 pathways to revolution. And I'm really thrilled and honored to bring everyone together here. I'll introduce the panelists in a minute. Before I do, and I just wanna talk about two things. Theater for me is an art of metaphors and an art of using space. And I love the metaphor of the space we're in right now. A lobby, an atrium, an open space, a fluid space, a democratic space, an accessible space. And I think that metaphor of this space is probably relevant for the work that all the folks on the panel do here in their theater in terms of accessibility, openness, and challenging how we make our work accessible. I also am thinking about the amazing training that Carmen Morgan led yesterday at Art Equity, all along with Lydia Garcia. And what was very powerful for me in that training was about questioning, questioning language. And that's what dramaturgs do. It's what we as theater artists do with the written word. We interrogate language, we question language, we question structures of power, we question the questioners. And I was very thankful for that. Thank you, Carmen. And again, that might be something that people on the panel deal with in terms of how are their theaters questioning the kind of plays we do, the kind of stories we're telling, how we connect to community, how we're thinking about power and structures. So thank you. The theaters that we've gathered represent quite an array and a diversity of theaters across the field. We have theaters from urban areas, from rural areas, theaters that have been around for 50 years, theaters that are quite new, theaters that are more connected to the academy and university, theaters that are more connected to quote unquote professional actors and people on the production team. But it is really, for me, a whole series of theaters that are challenging, challenging the issues that are related to the panel about access and activism. And so thank you for joining us today. I'm going to read you their bios right now. So we're going to go from my right to my left. Amy Brooks is the program director in Ramaturk for Roadside Theater, the theater wing of Appalachian Grassroots Arts and Media Center Apple Shop. She coordinates the company's core programmatic areas of new play creation, community cultural development, teaching and advocacy. Amy is the former humanities director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdston, West Virginia, a co-founder of the Twitter-based discussion forum Rural Arts Weekly and a recipient of the 2016 LMDA Residency Program Award, a grant that allowed her to initiate her career with Roadside Theater. Sonia Fernandez is a scholar, translator and dramaturg, specializing in new work, recent production and dramaturgy projects include the world premiere of Grandeur by Han Ong at Magic Theater and the shipment by Young Jin Li with Crowded Fire, where she's a longtime company member. Sonia is the associate artistic director at Magic Theater where she manages casting in the literary department and produces the magic's annual Virgin Play Festival featuring workshops and readings of a dozen new plays in development every December. A PhD candidate at UC San Diego, Sonia's research focused on audience experience of racial humor. She received an A-B from Princeton and a master's from San Francisco State. Thomas Friedland received his BFA and MA degree in theater from the University of Colorado and his PhD in drama from Stanford. He's worked in theater all his life, acting, writing plays and directing as well as translating. He has taught acting, voice, theater history and dramatic literature at Stanford, American Conservatory Theater, Oberlin College and the University of Colorado. He's been a lecturer in Stanford's oral communications program since 2000. He has appeared in numerous Stanford Repertory productions over the years including Betrayed, The Exception and The Rule, Wards to End All Wars and Democratically Speaking. He will appear later this summer in the Stanford Repertory Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Proposal. And SK Karastas is a social justice driven theater artist, educator, organizer and current artistic producer at the California Shakespeare Theater, Cal Shakes. They are a co-founder of Hashtag Breaking the Binary a series of arts programming and EDI workshops for arts organizations with the goal of creating and supporting sustainable practices for trans inclusion and accessibility. In the past year they have produced events in lead programming in American Repertory Theater, then APASO, Associated Performing Arts Service Organizations and Willi Mammoth Theater Company. Prior to that they were a visiting artistic associate at Berkeley Rep through TCG's Leadership Leadership U, one on one grant round two. SK served as the education director at About Face Theater in Chicago where they directed and managed the queer and trans youth theater program and all outreach programs with an intersectional focus. I'm the executive co-chair of the Pride Youth Theater Alliance and a member of the inaugural Art Equity Cohort. I'm Jeff Czeski, artistic director of California Repertory Company which is in Long Beach. I'm also chair of the theater arts department at Cal State Long Beach. So I've asked each of the panelists to talk about three things and it might get a little bit fluid, it might change a bit, but essentially about presenting a portrait of each of their theaters, incredible work that they're doing, the dynamic theater that they're doing so that we can get a kind of detailed portrait or portrayal of the work that each of their theaters does. Then also talk about the community. What are the issues that are in, that are really raging that are on fire right now in their communities and how is their theater addressing that. And then third at the end, hopefully we'll get some time, talk about provocations for the field. Bombs you want to throw out at the field. And just piggybacking on what Ken was talking about earlier. This is a very outward focused conference and the two things I remember him saying, what are the hard questions and what are the actions following up on those questions. So today is a lot of day about questions and action. Amy, why don't you talk about roadside theater? Thinking about Eve Ensler's quote which I was inspired, I stole from her amazing quote to create the title of this panel. Theater can be a pathway to revolution. Now is the time to use it for refuge for the vulnerable, for telling stories of the invisible, for resisting the tyrannical, for imagining the new story. And when I was hearing about roadside theater I thought a lot about the telling stories of the invisible or at least invisible to me. And is everyone able to hear me? Okay. When we talk about making the invisible visible, I'm very interested in this as a fifth generation West Virginia woman and what happens when that visibility manifests itself in a way that is threatening to everything that we represent when we talk about cultural equity which I think is a lot of the story of what happened last election. And I'd like to get into that at some point in this panel because I think it's something that probably we should address. My name is Amy Brooks. I'm the program director and dramaturg for roadside theater which is the theater wing of Apple Shop as Jeff mentioned. I prefer the pronouns she, her and hers and I also want to disclose that I make around $30,000 a year which is far, far better than I've ever done in my life. As an adult I've averaged about $11,000 a year income and I owe about $8,000 which is really good in America these days I think. And if the gender identifier sounds like a deeply important marker of personal identity that it behooves us to identify and address publicly. And the income thing sounds like embarrassing tertiary information that makes us a little uncomfortable and would rather I not discuss. But I'm really glad that we're having this discussion today because at roadside we're not really interested in discussions of gender or race that don't stay intersectional with class. We are a class based theater in a region that has a strong history of democratic labor organizing and our sensibility comes very directly from that. So we're best understood as part of our parent organization Apple Shop and I'm just going to give you the reader's digest version of that. Apple Shop was founded in 1969. It was part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty initiative and the idea was that film industry experts would come in and they would teach these Appalachian kids in eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia how to use film equipment. And then they would leave and get gainful employment in the film and television industries. So like good contrarian Appalachian people once they had those skills and that equipment the young filmmaker said well you know what I think we're going to stay here and make documentary films and tell stories about the way we're living in our homes and what's actually happening here. So that