culture? I mean, I work at a classical theater, right? So there's this sense of like, high theater culture sometimes or at least the perception of that. And so how do you each in your own work see your work bridging those gaps or crossing those borders or welcoming people into your space or going out into your own, into your communities to bring in folks who are not sort of traditional theater goers or typically excluded from those spaces? Please, no, no. I think Storycatch is one thing that we do pretty well and that's been pretty effective for all of our program is the ability to develop partners. Partners that can show our kids or give our kids an experience that we can. For instance, again, like I said, Victory Gardens has given us tickets to come see multiple shows along with other theaters in Chicago, Porcelain, Mercury, Steppenwolf. Some theaters have went a little farther. For instance, we did this whole, when Steppenwolf did the play Monster, we were able to go to stage readings of Monster. We were able to go behind and talk to the directors and the actors so the kids could confirm that Steppenwolf follows the exact same process for putting on a production. That we do because sometimes when we're telling them, no one does this because they haven't seen theater or they didn't have a drama club in high school. So, you know, they're like, you want me to do what? You want me to go on a block and do what? Why should I project and speak loud? You know, why do I need to articulate? How come I can't use the slang that I use with my friends? You know, so all of these things, they get to see another director giving professional actors the same notes that I give them and they're doing the exact same exercises. Also, you know, a space like Steppenwolf or Victory Gardens is not typically a space again that my students would naturally go to on their own. A lot of my students, depending on where they live, they usually don't venture outside of like a five-mile radius of where they live and it's because they think that they're safe. It's what they know. It's what, for me, although sometimes I argue with them, if you actually leave the area, you're more likely to be safe because then people see you less, you know? But just being able to make partners, we have a partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Once a year, Muti comes in and he does a presentation and he brings opera singers and he brings Yo-Yo Ma and different people into the facilities and they do a special performance. They also give our youth tickets. So, for instance, Illinois Youth Center, which is a juvenile jail, they actually take groups out to the orchestra. It wasn't something that they did before. We started doing programming over years. We worked with the administration to convince them that no one would run away or no riots would happen. Things like that. It was a process, but now in the youth, look forward to it. Well, when are we gonna see that movie guy again? When's the next play that we're going to see at court theater or Steppenwolf? Now they know people by name. These are not spaces that they feel like they're gonna be strangers in. They feel like they belong just as much as anybody else that enters these spaces. So I think that's one way that we do it. And just teaching them the work and challenging them with their norms, okay? We do hip-hop music, too, and story catchers in a lot of our plays. Our hip-hop sounds a little different. They're mainstream hip-hop and explaining the difference and saying, okay, I'm gonna, I call it doing a cha-cha-cha. We're gonna step into your world a little bit and we're gonna use a little bit from your world. But I hope by doing that, you step into my world and take some things from my world and by getting these partners, we're gonna give you some other worlds to step into to have, to expand your horizon. It's so interesting that you say that. I remember, gosh, maybe it was in February, there's a ghost from a fire writer who came to Chicago, Shakespeare to see Macbeth and one of the youth asked to the character playing Macbeth, what does it feel like to play that role? What does it feel like? A couple of months later, I went to the angry monster inside at the facility on Western, at the Justice Center on Western, and I saw him in a show until it was really exciting to see him see theater, wonder about how that feels and then watch him experience that for himself. I think Able has very similar experiences. We love our community partnerships and built into our fake piece what we do with our ensemble as well. And I think a lot of times when we've talked about disability with theater, there's a focus on access for audiences and I think theaters are making a real concern effort to try to make the experience better for audiences but we still don't get to see people with disabilities on stage. That's a really rare opportunity. There aren't roles out there for them and the latest statistic I read is 95% of the roles that have been written for a person with a disability are still played by a typically Able actor. So we're not seeing, we're not hearing their voices in the creative process either and I think there's not. Ability, neutral casting isn't a thing. The way that gender neutral casting has become a thing or race neutral casting has become a thing. So I think giving the opportunities for them to see other people's work but then to watch a show at Chicago Shakespeare Theater but then to perform on that same stage, on that same set two months later does a ton of work to elevate our actors of course for their own confidence but it also really raises their esteem in the eyes of our audiences to see not just one but 20 people on stage and to say there's a whole spectrum, right? I've got 20 people at Down syndrome in front of me and they're all completely different personalities. They're all very different talents and levels of skill and so to start to change some of the perceptions for our audiences as much as we're doing work to elevate and lift up and build skills for our actors. I think the big piece of the work we're doing is how other people are seeing as people are letting them see them at all. Being able to work with as many different theaters around the city as we have been has been a huge piece of that because we'll be in all different neighborhoods where there's