 this conversation and welcome. I hope you're all doing okay. And whatever version of that word speaks to you at this moment. We're just gonna dive right in and welcome these incredible women to this conversation. Marisa Wolf, wave Marisa, hi. Marisa Wolf is Artistic Director of Portland Center Stage. We have Hannah Sharif who is Artistic Director of the Reptory Theater St. Louis and my colleague and my sister, Ariana Afsar. Who is composer, lyricist, activist, all the things. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Exciting invitation. What fun. So let me tell you a little bit about how this came about and kind of what we're talking about. And then we'll just start talking. Well, I'll probably start with a little bit about how you come to the theater and how you find yourself in the positions you are. Where does theater begin for you? But first, all of this came from a question from one of my viewers of one of my playwriting classes and she reached out to me asking us, I would host something about feminism in theater, talk about it, was really important to her to understand that she is a writer on the younger end of things. So I think coming into this field with eyes wide open. And so she wanted to ask some of kind of the best in the, in the business and the best leaders that I knew and all of you came to mind immediately and thank you for saying yes on the same date, no less. So that's what we're gonna do here is kind of talk about what feminism means to us. If it means anything, has the meaning changed, how it applies to what you do in the theater, how you come up with shows, direct shows, pick seasons, work with people. Just how that has kind of grown and know that our audiences about learning and kind of what's now and what's next and how to be excellent at what we do and as people doing it. So those kind of answers I think will be really helpful. But why don't we start first kind of introducing ourselves by way of telling like how we come to the theater and then we'll pivot into kind of how your relationship with feminism. Ari, would you start? How do you come to this crazy business? I mean, I grew up doing theater primarily identifying as an actor and singer throughout my entire childhood. Most recently, I originated the Chicago production of Eliza, no, Hamilton, of Hamilton as Eliza. That's the second musical. That's all right. And that was in 2016, a month before the November 2016 election happened, which kind of instigated the desire for Jeanette, which is the musical that Lauren and I are composing and working on. Panna, would you tell us about how you come to the theater? Yeah, you know, I also love the theater growing up. I was a writer and I would say that I was a writer first. And I gravitated towards playwriting when I was very, very young. And then I was 19 in undergrad when I launched the Scrappy Theater Company with my friends. We'd lost our head of department who was really beloved. And our class in particular was a class where basically every professor that was there, my freshman year of college was not in the department by my senior year. So there was no one kind of tracking your progression. And we just decided that we weren't gonna let our education be kind of caught in this transition, that we were gonna take control of it. And I became a co-founding artistic director of Nasir Productions at 19. Ran that company for about seven years, which is really, I would say, if I was to look at the trajectory of my career, I would say that I wouldn't be artistic director of a Lord Theater now if I hadn't run that Scrappy Company because all of the skills of wearing all the hats really helped me become a great producer. And so I went to grad school and then I went into the regional theater and I spent like the last 20 years of my career producing. And I am in just ending my first year as artistic director of the rep. Congratulations on that. Sorry, it had to end with a worldwide crisis. It was a big deal. You know, it's fine, it'll be fine. Marissa, tell us how you come to the theater. Yeah, so similarly, I started as a kid. I fell in love with theater at a very young age and for my whole sort of childhood into my college years, I thought that I wanted to be an actor. And then it was in college that I sort of began recognizing like what a director is or can do and the opportunity to kind of take a world whole and shape it and question it. And it was also an undergrad that I began to think like, ah, the work, the work is in shaping a whole kind of body of work. The work is in leading companies and kind of being part of a national dialogue in that way. So it was pretty early on that I thought, oh, that's where I'm heading. And so I was in the Bay Area then in my early career and yeah, interned all over the place. And like Hannah also ended up after I had opportunity to be at Berkeley Rap as the directing fellow. And then I was running Crowd and Fire Theater, which is still an incredible thriving company run by Meena Mora. Yay, Crowd and Fire. That's where Lauren and I met and were collaborating. And I think the indie theaters are the best. And are where so much exciting work gets generated in this country. And so I'm really, really proud to have done that for six years. And then I was at Kansas City Rep as the associate AD. And then now I'm about 18 months into my tenure as the AD at Portland Center Stage in Oregon. And I'm super happy to have Hannah and many other amazing folks in this cohort of new artistic directors as we sojourn into the unknown. Eric Ting, in a conversation we had, I think it was last week, but what is a week anymore? I don't know. I think some amount of days ago I talked about this incredible flood of new, generative, creative voices, many of whom are women, many of whom are people of color. Thank goodness. And to see this class of leaders be faced with this in their early 10 years is kind of mind-boggling. But his point was, I mean, awesome. I mean, I trust you to iterate and pivot and bring all of your creativity and energy more than anybody. I know it's not exactly what you must have dreamed about for your first season or season and a half in these new exciting positions, but we're all behind you and all behind you. But we're all behind you and all here thinking about what's next with y'all at the helm. So this pivots to a question of what we're talking