 Hello everyone. Are we ready? We are ready. Great. Hello and welcome back everyone at the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation. Can we hear you out there? Colleagues out in the theater field online and everyone, friends and family and colleagues who may be watching. My name is Andrea Asaf and I am the Artistic Director of Art to Action and very proud to be a co-host, co-presenter of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation with Pangea World Theater here in the Twin Cities in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis folks, thank you for hosting us. Make some noise. I want to let folks know that we'll be live streaming another panel. I do think we have a little bit of sound feedback that we're working on. But we're going to be live streaming another panel on Friday that will feature Twin Cities artists in the theater of color, Twin Cities Theater of Color Coalition and also partners in philanthropy that are working to shift equity or the situation of inequity in our field. That will be on Friday at this time, through 3 to 5, right here at the Mid-Center and with HowlRound online. So we're super excited that you are all joining us and that we get to have this conversation at the institute featuring some of our international guest artists who are here in Minneapolis with us this year. And I also want to acknowledge that we are on Indigenous land. We're on the land of the Dakota and Lakota and Ojibwe people and that all conversations between nations, first nations, are also international conversations. I'm going to lift that up. And I'm thankful that we have one of our artists visiting from Canada is also an Indigenous artist, Barbara Kane, who you'll hear from in a few minutes. But we have this incredibly global panel today and we have framed this as what we're simply called global voices, artists responding to a shifting world. And one of the things that all of us have in common on this panel is that we're all living in contexts that are in some sort of shift or transition. Perhaps we always are, but this sort of moment seems particularly acute. And so we've invited these artists to talk about being artists in shifting times and contexts and about their aesthetics, their practices. And what we're going to do is hear from each individual artist about their own practice and the context in which their work happens. And we're going to hear for about five minutes from each person. And we'll be translating to and from English and Spanish with Lucero Muriam and Adlyn, who you'll meet in a moment. So we'll give a little excerpt time for translation. And then after we've heard from each artist, then we'll kind of look for the themes and connections that are emerging in the conversation and just have a dialogue about that. We want to inform our live audience, really fabulous artists who are in the room, that we're not going to take questions live. However, if you have questions, we have some folks around the room. You can see them waving if you're here, who will take written questions. And so they have post-it notes, and if you have a burning question, just make it somehow visible or known that you would like to write on the post-it note and they will deliver those up to us during the panel. And if we have time, we'll take some of those. And if we don't have time on our live stream, we can address them in our institute process together later. So I'm going to invite each artist to introduce themselves and tell us all a little bit about their work and context. And we are going to begin with Margot Kane. My name is Margot Kane. I'm pre-soto from Alberta, Canada. And presently I reside in Vancouver, Canada, the home of the Kosedish peoples. That's the territories that I live on in Vancouver. I am a performing artist. I was raised by a non-native family primarily. I was given up for adoption by my mother, the middle child of three children. She was encouraged to give me up by the mother superior, by the church. She was Catholic. Thankfully I say I was adopted by a man who was not religious, a blue-collar worker, a family that had immigrated, hard-working people, caring people. And my stepfather was married to my auntie. So when I was very young, my aunties would come and visit me from my native family. And so I always felt very loved. And when I went through any kind of identity problems later in life and racism within and without our family, I still knew I was loved. And I think that has carried me a long way through all the struggles and the challenges that I've had. I was always a storyteller, always a singer, a dancer, always making events happen. I'm a natural producer. So I had my first dance company when I was 11 and I created new events in the neighborhood. And I was a very active child. In high school I really began to move into theater, singing, dancing. And I was always called upon to do something, whether it be in the musical or sing with the big band or be in the drama club. And so I enjoyed developing all of those skills and learning and playing with my fellow actors and players. But as life happens, out of school and into the world and the professional world, I found that my first works that came for Indigenous people went to white actresses. So I got to play The Understood. I found that through the first years of my professional life that I was able to play a lot of different characters. I was young. I did children's theater. I could choreograph. I could choreograph the town musical. I could do all of these different things. But when I was called upon to play in the only Indigenous play that was being presented and that we knew of in Canada, we had to see it read a joke, I had to do my research around the peoples, my people. My people who were moving into the cities, living on skid roads, struggling with social services, not finding work, having me marginalized. As I did that research, I connected with my people and all of the social workers and crisis workers and youth workers that were working with our peoples in the city. And then from then on I was connected to my community in a very profound way. I am a senior artist in my country as a Native woman. I have a company called Full Circle First Nations Performance and we're in our 26th year. It's been a slow journey, a sick festival for the last 18 years. Because our funding was very small, it was a place where we could gather all kinds of different performance, all levels of professionalism and present a stage for them and give them an audience and bring our people into the theater or into the very spaces that we use. We're very conscious to build our own audience. We weren't so concerned about the nominative theater going audience. We are interested in telling our own stories in our own way with our own people directed and produced