 which can be a little bit misleading. The work producer is part of what I do, but the best way to describe it is that I built bridges between the artistic work that we do on our stages and the discovery programs that we do with young people in the community so that they're in a constant reciprocal dance amplifying one another. And the scope of that changes from season to season, so sometimes I'm more in role as an artist and maker, sometimes more as an administrator, sometimes more as an educator, depending on what the needs of the season are. Bruce, I'm Bruce C.V. I'm the Associate Artistic Director at the Denver Center Theater Company. Actually, the theater company at the Denver Center for Performing Arts. We changed our name to some of us older people having a hard time having gone through it. I'm also the Director of New Play Development. So part of my job is normal stuff associated with the Associate Artistic Director, but I also handle the casting and supervise our new play, Work, which primarily centers around a festival that we do in February called The Summit. We just finished our tent summit. Courtney was there as our director. Hi, I'm Henry Godinas. I'm the resident artistic associate at Goodman Theater in Chicago. And I think primarily what I do is I champion Latino work and help develop our Latino audiences. I've been the director, curator of the Latino Theater Festival at Goodman since about 2003. And I had the great privilege this week of working on Kittereville and it brings the rain. It's been amazing. And I also teach at Northwestern University where I had the pleasure a couple of years ago of directing this theater's play. So it's been great. One of the things that came up on Sunday night when we talked about the us versus them or us and them came out here. Sorry, us, so guys, we need to speak on it. Okay. Thank you. It's just this idea of adult theaters versus youth serving theaters. And so part of this conversation we'll get at that a little bit about what is the truth about that and where is there perhaps more generosity flowing between those two things than we might not be aware of. So I wanna just talk a little about each of your theaters do more for and with young people in a variety of ways. I guess you can wear whatever path you wanna wear in terms of good men at Northwestern as well. But Wendy, if you wanna just talk a little bit about people's, people's history of work for young people, just so people know the work that you do. Sure. I would call us a hybrid theater. Our season of plays includes several pieces that are intended for young audiences and in addition to work for adults and that work for adults also covers a wide range from classics to new plays. We don't really do musicals at all. There are musical components of our holiday show which is a Panto in British tradition but kind of Americanized and created specifically for our resident company which is another significant feature of theater itself. Abigail Adams is our artistic director and she kind of held the position that I'm in for many years and was a tremendous champion of work for young people and started the New Voices Ensemble about 25 years ago. Which is, the New Voices Ensemble is. Is a program that brings students in from the city of Chester which is outside of Philadelphia and it is the most economically impoverished city in the United States and has been for several decades. Those students come and participate in classes and in theater making experiences with us. And it was really to bridge the divide between where our theater is situated which honestly used to be farmland and our theater is built into an old farm house and since then it has become a very suburbanized, a very affluent area but we've continued that partnership with the city of Chester. So now some of the students that started with us when they were in sixth grade, one of them is now one of my most amazing teaching artists and I dare be heard. So there's kind of a generational carrying forward and a real commitment to that kind of long-term relationship building in all of the work that we do. So my realm in our discovery has multiple programs. One of them is a free ticket program for partner high schools that we've worked with for over 20 years. Some of the programs are much newer. We started doing a lot more work with students that are on the autism spectrum and students with disabilities. That has informed our artistic work which I can talk more about later. But our commitment to work with and for young people has always been that as adults we learn as much from working with young people as they learn from us and just continuing to build opportunities for that to happen where we have young people in the room alongside senior company members. Our best artists on our stages and in our design work are also our artists that are teaching our students. We don't have a separate category of teaching artists. It's kind of, you have to buy into that to be considered a member of the company. If you're not committed to working with young people we'll still continue to cast you but to be a company member there needs to be a real commitment there. Bruce, you want to have that? Well, we've always had a high school matinee kind of series at the Denver Center but since Kent Thompson came to the Center in 2006 and I came with him from Alabama he started looking at wanting to focus on the age group just below that and I'm hesitating to name it because we've used a number of different names called it middle school that worked for a while and then we kind of went to family because we were interested and when we started doing middle school all of a sudden we found out the families were attending with their children and thought this is great or we want to kind of go with that. And now we're kind of saying youth and we're also dropping the age a little bit. When we were first there starting out there was already a children's theater in Denver and we're very aware of our role in sort of the healthy organism of Denver Theater and we wanted to make sure we weren't stepping on it and people's toes. However, now there isn't a children's theater in Denver and so we are thinking we might be moving into that and really it's about our desire to put theater into the lives of the Denver metro area, people, population at all stages of the game. And we, I have to say that we're still sort of, we've made little sort of pebbles in the pond kind of thing and seeing what the well, let's try this and see what happens there. We do something every year aimed at that audience and we're still sort of evaluating and seeing what our program will be but we haven't made it yet. Unfortunately we didn't have to do a big manifesto to get a grant or anything. So we're letting the program sort of evolve organically, I hope. One thing we certainly found out though is that it has changed for the better our view of who our audience is as an organization I would say prior to this, it was pretty much a standard regional theater thing is that we were aiming for adults and somebody else was taking care of kids and we don't see it that way anymore. We have kids in the building all the time. Partly we have a very large academy program and there's a building that has two floors dedicated to classes that are happening continuously through the year. But also the move for us to be targeting a certain age group or whatever it has up in. We can put it in a separate silo. It actually was part of our season. We scheduled it differently so that we could take advantage of schools coming but