about, feminism, what is it to you? And I think this can kind of be whatever we want it to be, but I may just start with an example of my way into feminism. And I will say, I wanted to be an actor. A lot of us wanted to be an actor at first. And remember tracking, okay, I want to be an actor and I didn't even consider playwriting or any other thing, but thinking like, well, gosh, I just, what are the roles and looking through Shakespeare and finding some good ones. And then kind of looking through modern American theater and being like, is this it, is this all we have? All right, especially for young women, because young women are always, you know, the girlfriend, the whore, the extra, the sister, you know, that gets shushed and moved off or something. So I was like, okay, okay. Well, it seems like you got scout. You've got Annie and we're done. So kind of a dawning realization. I didn't have the articulation of the words to really describe what I was sensing in my own art form. And so of course, just turned Shakespeare as full of really interesting women and is often done in a gender-bending kind of way. So I was more like, well, I'm just gonna read Hamlet and kind of practice on that instead of Ophelia. And then moving into writing, realizing, oh, I guess we still write plays now or some people do. That's great. Maybe we can just write ones that I wanna do, write ones for me or people like me or, oh, okay. So finding that connection. But it really wasn't until after I graduated at Emory that I realized that feminism was me, that that was a word that I could associate with and own and I think, I won't say a lot of us, but for me it was something I didn't really think of meeting, which is such a privileged thing to even say. But then realizing, talking to my mom, oh, my mom was one of those 80s moms who had to do everything, who had to excel. She was in medicine and excel as a mom and excel as the homemaker and excel as the wife and do all the things and nobody kind of even said, are you doing okay? Do you need some help? Anyway, but it kind of took me a while. I like to think of myself as a young, sprightly, but what I was when I was younger was a tomboy. I just was one of the guys. I was the girl who's with all the guys and preferred that. I didn't feel a sisterhood. I didn't have a group. I mean, I had a group of friends, but I considered myself like, I'm not my best when I'm with the guys and can like run with them and talk with them and be in the conversations and be in whatever. And so it was only later that I realized like, oh no, I'm a capital F feminist. And then of course learning what intersectional feminism was and all of the kinds of feminism and all the waves and all of the ways that we share that. But it took me a little while, but it was right around when I was writing Exit Pursued by a Bear, which was my first production at Crowdfire with Marissa. And it was the wildest play I'd ever written. And it really cracked me open in terms of saying, no, I write comedy. I can write political feminist comedy. And I'd never really put myself in that place before because I was writing history plays about women scientists and women, but kind of like, you know, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have worn that shirt. And now I do. And so it really took me writing those plays with the indie companies that Marissa was talking about to crack into my ability. And now that's all I want to do. All I want to talk about, all I want to help other women realize and other men realize they're inner feminists. So that's kind of how I come to this discussion now. And it's so important and I see chances to discuss it. And correct it, but discuss at least all the time. And every theater settings with audiences, with commissioning, with plays that we are offering to students like here at the American Place, you should read. Like let's make sure that Lorraine Hansberry is not the only woman that we get to read. Or anyway, so on and on, I feel like we're, and then seeing again with your generation of leadership, finally we have so many examples of incredible women. So anyway, that's a little bit of my sense of this journey. Welcome. Yeah, do you wanna go backwards around the circle again, Marissa, do you wanna start with kind of, what is it to you? What is the idea of the word, what does this mean to you? Yeah, so I mean, I think the sort of broad definition I feel like is to me is feminism is that all people are equal, period. We would use the word woman, that women are equal to men, but also then of course opening that up to this sort of gender spectrum. And so I would just say all people are equal, period. And then I also, I've been thinking about that in two ways. One is bringing a lens and at PCS, since I got there and there's a lot of really fantastic sort of deep dive work around racial equity and anti-racist work. And there's a question that I think is really, it's really fruitful. Also with the lens of feminism, which is who in every choice you're making, particularly as a leader, but in every choice you're making as an artist to ask the question, who is burdened and who is benefiting from this choice? And for me, when I started carrying that lens it made, it put in stark relief the moments in which I could so easily lean towards something that felt easier because it was normalized. And so it's deep, rich work and that feels really important. And it also makes me think in terms of sort of bringing a feminist lens to all aspects of life, particularly around theater and performance, the question of whose stories are we lifting up and who gets to tell those stories and how are we kind of cracking them open? Who's on that team? Who's on that stage and who's in the audience? I love that work. It's never-ending and mistakes will be made all the time. And I'll just own that as a white girl and as a cisgender woman, like mistakes will be made even within our own practice of intersectional feminism. And we have to take deep breaths and keep questioning and keep deepening and moving into that space. Yeah, how about you, Hannah? Yeah, I mean, I think part of the key for me is this concept of intersectionality. I feel like I grew up in a household where the multiplicity of who I am and how I walk in the world was, I was encouraged to deconstruct that, to name it and to have language to it. So I am African-American. I'm