was in 1969 and today Apple Shop comprises a number of media initiatives. Roadside theater, my project and vision. There is a community radio station WMMTFM that does community affairs and public affairs reporting. There is a record label, June Apple Recordings. There is one of the largest Appalachian media archives in the region and there is also the Appalachian Media Institute which is a youth filmmaking program. So we collaborate with all of these projects within Apple Shop but particularly one called the Letcher County Culture Hub which is a partnership and a growing partnership of local artisans, people in government and community organizers using the power of arts including theater to drive economic development in our area. So if you're at all interested I won't go too into that in this panel but if you're interested in finding out more I can tell you about the incredible community organizers who are making the Letcher County Culture Hub happen. So roadside began in 1975 and it is very much best understood as a child of southern justice movements like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Free Southern Theater and it began from its inception with friendship with John O'Neill and Junebug Productions New Orleans based artists. And they said to John O'Neill well John there's some folks forming a theater company down in Whitesburg Kentucky so you better go check out and see what those people are doing and said oh god so we went down and got to know our artistic director Dudley Cock and they got to talking and I think John kind of gave them a little bit of shit about what they were doing and said well you know I think you need some more diverse voices in the forming of this just to keep it honest so that was the beginning of a long standing friendship and relationship. The basis of our methodology is the community story circle and all of our play creation comes out of some version of the story circle and this involves getting together as diverse a group of the community whatever community we're in as we can putting people in a circle and laying some ground rules that come very much out of a kind of a recovery sensibility meaning no crosstalk we go around the circle and based on a prompt each person has generally if we can an unlimited amount of time to respond with a story that has a beginning, middle and end and characters and avoids any kind of polemic opinion or judgment and it's an iterative process from that story circle we have the basis for play creation usually the community participants will help us create or a roadside playwright working closely with them we'll put those stories into a play that is then presented to the community and after that there will be another round of story circles during which the audience gives their feelings, memories and impressions of what they've seen in that play and that information and those stories are then used to do new rounds and drafts of the play and this is the way that we build our community residency as well our programming areas are new play creation, community cultural development, advocacy and teaching in colleges and universities so I hope that we'll return to the higher ed because we feel it's a very important one I know that most people here have some connection to the higher ed so the rest I want to pass the mic now so that everyone has time and I hope to discover more about it through conversation with everyone yeah, yeah there's a number of issues I want to tease out later Amy that you're talking about what I find very inspiring about roadside's work is the story circle element and the way that you are generating empathy and listening, deep listening it's something I know you were talking about as well when I was speaking so it's another theme I want to get back to but again let's just initially get a little bit of a portrait of what each person does, Sonya want to tell us about magic and possibly crowded fire if I can tempt you into that as well hi, I'm Sonya Fernandez I'm the associate artistic director at Magic Theater and I'm also a company member with crowded fire so I may throw some of those experiences in but I'm going to primarily focus on magic where I'm a staff member and been involved in all those artistic conversations I can speak more fully my pronouns are she, her hers and so the portrait of magic magic we just celebrated our 50th birthday which is a miracle because it is a company that was founded on new work and we think of ourselves as 100% risk and by that we mean that our audiences don't go in knowing who this writer is they didn't study them in school they're all the people that we produce are living and are in the room with us as much as possible and central to the mission of magic and also crowded fire is the representation of diverse voices in terms of aesthetically we're always interested in writers that are trying to do new things with the tools of theater and work that needs to be in a room with other people and not on a screen and so we have a long and varied track record on that about some of our programs we have an education program with Lainey College in Oakland and that's been going on for I think six or seven years where we bring students from that community college and involve them in our production process so that they can witness the professional workings of a theater and many of those students go on to be involved in various aspects of the organization they work front of house they have assistant directed they've been cast in our show and it's a very important part of how we engage on that level in terms of so I'm going to jump to the now what we've been thinking about in the past year is just digging down to do what we've already been doing in a deeper way so how do we facilitate those conversations about the work that we're already doing and give avenues to for people to really engage in a rich way crowded fire also has an emphasis on new plays and it has so I'm struggling not to make comparisons perhaps a stronger emphasis on community engagement I think I mean magic is in the marina and so we talk about not really having much of a community any of you who have been there it's on Fort Mason which is a former military base and across the street a safe way so we are we are branching out to the tenderloin we will be a part of a space on market whenever they break ground so we've also been making inroads with that community and trying to engage with them and offer them tickets to come to see our shows while we're at magic it's always a struggle to get people to come all the way to magic yeah there's a what's each person is dropping bread crumbs of things I want to pick up on after we each have time to speak Sonya one of the things that you were mentioning when you and I were speaking and you mentioned it again now was the using the tools of theater going you know which is an old impulse right to make the theatrical make the theater theatrical make to use the skills and tools that theater has as opposed to this techniques of film or television so that's something I want to talk about have everyone maybe respond to afterwards is how can we in theater respond what are the unique capacities and capabilities that theater has and also the whole aspect of being in the room together again the empathy and the connection that the live experience can bring together Thomas good morning my name is Tom Freeland I am a company member with the Stanford Repertory Theater and my preferred pronouns are he, him, his Stanford Repertory we are in our 19th season now we were founded by Professor Rush Rem in the department of theater and performance studies it began as a summer only pretty modest operation putting on a couple of plays in the summer session and has grown over the years and now we offer programming throughout the academic year and we combine casting of undergraduate students at Stanford with local professional actors and the kind of material we work with has varied enormously over the years it's mostly shall we say no longer living playwrights not entirely, not entirely but for the most part for one thing Professor Rem our founder is a professor of both theater studies and classics so he has a deep and abiding interest in Greek antiquity and also Roman antiquity what we're doing is looking at that day's newspapers what's going on in the country, in the world what's on people's minds and is there something in the classical dramatic repertory that resonates with that, is there a way we can approach a classical text that chimes with that and provokes discussion as I was sitting here listening I got to thinking about a famous quote from a great German Jewish literary critic in the 1930s Walter Benjamin talking about how revolution in his opinion, he's a friend of Brecht they talked it over a lot Benjamin felt that revolution is driven not so much by the vision we might have of the liberated future generations to come but rather we think of our oppressed ancestors we think of the people who've already paid a price and what do we owe them in