 If I can ask you to bring your chairs from the gallery, that would be helpful. First round. First round host. Yeah, no problem. So we're really going to try and hold out, say, the top three recommendations. What rose to the top as being really strategic. So if you can set the tone for that, that'd be awesome. Yeah. Do we have one more round one host among us? Round one host, another chair then. So I think we're all here and we're moving into this half hour of hearing back from the hosts of each round of conversations and then into the close until 5.30 which will be followed by the reception. So I wonder if Christine could start. Christine was addressing the theme around theater education. What we're going to ask each host to do is respond to these questions and what we're really looking for are the three recommendations that rose to the top. Had a lot of energy or really seem most strategic. So give us those or take two minutes, whichever is your preference, but I do have to call time at two minutes. Thanks. Okay, hi, I'm going to stand up because I'm just used to that. So we talked about a lot of strategies, but I think the one that stood out the most in terms of how to transform education so that equity is central is the idea that we need to empower and encourage our students to find their own voices and to learn that their stories matter because as we talked a lot about the opposite of that, experiences where somebody was the only one of their kind in their program and they never saw anything reflected on stage that mirrored their experience. How do we actually teach our students that they matter and that their voices are important if they never see themselves reflected? So three key strategies to help with that or recommendations for action. One is to teach that every play is an identity play. That idea came from this morning, right? So that it's not just that these are plays and these are sort of specialty plays. All plays come from a very specific cultural identity and positionality and that we need to teach every play that way. Two, equity in education means equal time in the curricula. So we spent a lot of time talking about who we're going to have to check. Check off. Shakespeare move over. You can be there, but you can't have the lion's share of the time on the syllabus. You have to share the time with artists of color and LGBT in First Nations and what if we spend the same amount of time on First Nations playwrights that we spend on check off. Number three, give students the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes, especially in performance training. We talked about what it would be like for example for a European student to play a role that was written for a non-European person. What would be like for a woman to play a role that was written for a man and maybe that would be more challenging to do on a main stage, but in a classroom setting that could be a form of knowledge to actually get inside someone else's story and learn about it from the inside, not just from an intellectual position. And those are our ideas. So we'll just pass the mic and if you could be sure to state your theme so that AFTAB gets it. Hello. Terry and I co-chaired a discussion on biases and barriers in the industry and an idea that came up is the triumvirate that exists between ideas, the individual artist or creator and the systemic, the systems, the idea that ideas resonate with an individual. The individual artistic director or decision maker has the opportunity to program a season, has the opportunity to make decisions and that this feeds back into what gets out in the public, what is appreciated, this triumvirate. And we delved into a few of the biases and barriers that come up. One is audiences and we think we know what our audiences want, but a lot of the time they are more accepting of work than we will give them credit for. Our relationship with business models and ways of creating the idea that an eight-hour rehearsal day is not as practical for parents, for example, that creating the space in rehearsal room for inclusivity for babies in the rehearsal room, ways of opening up how we rehearse and the way women are socialized to see ourselves, which makes us not as good at self-promotion as men are to submit our work, to not take rejection personally and put ourselves out there. And I'm going to pass it on to Teri now. So I would just share some notes that we made about the deepening of some of those ideas. We didn't have time to expand on all of them. So yes, there were the three points of inquiry and then there were basically three major relationships that we looked at and I'd say relationship with the business model of theatre was one of the big ones and underneath that could come relationships with unions, with funders. There was some talk about getting different unions to work together on agreements, building trust amongst these organizations, allocation of time and energy to work on these initiatives, more buy-in or engagement of the membership and lobbying for language, that kind of thing. There's also the relationship with the audience, making sure that the different voices in the audiences are represented, creating an appetite for women's work amongst our audiences. Activist actions, boycotting theatres without women, like first weekend, relationships with funders and, what do they have, playwrights and directors. So