 So everybody can sit on this side on the table, so everyone can sit on this side, so we have a table on this side because we are doing time to all people and we are making an act of this act, we are occupying this event. I'm going to sit down on this side, I'm going to sit down on this side, I'm going to sit down on this side. How are you doing? For those that don't know me, I'm like a primo for these other people. The overarching title of this particular session is Art in a Time with Up People. So we want to spend the next hour and a half in a bit of a collective experiment in how we can really examine the process of intervention through creative practice and as well as the reflexive of that relationship is the impact of social movements, of cataclysmic events that happen in our communities and in our lives and how they affect our creative practice and so the question of the impact on our creative practice and the impact of our creative practice on social movements and what that looks like and the forms of that change. So the first thing that we wanted folks to do is to think about a movement moment or a cataclysmic event or something that has really deeply impacted your artistic practice and to just help people get juices flowing we were just going to share some of ours and then we'll have the opportunity for folks to share with a partner. So to just think of a moment that was critical in performing your artistic practice and it's hard to come up with one but just something that came to mind for me. So on the timeline it comes in the 1880s was Nellie Bly who's a journalist and it kind of came out of our conversation today of really powerful women. Nellie Bly is an amazing journalist and did amazing investigative reporting in Bellevue to try to shed light on the issues for people that were housed there that were suffering from mental illness. So for me that was really impactful in terms of making me want to shed light on things that I found unjust that I got to learn about and I did a little report when I was in elementary school. But for me that moment was really important in terms of artistic practice to form my practice. So we're asking folks to think about and it could also be a creative moment or it could also be a large collective experience like I have a dream speech. What's your moment Michael? Oh my moment personally. A particular moment for me that had a particular resonance was the economic collapse of 2008. We had been involved with issues around housing and land prior but suddenly our work was given a different resonance and people were like oh housing is a human right. Okay maybe now that a growing segment of the population was affected in the same way that I had been affected personally in my working class experience. And so that was a profound moment in my understanding of language and how I express as a maker language to tell my particular story and how that story can have popular resonance in relationship to the art that I want to make. A moment for me that stands out is called the Battle of Seattle and it was the shutdown of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. I was actually a student at Ohio State in Columbus Ohio really far from Seattle. I was involved in activism on campus and in the community and we shut down like downtown Columbus and this obviously happened. Most people know this. This happened around the world actually like there was what happened in Seattle but then there were the actions that took place all around the world. And the way it impacted my practice was that I had my sort of vision and perspective on change was just really scaled up. It just really blew up and I started to think a lot bigger about what we could do and what we could win. So in terms of the timeline we're not going to get like in a little order. In terms of the timeline I would say for me it was when I was a student at Hunter College in 1995 there was the threat of well actually that came a little bit later. But there was the threat of raising tuition at that time like of $2,000 more which was really incredible for most folks. And everybody had a sense that that was going to dramatically change the demographics of like who was able to be the slow like chopping block to like open admissions which meant the right that high school students had to go to CUNY as a college. Regardless of some of their scores and things like that in their academics the right that they had in terms of being in public college even though they still had to pay tuition to go there. So for me we organized a massive student strike that had like 20,000 people in City Hall. And I was a poet coming out of high school knowing like how important poetry was. But this kind of allowed me to work with other poets who were also activists and find a community with them. And it just allowed us to use our personal stories and connect that to some of the struggles we were dealing with within the movement and then within our own lives. And like our struggles around access personally but also our struggles within the movement itself as women and as people as women of color. Okay so these moments are also like put in a context in terms of the discussion that we've been having and in terms of like how art and activism dance with each other and how they merge. At the end of the previous session we were starting to talk a lot about the moment and certain moments and certain pivotal moments and transformational moments. And it seems to me that people were talking about that art and activism and community work were not really separate that balance all the questions of aesthetics and purpose are really can be linked. And I think for me throughout my life and also now I'm looking at the intentionality of both arts and activism is to find that portal, to find that entrance place into the consciousness of a human being, into the consciousness of a community, into the consciousness of a society at large. Susan and I were talking about that sometimes you don't get to go through the front door. Sometimes there is a window that is open in the basement and a little crack that you get to go through. And sometimes that window has actually been left open by on purpose either consciously or unconsciously by the person, by the organization, by the society that you want to go into. So you can find this portal and that both art and activism is trying to find the images, the ideas, the resonating idea that can get you through this portal. And you can share that. And that the whole thing that wants to get through has a feeling, another word that came up, of necessity. That something's necessary. There's a great little sequence in Universe's New Peace Party People where Steve Sapp has this monologue that says Martin Luther King, Necessary, Malcolm M, Necessary, the Black Panthers, Necessary. So that whole thing about that, I thought that was really great that that thing about necessity came in. When I was thinking about where I would place myself on this timeline, I thought, well, you know, the kind of thing that was really in there, you know, for me was like, 1979, that year, when I first went to the Public Theater in Joseph Pat, and I thought, well, that was necessary in my life, but was it really that kind of moment, that historical moment