 Hi everyone. Welcome back for our last presentation of this year's Inclusive Theater Festival. This is someone I'm obviously so excited to bring on and I'm so honored to be able to introduce her to all of you. Claudia Alec is a performer, producer, designer, writer and inclusion expert. She's currently a curator and access doula with a cryptic incubator and a cryptic gray area metaverse. She's founding producer of the Transmedia Social Justice Company calling up, whose projects include producing in pandemic, the every 28 hours plays, recharge genocide TV, justice producers, co-artistic direction of the built convening with Fool's Fury. Claudia acts as a consultant of funders and companies around the country. She served as co-president of the board of NET for seven years and advisor for the National Theater Project for six years and co-produced unsettling dramaturgy, Crip and Indigenous International Digital Colloquium and is an advisor to high-round digital theater commons. She has performed with NYI new futurists and on many podcasts and live streams. Her online racial justice practice is reaching thousands weekly. She is producing performances of justice on stage, online and in real life. She has been the most wonderful mentor and I am glad that now we all get the chance to learn from her. All yours, Claudia. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Ashna. So what I'm going to do is share screen and I've got a PowerPoint and I'm going to share some information and then later on I'm going to be inviting potentially a couple of people to come join me on stage to reflect on this amazing thing that we did together. So let me share my screen. Here we go. We're sharing the screen and I am hitting the present button. I think that's what does it. And now we're presenting Welcome to Calling of Justice Across Space and Time. And this is just a little lecture on digital and hybrid producing for the Inclusive Theater Festival in 2023. My name is Claudia Alec. I'm an intersectional inclusion expert. I'm the founder of Calling of Justice. I'm a rider, performer, director, designer, teacher and my access check-in is that I am I'm actually doing pretty well. I sometimes will let people know that I have a pain disorder. So sometimes I might pull a face and it has nothing to do with what you said or our conversation. But I'm feeling good. I feel like all of my access needs aren't met. Today I'm going to be talking about we're doing some like opening moments to warm us up, let you know who I am. We're going to check out that minty meter that folks have been doing. So folks have been doing sort of like a group practice thing all day yesterday and a little bit today. So we're going to do that together. Then I'm going to talk through the principles of hybrid and remote convening. I'm going to give you a few examples in practice. Then we're going to talk about this awesome festival. And then of course we're going to land on Y Access. All right. So this first QR code that I have for you, it says what do you come to the Inclusive Theater Festival for? And I'm going to invite you to pick up your cell phone or a device that you have and see if you can trigger that QR code if you haven't already. This performance is one where we were brainstorming what are some ways to help us feel more connected throughout space and time with the people who are there physically in Chicago in the space. Because I got to watch you all through a window, but it's nice to be able to make something collaborative. So this is asking you, what do you come to the Inclusive Theater Festival for? And right now, hopefully you are all answering that question in the minty meter. And then we'll later on, we'll look at all of our answers combined. And it's fully anonymized too. So I'll have no idea who wrote what, but well, it'll be exciting. I know that there were entries from yesterday. So I'm excited to see what we all say together. And this second is share a moment you loved in accessibility. So that first output is going to be like a word cloud. And the second output is going to be more of a tone poem, me saying things that you loved. So share a moment you loved in accessibility. It might have been something you saw modeled by sins and valid. Maybe it was something you actually experienced here in the Inclusive Theater Festival. Possibly it's something that you're recalling from your own accessible practice. So go ahead, make sure you put those ideas in there because I am going to be sharing them collectively at the end of this presentation. And I'm excited to hear any moments that you loved in accessibility. Here's the other good piece of news. Those two links, they were dropped in the, I might ask, I don't know if you have these links on hand again, Ashna, but if you can drop them in the chat one more time because I'm going to keep us moving, right? But you can take your time in responding to these. It's always nice to collectively take a moment though to frame the invitation and to let folks know where it is and how to access it and to give people a little bit of time to do it. But you can also keep working on it as I move us forward to principles of hybrid and remote convening. All right, now let's see if I can move this so I can see my presentation. So clarity and purpose and roles. Oftentimes when you're collaborating in a physically shared space, there can be a little bit of on the fly in real time trading of responsibilities because you're all there in the same physical time and space. But if you are working remotely, the person who needs to make the contact list needs to know that it's their responsibility to make the contact list. People need to