 My race never goes well. I keep getting Energized by something that gets me nowhere But the places I've already been my race It's so long. I don't know how to train for marathons, but I've been talk to this the games That attack the minds of others Are not the same. This race gets wider and deeper and more treacherous stuff you acquire the skill sets you need sometimes It's more like a obstacle course that a race sometimes it's more like survivor You don't know if you're the hunter or the hunted the race keeps going find different things to Feed off along the way. I was really good in high school. It's sprinting hundred yards or so but after that Just fizzle out Like most people I guess and then The longer the race gets Some more things I have to carry with me Kid on my back. I got a mortgage on my back. I got my community on my back They don't make packs big enough for all that not even pad on So I'm wondering if I don't make To the end if I people Know where to go next Which race will my son learn Who mind if you Graduate from college with my 73 year old mother Who sat at lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 60s Feel as though something has really Changed so I have no choice To but to be in the race. I don't know If I'll ever really win No, it's It's been interesting That's just a really an artificial saliva for people with dry mouth Doesn't really help my throat, but it keeps my mouth hydrated afternoon everyone For being here My life. I was the arts in a current life. I am the executive of Brattleboro fan of sand glass Here and happy to see all of you here so with Matt through her absolutely beautiful pair of dance at Middlebury Company among men and Further on down the road last night I'm describing him as a puppy a little bit, but for that last night, so There has never been an inconsequential Us as a nation before that and Thomas Jefferson describes what to do that So it's never been Consequential it seems Very much particularly Consequential we have had really troubling and tragic the individual events, but really really grim deployment and economic success that nation the list goes The word Baltimore beyond a city in a place That has evocative meaning. It is certainly running through our very many ways I think bottom line in Korean and scholar Barbara fields who found six work What is going on this tragic flaw? So we but before we do that. I would like It's a chance to talk a little haven't seen that haven't seen the worker. I do a lot of things Recovery I chaired the dance program from here about two hours And I'm the artistic director of a production and project-based company Which is touring a work called the opulence of integrity, which is a Direct shift to what I had been doing with my company for ten years for ten years In spirit was an all-female ensemble that created work for one another to perform to perpetuate the work of emerging female choreographers And in recent years as I was telling John on the phone I like mostly your flaws and the gaps in your own understanding So then I started all male company a project called the opulence of integrity like I'm saying like I said And it's based around the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali. So now I tour with Seven men instead of ten women Which is different much different And in addition to that I create work all over the country for students and different arts organizations I'm really trying to participate in the dialogue that I think the companies that I work for in the cannon that I find myself in Coming from companies like Chuck Davis is African-American Analyzing my experience through their artistic voice and putting that forth into the world Oh That's why you should mention Muhammad Ali because he was one of my heroes when I was a kid When he was Cassius clay and when he was hated so much by white people Which made me really love him because he just pissed off people so bad and and his pride and his strength was really Really fantastic Political Saturday Saturday blah blah blah and I got to puppetry from being in the bread and puppet theater Currently of Glover Vermont. I was introduced to the theater when I was a child of 19 and a student of Goddard College and I'm a lifer and I'm happy about being a lifer. I'm not incarcerated as We heard earlier talk about incarceration, but anyway Right, right. Yeah, it's a good because I came from bread and puppet my work has always kind of been centered on political and and later on kind of social trends and You know criticism of different things going on in the society And I departed from bread and puppet because I the shows weren't funny enough for me You know, I was Schumann always says to me too much stuff and I I say to him not enough jokes So I you know and my faith and everything and and I also got interested in in some kind of natural way because I think of Clouse Oldenburg or Warhol heroes of mine when I was a kid So thus Marcel Duchamp and getting to the ordinary object is puppet Which all seemed like totally obvious to me and and doing that and then evolving to doing shadow puppet shows and Hand puppets and some little shitty marionettes and other stuff, which I'm forgetting Out with ventriloquism Just as possible To me And I mean I really love puppetry because he can do pretty much anything you want on a on a low budget Seriously, and and that's really great and Yeah, so that's that's how I got here today Let's some let's jump right in and talk about your work in the context of what's happening Right here right now in our society You you both have been doing what you do for a while But I'm curious as