 Thank you. Oh my gosh, um, you know, I don't think any of us would be offended if you moved closer If you feel the the need to now would be a great moment for a kind of chaotic Reverse diaspora Thank you Good, thank you for moving down. Yeah, we might as well be cozy because we're wonderful Um And I'll just start chatting away while you while you move So thank you Derek for that Very very much when Yeah, this has been a while in the coming and I really appreciate it Derek and I have been trying to find ways To connect for a long time since he was a child at the TCG conferences and I was already old And One of the things that I think we've shared That is so apparent at this gathering this extraordinary gathering is a sense of like trying to see through The maps of the theater world that obscure the real map of the theater world and It's been a long-term project and I just have to say with huge gratitude and all the Looking at the program for these four days It feels like you and the folks here at Georgetown have really Broken through that map and and really you know it's like those those things where you see the Ran McNally and you realize that the United States looks bigger than everything else in the world and You've done that revision around the theater and you've brought the world here and you've brought the real change makers and practitioners that are here, so thank you for that and and I'm like a big fanboy over here with this panel because This panel embodies that very thing and the people here Only one of whom is new to me. The others are people I love and admire and worship from a near or afar and So it's really an extraordinary Group and I think before I'm gonna do a little preamble, but before I do that Just introduce yourselves, and if you feel like reading what you love just do that if you don't just skip the shit Because we're live streaming so we have to everybody has to be a mic everybody has to be Elvis today Hi, I'm Tamela Woodard. I'm very nice to be here. I am I love audiences Okay, one other person does too I will you will find me a perfect match for many of you I am the associate justice director at WP theater formally women's project There's some lab members in the house. I am a co-founder of pop-up theatrics which creates immersive theater and Models of collaboration internationally and some of our partners are in the house right now I'm also here as a really proud representative of on God Arts where I am in collaboration with Annie and co and Laila buck who's a writer Do we each have our own microphone? Oh my god There's no college. I've ever taught at has Secret secret is that I love musicals. I love them Places all over the United States Good morning, everyone. My name is Raymond Caldwell. My name tag isn't here, but it says I love Jasmine Rice It's like I am the artistic director at theater Alliance here in Washington, DC in southeast Anacostia Hi, I'm Maria Manuela Goyanas. I'm the artistic director of will we mammoth So many people here we could have done this panel like three times over with the amount of heavy weights They're in this room actually looking at us. So it's a little bit. Whoa And I like dulce de leche anything with a little bit of caramel on it. I'm in I'm Stephanie Ibarra. I'm still the new artistic director at Baltimore Center stage And I really love My name is Michael road I'm first really honored to be Sitting with this group of people and to be in a space with this group of people So really honored to be here. I'm the artistic director of sojourn theater a 20 year old ensemble It's made up of 15 artists who live in seven cities around the US and work collaboratively on different projects And I'm also the co-founder of something called the Center for Performance and Civic Practice Which describes itself as a national resource for artists and communities Working together to build arts-based community led transformation And we do capacity building in lots of spaces and my title there is the lead artist for civic imagination Thanks for having me Thank you guys and I echo what Maria said about this group. It's great to see you all here So I want to just ramble for a few minutes and read something and then turn to the panel And I really only have one question which you already know what it is. So you better, you know step up and talk a lot The The idea is Derek talked about for this panel was really to talk about Ancestry and what we carry into the future as we're building a new future and when I say we I really mean they Because this is I mean again It's another example of the real made visible that these are the leaders of the American theater now Among the leaders among the people in this room But also the work that this group of people has been doing has redefined the aesthetics of our theater and the ethics of our theater and the justice of our theater and not always been Visible as the mainstream and now suddenly As if it happened overnight The mainstream is here the The person that I'm bringing into this room is a great founder of the American Regional theater movement who's from right here in DC Zelda Fitch handler and one of the things that Zelda has this look just this little quote Which is a Progress is a snail that jumps You know and my sense of that is that things move So slowly and then suddenly there's a jump And so I think that's that's kind of the moment what this moment feels like for all of the Other kinds of weird and heinous jumps that are going on in our culture There's this beautiful one that that were in the midst of so we wanted to explore You know what what do you carry from the past into the future? And what do you let go of and one of the things I was reminded of I don't know if Michael will Remember this but a passing conversation we had at a network of ensemble Theaters board meeting some years ago and I said something about how important it was to remember the founding impulses of theaters and he said something like Yeah, as long as they weren't based in racist sexist white supremacist You know thinking and so there's this This is I feel like this kind of defines the terms of this conversation for at least for me Which is like what do we look back to and carry forward and what do we really? Are we gonna fight to leave behind and not carry forward or change? I don't know if you remember that moment you do oh Jesus really I would have said we had never argued I'm really arguing. We were arguing. Yeah, okay. I enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. Okay. I love you, too. Okay So I just want to read something before I turn it over to everybody and this is also from Zelda Fitch Handler so for those of you who don't know in 1950 right here in a segregated DC she founded arena stage And that theater obviously still exists today. She led it for about 40 years and Three times in that the history of that theater she tried to tear it down and rebuild it as an a fully integrated institution and She by her own measure. She failed every time The first time she tried to do it through the acting company the second time she tried to do it top-to-bottom Organizational and the third time I think she was just sort of cheering from the sidelines as she moved moved away, but this is actually from 1968 and She starts this and I should say I'm currently editing her collected Writings and speeches which she couldn't finish before she died about three years ago And so I have the great honor and really soul nourishment of going back to it on a sort of daily basis And it's taking a long time because there's a lot there and she was an amazing thinker and writer So I'm gonna read this is gonna take a couple minutes and then I'm gonna shut up and turn to you guys So this is 1968 and one of the things she's describing is something that the art critic Harold Rosenberg talks about in terms of our ability to see what's happening in visual art and he uses this example from the Revolutionary War a moment where the British Redcoats were marching through the forest and Because they were marching to get to the battlefield Which was how they knew war to be fought on a battlefield They couldn't make sense of the fact that the colonists and the Native Americans were shooting at them from behind the trees So they're so focused on what Rosenberg calls the cannons of their craft Which is we fight battles on an open field that they missed the reality and they were slaughtered So she's drawing on that example, which I think is an amazing Image so here's what she says 1968 institutions and movements atrophy Theaters wither away or become stale when contact with reality is weakened and when imitation or reputation repetition substitutes for direct experience and constant improvisation Theaters in America face that danger at this moment. They are like the Redcoats in Rosenberg's description They are marching according to the cannons of their craft and do not see what is behind the trees When I look around however Beyond our two perfected technique and what Rosenberg calls the cannons of our craft a deep visceral Intuition tells me that the power of our art is being blunted deadened and caged We are like the Redcoats in the wrong place Washington DC the nation's capital city is the first city in the country to become Predominantly Negro 63% and she's using the term Negro, which was what she would have used in 1968 Its school system is over 90% Negro yet We have no Negro actors in our permanent company and attendance by Negro members of the community Except for plays like the great white hope blood knot and a fellow which have Negro actors on stage is practically nil The Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders recent report concluded that our nation