 Hi everybody, my name is Melanie Joseph and I am from New York City's Foundry Theatre, which I founded in 1994 and co-led for 25 years with some radical and very tender comrades, some of whom I think are with us today. My pronouns are she and her and I'm speaking to you from my rent stabilized apartment on land that was taken from the Lenape people who had a trade route that was about two blocks from here that was once called Braid Weg, which is now called Broadway. And so with the words of Grace Lee Boggs and in the tradition of the Foundry, I'm here to welcome you to this moment on the clock of the world as we emerge from lockdown and look up for next, not as a return to normal, which has been exposed, blessedly, painfully and globally, as not what we mean to rebuild again yet again. Exposing what is normal has led to what for me is incredibly inspiring. And that is the discovery of increasing numbers of my liberal colleagues in the theatre embracing and demanding radical new contexts for their work and for the world in which they're situated. To be able to see growing numbers of dedicated artists in political working groups like creating new futures or single-payer health care organizing in the Actors' Equity Union, who would have thought, or anti-capitalism for artists, I could go on and on. And I have to be honest, the discovery of this makes me want to live a lot longer than I'm going to be able to, just to see what happens. It's the timeliness, though, of these changes coupled with the radical and fearless vision of theatre and film director Milo Rao that provoked me to organize the events that make up the new solidarity art organizing and radical politics. If I hadn't come across Milo's work in his School of Resistance videos on HowlRound during the pandemic, and if he hadn't wanted to show his new film, this would never have happened. And by the way, if you've not seen the new gospel yet, don't miss it. You still have till midnight tomorrow and the link to screen it is on this same page. I promise you'll never have seen anything like it. And so I guess here we are, this gathering of remarkable artists and organizers and co-hosts from across the country, and you who have joined us, who I wish I could see more than anything. So I imagine we're gathered here to share the fullness of this change and to perhaps discover an ecology of a future that we mean, or at the very least to explore what next will be. So I want to give thanks to HowlRound for hosting all the technical shenanigans of the new solidarity. And I also want to give a shout out of appreciation to Frank Heckscher and the Siegel Center who supported this project. And I'd like to hand the screen over next to my colleague David Bruin, who is my partner in organizing this event and who's moderating this panel. And I thank you all so much for your very precious time and attention. And away we go. Thanks, Melanie. Hello everyone and welcome. I'm David Bruin. I'm a curator, dramaturg and scholar of theater and performance. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm currently in what is colonially known as Brooklyn on the traditional and unceded territory of the Lene Lenape and their ancestors past, present and future. Before we begin the conversation, I want to acknowledge the land that we collectively occupy and its digital manifestation. The following acknowledgement of what to keep in mind as we participate in this digital space was originally written by Adrian Wong of the company's spider web show. And with Adrian's encouragement has been slightly edited to mark this occasion. Since our activities are shared digitally on the internet, let us take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies, structures and ways of thinking that we use every day. We are using equipment and high speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art we make leave significant carbon footprints contributing to changing climates which disproportionately affect indigenous people worldwide. We invite you to join us in acknowledging all of this as well as our shared responsibility to care for one another and to protect our earth and water and for all of us to consider our roles in decolonization, land return, reparation and renewing our habits of assembly. My endless thanks to the panelists who have gathered here today and to everyone watching. Before the panelists share their stories and insights, I want to offer some brief remarks to set the scene. This conversation is animated by the question, how are artists seizing power today? The inspiration for this question is twofold. First, it is a response to the new gospel, a film directed by Milo Rao who joins us today. Filmed in Matera, Italy in 2019, the new gospel follows a group of migrant workers, many of whom are African, as they struggle against exploitation and corruption in Italian agriculture. Under the banner of Revolta della Dignità or in English Revolt of Dignity, a movement led by activist Yvonne Sagnet. Through an astonishing mix of documentary storytelling and cinematic theatricality, Rao's film explores the relationship between the Revolt of Dignity and the passion of Jesus Christ as told in the gospels. Yvonne plays Jesus to great effect. And the film asks its audience to consider if Jesus lived today with whom would he be in solidarity and what would he fight for? The film is available to watch on HowlRoundNow through Saturday, midnight Eastern time, so you still have about a little less than 36 hours to check it out. In addition to the film, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd uprising catalyzed