terms of moving forward and I think in some ways in an academic setting what we do with our repertory is looking at the past in that way and how does the past speak to the present and what possibilities does that open up for the future so some of the things we've done over the years well for instance shortly after 9-11 with the invasion of Afghanistan we staged Amy Freed's adaptation of this Estrada works like that we also put together staged reading kinds of things literary collages we did one last year right before the election called democratically speaking it was a whole collection of ideas about democracy pro and con had some very provocative weird interesting things from notorious opponents of democracy Hitler checked in with us to let us know of his contempt for the popular will the way that the popular will could be manipulated oh yeah definitely some from the panelists absolutely we did one two years ago to mark the three years ago I should say to mark the centenary of the onset of World War I we did a collection of pieces from the writings of World War I words to end all wars we did one of the few pieces that is of contemporary origin a few years ago a play called Betrayed by George Packer you may have read some of these pieces he's a staff writer for New Yorker about the translators who worked for the United States government and military during the Iraq war the Iraqi translators and how they were essentially abandoned by the U.S. when the U.S. started pulling out of Iraq and the dangers that they faced and so with these the casts we pulled together the cast for Betrayed we had people from I think six or seven different countries in the cast of that play and we always have talk back sessions and they're often moderated by professors from different programs around Stanford one of our great advantages is we are clearly connected with and supported by the theater department at Stanford but we also get support from political science from many other programs so for example the production of Betrayed was also sponsored by the Center for Ethics in Society they have year long conversations they'll pick a theme that year was the ethics of war and so we produced Betrayed Copenhagen to talk about especially the world's scientists in wartime which is an issue around Stanford absolutely where people have a very technical orientation and academic orientation and educational outreach we are in an academic setting of course so a lot of what we do cannot help but be educational outreach happening at a university but then we also take it away from the university we had a production of Betrayed's exception in the rule a couple years ago and we took that out to schools in East Palo Alto and West Palo Alto and senior setters and things like that and had some amazing discussions with the high school kids who've never heard of Betrayed and some red diaper babies at the senior center who knew all about Betrayed and we're very keenly interested in the issues being brought up in that so that's your introduction to Stanford Repertory Theatre and again I want to get back as Amy was mentioning to the whole role of higher ed because with the teaching that Roadside does the work that Tom in Stanford Repertory Theatre does for Cal Rep in Long Beach connected to an academic institution so what is that role? How can we instigate change in higher ed? Something that Martin the future president of LMDA was talking about in the panel the plenary earlier about how we can you know decolonize curriculum how we can really create the agents for change in that setting that's okay thank you we got so ready for the combo my name is SK, I use their pronouns I'm the artistic producer at Calshakes I've been here for two months so I'm still learning stuff quick introduction this company has been historically white Shakespeare company in Aurendra like the mountains of East Bay like a really fancy building and a half, I think maybe two years ago now changed leadership we have a new artistic director Eric Ting Chinese American director who is a new works director that choice was specifically made and I think before with programs like Triangle Lab and whatnot there had been sort of like a stark turn to kind of change the company culture and whatnot I would say what brought me there was having queer and trans people of color on staff and having a person of color in leadership every step of my interview I was like what is the reasoning behind hiring a white person in this role for a company that is really looking to diversify and we had a lot of really open conversations about that stuff and that indicated their logic was really clear and I heard it and it was awesome to be able to talk about that stuff within such a like, you know, the interview process being like so loaded with a power dynamic there's a really great opportunity to be like redefining classics or like sort of like using this frame as classic to lift up a lot of like non-white, non-European work and that would be Eric's been involved with an adaptation of Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler for a long time classic work, right? Like that is some classic work that we all can learn and benefit from that would be an example and then in terms of our artistic engagement we are in process there is like not a day where we are not talking about power and privilege and identity like but part of what we are trying to do we also utilize the story circles and that is because we have folks on staff who came from a community service background right, that is like where that sort of healing and empowering practice comes from so intense to hear you say that that came from like AA healing circles right, so it's like, ooh where does that like the idea of sitting in circle is inherently non-western right and not like a white practice we do this like riff on that for a minute so we do that, we do story circles with the productions of folks with lived experience of the issues that we are like trying to investigate those folks get paid for the emotional labor of like having those conversations and we try to staff the productions with folks who also have that same lived experience so the conversation is already deeper and more than one person more than just the dramaturg you know anyone who's brought in as the token to help a situation or to like add their lived experience perspective is like set up to fail already you know it's like such a hard position to be in so yeah I want to talk about story circles and I'll wrap this up real quick we're also trying to really look at kind of a structure you know look at who's on staff and look at how the money that we receive is distributed so our community partners we are trying to also micro fund and trying to think about projects long term so instead of you know deciding we want to do a play attaching to artists to it and then the year of production attaching a community partner or reaching out in curating the season thinking about who's a lead artist and what is the community partner we want to work with reach out to them that way and that way we can apply together for funding to co-design this project so that it's like really beneficial for both parties involved an example of that is we're looking to do 1001 which is an adaptation of Arabian Nights with the Islamic Cultural Center and collect 1001 stories of Islamophobia to then filter into the play and this is a partner that we worked with with last year really exploring Islamophobia through the Muslim identity of a fellow in that play I'm not saying all our plays are like that structure but this is what we're working for and we have some clear examples of moving in this direction and it's hard and complicated but it sort of gives a sense and we have a lot of barriers like a historically white audience who are really attached to their Shakespeare like that's just honest it's not even a sassy comment it's just what it is so yeah that's kind of where I'm coming from I love what SK and Eric are doing at Cal Shakespeare recently I'm thinking about the metaphor of theaters like a garden and how gardens are quite specific locally what you can grow here you can't grow perhaps in another climate another soil I live in Long Beach and I'm having a garden and I'm realizing there's certain things that wither certain things that thrive and I think what SK and Eric are doing at Cal Shakespeare is like you're really thinking about the garden of that theater and reinventing that garden it's something I want to get back to with all the different panelists is how do we about story circles when you and I spoke SK you were mentioning about a table communal table that you're building and about the micro funding so again how as theaters what are we cultivating in our garden what I want to do now is actually get back to certain themes, questions issues that were raised each person and now anyone can comment on that so it could be a bit more of a fluid conversation the first theme for me was a series of questions how do you listen how do you have