then it was part of the season ticket and we used all our design team and directors and all the production budgets were the same and so we've never kind of put it over off the lap or anything, it gets full attention and it's been interesting because a lot of the people who've been with the Denver Center on staff now have kids that are this age so it's a great thing for them that they actually get to attend with their children. As far as types of plays that we've been doing we started out working with schools very deliberately and because they're sort of the gatekeepers at least in Denver of how you get people in this particular age range and we are kind of aiming at what? Fourth grade to eighth grade, I guess. Denver Public Schools, there's a lot of different versions of what happens between elementary and high school and what it's called. Title recognition is a big part of what these teachers seem to, at this point in Denver, what works. Other pressures and I don't know if this is common everywhere like what time the buses have to get back and this is like, Finn and you know. You're most friends. Yeah. It's that story, you know. We call what we do theater for young audiences, QIA. We've actually only used that contract once. The rest of the time we used an equity contract because it just worked better for what we wanted to do with that particular play or who we wanted to cast in it and how much we wanted to rehearse it. But I blabbered. Okay, I just want to just jump in here. Some of you know this and I just want to make sure we're clear about this. So our three panels are all with Lord theaters, legal resident theaters, which are regional theaters and they all, in their unique ways, are serving leaders and that's part of what we're getting out of the different ways. Obviously we're going to leave a lot of time here for conversations so you can ask some in-depth questions about what they do, the kind of work they do. And we'll also focus here in a little bit on how they develop new work since that is our focus here right now. And we'll talk about that in a global way, new work and then down to is there a difference between developing new work for young people and developing new work for their grown-up audience? But I think for me, having worked at both of their theaters, they're very different institutions and their relationship to young people I would say is different in terms of the way it's integrated at least from the outside. I think people's thought has a long history of deeply integrating that, the roots are very deep with young people being given a lot of responsibility in terms of the playmaking and the generational thing that happens. And I see that Denver is doing that in a new way for you guys. Which may not still be something of the gap. So you're still figuring that out. You all may have some great ideas for Bruce about how they could do that. So since we're beginning of all that. So Henry, you want to talk a little bit about what you did? Oh, sure. I'm Henry today because I forgot my name. It's nice to be so young and good looking. At least for a day. Such a charm. Well, at Goodman for many, many years we've had a really terrific education community program. These days for a while now led by the amazing Willa Taylor. And that included for like eight or nine years my heading of program with what is now called the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. Working with a group of young people from the community for six weeks every summer developing skills and many pieces where they performed and presented for their community. Sometimes they were scripted plays. Sometimes they were adaptations. Sometimes they were devised pieces. It was really cool. We don't per se have a lot of producing that we do of theater for young audiences. As a freelance director, I've directed for Chicago Children's Theater including their inaugural production of the year for Frog and Toad which we produced or presented at the Goodman. Along also with a couple years later with the production of Esperanza Rising that I directed for CCT. Most recently, we've been working very closely and within the Latino Theater Festival it's always been important for me to include theater for young people or families from international productions. So we've hosted Brazilian companies, Mexican companies and generally they were non-verbal pieces or pieces that depended heavily on music and movement so that language wasn't an issue. With the exception of one Mexican piece, a popular piece that we directed that was very heavy language and we superimposed. But I also am on the board of directors of Albany Park Theater Project which is an amazing company in Chicago. It's a teen ensemble but they're led by incredible professional artists. David Finer is the co-founder, executive producer and artistic director. And we hosted them, we presented them in the festival in 2008 I think for the first time and it was humongous and so much so that we invited them back for the next festival. These were one night only presentations and then we realized we have to let more people see this so now we've been presenting them in the summer for a couple of weeks and the Goodman now has an ongoing relationship with APTP where we present them for a couple of two, three weeks every summer and this summer they're remounting a production called Beast. It's a device, they devise or I don't know how many of you know about Albany Park Theater Project or so, we've got to research this company and they're incredible. They create one show a year. They, the Youth Ensemble interview, they decide on a theme, they interview people in the community that have to do with that theme and then they spend the year devising, developing this play. And it's remarkable. So for the Goodman that's, I think that that's kind of the core of what we do in terms of theater-free and audiences. I wish we did more theater-free and theater-for-families what was great about the edge of P. Susan's play that we did at Northwestern is that's what I really consider theater for, that it's family, you know what I mean? The subject matter is not, you know, it's not super light, it's intense. You know, it deals with war and death and loss a lot of things and we had a great time producing it and I feel that that's the kind of theater that we could use more of, it's theater for families so that parents and children and young people can, you know, in a car away home talk about you know, some theater games. Great, great. So let's talk about developing new work if we can since we're all here hoping to do that ourselves to learn more about it. If you can talk about, if you can slant it towards work-for-family audiences, or for young audiences, how that fits into your programming. But I'm also interested, what are some of the mistakes that you've made along the way that you've learned from that you can pass along to the rest of us who are in those trenches as well? So anyone that you wanna talk about developing new work? We haven't done a lot at this point and we are on the verge of sort of moving into that. We really started out with high-repudiation titles of existing things like Diary of Anne Fragg and the Miracle Worker and we did the Tom Sawyer that Laura Beeson did, and what else? Coles, to give her, very successful. So we've been using a lot of material that's out there already in terms of building this audience and that's been successful for us but we know we're gonna run out of number one titles. But also we're excited about the idea because we have such a healthy commissioning