a number of movements, many of them led by artists, aimed at reshaping every aspect of the way theater and performance are produced, rehearsed, and presented. We see white American theater creating new futures, amplifying activism and anti-capitalism for artists, as well as strike MoMA in the world of the museum, are just some of the initiatives committed to centering justice, sustainability, and solidarity on the stage, in the rehearsal room, in the office, and beyond. These movements, some of which today's panelists are involved in, are the backdrop of this conversation. Indeed, against this backdrop, I've often wondered whether the panel should have been titled How Our Artists Sharing Power, or How Our Artists Building Power, or even How Our Artists Redefining Power, as we know it. In that spirit, I'm thrilled to welcome our panelists, who I now invite to turn on their video and enter the Zoom, which is no not awkward way to say that. Excellent. I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves. To begin, we've asked them to answer the question, how are you and your comrades or your comrades seizing power today to reflect on the activities you're doing and to share a little bit about yourselves? Why don't we go in alphabetical order by last name, because I am rigid in certain ways. And Luis, I invite you to begin. To just see my face. Oh, damn it. It's like going back to fifth grade. Oh, okay, Alfaro. Hi, my name is Luis Alfaro. I'm coming to you from the great state of California, in the city of Los Angeles, in the unseated land of the Kitireños, the Chumash, and the Tatavian peoples. I am very, very, very happy to be here. So I didn't prepare remarks, but I guess I have some thoughts in my head and my heart that I thought might be a good way of starting for myself. I come from a great tradition. I come from the ancient threat. So I am a mentor and I am an interned and I am an apprentice baby, right? And so my entire life in the art world, and then probably my entire life has been bred through a kind of another tradition, right? And I'm thinking of somebody like Morgan Janes today, the great dramaturg, who has been kind of like my art mother throughout the ages. So I lived my life in waves. I was very much a part of the Los Angeles poetry scene for over a decade, and then I sort of transitioned another wave into the performance art world, and now I'm very much part of another wave, which is the theater world. And in that entire time, I have never stopped being part of what I call a community-based sort of practice. So the way I see my life right now is that for 15, 20 years, I was outside of a system, kind of working to change the system, and then I went inside of a system, and then I went away again for 15 years. And then what happens is the way you, if you stick around long enough, I'm looking at Mark Bermuthi Joseph, who I met many, many years ago, I'm thinking when you stick around long enough, you start to move into different kinds of positions because you keep doing the work, right, and hopefully you get better at the work and also more acknowledged for the work. So I've gone back into the systems. So I'm very interested in architecture, and by that I mean I'm very interested in the way that things work, because I want to break these systems that exist. So I work for an eight billion dollar university, a private university in Los Angeles called the University of Southern California, and so I work within a system to subvert it, and then I work within the regional theaters of the United States, but also mostly here in Los Angeles, to change our systems. So even though I'm a playwright by trade, really what I'm doing is I'm a union activist. That's what I started doing when I was young. I was part of the, I was an AIDS activist for a long time, and all of those tricks that I learned then, and I call them tricks because they really are, is what I bring into the field today. So this way this working within systems to change them from within. So I believe very strongly that we all as tax-paying citizens give a lot of money to regional theaters, and so we deserve to see the kind of theater that best represents our regions. What makes a regional theater a regional theater? So I'm very quickly just going to poetically say that I come from a county that has 10 million people who speak 224 different languages, that's not including the dialects, who live in 400 different neighborhoods, but we only perform usually in one language. We are very rich in our region, because we have seven regional theaters that represent Southern California, and they are all led by very nice, but unfortunately very nice white men. Our county is a majority Latino, and we are represented in none of the leadership in our arts fields. That is an apartheid. That is a tragedy, and that must change. So my job is to kill you with kindness, diplomacy. I am an ambassador for change, and every step and every part of what I do is to create that change while I'm making the arts. The art speaks as if we saw a beautiful Milos film. The art speaks, and so do our actions. So I am very excited to say that I'm here because one part of me is continuing to make art. I'm a practicing generative artist, but I'm also a generative political person. So what I do is I make politics, I make change, and both of those together make alchemy. How's that for a beginning? Good luck, everybody. That was great. I'm sorry to bring up memories of fifth grade roll call, but I'll turn it over to Alec. Hi, everyone. I'm Alec Duffy, pronouncing him, and I'm currently in what is now known as Brooklyn, the