to what what effect or how events today are influenced appreciation of What you've been doing in a new light so Jump in either one of you, but if you could talk about What's happening today how it's making you feel as an artist and and and what you're seeing as an effect on your work It's not trained as a black dancer And I know that for some people that may seem like well, of course now you're just trained as a dancer But there are two very distinct worlds in the dance field. There's contemporary dance and then there's black dance And I was not trained By what I look like I was trained as a white dancer for you know because there is no white dance We'll get into that later, but I was answer and so when I graduated from my undergrad and went into the field to try to find a job There were only certain things that were available to me And it didn't matter what my skill set was it really mattered what this body looked like in the context of telling other people's stories and so What I because I was the black girl who was trained as a release dancer And so I got a lot of gigs for being unique And so what I have realized over the years is that that training gave me a little bit of an out In terms of dealing with What the constructs were around me that were prohibiting me from doing certain things and that were kind of touting Yes, another thing. So, you know, I still walk down the hall in African dance teacher, right? I'm all I'm one of the only one so everything about me Proceeds whatever comes out of my mouth, right? So it doesn't until people see me move or hear me say Hi, I'm crystal. There's a different connotation that they're that they're made that they're assuming I am right? So the way that that's influenced my work is that I really started to think of I'm talking to John a little bit about this On the phone earlier what I really started to think I know who I am. I know what I'm capable of I Know what the assumptions are and so I need to figure out a way to use those Not only in my favor, but so that they proliferate Opening for other people behind me, right? so in terms of that what I'm starting to see my work as is a way that I as You know for a for a lot of people as The smart black girl they know There are lots of us. I mean, yeah, but I'm the one they know it's come close I can say things to a lot a lot of people that other people can't say I can say to my son's Friends mothers that I know that it's okay for him to throw tantrums because you want him to express his emotions But Gabe can't do that because in ten years. He'll be arrested or shot Send him to me, right? So I can say thing I can have those hard conversations with a lot of people that are not broached in other situations And I have those in education as well So my work has turned into this kind of translation if you will of the embodied knowledge of a person of color Inside a prestigious white society that then kind of levels the playing field from an artistic medicine in the candy perspective So that's kind of what we what what my work has turned into over the years. Yeah, I Like that medicine in the candy thing I that's I get that About the thing I'm sort of most anxious to talk about which is the genesis of my show white like me Because I think it's kind of an interesting story business national performance network, which is a series of venues across the country that You know one of the things that happens is that Artists get up and they pitch their projects and they try to get venues on board to book them or co-commission or whatever and So it's in two days and day one I was on for day two. Thank goodness. I'm really happy for that So on day one, you know people got up and made their pitches and there were a number of people of color who got up and made pitches that were Varying degrees were about their identity or their experience as Latinos or as African-Americans or Asians and I saw Well, what about me and Then I sat there and said that's fucked up And it's really interesting. It's like really interesting So the next day I was going to pitch this idea of doing a show about lying and that hit the shitter right away And by that night I had a title white like me and I had to pitch the next day and I think part of what really interested me in it was the idea of We white folks see ourselves as I say in my show. We are normal. We look normal You know, you are not normal Because what we're you know, it's what we're used to we're used to we don't walk around saying I'm white unless we're in the KK Clay or the Nazi Party, you know what I mean? And it's not you like you walk in a room of white people who say oh look at all the white people It's just look at all the people and then so I I think that's really interesting and I've been in some situations in my life where I have been a minority very few I went to a black panther meeting when I was 16 years old that some of my African American friends took me to and that was kind of Excusiating and interesting. I remember going to an opening in Westminster in Orange County I'm looking around and saying oh You know, I'm in the only Caucasian Here and just to give you a sense of what I was interested in in terms of the idea of whiteness This is really a sick story. So don't help me don't hate on me for this but my my husband and I were in a shopping mall that's near where I live and it's a Filipino shopping mall and so the place is filled with Filipinos and I my husband Knees I grew up in Singapore and so we're standing there and I turned to him and I said man We're the only two Caucasians here so That explains in a way that idea of how Caucasians