empathy and how do you be uncomfortable it was raised when I was speaking with you Amy about the work that Roadside is doing working deeply with the community, connected deeply to the community, rooted in the community and also engaging in conversations in that community that can be quite difficult at times from different sides of an issue for example so maybe if you could talk about that and if other people also want to jump in on that issue of listening, empathy being uncomfortable we're going to trade these back maybe you can get it working there are two buttons just for a little context Appleshop is located in Whitesburg, Kentucky in Letcher County which is in the 5th congressional district of eastern Kentucky in the cold fields of central Appalachia it's among the sickest and poorest congressional districts in the U.S people there have about twice the disability rate they live on average 10 years less average income is like radically lower than even with our great American income inequality it's incredibly low and I live in southwest Virginia which is over Pine Mountain and it is in Virginia's 9th congressional district a district that in 1980 I think swung about 78% no sorry it swung for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan so it was very very blue at that time and this election swung about 78% for Trump to give you an idea of this sort of turnover of power and political momentum that's happened there I would say over the last 40 years so yeah throw the question back out at me again so when you and I were speaking for example you were talking about story circles where you would have people from radically different perspectives and how as theater artists are you encouraging listening empathy and being staying in that uncomfortable state so I'm interested in hearing SK's version of the story circle and your methodology for that ours is again I want to get to this idea of beginning in a place where we can move past the polemical or the opinion so if you have two people we might have in a story circle in our area for instance would be someone who is deeply invested in the coal industry maybe someone who is a foreman in a coal site which we still have although obviously that rate is decreasing radically and someone who is an environmentalist and you might have them in a story circle now if you ask these people what do you think is best in the future of eastern Kentucky where should we be moving economically and how do we get there you're going to have a problem you're not going to have an equitable conversation and you're going to connect a circuit directly to a place that is unsafe for people that is incredibly loaded emotionally that they are both direct stakeholders in the community and has been politicized and emotionally charged to the point where within the community people tend to avoid that conversation because it is not safe it is not a safe conversation to have and the story circle creates a place where people can bypass the polemical and if you ask those same people tell a story about a time when you were afraid for your family's future economically you're immediately going to connect to a place that is more empathic and chances are very good that you're going to hear a pro-co-old person tell a story that the environmentalist can relate to and connect with so that's something that we do within our communities and that's the methodology that we take outside of our communities so I mean I'd like to hear just the details of what your story circles look and feel like and how they work I mean I worked with story circles at about face theater in Chicago youth theater for queer and trans youth and that's how we would generate material from lived experience and we would share and group share and air share and perform them and then sort of put a play together through that the story circles at Hal Shakespeare were specifically initiated by Lisa Evans who is a non-binary artist and activist in the Bay Area and just became the artistic director of Peacock Rebellion which is an arts organization for trans people of color let's just like hello local artists if you don't know about this organization you should and they brought in this idea of the circle from community work also from queer service work and the way we utilize it with plays from what I understand that's a thing they did in one and learned about other ones is that it is a closed combo for folks who identify with have lived experience with the issue that we're investigating they get paid to be there they get food it is a bonding empowering moment so for example with a fellow there was a story circle about experiences with Islamophobia and that's what folks talked about for an hour and a half so Denmo Ibrahim is Muslim and so she was the one who led it and it was definitely like a connected kind of insular conversation a safe spot for folks to share experience and then they took a break and closed that one out and then held another one where they invited Eric Tang who was the director of that piece and the I'm blanking on his name but the person who played a fellow was Ibrahim to listen to just listen and they had said here's a couple things that we're exploring that they wanted the facilitator to bring up but because of that they were able to that play had such a richness of Muslim culture in it it was a controversial play it was Eric's first play at Calshakes and folks were really upset that it wasn't a classic Shakespeare but there was a lot of stuff in there that was specifically referencing Muslim culture and inhabiting it in a way that most folks wouldn't get unless you had that lived experience and then what happens with the process is the folks who are invited and who participate in the story circle are then paid to come back to the theater and give feedback and kind of work with the play and sort of a really beautiful way to create work that is authentic and has a community of people who've had buy-in to it as opposed to a couple yeah it's definitely using story circles as a tool right they are valuable in and of themselves for healing connected spaces and also as a tool for a show Thomas about this whole question or publication about listening how do we in our work, in our theater generate empathy listening both listening to what stories need to be told roadside connecting to stories that are not told in the dominant narrative in theater and listening to the people that we're working with and how we sit with those uncomfortable conversations yeah so what comes to mind for me is our current show is grandeur by Hanong and it's about sort of the final period of the life of Gil Scott Herron who we've discovered most people don't know about he is probably most famous for penning the poem song the revolution will not be televised and this play has triggered some really hard conversations and you know as a dramaturg I'm like the master of the talk back so we've been doing talk backs after every show and we've done this a couple times a season on shows that we felt we're asking for more than our regular Friday talk back and we've had some difficult conversations and I welcome them where just last week there was an audience member who said this show infuriates me because this man is a legend and he's portrayed as an addict he was an addict but it's still like the kinds of images that are being put out there we feel that the play interrogates that the way in which we're complicit in those images and that the value of telling the story of a man who is in a large way forgotten and trumped that but we are really excited to have this conversation and to have audiences debate this issue after experiencing the show so that it's about the themes raised in the play and then tangentially about like the light and all of those things so it's a way that using the things that we're already doing we're able to try to deepen those relationships and foster empathy and give people the tools to keep talking to keep talking about the issues I'm just curious because I heard one of the actors that's in the current production also in Grandeur and I have known about Gail Scott for a while but I'm just so interested in that it's such a public figure and is so important for like black culture in America and I'm wondering how y'all are negotiating having a white director and an Asian playwright the folks who are on the team defending this choice are not part of the community that like for which this figure is so empowering and of course it would be so upsetting to see your idols portrayed in not the most perfect beautiful light but yeah I would be so curious to hear about that because that was when I researched that I was like who directed, who wrote it and I was like oh I think that's so important conversation I have too and we did have those conversations from the first moment he sent the script and Loretta was like you need to have a black director and Han felt like he wanted Loretta to direct it and we did a workshop in 2014 and kept having conversations over years and that workshop had