unceded territory of the Lenape people. And I am a theater director and writer. About 10 years ago, I, with my wife, Mimi Lien, who's a scenic designer in theater, started Jack, which is a performance space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, really with the intention of creating a space that served as a meeting point for several different communities. And that also, with the aim of also creating a space that felt like home to many people in the neighborhood. The impulse to start Jack grew out of being involved in TCG conference, actually theater communications group, where I was there with several grantees, and we just spent the whole week complaining about the state of American theater. How the behemoths in the American theater didn't have the right audiences, they didn't have the right people on stage, weren't presenting the work of the right playwrights, et cetera. And it was at that time that I was struck by the fact that these theaters that we were talking about, these behemoths, were once, you know, garage theaters or storefront theaters in the 60s and 70s, started by people our age or younger, so people in their 20s at that time. And I was like, where's the entrepreneurial impulse in our generation? Why do we feel like we're just beholden to the existing paradigm? And so it was out of that question that Mimi and I decided to put our life savings into starting this space that life savings ran out after five months. But we were able to, via box office at that point, we were able to continue and we're still here. After a few years, the Black Lives Matter protests started coursing through our city this 2015. And we started doing more work specifically around racial justice. As we did that, it became clear to me that a white male leading Jack is leading the visioning around racial justice at Jack was problematic. And so we created a co-director position. Diera Wright filled that role. And we co-conceived the series Reparations 365, which was a series about Distributive Justice for Black Americans, which combined theater and also conversation and activism around that topic. And that was really a first step really into activism for us as a theater space. Jordana De La Cruz is our current co-director, also a theater director. And we are crawling out of the pandemic with all sorts of visions and plans for the future. I'll stop there. Excellent. I'll turn over to Emily. Hi, everyone. It's good to see you all. Melanie, that was such a beautiful introduction. It made me tear up a little bit. I really appreciate the invitation and this time together with everyone. I'm Emily Johnson. I'm from the Yupik Nation. I live on the Lower East Side of Manahatta in Manapahoe King. I'm a choreographer and gatherer of people in many sorts of forms. I'm a land and water protector, activist for justice and well-being and sovereignty. I'm sitting outdoors right now in a community garden on the Lower East Side. It's just part of the day that I am having that brought me here and to be here at this moment with all of you. But actually, as I'm listening and thinking right now, I think it's always good to be here. But to these gardens will be gone by people who saw space and started to bring themselves and their bodies and plants and seeds to space and to grow here. And so for decades now, the community gardens in the East Village and the Lower East Side really serve a very vital and particular and important function in our neighborhood. They are gathering spaces. The garden that I'm part of is a food producer. We produce food for ourselves and for the neighborhood. And during the pandemic, for many people who needed more fresh food and also now this garden plants every year, black plant corn seeds that are now shared back with the historic Lenape community in an effort to build continuous pathways for forcibly removed Lenape people to return home in the ways that they want to and for what reasons that they want to. And I'm heavily involved right now, not only in dance making and fire building and gathering and creating the futures and the Decolonial Action Coalition, all of which are these amazing gatherings of people who are really working, I think as you said, who is working from within and also from without. Like when I'm on a stage and when I'm building dances, I'm always thinking of pushing out through the walls and I'm always thinking of the ground underneath. And so I think of the ways in which I build dances and build coalitions and build community with community is is is always in relation to being a better relative with land, which for me and for us also includes land and water and our more than human relatives and kin and here particularly right now in New York City there's many land protective and neighborhood protective efforts happening that have been heavily involved and have gotten involved in the politics of New York City in a way that I never thought would ever be anything near in my life. But I'm very active and part of that is because there's a 58 acre park on the Lower East Side called East River Park that if the city has its way will be completely demolished. So that's 58 acres of green living space, a biodiverse area with a thousand trees and of course every living thing in that park and that migrates to that park and that depends on that park. And so there's a there's a powerful group of folks who are working to protect that land and our neighborhood. And seizing power I love David how you you brought in those other words because the seizing has been has been a challenge for me to think about because I do think about building power and