think about race. It's us against them. We are normal there so that's that's That's how I got to to this place and wanted to make the show I could talk more about the gnarliness of what it means and all of that, but I'm gonna just be quiet One of the words crystal that came up when you and I talked before was dichotomy and you You brought that up a number of times. I was struck Your life in a at Middlebury College Seat of many great things but also a seat of wealth and privilege Happens to be in the whitest state in the Union and you know you have found a way To sort of navigate those dichotomies But if you could talk a little bit about Maybe that kind of creative tension in your life or the dichotomies you've encountered and how you Experience those and turn those into your work I think I've experienced them and the dichotomy of Kind of if I'm this then I can't be that Like if I am a dance professor, then of course I don't whip and nay nay. Yes, I did Right like this idea that I have to be either Either or for other people to be comfortable in how they interact with me, right? So People's comfort levels are but Before and I don't expect you to know everything that I know or do everything that I do in the way that I do it And I take that into my into my studio time with my students as well You're not you're not gonna enter the precipice of the studio and all of a sudden become a 36 year old black woman Who's been dancing since she was nine and raised by a Vietnam vet body? That's in who I am all that comes out With the way that I walk down the street with the way that I you know wake up in the morning All those things are are connected in a way that I can't teach those things But what I do try to do in my work is knowing That there's so many parts of myself I want to try to acknowledge those and other people and teach them to do that with other people that they meet Right. So there is no dichotomy. There's not an if or then. There's just a kind of a mole ballad And I think that dance is one of the ways that you know You know, I kind of feel like I'm on a covert mission right now. I'm like the dancer in the room. That's another thing, right? so like the body is one of the ways we do that right and Figuring out how to get those stories out of this one Thing that we have to live in feed train You know share with other people and then find some semblance of self after all that's over You know at the end of the day like that, you know famous phrase at the end of the day You never know at the end of the day you want to be whole And I think where the dichotomy comes in is that when you when you leave that place of self You often have to fracture yourself to make other people comfortable, right? And so I'm really just thinking that in in the work that I'm making now With opulence right with opulence for me. It's so many things It's do people continue to strive for their own greatness when people stop believing in it When it's not comfortable for other people How do you put seven black men on a stage and not and have them transcend? Assumption and let them live out their greatness in front of people rather than their greatness be Diminuized for the perspective of the proscenium and so that's kind of what where I'm struggling with now and that and because Black men or African-american men in this country are at this point an endangered species It's the it's that's that's my entry point like that's where I go. Here's one right now Yes I'm not sure I understood the question well it was more Shift gears and talk about comes that you guys hope to achieve from from your work and you know, I've always wrestled with even asking that question it in some ways it reduces art to Commodalization how many units of something do you hope to get out at the end? Nonetheless? I am curious as to you know, what effect and what movement or change or In fact, you hope to have on your audiences. So and Paul, maybe you'd like to start with that. Well You know people say to me. Oh your message. I love your message. I don't feel like Western Union Yeah, I just don't that message thing But it would be disingenuous for me to say there isn't something I'm trying to articulate I mean like a lot of things piss me off. I don't know how to do anything about it except Hope is that people also can get sort of liberated by that because I think people with my particular political ilk Can get very depressed and very you know Calcified and like oh my god everything and I think it's really good to have a good laugh about it It's just it's it's just really good and therapeutic. So in terms of what I want I want people to have a good laugh and have a great time That's really number one and it's really cool to if people can have a new way of looking or thinking about Things and that's what interests me about this piece right now You know as an artist in the culture that I don't find particularly expressed, you know I say oh that hasn't really been exactly expressed in a way that I think I could do that and the idea of You know we white people being people, you know just generic people and everyone else being the other Was something I didn't quite So I but the question of like what you want to have happen is really an interesting one because My shows in two parts and the second part is clearly it's like a faux history of white man And in a lot of ways so that accomplishes what I want to say about anxiety about becoming a minority and About some of the things I mentioned earlier about the other but the first part has been the most difficult It's about me and event dummy who's been hidden away for a long time And