 In February downtown St. Louis, S.A.D. Hall, the Pan-African flag flies below the American flag. How many lives do you have to sacrifice to in this battle of bloodshed? As did my people's blood you painted yourself with. You dashed up above me and wave as if your fingers don't rip breath from noose. Mother from the sun, cut baby from belly. Waving over me, we're just forgotten whose back you crawl to get up there, please. How many lives do you have to sacrifice to win this battle of bloodshed? Enough. Everything I have done has been for all of us, not some newborn, conceptual cotton. I'm here because this is my land. You are just a hitchhiker. Tell me how could you do this without them? Stand there without them? Fly in the breeze with all the weight of them bleeding corpses? Or are them bones bleached white by the poison consciousness of your people's fingertips? You must have forgotten who I am. You are blinded by your weakness and your nation crumbles because there'll be too many bones in the battlefield. Forgotten. Will you pick my people up before we ever pick cotton? However, I see you picking more cotton than we ever did. You culled it green and culled it wealth. Green back, like my people's infected lashes, rips the wealth on the back of black back. They were swollen and bruised black and blue. Okay, boy. At least we have a country. Under my roof and my land, eat my food, no no rules. I am the inspiration to the birth of a nation. Do you know what it took to build this? My stripes be the colonies woven with the roots red. Reminds of the blood brave women and men have shed. Like skin wheel no longer segmented snake. Don't tread on the white be the pure sun in my land blue. Justice unforgotten built. You stolen red. Called it a brotherhood. Added to colors. Called it important. I call it a good trial. Black honor. Like a basin or place in this nation. My red was painted when you placed blade to black neck, brown ribcage or copper color backside. And that first red color trickled down body to second color black. Black is origin. The origin of man. And the center of civilization in third color. Came at the red blood slid down black body and bathed mother earth. That liquid drenched the green. You owe everything to me. You all claimed it famous and clad back to a 1920 song made in my fucking country. Your failed unity has left you with a failed fragmented continent. Your vice-flessed be alien to my kingdom. You be nation. I be continent. My origin was woven in stacks like baskets on top of head. And you stole these brick and roots. My origin is from my people to the symbol across the consonants of region. To the fetal acts of white supremacy defeats white noose on black windpipe. Which pop participant is willing to swing his feet from the mountaintop. To surrender blood onto this piece of cloth. And pick this piece of cotton without beating fingers. You should be grateful for that black shadow has been cast out. For you have been grace of the Lord's omniscient. All knowing white light owns all. Forever omniscient knowing we open our gates to heaven. I am a god that has open more gates to freedom via spoon fact. God has ever spoken his book. You chain my people's hands so we have no other choice but to pray to your god. Your godless country that is unified by nothing more than borders. The ashes will fly back into the face of him who throws them. Opulence means your tongue is mine. Means I have the power of God to mold the clay of history. Means your people can make tribe after tribe. But I own the sweatshop that sows the timeline. Thank you. Welcome to St. Louis and welcome to TCG's 28th National Conference. And let's really hear it. Hear it again for the amazing youth poets of herb arts here in St. Louis. When I learned that they would kick off our opening plenary my first thought was what a perfect way to begin the conference. My second thought was wait you want me to go after them? That is a hard act to follow. But then I thought isn't it fitting because in the past few years it's been young people and yes young people with a passion for the arts who have led some of the most successful movements for justice. In fact four years before the Parkland Theatre kids changed the narrative on gun violence. Artist organizers Patrice Cullors and Darnell Moore organized the Black Life Matters Ride working with local activists in solidarity with communities brutalized by law enforcement. Organizers from 18 different cities left St. Louis to start Black Lives Matter chapters in their own communities. Now as we meet near the Gateway Arch a monument whose soaring beauty is complicated by its origins in honoring the westward expansion and thereby the horrors of manifest destiny. We acknowledge that this place has always been at the heart of change in our national story. At the same time St. Louis is a deeply local place resistant to any single narrative that outsiders wish to write upon it. Many of you experienced those many narratives in our community field trips earlier today which were made possible by Edward Jones and TCG's audience revolution program with support from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. This city is also mound city site of one of the largest pre-genocide native cities on Turtle Island and home now to many indigenous peoples. To help us honor those caretakers of the land I'm grateful to welcome Deborah Tafa to the stage. Deborah is a writer, professor and enrolled tribal member of the human nation who co-wrote a documentary The Trail of Tears that will appear on PBS in November. Please join me in welcoming Deborah Tafa to the stage. Kumathom if everyone can put their feet on the ground and feel where they are in a physical space we began our meeting today by acknowledging that we are in St. Louis the ancestral and unceded territory of the Illini people who stewarded this land throughout generations. During the 