 So what do you think about the audience and what do you think about the audience and the loop gets me back to something that you wanted to see what people wanted to respond to? Do you think it's the word aesthetic? I always forget what that word means. It's one of those words that I'm always looking at, but I don't forget what anesthetic means. So I remember, under anesthetic, they will take all your pain away. So I say, okay, so aesthetic is the opposite of that. It's bringing all the feeling back. And then, so then I think about aesthetics, and then these two, the two of you, just that makes me think about, well who's aesthetic? Who's feelings? Who's all the senses? You're not looking at the game as such an experience of the audience and the loop like that. So who is getting to really be part of that? Have older feelings engaged and how do you handle it? And then there were a couple of phrases I heard about aesthetics. At one point I think you said, protect, use something so you need to protect aesthetics. And how you understand aesthetics, that you're protecting them. And you brought up aesthetics of democracy, which seemed, I just wondered what other people, if that was at all an interesting thought as far as, I mean I'm not the last question that's, I'm one of those people who put it in a current. But that's not why I write these, that we love to pick up stuff. I like the question Andy asked us about how will this shape the future of American theater. So I would really love some of you to say where do you see the local bone and what's the relation to the future as that is. Well that's kind of really interesting about that in terms of protecting aesthetics and who exactly is making this. It's a pretty big conversation though, which she must have heard. I remember I think there's a lot of time in this grant that it's kind of in the middle of the lecture right now. It's where artists do not release any information about themselves. So artists, they simply release the cover art and they drop the music and they put it out there. And then they share what are called standards, which is like a base file of whatever music they're making with other artists to remix and sort of extend it together. And so I sort of begin to wonder, at least in the theater, what do is the value of all this marketing, communications and performance, having everyone know who you are all the time, rather than simply just releasing the work and allowing other people to say I sound bad. I think sort of my own little theater kind of classic direction I don't like to take back in because less people know about medium and more they can actually focus on their art which is both the orientation and the setting. That's just another thing I want to talk about. You know what's really complex? I mean, I'm so curious about the membership of the world. You have to put people's bias in the program by meaning. You have to somebody, like the way that the family has been identified with me, apart from whatever it is that I've done to identify you, right? But, you know, we are, we are now, I have a partner. We are partners, we are co-needers of this company. We've been this way for a while, I did this session, we tried this before, this is something I have with two others. Nobody would let it be ours. Everybody wanted it to be, they wanted it to be mine. And I don't put my bias in the program, funders come up to me, people come up to me and say, you need to do that. Well, that's why it is so complex because it has a functioning company or better, you have to communicate yourselves in this totally splintered way. So it's like, to funders, well, yes, you have to be able to over-identify yourself and they want to know exactly who you are and then, you know, maybe it's the city that's all over the thing. You have to be able to speak, you know, you can tell us basically about yourself and haters or things. And I think that's a, you know, back to sort of the technical side, so be very careful to not do whatever permission you're in or, you know, like to always remain, try to remain in check about what your, what your real passion and ambition is. You know, you're basically just, you know, spending circles, constantly having in-money or being able to see to the fact of marketing. It's like, we're in this situation now, we're in one of ours. Dan Fish is coming up, and I said, we're in a barge, and anyone who's more than a fan of this program has an unconventional idea of how they stand. Actually, it's been really wonderful. He's kind of broken down a lot of our systems and, like, impressive marketing and inviting reviewers and not inviting reviewers, like, how he, you know, even things like the whole scandal is totally absurd, and it's like all those things because we've been doing this for years, I'm like, what, what? You know, I was like, ah, no, this is how we do it, and then I'm like, oh, okay, and it just takes somebody like that sometimes. It's so important to kind of just, like, strip down and be like, you know, like, you know, it's true, or do you, like, start your show at 10 a.m. and whatever. I also, I think it's a really awesome idea, too, but I'm thinking about, a lot of times, I feel like, and do believe in the black people, which is where I come from, I run a company like this, and there's a lot of conversation about, like, do you think I do? Just connect me to aesthetic, and I feel like there's a lot of catch up to do in some particular demographic that we come from here to make you, and, um, particularly I think that a black community that has always been expansive, but it's been one area that's been supported and encouraged, and so I feel that that's almost been the right way, and how she feels like she's sort of being, you know, put into a black category. And so, like, for me, it's about, first, identifying the multi-layers within the black experience or the sort of African experience, because I feel like those wanted the idea because of, for so long with filter and appeal, with so many else's peers. Even when it comes to black Americans writing African stories, that's still not a particular, you know, indigenous narrative. So, I just wanted to say, I think that's a really great idea, but I feel like for some demographic that's catching up a bit just... I agree, except that it just gets come off so well. But it's a modification, it's like the step beyond the categorization, because I think that Michael and I have experienced