he comes and he's learning about all the things that have changed and I I just have been tortured by What am I trying to say? What am I trying to do? What am I trying to accomplish with this? And I think part of it is because the area of race is so fraught Already it's so loaded already that I don't you know I see all these pitfalls and everything else and I'll tell you what was a turning point in the process for me Was seeing that essay I think by Peggy McGuire I think her name is it was written in 1988 and it was about 50 privileges that white people have and I went down the list and it's about like Erica and just talked about it. It's it's it's not me and them This is what all of a sudden it's like no wait a minute. This is what happened to me This is what this is how I benefit. I was like, oh, yeah And you know in a lot of ways like duh, but I read that and that became Very important to the show the privileges Some light on that so it's semi successful. I'm gonna keep trying to get it right But it's been it's been fun, you know reaching for it if I could just reflect a little The the your the ventriloquist half of your piece. I had my reaction to it was one of Sort of profound realization, but not really being able to articulate what that realization was about It was an aha moment that I then struggled last night when I went home to explain to my wife other than I That may reflect back what you how you were talking about it now, but it does have that effect even though You know the thoughts you can form formulate around it are not fully formed, but it has a has a powerful effect That was my experience of it. Maybe some of you had a had a similar one who saw it. So So Crystal your thoughts, yeah, well, I think it's different, you know, I'm sure you feel the same way I'm assuming it levels to this from an artistic level. You want your work to be seen you wanted to tour You want, you know from a creative level you wanted to thrive you wanted to be feeding you while it's feeding other people and then on another level You want to be You wanted to be seen by people who who our tour right now is made up of Kickstarter campaigns just to get the piece into places that wouldn't be able to purchase it, right? This piece on stage for the privilege to be able to see or the people who already understand the cataclysmic power of art You know put it in places where people don't see themselves or reflections of themselves on stage and for kids of the new generation who have no idea who Muhammad Ali is and What kind of kind of controversy the name itself stirs up and the kind of freedom or the the courage that people are using his Legacy for their own lives to build like people are using the Ali legacy to fight their own battles with cancer I mean like when I started came to came into play of you know Personally for my father who lost his legs on his second tour in Vietnam And Ali having the the gumption to say I'm not going take everything you want, but I'm not going right And knowing that my father didn't have that right He didn't have that privilege or at least he didn't think he did right He didn't he wasn't courageous enough to do that. So I want the work To really imbue a sense of courage in other people to really find not only the greatness that they want to strive for for themselves But in other people and be able to foster them to be able to get to the next place so that the 50 years that you're referring to Doesn't become the same 50 years where people assume we've made so much progress and Nothing has really changed where you've taken the show that Access was allowed that because of your work that Maybe it wouldn't have gone. Yeah, most recently we just put it in a theater called Joe's Movement Emporium in In Maryland and Rainier Mount Rainier Maryland and they're kind of a small community theater And they can't afford to like yes. Yes, please bring What we did is we sent out a lot of a lot of emails and Kickstarter Request to a lot of people a lot of my colleagues at Middlebury really And we raised five thousand dollars to be able to get the dancers there And you know, I luckily I have some really amazing dancers who are like, yeah, we just need to get there Let's do it, you know, like they're down whatever for whatever, you know Like two of them have their own company called Brotherhood Dance Another one has a company called Dante Brown Warehouse And so they're really invested in the change for themselves because it's their legacy that they're that they're unearthing as well like in this world stories about their own transformation just by doing this work and Studying the legacy of Ali for themselves and really trying to chart a lane for themselves in the world like really carve out a space where The black male is accepted for whatever they are Many of them are you know are a mixed descent, right? So it's not just African-American men. They're Hispanic men in the work They're all these men the color of my lighting designer Who is all of these people who are kind of surrounding the work are really making a container for what they want to change for themselves well, could you talk about humor and the power of that and Humor as a tool and work well, I One of my big influences aside from Alexander Calder with the circus and do shamp and class Oldenburg and Is Lord Buckley Lord Richard Buckley a beat comedian from the 50s And I was listening to H bomb before I did the show. Yes Caucasian he appropriated black like jazz language and phony baloney English Pretensions and all that to retell the stories of Jesus of Nazareth called the NAS and the story of Gandhi the