 You know, when you watch cable news, it's usually like one topic. And prior to the pandemic, it was all election. It was all 45 and post COVID. It was all COVID, all COVID all the time. And since the murder of George Floyd, it's all George Floyd all the time. And I'm seeing more and more video representation of unarmed African-American men killed by policemen. And although I think it's really important that we know about this, it's really disturbing to just watch this unending stream of snuff films of black men dying live on TV. And I'm really, it makes me angry and, you know, and I just don't see white people dying like this on TV. And I, you know, and, yeah, I'm largely, you know, when I look at TV, I'm angry. I have to step away. You know, I can't, you know, I can't watch it for very long. I get angry. I've been crying. It's a really hard time to be a young black man in America. And it's easier to be an old black man in America. And I dare say every black man, if you're 30 years older, has a police story, you know? And, but, I mean, under all that anger is hope because I feel like somehow it's a little different this time. So, yeah. I think it's, I had a, I talked to my good friend, Danetta, this morning, so all the time, is I had a little panic attack yesterday, another one, another and another and another. As now the rhetoric has changed to this time, it will be different. This time we're really making some headway. This time change will be, and I was like feeling that, like, yes, with will, with sustained will and absolutely fricking focus, we can actually drive past this for once in our history, our really troubled history as Americans. And then it occurred to me, oh no, we have been here exactly here before. It was called post-Civil War Reconstruction. It was called post-68. We were in that place where we were sure things were different. We were positive we would not go back to that place where there was no light or no hope and many people were outside of the system of privilege and bounty. And we've actually been exactly where we are right now. We've been here before. And if in a year we emerge and we're feeling like we've been heard as black artists, as black artists, as brown artists, as people of color, as indigenous artists, we feel like we've been heard. We're getting some progress. The moment you take your eyes off the prize, somebody back here is sneaking up and taking back their shit. That's what's happening. And then we end up here again in three years, four years, five years, six years, seven years, 10 years. And so I had, I mean, I literally was like, oh no, oh no. How do we actually not go back to post reconstruction Jim Crow? How do we not exit our late 60s social justice movement that was ushered in by Rosa Parks, who wasn't waiting for somebody to join her on the back of the bus? How do we and then end up in the 80s with trickle down economics? How do we not do that this time around? And I don't know the answer except that, oh my God, the amount of sustained will that it's going to take is enormous. Yeah, for the longest time I've been thinking, really hoping and wishing that we had a transformative president who could project empathy. But now I'm thinking that maybe 45 is just the right person for this because he's going to incite, he's gonna push. And if we had, if Hillary was in office, I think there would be this message from above, a message from the White House of somebody who cared. We got somebody who doesn't really care and he's actually inciting it and he's like pouring gasoline on it. So I feel like that's what's different. There's nobody to say it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay. I just watched a video where he was like at a rally saying, spoofing, I can't breathe. I just, I thought it was some kind of meme but I looked it up and it was actually him like spoofing, I can't breathe. It was in February, it was pre George Floyd, but still. I mean, so he's gonna incite, you know? And I think maybe that's what's different. Yeah, we've got an arsonist in the White House. What, he's actually gonna set the whole thing on fire. I don't know, all I need to do is like blow on it a little bit. That's what I need to do. He's actually setting the whole thing on fire. Yeah, I mean, and how do we, what is what happens? What do these ashes look like and how do we rise from the ashes or what's the new landscape that we're gonna plant? And we need everybody on board. I've been saying all hands on deck y'all and don't be afraid, I was in a conference last week where, you know, black artists were invited to speak truth to power and it was like an interminable amount of silence in that room because that room was populated with people who run things, right? And people can give you jobs and help you pay your rent and, you know, get you on a cover of a magazine, get your play published, people who can do things. And the silence was so heartbreaking. And it's my silence too, that we're like, oh gosh, I can take this moment to speak truth to power and then never work again. Never be able to make a living in the profession that is where you find comfort and joy. And that we are just, it's, what does it take for me? Speaking just for me, what does it take for me? To be okay with standing by myself in a space, you know, with not moving forward to say the right things, to say the things that matter, to call folks out and forward, even if I'm there by myself. How do we do, like, how do we do that? I love the quote, I was thinking of Rosa Parks today, it's Grace Lee Boggs who said, each of us needs to discover and exercise the power within us that enabled Rosa Parks to choose not to go to the back of the bus without waiting to see if others would join her. And that's where we are. Black folks, white folks, brown folks, we have to actually, like, not look to the side or behind us to see if anybody's gonna come with us and just take the freaking step forward. And I'm saying that to myself, I'm saying it, I have to keep saying it, it's like, just go forward, your heart is beating, your heart is beating, but we gotta occupy that space, even if nobody else will. James, I think of you, you have these, you occupy spaces nobody else dares to. You do that as a writer, as a conceiver of worlds, I mean, places that are really painful. Like, you ask us to stand inside of other people's shoes and you've really forced that as an idea. It's like, how to actually bring somebody into the experience that you have as a black man or that I have as a black woman. I really appreciate you for that. Yeah, thank you for that. It's funny, because literally, let's say, tomorrow, live streaming Disposal Woman, which was the show that I did in 2005, which was about, it was a solo piece and it was right after Amitabh Diallo was shot by 41 bullets, 19 hitting his body. And I was really just, really just angry. I got and stopped by the police and I'm just like, I wanted to do something and I did this piece, Disposal Woman, and it talked about various ways that men that look like me have been disposable. And this was 2005 and I was exploring the phenomenon of unarmed black men being killed by policemen, fully expecting this to be a phenomenon that would end. And it has only grown. And when Tamal and I, we did Three Fists, which was certainly inspired by Disposal Woman, where we put people into spaces that black people, specifically black men occupy. I made a huge discovery. I think I told Tamal this time, like every single night, I had a white person come up to me and say, I'm so uncomfortable as if they'd never been uncomfortable before. And it was like, and I realized that, maybe it's a fallacy, but I mean, being a black man, I'm uncomfortable a lot of times. I go in the store, I'm uncomfortable. I just deal with it. But I had white people come up to me like they were uncomfortable and couldn't get out of it. And Tamal had devised these ways where if people were uncomfortable, we would just push them deeper into the experience to have them stay engaged with it. And the hope was that it wasn't like sadistic, but it was the hope was to be, to force or to foster real empathy, you know? And you really can't be that empathetic if you don't really know what's going on with other people, but that's the kind of work I'm really interested in. And thank you for mentioning that. But it's so, I'm finding it more and more difficult to get it shown, you know? Because it's... Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that is really incredible to me about three-fifths was, this was also funny. I was just telling this story not that long ago that people got to choose if they would have the, they could either, they were greeted at the front by someone who was blind and could, and they could say, and she said, what are you black or are you white? And she would mark their forehead with either a black grease pin or a white grease pin because it would shape your experience in supremacy land. So supremacy land, first of all, it's called supremacy land and it's a carnival where you celebrate all things white and supreme. And I was like, we had a debate on this, I think, James. I was like, no one's going to choose to be black. Who would do that? And the amount of white folks that chose to be black and then they were upset that they didn't have, they didn't get to do some stuff. And I was like... They got less money and less access. That's exactly what happens. You don't get to do some stuff when you're black. And I thought, it was like, yes, this is the point. It's like, you get, you go into this experience called supremacy land, which is also called America. And, you know, and there are some things you don't have access to because you're black. And then a lot of the black folks were like, oh, me, why? I know what happens to supremacy land and they got to do all of the things. Money and everything, we're able to see everything. So yeah. More money. And it's just like, how do you, like, and I, you know, I've been saying this like ad nauseam that black artists have the, to me, you know, to me, the greatest freaking imagination in the American theater because they have to figure out how to tell the same story again and again in a different way so that you understand what we're saying to you, which is, look over here at my humanity. See me and try to erase all the stories you've been told about this skin. And it's just like, you know, and so finally James makes a whole carnival called supremacy land and folks have to spend 90 minutes with us, you know, either being tortured or lauded depending on the color of your grease paint being excluded or included depending on the color of your grease paint. It was a real challenge. We had about 10, 15 boats and each one was fun. Like there was the reasons to be lynched wheel of fortune where, you know, you spend the wheel and you land on a date like a 1929 and you get five reasons why a black man could be lynched. One of which was like skipping stones and you would have to tell, you have to say which one is not true and they're all true. And it's funny, I was listening on the news today, this guy got shot by a policeman and it was a situation that escalated from literally, he was riding with his bright lights on and he did not dim them when the police passed. So it's kind of like 1929, like as a black man, I can die because I don't dim my lights when I pass a policeman. And it's, you know, we did it, it was like a spoof. It's like kind of reminding people that, you know and in a fun way, but it got in, you know, we were really interested in having this information, you know, live inside of people and to see the horrible nature of our history. And it's still, I mean, this guy, I mean, George Floyd, but it was a $20 bill, you know. It's these- $20 bill. Stimulus things, like let it fucking go. It's a $20 bill. But also if you, like, this is a fraudulent $20 bill. How many fraudulent institutions that make money are there? With real money, you know, $20, that's crazy. It's, you know, it's funny how things really just haven't changed, you know. It's not funny, James. It's absurd. It is absolutely heartbreaking and absurd. And I think that's what it's been. That's what's been so like, I don't know. I'm just like, wow, you know. What is, what will it take? And then we just like, okay, well, let's just start doing, you know, just start doing because we don't know what it will take. Yeah, what it would take. And I mean, it was a time when, at least in a situation like this, people can gather in a black box theater with their knees touching and experience something that could be helpful to process the experience. But that is a year away or more from now. So an artist are now charged with figuring out like, well, how do we, what do we do now? What do we do now? In the absence of theaters as we know them. And I wonder if they're ever gonna come back. I mean, like, Tamela, you do work outside of theater and all of a sudden that's like, everybody's like doing work outside of theater. And people are realizing that they can't just like, shoot a play on video and stick it online and have it, you know, work. So it's a real, you know, it's a real series of decisions. And yeah. James, I don't think I ever asked you this question. I don't know if this is, and maybe it's a different answer now than it was when we first met. But why do you do theater? You were making a lot of money before you decided to do this. No, I was, I've worked at Winners in the World. I was on vacation when 9-11 hit and when that hit, I had always been like this pipe dream artist. I was like, you know, when the blank happens, I'm gonna be an artist. But I was working at Winners in the World, I was making six figures. It was 9-11 and I was on vacation due back on the 12th. And when that happened, I was like, I got nothing to lose. Because I've always been this guy that like starving artist was a phrase that was in my mind. And I'm like, I kind of like to eat every day. I'm kind of selfish like that. So, but when 9-11 hit, everything shifted. And I felt like I got a second chance. And I, you know, I just started, I had some time to think about what was rolling around in my mind. And I was no longer, I decided I was not gonna be a pipe dream artist. I was gonna do stuff. And I did, and I didn't go to school. So I didn't know what can't be done. And I'm like, I'm so grateful for that. Cause I got a feeling they tell you in school, when you got your MFA, your first play doesn't get done. It doesn't get toured. You don't get a New York Times review. It just doesn't happen. You know, I did, all of that happened. And it's not because I'm exceptional. I think a lot of largely it's because I embrace ignorance that benefits me. Like I don't know what I can't do. Therefore I'm going to try. Like I came to Tambola and I met her and I'm like, I want to do this piece. And it's going to be, we're going to take over 3LD and call it supremacy land. Like it was crazy, crazy ambitious. But there's, there's ignorance, you know, that and having done it with 23 actors, 22 video projectors, 30 collaborators, five theatrical spaces, looking back on it now. I don't know how we did it. You