Muslim. I'm a woman. I am a daughter or a sister. And at this point, a mother, a writer, a director. And what I would say as central for me is this concept of servant leadership. I also went, I come from a long line of Spelmanites, women who went to Spelman College in Atlanta, which is an all women's college. My mother, my aunts, my cousins. And so, there was no question that that's where I was gonna go to school because it's like, oh, that's her phenomenal black woman girl. They go to Spelman because that's like the best education you can get. And I think that's absolutely true because you are instilled from the very beginning in this concept of servant leadership and the idea of intersectionality and feminism. So there's a lot of actually tough conversations and deconstruction of the feminist movement from like the suffragettes forward and where do black women show up and how have all of these kind of movements across history affected women, women of color. And I think the conversation gratefully in the last decade has also moved to include trans women and non-binary folks along the gender spectrum. And so I feel really grateful that I had a foundation that encouraged a lens that was really critical and constantly deconstructing so that when I came into my practice of art, it was embedded in how I experienced the work and also how I advocated from the very beginning. When I was running my own company and then when I moved into the regional theater, the only person of color full-time when I started at the theater that I started at Hartford stage. And I was the one of two women in the artistic department. The other woman was actually artistic administrator who ended up going down the management track rather than becoming a producer. And so like the kind of sole curatorial female voice on a team of cisgender or white men. And at a time in the American theater where we were starting to kind of push past the slot mentality where there's a slot for one slot for black and brown people and there's one slot for a woman playwright. And then like we didn't even talk about like Native American, Asian, trans that wasn't even part of the conversation. And so entering that world and trying to find ways to be, to advocate and to subvert the norms became again like an embedded part of the practice. It didn't always make me popular. Then my colleagues will say they loved but now in retrospect, that was great. We had these great debates, we had these great stretching moments but I really did feel like, and at the time that I became associate artistic director in Hartford I was the only woman of color in that position at a work theater in the country. And so like I took my responsibility that access and platform delivered very, very seriously. And it was not easy and it was not, I think it's important to say this, that this journey when you're trying to actually shift the dynamically shift the standard by which we work is actually a really painful process. And it requires a lot of clarity of purpose and fortitude and also just an acceptance that your heart is gonna break a bit because you're pushing against a tremendous force. And that force is like has been, we're just gonna name it like cisgender, white, male, dominated, patriarchy, white supremacy. And so all of us in the work that we do, I just wanna honor the fact that that work is really hard even when it's joyful, even when it fills your spirit that there's the practice of creating and then there's the practice of pushing your creation into the world where it can encounter people. And sometimes that transitional process is the most difficult in our field. That's what I've experienced. But also the most essential, right? Because Marissa and I being in these positions is proof of that work, I think. That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, it is. It's to think about when I was starting playwriting the people to look to, it was few and far between. And I didn't even think of the leadership. I was only looking at the writers going, okay, Paula Vogel, excellent. Lynn Nottage, great. So I'm starting to like pass your rule starting to, the clean house was starting to do so well around the country and looking at them and going, okay, and they all write so differently. But then I didn't even think to look at artistic directorship and as a way like who's choosing these shows. And so it's the gatekeepers, right? Yeah, I just wanna say that feels to me really important because I do think that if we look at the trends over the last 20 years, there was a point where it was like, oh, it's really important to have women on stage, right? And it's really important to have people of color on stage. And maybe you'll get a director too, but maybe not, right? Because there are a lot of woman-centric stories that were being told through the lens of white male directorship. And they're the same was true for POCs. And that you actually can't dynamically shift the field until the stakeholders and the people with power and the people who are decision makers are more diverse. And the rationale for that is that we don't know what the blinders are that we each carry, but we all have them. And so when you sit at a table with people who come to the work and move through the world in a different way than you do, they will come with the perspective you haven't thought of because they live in a body and they have an experience of the world that is separate and different from yours. And that actually that's the thing that makes us most powerful and most cohesive and most transformative, right? Is when we are collectively drawing, so sorry, collectively drawing that energy. And I think that we're just now really breaking through where you walk into most theaters and that kind of table of senior leadership, the people who get to decide who the designers are that are hired and who the directors are and who the playwrights are, are a more diverse group of people than they were for the last like, you know, 60 years of the American tour. Forever, but it's so critical. They're very small though. Yeah. Yeah, Ari, do you wanna talk to us about kind of how you come to your feminism if you choose that? And maybe a little bit about Jeannette because of what Hannah's saying seems very resonant about conversations we've had about Russia too. Yeah, it's so interesting just like the idea of