 got it. We are live. This is for the people that watch it later. Hi everybody. Although if anyone is logged on now, I would be very impressed. There are people in the waiting room. Should we let them in? Hold on one sec. I just want to see if probably on Vimeo we'll be able to tell if there's people watching but we don't need to really know. Harrow, are you putting the captioning in once folks are logged in? The access? For in the chat? Yeah. I can put the link in. I thought you were going to put the stuff in the chat but I can do it now. I just don't think I have the link. Oh yeah. I put it in the dock. I got it. All right. Shall I let people in? We can still see your browser tab but I think it's fine. I can't unless I present this in PDF. I can. Perfect. Looks good. Welcome. We are going to get started in just a few minutes so relax, enjoy the slideshow. If you need captions for this, it's in a separate browser window and you find them at the link in the chat. All right. Hi everyone. Welcome to Meet the Wildcard Workbook. We're here to talk about and celebrate the new Wildcard Workbook from the Theater of the Oppressed NYC. It's a practical guide for juggling forum theater. It's a free resource that's now available to download online. I am Harrow Sansom. My pronouns are they, them and the operations director of Theater of the Oppressed NYC. I had very little to do with this workbook but I'm very excited about it and we're here today to talk with three of the authors. We have Sulu Leonem, Liz Morgan, and Katie Rubin here and I will let you all introduce yourselves. Sulu, do you want to start? Actually, let me just check who's on our slide first. You were first, Harrow to start. Who are you? Like I said, I'm the operations director of Theater of the Oppressed NYC. I also co-host a podcast called Thesis on Joan that talks to queer LGBTQ theater artists in the New York area. Also an arts administrator and excited to be here. Liz, do you want to go next? Yeah, I'm Liz Morgan. I use her pronouns. I currently serve as the director of training and pedagogy here at TONYC. I trained as an actor and the writer and then came to TONYC when I started working in the city as a teaching artist. The organization I was working for at the time thought we should train in one of the Theater of the Oppressed techniques. So I took that training and after that they absorbed me into what I thought was another teaching artist job and became so much more. But yeah, that's who I am. Who's next? Yes, me. Hi. My name is Sulu Leonem. I go by they and them pronouns. And I, my relationship to this book, I'm currently executive director of Theater of the Oppressed NYC. But about 10 or 11 years ago now, I was a performer and theater artist and was collaborating with a, with my neighbors in Red Hook, the Red Hook Theater Project. And so that's where Katie Rubin came through Red Hook with Concrete Justice, which became one of TONYC's earliest troops. And I started training with Katie. And then we started building with about four or five other collaborators, Theater of the Oppressed NYC. And maybe I'll pause there and hand the mic over to Katie. Hi, everybody. I am excited to see you all and the folks who are watching on the live stream and excited for today. I am a Theater of the Oppressed practitioner like Sulu and Liz and a former executive director of Theater of the Oppressed NYC and current fan really, as well as got the opportunity to write this book together with Liz and Sulu, which was a blast. And I live in the UK mostly these days, although I am in New York City right now in Times Square into NYC's home base. And I work with Legislative Theater, which there is a little bit about that in this book, that's more to come, and around kind of creative and equitable policy change. So that's me. Awesome. Thank you all. So excited to talk to you about the workbook. So we have some questions that I'm going to throw to you, the U3. And then we're going to open it up to questions from the audience. So please keep those in mind and we'll ask for those towards the end. So let's start with you, Sulu. Besides TONYC, this is our 10-year anniversary. What was the inspiration to create this workbook? I recall. So I believe it was in 2018, it may have been. But at that point, TONYC was, I guess, eight or six or so years old, right? And we had had enough a number of cycles where we had been training people. We were onboarding people. And I think Liz and I started talking about we really need to co-hear all of our resources. We need for setting up our own staff and for helping our actors train like clarity, put things together, give everybody the same instructions. Because I think in general, a lot of our training was focused on learning in practice. Facilitators would demonstrate, trainees would repeat back. And we did have a number of Google Docs where we had information packets to give to people. And then we had internal docs where we're trying to clarify how we use all these activities. And so we did have a bit of a sit-down meeting trying to map out what would the content of such a resource be. And then along the way, a next major step was that we received a grant from New York Community Trust. Megan Gomez, former TONYC Executive Director, wrote that grant and got us funding that would support us not just setting aside the time to do all the writing, but to get professionals to help us. And that is what led us to collaborating with Cup, whose focus is on creating accessible resources to guide people through tangly topics. And they had a roster of artists who they work with. And that's how we got connected with Krutika and Shreyas. And then the work began. And I think that is where we got really into much deeper, naughtier conversations about what is in this, because that means also knowing what is not in this. And what is its focus going to be? We were pretty clear that our audience was going to be really focused