relationships really is the takeaway from this too. Hi, I'm Nora. The topic was men engaged in equity and one of the great things about the group was we had multi-generation and lots of men and lots of women. One of the great things that started the conversation was that, and it came from a white male that he said, white men in the theatre are the fossil fuels of the theatre. They are efficient now and the death knell later, which I thought was incredible. And so the solutions that were some of the things that we came up with were blind reading, asking the people that read plays, the dramaturgies to read without knowing who's on the title, whether it be male or female, education from the womb for both male and female to be able to have that understanding of gender equality and equality and equity in all forms. And I think you guys, you addressed this on your panel, that the audience is our first judge, not necessarily our peers and our critics, that our audiences are, and we get the audience we deserve. It was brought up in the Tim Dang theory of the 51% plays by women and prisons of color. And we sort of thought, and maybe that's an American idea, that what's the golden bra? Yeah, the dramaturg. That when a presenter does do 51% that they're given the golden bra as an incentive as opposed to we're ordering you. That didn't seem to go over very well, like you have to do 51%. To be more inclusive, and asking men to take less for a while, to sacrifice less from their directors, designers, writers, to just do less and give women more. And for the younger generation, thank you for saying that they wanted to be involved in finding out ways of doing that, being men who are up and coming. Thank you. Thank you. Mentorships that lead to action, or action mentorships, a very hard working group that immediately went into action. So our strategies are a mentorship clearinghouse where people who can be mentors and people who wish to be mentored can all sign up and state their qualifications. We thought, in fact, this group might take this on, which means investigating some money for it, modeled on the senior artist thing that's happening right now where senior artists are being paid to mentor others. And this would be in all artistic disciplines. Part of this might also include a speed dating thing with mentees and mentors, and a module on how to make the best use of the mentorship. So to look into funding for such a thing, to implement it, to make it happen. A commitment that I heard from the Theater Museum is to have a module where senior people are mentoring in some of these interview tapes, and it might have a live audience that could ask the central figure questions. And of course, since it's all on tape, then it would be available to all people throughout time and history. And a final thing... Oh, no, this is a final thing. Who else needs to be in the room? This room. Unions. And what we would be working up to is technical apprenticeships, mainly, for women. A commitment to technical apprentice in the technical trades for women. It would be a kind of a quota. So we have to get the unions in the room first. Thank you. I'm channeling Jean Yoon because she had to go hang out with a bunch of 10-year-olds. So we were talking about restructuring Canadian theater so women can participate. Four areas. The first was structuring the work day and the work week. We talked to Kelly Thornton from Nightwood and some others have experience with the permission of the company, reorganizing a three-week rehearsal period into four weeks or a four into five. People don't know they can do that, and there's some barriers. So let's educate people about why they should do it and how they can do it and try to overcome those barriers. Second, women are not as good at negotiating. They tend not to negotiate well for themselves. I'm saying things that other people have said in an ideal world. Perhaps EIT with Playwrights Guild of Canada, CAEA could have workshops teaching women how to negotiate better. Third, sort of alternate performance environments. We talked about how cool it is to go to the Dream and High Park where you eat, you drink, the kids talk. It's not the end of the world. Canadian Stage has an afternoon, I think, where they offer babysitting to Quota Lean if you can leave your kid with Ikea. Why couldn't you leave your kid when you go to the theater? And the fourth thing is the thorniest part, and that's boards, boards, boards, boards. And if you're going to restructure Canadian theater, you'll have to restructure boards. And just to say about that, boards tend to replicate what they've got, not surprisingly, themselves and the people they hire. And if you have 10 volunteers with no professional experience who have all the power, that's a real barrier against restructuring. And I have to, most of my group didn't hear this, if you're my Facebook friend, you heard this. I was marking papers yesterday and I came across the student who said, the process of explaining to people in authority what they don't know is fraught with risk. And that, I think, says it all about the boards in this country. So specific recommendations. San Francisco, there's a group in San Francisco that has developed a childcare pool and you apply to get childcare subsidy also around boards. Let's make sure, there's a piece about educating boards in general. Let's make sure that all of the companies, the