program right now for our new work, adult new work, I guess we don't really call it that, but we are thinking that's what we will do. We have commissioned, Eric Schmidl, who was here yesterday, has been working on an adaptation of Frankenstein for us and I think we see that as something that we will be doing. The title recognition thing, I'd be interested, I'm here as much as a learner as a, I'm here as a learner at this conference because we do find that the title recognition thing is sort of big. If they haven't heard of what the play is already or it's not based on some book or something that's in the curriculum perhaps or something, it changes the way that it reaches the audience still for us and I hope I imagine that will change over time I'd be interested to hear what your experience is kind of doing. But commissioning is gonna be our thing. We're really struggling to shift the tyranny of the title. We really created a monster with going through a period of putting a lot of resources into the adaptation of popular stories for young people that were familiar, that were on library shelves and what we're discovering is that because of the fragmentation of ways of learning, so in our area, we have public schools, we have a lot of private schools, we have a lot of prep schools that are specifically geared toward getting those kids into college. We have a lot of home school networks and we also have a lot of cyber schools. So what we're finding is that the reading list is totally all over the place and it's not as consistent as it was I think even five years ago where we would see a novel like Goot on every single reading list for seventh graders. So looking at that landscape and recognizing that that's probably only going to continue and amplify, thinking about how can we still continue to connect with stories that are familiar and then also develop an appetite for taking a risk on new work. So we kind of have two distinct pipelines. One is what I would call, when we inherit a relatively new work. So a couple of years ago we premiered Why York's adaptation of Star Girl. If you haven't read that, it's beautiful and you should. Both the novel and the play and then right now we are going into working on Robert Shankin's adaptation of Seymour Schard, which the adult children's theater did. So this is the East Coast first production of that. So people are familiar with that book title but not that play. So what we're doing is we use our summer programs for young people. Our biggest is one that serves about 84 through eighth graders and we use the story that we're gonna have on the season the following year as our seed material to go through a devising process and then those students create a response piece that is not a retelling of that story in that same way but pulling those themes out and then using that through improvisation and playwriting to create something new. And then we invite the community and their parents to come and see it and so we're starting to build an awareness of and an appetite for that kind of work because then we try to give those parents tools to activate them to go out and meet advocates for us to other parents who can kind of explain, oh, this is what devising is because there are a lot of, there's so many people that you say that word and they look at you like you have two heads and they're like, so which music are you doing? And the other reason for going about that process is we've always been a very improvisational based company of actors and artists and also because there's a egalitarianism in that where we don't find that as much in already existing scripts where there are a handful of really meaty roles and then everybody else is in the back being a tree. We want everybody to make a meaningful contribution and to find their own story reflected in what is created together. So that's the one pipeline and then the other is, I guess the best example of this would be the recent work of the National Theater of Scotland on what we've loosely called the work project and is now shaping around this title of shift. So a couple of years ago, Abby was talking with Simon Sharkey of the National Theater and they were out of the picnic tables. Those of you that have been to People's Light, you know this like Brassy Null in between the two buildings in the summertime, the picnic tables are out and they were talking about meaningful work and what is meaningful work and what happens when meaningful work goes away or when you shift careers or when you retire and then you're kind of reinventing your identity or you're underemployed and you're seeking work. And so we went into a community engaged process of working with different communities to gather that information. My role in that was to take that same program, that summer program that I was just describing and we worked from the myth of Sisyphus, really light, fun material. And it was, we struggled. This was difficult because we were working with students that were not in a workforce. So how are we gonna talk to them about meaningful work without just going to school, which is not the same thing and what we discovered after making a lot of mistakes particularly in the first week and the kinds of questions we were asking and the improvisation prompts we were using was that they were reflecting back to us their experience of their parents' journey through work and what their perceptions were of that and grappling with things like they wanna spend more quality time with their parents but they also want the latest iPhone. And both parents need to have jobs in order to live that level of lifestyle. So how do you put those two things together and just working through those kinds of just positions and finding story through that? So those are kind of the two models that we're, that we have playing back and forth at the time when we work. That's a great thing. I wanna change this up a little bit just because of the nature of this the time of day that we're doing this but you just brought up something that I'd like to open this up to just some impressions very quickly and that is what is meaningful work? What makes work meaningful? Let's just call out things. What makes work meaningful to you? Discovering new things. Discovering new things. What else is meaningful about work? Helping people. Helping people. That it has resonance beyond selling a ticket to. Making real connections. The opportunity to crack something new open. Opportunity to crack something new open. Yep. Deem emotional connections. You want to do it every day. Forging new relationships. Change it the way I think. Okay, so that's all you have to do. This is for you. This is for you. I have a similar just mentioned there's something I want in our little playwrights and producers to hear. First of all, Wendy, it sounds amazing as a people's life is dealing and I think it's a great model and I think we will wanna know some more about that both in this panel and outside of the panel. It certainly sparked a lot of things. This idea of a response piece as a way to build interest in something is really, I think it's a fascinating idea. Where do you, how do you develop appetite from your work? Right. That's a hard question. Yeah. Appetite film. Appetite film. So another thing I wanna say is that Bruce was being a little modest and I wanted all the writers here to hear this. So Denver Center Theater is, he's saying, the guy who's heading new plays up there and new play development is saying, we're gonna start moving toward commissioning plays for young audiences. So this is a