on, in a way, our community, wanting members of our acting troops to be able to have something that they felt they could go to and start exploring how they could step into the Joker role. And knowing that thinking about it that way would align with sharing that to a much wider audience. I don't know, Katie or Liz, if there's anything you want to add. I think that's everything. And I think, yeah, we really started drafting content or taking the content Liz and I had started and focusing more on this project in 2020. Yes. Yeah. It's wild to think about how long you all have been working on this and, you know, like the seed of an idea. And now it's the thing that's free and downloadable for everyone. It's really exciting. For all of you, what do you hope people do with this resource? Katie, do you want to start? Sure. I think that, well, I remember along the way, well, we've been writing all over Zoom in two different countries and meeting and editing and writing. We said a few times, gosh, I wish this was available when I was starting out as a Joker, but really sort of as a facilitator of theater and social justice spaces or arts and like all the kinds of intersections of this. And so to me, that says, you know, there's amazing books by Augusto Boal who started creating the theater of the oppressed and the pedagogy of the oppressed book by Paulo Freire that we reference in this book. And that I think that at TONYC, it's, you know, really sort of a core text for people training or the ideas of it. But those books can be hard to read and take a long time and don't, for me, sort of didn't always translate into what do I do when I'm in a room? How does this game work? How does this forum work? What do I do when I'm having a problem? What are all the sort of infrastructural things that go around doing this work that I need to think about not just the philosophy and the idea, the philosophy is key, but what's about the practical? And I think TONYC for me has always been about multiplying the opportunity to be jokers in a really sort of practical way. What does it mean in the room? So I think that that is what I hope that people can really get from this book is something that they can wear out, something that they can look to just before a rehearsal or a forum and and that makes them feel more prepared to actually work with people in all the ways. I'll pass it on now. Liz, how about you? What do you hope people do with this resource? I'm smiling because Katie's answer was like so much about how we support people, which is definitely a part of joker work. My answer is more the militant, challenging part of jokering. And I hope this book gets people to reexamine their ethics, right? You know, I hello howl around and so I'm sure people here are listening from the wider theater community. It has become very normalized to oppress actors in the room, to treat them as objects inside of a capitalist machine. And early in our book, we talk about what has become normalized and what this work is doing. And you don't have to be doing this work to borrow some of those ethics and start bringing them into your rehearsal rooms and start bringing them into your classrooms. And so I really hope that that happens. And even if you're doing something that's, you know, not theater per se, but any kind of nonprofit that's inching inside of that world of serving marginalized communities, that entire industry and culture has become, I would say, tainted by saviorism. And our book also talks about that and how we can start to unlearn that inside of our arts programings and make sure that as we facilitate, as we administrate that we are rooted in the collective liberation, rooted in solidarity, rooted in knowing that if you're going to lead, you can't just be trying to save somebody else, you better be trying to save yourself too, right? And so I think this book is really about that. And I hope that becomes embedded in practitioners in a really profound way. What you got, Sulu? Yeah, it's making me think about one of the challenges of being asked to hold space to train people, that often my experience of folks is that there's so much of a focus on like, what is the instruction of the game? And let me make it happen. And what was really exciting in this workbook that I realized was maybe I was emphasizing more in our internal Joker team's collaborative training was how do we take care of these debriefs? What are we trying to get out of these interactions? And how important it is to me that practicing TO isn't about trying to get a good product. It is about whatever dialogue we are happening as we are practicing these games and activities. So I think it gave me time to reflect on, really, oh, right, like that needs to be balanced into the training. And we would give people instructions, but I think just, you know, the it's very, I think it's very appropriate, right, when you're new to learning an activity that you're going to try to do that you're kind of focused on like, what do I tell people to do and did they do it? When in reality, I think a lot of the jokering practice is like, okay, we're going to use this activity to explore something. How do I as a Joker make sure we're exploring what happens via the activity? And so I do hope that the content in the book reminds me to be having that conversation with people, reminds our jokers to be focusing on that care. And then it also helps us as we train our actors to say, you know, learning the instructing instructions on the game is really only part of the practice. And that's something I'm really enjoying, you know, I think I have been learning in the last week through my friend communities of like who else realizes that they and their collaborators or their coworkers or the people they manage are all trying to hold space. They're trying to run meetings. And they're trying to run trainings. And so often, people are struggling or suffering through those spaces