 terms of fundraising as opposed to the time that we were spending to build the the repertory company so those were some of the issues that I know that we had lots of long debates about yeah well yeah as a couple people have noted my strong suit is philosophy these practical observations without which philosophy falls silent on on the board very much the case the throughout I mean there were a bunch of us who a bunch of people without you know what I would say is that the biggest part of the arts is the audience of people who attend to the art you know that's the most important thing that happens in a theater in an art gallery or whatever whatever whatever the four in a concert hall or wherever it's that dynamic between the audience and and performers actors whatever it's that dynamic that makes it significant and we saw in our efforts to find ways to facilitate that engagement and to encourage people and in fact it fit right in with the movement because the movement was all about finding ways to make it happen and people people it was it was amazing what happened when three Southern theater with its we had built some little burlap bags into flats and made our flats out of burlap and little frames that we could fold up and put in the back of a car because we didn't have a truck way and that's how we tore it you know we had a lot of Dick Shekner who was here too late at the time had inherited a group of about eight or ten lights and and and a dimmer board and that was our tech and but it was all about the spirit of the movement of reinforcing the notion that there's a movement song goes so we are the ones we've been waiting for and and I don't think that song was a part of the lexicon at the time but the spirit of that song was the spirit of movement you know we can do whatever it is we need to do to make it right and we who worked in the movement became the advocate pardon me became the advocates for that conception and and John the chorus history has not been kind to us and we are the ones who can help turn that tide well sorry to say history is still not very kind and more of us have to do more to make it better and so that's your job that's our job to do it better make it better so yeah I just wanted to add something about conversations and not the ones that took place after FST came into being as something one talked about but before John you may remember because I think she came to Tougaloo while you were there Francis Williams the actress who died in 1995 she she came to Tougaloo for I can't remember how many weeks but she was also involved in our production of Raising in the Sun and she had been the understudy for Claudia of McNeil and replaced her for several performances in New York but this woman was not just an actress she was an activist and her activism came out of the exposure that she had both to the left the real left having studied acting in Russia and the exposure she had to the horrors of what goes on in a theater when with black actors and actresses are given scripts that are insulting and she did a lot of work in Hollywood was with actors equity which she has something to do with now the point is this she talked to us I mean she gave a lecture in Woodworth Chapel I had conversations with her outside of the chapel and her story was a very interesting one because it was also a lesson if you're going to be involved in the arts you must demand your dignity and this was very important you know she was she had she had a very clear vision of what was at stake and she was a probably the reason few people know her is not only because of the 50s but all of the ways in which Hollywood has to punish people who are too radical so that woman like many of the women in Mississippi did not say anything about FST but we have to remember as we try to remember history that history is a narrative of many parts that we have to attach to the specific history of FST and I would certainly include this woman as a part of that Dr. Ward I want to ask you a question as I read about the the history of the theater I noticed that you went from being a student to being a writer to also later becoming a collaborator can you talk about that work a little bit I want to know what you thought I was collaborating with because you see we were bugged by the CIA and I want to tell the truth I want to be sure they get it right I went from being all of these things because really to far I have a very strange history I went from being a math major which I thoroughly enjoyed I enjoyed the sciences to being a person who got degrees in English and that has much to do with my becoming a writer but I've always had this notion that all of these little compartments boxcars or whatever we put knowledge into are so artificial and that one has to cross all of these boundaries without even knowing you're doing it it has to be seamless so that's why I keep telling all these humanists you know you really need to read something about physics you need to know how theory is dealt with in that discipline because you are far too polyannish but the the point is I did all of these things in my life out of something that I hope is partially representative of why places like Tougaloo were there why people like my fellow students and my dear old frat brother here came to Tougaloo because we had a single something that is really singular now commitment we were committed and I think everyone on this panel will probably affirm this we were committed in ways that I still doubt people are committed in 2013 to be committed means to be just a little bit mad just a little bit insane because you know now it's all about me and whatever it's not about people it's not about community it's about what kind of bling do I have well it was not bling in 1963 and there was a myth among us that there was something called community and real brotherhood and sisterhood we were not you know profiling so I forgot what your question was but that's what I wanted to say so let us say that I collaborated I collaborated with life and I've been doing this for now of what 70 years I guess I collaborated with life and people always with the notion that there was a future which I thought I should have something to do with and never stopped