already different audiences kind of in felt with the theater so that's been a big opportunity for us. Yeah and I would just piggyback on it. It's all about the welcome. I feel like people don't understand that if I don't feel comfortable being here and being my true and authentic self then I'm not gonna have a good experience and so I think for definition it's all about, because I think it's many layers that go into it. It's not only the welcome, it's who greets me. Who is the person that says hello? Who is the person who I see at the box office? I see doing the things that are happening and so the biggest thing for us is we wanna be able to make sure that at every touch point there is a diverse range of individuals there and working and operating and being a part of the process because I can't tell your story. I can't tell anybody else's story about my own while it may be similar to others. I think it's very important that you have those different perspectives in the room and I've not only worked in, I've worked in like stage management, production management, theater, like all forms of theater management and oftentimes I'm the only one that looks like me in the management seat but also in the marketing seat. A lot of the science is the way that you talk to people. Like if you want me to see this play, you can't make it sound all, this is a Pulitzer Prize winning, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I'm like, I don't even know what those things mean. Is the play good? What is the play about? Who's in it and what is the story that's being told? And so I think that has been just like a huge thing for me. It's all about the welcome and it is about the partnerships. It is about being involved in the process and while we're small and we aren't able to make like huge partnerships, like we're not quite there yet with Arbor into the South Side, we're excited about getting those conversations started with the organizations that are already on the South Side. We can't come in and try to create the narrative that we want. We have to be a part of the narrative because that's what we're, and we have to build the narrative together. And then I mean, one huge initiative that we started this year with the year of Chicago Theater, it is the year of Chicago Theater for the people not here in Chicago, which is deemed by the city. And so there's a lot of programming going on around theater and a lot of awareness about theater in Chicago as a destination for theater. And one of the things that we definition was able to get funding for us to do a playwriting workshop on the South Side. And we did it, we got 28 young playwrights who had never written plays, super diverse, from teenage to high school into a woman who I was sure was in her late 70s and was like, I've always wanted to write a play. And we got Isaac Gomez and Marcia Clark and they facilitated a class. It was a seven week course for four hours every Saturday and they were scratching at the doors to be in there at 1230 and didn't wanna leave until five. And then at the end of it, we hired professional actors and we got professional directors to perform their plays for them and they got to be a part of the rehearsal process with the director to be like, hey, do you want them to say this a different way or do you wanna change the way that you presented that? And just being able to be in the room and watch them every Saturday and then for them to glow and be so excited that they got to see their work on stage was like something that I had never seen before. And so like that involvement, then they're gonna go, many of them went to go see Definitions Play that we were producing, which was also a new work. It sort of got to talk to the director and sort of see how that process works of like, yes, this is an ever evolving piece just because it's produced doesn't mean it's the end of it. You know, like that doesn't mean that it can't change. And so like sort of getting, like you said, getting them through the process of it and say, hey, this is actually how like everybody is doing this. And they get excited and then they wanna see more and they want more and they wanna talk about it more and they wanna be a part of it more. And they tell their friends about it. And it's just exciting that we're starting this journey but also the fact that all these other organizations are also on that path. I mean, everyone's like, Victory Gardens does this. And so like they also are like a part of that process of like being welcoming enough to let them in, to give them access and to not be afraid to sort of whip away the like curtain, the fourth wall for lack of a better term and say, this is what it looks like when you're crafting a story or crafting a play. So, yeah. Yeah, and we have three resident companies right now. One is definition for now. And then SciShow Theater Company and Tietra Vista perform at Victory Gardens in our upstairs space. And we also do a lot of town halls and community programs and bringing in, we've had story cutters perform after shows and it's about becoming a meeting place but I think what's also very important as we're finding we're stationed in Lincoln Park, which is one of the most wealthy places in Chicago. And a lot of the plays we do are not for that audience. They're for all audiences, but they're not directly tied to the people that live in Lincoln Park. And so a big question is, we can create all these partnerships to get people in the seats, but are they real partnerships? If all you want is them to buy a ticket. So how are we going into the community? And so right now, we have a big Joyce partnership where we've partnered with six community organizations on the south and west side and we're going in and we're teaching them theater skills. And these are organizations that are anything from a center for domestic abuse survivors to multicultural centers, to whatever it may be. And we're just talking about public speaking and we're just answering questions on teamwork and narrative and story structure. And there's really no goal other than to partner and sort of have this conversation, but we're also doing that with our plays. So Letty, which we at Killigrew did last season is a play about a woman going through the reentry process. And we partnered with St. Leonard's Ministries, which is an incredible organization here in