because they are just given a slide deck. And then are told you just like, I got to make sure that information is given. When really, the art of figuring out how to hold the dialogue and guide people's understanding through content is what needs to make those spaces more interesting for everybody. So there's, you know, the part of me that's focused on like all of the exciting things Liz highlighted about like, making sure we keep examining how theater of the oppressed is practiced. And then I would like that to trickle into all the other spaces where people are trying to share information and have conversation with each other, and to continue to make those spaces more fun and more engaging and more also, you know, like, real. We're really talking about things. Thank you, everyone. Lots of information. Liz, you got into the ethics of TO work. And what were the ethics, what were the values behind the creation of writing this? And did you discover anything about T1, MIC's process while writing the book? That's a great question. I'll focus on two values. And then if my colleagues want to add more, please do. One value was accessibility, right? We try to make our workshops accessible. And so we wanted this resource to be accessible. And I'll also talk about it being problem posing, which is, you know, foundational in Frary's work. And so obviously informs how we practice theater of the oppressed. And so the accessibility part, and I think, Katie, you were the one to bring this into the space, you know, trying to read Boal and trying to read Frary and feeling like, this is great. And also my head hurts. And so we wanted this to feel fun and fill it with stories and fill it with images. And we were like, you know, we could do it in 30 to 40 pages. When I look at the fact that that's how short we thought this book was going to be, it makes me laugh. And also, you know, one thing I realized is like being accessible is a lot easier said than done, right? Like we had all these critiques of the resources that we were trying to be different from. And then it was like, oh, man, this part, you know, we'd present the thing to our collaborators at Cup. And then they'd have a follow up question, right? And so in order to really make it clear how intricate this process is. And, you know, it's not that I didn't know how complicated this work was. But I think learning or realizing that it does have to be layered, and it does have to be scaffolded, and that you can't try to give anybody the methodology all at once, right? Like that's why Boal made it in the shape of this tree that, like, it's such a brilliant resource that Boal, you know, has given us and, you know, we replicate it in the book a bit. But there is so much to it. And I think that also came up in trying to make the book problem posing. Because I think we could have just filled it with what we think are best practices. We could have just filled it with our stories about our rehearsal rooms. And it was really critical that we create worksheets that ask people to really apply and figure out which part of this is going to work for themselves. You know, we've said it in a lot of our promo, like, we want you to rip out the pages, and challenge this book, and really be in dialogue with what we've presented. Because we know that this isn't the only way to do Theater of the Oppressed. I don't claim that it's even the best way to do Theater of the Oppressed, but it's something that is working really well for us. And so, you know, that there's also tangent. There's a little icon in the book that we use throughout to indicate where you're going to have to choose a strategy for collective decision making. And there was a moment where we were like, are we going to try to add that in this book, like all of the different ways that people can make collective decisions? And all of a sudden we were like, this book will be a thousand pages if we go into all of the different modalities that we are bringing in, right? That there's a lot of work to be done with anti-racism. And there's a lot of work to be done with trauma-informed care. And there's a lot of work to be done with collective decision making. And all of that stuff has informed how we practice. But insofar as this is like a book about forward theater, right? Okay, I think you're going to talk more about some of that later. But yeah, just it has to be contained. But I think what I really realize is that this work is very deep. And I hope these 200 pages give people a place to start. But yeah, we might have to make 200 more about any one of those many number of deep dives. Yeah, I don't know if Sulu or Katie want to add anything about the values. I mean, that just highlights to me that one of my values is making sure I keep learning. And a lot of those areas are where I've like that is where I have been training, trying to get training as a facilitator. We brought in some amazing people years ago to start to develop how our drug routine would have a trauma-informed practice. Curia Traber was a theater artist I knew and worked with. And we've also offered our staff the ability to explore those faces, whether that's kind of going into folks who have very specific mental health responses or theater practitioners who have developed their own. Training for change came onto my radar a few years ago and seeing that they were really trying to think about popular education and facilitation. And yeah, I took an interesting training, I'm forgetting the name now, but also in understanding Indigenous consent and consensus practices. And then as we've been working with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives on our own internal structure, seeing more resources about collective decision-making options and strategies and how each gets, you know, that is all, you know, like if there's a value in this book, it's also knowing that like the reason why we can't put that content in the book is also