 for what has been an extraordinarily full two and a half days over dinner last night. We were saying now that thing that happened yesterday and then realizing no it actually had happened that morning. But yesterday really was a 10 out of 12 and we went through an immense amount of content and we started with really good content on Wednesday afternoon when we first began. Throughout this we've had a variety of moments to speak publicly but I am absolutely certain that there are things that have not yet been said that need to be said here at this confluence of the rivers of audience engagement and community development. You know just in the brief conversations that I've had with people when I haven't been logisticating with the amazing staff what I've come to see is that there are complexities and nuances about the work that we're doing to engage our audiences to build our communities that need to be aired out among us and that's what this space is for. So as with everything else we've done we're going to try and keep a time frame on any public speaking that you want to do so that we don't privilege people who well like me are able to speak in paragraphs kind of strung together and could do so for 10 minutes at a time but really who needs to hear me for more than 90 seconds when I'm not giving instructions about buses that is. So I'm going to open the call on the floor we've got these two standing mics and I'm going to encourage you to say what has not yet been said and to say what has not yet been said around balancing audiences, new audiences and existing subscribers is the place that I'd like to start because that's where Lynn Carruthers is standing and she's going to capture some of the brilliant ideas that you have about this. Recognizing that we had some content reporting in your cohorts which was fabulous we'd like to encourage is there more to say? Is there more that you're still struggling with? Are there nuances of these conversations that came up over the time that you were working on this together or pieces out of the small group breakouts that really deserve to be heard by everybody that hasn't been heard on Twitter? Dale are you gesturing toward us? Would you be so kind as to approach Devin who will meet you in the middle because we believe in meeting people close to where they are but not actually where they are. And please tell us who you are even though I'm just calling your name. And what I'd mentioned it I guess yesterday or day before what I would have liked to hear heard because I was I was invited to come to TCG as a not solo but as a playwright and as a performer how playwrights and performers felt, feel about their individual participation within theater in term in reference to groups. Because it's annoying because I can hear myself you know but in reference to their experiences in reference to groups in terms of their individual voice how it gets heard how it gets lost in terms of lack of a better term politicking yeah. Do I make any sense? You do I would love to hear your experience with that. Well I think I said at the other day where sometimes certain things that have written this doesn't rep this this doesn't rep that so on the one hand it's about trying to get group how to call it certainly we need support but on the other hand you've got the individual voice of the artist which may not coincide with a group but still needs to be heard because the role of theater I think we're certainly supposed to entertain we're supposedly also supposed to educate and Elizabeth Ashley said it best she said the theater is supposed to be a dangerous place. Where's the danger? Dale in the wild card breakout yesterday you told a story. What story? The story about how am I supposed to sell rock and roll from you? That story can you just tell that real quick? Okay well very briefly this new solo that I'm doing is called forever New York Theater workshop is going to do it and it was done at Kirk Douglas in LA we were at I just left the Long Wharf and now it's going there and it also goes to Portland Center stage I guess I mean a lot of us right outside the box so we'd like to think we do what some of us don't and I'm a tremendous rock and roll fan and so this piece starts and ends at Jim Morrison's grave in Perlishez Cemetery and as a young person and even now as a middle-aged woman I still listen to a lot of rock and roll and the theater the theater is not here and it's not right for me to just call them out like that one of the places that I sent this script to I was told I love this script but I don't know how to sell a black woman listening to rock and roll to a black audience there's the story and also they said you know and they also said you know white people would be fascinated by this and I said I guess I said I can't even wrap my head around that kind of pretzel logic because that's exactly what the hell it is are you pointing to who should be our next speaker so this is what I'm saying that kind of compartmentalized thinking and then what I would have liked to hear heard while here maybe it's another time yeah right the other you know other people who are working you know the working artists they're you know how do they feel parallel not paralyzed but are they I in other words I've seen people like change their work because it didn't fit a quote-unquote group ethic I've seen that happen many times and I would have loved to hear some more about that here so