understand what their roles are. Is my role to be a moderator in the chat? Is my role? What are your roles? And what's the purpose of us gathering? Why are we gathering in this digital space? Or why are we trying to do hybrid connectivity moments? Then it's important to share those reasons why with your fellow collaborators since you're doing sort of a collective performance of justice together. Okay. Go to the next one. There we go. Technology selection. So what's the technology that you're using and what's the platform that you're using? I will always be mad at somebody who says Zoom Theater because that is doing all of us a gigantic disservice. There are so many tools that we use to gather and convene and create creative work digitally. And Zoom is only one of the platforms that we use. It is one that right now, I think because of the choices that were made in 2020, a lot of people have familiarity with it. But there are a lot of different technologies and platforms you can use for creating things together, feeling like you're in the same space and time. So you should think about how many attendees do you have? Do you want your attendees to feel like they're in the same physical space and time? Is it okay for you? Do you want your attendees to not have to see all of the production work so they can just lean back and enjoy it through the screen? What's the experience you want people to have? And will it be compatible with their devices? Like I'm thinking through, who's my audience? Where are they located? Are they coming to me through their phone? Are they coming to me through a laptop computer? Just like, what's the point of connection? And have I made multiple points of connection? And have I designed the aesthetics around them for that? What are the interactive elements? Again, in physically shared space, just the act of being together in a room is already interactive and awesome. The thing is, when you're meeting digitally through a computer, oftentimes you can default to just like I'm watching a TV show, right? You can default to a space when you're not actually engaging, but it's extra labor. It's extra work. So you as the organizer need to create opportunities and invitations and pathways for people to engage with you. For instance, I'm going to give this invitation to all of our friends in the space. I'm about to say a lot of stuff. I'm going to be naming platforms, ways of doing stuff. I'm not going to pause while I'm doing it. Please place questions in the chat. If I mention a platform where you're like, what's happened to? Why would I want to do that? If you want me to go further or more deeper into an idea, go ahead. I want to invite you all to engage in the chat. And also, if you feel like there's something that I said that you're like, yeah, to that, go ahead and be like, yeah, just take the words, yeah, exclamation point in the chat. Let's get the chat feeling like it is active and engaged. All right. So you can have Q and A sessions. You can have polls. You can have chat rooms. You can have networking opportunities like the one that you had where we got to go into breakout rooms and meet people and have a one-on-one conversation. So there are a lot of different ways you can design in ways to be interactive. And of course, clear communication. And when I say clear communication, it doesn't just mean I'm speaking with clarity. It means good immediate and good asynchronous communication channels. So for instance, I can get information from your website. I might be able to get information from an email that was sent to me. Maybe that email has links and locations and etc. But maybe I'm still confused because we're producing hybrid remote. I can't just find you and talk to you. So can I have a place for immediate communication? I'm holding up my cell phone here. It's getting a little lost in the green screen of it all. Can I go to a discord server where you have a couple of helpers? They're just sitting there ready to go. Is there a signal or WhatsApp or text chain that I could access to communicate with people in real time? Good immediate and asynchronous communication channels. Again, I'm going to try and just mention specificities around this when I get to the examples in practice. And then the last principle is post-event materials. The beauty of producing in hybrid and remote shapes and frameworks is that we get to produce and connect and create community asynchronously. So design your materials thoughtfully so that people can access them in the future. Now, I know that when it comes to like just straight up physically shared space, some of the practices I had when I was in my early 20s, I got these boxes full of postcards because I would keep the postcard and the program and the physical paraphernalia of the theater event that I went to. And I value them deeply. When you're producing hybrid and remote, are you creating paraphernalia that people could have as a souvenir, as a keepsake, as a reminder, as a memento to help them remember the things that they did in the past? And that could be as simple as, oh, I sent you a PDF. Now you can save it. You could print it off yourself if you want to and put it in a big old box like me. All right. So now I want to talk about examples in practice and check on the time. All right, we're doing okay. I have to say, y'all, I packed too much into this presentation. So Ashna, I will be asking you to maybe wave your hand at me if it seems like I'm going over time. All right. So this first example, this was a, this is Hybrid Community Performance. This is the Festival of Masks. It's produced in LA. It's an annual event that they produce. It's produced by LA Commons in