 Oh, I should get my water. It's not my title in here, River. See, can everyone hear me? Yeah, you can hear me? All right, we're gonna get started. Welcome back. I hope you had a nice break. So, we're here for our second plenary. Again, I'm Emily Aguilat. I'm one of the co-champions for the festival, along with the fabulous Roxanne. So, this plenary is about producing, and we're excited to dive into the conversation today. We have four amazing people here with us that I'm going to introduce in a moment, but also just know that we're gonna have a really good amount of time for questions. So, if you have questions or if you have things that you want to talk about, please, like, write them down or think about them, and we would love to hear from you, okay? Oh, and your maracas, get those out in case there's things that you want to reiterate. Yeah. All right, cool. So, all right. So, I'm gonna start at the end. So, first we have Rupert Reyes. So, Rupert... Yeah! Rupert is a graduate of UT Austin here and is the founding artistic director of the Atul Vivo. He is also a member of our fabulous host committee who was primarily in charge of the amazing party that's gonna happen tomorrow, so you can thank him tomorrow as well. So, let's give Rupert a round of applause. Yeah! We also have Nat Miller. Nat is the director of education at Zach Theatre and has been there for over seven years. And Zach produces Theatre for Young People and has also partnered with the Atul Vivo and UT to bring a bilingual performance... to produce a bilingual performance each year. So, a round of applause for Nat. Then we have Crystal Mercado, who is the artistic director and founder of Bocon Theatre Company in San Diego, which is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of San Diego's Young Voices in every production. She is also a co-founder of Duyo Theatre in San Diego's newest... which is San Diego's newest Latinx Theatre Company. So, round of applause for Crystal. And last but not least, we have Ramon Esquivel, a playwright and educator who has written several TYA plays such as Dulce. The Hero Twins, Blood Race, Nasty, Nocturnal, and Luna, which is a part of the Palabras de Cielo anthology that Jose Casas put together. And he currently teaches playwriting and theatre education at Central Washington University. So, round of applause for Ramon. Yay! Exciting. I'm excited to talk about producing stuff today. Thank you all so much for being here. So, I have questions prepared for them to just sort of get us started, but then I really do want to hear your questions to move us forward. So, to start us off, thinking for yourself, what was the first Latinx TYA production you ever saw, or remember seeing or were a part of, and this can be as a young person or as an adult? I also want you all to think about that for yourselves. What was the first Latinx production you ever saw? TYA production. Any of you can start on that. Tell us a story. Tell us a moment. I can start on that. That would be a play that we did with Theatral Esperanza. So, I was already out of college working with Theatral Esperanza in California before I ever participated or saw a TYA play. We had gotten a contract to tour to those elementary schools in the area around Santa Barbara, California. So, we wrote a script of a play called Everyone Has a Talent, and it really was a play about self-concept for the Latino audience members, and the youth to try to build up a lot of self-esteem. You know, I don't remember a whole lot about it other than my wife was pregnant and played a toucan, and so we didn't have to suffer. But that was my first experience with that play as a performer, and again, it was written by Rodrigo Dorothe Clark. So, again, it was just, to me, it was just something that we had to do because we had the funding for it. So, your first TYA, your first Latinx TYA play, you were in it? That was it. I was in it, yeah. So, you were in it before you ever saw one? Before I saw one, yes. Awesome. Who else has one? A story, a moment? I can go. I'm not sure which one I would consider first, but I think that one of the first projects that really turned me on to this type of work was actually a stage-managing and teaching artist for a project called Romero y Julieta that was done by the Old Globe in San Diego, and it was international. So, it was just bilingual and it was international. We performed it in Tijuana, we performed it in San Diego. There was a script for every single different place that we went. It was just bilingual, but it was enough and the kids and the actors were from Tijuana and San Diego and it was just the feeling of all of us coming together and sharing these words in Spanish was what got me excited. And then the first I would say play that then I participated in and then took me to the next level would be obviously Bocón by Lisa Loomer. I haven't, other than the production that we've done, or the productions we've done, I haven't seen others, but I read it and it just turned me on to work that can be funny and hard and make you cry and laugh and is about something a very difficult topic but also available to multiple ages. Thank you. So when I first saw this question that was sent to us I actually had to think for a really long time. I started when I was a kid, it was like No? Maybe middle school? And to be honest like I went into my 30s right before I saw a play that really centered a Latinx narrative and it was a play that I wrote, right? So my first experience with Latinx theater was a play that I wrote, which makes sense because the whole reason I started writing plays is because I really wanted to see my experiences reflected on stage. Like I'd fallen in love with theater when I was in elementary school and did skits and things like that, but you know growing up in a suburb of Seattle at the time there really wasn't this sort of Latina dad wasn't really woven into the fabric of Seattle at the time and that's definitely starting to shift, right? And so that play, Nocturnal, is really about a boy and a girl who are Latinx and the other two characters are non-Latinx and that really kind of reflected my growing up. I grew up in a very sort of racially mixed suburb of Seattle but it really dawned on me that this play that's about this boy who's basically based on my big brother was the only was the first truly like Latinx story that I experienced and since then like it's made me just still appreciate it still feels like sometimes water in a desert when I really get that nourishment from that next play that makes me feel seen and my family feel seen Yeah And I also don't have a memory as a child of seeing a Latinx play and my first experience that I remember very well is when we first partnered with Teatro Vivo to do Mariachi Girl Roxanne's Play Mariachi Girl and it was a partnership between our theater and Teatro Vivo and UT and I just remember how important it was that we were doing that work and I remember a teacher writing us and saying when we got back to our classroom our students were saying that they were proud of who they were in their heritage and how important it was that we continued to do this Raise your hand if that's also true for you that you didn't see your first Latinx play until you were an adult Yeah so for most of us So just