the same cast that we have now so we've been having conversations within the cast and I haven't been necessarily in those like rooms with those with Loretta and Han but that was part of the rehearsal process I was a dramaturg for the show but only in the early stages and early workshops but these are conversations that we've had with every workshop we did a workshop at Black Swan lab at OSF and raised those questions for actors to respond to because it's a tricky terrain and we just felt like the play needed to be produced and these were the people who were right for the project at this time it's about risks I remember when you and I were talking I think you defined the theatre as 100% risk and with risks come lots of responsibilities and so it's about responsibility to take care of those conversations and the dialogues Can I add something? You know this question has been discussed a lot but actually the more charged issue seemed to me to be that our audience is largely white and so it isn't necessarily a safe space for the audience members of color for the African American audience members to experience this work and that was an issue that was raised so there's a lot of different varying levels of danger and risk I just want to jump into this idea of the portrayal of him accurately as an addict and let's talk about the politics of addiction in America how we portray it and where we locate the responsibility for that because I know that I'm working in an area where there's an astronomical rate of opioid addiction and it probably doesn't need any more exposure these stories of opioid addiction in Appalachia who's bringing those drugs into our community it's not the poor white people that we serve with our theater that's not who brings the drugs who's bringing drugs into economically struggling urban communities it's not the people who live in those communities who's profiting from this so that's something that I think it definitely behooves us to bring to the stage and if we have idols who has exposed them to the possibility of addiction who's bringing the drugs into those communities that opens up that conversational pathway in terms of so Amy you're mentioning community I want to get back to that theme of the conversation what are for each of you the issues that are percolating in your communities and ways that your theater is responding to them and how do we take care of that garden you know is it a table a communal table is it microfunding is it talk backs what are the different ways that we're responding to the community in terms of curating the conversation that we're telling and then ways of delivering that conversation so anyone want to respond to that well I could share a little story coming out of the piece we did on World War One where Rush Ram who put together the select of the material for it didn't just want your typical array of Wilford Owen poems or maybe an angst younger thing about trench warfare we had some of that but also a lot of pieces from the point of view of women and what they experienced during the war both as people out there caring for the horribly injured soldiers and so on and so there were these gruesome long pieces about what modern warfare did to the human body and in the course of the talk backs Stanford has a fair number of military veterans in our community and so some stories came out in the course of the talk back of people who had been through things like that had seen things like that and shared things like that so it became this unlikely catalyst for this discussion in our community because we also have young people who are I just had a student just graduated and she's headed off to be a marine officer so some of them are going into the military and there's some very very interesting interchanges among folks sharing these experiences but as you're dealing with these issues of war how are you questioning all the nexus of issues about war military are you interrogating that or is it just a platform for plays and how people interpret that or how people question that is up to themselves so far it seems to me we're leaving the interpretation as much as possible with the audience as opposed to curating it in such a way that it hands them a message a line that they stand on because that brings out a greater diversity of backgrounds when we did the play about the Iraqi translators we had this talk back and at Stanford we have the Hoover Institution I mean you know about that the think tank very conservative very right wing think tank and it's full of former military former government people and some of their perspectives about the futility of the Iraq war they were willing the show because it put it on this personal basis of the Iraqi translators it opened up a space evidently for people who had initially supported the war in Iraq to share some of their doubts about it but without being led there so much it seems to me people want to respond in terms of the community that are I'm glad to hear the mentions of mass incarceration so far in the first panel and I want to kind of continue that with a little bit of apple shops and roadside historical work there so right before I moved down about a year and a half ago and began work with roadside I was living in Cincinnati so I lived there briefly and I moved down to southwest Virginia and I realized I had moved from the site of the convictions of a disproportionate number of people of color I had moved from the place where they were sentenced where they were arrested and sentenced down to basically what serves as a dumping ground for those people every day when I drive home from work I look up the ridge and I see Wallins Ridge prison and I didn't know what it was at first I had to ask I thought it was some kind of industrial park that was lighted at night and then I realized it was a prison and Appalachia is basically ground zero particularly central Appalachia ground zero for for-profit and federal prisons and this is where they ship these people who are convicted unduly 8, 9, 12, 15 hours away from their families it's where they are basically locked up and the key is thrown away and people don't have to look at these prisons or remember that the people are there so part of my education to that area is finding out the historical work that these organizations have done to advocate for these prisoners and say no, these are members of our community now and we're not going to forget about them there was a play that Roadside did several years ago called Thousand Kites I don't know if anyone's heard about it but it takes a multiplicity of viewpoints it's based on story circles and interviews that were conducted with inmates families and prison guards families so that the entire experience of daily life in these prisons is offered up in a confessional way and multiple viewpoints are represented so that entire communities are able to see these plays and recognize themselves and their positions in them which in turn opens up conversations afterwards because it's not a single viewpoint it allows people to engage in the material and basically it becomes a public forum for debate, the play we might have very strong opinions as the people who are creating these plays but the idea is that by lifting up the first voices the lived experiences of the people who are directly impacted by the problem the people who are directly impacted by the problem become instrumental in solving that problem so it's not documentary theater in the sense that it's removed from the people on the ground or portrayed maybe in elite or wealthy institutions it's happening right there this play is presented in communities that are impacted by incarceration and then people who are either incarcerated or whose families work for these prisons are able to give feedback on it and contribute directly to the creative process and then we collaborate with other Apple shop projects like WMMT has a show called Calls from Home they got a little bit of media coverage recently and it's basically a request and dedication show so that the families of people who have people in prison can send request and dedications and then request and dedications can be sent from the prisons and in this way the hip hop music that they dedicate is communicating with their families and whatever otherwise not have a way of reaching and it keeps the prisoners and the families in the forefront of the residents' minds they know that these people are living among us they're in our community and we're reminding of that on a weekly basis other people want to talk about the issues in your community and how your theaters are responding to them I mean the word community is like so what does that actually mean I feel like the identity communities that I'm a part of are queer and trans people and specifically queer and trans people of color are like trying to live and just trying to survive and like you know thrive right now so like that is just like a truth something that I I don't know I've been trying to like wrap like connect to community I