 Thank you all, we're back and right before we launch into the next inner circle, I want to just say a few quick things. So the first is, can I have everyone's attention? Thank you. So the first is that we're trying to mark a little bit like the bright spots, the things that are working that folks are mentioning throughout these conversations. Of course we're taking like all the notes, but also if there are things that like specific companies, artists, things that come to you that you just want us to have, feel free to write on these big sticky notes throughout our time together. I also want to acknowledge that we asked folks to share artists that you recommended and whose work you thought everyone should know about before you came. A reminder that that list is being aggregated, it's on the convening webpage as a PDF with links to everybody. And so we're also happy to add any additional folks who you want to add to that list at any time. And a good way for us to know would be to put them on those stickies. Great. So before we launch in, I'm going to hand it over to Lonnie who's going to, you know, get us back together with a moment of movement before we begin inner circle number two. Thank you. If you can and want to, would you join me on your feet? Folks in the inner circle, if you want to be there, you can. If you want to step out for a moment, you can, whatever you want. So yeah, as we go do what's comfortable for your body, take care of yourself, sit if you need to. So I just wanted to do something that would help us maybe relieve a little tension because I know that I'm holding a lot of tension right now. So if we just kind of jump back and forth on our feet, my feet are leaving the ground because it's a little more fun. But if you can't, if you don't want to, that's totally fine. Yeah. And so just like you're rubbing your hair against a balloon, think of this as like making friction right now. You're making friction with the ground and from it, that friction is all of your tension and all of your rage and all of the things that you're holding onto that are dragging you down today and maybe not just today, but forever. And then you're building it up, building it up, building it up, building it up and you're going to let it out in one huge, loud, silly, weird sound and a crazy motion with your body all together. We're going to do it when I count to five. And we're going to do this three times, yes, three whole times. So here we go, one, two, build it up, build the friction, three, four, five. And now I'm not going to count. We're just going to do it together. And it's going to be great. And you're going to build it and we're just going to feel it. And you can do whatever you need to do to build this friction if you feel like getting some knee action in there. If you want to sit on the floor and scoot your butt on it, do whatever you need to do. And we're going to build it up together. And then we're just going to let the sound out. We're going to feel it out. Okay, here we go. Oh, it's dissipating. We've got to keep the energy going. We have to do this one more time after this. Here we go. Yeah, build it up, build it up, build it up, build it up. Okay, increasing health. Yeah, one more time. Really? Okay. Make this one really weird. Really silly. All right. Here we go. One last time. Thank you, Lani. Okay. So, as I said at the outset, the conversation was structured to build the accumulative one. And so we're in the group now that is looking at how do we, the actual question is how do we double our impact? How do we double our current impact? So there's going to be another group that thinks about the stars, that thinks about, you know, paradigm changes. But in the work of what's happening right now, how might we imagine doubling, even go to triple if that's easier, the impact of the work that you're doing, that others are doing. One of the things that I heard in the first circle that we didn't get a chance to poke at is this notion of networks and recognizing that practice is local. Is there value in organizing? Is there potential in organizing? That's one thing I'd like to hear about. But what other avenues for increasing impact in your personal practice or in your community or in our collective practice? Chantal, did you have a place you wanted to begin for yourself? I think so. I'm thinking about Abishak's example of the theater that travels to six different villages and that uses the environment as the backdrop for this play. And I'm wondering, what is it that we're already doing that maybe could travel with very few resources and could be replicated? That could go either travel, actually, or be done in a different location but using the same model? Like are there things that we already have that could scale as opposed to, I mean, we can also invent new things, but I wonder are there things that we already have that we could bump up? And are there, talk about even the notion of scaling. Is that something that resonates as a potential place to begin for everybody or for someone? In this theme of thinking about things sort of holistically about, so where these problems have arisen from, that we're facing climate change certainly being the most probably acute of our sustainability problems but by no means the only one with the common sort of pathos that has given rise to this, they happen, these are emergent phenomena, right? I mean, we don't intend for these things to happen. The systems that we've created have brought us, sort of have achieved their own sort of coherence and resonance to bring us to this level of challenge and damage and urgency. And this is a feature of complex systems. But human society itself is a complex system in the way we respond and so I think you can also, there's this exponential growth that happens when things start to hit a resonance and that can also happen for the positive and this notion of what's working that came up last time is I think a lot of this is working and it doesn't always feel like things are happening but that's kind of a feature of exponential growth and of these emergent systems is it feels like nothing's happening and then all of a sudden it is. And so I think this notion of scaling up is more a question of achieving a kind of a coherence in the efforts. So just like the, you know, biologists, I'm sure many of you have heard of these really fabulous things. We're here. Oh, sorry. These really amazing things that happen, like in Brazil they look at, I know there's been a study in fireflies that start to, they illuminate in resonance across miles of the river. And that's not because they've gotten together in a committee and decided that this is how we're going to do it. It's an emergent phenomenon, the same thing happens in lots of places in nature and I think with these kinds of efforts, with societal efforts that happens as well. We've very recently seen it with, for example, marriage equality and this whole discussion in our society which for decades seemed to be going nowhere and then all of a sudden massive because beneath the surface lots of things have been happening. So I think on this notion of scaling up, this notion of sort of replicating, producing, creating things that can happen with a coherent future, meaning they have sort of the same goals. So an effort just doing the same things but in many more places and not necessarily controlled by the same people but maybe seated by the same people. There's an element also of visibility and coherence or a commonality and something about making something seem like a system that right now may seem like a lot of local things. Right, so that's kind of the difference between maybe noise and actual useful action. So when two waves are hit the same place in their cycle at the same time, that's coherent. When the waves are just not happening in any way the same, no, raindrops hitting a pond or just noise, the ripples they produce are noise but if you slap the pond in a constant way you can produce huge waves with tiny slaps if you