I've had the mic you're good you're good so Annabelle here we go oh me yes and tell us who you are please yep Christine Bruno inclusion in the arts sorry to be a broken record but I'm gonna bounce off what Dale just said and I would I've heard so many great stories and so many enthusiastic representatives for increased diversity in everyone's theater I would just encourage people to make sure that you don't compartmentalize by what Dale just said if you if you want to do a play that you would can set your subscribers or audience base would be you know would consider diverse don't think that by doing that one play that you've that you've done your due diligence try to just expand your your thinking and expand your programming to not even think necessarily I've heard it said a lot today that diversity is different things different people I know I have trouble with that only because I think diversity is all things everything we think is diverse should be considered diversity diversity should be all inclusive so we shouldn't say oh your idea of diversity doesn't jive with my idea of diversity or my theater's idea of diversity is different we all have you know things that we are more concerned with than than other things but try to look at diversity as all inclusive including your programming and I just encourage everybody to not put diversity in the box brilliant thanks great over here let us know who you are I am Sarah Madden from the Wilma Theater this this conference has been really great and I think one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is the age of our audience so our existing subscribers our that they're on the older end not old but on the older end 50 plus and our newer audience they're in their 20s and they're not really getting along and I would love to hear ideas you know offline or whatever about how to get them talking to each other and mentoring each other and seeing our theater through each other's eyes fabulous yes at our last audience revolution convening was it Gabe Zitzeman who offered the notion that many of our subscription audiences are somewhere between 65 and cremated so we're working on changing that demographic all right I want to move down the topic line yes ma'am oh before this was not on that topic because it was riffing off of other things people were saying okay tell us who you are I am Madeline say it from Amarinda so sorry just driving off of a couple things other people said I just wanted to draw attention to something in terms of the way the word diversity is being used is I think that the problem is is that it's being it is being used as a way to facilitate checking boxes as opposed to a way to facilitate inclusion because actually when I came here with a mind for authentic partnerships with diverse audiences what I meant was non-native audiences so it actually a lot of like the things that came up weren't as useful because I actually was looking at including you know white audiences and everyone was assuming that the only thing we were looking at was checking boxes and that's super problematic and ultimately doesn't put us all in the same conversation which is I think what we were shooting for and that I think a really great concept that came up in a question mark session was this idea of new ways of listening and that was something that was really exciting because it was a small room of us and so we just listened and we sat and we had a great moment to talk about new ways of listening to our communities in a way to try and detach ourselves from some of the lenses we bring to the conversations and I think that that is something that is I think getting forgotten in the way that we actually build our partnerships out of respect as opposed to facilitating a need we have to get grants. Well said. The trouble with the dominant culture is it dominates. So we've got Rachel on the queue and then two others over here so Annabelle if you will shift over that way. Go Rachel go. So this is riffing I think off of some of these things and this is probably not as well thought but I'm the in article one I can't believe I'm doing this. In article one of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001 there's this great quote I think as a source of exchange innovation and creativity cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature and I find I have found it extremely problematic that we have not been addressing power dynamics and privilege in this gathering. This is not at all a slight to TCG because I think this has been fabulous and you know I love you because I try to tell you all the time. But I sense that there's a real divide in this room and there's a real divide between language that's being used and I don't mean there's like one group and another group. I think there's multiple groups within this and I'm having a lot of personal struggle with that and I'm finding a lot of and I'm seeing a lot of nods and I'm hearing people talk about that and I've connected with some people individually about that. I think there's a group of us that are completely unaware of this and I think there are some of us that understand it in a way that others of us don't. And honestly I'm like really kind of fucking sick of the people that are unaware of it because it's really not that hard to start dealing with some of this work. I run a quarter of a million dollar operation. We're now a quarter of a million dollar. Three years ago we were $50,000 and we just started working on it because we said it was important and that was the audience we wanted to be working with and I think it's okay if it's not the audience or the community that you want to be working with. I really respect that it's not because that's, I want to go back, sorry and I'm going to wrap up in a second, because that's biodiversity and cultural diversity but don't say that it is when it isn't. Done. In the wild card, the second wild card breakout yesterday which was the one with the moonshine. Our topic ended up being power and power dynamics and so if you look at the other bucket you will see some writing and some mapping around the discussion that we had there but that was a small group discussion. My experience of coming to TCG conferences for the last 24 years has been that there's a lot of unacknowledged power dynamics within the room and that TCG has deliberately endeavored to shift those power dynamics. When I first came to my first TCG meeting in 1991 it was all Lord theaters and a couple of us felt like, maybe it wasn't but it felt like, a couple of us scrappy SPTs. The balance of the population of TCG as I understand it has shifted over that time but we are still very much in that struggle and it's a struggle that replicates the larger struggle in our culture right now. So I want to affirm what you were saying and affirm the fact that it is really troubling and really difficult to bring up. Thank you. Okay, tell us who you are. Hi, I'm Katherine Kovner from the Playwrights' Room and I just wanted to riff on a few of the things that have been said. I think in terms of diversity, I think that one of the impulses that has made us all think about this is the desire to mirror the society around us and in my thinking about diversity that's really the impulse that I'm starting to try to go back to and I think if you think about it that way it's a very holistic way and a little bit more intuitive than the checking the box approach that allows you to think about all of the categories at once and just think about are we representing the society that we see outside our door or however you define your community, you know, in your city, in your state, in your nation and, you know, so that's what I'm trying to do and I think it's an approach that I encourage. It can be a little challenging for those of us who live in places that are 97% white. So looking at those demographics and... Yeah, nation. Nation. There you go. Great. So right behind you we've got two. Pick one. Oh, wow. Yeah. You really can't hear yourself. Let us know who you are. I'm Elizabeth Nearing. I work at Long Wharf Theatre and just off of the conversation we're having about diversity right now something came up in the artistic breakout the other day that I just wanted to talk about intersectionality for a second and the fact that people aren't just boxes, right, and that's something that I think most people in this room I hope agree with and that, you know, when we're talking about having women's voices also having like a multiplicity of different kinds of women, women in power, they're not in power. They can be strong or they can be not strong. That's okay. And that's the same for races, for genders, for all things that there are so many different kinds of people that can be represented on our stages and in our stories and the way we talk about them that it's hard when we're saying, oh, do we have this kind of play? Do we have... And trying to push in season building, how do you make all these different kinds of things a part of the conversation? Short, sweet. Thank you. Brilliant. So let's pass the mic right over here. Hey, I just wanted to go back... But you must tell us who you are. Oh, sorry. I'm Joy Meads. I live in L.A. I work at Center Theatre Group and I'm a member of the Kill Royce. So I wanted to just talk about the revolution, part of the audience evolution and to say that actually I just think it's gonna really help if we acknowledge the fact that what we're talking about in this room are some pretty radical shifts in what we do, how we do it and for whom. And we've heard, I think, at the edges of the conversation some pushback from people hearing complaints, people getting secondhand reports of accounts from their traditional stakeholders that they're not entirely happy with everything that's happening. And I think it's actually important to be very frank about the fact that what we're talking about is a change. For many institutions, I should be clear, not every institution, you know, and that I think the more honest and frank we are about this change, the fact that it will represent a loss for some people who are very comfortable in the status quo, right? But that we believe that it is both necessary for our survival and the morally right thing for us to do as tax-supported organizations are given exemption from paying taxes because we work for the public good, right? That we really want to serve our communities. So I think acknowledging that, acknowledging the loss will help us to make sure that these programs don't get circumscribed, contained, pushed underground. You know, all of those things that you can see happening sometimes when there's a conflict of vision serving those people who have not traditionally been powerful stakeholders. Is there a story that you can tell us out of your own theater? I mean, you're one of the largest theaters in the country. Artists, most