to think about anything I had done because commitment said you've not done a damn thing you've got some more work to do so I'm still committed to work what are some of the most memorable moments of the first performances in Mississippi and this can go to anybody well my first memories or I really enjoyed the workshops with the students at Tougaloo and that's primarily as I recall the very founding of the Free Southern Theater and the involvement of the students and the staff it was that sisterhood and brotherhood just the very foundations of it there were many different levels of the Free Southern Theater or different areas that developed over time I wasn't there with that the whole time so I left Mississippi for a short period of time end of June of 1964 I came back and then I was working in education again just continuing the my zeal for working in educational endeavors to do the things that Jerry has just talked about and my commitment led me to be a pioneer in those other areas I work with the I was a resource teacher and teacher trainer in the first Head Start program in the United States in Mississippi and I was over a new chapel in the Holly Springs area and then I was asked to be a model teacher in a film that was made about CDGM at the Pilgrim Rest Child Development Group of Mississippi in Durant so my commitment led me to be where I was needed people sought me to be a part of something that they were doing they needed my skills and and so that's what I did I did see some of the Free Southern Theater performances after I was back in Mississippi but I was attending I wasn't a part of it my main memories are of the workshops and the students and the faculty and the people in SNCC that supported it the beginning of the Free Southern Theater and coming together strategizing to see how we could make it happen that that was my biggest memories anybody else well by the times I joined the theater and it had relocated to New Orleans and Doris was not there at that time but one of the biggest impressions made upon me was by Gilbert Moses who as others have said is a tremendously talented forceful individual who was kind of in some ways you know unhinged you know he was not he was not bound by most of the kinds of restraints that many of us might have he was someone who was always on the cutting edge or beyond the cutting edge but it that quality enabled all of us I think to do things as a company of artists but also in in terms of incorporating our audience one of the one of the strongest and most vivid memories I have during that first season that of the two that I toured was in the town of Jonesboro Louisiana in which at that time there was some activism from within that community preceding our arrival the local black community had risen up so to speak and it was very clear by the by the kind kind of vigilant protection that we needed to get just to get into that town that there was it was a very heightened level of danger because of that many of you have heard of the deacons for defense and justice who were who were were armed servants of protecting you know the community and particularly the activists who were coming into those communities without whom we probably would not have been able to get in to Jonesboro or Boca Loosa was another town that they were very active but we decided through the leadership of Gilbert that we would instead of performing our repertoire of you know plays that we had rehearsed and been touring in other areas we would actually create a piece of theater based upon the story of Jonesboro we met with the local activists and listen to their story and turned it into this vehicle that expressed who they were this this specific journey and not only did we write and create this but we included them in the production so that they were performing roles that they had actually lived themselves some of us from within the company took on certain key roles but the majority of the people who were on stage were the actual participants in that story it was by far the most riveting experience that I had ever had as an audience or an actor I just it really changed I think all of us in terms of our perception of the power of the performing arts to to reflect and and communicate the kind of power and and and and meaning of of history and and activism in a living artistic expression so we we did the same thing in Boca Loosa to some extent we also throughout our our tours would would fairly regularly pick up members new members who decided that when when they saw us on stage that that was that we were their new home they we adopted people along the way you know both you know while on tour and of course within New Orleans we had workshops continually that would recruit new members students of some of them just teenagers some of them who people who had been attempting to be involved in the arts but they saw us as their their their their best vehicle to really express who they were and would tour with us and become a part of of the company these were these were people who you know hadn't had never really been engaged in any kind of professional endeavor but many of them still stay in touch with me and I guess with with you John I'm sure you know and it changed it changed the course of their lives well we're in Greenville Mississippi I believe and you remember Denise we would start to show in the audience yes Denise would start singing on this side but she would always be over that way and she was saying oh freedom oh freedom oh freedom over me and then we'd pick it up we had assignments about where to stand on the stage and so forth and pretty soon the whole audience would be singing this song with us mm-hmm well this particular night a fellow came up on stage who was not in the show he had we all had poses you know and I was on that side of stage and I was facing out that way so I couldn't see what was going on finally I looked around and there was this man on stage yes he was standing here and nobody knew who finally Gilbert walked over to the guy said um we're actors and we're ready to start playing now could you please sit down or something I couldn't hear what he was saying he was whispering and the fellow said he sat down but after the show that night