 So we just kind of hang out in two minutes of silence. All right, I'm going to rest a little bit quicker. I'll be back. Like be comfortable with the Zoom silence, right? It's a thing, it's a thing. I'm fine with the Zoom silence in classes and in rehearsals. But in this moment, I'm more like, I have a script. I'm used to a stage manager. Now that we're holding, I assume we will get a go. Question. Yes. Here already have their Christmas tree up? Not yet. See who I'm working with here. Not yet. We have started, we've started the casual like holiday, like listening to holiday songs though. All right, I like it, I like it. We don't actively, the family's not actively searching for Michael Buble or Mariah Carey. But if it happens to come to us, who are we to say no? See, I'm on that pentatonic. Yeah. I love this. All right, y'all. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. All right, y'all. We're like just a lie. Got that behind the scenes. Take it away, Alex. All right. Good evening. Welcome to Reimagine Theater, a panel series that brings artists and community leaders together to envision a new theatrical world. My name is Alex Lee Reed. I'm the Associate Director of Arts Engagement, Youth, and Learning at Seattle Rep. I'll give a brief physical description of myself for our blind and low vision attendees. I am a light-skinned black individual with short curly brown hair. I'm wearing a black and white striped button-down shirt and a gold chain that I'm not sure it is even really present. Behind me is a teal wall with a variety of art pieces, a standing lamp, and a shelf full of books. I would like to start by acknowledging that we're on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish people, both past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish tribe. This acknowledgement does not take the place of authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, but rather serves as a first step in honoring the land that we are on. For more resources on how to support your local Indigenous communities, you can visit the Land Acknowledgement page on our Seattle Rep website. I so appreciate every one of our panelists and my co-host Nicole for being here with us and having this conversation tonight. We're doing these panels so we can envision what a future of equity and justice really looks like and how the arts and theater and educational theater specifically should be a part of that and a consistent part of community voice. The leading questions for our discussion tonight are, if you could wave a magic wand and build a new theater landscape, what would you create and what does theater at the heart of public life look like? For those of y'all out there in the Zoom audience or joining on the live stream, think about your own answers to these questions as throughout the course of the evening we'll be engaging you and inviting you to join in the conversation with us. And now I'm gonna pass it over to my co-facilitator, Nicole, to introduce herself. Hello, everyone. My name is Nicole Suyama. I am a new PIAC and I am the Program Manager for Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theater. For those who are not familiar with Red Eagle Soaring, we serve Native youth ages 10 to 19 and our mission is to empower Native youth and Indigenous youth to express themselves with clarity and confidence through traditional and performing arts. A quick physical description of what I look like. I am light skin, very light skin native girl. I have long, dark brown hair. I'm wearing dangly beaded earrings that my cousin made me. They're white, orange, red, yellow and my shirt is kind of all kinds of lots of things happening, lots of patterns but mainly black and white, little red, little pink in there and I just have a plain white background. And thank you so much for having me today. I'm honored to be here. Very excited for this conversation. And I think with that we can pass it to the other folks on the panel for introductions. I'll pass it over to Erin. Thanks, Nicole. Hi, everyone. I am Erin Alonzo. I use he, him pronouns and I am the Kids Stage Production Manager at Village Theatre Kids Stage in Everett. So I get to work with students every single day of my life and it's so great. Let's see a physical description. Oh my gosh, this is the one thing I'm not yet used to. It's like, how do you describe Marcel? Let's see, I am a tan Filipino-American with thinning black hair, thanks dad. I'm currently wearing a peach long-sleeved button-down shirt and a black vest. My current surroundings includes my bedroom office with lots of musical theater posters and programs and playbills behind me and my bed. So I'm so excited to be here. Thank you very much to the Seattle Rep for hosting this series. I've got Kiki next to me. So I'm gonna pass the baton to Kiki. Hello everyone, my name is Kiki Dominguez. My pronouns are they, them and I am a teaching artist and behavioral therapist in Seattle, Washington. Description wise, I am a tan multiracial femme presenting individual with big black curly hair. I am wearing a purple tank top and a leopard print sweater over. I am being framed by my window perfectly. Actually, if I might say. And I have two art images of musicians behind me. Yeah, and with that, I will pass it on. Dante, am I pronouncing that correctly? That is correct. And my name is Dante Felder I'm the Executive Director of Southin Stories. And what we do is push into different schools celebrating and sponsoring arts. I guess if I had to describe myself I would say that sexy brown mocha latte, I guess. I guess, but I'll let you, you always say what I am. I'll pass it on to the baton to Orlando. Thanks, Dante. Hey everybody, my name is Orlando Morales. I use he, him pronouns. I am the Associate Artistic Director Community Engagement at the Fifth Avenue Theater. I am a 30-something brown-skinned Filipino-American with glasses, I have black hair and a messy part. I'm wearing a red crew-neck sweater and I'm sitting in my living room. There's a blue couch. Got a lot of overgrown plants. There's a bird cage, there's a fish tank and my grandparents' old Filipino charge keys that I've tacked onto every vertical surface. And there's also a Fender Rhodes keyboard right there. And I'm just super happy to be here. Did I miss anything else in the prep? All right, I'm gonna toss it up. Oh, is that everybody? Toss it back to Alex then. Thanks, y'all. So I'd love to start this conversation. We'll get into our big questions, of course. But I'd love to start this conversation just with a little bit about where you're at. How you see yourselves as artists and educators in the community, kind of the things that drive you, that light you up that we get really excited about. And then we'll dig into some of these kind of bigger, deeper questions. I'd love, Nicole, if you wanna start us off talking about some of the work that you're doing and we can kind of popcorn jump in. We call it a panel, but I think this is more like a round table kind of conversation. Square Zoom box conversation. Absolutely. So as I mentioned earlier, I am native. I'm also mixed race. I'm white and I'm also Japanese, but I do a lot of work with the native community here and I have for quite some time. I actually joined Red Eagle Soaring native youth theater program as a student. I joined when I was 11 years old and I just sort of never went away. I stayed in the program until I was 19 and then I came back as a volunteer and as a teacher and as a director and they finally gave me a job as program manager because I just sort of wouldn't leave. So it's kind of been my whole life's work with this group that I love so much. What we do is we definitely give a place for native youth to come and like I mentioned in our mission statement and express themselves. But a lot of the work that we do with our students is it surrounds sort of a decolonized theater model which I think we'll probably get into talking a lot more about later on. But something that I love about Red Eagle Soaring and was how easy it was to access when I was a youth and how when we try to keep it very easily accessible to all of our students still. It's totally free programming and we even provide transportation when needed if necessary because transportation is a big issue for a lot of youth especially low income families in the greater Seattle area. So transportation free programming we don't do auditions. Anybody that wants to join as long as you fit you're in the 10 to 19 age range and you identify as indigenous you're in. And that's something that I love about the program as well even we get a lot of students that maybe aren't necessarily interested in theater at first. Sometimes they're just into meeting other native youth in the area other urban Indian kids that, sorry that don't live on the reservation that are in the Seattle greater Seattle area and have a hard time meeting other indigenous youth because we're kind