knowing that we've got to keep learning as jokers and expanding and being a participant in the spaces and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'll just chime in about the learning that one of the biggest joys for me, I'm going to get emotional. I'm over here in New York City, everything's making me emotional, like the honking is making me emotional. Okay, so don't mind me. Was learning from Liz and Sulu? So, and I think like T-O-N-Y-C, you know, usually works in co-joker teams for the exact reason, well for many reasons, but for the reason that one person is never the perfect facilitator or solver of any problem. And people have different skills and different expertise and different awarenesses, different privileges are different on all of that. And we need, we bring those together to do a better job. We're still not going to hit all the things, right? And so, like, and I think that, you know, sort of just, we have to, we have a value that everybody can be a facilitator. Everybody can be an actor who's a boss says, and everybody can be a joker. And at the same time, like, excellent facilitation makes me want to cry. Just because that is a super power tool for the change we need to see. Excellent was to me. And Liz and Sulu, like, I trust my facilitation life with. So it was so amazing to take different parts of this process and write them and then go, whoa, like, I never could have expressed that that way. And I, that just opened my whole eyes to something new. I never would have written that down. So and now I think about it a whole different way. And, and again, like, if, if one person can't hold every kind of facilitation or decision making space, one person maybe also can't write a book like this, because you need that kind of checks and balances. So that was, that was something wonderful. Thank you all. I agree. I don't identify as a facilitator, but I learned so much about it from the three of you. So I'm, it's amazing that you can share more information with folks. Katie, we've talked a little bit about what this workbook isn't. So what is this created not to do, aka, what's workbook two going to be about? Workbook two, we're still recovering. We learned not just about all these other things, but also how to write a book and write a book with illustrations. So, but I think that there's lots of things. One was when we said at the beginning, there's a lot of books we know and appreciate and love that are sort of more academic reflections on the impact or evaluations of theater depressed. Those can be wonderful. This is not Katie, your sound just cut out a little bit. Will you jiggle your microphone? I think the plug into the computer might be a little wonky. No, it's still, we can hear you. It's just quiet. I can take off the headband. Oh, that's better. That's better. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. Tell me if it doesn't, if there's a problem again. So it's not that. Yeah. It's not that kind of academic reflection. And it also isn't covering every part of theater of the oppressed, right? So there's a tree of theater of the oppressed that is in the book. And that many people have seen in different spaces. And there's rainbow of desire and cups in the head that are techniques about working on internalized oppression, but they often feed into doing forum theater. And to NYC has used them that way. There's legislative theater, which to NYC has done a lot of exploring about about working on changing policy using forum theater. And there is a section on that in the book, but it doesn't go into all the specifics about and questions really about how to involve policy makers and advocacy partners and organizing groups and how to structure the play. And we started writing that and thought again, that's a different book. We really, you know, to Liz's point about accessibility, like let's be clear about what this is going to be for. So there's many more parts of theater of the oppressed. And as Liz and Sue have referred to, there's lots of other kind of, I think the other thing is there's lots of brilliance about facilitation that we were inspired by, that we weren't trying to copy because other people did that better already. Right? We looked at the workbook on conflict resolution or that's not the right word. Yeah, public towards repair by Marianne McCrava and her collaborators. And that is that was like one of the inspirations to us of something that was really interactive and sort of engaged you as a user and reader and person. And those again, like those there are so many resources like that that I think a facilitator needs to work through all of them at different points. So those are some of the things I think that part of what will if there ever is another book, it will also come from what the questions are of the people who have used it and where they feel like there's something that they need to know more about, which is exactly what we want to know now and what is really exciting about this period. I don't know, Liz and Sulu, anything else I'm missing? I'll just add, yeah, that because you mentioned that workbook, I did get to take a transformative justice training in 2019. And that really like those practices, transformative justice, restorative justice, and community accountability I think really did impact my facilitation practice. And I just kind of wanted to mention because I know we are on the live stream. And there are resources that people are putting in the chat. So just being able to mention verbally, that book, as well as I know, Tony here is mentioning a space called Eastside Institute, I've shouted out facilitator cards. And the consensus decision making training I took was with groundwaterarts.com. So I'm putting that verbally in our archive for those who are not seeing the chat. This may be the more practical answer, but I also just want to name that like it's not a nonprofit management resource, right? We are a