is moving towards two societies One black one white separate but unequal it warned against the development in our major cities of an urban apartheid This is the single most pressing social phenomenon of our day and with isolated exceptions absent from our stages One would think it did not exist The Negro struggle for power economic power business power political intellectual psychological human power Foundationally affects his relationships with other Negroes with whites and with himself This struggle reverberates through contemporary American life Each of us feels its vibrations every day and yet we come into our theater at night as if into an unreal world a White audience sits around a stage upon which a white company tells the sad tales of the death of Kings Surely we are in the wrong place And it is not a geographical dislocation. It is a profound aesthetic Dislocation the style of our art is cut off from its source just a little bit more Intellect like it is Negro columnist Chuck stone remembers My minister in Hartford always told the story of a little boy who used to race the old trolley cars pulled by horses The boy would run along for a while with the trolley card sprint ahead and then drop back to taunt the motorman What say mr. Motorman, can't you go any faster? Yes, son. I can reply the motorman, but I've got to stay with the car We are all all the theaters simply staying with the car By doing so we deny to our work a dimension of tension abrasion Puranity connection immediacy Aliveness a dimension of power so that's Zelda in 1968 and Here we are in what year is this? 2019 and some of you have Run things of in some measure for a long time. Some of you are starting some of you are on the precipice and So the question is really Who do you bring with you? Who do you leave behind? What are you bringing with you? how do you think about the past in as you imagine and build the Future for your theater for our culture and I do have a sense that Unlike the founding of the theaters, which were really the attempt to build theaters in this country and In an effect culture that way that your change is a change Not just of leadership, but an attempt to really affect cultural change and you guys have been doing this work for a long time in really different venues So Follow Zelda I throw it to you. Anybody want to go first? I know Maria doesn't I Yeah, Stephanie Thought a lot about what who to bring into the space today and normally I would bring in Something from Thornton Wilde about the socialness of theater, but that somehow didn't feel authentic or appropriate today. I I am spending a lot of my time these days interrogating lovingly but interrogating The foundation on which this art form is built and the constructs of Exclusion and oppression that we perpetuate every day within it and I'm struck actually we I mean this is like a little bit of a tangent But I'm struck by the quote from Zelda that felt that feels simultaneously heartbreaking and encouraging and nourishing and It makes me angry because The quote implies a passiveness a lack of agency and a lack of complicity That I think is not true that it I think it's really important to think about Not just what is done to our art, but that we have the agency to either Reinforce it or dismantle it and therefore I'm sitting here today with I've started to reach out beyond The theater makers I love and adore from our foundational Years, and I've started to reach into present-day activist spaces So this is where I'll ask Maria to pull her book Emergent strategy out of her backpack As we both obviously showed up with with this on our mind and our heart and I want to read to you a passage from emergent strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown that I use as a kind of totem every day Art is not neutral It either upholds or disrupts the status quo advancing or regressing justice We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power So that I carry that with me like on the regular and that is what I use every time I go into a casting meeting a hiring session whether it's about HR or designers or or or or Thank you. Yeah, we'll come back Yeah, right. Oh, no, but I have to read from it I So, yeah, I struggled with thinking about the past and the ancestors There's so many people who I won't want to bring into the space No question. One of them is sitting right there. I'm Howard Shaw. It's I'm so sorry Howard I have to because what you did almost 40 years ago is is that I'm here because of what it is that you created and We were able to create here in DC and the thing that I would quote you that I still carry through is Well, he is here to Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable that is Howard show it So I just want to bring you You're you're as much on this stage as I am And I think that one of the things that is happening at least in the in the progress jump is is this feeling of We've done a lot of looking behind us And we are I I believe I'm saying we as like a cohort of folks who are taking over these organizations We're really interested in actually sort of Creating the new language the language that we're going to actually all hopefully become comfortable with in our practices That is based on what is actually as Zelda actually it talks about what is happening around us And that language is created at every single moment in culture, right? Like it is changing all the time that is changing all the time and we all have to actually take responsibility For getting hip with How it's changing for people, right? And so our theater organizations have to do that too. So So I want to bring also Adrienne Mary Brown into the space, but for me this is less of the philosophy and actually more of The kind of list of things that I'm looking at when I think about how to make change in the future And so you don't have to write them all down because you can buy the book. It's a principles of emergent strategy And you know put money in her pocket because she's awesome But but here's just like a short list of the things that I think about and I have printed up on my You know above my desk Small is good Small is all right. So hyper local right in some ways Change is constant Be like water There is always enough time for the right work There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have Find it Never a failure always a lesson Trust the people if you trust the people they become trustworthy Move at the speed of trust Focus on critical connections more than critical mass build the resilience by building the relationships Less prep more presence and what you pay attention to grows There's this I just on that last point. I just want to I think about this so often there was a documentary of What was named the animator Chuck Jones who did the Roadrunner and all that stuff and He tells the story about a an art teacher who reprimands us a little girl For drawing a flower that's bigger than herself He looks at this picture. She's drawn of her little self and the big flower and says No, that's not the way they are They're small and you're big because he thinks it's about self-esteem esteem, but the thing you look at grows. It's so it's such a Perfect. I also want to bring something up. What just happened here with Stephanie and I is also a small example of us attempting to make Abundance actually the thing that we walk through the world with so one of the questions that you said Todd was What do you want to leave behind and scarcity the idea of scarcity the idea that we don't have enough as the wealthiest country in the World is just I'd like to leave that behind and so in even this moment of just seeing each other and being like Oh, we have the same book There is a world imagine a world where not that long ago. We would have been like, ah, I got a change mine I actually need to be the individual my individual self is more important Actually, and my ego is more important in this moment to actually separate myself from Stephanie in some way And I just want to point to the fact that like actually together you you're we're making a point by keeping it that way Right, and that's like a really small example of just Shifting to an abundant strategy rather than a scarcity strategy. Does that make sense? I'm gonna let some of these guys go so that You can mix it up a little bit gentleman. I invite you to speak. Yeah, I'll definitely I'll jump in I'll jump in for sure for sure So I too struggled with this question because I thought there were so many people that I wanted to bring into this space My father who was a militant black panther who demanded my black education in white space who demanded that my white teachers Give me a black education and that black education if they didn't know it. They were required to learn So there was something so profound about this idea like who can I bring I would love to call on my father I would love to call on on to zaki shang gay who taught me personally like what it was to be an activist and to use your art as Activism and then I continued to search and and I think that the person that I would actually love to call into this face Is James Baldwin? When I when I imagine my artistry when I imagine who I am and what I want to do with my artistry I centered James Baldwin often James Baldwin Gave voice to very Ideas that that are difficult to wrap your mind around He was really interested in intersectionality what it was to be a black man in America Yes, but what it also was to be a gay man in America And so when I start imagining my own sense of activism I Center this idea of intersectionality. What is at the center and how do we find commonality there? And I think that Baldwin did that quite brilliantly and so in one