know, it was really We didn't know we couldn't do it, but we knew that we had to do it. Literally, I'm like, every night I would go home and it would just be like, oh God. But, and I don't know that I'd do it again. Certainly not without money, but I think, you know, but the answer to your question is like ignorance. I'm like, I'm really, I'm really, I covet and embrace ignorance that benefits me. You know, like cause if I don't know, I can't do it. I'll try it and I might fail. And that's okay, but I'll learn something from it. But I don't, I don't like the whole notion of somebody teaching me what I can't do. You are a highly untamable artist. You are not. Yeah, you will not be put in a box of any sort. It's like the moment you see the box, you're just like, where's the wall? Where's the hammer? I'm pretty pissed right now. Right, what's the hammer? What, what, what hammer do you want to bring now? I don't, you know, I'm like, I'm kind of torn, you know, cause I get, and you probably heard this as well. There's this whole notion that performing trauma is inflicting trauma. And I've gotten a lot of pushback from academia and from people in theaters that, you know, like my work is traumatic, you know, and it baffles me cause I mean, my history is traumatic. There's literally at a biologically measurable level trauma in my bloodstream that can be measured. It's been discovered that trauma can be passed on from traumatic events. And the event that they choose to use is the Holocaust and they've traced it to Jewish people who are alive now and they can see that trauma. So I'm sure that the trauma of 400 years of slavery and black codes and Jim Crow and red line, all that stuff is in my body and in the body of other people who look like me, but studies won't be done because if they discovered that then reparations is the next step. So what do we do then? So it kind of annoys me when people seem to be like concerned about trauma. I mean, and I get it. I mean, not trauma for trauma's sake. I'm not trying to do Texas chainsaw, mask or history, but I mean, literally our history is really, you know, charged with atrocities that are largely unimaginable and they continue. And I don't have a problem like mining and that's grist for my mill. And I think one of the reasons why I'm in a position where I do a piece and then people are like, okay, well, you did that. Well, you know, and I did, I got a creative capital grant and I got a chance to sit with several theaters. And I told them about, I was telling them about supremacy land at three fifths and all of these are household name theaters. They were all white people and they all smiled politely and nodded and they backed away with their hair on fire. And they're like, good luck with that shit. You know, never to be heard from again. And I get it. I get it, you know, but I'm not really interested in theater that makes you feel comfortable. I'm interested in theater that can elicit change. And I'm not saying that I'm that powerful that I can elicit change, but I can as a theater artist, you know, when I collaborate with incredible directors like Tamela, we can put people in situations where they will at least go, hmm, you know, for a moment. I'm thinking about George Ford's family and I'm from Houston and him being laid to rest and unexpected thing here that somebody had to lose their son and their father and their brother that they had to make a sacrifice so that we can learn a little bit. And it's so sad that black bodies keep being sacrificed and we don't learn enough to actually move the needle. And it is just devastating to me. And I did not expect to come and be like smart and quippy today. Sorry, but this very moment, somebody saying an internal goodbye to someone that they love and that is so hard. That is so impossible. When I saw the video, I was thinking about the, I mean, I think part of it is like we, images like that should be shown. But I mean, how would you feel if that was your brother's son, uncle, cousin to look at that live on TV? It's just, the pain is unimaginable. And the policemen's face was identical to the faces in the book without sanctuary where there were groups of white people pointing up to a lynched body and these white people were unafraid to be photographed. It's like, I'm here and there's a dead body and what the fuck, you know? And it's just, and I wonder, do white people not get killed by policemen, you know? And is it, because I don't ever remember seeing the moment except for John F. Kennedy, a moment of a white person dying live on TV or on TV. It's blurred or they cut away or because it's too much. And the thing is like, black bodies, it's okay to show the actual death, the actual snuff film. It's like, it's okay. It's not okay. It's, I mean, that's not okay to do it, you know? I'm like, and for whatever reason now with this George Floyd thing, it's the floodgates have opened. Every time I turn on TV, I see yet another police video. And I saw one today where they had the body cam and they had the image of the guy who was, he was clearly dead. And they're like opening his eyes up to see, you know? Until this moment because of COVID and this sort of like meeting point where the whole world is in the same, in one of the same situations at least, that we could sustain, we, me, could I could sustain an idea that if this place doesn't work, this America, I'll go somewhere else. There is nowhere to go. And so perhaps what's happening, I don't know, is that we're all recognizing there's nowhere to go. We can't jump ship. There's nothing, there's nothing else out there except for the ground that we stand on and that we have to actually just go and make it better. And it is not incumbent just on me, my body, my experience to make that better that folks have to take their hands out of their pocket. Yes. And get off our pants. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you were saying that this may be the same and it may be the same, it may be below over. I don't think so, because I've never seen so many white people marching and protesting and saying Black Lives Matter and talking about racism, you know? Because it, I feel like for the majority of my life and I'm old, so. But I feel like racism in America has been a Black problem. And it's clearly not, it's an American problem and we're starting to shift to that, to like, okay, well, because white people are now talking about racism. And I've always thought that rich people don't need to talk about money and white people don't need to talk about race. Why bother? I got it, we got it. Unless, you know, a coffee table, you know, at the cocktail party. But white people are talking about race and racism and, you know, and I'm being bombarded by, you know, these images and emails from all these theater and art organizations saying that we're down with the cause and, you know, and all of that, which I've never experienced before. And, you know, I'm hoping that it's not like a blip, you know, that it does amount to something else. Whatever, what's something, and I've never, I mean, maybe I haven't followed the news closely enough, but I mean, defunding the police departments is now like a thing, you know, it's something to consider. You know, it's like- I don't even understand what they're talking about. I feel like it's a- I'm not really clear either, like, but I mean, I gotta be honest. I'm like, if something happened to me, I would think really long and hard before I called the police, because the last time I called the police was not a good scene. What happened last time? Yeah, you should tell- Yes, please