spinning wheel. Anyway, he quotes H bombs one of my favorite No, if we'd laughed about that would be it and he quotes Lord Booth be who I actually don't know who he is But Lord Booth be said that humor is the solvent to To relieve Tension and terror. I thought that that's an interesting quote and then Buckley says in that schtick He says it is the duty of the humor of any given nation to attack the catastrophe That faces it in such a manner that the people Laugh at it so they do not die before they get killed And I I will tell you privately maybe But it's it's basically It's really interesting. I'm sort of very pessimistic but also very optimistic. I mean he was you know he was a really beautiful beautiful poet and Being on the sandbird do freeway and his car broke down He says I don't know about that Jehovah cat But he says and my car is broken down and then the this car pulls up and insides a big God and a little God And they helped them fix his car and you know off he went so it's actually it's a very Quaker idea, but Yeah, so Humor I Mean I just I believe in it. It's it's great and it increases oxygen and You know all this great stuff so and you know I don't feel like I'm preaching to the converted because I don't like the idea of being a preacher Sometimes I say, you know because they need like encouragement and all of that stuff But you know at the end of the day, I just want people to laugh and have a good time and go home and say it wasn't a waste of 20 bucks Do any thoughts on on humor and use in your work. Yeah, so I'm gonna shift gears a little bit So opulence is the all-male piece On the other side of that I do a one-woman show called the life cycle series And there are many moving monologues where Humor is to make it's easier for me to do Those about myself Because I can laugh at myself. It's like yo, I've gone through that now. It's funny, you know when you're in it not necessarily There's several kind of incarnations. There's one particular one that it's called I'm fine and it just keeps using the phrase. I'm fine to denote how people Really just want to hear you say that even if you're not fine and it charts this kind of and If you can imagine I mean you pregnancy is hard for anyone But a dancer to then have to give over their facility to an alien Who's taking them over? Minute by minute and you can't fit you can't you don't know if you want to pee or if you want to laugh Or if you want to get your leg won't move like it's supposed to all these things, right? So it all after all that it was this period people discuss them. How are you and I discuss it? I'm fine So there there's this solo called I'm fine. You can watch it on YouTube if you like When you were performing before you were talking about the long race and in reading about What there were articles on the battle fatigue that African-American communities and maybe all of us feel about the work that needs to be done and I'm curious as to What sustains you how do you both of you how do you I mean your piece talks about a 50-year Time jump and puts that in so where do you find sustenance to keep doing what you do and and keep talking about this? You know Lord Buckley What else my grandchildren? You know pretty flowers. I don't know feeling extremely grateful Really helps it fulfilled life, so having a good attitude. I'm naturally a you know a pessimistic dick, but You know if I get on the optimism tip and you know takes a lot of work, let me tell you but Yeah, I mean I'm more in like Satan's corner and Jolly God, but anyway I'm also you know was it Jeff Beck You know the early Jeff back with Rod Stewart and all that and I listened to and I spend my favorite music since I was a kid I was like boom all that tension everything went away. It was like, you know So there's a billion different ways to chill out and relax But yeah, I think about Lord Buckley before I hit the deck, you know, what would the Lord do? That helps a lot I think what keeps me sustained is the idea of legacy. It's always been something that's nagged at me And one of my dear mentors Blondell Cummings just passed away about a week and a half ago And for those of you who don't know who she is Feel free to read the New York Times article about her passing She was a really really huge force in the dance world without her being here I wouldn't be here and so that idea of legacy is really important to me that I'm I Was so instrumental in a lot of people's lives artists like Meredith Monk and artists who have gone on To be in books and have large careers. I mean not no one, but you know, I mean she wasn't She wasn't as well-known and so the idea of legacy for me is very important because I've seen dancers and choreographers and I'm not gonna say it's not fair life is, you know, fair is relative But for people to make such dynamic changes and other people and not be known for that is hard. So The idea of legacy keeps me going that Not that people need to know my name, but that the names will be known, you know, like I will keep saying them They will be coming and that something Will be different when I leave Might not be perfect. It's not not may not be all good But there will be something that has shifted and whether that be in my dance career in my dance family in my students Or even just in my legacy. I think even just in my and My son graduates from college That's a shift in my family's legacy. He will be the first black man to ever graduate from college in my family That's huge So legacy is what sustains me something shifting along the way that has a has a makes a difference Yeah, I just wanted to add I Got into puppetry because