feminists I'll kind of go on a tangent before going into Jeannette. So I competed at Miss America when I was 18 years old and I was on national television in a swimsuit and it really affected what feminism meant to me and what it means to me. I'm also a biracial child of an immigrant, South Asian Muslim family. So like that was also like a part of underlying everything. And it's really interesting and at them when I opened the Chicago production of Hamilton I got really, really involved with the city of Chicago with the Women's March United State of Women Planned Parenthood and I was literally like volunteering like just literally doing volunteer work because I needed to do that selfishly. It was very much a selfish reason. And then I actually spoke about my experience at Miss America and how it actually really, really shaped my perspective and idea of feminism and then so empowered living in the US of fighting for feminism through such these beautiful organizations which of course under-resourced and underfunded but they're completely criticized and pretty cool but there's also this power and this camaraderie, right? And most recently I went back to visit my family which I've not seen since I was a child in Bangladesh and my whole idea and perception of what I thought of feminism is completely stripped, right? And completely stripped and this is my family. This is my family in whom I live with and in the villages of Noakali. And it just like made me also check myself of like America has a lot of shit that we have to fucking work on and we have so much recognition and reconciliation that needs to happen but it's also just specifically for me so close to home of how that could have just easily been a different life for me. And so this is feminism, I think it's also really indicated by where you live. And my perspective and idea of feminism for only being a Bangladesh for three weeks had to shift based on where I was. So, that's kind of been my understanding and I'm still learning and still trying to define what that means and I think it's ever growing as our society is changing and as we're starting to see change. Now the issue in which Hannah was bringing up, I'm sorry, Hannah was bringing up, this idea of now what I fear and what I see and feel is tokenism that's becoming very prominent in theater. And so there are moments as an actor in which I haven't completely switched over to stop being an actor, which could happen much sooner than I anticipated. But is this moment in this feeling where I know, where I'm not even gonna go into the idea of the limitations of a lot of female roles but let's just even talk about the intersectionality of it where you know that you're in this role because you're a person of color and then also in kind of what Hannah was talking about also because I am an Asian person of color now, right? Like that's now has become another token box where I'm like, oh, I'm the only non-black person of color in this room and that was also very purposeful. Which is like a different idea of tokenism which I don't even know how to break down. I don't know. The reality is we just have to have these conversations because I myself don't know what that means. Like at first it's also an opportunity, right? Like for the first time I could have never played this role five years ago. And so that's something but I think the bottom line for me but what does this mean is and why I turned to behind the table who is behind that table, right? It doesn't feel like tokenism. This is my perspective but it doesn't feel like tokenism when you have a diverse creative team because there are the different perspectives and this is the whole thing and I'll talk specifically about like a band which I like the orchestra, the pit, right? Which is like a whole different conversation when you talk about the musician guild and how it's so white dominated and male dominated but it's extremely important to me every time we do an iteration of Jeanette to have a diverse band. And it's not, and at least from my perspective it's not for tokenism reasons which I think sometimes could be the misconception. It's because the diverse perspectives and realities and situations that these individuals leave is going to bring for better music. Like the bottom line is for better music. And I think that I don't want to make a whole generation but most of the time when you have diverse voices and perspectives the authenticity of why it's happening is we're all just checking each other, right? We're all checking each other. We're all bringing our own thing. And if we are continuing to create in a homogenous environment then we're not gonna be able to check each other. We're not gonna be able to bring innovative ideas and perspectives. And I think that's why I'm now shifting over to the other side of the table is so that we can create a world where the actors don't feel tokenized. And I mean, I remember when we were preparing for the O'Neill you making very, very clear it would be easy to get a band if they were all white and you were like, no, we can do better. Keep asking, nope, keep asking, nope, keep asking. There's going to be some people. There's going to be people. And you think yourself into a pickle. I at the very end I was very clear we needed a female person of color guitarist and we did not have that until a week before. But we found you, she was amazing. We found the most incredible and then from that experience she then booked a tour on SpongeBob. Broadway Touring Show, yeah. Yeah, and how can we empower and continue to create? And this is also the reality, right? Like the artistic director of the O'Neill, Alex Germagnani is a true ally to be able to... You have to also have people at the top that can support that type of decision and encourage and invite because it was also very scary. We did not have a musician until the week before for our band, but I think it's really, really important. And this is, I'm gonna kind of go off track but this is where I think it's really important of where does theater and activism lie? And I think I was not able to grow as a composer or as an artist in any shape or form if I was not surrounded by beautiful activists and community organizers through the work. Through me just shutting up and listening and volunteering, it would not have been able to positively affect it in the same way. And really