 Number two, it's my absolute honor and privilege to stand before all of you, specifically all of you, in the space that I am so many others call home. I totally recommend a home with a fully stocked bar. That's number one, rule number one, rule number one. Last year, I was also able to welcome you here and I shared what we at Joe's Pub are thinking about in 2017. It was just post-election, pre-inauguration and we were thinking about Joe's as not a performance space but as a rehearsal space, a place where we could learn and grow communities, where we could think of our shows as opportunities for engaging these once in a lifetime gatherings of humans in a room. And this year, post-inauguration, pre-apocalypse, we are recognizing that the audiences we are building are segregated, actually, into two distinct groups and I don't think we're alone in this but the two groups that we have noticed are that we have white communities and mixed communities. So here are the questions that we commit to challenging ourselves and our artists with going into this calendar year. What are the rooms where a whites-only sign outside the door would cause no shift in the audience demographic or in the rehearsal? What are the meetings, the design team gatherings where that sign or perhaps a men-only sign could be hung with no shift? I think I can count on one hand the amount of bands or companies I work with regularly that are all women, all black, all Latinx, or all Asian. But it would take both of my hands and the hands of everyone in this room, I think, to count the all male or all white bands and companies I work with. Strange, no? Often we talk about theater in terms of home and our chosen family. So who is in your family? Who did you invite into your home? Who did you choose? Who are you planning this revolution with? I hope that as we move into this year and into all of these conferences, for this field of storytelling, we think about the signs that could be hung around the rooms we gather in. Because you may not see them, but they are seen and they are telling their own very vibrant story. Thank you very much. This seems to be the year of rebranding. There is most a constant partner, Margo Garcia-Durham, who is CEO of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. Hi. Mark said the next year is the Quintanera anniversary and I have a beautiful... I'm older than he is. I have a beautiful Quintanera dress. I'm happy to put it on. It's gorgeous. So, thank you all for allowing me to speak for a few minutes. I want to congratulate under the radar for its continued success and partnership. As always, we are delighted to have a symposium pre-conference, so tomorrow, combine at 9.30 until 12 at the Hilton. That will be under the radar speed dating. And I wanted to just mention that when I talked to you last year, it was a few days before the inauguration. And luckily, all of my fears were unwarranted. That exploded. Anyway, so after a long and eventful year, the only advice I can offer to you is to stay focused. I firmly believe that daily bombs of indignation and things that are going to turn our heads are laying out for the media to gobble up and distract us, but please, please, please keep focused on the critical and important issues that affect us. There are a lot, and there's a lot going on in Washington in the background that we all need to pay very, very close attention to. So, I wish you a wonderful event, and thank you all for letting me speak. Happy New Year. We've come to the From Where I Stand portion of the event. Now, From Where I Stand is briefly brief views on the state of theater from unique perspectives of four guest artists. The first artist on our list today is a playwright and screenwriter, Robert Schenken. Robert's offered, authored 15 plays and won a Pulitzer and two Tony awards, and we actually went to, he went to the Elder High School, in Austin, Texas, the Good High School. I went to the Roper School, and we actually used to compete against each other in acting contests, and it's the only way that Texas can understand theater. Like, one once. But then he went on to win a Pulitzer right. Please welcome Robert Schenken. Thank you. Harry Edelson whispered in my ear, the helpful advice, don't fuck this up. So, with the bar set impossibly high, it is such a pleasure to be here today in this distinguished company of artists, rabble-rousers, and troublemakers. In my personal calendar of the theatrical year, I think of the Radar Festival as Christmas, because here under the tan and balm of the public theater, I'm always surprised and delighted by what I unwrap. Of course, outside this building, not all surprises delight. Fourteen months ago, a lifetime ago, in November 2016, the majority of citizens of the United States were surprised, shocked even by a presidential election which threw an archaic electoral process through an extraordinarily dangerous demagogue into office while at the same time this party holds both houses of Congress, thus consolidating power in the hands of reactionary forces. Apologies to our foreign guests today, some of whom have extensive experience in working under similar conditions. We have much to learn from you. But the problem of Trump, while uniquely American, is not, alas, solely an American problem, the consequences of the nuclear dick slapping on the table between Trump and North Korea will not, in the end, respect national borders. And the United States withdrawn from international efforts to control climate