like look around the room notice that that's a lot of us So that's awesome we're glad that you're here that's what this festival is for right So yeah As an adult now moving into that what projects have you been proud of to be a part of I know you mentioned the collaboration between Zach and Teatro Vivo I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit Yeah I'm having you want to Well I would love to hear Rupert talk about it We've partnered now on three productions as well as partnered with UT and it's just been so important especially in this city that we do plays that represent these students' lives and it's been so important to have it work with a theater company that does bilingual theater and tells these stories and so it's been nothing but a positive experience I think partnering is always hard in terms of making sure everyone maintains their identity and is able to you know everyone is sort of their voices are heard and that they are are known that they were part of this project but in the end the sum is greater than the parts and that partnership creates work that both theaters bring resources to and makes it that much stronger in terms of bringing the resources part of the relationship with Zach started after we had already decided to do a production of Mariachi Girl and we had already put together a production team of designers and we're looking at casting and stuff and before we even started talking to Nat and it was Roxanne that made the connection between Zach and Teatro Vivo to meet with Nat to help us start having a conversation about a co-production which didn't even occur to us when we first started looking at this play but for us it was just like a brilliant light bulb that went off because the Teatro Vivo produces for adults and our concept of vision for this play was 12 performances, 3 week runs 8 o'clock shows for a TYA show right and so when we started meeting with Nat that was what we wanted to do daytime shows for public schools and it turned out to be a production that brought in close to 6,000 students and I think every show we have done since then has been numbers have been around 6,000 so that was something that as a Teatro Vivo which we sell a lot of tickets to our regular adult shows would never have been able to reach that number of students so it was a great, great collaboration they had the skill and know how the structure to bring kids to the theater and we knew how to do theater and so they allowed us a lot of freedom in terms of the artistic end of the play it was at the Teatro Vivo production at that one it was getting a bit more collaborative as we went along but that one was really at the Teatro Vivo show that was in the Zac Theater using their skill to bring in the kids and then we started to move to the Mexican American Cultural Center because I remember you had said you didn't get to experience that location and know that they're part of that as well and that was tricky in terms of logistics but since making that move it ended up working out and working out really well yes that's where the last two shows have happened at the Mexican American Cultural Center so when you all decided to collaborate the initial shows were at Zac but then you did another collaboration and those shows were, it was decided that those shows would be at the Mac it came directly from Rupert saying I want kids to experience the Mac and how to bring it there and I thought that was absolutely the right choice and were there things that so we're hearing about how Zac was able to bring in the numbers and access to schools I'm assuming what was the partnership like the other way in reciprocity what did Zac get from that collaboration if we're going to do a theater that represents the Latino community we don't have a lot of I am not a Latino artist that we have Latino artists in the room with us making this work it's not for us to do without that kind of collaboration yeah thank you for naming that do you all want to have a moment to share something about that yeah I think it is especially as a smaller it was a tiny organization our first show was beautiful and wonderful but we really struggled because we were all by ourselves and so very quickly I just started finding other small organizations that were doing similar work and that we wanted to tell similar stories so instead of competing with each other which we weren't there's enough to go around there's not really competition but we just decided to join forces so now I think moving forward everything has been co-production so this last production self conchas we did it with Duyo Theater in connection obviously with our Latinx community we also also has a connection to the Latinx community but Duyo is also growing so it just made sense for us to come together and it's just bodies I mean you know like human capital and doing it by yourself is rough so joining with another organization you're pooling your resources and especially small organizations and then moving forward you know I'm looking to partner with larger organizations too that can mentor book on anybody out there and bring us to the next level and so how can we show what we have bring that to the table and then be mentored by larger organization to get us there we talked a lot about mentoring yesterday mentoring artists that's mentor organizations too you know just hearing these three talk about how you know we never thought to do it this way before and so we tried it and actually ended up being very successful and you know there's I think it's a recurring theme that you know we've never done it before so we tried it and it ended up being a big success right and not everything's likely going to be that way but it reminds me you know my first commission play honestly it's really kind of my only truly commissioned play was Luna and it was commissioned by Central Washington University and it was a weird commission because I had to like apply for this contest and then they chose it so like even that was a genuine commission right but for them you know they brought me I wasn't working there yet they brought me to campus for a week to work on the script with student actors and a faculty person at least 40 or 80 who really believed in the play and because it was Central Washington University which is my it's two hours east of Seattle I really wanted to tell a story about Latinos in the Pacific Northwest right a recurring theme of my work is I tend to write about Latino characters who are outside the population centers like outside of LA and outside of you know the Texas cities and you know Miami, New York, Chicago things like that sorry about like Latinos in Seattle and Latinos in Minneapolis and things like that right because we're there everywhere but again you know even developing the script for Luna which if you don't know is about a little girl who is the daughter of migrant farm workers and because she has to move with her mom and papa all the time she has difficulty making friends right she goes to school and sometimes she's there for a week sometimes she's there for a month maybe a couple of months it's always hard to be the new girl and so she eventually decides she's going to make the moon her best friend right and the moon is a character and we see their relationship and not only