of just spread out and sporadic everywhere. So it gives us a really good place to gather and meet one another and be involved in the native community because ready for soaring definitely jumps into a lot of other events and specifically native community events that happen throughout the greater Seattle area. So it's for us it's making sure that the youth are involved in other avenues as well and not just ready for soaring. And with that it's also making sure that youth are involved with other programs here like other theater programs. For instance, the Rising Star program with Fifth Ave we just put out a big thing to our students about that get in that get involved in that because that is an awesome program that I wish I would have done when I was younger. Things like that. So yeah, it's really youth centered and we're always looking to recruit and looking for ways to get more youth involved from even further out. We have youth that come up from Olympia that have parents that are willing to drive them. Thank goodness for those parents. So we really try to reach past the greater Seattle area and involve as many indigenous youth as we can to give them this space too. Cause as much as we get kids that aren't super into theater we also get kids that are very, very into theater. So then they get this space and they get to just act and do things and not have the pressure of having to audition or having their parents having to pay for $100 for a theater program and experience like that. So yeah, that's kind of what we do in a nutshell. Does somebody else wanna take it from there? Just remind me the question. Oh, just a little bit about who you are as an artist, educator, advocate for youth in the community and some of the work that you're doing. You know, I think that my one job right now and that maybe one or two words is to make the youth happy, period. So I can do that through arts and introducing to new concepts around storytelling and film and theater and all the good stuff but it doesn't mean anything if we're not making the youth happy and joyful bring the joy back into our spaces and into the classrooms and I have opportunity to go from classroom to classroom and I just see students who are disengaged, checked out. Literally we have the walking dead in our sitting in the seats and partly it's the systems faults or the systems that we created. Partly it's just us being too busy and leaning into the technological advances of today but I think that one thing that I'm which is consistent is that it's, the educational space and institutions are a joyless space and if I can make a child happy, laugh, crack up, do something silly that I think I did my job and all the fancy stuff in technical theater and the technical jargon can come later but I think that this is our place right now is to bring joy back into those spaces. On the flip side, personally I will do, I do a lot of creative stuff so I do dabble in screenplay and I'm right now making an animatic based on Blur's comics and cafe play that I wrote and just put it together with cartoons. So again, even with that, which was birth from pain there is still that space of, I want people to feel joy in this space. Kiki, oh, I saw Aaron just unmuted himself. Oh, I'm just gonna jump in, I'll jump in. Cool, jump in. Yeah, to kind of echo what Dante was saying, yeah, because I surround myself with students every day in our kid's stage programming, it's really meeting the needs of the students at any given time and especially over the last 18 plus months that has put on a life of its own. We say like, yes, we wanna be there for the students and make the space that they need but especially during over the course of the pandemic where they can't make physical theater in person which is how you're supposed to do it. You just as arts administrators and especially as educators, you really had to kind of like dig your heels in and go like, let's just do something so that way they can feel engaged and connected with themselves and with their friends even if it's through a screen. So that's kind of where I've been at. It's also been a wonderful exploration of boundaries because in the before times, right? Especially when you're interacting with students and you're working with students, you're trying to meet their needs. So sometimes you kind of have to be superhero and go above and beyond in order to get them what they need or as close to what they need as possible through that theatrical lens but sometimes that's at the expense of yourself, right? So it's like, I can't tell you how many times my time cards have been embarrassing because it's like, great, that is not an 80 hour pay period again but at the end of the day, it's like we have to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves in order to support our students as best we need. So like trying to like get into that mindset of like, all right, I need to like time out myself here for a moment that those discoveries have been really great but as theater has been starting to open up like our students are slowly returning to the buildings like these previously lifeless buildings they now have a purpose again and it's so great to like be in the office even though I'm not in the office right now but for the days that I am, like just to be in my office and like hear people talking downstairs and singing songs and learning a tap combo or whatever like that makes you feel good as an administrator because it's like, great, the theater has a purpose again students are finding ways to re-engage with the art form that they love so much or they wanna learn more about like that's really lack of a better phrase like that's really what it's about and that's what's super exciting for me being that fly on the wall and especially at kids stage in our Everett location I started off as a kids stage student I started when I was, it was, I think 2008 was the first time I worked on a show in Everett I was a high school junior and then going through college and getting a bachelor's in theater knowing that this was what I wanted to do and then if you can't beat them you join them so they end up working out the place that gave you your start in the first place and now I supervised the production programs that I was an intern in it's such a weird like serendipitous full circle moment where it's like all of those shows I now get to supervise the manifestation of right like from the shows that we pick and the people who we hire to direct and choreograph and design our shows to, you know the audition and callback process for our students and trying to find students who may not have been a lead before and trying to find their highest best use so that way they can learn and continue to grow in their art like all of that is super I pinch myself every day because there are many times where I'm like I can't believe I'm doing this like this is so cool so yeah, I can go on and on but yeah, just that excitement and to now reshare that excitement with students now in person again like that's the best thing in the world so I love that trajectory too and we'll come back to the kids have some questions for us and we'll come back to this point about those of us who grew up as theater kids in the system that exists and now our responsibility being in positions of admin and power and decision-making and creating opportunities but before we get to that Kiki, I was gonna put you on the spot if that's cool several of us in the room are doing a lot of admin work but I know that you are a human of very many hats and I'm just really curious to hear you speak to the work that you're doing yeah, I can do that I am a human, I promise that of many well, and I just wanted to comment too on something that really stuck out to me what Erin was saying earlier was that this concept of like meeting the students where they are and what with what they need because that is a big thing that I believe in like specifically with art and with the work that I do outside of theater because I work with individuals with autism and really that has taught me that there are so many different kinds of learning abilities and needs that can get overlooked that really can be helped with theater and arts and creativity and just different ways to express yourself and really thinking about these different ways that we look at how we make theater and how it doesn't necessarily have to be a play that is in English with these specific words and characters like maybe it's movement based maybe people are working on other aspects of it because the lights can be too bright for them and just really offering a welcoming space so I've been really lucky to be teaching a lot throughout this and I was teaching online theater and then I was teaching some I've been teaching more and more in person which has been great and some of the other stuff I've been doing is I've been able to use theater as a tool with some of these kids I work with with