very least all the PAC companies, start to educate their boards about issues of equity in general and gender equity in particular and suggest that they have some way of reimbursing childcare for single parents or parents that don't have any other way of leaving their children. Checklist with boards. Make sure EIT, PAC, et cetera, especially because the PAC conference is going to be here in a month, that companies know that there are alternate forms of rehearsal that can work. And the workshops on negotiating skills, that was us. So the question was about getting buy-in that appeals to self-interest and the conversation went off in two directions. So I'm trying to ride two horses with one behind here. The two areas that we need to get buy-in from are the people in power who hold the reins to performance and then also audiences. And for the people within the sector who have power, I mean, we decided plain and simple that box office was the most obvious self-interested buy-in and that maybe we should do a little bit more work about looking at how do high-female projects specifically compare in terms of generating box office, not just are there more women audiences but do women's projects bring out women's audiences? I think we only have anecdotal evidence. And in terms of for audiences, we thought that it would be very wise to remind people that theater is a window on the working of other minds and that there are many people who could use greater insight into their wives, mothers, daughters, neighbors. The recommendations to do that that seemed most promising. In all cases, we thought that probably one-on-one engagement, a concerted effort by all of the individuals in this room to reach one individual would begin to affect some change. And then we also thought that increasing profile of women's projects would also help both parties buy-in, one from a curiosity viewpoint, the other again from looking to leverage box office. There are several ways that we could do that. Pooling resources towards excellence in theater by women, really identifying excellence and supporting it more strongly and also to strengthen a woman's network so that there would be improved mentorship, which would up the learning curve. And again, these are initiatives mentioned by others which was creating lists of excellent proven work that other theaters and audience members could capitalize on when making their choices. Thanks very much. Sorry, guys. I just also, in terms of the men engaged in equity, it was one of the most important things, this program Kilroy's, which was finding plays written by women as an asset, and I just wanted to mention it, that there will be hopefully a panel struck on that. Thank you all. And so the hosts from round two are going to join us. I'm going to move over here. And I noticed that we are starting to, people are feeling a bit that it's the end of the day. I can see that on their faces. So I'm going to ask you to tell us what you explored and cut to the recommendations for collective action that seem most promising and powerful. Okay. And I, you know, I got a clear signal from the other group that I'm not to be ringing bells. So we're going to keep this moving through and then hear from our panel again. Thank you. Individual. While we were trying to talk about individual donors, it actually was hard to stay on point, which I think is part of the issue in terms of the, that it's very hard for women to think about money and asking for money. But we, I did establish women donors do exist. Even at the million dollar level, there's a group called women moving millions in, that's women around the U.S. that are giving it, and in Canada that are giving in that level. And there are women's foundations around the obstacles. Evidently in Canada, there's not a good physical sponsorship program in the United States. Individual artists can fairly easily get an organization to sponsor them so that they can raise money for their project. And so Canada needs something like that. Evidently there's work being done on that now. There's a lack of knowledge about how to identify donors or talk to them once you have identified them. And that's something where it just seems we need workshops not about grant writing, but specifically about how to go after individual donors and what the strategies are and how to cope with issues of gender or class or race in those conversations when you're with very wealthy people who may be from a very different background than you are. Collaborative, in terms of recommendations, collaborative approaches might work better if you could have a group working together. And then also to link with people who are already cultivating women donors which might be the women's foundations in your area, the women's colleges in your area, any organization, your potential sponsors might be people who run corporations that create products for women. So that's something to think about. So is depatriarchalization a real word and what do we do about it? I'm still wrapping my mind around all of this so if I'm saying something wrong, one of my committee, please just scream it out. The first thing is to understand that in history that matriarchal societies, they did exist throughout history to study how they worked and to also understand that these matriarchal societies do still exist today. And it's interesting to note that the men do not feel oppressed