and whatever? And then I thought, well, there was a real thing when I fell into Occupy Wall Street and joined the puppet guild and the arts and culture part of Occupy Wall Street where it really was about finding images, the art that could serve the activism. The Public Theater was very much about activism in art, which was sort of like one of the discussions, and this was very much art and activism. And I thought, well, a necessity moment is actually right now when the floor of my life is falling out and I don't know how to pay my rent and it's like, you know, what am I going to do next? And I said, oh, the four mission thing that came up? That was really great. Thank you very much for that because I'm going to have a four mission organization. And I thought, okay, I'm going to choose another moment that I realized was really, really key for me and it was when I was a child. So we'll see, 1979 is here. So I'm a child and it's a summer day and my mother says to me, Eidola, which is my name, my first age, Eidola, put on your shoes. When I go downtown, I'm going to do something really important, don't tell your father. So we go downtown, it's a beautiful summer day. We go down, if any of you have been in Washington, this is in Washington, D.C., you know, there's the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. And so we get down there, there are thousands of people around the Reflecting Pool. We find this little corner of the Reflecting Pool, like here's the Washington Monument, there's the Lincoln Monument. There's this little corner by the Reflecting Pool, where we squeeze in, right? And it's like, amazing. And they're these speakers, but they're probably not enough because I don't think they thought there were going to be that many people. And they're these speakers, you know, and they're talking in the sun and everyone is in this state of ecstasy. And every once in a while, I hear, at first I thought that we were at, I didn't know, wasn't happening. We were at some sort of interactive performance of Moses. Because I heard a lot about freedom. And I thought, oh, are we in a play? And, you know, is this, I said to my mother, is that Moses? And she sort of smiled, you know. And so every once in a while, there would be this wong, wong, wong coming out of the, I couldn't quite hear what it was. But the crowd would go crazy. And I thought, oh my God, I love this moment. And the other thing I realized was that my mother, for maybe the only time in her life, it felt like she was with people that she felt part of. My mother kind of looked like Amritha, that she was a fat shade dog. And I realized this was the only time though she surrounded a lot of people, especially women, who looked like her. And she was relating to them. And I thought, oh my God, she is with her community. I couldn't define it. And I knew that. And I felt it really, really strongly. And so that also moved me. And I thought, this is like theater. The set is great. It's dramatic. You have all these people. You have this, I can't hear everything, but it's obviously a great speaker with a great voice, you know. And then there was another, waw, waw, waw, waw, and the crowd searched and I fell into the reflectable. At least women, oh my God, oh my God, try to pick me up. They're holding me in the sun and I'm going, oh my God. That was the moment. And as I look back on that moment through the lens of what we've been talking about, I mean, it's really interesting. Years, years later, someone said to me, I said, well, that was your baptism, you know. And I went, oh my God, it was totally my baptism. And what started everything. And now as I look at it to articulate the context of what we've been talking about, it was the fanning of a collective flame. So I thought, okay, that's something I'm still interested in. It was an actualized, pivotal, transformative moment on time. Where there was a whole huge history that led to that moment. But balanced with that history that led to that moment, there was also a future potential history. Equally long, if not longer, that was different. And even at that, I was in elementary school, even then, I had a sense of that. Looking back at it now, I really have a sense of it. In terms of what, how it was art and aesthetics, I've said it, well, I had high aesthetics. I had a lot of the aesthetics that were found aesthetics. They were the, you know, the resources that were around them. It was also another definition of art. I was saying earlier that art comes from the Norse earth to be an art without art. Old English literally is being another one of the other definitions of art that have come up with that. It is finding the image, or when Plato talked about actually finding the form of art, finding the image or the idea that triggers an sensory, emotional world. And it also ties into culture, and the cultivation. Cicero is probably the first one who said, culture as we know it, where he said, a cultura animi, which was the cultivation of the soul. It was also the cultivation of the community, the cultivation of persons. Whether it's a soul as an entity, if you believe that, or whether it's what they've said now, the mirror neurons in the brain, which really operate in terms of people relating and feeling empathy and getting motivated by an artistic moment. But that was all there. All those types of things were present at that moment and in that day. There's also one thing in Occupy that we're really fighting for is the right to the commons, the right to the Agora, that huge Greek space in the center of Athens that was the marketplace, that was where democracy really was forged. That was the theater before the separate theater got built. And I think a lot about agoraphobia in the society. Not only the agoraphobia about the fear of people participating in their society, in their democracy, but also the agoraphobia of the top that's afraid of what comes. So that moment, which was both a gift and also survival, because it was a moment of a gift of hope, but it was also a real clear indication that there was a long road ahead and that it was going to be sacrificed and that some people might not survive, but that the real survival of what this community was, what this way of thinking was, really crystallized at that moment. So August, 1963, Washington, D.C., March on Washington, Martin Luther King. Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa! I have a dream. Okay, so what we talked about was these pivotal moments and historical memories, historical trauma. We talk about where it is in our bodies and how do we make theater out of that and how do we start this organic process? Because if I have a historical, we are learning this, it is in your body and then from there becomes the historical memory. The historical memory of relocation, of abuse, of a cycle, but it is stored in your body. Do you get the pain? Do you get the color? Do you get the vision? And how do you do that? And how do you work with that? We see it in modern dance. We see it in these different techniques of organic storytelling and that is the oral tradition, right? Because of weather, whether this was a bad time, generations and generations of storytellers. So part of that is comedy. And we never talk about comedy. Here we are in this room and we all are very serious when we talk about it. But what is the pivotal role of my timeline? Okay, I can think of a few things because the one, is it when my mother beat up a bunch of gypsies? I don't know. And then I said, no, I'm not going to do that one. And then I said, well, you know, is it the time when my family decided to occupy Washington, D.C. monuments with over 30 Indians and we all got kicked out and they decided, and the police had it coming, we all had to hit the ground and roll over. And I said, you know, and then they made us change our shirts, shirts because they didn't want snipers to shoot at us. And I said, no, I shouldn't talk about that. I'm saying, I'm really talking bad about my mom. So I should talk about that. And then I said, well, you know, I was like 1976, Spider Woman Theater erupts in my living room. And it's the first time I heard, saw this theatrical way of sharing stories about abuse. And I was very young, I was seven years old and I've used these techniques my entire life. But I said, no, let's go a little further. What, you know, that's history, right? What's happening now, right? So then there was, I don't know more, which really woke up my senses to another generation who was attacking the native communities, were attacking something that really, that really felt that the youth, and I had it back up for youth, and I realized I wasn't youth anymore. So that's the other one. So, but the one that really, and this is the one that really, when I knew my work as a theater artist was not done, was when Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson opened up at the Public Theater. Now, I at the time was working at the UN, right? So I'm hearing all this stuff. They have an initiative at the Public Theater. Everyone's saying, oh, you know, this is a terrible way. But I have no, because this day is the Doctrine of Discovery. Doctrine of Discovery is this big paper where basically Christians came, came, said we are not human in particular, and so that's it. And so, and they threw us off. And so it's gonna be this big apology at the UN so I get my Prada suit on, right? And I'm putting my makeup on. I gotta have good Prada to go to UN. So you gotta, I didn't have, I didn't have it in there. I'm going in there and they'll get Good Day New York. And the star of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson gets on and he says, oh, this is play about Andrew Jackson. We made a musical about it. And it was like a double take. You're like, huh? So, you know, like a nine-love Lucy, like, huh, what? And so I was like, no, right? It's like, nah. And then he starts to talk and they said, well, you know, she says the other, it's like an idiot, an idiot, an idiot having conversation, right? So I'm here and I'm like, okay. So the other idiot says, well, isn't there a lot of stuff with, you know, Andrew Jackson? And he says, you know, all of his court, oh no, that was propaganda. I said, well, do it. Right. So I say, oh, well, isn't there a Native initiative there? And I'm thinking, nah, so he goes on and they show little fake Indians on stage and I say, oh God, I don't have time for this. I get in the cab. I'm going there. And I get there and the public theater decided to invite every elder at the UN who's fighting all day to do have some entertainment musical theater so they had them see this play. They were crying in the aisles. They got up and they walked out. So I haven't seen this play and I'm trying to be fair, right? Because I'm a fair person. It's a fair thing to do. So I go, because I'm not going to say, they're going to say it sound great. She didn't make this musical. I said, okay. So I go and I get a bunch of people together. I get my mother. I get a professor. I get a preacher. I know it sounds like a joke, right? A mother and a professor joke. You're going to see a musical theater play, right? They walk into a bar. So then he come in and we're all going, and these are buried. There's a diplomat there and we're sitting there. And I'm looking at this play and I get free tickets. And I go in because the elders all say, you have to see, you have to do something. You have to speak about it on the floor. I was like, you know, I mean, you know, okay, some musical theater is a good. What do you want from my life? I can't make a, you know, a democratic thing about it. So I go to the music star, something, wow, this is really a cool play. I said, oh God, I hope, you know, I hope it's good. And if it is good, I'm going to be so jealous that a non-Indian wrote it, right? I mean, I'm going to be so upset, right? So I'm watching and they're doing all those things that you're learning in theater. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this might really be good. You know, maybe someone got it, right? And then the Indian joke started. And then the other Indian joke started. Then they did one little, two little Indians. And people think it's hilarious. And my historical trauma, not only mine, but everybody, my whole family was there. My husband, by the way, the coward that he is, he's the managing director. He stayed home. He said, I'm not going anywhere with you and your family seeing a play called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Forget it. So he stays home. So I go, I go there. And you see the historical trauma. And it just is like, it brought back so many memories. So many memories of being not called dirty Indian, not good enough, being woohoo, woohoo. And I put up all of it. And I look over to the audience of all these Indians and they're crying. And people are laughing. And then I got, then I said, OK, so then I got scared because I said, wow, if you can make genocide funny like this and make it nothing, and we're over at the other end of the UN fighting for our lives in the front line, this is really scary. I said, this is propaganda at its best. And I said, now I know what it feels like to be a Jew in Germany. I said, because there's no way this is scary. They can attack us. Nobody will. Nobody will do help us. So then the play's over. And of course, my mother can't help herself. She boos. And she goes, boo, yes, right. And I'm up to, I'm to. And her girlfriends with her, my stepmother, and she's there with each other. And this guy stands up and frightened words to my family. He says, you're old, you're fat, you're not funny. Oh, boy. Fright breaks out. My mother jumped. You know, I'm a little older now. She's seven, five, five. And she staggers up and she's going to clock them. And her girlfriend grabs them and they're yelling at me. They're saying, Mary, I'll do something. So I'm trying to get down. And then they say, security, security, ushers, calm. It was, and so I, and then they closed the door. So I decided to say, and I'm saying, and I have like these people trapped. And I'm saying, because I want to say that we're normal because we're the only people of color in this whole damn place. And I'm saying, we're not crazy. Okay. This is historical trauma. And they're like stuck because we're stuck in this theater. And my mother, and if they call the police, they're going to escort my mother out. We go downstairs. Then this woman tried to tell, tell us, well, you know it's satire. And you shouldn't be upset