 for those who are either just joining us or are joining us for the first time in a while. I'm just gonna quickly describe myself, white hair, white skin, brown hair, pink lips, red glasses, shiny dark nails, lots of gesticulating. I look like I'm like midway through being raptured because my only light source in this room is a very old overhead light that is both very bright and very yellow. So I'm looking particularly ghostly in this moment. Luckily, you will not be looking at me much. We have three members of Gorilla Opera here who will be sort of handling the Q&A and discussion afterwards. And I just wanna give it a minute or two because I see a couple of people still trying to enter and we will go ahead and hit play. Before we do that, a reminder that captioning is available. However, you do need to click the link that was just shared in the chat by my colleague, Derek. The captions are external instead of embedded in Zoom for this session. This session is also going to close us out. So after our Q&A with Gorilla Opera, we will be turning things back over to Keita to close not just today and this session, but our 2022 convening. I think that that is everything. Thank you for your time. Your attention and your focus. I am going to be quiet and go away and quite literally turn over the camera. On the cane, the mussel's dangling from his bones to old sleeves and feet, always finally boiling. Doctor's orders. The kink. I'm gonna smash those carrots. Still sho' them. He always has seeds. We were twins. He's a wild. He loves his soup. And I love to the last drop. Inviting everyone back into space with us, taking a moment to sit in what we're sitting in, feeling, same as we have after each performance, starting with gratitude to Gorilla Opera for sharing this piece with us. And I will actually defer to you all on how you would like to begin, if you'd like to give some information about the company, about yourselves and about the piece when you're ready. Yes, I'm very happy to start. My name is Aliana de la Guardia. I use she, her pronouns. I'm the artistic director of Gorilla Opera. I am a Latina female and I have short brown hair, brown eyes and light skin. I'm wearing a black cardigan and a black shirt with a white Gorilla Opera logo on it that says Gorilla Opera looks like a stamp. And I would love to just start by introducing our company, Gorilla Opera. We are an opera ensemble that presents new and experimental works of opera theater. So the work that we perform is not opera as you know it. You will never see us perform Puccini, never Verdi, nothing, we only work with living composers to present new work. This was a particularly very collaborative work which I would love for Denise and Bajar to expand upon later. I wanna also say that Gorilla Opera, we're in our 16th season, we've been doing this for 16 years. We have commissioned and presented, we've commissioned over 40 works, including the works that we have in development and we represent over 30 composers in those works. I wanna talk a little bit about the development process of salt. This was pitched to me by both Denise and Bajar during COVID which was at a time where I was considering how Gorilla Opera could continue to present new work with all of these personnel restrictions happening. Everywhere and nowhere wanting singers in their venues. So they said this work is for one singer. We want you to do it, it's with electronics. And I said, well, now is the time to experiment and do something like that. We're an experimental ensemble after all. And it began with a grant from the Multicultural Council Mass Multicultural Council, excuse me. And at the time we said, well, let's make it a film, let's make it a short film. And because we made that film, we got a lot of the content from the video that you saw in the performance that we just presented. And if you wanna see the short film, I'm happy to share it with you. So that was the beginning of the process of creating the musical language for the work, a lot of the visual language for the work and also immersing me as the performer in both the performative, the visual and the musical world of the piece. I wanna also say that my mother is in this as well. And she has some of the hands and she has some of the faces and the body parts that you see in the film and also the video for the show. So that really is how it started. And then we worked with a presenting partner, the Museum of Science, to perform this that you saw tonight on their subspace series. And this was the first presentation of the piece, which was basically a 20 minute version. We then toured to the Ice Factory Festival this past August and we used that opportunity to expand the work into a nearly 40 minute work. So it is evening length now. And we added three scenes that include more video and animation, more music with additional recorded artists and shadow theater that is behind the animation and behind the animation and video art, which is really, really, really beautiful. And I'm also very happy to share that video with anyone who is interested in the full work and also that we're showing the full work from the Ice Factory Festival on our Guerrilla Emergence Festival, which is a virtual festival of four nights of live streams and on demand at the end of this month that have four Guerrilla Opera works on them. And this is one of them. So please let me know and I will give you a festival pass so you can see all of our work, but this one in particular, cause it's so beautiful. And I wanna say what we also expanded at the Ice Factory Festival was the width of our set. What you saw in the video had one large projection screen in the back and one kind of in the front. And now it has two large projection screens, one in the back, one slightly in the front and the actor goes between the both of them and there's video art and lighting design that is shine on both of them. Another thing that we changed from this production to the other is that we hang the screens directly from the grid of the theater. So we do require a theater that has a grid and if you do