 So, I'm Teresa Eyring, Executive Director of TCG. Woo! Thank you. And I'm Adrienne Purdue, Deputy Director and COO of TCG. So, welcome to How We Show Up. We have a great agenda for you today. I wanted to just mention how excited I am finally to be in St. Louis. You know, we've been really planning over the last year. We've been working with an incredible host committee and local artists and businesses and arts organizations. But I also just want to give a shout out to the Uber drivers and the Lyft drivers of St. Louis. Woo! Because they are so hospitable and they know so much. I learned from one Uber driver that the St. Louis Zoo has just voted the best zoo and the best free attraction in the country. I found out from one Uber driver that the rivalry between the cubs and the cardinals is so strong that you're gonna see as many people from Chicago here as from St. Louis over this weekend. And... Yes, football. So now, here's another thing. I was with a few folks a couple nights ago after an event and we were in a Lyft and the driver asked what we were doing here and we said we're here for a theater conference. And he just like burst into song and he sang this really awesome R&B song to us as we drove down the highway and he was like American Idol. He would have won in a second, but anyway. So enjoy the Uber and Lyft drivers but also walk around the beautiful streets of St. Louis. Enjoy the arch park and anyway, hand it to you. All right, so welcome to St. Louis and happy pride everyone. Woo! You know, as we celebrate the field it's important to celebrate who we are and all our beautiful colors. I'm a proud, out gay man and immigrant. You know, I love the many parts of who I am and I celebrate that every day. And, you know, as we celebrate the field I want us to take a moment, just two years ago in Washington DC, we were two days into the conference when we mourned the loss of 49 young queer people who got shot at the nightclub in Orlando. And I want support from the group so either snap, raise your hand or yell gas or something. But, you know, over the next few days I hope we can take a moment to celebrate those lives but also celebrate the LGBTQ and Pride communities' resilience and celebrate all our wonderful colors together. And at the end of all of this, let's just love each other and respect. That's why we're here. We're here to learn. So, can I get support for that? Thank you. Thank you, Adrienne. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our conference organizers, Devon Berkshire and Hannah Fenlon. Hello, hello. Okay, so, you okay? Yeah, I just got to turn my page. Okay, so this is our fourth How We Show Up in as many years of conferences. And so this is a session which was begun with the intention of recognizing that the work that happens here at TCG is both professional and personal. So nothing that happens over these three days could occur without individual risk, vulnerability, generosity, and it's important that we honor that in both its complexity and its joy. So How We Show Up is designed with the intention of acknowledging this personal professional dichotomy and allowing us all to show up with our human instead of just our institutional selves first. So this is especially important as our equity diversity and inclusion work, that's EDI. So when we say EDI during the course of this session or ED&I, we mean equity, diversity, and inclusion. It moves from a separate arc of programming as it's been in the past to become the lens through which we view all of our work. This is the moment where we are able to bring all of our different contexts and experiences into this briefly but intensely shared space. It's important to acknowledge that there are multiple entry points to the work of social justice as there are for our work in the theater. For the culture of our theater field to become one that we can all work and live in, it's essential that we lift as we climb and work to ensure a space in which growth is paramount. Some of us may be far into the journey of our professional and personal work and some may just be beginning, but everyone has something to offer this theater community. One of the things we take most seriously about our conference programming and PREP is the feedback that we receive from you each year, especially when that feedback is delivered with love. Many of the changes to this year's conference come from what we've heard from the field as well as our commitment to make space for self-care, prayer, and reflection time, which you'll hear more about in a moment. This is a really busy and full three days and we are striving to make our time together valuable and full without being overwhelming, if that's possible. So here are the things you'll notice in St. Louis this year. Less is more. We're doing less with greater intention and breath. We have a dinner break tonight. What? Coffee breaks throughout Friday and Saturday. Yeah, we brought back the coffee. And open space time at the end of the conference for folks to gather around topics and issues that you wanted to discuss further or you felt were missing from the conference entirely. We moved a lot of the logistics and the cameos of our session leaders from how we show up to our first-timer orientation which just happened, snaps to those of you who joined us in the last hour, to focus this session on grounding ourselves in community and developing a shared language for our time together. We're introducing a statement of commitment and anti-harassment policy, which you'll hear more about shortly, as a means of systematizing our dedication to keeping the space safe, equitable, and open. We're spending intentional time discussing the Me Too movement in our field and TCG's connection and responsibility to our membership in this sea change moment. And last but not least, we've got more art. We have worked with our utterly fabulous host committee this year, some of whom you will hear from shortly and are delighted to share their work throughout the conference, but more specifically in our Saturday Plenary session, which will feature excerpts from pieces happening in St. Louis right now, as well as a conversation with the artist. So look forward to all of that during your time with us over the next three days. But before we move any further into this session and in that spirit of more art, we are so grateful to have poet Alice Azura here with us to share her work and to help us acknowledge that we meet today on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Alina people who have stewarded this land through generations. Alice is the author of five books, including Hunger Feast and Worn Cities, and you can learn more about her work at alicesura.com. Please join me in welcoming Alice to the stage. Thank you so much for inviting native Americans to this conference. I can't tell you how much that pleases all of us to be remembered. And my particular way I want to honor the land and the people indigenous to the St. Louis area has to do with ancient Cahokia. I would like to begin by acknowledging the ancient Cahokias who from about 900 AD to 1400 lived in what is now called the St. Louis metropolitan area. At its height, AD 1050 to 1200, we call it the city of the sun. Then it supported a population of 10 to 20,000 people. You can see what remains of the six square mile city at the Cahokia Mound State Historic Site in Collinsville, Illinois, designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. Then predominant structures in the city's landscape were the mounds 120 at one time. Now, less than 80 remain. The largest of them all was and is Monk's Mound. It covers 14 acres and rises in four terraces to 100 feet in height. It is believed that a temple was situated at the top or possibly the residence of the primary ruler. We have no idea by what name the Cahokians call their great mound, their city, or themselves. The name Cahokia came from a sub