huge shift and a huge new opening so you're gonna have thousands of playwrights and players and I'm gonna do a work. But I just wanna say as a recent commission writer for Denver for a play for grownups, the thing that's so impressive about what they do and why this is exciting for those of us who also have an interest in young people is that the commissioning, I'm gonna do my version of this, you can correct me, but at least in the last few years they've commissioned four writers a year and then you go through a very healthy process which includes sometimes being part of the summit which is now a two week long development process with audiences with several different kinds of audiences, both Denver audiences, national audiences, there is no verbal feedback, it's all written feedback so the writer has power to interact with feedback in ways that's most useful to them but also two seasons ago they premiered four new plays on their season out of the 10 that they did which is a huge, huge thing and so they're onto something so I have to believe that they will be able to figure out how to do new work for young audiences as well with that kind of track record so do you see a connection there? Are you in? I mean, let me ask you another question and Will, if you commission a writer to write a play for young audiences, do you see that play being part of the summit? You know the only thing right now is logistical in terms of can we crime it into the weekend kind of thing, but yeah, we don't really make a big distinction already between who the target of the work is I have to say too, some surprises were surprises for us we started this program for middle schoolers and then found out that all these adults wanted to come with us we put out this study guide for middle schoolers and the adults were like, you know I want the study guide, you know we had to print way more if I think you guys may want it and we found out that our target audience was not necessarily what ended up being our audience which I thought was sort of great and that there wasn't in the audience's mind a big shift we just did a production of Lord of the Flies, right which we were aiming for, I don't know middle school exactly, middle school to high school and the adults were I would say as ravenous for that play as the young people were and they were going together and that was a great audience dynamic that there was that having young people and adults in the same audience that it was so great yeah and I really, what I'm seeing a lot of is that place that kind of hit that middle stage that fourth through eighth grade they are, there is a multi-generationality to that and I think it has to do with the brain of that age of the young person where there's still a playfulness there and great imagination but there's also there's wonderful cognitive reasoning skills that are developing and so when you are hitting that sweet spot I think you're also opening a wider conversation that can include parents like one of the great things about several of the plays here this week is that there's a complicated parent relationship that's happening in the story as well as a difficult relationship for a young person and so there's something relatable for both but there is something about that that fourth through eighth grade sweet spot that does, you know, we're finding many more adults are willing to buy in and go see that and they have a great sense of fulfillment from it which is delicious from a producer point of view I think parents feel like they should get their child and go see that play of that great book or whatever but they end up staying and enjoying the experiences well I mean it's, there's an interesting tag along I don't know what else to call it I don't know what happens the one thing though we are gonna do some more conditioning and talking with Janet the other night and also I'm very aware of what Linda Martzl's been doing as he had the childrens and stuff there's such a body of work out there already I think I'm gonna change you for a number of things and so I do feel like partly we just need to the compendium of all this work that's been happening over what seems like the last 20 years or maybe more than that of playwrights writing for young audiences there's a lot of stuff out there well I would also say for all the writers in the room I'm sure every writer here has a play who's looking for a second production we all, I think we all know it's a lot easier to get a commission than it is to get a second production and that's the reality of what we do so whenever theaters say what can we do I always say do a festival of second and third productions because there are so many of those out there and what also theaters forget is you actually get a bigger, a better script a lot of times if you look at what's there because as a writer you can calm down it's not the career anymore it's in some ways you get to do more of the heavy lifting the second and third time so you're absolutely right and I think there's an exciting connection to be made I wanted to ask you Henry in terms of the work you do when you work like this week you've been working on Mark's play do you approach it, this is gonna sound incredibly naive to everybody accurate let's just put it out but do you approach it any differently than you do when you're working on a new play that was commissioned by the good man that goes for adults what's the nature of the conversation that you have about a new play for your audiences? You know I really don't and it has to do with what Wendy said because first thing I learned when I started directing plays for young people then being a parent is that kids are really smart and if we think about it when we were that age we thought we were just as smart as we could be so no I don't approach it any different really I think that this week in the room we were asking the same questions that I asked about any new play during the development process so you know I have to say real quickly that at the good man Rock and Bob had this thing about not really liking to try to pick things Rock and Bob are who? I'm sorry, Bob Falls are artistic director and Rachel for executive director they really try not to invest too much in labels and boundaries and boxes and things so they kind of disregard those things and just do things that they feel are important and appropriate at any given time so while we don't necessarily specifically have a theater parent audiences program we've been producing Christmas Carol for like 30 years now and it's something that we take really, really, really seriously It's something you've directed there many times and I have, it was kind of my entry point as when I first became an artistic associate for six years after entry and you know it's really important for us so in the casting you see the city you know it doesn't look like I'm willing to bet the Kensian in London but it looks like Chicago and that's important to us and you know there are generations of families and young people that have grown up with that play and now we're bringing their children to see it and you know they learn about redemption and morality and hunger and greed and you know so it's an important thing for us you know we have our great friends, Halibutti and our friends, it's definitely happy master to be part of the adaptation of you know young adult literature so we don't need to go there as things do as we're living but we do understand and I think as a community then hopefully in Chicago we can touch on those things I will say that one of the cool things