control may indeed guarantee its failure. But hey, it's just the planet. While our current political crisis is extraordinary, it is not new. The authoritarian playbook is centuries old. Create a constant state of crisis which only a strong leader can solve. Encourage fear, divide the populace, and scapegoat minorities and immigrants with appeals to nationalism, racism, and isolationism. Smear your opponents as unpatriotic and tell the press to just shut up and listen. Nor is this only an American issue. All the Western democracies are currently struggling with some variant. Five Star in Italy, Freedom Party in Austria, Le Pen in France, Geet Wilders in Holland, etc., etc. The question, of course, is not so much what the authorities will do, but how we, the citizens, will respond. And indeed, 14 months ago, this is what frightened me the most and what keeps me up at night still. We have a long sordid history in this country of race-baiting demagogues, but also a history of political heroes willing to stand up to them. Have you no decency, sir? But what has happened today is that certain congressional leaders have temporarily shelved their allegiance to the Constitution in order to embrace a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exercise complete power. We have seen how such temporary moral transactions played out in the past, and the results are not pretty. During the election, formally responsible officials enabled this takeover with false self-serving assurances that it's just campaign rhetoric. He doesn't really mean it, or my personal favorite. It's just words. It's just words. Everybody in this room knows the atomic power of words. They are our stock and trade, and anybody outside this room who still thinks he doesn't mean it hasn't been paying attention, and that is the real danger. That is how democracies die. The real political coup is not the policeman at your door trunching in hand. That's the epilogue. It is the abdication by ordinary citizens of their personal moral responsibility as care of the state. If you do not pay attention, the unimaginable can become the inevitable. The theatrical argument for individual conscience versus government authority is also one of them. We, my friends, are the inheritors of a noble tradition of resistance. Estelis made the case for it 2,000 years ago, and it's worth noting that his protagonist was a woman in really high shoes. Contemporary writers like Shoyinka, Parks, Haddle, Fugard, Nottage, and many others frequently and eloquently make the same appeal, and this is necessary because the authoritarian virus never completely dies out. It lies quiescent in the body politic until times of anxiety and then reemerges to gorge vampire-like on our fear. The only cure, then and now, is alert responsible citizenry. And this, my friends, is where we come in, the artists. The battleground here is the value of words, the very nature of truth, and the definition of community. Who are we as a people? Who is not us? At the end of the day, the battleground is over the narrative, over the story. The story is something we know a thing or two about. Shoyinka says that theater is the most revolutionary art form in part because it can respond immediately to the changing patterns of events, and this is what we must do. This administration is not business as usual. Indeed, they've thrown the rulebook out the window, and theater artists cannot respond in traditional ways using our traditional models. Confronting this administration about a critical issue emerging today but doing so only 18 months after the fact, is not a recipe for successful resistance. We have to respond with urgency. We have to think out of the box. By way of example, 14 months ago in a white-hot anger, I channeled my considerable fears of the then rough beast slouching towards Washington and Rotoplay building the wall, which pursues the pure logic of Trumpism to one tragic and very possible conclusion, sorted examples of which abound in our supposedly modern age. This theatrical provocation, this political predicate was designed to be performed as cheaply as possible, and my marching orders were no hold-backs. Get this done now, today. I don't care who does it, professional or rank amateur, or where they do it, Shea Stadium or a church basement, and since its first public performance in February of last year, it's had over 50 productions in this country, performances in Mexico, Canada, Sweden, UK, Austria, and Iran. Rolling out of play in such a manner is challenging, and it demands, among other sacrifices, relinquishing that control an artist would normally insist upon, but the time is now, and we must all, each of us in our own blessedly unique way, make us stand and resist. One of the first acts of every authoritarian regime is to come after the artists, especially the theatre artists. This might seem contradictory since they so often scorn us as elite, if feat, and ineffectual, but the truth is, no other art form speaks truth so forcefully to power. No other art form is so capable of identifying and rousing the currents of unexpressed dissatisfaction roiling beneath the surface of society. And no other art form has such potential, and this is the key, my friends. No other art form has such potential to give hope to the opposition. That is why they fear us. Make sure they fucking do. Thank you. The show, Building the Wall, I believe is available, and it's great. It's a very powerful piece, and you can put it up in a couple minutes, so take