autism because we have social skills groups and for those of you who do not know that a lot of times people with autism have a hard time engaging socially but theater is a really big thing in the autism community there's a lot of kids who really enjoy it and use the tools from theater to take into the world so I was able to develop some social skills groups over the summers and we did just an improv class which gave us an opportunity to just really connect and work on these skills that are all social skills that you're working on in theater like eye contact and waiting your turn and staying on topic and creating off of each other and things like that as well as using theater skills to teach conflict resolution and it's like these are skills that we're always learning as we make art together and it's just been a real gift to be able to share that with all the communities that I've been able to. Thanks Kiki. Orlando, I'm gonna throw it at you. What's up with you? What's going on over at the fifth? Who are you in this wild world of education and art and all of it? Ooh, I don't know. Like, does anybody know who they are these days? You know, like, I just feel like I'll be upfront, like this is our first day kind of back in person as a theater or our first week. So like Tuesday was the first week that I had not just been here in my living room, up on Zoom, doing things like that. So I'm in this period of kind of like readjustment and kind of excited about the future but also I think one of your prompts was about what's bringing you joy, what's kind of like getting you fired up these days. And I think, I mean, I could just think about we had a meeting with a bunch of, with some educators and a bunch of students that we're working with out in the Kent School District. And I will say there were two sides to that meeting. One was that it made me immediately very overwhelmed and very kind of, I mean, I still have hope and optimism, but hearing about what's going on in the streets and I heard Dante earlier, I sorry, I cut out but I came back in and I just heard like zombies in their seats. But hearing about like just what's happening in the schools right now and teachers saying that this, you know, teachers have been teaching for 40 years saying this is like one of the most difficult years. It's maybe the most difficult years. They've had the most kind of a lack of civility in hallways, conflict between students. Maybe they'd have one instance of suicidal ideation a month and now there's two to three a week. And just hearing about like the damage and the trauma that everybody's dealing with these days, like very overwhelmed and it touches a lot of the work that we do at the fifth. And so this is something that's very, it's on the forefront of my mind this week because we've just started having these conversations again with our partner teachers and the students in our programs. But the other side of that was then we started doing the work with students who were excited to do the work and who were excited to find an excuse to get some creative juices flowing and to serve their community. And I'm in this interesting philosophical space where, you know, there's so much going on in the world and I'm like, my feeling, my emotional reality is that I don't know if theater can save the world. I think that it was like, you know, if you had asked me two years ago, I'd be like, yes, I do this because theater can save the world. But right now it's like the only thing I know how to offer young people in like the effort to get us to start talking to each other again and to start interacting with each other again. And, you know, create unexpected intersections. Find that sense of community there, that way of in the democratic experience learning how to live next to each other and walk in the same hallways without exploding in anxiety and anger. So that's where I'm at, you know. I'm cautiously optimistic, feel a little overwhelmed but also renewed in my commitment to the work, I guess. Thanks, y'all. And over here at The Rep and kind of going on a theme that I hear in what all of you have said, right, we're working consistently at listening and responding and creating opportunities for youth to show up with them where they're at, right? And opening opportunities rather than expectations. And I think that's one way that we see kind of the landscape of the work that we do in educational theater shifting. And that kind of lead us into our first big question, right? Let's start with the easy one. If you could, based on where you're at today, if you could wave a magic wand and create anything be that a space, a program, a literal anything, right? What would that be at this moment right now? Can I jump in? I thought you were going to call someone. Yeah. Go ahead and go. I'll jump in. So right now, so we are a theater program but we don't have our own theater space because that costs a lot of money. So we've been, we're super grateful to act theater. We were doing pre-pandemic, we were doing all of our programming out of act during the year. And then our summer programming happens out at Daybreak Star in Magnolia, which is an awesome space and we love it. However, we don't get to give the students the full experience of being in a theater, right? We're very hands-on. We have, all of our students do a lot of the acting but we also have our students do a lot of the set design, sound design, stage management. We allow them to learn all different aspects of theater. However, it's super hard to do when we don't have our own theater space where we get to build a set in. Our theater sets, we have a canvas and we paint on it and we tuck it up and that's our background, which is great and it's beautiful and it's worked for us but we haven't been able to give our students that real world hands-on experience of being in a real theater and getting to go through the entire process of a show from beginning to end and what it's like to be in that sort of space. Something that we have been able to do because of the pandemic and stuff, we've had to shift. We did a lot of things on Zoom or finally back in person. We did our summer program in person and we just did, we're wrapping up our fall film project of this Saturday. And with the shift, we kind of started dabbling in the film world a little bit with Zoom. Zoom theater is almost like film in a lot of ways. And so for fall, we did a full on straight up just film project. We hired Skybear Media out of Olympia, Washington, a native owned media company and they've come out for the last few Saturdays and the kids have gotten to have real world hands-on experience with being in and on a professional film set. They've gotten to handle the cameras, the lighting, they learned how to set up all the equipment, how to tear down the proper language to use when on a set, when you turn on the light, you have to say strike, things like that which has been so incredible and so amazing but my dream would be to do it in an actual theater to give them the same hands-on experience, real world professional experience but in a theater. And cause we try and we do our best with what we have but obviously we don't have all of the access to a building or a stage or a set, a shop to build sets in. We don't have that. So it was really great to see that with film and we did get to do that with film which has been so amazing but the dream one day would be to do that in maybe our own theater space or just a theater space that we could have access to, to use. So yeah, someone else wanna take it from there. There you go, Karen. I'll jump in, thanks Nicole. So many things. Is it just one wish or can it be, can I wave the wand multiple times for multiple things? Let's start with one, see how we go but then sometimes one wish will require and then da-da-da-da-da-da. A lot of my wishes I feel like compound on itself but I think the big one at the moment is to create a safe space slash culture of belonging. And the definition of safety can mean differently to different people. Sometimes it's the physical space, sometimes it's emotional, so on and so forth. But just having the environment where you can A, be safe in whatever that means to you but then also by having that safe space you can then bring your authentic self into the room. And authentic self also can be different for many different people. Like for me, you know, speaking for me, it's like, great, I'm gonna launch that I'm a Filipino American who is barely five feet tall but adores musical theater, right? Like if anyone knows Filipinos chances are they're probably nurses, you know? So like I'm already like an outlier right there, you know? So it's like you don't have to, you can pursue different things than maybe what your parents or grandparents have done before, right? So like be unapologetically yourself. If you're passionate about musical theater, do that. If you're passionate about designing costumes or being a