tell that to me. Oh, Frank, you were there. You- Yeah. I live with my husband who happens to be a white man and I bought a townhouse in Jersey City from my other life when I was working at Windows in the world and I was able to keep it. Thank God. Anyway, we're home, we're, you know, living our life and we hear a window break. The alarm goes off and I see this man of color, very fair, sliding down the flu of my house, you know, the chimney and going away. And I'm like, we're looking around to see what happened. He broke the window. I don't know what else happened. So let me call the police because I have insurance and I'm like, I don't, you know, I pay insurance, they can replace the window and the pipe and everything. Anyway, the guy who broke the window ended up coming back around to the house and he was talking to my husband and I came out there and I was talking to him and he was a young black man and he was bleeding, you know? And he took off his shirt and he was holding, you know, wiping his hand with the blood. We got him paper towels and stuff like that. We were talking. And I forgot that I called the police and I have a SUV, which is tall. And we're standing there talking and all of a sudden this tiny little policeman, he could like five, five, he appeared gun drawn and he just like appeared out of nowhere. Gun drawn, pointed it at me and the other man of color who broke into the house. And immediately we had to get on the floor immediately. My husband, who happened to be white was standing next to him and immediately became an ally. It was just, it was knee jerk. Two people of color, you must have did it. Get on the floor. My husband was like, this man, he owns the house. He's pointing the gun at me, telling me to get on the floor and I was thinking, I don't have any ID because I'm not pajamas. And I thought about going in the house but I figured if I opened up that door, of course I would be going in to get my AK-47 to kill him and that would give him a reason to fear for his life and kill me. So I just sat the fuck down, you know? And the guy who broke into the house was clearly more versed than I was because he laid down, splayed. And my husband was freaking out, you know? And we finally got to the point where, you know, like he explained that, you know, like I own the house. My husband could go in there and get my ID. I couldn't. I had to stand there at gunpoint. And anyway, it de-escalated finally. And I asked him, why did you come out with your gun? Cause I called the police and I told them it is not an emergency. This is largely for insurance purposes. And why did you point it at me and not him? How come he didn't have to get on the ground? And he was just like, you know, he didn't have anything to say. And the funny thing was, although my husband, it's clearly not a racist. He didn't, you know, you don't understand how racism works, but he was shocked and shook by the event. And I was just like, whatever. I mean, if I was going to put this on a graph, I would say that's probably what would happen, you know? I'm tall, I'm perceived by a lot of people as big and I'm dark-skinned, big dark-skinned man, of course. I am the adversary. But I mean, after that, it took my husband a long time to get over it. I don't know if he's over it yet, but I mean, but that was a situation where I called the police because, you know, and now just thinking about, you know, calling the police, I'm like, I don't know how you do it correctly. I don't know how, you know, unless, and I mean, I'm fortunate that I have this white man, you know, my husband, who can like be the white man in a situation because I certainly can't. And all too often things escalate from this guy in New Jersey was shot dead because he didn't dim his lights. George Floyd was shot dead because of a $20, fake $20 bill. I could have been shot dead from, you know, this policeman fearing for his life and, you know, it goes on and on. And I mean, I don't think my story is unique. I'm like, I'm really grateful that I lived through it. And like I said, I think every black man and probably woman who's gotten to the age of 30 has their police story. It's unfortunate, but it's true. It's a world we live in. And I mean, for real, for real, I don't know that I would call the police again. Cause you should have just been able to call the insurance company and not call the police. You gotta do a police report. You gotta have the insurance company, right? I can go to the police headquarters and do a police report with my husband in tow. Like, you know, but I was telling Tamela, a friend of mine, she may be watching now. I was like, this heartbreaking story. She's black, her husband is black and they bought a little white dog. And they love that dog. I'm sure they love that dog, but largely they got that little white dog to soften the image of this big black man so that when he walks in his own neighborhood, people look at this big black man with a little foofoo dog and they may be think, oh, maybe he's gay or maybe he's, if you have a little dog like that, you know, you gotta be, I'm probably safe, but to literally have to go through that process. And white people don't have to think about shit like that. Like, how do I keep my husband safe? This woman has said, I'm gonna buy a little black, a little white foofoo dog. And we'll love that dog, but, you know, but to see a big black man with a little foofoo dog, you know, and, you know, it softens his image. And I don't know that white people realize it, that we have to, this is what we have to do, you know, to stay alive. And it's tiring to say the least, you know. And it's, I mean, she told me that I almost cried because it's just so sad that we have to go to these lengths. And this is in her own neighborhood. And, you know, it makes perfect sense to me. Yeah, a mod operate, right? You mean it's- Yeah, yeah. In his own neighborhood. How can't you distinguish jogging from, you know, running away from someone? You know, it's just, yeah, we are, this is the thing to, you know, and it's the why I love the theater. It's an effort to be in charge of my own story. You know, it's an effort to put forward the image that I feel in me, the destiny that I feel in me, the one that I was born with that hasn't been socialized out of me or mitigated through or subjugated. How to tell that story to myself, to the people who look like me and then to the world that doesn't look like me to foster an empathetic connection, right? I love for the world to not have to be segregated by these concepts of color or gender or whatever the things are that help us put each other in boxes so we think we can understand them because we can just label the boxes. You know, how do we erase those boxes? How do we just erase it? Yeah. I try often to, you know, to inflict humor on it. Like when I was working at windows in the world, I wore a suit, I wore a three-piece suit. That looked good. I got on the elevator with this white woman and she literally clutched her bag. And I was like, and I clutched mine. I was like, and she looked at me and I think she realized how ridiculous it was. I mean, we're alone in the elevator, it's a big elevator, but I'm like, I mean, I could hear her clutch. It was like, clutch, and I'm like, clutch. Yeah, yeah, you know, instances of racism, like, you know, every, not every day, but all the time, all the time. Right, what are other people saying? Well, you know, it's a situation we are all in now that forces us to look at existential questions. If not now, when will we ever do it? I think we do listen perhaps a bit more