don't know if this is Carmen's quote or it's someone else quote but this idea that like the arts need community and communities and communities need justice and like what is actually it look like for our theaters our organizations and us on an individual level to be pushing justice forward and I think it looks like a personal realm healing and really sort of figuring out where individual trauma is and why folks are holding on to power and space as that connected I think it's a cultural level how our plays are actually interrupting kind of historically dominant narratives and really pushing that forward and who are the people making those plays and who are we making them for you know so then also looking at structural level right who is getting paid who's getting paid sustainably who has jobs in this who is the audience who is the board made up of who's in the room who's on this panel right now even this panel is majority white people and that's not an attack on you curating I'm also a cure in place of Eric Ting being able to have conversations about that and know that it's not helping push justice forward to keep having spaces that are dominated by whiteness conversations that are dominated by whiteness and to really work at decentering that and centering folks of color in our organizations and folks with you know lived experience of oppression which is hard right because a lot of the you know racism that I perpetuate and I experience also comes from like white women you know in queer and trans community racism is a huge issue like these issues are intersectional like I just like love how much you're bringing up class like affirm that big time right because I don't know that's also a big part of the picture too I don't have like an answer or a tie to community but I feel like that's just something I wanted to name if we keep focusing just on the art and the artistic process without simultaneously working on the individual spiritual level as well as structural knowing how we sit in all of those at once like nothing's going to change right nothing's actually going to change absolutely yeah may I jump in and kind of bolster that idea let's talk a little bit more about community and then the institutions that serve community I want to introduce a couple of ideas we organize from an idea of Bayard Rustins which is that you need community centers of power alright and as our institutions have become subject as we all are as every structure that we are living under is subject to capitalism I think there's been an increasing mistrust of institutions I move away from them but more than that I mean it is not coincidental that our sense of community and the way that we experience community especially where I come from in Appalachia are kind of degraded that's not an accident I think everything that we're seeing politically now is the visible tip of the iceberg and what's below is about 40 or so years probably more of anti-community policy alright and we need to talk about that in my region it manifests as 150 years of us being an extractive mineral colony that's what informs our community that is a huge part of our identity we are historically a site of traumatized people with colonial mindsets and I am here to insist because a lot of the rhetoric right now is very dangerous and we are becoming more sectarian and there is this idea that we are disposable people that Trump country is full of disposable people who must be bypassed in order to make any kind of social change but as I become more familiar with these democratic organizing ideas and the history of democratic labor organizing in Appalachia I realize there is no bypassing there is no getting around it alright if we want to dismantle white supremacy and other forms of domination in places like Central Appalachia there have to be cultural workers who are willing to dig down and have the uncomfortable conversations that you're talking about I recently visited Highlander Center in Tennessee which if any of you have been there is a historical nonviolent organizing and resistance site that was run by Miles Horton who was an incredible Appalachian man and I was reading his interview with Studs Terkel in the archives there and he said oh yeah man Highlander Center was full of Klansmen and Studs Terkel said what and I said yeah and we had Klansmen and civil rights organizers working together every single day in this space to do democratic labor organizing and you know what those Klansmen might not have liked it they complained to me but when it came right down to it they did the work that they needed to do alongside people of color and alongside socialists and communists and to do what they thought was best for their families and their communities and they got results so living where I live and helping lift up the work of the community organizers that I do I guess I don't have a lot of patience for my fellow white liberals who say oh I just can't with those people in Trump country I can't be around their racism really? who are you going to leave that work to? people of color? who are living down there? I mean if those people of color in the place where we come from can work alongside those people every day to make change and to organize our communities you're telling me your white ass can't have a civil conversation on Facebook? I get it I'm mad too I'm mad all the time I'm mad at everyone on both sides because I straddle two worlds constantly and I think we all do in one respect or another those of us who are working under certain forms of privilege those of us who are college educated or maybe those of us who came down from the northeast and don't understand how communities down in the south work we're all mobile in ways that people maybe didn't used to be so we're negotiating dual cultures and I want to encourage us to keep to that plurality and the hard gross embarrassing conversations with people who are yes they're subject to white supremacist framework and they have ingested those ideas and it shows up in their conversations let's not be so fast in the past I don't think I have anything bad to that but let's open it up Leslie I just want to say you're wonderfully so mentioning history please go deeper and mention the indigenous before that we don't have indigenous representation here that I know of that seems visible to us or have introduced themselves but we must bring them into the realm this is so critical thank you other questions let's go can you hear me Amy and SK have both alluded to the question of labor conditions in the institutions that you work in Amy you spoke candidly about your pay and SK you talked about payment for emotional labor for people who you work with I'm wondering if anyone on the panel is able to discuss the question of labor conditions within the institutions and share ways in which you are addressing and talking about those questions so we've talked a great deal about your work so the spaces of performance and the spaces of making performance but I guess I'm interested in how the questions that you're raising for example in the process of making a performance are also being addressed amongst your co-workers as an organization what is the politics of labor within the organizations that you work in what is the most reflective of those organizations about those politics those inequalities or debates I can just say at Apple Shop we have vistas but we pay our interns and our community participants we pay them for their labor because people can't work for free there it's a challenge we're in San Francisco which is like the most expensive conversations are being had enough because it's always stretching thin and everyone is stretched thin so I just want to add that I think it should be happening but I don't think it's happening enough including in my organization at Stanford there is a pretty amazing range of what people get paid and the kinds of work that people do and the society as you might imagine is not terribly eager to be discussing this in that sense what really drives it though the students they want to hear more about it they want to talk about it a lot so they are always agitating us to be looking at texts that might offer a way to get people talking about that the exception and the rule that was part of the whole ethics but the students are driving it we look to the students such a good question thank you so much comes up for me with that with talking about class I'm in a producer role this is the first time I've been in a role like this and started to see how much people get paid how much actors get paid how much designers get paid I feel like for me this wealth of hidden information before I can just give more of a person not an institutional answer to that and I'm struck by how new this information is despite how many theaters I've worked at it's like non-profit industrial complex shit that is totally what that is where we're expected to feel grateful for the little that we have for you if the work is compensating for the rest you know I don't know that's