of his very last interviews I think Baldwin spoke to me most clearly about what my role as an artist activist is He writes art has to be a kind of confession I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine The effort it seems to me is if you can examine and face your life You can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives And they can discover to the terms with which they are connected to other people This has happened to every one of us. I'm sure you read something Which you thought only happened to you and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoevsky This is a very great liberation for the suffering struggling person who always thinks that he is alone This is why art is important Art would not be important if life were not important Most of us no matter what we say are walking in the dark whistling in the dark Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next or how one will bear it this Irreducible this is irreducible and it's true for everybody now It is true that the nature of society is to create among its citizens a Society to dismantle the illusion of safety But it's also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion Artists are here to disturb the peace And so I want to use my artistry to do just that disrupt the peace disrupt easy Conversations particularly around activism. I am very interested in the use of the word Activists and what we really mean by activists And so I think Baldwin asks us to really critically analyze what that is and I want to use my art to do that That's who I call into the space So in this period of abundance, so do I Yeah, and I and I also was thinking like oh gosh Stephanie if I've already had this conversation I'm gonna bring up Baldwin again, you know But it is so true it's for me Baldwin was just an incredibly early influence before I actually knew who Baldwin was I read the fire next time when I was 13 and read wrote an essay about it that Won some prizes, but the thing that happened is that I thought oh, I am Synthesizing my thoughts and and if I say it maybe someone will listen It was the first lesson that actually I could say a thing And then it wouldn't just be in my journal and my diary and that there was power and actually exchange And so I've been thinking about violence. I've been thinking about congregation. I've been thinking about mortality this I've been thinking about How we can't see what's before us and so this this idea of the redcoats going like the battles over there You know when it's so obviously around here I've been thinking about how it is that we are not able to engage in a very effective way with Politics in the world such as it is because we think the battles over there and we can't see what's before us and in in the In our inability to see we have an inability to act So I'm I'm going to bring Baldwin back in with a slightly earlier essay That's around the creative process and the role of the artist The artist is distinguished from all other responsible actors in society That is the politician the legislator the educators of the scientists by the fact that he Cannot allow any consideration to supersede his Responsibility to reveal all that he can possibly discover concerning the mystery of the human being Society Must accept some things as real But he the artist must always know that visible reality hides a deeper one and That all of our action and our achievement rest on things that are unseen The society must assume that is stable, but the artist must know and must let us know that there is nothing stable under heaven One cannot possibly build a school teach a child drive a car without Assuming or taking some things for granted, but the artist cannot and must not take anything for granted But must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war And he does at his best what lovers do Which is to reveal the beloved to himself. I moved to the Southwest Arizona three years ago after a decade in Chicago and Two questions that have become Clear to me in the relationship between Activism and art making that the Southwest has made clear to me and the complexity of the battles going on in the Southwest In some ways kind of a front edge of a lot of battles happening in this country right now those two questions are Particularly for artists who step into spaces that they say are about change What are you willing to risk? and What is the promise you make when you say you are a listener in our community and To me those two questions are Questions that as I try to frame for myself my dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the American not-for-profit Theater complex of the last 50 years Which to me has a very powerful legacy, but also to me has not been an ideal theater in so many ways Although there have been many many many ideal visionaries at the center of trying to guide that trajectory is trying to trying to understand the relationship and responsibility of institutions that have public good at the center of their mission and The artists who are charged with leading them sustainably in meaningful and economically viable terms I think that those questions are ones that in my observation are at the heart of a lot of the questions that leaders who are taking over these Institutions are grappling with so powerfully to the benefit of all of us sort of in the field and it's a tremendously vital time I think because those questions are being asked I have that book in my bag, too I mean it's it's a great book and to me it It relates to I guess the the two folks that I bring into the room Are two folks that I was privileged to have as mentors and friends pink Chong and Augusto Boal Both of whom I got to spend time with learning from collaborating with Augusto's no longer with us pink certainly is and both of them something I value greatly in their practice and in the sort of organizations that they have Built at various times in their lives and careers is a commitment to process and Something that you read Maria You know it will good work will take the time that it takes para phrasing But I imagine there's a lot of people in here who have interactions with institutions and systems Where it's pretty clear to you what would need to happen Or at least you have a thought an impulse on what would need to happen ethically For certain kinds of practices to take place or relationships to be built or change to occur and very often the system Institution is set up in a way where that time does not exist and Yet we know that without that time. We actually know what can't happen. We know it's it's not that we think maybe it will anyway We actually know we just are very are very practiced for many reasons at having to say okay The time doesn't exist and and we are in a moment where I think many people are saying okay What needs to change for that time and that relationship building to actually be the primary thing? I'll In service to the conversation rather than read the quotes I'll say from Ping what I bring into the space is a rigor around commitment to aesthetic experimentation and True relationship building in community outside of the art space and from Augusto what I what I always bring is a Belief that no matter how horrid The suffering around one is he Who saw and experienced a lot of pain and trauma always believed that theater was a way he could collaborate With friends and neighbors and meaning makers to imagine another future and That that collective imagining was another future was as necessary an effort of any artist as telling beautiful stories and That the two didn't have to be mutually exclusive and often are inclusive, but for him that Imagining with a purpose Was crucial, so that's what all that's really all fantastic Should have gone earlier Tamela gave you a chance You missed it I just I mean I just kind of just kind of just sitting with kind of like all of this this wisdom and just so much there too what to think about and And I guess, you know, just kind of just kind of holding that And I just think about this kind of like how like I was kind of astounded I couldn't end up on the stage kind of with like these brilliant folks and in the presence of other brilliant folks and Because I get so many ways like I just lived a life outside of mostly outside of institutions and and and so so I really appreciating this big thinking and And so much, you know, I really appreciate Raymond just like Bringing your father into the space and I was just thinking about my father You know who's 72 Refuses to retire because all he's because he's worked since he was 11 and He doesn't know a life where he doesn't work and so he's terrified that if he stops working He's gonna die and it's just like, you know, and so so like there's something about like working that I just like like for me like Carrying kind of that that the thing that the work that we do And and and you know, there's a thought about the question of who do we want to bring in? I'm just so aware of there's like the The paths that that have been kind of carved out for me that that I get to kind of Continue on and hopefully expand a little bit for for others And so so so you know in that in that kind of thinking about my father think about this I think about just kind of the the art the celebration that was just always present that lived outside of our institutions The I think about just kind of the way that people would kind of in the neighborhoods where we grew up They would just decorate their yards and and the expression of that in the the singing on Saturday night, you know as we were kind of having family meals or the storytelling and the jokes recounted That that happened and and so so something I hold very dear are just The