of and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing And we have been thinking a lot of what the legacy of the theater is and should be in the future because he's a you know he's 80 years old and I don't think I'm continuing that necessarily. I'm like the mutant offspring That you know, he would prefer You know Disappear to whatever Because you know, I it's like that thing where You know, it's I guess it's some edible thing. I don't know but anyway, my my work doesn't really You know ring true for him and it's a generational thing and all that and I could be bummed out and Or pissed off or above them and that's the most important thing and all my brothers and sisters from the theater And so we're trying to figure out what that legacy is and I hope that my work and my colleagues Some of whom are here today that our work is also legacy even if you know, he doesn't see it that way But you know that we're we're raising the banner of social, you know action and political theater and Puppetry and all the rest of it. So yeah legacy I think we're gonna take this opportunity to turn turn the floor over to questions and It's been asked that I repeat the question just so we all Yes, sir Ethnicity and gender race all over the place and I had the opportunity to write a book about the Detroit Institute of Arts puppet collection and American Collections started by Paul in the largest single Element of that is blackface puppets operated by I think mostly white puppeteers And it's in the basement of the DIA and in terms of the history of American puppetry. This is something that It's not talked about or analyzed and even today a lot of white puppeteers will operate Black oftentimes sort of caricature black puppets in that what to me is a minstrel tradition, but there's Sometimes there's an amazingly lack of sense of that But but puppetry is a very interesting performance technique and I don't know crystals work that much better at all but I think of Dance in a way being much more like puppetry because in both situations you're working with Movement on stage Just text face, but I wondered what you both might think about the possibilities of puppetry representing race Or you know, it could be ethnicity or gender but puppetry Because of this very special special situation where as a manipulator a performer you're not You're performing the other already. You're performing something else. You're not performing yourself Does that create some possibilities or challenges? Thank you. The question was about puppetry and race and and how they how that might work together So well, I you know my great-grandfather was a minstrel player did blackface Which is sort of simultaneously Something that I'm ashamed of and they've sort of been what's his name? Affleck sense, but then also, you know, I think it's kind of hilarious, you know, it's my background blackface, wow But what two things one I've never had an African-American Character because in my shows because I just wouldn't know How to do it. I just wouldn't now oddly enough in this show. I do have Latino characters But that I'm more comfortable doing and I don't know why I have to think about that It's less fraught in some way. I feel it's very fraught For me to play an African-American character You know, we just saw this Mamalengo piece in the festival that John Curie And he brought this wonderful Brazilian puppeteer Who had this show and he is Well, let's put it this way. He's he's not black the puppeteer and he's got this whole colors But the hero is in fact a very dark black Puppet and I thought it was really interesting that he could get away with it and he totally got away with it and in part It's because of the way the whole racial The whole construct they're Progressive and it's less racist because I it clearly isn't you know darker skinned people in Brazil are more discriminated against But it just is in a different context and that allows him to make that character play and it's not weird and messed up So your question is I'm going home. I have to really think about that. So thank you for that John The again an assumption Because I'm not a puppeteer, but I've always watched it as an extension of the embodiment of the person So I would imagine that if someone was operating the puppet and their their own Embodiment of culture was not intact or in line with what they were portraying then that could be hard on many levels for many people so In the past year I've taken some students to Trinidad and really explored this idea of masking in many cultures Japanese Buto Trinidad and Carnival and you know all these kind of ways that we change the body to do something else And I had someone say to me. Do you have those kids for the buto piece? Do you have those kids in whiteface? and I was like No, actually it's buto, but I could see where you there's this other You know this other thing that happens to the body and in buto. It's more of an erasure of the self Right, it's more it's not just about the color of it It's really about moving the person out of the way so that the work can be seen Which is performance theory and dance moving the person out of the way so the work can be seen That's my reaction to your question in terms of What's the medium? How the how the the embodiment is being portrayed and what's what's the What's the preparation for the portrayer? Questions You know that he didn't want to do that He's been deceased now for about 15 years and He did not express that to me But I've been learning a lot about him through fragments of stories from family members that I haven't seen for 15 years as well and so What I