we've done through the festival is partner with the large play development center in New York City and their US and Mexico playwright exchange is an awesome thing and there are many young or plays for young people that have come through that and it's this unknown gem of a secret that you should look into if you know John Eisner, Henry Atom, but the large there are a lot of wonderful trans-negative plays for young audiences that are flying in big time. So for the writers in the room and Diane are you here? Cause you had a ride and went through the Lark playwright's week, right? I did, yeah. So just I wonder if you're being aware of the Lark in New York, it's open submissions, you can do what you want to talk about by the time you play. Yeah, the Lark is so amazing. It's like this little oasis. They don't produce work, they only develop work. They only develop work, they have a really great little writer's room, this locked room and only writers can get the post. You're not supposed to talk in there. So it's really great, like and I asked and I was like, so when I'm like back in the city can I just like come right in this room and they were like sure. So they're super, super generous and they do tons of programming. So I mean a lot of programming is for writers who are based in New York, but I'm not based in New York and I've been there twice and they're really cool and great and Andrea is like super awesome. Which is another resource again, I think when we talk about isolation and not being aware of what's out there, it is another place. Susan, you have another thing that everybody ought to be aware of if you're not, is the National New Play Network. Oh yeah. And the whole concept of rolling premieres. Which Diane also just said. But I just think once again we're looking at the second, third production, the idea that there is a developmental path. You know, you talk about what's the developmental path of the play, but there's a developmental path that happens after the premiere. So then there's another premier, another premier in geographically very different states. I think it's just been in God's hand. And it's something that I wish there were more of in TYA specifically. Yeah, I mean the thing against Diane, it's really obvious to the writers and directors and drama turfs and producers in the room and designers in the room and publishers in the room. Everyone in the room. When we talk about weekly development, we're talking about through three and four productions. We're so, we have to be so focused on getting that first production because of course, we don't know what the hell it is in itself. Can I say that? I don't know. Until we get into a rehearsal room, until we get into a pair of audiences, it just continues. So that's the hunger for these continuing life of our plays. It can feel like a real burden on writer because you're stuck with these characters who are living inside you who are dying for more voice, for more opportunity. So I do wanna open it up to the room. Remembering just we started with so this us versus them thing, I think we've talked a little bit about how there isn't as much us as them, but I want you to be able to ask these two people, how is there an us in them or where you sense an us in them if you have that to get into that conversation to sort of start to satisfy the desire to really wrestle with that idea that we talked about on Sunday night or any of the other ideas or any other thoughts you wanna have or you wanna offer about commissioning and developing new work for your audiences if you'd like to know anything? I have a, yeah, for Henry, talking about New Albany, sorry, Albany Theater Project and Cout lives in the Goodman. And I think a lot of times, and this is something that came up in 2013 right now, that we wanna figure out how to ways to do new programming where we don't exhaust ourselves, right? That it's like re-energizing, and I love the idea of the invitation for Albany to be there. And I just, I wonder if you could just speak a little bit about how you negotiated those resources or Goodman's down to buy in on that and. Sure. You know, I think that I think we're really good at knowing what we do well and what other people do better. And I think that's the case with Albany Partier Project. You know, we understand that they are doing work and addressing an audience that we wanna address, but that we don't, that we can't do within the confines of a regular season, subscription season. And, you know, aesthetically, they are excellent, you know. So they basically touch on all of our core values, community excellence, and there's a diversity, you know. So, you know, and since we got to know them through the festival, it just became a natural relationship. And the buying from the staff is easy because the staff just saw the work, saw how amazing it was, saw the difference it was making in the lives of these young people because not only do they produce incredible work, they also tutor these high school students. They guide them through the college application process. We actually fly them, pay for them to go and visit colleges and universities. About half of these students are undocumented, so we research the colleges and universities that will often financial aid. We, you know, advocate, well, I say we, because I'm on their board, but really it's the staff of Open Party Project, it's David, and that, you know, it's a very small level. And what is Goodman's interaction with that part of it? With that part of it, really none other than supporting it, you know, through, you know, donations from the staff as individuals, or just, you know, when we present them, we use, you know, we go and advocate the funders on their behalf, and that's what makes it possible, you know, for them. But no, that's all the PTP does to that. It's just that we morally support it, so we can find, you know, we have no problem, I should say that Goodman has no problem my sort of like approaching art, not sort of actually approaching our trustees or board of trustees who have seen the war or who haven't, about continuing to support a PTP, because obviously those people are, you know, high-coward people, that this little tiny theater in the Northwest Side of Chicago, you know, one of those trustees makes a huge difference to them. So in that way, the Goodman has been super generous in opening up the doors. Right? I wanted, Wendy, as you're thinking of questions, I wanted Wendy to talk about the autism issues that you're developing, facing, solving. Yeah. We have two long-term residencies that have been, one's been in existence a little over seven years, one a little over 10. And one is serving a public elementary school in Pale League called General Wayne. The other is serving a private school called the Pathway School in Norristown, which is a very, also economically depressed area, but it serves students that are experiencing physical, cognitive, and behavioral challenges. So our associate artistic director, Pete Pryor, and our resident director, Samantha Bolomo, are in residence at the Pathway School. I'm in residence at General Wayne among the Susan McKee, who's our lead teaching artist there. And we've worked with those students for a full year from year to year. And what we are discovering there, it's kind of the opportunity to be in constant laboratory mode for how individuals with those unique attributes receive theater. And what are the things that we can do as artists to make that experience more accessible to them, more enjoyable for them? So the tightest model, like the most