collaboration with Lamert Park and some other organizations, Bill Caldwell's, Ben Caldwell's organization. And it's usually held in this specific place, Lamert Park. It's about the neighborhood, but it's also about bringing that specific Black neighborhood into collaboration with Africa, the diaspora. So they have a lot of African artists come in, fly in, and do live performances. And then they have classroom workshops where the kids come to the park and make masks. And then they do like a little march with all the masks. And it's so adorable. So how do you, how do you have the same outcomes but digitally, right? And also, this is all old heads. None of these folks are like, I have all the devices and I know Discord and I'm on the line all the time. They're not on the line. They didn't know what the line was, and we had to build the lines for them. So this is what we did. We have two hosts. You'll note that our two facilitator hosts, they're on a background. We had our artists use photos of their past gatherings to create visual landscapes that helped you feel like you were reminded of the beauty and pageantry of the past backgrounds. Then for weeks prior to the festival, we had the students meeting in Facebook lives doing workshops, making their masks. Then those were all recorded. And then we had somebody edit together those beautiful things to make these little videos that were like videos celebrating the mass meeting, videos celebrating that community aspect. But all of the kids and their parents, they were all in the Zoom with us. We realized that we were trying to do a presentation where if we were asking people to perform live, it would cause gigantic amounts of chaos with an OBS because these were not, these weren't performers. So we need to create something where we could all, like a couple hundred people could be in a Zoom and people could turn their camera on and off as they wanted to and it wouldn't interrupt the performance. So we had a lot of pre-taped materials and in many ways it was like a watch party that was also being live streamed. And then it was also including pieces of us in the audience. So this was, there's a libation ceremony that they start their thing off with. So we had the libation ceremony take place live. So we live streamed the libation ceremony from a space that had Wi-Fi. We had people interview shops and businesses in the neighborhood and do little tiny spotlights about what, well, what do the ancestors do to honor, do you honor with your work and questions like that around Black Pride? We also had, there was this gorgeous dance piece that they produced on the square. It was a video recording. So it was edited. So it was an asynchronous, but it brought us to feel like we were close and in that place. All right. Hey, hey computer. There we go. All right. Oh, I've gone, I've gone too far. There we go. Virtual community performances. Recently this was, so I'm talking to you about, that was hybrid. That was about bringing together that very specific space. We had people in the square while we were live streaming and we were bringing it together in the same time. These two virtual community performances were exclusively digital. We knew that the audiences would be all inside their houses. The virtual pride was produced by calling of justice in one free community because so many of our community members couldn't attend pride because there was less masking in 2023. A lot of the COVID safe protocols that have been put in place for 2021 had been let go and folks were feeling at a loss. So we knew we had an international audience. So we produced something that was had all day programming inside of a Zoom where people could fully participate. And then we also had evening programming that we presented through a live stream. We also, I want to mention the virtual protest performance that we just produced. This was done on November 4th y'all. So there were all of these protests taking place all over the country. Many people wanted to join them, but they couldn't. So we get about 500 people. They sign up to attend. We have a hundred of them inside the Zoom with us. While we're inside the Zoom, we are attending actual protests, a curated selection of actual protests. So we're going to somebody's live stream, and then we are giving them support in that live stream. So it's like a hundred of us audienceing together for somebody else's live stream, but we are also, it's a live stream inside of a live stream. So we've got that live stream inside our live stream. So for people who are outside of the one free community, people who are outside of calling up justice, about 400 people, they can all witness it through that Twitch stream that we're producing. Then you've got a hundred people inside. We're watching a TikTok stream and we're being transported from Philadelphia to Washington DC. Now we're in Canada watching the Indian collective do amazing speeches about Palestine and indigenous rights in Canada. And it's really moving. Then everybody goes off into breakout rooms. It does work in there. And then at the, in the final moments, we come back together and we listen to this podcast that we just produced. So in 2021, I had a series of plays called the Every 28 Hours plays. They're short plays that deal with racial justice. They're all about a minute long and they were developed in Ferguson during that time of, during that specific time of unrest, right? So in 2021, I knew we wanted to have engagement with these plays. One of my interns, Karina, had this great idea. So Karina and Sabina got together and we're like, we're going to make a podcast where we read one play and we invite all of the people