in them. Depatriarchal, you know what I'm saying, models already exist in different traditions. And we talked about, in terms of being an artist, how to find new dramatic dramaturgical structures for playwriting to follow that are not patriarchal. For example, the male structure that we currently employ now is the rising action, the big climax, and the falling action. But to look at other dramatic structures, for example, with women, how we can write in a more circular narrative and have orgasms throughout the play. Okay. From the depatriarchalizing, from an administrative point of view, it wasn't so much for us about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, although I understand that is a big fear for white men. So we're not trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we're trying to depate, part pitch, whatever, how decisions are made. Just to depatriarchalize how decisions are made. One good thing is just sitting in a circle. That's a good way to start. Okay. And we're not trying to put women in a man's role. We're not trying to put Sandra Bullock in Ben Affleck's role to do what the men are doing. No. We don't even want to return to a matriarchal society. What we want is an equitable society, looking at the deep-seated reasons why we are existing the way that we are existing and doing things the way that we are doing and understanding ourselves better so that we can leap into a new future of equality. Yeah. Okay. I just took this to another level. So you all get the idea. Just to learn from our past, appreciate and understand our past and use that to shape the future going forward. We talked downstairs in the cafe about fear and sort of identified this issue as a fear not only on the part of the individual artist who may be speaking to an artistic director or artistic decision maker, but also the fear on the part of that artistic decision maker who is being asked to change so that there are fears on both sides, yes. And a few things that were identified as strategies. Starting by having conversations with the people who may not currently be doing the right thing, but what we're calling, quote, unquote, the right thing today, but who are people that are friendly, that we already may have a relationship with, talk to those people first, get them to not only change, but then get them to become allies so that then we're changing one at a time. So I change you, you and I then both change to more people who change to more people and so on and so forth. Or we go in together once I've made an ally, then that ally and I go speak to someone who the ally has a relationship with and going from there. Also looking at can groups, such as the Playwrights Guild of Canada speak on behalf of their members when they see a lack of diversity or lack of equity. There's also, let me explain this briefly, for folks, there's something called CADAC. For folks who are not familiar with this, CADAC is a questionnaire that is filled out when one is applying for operations grants and that the CADAC questionnaire does not currently include equity or diversity related questions. Could EIT ask CADAC to add these questions to their questionnaire and diversity audits in general, it was mentioned diversity audits are done in organizations working with the Alberta Arts Council but perhaps could pact as a whole and encourage diversity auditing as a way to see what we're doing here. That's what we've got. So youths as part of the conversation and I guess there are two things that really stood out and we sort of answered the questions off of this. One was representation on stage or lack thereof as to why youths aren't going out in supporting theatre as well as why, I guess, modes. There was two things, it was like youths as part of the conversation as an audience or consumer as well as a creator and an artist. So in both those aspects, not having representation on stage and then the other thing is that we found out there's a generational gap, a mistrust amongst generations so how do we actually bridge that gap? And so some of the actual, I guess, follow-up steps to try to overcome this or at least questions to ask are, first thing would be more mentorship opportunities like PTTP, things like that, perhaps having a pact youth committee. Access points are definitely needed. So access points to easier conversation between youths as well with ADs, mentors, et cetera, things like that. The question of new models of theatre and if we're not seeing our representation of our world on stage, then does the modes of making theatre need to change? And if not, then how do we get them out still? And some of those things were like celebrating our own voices. But I think the one thing at least that resonated with me the most with regards to this is knowing what you want. A lot of artists out there, at least the youths have a lot of questions and a lot of tools that were given. We just don't have a focus, I suppose, as well. So clearly defining how you would know what you want to go and then start applying to programs like the PTTP and things like that to actually start bridging those generational gaps. I suppose that's what we came up with. Thank you. Professional Theatre Training Program. I'll run by Theatre Ontario. On behalf of the OAC. Thank you. The question we looked at was, do we need quotas tied to funding? And there's so much great work done today around