that. Thank you. Now we're going to take a jump. I think one of our next speakers actually was running a grave in our lobby last night until about 1 a.m., so maybe she's on her way here. But it's my delight to introduce you to my delight to introduce you to Jess Tom and she's a runs a company that's Tourette's hero, and let's see. Then we're going to I'm really honored to welcome Jess to the stage, and she'll tell you everything. Thank you. This is the stage that means I'm neurologically incapable of staying on script. Biscuit. Surprise to everyone. Biscuit. For inviting me to speak. Biscuit. For the next 10 minutes though, I'd like to propose we rename it from where I sit. Biscuit! My view as an audience member, but before that, there are things to know straight away. I love cats. Biscuit and hedgehog a lot. Biscuit. So nothing gets lost in translation. When you hear biscuit, I'd like you to think cookie. If I say something funny, you're absolutely allowed to laugh. Biscuit. It would be a bit odd if you don't. Biscuit. Several times a day, my tics intensify. Biscuit. And I completely lose control of my body and speech. These episodes look seizure-like and mean similar management. If this happens while I'm speaking, my support work will come to help me. Biscuit. A mark will take over with a glance about separate feet. So briefly, that anyone who might find this useful. Biscuit. With short curly brown hair and a very cool wheelchair. Biscuit. All the slides I'll be showing. Biscuit. Are colourful hand-drawn cards with the title of each section. I will read each of these out in turn. Biscuit. Torex Hero. Biscuit. A call to action. Biscuit. In 2000 at Torex Hero, after a conversation I changed the way I view my condition. Biscuit. Described Torex as a crazy language-generating machine. Biscuit. And told me not doing something creative with would be wasteful. Biscuit. This idea took root and was how I came to see my tics for inclusivity. Legislation, resources and knowledge are important roles to play communities. We need to think working within the art sector. You're perfect to make a significant contribution to catalyzing social change. Biscuit. I'm not disabled by my body. Biscuit. This was that when thinking about disability we followed either a medical or a charity model being disabled because their body is in some way. Both assume disabled people are in need of pity or cure. People are disabled by their impairments but by a failure in society to consider difference in how it is organised. For example, deafness is an impairment but not having captioning or sign language interpretation is disabling. Blindness is a visual impairment but not having information in tactile or audio formats is disabling. And I'm not disabled by the tics in my legs. Biscuit. My wheelchair provides me with a great way to get around. Biscuit. What I am disabled by is steps, a lack of ramps or broken elevators. I don't see it that way at all. For me, saying I'm disabled acknowledges the barriers I face because of our collective failure to consider difference. Biscuit. Only if those barriers are acknowledged can they be changed. Biscuit. Understanding disability. Using the social model has been essential for shaping my view of my body and my experiences. Biscuit. It's the reason I say I am a disabled person rather than a person with a disability. Disability isn't something I carry around with me. Biscuit. And it's not a permanent unchanging state. Biscuit. I am more or less disabled in different contexts. Biscuit. The exciting thing about this is that means by working together we can create disabling spaces, systems and attitudes. Biscuit. My journey to the stage. Biscuit. As I'm sure you've noticed by now Biscuit. Having Tourette's Biscuit means I'm really still or quiet. Fuck it, that was those things in my pants. Cup of tea or chopping vegetables into extreme sports. Biscuit. As a teenager I used to love going to theatres and galleries. My experiences made me stand out. In 2014 when I started work on my first stage show Backstage and Biscuit Land I googled Tourette's Theatre and nearly all the top results were accounts of people with tits being asked to leave or sit separately. Biscuit. I created Backstage and Biscuit Land after a particularly distressing experience at a theatre in London. Biscuit. Where I was asked to move and sit in the sound booth half way through the show because of the noises I was making. This experience was deeply distressing. Biscuit. As I was sobbing in the sound booth I promised myself that I would never set foot in another theatre again. Biscuit. Thankfully that wasn't a promise I kept. Instead I decided to occupy the one seat in the house. I knew I wouldn't be asked to leave. Biscuit. A UK theatre that takes a flexible approach to noise and movement from the audience and extends a warm invitation to all. Biscuit. The brilliant thing about relaxed performance is that everyone can benefit from being at one. This might include people with intellectual disabilities, dementia, movement disorders, those on the autistic spectrum, people with young children babies, or just those with very loud laughs. Biscuit. Biscuit. When they're done right they give the whole audience permission to relax, move about and make noise. This fosters a more exciting theatrical experience for everyone. Biscuit. There's so much amazing work out there. I don't want anyone to miss out because of preconceptions about who it's for or how it should be enjoyed. Biscuit. You