choreographer, do that. If you wanna be an arts administrator, do that. Or if you just wanna help paint a set, you know, be a volunteer, you could do that too. But just bring yourself and Neil, but the only way you can do that is if you come into a space, into a room, into an environment where you can trust everyone in the room to be yourself. And that can also of course spill into, you know, tons of other, you know, DEIA related, you know, initiatives like ensuring that you have diverse perspectives into the room, right? You know, making more space at the table in whatever that looks like, whether that's on production teams, you know, as teaching artists, as faculty and staff at a theater, so on and so forth. Like I can go on and on provided that that space is a space that can cultivate that those types of relationships and that type of work culture essentially. I hear that. I have a very similar sort of dream that sounds a little bit like what Nicole said and a little bit like what Erin said, but that is a place and a space, right? Where we value wholeness right where we feel safe and valued and loved where a person of any background of any ability right doesn't ever have to wonder if they will be welcome or accepted or whatever right where we, where we have fun, where we let ourselves play and have fun, where we are able to provide mentorship and connection to resources and to just be present, right? And then establishing that as the foundation then allows us to do whatever the quote unquote work looks like Dante, you're up. Here's what I was saying. I don't think it's a wish, it's the expectation and that expectation is for like the organizations that are sitting here to begin creating like this tick-ass amazing summer school program for our youth and or a fall program for our youth. So there's times like almost thinking like the Avengers that you have your standalone films or your standalone things, folks can do the Spider-Man movie and the Black Widow and Black Panther and yada, yada, yada, and they can do it well. But I think that if you want transformational change in the theater and film sector, especially in this space, it has to be like an intentional work of collaborating on a project. So right now like working with the Seattle Repertory Theater at Franklin is awesome. And then having the Intamont Theater Starfish program come right after for the afterschool program. You have three organizations in one school being intentional around that work. Just think that what if the act came together, get the avenue came together, SIF came together. And we said we were going to partner with the SPS for a summer school of the arts. Where again, there's liberation and joy that takes place. You start small, you pilot it and see what it looks like but we're better together than siloed and silos. Normally we can make a large footprint. So that's just something that I'm going to call on folks, see if they're interested in moving in this direction of what type of summer school program it might not be in 22, it probably could be in 23. What does that look like if we pull our resources together? I love that too because it also invites this concept that of like the other things that are part of the theater realm that's not necessarily just acting or playwriting. I feel like there's a lot of focus on that like specifically within arts programs but like giving them the opportunity to, yeah, like you're saying Nicole like hold the camera see what's happening behind the scenes see what it means to edit and do sound and any of those different things what does a stage manager do? What does a production manager do? Because there's so many different kinds of jobs and I think this goes back to representation and how people can get interested in the door and curious about the other aspects if they don't necessarily want to be on stage but like, yeah, painting those sets creating these visions would just be amazing. One with that too, I wanted to say like my magic wand vision would be kind of a combination of these different things that we're talking about and having to do around this concept of like who has access to shows and though there are some places that make it affordable and accessible, this goes back to like but can they get there if they don't have a car or and if it's in a part of town where parking can be rough and very expensive but also thinking about individuals with differing needs who like for people who are hearing impaired having options for them for who are visually impaired having options for them who can't necessarily stand all the sensory input of an entire full theater what can this look like and how can we make space for these audience members and these students who want to be a part of things but have some of these anxieties especially now when we've been told for so long that we shouldn't be outside or any big groups or these certain things and as we try to like welcome back into these spaces and make the space more welcoming like how can we do that? How can we make everyone feel welcome as well as have tools for them that they might need in these spaces? Orlando, you wanna jump in on this? Yeah, I could. Okay, so this is the magic wand. Okay, mine is, it's not practical at all but I just say if I could like wave magic wand it's not my fingers and make a change in theater education it'd be to have equity and funding and resources of theater programs in every school so that like every school in our community let's just say Washington State because every school had a well-funded resourced drama program that is integrated into the community culture to the extent that it starts to put us out of business which is funny because I'm a non-profit but it's like, I mean it's a blessing for our organization to be invited to schools to help them bridge the gap between not having this or that and to help out with that but in the best-case scenario theater should come out of that community and that it shouldn't be a regional theater as much as well-attentioned and happy we are to do it to kind of be reaching down and saying this is what we think is the thing and if I were to wave it again and have another wish it would be that that this theater program in every school was also kind of had a wing that was dedicated to devising or creating new work amongst the schools because we don't want everybody trying to do the latest Lin-Manuel Miranda play or like Inge or what, I love both those things but also there's what Inge, what's our next, William Inge or Lin-Manuel Miranda or Susan Lori Parks, are we missing? Do we miss every year in some beautiful Washington school that has no theater program and so they just never step through the door or start down that path? So if I could wave magic wand, I think, yeah, would be good. Awesome, if it's okay with you all, I would like to segue into conversation about decolonizing our spaces and education and I know that's a huge broad topic, especially in education because there's, I think there's a lot, a lot, a lot of work to be done in schools and education in general with decolonizing that system but we can start in the theater world because that's where we are. For radical soaring, we've always kind of worked with a sort of decolonized model, as I mentioned earlier, we don't do auditions, pay to come and we even, and that was how we started. We've been in an organization for 30 years and so we've kind of always done it that way and it wasn't necessarily on purpose, it was just kind of we were doing what we could to do our programming and make it happen and as we've gotten more established and we've been able to hire staff, we still continue on that decolonization path by kind of breaking down the linear hierarchy model of, who's the top dog, who's the supervisor, who's the AD, your artistic director and then under them is the program manager, then under them and so on and so forth. What we did this year, well, last year I guess was we wanted to hire on an artistic director because up till that point, it was just we had our executive director and then they hired me, the program manager and that was it and we had our board and that was all. So the board came to us and wanted to hire an artistic director and I kind of freaked out a little bit. I was like, what do you mean? What, you wanna start having seasons? We don't do that. That's not our theater model and I was a little bit worried that that was going to put us on the path towards like a more colonized model. It actually went the total opposite way. We were blessed and honored to get to hire Tara Moses and Madeleine Syed who became our co-artistic directors and we went for a co-artistic director model which worked really, really well. There wasn't just one person making all the artistic decisions, it was two and even then it was never like, oh, they're my boss. I have to do what they say as a program manager, the artistic director tells me what to do and we do