grassroots kind of initiatives. And so this was a higher level kind of conversation about some things that might be done at the level of funders and even politically. And we, first of all, we talked a lot about who would that be for, and we wanted boldly accept that we in the arts community, along with our funders, are in the business of social engineering. So that the work that we do and the work that we fund does make a difference in those systemic questions that we're looking at all day today. And one of the strongest recommendations that came forward was that we think of, and later on we can talk about who might do this, EIT or with a bunch of other organizations, to make a rating scale, something like a nutritional label. You know, on the nutritional label you talk about the fats and the curbs and all that kind of stuff, and it has to go on the food. Well, how about a label on the program for the season, and it's around cultural competence. Your power positions, of course, matter more than, yeah, you've got lots of women in your organization, but they're all selling tickets. That doesn't count as much as if you have a woman or a person of color as artistic director or director or playwright. Those are the three power positions that would certainly earn you more points. And there might be a rating scale, and theaters might, those who are doing very, very well on that rating scale might be very proud to put that sticker on their programs, which might apply a little pressure to those that aren't doing so well with that sticker on their programs. And that that particular rating scale might be used when we go looking to foundations that fund things for, you know, that theaters trot out their awards. They've had Dora awards. They've had these other kinds of awards. Well, there's another thing that you can use to prove the worth of your theater company that you have this very high rating that has been created. That's one program. We also talked about lobbying, and it was pointed out to us that there is an overhaul of the Canada Council going on right now, so it's a wonderful opportunity to start lobbying right now for cultural competence to be a part of what they are thinking about as they move forward. And also, our province, Ontario, is creating a new cultural policy and there should be some public consultation going on, and we need to be a part of that through tourism culture and sport in Ontario at least to say that we need to be at the table. So in terms of developing that rating scale, bringing in the stakeholders, those organizations, EIT, PGC, Equity, PACT, and all the others that I don't know and other people can tell me better that need to be at that table and maybe to draw in those partners to create this cultural competence scale. I was taking notes of what you're saying. In Canada, women got the right to vote in 1921. Some women. In 1951, Aboriginal women could vote in their ban councils. In 1960, Aboriginal people became Canadian citizens who could vote. When we talk about matriarchal societies, not all First Nations and Aboriginal people were matriarchal, but many were. I think this illustrates what can happen when capitalism and patriarchy come to town. We were talking about intersectionality. So there are women, there are Aboriginal people, some of those are the same people. We were talking about intersectionality as being versus the status quo, where we've got assumptions of universality. This came up earlier today around the straight white male experience is the thing that we can all relate to. We also talked about intersectionality as countering privilege and the class structure. Someone recommended reading unpacking the NAPSAC, Peggy McIntosh, some required reading. Recommendations were to take the onus on ourselves to learn about a culture or experience unfamiliar to us. And to further that is to not expect a person from that culture to teach you. But again, I will I will say again, take the onus on yourself. Also, that comes in other places that we might recognize like juries that we make up or in the rehearsal hall having more than one artist who represents the community and that this will address hierarchical power structures and it also speaks to the impossible task of any one person representing an entire culture. This requires disruption to the power structures and power systems. This is not easy work. This is the work that often within advocacy and activism, someone will say, we don't have time to do that right now, we're working on this. What else am I saying? Nothing about us without us being part of this work which is another way of encouraging participation and meaningful engagement with cultures, genders, with whatever it is that you're looking at. And I think I think I will leave it there except I will say one thing which is a plug for the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance is an arts service organization that I have the privilege to run and we are working on a partnership with the National Arts Center and the Bajmajig Creation Center. They are on Manitoulin Island. It's Canada's oldest Aboriginal theater that has a venue and we are going there. It's called the study. It's the history of Indigenous performance on this land. The repast is the final two days. May 14th in the evening 15th and 16th. You're all invited. There is travel that's covered. You can find it at www.ipaa.ca for more