actually, it was like three weeks before if we're talking specifically about that experience, I had an interview with the Chief Diversity Officer of, her name is Wendy, of New York City for the Comptroller, New York City Comptroller. And I was talking about this, like O'Neill and she was like, you will find the person, do not give up, you have to do that, it is your responsibility, right? And like nobody else was gonna tell me that. It had to be somebody out of the theater who had no idea what that entailed, no idea what that like dictation meant but then that challenged me to do better and be better. Do all of you feel like your art is activism, is a kind of activism? Do you press not every play but how does that sit with you in terms of what you do? I would say that I, there's something about, I do see that there is a paradigm of like either you're tearing down like violent structures or you're upholding them. And so, I think as a producer and director to be thinking about how is each project that we're putting on stage and every muscle of like the artistic engine going towards not only tearing down the structures but also creating and envisioning new worlds and new structures. So in that way, I would say that that for me is a broad way of conceptualizing activism. I also think that there's something about, it was the first show I had the opportunity to program in the 1920 season when we had a 1920 season. It was in Heights and it was directed by the incredible Mayadrolis and the choreographers William Carlos Angulo. Their production has been in a few other wonderful theaters as well. And that for me was like a powerful moment of living inside of essentially protest through misery resistance, through kind of like we are showing up, we are singing, we are visible, we are sort of catapulting conversations inside this community. And it was of course like politically it was just it was undermining all of the sort of daily barrage of hate and violence that was being spewed from our government and being put into practice around the country. And so that to me, I mean, that's a very, I think it's a sort of gentle way of talking about what's happening on stage and why the actual act of singing and dancing night after night was, I feel a political act and it was just absolutely spectacular. So that's my broad frame for activism. What about you, Hannah? It's a complicated question for me. And I think that part of it goes, comes down to intersectionality and like the reality of lived experience. And also like I have to be hyper aware of the unconscious bias that permeates the world that I'm in, right? So anti-blackness is just the thing it just is. It's embedded in the history of our country and the legacy of it. And so, you know, one of the differences I would say is like, and not always, but there are things that Marissa might be able to say and do that would be perceived as me having a massive agenda that would complicate my ability to do the work. So if you were to say, do I think of every piece of work that I create either as a producer or a director or a playwright as being a work of activism, I would say that's not the lens that I use for the work. I actually think it's more fundamental in a way than that. I'm gonna honor Sharifa Joka. We were at a conference and she's diversity, she's the director of equity at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And specifically, we were talking to a group of managers about diversifying the American theater. And they were saying, well, you know, the problem is like, we just can't find y'all, right? Like the problem is that, you know, there's no one really qualified that's out there. And, you know, it's a panel of like really talented POCs speaking. And then the other concept that was being put for it was like, well, we actually need like a special committee and we need special funding to go find talented POCs and women. And Sharifa introduced this idea of the keys and she's used this metaphor. She's like, you know, the first thing is actually just believing. That's the first thing, she just have to believe. She's like, you know how when you lose your car keys in your house, because you know the car keys exist, you believe the car keys exist, that you don't like go call the dealership and ask them to print you new keys or manufacture something. You turn over every cushion, you look under the blankets, you crawl under the TV stand and you find the keys because you know the keys exist. It's not that there aren't talented qualified people, it's that you actually haven't done a very good job of attracting them. You haven't done a very good job of recruiting them because you don't believe that they exist. And so the way I translate that to the way I approach every piece of art. So like when I was programming my first season for the Red, one of the journalists said, well, I see that your season is just so diverse and was that your agenda? And I said, you know what I did? I said, I wanna produce the best of the American theater. I wanna bring the most impactful, talented, innovative voices forward. And aren't we so lucky that we live in a country where the best of the American theater actually looks like this? That because I understand that excellence can show up in everybody in every color. And I don't limit myself to the idea that there might be one woman playwright that could be on our stage or there might be one Latinx playwright that could be on our stage or that if I choose that show I couldn't possibly have an all Latinx design team because you couldn't possibly put together five designers that are super talented. Like because I just don't believe that. And I choose to move from the space of believing in this concept of abundance, that if anything is a political act, it's that foundational space of believing that we exist, believing that the world is abundant and that I don't have to have a scarcity mentality and believing that I've been hired because I'm an expert in the field and that my concept of what excellence is is one that my community should see. And so I frame it in that kind of foundational sense of like, what is the best? What is the why we do theater? And how does this answer the why? And if I am as open and abundant in my belief in the why, then all things are possible. I love that so much. To me, the word abundance when we talk about who's getting