 I just want to thank Andrew Shull from the Cal Foundation. They have started a residency program and they're Andrew for the next few days. So, and then a few of the bucket from our staff is here roaming around, but she seems to have left. So I was going to say, I'm going to do something she's not. And so, oh what's up? You're up. I'm going to kind of time, so I'll give you like a one minute wrap if it seems like it's going off. Oh my God. I'm Danya and one thing I want to talk about is the diversity, oh it's a big company. And one of the amazing things about having Oly's there is the many different ways I run into him. Like seeing him on the bricks, talking to all sorts of different people. But also running into him as he workshops will play in the Black Swan Lab, or as he wrote a piece for our annual AFEN that we do each year that we build to this witnessing, remembering all the people that we've lost. The second year in a row, Oly's wrote one of the pieces that builds us to that big event. Running into Oly's at helping other players workshop their things, talk about their things. It's amazing the different ways that Oly's is a part of it. Hi, my name is Freda Casillas and I'm the Audience Development Manager at OSF. And it is my wonderful job to introduce OSF and also theater to new audiences. And also to enact a plan to get diverse audiences in OSF. And Luis is a godsend for community groups, for individuals. He exhibits why theater is important. He exhibits joy, passion, content, playwriting skills. I get so many requests for us to have Luis as a speaker and to do workshops. It's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to have Luis with us. Oh, and now I'm afraid to speak. I don't want to say just something very quick that Tom mentioned. I think the moment for me where everything changed and I knew I had a home was when I got my key. So I think that really did make a difference. I just want to say something really quick about the uniqueness of this organization. It's so huge that 600 and something employees. So for me, going to department to department really kind of does take a year because to get real relationships with people, to really make events, to make progress in a company like this. And just alone we have a diversity initiative and inclusion program where even that alone could take me a whole year. But it's been extraordinary just to meet everybody. But I will say that I had this sort of dream when we started, which was I always felt like I had two divorced parents, the Magic Theater in San Francisco and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And so the suggestion was made that, you know, if I was going to really write and play, could I get my parents together? So one of the kind of main thing that's happened is to get a smaller theater like the Magic along with Oregon Shakespeare to co-commission. My trilogy of plays has been maybe the best thing. So much stress has gone away. And so bringing Loretta Greco up from the Magic to Oregon, going down to San Francisco, it's been, you know, the stretch of the five Golden State Freeway is kind of an extraordinary trip anyway. And so I do it a lot because I feel like I'm connecting with my mom and my dad. I'm Bill, the Artistic Director at OSF. And, you know, Luis is such a charismatic speaker, for those of you who've heard him speak. He's such a visionary, he's a community activist. He's been an arts leader through so much of his career. The biggest challenge we're facing in residency, honestly, is everybody wants a piece of him. Everybody wants him to talk to their group and their department and their thing. And so actually carving out the time for us to spend together, as Artistic Director and Resident Playwright, and time for Luis to write has become kind of the crisis of residency. And so we're trying to work on that and move into the next phase of residency. The end. I've been working with 10,000 things and I'll speak to a little bit about perhaps what's unique about our residency. And I think that might come from how unique the theater is. The theater is very small in its administrative structure. I think there's four people, maybe, who work for it. And as Todd was talking about Artistic Home and having your name on the office door, I was thinking that is like the last thing that I want my Artistic Home to be, would be to participate in that kind of play. I have a home, I love my home, I live in Minneapolis, and my child and my husband live at my home. And what I do... Our homes are 12 blocks from each other. In the residency, I actually, though, without the idea of home, I have found a place for my artistry, though. And the chance to write for these amazing audiences is big, wildly diverse audiences. And it's made me feel useful and necessary as an artist, which is, I think, a really profound thing. So it's been a breakneck pace. I'm writing three plays for the theater in three years. I write them and they produce them. So that's been, I think, the most extraordinary thing, is to get to imagine all of these audiences, non-traditional audiences, original audiences, to write and then to have that conversation with those audiences. So it's home for me has been, I guess, a heart space and something very connected to the way my imagination is engaging with a much bigger audience than I've ever had the privilege to write. And I think a couple other things that may be our residency unique besides being small and theater without a building, is quite frankly we're friends. We were friends before the residency. Kira did two plays for us before the residency and started, so we got a running start. And quite frankly, because we're both women, and I would just say that as a woman director that directs lots of classical plays, it is such a relief to work with a playwright where there's not misogyny in her work and where we can just, we're on the same wavelength about our commitment. We understand who our audiences are, what kinds of stories we want to tell to connect with them. And it's just sort of like, I feel like it's been so cool about this residency. So Kira's written three plays in 18 months for us. We've done one, we did one last spring. The second one we'll be doing the next spring and we'll be doing the third one the next spring. So we're going to do all three. But the first play of the residency, Dirt Sticks, because Kira had written two before, we got this running start and she just knew what she was doing and it just quit and it landed and it connected with all our different audiences in prisons and shelters and with our paying audiences. And so I think we both felt like, okay, cool, we're cooking, we're going somewhere. And we have a clear sense, I think, of where we want to go and even after the residency, we're going to try to figure out a way to keep this cooking because it's really, it's just so rewarding to see artistically, creatively, and as friends where this partnership's going. I have the Alliance here in Atlanta, Georgia. We are in the East-South and Rays is still a conversation that we have about almost everything, either a spoken conversation or the element in the room where people don't talk about it but it's right there. Actually, this residency forced me to look at whether or not I wanted to have a relationship with a theater like this. And I had already worked with Susan and had a great experience so that I thought that I could work with her. But the idea of what the Alliance has represented, this is not a theater that was started by a charismatic artist. This is a theater that began as a part of Atlanta saying if we're going to be a world class city we've got to have a world class theater so let's get some business men to make this institution. And