grassroots part that the part that the work that happens outside of our theaters and and and and how how there's so much value like People have it people people have art and theater in their lives and and and how do we hold that up? I think about so so the people I think about that to answer thoughts questions, you know You know, there's a guy back in Wisconsin named Robert guard Who was just committed his life to? To grassroots theater to say like what are the stories around us? Like who are the people who are telling the local stories in a local place celebrating this land? this culture this community and then I think about you know Garcia Lorca in in in Spain with la varaca who's touring to small places saying We all deserve theater and I think about Luis Valdez who kind of did his version of that in in In fields and kind of farming fields across the California the Southwest and then I think about like the people who just like Offered me so much and and gave me so many opportunities Bill Rauch and Allison Kerry who who founded cornerstone theater company and and so so these are all folks who are kind of continuing this line of of this grassroots theater notion of place of the work that happens kind of insight in place of a culture of a people with for by and And so so so that that that brings me to kind of a quote that I actually so so in my mind I think this is a Todd London quote, so I And if it's not if these are not Okay, if these are not your words. I think I heard it from you. Yeah You did okay But they're but their words are actually live with me If the regional movement of six if the regional theater movement of 60 years ago was about Decentralization we find ourselves at a moment of recentralization Recentering the American theater in our neighborhoods town squares and community centers and changing the way theater fits into everyday life Yeah, is that you? I Think that was 1989 Bloomsburg it was about Bloomsburg. Yeah. Yeah, but but that that that is them that that that Thank you. Wow So I've been taking notes and I've been trying to listen really hard and I I'm thinking about that Quote about the there's a conversation in the room You got to find it and I kind of want to get out of the way and let you guys have it I'm not gonna leave the stage as much as I kind of want to It's so you'll do that, but I I rather than me respond I wonder if you have things you want to respond to In each what you said what you read Questions for each other. I I do want to know what you all want to leave behind. I Do want to know what you what you're done with So that we can all talk about that I'm very interested in leaving behind an oversimplification of activism I think that if the center of a conversation is like racism is bad then Then for me, that's an oversimplification. So I'm interested in leaving oversimplified Conversations behind like let's get it because when we start moving past that oversimplification Everybody kind of gets messy and dirty Right, and and so there is something about our shared humanity. So I'm gonna leave oversimplification behind I would really love to leave behind the word diversity But that's not but but also The The thing that I'm sitting here. I'm struck by as we talk about the intersection of art and activism and this sort of the promise of the artists or the arts inside of a community we tend to It's not it's not wrong, but we tend to lean into the sort of the soft skills or the the Intangibles the soul nourishment and the representation and the the And there is so much more and I want to leave behind the these Simplet this oversimplification I think of the idea that our art and activism takes place on the stage and is represented by X number of black or brown bodies or X number or the content of the socio-political whatever whatever Because it also takes place in the hiring the wages The production budgets it it takes place in the earning potential of a fur this theater versus that theater We're talking about playwrights. That is where the activism begins and I Really want to be done with the idea that it that once it shows up on stage in our stories That we've checked a box. I want to leave behind the idea that if you make it they will come This is not true If you make it you have made it also the idea of the theater as a building That the theater is people and that the magic of the theater is in the congregation And is the community that you can call forth and that the written richness of the theater is in the people Who are in the room and that the more profound and different those stories of people are The richer the experience for everybody the audience and the artists and that that's the thing that we have to be Concentrating on is making sure that we gather people from many different stories And many different points of view so that we can be reflections I want to I guess two things in this moment one is related to what you offered Stephanie I want to leave behind the notion that a theater's output or product Meaning generally what is being offered here as an example of the virtuosity that that particular theater can accomplish Whatever the venue or event I want to leave behind the notion that that is the only Significant contribution that the artists involved in that space and building have to make to the public good of the place Where that building exists or not a building and and part of that is the the notion that the assets that Artists all disciplines, but we're in a theater space today the assets that artists bring in a process Kind of focused way have tremendous opportunity to impact community outcomes in addition to the way that you frame that Mark and I are actually a part of a conversation on this stage Saturday That's very much about that But the second thing I'd like to leave behind is I'd like to leave behind boards that out of nervousness I'm sorry my mic is gonna go out, but I'd like to leave behind boards that boards in general but boards that through Continuing to push the narrative of What gets presented has a direct relationship to Viability both economic and stature begin to take on a certain gatekeeper role not just in terms of content, but in terms of Accomplishness accomplishing and allying around a community around the kind of processes that a theater and artist might get involved in That board should be shepherds of the vision of public good and artistic excellence But not not not what a place should be doing in relation to what might make it hard for that organization To continue in a way that board thinks is viable I want to add to that because I'd like to leave behind the idea that people of color don't have spending power Because I think that that dovetails exactly with what you're saying which is basically that like it won't quote-unquote sell right or And Leads us Yeah, it'll get people just to repeat that for the live stream It'll get people upset, you know and people will help heckle or something like that. I yeah, I Right so the the country is moving towards You know a majority People of color very very soon. It's happening They have spending power if they're not seeing themselves represented on stage or stories or being reached out to in the kind of building Relationships that we're talking about because we're using corporate strategies in the nonprofit art to be able to actually reach communities Which makes no sense? Because we're not Nike Right we're not it we're so by doing that ultimately We're really cutting ourselves off at the knees in terms of those relationships that we can have And going into them with not actually Without the kind of like I don't know generosity of spirit that is needed to be able to actually allow Artists of color and people of color to feel welcome in those spaces. Yeah, I also want to Let's just leave behind our spaces I think architecture is is is really problematic and I think it's it's really impacting aesthetics And I think a lot of those things that it like a second next slide yesterday and he was talking about like with the wilding of Cultures and and and there's something about like that. It's got me thinking about like how do we That idea of you know, like it's gotten too studied. It's gotten too Too clean too nice to to everything and I think a part of it is just it's just art. It's a problem of architecture So so there's that and then and then like frankly man I just kind of want to fucking blow up capitalism like I just wanted like enough like just leave it behind Like no more like it's the it's the root of so many problems Like I just like that's just kind of what I'm kind of working on like how do we just ship Enough can I ask a question? Please a question of you I mean between Baldwin and the book Emergent strategy there there is an incredible strain in this conversation around organizing and around analysis And so I'm really curious how folks up here are bringing organizing and critical analysis to their decisions as artistic leaders as Leaders of staffs working overseeing HR and how you think about and negotiate your relationships with community And I would partly even I mean I believe you just worked on a pretty big show in New York. Am I right about that? Yes, like a pretty big Tony nominated show. Yes So I mean you're in in that world, which isn't even the not-for-profit complex, but as a whole nother complex So I'm just interested in how these values and threads play out in the different spaces that you're all negotiating and leading That show being Hades town that Tamela was the associate director of yes I don't have this other book with me, but Eric Lou who runs citizen University in in Seattle Wrote this book called you're more powerful than you think and I read it. I can't remember