who are involved in the making of that play and also people who would just be interested in it. And then we're going to have an intense conversation about it. The outcome y'all, the outcome was supposed to be 20 minutes long. It's a 75 minute, 75 minutes long, this one. Why? Because it was so, the conversation was so deep. So we have Iman Aoun. She's the artistic director of a theater in Israel. I'm a Palestinian theater in Israel and she's currently producing the Gaza monologues right now. There's Karina there. We've got all of these great theater artists. And it was part of the point of these digital encounters is that it allows us to all very quickly have a theatrical experience and listening to that play and listening to people experience, that play was really powerful. I'm going to very quickly talk about a couple of aspects that we did with the production of Elektra that I directed. I directed a production of Elektra with the Women's Theater Festival and Access Classics. Access Classics is run by Heather Andersma and Michaela Goldhaber. And Michaela Goldhaber is also the artistic director of the Rai Crips, which is a disabled playwriting collective. And they came to me and they were like, we want to do Elektra and Arestes. And we'd like for you to direct it. And I was like, awesome. First, we're only doing Elektra because if we try to do Elektra and Arestes, it will be too much and it will break all of us. So we're only doing Elektra. And then I was like, we're going to make this accessible from the very beginning. So we knew this will be a purely digital production. This gives us the freedom of having an actor in Canada and an actor in Jamaica join us so we can say yes to the performers regardless of space and time. We hire these two amazing sign language interpreters, Kira Buck and Angelique. Oh, I'm gonna mess up her name, dang it. They partnered after they worked with us, they made their own company. So Ghostlight Interpreting came to be because of the amazing experience that they had with each other. And I just want to recommend, I think other people have already recommended this, start with Access and have your Access workers in the creative process with you. Now, of course, we were working with Antoine Hunter as a performer. So we wanted our sign language interpreters to be there for every single rehearsal. We also, Heather Andersma, was the one who triggered all of the captions for us. AI captions, we're not going to do what we needed them to do. We needed our captions to be very, very accurate. And also sometimes they were in Greek, they were literally in Greek. So Heather Andersma took on the extra labor of manually entering them into the captioning device and then triggering them for each production. I'm going to get a drink of water. So aspects to keep in mind for this production were starting with Access. The first rehearsal was a conversation about access needs and what what shifts and changes would we want to do to make sure everybody's needs were met and then also coming up with language for how do we pause if we need to do an access hold in real time to change something to make it more accessible for all of us. Oh, I'm so tempted to give you a piece, a piece of this production, but I don't think we have time. So I'm going to move us on. We can go back if we think we have time, but I want to make sure we actually have, we get to talk about the entire hybrid theater festival. All right, I'm accidentally showing it to you. That was not on purpose. There we go. All right. The next thing I'm going to talk to you about is this digital convening. So this was, yeah, this was the first digital convening that I produced. And it was, I was working with the Fool's Fury theater company. They would do a theater festival and convening every two years where they would bring ensemble theater makers, ensemble companies from all over the country, produce this huge festival and then have these workshops and really good conversations about just theater and the field. And I personally believe that it was actually a really important event that was taking place that was helping to tie together pieces of the ensemble theater community. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do the festival because of the pandemic. And then that was the year that a lot of people's plays didn't happen. So they were sad about it. So we ended up producing something where we invented it and I called it microturgy. Microturgy was when we brought a dramaturg. We partnered with LMDA. So we partnered with literary managers, dramaturgs of America. I think that's what the acronym sounds like. Maybe it's association. Anyway, we partnered with LMDA and a dramaturg was paired with each ensemble. And then they created a one minute presentation or a two minute presentation that was a shadow of what the thing was going to be or was supposed to be. Some people just spoke directly to the camera. Some people produced full excerpts and it was artistically exciting and engaging. And it was also grief work. So this was trauma-informed producing. This was myself and Deborah Eliezer really understanding that this event, this convening wasn't just about producing professional outcomes, but this was about giving everybody some spaces to grieve, to feel like they could really grapple with the time and space that we were in. So like all of the workshops were specifically designed to help build power for everyone. This event was held in Hopin 2. So it was held in a conference platform so that people could feel like they were all in the same space but also they could come in and out. Inside the Hopin 2 platform, there was a section where you could watch