it has been a place that has nurtured artists but that's not the impetus that started it. So that when I began to think about whether or not I could do a residency like this and I was raised in a very black national household on the west side of Detroit and I said to him I don't know if I can as an independent black playwright be in residence at the big white theater and he listened to me talk and he said you know you're looking at this all along and I said well how is that? And he said use American rather than the racial designations and see how it sounds because what you're really talking about is whether or not you can be a great American playwright at the great American theater which was like a big revelation to me because if I could think about myself as an American playwright and this as an American theater then of course I have every right to be there as an American playwright. I don't have to go in adversarial I don't have to go in and slam Susan's door and talk to her as a white artist I can go in as a great American playwright and speak to the great American artistic director about the mission, about the work, about what we're doing and I don't have to go there continuing the relationship that I had at my beginning of this theater which was when I used to pick at them for not using enough black actors in plays so that it actually has allowed me to not only think of myself as connected to a whole field of people but also to think of myself as an integral part of this theater becoming an American theater that looks like America, that looks like Atlanta that reflects all the things that are important to me so it's been really wonderful for me for that. Go men. I'm Chris Moses, Education Director and just last month I guess Susan named the Associate Artistic Director and I think that's important just as a testimony of what education means at the Alliance Theater and that it's not the subsidiary thing but it's always been core to the work of the place and now with that designation it's kind of clear to all of our constituents and Pearl is a huge part of that because the way our building is set up the third floor is all education and rehearsal halls fourth floor is the administration and it's telling that Pearl's home right now is on the third floor with us in the education world and the one project that she works on every summer is the collision project which is with high school students where we charge 20 teenagers from across Atlanta from all walks of life to come together here for three weeks and Pearl serves as the playwright in this project where they collide with the classic text take it apart and create their own piece and they write all of it and Pearl then puts it together as an original piece for the community and it's really probably the thing we were talking to three of us that most perfectly reflects the Alliance Theater's mission and that Pearl, is there working on it I think is a gift, a real gift in the entire city The reason that the collision project is the manifestation of our mission and the reason this is after Pearl's residency is that it is theater not for theater's sake it is theater to impact the community and to create a community and whether this would have happened anyway I have no way of knowing but the luxury of the past few years of having as my closest collaborator a social justice based civic activist artist makes a difference and I would say what we're learning is that our task is to take the style of conversation that we've been developing over the past several years which involves awkwardness which involves absolute truth which involves a core tenant which is white women don't cry when you talk about race that's the rule can translate the DNA of our artistic conversations into the DNA of the way the Alliance talks to Atlanta then we will have done something and I think that's what this residency is allowing us to pursue I just want to say just being in this room is so inspiring, amazing to be in this room with all these artists it's just probably one of the main big gifts of this program is to just be able to sit here so I'm at South Coast Rep as was mentioned the talk home is a little bit of an issue for me I'm a military brat so like settling down is tough so it's been interesting being at South Coast I do have a plaque and I have a cubicle and at first I was like this cubicle I can see everyone who passes by I'll have no privacy but I have a chair in that cubicle that has now become like please come sit just come sit and talk to me because you know it's very isolating to be a playwright and I feel like going there part of my job is to just sit there and disrupt other people working and talk and you know I hear things about their daily lives they're just really wonderful so that's got a huge bonus of going to SCR it's an hour commute from my house so I am going to the theater it's not in my not in LA in my home so that's you know I have to when I go I'm there to hang out I'm doing a project based on a Pandora myth engaging with older audience members which is I discovered as a challenge I didn't realize really how hard it is for those older audience members to get to the theater and so I'm still trying to find ways to get them there or find ways to maybe go into their homes and interview them because really I don't think that was clear to me going in what it takes for some of them that that maybe their big day event is going to the theater so really to be aware of that well I you know trying to figure out as an institution how to be responsive is one thing and about four or five months ago I realized that we were not doing what Pearl suggested to take the time to have the conversation so that I would always know what the obstacles were that Julie was running into whether they were institutional or whether they were just like how do you get the old people to come to the theater so that they will talk to you kinds of things which I think any of those obstacles can be addressed if I'm aware so we did start... ours did not involve wine it was salad it was a salad based interaction and then we did have a couple of wine actually vodka based conversation and that helped so I think the learning for me was that I needed to be more meaningful and deliberate about taking the initiative to say what do you need on a regular basis so that we can then provide it and I think some positive things came out of that we've done readings at Julie's work we'll do more of that there are other things not directly related to the Pandora project that I think we can continue to do so there's a lot going on for us right now we have two huge community based projects and Julie has a background in that Julie's been useful in staff meetings and other places in speaking up for independent artists and advocating for how we can be more welcoming to people and create the right kind of impression when artists do engage with us so that's kind of where we are we're still learning two years in how to make the residency work well I want to say one thing it's been interesting because I'm used to my work being what represents me the work guides the conversation and now I'm having to I represent myself and that's been a really new challenge it's like oh it's me this is my play and we're all going to gather around the work but I have to and that's been a real adjustment as a playwright actually so that's been really interesting advocating both for artists just for artistic and for and to represent myself isn't it excuse me my name is I'm our residency director and I think one of the surprises there are two things that I guess I want to just quickly say is that I've always thought of Peter as a peer and a dear friend of mine we had a relationship