tribe of the Alinawek who moved into the area in the 1600s. And Monk's Mound was named after a group of French trapeze monks who farmed its terraces but lived on a smaller nearby mound in the 1800s. My favorite display at the Interpretive Center is one concerning the question, what constitutes a city? Of all the criteria which define a city, a large population, a specialized labor force, organized government, social stratification, the presence of art, long distance trade, public works, control of surpluses, knowledge of science, one primary prerequisite has never been discovered, a written language. But who knows? We have scarcely begun to know this great city perhaps with the advent of some future non-invasive technologies, the best discoveries are yet to come. I would like to read two poems, two short poems, about two women who raised their families in East St. Louis. They grew up in South Dakota and attended the notorious St. Francis Mission and Holy Rosary boarding schools. And I'm happy to say they're no longer notorious. So the first poem is called, Where Wild Plums Bloom For My Friend Charlene Walking Bull. It must have been his larger than life confidence, tall, handsome looks, maybe his nickname Bull, or resemblance to the father she hardly knew, that drew her to him. Maybe she was glad to find a man with a steady job at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, able to buy a house in East St. Louis with a plum tree orchard, extra lots for his garden, room for his trucks, his vintage cars, his motorcycle, good times for all his friends, but never a wedding band for her. Only five when her mother died, her father put her and two sisters in a children's home. Some called this spiritual protection for the little girl, strangely blessed by spirit visitations and penny-colored hair, like her famous ancestor, Crazy Horse. In the early 60s, she wanted to become a lawyer. Not practical for an Indian girl, said her counselors. Turning her back, she left the White Haw children's home and the hovering shadows of Oglala Kin. Nothing stopped the advancing wasteland from their East St. Louis home, boarded up businesses, houses gone vacant, empty lots littered with chunks of jagged foundations, unchecked hustler clubs, food pantries, pawn places, young people crowded on sagging front porches, sitting in the sun on picnic benches, waiting for jobs, better times for their fixes. Still, she strung Christmas lights and a wooden Jesus sign on the chain link fence around their home took good care of him, their daughters, son, all the children and grandchildren. Now, bull is gone, passed on, her kinship vows released, wild plum blossoms sprout their 1,000 fragile flowers over East St. Louis and on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Oh, spirits of her Oglala Kin bring to fruition the gifts you have given, grant her confidence in her vision, post-holy rosary love song for Charlene Eastman. Let this autumn day of bluish sky, brightest sun, slanting through billowy clouds. Let this day's breezes fanning branches of eastern pines and sweet gum trees. Let all of this day of bulging, montuck, daisy buns, sheltering, silken lines of writing spiders cradle our memories, quicken our heartbeats as we remember a swaddled belonging whispers of my girl. And if that greeting be momentarily lost, if that mother's sound can't be found, can't be drawn back to consciousness, with haste let us call our daughters, reach out to all our kin, our relatives, call them by endearing names, address them as my girl, my boy over and over, my girl, my boy. Call back moments when a mother's voice cocooned us from anxieties. And if her songs seem gone awhile, don't despair, release the thorns of self-doubt, listen for prayers born in our nights, then get up and dance, dance, my girl, dance until the sun pours its light into morning sky. Thank you. So we wanna thank Alice so much for being here and taking the time to be with us today and for leading us in acknowledging the land we've come together on and the indigenous people who first occupied it. And we're honored, you could be here. Poetry has a big presence at this conference, so we're very honored by your presence. So as a conference team and in partnership with Theresa and Adrienne of TCG, we began having conversations a few months ago about the importance of articulating the value system of our conference and our work toward creating an environment in which everyone feels safe and welcome. Though we've been doing our ED&I work at conferences for years now, those ED&I values have never been manifested in a public statement of any kind. We put those values in the space in how we show ups of years past, but making them a more permanent fixture at the conference seemed an important step. So we spent time crafting what eventually became our statement of commitment, which you can find in your conference app under the icon that says Commitment and Policy and a hard version as an insert in your conference booklets. When we began, it was with the aim of creating a statement of values or a code of conduct. But as we talked it through, it became clear that the most helpful thing we could offer was not a series of values that live internally within us as a team or as a staff, but to offer a series of commitments that actively create conditions that allow us to work toward a truly inclusive and equitable conference here in St. Louis. And as we are gathered in a state that currently has a travel with caution advisory for discrimination, it became clear that we must be active in this process of working towards a culture of anti-racism and anti-oppression. And it is a process. We recognize that this work always exists somewhere on a continuum, and we like to be transparent with you about where we think we are on that continuum at this moment for our organization. And because this commitment is an offering from TCG to conference attendees, we've actually asked members of our staff and board to give voice to each of them. So I'd actually like to invite Teresa up to start us off. Thank you. Working toward a culture of anti-racism and anti-oppression, TCG commits to creating the following conditions at the national conference. Adrian? Thank you. We commit to avoid a language that is oppressive, for example, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and or ableist in our materials, session facilitation and public addresses. Kate Lipuma, Writers Theater. We commit to making sure that everyone can have a valuable experience by creating multiple entry points to our programming for organizations of different missions and budget sizes and for all attendees at all stages and places in their careers. Elena Chang, TCG. We commit to using affinity spaces as an essential strategy for mobilizing towards collective action. Josh Dax, Fisher Dax. We commit to providing inclusive and accessible conference spaces and sessions and clearly noting barriers to accessibility when present. Annabel Guevara. We commit to increasing access to the conference for more people from underrepresented communities and lowering barriers to attendance. Randy Reyes from Theater Mute. We commit to welcoming children and parents into our conference spaces via our family-friendly policies and our on-site nursing room. Amelia Katchapero, TCG. Do we have an Amelia Katchapero? Gus Shulenberg. We have a Nisi Aya, TCG. We commit to making space for self-care, prayer and reflection with expanded break times and a designated space for attendees to escape the bustle of the conference. Francine Reynolds, New Stage Theater. Thank you. We commit to striving to create a culture that is communal, casual, and collaborative. Gus Shulenberg, TCG. We commit to encouraging our facilitators to equalize power in session rooms by acknowledging power dynamics and allowing space for all attendees to contribute regardless of professional title or personal