videos like we are right now in kind of a Zoom area. But then you could exit and go to another section where it was kind of designed where you could have booths where people would be in a room and you'd go into the room and you could talk to somebody. And it was as if you were kind of in a lecture hall with people at different tables, you could talk to them about their different companies, etc. I just, last week, was this last week? No, was this last, this was last week. Y'all, I'm doing too much. This was last week. So there was a convening in New Orleans. I myself and not, I still wasn't feeling safe enough to get on a plane and go to New Orleans for this convening, but I really needed to talk to my fellow ensemble theater makers. And this was the network of ensemble theaters national gathering. And they did the best things. Not only did they had incredibly great COVID safe protocols, they did really beautiful work in gathering people physically in time and space, but then they also designed a hybrid piece of it. And then they recognized that we were having super deep conversations about strategic planning, trying to design for the future. And so in those moments, we ended up needing to come together. And so they presented us from the Zoom on a big screen for that audience so that we could come together. And there were moments where we were text messaging with colleagues, trading pictures, etc. And again, it's about how do you build community when gathering in physical space can sometimes be difficult, not only because of the price of tickets, not only because of our own the extra labor that we have to do to pay our bills, which might mean that we can't go out of town for a couple of days. So this was this was a really huge step for the network of ensemble theaters. And we felt really proud of being able to successfully convene in this hybrid style. And I was just just beautiful. I just can't do I can't do enough shout outs through the bridge ensemble for building that. And some of the tools that we used for that were and these are some of the tools that were used for this convening as well. You'll see right here this is a link tree was just a simple link tree, where they had the travel kit, the event program, the event program was done like this. This on the side here is a link from the event program. The event program was in Canva. And it was one of those interactive canvas. So this map was an actual movable map. So you could move it around find places in New Orleans if you're physically there, right? But you have the schedule with the clans dietary. This was also they had forms, right? This is about accessibility. So we had forms here to say what your dietary preferences to make sure we know what we need to know to make sure everybody is safe. COVID test form to find out so you don't have to physically come to tell us, right? That kind of stuff. All right. Padlet is another tool that was used for that. And I was just like, let me use another one to give us some variety. And I believe this event has a padlet as well. The beautiful thing about padlet is in 2020, I was looking for tools that anybody could use for free. I was trying to find tools that would be easy to use, low barrier of learning how to use it, low cost barrier, and also accessible to outside users. So padlets useful because I can make a padlet and then you don't have to sign up to join padlet to engage with it as a tool, which is super useful. There's a barrier to entry. Every time you have to fill out a form or do something, it's the equivalent of walking half a block to go through a door. So I was just trying to decide how many barriers am I going to put between you and the thing that I want you to engage with. This last piece is an example of transmedia digital art and performance. So this Why Mask project, it started off, it mostly started off because I was like, I was trying to write an essay about accessibility in theater and I kept being so angry about masking. And I was like, Claudia, you need to find a softer entry point. And I was like, well, how about I just create a project that invites people to tell me why they're masking. So instead of me trying to tell people why they should be masking, how about I just allow the people who are doing the thing that's creating the accessibility to tell me their beautiful story. And then we have these signs. Now these signs have been, I think, placed in four different galleries and three different performance locations so far. And the last engagement we had with this Why Mask, it made me understand that it has to be a performance piece. It's one of the outcomes is this beautiful digital gallery of faces. And to a certain extent, I initially thought that's the art. That's not the art. The art is the performance of inviting people to add their mask to the Why Mask project. And so we held space at this festival. We had this beautiful access station that had hand sanitizers and masks and free masks and all of that. And that's where we discovered that piece of the performance. But I'm mentioning this mostly because I wanted to mention the art of QR codes. QR codes are amazing ways to bring people, they're like little portals across space and time. But I did find that with this performance, I couldn't just have a sign that said do it. It required a person coaching them through it. Performance and art takes people. And now we're here at the Inclusive Theater Festival. Come on, you'll, these are actual screen caps I took from around off of my own darn computer. Look at that little people saying things in the chat. I love it. There's you, Ashna, being graceful yesterday being like, come back tomorrow. And you'll