shouldn't have to take to the stage just to feel safe from discrimination. Biscuit. Finally Biscuit. Visibility matters. While cultural spaces are generally getting better at thinking about access for audiences there are still many stages that I can't get on because of both physical and attitudinal barriers. Biscuit. Biscuit. Many both Biscuit. Biscuit. We've toured Biscuit land across the UK and internationally and over half the theatres we visited weren't accessible to me in the same way as my non-disabled peers. Biscuit. Disabled artists aren't just being written out of visible spaces. We're rarely visible within mainstream venues productions and programs. All too often our stories are written and performed by non-disabled people. In the UK we call this clipping up. Biscuit. Impairments doesn't constitute diversity and it reinforces damaging stereotypes. Biscuit. When discussing diversity in the UK's parliament British actor Idris Elba gave a powerful speech. He said diversity in the modern age is more than just skin colour. It's gender age, disability, social orientation, social background and most important of all diversity of thought. He went on talent is everywhere but opportunity isn't. And this gets right to the heart of the issue. Biscuit. If you're not white, male or non-disabled you're likely to face significant barriers within the creative sector. Barriers that exist within wider society. Unchecked, this lack of diversity becomes self-perpetuating. If you don't see yourself represented on stage you're much less likely to think that performing is a possibility for you. There are still too many people who don't see themselves reflected on stage or screen. Biscuit. All within our cultural institutions. This is bad for the industry and bad for us all. Biscuit. Biscuit. All this got me thinking about the cultural curation that happens around disability and the work that is and isn't made accessible. It led to our most recent production a neurodiverse presentation of Samuel Beckett's short play Not I. In this intense play a distant body math in a darkened room Biscuit blurts out her entire life story at top speed. Biscuit. Our aim is to take a piece of work traditionally seen as being difficult and being accessible at every level. We want to show that with the right approach even the most challenging texts can become accessible. We're claiming math as a disabled character and understanding her experiences from that perspective. Biscuit. Biscuit. Our intention is to present a rigorous performance of the work but in a way that works for mind, mind and body. My challenge to you I'd like to leave you with three challenges for this festival and beyond practice everyday inclusion. As a sector it is our responsibility to provide resources that can dismantle barriers. Don't let fear of getting it wrong prevent you from even starting. Making art accessible isn't a task that will ever be completed. It's an ongoing process that we all engage with every day. Nurture unpredictable outcomes Biscuit. When we started Tourette's Hero we had no idea how other people would respond and simply acknowledging the humour of Tourette's felt risky. Since then it's evolved in ways I could never have imagined Biscuit and most of the most exciting developments have been unplanned. Challenge yourself to be open to differences even if they might fail. Being receptive to the unexpected can lead to incredible outcomes. Finally, collaborate, innovate and improve. Creative collaboration across disciplines can unlock new ways of thinking capturing imaginations and expand engagement. Take opportunities to celebrate and share good practice but never stop asking what you could be doing better. So in conclusion for a dynamic sensitive sector it's essential to invest in inclusivity for audiences, for artists and for industry leaders. Biscuit. Biscuit. Disability isn't a niche issue. Statistics from the world might estimate that one fifth of the global population is disabled. Biscuit. So there is a strong business case as well as social imperative for investing in access. Visibility matters because art and culture are great at shifting thinking but it's essential that people with lived experience take the lead. Biscuit. In March, Tourette's Thoreau is celebrating his eighth birthday. Biscuit. And in that time the most important thing I've learnt is this. If something isn't working I have the capacity to change it and that's not because I have any skills or superpowers. Biscuit. It's because we all have the ability to create change. Whenever you're thinking about the barriers you want to bring down let's face it there are some pretty big ones at the moment. It's worth thinking about what you want to create cultivate and protect at the same time. Changing the cultural landscape isn't too mighty a task and it's definitely not something we should just leave to politicians or people wearing capes. It's something we could all do. Biscuit. Biscuit. Biscuit. Together we can create opportunities for talent to be shared, for difference to be visible and for creative communities to lead the way in shaping sustainable social change. Biscuit. If you'd like to find out more about Tourette's Thoreau please visit our website or come and find me later. I'll be the one shouting Biscuit. Thank you very much. Just time. Let's take a break Let's have some coffee. And then we'll in about, you know, 10 minutes or so we'll come back and we'll start again. Biscuit. Exactly. It's my turn. There's a couple of