does she learn how to make friends she learns how to be a good friend and what a good friend does for her right and so what Central Washington University did which is really important is they reached out for the first time to a small community in Central Washington a town called Madawa Madawa has a sizable population of migrant farm workers Latino farm workers and we packed up this has been this still in the developmental stage we had some basic props some hats things like that for the most part it was just the actors doing the play on their own and we went to a fourth grade classroom in little Madawa Washington in fact it was a portable classroom and the students performed Luna for this you know these 25-26 fourth grade students who were in the class they were all Mexican American kids right and they totally got into it you know like with no design elements it was purely just the actors saying the words and doing a little bit of sound effects and there's this moment in Luna where Luna is talking to the audience and she says invites them to be the stars right and the stars are looking down at these silly people on earth and to see this fourth grader sort of like doing the snapping and crackling and one kid said like I want a Jupiter's moons right he was like his imagination took him there that quickly right and so they really enjoyed it and then as we're packing up the teacher came to me and said you know we were talking about theater before and none of these students had ever seen a play before right they were ten years old nine ten years old so for that like that really that really hit me right and those students wouldn't have seen that play if the peep the commissioning body in this case Central Washington University hadn't been willing to try something new and it came from a recognition of you know what like we don't have the target audience right now so we're going to go find the target audience right and what's beautiful is that experience had started a long connection with Central Washington University's theater department and Madawa and since then they've been going acting students will go to Madawa and they're taking monologues that the Madawa middle schoolers and high schoolers right and then the acting students will perform these monologues in English and Spanish because the students can write whatever language they're most comfortable with and it's been this beautiful partnership that's come out of it but it started with somebody saying let's try something new and see where that goes I'm hearing from each of you this idea of partnership collaboration is that something that you feel is inherent in producing TWA work I feel like this is often the model right we do this in collaboration like a university or a university or like two theaters together like is that inherent in the work is that a part of it does that have to happen are there strengths in that well I think something I've been noticing is that you know I think Latinx theater culture is different than white centered theater cultures it's come up a couple of times where theaters have said oh yeah you know we did this in Latinx play it wasn't really for families but like families showed up same thing where if you do a Latinx TWA play like the grandparents show up you know the cousins show up the next night you know sometimes people come back and they brought more people and neighbors and things like that food magically appears so it's kind of this really interesting phenomenon rather than saying we'll do that for opening night and try to plan it you know kind of embrace the fact that you know there is this beautiful spontaneity that comes out of it and I think just the nature of Latin identity as being very diverse there's no you can't describe any one person's Latinx experience and say that's the one right because they're infinite and I think just the nature of being who we are encourages us to say you know well let's bring in these other voices because we don't have all the voices in the room right now and I feel that makes us particularly inclined to be open to collaboration too and I also feel too because you know there's relatively few Latinx theaters but there's a number of Latinx community organizations and social organizations that you know people who work for the theater might already be involved in oh yeah I'll bring my church group and things like that so again there's a natural inclination to pull all of those folks you know even if they're outside the arts world to just come experience this this work that's for our community I think that's really beautiful so because in our cultures we are already so community centered then this idea of collaborating is just inherent I feel so yeah Rupert were you going to respond well I think that you know I agree with what John has just said but one of the things about you know the whether it lends itself to collaboration I would say that not necessarily because you know that have been doing what he's been doing for years right Zach has been doing a TYA but they've never done a Latino play and it took really the individual I think it really took Nat's insight at the organization where he worked at to begin exploring the idea of doing this play by the Atchi girl and so and then once it happened and it was successful and we had had a great experience with it which wasn't all bed and roses I mean there was you know there was there was a you know it was it was like any marriage you know that happens you know you have your little bumps in the road I give one example of some tension was there was no it was a really interesting example was that there was a won't name any names but there was an actor that ended up not staying in the role is that right that's right yeah who was very new theater and was an experience and I remember there was tension around that with the director and she and I don't remember the details of what happened why she ended up not doing the show but I remember we were talking about one of the missions of Teatro Viva was to give new Latinx actors a chance to be on stage and I had said sort of I the tension for me was that I want my goal with TYA is to give kids the very highest quality right that they deserve the best talent and the best designers especially if they can't afford it that they deserve still that high quality art and so we talked a little bit about philosophically like how do we meet in the middle on those two? Yes it do and we ended up the truth of the whole thing is I ended up firing her that's what I mean we hired a new actress and then that actress couldn't finish the run so we did end up bringing a young woman in that Leslie Ray Naga came in to play the part of the teacher and did a wonderful job and again this was her first theater experience and so we still fulfilled that part of our mission Leslie's become a wonderful musician here in town so if you get a chance to hear her play you should do that but one of the things about being such a small theater company Teatro Viva we were well known within the Latino community but we're not well known within the theater community at large and we really were concerned about getting buried in a collaboration with the University of Texas and Zach Theater and so that was one thing that was constantly on our side to watch