note here's this beautiful sign that has another QR code on it. I wanted to do a shout out. The reason I took a screen cap of this was the last speaker from yesterday. What was their name? Ashna, could you remind me of their name? Yes. It was Tina Childress. Tina Childress. Everybody's presentations were just not. Chef's kiss. What I really loved about this presentation was that that QR code worked. It worked through the live stream. I wasn't sure if it was going to because it is a projection onto a wall. And then it's a camera capturing that. So sometimes that can create a little bit of wept and worth. It was beautiful. And it allowed me, she had offered to give visual descriptions of every slide. That would have added to the time of their presentation. Taking away from time for us to listen to stuff. And also, I think it would have broken up their presentation a little bit. So I was grateful that I didn't have to request it because I was about to request it because I was like, that's so tiny. I can't see what's on there. But then by allowing me to do this, boom, I could access the slides over my phone. And it was a beautiful moment in accessibility. I loved it. And then, of course, today, we've been fully inside the Zoom. And I just got to do a shout out for, I already did this, but I'll do it again. The networking moment, it was really delightful to be able to talk to somebody. And I'm going to say this. I tried to say goodbye to Nomi. And Nomi disappeared on the puff of smoke. That's one of the things that I cannot stand about these digital spaces where before you have a chance to be like, how they could just leave the digital space. So it's beautiful to design in spaces and places and time for us to exchange with each other. That's great. I also want to do some shout out to Momo's presentation because Momo was engaging in really communicative visual artifacts. So I just want folks, if you didn't already and you're here for the replay, check out that presentation and learn from the way they were using visuals to communicate. All right. This is the chance where I'm supposed to invite people to join me on stage. So who do we have here that did a presentation from earlier? Is Terry in the house? I would love to talk to Terry. Y'all, Terry's presentation was here. Let me stop sharing the screen and just do a little shout out. Y'all, Terry's presentation was so cool because Terry was live streaming from a location and then was being projected into the physically shared space and then I was watching the live stream of that projection. So it just felt like layers of accessibility and also just presencing in a really cool way. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Terry. I just want to hand you the proverbial microphone for a moment and just invite you to reflect on any ideas around remote or hybrid convening and how this experience was for you. Hi, everyone. I'm Terry and I did indeed present yesterday. I really appreciated the organizer's flexibility because I was initially invited to present in person and I went, you know, as an immunocompromised person without masking mandates happening, I do not feel safe presenting in person. Can you let me live stream? And they were just like, yeah. And we need more of that, please. Because, you know, there was nothing in my presentation that absolutely required my physical presence and I actually really liked that I was presenting remotely on the in-person day because I'm like this to me feels like just a little bit of like Crip Activism here where I'm like, yes, this space is not accessible to me and I want you to think about that as I get this presentation. So that is what my experience has been like. The networking was also really fun and this has been, you know, I have actually been trying to like connect with sins and valid forever and so like I've now been introduced to those people. So I really think that this has been a fun and creative and cool way to do this and, Claudia, I just am in awe of the work that you've done and I am just like, yes, we need more of this because the thing is that I really keep wanting people to realize is that the need for remote access did not start in March 2020. It did not start in March 2020. There have been homebound people, people with fatigue issues, people with movement issues, people with physical access issues, people with overstimulation issues who have been shut out from the arts forever and we have the technology to stop it and we just need to want to. So there's really no reason at the end of the day other than lack of resources or lack of desire and the first one is easier to fight than the second one unfortunately that really any art made can't be accessible digitally. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And Terry, you know, I feel like we were taking tiny baby steps towards that world in 2020 and I got so excited because y'all I'm disabled, right? I have a human body that sometimes is like, oh, you don't think you're not getting out of the bed. That's not happening for you. And I don't know when that's going to happen, unfortunately, right? So I can make all the plans I want, which means I sometimes can't commit to being in a play if it means I have to be on a stage to specific time and place three months in the future. That's a dangerous commitment for me to make 2020. I got to be in plays. I got to be in a bunch of plays. Also, I got to collaborate with my friends in New York, neo-futurists. I hadn't been able, you know, it's always been a promise. I was like, I'm going to get back to New York and I'll stay there for a couple of weeks and I'll do a run. But the timing never worked out. And then