about satire. You know, it's not really racist. So a guy from the audience comes up and says, I understand your racism. I've decided to debate with four Indians who are just angry and want to debate anybody because Indians can debate forever. And so then I felt like I was in the producers because then somebody turns around and says, let's kill the actors. And you're like, don't kill the actors, please. They just want a job. And it just escalated. And they're all huddled. All the actors are huddled. They're afraid to go outside and they just took over this thing. And it was not a bunch of us. It was really like the coach. And we were going to, lack of a bit, scalp these people. And that's what they really thought. And I go over and the lead guy, the guy who was in the vampire, Lincoln vampire fight. And he says, and I look at him, he's like really upset. And I go and I shake all of your hand as a fellow actor. And I say, I understand, you know, this is a play, you're an actor. This is a terrible play. And this is offensive. And I really hope it's a flop. You know. And I just want to let you know that but I think you're extremely talented. And I was right. I said, I think you're extremely talented. And I think you're a great singer. But good night with you. And he looks, so we go outside and now we're kicked out of public theater. Police are there. And he finally comes out. And he looks at me and he shakes and he has tears in his eyes. And he shakes my hand. And he says, thank you. And then my family goes after me. He's like, taxi. And he goes and he sails off into the night. So I go home, right? And I tell my husband all of this. And he just looked at me. He says, wow, another night with the Miguel. So at that night, I just said, you know, I really believe that that was my pivotal role. That you could talk politics forever. You could talk, you know, write papers forever. You could do all of that stuff. But the point is, you know, I was in theater to make a change. And I knew this could never happen again. And that's when I started working with Nina, and Nina and Morgan, and really trying to make a protest piece. And we made a protest piece called, Oops, Bloody Bloody Oops. And it brought up a lot of things about images. It brought, you know, Peter Pan, the Chugga Woga Woga song, looking at things on television. And like empowering other urban kids when you're the only person of color in the room, what do you do? You have to fight. And you spend a lot of that time fighting. But how do we empower you? How do we empower them to do something creative with that? So 2008, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is when really I knew that, like, I had a political life. More of a political life outside of political arena but to get her to create other than standing naked in front of the gap and saying, you know, down with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. So then everyone wants to come up now with the other part. Yes. So thank you for listening to some of our moments. And so we just wanted to give an opportunity for people to share with a partner. You know, they're a moment. Obviously there's like a big spectrum of things that were really, really, obviously critical. You know, just think of something that you want to share with someone else. And we'll give a couple minutes each side and we'll tell you when to switch. Just about five minutes, Top. We'll tell you when to switch. And just turn to the person next to you. All right. All right. All right. So we're going to move the train. Two degrees. The meanest of stairs. Yes. One, two, three. Oh, are you sure? No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I'm not happy with the story. We got one right. So I'm going to say, I'm a live series, but I'll take that. I'll live for the next two years. I'll be there. I'm just very inquisitive. I'm just going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, We're switching in a minute and a half, so now you cross your story in a minute and a half. You're still done. We've got time. She very much liked it to me, but because I was in high school and college it was like a feeling. You know, I'm in my own form of transition. That sounds very selfish, but I was like, yeah. It's one of these things now that I've heard about it. Think about it more and more. I'm in my own form of transition. I'm in my own form of transition. So if you haven't switched already, switch it up. I'm in my own form of transition. I'm in my own form of transition. I'm in my own form of transition. I'm in my own form of transition. I'm in my own form of transition. So we want to now try to put these things in some type of historical context. An individual has had a great political influence on my personal development. Gracie Byrne was the person who politically helped me understand the difference between insurrection and revolution and understanding revolution as evolution and growth as evolution. So we kind of want to put this in a historical chronology. And so what we're going to do is we're going to ask everyone to come up. And this down here being like present day right now, I don't know what the date is, but whatever the date is, 2013 today, August, July, is right here. And then down there is Nellie Bly, and I don't know if anyone's that old, but, you know, 1880. But, you know, we're going to ask you to stand in chronology. And a little bit of negotiation too, checking with your neighbors, see where folks are. Morgan is here in 1963. So, and the woman here down here in 2008. 99, you have two minutes. We have 95. What did you think? 1363. All right, there we go. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry to feel really bad about that. We're stretching down into the future, it looks like over here. Nick is always in the future. He said we're stretching to the future, I said you're always in the future. So who is on here? Can you just share a little bit about the moment just very briefly? I was just sharing the story last Tuesday on the cover of the New York Times. There was an article about a man in Louisiana we all revere named John Berry. He wrote his book Rising Tide, and he started working for the oil companies about six months ago and everybody in Louisiana wrote him off. And I said, man, he's not a trader, this guy's an infiltrator, I promise you. And sure enough, he came out of that experience in six months and he has led with the Orleans Parish Redevelopment Authority, the flood protection zone. They sued 100 oil companies for 150 years of damage to the wetlands and have found the loophole in the law that the companies actually signed in a contract that said anything we do to damage will be over repair. And so it was just this moment of watching somebody that you really respect kind of getting accused by the public, and then noticing that he put his integrity on the line and his job on the line, and so he came out of that and he does not have a job anymore. And his integrity is still in question, but now there's a suit against 100 oil companies. So it's just a really nice one. Let's go down to the opposite end. So Maywest Learning, I must have been in high school and seeing a Maywest movie on TV and then being like, who is this woman? And finding out that at the same time that she was doing these wonderful, wild performances that became great, important to my aesthetic, she was put in jail and that she would sit in, she was in jail, I think she was in jail a bunch, but the image that always came to me was on Roosevelt Island that old, dilapidated building used to be an insane asylum. At one point she was put in there and she would knit in her finest shoes. She would come in and visit her and she'd be knitting in this horrible place and just the contrast between those two things. So that's 18, I think it's 18. I think it's 18. I guess in the interest of our live stream videographers, we'll just kind of move down the line here a little bit. Somewhere around the 64 mark, be around where Morgan is, if y'all to the left or right want to share anything? Okay, this is probably 1944 and I was with my grandmother who was a designer and she put some flowers and fabric and all kinds of things in front of me and she said, anything you dream you can make with your hands. Let's move down here to, I don't know what year this is around... 