how the publicity and marketing went out and we really did have to kind of correct some posters some time because it would come out to Zach Theater and the University of Texas present and then Teatro Viva would be small down there so we would have to really kind of work on getting our name up there and making sure we had ownership of this so and then again there's just some things that were stopped and starting I know that another little contention happened where there was a showcase, do you remember the showcase at the state theater where Nat asked us to go do the showcase and this was a showcase of I think it was the city of Austin showing all the different arts groups that they sponsored and we really felt we were kind of a token we were being used by the theater company to come out and showcase our portion of Mariachi Girl and that was something that Nat and I also sat and talked about and came to the really really understanding from me it helped me really get to know Nat a lot better and realized where he was coming from giving us an opportunity to actually showcase Teatro Vivo in this arena and so it really really was a wonderful kind of experience working with Nat which goes back to if you're going to do this kind of collaboration it's all about relationships and dialogue yeah we've had through that we've had some harder conversations that have become better friends and made the partnership stronger in the end thank you for being candid and sharing that story with us I blocked out that second story this is making me think about the kinds of stories that we are telling in Latinx TYA do you feel as though there are stories that are expired do you feel like there are stories in Latinx TYA specifically not in Latinx theater in general not in TYA in general but it's specifically Latinx TYA are there narratives that are expired like what are you craving what are the stories that you're craving for people to be producing people here can produce these narratives so like let's hear it what do you think yeah I think I'd love to see I don't want to talk about stories that are expired and seem like the same story being told over and over and over again still has its merit to some degree and people keep doing Shakespeare right why because the story is still relevant or lots of reasons but what's the next story and I think this morning I got a chance to talk to another classes and this conversation kind of came up and it was really about what the kids are talking about now even if it's uncomfortable or even if you're not you know is asking the kids now what are they talking about I want to see more technology on stage and I also want to see the complete opposite on stage just like you know what we saw in San Ysienta right so that spark of imagination from everyday items and also like just something full blown technology and interactive because that's what they're doing now as far as narratives go I think I also just want to see a play that's about anything but the family just happens to be Latinos about anything about everything and no excuses as to why it doesn't have to be a Latinx play to have a family up there that looks like you so that yeah and to see you know mixed families and to see to see it all up there and what kids are dealing with and not just in our poor communities too you know in all of our communities and so for me it's like we just got to keep doing it because we are also different and we're going to tell our story and that's going to show the spectrum the entire spectrum of who we are thank you the word expired it's difficult because what might if I've seen a certain story might not be true for somebody else so like the immigration story I'm second generation but for another person it might be the immigration story is very real but you know for example Dia de los Muertos is all the rage now and so there's all these plays inspired by Dia de los Muertos and I get worried that especially white centered theaters are saying great we've got a Dia de los Muertos show we do it every year and that's our slot so we've taken care of the Latino community because that's our show raised a lot of money so Dia de los Muertos is awesome it's really fantastic but like as you said our lives are so complex and so I love to see stories about Latino characters who have their heart broken because everybody loves but there's certain dynamics of being a Latinx person who falls in love breakups and what does that mean and things like that space boys I want to say that queer Latino kids in space bravo so I wrote about this in my HowlRound story it's that everyone read? if you have it I encourage you to and please engage with me and talk to me about that like all playwrights there's infinite stories that I want to tell and what compels me to write Latinx characters is again it's very much reflective of my own experience and I want to show the depth of our experience that goes beyond just our identity so that's what I'm most drawn to stories that are surprising where the mother and father accept their queer Latinx son and it's more about I'm stressed because I'm 25 years old and I can't really hold a job there's pressure I've got these student loans and all these things but the issue is not I've got to come out to my mom with that and they're Catholic we've got to show the models of the Latinx parents who love their queer child and this is giving to build the story world around that as an example stories about nuance in our experiences as opposed to stories about our identities and that's it one of the part of the problem is especially if you're trying to get produced at a white centered theater is what are the stories that they're looking for are they will that institution feel that they're getting cache for producing a Latinx play that's overtly about basically white people and so they say look at that, that's our play those plays are important because white supremacy and all that stuff still around but again there's more to us than that too so I think what's powerful about Latinx theaters that produce a lot of Latinx plays is that they have the opportunity to really show a variety of experiences and stories and where they were coming from it reminded me of this play that we devised a few years back about technology and about how technology at its most extremes can be good and bad and anyway but the family had a mom who was away in the military and she was part of the story and we just see we hear little hints throughout the story that the mom is Latina the little girl sat at some point and the dad says and she's like you don't do it like mom it's just like little things sprinkled throughout the play but it wasn't about that it was definitely about technology and the relationships, the dad and his daughters and at the very end the little girl accepts technology again and she opens up her laptop and her mom is FaceTiming her which she hasn't talked to her mom in months and you just hear mom going hola mija and that's it and it was just like maybe two or three things throughout the play that gave the idea that this was a mixed race family and that mom was a Spanish speaker and we did a reading of it I would say it was a pretty mixed audience but maybe 50% and we had multiple comments about why we were mixing multiple issues