Chicago, and they have a house called Grace House, which the playwright set the play in. And so we went to Grace House and all of the women there were able to share their stories before Boo even told them what the play was about or even shared any of the script. She really got to know them and what was coming up with them, what they were excited about. And that partnership was not financial. There was no, we didn't get any money from them, they didn't get any money from us, but what we were able to do as a theater is then invite them in to tell their stories after the show, but also post multiple fundraisers throughout and they ended up raising over $70,000 during the run of our show without any money exchanging hands. It was just two people who have a common interest in telling this story. So it's about going into the community, but it's also about making it sort of a town hall that you can come to. And if you're desperate for space, you probably have some, or you can find a little bit, but we can also invite you into the conversations that are happening with our plays. So the plays don't just happen in these four walls and then you go out and you say, oh, that was fun. You're really sort of taking the conversation and these partnerships are ongoing, which is also great. We don't want it done because that's the most toxic partnership there is, but really cultivate that even if the show doesn't directly align, we're inviting you with free tickets or to come to a community partner night or whatever it may be, just so the conversation is continuous, as opposed to just a one time because we think the play will speak to your group and we can do a group sale, which is always dangerous. And I think that this sense of going out into the community, it's really important because when you're in a place like Linden Park, even though you live in a neighborhood or you're in a neighborhood and people walk by and get foot traffic, it can be a space that's really inaccessible and I work on it and be here, which is, some of you will find a very sometimes inaccessible place in terms of just getting. Just parking. Getting it. I work there and I never park there. And so going out into the community is the ways in which we share our work with people whom it may not otherwise be accessible, to whom it may not be otherwise accessible. We're about to kick off our parks tour for the summer. If you find yourself staying in Chicago or back in Chicago, we do a month long tour of Chicago's community parks, 20 different parks in one out in Aurora this year in the summers. But they're free for all and I think what's amazing about the parks is that every single performance has a sort of green show in their community performances. So you might have, depending on where you were in the city, a flamenco performance or you might have another singing performance. You might have kids performing depending on what those community partnerships are. And those are not, hey, here's a free play and I'll come to Navy Pier and pay for a ticket, right? Here's a free play, come and enjoy and be with us and with your family. And I think that's like those partnerships, right? And that's what I'm like constantly. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, please. Just to kind of piggyback on some of the sentiments like when you were talking about the conversation piece. So with the change of voices program, when we take a play into the community, as staff, I try to let my students lead as much of it as possible. Like I train them to lead as much of it as possible from the pre-show discussion to the, and we make it very interactive. So if you came, if we bought a show to you, there's a pre-show introduction, they come and they do a song. We almost make it like a game show. There's a theme song that starts at the beginning. Then we do activities where we bring the audience like out of the seats onto the stage and we do like a couple of activities just so everybody is present in the space. Then the audience goes back to their seat and we do two stories from our collection of stories. So we do short musicals there. They're all about, each musical is about 15 minutes long and each musical is intentional left open-ended. So that afterwards we have what we call a breakout session or post-show discussion. We divide the audience into groups that my students lead. Like I kind of just hover in the room and make sure everything is going. But they lead the questions. What were the choice points that these characters had to make? What were the dilemmas? What was the traumatic experiences that these characters had to express? How did these choices affect the character's family but the community? And in a lot of the communities that we work with because these are the personal stories of our students and they come from these communities that we go into, the audience is really engaged and actively trying to find the solution. We always say the only way that we could come up with an honest solution to a problem is to talk openly and honest about the problem. So for instance, one of our students wrote a story where he got high going to school with his cousin and while they were high, they came up with an excellent plan that they were gonna play a prank at that school today that they were gonna go in and the main character was going to pretend to get robbed by his cousin. They're high. So. And they're literally high. They go in and they pull the prank off. Well, his teacher was like pregnant. So when they pulled the prank off, she believed it and she goes into false labor as a result of them pulling the prank. The SWAT team gets called to school as a result of the prank. And so all these different sequence of events happen and the kid, he gets arrested and that was his introduction into the system. And it's something that when we talk to him, he regrets it. He's like, I knew it was a stupid thing to do. He was like, it changed his whole outlook on getting high about doing certain things in school. It totally changed it. But when we took it into the community, from teachers to the students, there was this split in the audience as to whether he should have went to jail and served time for that or if he should have been given community service or in school suspension or something like that if there should have been some type of restorative justice. And