compressed example would be in the fall at General Wayne. We use the Panto, which usually opens just before Thanksgiving. So for example, this past year, it was the legend of King Arthur. Arthur in the Tale of the Red Dragon is the title of Panto. We started with General Wayne in September and the entire fall, we were exploring that story. One of the things that our students struggle with is story sequencing and also in anything that is abstract and not concrete. So how do you take non-literal, introduce it in a literal way, and then open that up and expand it? Where they have most impacted our work, I think as artists, is in the necessary clarity in order to communicate effectively. So there is nothing extraneous. Susan has shared with me that she feels that her acting has become much more focused and dynamic because she's not wasting anything because for us, when we're with those students, if we're using anything extra, it is a distraction that could derail an entire session. So we have to lean in me. So that kind of specificity of focus is really important. And then we invade all of those students and their families, many of their siblings also are somewhere on the spectrum or they have what are called sibling echoes where they have a certain sensory processing thing that's similar to their sibling that's actually diagnosed with autism. So they come with their families to our invited dress. They become our first audience. This is hugely important for us because it gives us the opportunity to take a play that's never been seen by audience before and have it in real time and space with young people, with their parents, with the audience that we hope will come to get feedback while we're still in a place where we can make changes and investments. We are also adding sensory friendly performances to that production that keep the house lights up and have at least throughout the production gives everybody a lot more space so if somebody needs to get up and move because they need some kind of kinetic stimulation during the performance, it's totally okay to do that. They have taught us how to be better artists. They taught us how to have better hospitality. They have taught us how to be better human beings. So to have that resource built into programming has been hugely important. And I've already heard on how to serve what is an ever-growing population. So awesome. Janet, yeah. Quentin, when you're talking about you for or in residence at these schools, can you just unpack the mechanics of that? Is that, who's facilitating that? So we have great buy-in from our partner schools. Do you mean facilitating as in who's actually there and how frequently? Yes, and who's paying for it. Got it. So both programs are funded in part by the Pennsylvania Commission on the Arts and also by donors who make general donations to arts discovery programs, to that umbrella. So it does pay for part of my salary, Pete's salary, Samantha's salary, Pays-Suz's fees. Sorry, that's Susan, I will call her Sue's. And we're at general wage once a week on Mondays for about an hour and 15 minutes each day after school because we cannot go in during the school day because that would take away from instructional time. And then Pete is full-time staff member at the, well not full-time, he's a staff member at the Pathway School. So he teaches there regularly because theater has been hugely important in developing social skills. And if you're interested in the studies that we've done with speech pathologists that have done a very rigorous documentation of the impact, I'd be happy to send those to you. It was really exciting, studying we did a couple of years ago. He is there, I think, about three days a week. And then Sam is in as much as she can be with her rehearsal schedule. It's a couple hours each week, but if she's in production and she's in rehearsals every day, she's there less. So it kind of, it's a balance between their rehearsal schedule at the school and our rehearsal schedule at the theater and who's available when. So they also, they do public performances at the Pathway School. We do more private performances at General Wayne, mostly because there's not a performance space there other than a very large classroom that we work in. So. And are the projects text based or not? They are not text based. It's all improvisation. We build up to text, but many of our, especially our students at General Wayne have extreme difficulty expressing emotion. And reading emotion. Many individuals with autism have face blindness. So they aren't able to read facial expression and determine the meaning behind the word you're saying. So we work with that a lot. And that's one of the reasons the Panto is so helpful because it's a very exaggerated performance form. So a lot of it is improvisation phase. And then where we are now, it's actually on the phone with Susan last night during the playwright's lamp, which she called in a little bit about where the midst of finishing devising their story and we scribed for that a lot. So it's their words, but we're doing the actual physical writing because either their fine motor skills are not there yet or they are more comfortable expressing themselves through drawing. We do a lot of drawing work with them to tell story and then have them tell us about the drawing and we scribe that. So it's very little text until we get to the very, very end. I love a couple of things about this project. I love the ongoing relationship that exists between a specific school community and the resources that are there with the educators that spend time with these students every day. I think that's a really important piece to looking at how anybody can get into your theater. There's a lot, I imagine there's a lot of behind-the-scenes advising that they have amazing partner teachers they take what we do on Mondays and they really thread it through their whole week and I know that that's a blessing that not everybody experiences when they're an artist and resident. I also think the other thing that's resonating with me right now is the conversation that we started on Sunday night about how do we look at the submission process in a way that gets us away from verbal linguistics and I think a couple of resources that are really great is that I know that the Kennedy Center, first of all, the Kennedy Center has a great, really practical look at on-century learning performances. So I said it again. The Kennedy Center has a great, really practical, flexible booklet on-century learning performances if you're interested in that. The other thing that the Kennedy Center has is a playwright discovery program for middle school and high school curates and their submission process is intentionally and specifically really diverse. You can submit CDs, you can submit video, you can submit drawings, you can submit any kind of media to represent a play and you can also submit not just as a single writer, but as a group up to I think eight writers together as a group playwright. So in terms of broadening what this community might think of in terms of submissions, when you hear your thoughts just kind of spark my thoughts in terms of I think that community might have a lot to offer us and how we can diversify what we think of as an element. Yeah, you just triggered something else that I should share. It's happened for several years. The residency at General Wayne was funded by BSA out of the Kennedy Center and they have changed their guidelines somewhat since they were funding us, but they have I think eight different categories for funding