in the play you have the military thing and then you have the technology thing and then the mom speaks Spanish and I was like somebody had to hold me back because I was going to say something I was like why can't you speak Spanish so anyway that just reminds me that and to keep putting those characters and also the feeling that if we're Latinx do we have to write that identity play or can we just write a good story and those characters might be Latin they might not but I feel like we always have to be tied down to proving our Latinidad I really appreciate about I go to Tijuana and I see some theater and they're not always but they're not trying to prove anything because they're not in Mexico and here in the United States I feel it a lot more constantly trying to make our space you touched on a little thing that was something, a dynamic that I don't think we Teatro Vivo had ever thought about and that is the audiences that were non-Latino that came to see these productions that were brought in by they traditionally come to ZAC to see these plays they were mostly white audiences and they were experiencing Latinos for the first time in terms of their culture so we had during the talk backs a lot of the students would ask if the in Mariachi Girl it's about a family they would ask if there really are mom and dad and they really are brothers and sisters and they would be Americans because we did a lot of speaking in Spanish and so we had to go through that with the kids explaining to them about the different languages that are still spoken by people that are citizens of the United States so that was a wonderful opportunity for us we felt like giving them a little bit of education that we didn't anticipate we were going to be doing but I was real happy about being able to expose some of these students to things that maybe their parents would not have taken them to a little bit too about the collaboration with schools like elementary schools middle schools, high schools can you just make visible for folks in the room who maybe that process isn't common for them how do you approach working with schools how do you bring school audiences in like we're doing here how do I even begin if I know nothing about that but I'm a theater company or I'm a community based organization or I'm not even a theater company but like that's wanting to get into it how would I reach out to schools how do I start that process any ideas about that I think it's just important to we're in Austin so there's a lot of bilingual schools here the nice thing about doing bilingual work is you can do new work you can take more risk and schools will come because they're so craving bilingual theater it's really nice to have it gives you a little bit more freedom to work in other ways we've collaborated when we did we originally at at Zach with class half full and the poem that she says at the end of Sandy we actually went to a fifth grade classroom and the students devised that poem with us so that poem actually came from students and then they got to come see it in the play which is great community engagement the interesting thing about that was it's a rich top elementary school where you can do a language school so there's a lot of you know, English that are learning Spanish in that school and so when we went to go do the poem we all spoke English as we were doing the presentation and the students asked if they could write in Spanish and so we had the fifth graders writing in Spanish the Spanish that came out was not translated it was what they actually wrote thank you I would say a lot of my connections are because I do a lot of teaching in the classrooms and I get a chance to work with a lot of teachers so I would say relationships because I I get into a classroom where the teacher is not into the arts and thinks I'm taking up their time and all this stuff and then I do my magic and then they love it and then I'm like hey by the way also I'm doing this play and once you get them on this side then I wouldn't say it's easy but it's definitely easier because the doors are open the welcome mats are already out because you have that relationship and they know you they trust you with their students in the classroom or they trust your organizations with their kids and then and the principles be friends with principles I'll speak to a collaboration that Seattle Children's Theater is doing with Kaiser Permanente Educational Theater Kaiser Permanente is a health care company in Southwest for decades they've had this educational theater program where they partner with the local theater and they bring plays to schools that are about nutrition and body image and bullying and other health and mental health issues and you know for a long time they just sort of have this bank of plays and the companies can pick whatever plays they wanted from this bank and Seattle Children's Theater you know we have this reputation for really quality theater so we want to bring in a professional playwright to craft a new piece for us to bring about bullying especially internet and bullying to our schools in Washington and Oregon Children's Theater got on board with this as well so they asked me to write this play it's about 35 minutes for middle school students and it's about bullying and being a teacher having been a middle school teacher I knew that bullying situations are rarely cut and dry like they are on television there's the bully and the victim sometimes that bully is also a victim and sometimes that victim is also a bully and sometimes you are the person who's observing it the person who's sort of seeing this going on so this play was about these four characters and all four of them are bullies at times get bully to other times different times too so there's no real good person and bad person and so this the cool thing about this program is Kaiser Permanente it pays the actor salaries they pay for the whole production it's free for the schools they tend to go to Title I schools first and the feedback from the students and also from the teachers and the counselors who have watched their middle schoolers watch this play so what we talk towards is giving students a story to talk about difficult feelings opens up conversations and ways that talking about me or talking about bullying and the abstract doesn't do that's what theater does so beautifully it gives you a story let's talk about that story we can talk about those difficult feelings and so I think that's a great example with outside of theater another partnership but the mission is let's use theater to have this educational purpose let's also recognize the practical challenges of putting on a quality production that does take money Kaiser Permanente was willing to provide that and also trust the expertise of Seattle Children's Theater to really put something together well too I just want to name that we're talking about also two kinds of producing right we're talking about producing work and then taking it into schools and then producing work in a theater and how those processes might be different depending on the community depending on lots of things I want to pause for a second and just open it up to questions that might have arisen so far from people for any of these people up here what questions do you have yeah oh