information. This is something that's huge for Indigenous performance. We're hiring a local filmmaker and so there will be documentation that's available if you can't join us but I encourage you to check it out. Miigwech. So it feels like we've traveled quite a journey today from a research report and layers of response to it to having the conversations that you felt were necessary to have today before you left. And what I'd like to do is invite this morning's panel members to come and begin to close the day with some reflections based on everything that you've taken in. And to let you know that Michelle did have to leave us earlier because of her flight time. What an incredible day. I'm afraid I've been involved in a number of these styles of events but I have to say this has been one of the most exciting. With action plans, I already am part of a group that's going to do our Canadian version of the Kilroy's and I just like that we're going to be doing things and I'm just incredibly grateful that you've attended and I've learned so much from people who told me things I haven't considered. So I just wanted to respond to one thing, I think just one thing, and that was a question that was raised as to whether a study had been done to see whether women's work was produced more revenue at the box office. Part of Emily Glasberg's I think 2008-2009 study looked at Broadway and looked at the ticket sales because one in every eight women one in every eight playwright whose work is produced on Broadway is a woman. And so in asking question why she looked at the box office receipts to see if that actually made a difference and that was why there were a few women and actually around that women's box office produced 16% more than men's. And even so women were not being produced at a higher level. So it's not about box office. Thank you all so much. I was recently at a symposium in Victoria with professors of theater departments across the country talking about diversity and the programs or lack thereof and how to encounter it. And one of the things that came up that I wanted to share in my earlier remarks was just a growing thing that I'm discovering in various conversations I've been having with people across the country and in the states that diversity makes our work better. It makes it more exciting. It makes it more complex. So it's not about being responsible or accommodating people or being politically correct which are often the things that trigger me. I don't want to be accommodated. I want to be seen and I want to be heard. And so the more we can look at being inclusive in our work along gender lines, along age, class, diversity of style, the more exciting, the more opportunity there is to push ourselves and create really new exciting work. And if every company genuinely makes itself accountable to the belief that doing things differently and having different perspectives makes our artistic work better then I believe we will discover far different ways of working to be more diverse, that will be more inclusive and will develop the skills that we need to be respectful, equitable and accountable as artists, regardless of our gender, ethnicity, et cetera far faster and more efficiently than any legislative or policy driven change can make. We talked a lot about personal relationships one on one and it's something I think women are very good at doing and I think it's about creating space within the larger organizations to have those conversations, creating the time, taking the time and because those conversations themselves are exciting and do a lot, go quite far, quite quickly. Today has been a really great day for women and artists of color in Canadian theater and the U.S. as well, like the fact that we have so many U.S. artists here is great to see. I've been absorbing everything through the day and I think the study has a lot of the answers and I think we've discussed them in depth in the little groups that we've broken into and I think now it's just about action and making it happen. If we do support women and if we do support artists of color the work will just be richer and better for everybody not just for women and artists of color but for everybody in theater. I got a lot of questions about my whole thing of did I do good or bad by creating a company for a culturally specific community and I know that I did good. I know that I affected lives and artists grew out of that and all of that but I leave this question with you if there were no companies such as mine or Obsidian or Fujian or Nightwood where would we be? I don't know the answer to that. I'm still struggling with that but would it make it better if we didn't have those companies and we as artists had to just go out and work in theater or do we continue creating these companies so that we can continue to grow our communities and develop our playwrights and our artists and mentor and that's all. Thank you. I just got to do one last piece before I bring Connie back to close us for a day Yes? Okay good. So this has already been touched on but we've spent the afternoon talking about collective actions, things that we could do as the playwrights' guild or as groups within it and several of you have also talked about individual actions how we might individually do things differently and I just want to spend a little bit more time in that individual action space and this kind of comes from