the jobs, who's getting the chance to tell us the stories is actually similar to Marisa what you're talking about within the Heights that by leading with, yes, this is gonna be great. That to me is musical, that's comedy, it's romance. It's finding a way to talk about these things not ignoring the incredible trauma and the necessity of addressing those issues in our country. But also to say, and there's more to being, we had a conversation with two amazing trans artists last week and they were saying there's more stories than ours about coming out and the trauma of a family that rejects you and dying because of who you are. There we do other things. And how much drama there is in a love story that is not white, cis, you know, all of that. And all of those things, the way that theater works its best is going like joy can bowl you over with a new, a paradigm shifting new experience of a culture or a lived experience that's not yours. And using that as well as, you know, in some of the subtler ways I think about Miss Bennett and that play is done often and there's an encouragement to do that with a diverse cast. And even though that is not the edgiest political drama in American theater, you get a lot of female bodies on stage and they look very differently and it's amazing. And every time the season comes where we start seeing pictures around the country including yours, Marissa, last week, which was such an amazing cast. It just fills me with such delight because it's like, see, just do it. Just put people up there and make them fall in love and make them laugh and make them, you know, and that does its own kind of work, which I think is really, really interesting. All right, do you wanna speak to this as well? Yeah, kind of off of what you all are saying, I think this is no endorsement or whatever it may be, but it was a shift for me when I heard, when he was Vice President Joe Biden state that the American population did not take gay marriage seriously until Will and Grace, it shifted the responsibility of art for me. And I think that me personally, art is supposed to change culture. That's how we change policy. And I think whether it be on the head or whatever, I mean, there's so many different ways to be doing it, but I think that is the purpose of art. Art is supposed to inspire and change the, either make a commentary or see a world in which we wanna live in, whatever it may be, whatever that means to you, but like true escapism art, I actually don't like. And I think that that just lies in the DNA of what art means. I wanna just add actually to this beautiful comment is that it makes me think about Lorraine Hansberry that everything is political. And I go back to that all the time because everything we choose to stage is political. And so right down to Miss Bennet, you know what I mean? All of the choices around that. And it also makes me think of, I got to hear Lisa Crohn speak a year ago at Profile Theater here in Portland and she was asked about like sort of like her political body of work. And she had this beautiful, but it's not all of her plays directly deal with politics, you know, and she had this beautiful thing because she said something like, for me, the political act was recognizing that a voice like mine could be central in the play. Right. So I think that that just sort of supports what everyone's saying, that I just love that. Yeah, yes. See, and it's interesting because what you brought up, also the best quote for me about this is Toni Morrison saying all great art is political and I think it's the great, you can have art that's not political. It's not gonna be great if it's not. And I've been challenged in many talks by many mostly white people about this concept. But to me, it really does, it's exactly that. You can get fine art, but great art is inherently talking about the populace. It's talking about our civilization. It's talking about the now, the then, in what context you have to have art. But like to get great, you have to engage because it's too easy. Otherwise, easy art isn't great art, right? Also, and what's the point of why it was a point? Why then there really should not be a purpose for art? That may be a dramatic statement, but. I know you're a tiny bit dramatic. I also want to say like, I love being on this call. I love Marissa and I are in a couple of other circles of support together. And I love every time we get to engage because the other thing that I think about in terms of like, what does it mean to be a feminist? And how does that show up in our work? I think it is also about the way we amplify each other's voices and we, if we're looking for that validation to come from a system that didn't want us here in the first place, it's not gonna happen, but we can actually create our own kind of third party validation of each other and kind of create a new norm and a new standard by the level of like engagement and support and this like, again, the sense of abundance like instead of everyone trying to figure out their secret way of winning or getting through a crisis on their own, like I don't, six great brains are better than my one, so I want all six. Like I want to share, I want to borrow and it just been so wonderful. I think one of the things I love about our cohort is that there is the sense of like, we are in it together and my success and your success are intrinsically tied to each other and it's such a beautiful way to make art. Like that kind of interdependence that is core to the way that we actually create art being part of every level of the systemic parts of our business feels exciting and in some ways really fresh and new. I want to talk for a tiny bit. Thank you for that. That does make such great sense and it does give me more joy than anything just to be like, yes, do it, go, yes. Everybody go see this, everybody go see that, show up. Which feels like the entire reason of these like Zoom interviews is to be like, you're awesome and you're awesome and you're awesome too. Let's tell the world about it. But anyway, I want to talk to Hannah Avery who inspired this entire conversation. A couple of her questions, which maybe we can just kind of popcorn. She's interested in this idea of unlikable female characters because she likes to write them and she or I think probably she writes characters and then people tell her they are unlikable which has happened