when it was all about Activating individual power activating collective power and understanding the levers of power that are inside of all of us and That really landed on me and so now as I go into Rehearsal rooms or staff meetings and what have you I may get fired for saying this but But I find myself saying to my team If they're unhappy with a thing To organize themselves to come to rise up against the executive leadership or whatever Because because I hear so much. Oh, I I was waiting to be empowered to do that. No You have the power You have the power to push different levers in front of you Which lever are you gonna push find it push it over and over again and then find a friend and push it together Push it together and you just amplify your voice so that concept and that idea is is Is something I'm navigating every day and what is the right balance of like Telling folks you want to know what you all make your salaries share it Don't wait for me to give you permission to just share it. Just talk amongst yourselves Rise up and demand equality and I'm navigating that impulse with like Capitalism or what or whatever that you know, I I so appreciated you bringing up the oversimplification because In case you couldn't tell I am pretty white looking and One of the things that as a white passing Latina I have to deal with is being sort of lumped into the category, right of Person of color without actually speaking to my particular skin experience, which is super different from My darker brothers and sisters, right? So I get to maneuver through the world and Without certain biases and prejudices that for example my sister can't move through the world like that So the thing that I'm bringing up to the table is about this analysis is like I am doing that analysis I have to keep doing it. I'm gonna be doing it for the rest of my life Right, and so what I'd like to offer To folks in the room in addition to emergent strategy any white person in the room if you want to Deepen your analysis There's a book that just came out called white fragility that is a great book to do that And I would suggest that if you haven't read it, please do read it And even just for myself like I you know, it's so funny whenever I talk to Communities of color. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna read white fragility. I want to go read that book And I'm like, well, you don't really need I mean you deal with this stuff all the time, right? but it actually But it actually does bring up a lot of different it makes It made me feel like oh, I wasn't crazy, you know that things are happening, right? You sort of feel a little crazy that when when things occur in that way The other thing that I want to say is part of my positional power But also my whiteness has to do like how it makes me Specifically in a room with people of color shut up more Right it and make sure that I'm centering the experience of again Folks that don't necessarily have the floor and that kind of power, right my darker brothers and sisters And in rooms of white folk, I better speak the hell up Right from my experience because that's my responsibility. That's my skin experience my skin privilege. Yeah You help you help me actually figure that out. So I really appreciate you Annabelle So I just recently became artistic director at theater Alliance and theater Alliance is in Anacostia Which is a historically black neighborhood now? I am African-American but African-Americans are not a monolith and I even as I come in I'm an outsider in this community so I've been spending a lot of time actually Getting to know my community. It's important for me as a leader and when we start talking about activism I am a firm believer that activism is local Activism isn't something that we do on the national level. We do it on the local level So I'm very interested in what's happening in my community and I as a new leader cannot go into that community and assume What that community needs who am I to assume what that community needs? So the first thing that I did is I moved to Anacostia my partner And I got a house and and I am getting to know the neighborhood and so I've been telling everyone I am on my Aveda tour. I am like shaking hands waving rocking babies I Am getting to know my neighborhood because ultimately I want to serve my neighborhood And so for me to do that I need to know folks who live there and I need to fold myself into that community So that then when I know what that community needs I know how to program that on my stages the goal of our work at theater Alliance is to create Conversations in our community and I think Colin have the the previous artistic director did something quite brilliant in creating space post our shows After our our performance as we always have these post-show conversations And it's interesting to watch as our community sits in a circle and talks about not how the sauce is made We're not interested in like I really like the show. How do you memorize lines? That's not of interest, right? But instead how are you emotionally involved in this work? And I think that the next phase for our company is really to teach our audiences now in this circle If you are so moved by what you saw and what you experienced This is how you move to action in this community This is how you work in this community because at the end of the day for me Activism again is local and so if I'm inspiring my audiences to get involved in what's happening in Anacostia What's happening across the river and then perhaps we can start to bridge that difference of what's happening across the river? I have a question So one of the things that I am Struggling with or that occupies a lot of my mind and conversation. This is apropos of like, how do you? come in from the outside and Insinuate yourself, it sounds like bad, but you know become a citizen of your new community and one of the things I find myself the impulse that I have as a leader as an artistic producer and as a citizen is to Constantly be asking groups of people. How can Baltimore Center stage be of service to you? How can I be of service to you and I ask that question very authentically because I legitimately Don't think I have the answer, you know, I have impulses, but I'm curious particularly in the work that you do Michael how how you even go about assessing How to be of service or does the idea of service even live? I it seems like it's at the center of so much of what you all are doing and I would love to hear more Say for me, we've actually we tried not so much to use the term service Not just language-wise, but idea-wise and The way that you just said, you know I'm trying to figure out like how my theater can be of service what I think I've found and what I try to work on is how do we build a relationship and Listen and before asking what I can do Try to get to a place where I can Learn about what someone else not just needs But is aspiring to an imagining and that's crucial like like an asset-based model rather than a deficit-based model Like what's happening here? What are the strengths here because there's many wherever we are, right? Even mapping local assets and then sort of trying to understand what are the stories this place tells itself About itself and what are the stories this place perceives others tell about it? And what's the distance between those two things and how does that live in the people who live in this place? If we're privileged enough to be in a conversation where folks want to share that with us But but I think it is about like what's what's the aspiration so that there's the possibility for collaboration? support alliance and accomplishing perhaps rather than I Can serve you with the resources I have which kind of assumes you there certainly must be something you need from me now Often what it results in is like we may have resources Artistically or in some in some of many ways that actually can be in service to but I but I My experience is starting with the frame of how to be in service to is already kind of perpetuating You know both systems of whiteness and savoriness and all that stuff also They've been doing Kevin Minneapolis Is this thinking about being a good neighbor and just like creating this good neighbor framework of You know we all know what that means and we all know that it just kind of relies on trust And you know other people understand that concept and so So just like how can we just be a good neighbor to to the people who to everybody was around this? Is another way of that that we've been approaching it? I've been examining in my own community. What have been the barriers to entrance? What are the ways in which the cultural institution of theater has disenfranchised? people of color at large yes, but also people in my community and and asking them point Blankly why is it that you've not gone to theater Alliance? What has stopped you from coming and and also being able to like sit very quietly and have my feelings heard at times like? To hear the ways in which my community has responded or is responding to the work Has it has been really interesting for me? And I think that at the center now of what I'm looking to do is asking myself How can we share and pool resources? I know that when I start thinking about the community the community leaders within Anacostia We all have a vested interest in building Anacostia and creating a space that is a Community that is black that is positive And so how are we pooling and sharing? Resources and how are we pooling and sharing audience? What drew you there in the first place? to Anacostia I Will say that it was one of the post-show conversations I went to go see a show and I had one of the most powerful experiences. I will