I think about power collectively and I think about the ways in which that is what matters is that is the collective and in this in this ongoing emergent moment as we are continuing it is it's that collective consciousness shift as well as our as our physical attention shift and what we bring our minds and our bodies and our blood and our hearts to. And so really appreciative to everyone certainly in this panel and far beyond who's doing that really wholeheartedly right now. Excellent. Pass the digital microphone to Bermuthi. Peace everybody my name is Mark Bermuthi Joseph. I am a first generation American of Haitian descent. I am on the unceded territory of the Anacostian people in what is presently known as Washington DC. I spent most of my adult life on the historic land of the Ohlone people Oakland California. There's a fierce drought across the western part of this continent right now and it is pouring rain right here in DC which I guess maybe that's where the conversation about power begins for me is elementally. This rain reminds me of my grandmother. I'm a leader who was best friends with Jesus. I think you can appreciate that Milo. I remember driving with her in a Florida thunderstorm, one of those rainstorms, one of those thunderstorms that's kind of like what I'm experiencing right now where you can barely see five feet in front of you. And my mom was driving and I was in the back seat. My grandmother was just singing how great thou art. My grandma really couldn't sing. She had a pretty like terrible voice but she was very earnest and she meant it. And when I think about power, I think about the power of the universe. I think about drought and famine and also rain and abundance. I appreciate everyone who's spoken thus far about the generative aspect of their being and of their practice, the idea of making or building power. And it occurs to me that I'm not so much seizing but I am making place for power at the institution that I work at now. I have a square job, which is I am the vice president and artistic director of social impact at the Kennedy Center here in DC. But like a good West Indian person, I have mad jobs, yo. I got mad jobs, yo. And so the jobs that kind of form the penumbra of my action and activity are poet, librettist, dad, like corn chip eater, those kinds of things. What I'm doing really in a nest of federal power because the Kennedy Center is adjacent to federal power as a memorial to the 35th president of the United States is I'm thinking about anti-racism in a systemic way. My mantra is that if racism is structural, then anti-racism also must be structural. And in my role at the Kennedy Center, there's a capacity to think about both structural racism and also its corollary, which is structural capitalism. And so to maybe not be anti-capitalist within my institutional role, but to think about a kind of capitalism that is space making for historically stigmatized individuals and communities to re-fabricate language and vocabulary around the role of artists in terms of our leadership matrix in this country. To give money out without the expectation of a kind of product, to kind of undermine the transactional paradigm of how we work at the Kennedy Center to actually, I guess I seize power by ceding power to the community. That just came off the dome. That was kind of good. I'm going to keep that one. But that's what it is. That's what it is. I seed power. And we can talk about the myriad of ways that that happens in my institutional home. But before I pass it back to Milo, I just want to say that the rain has now stopped. And so I just feel like my grandma's around. And I feel her power. And I want to invest and invoke ancestral and elemental power in this conversation and throughout our work together as activists seeking a more equitable future. So thanks. I think the rain had to respect the rhyme. That was why I had to make space for that treasonate. So Milo, why don't you bring us home with this final opening question? Oh, did I lose him? No. Okay. Well, when Milo comes back, we can return. I guess I'm curious because a couple of you have mentioned the institutions in which you worked. And I just graduated from an institution that maybe not to put words in your mouth, Louise, but similar to USC is a handmaiden to finance capitalism. It was that way when my university was founded in 1703. It's that way today. I'm deeply ambivalent about it. And I, you know, Milo's back. All right. Well, I'll have to return to my rant about the university. Milo, are you connected via audio? You can hear me? No? Now I can. Yeah. Yes. No. Yes. You can. You can. So it's my turn now. Connected completely for one minute. So yeah. Yeah. So hi. Hi. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm hearing it's a very interesting thing to do this land acknowledgement what you did in the beginning. We don't do that in Europe. So I mean, I try. I hope I can do that in the right way. So I mean, Avignon in South France, formerly Occitania, invaded by, by France in, I think, the 13th century, when the start of the nation building started in Europe. And it became, I think, towards the 16th century part of, of France and is since then France in the revolution, there was an uprising, but then there was a little genocide. And, and since then we have la Grande Nation. So I'm here at the festival. And what is my background? I am from Italian and German descent, Swiss citizen. The German part of my family came to Switzerland in just before the war because my, my grandfather had a Jewish woman. And they decided to come to Switzerland. And it was a good