by our own people. Recently we have been faced with a challenge in our country with the emergence of a Pebecois director, white director, male, Robert Apage. Very well known, some very good work, but always telling the story for us. The show is called Canata. And just like Swayne, which is just erupted into the National Press, where he's telling the story of black people with no major black characters on stage, he's doing the same with our story, working with Teatro de Soleil out of Paris. The indigenous Francophone community rose up, wrote a big letter. Recently this is within the last 10 days, everybody is mobilizing. The press is out. We are tired of people telling our own stories for us. Coming and doing their research with us. They don't listen to what we have to say. They mislead the press by saying they're consulting with us. But they're really not paying attention to what we're all saying. Whose lens, whose artistic lens are you seeing this production through? Where are the indigenous voices within the creative cast? Where are the indigenous associates? Associate directors or designers or people? Where are the indigenous people within this show? Because we, after all, are the first peoples of this land. And in our own country, we have been continually denying the space and the resources to tell our own stories. I just want to close by saying that we're now mobilizing the Anglican indigenous community. It's an incredible time for us because we're a big country, like the US is and like many other countries. We're trying to connect to each other and move and work together towards equity for us all and opportunities to work and meet each other across the countries. So I'm very excited to be here to share this story of these ideas with this group of people. And thank you very much for your words of support and encouragement and your welcome to this land. Your due way to COVID people's lands. Thank you, Margot. I want to acknowledge that Margot has just recently received the Order of Canada which is a very high honor. And also I wanted to say that I think I can say for all of us that we are very happy to have the opportunity to stand in solidarity with the work that you're doing in Canada. And this is also an issue that is erupting and very relevant in the United States across multiple communities of color right now. And so it's a great conversation to be having and people will tend to drop the institute. And so now I'd like to pass the microphone to Lucero, Miriam and Adelaide Caldera. So we're translating and allow them to introduce themselves. Hello everyone, my name is Adelaide Caldera and I'll be translating for Lucero I'm an office manager at the Yellow Theater. Lucero is very happy to be here and thanks everyone for being here especially in the simple times that we are passing through in the Netherlands. So when I translate I will be speaking as if I was her and I would say exactly as I see it, as I think it, what she's saying. It's a story from almost 40 years. I'm from Mexico I came to Nicaragua when I was only 19 years old and very clearly I see a lot in the power of fiction and I was in Mexico having a documentary about the Nicaraguan situation in 1979 when the people were fighting against the Somoza dictatorship. I saw the face of the woman in the documentary with a flag at the time of the church celebrating the fight against the dictatorship. She said, I want to be there that's my calling. I wanted to go in search of Utopia and so she did. Two months later I found the theater that I'm currently in which is the Pusto Fino Garay. She founded the theater which she now creates which is the Pusto Fino Garay Pusto Fino Garay which she makes to this day. When she arrived in Nicaragua in Mexico before she came to Nicaragua she wanted to be an actor. She realized when she got to Nicaragua that the reality of what was happening was so important that she decided others to be on stage instead of her. So when I became a professor of art called acting 40 years have passed she has developed hundreds of actors through her theater. Only in this world by the grace of God there's somebody here from the same theater that she founded. Please stand up. At that time in Nicaragua theater was on the streets. There were no real stages, real theaters were performances being held. In 1986 we founded the first theater space theater stage in Nicaragua particularly for performance. Since then it has had permanent performances in theater and in film. So there was not a constant to have people show up to the theater or to a specific space to see theater so we built those audience. All this within the context of the revolutionary process of the 1980s. So our aesthetic of that time was with that revolution of that sense of festivity and celebration. The collective methodology was more of a collective vision a collaboration within the people responsible. In 1990 the San Luis National Movement they lost their election and history changed switched over late. They all disappeared around 10. Groups, groups of theater from 300 groups of theater theater groups only 10 were left. Very few were left. The groups that were left were the ones that were able to build audiences and waves to gain income. Then she became a cultural promoter. Then they founded International Theater Festival International Theater Festival. Since there was nobody to direct the side of the Shibuya. 16 years of neoliberal governments passed in a situation where we were orphaned and they were very sad and so then our aesthetic changed. An aesthetic that they call less is more. An aesthetic that is more contained more intimate but yet more powerful. Since the last couple of years we were very happy with this type of aesthetic of less is more but we were losing audiences. So we combined the best of the week of our aesthetic from the 1980s with the most current aesthetic of less is more. We worked with an aesthetic that we called aesthetic and citizen participation. So they have developed this aesthetic that is called aesthetic and citizen participation. So a new aesthetic that incorporates citizenship and participation. In the last few years since there was no real theater work or plays that were talking about the reality that we were living she decided to start writing also. And at this moment we're living a crisis in Nicaragua where there's a lot of dead a lot of people leaving exiled lots of suffering and then we're living a crisis in Nicaragua where there's a lot of dead a lot of people leaving exiled lots of suffering and then two months ago she has received death threats to her person and to the theater and she was in Mexico for a month to stay away from this crisis and she has decided to return she has decided to return because she has made a compromise with her group in Nicaragua and