a pandemic hit and a pandemic hit and suddenly they were like, oh, let's do a digital show. And now I can collaborate with my colleagues again. And it's beautiful. I'm remembering 2019. Oh, y'all, this was actually 2020. It was right before the pandemic hit. I was supposed to be doing a project with the National Disability Theater and I caught the worst cold of my life. I sometimes wonder if maybe it was COVID. Who knows? All I know is like, I was so sick. I told my roommates, I'm quarantining myself, don't come on, don't come in my side of the house and I'll use my private bathroom. And I called the National Disability Theater and I was like, I'm so sorry, I'm too sick to get on the plane. I should not. I was like, I think I could pull it together and get there. But I think I would get everybody sick and that would be a disservice. And they were like, what if we presented you on a screen in the room? We really, really want to hear your comments and stuff. And I was like, okay. And so that was my first moment prior to the pandemic. It was possible. It was always possible. And it was always necessary. It was always possible. It was always necessary. So shout out to National Disability Theater for that moment of accessibility that they produced with us. Is there anybody else in the house right now here with us that was a part of this experience? I know we're coming towards our closing times, but I'm just wondering, is there anybody else who was a presenter who wanted to share any words or experiences? I just want to make sure I'm giving you time and space. Dr. Chulis was supposed to join us, but she just messaged me saying that she had an emergency and she can't. Oh, no worries. No worries. And we are almost at time. I know that I packed so much into this presentation, right? So let me give a few more moments for some observations and also if there's any observations from the audience perspective, I'd be open to hearing those two. And then I'm going to share some of the group things that we made together. So let me pass the microphone to whoever else would like to make some comments. I just wanted to throw out right quick. I know I've already taken up some time, but I just have one more thing to say. Bouncing off what you said, Claudia, in 2020, I worked more than I had in the previous six years that I lived in Chicago because there were no physical barriers. I literally worked more in 2020 like my resume doubled in 2020 because there weren't physical barriers anymore. There were actually specifically companies who I knew had inaccessible spaces that were hiring me. And there were also, this is a thing to think about, companies who did not hire me because they wanted a certain look or a certain physical skill stage combat, something like that that hired me to read through their plays because I fit the character when they took out the physical component. Leaving that there. Yes. Okay. So you had to get on. You had to get on the mic and say those things because they were so vitally important for the room to hear. Can I pass the microphone to Amanda? I think I saw Amanda's hand up and I think Monica, did you want to share some words? All right, awesome. I'll pass it to you, Amanda. And then you passed to Monica when you're done. Totally. Sorry, she's loud over here. But no, I remember in 2020, it was my senior year of high school. I was going into my senior year and my acting professor was like, actually, this works perfectly because we were doing the tempest that year. He was like, well, they were stuck in an island. Now we're stuck. So it's a virtual space. And while like, I'm five feet tall. So that is something that like, in that show, I've been cast in one role, but I got cast as Ariel, like the like, ever-faceted being, and I got to be like this really cool AI type thing. And they did really cool, like voice modulations, like design stuff, all online, which was really fascinating. And it's also like, I got to help my cohort when I was in my senior year of virtual, we created a show together. And they're like, and I'm a huge dance person, they were like, oh, do you want to choreograph something? I was like, I've never choreographed before. Sure, I'll make something that can fit in this screen. And now I've choreographed. And like, I don't know how many shows, but it's like one of the top things I do as an artist. So like, those two things, like, would not have happened had we've been on lockdown, it would probably not have happened in the real world just because assumptions. Yes, yes, yes. All right, Monica, come on, come on. I'm on fire here because like this is the entire point of why we're here. Yes, Monica. Yeah, absolutely. I've just been reflecting like throughout your whole presentation on like everything that I've been, I joined CSaw in 2020, which was my freshman year of college. Like I joined it when we were doing everything on Zoom. And like my first, I took a year of being on CSaw before I saw like any kids in the space. But I know like the first production I ever worked on with CSaw was we ended up reaching like three, four, five times the amount of kids we normally were able to reach because everything was online. And we could, we like bought prop kits because normally like we have like a big thing is like our sensory experiences. And so we just bought bulk and sent out like 200 prop kits to kids. Like we had multiple states and like it was so cool. And I would love to see CSaw do something like that again in the future because we really only did it that one year, but it was just really like an expansion of like what could even be possible. And I think also just I've been reflecting on like what ITF