decision. But then they divorced immediately and she decided to go to Canada. What was happy for me because then he had a new wife and from the other side, the other part of the family comes from Italy. And that's perhaps why I have this still this interest to Italy. So and they met in Switzerland. And then in the 50s, everything happened. And, and in the 70s I was born. So that's how, how that worked. So listening to, to, to you, how you were answering to this very interesting question of, of you, David, I could, I think I could just cover parts of you. And then I would have what I, I want to say, so it will be a bit of speed redundant. But I can, I can answer through the, also through the film. It was very interesting to listen to your, to your practices and to your background. Because I have the impression that you, and what you can see in the new gospel, it is like building solidarity is a kind of acknowledging the, the identity of the other or of the other movement. And overcoming it at the same time in a, in a, in a common solidarity or in a common project. Because when you, when you, when you look to the situation of, of South Italy that we describe in the, in the film, and I know very well. So the big enterprise is neoliberalism or you can call it a system or capitalism. However, you want works by dividing people through their identities. So for example, Italian white trade unionists would never work together with, with a refugee activist like, like Ivan Sanje. And they would not, the people from Cameroon would not work together with the people from Sudan, would not work together with the people from Nigeria. And for the mafia in the South, and the women would not work with black and muslims would not work with, with, with Catholics. And that's how we interpreted in the, in the, in the Revolta dei Ladini, the Revolta of dignity, the message of Jesus as a universal message that calls everybody into dignity and solidarity to overcome this tragedy of divided emperor, of separate people and reign over them and trying to unite to perhaps not to seize power, but, but to how to say construct parallel systems of production and distribution of, of, of art, but also of tomatoes. So in the, if you saw the film, of course you could describe the film as a tool to propagate tomatoes. And that's what, what it became, because the film is used in Europe now. We landed in 150 different places with these tomatoes. It became a big business. And it's, it's really a parallel system of distribution. So it's kind of hacking the economic system through making art and using channels of distribution that sometimes exist and sometimes don't exist. So for this film, there was the idea to distribute it through Amazon and Netflix when, when everything was closed. Now the cinemas are reopened in Europe, but when it came out, it was closed. So as we do it now in the US, we distributed it through a network, but it was a network we created with 150 closed cinemas. So if you would have bought a ticket, it would go directly to the, to this cinema, you, you make the choice. And it really worked. It really worked. And this was my lesson of this, this project, you know, we all say capitalism is immoral. And when we say we want to have dignity, we want to have sustainable food, we want to have art production that is made in a collective and utopic way. If everybody says that, then the capitalism will say, okay, I only give you this because I said you what you want to buy. And, and, and, and this is, this is, this is quite interesting for me, how you can use this system in another way, perhaps you can call it reforming. I think the first voice said, I think it was you, Luis Alfaro, that going into institutions that already exist or systems of distribution that already exist and use it in another in a human way, in a collective way. And there are many, many, many possibilities. So, yeah, so that's, that's a bit for me, the whole, yeah, possible answer to your question, David. Excellent. Milo, when you were gone, you interrupted my rant, which was a good thing because it was really going off the rails about institutions and, and, and what I see as an aspirational goal, say for myself, of being in the institution, but not of the institution, and as Muji said, to seed power in multiple senses of that, that homonym. So I guess, you know, maybe Muji, I'll ask you, because Mellie and I, this is a question for everyone about how do you relate to the institution? And, and is the institution, are these large institutions, whether we think about them as predominantly white, whether in some cases they've actually caused enough harm to be just finally labeled white supremacists, whether we think of them as, as capitalist, I mean, would the world be better without some of these larger organizations that had theater club round about, I'm inspired here, I have to say by Strike MoMA, which is advocating for a post MoMA future in actions that they've been doing over the last two months. But I'm curious how people negotiate what I'm sensing as an ambivalent relationship to their, whether you think about your place of employment, your job, you know, your mission, I want to be generous. I hope I'm not asking this question in bad faith, but maybe the way to begin this, but Muji, if you can say more about that relationship you were talking about to the Kennedy Center, you know, what is the right relationship with that institution for you? And what questions do you struggle with? Um, yeah, thanks for the question. I have come to a place where I don't really have problems with institutions. I have problems