before this residency and Peter's a native San Franciscan so it is home to him in many ways he has a key and a code to our alarm he doesn't have a door or a plaque because none of us have a door or a plaque we did write his name on his desk though he's a deer and a sharpie and we drink bourbon together there's a bottle on my desk waiting for the last day of year three to be opened but I think the other thing that was interesting for me is that I really looked to Peter as an advisor there are issues that come up from an artistic director's perspective that I went to Peter and I said there are some issues with an artist or a playwright how would you deal with these as a playwright how would you want an artistic director or director or anybody to talk to you in this situation and can you help me think through this can you help me articulate it so when I go to the artists I have that perspective embedded in me so that's been a really important thing for me and the other thing is which I'm maybe not so proud of I'm a yes person and I'm very artist centric and I think the hard thing for me was to allow Peter to see the struggles the financial struggles of an organization and I like to shield my artists from that and he's seen it he's seen everything he's seen the nakedness of the struggles and you know sitting down we're producing his play this coming in November and here's the conversations where I'm like I got to cut the budget we have to do this can we help me find housing you know all of these things where generally I would like to shield my artists from ever having to hear or participate in those conversations so in that way it's felt I feel in some ways I've let him down by having to have those conversations in front of him but he's still with us I actually get really excited about those conversations and being invested in the whole product so my production is coming up this fall and I'm really looking forward to making it the most most whatever successful production it can be in all senses of the word creatively and for the community and I guess one of the things that I really liked is that when I came in there was no specific obligation put upon me as far as how to engage with ZSpace other than other than writing plays and hoping they'll do them which is still my primary activity there but all the other facets of being part of an organization Lisa essentially left it up to me to design what that is and it's a question I'm still grappling with is what is a playwright in residence and they contribute without losing the playwright and just assuming sort of tasks but wanting to engage in all aspects of a theater so that's actually been really exciting also been really exciting to be there at a time where the organization is I mean Lisa mentioned struggles but it's also it's a time of growth of the theater took control of a second space which is actually the size that is perfect for a show that I would write and being part of the programming of that and learning how this group can grow in San Francisco and that's been really exciting to see the dreams of a company really high and pushing forward through the slog muddy slog of non-profit life and it's been really exciting to be there for that and it's only 20 minutes for my apartment which I also really appreciate 20 minutes walk 20 minutes walk Laura you guys pretty much hit it alright we'll go next I'm Sarah Benson the opposite director of Soho RAP and David doesn't like things video so I'm going to talk and RAP's here too I'll direct him to work so try so when we were just kind of talking and really thinking through how to summarize what's been really distinctive for us I think the main thing is that David has really transformed the sort of civilian creativity bleed at our theater and encouraged everyone in the building who interfaces with Soho RAP to think of themselves as a creative being and to encourage creativity to kind of flow through the capillaries of absolutely everything that happens whether that's our staff our board and everyone who's coming to see our shows and that sort of manifests you know it's manifested in a number of ways but it's really jived with a lot of our long-term goals and things that David and I have been talking about for a long time just in terms of sort of throwing open the doors of theater and having innovative form and wild accessibility not being mutually exclusive which is a big kind of project of mine so yeah some of the main ways that I think it's manifested is through these amazing creativity workshops that David's been giving that form around basically people writing a play and putting themselves in the role of the artist he did one at first for our whole staff on board and then around Marie Antoinette he did a public one and then it kind of grew into this whole festival that Raphael Curie took a right with us where we had writers come and give these huge workshops for people like the theater just overflowing with people who'd never many of them had never been into a theater building before let alone written a play and it's really kind of transformed who's coming into the building who thinks of themselves as an art maker and it's expanding class diversity in a big way which has been really important to us for a long time we've done a lot of work with the local community college BMCC which also came directly out for work with David what else I mean I think that David's writing which was always the thrust of the residency has sort of infused everything we started the residency with his Marie Antoinette and we're planning to finish it with stereophonics so those are these two kind of big temples that a lot of activity has kind of formed around but there's also been dinners with board members and really strong one-on-one relationships that David's forged with with Raph and with Cynthia at the theater so yeah I feel like those have been some of the the main ways that David's really transformed how everything that happens at Sir Raph is the creative act sort of like what Howard was saying whether it's how we communicate our show to people or raise money for it or even how we do the residency I'll just say one thing with my shyness my camera shyness I will say because I'm very inspired by what everyone's saying but one of the things that we really struggled with in the beginning was everyone we all have the same thing like how my writing is my job so that's what I'm going to do but then I'm in residence but what does that mean exactly and we've really taken it sort of as a philosophical problem and we're not really we're approaching it rigorously but we're also approaching it sort of like Ambulgar I would say with soft eyes like we're not hitting the bullseye direct on we're looking awry so that we can really do it the way I do my plays which is I don't write a play going here's my action here's my obstacle I now character do this you know what I mean it's not we're not approaching it like in a bureaucratic way and we're really allowing ourselves to sort of give ourselves breathing space and fail and feel weird and awkward with each other and with what our process is and what are we trying to do and what's even the objective we're trying to like to listen and organically find an objective that feels right for what we're doing and really come upon real authentic discoveries together yeah because I think at first we were like what's the locus of the residency in terms of place and in terms of the relationship and it felt like we were failing and then I think we kind of went back to the the origin of our relationship which is as writer director as artists and sort of that energy of the rehearsal room has really kind of infused I think how we've ended up finding a way to develop