do it at the right rate. And so I think it's not necessarily that everything has the same people have to be doing it but it has to be happening with the same common shared goal. And if those seeds can be planted in many communities, lots of regional theaters and community theaters and artistic where there's a shared goal then I think what the efforts that emerge that are working towards a shared goal will have a coherence that start to amplify each other much beyond anyone of their own. Kiyoko, what are you thinking? I agree to many things that we've been talking about and I think that in order to scale we need to, you know, we can't just create one wonderful theater production that's addressing the climate change directly but we, for example, I had like three things written down. So for example, okay, sorry, I don't know where to start. But for example, going back to the traveling theater ritual model, in Japan there is a contemporary artist who's been engaged in socially engaged art and to me it's almost like recreating the traditional folk arts or the rituals that existed but maybe extinct. But she's doing it with her contemporary music composition and involving the villagers and working on the theme of environment, for example. So to engage more people, to really, you know, make that community involvement and one strategy I think is just like we were talking about humor earlier because, you know, to look cool, you know, young people are interested in fashion, for example. And a lot of contemporary artists are good at that. And again, I'm talking about Japan a little bit more but traditionally artists were seen as who are different, who think differently and in societies like Japan where it's rather less, much less diverse and more in general conservative. It seemed important to have that kind of freedom given that, oh, she's an artist so she's doing something very different. So that's going back to a little bit to what we were talking about, about the strength that we have. Another thing that came to me is early education. So, you know, theater, production, some of them may not seem like for children, but then with the expert educator it could be interpreted and it could be highlighted what in this existing production is about environment. It could be, you know, made into educational tool, for example, because I really think early education slash exposure to that concept, again, in Japan it's traditional belief, religious belief is how we call yaw yorozu no kami, which means eight million gods, or the spirits. So stone from leaf to tree to everything has spirit and they're respected. So, you know, there's like a nature, the respect for nature is embedded. So something like that, not saying that everybody has to convert to that of original Shinto, but some, that kind of value that we are talking about here, which may be missing a lot in the current advanced societies, because our economy is really based on consumption. So something like that. The last thing I was thinking about the intersectional collaboration, and this is, I really appreciate this conference is involving or inviting scientists. And in the arts sector I think we've been talking about, you know, working with cross sector. However, it hasn't been happening as much as it could, and I think, again, I'm very impressed that we are really talking together in one group. I also think that we want to involve psychologists or comparative study scholars to advance this kind of thinking together. Great. So there were a number of things in there embedded early as a way to increase impact. We were talking in the earlier circle much more about adult audiences, the conversation all of a sudden now about, well, get young, start at young. The notion of intersectionality as starting from the beginning, like a beginning place to double impact. What other things are maybe on your mind about how to increase the impact of what it is that you're doing individually or that we're doing as a global community? Also the notion of embedding a sense of nature, of spirit, of moving outside of the human centric nature of our stories. Yeah, Mark that. I just want to say I'm grateful for the, now I want to say indigenization of things and the shintoization of things. One thing that I'm grappling with and maybe others have solutions and I'd love to talk to you is I think about artists and arts folks and just often the impulse of creation and which embedded in it often is the idea of creating something new. And once that newness is there, most of the people that I know and work with, we're not the kind of species that wants to keep doing it. We want to do something else or go deeper or some kind of variation of that. One reason I mentioned that is because when we're talking about scaling, there's a kind of thing that has to do with repetition. And that's one thing that's embedded in science too, is good science allows you to, requires that you are able to replicate the experiment. And we don't, in the arts it's often we have to be unique. That's what we're supposed to be doing in a lot of the old Western ways of thinking about it. So often what I'm trying to say is I guess could there be a way that when we think about the infrastructure and thinking about what Roberto was talking about and I really value wherever you are, how do we move it? How do we scale it? Is there a way that there could be a new profession or maybe it exists that can take that initial production or that initial way of working and translate it so that it can be adapted to educators or politicians or urban planners or whatever it is so that the artists can keep doing new things or the things that the artists are really great at doing. And then, sorry, I'm sorry. I'll just intersect for one second and just say there's a lot of educators in the room and I know that it's not natural to just talk to some of the group and not the whole group but it's actually quite powerful. Thank you. So that there's a different species. There's some other kind of person in there that helps to create a new life or a longer life for things that are initiated by artists or theater makers in a larger sphere. Shantali. So to follow exactly on what you said, Mara, I wonder if, like, yes, maybe there's an additive species or is it a way for us to document what we do and then be passed on? You know, like as opposed to bringing something, somebody else, like I wonder is there something we can do that we would be good at that then we could pass on and it could continue to live without needing our input? So the question asks us to double and double what? Our impact. What's our impact and who's we? So let's just think about those things for a second, right? So we can't double what we can't measure and I'm not even sure, right? Have we measured? What's the question? What are we trying to impact? Are we trying to save a particular endangered species? Are we trying to save some cities from going under? Are we trying to protect famine? Are we trying to, what are we trying to do? So what kind of impact are we trying to have at the end of the day? So that's I think the most important question to ask isn't how we, but it's why we, right? Why are we doing this? And in many ways I think what I'm really focused on is that big word, human. And I think that word got there because we're probably talking about the human impacts of climate change, right? That's probably why the word is so huge there. To go to your idea of, you know, not retraumatizing, I do a lot of work about endangered animals. It's probably the biggest thing I do. Rebuilding habitats and taking care of animals, but I really don't care about that. I care about humans doing that. Because I think what we're trying to do is build a better human being, right? So first question is what are we trying to do? Like what is it that we are measuring here? So there's a practice where the artist is a teacher and a student at the same time, right? So we're both in it together. We're working and learning together. So that's