 My name is Stephanie Todd Wong. I'm the Director of Performing Arts and Culture here at Asia Society, Texas Center. And on behalf of our board and staff, I'd like to welcome you here this evening for a conversation on representation and 21st century responsibilities in the performing arts. As a Caucasian female in a position of determining which performing arts programs we present here, I am very aware of the difficult nature of this topic. Whitewashing, yellow face, cultural appropriation, these are extremely difficult and sensitive issues with no clear cut or simple solutions. As our dialogue tonight is likely to challenge our assumptions, we would expect at times it will be uncomfortable and request that we all approach one another respectfully and leave ourselves open to hearing different points of view. I'm heartened by the size of this audience and having you all here with us tonight and want to commend you for your willingness to engage in a difficult conversation. We have the opportunities to support one another as we grapple with these issues and I feel privileged to be a part of a community that's willing to tackle it head on. With this in mind, please know that this is the first of what we hope will be many conversations. Another community dialogue is scheduled for the fall and will be hosted by the ensemble theater and we hope that you'll keep that in mind and look for the details as they become available. And I've talked enough because I don't like to do this part. So, just very quickly because our ability to host this program wouldn't be possible without all of our donors and sponsors. I'd like to direct you to the back of our program and just acknowledge them and thank them very quickly. I also really need to send out truly heartfelt thanks to our partners this evening, the Houston Grand Opera University of Houston Center for Arts and Social Engagement and OCA of Greater Houston. Without them being willing to engage in this conversation with me, we wouldn't be here this evening. So, if you haven't yet silenced your phone, now would be a great time. And I'd like to welcome our panelists to the stage. First is Ryan Speedo Green, bass baritone. Next is Pia Agrawal. She's the program director of the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Patrick Summers is our artistic and music director of Houston Grand Opera. Shu Wei Chen, composer and department chair of composition and professor at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. And Steven Wu, co-director of the Houston Asian American Pacific Islander Film Festival. And then my dear friend and our moderator for the evening, Sixth O'Wagon inaugural chair of the Center for the Arts and Social Engagement at University of Houston. And now I get to walk away and they get to engage in a very lively conversation. Thank you all very much. Thank you Stephanie. Thank you. It's a sighting. It's Geo. Thank you, howl around in order to whose lives are treating this right now. I want to just give a little bit of framework as to what will be our conversation this evening. Part of this is, the question is, if art is a mirror to society, how much of that mirror reflects our current demographic? What is our responsibility? And this evening is not a debate. No one wins, no one loses. This is a conversation, this is a dialogue, and this is didn't work. We don't want to, I feel that we're all winning already because performing arts has actually sparked a vital in this work. And a lot of people here through internet and also here tonight have actually been passionate about this conversation. And that's really what art is about, I think. And I'm grateful for that. Tonight we're focusing on an Asian lens. There are, these issues are through many other aspects of any minority can actually be talking about these issues. But tonight we thought it was really important, in order to talk and address an Asian lens, because part of the discourse here in Houston has very much been about an African American and white lens, or Latino and white, rarely has the Asian boys been part of that. Tonight we're going to at least start part of that conversation. Part of what we're also going to be talking about is intention versus reception. What is the intention of the artist and what is the reception and how it's received by the audience. At some point there's a disconnect, when it works it's incredible. And part of our conversation tonight we'll actually start with that. So let me give you some current or operating definitions for yellow face and white wash. Yellow face means more than a white person wearing makeup to look Asian, typical slanty eyes and yellow skin. It also describes the systematic propagation of racist areas that Asians stereotype and caricatures. In its simplest form white washing refers to the tendency of media and society to look at everything through a white experience. The stories are dominated by white characters, played by white actors, navigating a story that will likely resonate most deeply with white audiences. That the assumed way of working through the world is from a white perspective and that color doesn't matter. Human is the uniform. So, Steven, I want to start with, do those definitions actually resonate with you? Or how do you, and can you actually give any examples of what that might be? Sure, I mean, those are beautiful examples. I generally agree with what those definitions mean for those two towns. Many people think of white washing as just having a white actor or a non-Asian actor for an Asian specific role. But it can also, to me at least, refer to that person playing in a role where the story or narrative is more Asian-centric. I think of the recent film, The Great Wall, where Matt Damon is the main character in fictional China and they're fighting monsters. It's not a real historical reference at all. However, it's a bit odd to see a white lead role come into state today, quote unquote, from these monsters in China. To me, that has two effects on people. One is for non-Asians, generally, and then secondly, to younger Asian-Americans. The non-Asian group, if you don't necessarily meet or interact with a lot of Asian-Americans regularly, the media unfortunately can shape your world and your perception, and that becomes normal for you. So that when you go and actually meet people, that is your thought, that is what you think these people could be in correctly associated times. On the other hand, for children, I mean, when you're a young Asian-American kid and you're going to the movie theaters and you're seeing all these great Marvel works on the Marvel film recently, and if you don't see someone that looks like he's playing the lead role, that has an effect on you. And personally for me, for some time, I don't know why I'm not that person on stage, on screen, saving the day necessarily. I always knew Jeremy Lin as my example, loved basketball, saw him playing the NBA, and I was like, yeah, I could maybe, I think, just be in the NBA one day. So it has profound effects beyond just the audience watching that day, but also everyone that they interact with in society. And I think it's interesting because it is about a representational power, and the power of it when it happens, and the systematic, when it hasn't been happening systematically, what actually we're going to be left with. So I think that that is a broader context in popular culture, and we'll most likely get back to that conversation. One of the things that we want to focus particularly on today is about the performing arts, and really what is our role and what is the power of live performance and what is our responsibility. And so Patrick, I think that part of this was sparked by the Nixon in China in those conversations, so I think there's a great note for you to tell us a little bit about your reaction to controversy and how does cultural representation inform or conflict with practical realities of actually being an artistic director? Well, in the operatic field, we do at Houston Grand Opera a relatively large amount of new work compared to many opera companies, but it's still a small amount of our total repertoire. We're still dealing with a repertoire that is, in the case of the regular Mozart operas, a couple of hundred years old, and deal with a very different set of cultural sensibilities, and we have to figure out ways to perform them that are both sensitive to the cultural times now, but are also sensitive to Mozart and to the original intentions of these older operas. And that's very, very challenging. If we did only new operas, these issues would not really be present, because we could easily make all of our new operas reflect the cultural realities of now. But opera is a field that deals in extraordinary degrees of difficulty. I'm rehearsing an opera right now, Gertrude Demmerung, for which there are fewer than two or three people in the world who can sing any one of those major roles, and they're probably, we imagine there are probably fewer than 400 professional operas in the world who are regularly making a sustained living being an opera singer. So many, many thousands of singers try, and Ryan certainly speaks to this. Ryan's an extraordinarily gifted opera singer, but there are a lot of those, and they don't all make a career. It's an extraordinarily competitive field. And I think whether we get to it right now or a little bit, I think... Well, actually, what we're talking about now, in terms of skill, you talked about skill, and that what is that pipeline and how, and really part of the conversation that you brought up is that you have been doing your work in ATO Studio in order to try to develop that. Yeah, in miniature, a pipeline would be a talented... in terms of singing, a talented singer at age 18 would audition for a university vocal program, spend four years on a bachelor's degree, and then two years on a master's degree. That would be a pretty normal path, and then spend two or three years in an apprentice program like Houston Grand Opera Studio or the Vienna State Opera Ensemble where Ryan is right now. And then after that nearly decade of training, then they enter a field which is extraordinarily competitive, and there will be even fewer of them at that point that make a career. So it's... and for the studio, for the Houston Grand Opera Studio, I think the number was 430 some applicants this year that... and for the concert of Aria's competition of which 20 semi-finalists came to Houston, 10 participated in concert of Aria's, and four were invited, three were invited into the studio out of that initial group of 400 and 30. And that's a normal degree of competitiveness, that's not at all. So you talked about the choice to, you know, if you were able to make new work. I think one of the things that I actually... as the program director at the Central Center for the Arts, that's pretty much all you present is new work. Yes, and I think we're in a very different position in doing new work, contemporary work where the training process is less vigorous, even if we're doing work on stage, it's not as filtered as the experience that you have of being that competitive, but I think the opportunity to present new work has allowed me to find projects where artists are telling their own stories, I think that felt really important. I think if I compare, I've been doing festival work for about 12 years, compare my experience now to my experience about 10 years ago, 10 years ago the work that I was producing was largely white European work, and so that has evolved as more social conversations have evolved with an attempt to represent the world around us a bit more. I think, you know, when I think more specifically about examples within the Southeast Asian community, the thing that strikes me about representation in the performing arts and on stage, is that in my experience the most successful Southeast Asian performers who've gone to tour or work more globally are often in projects or in situations where their Asianist is juxtaposed against whiteness. It's a lot of like dance duets that have traditional Indian dance juxtaposed with Western dance in a way that it feels like, and you know, again, 10 years ago, and I may not be saying these same things, but now I'm thinking about it, it feels that the value in that work is against whiteness on its own. It doesn't stand the same way as on its own, it's not for a diverse audience on its own. Indian dance is for an Indian audience, but if you put a white European dancer in there and they have a cultural, you know, exchange, it becomes a more global conversation, and that's a really, that's where I'm at, that sort of difficult spot. I guess I'm just trying to press that up. So I think that you said that it becomes a global conversation because whiteness is on stage and therefore it is more acceptable? I think acceptable is a tricky word, it's not maybe the word that would come out of my mouth, but I think it becomes more accessible and I don't necessarily use that word in a positive way. I think the accessibility comes from Asianists or brownists being qualified by whiteness in that situation. When you put a white body on stage with a brown body, with an Asian body, an Indian body, it's the white body that's defining the reason that that brown body is on stage. That's a pretty specific example that I've seen a lot in dance, but I think I've seen, you know, in going back to the definition of whitewashing, I think the issues around characters being represented by cliches, you're working less with characters in a form like dance, or in my experience the work I produce is less character based, but there are hints of that, there are hints of the definition of an Indian role being very defined by tradition, by traditional Indian dance, not by any sort of evolved art form. And of course, you know, that person is trained, they are on stage, they are doing that work, but I think in turning it into opportunity success, that is the work that I've seen that's had the most success, the most response, the most press, the most praise. So I'm hearing there's aspects of what are the change of standards in terms of studies, and what can be presented, and then also tradition in terms of what has been traditional and how are we actually thinking about tradition in a contemporary aspect. I think that part of what we want to do is we're giving part of an organizational and institutional approach right now, and then actually I want to come now and bring artists into this and hear from them. So Speedo, as a singer and accomplished singer who's been involved in some of the controversy, how was that to embody a controversial figure in Death of Clinghofer? Well, recently I was in a production at the Metropolitan Opera by the same composer, John Adams who did Nixon in China, and the opera was called Death of Clinghofer, and if you guys were watching the news about two years ago, it was all over the news, international news, and you could see my face with the machine gun, and I played the operas about a group of terrorists who take over Italian cruise ship with American tourists on it, and they end up killing, it's based off a true story, and they end up killing an American Jewish man in a wheelchair, murdering him and throwing him overboard. And I played one of the three terrorists, and my part, I had an aria, and in this aria for about three and a half to four minutes, I basically spewed all of the rhetoric of a person who would be an extremist, talking about everything from how Jews will deceive you, and how American Jews are the worst kind of Jews, and these horrible rhetoric that person who was extremist would say, and so there were huge protests before the opera ever made it to the stage from a lot of the community of New York from all different angles, especially Jewish organizations, and saying that this opera promoted anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic rhetoric. And fortunately, people came to the opening night and saw the opera, and then we had about a couple thousand people protesting it the day of, and the weeks before, and then after opening night we had nobody protesting, because basically when you talk about preconceptions that people have, like how viewers view it and how we perform it, I think it's so important for people before they make judgments about a piece, whether it be a piece about Asian culture or a piece about jihadism and extremism, that they do the research on exactly what the piece is about, what's going on in the piece, because basically the entire audience, including Mayor Giuliani, took my three-and-a-half-minute aria and based that as the entire opera, and said that those three-and-a-half minutes were two-and-a-half hours of music, and they didn't look at any of the other music or what happened before I said this aria, what happened after I said this aria, what my character was doing, or anything like that, they just took those three-and-a-half minutes and said that was the opera. And then once people saw it and they realized that three-and-a-half minutes were basically me being the evilest human being on the planet, and that the person who I was saying to was the Jewish man who I would eventually kill, and he beforehand talked about how you should be killing us, you shouldn't be killing anybody, what you're doing is wrong, and there are so many elements of this opera that presented terrorism as being bad, and it was giving not only the audience the view of the people who were being assaulted and caused pain by terrorism, but also who were these terrorists, like what brought them here, what made them this way, what helped them get to this point where they wanted to have so much hate and pain in their hearts. And I think people really responded to it. I think that in this piece, it was a contemporary piece in a contemporary context in which everybody was able to understand what the perceptions are and what the actual history was at that moment. Once they gave it a chance. It's actually a 20-year-old. It's 20 years old, yes, based off of an event that happened in 1985, I believe. I think the controversial point, in regard to the same composer, John Adams, controversial point of Nixon in China, is largely the second act ballet that Alice Goodman and John chose to put into the story. Largely, Nixon in China is a complete sort of fantasia on a historical event. It's about how we... The sort of meta plot of the opera is about how we assemble news and how we put our stories together. But they chose to put an actual event on stage in the second act of Nixon in China, which is the ballet of the red detachment of women, which was a Maoist propaganda ballet slash tiny opera that was performed for the Nixon's. And it does include very uncomfortable plays and cliches that make the Nixon characters in the opera also very uncomfortable. It's the engine of a lot of change in the two Nixon characters. And it's a historical fact. It didn't even need to happen. And so it has a discomfort in the engine of the drama, but it now, of course, also carries a larger... But I guess in this point, in that particular situation, the way that you have presented it is very clear in terms of the historical... That's the intention. You wanted to talk about it. I think that was the intention. The intention there is clear how the audience and perceives it and understands that is part of where we are having... Where all this controversy lies and really what... Where do we need to be? And I think that as much as you say that, there are parts of that where I agree with you and I understand and there are parts of it that I'm like, well, why did you choose that in particular? Why did you choose that way? What are the other ways? I think some of these choices are really part of... I guess I'm going to just transition these choices into Shi Wei and artists and we'll get everybody to speak on the panel and then we can come and come back to this. So I guess as Shi Wei, as an artist, and the choices that you are making and these ideas about representation, is this a challenge or does this inform the work that you're doing? Yeah. So I'm just looking... Among the panelists here, I just have the only one with an international student and an immigrant here in this country. So do you. You never know that I was born in Taiwan. So I've seen and heard different aspects of the... kind of here because I think that that we can sit here and discuss this issue is very remarkable. And I imagine this kind of thing will be discussed in Taipei or Shanghai, for example, because everybody is the same way. Because most likely there's no application around it, right? So I want to bring it up and I think it's really wonderful because in my mind I think that to deal with situations in the U.C. and the state has been really important in the U.S. and the world. And back to the idea that it's important because I want to say I think that our knowledge is important to bring up the vision. We have a correctness to the vision or agenda but I think normally we want to be think that you're a wonderful boy and you're capping in this pool because you're an immigrant. Right. Because you're an immigrant. Because I think that our knowledge should not be taken away from some of the boundaries. But having said that, that's a really good problem for me if I was in a black face portraying an Asian father, for example. But for me it is a particularly good story. It's not a time in my life in the 70s in the 70s it's a place where you talk of stories that stand like the... The red attack. The red attack on women and looking at women. Right. On the stage I think that it's not a good choice for the language. And so I feel that the time is so different now and I'm getting it because we have so many people population-related and population-related. And also, we have to keep face-to-face to see these populations if we want to reach the story not only to a human being but to a prior owner if we want to see the person sitting in there how would they feel how would they feel and then the younger audience how would they feel and then they see that oh, that's a really good life but it's not true. It's not a real life because everybody is really much, much more than a human being. So I feel like yes, we really have we can come in recent days but we have to modernize to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story to the story If we include a conversation and say, well, we are going to do this, what are you going to do? I don't think that's appropriate. And I think that, in the very production, you know, I think in 2013, if we can include an event in the production, I think that would be really interesting. So, I think, you know, because that brings up, it echoes the controversy, because there were the parallels in Mikado in terms of when the Seattle production was boycotted and it was actually set down. When New York tried to put it up, the New York Gilberts and the Solomon Within Society were proposing to do Mikado and they put actors in yellow base on their materials. And it caused a lot of reaction. And then they actually decided to pull the piece. And one of the things that was very interesting in the piece, because it actually just premiered in January, the reproduction of that, or the representation, what Gilberts and Solomon In Society actually chose to do was to bring in other consultants, to bring in other artists in order to see where and how that perception of where the work could actually land. Because it is a canon for Gilberts and Solomon. How do you actually make that and make it resonant in 20%? So I think that one of the things that we'll get to, or hopefully we'll get to throughout the day, is how are these conversations actually translating into actual, to actions and progress? And what are things in which that it's not just about a great conversation. Like I love it. What we want to do at Houston Grand Opera is form an advisory panel of colleagues like this and people who want to participate and look out into our future renaissance for potential cultural sensitivities that we may not be able to predict and talk about them as much as we can. That's one of the action items we're going to make. I kind of wanted to follow up on that point, as well as what you mentioned, about context. I was talking to some colleagues a few weeks before about, if you're in a position of power of decision making of a production company, what are some things that you would like to see if you're going to have a play for the production that's not about their culture or their group of people. And the two things that I kind of came out were consent and then respect. So number one of consent is, did you reach out to the community that you're going to basically produce and talk with them about it? Are they okay with it? Are there certain things that they're not okay with it? Which is why I love the advisory board. Hopefully those individuals live through and understand the culture. And then number two, the respect portion is, have you done your due diligence? Have you done your research to understand that culture to the fullest? Making sure that, yes, there are negative aspects in history that have occurred, but are you doing it in an appropriate manner that when this message is received by the audience, what effect does that have? Because I questioned a lot of other film festival directors as they screen a film, but do you, is that it, like you ended there? Or do you have conversations beyond that? To me, I think the art groups and art organizations, they can take a next step into understanding what their community is all about and what they feel, which is what we're doing today. I'm very glad for that. I point to one film that we're going to screen this summer, mainly murals, it's about these two graffiti artists in Hawaii. They mostly do it for the pureness of art, but they're trying to reach out to a school about historical context, they're trying to paint this mural of traditional Hawaiian culture. They do it first, but they kind of mess up, because they haven't consulted with the elders. And the elders came to the school and said, you are doing this completely wrong. And they were like, okay, I understand now. And through going through the traditions, the rituals, and some teachings, basically, in a lot of time, they really grasped the concept, they put their feet in those people's shoes and understood the context. And at the film's end, they get the painting right, basically, and everyone's happy. So I think that's a good example of what we can be doing too, at least in an across country. I agree. I like going back to the production I did, the Death of Klinghofer. I imagine I felt so confident in the piece, because my first day of rehearsal, I sat down with the director and the entire cast, both the extras and chorus and everybody, and which there are a lot of Jewish people involved in the cast and the production. And the director was there, and he brought in someone from the Situation Room who would have been there during, I think it was the Reagan era. He would have been there during the Reagan era when this happened. And he was, who knew about all the intricacies of this and where the three terrorists had come from and their backgrounds and everything like that. And he sat, the director had brought this guy, I don't know how he found him, but brought him in and to have this guy there who was a part of the Situation Room at that time with Reagan, the Reagan administration, and have some other people who are involved with not only the knowledge of the characters, but just of Jihadism in general and the conflicts that were happening around the world in Eastern and outside of Israel and around that area. And we sat there for hours asking him every single kind of question we could ask, both some really personal ones to just what's the mindset of these characters. And this happened in a small room, so all the people in the cast felt so confident about what we're doing and what direction we wanted to have this, but what they didn't do is have that same sort of conversation with the community like you guys are having now. So maybe that was a PR thing, I'm not sure, but they could have easily solved the problem if they would have brought this same group of people that they brought for us, the artists, out to the public, to the Jewish community, the acidic community in New York, that could have been squashed because they were able to realize, okay, this three and a half minute aria that this person is singing is not the entirety of the opera, and just like you have an opera, you have characters, for instance, in Trobatore, you have the Duke, or sorry, the Count, who basically commits a rape, he rapes a woman, right there in front of you, and if that's not an atrocious act, I don't know what is, but just as much as that is an atrocious act, we are okay with it because it's opera, and it's an old opera, or, you know, we're okay with the knowing that this is not reality, this is a story, just like we watch movies where bad things happen to people, we know that the bad things are going to happen, like from watching 12 Years a Slave, I know that this is a slave movie, that someone is going to go through some really horrible things in this slave movie, like in the title, so in a sense of opera fans, when they go see Il Trobatore, they know that there's a woman in this opera who's going to have something incredibly horrible happen to her, and they're not going to go see it because incredible horrible things are going to happen, it's part of the story that has an ending. I think in 2017, I'm going to push back a little bit to say that I think where we're at is actually considering the audience, who's not going to go, like there are countless numbers of movies, and directors and actors that I will not engage with because of things that they've said, whether it's issues around race, whether it's issues around sexual assault, I have cut that stuff out of my life, and I feel much healthier for it, and so I think we're living in a time where I'm not going to get into this deep dive on the internet, but that three and a half minutes is controversial, is what people are going to see, and is what new audiences are going to see, and it's what people are going to share, and if that's the only representation that you're getting out into the world, what does that mean? I know that's also important for them to actually have a conversation and let people know what is the rest of the piece, and they didn't do that, which is their mistake. But I think you also have to consider that there are going to be people that are so distanced from even being invited into that conversation or clicking past a controversial video. I mean, we're in a time, this is a very different topic, we're in a time where people are not reading past the headlines, and so what does it mean? How does that change how we write, how we talk about things? I can think of plenty of examples of movies, TV, maybe forms of art that are a little bit more, that are broader than opera, which I am not an expert on, but there are moments that define shows. There are moments that define movies that are 60 seconds or 30 seconds or one line. I didn't see 12 years of slaves because I have issues with Michael Datsun. He's not a great dude. But anyway, I think there are moments, so you can take a controversial movie and have reasons for not, or a controversial piece of art and have reasons for not engaging with it, and so I'm thinking of this as a producer, how am I connecting to an audience that I may never speak to, that I may never get the opportunity to speak to? And I think that your practice is conscientious programming, and in what ways that those who are programming or those who are creating work, how are you making those choices and how, I think you've been very clear on how some of that actually is informing your programming. But I guess it's a really interesting question. It's like, when do you do a classic, and why do you do a classic, and if only one singer in the entire world can do that, why are you doing it? Well, let me ask you, I will go back to you, and you mentioned Jeremy Lin. I'm a huge sports fan, and Jeremy Lin was amazing for New York. I was living in New York at the time, and I was a sports, New York sports, to have that happen. But if you think about basketball, who plays basketball? 90% of the people who play basketball in America are at the highest level. You have the minimum physical requirements to be a star NBA player are pretty high, but I could never play it. And so what can I do as an African-American to help you feel better about not being able to play basketball at the NBA? As far as having more people to be your hero, or to feel like you're... I can't do anything because I'm built this way. Or the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is built seven feet too. You can't help that. There are physical traits that are just genetic, and that occur like that. And I fully understand that. I mean, any Lin aspect is more so that it's a message to the people that you mentioned, not reaching your immediate circles. Those kids who are watching him play is motivating them to pursue it more as a career path. That to me is extremely valuable. I agree. And to me, that shows once you have someone up there who's on the biggest stage, who is a different face, it shows that hopefully, as Asian-Americans, we are a part of the American story. We are a part of the fabric of this country. We're not this contextual, perpetual foreigner where previous films and plays have put us in. So having him there and other... And in the film industry, having leads who are heroic and who do good things, that has a profound effect on the kid. And I want then to not say, but this is not a good career path. I want them to go into the arts. I want them to pursue it as something that can lead to something special beyond just them, but for the community as a whole. So that to me is what I see as Jeremy Lin. It's not about, you know, he doesn't have the specific... For Asian-Americans, not having a specific talent, there will be some that we'll get in and there's more coming in every single year. I mean, it behooves us as an art company to be sure that the opportunities are equal. That we have to constantly be vigilant about. And it's not just people on stage. It's also to me that people backstage, the producers, the directors, the screenwriters. These are the ones who are the decision makers. Right, because I think a lot of the, you know, the cliches around Southeast Asians that we do absorb are because the people who are in writers' rooms and the people who are reducing are not Asian. You know, and I think this is taking a little bit further, but I think something that I wanted to bring up tonight is also... And this is, you know, we'll be part of the where this is going, but I think it's really important to not just consider Asian perspectives on Asian representation, but considering Asian representations in a broader cultural context. Like, I'm really happy and honored to be part of this conversation, but I've been reading a lot of Audre Lorde lately. And she wrote an essay about 30 years ago about her being invited to a panel at NYU. And she was specifically asked because of her black, queer, feminist perspective. But that was also the only panel in the entire programming that asked for that perspective. She was like, why isn't my black, queer, feminist perspective important in a conversation about film more generally? You know, so I think that we have to push beyond, you know, we're making strides, but I think we have to push beyond even just having Asians represent Asians, but Asians represent America. Absolutely. In the fact that I'm here now, I'm definitely not white nor am I Asian. And for the fact that I'm here is, for me, a huge honor and something I would never expected for someone like myself to be a part of, but even now just being a part of has educated me a little more on being more understanding of another aspect of this country. And, you know, I've only seen the aspect of the country through my lens my entire life. And just now becoming more of a man at 30 years old, I'm sort of thinking of things about the future of maybe my children in the future and what things they should be thinking about, how should be teaching them to look at everyone around them, not just a black and white lens, but maybe a black, white, Asian, Native American. There's so many lenses they can look from, and I think it's so important to have this conversation at a young age so people can realize or start thinking about so they have bigger thoughts in the future about what the world is, who we are, who we are as people. I want to go back to my conversation as how amazing it is to in the United States you couldn't have this conversation. When I presented my daughter to an American school, she went to the world's American school, and there were 45 countries represented. And when I was first involved in that school, and they said they had an international week, and I was like, oh, you know, I'm an international. I know what's international. Yeah, so I went to the international week there. I was so humbled because they're Asian. They don't talk about internationalism as an Asian. They have Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, so they say, you know, it's so, there are 45 countries represented in that school. And all my daughters and friends, they speak only two languages, one English and when they go home, they have a second language, French, Latino, and Chinese, Vietnamese, and all that. And when they go there, they just speak a few languages. And this is the kind of situation you see in America. You do not see that in Asia. I cannot express enough of that beauty of this diversity, this vitalness. And then the formal identity, I think America's formal identity is neither Asia, nor West. Asia and West is a new kind of identity of a new 21st century that is all of it. If we want to be, look forward to this 21st century than we are now, this is what we need to impress and embrace that's the reality. We now just only talk about stress in only Asia, only West, only something that we need to think about in the world. I think that we also need, and thank you for bringing up the multiplicity of Asianness, the multiple cultures and multiple histories, multiple conflicting histories and all of this. But I also want to bring up this idea about generational because first generation, second generation, third generation in Asian cultures are like, I have, of course, I've lived and seen that a lot. So I guess if anybody wants to talk a little bit more about what has been some of the generational disconnect or some of the general, the conversations or problems we've even had in one generation. Yeah, I can start. So that is a very big topic for me. I just want to say for those who have immigrated to this country first, number one, thank you for taking that risk for being courageous and getting here. You came for a better life. You came hopefully for your children to have a better life. And then when I talk with some of the elders, that conversation of coming for a better life is security. How can we make sure that the next generation financially and status-wise they're secure and there's no risks that they face back in the country. But to me, I also see it as you came here for the freedom of choice. You came for the opportunities that America presents. And with that freedom of choice comes exploration of different avenues and paths to express yourself, self-expression. Whether it is STEM, whether it is the arts, whether it is sports, that should be something that the children, I believe, can have more input, I hope. But unfortunately, a lot of the older generation, they want to say you've got to go down a safer path because they don't want you to live what we live to be. And I fully understand that. And I want, this is kind of my closing point, but I want those two different generations to have more dialogue about that because I know from the younger side we talk amongst ourselves about that and I know among the elders they talk amongst themselves about that. But there needs to be more where they talk to each other instead of about each other because you're not going to get really anywhere with that. And honestly, I learned a lot, talking with my own parents about these things and other of my peers with their parents about this. So start with conversation just like what we're doing here is having conversations. Stephen, we met with OCA and HDO and we were both a part of that in mid-February. I don't know if it was you, but others on that panel, and that was a very, very positive meeting that I think that we had with the Organization of Chinese Americans but there was very much a feeling that the younger generation of Asian Americans were not going into the arts. Now I don't think that's the case in Asia in terms of classical music. Yes and no. But that was very much a takeaway. We should learn, we should do arts, and we should live here all the time. But to make it as a living, that was a takeaway from that meeting. Definitely. One small correction. OCA is all Pan-Asians, we're no longer just Organizations of Chinese Americans. So I just want to make it quick. But to your point, yes. I guess if you want to look at statistically there are a lot of parents who, if they want their children to pick up the arts, it's for extracurricular. It's for getting more married for going into college. But it's not a... When did this start? I don't know how much older I am than you, but I can tell you from my college experience, from undergrad, even grad school, undergrad I would say we had this thing called 2020 in my undergrad for the 20 best musicians in my school, and I would say 15 of them were Asian. And they are from all over, they're not just American, they're from Japan, Korea, China, all over. And I've noticed even from when I started music, which is very late in my life, the musicians that tend to be when all the competitions, when I was younger, were of Asian descent. And so I'm wondering when has this happened where this is becoming less relevant now as a job, because in college you go to college, so I assumed to pursue it as a career. It's been a long time. But it stopped recently? No, it's always the case, but don't forget there's a lot of Asians. I mean, this is very, very true. This is very, very true. I'm kind of curious of those criticism that you mentioned, how many were Asian-American? Not many. But let's put it this way, there were no African-Americans, obviously, in it. And the ones that were non-Asian were Caucasian. I think not to say that they're different. They're a very unique experience being Asian versus being Asian-American. Growing up Asian in your motherland country, you are the majority. You are the voice of the people. Versus if you're Asian-American in the United States, you are by far the smallest group. Growing at the fastest rate, but still the smallest group. So that's a different perspective when you grow up in this country. Just looking around, right? When you're surrounding, I grew up in the South and in my elementary school, I was only one of two or three Asian-Americans in the whole school. I didn't see a lot of Asian-American faces until high school and then college and I came here to Houston. But when you grow up in that environment, the way you carry yourself changes versus if you were the majority, where everyone around you looks similar, you are more of this quote-unquote comfortable with the surrounding. So I think that plays a factor with the decision-making of, because I see that as quote-unquote risky, and then I don't want my children to suffer through what I may have suffered in the past. For you, the information gets out from the same. Yes, right. The Asians still do not see that as a good... Because they usually, if I want to say it's the war and everything, it's just difficult. So there's one more case to do, that way. That may be more universal than we think. Yeah. I think that the perspective that you were talking about Stephen, between Asian and Asian-American is interesting even within a household, because it's only until relatively recently that I started having conversations with my own parents about, like, how... outsider I felt growing up, because they didn't necessarily recognize their perspective, because they had grown up in India, surrounded by Indians, and then moved and they're focused was more on, you know, career and family and didn't really consider what our perspective was going to school, because they paralleled it to their perspective going to school. You know, I was also one of, there's very few Indian kids in my school. So, I think there was a disconnect within households, you know, everyone's talking about their age, 33. And I had that conversation really with my parents very honestly about three weeks ago. You know, and I think, you know, there is something that's really eye-opening about, for me, I've lived in Houston for about three years and it's exciting to have this conversation here, things to think even for me at this age. A lot of the perspective and who I am, which then leads to the art that I want to bring to the city, came from moving to Houston and actually seeing more diverse spaces in audiences like this or gallery openings and we're certainly not perfect, but I think it's more, you know, it is more diverse. We're the most diversity in the country. But it's, you know, I am, I think, pretty late in recognizing my own, the power of my own ethnicity, rather than, you know, there was something I think, especially being younger where, like I was talking about artists on stage, you know, sort of being defined by being juxtaposed with whiteness. Like, I went through that as a kid too and I think I came to a new perspective in living in a really diverse city. So I think it's important to be able to share that perspective with people who don't have the opportunity to necessarily, like, program or see art. Like, I'm really interested in getting folks to the work that we present who wouldn't necessarily see art because they might be using art as a tool to understand their own identity when they wouldn't have considered it because they don't know that they're going to be represented. So great. Great segue. I mean, because if we are talking about audiences and we're talking about new audiences and we're talking about, I'm like, is the assumption that audiences want to go see something that is familiar to them on stage? Yeah. This is where it's going to get controversial. There is not one of the audience. There are several. And the current largest of the audience wants to see a mixture of things that are familiar mixed with things that are more talented. But the largest group of those people are very drawn to what they know. But there is another. There are other audiences that absolutely have no interest in seeing another production of La Vova. And want to see our new pieces that are off-site. So there are audiences are segmented largely, which is very challenging if you are an arts company, our size, and structured as we are as a subscription-based seasonal opera company, because that's not necessarily what the culture is doing now. But that's how we are structured. So we have to cast a very wide net of activity to embrace all of those audiences who are here. I think we're sort of in the opposite position of not relying on subscriptions. We're very fortunate to be a free festival. So we're able to invite audiences into the room. And I think the work then becomes really making sure that if we're trying to use art to represent different people, different experiences, how do we make sure that the people we're trying to represent are actually connecting. Again, it goes back to the question of, like, the value of art in relation to culture and generation. And I think that that is a challenge. Well, I guess pardon me, but to me it also looks back to these questions about changing standards. And, like, with new audiences, the standards of what is accepted or what is good changes. Is this one I got to bring up? I had one, my main goal for tonight was to bring up Short Circuit 2. Which, as some of you may know, featured... Fisher Stevens. Fisher Stevens, thank you. In Brownface, playing an Indian scientist with a very heavy Indian accent, I found out that was not an Indian man in the year 2015. You're learning a lot of my late, my early 30s discoveries about myself. Sorry. But, you know, I brought that up with my parents and we started talking about the television show Master of None, which was produced by Yusie Zanzari and started Yusie Zanzari. And I started talking to them about their perspective coming to the country they came in the late 70s and what they thought about these kind of overwrought, cliched representations of Indians and, you know, at that point it was largely in movies. And at some point, it felt really good it felt really good to be represented at all. It felt really good to be like, oh, they're even considering that, like, Indians live in this country or work in these jobs or exist in this universe. And as standards have changed, as we continue to have conversations like this, as we've sort of demanded I think more of each other, and as this country gets more diverse that has had to evolve. You know, I'm no one's happy seeing a complete cliche of themselves represented on screen. And I think that's been a really interesting shift, you know, it goes back to the complexity of like, yes, you may be Indian but can you also do this? Yes, you may be Indian but why do you have to have an accent in the role that you play? I have just one quick one. That aspect of having a specific role for a specific group of people, at least for Asian Americans I've seen fall into the model of minority men, which a lot of people may know about. And that has ramifications not only for the Asian American community but also I think it affects other communities as well saying that, okay, we put Asian Americans on the pedestal what does it say about everyone else? And not only limits our own group of people, but it kind of defines other groups of people at the same time. So it's almost like a double pat sword in a way. Well, yeah, the fact that Asian Americans have been weaponized against other brown people in order to say that, well, why couldn't you be as good as the Asians? Exactly. And horrible and wrong-headed in so many other ways. But I think Patrick, did you have a comment on that? Well, I think this is related because in opera being a live performing art and you know, you come to an opera performance and 2,400 people experience it together and then it's gone. You know, it's not filmed, it's not a document, it's not a very different medium from film. And so we're not only casting we're not only casting roles, we're casting opera singers careers. And singers with whom we engage both in the studio or like, you know, Ryan, I'm hoping to have 20 years of things from Ryan. And dreaming that out into the future with a very small set of gifted singers is one of the great joys and challenges of this art form. But that is slightly different from you know, if I were making a film of Madonna Butterfly you know, that's going to exist forever and it's not going to be seen by 2,000 people at one time but it's going to be seen by millions of people for years then your casting demands are very different. And your casting intentions are very different. But if I have a gifted soprano who needs at some point in her own creative life to take on Madonna Butterfly for her own artistic reasons and we can make that work with integrity then I also have the responsibility of her career not just the responsibility to Puccini and Madonna Butterfly and that's just one repertory opera that's there many. You know, how do we bring that back to the idea of opportunity? You know, if we're having this conversation now and you know, obviously there are there is limited talent especially in a form like opera or basketball but how are we doing the work to foster you know more diverse communities into pursuing those talents because I think that that's still not really happening. I agree. You know, it's not that there is not enough I understand that but it's not being fostered it's not being accepted. Well, I mean actually both of those things like you know preconceptions I talked about earlier about the different ethnicities in America and even when it comes to R&B or how many Asian R&B singers you know that are singing on the Super Bowl but it's the same thing as for African Americans I can speak from my lens there may be small preconceptions as small as they may be they still affect casting like when I go into an audition for an opera or audition for casting it could be with any company at a young age in between the college and mainstream where I'm now I walk into an audition room and there's a panel of people involved judges or administration and they walk in and it can be a small preconception of like man I hope this person doesn't have a gospel sounding voice I hope that they actually can sing in a foreign language you know sort of things that people think in the back of their minds when they just see a color of someone's skin and those preconceptions can happen to Asian artists as well when they're going out to audition for a musical I don't know of Rupa, Rent or West Side Story or something like that and they're thinking when this person walks in what preconceptions could they have about Asian artists so we hearing you guys talk about it I've thought about my own preconceptions that people might think about me when I walk into a room any kind of room you know I'm six or four or three hundred pounds like people immediately think what they want to think and maybe they think differently if my skin was white instead of black and then you talk about the programs that allow the cultivation of a young talent to maybe become that Asian mat and butterfly in the future I grew up in a trailer park I didn't grow up in a big city I grew up in a country in a trailer park and it was by chance that I happened to go on a field trip to go to New York and they were singing musicals and I happened to see an opera and that one like one day at one special weekend when I was fifteen I saw an opera that just happened to have an African American as the lead which rarely happened at that point in American history and to be there at that one moment to see a person who looked like me as you said on stage performing as a main character in an art form that I never knew a person like me could ever do made me think when I left there okay I know what I want to do with my life I want to be an opera singer and here I am now it was that exposure especially from where my circumstance I didn't come from a well to do family or musical or have the opportunities to have a piano, grand piano or violin lessons at five no I just happened to be in a school field trip and it made me want to pursue it on my own my parents didn't have anything to do with it it was purely my desire to want to become a part of this art form and I think I also want to recognize the incredible journey and the uniqueness of this because part of what we're talking about is a privilege in order to be able to have those classes to have those lessons to have the master teachers to be able to for the parents to be able to work in order to be able to afford those lessons and there are structural aspects here that are problematic for certain communities or disadvantaged aspects and how are we thinking about and how are we actually making sure that that is because even if you're a talented Asian you will push you over to the piano or the violin we're not going to push you to sing there are conceptions in terms of what that is I know that's really stereotypically horrible for me to say but anyway it's still happening as someone who's not normally on stage I those cliches of stereotypes happen when you're an arts administrator or a cultural producer I've walked into rooms where people don't know me I've walked into rooms where people do know me and they assume just by looking at me that my experience is like I know Indian dance really well I don't know Indian dance very well I know a lot of other dance really well you know it's I'm at a meeting and it's these slight these slight moments where it's like oh yeah there's an Indian dancer and someone will gesture towards me and we're there we're all the same people and it's not I don't think that has any devious undertone in it but that's still the way that we function I want to bring back what Patrick's talking about he had to cast a really big net of the different kind of audience there's some audience see music or arts as entertainment and there's some people see music or arts as a way to to ask questions or to learn something from this from this and so me as an audience when I see a movie or an art or even an opera I ask questions what do I learn from this if you don't teach me something new this is not worthwhile for me and so we have to see using the opportunity to educate our audience because I'm also a teacher and so I want to see of course there's a majority of people who want to see it as entertainment but yet happened to be that person happened to be there and that's a good education and then possibility this might flow it this little sea might flow to an amazing flower or tree in the future and we never know and so we see that music or art is in production as a chance to educate and to have a possibility to allow a sea to become flourish in the future then we will see it very differently I have a question you said you're originally from where? Taiwan I in grad school I participated in grad school productions and the lady who did the costuming she was a volunteer and her name was Lucy Ho and she was an entrepreneur actually a very important entrepreneur in Tallahassee, Florida and she opened up a slew of restaurants and other restaurants in America I'm not sure what she came with to America from Taiwan but she created an empire for herself and her family and she volunteered her time to just do costumes for the opera because she loved opera and I happened to just sneak there one day for fitting and she happened to have the entire class of students and I was like what is this and so apparently there was some underwritten thing where all of the Asian students would come to her foreign students and Asian Americans would come to her office during lunch hours and she would cater for all of the Asian students no matter where you were from and I thought this was so cool and so she's like oh if you want to come eat then you have to like sing for us and so I started like Lucy Ho's Hangout Spot on the lunch hour meeting all these interesting people from all over and she actually brought a lot of her home the Taiwanese New Year she had a festival that she started there which got bigger and bigger and bigger with the Asian community and both Chinese and Taiwanese people for the New Year and I was honored to sing some piece that took me months to learn and I can I sing this with a couple of instrumentalists and for the Taiwanese New Year it was so cool for me to be able to absorb so much of their culture and the stories and the food and that was a way to bring sort of me as an outsider into their community and appreciate not only her community but what she brought to Florida State and I think that was so beautiful in moments like that can easily happen when you know as much as you want people to understand what bothers you what's not right in the world I think it's really good to open your doors and your community to the outsider so we can really understand what is Asian culture what is Chinese culture, what is Indian culture so we can start to understand maybe not immediately but maybe my children who are there will be in interest so when that moment comes where they're in a position of power or position to invite more experiences or more ideas and have that sort of panel like we're doing now they already have in their mind like okay I need to invite this person and this person and there will be just a question of if it's a matter of I should and I think that's something that would help us as a person who doesn't understand who's not a person who grew up in your culture to be a part of your culture and it's not something that's given to me by TV at least not accurately what I'm hearing from you guys and I would really love to for I think there'll be great people like me who are very interested in knowing about it in a way that isn't maybe necessarily a discussion about things you shouldn't do but maybe let me invite you to have a dish like have a real authentic Indian dish or real Indian dish and then next thing you know I'm telling all your stories and that's a way to really in a positive way read a conversation without pointing fingers I think that it also brings up the whole aspect of generosity and really if we're entering into the space with generous intentions then I think you know instead of if we're coming into it hyper-critically and I think that but I also have to say well at a certain point when do I when will it always be my responsibility in order to educate you this is great, I've been telling this for a long time I think that we do that as an educator that's part of what it is but at a certain point I'm tired I'm tired of going to the same conversation and having the same conversation about where I come and what my name means I am totally with you before I came here today I feel that way but I'm so happy to be here today because it's it's it's an ongoing job I mean if you want in a way you don't have a choice but if you want this to be you know you want people to feel you want the people to feel sensitive you need to make an effort to do that on an everyday basis I mean I'm allowed to sometimes you're allowed to be resting fine but there are most of these you know we are if you want to be misrepresented misunderstood it is an effort to do it I mean we have to believe I mean as a musician I believe that the art of music and the making of music it teaches empathy because you have to be empathic to be a musician because nobody can be a musician alone and so I think we have to continue to believe that in whatever our respective art forms whatever they may be that there is empathy to be found in that art form and the more we can approach our decisions from an empathic and really global perspective I think the better we will be and the better art will make there are lofty words but there are very concrete ways to do that everyday to me we had this conversation earlier about respectful criticism to me this is the part where the job if you are going to be in the arts you are going to get criticism respected or not respected and it comes to the territory the next step is how do you how do you address it do you ignore it, do you embrace it do you deal with it, you just want to put it underneath a rug there are a lot of ways of handling that criticism so I think what you mentioned about empathy if you are in that empathetic mode it would be a behoove you to really embrace the respectful criticism when OCA Gutter Houston contacted HGO we had that meeting we had a positive discussion about both sides of the story and I think a lot of great actions were coming out of that we talked about the youth engagements exposing the ones that may not have the resources to go to HGO and see theater and the beauty that it is we are trying to work with HGO Co with bringing up or to go into the Asian American community perhaps before maybe some scholarship opportunities where families who are more economically disadvantaged can participate in this and really encourage and show them that this is a good thing to do to explore at least and I think taking that criticism as you know accepting as being as valuable as like 100 pieces of praise you know I think it's it's about the praise you know you'll always get someone's always going to like what you're doing especially if you have like a following but I think the criticism needs to be like you're saying accepted and absorbed and processed I think it's easy to dismiss one person who's offended by something when you have 500 people you were talking about this a little bit the show in New York when you have 500 people who are really praising it when you're going to talk about empathy then talk to the one person that felt offended and accept that they were offended or misrepresented or felt that because you can't devalidate that you can't devalidate someone feeling like that but could you also say you can't please everybody I think you can't please everybody you know maybe that you're going to make another piece of art another work that would continue to offend a new person or the same person you've had the conversation at least you've considered it important I think yeah exactly you're not dismissing it as something that you didn't have to that wasn't sort of an actionable conversation you didn't offend the person out of annoyance or not because you didn't mean to do that just because you didn't know it at all okay so because we are talking about performing arts an audience is so important and because we've just been talking about generosity and positive criticism and respectful discourse we're going to open it up to y'all and ask questions there are microphones that are here and we ask you to go to the microphones because it is being live streamed in order to do this in order so that everybody can hear as well like once again generosity kindness and empathy let's put those out there again and again yes your name good evening I'm Joy Scott and as a rule I don't use a mic because I don't want to take the wall all of you are so proud of you I live the life of the women in Kentucky that's very unusual because you guys would know that I'm a big programmer and kick white boys asses thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you this is a gorgeous Friday evening and y'all are here and it's Friday evening so there are at least 30 other arts events that are happening I guess it is not I don't want to be just specifically about that one piece but I think that we've covered much of that ground tonight so do you want me to answer the question I we we set out to cast primarily vocally first and I don't begin a conversation about a character with you know what ethnicity is this singer I start with can they deliver this score and can they and I would no more say to Ryan that he can't play King Philip in Don Carlo because he doesn't look Spanish then I would say to an Asian singer who was very gifted I'm sorry you can't play Carmen because you're Asian I wouldn't say that Orotelo I think we always can be better at being more inclusive opening the playing field to make the opportunities equal I think we can always be better at that all of us but I think we had a cast I was extremely proud of in Nixon and John and continued to be so to answer your question hi I'm Wei Chen I'm the arts critic for the Houston Chronicle the review I guess that started all I really I actually want to push back it actually just catalyzed part of this conversation this conversation many of the people in this room have been having this conversation for years and some of us unfortunately have been having it even before you were born so not that I thank you for catalyzing this conversation but I also want to put this into a larger context that this is yeah anyway so I guess the background for me is that when I saw Nixon in China I had a couple of questions I guess my first question was like my job is to go out and see as many performances in Houston as possible my question was why is this the first and only time Chinese culture has ever been represented in the span of like seven months and it's again what I described in the review a bunch of white people in Fu Manchu and that's really what I saw they were doing Kung Fu they were doing Tai Chi they were in conical rice hats that was not the type of Asian America that I saw represented and my other question which has to do with like the other Asians is like why does no one care why wasn't anyone like why does it take one younger person to get a bunch of people sitting together and being all happy and kind of nodding together I'm just curious like why does it take so much to get this needle moving why does it take so much and for one person it risks so much to get this going and I'm curious just I appreciate the broadness of this panel but how do the panels feel about Nixon in China and the Yellow Face is it right, is it wrong Patrick essentially made a justification for why Yellow Face is okay do the panels agree with that I don't think that we I'm not sure that we actually justified Yellow Face I'm not sure that anybody I think that we actually have said that representation is powerful and potent and can be harmful and I think that as much as somebody else should respond I'm going to I want to address the second question it's a very good question of what you said about you catalyze this discussion and going back to six to this point this conversation has been going on forever amongst the Asian-American community even here in Houston we had a representation T-Talk which is a community around table discussion on Asian-American representation on media last summer in our film festival and it's about do you know about these events that's the thing right, our events reaching out to you specifically and what I see for a lot of the Asian-American community is we're segmented I mean that's a fact right you read the news that pleases you or only things that you see but do you get uncomfortable enough to reach out to people that you may disagree with like have you reached out to the Asian-American community with OCA and there's so many different organizations that do great work in the city for these specific issues and I know you reached out to Cecil Fong our president on the issue but if you come to our events we are talking about these things it's not that we're silent and we don't care I think this shows we care and we're going to continue the care moving forward I think there are many ways of dealing with this organization I mean you are a critic therefore you choose this way and that's very powerful and there's some people choose to do very I don't know grassroots skill or like this lady in Florida she's doing a lot of things I am doing a lot of things Asian society is doing a lot of things we all collectively we do care collectively we do things I mean like a big controversial and doesn't mean that we don't care I guess one of the other things is that you have a platform and I'm glad you utilize it part of the reason why we have all these people on this panel is that each of us have a different platform and how are we utilizing those platforms in order to be able to do this yours happens to be really public and that's what you get paid to do and that's thrilling but part of it is that how are we each taking this opportunity in order to have those conversations because this is what my life has been for the past 25 years I think there's a difference between your platform as someone who's defined as a critic is the sort of the reception of that is different what you're being asked is different but in a maybe romantic and topical way existing as an Indian-American and trying to work in the arts world for me every day is an act of activism I'm just curious what you guys think about Nixon and China controversy do you agree with my review do you disagree I think we can actually talk to you about my personal opinions of Nixon and China on another I think this forum has been where I want to talk about beyond that and really what we've actually managed I think is to be addressing a larger context and Nixon and China is an art piece which deserves to have discussion but we are talking I think about a larger cultural context so you and I will talk later but sir, question first of all I want to thank Houston Grand Opera and the people in Houston 30 years ago to commission John Adams for this opera 30 years ago I was not in Houston but I watched the premiere in Brooklyn when I was in New York 30 years ago I was much younger I was much radical and much angry I watched the Brooklyn premiere I was not offended I don't remember I was offended John Adams produced a very powerful opera that was the first encounter of two universe at that time I have no problem with the red detachment of women okay if you talk about the yellow face that Yuan Cheng Ye was here I spent hours with Yuan Cheng Ye when he was here he was the one who performed his own life the actual production of Nixon in China including two of his classmates in Houston I asked him because John Adams first of all I was an audience and I had nothing to do with performing I'm an engineer okay but coming back to our discussion with Yuan Cheng Ye even I can appreciate after performance talk with the soprano so I think John Adams vocal music is very difficult this is different from some of the live opera we referred to earlier I think some of those live opera many many artists can perform so I posed a very different question for Yuan Cheng Ye put him on the spot I said a two key role Mao and his wife if we put the performance level at this bar how many Asian artists can meet that bar he had a hard time to come up with the answer for Mao's wife there may be a Korean singer can do it Mao he cannot identify a really high qualified person to perform that role if we use the vocal standard it's there okay but let me at this point I turn around and I'm going to criticize HGO production okay I have no problem with the red detachment of women I have no problem to portray the land law as a evil but I think HGO production kind of pushing like a crown and that's not appropriate I think I think it's appropriate to portray Nixon's wife as a innocent American girl totally shocked by this first encounter that's appropriate there are many things for example in the red detachment of women the An Biao used to put on red gown the ballet was back in the Chinese Civil War days in the 1960s right there was no red guy at that time okay your performance still had the An Biao here put on red gown those are minor things but what offended Mao the most is the sir at when Kissinger and the mouse secretary was fooling in the back in the shadow I think in American I think you used to humiliate the politicians we heard about Kissinger as a tendency to womanize and so forth but first of all I don't think that intends to drama this opera Q you have to keep in mind in Asian people we have an image that American soldiers went to Asia fooling around with a Vietnamese girl Korean girl, Japanese girl that bring back very bad memory the bottom line that's poor taste that's all I have to say thank you thank you hi my name is Cecilia Pham and just for full disclosure I am an immediate OCA greater Houston past president and I also used to work at project row houses so I was very I was blessed to get to work with Pia when they first started doing countercurrent festival through that and I love the depth and the breath and the diversity that you bring through countercurrent and giving it to the Houston community for free it's amazing and it broadens people's minds and gives young people an opportunity to go to these events and really learn about the arts and maybe perhaps become artists themselves in the future one of the things that when I was working back to Sixto's comment that this is a discussion that's been happening for decades for generations after generations and it's great that we have these discussions it's great we have these panels and it's great that we are willing to sit here discuss and talk about it but I want to walk away from these discussions with a plan of action with a call to action what can we as movers and shakers in our community the producers the funders, the backers the audience what can we hold us and our arts community to a higher standard so that we don't have these discussions year end and year out decade after decade and it should be a discussion in the future where it's I cannot believe that we have an Asian Othello I cannot believe half of the ballet company is African American I cannot believe that there are leads now that are of different race and ethnicity in these major companies like the symphony and like the opera and those are the discussions that I would like to have 20 years from now in which I had hoped I can see before I die and so that my kids and my grandkids are not having these discussions and so my question to you as the movers and shakers is how can you move the needle forward what are you committing to do your part like you always such a forward thinker because that's actually our closing question to the panelists and actually I do want to keep it as a closing question because I want to close this out very much upon that so we are getting any other questions I want to ask some other questions I want to make some other questions that's going to be a closing question that we will get to in a in a few minutes but we want to leave part of the intention is that we are leaving this room with very clear action steps from the people who are on this stage and hopefully that you all are also thinking about what are those action steps and how you are able to to ally with and associate with in order to make some of these to manifest some of those realities that we're talking about my name is Jenny Seto first off let me thank you for presenting this panel it's probably one of the few times I've heard an actual 360 perspective on this issue I want to in a way I want to follow up on her question about future action but I also want to follow up on Speedo and Pia and Steven's comments earlier on about youth engagement and that is whitewashing and lack of representation and lack of roles happen not just on the professional stage they start at the very earliest levels in youth theater companies in high school productions and it can be very discouraging for Asian Americans Black Americans Latinos to go young children to go into those productions and never get cast or get cast in very marginal roles I'm a mother of two working actors and fortunately they persevered through it all and they now have a career in the field but I have seen many instances where kids drop out because they lack the opportunity to continue and if you don't get the opportunity to them at that early level then you close off the pipeline that Patrick was talking about so what is your advice for maybe the youth that are coming up about sorry I think that's about more we've talked a little bit about more representation not just on stage but in people who are teaching or administering or in schools who are working with youth because I think that that's where the discouragement will decrease if you're talking about an Asian American a young Asian American working with a teacher in their school who's encouraging their arts career who's also Asian American they're going to see the success of that they're going to have someone to look up to they're going to have some understanding at a young age that it is possible I think for me I'm actually going to say this to the opposite for me the person who motivated me the most to be before I even was an opera singer motivated me the most to think that I could be something other than or drug addict or living in the hood was a white woman who was a 5 foot 1 Irish Catholic and she was a special ed teacher and at a young age when I was in special ed and majority of my class we had one white kid and an entire class full of African American troublemakers she told me that I could be something that I could be someone that I wasn't just a color she made every single one of those kids in that class memorize the Martin Luther King I have a dream of speech so every morning we went to class we had to say this speech and it became a mantra for all of us there and for me that's something even though I left that class and I got in trouble later on in my life it was still part of my life and it's something I thought about as I did go see my first opera and I saw this person on stage performing an art form that was so far beyond me at the time I thought man like like someday I could dream to be something like that and I think it's up to the educators as you said before whether you're white, black, Asian it's up to them to motivate all students not just any color and if there's someone with potential or there's someone who really loves to be a part who wants to be a part of something and maybe they don't have the exact all of the tools to be graded at first maybe it's up to you as an educator to maybe give that person some after school lessons at that point that person in a direction where they could get some extra help so they can be better at whatever they want to be better at not just say you suck, move on and I think that at a young age the kind of encouragement children need and young teenagers need is to know to not give up because it's maybe normal to give up and to try something else but the best things in life take work and are hard to get and are hard to obtain and I learned that later in my life when I wanted to be an opera singer I didn't have any of the tools to be an opera singer I didn't know how to read music I didn't have a voice I couldn't get on stage without crying but the people around me and the educators around me didn't give up on me they're like if you really want to do this you're going to have to work hard and I kept working hard and it took me pretty much 10 years of my life to even get to a point where there's a lot of art form including acting and art and some people are born with it some people you have to work your butt off to be even acceptable and if you want to make that sacrifice you have to be taught at a young age like you have to put everything into it so I think that we have time for two quick questions because I'm trying to model for myself in life we're really trying to nurture the next generation how can we be sensitive to not seeing our colleagues who have established themselves in the field as not overtaxing their responsibility I guess I'll speak very personally it is about a question of inquisitiveness and generosity I think that it's easy in order to respond to that in positive aspects if it is about representation or about an obligation then you're not going to get the best out of me in this aspect and I think that if it is about and it's not just about me who are the other people you have around that are actually like can you build a broader aspect it's not just the one Asian friend it's not the one Asian expert that you have it is the multiplicity and also how we also will disagree with each other in some of that aspect that complexity can build it into it I'm like I over exaggerate the exhaustion I think that that is but it is one of those things where it is also because I have had mentors who have been doing this for even before I was born and it is because of their generosity and them taking me under their wing and actually continuing to give me life that I can actually continue to do this but I appreciate the interest and the question I respond in kind and if you can I think it's two things I think part of it is having those conversations we're all going to end with figuring out what we're doing next but having those conversations and then figuring out what you're doing next and how those conversations are actually leading to change even if that's just additional conversation and I think the thing that I've run into especially over the last few months is I've been asked by quite a few people to speak on behalf of other people of color and like Sisto said all the experiences are different and I think it's it has been a you know that for me that is a point of frustration I can't speak for anybody else I can speak for myself I can speak for what my views represent but I think it's about having as many conversations as possible and also accepting again like Sisto said that everyone's viewpoint is different different experiences you know even two you know two Indian-Americans that have really different experiences of being in the country or working in the arts or you know with other qualifiers that make them seem very similar I would even say that my sisters would have a completely different experience living in the same household and growing up into it and so like our impressions are going to be different but I think that that's I think one more question last question Charlie Zhang and so I've I've listened throughout this panel and I've heard a lot of discussion audience engagement I really particularly appreciated the point about how it's not only important to portray a group accurately but also to consult with the group and so I think Stephen mentioned at one point that there's a generation gap and it's pretty pervasive and so there are like different issues unique to each generation especially Asian-Americans how that's particularly prominent in our community and how just like audiences want different things generations may also want different things because what I realized was perhaps not only does the dialogue matter in participants but also like their specific kind of forum and so right now we're having this conversation it's a very broad forum there's also a conversation that happened in a very narrow forum for example during the film festival we're going to have a discussion most involving Asians talking to Asians and so therefore we want to risk for example having a question or that's answered but then nobody hears the answer and the voices that don't get to be heard usually don't hear the answer so they don't feel empowered and then the wider community also doesn't hear the answer as in they don't receive that perspective but then if we have too broad of a forum then what happens is I feel like a lot of disadvantaged voices have a harder time being heard and so I'm actually a high school student and so my passion is to engage youth and especially to build forums especially in the creative field and so I hope that when we will not have to turn away any questions and so my question is with the supposed idea of the balancing act do we want a forum in itself that's more focused or do we want a forum that's more broad where's the balance and especially how do we balance not only like the mainstream where I suppose like the particular groups perspective also how do we balance across generations good question I do think that I mean one of the things one of several things is action items we're going to take at HDO as I mentioned an advisory panel on these subjects and I think making sure that all ages are represented on that advisory panel is very, very important and I think that's going to be one of the big outcomes of this conversation and we're looking forward even to continuing this conversation with I mean Morris at the ensemble theater in the fall and so we're going to take on some of your ideas for that forum in the fall but that's just our organization for others who can answer that in my personal opinion I think you need both and everything in between I know it's tiring I know it's exhausting but I think it's necessary so you need those specific ones that reach the specific community but also the ones that reach broader audience as well you don't want to miss a certain group that's left out or they don't get to hear what your opinions are so if you're motivated and you have the energy I would encourage you to do that starting with your own family honestly with your own parents and siblings and branch out be uncomfortable like that's the biggest thing this whole panel to me is about is being uncomfortable and embracing that uncomfortableness and I would say you should keep going you personally should keep going to talks like this and asking panelists questions like the ones that you asked because it pushes us too and I don't think you do it all because there's so many of us to do it thank you very much and so I'm now going to turn to this last actually we have time because of the live stream we're going to leave it to our panelists the question is what are you doing personally or organizationally in order to make sure that this conversation which if it's going to happen a year from now sounds, looks or is different Speedo well, anyone who knows me on a personal level knows how important race is to me and in any conversation I've been lucky enough to have a little bit of exposure last year by releasing a book about how I got to where I'm at right now and how race has been extremely important not in both good and bad ways in my upbringing and I think for me it's even at a young age, lucky enough I was lucky enough to have a parent who with every project that I had to do with every paper I had to write my mom always made me do it about a person of color and specifically African-Americans so at a young age in 4th grade, 5th grade when I ever had a project to write about a war something or American something I always my mother said it's a black person, make sure that it's a black because you're not only going to educate yourself you're going to educate others and I think it starts I saw a high school student here and asked this amazing question amazing questions the next time you have a report or a paper or something you're right on educate your classmates on your culture on where you come from, on who are important to your ethnic background because maybe every day we're talked about white people from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you go to sleep you're taught about something that's white and I think it's important to give 5 minutes out of the day to something that looks like you not only not only to look like you but to share that love and that beauty with other people what's the name of your book it's called sing for your life I think professionally I'm excited to be in a position where we're able to give voices to artists and creators that may not otherwise be able to share their voice in Houston so I think continuing to push that boundary will change the conversation I'm hopeful I would say personally with the same intent I am dedicated to the same intent of sort of sharing my experiences pushing myself to get involved in interests that are outside of my own identity so I can share my identity and have an exchange with someone outside of an Asian community or an Indian community who feels like they have a similar background or similar disadvantage or issue or conversations they want to have that expands my because I have to do the work too being an Indian American on the stage does not give me any free paths to do as well In addition to what I've already mentioned the advisory panel our work in HD OCO has been nearly 10 years now and has had a fantastic track record of community engagement and a really diverse set of works that mirror a very diverse community and I think we always have to be better at that and I hope that a year from now I'll be able to announce things that go further and continue to push the boundaries of what opera is Elaine? A year from now I hope that we don't start a conversation about what's different but talk about our similarities because I will share we have the similar we have the organ we have the skin and everything there are a lot more similar differences we have and we can share the empathy Patrick already mentioned the work that HD OCO is doing and OC is going to be very involved with that very excited to target more Asian Americans to be exposed to the arts other than that I want to increase the conversations between generations that to me is the key thing we talked a lot about what the artistic organizations can do it's on us as Asian Americans the parents the children who are still growing it's on us to recognize that this is a field to go down possibly and expose that it's a great path to go down there's going to be risks but there's going to be risks for any profession that's just life and if this kid truly loves what he or she wants to do in the arts let them explore it now don't diminish it let them explore that option and that's what I want to encourage more parents and to have more conversations about that topic so I don't get a pass the things that I'm doing I am going to actually accept vulnerability and actually write these opinions down on paper so that you all can actually troll me and all my ideas that's brave the second is make sure that I'm not the person that they talk to and actually the go-to person as the moderator that there needs to be another Asian voice that they can go to sir where are you like from we're going to talk there you are we need to talk because you might be here thank you all very much to our panelists thank you all very much for your attention your generosity and for being here and I look forward to seeing what work that you all are doing in order to make sure that this conversation changes within the next year so thank you all and thank you AHS Society and HGO and OCA and everybody who in order to make this happen and thank you Hal Round and done exactly on time thank you very much I would like to say thank you