careful than before, I think the reaction to the killing of George Floyd is related to that. And there is nobody knows what is the moment of change or not that we talk to people around the world and we hear stories from Chile, Guillermo Calderón, the same police that was out shooting us and was trying to protect us. We can't really make sense out of it. They stopped, they said there was a march of a women's day for one million and a half women. Three days later, the government shut everything down. They asked for a change of constitution and it's confusing. And so I think there's a great, great injustice around the world. And I think what's heartbreaking is that America should be an exception. It should be different. It was the new land, the terrestrial paradise. It was the nearer neighborhood, the ideas to create a new world, that is not bound by old European class structures, boiled or dictators. And it's heartbreaking to see that perhaps the civil war never ended. It's just a break in between and what will come out of it. So how did you both experience the time of COVID, the time of being, how long have you been in your apartments and where are you now? I've been here, what are we on, like 83 days or something like that? I've been here since the Broadway theater shut down. And we took it seriously. My husband works for a pharmaceutical company and I have some health concerns. And so we locked ourselves then. And I have not been anywhere. I can't ride my bike. And I ride my bike and I ride my bike and I ride it all the way back home and do not stop. So, you know, and then all of my, all of my protesting has been with my keyboard and with my pocket book and with whatever platforms or levels of, you know, sort of windows that I can open in any, any, any way, but also with really practical things. Like, like how do we, you know, how to just exposing folks to the things that keep me moving? Cause I think the thing that we're going to need is we're going to need some fuel that keeps this thing going and asking questions. Like what, you know, you know, what are you, what, what are we afraid of that? That's it. COVID's been a perfect storm. I remember when it first, you know, first hit and I will hear this phrase over and over again that we should shelter in place and, you know, stay home. And immediately I thought, I'm like, I've never seen myself as a person of privilege, but I mean, right now, I mean, I have a home that's safe. My husband and I are compatible. But, you know, all too often I hear people who have means and people of privilege say shelter, shelter at home, you know, and stay safe. And a lot of people's homes are not safe. You know, and I think about how, you know, like this is the petri dish for domestic violence, you know, and how people who have tiny, tiny spaces who opted to, I'm going to live in New York, but I'm going to live in a little closet, but I have access to the gym and the roof and, you know, and now they're trapped in that little closet, you know, and how, how does that feel? Is that safe, you know? So it's, it feels weird to be, you know, in this position of privilege in that I have a, I have a home and I'm safe and I have a vehicle and I can go out, I put my mask on and my gloves and I go shopping and I do all of that stuff. And I've been really religious about, you know, doing the mask and gloves when I go out. And initially when I, when it's first hit and I was driving through and playing field is, it used to be, I don't know, I don't know what the percentage is, probably 50, 50 black, white. And now it's like a high influx of Latinos and black and some whites. Latino population is pretty much masking gloves. White people are masking gloves, but I went through black neighborhood and, you know, people were like, you know, shaking hands and it was, it just broke my heart. I mean, this was pre Idris Elbow. Cause I mean, it was like, there was a time when, you know, you know, a rumor was, if you're black, you can't get it. I don't know where that came from. Oh my God. I can guess. But Idris Elbow got it. So it's like, okay, well, you're good. But now I'm seeing everybody in the supermarket, everybody's got the, you know, the mask and it's very surreal, you know, just going out. Cause in my house, I look out the window, I see birds and trees. When I go out, you know, and I'm in the community, it turns into a science fiction film with two pandemics, the political one and the racial one. And I wonder, Frank, and I know you don't speak for all white people or do you speak for all white people? I forgot. Who do you speak for? Some white people? Cause I have a question. But I'm like, what is the role? What is the role for white people right now? What, what, what, what, what is the role for white people right now in this, in this racial pandemic? As you see it. And I know you're not, you know, the spokesman. Yeah. And that's a good, good, good question. Master Wallace, I think he used that old image, you know, the, the fish and water, you know, that the fish doesn't know what water is. Cause it's in it. It doesn't even know, it doesn't know what air is. It doesn't know what's a forest. Maybe it doesn't even know what's, you know, earth and under the, and I think, yeah. I think for us, not easy to say, but yeah, for us, the white people in a way that is to understand what we perhaps move in is similar. We just do not see it. We are not aware of it. We might be thinking about it. We might know about it. We have read about it. We saw a movie and a great play. But what does it feel like when you experience it? As you guys said, what if it's your brother, your father, your uncle, your cousin on TV, you know, that what, what, what does that really feel? And I do think, James, what you said with the image, you know, the images, the endless repeating of images, you know, does it really, really help? What do we remember? We see an image and we remember, then we see the image again, then we remember the image, then we see an image again, we see, remember the second we have more and more removed after 10 times, you remember, the ninth image you saw before and not the experience, not the whole life that's been, we don't meditate on what theater does. And that's why I believe theater is there. They're good, you know, to create a complex story. And Susan Sontag wrote so beautifully on the suffering of others where she says, you know, images of war. And this is a war, I think one could say. What do they, what are the images of the paintings of Michelangelo, the civil Spanish civil war, the Holocaust images? What do they really tell us? The civil rights movements images, the Vietnam images, 9-11, you know, someone dies, you just show endlessly the car accident in your family. No, you don't, you know, by what we see now is that. And it perhaps even takes us away, numbs us and we have to really be able to be in the moment and the present also see a whole story, a whole life, a whole situation that there is a system over hundreds of years and that it's not, you know, just something died now in the moment and we have to fix it right now. It's a very long thing and it's not an app can do it. You don't go to therapy or go to a fitness studio. No, you know, there are structures in place, forms that have been created before us and we are called upon to change those forms to make them work better. We have to be part of the struggle for liberty and for freedom and we are maybe not enough. We haven't done enough. We haven't listened enough. We haven't seen enough, a little bit blind and a lot of blindness. And I think this is