core values and work and engaging the community through that, we need to be also protecting that work. The work of the artists at the core who are maybe training every day on a regular basis or undertaking deep research or spending long periods of time to write a script with great support. I think that that work cannot be... I just want to make sure it's not forgotten because that's the work that forms the purpose and the core of the engagement and whether that's with an amateur artist or a professional artist of any ethnicity or background or perspective, that for me is where the real juice is in the conversation. And I also think we need people like Pastor Mike to remind us of those core values, but being reminded is not enough. It's about doing the work, going into the rehearsal room and practicing exactly what we're preaching. And I'm really looking forward to seeing many of you in Cleveland, Ohio for Game Change. Okay, so I think we're moving to Randy, and then if you'll... Randy had the mic off to Rebecca now that she was waiting also. But who are you? I'm Randy Reyes, a Mu Performing Arts in the Twin Cities, an Asian-American theater company that does theater in Tyco for the last 23 years. And I just wanted to... We talked a lot about diversifying audiences, and I just wanted to just to remind or to just bring light to the fact that there are theaters of color doing sustainable work in these communities. You're here. And to please find equitable ways of working with that and really think about power dynamics as you are working with these groups. Please use us as a resource. We do want to work with you. We do want our best for our community, but it takes a different way of working that we have a shared power dynamic so that we're not appropriating our community but lifting them up and giving them a voice. Well said, sir. Well said. Great. So, Rebecca, hold on one second. We're going to go all the way to the back of the room. Hello. Hi, my name is Kristen Schweitzer. I'm with the San Diego Repertory Theater, and I am the Partnerships Manager. That's a title I made up because the question became, why us? Why should this African-American dance group come to our African-American play when we won't go to their work, when we won't form that relationship? So we spent a year, or I spent a year, going to these places without flyers and just meeting them and just watching their art and not saying, okay, see you next time. We have a black play. Peace. Because it's not about getting as many of this minority into our door. It's about forming a lasting relationship where there is no, well, how do we exit softly? Well, now that you've trusted us with your history and your culture in this show, we're doing a Latino show. I know you're not Latino, but would you like to come? Hi, I'm Rebecca Novick from California Shakespeare Theater, and I wanted to talk about the word revolution as Joy was thinking, for me, for my own organization, and I think for many here, just kind of looking at this desire that springs up among some folks to see what we can change without actually changing. Like, could we get more racially diverse audiences without doing anything different, like not doing any different plays or casting actors of color or changing out feels in our lobbies? And I think if we are really talking about revolution, I'd love to see this space move away from kind of tips and tricks to look like we're changing but not really calling for change. I think that when we go that direction, then we have to talk about internal change and I think I really want to say so our organization has begun to often and publicly use the phrase historically white to describe ourselves. So we are a historically white audience with a historically mostly white historically white theater with a historically mostly white audience, by which I mean we're a Shakespeare theater with mostly white staff and a mostly white board and a mostly white audience and for historically white theaters one of the critical steps of being part of this revolution I think is to get your staff and then the circles beyond that working on what Rachel was talking about we are doing anti-racism training, thank you Carmen with our staff, we are beginning to broach that with our board and I think that that conversation needs to move more explicitly into the space as well. And many of you may be aware of the incredible debate sparked by east-west players in their provocation to use the Rooney Rule and to start to build staffs of theaters that actually genuinely, staffs and boards of theaters that actually genuinely reflect the demographics of the communities that we're serving which in California would put you in what is called in demography terms a majority minority where Eurocentric work no longer dominates because Eurocentric people no longer dominate. Radical shift. Okay, over here. Hi everyone, I'm Samantha Weier, I'm the director of education at Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC and I just wanted to take a moment to remind everybody that you all, all of your organizations, wonderful organizations as you're grappling with this, have a very wonderful tool in your back pocket and we are a group of people that have as Liam Jason says, a specific set of skills. Your education people have been listening to other groups have been creating deep programs, have been working with people to have a relationship to the organization