 For my title, but I don't like it. We just use it for other people, you understand? I think it's obviously a creative producer for the company. But for all of the times and purposes, I guess, artistic director. My name is Elizabeth Mugray. I'm one of the Bonsalha members with Bethany Luna. My name is Mya Malan Gonzalez. And I am also a Bonsalha member. And then we put it back to Ari else. She can say hi. All right, Ari, are you here? Yes, I am. Okay, hi. Say hi to everybody. Hey, here's Buddy. My name is Ariel Brown. I am an artistic associate. Fabulous. Thank you. And so why don't we just go ahead, right around the circle, and you all can tell us who you are, if you have an affiliation with us now, and maybe what city you primarily work in. Cool. So we'll just start right here to our right. Hi, friends. I'm Nick Bailey. The pronouns I use are he, him, his, and I. I am an assistant dean of college, and my whole type of job is to try and find an art engagement opportunity for students in Southern California. But I'm affiliated with the Colorado Salons Ensemble. Sam, I want to hear so much more about you guys. You guys have a session later today, right? Yes. Okay, I can't wait. In this room. Yeah, right. Be careful. My name is Vanessa May. And I'm a student at the University of Oregon. And my work is Canadian based work on Tribal Community Center around the environmental issues and what I want to direct our so-called group matters on the stage. I'm Jennifer Kimball. I'm from Atlanta. I work at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My job is to engage with students in arts engagement there, which is a whole new world for them, and a whole new world for me. I have done theater production in and around Atlanta, mostly for over 15 years, and have recently gotten into the university world. Awesome. Thank you. I'm Kay Wagon, currently with the National Performance Network based in New Orleans. I also teach a course in art and community in the arts administration program. That's just an arts administration program at the University of New Orleans. Hi, everyone. My name is Molly. I am the founding artistic director of a new emerging dance theater company, Greatbox Collective, outside of New York, Arizona. And I am also an instructor and administrator of the University of New Orleans. Hi, everyone. I'm Megan Kearney. I'm based here in Chicago, where I usually meet her and her crew members, and I direct the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Illinois, Chicago, just a little bit west of here. I'm also an ensemble member with Rivendell Theater Ensemble from University of Chicago. It's a professional women's ensemble focused around advancing women through the arts. Can you guys have a show that's closing this weekend, right? Next weekend, we get to have a little chat and it's up right now, so... And I've heard amazing things, so the book looks pretty good. Hi, my name is Leonard Maldive. I'm from Abakerke, part of the artistic court blackout theater and I teach at Central Mexico College at the University of New Orleans. I'm Yisama Kever. I'm a choreographer with Deatro Luna and, yeah, I freelance choreograph for a lot of people, mostly myself these days. So your work often focuses around activist kind of practice. Yeah. So it's supposed to work out. Okay. All right, now, you introduced yourself, but you want to tell us your affiliations? Yes. So I am a university and I am also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Thanks, girl. Awesome. Okay, so now we know who we are. We want to tell you a little bit about what we thought would spend our time together doing and if there have been some circumstances, I'm not going to move forward, but it's going to be very fluid. You need to leave. Leave. You need to stay. You stay. Join the circle. Grab a chair. Join the circle. You had perfect timing. You just introduced your name, what you think you have any affiliations with public schools or other organizations or other institutions, and where primarily do you work or there is a primary place you do your work from. Religious is about as well. So I think we'll start here with a new addition. Hello. Hello. All right, general manager of three-street theater. I'm Baja. I'm a three-street member of the company we're in. I've been at three-street for a year now, so. Awesome. Congratulations. Yay. I think you're the next new junior. Oh, me? Hi. I am Anne, professor at Hector College, and most of my work is around the world. I kind of do a lot of work in China and Singapore and other places. Excellent. I'm Leslie Tmar-Bushi. I'm a teacher at CalArts. And I'll form some VRs and I'm the producing director for CalArts. Thank you. I'll read your comments. I'm sorry. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah, so that's us. I'm going to repeat it again. If you need to dash out, please don't feel awkward when you go on your way. It's a very food space. And we thank you for joining us for the party. You can join us now. Okay? Cool? Cool. So can you guys start handing out the work that she taught you? Okay. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we thought we would do. So because we could talk for like days and hours, the better work. But we really wanted to kind of focus on the intersection between how our work, the way in which we work needs to be adapted for the piece at hand. And we did, it took us kind of a really long time to identify that within our ensemble. So some background. We basically had about four to five generations of ensembles at that moment just to give you some context. And at our ninth and tenth year mark, we had a huge leadership transition, founding artistic directors to the current state where there are no founding members currently in the organization. So a broad 15-year industry, right? And we were founded here in Chicago as an all-atina theater company. And currently, we find ourselves today at year 15 retaining that title, but as a mission serving and creating safe space for all women of color artists. And that could be a whole panel in itself, how that change came about. It was a very organic process and recognizing, I want to play bottom line this way, recognizing the cultural shifts that are happening in this country, and just like the straight-up mixing of people. And it started to become to feel like an exclusive space if we weren't opened up to the broader contingent of women of color. Right? Yeah. And as an intersexual company, right? It's kind of like something that was at conflict within ourselves. It's a little authentic I figured out. Anything about that? Okay. So we kind of, like I said, we want to focus on this intersection of how form changes based on the project. We want to talk about partnerships, the benefits, and the challenges with institutional partnerships on equal partnerships, with organizations of the same size, and just individual artistic partnerships. And then thirdly, what was that third point I don't want to see within this? The third point is how? Oh, yes. So how an artistic project, and in this case, we're going to talk about Generation 6, how an artistic project can be only one part of how you change your local, local, national, and it's through this project, through the lens of an artistic project that the scope of our organization has. I just want to share with you the takeaways that I hope you guys believe this space with, maybe some tools around these issues. One is adaptability. So I want to hopefully talk about how you can change a challenge into an opportunity, which I feel like is the life story and lifeblood of this company. We should have shut down probably 20 times 15 years ago. 15 years ago. And so how do you, when you're coming up against that moment of being closed and moved on to something else, how do you give rebirth to something? The second takeaway we really want to talk about is a really scary work. People are really scared to work failure. And we are on a mission to re-empower particularly women of color around the notion of failure. It can actually be a powerful thing. How can the best learning can happen there? And we want to draw kind of a line between ensemble as one of the last frontiers of being there in theater and a safe space for artistic failure. And how can we actually promote that as something positive? And then the third takeaway we'd like you guys to think about is how can you build work based on who's in the room, not who you thought was in the room, not who you invited to be in the room, not who you thought you should have had in the room, but actually taking stock was in the room. And that has taken a lot of pressure out as we've gone through four different ensembles and started to work with people outside of the company. Does that make sense to you all? Does that kind of make sense as our focus here today? Okay, cool. So I hope we