nonprofit, we're doing this work inside of a nonprofit, but we recognize that people may be finding other ways, maybe more liberated ways to do this work. So yeah, like take that, you know, and anything that we do inside of that context, take it with a grain of salt, and we try not to go too deep into what that means. And yeah, it's on the cover, but just to reiterate, it says forum theater, like because that's as far as we could get, there's a chapter mostly authored by Katie Rubin about legislative theater. That's really great. Katie Rubin also just worked on another resource with a participation playbook that you can find out if anyone has the link and can drop it in there. But from People Powered that's different, but also similar in terms of an interactive way to think through how you can create legislative theater. But I think our future books will probably go even deeper into some of those other techniques. Oh yeah, it's not available yet, but we're so close. Awesome. Thank you for those amazing resources. I'm doing one more question to the three of you before we open it up to the audience. So audience members, if you want to start putting your questions in the chat, and then we'll we can get to those after this. But for the three of you, what is your favorite part of the book? And if you want to share a little bit about why so folks can definitely look up to those. Sulu, you want to start? Actually, I was going to ask to go last so that I have my choices in balance in case anybody else had them, but I'm also going to share screen. So since I'm doing the tech, who Katie or Liz? Yeah, well, if you want to pull it up, I think we found it on page 75. Oh. So if you've ever taken a training with us, we will do like a drawing of the dramaturgy arc. And so yeah, on page 75, 76, we draw out something pretty similar to what you might have seen in a training that shows you what a story looks like, the protagonist, their need, being told no by the antagonist and then the failure. But what I love is that this workbook also shows you what happens during the forum that we jump back in and that actually the story changes. And so I hope it's clear. But y'all let me know, find us on social media, let us know what's clear, what's not clear. But yeah, I really love this spread and again, shout outs to Shreya and Krutika because we went back and forth so many times about how to make it clear. And they were just so awesome about all of the little nuances that are required to make this book what it's become. Do we have time for you to just mention, you know, the cycle? Oh, like, oh, what the little loop-de-loop is? Or just the shape. The shape, yeah. So in forum theater, you know, you'll have a protagonist that has something that they need that they have a right to. Something that, yeah, a human right or including maybe even just an expression of identity. In this story, we have someone named Jean Pierre who needs to find housing for himself and his partner. And then he meets an antagonist, a landlord that refuses to rent to Jean Pierre when, or refuses to renew the lease when she realizes that Jean Pierre wants to move in his same-sex partner. So that's somebody saying no because of who Jean Pierre is and or who she perceives him to be. And so we have this moment of crisis where Jean Pierre has equal opportunity to get what he needs and be denied. We end up seeing that story end in failure or an unsatisfying compromise. So in this version, let's say Jean Pierre and his partner break up because of all the stress around finding housing. And so, yeah, then when we see the play again, that little moment of crisis actually becomes a place where intervention is possible. And so a spect actor would get to come in, interact with the antagonist, and might try something like calling a lawyer. And then the actors play out what might happen when you call a lawyer. And maybe you get some new information, but maybe some of that new information includes that court fees are expensive. And so maybe we still end in failure. That doesn't mean that these stories always end in failure, but just to understand that the story kind of keeps changing every time we have an intervention. So this spread along with the pages before, the pages after, it's not just this diagram. But I really like the visuals of this and what Shreyas and Frutica put together for us as far as this was concerned. Thank you, Liz. Katie, do you want to share? Sure. Mine was mistakes we try not to make, short-handed, unhelpful intentions. And page 30, I think. And somebody else wrote this first, because we all sort of split up the sections. I think it might have been Sulu. It wasn't me. And I love this, well, it's funny, first of all. And I really love that a lot of the book is funny, like makes me laugh out loud. I think that, I mean, we, like, TONYC prioritizes fun and considers fun a crucial ingredient to the revolution. And so fun was a baseline, you know, or whatever revolution we're trying to do at that moment, let's say. And fun was a baseline value of creating this book, you know, illustrated, like colorful, beautiful. And also I think that laughing is part of that. So the fact that it's funny. And I think also that we try not to make means that we do make them. Again, no one is a perfect facilitator. I think, you know, as Liz said, again, TONYC is, has so many strengths and a lot of practice of learning in this kind of stuff and is also ongoing learning and making mistakes. And all of us make mistakes. And I think that that sometimes I would say in a Joker training that that is to me, the definition of a Joker is that it's the person who goes home every night and plays over the video in their mind of what happened and said, where was I biased? Right? Where did I miss something? Where did I not do that, that real problem posing and job towards, towards liberation that that I'm trying to do. And there was definitely somewhere and what