for specifically arts organizations you want to work in communities with individuals with disabilities and the grants can be incredibly generous so that's a great resource in terms of looking for funding to start or sustain programming and also just as a resource that BSA has been really, really wonderful. So I want to connect some dots here. The theater that Wendy's a part of people's life, Wendy's sort of a continuing connection between right now and people's life. Abigail Adams was the keynote speaker at the then Bonderman probably close to 20 years ago. The artistic director that you've mentioned is such a visionary by integrating the lives of young people with the working artists. It's, they've been nationally recognized by so many awards. And also David Bradley who was the associate artistic director was directed here many times as well as the ISU. He says hi to everybody by the way. So this is purposeful in terms of us continuing this relationship of this great knowledge base that Wendy brings to us from people's life which is really one of the leading programs doing work side by side and really together. And also my observation it was one of the first times where I saw a company of grown up actors who were doing both work for young people, families and adults and there was no difference. There was no difference in pay, there was no difference in it was the thing they were working on. And I was so, that was a huge step up for me as a writer to experience that. The resources committed to our work for young people it's, they're the same resources that are committed to anything that we do. So there's not like a second tier funding. I'll see what else you want to ask. Any of you sponsor? Oh I, I just have kind of published one of the issues of the, so I grew up in the U.A. until 1812. So like going to PENTO was for me and like for many young people in the U.A. like that's your introduction to things there. And then like going back to the U.K. as an adult and going with like, you know, young adults of mine, like experiencing that as an adult figure maker now is fantastic. But I know a lot of like, people from the U.K. like the PENTO might be the only sort of more family friendly show that they do. But I have some colleagues that work at York Theater Royal and they talk about their PENTO issues of being like, for many people in their community like the only time they'll come to their theater. Yes. And that's okay. Like they acknowledge, they may not forget but that's a good thing. And it seems like the sort of success of those productions is, well, like it's incredible. And yeah, I think it's just like that, that history, like I'm always kind of surprised that it hasn't sort of taken up so much. Because I think there's so much about that. That it'll, in addition to being family friendly, sort of this great sort of subversive history and like the use of drag, like having them people see that in real age, I think it's so cool and exciting. It's a hard, I have one foot on each side of the fence because on one hand, a PENTO, is everything that Coleman Jennings and Susan Zeter taught me not to do. Just three points as a theater maker. And then on the other hand, it is a low risk entry point for people who have never experienced theater before or that it does become their holiday tradition. And so I'm grateful for the positive things that it's done for us. Yeah. I kind of want to return to what Susan said and maybe get some more responses from you about the idea of rolling world for years and how I am taking that they're not really being, it's not really being applied so much to TYA. And I was wondering what you guys could like, speak on that. Is that anything like, is it, does that seem like a cool idea that anyone's radar as like a possibility for, you know, working with TYA places, place to adult place? I've been on their ambassador board for three years, which you don't get a stash or anything like that. I think it's another thing. Is that a good idea on the board for a national level? Yeah, you don't only have to do rolling world premieres through that, but just I guess they do fun by it. But there's other people do rolling world premier type concepts without. It's a good question. I don't know if they ever have had a TYA script, you know. I don't know, but I think it's terrific. The concept is such a good concept. They just, I think us, Dallas and a few other large theaters have joined NPN this year as associates or something. We're not quite sure what that entails exactly, but I would see no reason why, I still think there's a big dividing line between, oh, kids are gonna come see it, adults are gonna see it, really. I feel like it's an opportunity that we just need to make happen. And it may not always look the way that we think it does. In other words, it doesn't necessarily need to be good and Denver and people's life. Susan, I'll use edge of pieces, for example. I think the university world, the academic world, has a lot of possibility for us in this way. At Northwestern, we have this huge student theaters in two moments. And within that, there is a very established theater for young audiences called Purple Crayon Players. And now there's even a splinter group. It does specifically, you know, I went to a piece this fall that one of my students was in for young people on the autism spectrum, and it was the most moving, remarkable, just can't even talk about it because I'll start crying, but you know, when we did edge of piece, Susan, I don't know if you should speak to this, but we did it at Northwestern, then I think it went to Austin, and then eventually you say, I don't know. Yeah, well, basically what happened again, especially with the big shows, it's often very hard to get it onto that production schedule. So Linda Hartzell, in an incredible act of grace, actually said to Reeves, and to you guys, can do first production, you know, and we will actually call that, you know, premiere will be when Seattle finally can do it, but because they couldn't put it in their rotation early enough, they, we were able to do that in conjunction with Northwestern and in terms of the AATE conference that was happening at the same time. So there was that kind of urgency. But then when we finally did get the time to be able to do the actual quote unquote premiere, it was a co-production between University of Texas and Seattle. And what they were able to do then is that Linda sent five equity actors from Seattle to Austin, and they augmented with the rest of the cast from the MFA program, including the famous Fran Dorn, who was the head of the acting program, the MFA acting program, and it was a wonderful coming together of student actors at the top of their training of the equity actors from Seattle and, you know, the truly co-production that was fabulous to be able to list together. I think one of the things about this rolling premiere, I mean, I don't think we should make it, the number of playwrights in this room, don't make the assumption that the MFA network is not for you, you know, they can't do it if you don't send them. So if you don't knock on the door. I'll take that a step further than you say, because, for instance, at Goodman, we have, in terms of new play development, we, through Tony Palmer, who's our fabulous director of new play development, we had something called the Playwrights Unit where we, she has four playwrights, generally thought of as local Chicago area playwrights who develop the play throughout the course of a year, you know, and they work together every month, they read from each other's scripts, and then they're given a professional director, a professional cast at the end of the year, to do a workshop and a stage reading. I mean, it's really a great process. And then there's new stages where there are submissions and we do every fall readings and workshop productions, and so I would say, don't assume that those sorts of new play development programs, you know, aren't interested in your play for young people or families. I think, you know, don't wait to be invited, and say, just go. Crash the party. Yeah, crash the party, totally. I just want to cede us back to the 2013, right now, gathering in Tempe to say, we spent a day and a half with Jason Lowe with who was the former executive director of NNPN, talking about how we might be able to create a similar kind of model or infiltrate that model with theater-free audiences, writers. So we did some beginning kind of spade work about that. And part of why we wanted to do some us and them in this conference was to start to unearth why, what are some of our barriers to keeping at that? So I think as an industry, we want to keep focused on this. How do we build up more momentum for the kind, either rolling premieres or co-productions, whatever you want to call them, collaborations between academic and professional. But how do we keep the energy moving about that conversation? And part of it is, don't, what Heather said, don't wait to be invited. I think that's probably the greatest way we can parse it. Even in Carolina. It was interesting for us because we, there was a funding opportunity that came up from US Airways about six or seven years ago, maybe a little longer. But they just put out an RP and said, we want to do something special with the arts. And they didn't really know what it was. And so we submitted a proposal with People's Light and Charlotte Children's Theater to do second productions of world premieres where we would share them. And so we did, why you're premiered, getting your baby at People's Light. So we did the second production. We premiered Dwayne Hartford's, Tell Two Cities, which then went on to People's Light. Charlotte didn't really play well. They just collected the chat. But it was a fascinating, and funders sometimes don't know what opportunities are out there. And they were, US Airways was looking for hub city things, but it turned out to be a great experience for us. And we collected a lot of money from it. So it was great fun. It was great. Yeah, Carol. I'm looking for the hope that the sea change that's happening with Lord theaters, because obviously the representatives who are here are doing it. And I think we've heard the glowing stories of significant action in your communities where the work with young people and for young people is not second class. It's not ghetto-wise. So I'm wondering about board meetings. Our fellow board members who are not in the room noticing, are they paying attention? Because it's not only good work, it's also good for marketing. It's good for all those connections that need to happen as a sample audience. I'm just gonna respond quickly, Carol. Here's the oxymoron about Lord meetings. Who's at them is the managing directors. Who are wonderful, but they're doing collective bargaining conversation, not pro-permint conversation, okay? They are doing some pro-permint conversation, but principally through marketing and development. So it's much more, there's some big oxymorons in how meeting structure functions. True. I just got back to more. Yes, she did. This is our temple manager, Jane Robinson. Thank you. I will say, because we've just been on the phone with several caucus conversations because the TYA Ethnic Contract Development Association in June. And there were a lot of Lorde people on that phone wanting to make it easier. Wanting equity to make it easier for us to Lorde theaters to do more. Which I do think in a way does make the programming for my managerial point of view. So yes, the conversation happens a lot. That's helpful, right? One more. Yeah? As a writer for Atlantis is primarily, I was really, I love 100% of that, you know, don't wait for an invitation. However, there are a number of opportunities that explicitly go hit it. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you might be in advocacy to change that and to say it really doesn't need to be. Sometimes I actually contact an opportunity. And they said, well, sometimes it's not that kind of play. But you submit it. And I wonder if there's a problem. Sometimes I think you could just don't tell them it's for young audience. Yeah, yeah. Just submit it as a play and see what you get. You know, Mark and I were actually talking about this earlier this week and, you know, first of all, never take no for an answer. You know, so when I, you know, I advised Mark to use to, when you come up against something like that at a big, you know, Lord theater, a big institution, look for an advocate, look for a champion within that institution that might be open to your work, you know, or to that need. And have them advocate on your behalf, you know. That's what we do at the Goodman, the associates. We go to Tanya, we go to Bob, we rock and we go look, you know. That's my job. That's what I've been doing. You know, sometimes I feel like I get paid to be frustrated, but that's my job. It's to just, I get paid to put my fist on the table and say, no, we need this, we need this. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But what's cool is they made me to do that. So find those people and say, look, you know, in the instructions or in the rules that says no TYA, but this is an awesome play. It's, you know, if you frame it this way, could you do that? And I think it's a matter of labeling, too. I mean, I think if you don't send it, you don't say, is it okay if I send this? It's TYA, you know, I was struck, I wasn't a human, I was glad this was the most recent time. But the time before I was struck at that, how many plays in that human festival had a young person at the center? You know, are they defined as TYA? No, but, you know, it was like half had a young person at the center and nobody was calling that TYA. And that's not denying our profession. I think it should work, I mean, I think ultimately my dream will be when we have those, that category disappears. Because we aren't saying we're different, we're special. Where every theater would automatically include the youngest and the tiniest butts of seats among their audience. And you know, I was said when I taught in a children's theater program, that my dream would be the day that there wasn't such a thing. And it's not gonna happen until every single theater in America embraces the totality of the age range of their audience. I've been, I'm getting that signal but I wanna say one last thing to Reina, who I don't know that we really addressed it because one of the us's and them's was that sense of I'm at the beginning of my career and there's all these people who already have the ins. And I think it is difficult. I just wanna acknowledge it's difficult to make it on your own. But I think you have to, you're doing it by being here this week. You know, it's so much about relationships and about building relationships to people's work. And so the conversation has started for you and your play and you just have to keep that conversation going and invite, invite your theaters to do your flow. Thanks everybody for spending some time. Thank you. We're from back in 1030 and we have a break. There's some snacks in the lobby and coffee and water.