not have a grid, we have a very large scaffolding. So we can be very flexible, but we do prefer a grid and this is why, because that beautiful linchpin moment where you see that the salt waterfall is so, when you're there in person, it is such a communal moment to watch that salt fall as a group and to meditate and have a catharsis together after the intensity of this music with just the salt falling and that is the music for that entire scene. It is just the salt falling and that salt is falling for minutes from a rig that we have perfected from the grid and again is another beautiful moment that we're prepared to install into any theater. And we have a skeleton crew, but a very, very, very professional and just the best team. And I'm gonna post a picture of our team in the chat so you can all see it. But I would love to now turn it over to Bahaar to talk about the music and then Denise to talk about the visual world and the libretto. So Bahaar, please take it away. And if you can unmute yourself, you're not sure how to unmute yourself. Yeah, unmute that. Okay. There's an issue here with my phone. Is it possible that Denise starts and then I just fixed this issue that I'm having right now and then I start, is that okay? Yeah, Denise, are you present? Sorry, I apologize. There's huge mistake here, sorry. Bahaar is joining us from an airport. At the moment, literally in transit. So thank you for being present in the way that you can be present. Denise, we would love to hear from you. Hello, I'm Denise Khateri. My pronouns are she, hers. I'm an Iranian rather with a rather white skin and dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. I'm wearing a scarf around my neck and a gray, dark gray sweater. About salt, well, it started a few years ago. The idea started in my mind. I had a lot of, I knew a lot of older women who like, mostly Iranians who were trapped in abusive marriages and they just couldn't get out of it either because of their children or social norms or they were just too scared to become independent suddenly at an older age. And then they were just trapped in those marriages and there was no way out for them. And I constantly thought about how that much of anger that they have been holding throughout these years, how much that anger could, like how can they finally release it? Is there a way that they can release it? Or if like in their fantasy, how do they see it? How do they see that moment of release? And I thought about, and one of the people that I knew, one of the husbands actually had a very high blood pressure and some other diseases that the doctor strictly forbidden salt. And that was when the idea came to my mind of like, you know, it's sure, it's a fantasy. It's something that passes people's mind. And I was thinking what would happen in the mad donation of this woman who has been trapped and who can't get away from it? Like, you know, what would happen in her mind? And that was the initial thought of salt. And I really wanted to see the isolation, see the feeling of being trapped of that woman. So that's why in my direction, I had the performer, aka Aliana here frozen in one spot and not really moving around the space because I wanted that release and that movement to be for salt for when it drops and for when we saw it falling from the ceiling. Yeah, and then the whole process was very collaborative as Aliana said, Bahar was very flexible and also Aliana was very flexible to change a lot of things during the rehearsal process. Even in the libretto and the music, we had to experiment with a lot of stuff to make it work. The way that we wanted people to get the effect that we were looking for. So it was a very, very collaborative process. Thank you for sharing. Bahar, are you all set to join us? Amazing. Okay, finally, hi. Hello. Hello, and I really apologize for all this issues that I'm having. I am currently in the airport in the transit. So there's a lot of light here as you can imagine. There's a lot of noise here as the people are walking and talking a lot. So I apologize if there's a lot of noise in the background while I'm talking. My name is Bahar, Bahar Rorya'i. I'm from Iran, short, dark hair, dark eyes. I think light skin and I'm extremely happy that I'm here and I'm glad that I can share some things about this piece that is becoming more and more dear to me. The more that I'm thinking about it, the more it's becoming more precious. I was lucky that Denise Khateri asked, gave me the return. Well, Denise and I have been working together and collaborating a lot since 2014. We've been constantly working on theater and animation that Denise made. And so we know each other and we know our aesthetics. So when Denise gave this to me, it was basically a very, it was like a play. And Denise has this very special writing, style of writing that is very much repetitive, extremely minimal. And things come back. There is a lot of rhythm in it. So when I read it, read the text, I was like, yes, absolutely, let's do this. So we divided the text into recitative aria, recitative aria, recitative aria. Whereas in the recitative, everything is so fast. She's so anxious. She's somehow living in her mind. She's in the reality, but she's not. Because things from the past and the future and things that she wants to do comes, all of them at the same time comes in her mind. But then we have this aria that she goes deep and in the contemplation process of, if this is going to happen, if I'm going to do this, what is the image of it? So I recitative aria, recitative aria, and then the last section is this whole process of hair. So hair desiring something. We don't know really what, if she really did this or not, but there's a desire and that desire in the sound of the salt comes back to us, in the sound of the water comes back to us, in the sound of the door comes back to us, the walking and everything is repetition and there is a power of repetition. That brings that anxiety, that there is a very small moment from going into the peak of anxiety, when something comes back and then suddenly jumping that