one thing I think all of us can look at. So let me say we, who's we? Is we, you know, the producer? Is we the playwright? Is we the audience? Or is we the Joseph Boy's sort of we, which is everyone's an artist? So I think that's the first question we need to ask ourselves. And then we talk about impact. Well, what is it that we're trying to do? Because there's different kinds of activism. I am particularly involved with the kind of activism called slow activism. I'm not trying to change the problem immediately, even though there's a sense of urgency. I'm actually trying to little by little build systems, work in an ecosystem to change those things. So that to go to you about the newness of something, I'm not trying to create new art. I'm trying to create a group of individuals who work together. So I'm more of a choreographer than a painter when I do my eco art, right? So it's working with the policymakers and the different schools and the science museum, everyone working together to try to get to this idea of learning from one another. And I think what the people in this room have is creativity, right? The ability to innovate or do something new. And that's what I call the making it weird thing. So you do something that looks unusual, but just reframes the way you think about something that's in front of you, that then serves as a catalyst for people to try to respond to that problem. And then you give them a sense of ownership and they get engaged. So the question is a hard one because it could be answered in a hundred ways. And part of what I have difficulty with is us understanding what we're trying to impact. So I think if we could... We started this idea with a sense of urgency, right? Like we need to do something. So I need to understand who we is and what that something is. And I think that's part of what this discussion can be about. There's a... I don't know anything about physics, so I use these words in my peril. But there's chaos theory seems to me to describe a sense of... There are many different things happening and we haven't seen the system yet. And I wonder to what extent people feel the need to come to one system to agree on a single impact or to agree on a practice or a we or a project and to what degree to your earlier point is it raindrops or is it many people making small waves that somehow... Do you... Where do you have a sense of that? Let's go here, Elena. So I guess I'm pulling from everybody who spoke so far but I think one of the ways that we can double our impact is to empower all of our people within our communities into action rather than like what was said earlier about the deficit. But I think because a lot of times we get people in the political realms or people who are the directors of theaters or whatever it is that we say they need to be people of color or they need to be this and that but then sometimes they can be just as damaging as the non-people of color that have sat in positions and they could be just as damaging because they don't get what we're trying to build and so I think it's really important to build each other up and help each other to be able to sit in those positions so then leaving the door open for people who may not even know that they're artists or that they are in theater and because I think a lot of people who are in politics a lot of people who are in any kind of theater work it's they kind of self-proclaim, right? And then so the people who don't feel that they carry those characteristics then they just sit on the outside and they don't know what they could be or how big of a difference they could make so really building up our people and a lot of hard-working people that could trump talent any day within our communities that just don't know that they're artists or don't know that they're actors don't know that their calling could be theater and I'm just thinking of the systems or the interdisciplinary view of it because we could work fluidly to change climate to change our impact on climate but how many of our marginalized communities know about the carbon counter or know what that even means, you know, this many tons and wait, you know, unless it's some people are visual some people just understand that stuff out of just because they do and I think I like what you were... sorry, I forgot to... Shantel, I like what you said too because I think a lot of the work that we do where people have conversations and then we're like, alright, yeah, I would love to do this, this and this and you've already done that, you know, I want to learn and they're like, yeah, you should, you should, you encourage them but then they're left to reinvent the wheel anyway, right? So then trying to get a template or some kind of action plan to share with people so we could make the best impact without everybody starting from ground one and needing to do it on their own so don't be stingy and share resources and share knowledge and just understanding that when we empower each other it's not taking anything from us it's helping us to... because nobody has the minds that we have we can empower them to do this but they'll do it in a completely different way no matter how much work we've done for them they still will do it way different than we do, right? And so, yeah, anyways... a gathering space or, I mean a virtual space if we're talking globally a watering hole or some place where people are actually able to share and someone wants to lift here particularly around questions like this Javier, you had a comment and then we'll go to Peterson Oh, sorry Javier, Teddy and then Peterson So, my comment was just to talk to you a little bit more about the issue of... the issue of making a change of a radical change and you were talking about how in society we've seen it happen, right? Recently So, a hundred years ago if I would have asked any of you to spit in the middle of this floor you would, right? Society would have been okay to just spit right now I bet I can't get a single one of you to spit on the floor Try, try Try, it's really hard I mean, go for it Really, go Alright, good for you Can someone else do that? Society, like, told us you know, you don't spit in a barbershop because there's tuberculosis in your spit and all of a sudden the entire American society stopped spitting in no time because it was bad, right? Like, we got it Oh my God, you don't do that Congratulations, by the way That's a courage, which was your word today Right? But I don't know if it's a courage but for me, that's a pretty that's a pretty tall order right there, right? Because it's breaking a lot of societal norms What we haven't figured out is a way of telling our fellow human beings that climate change is worse than tuberculosis and we've got to start doing stuff, right? That changes things So what we have in ourselves here in this little circle are people who are real innovators, right? Like, you can change the world view of the people who come to your theater You can have them rethink their place in this world that science can do that with journals and there's some TV shows that have and can have that impact but I think the power of artists is to really reframe an issue and make people think differently and that, I think, is what's going to make the change because there's a lot of the discussion that I'm feeling as we're talking that sounds very much about how do I make my practice or my theater company, you know, better at doing what I do and I think that may be the wrong question, right? It's really a bigger issue that we're trying to confront at this moment So that's what I'm getting at I think that us here in this little circle have that ability collectively to do something really bigger than what we can do individually and that's, I think, the challenge of the day That's what I mean by impact What excites me about what you just said is I heard a goal in there too and so, like you, I saw this list of questions and was like, oh my gosh, the responsibility how are we going to double and then triple and then plan the