it was split between when I went and I thought the teachers would all say, he needs to go to jail. But some of them were like, no, he should have went to jail. That's very serious. Someone could have got killed this SWAT team. But some of the teachers were like, no, like in school suspension would have been sufficient. Maybe he should have had to go and work with people that were victims of gun violence or something like that. So it's always very interesting to see where people fall when we have that discussion. So that's one of our ways of bridging the gaps and making sure that the conversation stays alive even if that's community. And cultivating new artistic voices too. That's a big part of what story catchers do. So I'm wondering how do you all see your work as, and you spoke a bit about this already, Skylar, but how do you see your work in terms of cultivating new artistic voices to have those difficult conversations and to continue to keep coming back to the conference theme across those borders? We do a lot of devising as well and kind of writing our own. And it'll be a mix of wild imaginative fantasies that we've written ourselves, but also reflections on our actor's own personal lives and their life experiences. And I think, you know, from us, I always hear from parents and from family members usually after a show, surprise. I'm surprised that they said this. I'm surprised that they did this. I didn't know she thought that. I didn't know that she could do that. So trying to get people to see people that they live with in a very different way. And so I think that that's great to give some opportunities to share some personal reflections. But then we're also really working, I think working with the classical pieces, the way that we do is a really important piece of how Able functions at, because there's a certain level of respect, I think that comes with saying, I'm doing the Shakespeare show or I'm doing, I'm doing zero note first rack. I'm doing zero note first racket in the yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And it's a certain amount of seriousness that comes with that and giving our actors their confidence and the room to be taken seriously to not be infantilized, to be respected as a three dimensional human being is a really, really huge thing. And I think just having a platform for it's not that they need to give them a voice, they haven't, but to give them a platform for other people to listen to them is a really, really massive thing. It is all about the platform and all about giving someone all of the resources they need to do it in that moment. Like sometimes it's like, I don't have enough time, I don't have, you know, we wouldn't be using the terms like underrepresented or those, if they are these plays existed, they exist, but if they were being produced, if they were being published, if they were being highlighted. And so I think for definition, it's about the new work. It's like, who's writing something that's speaking to the right now? Who's writing something that is speaking from a perspective that you've never seen? Who's the one, who is really telling these stories and telling them authentically and from the place of love and from a place of authenticity? Because a lot of times, you know, I'm just excited that we're able now and again you sort of see the change in society of like wanting to hear these voices and wanting to see them on stage and wanting, I mean in Victory Gardens and a lot of theaters like, yes, but those are traditionally white institutions and so now having them open their eyes and A, accepting that history, but also then understanding it and getting out of their own way of like how they can be better now about it and like institutions like Definition who are like, no, we have always been here. We've always been young kids of color who wanted to do these and wanted to tell our stories and now we have an opportunity to do that. That is like exciting for us and that's exciting to then go out and find others like us and give them the resources that we've been able to gain in our partnerships and in our interactions with this world and say, hey, go to the drawing board and let's workshop a play. Let's do it seven weeks and we do a reading or let's workshop a play for two years and then produce it. You know, that's sort of the investment that you have to put into these plays and into these playwrights and into these art makers. There's a big difference between a piece that is about a marginalized person versus something that is by and for and from that person and from that voice and how can you involve those people in every level of creation, right? That it's not just about we're putting this person on stage, right, as a token, but actually saying that, you know, here you are, it's your story to, you know, you get to tell your own story and I think especially with disability it falls so easily into, we use the term inspiration porn in the community of, you know, it's very much about like, here's this disabled person and my typically able protagonist is going to learn how to live more gratefully and freely and honestly because of this wonderful disabled person and that's just nonsense. You wanna see a three dimensional human with dreams and hopes and a job and relationships and all of that. So I think it goes back to your point that like, and your point about like, where is the investment? Like, everyone's invested in the audience and invested in the ticket buyer and the person who's gonna then bring money back to the organization but then it's like, well what about the people on stage? It's reason that 95% are still, you know, a typically able people doing these pieces and so it's sort of like identifying the investment as well as another way to sort of break down those barriers. I think, so like, at a facility like Warrenville, as I say like, three years ago, Warrenville was an all female facility and so when we would work with the youth there, I would say seven to eight out of 10 of the stories were about rape and molestation, you know. And one of the big things that we do at the facilities there's a really big push to get families to come see the residents when they're in shows. Having families come there, basically, it restores, you know, some parents get really upset that their kid is incarcerated because they don't know