it. It was always a conversation with all of us, including our executive director Russell Brooks. He always had a hand in programming even though that's not his thing, that's not technically his job title at all. We all talked about everything at once and I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about this or say this, but I think we're going to, Madeleine had to step down unfortunately because she's just so busy, but Tara Moses is still on board and she's going to propose that we continue this co-AD model in which we would have two artistic directors right at once and one could be out of town since we've realized that we can work for an org that we don't necessarily live in the same city as and one would be in Seattle and it would kind of be a thing where when one leaves, another one comes on and then those two and then another leaves and then another comes on. So there's always this overlap with the different co-ADs and the different ideas and that's kind of one way that we've been continuing our decolonization of theater work within our own organization. And so I'm curious to hear what you all have seen maybe in your orgs or what you would like to see or what decolonizing this space means to you if someone would like to just take it away. I know that was a lot. No, I think it's a complicated nuance at answer. So there's no right way. Right, absolutely. There's a thousand different wrong ways but I think there's multiple, actually there are right ways. There's multiple ways to get to that right. I think there needs to be some type of cultural training part of it. The second part would be that there needs to be folks who understand the work who need to be hired in those spaces. That's part of it. Three, like what are you working towards? So decolonizing is one aspect of it and the important aspect, but then you build to what? So I think there always has to be that we're building towards, I'm always thinking about parabolic solar as there is the teardown and then there's also the rebuild that takes place in the sequel. I think there has to be like an audit of if the space is healthy there has to be an audit of the tools and strategies that are being used and are working and what are not working. There has to be just an audit of like those who are doing the work, are they doing the work? Because sometimes folks get their social justice badge or their Black Lives Matter badge and then they think they're doing the work but really they're a hindrance, more of a hindrance. So this getting like, there's the decolonize by doing these specific action steps. One understanding, do you have a healthy environment? Do you have a welcoming environment? Do you have, is there student voice and people voice? I mean, there's just so many components to that and then what's your vision and mission to move into what? So every, I play, there's joy, liberation but I do think that there's a necessity that power analysis of your organizations before you can start moving forward. If I can, yes, and what Dante was saying, the idea of especially of being like an arts administrator, right, like you're a gatekeeper in a way, right? So you have like extra duties and responsibilities to decolonize the classroom or to decolonize your curriculum, the shows that you pick, the rehearsal rooms. So there's that added responsibility. And to echo what Dante was saying, I think like two of the most important elements is to, make sure you have that open welcoming environment for not only your students, but for everyone who works within your department or your program, right? And then also having that educational foundation too, that cultural competency and awareness. And then from there, you can then kind of slow ever so slowly, but surely, have a new lens on your current existing policies and procedures and systems. And you can kind of start to deconstruct it and rebuild it to make a space more welcoming or to look through your show selection process with a new perspective and a new lens, right? Even though like at kid stage, for instance, I'm only one piece of the youth and puzzle, right? There's productions, but there's also classes, right? And so it's like who you have in the room, like are your teaching artists and instructors, do they look like the students who are attending and participating in these classes, right? Are they part of the global majority? Are they? Are they not? Are your instructors all about sticking just to the curriculum or are they willing to have the curriculum be guidelines than actual rules, says Pirates of the Caribbean, but willing to toss that curriculum out the window in order to meet the needs of the student, right? So it's more community-based as opposed to product-based, right? But then also speaking for me and the programs that I supervise under productions, like yes, there isn't end product, you have to put on a show, but you can be just as intentional about the process in addition to getting to the final product, right? So the finished fully produced show that people buy tickets to see, right? So it starts from show selection, right? Just because I'm the production manager and I can pick whatever show I want, doesn't mean I probably should, right? That's why you need to have other, you know, stakeholders in those conversations, right? Whether that is, you know, other staff members from different levels of your organization, outside stakeholders, your students, your teaching artists, the directors and designers who work for you on those shows with those students, right? Having those different perspectives. It's like, here are eight shows, are we on the right track, right? Like we could be doing this show or we could be doing this show. They're both great titles, but they also have their problems, but they also have their plus sides. What are they, right? Is it like, do we wanna be doing Hello Dolly or do we wanna be doing, you know, Newsy's or Hairspray, but are we making sure that we're intentional about those choices, right? So then that's through show selection, then it's through the people who you hire to work on those shows. It's those directors, it's those designers, stage managers, musicians, like having those unique different perspectives, right? Making sure that those stakeholders have a stake in the stories that our students and us as a community in our region wanna be telling, right? And then it also goes into the rehearsal process, like at Kidsage, for instance, up until the pandemic, theater is an industry, right? It's a business. So a lot of our approach was, like you live and die by the budget, right? So it's like, all right, you need to have X amount of students in order to make this amount of tuition revenue so that way we can offset expenses and all of that, right? Like it's super important, I get it. But nowadays it's like, who is that really benefiting, right? It's not really benefiting the students if they have a cast size of 50, right? Super cool to have a cast size of 50, but what is the program and the experience like for those 50 students, right? It may be great for like a show like Les Mis, if you cast 50 people in Les Mis, we did a couple of years ago, I'm speaking from experience, right? But those leads are probably gonna get a lot more attention from the directors than ensemble member number five, right? So it's like, do you really need 50 actors in a show or can you do it better with 25 or 30 knowing that your student participants are being seen for who they are, what they bring to the table at that given moment, right? Just like bringing their whole selves into the room as opposed to being a number. So like, through casting, that's super important as well. And the rehearsal process, making sure that there are enough team members to make sure that they have eyes on every single student and can meet the needs of those students. I'm starting to spin the wheels here. I can, again, keep going on forever. But yeah, it's just making sure that you have that A, that welcome space, but B, that education and that at least awareness. So that way you can really start nitpicking at like, why is the system the way that it always has been? Is there a better way? Is there a more efficient way to get to the end product while not sacrificing quality, experience, well-beings of so on and so forth? I'll leave it there. Someone else take the conch. I want to jump in real quick. Just to echo some, a couple of things that I heard, one of which is including more youth voice in season planning. And that's something that a lot of our student panelists brought up in part one is that they have a want for their engagement to go beyond programs and classes. But rather, if we're saying that we value them in our organizations and their presence to really actually invite them into all of it. And then something just that came into my mind is both looking at who is in the room, sure, and right. But I feel like that's how we get into this