not just on stage. And so I just want as some of us in education have been talking, it's like ask us, we have ideas and I would encourage artistic directors, executive directors this week, ask them to come in your office and just have a conversation about how do you think we could engage our community because I bet you they're going to have some ideas. Brilliant. Coming in the back, back here, there we go first here and then back there, yeah. Somebody talked about, I don't know your name, but please tell us. Sorry, Maria Elena, I'm from Chicago, we're a theater for young audiences, we're part of a social service organization so we have the very odd situation of we are in a very, in a neighborhood that has become very hipster and young and predominantly white but it is historically a very immigrant neighborhood and it has been Polish and Ukrainian and it is now for the most part Hispanic, mostly Mexican but also Central American and etc. I want to talk a little bit about the engagement part of an audience engagement and community engagement and I think that I mean Donna Walker Cunin is one of my heroes and she was a professor of mine and she's wonderful and she wrote an invitation to the party and I think that we assume oftentimes if we just invite people to the party they will come, right? And I think that we need to also think about what kind of party it is where the party is because for many communities and I, you know, my family is historically Puerto Rican because I grew up in Hannibal, Missouri but my extended family did not grow up going to theater, it is not something that you do I lived in Mexico for a while and so I know also that way that actually stepping through the doors of a theater is not something that the vast majority of the population accepts as a cultural right that they have so I think when we think about engagement we just assume that that means getting more people into our doors and that may not be the case it may be figuring out either what the programming is and if you have tackled the programming great, wonderful and if you're wondering why they're still not coming you know it might be a price thing but we have a lot of free programming and we still can't get the community to come and it's a built in audience of our social service organization they're still not coming and I'm the only person with a historically Hispanic background in the office and I say think about maybe taking the party to them because if you want them to engage with you like you were saying it's not just about getting them in the door so we're going to go to Steve over here and then the mic's going to move to the back of the room I'm Steve Martin with Child's Play and very interesting with Theater for Young Audiences are that we perform for schools and so our audiences actually don't select what they're going to see and so when we look out into our audience and I'll say probably 20 years ago our organization started producing bilingual plays because we started looking into our audience and started realizing that it was changing dramatically and that 65% of our audience now we believe are Hispanic and that we have to put work on our stage that is authentic to their experiences and so we're actually trying to make sure that we keep up with our audiences and they're changing demographics and how we represent their families on stage with single parents with multi-ethnic families we're kind of wrestling right now with young families and how we represent those on stage so that when that young person sitting in that audience they're saying to themselves I know those people that's my family up there on stage I'm getting it and I'm understanding it and so we were kind of pushed in another way to diversity now internally we're like failing miserably on that and we need to be more purposeful and there was one more thing I wanted to say and I can't remember what it was so I'm done great, okay back here tell us who you are sure, hi, I'm Cathy that switch and just two things one is that because I'm very passionate about the word diversity as an artist and as an artivist and so I just wanted to say that let us not forget aesthetic diversity in this conversation because I think sometimes that gets put somewhere else and it is part and parcel of what we do and I just want to remark on something about moving the field forward which has to do with that revolution has to do with that and so it's ongoing to quote Pastor Mike from yesterday ongoing but I think that the question being that this is just the revolution convening now but the revolution has been happening it's not like it just started today and that maybe we're playing a bit of catch up some of us which is okay and also to just acknowledge that the furthering of a single institution is not the only goal but the furthering of the field which is why I'm just going to encourage you again that diversity be also aesthetic great so I'm just going to give our mic runners a heads up we've got time for two more we've got one there and one there anybody else who's dying to speak and Fay Harga you're going to have the last word okay great tell us who you are so I'm Sarah I'm the managing director at company one theater in Boston and I had this weird conversation with a couple of board members that struck me as weird and we have a very young audience we have a 55% of our audience is under 35 and we feel like we've done, we're 16 years old we've done