why, they're like, what did I do? I gave everything to this kid to raise them right and then this event happened and they're in jail, it's an embarrassment to the family and they don't really know what happened, why it happened or how to feel about it and so we go to that basic emotion of disappointment and anger, right. And then a parent comes to see a show and then their child is telling, oh, I beat that girl up at school because I got raped by my next door neighbor and now there's a new lens like, oh. And so now because the problem came out in that way, the family knows about it. They can take steps to kind of mend and get that resident held but also find healing for the family and how conversations can begin that weren't there before because of the assumptions that were there. And we do a lot to get to families. A lot of our families are poverty stricken. So for instance, at Warnville, a lot of the you've come from like Rockford or East St. Louis or Peoria, it's like a four or five hour drive. So we're lucky to have board members and volunteers that help pay for bus tickets or in some cases it will pick a parent on the way coming from there. But it's a big push to get. We don't get a lot of people from the outside although anyone is welcome. All you have to do is RSVP if it's in a facility and our shows are usually free. But the biggest push is to get the families so that we have that. We can restart to repair those relationships. Well, I would love to open it up to what questions you have for this group of people. Please. You know, I love what you said about investment and the necessity of investment to create these kind of meaningful partnerships and curious especially for those of you who have bigger organizations how your staffing structure reflects the investment that's required to create those kinds of meaningful partnerships and how your organizational structure allows staff the time to maintain those partnerships. That is an excellent question. I'm sorry. I think part of it is getting people into the building is so much easier than you going out into the community. And so I think with an added investment in getting out into the community, we're currently figuring out what that means in terms of staffing because right now our education director, our audience development associate and we have a part-time fellow are sort of leading this choice partnership. But they also have to do all of their day-to-day work. So what does that mean in terms of the organization getting a grant to do something incredibly exciting? But what does it mean for the institution in terms of the day-to-day? So then you don't have these people taking on everything in addition to what they're already doing and then the partnerships can't be, can't reach their full potential. So those are the conversations currently having internally. But to get these grants are then where you're able to figure it out. But it's, when it's a hypothetical, it all sounds great. And then you get the grant and you're like, oh, we have to do it. How do we figure this out? And so we're, this is the first year of this choice partnership, which has been very exciting. And so we're figuring that out. But in terms of going into the community and listening to stories, we've been doing that with the playwright and like myself or the playwright and the marketing director or whatever it may be. And those are far more simple because you're just listening and you're absorbing and you're just being a sponge and getting to meet people in their community and just hear from them. So those are different. But in terms of a big, massive project like Joyce, we're figuring that out. We, our education teams, there's four of us. Me, Education Outreach Manager Jason Harrington, Learning Programs Manager Molly Trulia and Director of Education Marilyn Halperin. And we do the bulk of that sort of going out to the community work with our education programs that are strictly education. One of those is the Chicago Sheik Spear Slam and what that is, it's a slam style competition. It's 50 schools from Chicago in the region, half are CPS schools, so Chicago Public Schools, half are non-Chicago Public Schools, so that might be suburban, it might be parochial, it might be just private Chicago, what have you. We have schools from, like sometimes we'll get a school from Wisconsin or Indiana who will kind of be joining us. And that's a big part of our out in the community work during the school year. So we'll host three workshops at different schools in Chicago or the suburbs and then we'll do three regional bouts in Chicago Public Schools, or we'll go out to the suburbs to sort of keep that equitable and then eventually it all culminates in a final bout where everyone comes to the theater and that sort of that elevation as like welcoming these high school students onto our stage and saying your work and your ideas and your feelings are worthy of a 500 seat audience. In terms of our staffing structure, I mean, it's tough. I mean, it's not small theater by any means, but I mean, our resources aren't unlimited, but and you know, there's the four of us and we usually have one or two college interns who are helpful, you know, or like, actually they're not helpful, invaluable, amazing. But in terms of, you know, could we use a team of 10? Sure, but we have to do it with the resources that we have, but what we've found is that we have so many people in our lives and in our communities who volunteer to go out to these schools with us and to host us and to give these students an opportunity to say this is for me, like Shakespeare's for me, that I can take it and I can mash up and I can make it my own and here's my story. But to your larger point, you know, we work to 16 weeks often to do our day-to-day partnership with our teachers to, you know, manage our student IMA programs, but to do the work that is so necessary in the community. Other questions? Well, to kind of think it back on your question. So our structure is a little different. For instance, 80 to 90, well, about 80%, I could be wrong, but the majority of our budget, for instance, goes to staff. We don't have a physical theater that you could come to as you place. All of our shows happen within the community we're turning. We, when our youth go out to do a tour, we're normally taking like six to eight wooden square