trap of checking boxes, right? So often I see organizations say, OK, well, great. We've got a black person in the room, so diversity check. We've got three women and a queer person in the room, so diversity check. But also challenging ourselves to look at who is not in the room and why. I like to, if I can just add to that, it's like there was one quote in the middle of the pandemic that kind of echoes what you were saying. I think it was by trying to remember her name. I don't remember her name. But it was on Facebook that I saw. But it was like diversity asks who's in the room, right? And then equity responds, who is trying to get into the room but can't, right? It's just that ever presence, that ever awareness, like that's super key, yeah. Yeah, well, I want to hop into and talk about what we're saying with the people that are in the room and also sometimes we can get in these pitfalls of it's always been done this way and where the teaching artists or the designers and artists wear their lack of understanding of decolonization lies can sometimes be in the fact of where their education is. Because I have a bachelor's degree. I have a master's degree. But both of these are from organizations that are like longstanding traditional organizations. And so a lot of my knowledge and things has been taught from a certain structured way that has just always been taught. And so there comes questions of like, well, we all study a lot of us study Shakespeare in this certain way taught by these four people in town who are great teachers. Don't be wrong. I learned so much from these different individuals. But then the question lies is, is there no one else that I should be studying under? Is there no other way to approach this material outside of the way that we've known to be the right way? And how can we challenge our own assumptions and our own base of knowledge as we enter space and not continue these practices that have been holding other people down? I think that's a really, really great point, Kiki. And just like in one of our teaching artists seminars a few weeks ago, one of our teaching artists said, I grew up as a person of color in theater training that was traumatizing. And so my objective in this often happens to us especially as BIPOC theater artists and educators, right, like they dig into the pain. That's where the art comes from. And that's part of what's effed up in our whole system, too, right? Let's celebrate the entire individual and not just exploiting youth for their pain to make art that makes quite odd audiences go, oh, you know. Yes, yes, yes. No additional comment other than yes. To that end, I want to make sure that we get to a couple of these big questions from the youth, one of which is on this subject. So they frame this question as, right, you all talk about how things are hard growing up or how things were difficult for you. So a two-part question. Number one, what have you found that makes it easier? So a question for guidance and advice. And number two, how can we use what we know is wrong in our own education and training and the systems that we grew up in to make things easier for the current generation of young artists? Here are my thoughts. I think you always have to look at what is the purpose of education and what is the purpose of theater, what is the purpose of the campfire and stories that centered around that space? What's the purpose of the jobs that we choose? So I think getting into the purpose and the why will inform our practices. So if it's built on lies or misunderstanding, you're going to get the same results. So understanding an example would be the PE system. Most folks don't understand why the PE system was created. It was to prepare for war. And that institution still carries out and getting fit for it to prepare for war. Thinking about the outdated systems that we sit students in roles. Why are we still doing it? I mean, just think about all the traditional and folks, teachers, a lot of the teachers don't understand the why for education they believe is preparing them to get a good job, which is false. Teachers are training them to pass the test. That's false. So getting for teachers before they even get into the field of getting is the why and the purpose. And if you understand that, this purpose was set up for to create the busy bees, the workers, and to maintain the status quo. And of course, that's what you're doing. It's like the matrix. The matrix talks about it. Kowski says there's talk, tell us and teach us about it. And when you begin to pull yourself out and hear some knowledge, then things will open up. My thoughts. Can I, like, I'll co-sign on all that. Thank you, Date. I stumble on that part of the question. It's like, how did things get easier along the way? Because I don't know if they got easier for me. But I feel like they did get more fulfilling and more enriching. And I do want to co-sign on Dante's encouragement to find the why, why we do things, what is the reason. And I think as a theater educator, I'm in the habit of tying things back to this idea of dramatic action. So if action is the medium of theater in the same way that paint is the medium of painting, that we too should have this kind of centering of, OK, well, the objective is this. And these are the things, the tactics, the things that I'm going to do to pursue this thing that I want. There's a reason. This is why. And I think as I started to develop an analysis around why theater was important to me, then I found that advocating for the things that I needed or the things that the work that I wanted to do became maybe easier. But I think the actual word is more compelling and more emphatic and more. So for instance, I know that's a lot of abstract ideas. If my work before was like, OK, so why do we, you know, let's put on a theater. We do musicals, right? So that's our thing. Why do we do these musicals? You know, is it fun, Disney? It's because we want to participate in this capitalist industry that is Broadway, you know? Or is it for me personally, because there's something about musical theater that is synthetical, that brings together a community of people with a diverse set of skills and a diverse set of interests into one shared goal, something like that? Or is it like, oh, you know, theater, it's, I really love the idea that theater teaches empathy, but I think there's something a little bit more like practical for me. It's like, you sit your butt down in that seat and you have to, you agree through cultural, you know, somehow through magic, ritualized magic, we agree to sit down and pay attention to somebody else's story for 90 minutes. Oh, I love a 90 minute show. Two acts, I should say, though, because, you know, there are more 90 minute shows now, but there's a lot of two acts. So two acts and an intermission. We're going to sit here. Most of us, that theater, we're going to agree to sit and we're going to watch and we're going to pay attention and we're going to be polite. And like, there's something about that action and that ritual, which is the basis of ethics. Just paying attention, you know, and then now putting that with how I'm seeing what's happening in the world and people not able to see eye to eye and not listening to each other's things. I'm like, yes, we need theater, you know. And this is the objective that I have now to, again, ground things in Aristotelian action right after you've asked the question about how to decolonize what we do. But there are other examples. Like, you know, just say with Filipino epics, we have our own example of how something should progress, you know. And so I think that's another way that things have made it easier, is that when I start to kind of strip away white supremacist narratives around the work that we do and realize that there are things within my own culture, within other traditional cultures that are, you know, Audrey Lord, she has this quote, which is like, there's no new ideas, actually. We think that our brains are gonna set us free, that ideas are gonna set us free, but new ideas. But it's really, it's the old forgotten ones. It's the new combinations. It's the, like, recognitions and extrapolations that are already within us that are going to set us free. We just forgotten, you know. Sometimes we're fighting against things that are not even, like, we're talking about programming. Oklahoma, ooh, it's in the sights of a lot of people right now, is like the example of, like, this colonized theater. But sometimes things are not, you know, what's the spoon there? You know, what's the source material of Oklahoma? It's green growth of lilacs. There's a queer native writer who wrote that play. And those characters are actually, you know, have a native experience. They say when the sheriff comes into town, it's like, America's a foreign country to us, right? So it's some, that's the source material of Oklahoma. And we don't talk about that, you know. There