he came up to us again and said when I walked up there I knew exactly what I was going to say but when the lights came on I was I forgot he been in his nibs a little bit too you remember that I do and I remember another another performance of a this is a season after that when we did a performance of Gilbert Moses original piece roots two character play with Denise Nicholas and myself where I was had a moment where there was a jar that I had to open and I was struggling open in this jar and I looked up and there was this man standing right there on the stage with me and I was just I didn't know what to say well thank you brother not a one sat right back down because that was that was what he was supposed to do come and help me you know it was just made perfect sense he there was no see the kind of theater that we had created and were in the process of building was one they were there was no separation between us and them there was no the audience was as much a part of the creation as as we were in some way you know so and then in the productions of Jones Borough and Boca Luzo that was their production they had written the script they were the primary performers in those pieces and we were the benefit the beneficiaries of their their journey but yeah it happens several times where you know we'd look up and there'd be an audience member right there with us you know and you know we came to almost expect it to happen you know but yeah that's and that's the power of of live performance and live theater that has meaning that has it has a relationship to what's actually happening at that time in that place and with those people so yeah and and they get it they get it sometimes better than we do yeah I think that what you're saying is that was one of the goals to get people involved in critical thinking and performance and interaction and that was the whole part of the movement that we did that whether it was you know in the head start centers or in the mass meetings going out there again people to be involved in voter registration activities the freedom schools it was all about involvement and you get involvement when when they take ownership whether it was in the theater or the schools setting up the handcraft cooperatives farmers cooperatives so you had several things happening at one time because everybody isn't into the same thing their needs are not the same but getting the participation gets people involved on a certain level and then they able to move forward move forward move forward and do things that they never thought they'd be able to do and you influence that's how you influence student people I say students because I've been involved with students for so many years and I just retired from Georgia State University after 22 years of being involved with students and so whether you know whoever it is that's how you are able to plant the foundation for involvement and people thinking on their own being creative and going to the several levels that they need to go to go on to and that's how we move the society forward and what we are involved in is making democracy a reality I think there's this idea of up from the audience up from life and giving back to the people what in a dialogue has been developed because become a like a touchstone in the approach to the work that we've always tried to encourage and ultimately we started trying to find ways to incorporate that not only in these accidental ways that we have described but intentionally and self-consciously we've made we right now have a program we call the Free Southern Theater Institute and I my glasses don't work at the whole distance so I can't see everybody here but I know that some of you have been involved in the FST I as we have called to come to call it the Free Southern Theater Institute we teach and encourage people to become engaged with the work as we try to and some of our best performers ultimately and and almost all you'll you'll meet a couple writers who have been working with us over the years later on Coloma and and Chakoo Day on the program yeah yeah so you'll meet them if you don't know them already and they have become real leaders in this community cultural leaders in this community for and around the country actually in the case of those two fails in particular and so so it's become an important kind of principle that I'm very proud that we played a small role in helping that to become a common way of approaching work and life so I think that's a I think that's a very good thing encourage you all to come out and become more engaged in the things that you think are important to make this community a better place to live in did you decide to move the theater from Mississippi to New Orleans it was a hard decision I think frankly if I told you the honest God awful truth I think I would say it was a mistake you know to have moved because at least the thinking we were doing wasn't was mistaken we thought because there were more universities there'd be more smarter people here I don't think it's necessarily true you know sometimes the smartest people are the ones who had a good sense to have on the universities we thought there'd be more money available to service our needs and we didn't recognize that there was gonna be a lot of that as you move to these more urban urban situations you move things change you know it it's no mistake that the movement that they gave they gave both to the work that we were trying to do was a real movement poor people from small communities who knew each other very well and who used their familiarity with each other in fact that's what the African-American culture in this country is rooted in and many places around the world it seems the same phenomena occurs and when you get to the cities where the advantage the advantages shift in favor of an elite the quality and the depth of the perceptions and the ideas that people bring to their lives and bring to their work does not necessarily get clearer and sharper it gets foggy and complex but not necessarily clearer and sharper and the advantages shift in favor of the goodness God they shall get and they keep on getting and the people who nurture the roots of the culture get covered over and left in the in the in the