next 12 months and I heard this very pragmatic estimate there and my first mind was measurables and goals So we got one goal It's to recognize that we've got power We have the potential to influence the audience to speak in dialogue with the audiences that are in our spaces that are seeing our work that we're educating and the chance to garner empathy for a problem that they are a participant in The other thing I just totally adore about what you keep returning to and I think is a model we can all sort of I just want a name It's not a zero sum game You said it about trauma, you said it here about the same sort of pragmatic thing about goals It's not a zero sum, if I'm going here I'm not taking away from this pot but it's really, as we look at things under a lens that there's a potential for it to be prismatic rather than, you know, one way or the other To offer one, to your initial question to offer one project that I can sort of claim as a way of approaching this that we could hang our hat on Georgetown is we're participating in or launching rather a university-wide initiative that looks at problems from a interdisciplinary model And the first one will be climate change So we're very fortunate at the lab that one of our co-directors is going to be teaching one of the offerings in the humanities which is a class that he's teaching that's called improvisation for social change and that will be introducing students from all over Georgetown at a way of looking not only at climate change from different perspectives that you don't have to be a capital S scientist in order to acknowledge and change it but also a way of approaching it that the solutions may require thoughts from different parts of your training different parts of your background different parts of your person So that's one thing I can name Yeah, great, thank you Peterson A lot of things That's what happens when it accumulates That's alright, just bring out what you're sitting with We've been hearing about decolonizing our brains and I think this also extends to our imaginations in that one of the vestiges of American colonialism in regards to climate change and the environment is that we're constantly reacting to the denial narrative because it was put out there and I hear so many climate presentations where basically it's saying, see, it's really happening which is a tremendous waste of time and energy to tell people what's real and I often wonder what if there was no climate denial what would we be doing, what would we be saying The other way that it's very much come out of the US and parts of Europe too is this obsession over individual carbon footprints and turning it on individuals and the other theme I've been hearing today is about structural and systemic changes that need to take place and it seems the environmentalist movement has been very earnest in getting people to live responsibly but it's really systems that have to change and so I think in part of decolonizing this is what happens if we throw out the denial narrative and throw out the personal carbon footprint and begin to think for our local communities our regions, our countries what does systemic and structural change look like and then the other question that keeps coming up and it's driving me mad because the answer to me is so unbelievably obvious how do we amplify our message most people don't go to theater most people don't see live theater most people see YouTube and Facebook videos and usually they're less than 30 seconds or 60 seconds long we are artists and we can create art in all sorts of spaces where people doing stuff on the internet that need content, really good artistic stuff I go to South Africa, KwaZulu and Dital this little rural community everyone has a smartphone, they're looking at videos this is a global thing in so many ways and I think we need to push ourselves to consider how do we use these technologies to do our theater and really liberate ourselves from long form live theater so we're hearing about changing platforms you brought up this term narrative and we haven't talked that much about it but you used the word but also the notion of climate denial or what was the other one carbon footprints, these are really strong narratives and do we have capacity or an opportunity with narrative as a group of theater makers that's our weapon of choice to make some change here Rob did you have a media thought I know Javier is waiting anybody else? I think that's just sort of a brilliant summary of a lot of things, unpackaging very succinctly and so I think of this as what's the story part of the way I think of it is what's the story and who's it for Xavier brought up this notion of what's the goal what are we trying to do I'll summarize that for myself and this is how I often summarize it for people I talk to which is the goal is a reduction in human is an increase in human well-being and I think that's something that's really hard to argue with now then of course there are specifics and then and the success from my mind from my work and I think what the work of all of you do to me is moving people from somebody said earlier gaining a little bit of knowledge and calling that a success but moving us to a meaningful response and so that's my notion of success so what's the story is even regardless of the of the medium you just talked about long form plays or maybe one act but now moving to video or moving to something that just has much more reach that really resonates with me and the story though bringing it back to Elena's topic about not re-traumatizing is this notion of vision where are we going what would we want and while the world of our art culture is full of dystopic views of climate change and societal collapse it's not very full of narratives and envisionings and stories about the place we want to be and what it would be like to be there and how we get there and so I would say that for this group what I look for is those stories and then there are other people out there who will translate those stories and we can help them filmmakers and YouTube makers and playwrights and novelists there's a whole ecosystem of that kind of thing what they need I think are the stories and one last comment the audience I also resonate with the denier comment and I refuse many speaking engagements in which I'm asked to debate climate change with somebody who doesn't accept the science I really think the game is not in moving the immovable I think the game is taking those of us who understand we have these problems to some degree maybe we don't all understand the scale and the immediacy we understand who get that we have these problems and taking those people and moving them to a place of response I think that's the target audience for the most part you're talking about a head tilt that I just want to put in the room this question of if we tilted the head what would we stop doing and stop stop engaging the climate denier argument but also stop the idea of who the audience is what are the controlling assumptions we have about we or the world that we could just look the other way look at them in a different direction and drop some kind of resistance or some kind of impediment Elena and then Javier so I just wanted to make a comment about how do we just continue to move forward and impact and just everybody's comments I think what people are I believe what people are looking for is they're overwhelmed I don't know if everybody's in denial but people are overwhelmed like oh great well then I'm going to yolo like what do I do I'll just put it off till tomorrow then I'm just going to have fun today and so I think because it's overwhelming and it's scary and so I think as theater majors as people who know better who are doing better that we basically are building the sidewalk and we use that analogy with our language work is that you know our language is taken away from us our culture everything we weren't even allowed to practice our culture until 1978 when the Native American religious freedom act was