seats down here in New York City's subway system. Charlotte is an amazing director and she put together this amazing show Shasta Goes Pop which played last night anyone was there dancing she turns this whole lobby into a club and we're going to do that quite an amazing experience to be in the presence of the Shasta. And so and Charlotte's been directing here she's kind of one of our in-house under the radar directors so you'll see her work down the line. So thank you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Andrew Kircher. Now Andrew Kircher is by calling my consulieri he is the dramaturg for the festival to some extent. He doesn't take responsibility for everything I've worked with but the things he likes he helps me out. And he's with the new works department which is a whole new thing that the public theater is doing which is they created a new works department which includes literary novels and all the other things that we're doing all this theater that we're making including device work and that's where Andrew comes in. He's been helping us with the coming attractions and I leave it to Andrew Kircher. Thank you. So first I'll second what Mark said what Charlotte Breathway and Ayesha Jordan are making in the lobby is sheer brilliance I encourage you all to come on Friday it's a really good time we have four wonderful coming attractions the way it'll work is I'll introduce the artist, they'll come up they'll share a little bit of what they're working on and then we'll have time afterward for questions from all of you and we're going to begin with sinking ship productions and a hunger artist. Please welcome him to the stage. In the last few decades interest in public starvation has declined dramatically. It used to be a top form with enormous crowds everywhere left in a different world. I cannot see a real hunger artist today with our minds and with our hearts we can resurrect one of the greatest men ever to be seen. It's small. Can you see anything? In the back, can you see anything? No. You have to do it bigger. Who is without dispute the greatest practitioner of his craft the world over has sat in this very cage in this very hall and has not taken even the slightest morsel of sustenance. You have seen for yourself that he has not. You have heard the report from the official observer chosen by yourself that he has not. Now you shall all bear witness you saw with a miniature recreation of the whole hunger artist's spectacle before in a magical reversal the audience is thrown back in time for artists before his eventual decline where he is forgotten in a circus. The show has a lot of humor but there's also a tragic dimension to it and I ask the question what is the value of performance and why did we go and see it? Hunger artist is created by Sinking Ship Productions that's me, Josh Luxenberg and John Levin. We founded the company in 2008 with There Will Come Soft Rain which was a timeout critics pick and followed it up with Powerhouse at the New Ohio Theater which was a New York Times critics pick and the script was also a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill conference. Now I'm the writer on these projects and John and I create every piece collaboratively working together from the very beginning and we brought on for this project Josh Gell who is an amazingly inventive director and also a specialist in 19th century theater his last production The Black Crook was a reimagining of America's first musical at Abrams Art Center. Now with a hunger artist which is a story about lost art form we evoked a lot of older theatrical techniques. Now John is, he graduated from Le Coq in Paris so the piece has a highly heightened physical theater style it's a bridge between a narrative theater and experimental theater and well it's bleak, it's Kafka but it's excessively bleak. Basically the true draw though is John's virtuosic performance he is conjuring multiple characters switching seamlessly between them while manipulating Victorian miniature theaters, puppets he's clowning and there's a little bit of magic So the New York Times said that John holds the audience in the palm of his hand New York Irish Arts called it solo toward de force, Leven is like a cross between Wil Eno and this is a lot, Charlie Chaplin We started working on the piece three years ago we had our first workshop at the New Ohio Theater and then we premiered at the Connolly Theater and from there we jumped on a plane and we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where we received a sort of absurd number of stars and we're granted the Lustrum Award for excellence and right now we are remounting for the short week through Tuesday and we really hope you'll get a chance to see the show These are the dates that we're performing this week and we are setting up tours in 2018, 2019 domestically and internationally starting in just two weeks in Hartford, Connecticut with Hartleet Ensemble and now both looking to add more dates So this is actually the first show that we've built specifically to Toro which means we're meeting a lot of you for the first time here today we really look forward to building partnerships for this project and for our future project as we go I'll tell you a few logistics it's about 75 minutes long and there's no intermission It fits best into medium spaces or black boxes with equipment set up which really helps us with the stage magic and sits in houses of about up to 250 people We travel with four and everything fits in the back of