19th century tribes in Missouri were forced to give up their lands. For example in one instance on November 10th 1808 the great and little bands of the Osage nation were forced to sign session 67 which ceded 52.5 million acres of Missouri and Arkansas. In exchange the U.S. government gave them 1200 in cash and 1500 in merchandise. All tribes in this state were eventually removed. This ground we stand on was taken from the original people. It is unceded native land. I would like to take this moment to recognize and honor the sacrifices of all tribes who once lived and thrived here who lost their land so that today we could live work and participate as allies in today's event blessings to the creative work that you do blessings to those allies whose grandparents were placed in Japanese internment camps to those allies whose grandparents were torn for their from their families as slaves to those allies whose grandparents were preyed upon by dull foods to those allies whose land in the Middle East is even today being contested to those allies who aren't allowed to cross the border on their own ancestral land to those allies who have been persecuted for differences in their bodies gender or sexuality to those allies who are not responsible for this undoing though they may sometimes be wrongly blamed for those allies I have forgotten to name but with whom I stand hoping to hear and honor their stories and for my indigenous allies especially those who fought valiantly against the dakota access pipeline even as the waters become dirty and the coal is ripped from our mother's belly we will pound our ancestors drum until it bleeds fill huge holes with sand and stretch odd shaped band-aids across earth wounds growing too big to heal thank you thank you debora st louis has long been called home by many artistic powerhouses and theater people including tennessee williams vincent price maya angelo chuck berry and many more it's my pleasure to welcome two current powerhouses who call this city home to the stage jennifer wincer and steve wolf they are co-chairs they are co-chairs of our st louis host committee along with ron heim's he'll get to meet tomorrow and they've all been passionate advocates for their city and wonderful partners for this conference welcome okay great an extraordinary afternoon here today welcome to the conference welcome to st louis we in the active and large st louis theater community are thrilled to have you here and to discover our complex city you saw some examples of their passion earlier today a big thank you to jenny wincer and her crew at the shakespeare festival that helped coordinate the planning for this gathering also thanks to ron heim's the st louis black repertory company and william roth of the st louis actors studio for their work on the host committee there are many activities going on during the conference and we don't have time to mention a lot of them but our colleagues at the muni opera in forest park has just opened a rare production of geron robbins broadway the muni is offering comp tickets to the attendees of this conference on the next three nights you don't need reservations just go to the box office and say you are with tcg not sure where you'll be seated there are 11 000 seats it's something to see uh and it is outside so dress appropriately i saw a tuesday night it's amazing check out the rave review in the well street journal from yesterday uh it's a rare show to see opera theater of st louis which performs at the loretta hilton theater in whipster groves at the theater that we at the rep perform in is offering tickets to orfeo friday night at eight and also the premiere of an american soldier saturday at eight using the code artist 25 or artist 50 for either 25 dollar or 50 dollar seats as you know we are at the arch grounds and the redo of the grounds is now finished so do walk up to the arch and experience what i think is one of the great sculptures of the world unfortunately the museum and the rides to the top which are pretty harrowing won't be open till july third however however evidently the film of the making of the arch is is running and i don't quite know where it is over there well worth seeing because it's like 1776 you know it's going to finish you know it's going to be complete but you're not quite sure as the last piece goes in with fire boats spraying the arch with water it's really worth seeing for baseball fans given more already uh the cardinals are playing the cubs friday night at 7 15 and also saturday that just down the block from the hotel it will be wild downtown tonight is the open a party will be at the city museum it isn't a museum it's an amazing playground i don't know if there's anything like it in the country it's unique and that's why we wanted to hold the party there i would only say that if there's a sign that says don't put your finger or hand in something pay attention to that the jenny's going to talk about other special activities during the conference again welcome we are so thrilled you're here this promises to be a most exciting event jenny thank you steve uh you know i have to say it's been an honor to be a co-chair of the host committee along with steve woof and ron heim's who can't be here with us tonight because as a true theater maker he is out i believe at rehearsal but we may catch him a little later in the conference this weekend i want to make sure that i honor the entire host committee so those of us who are here this evening do you mind standing up the st louis host committee i'd like to give you all a round of applause i hope you all had a little taste of our city earlier today the host committee was certainly a part of the planning of the field trips that therisa mentioned earlier i myself even was able to be a tourist so thank you all for coming to st louis and giving me that opportunity uh being at art house today with the activists and artivists