identity. So, Hami Morales, Creed Rep. We commit to challenging attendees' preconceptions through our session content and encouraging a spirit of openness with respect to new ideas. Kallen Geiss, TCG. We commit to creating a clear system through which attendees can report any incidents of misconduct, sexual or otherwise, while at the conference. Kristen Corey, Gulfshore Playhouse. We commit to treating each conference attendee with respect and an acknowledgement of their full humanity. Misa Portes, DePaul University. We commit to offering the possibility for discovering joy in the conference journey and the inspiration that springs from learning new things, getting to know a new community and feeling a part of something larger than oneself. Thank you, Lisa. So, we'll take a pause just to center ourselves and consider this question. If you did want to ask one question or reflect back one thought to these commitments, what would it be? And so, we'll create space in a few minutes and come back to those questions. I also want to pause and create space for one thing that we neglected to do earlier in how we show up, which is introduce the entire conference team, some of whom you just heard speak here, but we kind of blew past that part. Can I ask the conference team, Gus, Misi, Elena, and Callan to stand, just so I can introduce you? Gus, why don't you, since you have a mic, can you introduce yourself and pass the mic? Hi, I'm Gus Schulemberg, I'm with TCG. Hi, I'm Misi. Hi, Elena. So, this is the dream team, folks. If you see any of us running around, we're usually the ones that can tell you where to find what you need to find. As is the rest of the very hard-working TCG staff on site, who I also am so grateful to during these three hectic days. Okay, thanks, y'all. Okay, so if you experience a moment at the conference when you feel like TCG is not upholding one of the commitments we just went over, we just ask you to let us know. If we can't course correct while we're here, we can at least take that feedback as we reflect on this time together, and we'll continue this work into the next TCG event and beyond. All right, so we're gonna move on from the statement of commitment to talk to you a little bit about our anti-harassment policy and reporting system that we're also introducing this year. In a year that has left many of us reflecting on the health and safety of our theater field and in recognition that a system of this nature was long overdue, we are looking forward to sharing our anti-harassment policy and reporting system with you all this afternoon. In upholding those values and commitments we just went through. We do not tolerate harassment or discrimination in any form in our conference spaces and that includes spaces outside the hotel. We are not gonna be able to walk you through the policy in depth today, but we highly encourage you to read it all thoroughly in the conference app. You can find it in the commitments and policy section on the app. It's to people shaking hands or the inserts in your conference booklet. So you'll have it in print as well. You'll want to review the definition of harassment and discrimination as well as the resource guide we provide with local and national resources for support if you experience harassment. I do wanna quickly make sure that you all know how the reporting system works in the case that you experience any form of harassment law at the conference. So first off, just in brief, you can make either a personal or an anonymous or an in-person report to TCG. So if it's an in-person report, you'll wanna find a TCG staffer and they're identified by their maroon tags. I don't have mine on, but they are maroon. And that person will find a community team member. We've identified a small group of our staff to be on our community team who will take these reports in private. If those community team members could stand, it's a lot of the folks you just saw on stage. That includes Devin and myself, Nisi, Elena, Gus, Annabelle, and Amelia, Katchapero. Thanks, y'all. So the TCG staffer will direct you to a member of that community team who will take your report in private. If it's an anonymous report, and you can find a link to where to do that anonymous reporting, again in the statement on the app or in the policy on the app, you just wanna go through there. So it's the same process in a certain sense, but that report, if you reported anonymously, obviously we will take the action that we can, not having an attributed source. So all of these, whether they're personal or anonymous, all of the information we receive will be kept confidential to the extent possible, but confidentiality cannot be guaranteed, and that's explained in more detail in that policy for you. So please know that any actions taken by TCG to address the issue will try to seek the consent of the reporter, but TCG retains the discretion to take all necessary action called or under the circumstances. So all the need to knows are laid out in the policy. Again, we encourage you to read that over, including the list of possible actions TCG might take in the event of a report of misconduct. So we'll have more time to reflect on the statement of commitment and the anti-harassment policy and the reporting system in just a little bit later in the session, but now that we're all grounded in terms of hopefully how to treat each other, we wanted to send a big how we show up style shout out to our artist friends in St. Louis. This year's conference theme is St. Louis, so we'd be remiss if we didn't spend a little time in this community forum hearing a bit more about what it means to make art in this wonderful, complicated town. So I'd like to welcome our first artist to say a few words. Jackie Thompson. Hey, hey, we were all deep. We were all deep. Hi, my name is Jacqueline Thompson. I'm a St. Louis based actor, director and also theater professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. I'm also privileged to be in the rising leaders of color program. Excited about that. So we were asked what we love most about creating art in St. Louis. And so if you are a St. Louis theater maker, please stand up. This is what I love most about creating art in St. Louis. My community. My community. You all can have a seat. Let's go. No, these people up here, our community. I work with some fearless artistic warriors who create art that reflects the challenges and changes in St. Louis. So that is what I'm most proud of. And the second part was what we want you to know. And what I want you all to know is that we're here. Come to St. Louis. We make viable, moving, visceral art that is worthy of national recognition. And my hope is that when you leave and you're thinking about future collaborations and how you integrate and how you network and branch out, that someone that you met that is St. Louis-based pops into your mind. Hello, friends. I'm Joan. Hashtag midterm, 2018 elections. When we vote the suckers out. November 6th, Lipkin. I am the producing artistic director of that Upadee Theater Company where we have been, yes, you can applaud. I love it. We've been creating performance and working for social change since 1989. And I'm remembering that one year ago today on Flag Day, which also happens to be a certain president's birthday, we held a free outdoor birthday party for the resistance with a coral reading of the Bill of Rights, synchronized flag waving, and we wound up on TV, hashtag resist. This too is theater. What do I love? I love about being an artist in St. Louis is actually the same reason that I am really loving this conference because it's about scale and accessibility and humanity and the ability to talk and to build relationships. Now we are a city as much of the country that is mired in racism, police brutality, income and gender inequity, but we are pushing back more than I can previously remember, especially with our generation of