that with our work, is that people continually want to call out a community-based company or other labels that talk about it, and then it gets at least funky hierarchies, like, well, it's not really artistic with some community arts project, and these weird... graph, like, the work doesn't stand on its own. It's more about our casting, as opposed to the piece itself, or why aren't they connected, and it's, regardless, I think that it also helps with what you're saying about, it's a process of categorization, and it's a process of saying, this is that, and to some extent, that box exists in that world, and this is a black experience of that, that's over a year, and so that, as an artist, I think it includes the power of your venue, and how to resell it, and be what it is, and allow the experience of being in multiple things. I mean, I want to draw that back to what Daniel's saying, as part of those views, just about the future of the theater, and this is about artists voting to be that role, and not being a non-operated institution, and what Daniel is talking about, and what I mean. I think, you know, for too long, institutions, you know, it's not anybody's fault, but, you know, institutions are, because they're physical, unless they have a certain phenomenon that you start to defend them from aggregators of capital, and aggregators of that capital, and artists that have been voting to position them in a required institution previously, to get the money they need for, and to get the cultural capital of navigation, and what I'm realizing is that, you know, I mean, what you can sort of talk about, sort of, from the side, is that artists actually have a much more better work than each other, than they work from. They are aware of complexity in the new months, and our work is on the phones, and what you're describing, but Melody's trying to do is come into the institution that has very marketing, moving to take spring work, and a lot of artists work, and the artist doesn't see any income on the back. So what this really is, I think what it feels like, and what Sam was talking about, about electronic positions in a way, you know, it's like, I may put a sample out of a certain base track, but my name was with it, as other people use it, and that built the audience, so it's like, I think part of it is about artists taking control in their networks, over the narrative, over the line, which is over the ownership of these actual property content that they see, to when they sell it to the institution, or when they go into a relationship with the institution, and you work in the film world as well, so, right, so you know a lot more about how we look at the film world and this confusion about the college or the film world, and have the time to economic outlay that artists are investing in, they work in the film world, so that you know, that the company backs you today. Because the thing is, even if you don't have to sell it, you still have to talk about it, right, even if you got a new family on your work for a year or something, you would actually still probably have to talk about your work, actually, in some way, and so it's up to us to come up with a language that's interesting. That's really good. I agree with everything you said, just back on it for a second, because I think it's not just artists who are always the people fighting the system, it's how the team can achieve success in this field as long as you have the team that it takes to really make it as a career in art, requires every artist in the company to institutionalize themselves in some way to find their own short hands, which in short hand, by definition, is the thing that we're always fighting against. We're trying to reopen those anything, which we started fighting, and I wanted to tell our experiences, especially this faculty of experimentation, but when I try to do a process of a slightly different I invent resistance from every corner, and no, I overcame it in a very valuable experience to fight in an institutional setting, but it's remarkable to short hand the team to achieve what they have on the budget, and so I think that it's also from, I'm not saying you're in the industry at all, but from within, I think we also need to constantly challenge our own I mean, it also, for me, was back to the difference between marketing language and talking to funders and talking to foundations whose job it is, they see it to support work that is going to work now and to support people that can succeed in their summit and that language really changes based on you know, you have to there's always a retro vacuum they're always looking backwards and it's already starting to be furthering that when we're trying to do the opposite but when you talk about the art the artist cresting control versus an institution, I think the question is what institution, what context because we also we're talking about money and how does the artist get paid to be an artist and I just think it's important I see it happening that there are too many platforms that there are increasingly more than many of us being an artist there are increasingly more platforms that artists are working at being able to create work that is true to a vision that they have but that is kind of it's decentralized, it doesn't all happen in cultural institutions like this again, it's not either or this is one kind of place that art can happen the fact is, and listen, I'll be the first to dish the dirt about higher ed with anybody I can dish the dirt about higher ed so does anyone I've ever met on the other hand, I've seen amazing projects come out of higher ed because often colleges and universities which are very diverse they're publics and they're privates they're big and they're small they're in Wyoming and New York and Florida and you name it and what they're doing in those places often is very interesting and very interesting experimentation and sometimes it's one of the best places to take to work further plus it's a financial source you know, and neighborhoods there's a great project some of you here from in Wyoming in New York City, called naturally occurring cultural districts and it's really bringing support toward what art brings in neighborhoods and it doesn't mean you stop doing what you care about, it means you're a part of the neighborhood at the same time so there are other platforms which are not strictly cultural and to me that's one of the places I hope the American theater