that are a part of our community was really enlightening for me as well as director of community engagement and education at shakespeare festival st louis i would be remiss if i didn't talk to you a little bit about the community offerings that our fabulous arts community has to offer you so bear with me i'm gonna list just a few okay um if you scroll on your app which i've been doing a lot i don't know if you all have there's a section called dinearounds and you can check out both dinearounds that have been planned by the st louis community as well as performance opportunities and uh you could catch lucy cash in from equally represented arts her trash mcbeth is a dine around that i would recommend i would also recommend uh the mustard seed and theater nuwevo collaboration on the production of luchadora which i believe will be yeah on this stage perhaps on saturday um the prison performing arts and the slightly askew theater ensembles production of a run-on sentence is also a great option for you to check out in fact they stole one of our actresses that was supposed to be in shakespeare and streets so we like to share here in st louis uh we also have the black reps commission of canfield drive which i believe you can can experience tomorrow night and stray dog theaters had a gabbler and that is certainly not everyone um we are not sure to theater here to share uh shakespeare festival st louis has not one but two shows running we are in our the height of our summer season as we have also welcomed tom richley our new executive producer to our company so you can catch romeo and juliet in our city civic gem forest park and that's directed by alina arouse from new york city and then also a special project to me is shakespeare in the streets blow winds which i believe the winds are blowing right now outside so i am a little nervous it's dress rehearsal for shakespeare in the streets right now about 10 blocks away from the hotel and shakespeare in the streets is our adaptation of king lear written by nancy bell and mariah richardson this is an opportunity to experience the stories of st louis through the lens of not only our community but the adaptation of nancy lamar harris is our musical director and composer so you can check out up to a hundred performers including a church choir a step team the gentleman of vision and a 20-piece band telling you a little bit more about st louis both maybe some of the things that frustrate us and some of the things we want to celebrate so that's a taste of what we've got on deck for you all this weekend now steve mentioned the party that's going to follow tonight if that's not enough for you we have another party friday night you can check out the late night party and that's at nine p.m at the cransburg arts foundations dot sack we're taking it over so come join us thank you so much we welcome you to st louis and i'd like to introduce susan booth from the alliance theater to the stage it's almost an old-fashioned idea to dedicate over 30 years of your life to a single job putting ambition for an organization above ambition for self and curating a multi-decade conversation with your community that's what steve wolf's been doing having held the positions of the repertory theater of st louis's managing director production manager and interim artistic director in 1986 he made it official and became artistic director and at the conclusion of the coming season he will step down having defined and animated the rep for 33 years in that position so um depressing though this exercise will be for some of us if you are younger than 33 and are able will you please stand up come on no stay stay stay standing since before these people were born steve was running a theater and it would be tempting to call it his theater but steve has made it his lifetime work to create a theater that belonged to st louis and st louis has made it known through countless honors and appointments and by showing up in deeply sustaining numbers that he's done it and yes the rep is their theater steve hasn't gone with the easy approach to running a theater by the way his own productions as a director run the gamut from premieres to pierandello with stops for albie's goat brex galileo along the way he created the ignite festival of new plays to bring his audience challenging new work before the rest of us could get to it giving first outings to plays by iod octar my clue monuments or countless others he created this is my personal favorite he created the off-ramp series bringing completely off color and off kilter work to his audience in an alternate venue which is a pretty ballsy and devious move if you ask me and he's fostered more careers actors writers designers and directors then you can count on many many hands a whole bunch of years ago a few months after i'd been hired as the alliance's artistic director i directed at the rep for steve i'm sure a production happened in there somewhere but most of the time i was rubbernecking an organization to see what i could steal i remember a first rehearsal attended by this enormous cohort of deeply invested volunteers i remember a staff who whether administrator props artisan stage manager articulated a sense of fierce pride in their theater and its work i remember steve's near daily presence in the rehearsal hall something i initially interpreted a severe trepidation on his part about my abilities but i later learned was evidence of his total love affair with this process and when i returned a few seasons later i remember being welcomed back like family and feeling both ridiculously fortunate and deeply humbled by the lived lesson of doing this weird and fungible artistic director job with your whole soul and being a tcg we applaud artistry we applaud risk we applaud deep engagement and now by applauding steve wolf we're gonna applaud all of those things we are gonna present him with the tcg theater practitioner award and we are gonna applaud his unswerving loyalty to the greater cause of leading a theater in an ever-evolving and lifelong conversation with its community please thank steve wolf that's a hell of an introduction thank you yeah i love the process i love to watch the work that's true i know it upsets people but you know i love the art i love the form so thank you susan thank you tcg thank you all i'm honored by this recognition and it's especially meaningful to come from tcg and from my good friends susan i've been in this field a long time i've seen a lot in our world of the profession missing the nea site visits seen a lot in the wide world too it's hard not to try to figure out how weak collectively can move the country and get us out of the trouble we are in we speak to so many people on a daily basis is there something to be done is it's more to be done i feel this very keenly we bring people together we are a place for ideas and thoughts a kind of meeting place our art can be a catalyst for galvanizing a country being torn apart by recklessness enough soapbox i've been living this dream this gig for a long time i wanted to be doing my job since i was in junior high to run a major arts institution in a metropolitan area was something i aspired to does that mean my dream world as an adolescent was screwed up well yeah probably but i'm aware that so few people get to live their dream and i feel quite special about that 30 plus years at the rep 40 shows that i directed over 300 shows that i produced that's a whole lot of practitioner work and i can only hope uh those of you that stood it being under 33 uh that there are some out there that can find that kind of fulfillment in our field we are so important as a civilizing structure to our society the flame needs to keep on burning in arcadia hannah says it's wanting to know that makes us matter otherwise we are going out the way we came in i just want to know i don't know enough our particular profession gives us the ability to share this passionate desire to know through the telling of great stories it's been a fantastic and unique and special ride thank you so much for this award steve mentioned the nea site visits and i know the first time i met steve is when he was doing site visits and i was a young fairly early career manager at the time and he uh was just i remember him being so generous with his time and really giving me a lot of insight on the field and insight on the organization i was in at the time so i really want to express my gratitude to you as well steve you've been a great mentor to so many people in this field um at the heart of what makes our conference special is also the opportunity for intergenerational exchange we just witnessed a little of that with our um our our mapping exercise thank you susan um but we also have uh the opportunity now to um in addition to honoring steve's legacy um to really honor in this very same session and celebrate the impact of a rising artist and leader uh to help me do so play right qui when wanted to be here in person but he's in rehearsal uh he did ask if we could make him into a hologram but our tech's not there yet so instead he made a lovely video queen what's up madras it's your boy quig win i'm here to congratulate you on winning this prestigious award which i'm pretty sure you are and you were getting because i'm pretty sure tcg will give me enough time to write yourself a speech but knowing you i'm pretty sure that speech is all super asian and humble and says things like that you so much i don't deserve this i won't be here if i want for this person or that person yada yada yada well stop first off you do deserve this in my opinion you deserve every directing award there is second you're here because of you now anyone else because you're a genius you're innovative and most importantly you're fun hell you went to Yale and you're not above dragon torah armadillos across the state just to get yourself a cheap laugh and this makes you amazing because your ego parts heart as well as mine if you don't believe any of that please believe this i don't think i'm still writing theater if it weren't for you this how much i love being in the room with you i'm willing to write some of the dumbest most ridiculous things about my family just to be in the room with you to make them jokes you busted your ass to be here right now please own this moment you deserve it i love you my sister you are my best friends i wish i could be here right now to celebrate you but because i can't i want you to know this one thing look around the room right now look at all these people celebrating you realize this they all owe you at least a drink or some food because if they don't they're not doing their jobs for either themselves or the theaters so get yourself some free shit anyways i will see you in eight months when you and i will be back together again doing poor yellow rednecks a bit gone part two for south coast rep look at how i plug our shit anyways have fun i love you you are the absolute best do we have may may are you here please to give you the allen schneider award comes with this as well thank you i'm going to put it there gee thanks quigwin you just made me cry before i'm supposed to be up here um he's right i did have like a a very formal very grateful speech and it actually it actually means a lot for someone to say you own this moment and that's what i say with all of my actors right before they take their first current call is that you deserve this you give so much of yourself to the audience let them give back to you so i'm going to relish and doing that i know i didn't get here on my own i just want to thank all the people that helped me stand here today the people that lift me up every day my family my husband and my amazing group of friends i want to thank tcg and the committee and the panelists for selecting me i also want to