can I learn from that. And so all of these mistakes, right, I will teach people about oppression. This makes me laugh, but they're all real. And even if it's hard for us, I think sometimes it can be hard for us in a, in a live space to admit, because we know this sounds bad. So kind of having it on the page is like, then I can go in my private head. Oh, that's true. I have done that, right? I am unbiased, just absolutely impossible. I never oppress anyone. Definitely. Maybe not impossible, but certainly not true for me. I am saving oppressed people, right? I am serving oppressed people. There might be one more on the next page. Is it the end of the next page? No, it's just the notes. Right. So, and then there's actually this worksheet about how do I relate to power of oppression and privilege is a worksheet that I think is really important for jokers to do that kind of conversation with themselves and with each other. So I love that for all of those reasons and more. And the text next to each of those little, you know, speech bubbles, it's just wonderful. Stop. We are all biased. Stop. Yeah. That's me. Thank you, Katie and Sulu. Yeah, I think I really want to highlight there's a couple pages here and the so often people would come to me at the end of a training and be like, so is it okay to do a forum theater if I'm working in this kind of space? Or is it okay if I do forum theater if I'm working with this particular group of people? Or is it okay to do forum theater with this kind of story? Right. Those were the questions, like even though we would hold open question time in the training, they would like hold onto them like a private like, wait a second, I need the expert to check in with me on this. And actually, that's not true. I'm now remembering there were some group discussions in training, but so we held a little space in the book to try to help folks think through that because we certainly can't judge, right? But I think it really what we were trying to do here is like, navigate how do you have that conversation with yourself and with the people you think you want to make forum theater with? How do you ground yourself in people understanding what it means? Because saying like, can we make this into a forum play? Does kind of need people to understand what that means? However, I know as a practitioner that so many people don't really understand what forum theater is until they've done it, right? You make the play, you do the interactive forum, and then people, even if you practice it in private, you do it in public, and then everybody involved is like, oh, whoa. So it's hard. You can't make it perfect. But how do you navigate some conversations about like, okay, this is a version of the story we're going to use, you know, for a public conversation. And we're going to, you know, have, you know, imagine who might be in the audience. Is this how you want to present this problem? And I think there were some questions like, you know, is it okay to ask people to share their stories, which I think is also related to like, you know, asking if they want to, thinking about the power dynamics of who is the asker and who's being asked. One of our focus groups while we were developing this book, moved into a really specific conversation around the power dynamic of being able to say no to a facilitator. One of our actors shared that really his life was about any, any group space, whether somebody in charge. He has felt that in order to be okay, he has to say yes. He's not allowed to say no, or decline a request of him. And it was only via being in multiple rehearsals with our facilitators of realizing that he was being offered that option. And I think it's, you know, it was multiple years of being in that space before he realized that like he could start using the word no. So note being aware of that. And then this question, which I think a lot of people started asking us as an organization and as facilitators was like, are we re traumatizing people, which I also think is, is a conversation that needs a lot of care. And getting more experience with understanding what does that question mean and how to have conversations with the people who are participating. Because I think what we noticed was we were mostly being asked that by people who were outside of the room, who thought as social service providers, they needed to protect the people who were in the room. Whereas many of the people in the room were often being told they shouldn't share the story in case it was traumatic for them. So some of these dynamics of power in spaces is not allowing people to connect with other people who have the same experience and be creative or have support. And we could not offer these things in the book as a map of like this is when it's okay and this is when it's not. But we really wanted to flag some of the considerations. Thank you all. Yeah. Then there are so many great pieces in the book. I'm glad you all got to talk about some of your favorites. Jumping to questions from the audience. We have one from Pablo. His question is how do you think the book will impact current ToNYC participants? I don't know if someone wants to take that. Maybe add what does it mean to be a ToNYC participant? Ah, what does it mean to be a ToNYC participant? I don't even know if I have like the best answer for that. But for those that don't know too much about our organization, majority of our work is done in partnership with social service organizations or city agencies. And what those organizations might typically call their clients. When we partner with them, we ask if we can turn them into actors, right? Not necessarily thinking that we are going to turn them into professional performers for life, but actually into people that are taking action in their lives on a consistent and regular basis. So that's what we mean by actors. But yes, also they would be performing with us. And so then we spend 10 to 12 weeks