with white supremacy. I have problems with violent patriarchy. I have problems with, you know, heterosexism. I have problems with these social pathologies. And I acknowledge that the social pathologies are inscribed in the founding. They are part of the genetics of these institutions. And so a lot of these institutions almost through no fault of their own, almost through a kind of inertia, propagate the worst parts, I think, of the social contract, the most nefarious and harmful aspects of our social ecology. So my relationship then to institution is through or at least attempts to be through the service of futurity. And Emily and I spoke about this together with our friends, Jonathan and Daniel, a few weeks back. But I interviewed this woman recently, Marina Gorbis, who is the executive director of the Institute for the Future. And she talks about the future in four different ways. She talks about the future as she talks about a growth paradigm, which is to say that we are here at this point and we're going to continue at this point at this trajectory until she talks about collapse, which is wildly popular in Hollywood. A future of collapse is the apocalypse. Everything falls apart. She talks about constraint, which is a future that we are actually currently experiencing in the present. Just a future that is predicated by a severe lack of resources or just kind of less than what we currently have. And she talks about the future, a paradigm of the future that is about transformation or transformative, which is the hardest kind of future to project onto, but is actually the realm of artists. A transformative future is the realm of the visionary, of the creative visionary of the artist. And that's what we do. We create futures all the time. So the question that I've been asking is what does a culturally transformative institution think about diversity or equity or inclusion or access or capital? And so I guess what I'm getting at, man, is that the problem with institutions is that they principally are consumed with both the aesthetics of the past and also the morality of the past. That those, that's the DNA of these institutions, which we continue to propagate. But if institutions, particularly cultural institutions, thought of themselves as incubators for a culturally equitable future, if institutions thought of themselves as conduits for transformation, well, particularly social transformation, well, now we're thinking about something else. And so I guess I am a mutant in the DNA. I am a mutation in the DNA of the institution that I work at currently or any institution that I engage in. And my hope is that that mutation, me, who's not supposed to be here in this body with this power, that that mutation is something that takes hold until the genetics of the institution itself become altered. That's my gig, Professor X at the Kennedy Center. I don't know, Luis, if you feel the same way at USC. Oh my God, I mean, I'm riffing on all of it. I should say I'm going to riff into you and into Milo's film, because one of my favorite parts of this film is there's a beautiful moment where the police are clearing an encampment. And there's a guy on the phone and they say, are you alone? And he says, yes, I'm alone with my God. That's the only other person with him, right? And I was thinking about this, because, you know, my heritage is the Central Valley of California. I come from a farmworker legacy, right? And so we have, I was raised Pentecostal. So I was really raised in a kind of sect religion, right, and very traditional. And one of the things, one of our favorite sayings was, in the world, but not of it. So subversion for me works in a kind of religious way, right? I am a spiritual activist, right? Because I'm very interested in people. I'm very interested in change, social change. So I never write a piece alone. I never think of myself as a singular artist. I only write in community. I only write in public, right? So because I do that as a religious act, what happens is the spiritual or the faith notion, which I think Mark is talking about so beautifully too, right, is the way I move forward in the world. My job is to subvert. My job is to say that I do not belong in the institution, but I am the institution too. So I'm going to change it from within. I'm going to change it from within. So, you know, I'm going to do my, you know, one of the beautiful things about being in gigantic institutions is they start to recognize you as that person that does that. And they put up with you for as long as they can. I'm very lucky, you know, because the one thing I fought for early was to get tenure, right? So you can get fired and you can drive them insane. But that's really, really important. And you know, I used to poo poo at all that stuff. But now I've realized the real change that I've done institutionally is because you walk in always and you know, this is always a controversial notion. I always walk in the margins. I'm a Chicano and I'm queer. I'm always outside of it. Even if I want to be in the center of it, I'm not in the center at ever. So what that does beautifully is allows me to drill up, right? Or to drill down or to drill in. So this notion of what I'm able to change always happens well also because I believe in faith. So I believe in being kind and I believe in love and I believe in all those crazy things that allow me to be friendly with people that sometimes I don't want to be friendly with, right? But I do think that change happens on a very, very personal level. It happens on very personal level. So as I move up in my systems, right, as I'm able