younger artists and activists, give it up for them. And thank you, TCG, for that incredible support for this. We are Midwestern nice and we are Midwestern fierce. Upadee has been doing work, climate change, racial justice, abortion rights for a very long time. I try to see limitations or lack as opportunities. We created the first queer work in the state, the first disability work in the state. It has been an exciting rocky road and still they persisted. And when we lost our space, we became itinerant, leading to some great and unusual partnerships. Next week we are producing five free performances of 26 pebbles at communities of faith and libraries with mom's demand action for gun sense in America about the Sandy Hook massacre. And we have a big project called Dance the Vote that pairs spoken word and theater and dance pieces about the history and importance of voting with voter registration and getting out the vote. We may be one of the only theater companies that actually offer voter registration classes. So yes, thank you. All right, we're a mashup of things. We have performed on the stage of the rep and the art museum and the history museum, but also in a car wash, in board rooms and in gymnasiums. In ever more challenging times, we need to be creative about subject matter, space partnerships, expanding our audiences, how and where we work to be bold and brave with or without adequate and traditional support. Identifying and nurturing and listening to our future audiences is central not only to the future of the arts, but to democracy. And we will need to be more bold than ever to ensure both. So tomorrow night, Chicago theater critic Carrie Reed and I are co-hosting a Dine Around with iconic St. Louis food and drink and a conversation about if money were not the object, what would be your theatrical dreams? We have a few more spaces. You were very welcome to dream with us. Welcome to St. Louis and thank you so much. I'm Catherine Bentley. Hi, I am a local director and actor and professor. I teach at SIUE, no, I'm not my students are here. So I am a St. Louis native. I have lived, I lived in New York for 10 years. So my New Yorker's in the house. I am, yes, New York, New York is my other home, but this right here is home. And what I love about St. Louis is that we're right in the center of the country and it's the heartbeat. St. Louis is a heartbeat. It's steady, it's strong, it's resilient, it keeps going, now it's not perfect. We have a lot about our community, our arts community that's not perfect, but we're resilient and we keep going and we keep trying just like our hearts, right? Mine is beating right now. That's what St. Louis is to me. And when I came back to St. Louis, I was able to jump back in there and if you have the energy in St. Louis, you can create anything. That's what's beautiful about it. All of our artists are so diverse and so many interesting things they wanna do is that if you have the energy, you can plant the seed in St. Louis and it'll grow. You see all this beauty around here, right? New York is, you see all this green, it's not just in Central Park. It's all over the city because that's what we have here, fertile ground for things to sprout and grow and that's why I love being here in St. Louis. And I hope, as Jackie said, that you will take that with you and know that right here you can create. You can create things. So thank you all for being here. I love that you all are here and I hope that we get a chance to speak and I hope that you will take some of this fertile ground back with you wherever you go. Thank you. Following Kathy Bentley is like my personal worst nightmare. My name is Christina Rios and I am of an indeterminate age. Thank you. I am an artistic director here in St. Louis. I have been so for almost a decade. I have four children and in St. Louis you can do that. I mean, you drink a lot, but you can. My family is from California. Growing up, there were not many people that looked like me in this city. There were not a lot of people who pushed me, who told me that I could do anything. I suffered from the great St. Louis disease which is called Get Out of St. Louis to think you have to do something and don't act like it's not a thing. Like it's a thing. And I came back to discover not only a really nice cost of living, but in my mind we create theater not because there are shows we really like or actors are our best friends or we are actors and we want vehicles for ourselves, but in my mind we create theater because we have things that we have to share that we think are important to our community. And I feel that St. Louis is a community that needs things shared with them. And I would be willing to bet that wherever you are from, your community needs things shared with them. So I guess what I am most proud of is that yay, you all made it. But I guess what I would like you to know is that the possibility for change it is as limitless as your imagination is. If somebody who Foghorn Leghorn says can't ride the Screamin' Eagle can have four children and run a professional theater company and go back to school for my masters all at the same time while being moderately awake, then you have no excuse. There's nothing that you can't do at all. Talk to each other, be nice to each other. So my name is Adam Flores. I'm assistant professor of theater at Fampan University here and founding member of Mustard Seed Theater, which right now is in collaboration with Theater Nuevo. Hala, I got you. And we're gonna be presenting a piece of Luchadora later on and we definitely want you to check that out. Let's look for that. So I wanna tell two quick stories of theater experiences that are very St. Louis to me. And like one, we're all bragging about St. Louis, but what I'd really like for you to think about is ways in which we as St. Louis theaters are so screwed up that you wanna screw up your community in the same way. In 2006, I was working on a production of Noises Off and I was like the sound board off and we did this thing where we put the audience or the set in the middle and we moved the audience at the intermissions, right? And so like I'm backstage and if this time we're doing this in October and during the last five minutes of Noises Off, if you know a tactic people running off and on and on, at that moment, the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, okay? But the beautiful thing about it was that every single actor came out quietly by... And that was how all of our actors found out about the Cardinals win in the World Series and we were so happy they skipped the curtain call and just went out and we're like, we won the World Series, yo! And the whole audience was like, yeah, that's so great! And then we really got a standing ovation, right? That night, I had already planned, it was, you know, in the end of October, I went to see a Rocky Horror Picture Shadows show, right? And you go and you do the thing and it's like so much fun. Yeah, I get it. So we're at the moment of the Rocky Horror Picture Show in which the Beast thing comes out and he's supposed to be in the gold bikini, you know what I'm talking about? The thing? Is that a bikini? Whatever. The guy came out in a gold bikini but also wearing a St. Louis Cardinals jersey and the crowd went nuts, right? It's really unique that you have these weird, crazy theater artists who are so invested in this sports thing, in this thing that is the community, right? But it's not because it's sports and we understand how corporate and like BS it is and everything like that. But it's part of our culture, right? Like it's part of what this city loves and so we want to be connected to that. We don't want to pretend that we're better than that, right? We want to be connected and find that thing, right? The other story I want to tell you about is we're remounting a production right now with the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis. Holler