is going as the capital A, capital D and theater I think you're right and it keeps me to believe so I'll just nap with you and it feels to me like I mean one of the things is that it feels to me like ours is just English green money well this is this kind of money and I think like when you look at the Oscar Eates, one of the best things that the Oscar Eates has done is that fuck that money's money and he doesn't care where it comes from as long as he gets what he wants to do and I think that art is when I talk with, it's like institutions are good for one thing like the public theater is really good at some things, you know, CUNY and the work that actually America is putting art in the university setting but like all of these things exist the thing is how do we help the ecosystem where the small of our individual artists are able to have that power and genre that's our brain especially that we all get to enjoy every kind of flavor you know, theater at all is what we have that's new through the time and ultimately for me it was just a really great experience talking to people and you know what I mean and in the end I think it's important for everyone I think that they've changed a lot of what they're doing and how they understand the progress of what they're doing because they talk to every single faculty member and this happens in so many ways around our community being unknown is at once terrifying but actually the essence of what art is is that you should be paid for it just to see how many people here feel responsible for inviting people to come to their work or to the work of the community can you please imagine if you feel like you're responsible for them I think thanks I just want to I'm sort of tagging on the current pulse part of what I do is one sort of reclaim the larger and sort of provide both the development and funding arts the opportunity to sort of rethink their own sort of POE and filter and then what's important for me is that I try to share with other theater companies to help build their respect and also educational portion around particularly the African diaspora narrative and so what I usually do is like you know I have like six plays that I'm going to support in whatever way and I'll reach out to you know Rockstar Theater Company or on a primary stage and see if they're open to having a keyboard shop or supporting a play right in a few days or whatever that is and that's my way of trying to not keep the aesthetic insular but to help all of us sort of understand each other in a more enlightened way and I found that finding that to be very very successful just around the sort of market because when a theater company like working in the company has developed something that actually is sharing with you and then when I come to see what I've done what I've done in my life lives so it just builds this community so that's a way of thinking about sharing is important and how open are we to that and if it isn't a mission or a sort of aesthetic mission then you know what happened then you know there's a course of sort of the issues to be there because of the questions that we should have heard from the Director of the World and not while we were there so I come from an experience of an aggregator part of this the conversation that we're having today this is a field reaffirms some concerns about this interpecial theater and the way it's felt and how it is rarely created from within our community we we're in a great way we're in a great way our only in that set and our only way to be able to help our community go connected to the work is by creating some of the artificial connections to those people through days like ours and through days like these through days like trying to understand what they're going to see together as we get down to living or modernizing or community because people we are not by our community like a spirit or a community that is both a manager of the theater or a director of assistant director and that they need something to drive on to and so where is the intersession to those people need to drive on to you know they can't fault that for what they don't know or know where's the intersession and the work is being where the work is being not loaded off back to truck we require ourselves in doing everything in terms of you know from scratch but it's not all of the community in any of the ways and yet there's some really interesting ways that regional theaters are becoming more creating including some work in their seasons that's most wounded where they're living in I know South Coast Rep is doing something in their new work season with playwrights to do residencies and each was meant to write something that look at the diversity in that county right and I know there was La Jolla playhouse launched with that wall festival which is one site specific so sometimes by planning plays in the community that's a way in but it seems like I think the network of lines from the theater is having a real influence in the regional theaters now correct me if I'm wrong I think there's like some 200 theater companies that are part of the net and there's some 500 that are part of PCG and there's a big overlap I think like 100 of them are the same companies and I told that even 15 years ago maybe 5 foot of them so it's there's there's less either or so I think it's the networking that Annie was talking about that people just quite naturally interested you know they would have to call it a community based theater and they would post community based because you could be a community based and you could be a regional theater and you could be a social company and then turn over to the I think there's more fluidity and I see more than regional theaters entering that one way or another I know the institutions are at a certain level of maturity at a certain level of size I mean having an idea and executing an idea yes, wider and wider and wider and more assessing how to vote and so there's a lot of different tone in the water but it would make you feel like maybe it doesn't recognize that you are in your institution and it shouldn't have to do with all friends who is within your part of the community part of it I think what Eric is doing with the library is fantastic I mean he's doing some amazing sales what is there I don't know about the program it's a program that actually I don't know if you know about it but we wanted to create a partnership for the community of the library to be