say that the thing that drew me to Theater Alliance was a post-show conversation in which I sat in a circle with perhaps some of the like it looked like the United Colors of Benetton and and there were all ages and and everyone was sharing these very personal experiences that were related to the art and it started This idea of like wow, this is community and what a powerful powerful experience And so how do we build upon that and how do we invite more people into that circle? I'm always imagining that circle is so large that we don't have space in the theater, right? But how are we making space for everyone? Could I ask you a question? Well, a lot of your current work is about dialogue and bringing folks together. I think particularly around Different experiences and trying to make spaces I know the piece you worked on at Cleveland and the piece you're gonna share a bit of here so I wonder this whole the conversation about organizing and I'm gonna say work that attempts to kind of bring people across borders or boundaries like how are you thinking about that work? Yeah, I think I'm definitely like a theater worker like I find myself empowered inside of the Or at least if I can put it in the scope of my brain that what I'm doing is creating it through the lens of theater Right, and that's my activism and it's a you know, I think I was like mark is such a pure artist That that that idea that the work itself at hand is is is valuable and creating right if you if you come on Friday Friday tomorrow At five o'clock. I'm working with at six o'clock Six o'clock at five o'clock will be rehearsing working with on guard arts with Layla Buck who is Creating a play called mix and match that is about two different kinds of communities coming together Muslim Family and a Christian family and we're all gonna go to a wedding party together the whole audience You know and everybody understands what it means to have two different kinds of Families try to come together With their own particular traditions and really that's a sort of you know microscopic way of looking at the macro which is this country is a bunch of different fricking families trying to come together, you know in celebration in the morning and So I I think that if I could get people in a room together Sitting next to each other breathing the same air and listening to the same good stories Not the bad stories But the good stories That if we can start there, that's an already radical act of Congregation and we can make nothing by ourselves. We can make everything with each other and I mean we can make arguments and we can make fights and we can make violence and we can make wars But let's come out of those things on the other end knowing something different about who we are. I'm okay with conflict That comes with community But we also have to be able to all of us be all right with not agreeing And also respecting the fact that we can live together in disagreement like most families do I'm happy to ask. I'm enjoying you asking each other I I keep I'm now my mind is turning around this notion of what you want to leave behind Because it has another meaning right which is like what do you want to leave behind when you're done with whatever it is you're doing right now and That's a really lousy question to ask but I want to ask it because I'm curious how you think future The present is so present in all the things you're saying and the past we've been talking about a little bit But what is the future that you want to leave behind? I hear that it's not the same future as maybe the founders of This piece of the field you know leaving behind buildings and institutions and staffs and So what might that leaving be thinking about mortality and awful lot and I and I this is not your question But it occurred to me in listening also to the opening Welcome yesterday that actually the thing about it is I don't I'm not I don't want to think about what I'm leaving behind because I think about what I'm leaving behind I think about leaving and What I'm concerned with right now is living and Staying and how do I and we just had this conversation Heather and I how do I death is gonna come like it's inevitable But how you live that's the choice I have every day and the kind of thing I want to put in the world the dialogues or The work or the arguments that's the thing I'm most concerned with and I don't know what the residual will be And if I worry about that I will be too afraid When I imagine what theater is in its most beautiful sense in my mind It's and what it really is is it's this it's this public temple that we all go to and it's the last public temple That we all sit in that we grapple with these ideas these complex these difficult ideas And so I wonder if what I hope But a space in which Audience can come in and learn very deeply about themselves and also have space to make mistakes You know, I think when we start talking about Identity politics it starts getting very tight intense because there are all of these unspoken rules and so I will say that I was born and raised in Germany and so rules come very easily to me I love a rule But when we start talking about like what it is to be and to live in the United States There are these unspoken rules as a byproduct of all of the things that we've not had conversations around Who's allowed to say do what and so how can we create a space in which someone can come in and ask a question And someone who's interested in teaching that can share that idea a space that we are free to make these Mistakes in so that as we leave this public temple we leave better stronger knowing how to move in a larger Society and make mistakes out there so that then when we come back in there's space for more and greater and more complex conversations So my husband is an amateur Mineralologist or so instead of works of art in our place we have a bunch of rocks Lots of really beautiful rocks that he takes lots of pictures of and dusts with a little paintbrush And he loves it and one of the things that he says he has said to me You know in term because these rocks, you know the minds and stuff they you know they've passed Hands like you know for many many many many years, right? So he thinks of himself as the temporary keeper of these rocks right now because they're going to outlive frankly all of us and I and so I think about that a lot actually because Particularly with the conversations about climate change and doing something for our world actually being environmentally conscious, you know We got to be intentional about what it is that we're actually trying to save because the fact is in Scientific terms this shit's gonna be around and it's gonna and it's been around for a lot longer I mean watch cosmos It's like it's been for a lot longer than the human race has been human race has been you know tiny tiny amount of time compared to the eons that stars and planets and galaxies Have existed so I think that's really interesting right because for me It just gives me a like So I got to be really intentional about what it is that we're attempting to save and what it is that we're trying to actually make Together and it's why that quote about sort of finding the conversation in the room Because it's never gonna happen again with this particular group of people at this particular time at this particular space Feels really very urgent to me in that regard because when you think about the millennia stuff It's like we're only it's not just that I'm here for only my lifetime You know who knows what's gonna happen over time? We can do whatever it is what we can so it stays You know our children and there's some legacy in that regard So I think about that a lot the other thing that I want to Bring into the room is young Jean Lee's we're gonna die flying V theater company in DC is gonna do this soon They just announced it and it's a great great. Do you all know it know the show? Well, so you're gonna you're gonna sing for a second after me because it's it's just why not we're in a theater, right? So this is how it goes We're gonna die We're gonna die someday and then we'll be gone and it'll be okay We're gonna die right we're gonna do it so on the count of three one two three I I wasn't asking on that but it tells us about Tamela. I guess last and how much they'll put up with my Shenanigans, so I make all of these jokes as I'm like well my altar So so whatever time I have here like each day. I'm trying desperately to You know to to put as many footsteps into the path as passable To follow make deeper some footsteps and make new pathways and you know offer up my shoulder if somebody needs a boost or step on But I hope in all of that I don't know how to say the tangible thing that I want to leave behind but there is a like there it's it it lives in the world of an invitation an invitation or an affirmation to to constantly ask why and what if and To never accept the assumption put before you that is I Hope that becomes the kind of total norm In not just the art making because I feel like it's totally acceptable in the art making I'm talking about in the entire practice of what we do and who we are and how we interact with each other and our communities Why and what if feel like really important vocabulary words for the future I Was I was just gonna say it's funny about whether you think about it in terms of mortality or not Because I'm sure it's a bit of a Rorschach test maybe because I'm thinking like I'm a I'm a neurotic 51 year old Jew with father issues So if you get me within 10 feet of the word leave or behind I go to death immediately So I'm that's where I went And I also this question also feels like a really important question. I have little kids So to me