hustle and bustle so I think we got a big piece of work to do obviously cities are important I don't mean to say they're not we need cities but we need more than cities we need the groundedness and the sense of community and sharing and working together that has made human society possible in the first place we got to figure out how to keep on doing that and making it stronger it's my opinion well I certainly agree with that that was the reason why I or one of the primary reasons why I didn't continue with the Free Southern Theater in in that same sense that I had with the zeal etc. I did as I mentioned leave but Mississippi for a short time but since it had moved to Louisiana and I disagreed with that move I didn't think that the resources that Richard check Nantulain had to offer was enough of a reason for us to move I thought that the we had already laid we're laying the groundwork we had discovered that we had a lot of resources we had the whole civil rights sneak connection throughout the state to set up the places where we would go and the people we would who would get the audiences for us and of course we still use that but as John as you mentioned the substance the people what it would mean to them for us to work with them and involve them in the process and really rely on them even their small amounts of money if we had charged something 10 cent 15 cents 20 cents we could have started to raise money and be thinking of how we could develop a financial base there how we would keep our costs down how we'd raise because we spent a lot of time later on you know in New York that they always in influence the direction of things in my own work as a documentary photographer now in seeing about publishing some books and getting my photographs out people will say to me well you know you need to get a grant you need to write a proposal for a grant I said you know what I'm going to stay here and do this the way I'm going to do it I'm not writing any proposal because every time you write a proposal for a grant the grantor wants you to do it their way and then you spend a lot of times writing the grant proposal and you may not get it now what if you use that time to concentrate on doing what you want to do it may take it takes a lot of your time but your time in your time you're creating your you're getting a knowledge of what it is that you're doing how you need to do it you're critically thinking and those are the kind of things that I thought we needed to do and stay in Mississippi and continue the base that we had expand from there and that the base of providing our resources with people throughout the state and then getting back from them what they had to give to us to the whole process of developing the theater and so I would agree with you John I see a lot of people out here who know who I know and who know this community and know this way of working and thinking about things y'all not y'all don't y'all talk more than y'all talking you got things to say you got points of view you some of y'all may even disagree with something somebody said I'm not accustomed to such politeness so if y'all got something to say better job on in this conversation thank you Bob this segues us to our question section so if you would like to ask a question to our elders here then there's a microphone there we have about 15 minutes for this y'all that's my niece anybody so what are some things that you want people to know about the free Southern theater before we conclude this conversation you've been the hell raise all your life I stopped answered this but did you always I mean did you set out to do new work write the work yourself or did you want to did you start wanting to perform plays that had already been written yeah we always felt that well it's pretty clear if you pay attention to theater it's sort of a top-down business you know with the biases and it's urban theater is more urban than like most people really live and it's it's it's got a very strong bias in favor of the existing power structure and the values that that power structure has developed to protect itself and so we always figured that we had we wouldn't be really in the game until the people whose culture and lives were actually and represented in the work that we did until they start making work with us and with you know and and informing us you know I still feel like that so we knew all the way although all the way along that we would not be on the road until we started listening to the stories of the people who we sought to have as audiences and if those as as you can see in the stories we've already told there's there's a great desire on our part all the way through to make that hook up from the grassroots and be consistent in helping to make that grow and so we've always been about that and I still think that's that's the core to trying to transform the society in which we live that we we can't come along and tell the audience what they supposed to be thinking or they're supposed to be doing we have to be more modest than that and actually ask the people what do you think needs to happen in your community and what can we do to make it better I have a question that's about working in in the commitment that you named across through conflict and conflict that's not just about personality but across divides so white folk with the people who founded the FST men and women where their power differences so I'm curious what learnings or wisdom or questions you have about working through conflict and being in shared commitment well that's that's a public conversation you're inviting us to and everybody here will have stories that are informative within that context I would say Doris if we haven't been all together honest your absence in the ongoing life of the Free Southern Theater wasn't result of some serious mistakes that Gilbert and I in particular made because we started on this road together before the women's movement inside the movement had made the fullest statements that they ultimately made fact is Gilbert and me both thought that your job as a woman was to be quiet and do what we wanted you to do and you the first one is said to me in ways that I began to understand oh oh you're going down the wrong road