what I can deduce from the fragments that I know and also thinking my brother and I were both born after my father Lost his legs. So another part of that my mother fell in love with I just know the the man who came back from the war Right, so and I assume he was drafted That's also very interesting listen to this okay, so I just found this out. No, he was not drafted he was Guaranteed that he my father was an athlete. He loved playing football and so He was accepted to a college. They didn't guarantee him a spot on the football hence his military career Yeah, and then losing his legs and not being able to play at all So, yeah Exactly Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly legacy. He was of that mindset I know that he was of the original mindset of Cassius Clay who wanted something Important to do to feed his family and so that's really what I She told me and that's what I first learned that he lost his legs on the second tour I never even knew he went back again until you know that kind of Ideal that that mindset yeah, and then hearing a story that my mother told Where she said that when she when they get when she got the call from the hospital from him His recount of the story is retelling of the story went something like Yeah, and I saw the guy in front of me, babe And then the first thing I saw a lot of blood But the first thing I did was reach to my back pocket and see if I still have my money because Right, so he was really about man and it was deep deeply ingrained Which is something we see in african-american men to this day Your worth is about what you have not what you can give and if you don't have it And you don't have it to give then something about you is not manly Right, so that one that was his first the first thing out of his mouth She said and I was just like oh my god. This is so deep like what are we gonna deal with this? Yes? No, thank you I A lot of times people us people have on issues right so I personally don't think it's taking spaces for the dialogue If that in in the life of the conversation is one counts for me more Right, so if we're not We're not moving anyone forward like it's not it's it's about I thought about this for a long time. I was actually engaged to an italian Therapist a white woman who blew by mine. I was like what how does that work? What are you like? Are you getting in fight really just reshaped my idea of how people are influenced, right? And so there has to be a sameness Tensionality this is about social status. There has to be a sameness for people to even listen Right, there has to be a peer connection Right, there has to be a I trust you on some level to even be able to hear your critique of something about me And that I will actually honestly believe because I could just brush this off of like Oh, yes, she's crazy right and move on But if I have a connection if we have a connection if there's something about you that I respect and you tell Me there's something about me that's that needs work, then I'm gonna listen You know, so I think the spaces and the people in those spaces are more important to me than how the amount of people who are talking about it, you know Well, I had an English teacher when I was in high school who was a acolyte of Martin doberman and If you want to affect social change you should do it in your own community So that had a big impact on me And you know plus I'm a white male. I know it's hard to tell but It's so laden with so much different stuff being a white male that I'm not even aware of all of it And I'm I feel in a way like going through life is like a mind-fuel I'm gonna make some sort of mistake or say the wrong thing and but I I think Really focusing on the white community and communicate, you know, that just seems like it makes sense for it to be my mission Now having said that I performed the show in Turkey and in Sicily and in France And I guess part of that that end of the mission is to kind of show people that not you know all Americans are assholes That some of us, you know, we don't think monolithically we think in different ways and we create work in different ways And that's been important to do that and There is a desire on African-Americans and and other people of color to see my show Because I want them to see what the perspective is of one Caucasian and I don't know why I you know, I don't want to prove to everybody what a great liberal I am or how I Just I'm interested in people seeing what that perspective is and how that resonates or doesn't resonate So last night some of my colleagues who are here who are from Mexico and the Mexican puppeteers I mean I actually really treasure the factor in the audience because I get to talk a little bit and and I get to have the Latinos in my show and you know my perspective and I want to lay the contradiction But the bottom line is I think there's plenty of bandwidth. It's just as a white male We get to dominate everything all the time. We don't even know it. So in that sense, you know It's pretty tricky Next question Or do you have a question Baltimore and Initially when we started it was about creating space for people who don't identify puppeteers the answers other kinds of performance artists to find a new way of presenting work on stage, but As we've been having more concrete conversations in the Baltimore arts community about how to be within our own arts community travel heads around the inequities and access to grants and access to venues and access to space how do we utilize the science way to create community around those issues and We have still very few People of color who are participating in