cubes and some basic pipe and drape and we transform any space that we're into our theater. We have a headquarters. If you came there, you'd just see like a couple of people in cubicles. You know, other than that, we create the theater wherever we're called to. And so for that reason, the majority of our budget goes to staff, our change of voices program because these youth get paid. That's a huge chunk of our budget and they are considered like hourly staff in terms of staff like me. So every one of our four programs has a program manager, an artistic manager. Now they used to call it like lead teaching artists or whatever it was, program manager, artistic manager, and then maybe one or two teaching artists and then a bunch of really cool people that come and volunteer. Some programs have more because it's easier to get them in. For instance, if you were a new volunteer, it'd be easier to get you into our Cook County juvenile detention program. Then it will be to get you into our fire riders or our word warrior programs. It takes like one or two months to get you into Cook County. It takes about six months to get you into one of the IYCs. And we kind of like for people to get experience in that Cook County, but one of the IYCs before they come work with me at our change of voices program because it's levels to it. Yeah, you know. So does that kind of answer your question about staff? Yeah, thank you. Takes a lot of staff. Could you tell us something about how you navigate or perhaps even negotiate this bifurcation between theater teaching artists and people who really had the experience or the understanding of the social or one might even say sociological understanding of what they're doing. I mean, what do you hire? What's the profile of the person you bring in as a teaching artist? For me? So for Storycatchers Theater, you have to have a degree either in acting, writing, singing, dancing, or you have to be interdisciplinary. That's first thing. When we hire people, we invite them out. You have to come and see at least two shows just so you get an idea of the participants that we work with and you get an idea of the type of art that we create. Then we look at your skills. Once you become a Storycatchers Theater teaching artist, the training is ongoing. So if you've never worked with Gordon Ball for Justice of All of You, we give you training. We have a guy named Brad Stovak who's one of the leading, what's the word? He's one of the leading juvenile psychiatrists in Chicago. He gives us a lot of training on trauma, how to identify trauma, what is trauma, how to identify when a participant or even sometimes an audience member may be dramatically triggered. What is recovery? How do you get a person onto the path of recovery? And then we have ongoing training. So my background, for instance, I worked with Storycatchers for 16 years. I've only been full-time since 2010, but I've worked with them from 2003 and to now. But also, I have a background working for CPS. I used to work with students that had emotional, severe and profound emotional behavior disorders. I myself have vision impairments. Plus, I grew up in Austin, west side of Chicago, which is, it could be a rough place. It rivals Inglewood in terms of homicide. So we also try and find people that are from the communities that our kids are from. We're always looking for anyone that has the skills and the love to work with our youth is welcome to work with us. But we definitely look for artists of color and artists from the community and artists that have the experience. A lot of our artists, if you talk to them, they say, if it wasn't for an archangel or some type of godsend, I might have been in the same situation as our residents. So, yeah. Yes, please. I'm wondering how you're all feeling about the climate in which you're doing this work, especially in Chicago, but more broadly, given that we have a president who got elected once and is trying to get elected a second time by encouraging white people to think that the special interests are to blame for all of their problems. I'm just wondering how responsive the people in Lincoln Park and the people on the north side before you move to the south side, there's a lot, there's a lot behind all this in terms of the demographics of Chicago. I mean, it's a hard question to answer in a general sense, but I'm just wondering what observations you might have about the receptivity of the majority to the work, to the commendable work you're doing on behalf of the minorities, of various kinds of minorities to put in those terms. I think people opt out. Like, it's weird to say, but like people opt out, like they will show themselves, they will not agree with what you're doing and then they'll opt themselves out and if you don't wanna have a conversation, I can't force you to have a conversation with me theaters about a conversation. It's about a difference in ideas, it's about you experiencing something that maybe not be your norm. And so I've seen, especially on the north side, like if people, and at all institutions, because definition is one institution that I've worked at, but I've worked at many, that most people, they all get very angry and then they'll opt out. And I feel like if that happens, no, I mean, in your training, I'm looking at you, because I'm like, if you're training, you probably get a lot of this. Like there's a point where someone is no longer willing and listening and able. Like they just don't want to hear it. And in this current climate, like it's like, what can I do? All I can do is share my perspective and all I can do is put the voices of like my perspective on stage. And if you disagree with that, and this doesn't help you to, if you have no empathy, I feel like the words like empathy comes to mind. Like it's like, if you don't have that in you, then maybe this isn't for you. And I can't change that perspective for you. But like we're just now learning this from the south side that there's also topics that like, they do not want to hear. They don't want the same, like, you know, the same conversation about gun violence or about, you know, something in particular or, you know, what you see on the news and what you believe the south side to be is not actually what it is in the south side is a huge part of Chicago. And like, and it's so different and it's just south