to me so many times. And so this idea of what even that means or perhaps we just share our ways of snipping that word out of our vocabulary or calling it out when somebody says that and being like, is Hamlet very likable? Do we call him unlikable? Anyway, also this idea, she asked about initiatives for more female voices. I think she's asking from a playwright's perspective. Perhaps the playwright's responsibility in this, how to find people who are looking for it to tell stories from female or female identifying voices which I think there are many now thank goodness but maybe you can share some. And then lastly her question about male directing, male directors of female work and she had an experience that seemed not great for her and that kind of what you're talking about seeing a lot of female plays through a male lens and how that still feels not the progress but those are her three kind of questions that she brought up that maybe we can spend a tiny bit of time talking about so unlikeability initiatives for writers of female stories and male directors and I guess it's a question of allyship too. So do y'all have any questions about that or any thoughts about that? I can talk about unlikeability because there are several of my characters who've been talked to use that word and I again use the one I just said about Hamlet being likable as King Lear very likable as Macbeth very likable. There are the Willie Lohman I mean come on you go on and on and on and the whole idea of complexity and unlikeability I think calling out the differences that we have where we would call a male character with the exact same attributes something different something wiser or something with more gravitas and if it's in a female body it's like well they're Shrail they're annoying it's the Hillary Clinton thing it's like everything that makes her talented makes her unlikable and just trying to I would say to all of you out there if this is a conversation that happens to just call out the use of the word and you know whether that's like me and I just make a joke of everything and that's because I'm not not great with personal problems like so making a joke about it calls it out and then we can be like ha ha right y'all agree great with me but yeah and I think it's just calling out the language we use to compare female characters or female identifying characters and male characters. I like to put people in the spot and like oh what do you mean by that like what do you mean by unlikable not just how it compares to men but actually like when you ask people to define it it really often comes down to like women stepping outside of the societal approved role and you know it's kind of like what I will even say like as a woman in leadership the things that made me really great as a number two to the men that I worked for are the same things that make me a great leader now but also can be very challenging for folks because it's like but you're not you know it's that confidence in a woman in a man is arrogance in a woman it's you know and so for me it's less me wanting to defend it and more like why don't you tell me more about that and just like deconstructing it down and then giving like once people say things that are you know fairly ignorant but they haven't quite heard it yet I just like repeat it back to them so did you really mean to say that women shouldn't lead organizations that women don't have leadership skills is that what you meant to say I'm gonna give you a moment to rethink that and tell me that's actually what you meant to say you know a little bit of like female characters challenging because she yeah has an idea yeah yeah any of the other ideas about initiatives for female voices or male directors I mean I've had many great male allies work on plays of mind some of my kind of go to directors are men and they certainly are I all of them would consider themselves feminists and acknowledge if they don't know a thing which I think is the best thing to be to be able to say I don't know with as much confidence as when you do know something but yeah I would say I have developed a crew of female directors because my work was often paired that way when I was younger so I honestly didn't realize the quote unquote dirt that female directors because I was always paired with them I was like wow there's all these great so and it only occurred to me when I had actors would join a room I remember this for Silent Sky and there were several actors were like I've never been in a room or rehearsal room where it's all women I've never been ever in my entire career and you're coming to a place and I was like oh I always am oh maybe that's the plays I'm writing which are all about women oh great so but yes I think it depends on the play depends on the relationship more than what you need yeah I think there's a lot of nuance in that question and I think what I love is I would say like what Ari I love what Ari said about keep going or and connected to Hanon with Hanon thing about looking for keys which is such a fantastic sort of image and metaphor which is I don't know the sense of I think if you're a writer or I guess I should say every director brings their own lived experience to the play and so each director will unlock something different and I do think probably like all of us I absolutely have had experiences where I've sat through a play and I thought and I've been like gnashing my teeth because I feel like there's something that's not a tune to what the play is offering around like a play written by a woman is offering that the interpretation of something's been lost if it hasn't been a female director of the helm I've also like I have many, many male collaborators and colleagues whose work I think is just spectacular and with the right the right collaboration and perhaps like deep running long-term respect between the pairing cracks open other things that is utterly unique to them but I do think that it's like everyone should every artist should be lucky enough to have a wide body of female directors or female identified directors who they are working with period because yeah I think it's gonna unlock the work in different ways. I'll speak to the I don't know if this is kind of like a nuance of the question but in being pretty young in my career as a composer and also being 28 woman of color composer where there's not really any