to Ginny, who's also here somewhere. Yeah, there you go. Just trying to shout out some ADs here. And we were set to perform on the steps of the library in last September and we had rehearsed all the way up to the moment and then Friday happened, we were supposed to open that night and the Stockley verdict came out. For those of you who don't know, this was a police officer who had shot a black man and was getting let off with almost nothing and there was all sorts of problems. So immediately the city broke out into protest. I was actually at the protest with people. We had just gotten pushed off by the bike cops and just got pushed away and then they were about to spray people who had been blocking the bus and we were pulling them aside as another member of that show came over and was like, our show is canceled tonight and we're like, okay, that means we just stay here longer. Because then we as theater artists say, we need to move to the streets. We need to be a part of that. We can't just be connected to the Cardinals and the organizations, we have to be connected to the people. And the other little piece of that was we have this amazing projection going on in the show and the artist who created this beautiful projection that no one was ever gonna get to see again. No one was gonna get to see this beautiful art that they made, took that projection art and made it her sign that said, black lives matter, right? And she took that to the street and said, I'm gonna show you my art where it's gonna matter. That's what St. Louis does. You all can do that too, right? And I'm sure that's many of you do, but I just like to say, come to St. Louis here that we're active and engaged in our community in all sorts of different levels and please find ways to talk to us about taking that into wherever you're from. Thanks for being here. Thank you all so much. Amazing. Phenomenal. Elena. I'm gonna call Elena Chang after this day. You wanna come up? But yeah, it's like such an honor. I realized Devin and I stepped back and like we weren't planning on leaving the stage and I just like have this electric energy from standing on stage with y'all. So thank you. You're amazing. Hi, Elena. Hi, Hannah. How are you doing? You wanna tell us about one of our most important organizing principles at the conference? All right. We have a lot of spaces and sessions at this year's conference and Hannah and I just wanted to lift up two very special spaces. The first one is this idea around affinity space. Affinity spaces are spaces for folks who self-identify as part of a particular group to discuss their collective experiences and I just wanted to clarify because there are different types of affinity spaces. You'll see in your program booklets, there's professional affinity spaces and then there are also affinity spaces based on areas of identity, such as race, sexual orientation and disability. Oftentimes members of marginalized groups are asked to show up to educate and it could be very problematic. So especially in this work, there needs to be space sometimes to be able to have conversations that cannot occur around these power dynamics. That being said, I just wanted to throw it back to this idea around professional affinity spaces. We really encourage you to lean in to that work also through an equity lens. Thanks, Lina. I'm just gonna share just a minute about open space and this is my fourth conference. We have never had an open space. Maybe it existed at some point. Yes, it did. But so it's new for us and it's new for us in the way that we're doing it. We recognize that at every conference, there is a conversation that comes up that we just can't get to, that we don't have programmed. There's something that happened a week ago that we really need to process as a group. So in an attempt to create that space for you, we have open spaces. We have about eight or 10 slots on Saturday in two different time frames. So the way that is going to work is that within your app, and you should all be on the conference app if you're not, we can take you through a tutorial if you see a staff member. In the conference app in the open space section, you click on that event and you'll see a little link to a Google form. All you need to fill out for us is your name and your email. Propose session title and session content. Fill that out for us by Friday at five o'clock before you head to your professional affinity group. And then we will alert folks via push notifications in the app and hopefully via email. By the end of the night, Friday, so you know what has been added to the schedule as an open space session on Saturday afternoon. And we're excited to see what new conversations come out of what's already swirling around in the air over the next couple of days. All right. I think what I'm doing now is I'm welcoming Ali Madi to the stage. We are in the holy month of Ramadan and Ali Madi is going to come up and be with us and give us an offering to start our conference. Thank you. Asalamu alaikum. In any other language you can translate it. I came here without any paper. I came with my heart. But I'm going to read from my heart to your heart directly. This is Ramadan. And for me, this is very special moment. Not for me, for the whole artist around the world. That in a conference like that, we give the real meaning of the cultural diversity. They asked me to pray because of Ramadan and tomorrow, today we pray Ramadan. So I will pray. We believe in one God. I want to share my prayer. You accept it? Yes. Good. So can you stand up? Please. Those who can stand up, please. Hold your neighbor hand. Yes. I will pray and I will translate it later. You just have to say amen. Okay? Can you say it? Amen. Amen. Inshallah. I will translate it. At the end of what we are saying, I mean, okay? So my God, all of us here, we came to use the art, the performance art for the welfare of the human being. We pray for the future of our children, for the peace, to stop the war. Any child can have the seat in the school, can have the clean water and have the future. We ask you to help us. An artist, we have no tools like the others. The only tools in our hand is our art. Our art is our tools for change. We're looking for change in the future for the better for the human everywhere, every place, any time. Please God help us. So can you say amen? Thank you. Hello, I'm Kevin Moriarty. I am the chair of the board of TCG. Thank you. This has been a difficult year for TCG and for all of us in the American theater. Throughout our country, we've been forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that many of us, especially women, face harassment and violence in our workspaces. The American theater that we love and that we fervently envision as a model of equity, diversity and inclusion has too often been revealed to be harmful and inequitable. On a deeply personal level, I've experienced this at my own theater, at Dallas Theater Center, the theater I love and that I am privileged to serve when we learned that a member of our artistic staff and a leading artist in our North Texas theater community had been abusing his power in subjecting women to harassment for many years. We fired him and made a public statement, but that was only the beginning of many months of soul-searching and difficult questions that we're still grappling with today. How could we not have known that this was occurring? How had we failed to create an environment in which women failed, felt safe and empowered to come forward? How could our working environment be so misaligned with our fundamental values? For me, personally, this has led to a very painful truth. I have failed as a leader at the most fundamental thing that a leader is obliged to do, to keep people safe, to ensure that everyone is treated equitably with respect and with dignity. I've spent a lot of time trying to make sense of all of that in the