of downtown. And you're like, well, and so like learning more about that, I think has been exciting for me because I feel like it's a different conversation on the south side. So, yeah, I don't know if that's helpful or an answer to your question. Oh, sorry. I mean, I think in terms of some of the things that we've done is like, Paula Vogel had a bake-off, a boo-boo bake-off, which was very pointed in a direction and we did it. And we hosted it in our theater and brought in 10 artists who had never really worked with us before and we did the bake-off. And yeah, that was a great night and probably a hundred people were there. But like, I think that sort of filters into every conversation you start to have at the organization if you're not afraid to do those and you're not afraid to open up your spaces to have conversations that are uncomfortable. And even something like we're doing, if I forget right now, Stephen Levinson's play, and those are the most heated talk-backs we've done all season. And I think what's so amazing about that is like we've also had instances where people stopped listening partway through the play because something triggered them and they were angry. And then in a talk-back, someone brings up, oh, well, later in the play when they said this, and someone will raise their hand and be like, I didn't hear that. And they go, oh yeah, it happened here. And they, oh, okay, thank you. Like, so you also start to open up a conversation that you will hit those potentially awkward minds. But what's great about it is sometimes you can bridge that. And you can find a mutual understanding because you stopped listening because of whatever you saw in the news before you got there that pissed you off when you heard it in the play and you missed whatever was next, but that hit someone else profoundly and they bring it up. And then you start to have, you see that they came from different perspectives, but they at least are leaving in a way that's like, oh, I think I gained something from this conversation. That does not always happen. But more than any show we've done this season, this play is bringing up a lot of that. But we're also, more than any play this season, finding moments of understanding after the show. Which has been really interesting, especially if you look at what shows we did this season and where you think those would fall, I would not have expected it to be here. But that's what people, at least noticing this show, are very interested in talking about. And I think talkbacks, I think is in post-show discussions and anytime you can have a discussion pre or post or I think that is, for me, unique to Chicago in a way that I haven't seen in other cities. And so I think talkbacks are a great way for us to sort of bridge that gap between ideas and thoughts and behaviors. We do a post-show discussion after every single one of our students, for our Bridge Shakespeare, which is a 75 minute show and then a 15 minute, or sort of act six is a 15 minute post-show discussion, the act of bow, and then they sit down on the stage and take questions from the audience, from the students for 15 minutes. And I think, because so many of those students have, they're there on a field trip, right? So there's not that sense of opting out necessarily. So something we strive to do is remember that we live in sort of like a blue island, right? But there are students who are coming to our theater who are not from that island and who are from much more conservative communities. And we strive to both, and we ask our actors to be true to who you are as an artist and a person, but also we don't want to alienate even one student and make them feel like this isn't a place where they can't come to have a conversation and learn something new, right? And to fulfill stereotypes that maybe they have heard or will learn later about like the theaters for liberal elites, right? And that's not for me, and I won't go there to learn or to learn, you know? Or have that conversation. And so for us, it's that balance of like telling the stories that we want to tell and our artists want to tell, but also doing our job in the education department of making sure that those students feel like this place is funny. I know we're close this time, but this is... I love that idea. No, no, no, no, I want you to ask your girls. Thank you. I'm wondering if you can talk briefly about how you define excellence in the rigor that you bring to the shows that you create. And I think about this just as, is like, I'm thinking, first of all, you're working with people who may or may not have favorite training backgrounds, right? So there's a level of that. But also I think, as you're talking about giving them platforms to be heard, I think sometimes there's a tendency in audiences, at least based on my work that I've done in this, for like, you know, a disabled person gets up and says something out loud and says, oh, this is amazing. Yes. More than like, oh, this is a really great person to have an idea and put words down. You know, it's like, how do you, how do you kind of balance that and like where they're at, but also this, you know, combat that tendency to just celebrate everything and in fact try to say, like, no, we're gonna make something that you need to hear. Yeah, I mean, I think there's an interesting book you might want to check into. It's called The Good, The Bad, and The Plain Ugly by Hargrave is the author's last name and he's looking at the aesthetics specifically around disabled theater. And the thing is that the aesthetics of a traditional theater experience have not been accessible, right, for people with disabilities. So I, as a director, have to fully accept that my show is gonna look different, sound different, feel different than what somebody else might walk into and that's just the deal. I'm also working with performers who possibly don't have a level, a baseline level of literacy, who struggle with short-term memory, who, you know, there's certain reading skills, like there's certain things in there that I can't assume. So I'm trying then as a director to level the thing, feel as much as I can for them. So what we do at Able, we have a method which is a method, and I won't say it's the most perfect method, but it works for us. We use cult dropping in in performance. So we rely on our teaching artists and our