kind of what I can offer it's like queer and trans service oriented art making in Chicago we made stuff with no money at all and it was beautiful I'm in this moment a little bit where I see the budgets here you know the folks running them at least for artistic engagements are folks who have experience with community work that money is getting spent and folks are getting paid for stuff like emotional labor for stuff like the more minor role or not as senior roles I don't know whatever I don't know that's what I can share but from my personal motivation I wanted to know what what the kind of bones were behind a lot of these companies so it's really new for me hi everyone I'm Martha Ramon and she, her, hers I often feel you know personally and then with the organizations I've worked for a lot of curiosity around accountability and so I wanted to ask for whoever would like to answer what are the ways in which you assess accountability in your work how does that then move to organizational accountability and how do you translate accountability to action hi I'm Martha it's good to see you so I had to figure that out really early on because I came from kind of a mainstream theater background I was educated in the northeast I got my dramaturgy MFA and I had only ever really worked in the sort of the what I was comfortable with and then I went to a front line organization where this amazing organizing work was being done and all the art and the media that was done is produced through that lens so I had to figure out really fast how to locate myself within that work and how I could best serve the organization and the communities that we live among and serve so early on a co-worker gave me an article to read that has been sort of foundational for me and it's Marshall Ganz's essay what is public narrative if you've never read it I think that every dramaturge should read it I think it's incredible and Marshall Ganz encourages us to ask three questions and orient our work around them and one is what is the story of self or the story of me who am I, what privilege do I enjoy what is my where am I located in the work and what are my proclivities and my skills and desires what structures or institutions or social circles am I beholden to am I part of who do I affiliate with and then the third question is what is the story of now what is needful of the moment and how am I best positioned to respond to the needs of the moment and how can I do that as part of a communal action rather than as just a gesture that lifts myself up so recognizing that I am not one of these community organizers I am not one of these amazing people who is kind of out there every single day among the people of Letcher County or Wise County where I live the truth is that I do spend a lot of time grant writing I love the dramaturgical work and the play creation side of it but honestly probably when we got an NEA grant recently I felt like a hunter who had brought home a hunk of meat and was able to throw it on the table it's something at least I can do I can do stuff like this I can talk up my organization publicly I have no dignity I don't care I'll tap dance topless if I can raise money for these people doing this incredible work and maybe I'm not out there in the community every single day being the person who does that organizing but I can find those people who are doing that work I can use my skills to lift up that work and that's how I hold myself accountable at CalShakes we have an EDI work group and the project we're currently working on is creating a system for reporting microaggressions and sort of dealing with that so I feel like that's one institutional accountability thing being put into place I agree on a personal level I think it's about healing and about educating yourself where you hold privilege and where you don't because in the space is where you do hold privilege that's where you have influence and that's where you can be working or where you can leverage that privilege to do the good work I also just it's like how are we accountable to this planet right now and to each other it just feels like such a such a big question in the air and how actually does theater fit into that I feel like this is something I think about a lot but I do think there is a sense of alignment that happens when you're like when you're working in injustice work when you're working against oppression there is a like a clarity and a truth and a wisdom that comes from that and I think that's also connected to accountability good evening my name is Michael Lee and I'm a community organizer I'm the guidance of the trenches every day I find it interesting that y'all are up there talking about community the non-inclusion of people of color I find that interesting because of the fact that one I believe as a community organizer building numerous coalitions over the last two years I believe y'all don't have a clue that what you talk about and what your concerns are on our concerns for instance in the barrios and ghettos in this country sorry on top of our list police brutality but we see these organizations raising thousands and millions of dollars for polar bears in the Antarctic while our little children starve in the streets of Detroit and you wonder why you can't relate to us do you ever think that that might be a problem recently on Facebook we had two GoFundMe campaigns up for homeless people homeless street vendors we couldn't raise about five dollars a week on there but white people white animal rights activists put two chickens up there raised six thousand dollars in twenty minutes so what we're saying to you as people and organizers of color and leaders within our communities is examine your issues what issues are you working on if you're working on a climate change how does that relate to us in the streets with our children starving look at them when you are non-profits and these institutions look at them make up of your board of directors I look at this panel here and I'm listening to a bunch of fairly bright individuals and I wonder to myself where are we or is there such a decor out here in the streets of South Berkeley I don't see any youth up here right down the street on Alcatraz there's some of the most amazing youth out of YSA you'll ever see people that every day are in the struggles and in the trenches but when you talk about community be very clear about what you're talking to and when you want us come to the same table you must set that table so that it's welcoming to us items that we are interested in or that we could relate to but do not continue to sit up there scratching your head going oh my god we don't have any people of color here because the solution is very simple the consciousness of your language and the make up of your board and the things that you and your institutions are the last thing is I want to point out most of the institutions I find that are dominated by white boards I really don't have a problem with that something I deal with every day what I do have a problem with is a Stalinist authoritarian hierarchical organization that says one or two or a steering committee gets to decide for the rest of us the direction of the organization we're not going for that because that's not the way to borrow and to get a run just a quick question about the local artists especially in the Bay Area the Bay Area covers a lot of miles and we're having a problem we have actors who come from over an hour and a half to two hours to rehearsal because they can't afford to live in the Bay Area I don't know how much longer I can afford to live in the Bay Area and I'm on a senior level at my organization what are you finding with your artists are they coming from I mean Berkeley right now there's a huge affordable housing crisis as well as in San Francisco I live in San Francisco and I'm just curious to know what your artists are dealing with how, I mean in Arenda I mean that's even further away than Berkeley if people are coming from San Jose and they're coming out there I'm just curious to know how you guys feel at your institutions about your local artists is there a concern that other people are going to have to go to move to Chicago or places that are potentially more affordable where there's a thriving theater district I just want to lift up what this person said this is like what we have been talking about right like a huge disconnect between the folks who have power and who are in these insular conversations and like what the reality of people's lived experience and folks like you know that's like the profit is like you know the community is over there and this like group of people we talk about and serve but then inside the folks who get paid are in a very different you know yeah have a lot of privilege and you know make these decisions like who knows like folks even want that right can we just commit to keep returning to what we just heard to please throughout the conference so that that's not forgotten we cannot move too fast past that moment that's all I want to say in