this deep connectedness so yeah anything else that I forgot there's so many things so yeah it's been very kind of prismatic I would say anything else we're one room with five desks and David has been able to he comes in and hands out when he's in town and it's this sort of filling in the negative space around the residency in a wonderful way and that is sort of it's like a magic eye then the residency pops out from that but real estate I think has been a real challenge I will say don't you think real estate of our office just that there's you know and like I was saying Sarah like every time I go in there everyone it's so for everyone's like making phone calls and like everyone is really scraping by every single day and everyone's resources are tapped all the time and in the beginning I would come in and go oh my god I better like back against the wall you know what I mean everyone is working so hard and I don't want to just knock on someone's excuse me I want to do the residency now you know what I mean so that was a thing and like Julie was saying I know I'm talking a lot but what Julie was saying before about getting used to having your suitcases you know I'm very sort of if it's a dating thing I'm sort of like I'm going to wait for the other person to call you know what I mean I'm not going to barge in and demand stuff and start saying here I am you know so the dance of figuring out how to engage with them has you know we're both we're all sensitive everyone that works this place is really sensitive to each other and so it's just been this interesting dance of trying to figure out okay you know don't be shy you know one time Sarah took me out and said David you know everyone wants you around everyone loves you and I was like they do and that feeling of like why do I bring to this what am I bringing David to the table as a person not just as plays that are pages that I hand to you it's a very interesting very very interesting dynamic alright great so what makes our residency at Dallas fierce and interesting I think it's three main areas so the first area for me is that I have moved to Dallas with my wife with our children with our dog Goldie and I'm getting to know the city and engaging in the city not just as a playwright in residence but also as a parent I'm also teaching at SMU so as a teacher as a spouse as someone is running an errand and so when I'm thinking about programming for example Dallas playwrights workshop which I found it came out of this understanding of knowing different writers in different areas that I wouldn't necessarily know if I was just at the theater center so my daughter takes classes at South Dallas Cultural Center in South Dallas where it's a primarily African-American community and so my son didn't want to take classes as we're playing chess in the lobby and while we're playing chess I'm meeting the cop where a person, the artist or my cousin is a writer and so I'm able to kind of engage the city in different access points so that's one thing I think it's really really exciting and interesting the second thing is that Dallas Theater Center they have kind of welcomed me into the I would say a leadership position and so I'm part of the decision making process so I've been in the interview process I've interviewed some key positions including the general manager I've contributed to there's a big diversity initiative that's going on we've just instituted the Rooney Rule which is really exciting and I'm on the diversity committee and I lead a self committee and the self committee I lead is the one that's responsible for sharing information with the 70 member company so my committee I have to figure out how are we going to disseminate this information which is really exciting for a play right to be in that position for the whole the whole company I'm also engaging with the board and doing that kind of thing so that's really really exciting too and the third thing I would say is you know I've done a lot of work with music and I've done a lot of solo work and a lot of different kind of things but this new piece I'm doing Stagley is like a big it's like a better word it's just like a big musical you know and it's like people coming out of a manhole Stagley you know and you know they Dallas Theater Center has been so supportive of my writing this is our co-pro alone they're producing this 18 cast members there's a 7 person maybe 8 person we'll see we're the horn section so it's a real traditional function and so they've been very supportive and we've been very active and I've been very involved in raising that money so we started a Stagley society I'm going around and I'm learning about these kind of things and it's been it's been just a fascinating powerful experience for me to just understand not just the theater center but the whole city and to try to have an impact on the whole region so anything you guys want to add? I would just say that I think it's been interesting for our community in Dallas where we don't have a large number of full-time professional mid-career playwrights in the city it's been exciting I think for us to have we'll build in personal, unique, authentic relationships throughout the community for most people on our board on our staff, our audience and the folks who aren't necessarily Dallas Theater Center stakeholders or just members of the community they don't necessarily have the kind of personal relationships with playwrights that our artistic staff and our production staff has with all the guest writers who come in and out as we do new work it's going to be really different instead of our community medium playwright on opening night at the end of their time in the city just as they're preparing to leave and not come back for another year or two until their next play comes up instead to have that relationship be just the organic lived-in experiences that's really different for us and it opens up a lot of exciting possibilities When I started in Chicago with Shane we had a lot of great ideas for theater and I felt great because I was moved to Chicago and I felt like finally I had a home and I was getting married and then a couple months after the residency started various theaters quite a few quite a number of theaters called me and they wanted to date me and I said oh there's some other people interested so it's your calendar because he's also a playwright and a director and there were some other opportunities that were available to me which was really great and a big gift and I thought I couldn't do it I don't know if I can do it this year's going to be really crazy and he just grabbed me and said you can do this is this what you want you can do it and he made space and time for me it was an amazing thing and I got real busy during February really busy and I thought I really can't make it and he was there he actually directed another show close to France but also a really great advisor which I didn't even see coming and it's been a really great experience and in Chicago we're going to be dedicated the theater is dedicated to three works for three years we did one which is a big success and we're going to do our written play for this season and we're already talking about the next play for the next season it's just been a really great gift and being in Chicago which I thought I would have no time to do I've actually been there longer and spent more time there than I thought was possible and we just kind of scratched everything we planned and let opportunities grow out of what we were already doing and it's become even better than what we originally planned which is really amazing so we did a show there I was there and I wanted to do a show about the ball scene and I was interviewing people because