this moment that we are living in right now is also modifying our aesthetic this very moment. All this to say that that what is being lived in Nicaragua has influenced all the work that we have done over the 40 years that they have been in theater so whatever is currently happening whatever they are living that's what they incorporate into their work. The most fundamental compromise that they have for the people so the big compromise that the theater and her herself has towards her group towards Nicaragua is to always speak about the reality that is happening in Nicaragua that is happening with people people who are dispossessed people who don't have a voice that is their mission. Thank you very much. The whole thing about translation I want to just clarify from miso also means promise or commitment in Spanish and just to clarify that compromise and I also want to just appreciate and acknowledge and be thankful and grateful for the courage that it takes to do your work and I think for all of the artists on this panel and this moment that you're moving through and so thankful that Lucero and everyone on the panel is here with us now. I also want to say I've had the honor of performing in Lucero's festival and it was one of my shining moments in my life as a theater artist and I'm so glad that you're here. So we're going to pass the microphone she's already got it and to hear about your work. Thank you. My name is my name is and I am from Damascus, Syria I was born and raised in Damascus and I lived in the United Arab Emirates for a little bit that's where I got my undergraduate degree and that's when I decided that I wanted to pursue a degree in theater directing and I came to the United States in 2012 and I've been living in the US since then and I'm actually I went to school there and I'm an artist in residence and I'm going around the country doing fellowship and internships and more training and skill sets that I'm interested in building my skill set and so on You might want to turn my microphone off while the panelists are speaking. You can't as you're living in the United States now in 2018 with the Syrian passport with a hijab disappear as much as you wish to sometimes so that's a daily question for me and what that means and a daily decision and a lot of the time I think what is next and of course I dream of the day I can go back to Damascus and I know the time but I want to share with you some of the pieces that will come up and how you can answer one question Alright we're just going to pass this microphone and it's so great to have you here and I'm going to pass the microphone to Dohozo Hey, hello everyone Hey, I'm Alain Dohozo I am from South Africa I'm from a little village called Guam Dayani I have no idea what that means but it's called it's a little village of the rural outskirts of the province of Wazirinatal and I work for the University of Wazirinatal and have been working there since 2008 and before that I did freelance work a little bit as we all do we grow up dreaming it's really anxious knowing there's going to be issues in the news and we're going to be famous and everyone's going to love that and we're going to be rich and we're going to be the nation to but when I was at university I discovered that there was more to theater than just entertainment I discovered other functions to theater like education, social development advocacy etc etc and at some point I made a choice to go into the teaching phase and I said I always knew I was going to be a teacher and I did not like that there were lots of elements of truth in what you said I know you better than you know yourself and so I embraced the calling to the teaching space without letting go of the other dreams so over the years what I've learned to do I've integrated my interests into the teaching phase so if I want to go and work in communities I make sure that in the theater development theater studies module my theater space where young people then get to go into communities as part of the studies that they are doing so I continue to be engaged and work with a mentor and young people and they develop their own craft and learn in the same way that I learned our multi functions of theater so one of the things that Ender wanted us to talk about was this idea of shifting times and as a nation we are definitely shifting a case to kind of accepting because we are a young democracy and we were just calling nicely making baby steps and for the Nelson Mandela who is currently in peace today would have been a hundred years old today and to honor the legacy of Nelson Mandela in whom we became as a nation and what he has contributed to was introduced to us as the rainbow nation and was a very strong concept when he was alive however that promise of a rainbow nation has been eroded in the latter years you know there is a sense of doubting the rainbow nation of questioning even the legacy of Mandela and his contributions so it feels like our nation is divided again you know we were building nicely to this finding it was not just a rainbow nation it was learning to become a rainbow nation and different narratives and challenges to a point where politically right now there is a lot of there is a lot of this politics that we meant between parties and I guess there is always a camera in every country but it's also infighting within political parties so the political parties themselves are not important I agree about the way forward for who we are as a nation and as a result you see the residues of their attention affecting the nation and though these faces where they can be communicated you see it on twitter you see it on social media and some of racial tensions have been popping out again but also gender tensions there has been a lot of gender tensions in our country and a lot of slaughtering of young women there has been happening quite a lot so there seems to be a sense of anger towards each other and that I am in anger towards each other so it feels complete it feels like we will be doing that again what's going on what are we going to do how are we going to do it as soon as we become and so for me again these dialogues these complexities find their expression in the teaching space because that's where I am and one of the spaces in which that happens is the directing space where I mentor young people as directors and I chose the angle of adaptation because I didn't want to impose on them in terms of one material they use I didn't want to choose a particular direction so it's the second year of doing that when we first did it I said an adaptation of a classical taste and it was interesting that young people they chose in cocaine there was there was a there were two chicks here I can't even remember which one and that was curious so this year I decided to and say you could