last couple months and I'm not done with that journey. I've apologized to survivors and to our staff and here I apologize to all of you in our broader theater community who've been impacted in those ways. As I've grappled with all of this, I've been forced to confront the many ways in which women are routinely marginalized, silenced and diminished in our theaters and throughout the country in which we live. I've been forced to confront the truth that power remains concentrated in the hands of a privileged few and I've been forced to confront the immense privilege that has benefited me as a white cisgendered male throughout my career. So I come here to the TCG conference this year with a powerful need to gain insight, to gain wisdom, to get a deeper understanding from you, my peers. I'm eager to engage in personal conversations, to attend plenary sessions, to participate in the multiple opportunities throughout this conference to learn how to contribute to the wave of change that our field so desperately needs. I have nothing to teach, but I have a lot to learn and I am blessed to be at a conference where learning is possible and where hope and change can take root and start to grow. This is one reason why I'm so very grateful to TCG and why I'm certain that our field is stronger and better because of TCG's tireless efforts to help all of us recreate an American theater that is more equitable, more diverse, and more inclusive. However, this isn't to say that TCG itself is immune to the pernicious forces in the world around us. As the chair of the TCG board, I'm honored to serve alongside a dedicated group of colleagues and friends who come together to serve this field that we all love. The board is charged with upholding TCG's mission, vision, and values and supporting the inspired and inspiring staff in their noble efforts to strengthen and nurture our theater community. This year at TCG, we've been forced to confront the reality of the Me Too movement, which has generated complicated and nuanced conversations in our TCG boardroom and throughout our organization. We've repeatedly asked, how can TCG be an agent for change at this critical moment? How can we best support the survivors of abuse? How can we shine a light of truth into the dark shadows of silence? The most difficult of these conversations have centered around the role of American Theater Magazine, which is published by TCG. American Theater Magazine was founded to cover, celebrate, reflect, and record the work of theaters and theater makers in the U.S. and the world. And yet many of us have felt that this specific moment in time requires something more, something different from the magazine. This moment requires that TCG provide the magazine with new resources and tools to clearly and accurately report the stories of violence and abuse in our theaters to help all of us learn what has happened and to ensure that silence is never again an option. As a board, we've come to believe that American Theater needs to expand its mission so it can serve as an accurate, clear, honest voice in this difficult field-wide conversation. And we have charged TCG's leadership with putting in place the necessary tools to ensure that this is done fairly and responsibly. Over the course of the next three days, as all of us embark on this transformational journey at the conference, I invite each of you to join the TCG staff and the board in this conversation. We wanna hear your voice. We wanna learn from you and we wanna learn with you. We want to serve you in your pursuit of creating meaningful art in a community that is safe and equitable and just for all. To share more insights into TCG's journey with the Me Too movement and with American Theater Magazine, I'm honored to introduce TCG's Chief Executive Officer, Teresa Eyring. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. The leadership of our board has been absolutely extraordinary during this time. TCG as our field's service organization and American Theater Magazine as the publication of record for the theater field have been working in recent months to determine the most effective ways we can fight abuse and bring about safe and equitable. I sound echoey. Workspaces for our theater people. This work has included creating extensive programming, such as a resource page, a three-part webinar series, and a robust track of Me Too content here at the conference. It's also included partnerships, such as a group of New York-based organizational leaders meeting to forge a sustainable pathway forward in creating safe work environments. It's also included a serious discussion among board, staff, and our organizational and individual members about the role of American theater and how it needs to evolve. Something we've all learned as the Me Too movement has taken hold is that social media, as well as more formal news outlets, are powerful tools in the quest to illuminate and fight against sexual abuse and misconduct. This is how survivors are getting their stories told and often seeing action to remove perpetrators from positions of power. And just as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Houston Chronicle, and other major news organizations receive reports of misconduct in our theaters, so does American Theater Magazine receive these reports. This has presented a new challenge for us. How do we adapt our mission and capacity of American theater to be able to take on more reporting that is of a serious, independent, and even investigative nature, especially when it comes to abuse in our field? At the end of 2017, our board met and determined that we had a responsibility to act on stories that had been brought forward to us. There were three possible approaches, intervening through direct conversations with theaters, sharing knowledge with other publications that were in the midst of reporting me to, and creating targeted educational resources. Additionally, the board charged the staff with determining what capacity would be needed, legally, organizationally, and in other ways, in order for American theater to take on this kind of reporting ourselves on a case-by-case basis in the future. Throughout the process, we've been able to bring about new learning and contribute to movement building, but we've also made some mistakes. As the leader of this organization, I take responsibility for these mistakes and how they've contributed to a culture of silence. These mistakes prompted external feedback from the field, including a group of artists, activists who circulated a petition on change.org, encouraging TCG and American theater to print stories and names of perpetrators. Out of these conversations, there have been a few important developments. First off, it's important to clarify that out of the reports of harassment that we received, there are a handful of cases where there are histories of misconduct and potential to do harm, and we are seeking ways to address these cases, including intervention, partnering with other news sources, or reporting on those stories ourselves. Second, we are building capacity for the magazine, as Kevin mentioned. In part, we are restructuring how AT and TCG interact under these circumstances, reducing the possibility of a conflict of interest between American theaters reporting and TCG service mission. One activist who has participated in our EDI Institute and was a TCG grantee came to us with a successful lead on pro bono legal advice from a firm that specializes in this area. The third thing we're working on is a Me Too issue of American theater magazine which is scheduled for the fall, and that will include, among other things, likely survivor stories, as well as reporting on how theaters such as the Alley and Long Wharf are moving forward to transform their cultures. This entire experience has demonstrated the strength, the thoughtfulness and caring that exists throughout the field, and it has