passed we weren't allowed to have our languages taught in our schools until 1990 and people think that this is something that is so old you know and I think for us we deal with that too with the language is that we're not going to save one elder from New Zealand said that you're not going to save your language for all your people but you are going to save it for those who are willing to work with you and to save it and so we use the analogy that this was taken from us it was meant to be ripped from us and so I think every one of you were meant to not know anything about me or my people and that was intentional and so I think when it comes to climate change same thing we were meant to think it was a hoax and that it's not real so I think we're building the sidewalk as we're walking and we almost have to do how to mixed in with our artistic abilities and identities and all the work that we do we're throwing these like how to so people aren't overwhelmed and they can be entertained at the same time so you know when we started earlier today you talked about the idea of being strategic and in a sense I want to be able to be pragmatic about how to make some systems changes and I do think that focusing maybe not on the deniers but on the oblivious because there's a lot of people who really don't resonate or care about climate change and it's not that they're opinionated it's just that it's not their thing they're worried about paying a mortgage so what I try to do is I try to make the issue relevant to their mortgage so in Miami which as you know where I live has serious issues with people's mortgages because they're going to be underwater in more ways than one right I reframe the issue and make it about them really like this is about your house I know you don't care about the manatee having you care about your house so I think that their stories or the storytelling or the way of framing it is about creating consensus and creating community around not the people who are going to walk into my gallery or to your theater but to the broader community but using the tools that we have in my gallery and your theater to reach broader community so I think that's one way I try to do it the second thing I try to do in changing systems is literally building a cadre of people who teach what you were talking about just a second ago the idea of the how to right so the how to care and love you know their environment or care and understand that we're all going to have to leave Miami one day so that we can start preparing for Miami going under so I explained to them that they've done this before I'm from a family of political refugees that left everything behind because of an external force and the grandchildren of those same people are about to leave everything behind because of an external force so I'm able to create discussions between political refugees present day and future climate refugees using art using these techniques that I use so my point is it's just trying to figure out what it is you're trying to do in this case I'm trying to navigate through the chaos have people understand that we have to have some equity for the people who are going to lose their houses because they're going to be underwater most of them poor people in the Everglades portion everyone thinks it's the Atlantic Ocean but the Everglades is also water so those people will suffer and reframing issues around that is how I try to get systems to change because I'm not going to get the politicians in Miami to do anything unless there's this ground swell of support so it's this very complicated thing we try to do engaging all these policy makers and people so I engage the school system the museums everybody involved in order to have these conversations and I think that's what I'm talking about what I'm saying like impact what are we trying to do here we're at time here we're going to open the circle out and I know Peterson so let's go ahead and go back to the out of circle and there's a microphone here so those of you who've been listening circle take a moment to connect connect with yourself about what's on your head coming out of that Peterson did you have a follow up that you want to go to and then we'll start to work the rest of the circle when I think about climate change I think often about the early HIV AIDS crisis and the parallels that exist there and the absolute need for theatrical activism that took place and the I mean those political actions of act up in particular in groups like that this was theater that they were doing and and in order to change systems we have to put pressure on the public and it's not just enough to be angry and to say that really it is like putting on a play like what is the message and how are we going to you know do it in a theatrical way so that the media in the way that they report stories they'll pick up on that message and so I think that we're so sorely needed in helping engaging with activists who are on the streets with the skills that we have including people who do design again I think about the really creative stuff that they did with act up and design is so essential to that and costumes and all of that and so in a way we're I feel like we're being called to up the ante in that way and bring it out to the streets and help shape the public message Jayisha can I pull on you around cry one I understand that that's your that's a project you were your company was involved with and maybe as a did I get that wrong could you talk about just as a follow up to Peterson's on the act up world what is cry one and what has been your sense of the impact of cry one so cry one is a site specific processional journey that started in 2013 I wasn't part of it that point I experienced it that point when I was a coalition coordinator for 96 organizations across the Gulf Coast and the piece at that time was a four hour processional through the wetlands of Louisiana it's a story about coastal land loss environmental racism all the issues that we face in the Gulf Coast I became part of that project we toured it around while I was part of that coalition existed in the response to the BPOL disaster which no longer exists after the settlement happened but we went and we combined parts of the theater piece some films that were being shown that were kind of came out at that time about the issues in our communities and some lives like storytelling story circles and then community visioning and then I did a little like policy presentation about like what was happening at that time with the restore act which was the act that was around the BPOL disaster so that was one piece and then it closed last year in the fall in Gentilly which is my neighborhood so one mile from my home we closed the piece and that was where another Gulf is possible which is a collaborative of brown women across the Gulf Coast we were co-producers and partners in developing the kind of last iteration which was a shorter piece it was two hours and we partnered with the city of New Orleans and there's this big water initiative happening in our city because of the water that we have to deal with and so this is a big water reclamation site that hadn't yet started so the piece was on that site that is going to be a multi-billion dollar I believe water reclamation project to live with the water and not against it and so we took the piece there I produced some visual installations that were kind of the end of the processional ended with these visioning pieces that were different kinds of visual installations for the audience that were kind of taken on and so the impact there's a film that working films has helped to co-produce that hopefully that film can because people keep wanting it but it takes a lot to produce that and so I don't think the whole production will ever be shown again but how can this piece continue to live via what folks were saying in terms of like what are other platforms that theater can live on in and so we're thinking about that film piece marrying it with other film like some