sorry what they need your mic oh I'm sorry I was just going to repeat but do you want me to okay go ahead that's a great question so the question was Latinx theater companies and artists might feel tokenized and used by predominantly wide institutions and how do we deal with and not do those institutions not tokenize Latinx people does that capture yeah okay I mean I could speak to something recent is that a larger white institution wanted to wants to partner with us and it's attractive to look at dollars and be like bling bling bling but then but then you know it was a much longer conversation about if we're going to be a part of this work is it just a one-shot deal is it leading into something so it was a much deeper and longer conversation about how this work is then going to lead into a longer project working directly with the community and that there's going to be a conversation and that the organization already has multiple relationships with different communities and that it's long term and that the artists working there look like the communities and sound like the communities where we're working and so it wasn't just like this one-shot special thing it was a part of a bigger picture so then we're not special that's special and we're not tokenized right it's part of a big big picture yeah that's a good example yeah other questions let me bring the mic to you because we're live streaming so I just want to make sure everyone's heard thank you Mario Abigail asked me to run so that's not good hello so I was wondering about what makes a production Latinx like I think that there's a difference between having a Latin play like written by someone who is of a Latinx identity but then once you go into a full production and there's a lot of other hands on a project what makes it Latinx speaking of that so this is something else that I wrote about I think there's no established answer I think you can certainly make the case that Latinx theater must be written by a person who identifies as Latinx there's another case to say you know if somebody who is not Latinx but writes a play that's set in that's features Latinx characters and it's done with respect and there's an authentic feel to them that that would count too and I think I would open up that conversation to everybody else right but I think what's important to recognize is kind of the way systemic racism works like if you don't keep your foot on the gas for anti-racist work if you let up just a little bit it's all going to fall apart so if you are commissioning Latinx playwrights fantastic but again it's not a phase and if you aren't intentional about hiring Latinx artists about casting Latinx actors bring it in directors and designers Latinx staff members and your leadership right and if you're not constant I mean it's systemic right the system is going to retake the land that is lost right and so I think that what's what's important is you know if you do a Latinx play that's not created by a Latinx artist that that is acknowledged right and say okay so let's make sure we don't fall into the trap of just going to the people that we know because they're really good playwrights right this happens a lot in TYA because so many TYA companies do page to stage adaptations right and so they'll say we'll take a novel that's written by a Latinx person but we'll go to one of our tried and true white playwrights to adapt it right and so again adaptation has bias too cultural bias as well and so I think that's why you need people in the theaters this kind of goes back to a series question right you you can't just depend on the partners to hold your feet to the fire right you actually have to have leaders who are saying hey all man playwrights hey like all white playwrights hey we have no transgender representation here right you need the people in the room making the decisions with the power to make sure that you don't let the system reclaim what it has lost hello my name is Benito Vasquez from Houston, Texas my question has a little bit about it's a little bit about money and I know we talked about you know the money it takes money to produce something but it also takes money for the schools to be able to take you know be able to take their students to the theater and things like that so I recently run into the situation where the alley I just started working at the alley the alley gave me the opportunity to go to high schools and middle schools with large Latinx student populations to invite them to come see our production of 72 miles to go and so I quickly went out and went to schools and started reaching out to try to see how many of these schools I can come get to come to the theater but the number one problem was they had no bus money budget and so my question to you is have you run into that and what are some of the solutions perhaps I did see that there is money for schools to apply for but the last thing I want to do is go to an overwork under paid teacher and be like so maybe you can you know write for this grant and that's one of the last things I want to do so I can say for us and we're a theater similar to the alley that we it's a huge part of our fundraising strategy that we tell donors and foundations that we don't turn any school away so if they can't afford a bus we'll help them pay for it so it's on our end that we fundraise around that very issue of access and that that is a really strong fundraising campaign and we make that promise that we turn no school away and that sort of is the central fundraising promise of our outreach and education programs. Can I add to you know having been a teacher I know that often times to apply for funds to get a bus you have to apply like the spring or the winter before the school year begins you know and so I think you know theaters can take that into account you know when are you announcing your seasons right is your season being announced in April or May for the following academic year you know by then it's often too late for a teacher to be like oh this is a Latin way I love doing my kids there but we miss the deadline for playing for buses so I guess we can't go. Absolutely the sooner the better. Yeah and I would just add to that is that yes schools are struggling and we're struggling too however if we give them time some it was mind-boggling to me there's some there's a lot of schools out there that have much larger budgets than any one of our organization so yes it is it's hard to be honest also to to raise funds but creating a partnership and also advocating to the education system that they need to be setting money aside for the arts I think those things need to go hand in hand and when teachers want to do it when principals are about it and when a district is about it I don't know somehow they find the money. Totally yeah having a partnership we have a partnership with the fine arts director and Austin public school system that makes a big difference if someone's stuck there. Advocacy piece. Yes. And then goes back to the small organizations that aren't planning far far in advance I mean you have to plan for advance like just conversation I was having with Nat at lunch was he's announcing a season in April and May of this year for 2020 for next year and you know so there if you're not you're a small organization