a lot of work it's very mission driven that we have a very diverse audience in lots of different ways and a couple of board members were like well we need to focus on traditional audiences now because we need to increase our budget we have all these goals so that's what we have to start doing and it kind of I was really taken back and I've been thinking a lot about why all of a sudden this happened and so part of it I think Melissa Hillman kind of touched on this in one of her blog posts what is really kind of I want to make sure we're talking also about the philanthropic community a lot of the I'll speak locally anyway a lot of the money that goes into some of this work that we talk about around engagement seems to really be about changing large organizations and not focusing on some of the smaller institutions that are seeing at least some success in what we're talking about so I want to make sure that was kind of in the room too I know we have some philanthropic voices in the room but that at least locally feels like a huge conversation that kind of is not really happening so there are two resources I want to offer on that one is an excellent study that Holly Sidford authored that pointed out that 55% of the money goes to 2% of the organizations in arts philanthropy the other one is if you want to know what grant makers are thinking much of grant makers in the first content is public on their website it's giaarts.org check me on that Cheryl am I right on that arts.org and they have just published a statement on racial equity in grant making recognizing that doesn't cover the entire waterfront on diversity but it was a powerfully important statement for the organization of grant makers in the arts to have made and they have an ongoing racial and social justice work group that's focusing grant makers attention on that yeah giaarts.org I believe it's .org it is .org I have had confirmation from the field ok so we're going over here and then Fay has got the last word on this we'll have a little song and we'll hear from our fearless leader Teresa that's how it's going to play out tell us who you are hey Dan Barnett from wow this is odd that plus my allergies it's really really echo in here I'm Dan Barnett from National New Play Network and I just want to give a little shout out to TCG and take us back to where we begin with the cohorts thing I have the great privilege right now of working with what I believe are two of the most innovative productive cohorts working in the national theater right now and at NNPN where we are really changing how theater is shared and created through the new play exchange and all the so of course there are other programs like the rolling world premieres if you're not familiar with us see what can happen when you put 90 theaters that are all focusing on the same type of work but it's in many different ways as possible into a group and the network has been pretty astounding and will continue to be the other thing that I'm working on I know some of you were in sessions with me is that the women's voices theater festival which is going to happen in DC this coming fall between September 8 and October 31 there will be about 60 fully produced world premieres of plays by women happening in Washington DC in 55 different theater companies coming together to work on this project we're just getting ready to announce two industry weekends the first weekend and the third weekend of October you can come in and see anywhere from 20 to 30 different pieces if you want and you're really busy but there is such a great power in working together with other organizations that are not like you that I want us to remember always that that is really important so take these things, these contacts you've made this weekend and remember to move those things forward because that's how in our world work gets done beautiful thank you last of our comments from the floor please tell us who you are my name is Faye Hargate I am education associate at Cleveland Public Theater and I just wanted to say human to human connection we talk a lot about connecting with groups and when I think of this group and what I remember from the last three days is the people the actual persons that I connected with and I know if I have an authentic relationship with a person that will validate my organization myself and that invitation to come to my organization because honesty and trust has been built in reciprocity through attending and through having a community and a relationship then that human to human connection is the basis of desire and of the impulse of why we're coming from and also active and honest curiosity you know it's not just to like check a box or to get the money I mean of course that's important because we all want to be thriving companies and we want livelihood inside of our theaters of course but if you as a person are actively curious about someone one person and build that relationship that will have a multiplying effect I believe I've seen with the work at Cleveland Public Theater yeah okay we end with Cleveland because we're going to begin again with Cleveland in June alright this might take a second to get all our sound mix right because we didn't have time to sound check this many many excellent things were tweeted to hashtag banjo lyrics you'll hear a few of those in this tiny little diddy to close us out make sure that you can hear me sing over the dang banjo there we go wha