thank mark masterson who gave me my two biggest breaks and nominated me for this award and um jump started this uh relationship i had with qui uh as he produced viet gone um you know so many supporters who i've had over the years john isan and john deas bill ral she wrote letters on my behalf and um i just want to thank uh mark clements and chad bowman at milwaukee rep who have given me an artistic home over the years and this past year a place at the table for artistic and institutional decisions um their support of me reinforces their vision to put art at the center of the organization and this is just one of the many steps this leadership has taken to find innovative ways to mentor the next generation of leaders but most of all i want to thank my theater family uh for qui and kemp and idris and ray and chisa and stephanie and the designers and actors that just make me who i am today you feed my inspiration and you share my passions you feed my curiosities and you deal with my mercurial disposition when i'm in the that horrible state of i don't know um you make me a stronger artist and a stronger person and you help me see the joy uh every day and the possibility um when i first attended tcg i was only 21 and i was terrified of actually everybody in this room and i was also just didn't really feel like i belonged here at that point i could only dream of doing theater for my job and now i feel like my job is to dream through the support of all the people that believed in me i merged from a young woman who spoke quietly but passionately about a society she envisioned to be the one that's pushing that society forward by the work that it she creates i wish i could go back to that 21 year old and tell that first generation immigrant born on rural virginia who had only seen her first professional theater production at age 17 that she'd be standing here to accept this award for directing um but how could i have imagined it i'd never seen another person who looked like me or my family on stage um until the age of 21 when i saw jessica hagedorn's dog eaters at the public it also dawned on me when i saw that production that um that i had never seen so many asians in one room together um at least uh you know agents i wasn't related to already um when i was coming of age as a director i never assisted a woman i never assisted a person of color and of all the lord theaters that i worked only two were helmed by female artistic directors um i was just reminded because i talked to my sister recently um of this memory i had um when not too long ago i watched uh chloe kim make history when she won the gold for the women's half-bite with a nearly perfect score and my six-year-old mixed race nephew upon seeing her receive that golden medal she said he said but she is an american how could a six-year-old who's philippine a mother my sister who also happens to be a surgeon at john's hopkins not be perceived as someone uh that could not be perceived as american how could he not perceive that someone with asian skin could be american or could represent the united states of america what did that make me and his mother and his grandfather in his eyes not american and still another at just age six where did he get those ideas so representation representation matters telling stories that have not found their way into the mainstream matters does mantling stereotypes and reframing history to reflect those who have been left out of the telling of that history that matters i'm a living testament to that together with my vietnam family we made a romantic comedy about two asian refugees in arkansas a new american love story and kim powers little black shadows we told a story to honor the shadows whose backs of this country was built upon but whose history had never been told on stage in adrease goodwin's the way the mountain moved we tell the story of how the west was really one and the escaped slaves the native americans the immigrants the mexicans and those fleeing from religious persecution those that inhabited it i take up the mantle as many my colleagues have to shift the narrative of the american theater to a new norm to embrace wholeheartedly our responsibility to present more than a single story to redefine what it means to be american and redefine what it means to have an american family to rewrite that classic american story to reframe history and create new classics and new ways of storytelling i want to show that work directed by me or women like me works written by women or artists of color and not risky they are essential and they are essentially american you have given me a great gift today the allen schneider award is given on the basis of merit and artistry and to be recognized on this level means that the values that i espouse of citizenry diversity and inclusion and artistic adventurousness have made it into the national conversation receiving this award has already changed me it has bolter my confidence as a director and it also helped me realize the strength of my own voice and my potential to change the theatrical landscape and i look forward to more women more artists of color changing the landscape with me i look forward to seeing them onstage backstage offstage writing directing designing i look forward to them walking the halls of power upstairs and redirecting financial success to support and empower those very communities so i thank you again for your warm reception of me thank you for letting me uh bask in this moment and thank you for believing in me and helping me take another step forward and i hope that together we can march step by step to a true representation of the world we live in and the world that we imagine thank you thank you may it's always um so exciting to see may's work and to talk with her and hear her views and also just everything that's happening at milwalki rep right now with chad and mark uh and may working together there