and you're not talking about what you want to do a year from now if you start thinking about it in September which is still far away you're almost five months late already. Coming down here first. Yeah right here. Okay great. Hi. Hello. I have a question. What advice do you have to younger folks who are trying to get into institutions and trying to like push new ideas and new work to even get their foot in the door like as an administrator just teaching artists anything like fresh out of college young folks who are like I have all these ideas and I see where where we can go and what we can do but there's kind of like an ages sure I mean for me getting the key you know we have any skills that you have I think learning how to be a teaching artist is a really great skill to build right it gets your foot in the door especially at a bigger theater and it's just a good skill to build and that you know we have a really strong internship program we're really good about hiring our interns when jobs do open up and so being able just to get in interning is a great way to get your foot in the door at a theater we hire a lot of our interns because you prove that you're going to work hard and that you want to be there and then once you're in that's when you start to make changes and the way that I've seen change happen at a big institution is to piloting programs you tell people it's a pilot you tell it's small you do it really well and really small and by doing that you prove its success and you grow from there that's been where I've seen the most growth and change happen yeah I would just say with smaller organizations I mean like myself I mean we just need bodies so you know we've had so many young people you know started off just like how do you do you need help what can I do because that's what we're all doing especially as a small organization it's tricky with you know that fine line with free labor so I think really it's tricky and I think that if I'm expecting to put in so many hours for our entire team and you want to be a part of that and we're basically volunteering for now you know then that it's understandable but then you get to a point where you're like so I would yes yeah I think it depends on the size of the organization and also you know just advocate for yourself just call someone up I got a job one time like that I literally was like hey I just got a graduate school can you give me a job and they did and because you do so many internships the labor law say that if you do an internship for any organization it has to benefit the intern more that does the organization so it's good to know that and always you know that is honest to create a curriculum and make sure that it's an educational experience it's not us just getting free labor I had a different path I was a school teacher for many years and because I was a teacher you know my school in Washington DC needed somebody to direct the middle school play and I'd been an actor before I was like well I've never directed before but I'll try it right and so like I couldn't afford an internship you know it would have been great so my sort of entry into professional theater was actually through my job you know I was a teacher right and because I started directing theater in my job I started going to conferences and you know I would meet people through that and then you know that's when the networking started to come up and an opportunity would come up here and I would say okay I can maybe do that you know so I think you know you have you know we have to take care of ourselves right but know that even if you do have that day job you know if you can work you know a couple of hours in a box office in a small theater you know what starts to happen is you start to meet other people who are kind of at the same stage and those loose you know connections let's go out and have a drink and you know we'll just you know let's go commiserate those start to become networking connections right and as people start to move up then before you know it you're like people are asking me for advice I can't believe people still ask me for advice like I'm an emerging artist don't you know that nope not anymore apparently I don't qualify for certain grants now but um yeah and so I think you know um I think my life is a story of I chose a path of doing things that I loved and sometimes I was good at them and I really enjoyed doing those things and I've somehow managed to make a life that involves the theater it's not completely centered on theater I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford that um but it's enough that it sustains my soul right and so I think you have to find know your full self and do work that's meaningful to you because a meaningful life will lead to meaningful work meaningful yeah sometimes someone over here this microphone can I um so you talked uh really beautifully earlier in the panel about partnerships and I think that is definitely one of the really critical ways of getting this work done um I think that uh there's a lot of value in partnerships um for larger institutions because they get access to um a community and an insight and a perspective um that they wouldn't have otherwise and obviously there's value for smaller organizations and access to those resources but I think it's also really easy for smaller organizations which often are people of color run organizations to be swallowed up by the size of the larger institution which is very often a wide institution almost always so what are some and I think both sides are represented on this panel which is really great like what are some strategies on both sides for preventing that and making sure that it is um truly a partnership even when in terms of resources and dollars one of the organizations has a much bigger footprint you know one of the things about Teatro Vivo that we developed uh very early in our organization was collaboration guidelines uh we we drew up a little uh document that says if we're gonna do a collaboration with anybody that these are the five principles that have are just non-negotiable um no matter who we're working with and part of that included financial um arrangements artistic decisions um you know the the billing how we were named in the um in the collaboration um so we went into talking to that with that document in our hands so we already knew what our our rules were going to be in terms of that and that was very open to to um working with with us on those things I mean we didn't pull it out and say look this is our rules but from within ourselves internally we knew what we were going to give and um what we wanted so uh that was one thing that helped a lot with us and uh with with Nat and then the other thing is just transparency just knowing exactly what how the money is being handled um one of the good things that I can say about our collaborations um is that they have been pretty much break even um without the having to put up any cash up front um so we've been able to do this productions do these productions without even really putting them on our budget for the year because um we knew we were probably going to break even on it so we we shared a lot of the cost and and again just to transparency up front so that to me was a really important thing but again