that's a really important part of the process when I make a play and people want to talk about gunfights and so it's like drag queens and wigs no I'm not talking about gunfights which is really amazing we're going to talk about the gunfights and that's what's happening now and so I changed and I met with Chase and he says let's talk about we want to change the story we want to talk about gunfights and so all of a sudden I was in it and now people really were waiting to talk about it and then the topic changed and a lot of people were questioning why are you, why should you be telling this story you're not from here you need to find a way in which was really hard but also really encouraging and I thought like they took me in and embraced me and I was like so we did this piece and you know I write here because I really want to spark dialogue in its audiences which is really the most important thing for me and the conversation is after because each show has a cultural discussion we're really powerful some people got angry some people got really upset but you know we did something to that city that play was doing something in the city and it gave people a space to talk about some things that they had not been able to talk about before and a really proper thing happened where a cousin that I didn't know I had in Chicago last named Gartley he wrote and said is this your play you heard about this play and I said yeah so you should come see it and so two dozen of them I got real nervous because they all need to come but I really didn't regard me and the theater was like it was just confident because they're related to you and they need to see the work and I actually become real close with them so it's been a home again the meeting changed again and I'm so excited about the next play and I've also started with the theater a local writers group and that's growing and I'm really excited about that and then probably the most important thing that I started is this program called Inspired Eaglewood we bus some of the young people from what is considered one of the most wild neighborhoods in Chicago to the play they had never seen the play before all they know about theater was Tyler Perry and so I met with them before the show and I could tell they really wanted to see a Tyler Perry play because I don't do that and they saw the play and they stayed they couldn't leave they wanted to talk about some of the things in the play and from that moment I've been in fact quite a few times and we're starting a little theater group with these young people in Chicago and so I really have embraced I guess my point I want to share with you is I had to change what I thought home could be and it's going to always change because that's really what home means let home be what the other family members think it should be and be an open to that process I guess I could No I just want to make sure Jen is on the screen Great, go for it Yeah, I'm Howard Ksell I'm the artist director for Robert O'Hara I'm going to take the lead here because they told me I had to and that's sort of how it goes I think it's the top down and it really is it goes the other way but distinctive elements maybe that Robert is both the playwright director was already a company member so it's a lot of different roles and I feel like it's like this constantly complex and shifting set of relationships and authority structures depending on those different roles and I don't know somehow we seem to navigate all that pretty easily I think that's because Robert's also a director it's opened up a bunch of possibilities that maybe some playwrights wouldn't have you know like directing a season preview event and we want them to direct more than we can get the time for him but I also think it's meant even more pressure on Robert's time probably similar to what Robert is going through but in Robert's case a kind of dual track of both a national directing career now increasingly a national playwriting career some of which is growing out of successes at Woolly and then still trying to juggle still trying to juggle zombie and the other projects he's working on at Woolly so I think it's the time pressure is like the hardest I would say part of juggling all that we've made it even worse because we've added a small kind of producing role and I shouldn't say small but we've identified one project each season where Robert's going to do as much of mine's at Miriam's job as he possibly can so that we don't have to do it and and you know that's a whole other different kind of authority structure that we kind of juggled on those projects maybe an example of kind of those complex roles I really didn't find out until just about outside when we were talking that I mean Robert came to me and asked me if I would direct zombie which is the big play at the center of this residency but I didn't find out until just now that really he and Miriam cooked that up together first and then I was the unwitting I just stepped into it so that is how it goes someone mentioned staff transitions and that's kind of interesting because actually the moment the residency started we lost our production manager and then shortly after that our literary manager and now very recently we've been through a managing director search and a connectivity director so Robert's been basically part of the interview team for all of those so that's been like a deep immersion in sort of personnel stuff at the theater obviously Robert plays a huge role in season planning scouting for plays but that's had a lot of unexpected outcomes as well like I think one of the plays you learned about through the our season planning process was Marie Antoinette David's play a different director is doing it at Wooley because he'd been involved in reading it earlier Yuri Urnav but then Robert ended up pitching it to Stephen Wolfen is directing it there so it's like a lot complicated pathways that lead into and out of out of these out of these residencies and then maybe just some other thing to reflect on is some interesting ways in which I guess Robert's voice as a writer and as an artist starts to almost become the face of the theater in interesting ways like I don't know when did you say everyone is welcome no one is safe it was we were talking about how do we talk about who we can and Robert said everyone is welcome we just all like pounced on it and it became like the big the big lettering as soon as you entered the theater outside and inside the theater for about a year and then we knew that let them eat cake was going to kind of frame our season this year because we were opening with David's play Marie Antoinette and I don't know Robert had this idea that it could be a different substitute for cake for every show so it ended up being let them eat cake and then worms and then s'mores and then lava and then brains let them eat brains for zombie the American so do you guys have stuff to add they forced me my name is Mackenzie Goodwin I'm the comic producer at the Kansas City Repertory Theater with Macken Jackson and artistic director Erin Rosen I'll start off by saying that there's so many wonderful things and confidences about having Nathan at the Kansas City Repertory Theater Nathan is from Kansas City and is able to engage with the community in so many different ways the first play that was produced at the Kansas City Repertory Theater is Broccoli which is about a family in Kansas City also through the education department he's been able to visit so many different schools and even connect with Zella Modern who came to a talk back of a play that was produced recently also it's been wonderful to see and don't hit it again and also it's been wonderful to see how the integration of the staff has