get to the peer sharing. I think we're a smaller group who can do it. But we're going to start with looking at GenSense, how we built this project and how it informed the other processes that I talked about. And then we'll move forward to just open conversation. Hopefully that'll bring up questions and we can kind of go from there. All right. Hop down. Sil, Ariel, we're going to throw it over to you to kind of talk about your relationship and how you came into this process. Cool. So I began working with the Actual Luna in the fall of 2014. I worked with them as a non-agistic leadership fellow through the sponsor of the Los Angeles Theater Center. And so I began working with them and kind of thinking through their listening to their process of how they created ensemble, how they had this kind of fluid space for women of color to come in and develop work with them. And I began to hear about American Sex, the lineage of which you'll hear a little bit more about later. And I got really excited about that project. And so I came on as an artistic associate. I worked as a creative producer with them and also as a divisor in the room, a writer as well. And so that process began in January and February 2015. And we had a moment where we had the opportunity to go to a theater fund casino and think about what the next kind of ensemble generation of theatrical women might look like. And in that moment we were really thinking through how does a theatrical woman become a home space for women of color artists? I think in this kind of contemporary moment that we're in looking at gentrification and displacement of people. But also looking at how transient we all are. This kind of need for an ensemble to not be exclusively rooted to one space but to kind of make a transient home was something that was coming to the forefront for us. And so our work on Generations at the LATC was kind of a foray into what it might look like to develop a national ensemble. What it might look like to develop a home space that was for transient and local artists of color, women of artists of color. And so that's kind of the foundation of what that process was. As an artist coming into this process working with definitely the as an ensemble I felt very empowered to come into the room as a writer and to have the the human resources of the wealth of people that Alex brought into the room the wealth of the wealth of kind of just talents and gifts and technologies and knowledges that people brought into the room and how that really informed the piece and how it developed and shifted over time I wrote three pieces within that work that I that I think the process and the transientity of the the actual human ensemble really kind of undergirded my ability to grow as an artist in that process and I think that that's just a testament to the capacities of this transient model of ensemble thank you that's excellent feel free to pipe in as the conversation goes and if you need to jet you know the deal just jet cool can you get questions about what Ariel just talked about alright so I really wanted Ariel to speak to this because she came into the development process of a project at the two-year mark so do you guys want to share a little bit of the history of the project and how it developed over the course of two years so some of us here do know a little bit of that but Generation 6 first started as a revamp of a show called which is S.S.O. so we were revisiting that and how now that ten years have passed since that show came about how our lives really aren't the same after that with technology we're coming in and so we wanted to we got that show we just kind of we had our own stories we had the own people we found that then through technology we're going to include different things as time changes so when we discovered that we did a workshop at it it was a group of ten or twelve women who came and did the workshop Melissa was a part of it as well and then after that we did the workshop and were like hey there's still more to do as a lot of work always would never guys right it would be thinking We had a non-tour, so a group of us, Vimaya and Alex went on an international tour, which was really an international tour. And so they were working on getting stories from different people all over the world. So we've been on tour with a different project and we recognized, so a challenge was how does our size develop multiple projects at the same time. So that was like a challenge we were having in 10 years. We were never developing more than one device piece. We could do a device piece and a new play by playwright. We could never do two device projects at the same time. And so we really felt, okay, this is an opportunity. Several of us are going on an international tour and we'll be together for three and a half months. And then there's a contingent at home about another amazing, 12 talented people. And just because we're gone doesn't mean they should be working. So we said, okay, we're going to develop in the multiple cities. We're going to be out, we're going to have interviews, we're going to do workshops. Y'all are going to do workshops. And then you're going to direct something at the Chicago Fringe Festival when we come, which is, and we got to see the closing performance of that when we came home for an international tour. Yeah, which was great because it was a totally different take with the artists that were here. So the lead artists that were here, which most of us were part of as well, like it was a completely different take on generation sex. And what does that hand have to do with what ultimately will culminate to this show that was over here and with the stories that they brought in. And so after that we realized, wow, that's amazing. What can we take from that? And then after we started to do another workshop in Chicago. With a whole new set of actors. With a whole new set of actors. So I think the only, there was, I was in, I think I was the only one that stayed in that show. So I think I believe I was in all generations of generation sex. Besides the international tour. The international tour, which was the other projects. Yeah. So from there we started to go pulling with bunch of actors. And we brought in visual artists. We brought in, we brought in a choreographer by the east side. How does that change and inform our work? And how does that building on like who was the gift somewhere in the room? As we all do, like we have to parallel that. We have to parallel the trends that are happening in our society. So we built a workshop on that in Chicago. And I'm going to touch on it really briefly. And one week, right before we opened that workshop in Chicago. It was a year mark. It was a year mark of development. A year mark of development process. One week before, something happened that completely changed the show for us. Was the Elliot Rogers shot. Every year in the government. Yeah. Yeah. So like wow. Yes. That one week before we started, do we talk about these marks? Justification of the murders of women and men. Because he didn't find love. And our show is about love. Generation sets about loneliness. And how does that inform? How do we change all of that within a week before the show? So we built that. And after, we realized, well, we're here in Chicago. I mean, there's more to be done with this show. But a lot of times, one of the challenges that we face is that when people come to see a workshop, they think that's a finished product. And as you all know, it never is a finished product, right? So we decided to test. And we're starting to have issues with people coming to a workshop, maybe coming to a second workshop later, and then not bothered to come to the final world premiere. I think they've already experienced this project. And so we were trying, we tried a bunch of methods to get people to understand. So we started certain hashtags. People who watched the process of the show. And we started things like inviting live tweeters and live bloggers to the process to try to share that it's a process. Because it's very challenging to communicate to an audience. And we have a, at that point, a 15-year audience, a 12-year audience, and it's still a challenge to communicate. So they're tracking onto this, also, like we are Generation Sets. And yesterday, we were looking it up, just, wow, this is how we track our work virtually, right, as well. So we decided to go on tour. We decided to develop the next phase on tour. So we partnered with six different universities. One in, I wish I had the nuclear map up. But basically we went to Texas, we went to Louisiana, we went to Connecticut, and two schools in each. And so we created a methodology where we rehearsed before we left on tour some version of the show, some mediocre version of the show, right? And it's the idea of the tour studio. It's okay, but we're