a minivan or on one pallet if we're shipping We're also developing several new projects and if you are the sort of place that can offer residency space or other development resources we'd love to talk to you about that as well And so once again this is our schedule for this week There it is with suitably strange times because we know you're busy and so it's been scheduled for your convenience So again just thanks to Mark and Andrew for inviting us to be here today We will be at the bar in the lobby ready to answer any questions so thank you all You're also ready to answer some questions now So if anyone has any questions can we get the house lights up any questions for the company Tomorrow at four at the Connolly At 10 Anything else? Nothing. You can even just ask about their daily life their hobbies, their fears their hopes for the future That's okay Well with that I want to thank them again for coming and sharing their work Next we're going to welcome to the stage the team with primer for a failed super power So please join me in welcoming them to the stage You can keep clapping because they need your encouragement My name is Jayla Lemington and I am the associate director of primer for a failed super power and my name is Nehemiah Luckett and I'm Jill Frudkin founding member of the team a company whose mission it is to make new performance works about America today Our director Rachel Chavkin is away for work but she'll do that on Sunday if you want to catch it Hi I'm Maddie Burson I'm the interim producing director of the team and I'm the producer on primer for a failed super power We did primer for two nights last August in Brooklyn and you're here today to talk to you about touring And you just saw an excerpt of my reimagining of Exumo's 22nd century as performed by our incredible company I'm one of nine composers commissioned by the team to reimagine an iconic protest song for this concert Other composers include Martha Redbone and Stu in Heidi Rodevald and the songs range widely from smells like teen spirit to the labor anthem which side are you on to a medley that we called Queer Jubilance As music director I led our massive band of 33 teenagers 30 somethings and baby boomers During the concert video interviews with activists from across the country are interspersed with songs including a 21 year old Indigenous water protector standing rock and a cultural worker who has spent his entire life fighting for social justice in Appalachia and we ended the concert with a pizza party and which audience members were introduced to local activists and opportunities to get involved So we did this concert at a music venue in Brooklyn and if you can't tell from the video it was hot like 100 degrees hot and totally packed and it felt incredibly medicinal and transformative and I think everyone in the world and that was the aim of the whole project every day I left rehearsals feeling like a better human and fired up for the justice work ahead So I imagine you're asking yourselves how can this thing possibly tour Well we're excited to tell you that there are a lot of different possible models and we're excited to work with you to build one that is powerful, authentic and doable We're interested in doing this a lot because we believe it's important and if you want to put the whole New York production on a bus and bring us to your venue, that's possible That said, we know getting all of us on a bus is expensive and complicated so to tour this work we're also imagining models much like 600 Highwaymen's The Record or God Squads Before Your Very Eyes meaning that a small group of us will work with you and your staff to build this ensemble locally for short site visits and then be on the ground full time for the final rehearsal period and performances which for our Brooklyn production totaled two weeks Now, as Orion said the highest intention of this work is to manifest collective liberation through every facet of the project We hung banners over the doors to the venue that read how we make is as important as what we make The most vital factor in all of this is the ensemble How the ensemble is built is central to the vision for this work as an artistic avenue for deep community engagement whenever and wherever this piece is done This was our ensemble last August And here are some of the ways Word of mouth singing and collaboration workshops that were free and open to the public and key relationships with organizations doing justice and liberation work particularly with teenagers and folks over 60 We're not here to tell you that this process is not complex but we would work very closely with you and your artistic and engagement staff to put together your ensemble And there's a lot of space for varying levels of singing and performance experience as long as each age group has just a few ringers The rehearsal period was just two weeks and then one day loaded performances at Roulette in Brooklyn This shows definitely a concert and it's going to feel best in a venue where people can both stand and sit It could happen in a concert venue or in a school gym or in a church The only requirement is a good sound system We're in talks with a couple of partners in Washington DC and the Pacific Northwest about bringing Primer to them in the summer of 2019 And we are even talking to a partner in London about the possibility of commissioning of British protest songs All of which is to say that we would love to work with you We think this project is particularly suited for summer