has been because I produced it last year and was a participant in it the year before that. And just I think the way it's just kind of shifted. And like, I think what we landed on this year, like what Claudia, you were able to help Ashna kind of brainchild into existence was just really wonderful. And like, I think it's been really cool to see like, because it's, it's just, it's a huge conversation that we have about it every year. But I think this has resulted in something like really wonderful. So I just want to put that in the space. I'm mad. I don't have more time to spend with y'all. Let's look at the things that we made together. I'm curious about what we made together. So I'm going to share my screen. One last time. Where's the buttons to let me share my screen Claudia sharing her screen. Thank you so much for making me a coho. So I have the power to do that. That was nice. Okay, first, actually, no, we'll start here. We'll start with our poem. And then we will end with our word cloud. And I'm going to see what we have here. Things that we loved about cool theater access sign language incorporated into choreography. Heck yeah. Integrated ASL when it worked very well. Yes, kids in the audience could answer questions and speak throughout the show if they liked and no response was wrong. That's beautiful. A theater they worked at realized their bathroom doors weren't wide enough for power chairs. A licensed contractor crew member spoke to their artistic director and the door was widened that same day. Oh, that is such a good story. That is such a good story. That reminds me I'm breaking the rules. I'm telling a story like, like, oh, no, two weeks ago, I was working with a group of folks and they had two accessible bathrooms and they were using one for storage. And I walked in and I was like, you have two accessible bathrooms. And somebody was like, oh, we're using that one for storage, but that one's accessible. And they saw my face because I went, huh. And the next day, the executive director had all of that storage in his office and see my first seesaw show and how much the kids responded to it and getting to learn from them and to learn about how I can make theater as enjoyable for everyone as it is to me and hearing stories and becoming more aware of what is needed now. I love doing an exercise where we all just kind of name things that we love in the space because, like, it's an act of manifesting. These are the things that are important to us, but why did we come here? Why is there an inclusive theater festival? What's the point of this? A bunch of people came. Students, adults, practitioners, audience members, people came here to brainstorm with special needs to spread an idea, to present an idea for inspiration, community learning, understanding, knowledge sharing, to share an idea for theater, theater to my students, world-beating ideas for teaching, innovation, to learn, education, connection, sensory, theater, inclusivity, ideas, listening, celebrating, y'all, these words were typed into this form by people in a physical space yesterday. They were typed into this form by us in this digital space now and this is all of us together. I am so, so happy that I could reach across time and space to be with you all here and there together. Inclusive theater, y'all. Come on. Thank you so much, Claudia. You have such, like, as soon as I was speaking, Monica texted me and was like, they have just such wonderful energy and I was like, I know. Absolutely. For like the past three months, thank you so much for being with us today and for sharing that wonderful word cloud. I think it's such a wonderful way to end this festival and this experience that we've all had, this experience that I've had. I am so grateful to all of our presenters for all of the amazing ideas they've shared here today. And if there's one thing that we can take away from this experience, I think it's just that let's try our best to bring everyone into the space, the way all of these presenters have been working so hard to do, the way CESA has been working so hard to do. I want to thank Monica and Matthew, who have been such amazing partners in helping me build this festival and do everything that was required in these past two months. I want to thank Claudia and Kojessenya and my mama and calling up Justice for being such amazing mentors to me throughout this process and for teaching me so much more than I ever thought I could know about accessibility. I want to thank Alround, Tia, Vijay and Matthew who have been so patient with me as we figured out how to get everything on Alround, how to reach that platform, how to make sure video quality and everything else is working well. I want to thank Julia, Marshall, Laura, Elise, Elizabeth and Haley from the CESA team for just being such wonderful collaborators in this process and taking care of everything that I couldn't personally handle myself. All the presenters for teaching us so much and all of you who attended and were such a wonderful audience, thank you for engaging, thank you for being in this in this space yesterday and today in whatever ways you could be. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If even one person in this room takes just like a little bit more of a commitment to accessibility back from this space today, I think I'm happy with the festival that we've created together. On that note, happy Diwali. It's the Hindu New Year and I think this is a great way for me to begin my new year and have such a wonderful weekend ahead, I don't know if it's over, have such a wonderful week ahead and so much CESA love to all of you, thank you for being with me in this space. Thank you.