peak. So I've been trying to make that as you see, there's an announcement. I have followed it. The music, what do you want women and small children and attend the performance period on one ear and then walk in the first floor? Well, it is for Aliana and live electronics. There's a lot of processing while she's singing there. I have this program that, there are specific parts that when she's singing, it goes to the program and then it reflects on her own sound, as if she's actually covered by her own voices in her mind. I also very much feel this, I think I could be connected, I was connected to the pain, the fear, the hope, everything that was happening for this woman. I could feel it and of course it's coming from the text because the text was powerful. And it's all about the storytelling, 14 years of tyranny basically, that was coming through this world. And it was trying to tell the story, which always there's this morning, we have when the person dies in Iran, we have this movement and singing. So we were trying to capture that. I don't know what else I can say. That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I do, we are already running sort of close on time. So folks who are attendees, if you have questions or comments you'd like to put into the chat because Bahar is on an iPhone right now, I'm going to be reading those out loud and elevating them to the group. So this is your opportunity while we have the folks from Gorilla Opera present. And I know that I speak for at least a few folks here, surely everyone, when I say that that piece is beautiful and very affecting. And also the author for participation either to watch the full video or to attend the Gorilla, I put it in here, the Gorilla Emergence Festival. I know I and my teammates and colleagues at least would love the opportunity to view and participate and we'll happily take any information there. And I'm going to take the moment to remind folks that you can engage with Gorilla Opera the same place you can engage with our other folks on the Huvva app through all of the info that was shared there as well as the things that have been posted in the chat. Are there questions or comments or burning things folks want to bring to Aliana, Denise and Bahar? Giving a moment as I rapid fire. I also want to elevate how much I enjoyed hearing each of you speak about each other as we sort of wait for questions or comments from attendees. The whole theme over the course of this month has very much been about community and communities and how we build it. And it was beautiful to hear each of you reflect on what the other co-creators of this brought. I am curious about the process of working with the Museum of Science. I think it's really exciting that the place that this sort of smeared live was not at one of the various museums with art in the name. So if anyone would like to speak to that, that's definitely a question I have the like production part of my brain. So yeah, the Museum of Science there, they have like an adult programs team and they bring in artists to produce STEM based work, work that what helps them reflect some of their programmatic priorities as well. And they commissioned us to be a part of the subspace series, which is an evening series. So they open up the museum again on certain evenings and invite audiences to come in and to see new work by artists, many of which are local. And we presented salt on a double bill with another piece called Distorted Attitudes Three by a colleague of ours, Anahita Abasi. And it was sort of tied together through this Iranian woman presence. And I have to say these are amazing, these women are amazing colleagues to each other, absolutely love each other and are like instant friends even though maybe they've met only on Zoom or anything like that. And it was a genuine experience. And since I'm talking about that and the Museum of Science, they did work with us as presenters, so they commissioned us and invited us into their space. And we created this basically anew for them. But because of them gave us the opportunity to continue this work that we were planning on presenting as a full live performance anyway. So it was a serendipitous collaboration. It was a really mutual collaboration. We were very happy with them and they were really happy with us and they invited us back this year. And I think in their words that they absolutely love us and they want us back every year. So you can look for us at the Museum of Science. There's two, I just want to pop something really quickly in. There's two people that we didn't talk about that are really great collaborators on this. And the first one I want to shout out is Nujo Wang who we call Nora. And she is the video artist that created all of the video projections that you see. She mapped all the projections, she created all the video content. And in the new version collaborated with Denise who drew a lot of the content and then Nora animated the content. And so as a result, I interact with like Nora and Denise's work that is projected onto a screen which is already beautiful work that you saw with like little eyeballs popping up on a barrel and then like a giant, like a movie projected onto a different thing. And another one is our associate producer and lighting designer who is Keith Lynn Parkman. And she from the Museum of Science to the Ice Factory Festival created a really, really beautiful lighting design. And also is essentially the technical person, the technical point person and manager that helped us move the show from Boston to New York. So those are our two other collaborators that you see in the photo that I posted a link to a photo in the chat. And those are where we are the dream team of Salt. All women, very fierce and very professional. I want to elevate this comment from Carrie with Theater Kapow. Thank you, Aliana, Denise and Bahar. What a wonderfully collaborative creation that really provokes thought and emotion. Thank you for sharing. So just uplifting that. I'm gonna give folks- Thank you, Carrie. Yeah, I'm gonna give folks another moment or two to