choose any text from anywhere in the world it could be a theater text it could be a prose it could be a poem and it's really interesting to see the shift in the themes that young people decided to work on so the agenda came up quite strongly with two plays one of the plays that was adapted you know looking at the power dynamic of power within gender and this anger that is going on between men and women in our country so the one director wanted to look at that the other one was Dosa Keshangir who colored the girls who were considered so sad who were employees enough and in the sense of reclaiming the text those texts were reclaimed for their context there was a lot of translation but also reimagining the scripts completely and creating a church scene where there's no church scene it's just a poem but the characters find the aesthetic that is unique to their South African context in location and somebody did come into one woman's show and trying to look at the voice of the woman that has been suppressed for so many years and she never seems stories of women being slavery stories but also thinking about this woman whose heritage is in Africa but now finds herself in another land um yeah et cetera et cetera which is what are we going to do how will we do it and I think those are questions that the United States and our current political context resonate very strongly for us here as well I have now learned to pass the microphone to someone who is also a great honor for me to share a panel with because his critical writing as a scholar the drama turned in on his heredic profoundly influence on my development and my understanding of issues, such as appropriation, when I was learning how to be an artist, and so I think it's a great honor to sit next to you. Thank you Andrea. It's a great honor to be served on your struggles. I would just absolutely respond that you need to Marko. And that Marko is talking about this ongoing crisis, negotiation with the director of this representation of a play around the Indigenous, where the Indigenous are accented and the Indigenous are erased. You know, it takes me back to 1977, when my intercultural journey began. Now, you know, you guys may remember this. In 1977, the seven-meter room had this huge production. It wasn't marvellous, it was ten years later. This is a production called the EVE. And EVE referred to an African tribe in Uganda who, at that point in time, were an endearment state of music. They were literally killing each other. They were mutants of a technical relation from their own natural habitat. And a very controversial and important anthropologist, Colin Turbull, had written an anthropological study and wrote a kind of an adaptation of this anthropological study. Now, in this intercultural pitch, as it became the cause of celebration and the global circuit, it was appalling, actually, because only the anthropologists' characters spoke the language, which was either French or English. And the rest of the character who were made up of international actors based in Paris followed, at least for the number of languages, at least for Jewish, basically. And this was seen as some kind of a great, you know, directorial strategy, you know. And it amazed me. In 1977, when I saw this a little later in 81, actually, in La Maman, I was appalled by this representation, you know. And it's so steeped in the kind of inferiorization, they don't have the language they can't think of, you know, the perimeter, etc., etc. So, listening to Marvel, I'm not saying that this is what is going to happen with the departure, but, you know, my first intervention, when I considered something like, hey, has it exist right? Or has it exist sometimes? It's a very strange question to be asking in the theater that we have asked that. This is right, I think, most of our truth in the middle of about, you know, is an artistic example. This is right, you know. And I find that it's essentially the more things seem to change, the more they remain the same. And it's the same which is reinventing the wheel, you know. So, I'm not going to critique of this kind of interculturalism. It's based on the kind of universalism, for example. It's based on the kind of right that I have a right to represent other people, because I have artistic truth. I am an artist. I am an artist as an artist. I have every right to do whatever I want, and to tell them with questions related to fortune or questions of representation. Today, we are not living in that world. We are justifiably upset about these things and I know you about it. And I think what we can be positive about today is that there are people like yours, Marco, and many other views that are not going to take the shit in long enough. And we cannot fall back on these humanist platitudes, which are actually very, very arrogant kinds of assumptions of representation. So, I mean, just to be more positive here in the school, we have gathered here from many, many different backgrounds. And apart from the interculturalism, a very important asset for me in the country is the interculturalism, which is the differences that exist within particular regions. So, you may be forthcoming, many of you may be coming from the United States. Let me know if you are an art and soul. It's not quite the same thing as being in Boston. And it's not quite the same thing as being in Minneapolis, you know. And within Minneapolis, you know that there are different kinds of communities that are interculturalist. I've always felt that this is the most important thing to think about, which is the little differences. Not just the big differences, but the little differences because they don't pay attention to the little differences. They're likely to face them and explode. So, the thing is, here we have an opportunity to readjust both the little differences and the bigger differences. We have a larger role in the scenario and an annual role in the elevator. We're all facing the same problem. And the problem is right to be in the territory, and it's on the rise in just not every part of the world. Thank you. So, what are we going to talk about? And what can we in the theater world really do about this? This is what I would like to share. The question that we're all facing across all of these various contexts, including the United States. And so, I'm going to try to tease out and pull a few connections and just invite dialogue around these ideas that we've heard so powerfully. One is the way that we are still living systems that perpetuate the process of colonialism and colonization. In so many ways, whether we're talking about the adoption system or the level of anthropology, in dehumanizing people, or education, sometimes education would be liberatory and sometimes it could also be a testament to people. And that the theater