it comes back to relationships I don't know that I would have had been able to do this with another um artistic director at the same theater where they would have been open to the kind of conversations that we were having so that again sorry uh yeah I would I would piggy back off of that and reiterate that the relationships part although I would add on to that is is to just make sure that thing on paper is signed I I had a what I thought was a beautiful relationship with somebody and and a partnership that seemed like it was going to serve both of us and it kind of exploded um and it was very very hard and heartbreaking um experience learning lesson um but we had something on paper and then moved into another step where we didn't have anything written down and that's when things exploded and so um uh it's hard for me because I'm such a also like a relationship person and to be trusting is seems like the natural thing for me um but it was a hard lesson of just get it on paper and get both parties to agree before moving forward and and to talk about the difficult things like dollars and cents um how is this shared is that feel equitable um what are you putting in what am I putting and just have the hard meeting the uncomfortable meeting nothing I would add to is you know I think at some point the personal connection has to become a professional collaboration because sometimes those forward thinking leaders leave the organization right and then again like that they go back to old practices so if you are are part of a theater whether it's a small theater or a big theater uh if something is working and we're like okay this feels like an equitable relationship but like do you agree right this is not I I think it's actual so it is like do you actually agree then make sure those go into the practices right the best practices organization uh it goes the board understands it and so you can actually that's how institutions change right it's like we found an equitable practice this should become our standard practice from now on right and oftentimes you know work and equity ends up benefiting everybody right but it has to be put into the system itself not just relying on I trust you man the other thing I would add to all of this is you're gonna make mistakes and and and that if you have a relationship and there's trust there it's it's also building up a communication that that empowers both of the sides to say hey this this didn't work for me or this this felt unfair and I think that that takes time and that takes a lot of it's building relationships and but you're right if someone were to go away then how do you also set up that system that it doesn't just rely on our friendship Hello when you're invited to spaces specifically because you're Latin X how do you preserve your storytelling when it clashes with theater conventions specifically European theater conventions so you know I think the more you bring yourself into the work you know the better it's gonna be right and for me it's actually really helpful for me to describe situations using a very simplistic language right oh these are the oppressors who are trying to you know put their ideas on me as a queer person of color right and if I could say those things out loud like it helps to sort of understand the dynamic and it also helps me find my own power right it's like well it's my play though right so that does give me some power it's taking me a long time to get there right and in fact a lot of the things that I've done like graduate school and for creative writing have actually in many ways sort of worked against me worked against that since so I've had to reclaim my identity again because I've tried to go through this door I was supposed to go through and so I think it also helps to find you know like what you know Jose Costa says not allies but accomplices you know the people who support your work and check in with them you know if you're going to go to a conference say who else is going and if it's nobody else then like don't give them your money don't even go right because it's possible that that opportunity is going to do more damage to you right but if you find your crew and you say okay let's go and I know that these people are going to back me up that's really going to help right and over time especially going to places like this that crew will start to grow and you know when you are shaking the cages in one avenue in one at one institution slowly the culture will start to change right but again you have to maintain it it has to go into the practices these practices have to be stated like the idea of sort of stating pronouns right like we didn't do that and I realized like oh like I'm still because I'm a cisgendered man like that's not always at the forefront of my head and so like I think what would be great is if you know LTC sort of adopts a practice to say okay let's make sure for all our presenters we put into our plan that we're going to say pronouns and just as an example right so that again it's the personal becomes the standard right what has worked to make it more conclusive that becomes the standard of what we all do and that's what it takes for culture to change one more question anybody alright we had a moment at the beginning where we we have a handout okay do you mean the families the public shows you mean public shows okay so how is marketing with school shows and school audiences different than marketing for a public show and public audiences or how do we publicize the public shows I mean with schools especially if you are at an organization over time the relationship and you can actually depend on when you go to budget how many schools will come based on past data right with families it gets different it's different in what is the play what is the demographic and I think it's a lot more complicated and you just have to be really proactive about ways to especially that community and I think that we it's different every year it's not something we've quite figured out like the relationship with us so we were a theater company we produced and we had good audiences Joanne my wife was a co-producer handled all the marketing and was brilliant at advertising our shows so we just used the same system for these public shows I know that we brought in our audiences to Zach Theater that was really wonderful to see them come because we had full houses there just like any other venue we're now a resident company at the Mac and we're doing all our shows all our work but before we were all over town wherever we could find a venue so we just did the same thing it was just a new venue for us for this show so we did the publicity marketing like we do for all our shows and it worked so we are at time but I just want to thank everybody on this panel for participating and at the beginning of the panel we asked a question what was the first Latinx play TYA play you've ever seen raise your hand if that was here at this convening that's awesome so thank you all so much and if you are are you going to do the logistics announcement great I'm going to pass it over to Abigail but I do want to give this group another round of applause that was an awesome conversation I was sad I had to be gone for ten minutes okay so we're about to enter our last session for the day