part of that and we've got a small program to work on projects in there first we need to be able to do a micro branch of the library in a lot of different places each play a collection of schools that people can check out the library privately they can turn it in and then we also have all the branches have theater classes that people can check out the library and then all the things like that and no it's been great and the community of the library you know is representative of theater to come and attend your press personally and then they invite people and it's all great it's all great and it takes time and actually when you're saying about marketing how you speak to the impact of development in some cases the impact of development is what you have to say about marketing and so you know how to say about marketing about marketing about marketing I feel like some of you have already said about how you manage success and how the money flows so much about the anxiety of the fear of if we do this we're somehow going to fail we're not going to get money or we're not going to sell tickets I'm not speaking on behalf of everything but I think I mean, I work with brick and our mission is actually to make sure that it's like a quite good approach, not that great. And I would say it's sort of a high-tech approach, so I would say it's one of the largest music festivals, it's really one of the great factors to take it as far as $3 to just a donation. So I mean, in terms of accessibility, I can't think of anything, unless we're paying them. And you know, the program is really, and for whatever reason, like, we've gotten a lot of after 35 years, right? Like, that program is like good, like no one is stressing out about the program and making it more accessible. But like, that took 35 years, but you know, Brick House, which is a building we built in October, I would say it's already fairly successful, most of our tickets are under $23. We have like a cafe at a student, that's free and accessible to the public. And that's good, and we're like up to our necks with like stressing out about how much the program is like, which would you do? But so with all of that, I think about like, what is our responsibility to our surroundings? And for the most part, again, our programming is like, I mean, I think Brown Brown is like, his work is so driven, based in the community. I mean, he's worked with people, so I mean, like, community centers, like the branch of the University of South America, and he had advanced workshops within Equal Soul. And half of the, obviously, not Equal Soul, there's answers in a lot of those, what do you call community answers, the formal case of the show. And so there is that component. And at the same time, you know, I think there's still this fear of failure in terms of money, right? And I feel like, you guys, I feel like funders and board members without any respect tend not to be a diverse of different socioeconomic levels, right? They tend to come from a place with money, which is why they are on your board, right? But then, and this is me talking, this is not where I'm talking. I have a sense that there's economic disparity, right? Like the things that they're really excited about may not be the thing that folks living for green are excited about, but they have the leverage, right? They can say like, if a funder wants to pay $1 million to make this project happen, do you say never that? Well, like, you can use the money, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you can use the actual millions to pay some folks and then give raise, whatever. But like, you know, I feel like there is a tension, I mean, between that and, you know... There's a lot of antiquity in our lives, you know. There's a lot of, you know, I think... And you know what? I don't have a board. I mean, I haven't got a board. And it is. Yeah. Which I'm working between. And I've never owed anybody any money. So, it's also possible, I mean, there's lots of problematics with that. I mean, I have a board, legal board, for tape and... I have a board and a secretary. But I've never, I've tried it for about two years and it took so much time and people always felt that we were failing and it just wasn't working. And so I said, okay, it was different, wasn't it? I want to sort of ping on that. Because obviously the funding and the work itself has taken so long. And I didn't see it in the system. And because, you know, there's a clean competition, we are disincentivized for collaborating in English and sharing resources. You know, and there is a hole in the, you know, the political commentary where we're going to break this down about sort of why the violence is being drafted for sectors and things like that. I mean, we must go through these sort of elaborate, difficult mechanisms that are almost, you know, we have to include smaller, more nimble, more actual organizations and access to that gap for us. But I want to sort of think about that in relationship to really actually what you're doing with the public. They're not only coming out in America, they're not only coming out for self-interest and discourse. Because I feel that one of the big problems is language. And I think, you are doing very well. Different artistic communities are facing different challenges. And how the talk about the work, and how the conversation is about the work. And we have a lot of talking through the cross. For instance, from, I can imagine, with the perspective of an artificial theater, it's hard to imagine how they would work in the same sort of highway measures. You know, and I heard a story of cases all the time that are trying to work. They don't have, you know, large institutional theaters that walk over a smaller ensemble or, you know, more actual people. They don't know how to negotiate their own infrastructure. And then we have to be able to build a public conversation that empowers artists all the stakeholders to have a real opportunity about how do we talk about the work, how do we talk about risk, how do we talk about success versus failure, what are those things. And so I actually, I want to talk back a little bit. Just sort of, if you want to talk a little bit about, about, because you've been working in the foundation of textualizing and articulating about this for a long time, and also through the public, I'll talk a little bit about that too. I don't know if you can explain it though. You just go, you know. I'm sorry. Well, this