can either play a role in continuing the process of colonization or in playing a role in the Kennedy columns. And I think that's something that we've been talking about, we've got a conversation about at the Institute that we can continue talking about. And this question that Lucero raised around powers that exchange with the time's demand, with the time's change and the time's demand that we change and I think what Jozo was saying was also seeing that it changed because it just happened once in a lifetime and happens many times in our lives as artists. So how do we respond in our artistic process and our aesthetics change as a result? And also this question about ethics and what is our responsibility and the ethics that we have as artists and as producers or presenters around representation. The U.S. is also struggling with this very strongly. I was recently involved in a protest with the answer in the Broadway remount over at the community to be concurrent with the TCG conference that resulted in what led to a very powerful statement of theaters of color coming together to basically say what Lucero said was we're just not going to date it anymore. We've got to hold each other and account to that thing to whether we are continuing to call on the station or trying to engage in deep conversation. And so we have on the floor, I would say, these questions of representation and how our aesthetics change especially in times and contexts and our ethics and responsibility as artists. And I would like to just open it up to you with a way to continue the conversation. The idea of representation, I often think of the international artist who is in the last year of poetry to come to offer something to the world of culture and I often think of the idea of who say in hearts that don't show me any Saturday, show me your worst Saturday or your best Saturday. And I'm afraid that when we're doing that on the internet or in audiences seeing that country through that work it's becoming every Saturday story. So in other words, if I'm operating a story about Syria to Syrian audience I'm usually exposed to everything I want to say which should be analytically or politically to change it. And I'm worried that that's going to be coming to the idea that is Syria. And that worries me so much to an audience for this viewing of the country or our culture through that work in the idea of generalization and for example, there is the idea of an honor-killing story on stage. It's on stage because of the same exception but it's taken as a norm. In the same way everything, different American audiences going to different American artists is going to the Syrian audience of America and they put the story about gun control in schools and we already have that assumption that that's an American struggle to hold a dirty guy and say, the idea of coming from an international perspective and representation from that world I agree sometimes the work that comes with I agree with the story about the Muslim who is not the terrorist I agree with the story about the Syrian who is not the victim or the enemy I directed this play recently I offered myself to try to do a classic work and I asked a question why and I don't think it's because I don't want to collaborate with any artists I think I'm desperate for finding that with the voices and the stories that I care about so much because I feel like I'm the director in one leg of the chair and I'm trying to understand like somebody don't focus but I directed the play and it's such a great play to share a refugee story where refugees are empowered or resilient they are not victims waiting for savior and they're not enemies there's no expectation that they are bad until they hook otherwise and therefore we have to issue a ban because we can't get the right cable work from our country to prove that you are not a terrorist because it therefore works to mean you are a terrorist unless it goes otherwise meanwhile we try to run for survival too I'm sorry, I want to talk to you Before you represent anything you've got to be able to enter the space so we're also really talking about the rights of the mission and a lot of institutions this day I think have closed doors so most people coming from the minority might return to the backgrounds but they just walk fast in the theater without ever feeling that they have the entitlement to enter it On the question of representation on the one hand there's stereotype I think it's pointed out but today for example the refugee crisis the new dramaturgical territorial strategies where so-called real refugees are now being incorporated into the missile center it's very common in Germany for example and I had a very discerning experience but on the one hand you can see how democratic all of this is where the biggest theater being a big German theater festival you've got 25 refugees on stage so-called real refugees integrated into the missile center at the end of the day there's a standing ovation the refugees are taking their vows to everybody else at the end you go out into the lobby and there's a little discussion and there are no refugees sitting at the table so they're on their own side and they are once again being represented now of course they have the challenges that the people are learning that they see so when I saw that I said what has really changed in allowing them to enter that space and then incorporating them into the league but at the end of the day they are not allowed to speak about what are the experiences for them and what's the whole thing So I think I've been seeing for example one of the students who did an adaptation of in The King's Horseman by Ole Soinka it was very intentional he turned it into a two-headed wanting to look at multi-generational relationships with two fathers and sons and it was very intentional about you doing the entire play in Mrs. Wu and completely rewriting their speech and representing narratives of young boys in their dislocations they are trying to reach out to the next generation and understand what it is to be a man and a father and a son and how to pass legacy on et cetera et cetera what was very interesting for me is somebody who comes from a different generation to them in the process as I was asking what about the old games are they going to understand I'm now came king now who I'm worried about the white old games that's who I'm worried about and it was like no man who be who now it is who I'm worried about because this is the story that I want to tell these are the voices that I want to represent so I find what's happening with young people in South Africa is that they are putting themselves at the center of the conversation and they are saying let everybody else be uncomfortable while I am at home with the people that are coming to me and the