happened because we have Eric Rosen, artistic director as a playwright, also the associate artistic director, Kyle Hatley who is actually moving to Chicago and is stepping into a role more as resident director but still is very involved with the residency he originally directed Broccoli which was the first play Nathan did at the Rep but he is also a playwright so we have playwrights who are in these positions and so what Nathan has been able to teach the theater I think through marketing, through education through all of these different aspects of this very large regional theater is what was lacking in terms of supporting a playwright in residence and so because of that that has led to this wonderful shift in focus where it had been becoming more artist centered as an institution it has become even more so and it has inspired the theater and has now gotten a grant to make a whole new position in the theater for as a new works director somebody to support direct be in charge of being produced because I mean Kansas City audiences aren't as used to new works they're a little bit skittish about new plays and so they're becoming less so as they're engaging with Nathan as they're engaging with Kyle and Eric's work and there are so many new playwrights in Kansas City who feel like that is a place that they can produce new works and people won't be as frightened to to go see it and to engage with it and to feel like they can connect with it as part of their community I would say just talking about boring strategic planning everyone's hearing I've been at the theater seven years and this is our 50th anniversary season and so we're the same age as they got through and we're the same age as Seattle Rep and Arena Stage were part of the founding moment that the Rep had never had sort of moment as a national theater and my charge when I came in was to build a strategy around new work as the catalyzing event that would push the theater into national prominence while deepening our roots in Kansas City this grant for us was a huge catalyzing event as part of a larger seven year conversation about how to shift the theater from being an importer of all of our work to becoming an exporter of the things that we can do in Kansas City what Nathan has given is a face to our board, to our community to to people, literary managers around the country who know him to take us seriously as a new place theater it's also initiated a campaign speaking about we're raising we're in the silent space of a $25 million campaign for all kinds of things we're dedicating over 10% of the campaign to playwrights of new work and we got our first half million dollar grant in the summer that's enabled not just a position but ongoing residency money ongoing commissioning ongoing production development of work and that will ultimately be a $2.5 million fund so that is I think what's been most interesting to me is how the legitimizing impulse for theater that most of you have never heard of before we started doing this work with you a couple of years ago has put us on a path towards institutional stability it's put us on a path towards creative richness and it's been all for the strategy of placing artists including writers directors, director writers dramaturgs producers at the center of every decision that's made and it has been a huge and vital part of that and that's really been a massive organizational transformation over the last 7 years and given us kind of our direction for the next 50 Nathan I know we're too short on time I'm just going to say because as you said there's so many women playing so I'll just say my 3 favorite moments we were doing education, education coming to a part of the grant there was a young boy running the schools who didn't do any work so the teacher's job was literally she said I just don't want him to cuss anybody out she just gets him not to cuss people out and gets asked and he just stays there until he's 17 and can decide not to go to school hadn't done a thing all week long another talk he puts his head down mumble his curse words mumble with me as my actor friend we worked and worked and at the end of this period he did his first assignment and he's written a short play about a page and performed the play and it was an only 80 on all of y'all and to us that meant a lot so we continued education it was a bit of a big part two we read like eight pages of play and I was like I don't know if this is any good or not we read this reading here it came in eight pages it was like I liked it and then now it's on the sees so the faith that it shows I was like that's sweet dude that was great and then three actually all that good things happened all those good things were happening and we had a great night we went out the night afterwards and this terrible horrible like I don't want to say nothing on the scale of focusing but this thing happened at this bar that made me think that I still got a lot of stuff to write about and no matter how wonderful all these other things are not just me but the community and we still have a fight we got along so it was a terrible but good grounding incident that happened that made me think and it pushes me forward I'm the managing director at Cutting Ball and I'm going to do all the bragging that our artistic director Bob Ballers would do about Andrew he worked here today and I think the big thing that really started our residency off was that we did the first fully produced play of Andrew's work three months after Andrew started his residency maybe not even three months but I think he started in March two and a half months later we premiered Crispy Critters in the Scarlet Night so I think that initial really diving right into the artistic relationship with Andrew was really critical for on Rob's side and I think for Andrew's too beginning the deepening of that artistic relationship right away and then the truly extraordinary thing is that not only did Andrew begin by doing millions of rewrites of that play before it opened but then has started I think five other plays that were he had started with little germs of pieces of them and he's completed all of those full per play that we're going to be producing in our current season so he has seven red plays that are basically production ready within the first year and a half of this residence which is the volume of that work is just kind of staggering and in addition to that he's doing his writing two additional new plays this year which were developed by University of Missouri and it's done but we'll have completed two translations also by the end of this year so Andrew's taking that slide we're making the most of the residence you could possibly create but I also think from a managing leader perspective we see that as being a gift that we can give Andrew at this point in his career and that he's really taking advantage of as a playwright who's in a slightly earlier point in his career being able to leave the residency with all of these plays to go how produce not just at our theater but at other theaters is really extraordinary and Andrew's taken a lot of time to do a lot of research on the work and I really wanted to talk about it so tomorrow or the next time I'm going to Nantucket for but not quite a week to do my start my research for my very experimental guide club that beneficial to Bobby Dick thanks to the the flexible playwright funds we don't have the Dicks and Miller Foundation and about this time last year I spent a lot of time in D.C. and Maryland and Sasha there and that was to do a lot of hands-on research for Mount Misery which you heard about and I went to the Pentagon where Rubs fell work for six years I went to took the Frederick Douglas Historic Tour on the Eastern Shore and a