since having kids The relationship I have as a daily practice to defining purpose Has shifted a bit in that if I'm Not gonna be with them whether it's just you know during the day or at night or like I'm here today I'm not there like I better be able to answer Like how I'm gonna talk to them about why I'm not there but that this age and as they get older I mean just constantly so I mean to me I think very concretely about I want to be a part of a movement that helps artists Across disciplines Have a clearer sense of the contributions they can make Through the output they create but also through all kinds of process and practice As positive contributors to public good in their community and fighting for justice I I want to be a part of helping Systems that are not art systems be prepared to collaborate with artists and culture makers so those contributions can happen effectively ethically and productively and I want to Be a part of our incredibly Dangerous awful fucked up democracy having the benefit of all the contributors who have creative practice Participating in bringing more imagination and collaboration and ethics to how we engage civically with each other and make decisions For ourselves as communities and those are three things that I think about as sort of compass points Mark something dad You're focused on just being here and and and so I'm just wondering like like Okay, can we can in this life with this life do something good? Be good do good And and hope that at least something Okay Thank you all Thank you Derek and all for this this time together I I can't wait to see what you guys do with this moment of refounding and Dismantling and making a new and I'm also really just want to say I I've sat in so many Conference rooms that are full of bullshit and self-promotion That from the moment of the two emergent strategy books on I'm just so grateful to you guys for your honesty and your passion. So thank you and thanks to y'all Thank you Thank you such a just to echo such a We're transition into a coda that I think actually will kind of continue the themes of this extraordinary Conversation, but it is so Some of you were here yesterday some of you weren't but the continuity and energy are of What was said about abundance about connection across in a non-hierarchical way There's so much there's so much momentum in the conversation that's moving forward and that's that was and it's just such an honor To have the seven of you sitting on this stage and I love Mark does his laugh So thank you guys hang out in we're gonna shift the space for Nick and Jason But we want I want you to and then we're gonna go to lunch in 15 minutes So this is sort of like the this is the dramaturgy of our event We're sort of moving from this conversation to a two-person conversation Which I'll introduce which I'll introduce I did want to say this is I guess part of the transition in the scurrying to get people in the room and introduce You know a deeper thing to say about Todd that this work and panel Reflects then just oh it was inspiring to be at TCG Decades ago is that I think Todd is just as James Thompson was talking yesterday about Care as an art form. I think what Todd's work is Gigantic in terms of is appreciation as an art form and the that word like I read Todd's Essays and I'm like oh, that's why I love that work exactly, but I didn't know it And so the notion of appreciation as a rigor as a like rigorous thing with value that like This is not just casual. Oh, I appreciate you like that's great. This is that like that work of non-hierarchically noticing and appreciating you are a Signal force in and that is what this gatherings about and that's what this group of people are doing. So that's part of So this is the part where I throw all these beautiful leaders off the stage And I am on the theme of ancestry we welcome to this is one of the privileges I've had just in You know curating ahead with folks to this event is having these amazing conversations usually too short and imagining Putting people together like we did with hopeful encounters yesterday in these two-person conversations. So this is Two folks who are doing amazing work and thinking about ancestry and related but different ways than I think we saw here And I want to welcome to the stage. Most of you saw Jason Tamir yesterday as part of our opening Land acknowledgement from malt house theater in Melbourne our Yorta Yorta man with Nick sly Co-artistic director of Mondo Bizarro in New Orleans and one of every time I talk to Nick My mind just gets bigger and wider a great performer cultural organizer, so We're gonna welcome Nick and Jason to the stage for a conversation Good afternoon everybody. How y'all doing? So we got a quick one and we'll jump into it So honored to be on the stage with you who I met an hour and a half ago It's pretty great. And before we begin I just like to bring I love this question of who you're bringing with you and I Acknowledge and bring into the room a great teacher of mine and of ours mr. John O'Neill who recently passed Just a beautiful beautiful lover. So we're just gonna have a brief Conversation and I'm gonna lead it with just an image or an idea I was talking to Derek in December at the NPN meeting about Sort of where I was personally and what was coming up for me artistically and I want to share an idea that we're working on right now That is related to the place that we live and in our home in Louisiana as many of you know It's a long and complicated conversation but the lands disappeared really fast for a variety of reasons and this year they cut the levees open south of New Orleans which was an experiment in Rewilding the former paths of the Mississippi and in 2019 they're gonna they're gonna do the big ones They're called river diversions and they're gonna spend four point five billion dollars to reanimate the ancestral paths of the river with the hopes that this could save our home and As I had in the last two years been going through a really deep Wrestling with my own personal grief I started to look again at these maps by this man named Harold Fisk he He drew he walked from Missouri to Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and he drew these Ancestral paths of the Mississippi River for the Army Corps of Engineers They're like a circulatory system of where the river flowed for 12,000 years Before we levied it and I began to meditate on how have the structures and the systems of control that it takes to strangle a river Showed up in the bodies of the people And in particular how have those systems showed up in my own internal territories of experience Some of those systems I would name or like white supremacy Wholesale environmental destruction Winner take all capitalism like how are those things playing out and how we're now trying to address the Saving of our landscape and how are we ready to rewild the land? If we have not sufficiently Rewilded ourselves And so this project that we're embarking on is these long public walks 30 mile public walks along the ancestral paths of the Mississippi with anywhere from one to 1,000 people whoever wants to come and it's a manner of research That will then become the sort of information for a public call To the public to artists to policymakers to chefs to musicians where we're gonna host a floating a series of floating festivals in the ones so sort of Taking a look at how do we Show adaptation and the way that we're talking about water and how do we look towards what it is that we're going to need to do In the home that we live in if we want to have a chance to survive But really it's about this is my image It's like trying to prod a little bit a relationship between the timely and the timeless is what I've been thinking about like How do we address this time? Mr. Schoenke said it we're in a recession right now Like how do we address the timely in relation to the timeless and when I think about the timeless? I think about my own ancestors but back from that like the ancestral paths of the river which were there long before my ancestors and I shared this story with Jason in the lobby up there He's like I know what I'm gonna do. I know where I'm gonna go because Derek was talking to me about your work with Repatriation and anyone who was here yesterday got to experience the beauty of what Jason shared on stage and I was so struck by you follow that path back and it leads to peace and So yeah, I want to invite you to just to bring that right repatriation into the space Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me and Thanks for listening to me too. It means a lot. So I thank you Yeah, I've come a long long way I guess to be with you and I guess I've come to bring Offent a story a story that a story of the world really and I guess history History has brought all of us here today the good The bad and the ugly History's definitely brought us here today And I wouldn't like to acknowledge all your history my people My story Yeah We go back a long time a real long time and We acknowledge that and we celebrate it. Let's get some people and I don't know why Because it's our culture and we love our culture And we love our land Other people should too my story our story Goes right back to the dream time You don't understand the dream time. I guess it's similar To people's heaven our dream time as well our people are their spirit ancestors They crowded our earth All the plants our medicine animals Food or water our vegetables Created everything our music our dance our language And gone forever Yeah, our dream time We live in the dreaming. This is our land We're born from the earth we're created from the earth we connect to the earth My country They call it Australia is