ripple effect of their presence the audience then when the performances happened there were scenes where the boys would start doing the scene and go into a song and the audience would just join me without being invited to join him because they feel they are being represented on stage they feel like the stories they are seeing on stage are about them and therefore the theater it is of sitting quietly in the dark and having fun does not allow that lie the spontaneity of African audiences and participation and speaking back to the audience to the performance that is happening and it is an interesting transition to observe with this young people I brought a castle microphone to Marco and Lucero to continue the conversation but I want to keep coming back to this question how how we do what we do how that talk about who is designed re-wrote the entire show and the short use of a white language to perform or how we represent ourselves or even collaborate with other artists of color who might have a contextually different story but a similar historical experience and this question of aesthetics and all the choices we make around the work of art itself the how is what makes all the difference the symbolism and details and the details of the how but I also wanted to open this up to Marco and Lucero to joining on any part of the conversation that you were moved to I think I want to talk about the training program that we began and it was myself and my colleague who was not native he was Scottish from he still carried his ticket to Woodstock he was a very physical theater person with a dancer a director a clown talking he still has a lineup of people around the block to get into his workshops because of me he was a listener he shared a language and I guess that's probably what I'm talking about when I talk about that I have been returning to the notion of language what language are we using to describe what we're doing am I being understood by the group that I'm working with am I discovering the language as I go along I'm not a trained university person I was just I went through dance classes and I went through a part time theater program because I had lots of skills already so I just picked up the classes and the workshops along the way and I tried all kinds of different things but when we began to develop our training program really the issue was around voice we didn't train people to act we trained whoever came and wanted to express their artistic discipline and to find their voice and to voice that way so the work is very interesting that way it's very hard to do with some people because we're not used to being given the freedom to to suffer who we are through the process and to wander around and not know how we're going to voice ourselves but it's a very rewarding kind of training and the result of some of that work was that we we drew upon our own cultural knowledge we drew upon our own personal journey we drew upon our own selves and our own histories the people that came through our training program which lasted for a number of years had some of them had trained in other institutions conventional institutions so they already had made a commitment to their craft and the development of their craft but when they came in to work on our pilot project it was that they brought their culture with them they brought their nativeness their indianness, their aboriginal self however you want to they brought that into the room and it was important that as we developed the community audiences but those people were able to showcase their work you didn't have to have graduated from some program and be in some theater program and do a well done play you would create a show you would assist you and help to devise the work and whatever form it came was so very important it was not a prescribed formula for creating the well done play or the well done poem or whatever and in that way the multiplicity of form which is part of our topic of this festival was really important because people come to the arts from a variety of places and I'm most concerned with our young people I'm concerned with our old people I'm concerned with our society specifically and generally I want our own people to be inspired by our own stories and the way we want to tell that story is the way we want to tell that story and we need to affirm that and so part of what we're really developing is in our festival took a long time because people didn't want to come to the theater they were familiar spaces for them to know so we didn't show in their community center we didn't show in the cafe that they hang out we didn't show in the theater we didn't show in the theater in the neighborhood and slowly, slowly over time the audience knows that they are represented on that stage their youths are doing the slam poetry their elders are part of the stage their people are being represented on the stage and it's really about encouraging the voice of our people for the healing of our people and what I always believe is the artists the storyteller is part of that sacred circle of teachers and masters within our communities there is importance there is importance as the educators there is importance as the actors and I have the people who are keeping the field of story and raising the nation they are fighting to to the development of our community it's really important and the well-being of our community to respond to that to respond to that conversation in your context when I came to the theater as I told you I felt with the fear that my voice would appear I told myself to work the political problem the social problem of the people of Nicaragua so I didn't want to look at my own voice as a Mexican I first came to Nicaragua I was concerned with not putting my own voice into the work that was being presented and the work that we were doing we wanted to have the people the Nicaragua people to say their own their own stories, their own words not my own as I am listening it took a long time for me to have the courage and the will to be on stage to tell these stories from my own perspective and also presenting my own views as a Mexican and the courage to meet with my own voice there is love there is love, there is no love I love you so much so remember this is of your traveling in that feeling of traveling coming back home she said that she wrote this and she wrote another play too she identified deeply and ended up with Nicaragua she went through international festivals and every time we presented her we presented her to the people of Nicaragua so when you talk to people the problems are common the people of Nicaragua the human relations and also love what she means by saying this is that when you speak sincerely from the heart and you tell your stories that are intimate from your heart we all are connected