and so I think honestly I struggle with even the in this safe space I'm able to really be in my body and have feel like I have authority to speak freely but that's not always the case and so especially in the beginning I struggle with being able to hold my authority in rooms and and it's a constant struggle and it's a constant battle and I'm just learning like with age that it gets better and it gets easier and so I think it's like really making sure in the choosing of your collaborators wherever you whatever role that you fit making sure that you can feel free to feel open and vulnerable because that's extremely important for the creativity. Right and it's like even at the O'Neill like a lot of I remember there were while we were in presentations nobody knew I was the composer and so I was able to go in and like audience members didn't know and so I was able to like come into conversations as if like I was just a go-getter and like hearing what their commentary was and I was like okay cool so this is a situation that is the reality this is just the reality so like let me try to use this to my benefit and I was able to get intel of what they thought of the top of act two which is a really bold idea that we do in Jeanette you know what I mean and so it's like we're the little pieces of sliver because it's also I'm not even blaming the society it's like I haven't quite found my authority in my body to hold myself and it's just gonna I have to just continue to learn that. Yeah. On the advocacy tip which I think is the third question. Yeah. You know for me it's like I just do it right so like two world premieres this year both of them world premieres written by women of color and I just programmed them because I love the plays and I thought I want it and they fit well with the season and the arc and all of that but also I found by not talking about it I don't give people a chance to label it as a thing as a you know as a kitsch thing I want actually people just to like keep showing up and for it to eventually be something you don't even think about and you know and there was a lot of conversation with like my marketing department like well should we talk about how many women directors we have and I'm just like you know let's not talk about it. Let's not. Let's just do it. I am so with you Hannah. Let's do it. It's interesting. Yeah mm-hmm. And if people figure it out if people are like oh my God. Exactly. And if they don't that's also great because actually what I'm trying to say is that this is not crazy this is not like spectacle or for show this is actually just what the American theater looks like I want this to become the norm and so I'm gonna normalize it by not pretending that it's extraordinary. I'm gonna keep producing women writers and hiring women directors and hiring women lighting designers and sound designers because fortunately at least for the next three years I can. Yeah I think we do. We just we write it we do. I mean there's many plays that just if there aren't gonna get written if you don't write them and that means those roles aren't gonna be castable because you didn't write them and the conversations aren't gonna be had because you know so I love that idea. Just do it and find the people and if the people you're around are like I don't know then those are the wrong people. Find the other people. Yes. You will find people. Ari this idea I sometimes feel like and it's embedded in the business I think there's something about the way the business created that is meant to try and keep the generative artists from fully living in the truth of your power but when you're the playwright and you're the composer and an organization has fallen in love with your piece you know you can go to the carpet and advocate for the creative teams that you want and that you think are gonna serve your storytelling and sometimes that will be all women and sometimes it won't be you know sometimes it is about finding the right chemistry for that play in that moment in that production that you're trying to build and even if they push back we push back right? Like because I've been in the position where like I'm like oh that's a great idea my 80s like no, no, no, no I really want it to be this person. Keep pushing right? And the same way you did for your guitarist and I say this to all of the writers out there all of the generative artists you and this, you know I was mentored in playwriting by Edward Albee who was totally like the playwright as king I don't care what anyone else may know like there is no American theater without a playwright so there's a little tiny bit of that that's still in my DNA but just know that like especially with new work your vision forward for how that piece needs to enter the world for the first time is so important. And just own the fact that you're the generative artist that the seed of this entire world depends on that work being held and lifted in the way that you envision it because nine times out of 10 you'll get what you want. Love it. We are closing in on our hour and I feel like we've just begun but thank you all so much. If there's any last thoughts I mean in my mind it's kind of it is feminism doesn't have to be the thing that we name or wear in our shirts like I'm doing you can, but the idea of like living it making it, being it is it making those choices all the time about not just feminism but every kind of attempt and journey towards equality and a justice seeking mind and mentality especially around art like if the arts can't do it then what are we doing? So that's what I've taken away from this maybe some final thoughts. It's just a joy to hang out with you all. Yeah, I feel. I mean truly you know it's really it's very moving to dive deep so quickly in just an hour you know and I was also taking some notes because I'm inspired by you so thank you. Likewise. We should have a sidebar conversation. Totally. Inside side drinks later. We'll do this at 5 p.m. on everyone's side. Awesome, thank you Lauren. Thank you. Thanks everybody. All right, thanks so much for watching more interviews to come and it's just such a great, great lift for my week to think about all the art that is to come during this time and after this time with all of these amazing minds at Work in the World. So thank you so much, be safe. And I can't wait to read Jeanette whenever you're ready. Oh yeah. Yes.