made up of 500 nations of our original people within those nations There are clans and tribes Those clans and tribe They connect to the land What's happened in history? It's been a little bit unkind for us Quite cruel and What I'm trying to do and others We try to make things right and I guess The story of repatriation There's something I've done There's something I still do There's something I'm doing Directly after this conversation Yeah, the white man come to our country They slaughtered us almost walked us off the planet. It's only about 10% of us left They heard of us from our lands And they put us into reserves and institutions and they told us That what we practice was the devil. We weren't allowed to speak our language We're allowed to do our dance we're not want to connect with our country even our children They'll take it off us with this possessed dispersed those kids were taken to other places Today We're still trying to find them So trying to bring them back home So I want to also mention That I'm not a leader on my people I'm a servant I'm a servant for my people I'll do whatever I can to help them out Repatriation it's really heavy business Collectors come to Australia I guess my sacred place for anyone Is where you bury your loved ones, right? It's really special It'll be sacred place where you go to connect with your family Yeah Anyway, these collectors I found out Where our places were we buried our people I'm not only not me that they find out where we buried our people where they be friended Some of our people to find out Where our people were buried and then what happened Under cover of darkness that is going to take us take the bodies of our elders and disperse them all around the country Into institutions Because of some theories around that believed we were going to die out And I'm fascinated by our culture because of how long we've been on the planet. So they measured our heads Our fingers our feet our legs All these things remembered us And I spread them all around not only Australia All around the world now in our dream time and our dreaming or when we die We've got to go back to our country We go back to our country We connect with our ancestors Then from there We go through to the dreaming Everything's connected our old people There's no full stop in our When we die This continues on And we recarnate Into trees the fish into the children That's our cycle That's our sister but how To those people who are taken away How do they come back to land now 60,000 years of history We've got medicine men people special powers that are buried in the earth and Not only them and others But they're in these institutions and Our people crying brings a lot of sadness a land He's crying our Rivers everything He's crying. So what I do I I Found out Where our people are? I go knocking on their door Sometimes aggressively and I ask them Can we have our people back? sometimes this hesitation because Who owns these people? Who owns humanity? Who's got the right to define what that is but policy and legislation Has made these institutions To get our people back so what I do and others We go get our people We take them back home. We take them back to their country Bring peace to the land To all our tribes To our elders to everyone It's really important business And you know, I'm sitting here now Nothing scripted and I'm taken now to a sitting here And I think about The first nations mob that are here what they've what they've done What they're still doing And that's connection and storytelling And today We mimic him Exactly what those people are doing. I just like to acknowledge that so My work I work at a major performing arts company as a producer and Not sure if it's an indictment of Australia or Opportunity that happened Which I must admit I kicked open the door I'm the only producer in Australia that's indigenous They've worked in a major performing arts company. So Now that it is major performing arts company On the main stage there's now a track Into this institution into this performance space So when our mob steps in this environment It's not cold. It's not Disconnected it's a place of warmth inclusiveness a place where You can come and tell your story and be proud of it and It's taken me a while To get the confidence, but I Have confidence there and in fact I got love for them, too So Now it's time to tell the story The world needs to hear this And in my capacity as a producer inspired on my own journey The journey of my ancestors and everybody else That's been involved with this type of repatriation business I'm bringing it to the stage and This story is going to be very dark I'm very haunting and And it will be experience like no other But I have great confidence in the team that I'm working with great confidence in the workplace that I'm I'm I'm in and Most importantly I've got great confidence in how I'm driven Because I always sit as I mentioned yesterday and wait for the invitation and I'm getting driven by the old people they're telling me what to do and Been involved with this Repatriation You connect with the old people You know, I I touch with my own hands And I put them in the earth and What's written in their files which can be minimal you really taken transported back to this time and In that time you can see and feel What was going on, you know really really feel it and It's dark It's scary It's happy and it's beautiful and you know We've been a lot of stuff has been taken away from my people and Always say one thing they can't take is my motion and My motion I Care I'll let it I carry it all the time and to some people it can be Make it really fragile Make you sick but That's okay for me because I Need to know that I need to have that feeling because it creates an energy That's pure I enjoy that Jason Derek told us that the story is never gonna be over and You told me in the lobby that we should stop each other because we're both storytellers I Think I'm the de facto timekeeper And everyone's gonna go to lunch But I wanted to invite you to close and say whatever you wanted to say and also to let everybody know that right after this Jason's gonna get in a car and go to the Smithsonian and actually today in Washington, DC do the Real and necessary and emotional work of repatriation, so that's incredible to me, and I just want to offer you Wish wish But any if you want the last one before we go eat just yeah, I do I Thank you. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it I Think what I want to leave you all I want to leave you all I want to challenge you all It's time. It's time. I Was shocked yesterday Hearing about this university here Have a minimal. I'm not many First Nations people here That's not right Everyone deserves an opportunity and education a house clothes No future Everyone deserves it and a lot of us we're in a place of privilege And some people can bake in that area in that place and just go by with their lives And that's okay But some of us We're in these places of privilege I've got an opportunity for real change and I'll look out here and Of course, you must be leaders or servants of your people So I'll challenge you all to connect with the people of this land and the people of where you've come from and Help the indigenous people of the world Help us to get up on even power with everyone else So we can enjoy the world Just like everyone else And I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you Thanks friends moving just to Logistics which seems So so small So The couple things we will resume in this room with Martina Mayok the extraordinary Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who's joining us with Seen work from Sanctuary City and in dialogue with Professor Maya Roth at 2 p.m Which should give you time if you go, you know to the tent now follow people if you Don't know that's you know just follow Just a couple quick words about this evening to so you can be thinking about this in terms of workshops and performances we have a Amazing film screening that some of you are signed up for already of Jonathan Hollander and battery dances moving stories We've shifted the location of that just to make it a more comfortable viewing experience because it's it's it's got Lovely demand and interest from this building to another building on campus. It's the intercultural Center ICC auditorium It's actually very nearby But we want to make you aware of that in case you're coming from somewhere else and will have people to direct you from dinner at the from the Tent at dinner if you're there'll be one group going there but I wanted to say that it's there and the other thing just to be aware of is a small number of you who are signed up for both that and Pascal Arman's Shit whole country clapped back next door Those are going to run into each other just a little bit because of demand So you can go to moving stories, but you would have if you need to make it back You would have to leave the screening just a little bit early There's only I think we think a small number of you have overlap And that's just because of I pledge allegiance coming later in the evening and just the range of things we have There will be a discussion at the screening also So we want to cord you know wanted you to coordinate that but just to sort of make you aware There are still a small number of seats available for shit whole country clapped back What is really helpful because we're getting demand for all these performances is if you're changing your mind and you're on a list And you're not going to attend that performance to let us know because we have wait lists and it frees people up So just if you can be communicating that does that make sense? questions ask us great