lot of details that are in the play came out of that time there and so it was just being in these areas and I like to do commercial research before I begin plays a bit of a part of it and so that's been a huge blessing is to really get down to it. So for example jellyfish are technically called sea nails are a recurring image in Mount Misery and perhaps somewhat we'll figure out if it's credible or private they become the time travel mechanism by which Rubs fell and Douglas both get stuck by jellyfish and then they can see each other and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gone to you know the Eastern Shore and looking out at the Chesapeake Bay and saw all of these jellyfish just floating down quite polluted in waterway I tried to meet with Rubs fell there was a while I was in D.C. Pauli Carl very generously on my behalf wrote to his press secretary saying we would love to be open to having an interview and I praised and he voted in favor of all of LBJ's civil rights initiatives when he was in Congress in the 60s I was basically saying trying to say how admirable Rubs was interviewing his press secretary not only gave the most somehow spun that into that I had written a negative letter because oh I had some facts wrong he said no Rubs fell never lived it was not the same property the New York Times and the Economist reported that incorrectly and so the beautiful thing about that is I actually have Rubs fell in the first page of the play denying that it's the same property and I'm not going to put that letter in our program oh that's awesome and then we're going to talk a little bit about the way Andrew's work is some of our other yeah finally on camera I'm the associate producer cutting ball so in addition to everything that Susan Andrew talked about Andrew's helped and done a great deal of bringing in other fantastic new playwrights for readings and productions I'm talking about playwrights like Basal Krimadal Krimadal and Silverman, Kat Sherman helping bring these playwrights in to Florida is developing their own work and right now the playwright we're producing is Paul and Andrew his drum tune for that show helping develop that show as well so in addition to writing all of his own work, in addition to traveling he's also has the time to help out other artists develop their own work which is just fantastic Andrew Sackel how about Huntington over there Huntington over there okay well Melinda is our playwright in residence and really the focus has been this year on producing for Play Becoming Cuba which Bevin O'Gara our associate producer directed and I guess the one thing I would say that maybe isn't immediately apparent in the statements is what a valuable voice from Linda's been in season programming and just having a playwright in the room who's not carrying all the institutional baggage that the rest of the artistic staff is carrying is amazing you know because there's just a purity to the opinion and the thought and Melinda will just be like I fucking love this play and here's why and so I looked at it with a different eye and then I guess I would take from my point of view the other thing that's been great is you know as an artistic director when you're going into we do so much new work at the Huntington it's at the center of what we're most passionate about and you're going into a director a playwright relationship when you're doing a new play that you know you're coming into something really intimate and what's amazing about having Melinda on the staff is I get to come into that conversation and it's just a continuation of the day it's just us the play becomes somehow slightly more objective and the conversation becomes easier because you know Bevan's her director and it's just this extended conversation so that's been a beautiful benefit I guess I'd say my residency is structured with I have complete freedom I think that's the thing that strikes me and underscore so I have been able to intensify and develop this wonderful relationship with Bevan O'Gara who's like a bright shining star on the horizon that the world will know for soon that I get to see her every day as well as work on cool projects and so you know you're talking about extending that artistic relationship into the every day I feel like I come to the theater offices and I get to work with my friends all the time so I mean that's an incredible blessing I've been a part of that theater for over 10 years so you know I've worked as a playwright I've worked as an actress there I've been on the board there and so I have many long standing relationships with many different departments and board members as well as you know this incredible theater department that's lit a fire under a new play development that's that's turn up the burner under every theater in Boston I'm hard just to think of a theater now that doesn't have something going on with new play development reaching out to new playwrights and I would draw that line directly back to this theater so having a resident playwright is new and you'll know the thing that I've learned a couple of things one is you know being this conversation of I'm a writer but who am I if I'm not a writer how do I tell the world who I am it's very foreign for me to talk about what I've done making a list of here are the things that I've accomplished this year because it's like I wrote a play that's all I do that's what I know how to do and I'm like well there's 875 ways that I've reached out to the theater I've had conversations with the board of you know represented the programming I've been a liaison I've directed you know for readings I helped put together a fundraiser so I my challenge is keeping track of all the ways that I am integrating and being integrated into the theater that's something that I want to learn to be better at and it's also a question of interrogating because I come to the office and it's like how do I work and how do I talk to people about how I work you know have I been to the theater three times a week or four times a week or I was away last week do I have to talk to people about where I was last week it's a process of understanding who I am as a shy personal private writer and also like in the world as a melon fellow so finding that balance and that sometimes there's attention there so figuring that out has been part of my journey and then the other thing I'll say is that I'm having over the course of this year having had the support of an institution personally and financially has been really good that's been good so good the only thing that I really want to add it was so interesting earlier hearing from Pearl about the dynamic of the reminder that the art comes first and as someone who's like ingrained in every detail you know every day today the budgets the all the planning the board stuff it's been so amazing having that reminder every couple of days that actually I'm an artist first I'm like there for the art has to come first and I think the thing that where I'm really trying to implement that where like I think what we want to continue to do is I do a lot of work with the young the young folks who work at our theater we have an internship program that group of 15-20 people whatever it is that meets every other week that we always talk about the art first we actually start all our meetings talking about what play we're working on and why we're working on it and I think that that has been really shifting the core of a lot of what some of those the next generation of theater administrators is how they're coming in I think the question is really oh I just wanted to add one more thing too in terms of you know having freedom to develop and pursue what I'm interested in you know one of the things that I was