facilitators who are trained actors and performers to partner with one of our actors. And it's that facilitator's job to remember our blocking, to remember our lines, to make sure we're getting to the right place at the right time. They will drop our actor in. So it may be that one of our actors will completely be off book, will know all of their lines and has done their homework and like has that ability. I'm not inflicting that on anybody because I want it to be a joyful experience for them to be up on that stage and it's a big deal for them to be up there. So if you don't know your lines, you've got your facilitator to drop you in a few words out of time and you can repeat that back with whatever flair and personality and character choices you brought. And you've got a couple of videos and stuff on our YouTube page so you can kind of see that in action. So that's one way we work on it. And I think, you know, the thing is anytime you're, you have to make your accommodations one person at a time, one individual at a time and everybody's gonna need help in a different way. But anything you're doing, I think in working with this population is better than not giving them an opportunity at all. And then just getting your audience to buy in to that experience. So our pre-show talk is actually more important for us to go on and say, you know, each person you're seeing on this stage is working on a very different set of goals and on a very different set of abilities and everything they're doing is right for them. Cause just speaking out loud might be a big deal for somebody. Somebody might not be speaking at all. Somebody might be wanting to be out there and not being off about them doing their things on their own. So I think, you know, my job's just to give them room to fly and they will make the experience what it is. Cause I know it's gonna look and sound and feel different than going to see a traditional show. What she said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty much what we do, I would say eight out of 10 of particularly at Change in Voices, probably eight out of 10 participants in our program have never been in like a drama club or a play. They don't have the training or sometimes they come and they say, I know how to sing or I'm going to dance and they're like, okay. Like what's the new dance now? That's what I can't do. It's a training. Yeah. Totally can't do it. But that's the part of me where I learn. I'm like, oh, that's dancing these days? Okay. But it's pretty much what she said, taking the small steps, meeting people where they are. Okay. You've never sang. You've never danced. We have choreographers. We have writing instructors. We have acting instructors. And we just take it one day at a time, one step at a time and you get to where you get to. We have that time. So it's more, it's mostly about teaching them to show up, put in the work, and that's part of being professional. If you show up on time, if you do what's expected of you, if you try your best, if you're not a jerk, things happen, right? And so we have some people that conflict, like we had this one guy, Dion, we were singing a song one day and he just let it, he just had this beautiful baritone voice and he didn't know that he could sing and it, you know, three, four, y'all. And we're like, well, he's like, in his mind, because he listens to mainstream R&B, you hear voices like Maroon 5 or Justin Timberlake that are more like tenors. So teaching them the difference between the tenor voice and the baritone voice and the bass voice and that he had this beautiful baritone voice, but in his mind, because it didn't sound like what was in mainstream, it wasn't good. We're like, no, your voice is amazing. Like you should actually sing more. And so we put them on, we have teaching artists, actors that are on stage just in case something, something goes astray. But one of the things if me, Paladofsky, the founder and artistic director of the company was here, she'd tell you, one of the things that a teaching garden story said, we have to believe in the process and in the outcome sometimes more than our students or our participants. They've never been in a place so they don't know why it's gonna go. I can't tell you how many students that I've had. I've smoked too much weed. I'm not gonna remember the 60 page script that you want me to. And it's just educating them and talking like, okay, first of all, you don't have to remember all 60 pages. Your partner's only really like maybe six or seven pages. Just focus on that, you know what I mean? And we got about a month to get ready for it. So if you call me, you show up to work. You're gonna get the amount of time to work it. Practice makes perfect. So that's just kind of how we, and you'll see, participants that's been with us for a month or two might be a little up around the edges. But as you say, you take the small victories. It's important that they got on the stage. It's important that they challenged themselves to speak in front of an audience. You know what I mean? And then you'll see that someone's been with us for two or three or four years. They're just like, whoo! And they can tell you how they were when they came in. They'll tell you, man, I was like, what is this musical theater stuff? But now they're coming to us and just wrote this song the other night. Or actually I came up with a dance choreography that I want to talk to Mr. Nook about, putting it in show. Okay, let's do it. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? There's something too, but I think people being able to create their own work that, when there's that sense of ownership to it and pride over it, it, they remember, yeah, they remember it better. They know it better. They feel it better. And so being involved in the devising process, I think is them, is natural in that way. Chicago is often called a city of neighborhoods, but really what it is is a city of borders and a city of, a city that's often being segregated. And what I hope that you've been able to see today is those work that is happening in our theaters with our young people, all over the city, to help bridge those gaps and help cross those borders. So thank you to our panelists. Thank you all so much for being here. Check out the materials on the table and have a conversation with them. Get their cards and continue.