programming because of the school calendar and we have multiple budget templates ready to go for all of the models we just talked about What we need from you is excitement about bringing this work to your venue and the capacity for collaborating with us to build an ensemble Primer is a forum for building community, deepening relationships and joyfully exercising muscles for the ongoing fight for justice and liberation Thank you so, so, so much and we'll take your questions now I'm curious to know if you had to talk through the ability to welcome our community there's such an opportunity for the beginning of some kind of perhaps grassroots development Do you have any thoughts or models in place for what the continuation of the conversation is happening Absolutely, I can take that So we're really excited about building a coalition of presenters across the country and perhaps around the world who are excited about the mission and the vision of a project like this What we found making the piece in Brooklyn is that so much of what makes it valuable to the people who are doing it is what comes out of the room So we don't have any sort of pretty kind of packaged ideas about what that could look like but we're certainly excited to explore that and kind of use the opportunity of touring it to build that primer community around the world I'll also mention that we had a really robust and wonderful social media presence as we were building the concert and perhaps Orion and me and Jaylen might want to talk a little bit about what we were doing in rehearsal and what we were sharing on the internet and the kind of impact that had because I think that'll be a huge component of what it looks like to build a primer community that's bigger than Brooklyn Just to say speak really quickly to what happens immediately after the concert as you know from being there we invite these activists and organizers onto the stage and not only ask them to tell us about their work but ask them to ask the audience what we can do right now in this moment to help their cause or their organization which varied from go over to that table and sign up for our mailing list to passing a bucket around and put whatever money we got because that's what we need two more long term organized ways of working together and I think that would be very specific to the towns in which primer may come to It is primarily as you are referencing a schematic for engagement that like the particular schematic that we have built we're excited to share and are we still making a casebook because we learned so much in this process very so much learning on every level and so at the very least to be able to like to share stories from our community and what we've learned that other people may even build whatever they're building from the ground up based on what we do How many people do you need as minimum in a choir and what's the largest number of people? Yeah so thinking through the songs that we have and kind of the parts and things our production was probably a minimum so I would say be you have more things I discover what the maximum is Yeah I like it Well thank you so much Welcome to the stage universes Stolen by my mother's pet dog or was it a snake that comes to pluck the apple night after night but does not take a bite it just burrows his way inside where he thinks it is soft and warm he pups and puffs and blows down her walls a torn ego turning her white slippers ruby red like the twister that picked up Andy Ham's house or turned off the around and around in the air 22 22 years, 23 years we come from the south ground slowly side we perform we started in like the open mic stage near Rika Poets Cafe P.S. 122 P.S. 122 in a workshop we were here with our show on Merrillville we've been to the Humana Festival I played Party People which was premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Berkeley Rep and was here last year about the Black Panthers and the Lords and we want to introduce to you our new show Unison which is based on and inspired by the poetry of August Wilson now a couple of years ago 1995 I saw August Wilson read poetry in a venue in a venue in Pittsburgh and I never forgot that this man who everybody knew as a playwright was reading this poetry jumped to some years later we got access to this poetry a whole box of stuff written on the back of napkins and menus we went through the poetry and inspired by all that came up with this piece of artistic vision so Jordan please let the audience see a little bit of unison and also what have we dealt with or not dealt with our own personal shit that we have hidden in pockets and corners look at some of August Wilson's unpublished poetry and have that privilege and when his poems talked about finding these terrors and what they might be they actually were just one line descriptions that we created whole characters out of and then he also talked about a box the crazy thing about it was that at the same time that we're reading this poetry we're sitting in front of a box full of gifts that the world has yet to see so we were able to take that poetry and kind of just bring it into our own bodies and our own selves mix it up with our own experiences our own poet mentors our own songs and just flip all of that and kind of combine hopefully what August was trying to say and what we received from him as a new generation that's what so we're looking for we're looking for an apartment to redevelop and help launch to reproduce the show and then take the show out