this notion of we can be part of the solution if we are not also part of the problem and so to just kind of think for a minute about how is it that we are part of this problem and is there something that we realize today about what we need to do differently as individuals that might make a difference also to our system so I'm going to suggest that we just think about it for like 30 seconds or a minute however long it takes and then if you have something like that and it would start probably with I realize that I need to da-da-da or I have an insight that I should do da-da-da if you have one like that I'm going to ask you that you start stand up and you say it and if anybody else also had something similar to that they will also stand up with you and say it but other people can stand up with you and join you in your personal action commitment so we'll just give it a minute and see what comes out I've had something similar to that please stand up the courage to advocate on behalf of other people one on one yes great great okay so next time I'm going to go next time I'm going to go sit in a very nice very nice I will celebrate women artists more if you agree with that make sure you stand up Thank you and maybe some will sign up for the event great anything else yes if you feel that duty also please stand up to speak up for the women also who come after you stand up if you had a similar insight beautiful thank you great so I'm gonna ask for the support I need and I'm not gonna do it without the money like I'm not gonna do it if you had a similar thing I'm gonna expect it I'm gonna stand up for myself nice okay and is there any burning ones before we stop yes one last one beautiful anybody have a similar much nice thank you very much great I'm gonna give to Connie to make any any final comments your own insights and commitments if you would like thank you thank you for such an amazing day mind-blowing in all the right sorts of ways I have lots of inspired to act on lots of directives personally but also on behalf of the Guild I think that there's so much the playwrights Guild can do many suggestions that have come up today and I think one of the things that the playwrights Guild can do is promote create better relationships between playwrights I'll speak you know I think this applies to all relationships in the theater but to try to broker better relationships between playwrights between individual artists and theater companies and those relationships are we talked about that a lot today in many different ways and I I also want to say that I feel a surge of optimism which one doesn't always feel at the end of these events because and it's partly because thinking change may be possible I come from a province I'm from Alberta where a Tory dynasty has been we've had a conservative government for 44 years and it's the latest polls are indicating the NDP is leading in the polls and Alberta cannot imagine how insane this is so really and truly and and she and she's the only woman the other party leaders are male and she just destroyed the other leaders in the televised debate the other night all lovely to see and you know what even if she doesn't win the election and really anything could happen yet inroads have been made and honestly you would not believe how much optimism that gives me and I feel full of optimism for the changes we can make as a result of today and the initiatives that have come forward now I have the great privilege Rebecca tasked me with being able to list to express gratitude to the people who helped today happen and this whole initiative first of all this EIT is the brainchild of two magnificent women who not only had a blinding epiphany about doing this but they followed through huge and one of them is PGC's Rebecca Burton and the other is yes and her partner in this venture Lane Zeisman Newman brava brava brava come and feel the love Lane okay just I'm going to go through that there's a huge long list of partners and funders so equity and theater partners artists driving holistic organ organizational change Donna Michelle St. Bernard associated designers of Canada Sheila sky Canada Canadian Actors Equity Association Arden Rishpan Lynn McQueen and Sedina Fiatty cultural pluralism in the arts movement Ontario Charles C Smith indigenous performing art pardon me performing arts Alliance Cole a this and Lena recollect literary managers and dramaturgs of the Americas Canada Joanna Falk path the dog theater creation Lisa O'Connell and Lane Newman playwright guilds of playwrights Guild of Canada are wonderful Rebecca of course and the wonderful Janet Jenny egregory she's here somewhere playwrights theater center Heidi Taylor professional association of Canadian theaters Meg Shannon and Aliyah Marchie the funders Canada Council for the arts who funded context consulting facilitation and and the symposium today why we're here today and thank you to our wonderful facilitators by the way some very creative ideas for making this event productive and your artwork really it was like watching the side of a building fantastic Ontario Arts Council who funded the research report and the symposium Ontario Trillium Foundation who found funded the research report and the website and the Metcalf Foundation who funded Jenny's internship with EIT and finally our host the theater center so brava brava brava and there's a reception right there's a reception