working with those that participate in creating a forum theater process. And our book has how we map out a 10 to 12 week rehearsal process. So that's typically what it means to be a participant in ToNYC programming. And so the question is, how do we think the book will impact? I'm hoping. And again, I do think the best way to get your feet wet in this work is to be doing it in your body. And I think, yeah, I think Katie just said like some, or no, Sulu, right? Some people don't get what it is until they've done it. I think after that, people have a lot of questions. And I hope this book can help answer it. It's like, well, so why did we make this choice and not that choice? And then either, you know, a joker can point them to page whatever in the book and say like, well, the theater that maybe you've seen before might look like this, this is what we're doing. And then folks can know like, oh, it's, it's not that ToNYC is just making this thing up, but that there's actually a lot of intention behind this work. And so I hope this book can maybe answer some of the questions about why our work doesn't look like other things that people might be used to or other programs that people might be used to, why we use the term joker instead of instead of teacher. Like I think I've worked with some troops where they want to call me professor and I'm like, I am not Professor Morgan. But yeah, so I'm hoping it can do some of that. I don't know if Sulu, Katie, want to add anything? I think, like we said before, sort of the idea that anyone, you know, everyone is an actor to take action in their lives and in the world. And then everyone also can therefore be a facilitator to move other people, to move themselves and other people. So and ToNYC has a long practice and very developed practice that Liz leads and everybody does, right, of like supporting actors to become jokers. And that's where lots of folks who are jokers in ToNYC who are part of the staff. And so that is another resource to support that too. Especially insofar as I think it lays out how complicated that work is, because I think sometimes jokering looks easier than it is. And so I actually in some ways I hope this can make folks go like, oh, everyone can be a facilitator, but does everyone want to be? And I think that's a real question. I'm glad that we actually had one actor be like, wait a minute, this is a lot of holding space. I don't know if I want to do that. I just want to play. And that's totally legitimate. But yeah, like jokering is hard work that you have to hold space for other people and do a whole lot of other things. And so I want that to be laid out a little bit more clearly before folks start getting their hopes up about doing this work. Because it's challenging. I think I cut you off, Sulu. I just wanted to add a little thing, which is that we have shared training. But something that I do have done, for me, to learn the games and activities has been like, I avoid going back and reading through the instructions, the night before training thing, like, right, what do I have to hit? And now we have that more available to people. And I know we have somebody who's watching, who holds a lot of space in organizer meetings. And I know there's somebody here who also is like, you know, I want to play some of these games with the kids in my building. And now I'm hoping that they have that, you know, in their pocket on their phone, could like sit down and be like, what's, what, what do I say on that game again, or even have it while you're doing the game? You know, I think there's no shame in having points of reference while you facilitate. So I'm hoping it could be, you know, spreading that that way. Okay, thank you, Pablo. Another question from Liz, a different Liz. Do plays always need to be performed for an external audience, or can they just be used to stimulate, activate participants? Katie, you want to start with that one? Me? Yeah, I think, well, I don't know if, I mean, I think there, to me, there always needs to be a forum in that a play is not an answer or play as a question. So there needs to be an opportunity to open that play up as a problem. We've got a problem, what are we going to do about it? But we can be our own audience and figure that out ourselves. Like, you know, I remember at TONYC times when we were having an internal struggle and like, nine months later, we'd go, Oh, we should make a forum scene about that in our retreat meeting. And then, you know, that's actually what we do in our work. That's how you can look at problems a different way. And so that's our, we're the audience of the people who are facing that problem and trying to change it. So I think that that is the great use of this tool. And that is to me, that's the same. Any external audience is somebody who watches something and somebody who thinks about how to take action. And that could be we are each other's external audience or we bring in the rest of our external audience. What do you think? Yeah, a lot of our residencies and troops culminate in what we'd call an internal performance that's for maybe folks at that same organization. Maybe they didn't help build the play, but folks that saw them rehearsing and were like, you know, what's that little theater group doing? And so, you know, there are varying degrees of public. And, you know, I know, Sulu, you just worked on a project in your neighborhood, where at a certain point they were like, Oh, we don't know if we want to perform. And the whole idea of producing sounds like a lot of work. And then you, you ended up leading them and making a zine, which again, I don't, this workbook definitely does not teach folks how to make those kind of pivots. So I'll make that very clear. But that's why again, we want folks to be thinking about all of the other skills that you can bring and infuse and apply with theater of the oppressed, so that if you do come across a group that all of a