on the road and tour because we like to be out on the road and touch people and have people see and interact with us nine actors but we would love to be able to take this show out on the road and really kind of beyond just awesome folks but those of you who know universes beyond just doing the show itself in the traditional theater spaces we go out and open mics hip hop spots or wherever it is and we like to interact and really connect with what we're out we definitely have a big educational component that goes along with this and we'd love to share that all with you guys okay we did maybe you have some questions it has the kind of ranging jazz quality that universes has with in relation to the 10th material also Robert O'Hara's direction also is also rangey and crack open in a jazzy kind of way and it's very adult and very powerful and I think this piece has been created in a regional theater setting and really now needs presenters to get involved together to figure out how to liberate this extraordinary work that they've done from the way it came to be in a different system to get it into our system so I haven't had time to speak to talk with you guys about what that means and I'd be happy to talk to more people about what we talk about or talk with others if you're interested it's really worth digging after and it's going to need some digging to figure out how does it move between these two so it sounds like we have a lead partner like you guys saw there's a giant monolith wall in the floor that does not tour with the production and also there were lots of screens on the wall we're obviously talking about shrinking the body politic of the piece in that visual way just shrink it down a little bit we have all of the all the props are being boxed and all of the the costumes are also boxed so basically we would just need to mold into the next space you know what's the next space going to be is it just the box is it the what's the monolith look like or what's the body of the physical August Wilson going to look like in whatever space it moves to any more questions of nine probably two tech people, our folk yeah obviously it's all contingent on people's schedules and what is available right and what can happen what cannot happen people's lives but there's some flexibility but there are nine roles at least we have Joseph Keckler please welcome Joseph to bring to light a hidden drama I've experienced in moments of more contemporary sound games as opposed to the so that's a little sampler recently been nice places such as the pompadou and bam and fuse box others my writing has been published in Vice, Lit Hub and my collection of writing dragon at the edge of just came out from Turtle Point Press I have two new pieces coming up one commissioned by prototype in here art center and another by fringe arts in opera Philadelphia here are some pleasant remarks made by people I have not met piece trained with no midnight which will be commissioned by prototype in here art center will premiere in a year is a theatrical and musical project it will exist as an 80 minute theater piece and more loosely as a musical endeavor performed with a three piece ensemble this piece centers around 2012 apocalypse that didn't happen at least not so tidily and punctually and extends into other realities that never came to be perhaps one where there's a different president perhaps one where I got the tattoo I thought about getting combining vocal work with observations and stories I will lead the audience through a connected series of vignettes each like a stop on a late night train working towards a poetics of the non-event the vitality of the lost cause the evaporating expectation and the longing for a dramatic ending I got through that fast this is like fading down prototype in here and I are looking for co-commissioners presenting partnerships for touring partners for this and other work the piece also doubles as a recording project and I'd like to collaborate with music producers find means to promote and distribute work in a musical realm and to end here is a little sketch an excerpt that will become part of that larger work and I'm sorry hopefully I can I can actually you know it's very quite early the great singer Shaly Oppen said that he didn't spit before noon and I am of that school but imagine you know Vogue rising was big in two thousand a one twelve I have friends who are in to it but they'd all long since forgotten by the actual day Scheister started selling their books about the end of the world by invoking some inscrutable my and prophecy cobbled together with bits of scientific jargon about the magnetic poles switching along with some other very distressing and probably accurate statistics about the environmental catastrophe we would all soon face I had friends who went around Brooklyn muttering forebodingly about the day the world was to go asunder twelve twenty one twelve then these same people spent the next four years squeezing in every hedonistic life experience they could possibly imagine I never mentioned the apocalypse again as that date approached some of them were even Christmas shopping and I didn't get the sense that they were relieved the world wasn't going to end no, I got the sense that they were somehow resigned to this fact Long Street two weeks is John Brené there's going to be speed dating and just for your information just Tom will be there making the rounds as well the other thing is when you'll hear this let's go see get some food thank you