animations that we're creating on another Gulf as possible that theater can continue to live on even though we're not going to be producing the live performance again we're trying to think of ways to continue to organize with the content moving forward very helpful thank you there was a hand Marta was your hand up moment this is kind of off topic but I kind of on and combining the things about doubling impact and I think about a couple of well three examples maybe the first one is Uncle Tom's Cabin which I recently read because I talk about it a lot and I thought I think it would be good to read this but what was so interesting about it it's not the greatest work of art for sure but as Lincoln said supposedly to Harriet Beecher so who wrote it you know you're the little lady or you wrote the book that started the Civil War she didn't do of course but she did work on the build on the work of other abolitionists and all kinds of other people and she captured the imagination of the American people to envision a world without slavery and sort of how to get there and the reason I'm mentioning this is because I feel like there are some examples of artists partnering with other people that have been other kinds of disciplines that have been really impactful one of which is Eve Mosier sorry these are visual artists examples Eve Mosier who did the blue water line project I think it was called high water thank you and then it's a project where she she worked with scientists to trace the lines originally in Miami of where the storm surge line the flood line would come in Manhattan and she's done it in different communities so people could visualize and visceralize where that water is going to be coming and her most I think one of her most successful projects of that artwork was in Miami where she partnered with Heidi Quant who's an activist who skills our community activism and together they really galvanized the community to come together and to write a big Kellogg Foundation grant I think it was to create a disaster plan and hazard resilience plan for that area and that's one example of I think where art can work in partnership with others and also not burn out the artist in the process the other one is Kim Abely she was commissioned she's another visual artist partnering with the California Bureau of Automotive Repair and she was Kim makes one of the things he does is she makes smog collector plates I don't know if you've ever seen these but they're she invented this process where she takes a ceramic plate or a surface and cuts out a stencil and puts it on the surface and leaves it out in the smog for a certain period of time and the particulates and the air drop down on the plate and after a period of time there's a stencil and there's an image and she got real famous I think in the 90s or 80s when she made the presidential smog collector plate series where she made one president's face per plate and depending on their environmental record she left the plates out longer shorter periods in the LA smog and so when you saw the plates in a gallery or museum you could see whose image was darker light and you could tell what was going on and there were quotes but the reason I bring up this story is because she did that first and then the California Bureau of Automotive Repair commissioned her to help them with their smog check campaign called the Vehicle Emissions Campaign and so Kim made these sculptures out of catalytic converters and mufflers and they were sort of ugly and wacky and very funny and put them all over LA or at least Santa Monica and did smog collection on it and so all was going very well and then she was going to be sued by a congress person for using this tiny little bit of money for this frivolous purpose and the reason I'm mentioning this is because of impact because most artists don't have money to actually document or survey or evaluate what they do they barely have enough money to actually do the project in the first place but this is kind of backwards evaluation where so Kim was going to get sued she didn't have money so the congress person went to the Bureau of Automotive Repair they have money so they did all kinds of research to see what the impact of this was and that it was not a frivolous use of money and it Kim said as they were walking up to the courthouse to argue the case they were told the case was dropped and they couldn't figure out why and they found out probably what happened was that the lawyer for the congress person found out what the automotive repair people found out and that is that this little art project had an impact of some three million people learning about it through the newspaper and media and 30 million dollars worth of in kind advertising because of all the press that came out about this project and it was considered to be the most successful media awareness campaign in the history of the state ever and so when I think about this little and I think the grant was maybe three thousand dollars and when I so when I think about you know how can we as artists without compromising what we do really leverage what we do to have some kind of collective impact that is extraordinary without sacrificing the integrity of the arts but really collaborating in an allied kind of relationship with other fields right that was so long so uh oh April yes this is not uh fully coherent thought but I have a couple pieces that have been floating around um partly resonating with what Peterson was talking about around activism and then I think I was called to talk because you mentioned Harriet Beecher Stowe and there's this weird connection to that I'm thinking about how one of the principles of nonviolent direct action and the kinds of protest activism that people do is to dramatize the conflict right that a good action dramatizes the conflict and performs something about the solution um and that so and I guess I've been really resonating with what people were talking about in the first um the first circle about broadening our sense of what what drama is what theater is what performance is and how it works in the world um so really thinking about that in terms of activism and engaging people um in dramatizing the problem um and I guess the other piece I was thinking about was this insight from performance studies actually and I'm thinking about this book that I've read that um has been very influential in my thinking that comes out of performance studies and it actually has an extended analysis of Uncle Tom's cabin from a performance studies um lens and she talks about the way that um performance is twice behaved behavior right so this idea that you do something and the performance is doing it again um with a kind of intention um and so I've been thinking about that too as I've been listening to people talk about what theater can do and what theater can do in this kind of engaged um this engaged practice and listening to listening to you talk about um the processional project as well resonates with these these kinds of things so I really like this idea of empowering people outside of these gate kept organizations to imagine themselves as uh as performers as activists as artists as creators yeah so I have I said Julia and then Catherine and then Lani and then Elizabeth is that okay um wow I feel so full and appreciative and I want to add a couple of examples that are woven into our conversation that's been going and something that I was thinking about that came up in this inner circle is um Xavier brought up um the personal connection to the people in your community and I know Peterson I've heard you speak very um eloquently and concretely about this as well that um climate is an overwhelming issue and topic for people so opening up personal entry points um which is something that I've used in my work as a theater maker um specifically around food issues um and then tying into um tangible how-tos to leave audiences with um so I think about the audience experience when they come to a conventional theater setting or otherwise