also shown us very clearly that we, as TCG and as American theater, can and must do better, and we will. So, we'd love to hear any thoughts that you have on what you've heard, either as it relates to American theater and TCG, or as it relates to anything else that you've heard during how we show up, and I'd like to invite Hannah, Elena, and Nisi to the stage to facilitate that conversation. Thank you, Teresa, and thank you, Kevin, in sketching out some of the steps forward around a very complicated issue at a very nuanced time. So we're just gonna take some moments here to kind of receive some community reflections. It's really important for us to take a little bit of this time, at least right now, Hannah? Yeah, we just wanna acknowledge that we had set aside 15 minutes for this, and we really do not wanna move quickly past it. We are at time now, and we're going to keep going for at least 10 minutes to make sure that we get to put some voices into the space. It just means that some of the sessions at 315 are gonna start five or 10 minutes late. I hope that's okay with folks. Please feel free to get up and leave, but we wanted to make sure that we weren't just sort of running by this moment that we had promised you prior, and then had so many things to share with you. Yeah. Great, so we're gonna take the short time that we have to open the floor to folks. Like Elena said, for us to hear some immediate community reflections, it's also an opportunity for us to be present with one another and actually hear what's on each other's minds. And I think Erin has a mic on that side. Annabelle, if you wanna come to this side, Annabelle, have a mic. And then we'll manage the middle. So if you do have something you wanna share with the room, please feel free to signal and we will come to you. There's Erin back there. Hello, my name is Erin Washington. Very grateful to be here. Thank you so much for opening this conversation in this space. I screamed in the back when the first brother was speaking that's over the board, so I apologize. But I really want to acknowledge those that do not identify as man and woman, those of us that are queer in these spaces that violences have occurred to us. And also that we don't preclude men in violences that have happened to men. I think a lot of times in this culture, it's very difficult for men to step forward in the things that have occurred to them. But I know a host of men that have been violated in theatrical spaces. So I just don't want us to forget any of us that exist in these spaces. Thank you. Thank you, Erin. Sorry, I know I already talked. I just wanna say, and maybe it's a lofty, uber-optimistic goal, but my teeny, tiny, like super underfunded theater company just took not in our house and adapted it to work with our personal theater company and have put it into all of our contracts as a zero tolerance thing. And I don't think that's actually exceptional. I don't think it's amazing. I don't think it should get clapped for. I don't think we should even really have to talk about it. But overall, what I would love to see in terms of being a gigantic national organization that represents all of us is what are the odds that maybe anybody under your umbrella would have to adapt some clauses like that, otherwise they don't get to be in it? I think if you can't be, I think if you can't provide safety and comfort for people on every possible level of an organization, we probably shouldn't have them. Thank you. Thanks, Justina. Erin's got you. Hi, Ron Solana with Coachella Valley Repertory. I'm gonna be a little edgy here. I heard you say in terms of the time of Facebook where it's so easy to report an issue. At the same time, I know stories specifically, oh, it's not only in California, also in other states from colleagues, where Facebook is then a platform to accuse a director or a different staff member of sexual harassment when in fact that's not the case, but they have a platform in which they have a different gripe against that theater company. And that's an ugly situation. So what happens is we have to take it seriously. It never happened in my company. I'm just saying this is what I have heard in other companies, but I would do the same thing in terms of how we as a theater community then deal with the person who's accusing that's not the truth. And I'd be curious what TCG has to say about that and how they're gonna address that in the October issue. Before we move on to another comment, I do wanna name something and what you said and I wanted to keep the space open for community members. However, I want to call out what happens when we do not believe people who speak up and that is called victim blaming, right? And just as a statistic, sexual misconduct accusations that are falsely reported are as the same number as any other criminal crime, which is 2%. So within this model, if we are actually gonna create cultural change, we are lifting survivors. And that is not something that is to be debated. Before we take another comment and question, I also wanna say this is a space for us to hear directly from you. And even if you do pose a question, please do not expect an immediate answer. Yes, no, maybe so. A lot of us feel like these issues are kind of posed and discussed in a way that folks are being polarized and there will be follow-up and this is just one part of our movement forward. And I just wanna bring that up because our priority for the next few minutes at least before we go into the national conference is that we take some time to hear whatever questions you have, whatever comments you have, whatever you're sitting with right now and we'll certainly take note of it. But this is not the end all and be all and I do wanna be clear about that. I think I saw two hands on that side, maybe one over there. Okay, actually sorry, we're gonna start right over here, thank you. Really quickly, my name is Andrea, local artist in the community. I applaud how brave and forward thinking TCG is to even bring up this topic, which is so relevant in all of our communities. But I also am feeling a bit of anxiety, especially coming from working in the mental health space for those that are victims in this room right now. So I just, I wanna be really, really clear at how triggering such a conversation can be. And potentially just, you know, poof for thought, if you are choosing to have more of these conversations collaborating with mental health experts, because what you're doing for many people, you know, you're opening up wounds and to take such a short amount of time and then go throughout the conference without having any form of a band-aid or further conversation with counseling can be extremely dangerous. So maybe you have those in place, but if not, I just, I really wanna caution you of, you know, what this can do to an audience. So again, I appreciate it, but I also think we should just be very, very sensitive. Thank you. Hello everyone, my name is Victor. I'm with Arena Stage Washington DC. I wanna thank you for saying that because I feel that that was a perfect preface to what I was just about to say. As somebody who worked at a regional theater eight years ago and experienced this sort of abuse as a queer man in an entry-level position, I wanna bring our young people into this space as well. People who are not here, whose voices aren't here, who are entry-level employees at our theater companies, who are interns with bright prospects and visions for themselves in this art that we so embrace because this is also about them as well. And they might not be here with us. They might not be in positions of power that allow them to travel across the country to be in a space like this. So I also ask that as we continue through the next three days that we also think about them. And for me, I will think about myself eight years ago and how afraid I was to put words. And it took me eight years to say what I just said right now. Good afternoon, I'm Michelle Dillard, actor, director, voiceover artist. And I thank TCG for coming to St. Louis. It's been a wonderful experience thus far. And just to jump on the bandwagon with the hashtag me too conversation, I really applaud you for bringing awareness in the theater community. And I was challenged to last March, put on a project, director project called hashtag me too. Her voice must be heard. And when I was just so moved by the opportunity to do it, I was nervous, I was scared at first about doing it, thinking who would come, who would show, could I, can I take on this feat because I was new to directing and we packed out the house. And we were over-sowed and Andrea, who just spoke, she was one of the persons to lead the talk back session. I would like to see more theater in our community that speaks to this issue. We brought it to stage. And what I learned in one of my rehearsals is that several of my cast members had been impacted by sexual harassment or violence. And we had to have a healing session in one of the rehearsals. But it helped us to all move forward and put on a great show. And we have the opportunity to do it again in August at the St. Louis Fringe. And I'm very grateful to be a part of making theater to bring it to light this topic. So I encourage you to start something in your community, put it on stage, have a talk back session afterwards because it doesn't seem like this issue is going away anytime soon. Thank you. Thank you. So we're gonna come over here to Kate. But before we do that, I wanna point to a couple things and I wanna just thank Andrea so much for what you offered to us. TCG does have a pretty full list of resources, not just for nationally, but also for St. Louis. You can find those within the policy that we've created. And then in our town hall, that Maria, Guyanas, and Stephanie Ibarra are hosting for us tomorrow. We'll have an opportunity to really open this space up for more of these reflections and more of this conversation. We're gonna go to Kate and then we may be able to go to one more person and then we're gonna need to move on. But I also just wanna say before we do that that the TCG staff and specifically the community team that I lifted up earlier, those folks are here for you even if you just wanna process something with us. Please by all means, we're here to do that with you. So Kate, I'm gonna hand it to you. Thank you. This is just something I wanna call up as we look at this work and all of our work in the field where we are used to wearing our sleepless nights and our trauma as a badge of honor. And as we create safer, more respective and more inclusive workplaces, turning that on ourselves as well and making sure that we are being respectful and safe in our own personhood. And not wearing trauma as a badge of honor and not being proud of that time that someone said something and we dealt with it internally and didn't process it externally and just taking some moment for self-care and self-respect as we move through our field and create better workplaces for all of us. One more. Last word. Good afternoon. Ewe de Wongi, they are my relations. I wanna greet everyone here today. I flew in from Nebraska early this morning and I'm here as a part, as a guest of Indigenous Direction. I understand Larissa, Fast Horses here. Oh, there she is, awesome. Okay, that was easy. Now I know where she's at. Uh. I'm from the Omaha Nation, the Omaha tribe of Nebraska and Iowa. And I think part of what I see happening here is something that's long overdue. Long, long, long overdue. 500 plus years overdue. These conversations need to occur and as a native woman Indigenous to this land, my ancestors come from this area. So I've never lived here in St. Louis but I could tell you a lot of the history here based on my ancestry. My connection to the land is one of the most important things to me because through my connection to the land that connects me to the bones and blood of my ancestors. Also, I think as you are going along and developing this format as you are stating here, of conversation, inclusion and so forth, I think that as you have more Indigenous companies attending, you're going to hear more voices coming out about any number of topics. And I can tell you and I'm sure that any of the native people who are here in the audience, this is a lot of work. And I can tell you right now I'm so overwhelmed with all the things that need to be addressed and I feel I'm very exhausted because with all the work that has to be done and needs to be done, it's like every day I'm thinking, okay, what do I gotta address today? Okay, is it gonna be a protest somewhere, our rally? Okay, is it gonna be a healing ceremony? Is it gonna be a language conference? Is it gonna be on sexual assault? And every day there is something to do. But mainly my work is with young people, with youth, and by providing hope to our youth. And many of our native people are aware we have the highest rates of suicide in this country. Native American people, I'm not even talking about the rest of our relatives to the North or to the South. I'm talking about here in the United States. We only represent maybe about 2% or less of the entire continent, well, the entire country. The continent is a whole different thing. Turtle Island has a lot more indigenous people than what we are led to believe. But here in this country, what I'm trying to state is that we have such a high rate of suicide, it's higher than any other group. And this is something that isn't also an ongoing battle. That's been part of my battle as well in working on suicide prevention. So all these things that have been happening, you can, as we saw in this past week with these well-known people committing suicide, it's like these are just some of the things that can be addressed. And you know that, I think I can see that you're taking a stand on issues that a lot of times no one wants to address. Everyone wants to go about their lives, it's like nothing's wrong. But from a native perspective, we can't ignore anything. This is something we're dealing with 24-7. So I'm really glad to be here right now and I'm glad to hear what people are saying. That prayer was really beautiful. I want to commend that gentleman for saying that prayer at this time. That's something we really need. And I think to conclude what I'm trying to say is that with all the voices that we have here available to you now, we really do need to create those safe places and understand that sometimes you do have to step out of your comfort zone in order to hear. And that's for everyone. Because if I have to do that every day, then I hope that others will do that for me as well. So again, thank you so much. This is an important time we're in. And again, a reminder, also in the process of the Me Too movement, we have hashtag MMIW, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. We have the highest rates of missing and murdered women on this continent, thousands and thousands. So that's another example of the work that we're carrying out. So again, thank you so much for this time. And I don't want to continue on because I could probably go on for hours. So thank you so much. We've done, huh? We want to take a moment to thank you all so much for contributing to this space. And we have many more spaces over the track of the conference for us to continue this dialogue and remembering that this is to cause a culture shift. So we're uplifting those voices that are most vulnerable, that are unheard, that are misrepresented. So thank you again. Thank you, Howie, show up. We can now bring to a close. And just a heads up for those of you heading into sessions, we're gonna start a bit late at 3.30. Luckily, we've got that lengthy, luxurious dinner break afterwards. So you'll have plenty of time to rejuvenate before Naomi Shiavni tonight. Thank you, friends. Thank you so much.