trying things, right? And so the idea, because we, so, this is important. We've been a touring company to universities for our whole history. So we earned, yeah, it was our bread and butter. That's how we're actually paid. And that can even be a challenge sometimes. So we'd already had this method of taking work that was finished out to the university once it's in our repertoire. But we were like, okay, we don't have cash. We have this challenge of audiences being kind of played out with the title. What's a solution? And we looked internally and we were like, we already have a solution. It's on the road. Flip the order. Go on tour for a development cycle with these constitutional partners instead of only doing it in the aftermath to share ready work. And what excited our partners will have got them to give us more money. We got paid more money for the development tour than when a tour is finished because the angle, it's a genuine angle. Your students get to be part of the show. Your students will change the fabric of our show. So the model we created is we would perform one night, do really intensive audience feedbacks, go home, think about everything, throw half of it out the window. And the next morning, sometimes we would get the workshop of the students on how to build a device for them. So we would do that and do the process. We'd use the work they saw last night. They'd tell us what they hated. They'd tell us what they liked. And we would play and do a whole new show for that audience plus new people that night. And then we'd leave, go to the next town to the exact same process. So it was solving two challenges for us. The cash issue, audience-tired issue. I'll just say that. And third, it is expanding our national network. And that if you build a good relationship with the person you go, they're going to want you to come back. And we've already knew that we need to figure out through technology how to deepen that relationship when we were forming these one or two nights. Because for me, it was like, this is a bad business model that we're just visiting people, sharing, getting intimate, and we don't talk to them anymore because we're so bad about keeping our online world posted and we're supposed to be like this new wave techie company. That's a problem. One of the things I'd like to interject is that particularly what this did is it expanded our voice nationally. So it's not just a group of women in Chicago telling their story. It's stories that we've gathered across the country. And particularly when we were on tour for Luna Lays through these workshops, the international tour, through these workshops, we would then send things back to the folks in Chicago. The folks in Chicago would send us things that they were working on and would say, okay, well, we're going to try this in tonight's show. And, you know, we learn a lot really quickly that someone's screwed up and then have that title. So it really does expand the local national straight together. Absolutely. So we're going to go forward because we could go for hours I'm like the problem. So we'll be. So say you're in Ohio, you have to do a workshop, get some new stuff, and see if I'm understanding this. So you get a monologue that you think is really juicy and good and you want to keep it in the show. Do you keep it in the show? And then you go forward, you're in Virginia and then you're using a student from Ohio so you're getting some kind of approval or agreement or whatever that they're like, now they're in your show and that's kind of the deal. Yeah. So let me clarify two things. It's a really great thing. So anytime we do a workshop, there's always we'll go through the release of, if you're writing, you'll release it and you still have the ability to use it on your own independently, but the company also retains that right. And so definitely consent was super important on that. I'm sure. I'm going to give you this concept in the end. And in other, I would say less than fully. Students were contributing. I would say it was images, phrases, a movement section. And so yeah. And what was amazing is sometimes a piece, so a real clear example, Diva Cup. So a piece called Diva Cup and basically the idea of the piece was talking about like combination of normal bodily functions. But at some point there was language that equated womanhood to having a period. And obviously we all know now, there's a chat, like that's not all women get their periods when you're starting to talk about expanded identities. Like, and so we, it was amazing student change are right. So here we are, this progressive feminist organization making that kind of flawed thinking in a piece and a student, a blue thing exploded and that piece was never the same again. So yeah, they have all, that change has lasted two years. So development, development, development, development. I think another key piece to note here is this is the one project in our history that has never received a single penny from grants. No foundation support. I'm not like, I think that's like so important to highlight. So there is a power. When you own your own work, you can monetize your own work, right? And that, that's the idea here. So we developed, we did a, so now we're at the one and a half year mark, we came back home, we did a workshop production at Innsiplos is that about this, where we started the whole thing. And I hated it. I was like, this is garbage. There's something here, but this is garbage. Where did we go wrong? So then what happened? I think Innsiplos is that about this. At that workshop. So this is, mine comes back into the process because we get accepted to the full spirit factory. So then what happens is, again, this goes back to like, looking at who is in the room, right? The work is always going to change. So my voice came back into it, right? I was there on tour and then I stepped out and I came back. And he also minimized the number of people because we were like, okay, we're going on this, you know, we're going to discuss so that we can have a group of eight. We're going to just do it for a year before. So we really looked at the pieces and we said, this is the outline of what the show was, right? This is the frame. We're not re-mounting the show because you can't do that when the voices change. When the bodies change. When the bodies change. When the identities change, right? Like, I'm a certain body type and when I'm showing myself out there that says a story, right? So we acknowledge the stories that our bodies show up. So really, you know, we started with the framework, right? We started looking at it and reading through things together and then that's when voices kind of say, well, if I'm doing this part now, I wonder what it would be like if it was like this or what if we did that instead? Well, what about the order of this? Because I feel like with us four people telling this story when we do ABC, it doesn't work as well. Maybe for us, it's more of a C-A-B kind of story that we're going to tell. Yeah, absolutely. And so things like an opening becomes a closing. Something that was talking about fact-phobia has to be translated into a racial conversation because of who's in the room and so it's like a constant negotiation between those kinds of intersectional politics. Super draining, super exciting, right? And having to acknowledge when to let go, right? There was pieces that we all loved but it just didn't work in this new context and we had to sit there and go, do we cut this model off? Does this not make sense to this story that we're telling you? And every incarnation of a workshop production had a completely different transition formula. So that's also really key because these are episodic kind of pieces. Okay, so flash forward, we finished the tour in San Francisco and we get offered the opportunity to co-produce the production at the LATC in a year. A year from that point of that agreement. So we were working with the LATC for that year I think when through it's how we met Ariel. So we think we know what the play is. We think the play is that it's funny, it's bawdy, and it's about the relationship, the contemporary relationship between technology, sex, and love. And we can't talk about technology, sex, and love and not talk about loneliness. So that was what the play was. We knew it was that and we thought it was funny. We rewrote our description. We pitched it, we're like the valve. This is gonna be a sell-out show. It's gonna be so fun. Flash forward a year later, we begin the development process in January with Ariel, a whole new group of actors. The only two that have been part of the process was Abigail and Elizabeth who were to find ourselves in a way for the LATC. We can hear you. This is part of the process. I'm gonna turn the computer around because maybe it's a microphone thing. Better? Co-production! This piece is gonna be free. It's gonna be all these amazing things but what we're gonna have to worry about is the work. That's never the case. So it's crazy. So we had gone from being in total control of our product because we're using institutional relationships like universities to now having to be in an artistic environment with a co-producer who has an artistic opinion. What? That's a shift, right? That's a big shift. And here we are. We've collected stories from the women of color in LA have different challenges. They have their own unique voice. Speak to them. So we have eight weeks until we open. We had a script. We had orders. In our house, our method is like a whole wall of sticky notes with every piece. As you can imagine, in the course of two years, we had 45 women of color writers contributing to the project. That includes students who liked the pieces made it. So it's about 45 writing contributors. We've had a choreographer. We've had an installation artist, Maya McCrandewell, helping us. So many people are touching this thing, right? And probably over 25 actors have also touched it. So we get there, and we think we know what the show's about, and we write this really funny description and the postcard's sexy. And over the course of eight weeks, Arielle, the process of partnership and its challenges changed the very fabric of the show. It became angrier. It became darker. And... Yeah? Would you agree? And it became a little whacker in a really great way. So you had more black actresses join the ensemble. I don't know if I can say that. Everything was obviously known as all of the idea from being... All of her work has definitely identified race as a factor. It's close to ethnicity in it. But Generation Sex was really the first show where we don't talk explicitly about race. We don't explicitly talk about ethnicity. It is about women. About all that. And when it comes to LA, it is... It was like Slip 50, our cast, and our crew was all in a color of not that it wasn't the majority. And that, I think, is very... It was shit, a size of shit in how our company joined us. Yeah, exactly. So as we're going through the process of developing the show and the show is changing, the project we set out to do, which is create a national ensemble with multiple sites. So we were at this whole time we're trying to open that through the National Los Angeles. Arielle joins us in the entire notion. She goes, why are you trying to open up another site with its own ensemble when what you're telling me you want to accomplish is a system in which a woman, an actress in LA can come to Chicago and audition and be involved in projects in Chicago and have the support of Luna, maybe housing, maybe gigs. That's... If you're trying to actually create a safe space, a safe network across the country, and then you want to open up in New York in 2018, how can this project serve that end goal in thinking about ensemble is not... So we weren't creating an LA ensemble which is what we originally thought. We were creating a national ensemble. What does that mean? Because ensemble, to me, as I've understood it, is who's in the room? Who are you touching? Who are you exchanging with? Who are you grieving with? You know what I mean? So that exploded the very understanding of what we had of what ensemble meant. Ensemble was sisterhood, ensemble was friendships, ensemble was going through abortions, miscarriages, marriages, and divorces. That personal aspect, how do you manage that and tell a community? We haven't figured it out. And we've figured it out. We're leveled up. We can have... This is my life. It is constant FaceTime with people. It's constant phone calls, right? So we haven't perfected it yet, right? But Arielle went to grad school and is still here. And that is true with so many people. So, I think the real truth of this song, the project became this beautiful artistic tapestry. And it was our first financial, complete financial failure for 15 years, in terms of selling in LA. And it took until one month ago. We closed that show April 20, what, May? No, May 2015? We have not produced a single performance in that. Sounds like a total like, oh, they're gone, they're done. Failure, bye. No, it took us a year to start archiving the entire process. Just go back, because we archived everything through hashtags. And I wish we had time to kind of go through all that. But it has taken us a year just nine months to realize the show's not over. It actually was week part two of a trilogy. So next year, what are you going to see when that's over? We're going to bring back the original essay. So we're going to do the newest version that we haven't built yet. We are a generation of generation of sex. And the third trilogy called Love Sick. And they're going to run in rep. And it's going to be ridiculous. But sometimes you have to go on a very crazy journey to land there. So we're also we've opened LA. We put so much energy we're doing so well recruiting new people, getting a national reputation and Chicago includes nothing is happening. We have ensemble members over the course of those two years dropping like flies. What happened? The very thing we were built on a safe space for Latina and women of color artists that entire notion was mythologized, pathologized to the point where the space became destructive because it's trying to do too much. It was everywhere. Trying to do everything was homegrown. It was thirsty. What about your syndrome? What about your syndrome? We pushed people to the limit because there was a period of time we were operating a space here to theater band. We were touring every week to a different university and we were producing maybe five nights a week at that show and doing rentals. How can you sustain that and be developing simple shows? For a company of our size less than $350,000 and no foundation support would be challenging. Right? So we share that with you guys. We're really proud of that history. We're really proud of that failure because something so much bigger has been born out of it. A desire to continue this experiment of national ensemble and we're well in our way. We've done so many amazing parts of this and now we've got to figure out how to all make it work in synchronicity and how to like rebuild the idealized version of a safe space. How do you do that? How do you mutate? How do you know? So that's kind of what we want to talk about the rest. I want to hear from you guys questions you have about that. Please reach out to Ariel as well. And then I want to go through this little worksheet. So those are the questions. Yeah. I want to talk about the mythology of the ensemble and something that we discussed yesterday in a different workshop was the the trajectory of building and creating safe space for ensemble. We're not particularly willing to do social justice particularly what we do narratives that are built on personal or personal experience whether they be autobiographical or ethnographic. So part of things that I'm experiencing had experience in that and I also think that you should point out the piece that you wrote around trauma. What happens within ensembles personally. We all have it. There is all drama at some point. Yeah. Personal relationships intercede work. Personal well the way the dynamics can control the room sometimes is a real thing. So I think that that's important and what I am struggling with right now as an ensemble member of another theater company and also general manager of my own is like that ensemble word it's kind of like a word in diversity where like you think it needs something else but it's really the act of. Right. Coming from the grassroots from the bottom level it's really it's really something different and I honestly feel like we try to do the work ahead but if we are not whole like just as people we don't have self-care we can't really do work. Ensemble has to operate in the self-care space and I think I just want to ask you to speak a little bit on the piece that you wrote to call out the real problems of ensemble dynamic and how use our example of how we come through a lot of that stuff and still have trauma within the ensemble because you can't work you can't work and it's not going to be real I mean you could put on productions, productions, productions but I feel like there's a true sense of hurt that comes from the production itself and the ensemble within when you don't try and it's the mind experience is a perfect example of having shed skin four or five times. Yeah I mean there's just so much involved in that right so we did write a piece last year hi actually we didn't do it in a year we've done a lot in a year okay we're not performing which is crazy for us right because that's the healing because we're building together so we wrote pieces in hospitals I can make it accessible we're going to make more accessible to people who don't like to subscribe to the journal so basically the piece it was our 15 year anniversary still is until June and it was a retrospective on trying to be very honest about you know what you're already outside of the mainstream of what people accept as theater and I think we always talk about ensembles with really rose colored lenses we're a family we do social justice work we're engaged in the community those are beautiful powerful words but there's words and then there's actions right and so we really struggled a lot with what do you do when you can't pay people what do you do when leadership moving up looks one way when you're saying you're a body of artist of color how right how does class of a group of people in the different classes in the room how do microaggressions within a social justice space impact your heart like so it was all I mean the article is all about that all about like real mistakes in the main because we're engaging in something we're trying to call hashtag project fail I'm wrong nonprofits and particularly my interest is women of color and artists to talk about the failures because what happens is the youth coming up they don't hear about them so when they experience that trauma for the first time they think they are alone and then personally there are people that isn't happy to because I mean like in my experience being part of an ensemble of these fast forward years whether it was at a theater ensemble for one year and then switch over to Appreciate Theater I haven't been there for a few years now in my experience I feel like I've always been part of this ensemble and I've grown with the ensemble and I feel with the ensemble and as more people come to it like I know this year there were some people that left there's always a senior's leaving but now that I've been here I've realized the role that we all play in an ensemble for me that role would be I would consider myself a leader I've learned how to lead I've learned how to become this person that not only in the ensemble but in the working space the space space but outside people can still refer to me as people can look at me the same way that they do in an ensemble I'd like wait is that what you're talking about? so I was getting to the fact that being an ensemble I don't know I find myself very like just wrapped around the work that we're doing and I don't like I don't have moments where I question will there be ever will there be ever failure or anything so I like hearing this that's what I'm trying to say yeah, yeah I like hearing this because it's a person in the future yes and it's about discovering that work together yeah while you're putting up with each other I think what you bring up is oftentimes as ensembles as producing ensembles you're producing your work you think the only projects you have at hand are the artistic projects and what we have found is really healthy is to when you're making your like calendar of your season whatever you'll get your work the project of just ensemble building is a project just like your administration is a year wrap project do you have anything to add to that? yes or treats? yeah no, no the letters are great it's fine that you're spending and what we did is we just went all we're like we're just going to make and we stopped thinking about the process and organizational infrastructure and because we're just selling and doing and making right Mark? was there when you said you've been touring a lot that you had been doing everything you could do and I don't know I sort of thought you got an Instagram so it's like not just in Chicago but we've been all over the country for the last couple of years yeah I don't know this too I'm just curious has touring exacerbated what we're talking about right now? like drama, ensembles oh we've got to talk about it maybe come up with ways I mean you know I think that story you really have to look at here's the thing right when I came to get when I worked with a couple other ensembles there's I literally I just came on tour I just jumped at the party for a three month tour and then I barely knew I was like you grew up in a touring I grew up in a touring ensemble and I've worked with other touring ensembles as well but the thing about that the story you need is something very simple actually is we start every meeting with a check-in and that goes to what we're saying about who is in the room not who you'd like to be in the room or who you thought was in the room but who are you in this moment and that's what today's rehearsal is accepting and embracing not who we thought you were when we brought you in and who we expect you to be but who you are on that day and so on tour we're creating these things and then going back to our hotel and we're all like right there so it's really intensive work together and you have to look at some people and some people that is not the space the environment that they emotionally thrive in which then affects the work right and so then things come embracing failure I would say most people that have left the company on more negative terms I can point it back to we brought them on tour and they were better served by performances local I no longer tour I no longer cast my tours based on the best person for a role I cast based on personality and you have to want to be on the road you have to want it particularly on three month tours if you are going to cry if you're not talking to your partner three times a day that is really detrimental to like the holistic healthy space that we're in right so the first 10 years it was easier it was one off touring to a college to a university the second we added in self-produced tours to the mix it's a very different story you're not dealing with a $5,000 check in advance and you're paying for a long time money always comes into the equation always so it's about personality and are you a fig to the tour and it's not I don't think that people are doing less value they're amazing to have in the room but a lot of those mistakes from my leadership mistakes just not having that understanding of that knowledge in my 20s I do now right it's amazing you can't problem solve mistakes in the past but you can learn and take them to the future right so that was a huge thing like do these people even work together in a room there's also the question of like did an exacerbating process of when we were touring what else was happening of having ensemble is huge because when half of your ensemble leaves it's probably the more productive have what happens to the ensemble that's there so like we attribute a lot of our work to ensemble but when you separate what does that mean we part of the you know we were talking about is like in one of the projects with the Chicago Fringe I was going to know role as a producer but I never had the opportunity to learn how to produce so it was like how do we mentor each other at individual bases how do we hold strong as individual artists and learn skills from each other at an ensemble so that when the ensemble changes shape loses form that ensembles still exists in forms of strong individual people and so I think that's where one particular instance of touring exacerbated the process of ensemble then you know what it means with an ensemble well that's where the space becomes unsafe because something that's supposed to be an opportunity for you became a very painful experience well I mean just and I was like oh that was different I didn't know how to produce or I didn't know how to do one thing at home and one thing at the other because we were so used to ensemble moving together as one and we were touring for several years because we had no home but now that we had a home and that comes to I think that's close to another great point of like how as artists do we give ourselves a license to be able to work administratively because if we cannot work administratively we cannot do the artistic part and how to be fill ourselves with that knowledge which is something when we did LACP I definitely learned was how to by working administratively have to be empower our artists and that was definitely like the actors and the accessibility with that too like we don't always have access to the same information at an institutional level or at a grassroots level there's clear barriers of how to do three panels on that alone I think I'm just going to chime in on this and I love what you're saying about how can ensemble create opportunities for professional development or growth into new areas you know but the comments are also making me think about what are the expectations of each other as ensemble members you know and I think sometimes they're unspoken or unarticulated expectations that we hold in the room and if I think about another model of organizing like coalition building my social justice work rebuilding coalitions we might invite people into the space differently knowing that they can participate in a different way not better than that and challenges and opportunities into the room so but I think sometimes the ensemble member because we use family right he's like idealized he's idealizing which is a family event right of like oh we have this common bond but you know if we think about that model as well we have these people who are bringing these particular strengths can tour can't tour can't hold down before when we're at tour whatever we kind of set ourselves up for a healthier space because we're not expecting everyone to be able to show up at the same time because they've got a job for kids but we're taking all of those things into consideration yes hitting them hitting them ahead it's about expectation and managing I have had to eradicate the notion of obligation my ensemble members they are not serving it's hard it's like the individual serving the ensemble is the ensemble serving them and it has to be this and so for us something that helped us move in that direction of building heller in terms of expectations we stopped seeing that baruna as that baruna and how is anybody who ever passes through our doors that baruna when they come and when they go and translated that into an online platform through our it was our idea she was like if anybody who comes through your doors whatever whether they want to acknowledge it or not how do we give them a mechanism when they are travelling when they are maybe in a whole other ensemble on tour but maybe they want to use so hashtag luna in the length has become a mechanism where people can in their own work still be carrying forth some of these values and representing and embodying a spirit the idealized spirit of what luna should be in their work and what does that do? It creates an archived amount we don't do any work to archive the countless people who are coming to the institution or in common go does that kind of make sense? This is kind of so simple to say it doesn't it doesn't I didn't question those thoughts about anything let's come on sorry maybe it's time to move on but I just got a quick follow up for that I'm just so I'm obviously curious this year I'm touring with two different shows all the time and we often have different but similar people in the room and I'm curious to know you talked about checking so I think what my challenge has been I've even said it out loud I'm still sort of working towards a practical answer but it's like every time that my company comes in the room it's theater unspeakable every time we're in the room it's got to feel like it's a theater unspeakable because you were talking earlier about ensemble is I can touch it's contact people I'm with right now that I'm working with but some people will go on some people won't some people will find them ways to interact with a company you know some people will come to the five-year party they'll be part of the first year that's great I think that's that brings a lot of you know it's like it's not like a transaction but it's like a person who's acting like a company today in year five seeing someone from year one there's something that's sort of just magical about that but it's not quantifiable what is a master card it's priceless yeah you know it's like it's that other thing right but so facilitating that I think the job has become as the manager of it the leader of it is to say why is it that people are coming for and how do I make sure that every room whether yeah whether it's coalition building and everyone always feels like we're all I want to go to a pro whatever reading or I always want to go to a lecture room rehearsal or meeting do you guys work towards checking is like a great idea is it like the piece we saw last night like I always thought it was going to be a rainbow circle at the beginning you know are there any are there any particular insights that I'd love to hear you know how do you always make it feel like it's actually in the room even if it's a space time yeah for sure again this is not foolproof this is just things that we have found that have worked for us and unfortunately it didn't happen in the space today one is the green light no one enters that kind of space but a hug a kiss a hello how are you whether we're strangers or not so that is like there's always music and almost always food I forgot that oh okay it is really hard for us to have an event whether it's a meeting whether it's a public event coffee and food it is part of the brand right and music and ritual is a huge part of it so internally our process of checking is important if it's a group with new people in the room there's always some sort of game is it a secret telling game is it a physical exercise some kind of sharing that takes you to a vulnerable space not a dangerous space but a vulnerable space is how we start everything from a workshop and a university to a partnership with another own sample am I missing anything no I think it really it goes down to the space is a space space and it's an honest space right so no matter what's happening I think that's where the vulnerability really comes in right we do we'll do a spectrum exercise what do you guys think about this where do you want the spectrum right it's being open and honest to then be able to create do you want to add something alright I I want to also say that I think before I remember that he's been working with me now that that this kind of this this sense among folks who are not even stick associates around some of the members follow up and reach is continuous so that there's always this there's always this sense of welcome there's always this sense of the door is open that is yeah how can it kind of take the shape of of the communities that it's it's currently local to and just stay in touch you know I think that that's pretty consistent I think that's great alright thank you one thing that is a tradition held over from the founding artistic directors so as a director and my aesthetic is a lot more visual thank you it's a lot more visual and all these things so like I have a personal trademark and so does my ensemble but one thing that we have carried over from what I call classic even more important than the food and the coffee is a writing prompt that is how we completely enter a space particularly with strangers because at the end of the day like we had a tagline they actually do not blame tagline not you know who we are it would be your story matters period and so that is what we do to help people with their story matters in some different ways to tell it right any other questions before we go through this little workshop here coaching thing yeah just briefly I love hearing the structures that we put in place to maintain and continue to create this dynamic this space so on the other end yeah when people leave the family yeah as happens with family yeah there's cleaver there's people left and bereft yeah um there's some structures on the other end that you deal with whether the departures have to do with careers or you know or you know biological family issues or or Trump yeah yeah we're definitely in the part of the process of right now just starting to deconstruct for us in a theoretical way kind of what are the different categories that the trauma is occurring in so that we can find solutions that are unique to that right because there's a very big difference with how I will deal with somebody who departs because of a personal life issue then who departs because they feel that they haven't been valued their pay has been laid way too many times a trust has eroded right there's a very different thing the unhealthy way we're dealing with it right now is landing on me personally now it's another to invest a lot of time like let's just take the Melissa example so with Melissa I think I had to meet and just extend myself to Melissa four or five times for us to be back on a speaking place so Melissa and I had to fix something between us as individuals for me to even then find a way for Melissa to heal her trauma with the organization right because there's the people there's the personal traumas but then you're also left with like a trauma with an entity that is a thought concept to be a intellectual being of what Melissa does yeah so right now the first step that we've identified in terms of the public stuff with that is starting to write about it so the piece last year majorly messed up in these ways and this is what we've learned from it that was step one step two is working with several facilitators to help us to buy a restored how do you say the word restored restored is just a circle so it's we're about to finish our 15 year we're in the process of bringing everybody who's ever been you know to a summit that'll launch the process but it will take years it will take years for me yeah yeah we work with many and we train as facilitators so my lead artists eventually become very highly trained in facilitation of our work right that's a whole skill set in and of itself right because you're dealing with your own trauma your own ensemble but also how we make money is go out and workshop and teach people a method and that requires a whole different kind of facilitation how do you if you're going like on tour like every other week how do you get these people to open up to you to like tell these stories if you're like moving kind of quickly yeah the power of your own personal story is magic I'd like to say people say like in 30 seconds you'll know who somebody is right like you can just get a feeling that like that is entirely that process is even shortly when you're telling your own story and so we model openness we do not welcome to a room and expect you to suddenly bury your soul in us in this false hierarchy because we're teachers like we walk into a different space and we don't know shit all we have is our experience and we want to share it you have to enter the space not as a teacher not as a savior you are I'm one with a student who is 10, 15, 70 I know as little and as much and so that for me that's a key I don't know if they ultimately have to be served you more than we serve ourselves in that and I think even sharing our story maybe it is it is that essence that connects us within that and I think knowing that every person in the story that would stop your heart is something where we could just begin and just that connection through that also for us the key in everything whether you're building work whether you're coalition building humor humor is the only way to really talk about that in a way that is not unsafe for people I would have just talked about a rape story as a rape story and I know you're trying to make rape funny no but I'm trying to humanize it does that make sense and so humor doesn't just mean making people laugh for me humor can be a levity it's funny but I think our ensemble of human of color we're not going to say that our stories are not our lives are not said we are full of joy we're full of overcoming and how do we make that constant celebration of our lives is joy in finding that you know it's not we cannot yes there are enough people making words about women of color that is really sad there's no work here saying we're going to take that back yes that is our story and that some of us can relate to that but we are not sad we're not constantly living in that oppression we are joy one of our challenges actually has been as our work has shifted artistically and found really a balance between dark and white people are like are you still a social justice theater if you're not just telling oppression stories and that's been a real challenge with the mainstream working through it because often times that's what they mean when they say diversity they want to hear the border story they want to hear the immigrant story they want to hear the women of color make a story and do we talk about those things because they happen in real life absolutely but we will never start from that place in our life no we'll enjoy it it's the questions it's like where do you start then like if you don't start from that gossip it starts with gossip it starts with circling it's this great checking it's fundamental the checking is great so because we believe this you are not alone in your story right if it happens to me it happens to somebody else we're starting to see some trends right and then we get an idea so with Jens X everything starts differently there's no I can't tell you there's one solution but I can't tell you it's the talking and the sharing and if we start to see a trend okay let's try to start writing about it everything starts with the writing and the talking or somebody can come in and say oh my god I saw this let's write about it who knows it can turn into a click yes I'm really interested in how you can bridge like between you know internal and external yeah so my question is how do you blind contact what is your first thing to crack the invitation like that first email phone call or whatever it's your place you've never been before or a certain community you've never been to and how do you sell yourselves and talk about your work in a way look how do you kind of yeah use that first contact to be useful um I don't there's no one answer to that it's really strategic I just so everybody knows most of our touring is not from cold calls or something like that it's just you know what I'm saying it is all about personal relationships and let me tell you professors at any school they are your lifeline they are your life respect them and invite them to your work all the time because they will then invite you out right but for me I don't just want to I want to go where we're needed so we contact people if it is a cold call maybe we saw that this school had some kind of LGBT crisis moment then I might cold call them and say hey we do this work around healing would you like us to come to your space but we don't go anywhere that we have research that we have to figure out can we learn something from you and can we give something to you I love what you just said about there we don't stop at the rate and I find it really problematic when we are doing work about historical justice and how do we not perpetuate the violence but to investigate it and then how we sort of build the structure to move beyond that so I'd love for you to talk about content inform wise how you address those issues in your work did you hear that Arna? did you hear that question? but no the girl to answer that question can you hear me? yeah I can I'm really excited about what was to be Elizabeth had said we do not stop at the rate and that we go beyond that and I'm very I'm concerned about when we look at historical injustice it's very necessary to do that but that I'm also I also want to look at how we perpetuate the violence and how important it is when we're doing work like this to not do that and to figure out the structures of form and content in which we move beyond that so I'm asking about how you do that in your work right can we talk about bits of teeth? totally so the teeth that was 40 years ago it looked that is perpetrated against women of color now and what it will look like what it might look like envisioning for the future what it might look like for us to kind of get free from that I think that in bits of teeth there was kind of this recommend or we are actually living in we get in kind of that oppression and so how does anger become a generative place? how does anger become a space of creation? I think that transformative properties and I think that in moments when we have colored we women of color have been silenced the opportunity to kind of push that forward is transformative it can it can change spaces in as much as in as much as we are also afraid of them kind of keeping us stuck in moments and I think that what it really comes out of is this kind of tension we had with 40 years ago which was that that in the end there was this hope that there would be other people who would stand in the gap that they might stand in the gap that there might be other allies who might stand in the gap of us getting free and so this piece bits of teeth kind of looks more so at women of color as subjects in their own freedom and so how do we take our narratives of oppression and move them through that into imagining how we are going to get ourselves free? That's a real theory that is beautiful thank you for saying that and then in the practical terms theatrically it is also what is the story you are telling before or after that moment so the piece she is talking about bits of teeth it's the height of anger it's the height of trauma of our play and what's in it's loud I almost want to play the video of it what's immediately followed is moments of silence and a love of two people falling in love with respect so it's also about theatrically how do you get how do you move past that moment and then the piece after that beautiful love story is elation and then trauma again and so like it's also what are you putting with porn what are you putting after and that's why the positioning of scenes is so important because depending on the order I could be telling a very different story so we have very little time left 17 minutes left so I would love to keep talking but if everybody can pull out a sheet and anybody who doesn't have one wants one can we have anyone okay so this is just a little take away for you guys if I wanted you to come away with some tools I can give this to you it's two different sheets of paper and the only thing I want to give you guys five minutes right now to just look at step one and answer any of the questions that you would like you can apply it to your own work and an artist you can apply it to the work in any ensemble you're doing and this is kind of just our version of trying to walk you through the adaptability model that we were talking about how do you when facing the challenge how do you actually make it an opportunity of a lifetime that will break you out of a cycle so five minutes are in class go ahead yeah first section only and while you do that I'm just going to play this little video Alex? yes me and Daniel yeah these things is it me or I don't see different than what it was but that is what it was and it was three different versions there's hip-hop music and there's trancex in its entirety this is built with the staff who go to New York and they want to share any of their challenges that they wrote down you can kind of like give them a challenging opportunity anybody want to share the new president in the room all of the new presidents during that moment and we all are about to maybe go writing from the topic there's a lot of people that are in the circle but they're not sharing and you are I don't know a guest facilitator is confronted and I can I too I'm an ensemble member at some place I stopped myself and thinking should I like I know that I have a freedom of of like sharing but I I always feel like it's like who commits or like people need to commit more to the work I think that's a that's a challenge yeah expect more from your ensemble that's definitely a challenge so so one thing that I would just like my immediate like feedback to that is like it took me a really long time to recognize they're just going to always be different levels of participation and instead of wanting more commitment from others how do you transition your own view of what is committed from people what is involvement and try to meet everybody where they're at it's kind of like an AA room sometimes you have to share at your first meetings sometimes it takes many meetings and that's what happens and so in that case I've been faced that so many times particularly with students and if it's a struggle to pull it out of them the immediate thing I'll do I'll immediately share myself where I'll put one of the girls who I know and be like hey tell your story right and it's an offering maybe you're not ready to give me an offering but I'm going to give you one so that's just how you can take a challenge a moment of somebody not wanting to come into the space with you and give them a gift for them to take with them and I think it really does go back to the fact that you can't have everybody engage in their own time right and sometimes people feel like my voice is you know what I have to say someone's already said so I don't have to put it out there but it's really creating a safe space that empowers people to say whatever sentence is going on in your head that you think someone said five minutes ago say it because it's important from your voice and your empowerment too yeah so this one again is a take home a paper for you and it was just us putting into like one sheet of paper how we have embracing challenges so we told you we started touring developing shows on the road to answer several challenges that is how we turned an internal resource we already possessed into a solution for something else but to even come to the place of solution you have to actually identify what is the issue is the issue that the space wasn't made safe for that person to share I don't know do you know anything could be that could be anything the climate the smell yeah so before we like stress about oh if I got this thousand dollars if I got this hundred thousand dollar grant my problems would be solved often where we approach things well if I had the money or if I had the space or if I had a name director on this project often times these external solutions were like we become obsessed with or not the solution what internal natural resource do you have which is exactly where partnerships come into the fold and they can like make and break you right so anything else anything else to share let's walk you through step two is assess your natural resources who already has figured out the solution I think sometimes particularly as ensemble we get there's so much work to do we stop realizing there is not just a huge world of ensemble and device practice in the United States we're like babies to this process in the United States what other groups can you find that have been surviving 30, 40, 50 years more working together they might have a solution how might like a new app release and how they structured their technology around creating an app how can that actually be a solution to you so sometimes also thinking outside of like your artistic form so these are just questions you'd love for you to think about as you're like challenging we think the next step is dreaming right but dreaming from the context of what you've already assessed and so we have some prompts here that might like lead you through that process like we're basically strategic planning every day of our lives like it's a constant strategic plan a question that has helped us a lot is if I change this one thing what would happen going back to your question mark if I change who went on tour and who stayed home what would that impact me if I change from Latina Theatre Company to women of color what would that be right and then planning we often try to like make these master fusion plans so just a toolkit we use and because you're always exchanging between the I and the we in the next four weeks I can write that down what can you do in the next four weeks for yourself based on any challenge in the next eight weeks I will and in the next six months we will have because of the work that everybody has done individually and in one year we will be doing we never like to think of anything as an end point it is just fodder for the next thing and then will you two read this last book when we get ready to read it on an island not so far from here the local people became very annoyed like a pesky monkey who lived in the trees surrounding their village in wrecked havoc under order of the garden a clever village elder creator small bamboo cage in place of banana inside it then hung it on the edge of his property late in the afternoon a monkey reached in and grabbed the banana when he tried to pull it out between the narrow rinse of the cage his hand was stuck all he had to do to get free was to release the banana and slide his little hand back but that evening when the elder came to check the trap the monkey was hanging on it still clutching that banana even though it meant the loss of his own freedom many of us are just like that monkey we grasp onto something that tantalizes us and even when we realize that to be free we have to let go we hold on to none we hold on nonetheless one of the things that most commonly trap us is the habitual pattern of our own thinking the limiting stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what our capacities are this is an excerpt from collaborative intelligence by Don Markova and Angie Arthur this book has changed my life I really encourage you if you work in ensembles to get it to read it it has amazing exercises and practices and so if y'all want to stand up just reflecting on what you just heard about how we sometimes you're holding on to something that we've inherited or we have come up with how are we preventing our own freedom we really like to think come Jimson come Jimson have to remember we relinquish the power way too often when we think we don't have enough money or the way to do something a spiritual guide once told us if you wait to go to the moon until you're ready somebody else will colonize that planet so maybe it's the idea you have to have a season in a traditional sense like a reason or how you create work whatever it is I would love for us to just breathe together let's take a breath in and exhale and let it go let's breathe in again together I want to thank you guys so much for being here with us for many minutes we want to think that we're a resource in sharing our own failures and our own struggles and our own successes and we're around online all the time we'll be watching a YouTube channel to kind of talk about the journey in a much more direct way and so hopefully you'll join us in that and I would just would love to hear your thoughts anytime you want to share them with us online anything else anybody wants to share a shout out put them to the space love love love justice peace anything I'm being told to be in this room filled with all this mind that had a diversity and a line of women's thoughts and I'm just very thoughtful about this and I took I'm going to take home a lot of thoughts that I would be reflecting hopefully putting into pre-shoot and also it's my own personal artist thank you everybody this is so great to have you here thank you