post any questions or thoughts or reflections before I turn things over to my boss, Hida, to bring us into closing for not just this session or this day, but for the entire convening. So if folks have any questions or comments or things they wanna uplift for Aliana, Bahar and Denise, this is the moment. I know putting everybody on the spot, people are trying to type their own phones. And I do wanna say I love, like on a personal, my personal cup of tea level, the idea of an opera company that is producing work only by living composers and still firmly naming and classing themselves as opera unapologetically and holding both of those things in space is like beautiful. I also wanna reflect on the diversity of performance we have seen. I am incredibly proud to live in Maple Nation and in New England and to have seen puppetry and opera and dance and theater used to reclaim space and histories. It has been a beautiful several days with all of you. Any last things from the folks at Grilla Opera that you'd like to share, stay, pop in the chat? The floor, mic, camera is yours. I'll just end by reiterating my invitation to come see the Gorilla Emergence Festival, which is a festival that contains three of our complete works. One is a musical performance of a work that will be premiered very soon. One is a live performance of a work that will turn into a film. So we don't just produce live performance, we produce every kind of performance and sometimes a work starts as one thing and ends up as another. And we're also showing the complete film of Salt from the Ice Factory Festival. And the final work is an interview with another collaborator of ours, Emily Coe who is whose work we are premiering at the end of the year. Her work, Her Alive Undead is a multi-generational work about a family of Chinese American women, but with a sci-fi and surrealist bent because we are Gorilla Opera after all. And so you're going to see an interview with her and two work samples that we haven't shown anyone. So please join us. And I put my email in the chat, but you can also very easily find my information online on every platform because I'm everywhere and I'm very happy to extend free passes and invitations, open invitations to any of our shows. Please contact me directly. Thank you. Kida? Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Babatni, I'm, aside from the voice issue, I'm so extremely grateful for those of you who have joined us today, those who joined us last week and how amazing is New England. I am, sorry, I am from, a nation that technically is New England, even though it's in New York, somehow we got left out of the fact that our nations are more firmly New England than they are New York, which is what I'm reflecting on right now about communities in New England and how much there is here, even though people don't necessarily think of us as a quote theater center or theater hub. And the first question I always say to them is, well, what is your definition of theater? Everything that we have seen today falls within my personal definition of theater. And so I'm really excited about the conversations that have been started, especially today, starting with what was raised earlier, sharing each other's breath, what Babylon brought into the room, coming together after such a traumatic experience as the onset of COVID and also finding where our permissions lie. Where can we speak? Where should we speak? How should we speak? Which again, reflects back to the indigenous, the native panel and knowing what those responsibilities are. But something that has reflected, resonated with me today, especially this experience of doing a hybrid convening is that perfection is not beautiful. Our imperfections are beautiful. All of the tech issues that have happened today, or the last week, and when we did the in-person medicaid portion, all of those things are proof one, that we exist, and two, that we're going forward together. There's so much that we are doing together. So I want to say top of the knee, thank you for being here. I can't stress how much and how important the team is. Leilani just referred to me as her boss, which is not a word I would ever use. We are a team. Thank you, Leilani. Thank you on your 90th day at NIFA, taking on so much of this work and emceeing us through all of this. Thank you, Derek, for all of the tech work that you've been holding down for us. It's been amazing. I'm, y'all know how I am. I love to adapt things. I never master anything. Mina had to leave because life is real and she's picking up her son from school. And Mina was formerly a part of the NTP team and is a consultant for us and is really, we're not letting her go. Yes, she's moving on and she's doing everything and all of that, but she's never going away because we love her and we need her. Thank you also to Sherry. Sherry has been captioning this entire day and all of last week. I know her fingers hurt and I really, really appreciate it. Sherry has been captioning for the National Theater Project for a few years and I told her earlier, she's really a part of our team at this point. But really thank you to all of you who have been with us, who have shared this journey with us. I hope there's some of you that I have known for a while. Some of you I have lost touch with over time and some of you I am meeting via Zoom or in my language, Zoomakik for the first time. And I hope that this conversation and these relationships continue to build. We will be doing another regional convening next year, I hope and hopefully in person. And all of you, one joyful thing about Hoover is now we know how to get ahold of you all. So you will all hear about that as well. I think our time here together is over for now. It's not over, it's just over for now. And so from the bottom of my heart from the NTP team, thank you so much for joining us for the regional convening and see you soon. Thank you so much. And sorry I was just out of the room. I really appreciate this sharing this space. I really appreciate it. Many, many thanks. Have a good one. Thank you, Bahar. Merci, Bahar.