youth work and in a lot of community work like you are successful if folks like are like kind of rise through the organization and the folks who receive the services are then actually running it that is like the ideal kind of model and I think that is something I don't know that could be used in theater too in terms of transportation I mean I think I'm super interested in what you have to say because it feels like there's a huge call for folks who move to the city from the suburbs you know especially after the election to like go back and stop gentrifying you know what I mean like it's like sort of I'd be interested as someone who is like working in a rural area like just thinking about the patterns of how people are going to be moving around this world in the next like 10 years like I don't know have those been conversations in your communities you know folks are really fired up and are like dang I actually don't know if the city is for me maybe I need to actually go back to where my family lives and have those hard conversations there or whatever I'm so curious as someone who like grew up and saved my whole life I would love to hear your perspective or anyone who has a perspective I'll keep mine brief so that y'all can jump in but our artists and cultural workers we're in the midst of a big generational turnover we have people who were born and raised in Letcher County form the strong core of the organization because we feel that Appalachian residents are the experts on their own culture and communities and should be empowered to do those things as often as possible you know without maybe intermediary organizations and think tanks and that the art that they create and the media that they create should be lifted up but two there are those of us I guess Matt Flourty at Art of the World calls us the rural diaspora so you know we've left I'm Jen Exer I left because I was told that was the only way I was going to be able to make a living as an artist was to leave Appalachia so I did and after grad school I made a conscious decision that I wanted to go back I knew when I read that chapter in ideal theater about roadside and apple shop that I wanted to go back so you go back and you're surrounded by people who left people who do drive an hour, two hours some of our participants go incredibly far out of their way we're talking about people who have no broadband or drinkable water you know are finding a way to get to the building every day or find a way to come over the mountain for rehearsals and work with us so if you live in rural America just transportation mobility is a huge issue that kind of infrastructure we always have to be thinking in terms of how we can even get people to come and then who's willing to move back to rural I mean the out migration is overwhelming people are disinvesting more and more in rural America and that's reflected on the national policy level so I mean all I can say personally is I'm not willing to become sectarian about it or sever ties with urban America because this idea was put forth in the first panel that we are interconnected there is no future for America without urban and rural interconnection and that should begin and end with artists driving that I was just going to state the obvious of my experience which is affirming what you said people are leaving the young people that we have an apprenticeship program every year we train young future theater leaders and they 90 percent of the time return like three of them are moving to Chicago I should have them talk to you and one's going back to Philadelphia which is where her family is and it's just not really sustainable for someone just starting out I'm having a hard you know we I'm trying to stay in the city and raise my daughter in the city and it's just like this it's just bad and I don't have a solution I just wanted to just hi I just I got here a little late so apologies if you covered this already but I wonder if any of you in your work with your organizations are in communication with government about policy around this housing stuff I know like so I'm from Seattle and we are having conversations all the time looking at the Bay Area and being like oh we could be like that if we don't get Amazon under control and a lot of that starts with policy conversations so I wonder if any of you could speak to some of the work you've done with our garden unless you did already and I missed it fun fact we lost our core performance ensemble around 1997 so so we do do a lot of policy work because that's a big part of what we contribute now so we do a lot of writing a lot of publication and a lot of communicating with government officials to try to change this policy we work with nonprofit organizations who advocate for rural America and look to connect low income communities across the US including urban and rural I feel like in this post Trump world we're all sort of being pushed into a position of more advocacy than we've ever been more comfortable with so and may not be fully equipped to do that in the most effective ways but like we're sending letters about support the NEA and making calls to representatives but yeah it's a new ground I just want to thank all the panels and maybe before we close if each one of you could just put out one provocation to the field one statement one provocation which many of them have already been mentioned maybe it's a reiteration of what you've already said but just throw that bomb out there I feel like the provocation was made by that gentleman about the value of what we're doing relative to people starving in the street or even you know we've had people call I've heard overheard conversations where some of our donors are saying we can't donate to you as much or at all this year because these other things are pressing on us more fully so I think that is like the field wide provocation that we need to be thinking about what are we bringing to people and how and I do feel that we are bringing something or we wouldn't be here but how do we convey what the value is for people's lives in a really tangible way I'm going to quote a couple of figures I'm a note reader and a note taker so I want to leave with some figures and statistics and continuing the trend of quoting Jeff Chang because he cannot be quoted enough I love him and I'm also going to quote Philanthropy researcher Holly Sitford who is still in her reports yet she has a new one out so despite growing numbers of non-profit cultural groups focused on serving people of color low-income communities LGBTQ institutions and the disabled nearly 60% of arts funding goes to just 925 of the largest institutions whose audiences are predominantly white and upper income the percent of all gifts, grants institutions with annual budgets of 5 million or over has increased and the percent going to groups with budgets under 1 million has declined so understand there that we are talking about a lot of frontline and cultural equity organizations there so Jeff Chang says of every foundation dollar 11 cents goes to the arts so right there there is inequity 5.5 cents of that 11 cents goes to art organizations with budgets of more than 5 million who make up just 2% of all arts organizations and his conclusion is that objectively inequality in the arts non-profit funding world is worse than income inequality in the US so we look at these institutions serving comparatively few wealthy privileged white people receiving greater and greater amounts of funding and organizations that serve broader basis and more diverse basis the people that we hope to address in this conference are getting less and less funding and I hope that we will continue to talk about that Brecht said that theater is a luxury if that is a trap for us or if we should be thinking about is this a luxury to which everyone has a right to have that space to think okay great yeah I think this was me Mina said that this was mentioned in the first panel but right artistic director positions at three major theaters in the bay are switching over like right now so just saying that the three there are three huge theaters in the bay that are switching artistic directorship in the next year and a half to three years and a lot of organizing going around those choices and getting folks in leadership at those positions I think who have multiple experiences of live depression that really impacts the art that is made but with that organizing I think all of us in the bay area need to think about the theaters that are culturally specific and have been doing this work for quite some time and how we can strategize to lift up those theaters as well so that they don't suffer if a bunch of these large theaters start pulling resources right I want to thank the panelists Amy Sonia, Thomas and SK and thank all of you for your engagement and your involvement and let the hard questions continue throughout the conference thank you so much thanks everyone so let's gather together if you can help bring the people out of OSHA, A, B and C please everyone gather together