are layers of things that we have to address. And I forgot what the question is, but I'm just going to stop talking because, I think I've said enough. Oh, no, unless you have something to say, Alec. Go in. Well, cause we're talking a little bit about, like, I like this question, I appreciate this question because I think about how it comes back to this community aspect about I'm, how do I make this not only easy for myself, but also like for the other people who I know will be experiencing this? And another thing is, I think just as you get older, you realize more and more that like, you're not going to get what you want unless you go out and either make it happen. And that is easier said than done because like some of us have been working in these organizations for a very long time to get to where we are. But there's a bunch of other artists out here in the world who are also wanting to make art and want to do a mashup of other things. So finding your group that wants to make the art that you want to make is always a good place to start. And it doesn't have to be the end all be all if you found a group and then you grow out of it or things change or visions change, that is okay and that happens. But there's something that happens too as you start to realize that there is no possible way to make everyone like the art that you're doing. That's just not going to happen. So if you like the art that you are doing and the people that you want to share that with are also enjoying it, then that seems to be the best way that you can create and do what you want to do. I don't know what else there is for me to add. Like everyone said the things. Yeah, I'll double down on the idea of like why, the why. And I think if there's one of the few good things that has come out of the pandemic, it's that the idea of looking back to yourself and reflecting, self-reflection, introspection, the why, right? Speaking for me, right? Like in the before times before the pandemic, if I was asked the question like why you do what you do, I would be like, because I want to produce newsies. I want to do these big amazing shows, right? Now that would not be my answer. It's because I want to open a door for other people to then walk through because someone gave me the opportunity to walk through that door in the first place, right? So like that's my personal mission as an arts administrator, is to be the person that opens a door. And as arts administrators, as teachers, as faculty members, as staff members, if we understand what the why is, why we do the art, then the work, kind of to what Orlando was saying, it's not maybe not necessarily easier, but it becomes more second nature, I guess, the work. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Thanks, y'all. And Nicole, I'm gonna throw this back to you. I wanted to ask that question from the students in the context of this larger conversation about decolonizing education and our theater spaces, because I think that by evaluating our own experiences and our own perspectives and our own responsibilities as artist educators in defining this spaces that exist for our students, right, that that's our step and responsibility in that. But I'm gonna throw it back to you to wrap us up. We've got maybe 10 or so minutes left. Oh, right. I wanna talk about kind of how, so in radical soaring, we've come to a place where we really want to grow our own if that makes sense. We have, so we have students from 10 to 19, and then back in the day, it was just like, okay, goodbye. But we created a group called YTT, stands for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, where we have our young adults. After age of 19, you can come back and still participate and we give them opportunities to perform as well as training opportunities. So do you wanna come teach? Do you wanna come direct to show? Training that they might not have gotten to get in the real world or in school. I personally didn't get to go to college for a theater. I went for communication studies, but now here I am getting to work with a theater because of all the training that I received from radical soaring, which has been just the biggest blessing in my life. And something that Tara Moses, our co-A.D. has brought up a lot about this decolonizing theater is how do we train native people to become an artistic director? There's no Native American artistic directors of non-native theaters, right? Why isn't that a thing? How do we create that? How do we make that? And yes, I'll always advocate for going to school and college, you know, I'm for it. But also that isn't always the pathway, that isn't always the way, right? That you don't go to college and say, I wanna be an A.D. and then get specific training to do that, you know, if that makes any sense. But so part of what we feel really passionate about doing is giving our students an opportunity to learn to be in these positions, not just for radical soaring, but to go get to be an artistic director for some other theater. Go to New York and be an A.D. for whoever you want to be, but you can learn it here. And that's kind of, it's kind of exactly what happened with me, right? I was a student and then I came back and I volunteered and I got to, my first directing gig was with radical soaring, my first teaching gig was with radical soaring, then they made me program manager and eventually I'll probably apply for A.D., who knows? We'll see. And I'll get all of my training that way. And that's really what we try to do with our students, give them an opportunity. You know, like we've all kind of touched on a little bit and draining it in different aspects of theater, but especially those big roles that are in other theaters, it is like a hierarchy, you know, to be the A.D., and how do we get there? And how do we train our students to become that? And I think something really cool about radical soaring, it's definitely a community-based program. And the fact that people want to come back, our students want to come back and work for us and do things with us, whether it's a paid opportunity or volunteer, you know, they still want to do things. I think that says a lot about the programming and how we run it and how we do want to train folks to be able to go off and do their own thing. And so with YTT, it's not just alumni. We call it our alumni group because we encourage all of our alumni to come join and come get training that way. And on that, we also, a lot of our classes, we do one-off classes where we'll do a traditional music class. We've done stop-motion animation class where we had our alumni come and teach those classes where they might not get the opportunity to teach those type of classes with other orgs. I lost my point where I was going with that, but I do love that we have the opportunity to come back and work. Oh, so we do encourage alumni to come join YTT, but it's not only for alumni. We have some folks in our YTT group that came to us as young adults and said, hey, I really like that you have this native org and I want to be involved. How do I be involved? And then we hire them to come help out for a summer or a project or even sometimes they just want to come volunteer. And then you volunteer for one project and boom, you're in YTT. Now we're hooking you up with all the opportunities that all the alumni are getting because we just want to bring you in our circle and give more native people those opportunities. And something that I think, Erin, you could probably relate to because you said in high school, you were with the program, you now work for and you now run, right? That's exactly what ready go soaring wants to do. But we also don't want to be so selfish to where we're keeping all of our students and only work for us, only run our programs. Of course we want you to go off and do what you can, but we always want to have the opportunity for you here kind of at home to learn that, which you might not get in a college setting, what you might not get in a, especially a colonized classroom setting, which is so unfortunate. There's so many things we need to break down just in the education system, all the way from kindergarten, all the way up to higher education. You know, there's so many, a lot of good things happening, but so many problematic things. And now I feel like I'm really drifting away from the point. That's something that I've seen from ready go soaring and I would love to see from all kinds of different orgs where opportunities to where kids aren't just, once they graduate the program, they're off on their own. I'd love to see if they could come back and they can work or they can come back and get training if they want to go work somewhere else. I think any of our kids at any time, if one of our kids said, hey, I think I want to apply to be program manager at this other org, I'd be like, yeah, come shadow me or come hang out. We always want to provide those opportunities. So yeah, I don't know how