everybody you're going down the wrong road and we had to stop I had to stop I'm not sure what Gilbert did I'm not sure I had to stop and try to rethink and understand what was happening because we were we are victims of the prevailing culture even those of us who are trying to make change you know we're victims of the prevailing culture too you know some of the most well I'm beating a dead horse you know what I'm trying to say so that these conflicts and contradictions inside the culture are reflected in the lives of the people who are trying to make change and I've seen a lot of that over the years and it's hard to fight when do your excellent question leads me with your father's permission to do my usual volcano thing one of the questions that was prepared for this panel was what did we think was the present state of theater and writing and and his future so I'm going to shock everybody by saying for many reasons that we need to explore that are implicit in the question Wendy raised African American theater is pathetic it's pathetic because if you turn to page 12 of the Free Southern Theater by the Free Southern Theater you will see that Gil asked that in terms of writing materials FST would try to produce new idioms new genres that were like the blues jazz and gospel I think John succeeded in part not with a new genre but when he moved into being Junebug Jabba Jones and mining African American oral traditions to do a little bit of that the quintessential example of writing and there was a lot of good writing that came out of FST but the quintessential theater piece or one act play or whatever you want to call it is Tom Dent's ritual murder I'm not trying to put down anybody else who produced work but I know of no single product of FST that is so economical aesthetically economical is economical in terms of its language and that has the psychological depth of a classic piece and classic in the sense that since 1976 when this play by Tom was first produced by FST it has served a purpose in communities because of the kind of question that is so central in that play we don't have that in contemporary drama which is about everything except the conflict oh that's great conflict you can't have drama without conflict but it's not about the conflict that is ongoing and almost precludes are identifying a single issue around which we can rally as we had a single issue initially in the in in the 1960s I want to also suggest that as this ongoing that as all of us pursue what Wendy is asking us to pursue that we remember something about what a revolution is title of this symposium is talking revolution that's a nice safe exercise safe talking the revolution of which FST was a part did not start in the 20th century it's a part of the long history of struggle for civil and human rights beginning in the 18th century in this country and it's still going on so when we talk about revolution I will I would propose that yes as the named movement the civil rights movement did produce a revolution but please do not think that FST was a revolution it was a catalyst within a revolution trying to find means to make that revolution stronger and more possible so the conflict the marvelous thing about human beings is that we're going to always have conflict it's eternal and we have to find various ways of working this out the kinds of issues that have been raised which go beyond just simply civil rights or economic problems to the rights of the being really get back to John's philosophy being in the world Heidegger etc that is that that's something that we have to grapple with continually I think FST in a certain kind of modesty modesty in its beginning of saying we don't have all the answers maybe some people in the audience we have to cultivate will have those answers that will allow us to then through the olympic of our intelligence and creativity create the forms that will help them to think more critically about the issues I think that's what I think that's our charge I think that is the mandate that we all have and we're going to have to do this very honest honestly and brutally honestly because all of this post-racial bullshit is just that this country is becoming more like it was in 1813 okay don't be fooled by 12 years a slave because last year you were galvanized by Django somebody is pulling somebody's chain and I got to get the chain puller so we're at 1235 which our panel was scheduled to be over at 1230 do we so I'm going to allow our elders is this fine Stephanie to kind of say the last thing that they want to say and then that'll be the conclusion of our panel or our discussion well although the free southern theater hasn't gone in the direction that we laid out and conceived of in the first year I'm certainly proud of and happy to see what did happen and that we had Junebug productions and we we have had this long history so that we can know where the mistakes were where the good points were and that you know it will continue and the works of the group that's putting this celebration on I'm glad that it has happened and I think it will continue to happen well in terms of my own which went out of existence after some of the student which leaders had graduated so I did start a theater for our students in 2008 2009 with students organizations at George State and we put a number of theater plays some original works in some plays like Raising in the Sun and incorporated the arts music poetry dance in the plays and so I said okay 46 years later I continued the journey and so one of my students is on her way here I continued the journey she'll be here this afternoon so I was like really excited and she said she would be able to come because I thought that it's still a journey the continuation of the kind of things that we had had in our mind heart and spirit years ago and so I think that's very important that's very important part of this conference taking place is celebration continuing to have information passed on I was always so happy to speak with my elders my grandparents who gave me that gift of the importance of passing on the information I'd like to make my final statement I'd like some which I want you all beside with my own statement I don't so everybody had a chance