um but in my own play um that I workshopped about food in a grocery store um I was thinking about what am I going to leave the audience with like food in a grocery store is one inch of the issue in food justice and climate issues so um something that I incorporated was a resource list that audiences could take that were passed out by the actors as part of the performance that they could take away have a tangible piece of paper with them um to look up uh and learn more as opposed to uh and in addition to a talk back with um someone on nutrition and food policy and urban farming so pairing um a live experience as part of the artistic happening and also something tangible for audiences to leave with um and the other thing that I was thinking about is um on a community working with communities level um that I was came up uh and stirred up in the first comfort inner circle um is about who are the communities that we're talking to um and how are we involving them and one example that I just heard last night from a friend is um in New Jersey um the government uh at a suburb of New York City in New Jersey was trying to deal with a deer problem over a population of deer so the government hired um sharpshooters to bait and lure um herds of deer and um the plan was that these sharpshooters would take out parts of this herd of deer to curb the over population um and this plan was sabotage by local hunters because the hunters were not involved in the conversation that the government the government came in and made this decision and hired these outside professionals um so just to add that into the conversation about communities and who we're talking to and who we're not talking to and talking with as opposed to talking at uh yeah so uh let's go to Catherine and then Lani and then Elizabeth um yeah I was I've been thinking about um there's two links between the first conversation and the second and Roberta's um comments about this burgeoning movement and not really feeling about it and when there's disruption happening and complexity sometimes you you can't locate it you don't really feel how active it is and um it's been really interesting over the last year at Julie's Bicycle we've been starting to think about what that movement is and there there is this um creative climate movement that we're describing as the seven trends and I think many of the topics and thoughts that have been coming out can you'll see how they might be located and so I just wanted to share what those seven ideas and trends are so the first one is about the creative work and what we really are seeing is just this incredible increase of um artists thinking actively in their practice about it um in the UK almost two thirds of arts organizations have our programming or planning and programming around sustainability and climate change the second is thinking around activism so you might not be artists doing it in your work creating the play but you are actively engaging in um maybe it's divestment campaigns there's a number of groups that are really um have a more activist response then the the third um thing that we've been locating and describing is institutional leadership which I think is again people have been talking about that um and the importance that organizations have and how they embed um sustainability and you know thinking about that it's not just the nuts and bolts you know we're talking about theaters and their efficiency and that's an important part of the infrastructure but it's also those designers those um funders the commissioners the producers um the audiences so looking at that emergence of um of organizations and then the fourth as we've had is around design and innovation and thinking creatively about design and innovation it's not just the materiality but it might be um pieces and you were talking about um theater thinking differently new models and platforms so we're thinking and trying to document and collect all the ways the creative community is um designing and innovating around climate change um the fifth which I think how around is would fall into this is around pathfinders catalyzing organizations that are providing um some stickiness some space for convening and conversation and um energizing people giving space for reflection so we're seeing that as a really important part of this creative movement then the um the last two are collaborations and I'm gonna highlight a collaboration that I've been involved with for eight years which could be really interesting to um um kind of explore but that being really important that collaboration is network and so you don't feel isolated in how you're working but you feel like you have peers and people that you can soundboard um amplify and then I think this is where that scale and doubling the impact becomes really important because this issue is so systemic um and uh it's really important it won't we won't create the societal change without um working together collectively so that's really important and then they um the last piece that we're really looking at is policy um because it isn't around the individual um the individual practice the individual organization but it is about these kind of policy interventions both within our um artistic community but these other sectors that are really important and we're feeling you know it's just so critical there's so much um that the cultural creative sector can lend into this conversation but may not be seen or be taken seriously by these other um institutions and powers that be that we've been talking about um so I just thought that might be a helpful thing that we've been thinking a lot about is these seven ways and locating because what we are seeing is it's transforming you know it is it's becoming a um and also I think if you if one can visit um make it visible then it can become can grow it can almost have that chaos theory that uh kind of butterflying effect um and then the collaboration that I I thought I'd just throw in so there's a group called the London Theater Consortium which is 14 producing theaters and they've been working now together for eight years since 2010 and they've kind of their eye on the prize a little bit is the 20 25 London Mayor's Target to achieve a 60 percent reduction in um emissions and impact and so they've been thinking and it's not just about the carbon number but it's it's thinking about them completely as their organizations you know every aspect and what that issue of climate change in London means and how as 14 theaters and you know they've got the um convenience of being in a place where they can meet together but what's been interesting it's the chief executives have been they meet several times a year where sustainability is a focus of that agenda but then it's about empowering fully their organizations uh through which to um kind of interrogate and reflect and actively engage with this topic um and so really would love to talk more in detail about LTC as an example so there's a um just want to lift up a little bit of a question that's happening where we've fallen pretty nicely and naturally into this lifting up of bright spots and uh if you don't get to talk about something that you feel as though what is a bright spot that should be brought into the room um where we'll collect them over uh on the board too because we're going to move out of this shortly but post them over there you know part of this doubling the impact uh question is probably where do we name them and why haven't they uh why aren't they all known by everybody in the room who's already doing it so there's a possibility of something that can happen so the next Elani Elizabeth and then uh Allison and I think that might take us to the end um so I just wanted to kind of state or ask two questions that have been maybe it's two I don't know it's a little messy right now but um so I someone was talking about uh working with youth and it got me to thinking about the work that we do with youth and um an anecdote that led to a question with the anecdote being