the role is to really, you know, to see the world how it really is and not how we think it is or wish it would be so good in time to see how is it really and that's what I think. Yeah, James Baldwin wrote, you know, the artist's job is to correct the delusion, you know, then put forward the possibility. It's almost like in these times, the reality is so intense. It's like, you know, resistance, art, you know, like on CNN every day, you know, it's everything is hyper, hyper, you know. But I'm just, I keep going back to the fact that, you know, why is it okay to show these snuff films? And, you know, and I'm wondering Frank, have you seen images of white people in the moment of their death? Cause the ones that come to mind, it's like they blur it. It blurs cause it's, you know, and it's, it's all in my mind, it's like, you know, it was a time when, you know, it was okay to show black African women's breasts, but not white women's breasts. They got blurred. And now there's this time where it's okay to show to the Floyd family and the rest of the world, the exact moment when this guy dies and it's okay. And they didn't blur it. And I'm like, I, you know, I'm kind of torn cause I, I feel like if it gets shown, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna do something, but do white people not die? I mean, that's a real question, not die, but I mean, I mean, do white people not die on TV? Have you seen a white person his last moments, including his death on television and not blurred? Have you? As you say, maybe the Kennedy assassination is the only one that comes to mind that's been prominently kind of a no. And it looks like we're, you know, like we're a, George Floyd, you know, it's $20 bill. And this guy in Jersey, and I don't know his name was because he didn't dim this lights. And then you have serial killers or, you know, people that killed everybody in the room, like Dylan Roof, who walks out and goes to Burger King, you know, and, you know, it's just, it's really daunting. Like, you know, it's literally like, I have this whole notion of then I did, we did a little bit of it in three fifths where I feel like sometimes my actual skin is weaponized. Like, just my darkness, you know, is a weapon and it is fearful enough for me to get killed. And I had this like reoccurring fantasy, like if I got out of my car and I was buck naked, would I still be fearful or would I be more fearful? You know, and we did a shoot where we had these beautiful black dancers, nude, performing, getting shot by and falling. And it is literally, I really feel like there's something there, like my skin is weaponized, you know? I've been in situations where, you know, I was around police officers or, you know, and I'm like in my mind, I'm trying to project like, I'm nice, I can say a whole paragraph, you know? I'm like, you know, project my inner white woman and project my light skin-ness and fold my dick in half. So there's no envy, you know? But I'm like, I'm tired, I'm tired. I'm like, you know, this poor woman that has to buy a little white fufu dog for her husband. Why do we have to do this, you know? And I mean, the answer is because, well, if you wanna live, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. I was thinking about, Frank, something that you said, and it's just been like noodling in my head about the kind of like, whatever, how the sort of foundation of America. And I was thinking, all right, we were, at some point we couldn't, like we as the world couldn't imagine what it would be to live without the rule of kings. And so some folks crossed the ocean to be like, we're gonna imagine a new place that is without the rule of kings. But then what always happens is you've been a victim and then you can't wait to perpetuate power on the other. And so actually from the beginning, the country has always been, you know, we just crossed the ocean, some folks, not my folks, crossed the ocean going, I'm gonna seek freedom. And then in seeking freedom, subjugated the people to whom the land already belonged, and then retold the story about who those people were. Right? And then we put them in movies, cowboys in Indian movies and the cowboy with the big hat and the John Wayne and shooting the bad guys that were helping, that were postponing progress. And then, and so like the slavery was like inevitable, right? It's inevitable. It's like, of course, we're gonna bring some other folks here for whom this land is not their home. And we're gonna make them work for us so that we can have the dream that we left an entire continent to have, not thinking that you left a continent to have a dream that is a dream that every single human on this planet actually has. And so just examining the idea of the American dream is like foundational to this moment. From the moment we started, we've actually been transgressing our own possibility as humans who can share the planet. So I don't even know where we began. It almost seems like, you know, like every, every, and I haven't studied every culture, but I think most cultures, they have their nigger, you know? It's like, why do we need that? Why do we need that, you know? And James Baldwin says, you know, I'm not your nigger, you know? But I mean, it's like, but it's like in order for me to feel good about myself, I have to put somebody else down. And I'm like, it's, I mean, I think that's the change that I would really like to see happen. If, you know, it's very Pollyanna, very like hold my hand and sing Kumbaya. But I mean, like to look at like, why do we need, why do we need someone to look down on? I was in Europe and people looked at me and like they thought I was from Africa. And they're like, ooh. And I said, I'm from America. They're like, oh, okay, cool. Cause we hate Africans, you know? So everybody's got this, you know. At the beginning of the COVID crisis, all of the violence that was being perpetrated on, you know, Asian-Americans here in New York City and their teenagers of color who are like, you know, committing violent acts to Asian folks on the street. And what does that come from? That comes from the fact that you have no power anywhere else in your life. The moment that you can get on top of another human, you're like, boom. But that is being taught to, taught. How do we take that out of the lesson that in order to have, that doesn't mean that someone else has to have not. That there's infinite space. There is abundance. There is enough for everybody. It's not a fiction. We just have not internalized that truth. I don't have anything else to say. Well, it's sort of my question for you. You mentioned the panic attack. Do you feel that the George Floyd murders and decision put an additional burden of you in that lockdown that you felt that is one more layer of this unhealthy situation? We are not being, not going out, not being able to talk, touch people. That some of us don't have to experience. I think if this is like, we all have like skeletons in our closet and it just like, you know, George Floyd sort of like the door, like there's one too many skeletons in the door opened. You know, just like, there's like just this spill out. It's not an additional trauma. It's that we're all coping. We're all coping and this was just, for me, it was just like, oh gosh, come on. Really, I can't even like, yeah, and of course, this is a trauma that is part of our daily lives and it's just illuminated. It's light. It's not darkness. It's light that was put forward. And, you know, we have to be appreciative of Breonna Taylor and, you know, a lot Aubrey and George Floyd and Freddie Gray and, you