to give out money, like Mark was saying, I sit on a lot of panels where we get our money and everybody always says, you're ridiculous about that. But let me tell you something, giving artists money is a revolutionary political act. And giving artists money, giving money in a way that makes real change is what we can do, what we can bring into the field. I have to stay at the forefront and I have to study the field a lot because I know that there are people out here that are also working in the margins. We have to give them the power or empower them if it's money, if it's just the certificate, whatever it is, to allow them to subvert their own environments. And that's really, really important. And I learned that through farm work, through migration, immigration, through being in an undocumented family. And I learned that really through community based artwork, with working in the state prisons. That's where you learn how to subvert the system really, really well. And you take all of that into the art world. And you are a criminal, you are, but you're a criminal because you're changing something. And this is the thing that's so great about what I think we do so well. We are in the business of change. I used to say we're in the business of emotions, but I'm not sure I believe that anymore. But I am in the, I am in the business of change. All I do is change. I change and I change and I change. Every artwork is a new artwork. And every artwork is a new experience. And I always feel like today I'm feeling very much like, what am I talking about? I don't even know who I am, because I don't know how to start a play anymore. But every time I start a new play, because I am in the business of shift, wave, change. And I love those words. I love them because they're action, they're movement, they're energy. That is the way community works. That is the way we, that is the way we create political movements. That is the way my community responds to me, right? Action, movement, forward, love, which is, right? That's important. Does anybody Alec, I'm looking at you and I'm going to throw it at you. Yeah, that the idea of change, constant change and action is really, really resonates with me. You know, in starting Jack, really the choice was to stay out of the existing institutions and try to build our utopia on the side, right? And then of course the challenge is, how do you, as the, as the, as your own tiny institution starts to grow, how do you keep inviting discomfort? And how do you avoid becoming institutionalized in the way that you're trying to fight against? You know, Milo, the manifesto that's, that was released in 2018 that you wrote, that I hope people can take a look at was really inspiring to me in reading. I'm just, just now I was, I was only educated to it a few weeks ago, but the, the elements that you have in your manifesto upon becoming artistic director of antique ent include, you know, making sure that the production process is completely publicly accessible, that is rehearsals, research, castings that, that the, at least a quarter of rehearsal time must take place outside of a theater, that at least two different language must, must be spoken on stage in each production. At least two of the actors must not be professional actors. For example, all of these are just chaos inducing, you know, if you're, if you're from an institution looking outwards, but, but necessary in keeping things real and inviting that constant discomfort and newness. So I don't know that really resonated with me in starting our space. I find that anytime we're coming up against a challenge is an incredibly healthy time for us. And whenever we hear a challenge from someone, whether it's an artist we're working with, that's when we, that's when we can take a step forward. That's the opportunity for us to be constantly growing and shifting so that we avoid becoming a comfortable, a place of comfort. I don't know if I can interfere here to answer to your, because you were quoting the Gantt manifesto and then I was, I was not born to become an artistic director. It was just like it happened because I love Gantt and I was working in Gantt in the children's theater. So I decided to become, to go inside this institution. And when I did it, and it was for me very important to be very explicit because I think being political means being explicit and being even dogmatic, perhaps even a bit Stalinistic to say, okay, this is the dogma and we will adapt the dogma and we will do what we preach. Because the problem of European institutions, perhaps it's very different and you are more idealistic in the US, but in Europe you have kind of one department in the institution that would print beautiful papers and even leaflets and making panels about diversity and everything. And on the other side you have the staging of Schiller and Shakespeare, you know, so with a white ensemble. And I just wanted to make a plan that makes this completely impossible and that makes me accessible to everybody who can say, but this is not what you write in point three, what you write in point two, but for example, you have the right to be in, I wanted to demystify this kind of production process and say, okay, everybody can come to all rehearsals, there is not a premiere, the production process is the product, you know, and that everybody could be there and give his advice. And the fact is that the products become of course better than because you have more people working on it and you have the public involved and you have the reality involved. Or the other point, it is forbidden to use a written text. A text has