86. 86. 86. Yeah, someone who owns that year, why don't you say something? So I'm on my knees in Berlin. I'm speaking French, taking me like a half an hour to get the nerve up to come in this room because there was one woman sitting in the room, she was sitting on a chair. I was sitting next to her on my knees. Her name is Ariel Muschkin and I didn't know why I was there but I knew I had a question and it finally came to me. She was very nice, this babbering person and I finally said, what about this company thing? And she looked at me sternly and she said, well what are you going to do without a company? I mean don't get me wrong, they make you miserable, they're always leaving, there's always a problem, but what are you going to do? And I had an epiphany in that moment where I realized that every great production of a theater or dance I'd ever seen was always by a company and that was turning for me. Can we move down to the 90s, anyone in the 90s? 2001 last final, anyone have any burning moments they'd like to share? I can give it a shot. In 99 NATO started bombing in Yugoslavia and it was the first time having the anti-war activists and growing up during the time of the Vietnam War all these people I knew were for it. I'd never known so many people who were for military action. So I started having people over to my house in small groups and asking them questions and sharing stories to try to understand. And the woman who was the editor of the country's largest anti-Vietnam War rag, I knew her, she came and said a reminder of the Holocaust, the fellow who won an arts program for a major bank in New York came and said Milosevic reminded him of his dad, his dad was a bully. I know it could be easy to laugh but these were very, very intense conversations and I was asking people what does it remind you of, why would you be it? What do you think? And so I gathered hundreds of emails from people who were involved and articles and journal entries kind of started to meet that community from all the countries there and did a play and asked 35 friends including my male man and my brother and we did a one night performance at St. Peter's Church where they read as themselves these texts from there to try to understand it and the next day I flew there to interview men who had committed these acts and made two trips and interviewed scores of men who had done and participated in terrible things for the next year and a half and in my heart wrote a play called Just War but I haven't read it on paper yet and that's when I decided to be an artist and do nothing else. Wow, cool. Thank you Marty, that's like a perfect transition. So we've found ourselves on this calendar together and we've made the calendar with our bodies and today we find ourselves actually also probably for the first time in this configuration in the same geography and we want to take this moment to now recognize I think Morgan got to it a little bit where she talked about being there that day in Washington and kind of reading that history back that led to that moment and that's a little bit of what we've just done we want to take some time now with the time we have left actually now together that we're all here together to start to create that calendar into the future because there are some trajectories that we're on in this geography and the geography of the US that are pretty readable, anticipatable and so it seems like we could do something together right now make some things together or just imagine some things together that may bear fruit so we came up with a few scenarios that are sitting on that calendar way over there, they're sitting out ahead but we think they're probably going to happen unfortunately but fortunately we're all here together and we have some ideas and some creativity Lenina, do you want to share our scenarios? Yes and what we're going to do is, there's six of us two of us from this team will go with each group and there will be three groups and these teams will create a response to the scenario and there's also an option for another imperative, necessary scenario right, in case it's done so I think that when you hear these scenarios they're not going to be something super uncommon because a lot of what happens, like history repeats itself are narratives that have repeated themselves and that's one of the discussions that we had as we were coming up with them so the first scenario, and this kind of came out of some of the discussions this morning is going to be dealing with issues of gentrification and development and displacement so you're in a community and a developer would like to destroy the last remaining affordable housing unit that is housing about 400 families in the community immigrant families within this housing unit are actively being targeted to be evicted from their homes as the developer is still negotiating and trying to figure out how to demolish this property so that luxury condos off the space can be built so that's the first scenario scenario number two there is a major hurricane and this hurricane has now come and destroyed an entire community it's housing, it's businesses, it's infrastructure there's lots of people who are displaced there are a lot of families that are divided and can't find each other what are we going to do to build it back scenario number three there's a young black man who's also queer and he's in a neighborhood that he hasn't always been in and he meets a group of youth like himself white youth who beat him up and kill him and in the court case it's seen as self-defense because this person shouldn't have been in that neighborhood so how does the community respond to that? the one thing I'll add is that in the entrance of the urgency of the drama you live in that housing development that's under threat it is your community where the hurricane has occurred this young man is your friend, daughter, son, cousin so it can come to you any way, any form all of us are going to facilitate different ways to do this and we're all going to go into groups mine is going to basically be about historical memory and where that lays on your body with something asking you a question and seeing where we go from there and everyone has a different way of approaching it yeah, Lenina and I will take a group and I think we'll be really open to whatever process we come up with in there and we're here? are you going to go with me? and the third group is Michael and Rachel should we name the groups? and we're just going to count off and three is going to sign you so you don't have to do any of that cogitating of what scenario you want the scenario is imposed upon you it's not usually one you get to choose so who's our first participant on this end? well, Rachel's going to facilitate one two three one two three one two three one two three two three one two three one two anyone else joining us? one ones go with Morgan and Muriel twos we'll go with Lenina and I and threes will go with Michael and Rachel and the scenarios are? so we'll hand the scenarios we have 20 minutes to respond we're getting good we are taking the scenario it's crazy two three one one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three Yeah. Wait, so we're at the moment. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. if it's just us dealing with it for now? We're just a collectivity amongst. Well then I'd say it'd be to like create other, to delegate areas like specific, like we're trying to specific neighborhood or specific like, so to like organize like tasks based on ability. Really? Yeah, my other side would be to see what structures are sound. Yeah, canvas, the area. Yeah, talk to people like, like, like I was saying, but also there are people probably already organizing, so try to contact them whatever, you know, how you can. Probably there's no phone, there's no electricity, so. Yeah, what resources are where and who has them and how do we help distract them? If there is water, are there are there boats, mini boats that you can use to go around or, you know, who's on the top routes to see each other and who needs rescue immediately? You know, what's more urgent? Probably work in couples, because it's such a dangerous situation. Find out what communication tools are out there that work and don't work. That was an untransmitter. And the guy looked like that. I mean, I think the response is also like, a creative question in the trans community. And I had to really think about that. Why am I angry now? You know, someone was abused 20 years ago. The guy said, well, why now? So if we think about that one, and if we put yourself to think about it for a few minutes and think about that scenario, someone's developing to take it. Whatever it is. There's no right or wrong here. But think about whatever it is. And then we'll go in a circle of whining, okay? So let's take that three, you know, three minutes. Okay? Okay, let's just go. Yeah, let's just go. Why now? Why would you be angry about that now? Why now? Oh, because it's a problem that has escalated to the point. Emotions make you angry, it's making you sad. Furious. Furious, good. Why now? Does it make you angry, sad? My heart feels hollow. My heart feels good. Okay, be a little more specific. Is it painful? Is it sadness? Yeah, sadness. Sadness. Remember, sadness, good. Why now? Agitation. Agitation, agitation in anger, agitation in fury. Naive, agitation. Naive. Big one word. Mm, one, just give me one. Mm, a word. Okay, I'll say it again. No, I can't. No, just give me a word. Why now? Powerless. That's good. Fearful. Fearful. Overwhelmed. Good. Stop being funny. You know what I mean? And it's just, you know, just, occupy our time in a productive way. Right, yeah, like what we realized is that, like, there were, that there were like dance parties that were held up. I don't think it's the only thing there were dance parties that were held up. How did they, how did they internet that? Like, there's a lot of things that we weren't as well as the dance parties. Regardless of the dance parties. Like, we're not as organized as we are now. Like, each year now, we're not as organized as we are. But I think it's the only thing that we're going to do that's not a part of our history. Yeah, I think that's a really important part of the aspect. That's where we turn to, you know? And like, what are other equivalencies of that? You know, it's like, okay, so that's one example. You know, like, dance parties, like, in the queer community. Okay, that kind of like cross boundaries, you know? Like, what about the isolation? I see these as being like, there's this, there's a one point, and it's just sort of a floating point, which is like this, the beauty, you know, sort of, there's sort of a beauty, beautiful freedom of that floating. And it's like, is that space, like how, I don't know, how to express, or how that space is like, that's the action against that is like, is like taking away that sort of, this sort of beauty or this sort of, that space. And I don't know how to address that at all. But I mean, just the, to me, it's like, that's almost like a dramaturge of just this sort of like, this is the action, you know, and then there's this group, which is like, how do you communicate with this group, you know, as to the idea of this individual floating through that sphere, basically. I don't know. What made me think of, I'm a teaching artist in a lot of inner city or whatever places in Brooklyn. And so in Brownsville, We are five minutes. Many times I've been kind of like a classed by like a lot of aggressive energy. Like literally I'm in the, in front of the school and my kids are like just aggressive in teaching. It's all about this aggressive thing. And I've learned that it's like, they need this. This is actually, it's a tool for them to have the strength because their community is very tough and very hard. And so it's not like, you can't be this way. Like this is not okay behavior. It's not like that. But to say that there's another way, that there's other options and give them some other things. And I think that, that there is this aggressive thing that, you know, there's this whole group and this is like out of fear, whatever they have this aggressive thing that happens. And to just cut that off might hurt them in their communities, you know what I mean? Like in the project, it's like, it's tough, you know? And you can't just be a wimp in some ways, but also you can't kill people. You know what I mean? But I just think that that's also an important conversation and it's not like. We're being set up here. And I told you, that there's no form that can be defecation and it's the same thing without a way to frame it. I mean, in winter it's hard that there's, you know, there's a crisis here. One of the things that happens is that people panic. So you need to grab those tools because somehow what you need to try is to work with the panic, you know, like that kayak and I know that Molly Smith, you cannot lean outwards, you need to lean inwards and go with the people in, into the panic and then try to use it, like somehow you take advantage of your storytelling or whatever it is, charisma, and try to manage that moment because one of the things that's crucial at that time is to get everybody out of panic. And you need to navigate those hours which, you know, they're eternal. Sometimes they last forever, but it's like, you know, we're gonna get the help. We're gonna be okay, but we need to do this now. So, and there's no doubt that we need to do it. So there's no panic. Do you have a specific exhibition? And she's, no, she's doing, she's gonna sit down. Okay, go. Go, go, tell your story. Tell your story more. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. To them, not to them. All right. We are pushing it, you know, the exploration that, that softening you of this, of things and retelling what's going on and it's always that I need to predict what's gonna happen next. This is something different. This is like being invaded, like that sci-fi movie where they came and they were like locusts and just be everything. Because there's a time limit on this. I feel like at the same time, I think there's a shift, but these people are doing it while they still can. They're doing it through the banks. They're doing it through student loans. They're doing it through us. It's also, it's greed, but it's also racism. One minute. How are you gonna share back? One minute. So I want someone to come up, take one movement and go, but you can just do one thing and continue to do it. And say the word. I feel powerless. I feel insincerated. Do it four times. Okay. Nina, go. Keep on going. Keep on going. It's like we're all in terms of like a trial and error. It's like, in fact, aiming at all parties, that we try, like, doesn't do folks feel like they want to try to bring a lot of different parties together or do something that works with the community that George Neiman went from or like, you know, or black community, or a community that you work on is the audience. Right, and who's stages, right? Like, is that the stage of the observers or is that the stage of the participants? Like, what is their stage? That was their stage, because that's where the action took place. You know what I mean? That shifting place. Divided up by community, people selected how they wanted to be a reenactment of the trial in some way for the event. Tell your story to me. You will get a report, and you have to judge them by their results and your killer, your killer, your good, your good. Whatever the thing is, the process of doing that and how you do it, is like, wait, what do you mean by that? There's something about being late to do that. And then you present it to Dave, and then you present it to Dave, which you present the drama set to. That's it, there's an ideal that you're going to be able to do here. That's your responsibility, because I feel like you and your four children are trying to create dialogue opportunities and self-identify the parties that are in charge of your fun around both the incident and the community, where you try to get away that needs to be trashed and all that kind of stuff. We're not here to try to stop this. I don't have the... Adam is not going to do anything to help us be a firefighter, so... I don't think there might be a third option, too, which is that there's the possibility of really creating a new way of dealing with violence and the question of accountability. That's why I really recognize that justice is not going to stop us from doing the work. And then you tell and activate these beliefs, creating a process where people can tell and people can come to terms with the ways in which we hurt each other, like, every day. So that... All right, let's come back together, so we have time to share with the other two groups. Is there anyone who would... We can pull back into this space so that we can best connect with the... livestream. This is audience space. This is presentational space. This is audience space. This is... Will I block you, sir? We're going to be good. We're going to be open. We're going to be good. I'm going to help you. I'm going to block you, sir. I'm going to block you. I'm going to block you. This people with community is heavily involved. Scenario one. Is that us? ocuerio... Scenario of one. We have three minutes to share back. So this won't take very long, just what we did was, we started doing story weaving and talking about development, we did some warm up and then we took a story and then from there one person takes that movie to show the frustration. Our scenario was what? The scenario was, a developer wants to destroy the last remaining affordable housing unit that houses 400 families. Immigrant families are being actively targeted for deportation as a developer. So we're taking one story and we're weaving it and pulling it apart and I'll call everybody at 1x100 with the movie. So tell your story. I've been here for years, and I've seen these things come before, but this one feels different. This one feels like an invasion. This one feels like that science fiction movie where like, you know, those beams that look like insects were going to come and they're like locusts. And they're just going to wipe everything out because their time is limited. Somehow you know that they're going to die, their planet is going to go away and they're going to die, and their time is limited. And this is what it feels like. It feels like somehow it's sleeping. And they're just going to reign everything they've had. And they're just going to shred everybody's dreams. Always. Always. Always. Always. Yeah, I don't know what to be afraid of. What's that? I don't know what to be afraid of. They don't even lie. They're just doing it all the way. All the way. They're not going to say goodbye. Okay. I've got his stretch out. Yeah, we've got more people. It's a while with this. So, we got into a discussion that took place in a couple different time periods. The first time period was the waters have just receded. It's that first moment of quiet, and then we sort of had some discovery from there. So what are some of the things that we're doing in that first moment? We're canvassing what's going on immediately around us in our community based on our needs, and what's available for resources, that's a step one. I'm compiling a list of skills that we have that are actually useful in a crisis situation. So like actually if someone knows first aid or someone knows, you know, like that. We're going into a situation too, because it's a dangerous situation. And gathering people to save places that are built that are not going to crash into us. So you're going, right? Yeah, and then just assessing what's working, what we can use as communication tools, which would help the needs and what the skills are. So there's sort of this identification as just another citizen, or non-citizen as it were. And then looking at that little moment where we're all under the tent now, we're dry, we have water, some access to food, tipping over into the citizen artist. And in that moment, we start to discover what might we have to offer in that moment. Polly? In that moment, we might have to offer up producing capabilities, like how to make more with less. So we probably put ourselves in the mode of like, we're in a, you know, this is a production with minimal resources. And what is the, what's the show and what contribution can we make in what we have our access. You had a good one. Well, I'm the gather all the children. And we don't have pencils. We don't have paper. We don't have crayons. We don't have anything for set design. We have no musical instruments. But we are going to create poetry and songs. And we're going to do some improv. And we're going