sudden is going like, yeah, we shared stories, and we used some of these techniques. And now the idea of sharing our stories to a public audience is no longer feeling good. You have to have options. And so my, you know, my answer would be maybe a little slightly different than Katie's, like, you don't always have to forum, but you, you always have to be pursuing a concrete ethical direct action and figuring out, like, what's, what's the next step after you've done this work? Cool, I do. We have one more question from Tony, and then we'll wrap up curious to know if young people around school age have been emerging jokers, and what challenges and successes have you seen that have swung it for them to develop, or have let it go due to other commitments or issues going on for them? Sulu, do you want to start? Sure. We have navigated that shift, and there are so many challenges that I think are, you know, somewhat mostly external, right? Young people who are in high school or are not in school, but are like, still, you know, 16, 17, 18 have been trained with us, have worked with us, and we know that they're also navigating, how do I pay rents? How do I, if I'm being asked to support my family, how do I support my family? And then, so there's, there's a figuring out how to be supporting their learning and supporting them, understanding how to continue to show up in our various spaces while they are, maybe their life is going through some big changes as well, right? Because they're leaving school or they're leaving home. And then there's, I think, the other challenge I'd like to mention is being in spaces and being always perceived as, well, you must be a youth participant. And then having the struggle of trying to get their work done, either, it's not often so much that, like, the people they are facilitating say that, but the people controlling the space or the spaces. And even now, we have a couple of folks on our team who I think right now are 23, who started training with us when they were in their late teens. And we're showing up to a high school. And we're having security guards who are, like, making sure they couldn't come into the space until some grown up from the school came down the hallway and vouched for them. So, you know, there's, yeah, there's the challenge of maintaining, like, a creative art practice? I mean, I, as an adult, like, how do I maintain a creative art practice while also paying for rent? And then the ageism that people face? I'll say that. Yeah. And I'll also add that, like, we're encountering some I would say, yeah, almost all of the young people that we encounter, or encountering them separate from anything that has to do with their parents, sometimes very intentionally. Right. And so if there are folks that have parents that maybe aren't in alignment with this work, or know that it's okay, but it's a priority for them to maybe do be doing something else, you know, young people can often over commit, right? They say they're going to be at rehearsal. And then they text us, oh, I'm actually supposed to be going prom dress shopping with mom. And so, you know, we could probably figure out like a strategy to make sure that when folks have parents and guardians that are present in that way, that they feel a little bit more collaborative with us. But that that's an issue that has has come up in the past. There may be one other thing that I was going to say, but now do I remember? Oh, power dynamics, right? I think, you know, Sulu, you're talking about what it's like to show up at the school. But even just between co-jokers, if someone like me, you know, I'm about to be, you know, 34 on Monday, right? Co-jokering with one of these people that Sulu was talking about that's closer to 23. And then even taking race into account, say they're co-jokers with Katie, who's white, right? We're going to default to the person who's older, has more skin privilege, all of those things. And so I think that's also a question of how do you provide mentorship that also allows young people to step into their own and see themselves as an equal co-facilitator in the room and not always lean back and say, like, oh, well, well, Liz has been doing this for longer, so she can do the agenda planning. Like, maybe I shouldn't be doing the agenda planning and de-mechanizing that on both sides is really challenging work. But I try to lean into it as much as possible. Thank you. Leo Season is here. Thank you all. And thank you for the questions. We are at two, so I want to wrap up. Thank you, everyone, for coming into this discussion. Thank you, Katie, Sulu, Liz, for your amazing answers. If you want to join us in person, we're going to be down in Battery Park at five o'clock to toast this workbook. So come meet us, come snooze with us. We'll have some snacks and drinks. You can also save the date. We're having a 10th anniversary party on Saturday, September 24th. More information, location, and all that coming very soon. You can donate to us at tonyc.nyc. The book is free to download, but it was not free to make. So if you feel like donating, you can do it on our website. You can also volunteer. I run our volunteer program. We'd love to have more people help us out. And we have a donation campaign coming up called Represents, which will put our slides up. And there's information there on how you can join. So you can be a fundraiser for us if you're interested in that. It's a team effort. It's a lot of fun, pretty simple. So thank you all again for coming. It was lovely to hear your questions and your feedback. You can find this stream on HowlRound if you'd want to come and revisit it later or share it. And yeah, Katie, Sulu, Liz, you want to say any final goodbye things? Read the word about the book. Let your facilitator friends know how to download it. Seriously, take level two training with Sulu and let us know what you think about the book. Hit us up on social media. Bye, everybody.