our mother's lands And so when I went to the National Festival one of the things I was really aware of is how white the public festival was and I was in conversation with a few people there about You know the deeper issues of white supremacy how systems are perpetuated these people who are you know someone I got into conversation with over For a long she said well, this is just representative who's interested in poetry and I thought I was a real lack of understanding about how systems were perpetuated so I guess I'm curious to hear from From Crystal and Paul or anybody else in the room. How do we grapple as a publisher community with those underlying? systemic problems and because there are so many Traditions that are connected to poetry that I see in Baltimore. We have still walkers We have people that are dancers with people that are moving with objects processions But they don't And they're not on stage And so I'm really grappling with how do I make sure that I can be in my community and I can bring my interest in poetry to to To this issue of not having enough people of color because I feel like we're losing out in big way You know, it's not to increase diversity. We had a conversation about increasing diversity That somehow is again centered on that some way people it's about that We're really missing out on stories and experiences on people and ways of expression Because we don't have enough representation of other big points in the publishing community So the question was representation of the puppet and maybe by extension performance community or other artistic communities in general and U.S. Territory, but it's got its own façade. I was the Crest on a wave There were very few that look like me that came from a culture like mine and The reason that I went and stayed as opposed to going for two years living on the ocean and coming home Was that I had something to learn and wanted to learn it and with a way I think that your question can be addressed and this is just one way Is to decide that you have something to learn not that not that and I and I hear that Implicitly in what you're saying, but I mean be explicit when you invite people to participate when you open up your space When you examine yourself and that's the first thing you got to do and say where did I learn this? What did I get that I didn't earn? You know, then you have something that you want to include other people in why because they can teach you something and Because you need to know it and because you're never gonna know it if you don't open the space up and put Away for other people to come in so when you write a grant You specify and you may have to use the buzzwords, you know in order to communicate to the people who are gonna give you the money But you specify You know, we're interested in a shared Opportunity here We have people who would like you to give us a workshop because you've got stuff that you're doing that we want to know We want to hear about we want to participate in and if you come with that open heart And the Samoans would call it a key or eva, you know, if you come with that open heart people will come to you You know, that's how to that's how to bridge the artificial barriers that get constructed so that People in privilege stay in privilege and don't have to give it up So the willingness is not so much here. Let me give you some money. The witness is Tell me Tell me what I don't know because I grew up differently Tell me what what you can do that I can't do because that's really complicated. How the heck did you you know? Just be there be genuine be open and act as if you've got something that you that you want to learn and People will come to teach you Quick reflections before we wrap that up anything else to come to the end Well, I would just say I think in many ways we're I don't know if you'd say it's a crisis in American puppetry, but There's a lot of really shitty work out there and There is not enough social-political engagement in the puppetry community And a lot of shows are just pretty and they're not really about something and you know Puppetry has been about you know these characters like punch and and Patrusca and Carragaz and all the rest of them that were trouble makers We come from a tradition of trouble makers and ball busters and you know wickedness and saying the things You're not supposed to say and the authorities by nature are stupid and they Don't make the connection between the puppeteer and the puppet like they do between the actor and the you know And and you know it's all the same person, but if it's a puppet There's all that puppet is so wicked saying that stuff and yeah, I mean I'm simplifying but so this is our tradition Is is making trouble and being troublemakers and being Faces us and the great dearth in our puppet community and the curse is that there's not enough Commitment and interest in that that mission that has existed from day one of human experience jiggling dolls Oh, thank you crystal. Oh, thank you. Thank you to all of you for being here I just want to give you an invitation So in about a month or so no about take that back in about two weeks Time is flying September 24th to 26th at Middlebury College We're hosting a symposium called the good body and if you want to continue this conversation about race gender Ability disability is also centered around the 25th anniversary of color and disabled and talking about the intersectionality of all their identities There'll be a keynote keynote lecture lectures all day during the weekend and some and a performance at the end So it's just Clifford 2015 at Middlebury if you want