to do some dance. I'm a comedian, so I'm going to start telling jokes. I'm also going to document. Nothing brings up morale. And I suggested working with shadow puppets. No, I think that RJ was just at one point, we were kind of like going a little bit back and forth about not being so egocentric or thinking that our role, particularly as artists, is so important in this moment. Because I think we were talking a lot immediately about like survival. Like, oh, God, we got to get fast. We got to get water. We got to get, you know, and we were like, well, okay. But then like, what kind of response are we giving as artists? Like once things are a little bit more settled and we know that certain things are in place, like how can we come to it from that direction? And then, you know, we were, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to develop that because we were still so in like survival mode, right? But so what did come out was like these ideas of like, you know, that you can just work immediately with children right there in that moment. Or you can, you know, do like a shadow theater because you don't need any, all you need is light. You don't need any particular props. So that could be something. And like something I didn't say that I was thinking about was like, you know, one thing I remember doing was like making a lot of, you know, learn jelly sandwiches, you know, like, like putting smiley faces on them, you know, with like a marker in a, you know, while you're putting in a paper bag, you get more spirituality or creativity to an ordinary task. So. Somebody's thinking. Um, our, our scenario is, you know, quote unquote, modern day lynching of a young black queer individual by other young people, other peers of an opposite or of a different. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Read the whole thing. Yes. And they were, they were, they were, he was found not guilty because of self-defense for reasons of self-defense. And so what we, what we thought about is, is the way that we thought about Trayvon Martin's case and how it was publicly, you know, it was, it was a very public process. The judicial process was open for the world to kind of look at it and see it as it was progressing on so we could give live commentary as it was happening. And that what, what would it look like for us to stage a concurrent, alternative, a reckoning system in which we, we try the case in a public forum, not like, you know, pundits talking, but actually set it up in a way in which the case is argued from or presented from those various sides and, and have that as a space in which we move concurrently with the, the cases is developing in the, in the judicial system, but in a public sphere in which we're kind of re-enacting and, and bringing it back to, as Michael's saying, open up more channels of conversation that are a little more nuanced and, and don't really make their way into the public court system. We, we talked about sort of the why in trying to understand as artists in the context of this circumstance and systems that lead to this situation and the, and the conditions around it, is our goal, thinking about the word activism, is our goal to make dialogues between people who self-define as others in relation to these issues, is our goal to do something that is more traditionally activist in terms of make change in the system and actually get involved in advocacy in a variety of aggressive or passive ways, and just trying to sort of pull apart what the responsibilities slash needs were in relation to the different artists who might come together around this, which led us to a conversation about it. Um, it's a third possible goal at being, um, envisioning and embodying an alternative to the criminal justice system. Like, what would our system of holding each other, each other accountable for the ways we hurt each other and, um, yeah, hurt each other ultimately. How, how are we going to hold each other accountable and, and create systems of reconciliation and justice, um, that are different? So, yeah, that's where we landed. So we built that and we have flyers for everyone to land. What was this Friday? Three different approaches is that they all kind of go through a different window in the basement to the experience. Uh, like, like Muriel very much was about, let's get this in the body, the actual emotional experience that people are feeling. Let's deal with that first. When we went around it, people have different things. A lot of people were angry, sorrow, whatever. We kind of went with overwhelmed because that's paralysis. And paralysis is like somebody sitting down on other things. Like, I really wanted to, who, who, who has said opportunity? Is that you? I really, I really wanted to get it because I thought, oh, this is the scene. The person who feels overwhelmed is going to meet the person who goes, oh, this whole, you know, it's opportunity. It's like, well, you come from a different perspective than I do. And it would also allow the person who just feels powerless and overwhelmed to actually maybe get angry or whatever in a moment. But the whole idea is that to actualize so you physically feel. So you feel that trauma through. So you know what the trauma is. You know where it's coming from. So this could be used in two ways, this technique. First of all, to develop a piece that you want to put in public view, to talk about, to be a protest piece. It can go from one grain, one story. And then you start to develop it. You know, you don't have to have a script. You can have it on the body. Now you can also go into communities with the same thing. And you can talk about, and you know, where to be stricter with you. You can talk about violence against women, rape. A lot of times I do a lot of stories like this, a whole day of suicide stories. Who knew, who knew it was suicide? You know, on the reservations in our communities, a lot of suicide. So what has saved you? You know, then it gets so heavy, you bring them out of it. Let's do grandmother stories. What has brought you back to spiritual content? So this is how you could use the first part in showing it as a protest piece or using it in your communities. Yeah, we have about, this is about our time to the day. But before we close, I just wondered, but is there any like lingering questions, thoughts, reactions? Appreciations, however you want to phrase that? Thank you. Cool. Aren't no people? I'm not sure what's up next. Up next, I just want to say thank you. I want to introduce Michael Rohn who's here. Got stuck in some travel. I'm a Shoguna, a soldier in theater. Northwestern, welcome Michael. Winter Miller, who came from, who's up in the region. Winter is a creator of a piece called Indar Four, which some of you may have heard of and joined us for. So there's going to be a break now until four o'clock. It's about 20 of. We'll meet back in the pavilion. The next part is a brief talk with these co-authors, Nancy Abrams and Joel Primak. Their book, I believe it's on the table in there. I sent a link to some of their work as a short TEDx talk. You can look at that in the break or not. And there'll be a short talk with them about their work and how it relates to this context. So four o'clock in the pavilion, we'll be next. Thank you.