because they are human stories they are not from one culture or another they are human stories and that is what connects the song we have a little less than half an hour left we are going to move to our closing but I want to remind the live audience here if you have a question you can write it on speaking out to someone who will bring it up to me and then we will see if there are any questions we can take at this time also we agreed on a final question that we want everyone on the panel to offer an answer to but first I want to believe though this scene that is coming forward for me quite strongly about agency over our own aesthetics the value of multiplicity of aesthetics in terms of seeking an inclusion that represents all of our communities and that is something that I think we are here together to explore the institute over the next 10 days but this question of how we have agency over our own aesthetics and as artists of color in the context of the institute women directors women leadership LGTQ and artists of color and indigenous artists who are struggling against oppressive systems and forces in our lives and in our work colonization and patriarchy and all the various forms of oppression that we are constantly managing how we create career, create an aesthetic and maintain agency over our own voices and stories and how we work together and how we collaborate and what the challenges that we can work through together in that process so these are some of the things that we have been talking about and will continue talking about and I offer that as something to reflect on in the past and be into the final question but the final question that we discussed over lunch is what are you going to do next? what is the next project that you are setting that you are involving the next story you need to tell and it brings us back to this question what are we going to do how will we do it and what will we become so who would like to share first with the next phase of the work he has for you just as there are multiple stories to be told I think there are multiple interventions to be made and it may be that my intervention may not find its language through theatre it would be that my intervention would find its language through the creation of an ensemble of artists as you know Galleria which is a remarkable achievement just to bring diversity in a real sense into a space where instead of ghettoizing diverse communities which has been the multicultural policy so far creating ghettos differences should be fluid if they are not fluid if they are not in dialogue then they freeze and there are borders there are multiple borders so for me today the idea of creative work it can go in many directions you know and I would perhaps like to sort of take the inspiration I've received from this ensemble and see where I could go with it in different locations one thing that really concerns me is the creation of new troublemakers this is what really you know fires me and I think dramaturgy in some way can mean anything to them how do you tell your own story but how do you take possession of your own language of your own value I'm really interested in this and I know one dramaturgy I mean there are all that nonsense that are popular in school and you go back to the German models and the way Bertolt pregnant that's okay that's history but it's not going to help us I think beyond the point and therefore to create new dramaturgy coming out to those communities who frankly have their own dramaturgy already the indigenous community and all of them by what one can learn so this is what we find we set the learning process by opening myself to those marginalized experiences that contain some seeds of knowledge that can be knowledge that can be translated we arrived and we got this answer and we know what they are and we hit nicely in 2012 and tied to them from it's like yay you know so in some ways the journey continues the struggle continues so for me I can share two things from my mind right now I'm going to register for my PhD and I want to focus on the issue of teenage pregnancy which has become the deciding play in my country right now and I'm particularly interested in the positioning of the girl child within the problematic narrative of teenage pregnancy that is always positioned as a problem of the girl child and I want to know how do you engage community in dealing with the issue of pregnancy how do you get uncles involved brothers involved fathers involved etc etc because she doesn't make herself pregnant so how is it that you know one who gets demonized you know when she gets pregnant and how do you get the community involved in dialogue if this is the thing that we want to solve to deal with to deal with it differently how do you do that so that's the one thing the second thing is stories about our mothers as heroes of the struggle those are stories that have not been told and they're very interesting thank you my colleagues and I started a process of improvisation just out of peace with the memory of my mother calling me one time I used to go to foreign school and I arrived home in the 90s and you know towards other dinner my mother said so just pick up your things with you know gay woman just go somewhere and kind of long story short we sat under a bridge and then I was kind of introduced to these mothers who were holding communities while their husbands were working in the cities and keep the community alive and safe home by themselves but their story has not been told about these women who continue to fight in the struggle but fight for the position of nurturing and mothering and loving so we just started doing research on that and yeah hope we can take a bite then tell me stories in my own language and to an audience that don't write because of the same plot that I have about the same issues so I'm trying to create relationships and actually I'm one of the artists that are still in gymnastics and I'm trying to use the access I have to education and language to bring this towards the artists in gymnastics and to try to empower these artists and to learn how to study and to create anywhere and try to create work across the world since I can't go there unfortunately in terms of so yeah it's on my mind a lot it's also on my mind to translate some more kind of interested in translating some poetry work for this amazing poet he's after Danny he's a very famous poet in gymnastics in 1907 and his death would almost create a revolution since general in gymnastics and one very short two lines of his writing is I return after my rather than my I return after when I live seven minutes at home across all continents and after my crops have been scattered all over the place so that is what I kind of say in gymnastics as soon as I land on that line exciting and challenging