to wrap from there. If anybody else have anything they want to add to that. Nicole, it's like the idea of like paying it forward a little bit, right? It's that constant engagement with the students who are no longer students, but being a stepping stone for them to the next part of their journey, whatever that is. And I think that's like, again, can only speak for me, but it's been really amazing to kind of have it full circle and to be at a place, whether that's a kids' aid or ready to go soaring or wherever, where you are given the keys to the city because they trust you, right? Regardless of whether you think you have the training or the master's program in, you know, ADing, right? Like someone has to open the door for you and trust them believe that you could do it. Like if I could not have done this job like when I was in college, but someone gave me the chance to do it. And now I have the keys to the city, so to speak. So like just that idea of paying it forward and making sure that you cultivate an environment and a program, whatever that is, where students can see themselves in that, right? I think there's no better compliment when a student comes up to you and says, you know, unabashedly, I want your job. Like I can tell you, I'm running out of fingers as to how many students want my job. And I'm like, wow, I didn't think that my job was that fun, but if you're really interested in this, then let's pursue that, right? Let's mine for that a little bit. So I don't have an additional question or a point, but I'm just, yes, ending to what you're saying, Nicole. Yes. I echo that too. I think about, you know, I've been in Seattle for not quite four years now. And often as I'm looking at my career trajectory or I come up against hurdles or obstacles or whatever, then the people that I go back to for advice are my mentors from the theater that I grew up in back in Flint, right? Because they set me up in that way as a kid. And so now in the position of being a mentor and a person who is present for students, like I have this deep desire to do the same thing, right? To, first of all, is who are you in the room? What do you want? What do you need? We can talk about anything. We can jam about anything. Yes, we will get to rehearsing, but if you've got big questions about life, the universe and everything, like, let's go. Absolutely. And I like that what you said about, you know, who's in the room and it's super important to do that with our youth, you know, obviously, but it's also important to do that with our young adults as well. You know, the fact that we taught a stop motion animation class, that wasn't because ready to go soaring to stop motion animation. That was because we happened to have an alumni that was very well versed in stop motion and could teach it. So we're like, why not offer it? We have him here. And then the kids loved it, that they didn't even know, it was something they didn't even know that they would be interested in, right? And so, yeah, I think that, you know, accessibility and offering opportunities to our youth and beyond, right? Not just cutting it off after a certain age. I think is super important. Also, I wanted to ask before, I know we're close at time, but were we getting any questions from audience at all, thoughts or anything? I'm not seeing anything. Just wanted to make sure I asked. Any in the chat, but y'all feel free. Okay, nothing from the audience. Okay. I got something. Oh, yep. Before I step, before we step out. It's like, I'm just reading the, like the lyrics for me. I don't know why I started to just pull it up was Kendrick Lamar's DNA. When he says, I got, I got, I got loyalty and got loyalty inside my DNA. Cocaine quarter piece got war and peace inside my DNA. Got power, poison, pain, enjoy inside my DNA. I got hustle though, ambition flow inside my DNA. Now I'm just reading. My big statement is, what's in the Seattle reps DNA? What's in Southern's stories DNA? What's in like the acts DNA? Because if you don't acknowledge what's in that DNA, you can't move forward. So Kendrick Lamar is, he's referencing all the good, the bad and ugly, without flinching. Now, if I went into an organization and did a training, would, what would, here's my observation. A bunch of folks, they begin to shrink and or do this and or to just like, whatever. They don't want to acknowledge that. Matter of fact, in the United States, that we don't need to not acknowledge what's in our DNA. So how are we moving forward? So I think that's, that goes into power analysis of like what's in your, your, your organizations DNA, acknowledge that the good, the bad and ugly, so that way you can move forward. I'm done. I'm out. I think that's really interesting to like, I hold up that challenge next to Nicole's question about like what training, cause like, if I'm gonna be real about Fifth Avenue Theater, what's in our DNA is a, you know, a regional theater with a union obligation that if we did have young people come into the theater and be like, hey, what kind of training can we, you know, get at your theater? We'd be like, hey, yeah, so you can observe, but we can't let you touch anything, you know? Cause one, you know, there's these things, but then also like we should be paying you. And maybe we don't have an intentional budget set aside for these programs. So I think that's the challenge for my organization is like, okay, or to be talking to the unions to be coordinating here, it's within our purview. It's in our, it's our opportunity now to be like, okay, so we're not serving the students that come back, you know, and what's the path for them? You know, and how do we, how do we take away some of these roadblocks that were, you know, do we, all of these resources that we put towards our, no, I'd love the children, right? We put a lot of resources towards their children and that's great. We need to keep doing that. But I think there is something very attractive to donors and things about having these funded programs for little, little kiddies, right? But now if we're getting real about, okay, we need the opportunity, okay, we see what theater they want us to have leadership. Everything that Nicole's talking about, we want like native EDs, we want, you know, global majority EDs and managing directors and things like that that we got to be real about. Like, okay, we can't just be putting all these resources into the very valuable programs for the element for the K through 12s, right? And then be like, okay, after 12, there's somebody else's, they're Michigan's responsibility, right? But even if they're Michigan's responsibility, tish, when they come back to us, what do we got for them? We got, we got roadblocks because of this, that, and that. So, and I think that's an industry thing to also figure out through coordination. So I will put that out there as the conversation. I am, actually, we just started having conversation about MDs, sorry, music directors, right? You know, that came up, somebody had brought up the fact that like, oh, who are we gonna hire for this one gig? And we're like, actually, everybody, there's nobody. So we should start talking because it can't be all the five, you know, only five MDs that are available to take a gig around town. And how many of those are BIPOC people? Three? Actually, that's pretty good. So, that example. But yeah, I think just as Dante was encouraging us as a community to come together to figure out summer school, we should definitely start having those conversations about, okay, how do we support the emerging artists, emerging leaders? Erin, any final thoughts before we wrap it up for the night? Erin's gonna take on that decolonization by using just gesture to express and I appreciate that. No, I don't have anything else. I'm just, I'm really thankful that I could be on this and chat with you all and please expect me to find you all and reach out to you in like a not weird way. So curious on everything that you all are doing and I want to know more. Except non-closure, that's what I'll say because this will forever be a conversation that just has to keep happening. It's like, how do we be better? And there's many definitions to that. So, except non-closure, folks. To that end, right? This is only the beginning of this conversation. This is 87 minutes of what will be at least a several years long conversation. And I'm personally feeling excited and energized to continue to carry forth this work with all of y'all. And I thank you all for taking the time and energy and brain space to be here with us tonight. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you and thank you to those of you out there in Zoomland for joining us. This has been just a delight and we'll look forward to seeing y'all at the next one and out here in these streets doing the good work. Thanks so much, y'all. Have the best night. Yay, and thank you, Alex. Woo. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex.