 Welcome to the Neurodiversity Matters Conference hosted by STE. We have a lot of programming lined up for this conference and thank you to all the participants involved. But so I just want to mention a few quick things before we begin. First I want to thank a few organizations that have been vital in us presenting this. First we want to thank HowlRound who has been amazing in helping us co-host this event. We also want to thank Spartina Consulting which helped us develop the concept for the event with support from the Rhode Island Foundation. We also want to thank the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts which has supported the Neurodiversity Matters Conference as well as other programs we have had this spring and the Prone Family Foundation which has been a tremendous supporter to us throughout this year. So if you want to know more about this festival and get the schedule for all the events today you can check us out on our Facebook page that's Spectrum Theater Ensemble and please feel free to share the page with anybody you think would enjoy watching this. Great so with that I am going to turn it over our first panel to our moderator Leon Hilton. Leon take it away. Great. Thanks Clay. Hi everyone out there. Thanks for tuning in. So yeah I'm very excited to be kind of hosting the introductory panel to this really exciting two-day event. That's really going to be exploring this concept of neurodiversity particularly as it relates to conversations in the performing arts. There's a focus on a particular college kind of performing arts and how there's kind of this really exciting emerging conversation among artists and people who work with students at all levels in terms of inclusion, in terms of accessibility, in terms of sensory friendly practices, all kinds of really rich series of conversations that we have scheduled for the next couple of days. This panel was conceived actually to sort of serve as a sort of overview and introduction to these kind of terms that some people are really familiar with. Some people maybe are encountering these ideas for the first time. And so we thought what might be nice would be to just start with a kind of overview of what does this concept of neurodiversity mean? Where does it come from? And also how are artists and students kind of using the term to kind of think through art and in particular theater and performance in their practice. So one of the things that's been really nice is that actually this semester at Brown where I'm an assistant professor of theater and performance studies, been actually teaching a class kind of dedicated to thinking through issues of neurodiversity and performance. And I've actually asked some students in the class to join as panelists and to kind of talk through how they think about some of these ideas in their own kind of studies and also in their own practice as artists and performers. And so I've asked each of them to kind of prepare a couple things to say. I've asked them to sort of think thematically a little bit. So I'm hoping that each of them will kind of speak to a particular concept or theme under this like general umbrella of neurodiversity. And so they'll each speak for, I don't know, three to five minutes about a particular concept or idea. And then I've also asked them, I'm hoping we have time. We're supposed to go till around 130 or 140. At the end, we're going to have a little bit of a conversation about how they're putting into practice some of these ideas in their own work. And I do have some images of some of the work that they're making. So I think what I'll do actually now is introduce the four panelists. And then I'll actually spend a little bit of time just giving some kind of ground rule definitions of neurodiversity. Where does this term come from? What does it mean? How is its meaning kind of shifting as an increasing number of individuals and communities and organizations are kind of taking it up. And then I'll kind of hand things over to the panelists and we'll take it from there. But to start, maybe I'll just introduce who we have in the room, so to speak with us, and then we'll dive in. So as I said, my name is Leon Hilton, I'm an assistant professor of theater arts and performance studies at Brown. And then our first panelist will be Vanessa Garcia, who's a first semester senior at Brown University studying business, entrepreneurship and organizations. They are currently pursuing thesis research actually, looking at the extent to which corporate organizations include and integrate neurodivergent and or disabled employees with the goal of more closely assessing neurodiversity affirmative action initiatives. They also hope to attend law school soon. They also intend to continue to create and perform artistic pieces on living with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. As many of the themes that they research and write on become visible in the choreography that they make. So that's Vanessa. Next we'll have Julie Dind, who is an autistic scholar and artist who is obsessed with obsession and the performance of the non normative social body. She's currently a second year PhD student in theater arts and performance studies at Brown University. And her scholarly work explores autistic modes of performance. And her artistic practice deals with what the French poet and educator Fernand Deligny described as the place that is not the place of saying. Since 2012, she's been collaborating with the Norway based artist Rolf Gerstlauer on a project titled Drawing and Inside Bouteau. Third will be Nat Sorscher, who's a puppeteer in theory and practice from Birmingham, Alabama. As an artist, Nat's work focuses on the intersection between puppetry and mime, interrogating aesthetics of object making and objectification through the material world. As a theorist, Nat explores issues of performance and identity through the metaphor of the performing object. And as a panelist, Nat sits quietly at home waiting for their opportunity to talk about neurodiversity. And then finally, we'll have Nicole Yee, who's a junior studying industrial design at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. She's an autistic designer and ceramicist from New York City. So I'm excited to have all of them share some thoughts with us in a moment. But I thought what I would first do actually, and I'm going to try to see if I can successfully share my screen here. Just first say a few things about this concept of neurodiversity. What is neurodiversity? Where does it come from? And just so we can all maybe start from a kind of common place. Just to say that yeah, and I know that some of our panelists might cover some of this material, but I wanted to just begin with it to say that the first use of the word neurodiversity is really been attributed to the Australian sociologist Judy Singer, who first used it in an internet exchange form in 1996. So it's several decades old at this point. And she's elaborated the concept in an essay published in 1999. And I really liked this quote from Judy Singer, which kind of gives a sense of where she kind of got the idea to come up with this term that I think has now been taken up in so many different domains. But she says that I came to the neurodiversity word from the green movement. Environmentalists use the word biodiversity to argue that the most stable ecosystems are those that are most diverse, from which it follows that all species must be conserved. I thought the same principle could be used by neurologically different people who had traditionally been excluded, bullied and humiliated by mainstream society. In an era when no decent person would dream of mocking someone for their ethnicity or conventional disability, it was OK and even cool to mock nerds, weirdos and oddballs. And the neurodiversity movement is changing this. And so I kind of like that as a sort of like opening just to sort of pay homage to the people who have been really paving the way for what this term has come to mean. You know, there's other folks that I also wanted to just bring into the conversation and other kind of forbearers of this concept, one of whom is Jim Sinclair, who's 1993 manifesto. Don't mourn for us. I think is a really important antecedent for the idea of neurodiversity. Jim Sinclair writes that autism isn't something a person has or a shell that a person in trapped inside. But the idea that autism is a way of being. And, you know, I think that this has been a really crucial concept for thinking about the different modes of being not only autistic, but other ways that neurodiversity is kind of opening up our conversation into thinking about the many ways of being neurologically kind of different or other that can maybe have come to be fallen under the neurodiversity umbrella. And then the final person that I wanted to kind of bring into that conversation is Mel Dags. I think a lot of us have been thinking about Mel who passed away just in the last couple of weeks and was really such an incredible pioneer of of this of this movement and of the kind of conversation and the real insistence that thinking about neurodiversity is such a crucial kind of terrain for thinking about human flourishing in general and human rights and human inclusion. So just I've brought some words from Mel bags in my language, which is a YouTube video that was posted in 2007. But I think it's really become such an important document and text and manifesto for so many of us who are doing this kind of work. And I would really recommend looking at Mel bags in my language to to to engage with to engage with this topic. So those were just kind of some voices that I wanted to bring into the conversation. And I think maybe at this point, I will get out of the share screen mode and hand things over to our first panelist, who's Vanessa. Awesome. Thank you. This actually builds really well into what I'm about to say. So I'm glad that worked out. As I mentioned, my name is NASA Garcia, and I'm really interested in talking about modern definitions and interpretations of the term neurodiverse. My positionality also, as mentioned, is someone who lives with bipolar types could so effective disorder, or in other words, a neurodiversity that was later included within the term, but definitely wasn't the original community, which we know were autistic organizers. So I'm I'm invested in interrogating and sharing this distinct and more general dynamic of the term in two realms. One, my academic work, such as my honor ceases that particularly centers neurodiverse narratives in the corporate workplace and also writing papers for Dr. Holton's class on laws like Section 5150, which overwhelmingly impacts neurodiverse for folks. And then to the corresponding influence that this work and then my own intersecting personal experiences have on defining my performing arts pieces, namely in dance and theater. So when I released my first research call for thesis interviews, a ton of people asked me if they were neurodivergent, which was at once a very vulnerable moment between me and these people who were, in essence, kind of trusting me to confirm an identity of sorts. And at a point, I had to make it really clear that I wasn't the gatekeeper of the term, especially as part of a demographic that that wasn't the originator. So at this point, I realized I still needed a working definition of of neurodiverse, because people just really wanted to know if they fit the definition. I built this from doing research. I focused a lot on describing what it was. I focused a lot on giving examples and it shifted a lot, but it is currently this neurodiverse. A term originally coined by autistic sociologist Judy Singer to alternatively define people living with autism is now being used to describe anyone living with atypical neurological conditions pertaining to mood, attention, sociability and other functionalities. Other examples include ADHD, developmental speech disorders, dyslexia, intellectual disability, Tourette syndrome and mental health conditions such as bipolarity, schizophrenia, anti-social personality disorder and so on. So for context, I felt like I had to list so many different conditions because again, people really needed to explicitly hear what they lived with before they felt comfortable either claiming the term or realizing that they didn't or shouldn't consider themselves as such. One element that I also want to kind of focus on is that I had to keep adapting the part about the term's purpose. So originally, I had the term was coined to more accurately define people living with autism. And then I changed it to to more inclusively defined. And now it's to alternatively define, which honestly could be as equally scrutinized like the other words. And I think the main takeaway here is I don't know. I know the history, I know the roots before a working definition today. What would we describe the intentionality as, you know, for a term that's seeing a really recent uptake and strong uptake in usage from popping up in people's Twitter bios to a sort of all encompassing reclamation of mental illness language that I do believe could be pushed back on or defended, depending on your perspective, where do we draw the term boundaries and how can we how can we be sure to always censor how it came about and from what community, you know, the autistic community? In conclusion, I kind of feel like the impact of these considerations, which definitely are not just within my thesis, have really shaped my dance and theater pieces on living with neurodivergence. For one, I've been able to use the term in show programs to succinctly and powerfully define my understanding of my experiences and symptoms in a way that mentally ill and disabled often fail to do when the goal of my performance, for example, might be about self empowerment or about reclaiming myself in the eyes of society, et cetera, which is which is not to say I don't use the terms mentally ill and disabled at all. But the connotations were very off for my pieces, whereas neurodivergence or neurodivergence were perfectly on point. But do I do I think another person, say someone with Tourette's or someone with autism or OCD, do I think they then use the term differently or for their own framings and intentions? Absolutely, you know, just as I did and as I do. But then I guess my kind of final question or point here is then it probably wouldn't be my place or even territory as an artist to decide how they're identifying with it or even utilizing it given that it's not appropriate. So I'd be really curious to see what other people think on that. And thank you so much for including me in this really cool of office. Great. Thank you so much, Vanessa. That was wonderful. And really, yeah, I really spoke to spoke to so many important issues. So hopefully we'll just continue. And I think moving on to Julie at this point. So how things over to you, Julie. So I'm Julie and today I want to talk about the distinction between art created by neurodiversity individuals and our therapy. And I actually feel that like in this conversation on neurodiversity, this is a very important question. So usually when I explain people that I work on art and performance in relation to neurodiversity, people tend to automatically assume that my work relates to art therapy. And when I speak of people like that includes my mother, that includes pretty much everybody. So and well, it does not. So I'm interested in more capacious ways to look at the relationship between art and especially performance and neurodiversity. So when we think of neurodiversity, like there is this question of recognizing autism as a way of being or as a mode of being rather than as a problem that needs to be fixed. So in a way, it allows to escape a medical or therapeutic framework. So when thinking of arts relationship to neurodiversity, rather than asking, how can we use art to help to normalize neurodiverse individuals or to help them acquire communication skills, which is part of what art therapy does. I'm more interested in asking, what can neurodiverse artists contribute to art? Or how can we create art that moves and feels like us? So within an art therapy framework, art becomes a tool rather than a goal. It is about therapy as much or more than it is about art. As an autistic artist, my art is very much about art. So in her wonderful book, authoring autism on rhetoric and neurological fairness, which I recommend to everybody, Autistic Activists and Scholar Melanie Yergo writes, I want a rhetoric that ticks, a rhetoric that stains, a rhetoric that's popa, a rhetoric that averts eye contact, a rhetoric that loves theory about theory of mind against the wall. Well, I'm interested about exactly the same thing if you replace rhetoric by performance. I want performance that takes stems and popa, performance rooted in a autistic mode of being. So this is very different from art therapy. This is seeing what neurodiversity can contribute to art rather than a way in which art can help or make feel better or whatever neurodiverse individual. So one problem with art therapy, aside from the fact that, as pointed out by the disability activist, artist and writer, Alan Sussalan, and I couldn't resist to quote him. So he says, the term art therapy is one of those phrases like military intelligence that contains an internal contradiction. Art therapy uses the form of art for an artistic end, end quote. So the other problem is that it is linked to a history of silencing and surveillance. So when art is no more considered for its artistic potential, but as a way into the patient or as a diagnostic tool, this becomes very problematic for me. So as a autistic artist, I am extremely tired of people asking me whether my dance makes me feel better. It does not. That's not the goal. I make art. So the same question wouldn't be asked to other artists. And I think that when my dance becomes therapy, it's yet another tool to interpret me. So as a scholar, as an artist, I wanted to reclaim art as a space for intelligibility, for inexpressibility and for existing on autistic terms. But this is a big shift and that's what I'm interested in. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Julie. That was so great. And great. OK. So I think now we'll go to Nat, who I think is also maybe yeah, we'll just hand things over to Nat. Yeah. Hi. Hi, everyone. Hi, mom. I'm Nat. And if you want to get a sense of my personality, you just have to notice that my background is the confessional from RuPaul's Drag Race. I think a lot of my academic pedigree will be showing in this presentation because I'm also pulling very heavily from Melanie Yergo. And if I could give one piece of advice, it is absolutely to read authoring autism. It's a book that changed my life in the way that I think about a lot of the theory that I engage with and a lot of the performance I engage with, and I totally agree with Julie. We need to think about performances that tick and stem and recur in these really phenomenal ways. I want to talk today about spectrum. And I think it's an apropos thing to talk about because we're here on behalf of the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble. And what does it mean to kind of engage with this word spectrum? So Melanie Yergo reminds us that spectra are the master tropes for neurodivergence. And I take that to mean that spectrums represent a way of being as described by the neurotypical. So to be diagnosed into the spectrum is a positive thing for many because it allows for self-identification and community formation. But what does it mean to be a performance company that claims this term spectrum? And what does it mean to be placed within one by diagnosis? So spectra kind of inherently establish neurodiversity and in particular autism, specifically as opposed to neurotypical notions of rhetoric and this Julie appropriately mentioned performance. And it's because the spectra kind of comes with these stereotypes of non-symbolism and inability to debate or like hold like rhetorical notions of symbols and metaphor. And I believe like an ability to pull off a role. So I think there's like a stereotype that an autistic or neurodiverse actor couldn't appropriately play someone like Hamlet because of the nature of the disability. So to be spectrumed between to be spectrumed, I think kind of is to like inhabit this place between complete a rhetorical autism on one side and performance and rhetoric on the other side. And I did do a little visual aid to see if this would be helpful at all. But oh my gosh, no, I'm going to I'm going to turn off my background for a second. But yeah, so I don't know if this is reversed or anything, but you can see I've adapted a Melanie Yergo figure here where we have rhetoric and performance is one side of the spectrum and autism and neurodiversity on the other side and to exist within the spectrum. And I think you get a sense of that. You're always going to be questioned and your ability to perform your ability to produce rhetoric because you can't fully reach one end. It's a term that Melanie Yergo calls dimmy rhetoricity. If you are if you are on the spectrum and you are able to appropriately express yourself or like pull off a role, you're labeled as not autistic enough to speak for the community. If you are on the spectrum and not openly rhetorical or performatic, then you're too autistic to speak for yourself. So you're forever a non-incredible source and it's always kind of an inauthentic performance and to pull from Shakespeare. If you are kind of spectrumed by diagnosis, you are always telling a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. So what does it mean to kind of inhabit this notion of the spectrum in the notion of spectral theater ensemble? I think the main difference here is rather than trying to focus on depictions of the being on the spectrum, the company is really all about representation and inclusion and by allowing people on on spectra and people who are neurodiverse to speak for themselves, we get a more nuanced look at what these identities really mean beyond the stereotypes that are generated by the notion of the spectrum. That's really all I have to say. Thanks. Thank you so much, Nat. That was great. And finally, we'll hear from Nicole. Hi, everyone. My name is Nicole, just like Leon said, and I thought I would bring into conversation how understanding neurodiversity supports our ability to pause and reflect, for example, taking breaks and many of us need to take breaks. Breaks are essential after communicating, which can be in forms of conversation, presentation, performance, classroom and job settings. Taking a break can show up in many modes of language, language such as verbal language, body movement, body language, facial expressions and silence. And typically, breaks are scheduled in a daily routine, but breaks need to be seen as a pause in communication as it's not universal when a break is scheduled. So when our body needs to take a break to process, it may not simply be like, let's stop what we're doing. When we take a break is diverse and how we take it and when we take it comes in many different languages. For example, some of my classes at school always stick to the 3 p.m. break, whether that is after a discussion, a presentation, or some group work, it's always at 3 p.m. But in a very diverse classroom that may not always be preferred, I may need a break earlier on after group work, but my classmates will benefit with a consistent break midway through class time. Right now, schedules govern when breaks are, but maybe breaks should prioritize how we structure our schedules. And for myself, breaks are when I have the power to take control of my environment. While I'm with my friends, I know that I may need a break after watching a show with a lot of them. I may take a break from communicating throughout the show by sitting on the floor or checking in with one friend on something other than what's happening on Food Networks Chopped. And also keeping in mind that after reading a ton of academic journals, I may benefit from a break by having a change of scenery other than the library. I may go to the stairwell, which is a pretty good scooter ride away, or I may listen to a song, turn off the lights, organize my room that I have control of. After a bunch of group work full day, I usually recognize that taking a break before I return home acts as a good transition between my class and home. So I live about five minutes away from my class, which I always take the 30 minute route after class to pause my day. And with that, my breaks are often filled with familiar language, such as body movement by scootering. And I'd like to thank everyone for including me in this. Great. Thank you so much, Nicole. That was wonderful. So, yeah, thanks for these really great remarks. I think, you know, we don't have too much time because it's a really packed schedule for today. But one thing that I maybe wanted to end with is, and also I should say that folks are who are tuning in, please feel free to ask questions. I think there's a way you can do that via the Facebook stream and it'll come to us through the chat in some way. But, you know, while we're kind of absorbing all of this, I did ask all of our panelists to share actually an image from some art or performance that they've been involved in making. So maybe I'll see if I can again move to the sharing the screen here. Let's see. Yes. OK, so I thought maybe what I could do is just ask you, you know, and I also asked them to think about this question of how do the arts or how does performance open up the conversation or meaning of neurodiversity in ways that are kind of unique and productive rather than just talking about it, you know, from a kind of policy perspective or from a, you know, educational inclusion perspective, which are, of course, you know, really crucial, you know, arenas to like be thinking about the question of neurodiversity, right? But what can art or performance in particular bring to the conversation or bring to the understanding of this concept that these other maybe discourses can't? So I thought that maybe I could just ask maybe we could just go through and maybe we could talk a little bit about these images or how you have thought about this question. And I put them in a slightly different order than we talked in, but maybe we can start with this first image, which is Julie's. And I think let's see if is this showing up? No, yes. Oh, no, it is. OK. No. No more. Is it working? No. Yes. OK. OK. So, yeah. OK. So I'm a Bukto dancer. Bukto is a Japanese post-modern dance form. And like Bukto at its core is also about unlearning the social body. So as a autistic person who struggled to learn to function in a socially appropriate way, according to a neurotypical standard, then I said, this is a great art form for me. So this is part of a performance that is part of the drawing and then inside Bukto project. And I think it has very much to do about what neurodiversity can bring to Bukto dance. So yes. Great. Thank you. Second image is from Vanessa. Yeah, so this image is actually from a really recent dance show with my team. And I just I think I will practice by saying I was really used to doing solo pieces about neurodivergence because I felt like there was no way there could be like other bodies really on stage or like there would have to always be like I would always have to be like centered because it was like I was like very weird or it was like very divergent. So even if like, you know, I was in a play called Dance Fail and there were other actors and dancers on stage. But when I was when I was on stage, I was never just like with them. I was always othered and that was like the point in a way. And then like I had a fall dance concert solo where it was just it was just me for eight minutes doing a lot of hip hop songs about neurodivergence. And for this one, I'm showing this picture because I think it almost is it's kind of like showing an update that I've had in my mind about how I want to keep performing neurodiversity. And it's it's I don't want to I no longer really want to like always force these these images of isolation and and kind of extreme othering, not to say that that's not true, but because I think there's other modes of neurodiversity interacting with other bodies on stage that is not just like a sensationalized, you know, like very mentally ill kind of trope. So in this one, I'm actually doing a solo piece about a lot of things, but about like involuntary restraints, about police responses to to like my personal experiences, but in general, and my entire dance team was on stage for this part. And they were I was moving like obviously the lighting was like, oh, that's me, but people were like moving with me and at the same time. And it was like it was kind of like the biodiversity idea like it showed like the whole environment and that like everyone was in the scene and people were different, but we were, you know, we were all meant to be there. So that's why I bought this image. Great. Thank you. And next, this is an image from Nat's work as a puppeteer. Yeah. So this is from a show I did two years ago called Erattics. And as you can see, that puppet is literally of me. We we built these puppets. We built five or six puppets to resemble actors and puppeteers who were working on the show because I think really at the core of the show it was really about imagining one's own body as other and what it means to manipulate your own body externally. And we did it kind of through questioning like notions of Americana. You can see from our outfits that were kind of dressed like it's the 1950s and we worked through very complicated texts and complicated choreographies to really get to the crux of this question of what are we when we're outside of our bodies? Great. And last, Nicolson, I have two images. This first one and the second one, which is about your scootering project, I think. So do you want to talk a little bit about this? So this is more of how I like to take breaks. Both images are from a short film that I did in school on my scooter road trip of Rhode Island that I like to take every year. It's a time where I have complete control of how I want my environment to be. I wanted it to just be myself within the environment of Rhode Island as my road trip goes and creates this time of familiar language where I can pretty much show what my scootering breaks are like in my own personal enjoyment and share it with others. Wonderful. Thanks so much. I'm excited to see the film, actually. So I think, let me just see. Yeah, so I think we are maybe about at time, but I wonder if anyone had any kind of final thoughts. You'd like to contribute or share anything that I feel like we didn't cover or questions for each other in the last kind of minute here. Long live the arts. Yeah, I think that's a great movie. No to conclude on, right? Which is just so inspiring to hear you all talk about your process and how you're thinking about these issues and just really excited to continue to follow each of your work individually and to kind of continue to be in dialogue around these questions. So thanks everyone for tuning in. And I think the next panel will start momentarily. Is that right, Clay? Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for doing this. That was an incredible conversation. So yeah, as these wonderful people start to transition off, we have our next programming segment. Signing on. And this is going to be actually a feature on another amazing program that works with theater for people on the autism spectrum. This is a partner organization with us, the Miracle Project New England. We have Shelley, Rachel and Anna here to talk about that. So we have about five minutes of time in between. Take a break and we'll start the conversation at 140.