that I we uh we have a program where we um give students in Brooklyn tools to create plays about the environment or climate and then uh we produce them professionally because we want their voices to be kind of heard in a way that is respected and because they tell important stories um and they have important things to say but one of the optical one of the obstacles that we run into obviously is that uh a lot of our our regular audiences reluctant to come see student written shows and then the other obstacle that we run into is that a lot of our regular audience doesn't want to come see a show that's free and uh I I was thinking about that and I was thinking about how it's really hard as an artist to as a theater artist to live in a society where what signifies value according to the dominant ideology is how much you are willing to pay for it um and uh and the theater in that regard is not valued in our society as much as someone was saying it's not seen we certainly aren't a very wealthy industry even though there's you know a lot of money in certain pockets and I was thinking about that and about how um I as an individual uh do not have a lot of I don't have a lot of money and and uh that is relatively speaking not true um also because I know there are people who have less but I know that I don't have a lot of options in terms of um how I can keep surviving except for all I'm saying is that I depend on being valued in that way to continue to do the work that I do in order to make an impact and um and I my question is uh to everyone and we've already kind of been talking about it but I just wanted to state it in a and kind of ask for more wisdom from this group um how how do we uh kind of subvert an economy and destroy an economic system while being dependent on it at the same time and also um uh and also like what can we do to make theater uh to use another dirty word popular uh and I don't mean I don't mean to debase it as people often associate that word with but to really um make it necessary and desired and um uh and I think there's already lots of great conversation around that but I just wanted to state those two things so that we could keep thinking about it and talk about it Elizabeth? So I've been thinking about two kind of threads that came from the first circle um and then the second circle about asking um specific questions about impact so one of the bright spots that was this idea of um these itinerant performances or things that are site specific or that are happening out of out of doors of traditional theater spaces and some of this is going to sound kind of like blasphemy because the theater as a temple like that's my church but I find that um and then that question about the designers really actually provoked this which is the theater is the most controlled space in a way that kind of exceeds other controlled spaces as so as artists we rely so heavily on these on the space where we control everything we control the sound we control the light we control when people can speak and how they can respond extremely indoctrinating kind of structure in a little bit of in a way in a lot of ways actually if you in one way um of looking at it so I think that there is a great opportunity in this idea of site what we call now site specific which is street theater outdoor theater which is as old as we are as a species probably and I think that it all there's a couple things that that practice can offer us um one is um taking back the commons which I think is a really important action where we can um as artists that don't have money or can't get booked for presenters or um find that we can do a show for a weekend because that's all the grant will pay for and then that was it and we will try and tour it but it may never happen again and site doing stuff out of doors or out of theater spaces really solve some of those problems there's a whole pile of other issues that come with doing site specific work and that's where the designers can come in and if they think somehow that their work is going to be obsolete they are so wrong because there are so many opportunities for good design to help site specific um spectacles happen and and that leads me to this other idea of impact which is for me when Xavier asked that question like what are your desired impacts for me it's clear I want more people to see the work and I want to be able as an artist to do my work more I want to do my show like every weekend during the year if I can I've never had that experience as an artist I get to do it once or twice a year and so this idea of scarcity of opportunity gets solved in a way and and the other thing I'll say that just kind of another thread is something that a Julesen said about the precarity of communities that are struggling to do to get day to day needs taken care of and there's no luxury of time to contemplate the bigger abstract questions of climate change and so one I think one of the ways that artists can take some risks and also meet communities where they are is by leaving the theater and going and finding those communities again like I'm not saying anything new um and who here in this room hasn't said oh you know we're having so many problems getting audiences to come to our shows no one's interested in climate change is a theme um you know if I if I have to sell another show and sell another ticket in my life I'm going to kill myself like I can't do another audience development project um and so I just feel like this idea of moving our work into public spaces or green spaces is to me feels revolutionary as an artist um and it's not new it's just pushing us to kind of radicalize our work in a way that feels like um maybe we're not doing enough of so I would that was a provocation I'll offer and and I also think that there's something about working outside of the theater that makes you feel like you're not in control and that that is how a bunch of other species are feeling right now that they're endangered that's a lot of how a lot of other humans are feeling right now that they are on the verge of um extinction so Allison and then we'll break uh that segues into pulling on threads of what everyone has said it's not because this has been in the news because two very famous people killed themselves this week but more because the study on the rates of suicide in the united states and just how dramatically the rate of suicide has risen I it's hard not to make the parallel right between climate change as a global act of suicide bringing along all the people you're damaging who may not actually be in a position of wanting to kill themselves and yet somehow we as a species collectively are doing this and so I think we when I'm thinking about impact and how we magnify it I'm thinking about um the ability of human beings to purposely self-destruct on an individual basis on a community basis on a on all the different levels and I do think the part of our job in looking at impact is also looking at how we as artists provide comfort because it's so scary and obviously there are people who are traumatized and re-traumatized by so much of what we do and what we see and that even the art we do but to leave out that the comfort means we're leaving people a little bit alone perhaps more alone than when we they came to see our art and we don't want to do that right and I do think that one of the ways in terms of the promises we're all making and what we want to do is not just that individually our art can say that you matter as a human being which obviously is incredibly important but also part of the comfort that we can offer people is collective action right so you know we're holding out we're holding out the promise of love we're holding out the promise of individual love and collective love but we're also holding out the promise of giving people agency to collectively move together and that is one of the great antidotes to the despair that human beings so often fall ourselves find ourselves in all right well we'll take that into the break Jamie