is, it's a pretty new journal. There's one issue that you can lob on to public.imgc.org. There's an organization called Imgc.gc. Artists and Spudders. And so, check it out. I also work with, you know, we all need to be more disciplined just because I'm listening to this and I'm thinking the same things. There are a lot of different places where conversations have to happen as well as the work. You know, that we need both. But where, what are the, what are the entry votes? So obviously the internet and it's open access, that's good. You know, I wish that there were someone who wrote about the kind of performance we've been talking about two different times. But I'm an alternative gal, in that basket even if I could. And so like, just because there was like, there's this, there was this great paradigm that that petition came up with. It's, how do paradigms change? In this book. It's called, what does someone think of it in the evening or someone else? But basically, it's about how something to do paradigms change. What allows it to change and the example that the writer is given is he's showing cards very quickly. Not to say like, red of hearts, two of spades, three of clubs. But some of the clubs are red and some of the diamonds are flat. And people are getting terribly confused and upset. They can't prove themselves to see a red club. And they don't want to call it just because there's no language for it. Even though they see it with their own eyes and they don't understand it. So what is it that allows us to see differently? I mean, I agree with you more about how we measure differently. We have such a terrible habit of somewhat monolithic ways of measuring and yet listening to the work, seeing the work. We know there's any number of things that are valuable for us. So, that's what I say. I think one of the most important studies of this conversation and of the initial conversations that we have with people they don't artist. There are many artists who resist having agency, knowing how to write a budget, thinking about the nature of the invitation to the work. I mean, somebody said many ten years ago, somebody from the social justice sector said, oh, you're an artist organizing. Well, not really. But it's very hard, I think, because the structure of how people have to make a living is so backwards in terms of thinking about the future of theater. I mean, the market is sort of less of a fair market that we live in. It's pretty choking. And so, the factory doesn't like to be able to deal with agents until we absolutely have to. And right away a lot of artists are like, I'm not comfortable there. So that's cool, but they don't like to deal with agents, although sometimes we're skeptical of that. We try really hard to make the budget as I've already shown with the artists who are coming. Lots of times we're not so interested. And again, this is not a great thing. This is a system. This is a system. And so I feel like why the book in comedy is so important and why I have been running the family for 20 years is because what are the territories upon which artists can come together to find their own sense of agency and recognize the real importance of that agency in changing and making a world that we live in. I can't back the old and I wish that. I mean, for an artist who's coming to have really kind of a force we need to see things from the perspective not force, but that's what's important. That's what's important. And love we were small enough and possible enough that we are liable and viable and the game just switches up and different things. But I think whenever possible I think it is important to make sure that they are and another comes to the same is when possible. I'm praying that we don't do it on American press but we do and also have them which means that we work very closely. We don't hire an outside house person to do it but I think that's going to be a trouble to potentially lose a little bit of life. They will start to slap on things and you know, we're really having a hard time about handling the green marketing for an in-house. I think that that's, you know, what I think you can is really tied to what we're saying. It's so important to have this whole life. I mean, that's something to stay here I feel like is important in terms of thinking about the future and the incredible quality of all of this because it's not one of our forward-moving entities can do everything. We can do, like I don't have a board, okay? So I don't have that fundraising possibility. I have limited, I have enough money to do what I do and to pay people well to do it but it means that I can't do many, many things that I wish I could do. But you know what, other people you know to me so like I can say, okay well, I have enough to do these six things damn it I have eight more in what I can do and the detail and like the idea of invitation I'm sorry to go back to this I don't understand it so well it's reaching for its understanding I try to teach a course for the mama to a bunch of directors about the stage but how is invitation it was a terrible course but the idea of these only six things that I can do are massive when you think about the extension of the stage and how people are like where does the invitation the invitation starts at least the making of the invitation starts at least the invitation starts at least you know it's like every single tiny bit contains the whole thing and that's the details and that's doing it in house and that you know the minute you start to I totally get it are you kidding please somebody else do this but when you start you have to do that so so carefully I really carefully because we're at time and some people are already going to see if you're on the cash show so I just wanted to quick housekeeping thank you all everybody for being here I want to just talk about really quickly because you talked about it and when I worked with Mikro it was crazy when I realized why he was doing what he was doing about giving the artists like total giving the keys because like he's the greatest example of listening to the artists and making sure it happened and I if you ever want to know how to do it right just talk to us and look at this history and the third thing is if you want to do this conversation going a bunch of us from the Brooklyn County are going to be there from 3 o'clock until like 5 or 6, hanging out and we hope you'll join us there so thank you all everybody and enjoy your