most excited about the residency was that I wouldn't have to teach as much you know the second thing I did was I'm going to start a class but so you know I realized that I really wanted to sit in a room with actors and I had actors who I loved approached me and said I don't teach you how to write a play so accumulating over time so I said I'm going to teach a play a class for actors and it turned out to be so hurdle and enriching and so much fun and not have the expectation of you know you're the professor I'm just one of them and we're sitting in a room and we're creating work together and so they're bringing in material and they're writing monologues for themselves and they're creating solo performance for themselves they're writing themselves 10 minute plays and it was so much fun that we said we have to do it again and that also came from me so feeling re-invigorated and recommitted to one kind of education which is for my peers and for artists who are exploring developing their own artistic voice in a different medium perhaps and I'm you know I feel like that is going to that's just going to keep generating it I think that's going to go on forever because of Mel and I can basically practically offer the class for free you know the Huntington Pace the room and you know I don't get paid because Mel is paying my salary and so the diversity of both socioeconomic huge range and ages of the actors who were in the class all different kinds of performers you know that's been a really nice surprise and a different way of getting the furnace you know fired up again getting me excited to go and work on material so we're not out as well Edith and I have known each other personally and professionally for 20 years as a actor, as a director, as a playwright I would say you know we are family spend holidays together my daughter is a ring bearer it's a deep and long relationship I would say that our professional MO is progress through conflict we have a culture that values honesty, self-criticism and dissent and in every conversation we have we embody all three of those so just to sort of top cutting ball that a week after Edith's residency we went into rehearsal for a trilogy of plays by Edith and we produced that trilogy just placed into God which has gone on and has six or eight other productions subsequently in the course of that first year Edith directed a theater free audience show that she'd written she actually stepped into a role for a weekend when an actor had a health issue she brought a play to the table to do this season she's going to direct another play this season she has an office one of the things that happened is we had at the end of the rehearsal period for that trilogy which had been commissioned in any works I have to admit for several years before the week before the rehearsals began but she said it was great to have money at a time when normally a playwright doesn't get paid during the rehearsal period of a world premiere and it was paid for that and while that was great for Edith and a good lesson to learn we actually built into the budgets for future world premieres money for the playwright during the rehearsal period so it's something good that is because of the residency one of the things that we also agreed upon was Mixed Blood had a lot of great stories to tell and we weren't telling them well Edith was going to be the storyteller was going to be the voice create a character and a narrative for the organization so we could tell our story through the media and social media and so those are a lot of the good things that sort of continue to embody our artistic relationship we have a disability library that we're curating to try to change the relationship between the American theater and disability but on the other hand when it came to we have this unresolved tension and it's significant about this role of resident playwright versus staff and what has embedded me and it's to the point this artistic home of 20 years is I feel something we need to work through and because we know how to argue well I'm sure we will but it actually is something that needs to get worked on what makes a person a staff what isn't an embedded playwright what is a playwright in residence how are we doing that and a year later and we agreed a year ago when we started that we were going to do it for a year and rediscuss it we're going to rediscuss it after this convening but it is still an issue to be resolved that is it I'm the only one speaking for a minute you know when Outrageous Fortune came out a lot of our internal conversation of playwrights horizons was how to improve the playwriting experience within the production context for all playwrights and how to think about how to think about making an experience for writers that all writers felt in some degree in residence and there was a transparency and you know the whole theater's orientation towards the writer coming in is that there's the star of the show for the next three months so the opportunity to apply for an actual residency in some way was perfect timing for us because we were embarking upon a strategic campaign to help develop some initiatives to this regard initiatives that we put more money into the hands of playwrights faster to increase the engagement of the playwright with the community but not just that also creates some risk capital for the organization to try to for example enable us to develop and produce musicals without extracting ourselves from the poisonous enhancement game so many of us feel we have to be part of and also just to create some institutional well frankly to create a building reserve fund and also to make better use of our space to take step back from renting our spaces whenever there was a vacancy to make better use of that so part of that strategic campaign has been we've had a subcommittee and Dan has been a really key member of those conversations he's come to all these committee meetings talking about ways to develop all these initiatives he's gone to several several board meetings and so they've been real value to the institution of having him there frankly in the spirit of what Howard said I think he would have completely justified and deserved his residency if all he had done was what he did early on in the residency which was drive with me to Philadelphia and see booty candy after his drive back I'm like that was great Dan's like yeah I'm like I should produce that Dan's like yeah you should I'm on the main stage I'll go yeah it's a comedy yeah yeah there's that but I think most importantly all of these is how has the residency helped the writer work although the mutuality is important hopefully it does not in any way present an encumbrance to that artist to create work and maybe you can just talk about what you've been doing from the artistic side I mean I've been like writing play like Dave's saying that's my job so I've been writing it's been great workshopping this play and I've been workshopping and it's been like a home base as I've gone off to do work elsewhere as well what else and I've been a part of creating this panel series that actually Robert's about to take part in for booty candy and our playwright led like post-show discussions where we ask the playwrights to come up with their sort of like dream panel of just intellectuals, artists, thinkers from other fields besides the theater sometimes there are some theater people that find their way onto the panels but it's been a pretty compelling and inspiring project so far and it's been a highlight for me just getting to work with the staff it's been great more things later it's been wonderful done so I think that that ends our live streaming so the camera will now be on for the rest of our time probably