time the national government out of one side of the mouth they say that we want to reconcile the conditions people of the land out of the other side of their mouth all their bureaucrats not all of them still very colonial very internal and still we're still fighting with them to really give us the rights to say that they acknowledge so at the same time the murder and missing women and girls has achieved an incredible national movement before that was I don't know more or almost at the same time people begin to rise up this incredible guerrilla theater happens in the streets with these movements and so as I am living on the edge of the Pacific Rim far away from some of the fray my new office studio is just down the street from the darkest corner of Skid Row in Canada where there is an incredible opium crisis where many women murder and missing women their TNA was found just outside the city in recent years and so you're balancing the light and the dark and the sorrow and grief and you're living with that contradiction and I have to say I'm very fortunate as I said that I was loved I didn't realize even in my identity crisis that I went through how much love can keep you going even when you feel you're a bone and you're struggling on your own and what we've been doing with the Thomas Festival in our industry series I'd love to find an indigenous way to describe that in our series and we've been trying to indigenous things that we do and we've been gathering our little ensembles and we've been gathering people to have the conversations that need to be had among the artists and at first the non-native artists the white artists didn't come and we kept inviting them and we kept inviting people and the artists started to come everything started to shift because the priority was to include indigenous voices and include racialized artists arts of color in the funding there's still issues there's still major issues and our young people are still thinking that to be on the stage of the artists club would be the pinnacle of their career when I know it's not so the conversations that we've begun are really important for us as a community but also our allies and it helps us to develop those facilitated safely facilitated conversations where we can raise the issues and talk to each other and share with each other inspire each other looking within and within our own cultural practice and how listing that out it means also when we're working with non-native companies we're getting into a crisis situation again with not just the Robert LaPage but within our communities our smaller communities as the truth and reconciliation you know the energy is people are saying well let's reconcile with the Indians well let's come together before you and you can be my assistant and you can feed me and I can tell your story but we need to talk about it and we need to also together we need to come together more regularly so as another sister in my community that's in my journey to bring people together to find ways to advance the conversation and for myself I would say that along this journey has meant that my own artistic practice has slipped to the side and so what am I going to do next well there has been a change in my life a big change a very tough change but through coming through that I have a studio we have an office where the administrators and the administrative people are not separate from the rehearsal room where the artists and the administrative people the support people can be together work together where the community at large there's no place for us to come together and have the conversations and have a barbecue and have fun there's no place for our people when they come in to do a film or TV show or something there's nowhere for us to go so we're very excited to have a place where we can begin to gather more regularly where we can begin to have those conversations to inspire each other and where I can begin to go into the rehearsal studio every morning before I go to sit on my computer roll around on the floor and sing to my ears she has started working on the piece that talks about the sentiments that she felt about knowing where really her culture works in the long term whether it's a Mexican culture or a Nicaraguan culture and where she fits into that so three months ago when the crisis came to pass when they made her the best threats and now she has to leave so she's in Mexico physically and securely but she was there all the time so I was physically in Mexico my heart and my soul was back in Nicaragua before the question of what's going to happen I decided to go back but I didn't know for example when Andrea asked me what's going to happen to Nicaragua I said it's less than a moment because I don't know every day in Nicaragua something is changing after my return Andrea asked me where are you leaving where are you leaving to come over here and she said please wait please wait because I don't know the situation in Nicaragua is changing day to day even now my daughter who lives in Mexico tells me bring things you consider important because maybe I can't go back to Nicaragua so even next week when I'm going back to Nicaragua my daughter has said mom please really whatever is most important is essential because you don't know what you're going to be like and the first thing is always we want to practice and we don't know what's going to happen we also have a tour going to Brazil to present one of our one of our performances and we don't know where we're going to rehearse we don't know we'll be able to rehearse we don't know we'll be able to perform we're in a limbo moment like the opera that I'm playing in limbo to know what's going to happen tomorrow that is what I do is I would like to continue with my daughter because if it's not possible in Nicaragua I would like to have the possibility to translate with me in Mexico I have to do nothing but I don't know what she's doing what she's calling it that's how she feels she wishes to continue to perform with her group in Nicaragua but if that is not possible she wishes that she could do this in Mexico with her to see what we're going forward with that we have a conversation for now I'm extremely grateful that we have this time together to continue the conversation with everyone here that's at the institute and I just want us to always celebrate our courage our creativity our determination and the brilliance that comes from making even the most painful moments in our lives into art and into beauty the transformation that all of us, all of you do in all of the work that we create and hopefully what we will do together over the next 10 days but also into the future as we remain colleagues and friends and people who are this work and this struggle and this creativity together so thank you all thank you