know, it's like piles and piles and piles. It's like a whole bunch of light just keeps coming on and until you hopefully we can not turn away and we can just see what's in front of us and the destruction that is laying and the heartbreak and the disappointment and, you know, I mean, Tony McDade and this is just, and I'm missing whoever else in the last 10 days because these names are now, you know, this is 10 days ago. So I can't even, I don't know. I don't think that there's an additional burden. It's simply that I decided that I was tired. That's what happened. Like, yeah, I'm gonna just say I'm tired instead of pretending that I'm not tired. I'm gonna say I'm exhausted. I don't know, James, for you, what? I, you know, I feel that this where we're at, race and racism is intentional. And my little thing is like, I just got a day on TV and I can't get this out of my head. He was saying that we don't have government records of how many black men have been killed by policemen, but you can find easily out how many people have been killed by jellyfish, you know? And it's like, it's intentional. It's, you know, and it's like, and I guess there's like, if we hide the facts, maybe they will, you know, I don't fill in the blank. I don't know, but I think this is a real time for, you know, truth. And unfortunately, you know, 45, that's not one of his strong suits, but, you know, you know, maybe, maybe he's just the right one, you know, for this, this thing. Cause he's gonna, whatever happens, he's gonna be there throwing gasoline. So things haven't been bad enough, you know, for, so now there, when it comes to theater, since we also, you know, we are all part of that community and it's a great community. I think the most generous people, the most people who are close to the, also the history and the fight for freedom over centuries have been part of that. So now what, what's on your guy's mind? Do you think things will change in your practice? Will you do something different? What are you thinking about about? Or do you even think about, go back to perform and do theater? Yeah, luckily enough, I am the co-architect of a theater built into its mission as representation. And we are, you know, and I have a really great partner, more present, and you know, I just, you know, love this man and think that, you know, we're, we're agreed on the task, you know, that we have to make up for lost time and lost effort and amplify the mission of working theater to make sure that the voices of working folks, a lot of brown, black folks are present on our stages and that our stages aren't just these exclusive spaces, midtown, but those stages are inside of the communities of the people who actually make this place what it is, who enrich us culturally, experientially, because we exist as neighbors. And so yeah, and we're talking about transparency and like ways to put artists in charge of their processes as opposed to sort of building the kind of this sort of pyramid of, you know, little boss, medium boss, people who have no power on the bottom. So how do we redistribute access, wealth and opportunity? I made a decision early on in this COVID thing that I would, when it's over, I'd look back on this time and I would think that I use this as a gift. I'm a glass half full guy and I'm like, you know, this is a horrible, horrible time. But personally, I have time, you know, and I have thoughts in my head and I am executing, you know, I'm talking to Tamal now about like what we can do outside of the realm of, you know, of a theatrical experience and what does that mean? And it's, you know, when I get presented with a problem, I try to look at it like an opportunity and this is a huge problem, you know, the whole race and the political thing and the distance from theater, which is, you know, my, you know, artistic home, there is no such thing. I mean, I don't know when we're gonna be okay with somebody coughing behind us and be like, oh, it's just someone coughing, you know, I'm not dying. So yeah, but what does that mean? How can I bring theater into people's homes? And that's what I'm interested in pursuing. You once, I think you came to a prelude, right? Was your piece on police shooting a long time ago, would you do the same piece or would you do differently now, do you feel things are changing in forms? That was Disposable Men and it was back in 2005 and it's being shown tomorrow on here. And I did three-fifths and I think that, you know, I don't know, I think I'm, I don't know, be honest. I'm working on a piece related to my experience with 9-11 now, which is a whole different thing, but yeah, that's where my head is at right now. I think does everywhere you look, you know, people are aware that black men are getting shot and killed. I don't feel like I need to highlight that fact. It's everywhere, you know, and hopefully something is gained from it, you know, today, I was looking at this woman whose son was killed and the lawyer was like, please give us the video, the body cam video before you release it to the public. And of course they, the police were like, you know, whatever. They released it, put it on YouTube. This mother discovered her son's video by her friends calling her, telling her it's on YouTube. You know, so there's all, you know, like, I don't know that I think that's being, that it's being done, that work is being done. I don't know what I can do. We need joyful stories. We need joyful stories. Yeah, what do we need? No, what do we need? What's meaningful? What do you think we should be doing? I think we should tell the stories about the future we want. That's what we should do. We should put into practice. We should start rehearsing the future we want. We should put it in front of audiences so they can see that it's possible that if exist in my imagination, it could actually exist in the real world. Those are the stories we need to be told. We need to tell the stories of the future. Come on, Black Futurist, let's do it. That's what we need. We need to put forward what can be, should be, must be. And that is, you know, and those, how do we exist in like the profound joy and light and grace and generosity and see black folks existing in abundance and not suffering? Yeah, James, related to what you're saying, like, don't watch me suffer. I don't want you to see me suffering. You wanna make some joyful stories, James? I am an angry black man. No, I mean like, you know, I did some, you know, that said, I mean, I must find reasons on a daily basis to laugh, you know, at myself at something, because otherwise, you know, hand me a razor blade, I'll slit my wrist, you know? But I mean, there's joy in my life. And I think that, yeah, I think that there is, actually, I'm writing a piece that's kind of joyful, but, you know. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Tough times. Frank, I think, do me a favor. Yeah. Talk to your people, will you? I will, okay, I hope they are also listening and they are, but you're right, yeah, we have to, yeah. Talk amongst yourselves. They're at eight minutes and 45, 46 seconds of silence in the Senate. The other day, it's such a long time. There should be no silences. We need to be done with silence. I think it's helpful to realize it's one thing to say, eight minutes and 45, 46 seconds, it's another to experience it, you know? I couldn't watch the video. Listen, guys, thank you, really, thank you for, you know, for joining us and sharing, on this day, especially. And I think what you said, we all should think very carefully about and to talk to us, ourselves, among ourselves, to think what we could do. And to also that, perhaps, that Buddhist idea, the joyful participation in the sorrows of life. You know, we have to participate in the sorrows, but also in a joyful way. I think this is what theater does. It has always been on the side, it's been on the pragmatic side to find solutions that people survive, to celebrate, and show the conflicts openly, the murders and killings, but also love and joy and how close they are and we really experience them, even so they don't seem to be real, but they are real for that moment. And as Tamela said, why theater is interesting, it's a model for something. If it happens in your imagination, it happens on stage, it could happen. And that's why a lot of people, we talk to it there, governments suppress it, forbid theater, they film it okay, television is okay, it could be more radical, but if it's shown on theater, it's getting censored. There's something powerful in it. And yeah, so we all really, really have to think what we're doing, everyone, and I think there's a long, longer-term mission and no easy answers if it, as Einstein said, if it could be solved, it wouldn't be a problem, so that's why it is a problem often, because it can't be solved and the people are not able to solve a problem, other ones who are also connected to it because they can't. And we really have to work hard to do this. Coming to a close, what do you, I mean you have said already so much, artists, people, you know, I remember you also starting out and James, what would you say to your younger selves, what do you say to young artists who now couldn't even graduate, can't send out their plays, can't act, can't have, don't have auditions, plays as far as we know, being read. On the contrary, I think, the commission she got, they said give us your money back, they started writing on it, you know, I mean, so, but what do you say to young artists how to engage in a meaningful way, from your experience in life? Yeah, I think of my friend Leslie at school, he told me, and I think of this all the time, it's like you have to remember the feel of your own destiny and let that be the fuel for the stories that you want to tell. That's what I'd say, remember the feel of your destiny, keep moving forward. Yeah, I think I've been in groups where writers would write a two-person show because the hope was that it would be easier to produce and I think that's fine if you're a writer who writes two-person shows, you know, go do it, but if you're a writer who writes shows that need more, I would encourage you to do it and find someone to put it on. I mean, I think one of the things that really shifted everything for me was when I was in a group and this woman she was a white woman and she said, I did this thing with horses in a drive-in theater. I'm like, I get horses in a you know and I was just like I want to be a white woman, you know, I realized it wasn't so much that she was a white woman, it was that she asked. She went up to the guy with the drive-in theater and she asked for it. She went to the guy who had the horses and she asked for it and I think about her often when I get to the point where I'm like I want to do something and you know, who can I ask? And it's hard, it's really hard and you have to be brave because people are going to say no but I've got a good friend who always says they ain't going to punch you in the face most likely. So ask. I will ask and there's no way in the world that a piece like Three Fist we had five weeks of rehearsal, a four-week run in the theater with 23 actors, 30 collaborators, 22 video projectors, it's just off-off-broadway, it's never going to happen but you know, we didn't know that it couldn't happen. So I think what I would encourage young artists to do is follow your heart and that sounds really corny but if you are a writer or a creator that does very small pieces on one, great. If you're the writer who needs an army full of people, do it. Find somebody to put it on. There are people, you know and follow your own what makes sense to you and embrace, you know, your own ignorance that helps you, you know. Yeah, as you say it all sounds simple or easy but it's real advice and it's significant and it's also important to and thank you both for speaking the truth, for sharing this moment today, this day with us and your thoughts and we can't wait to see what you all will come up with and when you're back on the stages of New York and you share with audiences your experiences and we know we need the audiences to be there. It's also something we learn now and so that we all but we really have to look at what we do and this is a moment where we can do that and we really really have to, if anything we have learned from these days, we have to to ask questions, maybe we never wanted to ask, we have to see things, maybe we didn't want to see things. So tomorrow if you can join us, we have a great philosopher or a significant philosopher on contemporary philosophy from France, Sean Wignancy who wrote a lot about public space, what's we, what is I on love also is a great, great thinker it's a big honor for us to have us here. Thursday we have Avalier Timpel with us, a great director who did the great feast with us also, I love that play that musical things came from the Royal Court and the National London, never got done in the US, we tried very hard, that was one short version but she did so beautifully and then Woody King Jr I'm going to talk to him on Friday he has been for 50 years, he's run a black theater in New York, tried to do the New Federal, so many people also went through his work how does he experience the moment, how does he see what we what we're doing now, so that's truly of of real interest, so I hope you will join us again and listen I think it is important for you guys to say what's on your mind, but it's also important really for us to listen and I think our listeners and we get comments from many many countries and states in the US, you know, that people are perhaps listening a little bit more carefully, so thank you it's important, we need good theater but we also need good audiences, people because ultimately it's about you, the listener, the viewer the listener, what do you do with it it's not good enough to know something but what do you really do and theater artists are great because they do something and they see something earlier perhaps a bit, I see they are in the moment but they also anticipate as the both of you did with your work, so next week we have Tanya Pugera with us from Cuba and also many many others, so I hope you will join us again it's week 11 for us now and it's a privilege for us to listen and share so many voices from around the world, so James and Pamela, really thank you for being so open honest and in this moment which we could feel you know that it's not easy for all of us not easy to speak but it's not easy to listen but it's a serious moment and I think that's what what we need and theater if it ever had anything to say and the arts it's now we are of significance, we have been a change, this is the stories we heard from Africa and the apartheid in Chile and Mexico and Colombia how theater has been a contributing force to change and I think it's time again to think really really through how we can be even better and more clearly so thank you all for listening, thanks to Hal Round, Tia, Vijay and Travis for hosting us and my team, Andy and Sanyang and please do join us again tomorrow with Jean Luc Nocy look him up, maybe you don't know for years it might be also, like today it might be really an important talk thank you, bye bye