to be written during the process. You have the right to have 20% of Shakespeare or I should also or whatever you want, but not more. And it worked very well. It worked very well. It's of course making a permanent revolution makes people also a bit hysteric. But when you overcome it after a season, you also get another and the slower path to do things because you understand, okay, if I want to create and not only to adapt following the rules I didn't or we didn't make then I need more time. And you can produce 20 projects, but you produce perhaps five or six or perhaps seven and perhaps one project takes four years and then it will have a lot of different forms to appear. There's a film, for example, the New Gospel for me is a big project to distribute tomatoes, but there is also this film and it has also a spiritual dimension to make a social fight. Of course, he has of course, we appropriate the Bible from this strange institution, the church, the biggest problem of Jesus was that the church appropriated his message and I never understood how people could kind of this. I mean, in Europe, they even try to not translate it in local language. It was in Latin until I think the 17th century, because they knew if people would know what is really written in this book, then the institution has a big problem, you know, so they had to hide their own book to the people. So we are in absurdities like this in all institutions. And that's what when I said, okay, I come in and I do this and again, together we are four directors, by the way. And I also made one not written rule. I said, okay, now I have two years more, but because of COVID, but I said I do it for five years to not become, I don't know, not become, yeah, but that's a bit because I'm coming from the independent scene and I was a bit afraid of this job and I was thinking, okay, it will take too much of my energy and time. And then of course, you start identifying that's for me dangerous too, even if I think if I compare with the institution you presented, the Antiguento European City Theater, they are small, you know, we have like 100 people working there. So that's really it's kind of a middle-class enterprise. So it's not a big deal, but it's a beginning to see how would you construct this community that creates what we call our classics in Europe, because that's the institution that what they do are the classics, you know, so you can create new classics. And that's a beautiful thing that this is, this is tradition is so simple to change even in the brain, in the total brain of what you described before as this patriarchal et cetera, et cetera system that somehow was before the tax created 500, 600, 700 or perhaps more years ago in South and Central Europe and then exported to everybody to make them swallow these stories. And it's so simple to not simple, but it's possible on a small scale to change it. And that's what we try. And that's why we try to be explicit in it and to be accessible. Emily, I'd love to ask you well about whatever you want to share on this front, but specifically about the decolonization writer, which to me has the force of a manifesto. It has a certain visionary quality to say the very least. So I'd love to hear your thoughts in this vein, but also specifically about this document and your journey with it and what you envision the future of it being. Yeah, I was thinking of tools as we were speaking of structure and of manifesto and the decolonization writer, which is a living document, which is always in process and always kind of growing in terms of what needs institutions, what needs I need to present that institutions need to meet when working with me. And it's a public document, so it's shared. I hope that everybody uses it because decolonization is also a collective action forward. Thinking of the Decolonial Action Coalition, which there's a briefing on it in the Creating New Futures Phase II document, which was recently published publicly, and I encourage everyone to read it. The Decolonial Action Coalition is thinking about how we can guide and also assert that institutions must meet the Decolonial Act calls for change specifically and very specifically different from DEI processes, a very different kind of process that decolonization must, that goes through toward a process of decolonization, which is ever going. And as a process of decolonization is not a metaphor, which I'll come back to in a moment, but so thinking through benchmarks, thinking through what are the actual indicators and guidelines and processes forward that institutions can be measured against from the outside, like an external decolonial review, but that can also provide very specific pathways forward internally for an institution. Because, Mark, I love, I mean, we are all very hopeful people on this panel, and I love that. And even with your actions, I like see so much hope and like gathering of energy and sharing of energy, and that's what we're here to do, and that's what we all do. And so brilliantly and so evocatively and generatively. But Mark, I don't share your, I guess I've been harmed by institutions to such a point that I am very much in the idea that there are some institutions that absolutely need to hold, institutions that are very actively refusing calls for justice, for liberation, for decolonization. Certainly institutions here in what is called the United States, but also globally. And you know, and this is a process of, we are all in processes of different forms of generating different forms of dismantling different forms of burning down. I think all of those forms are interrelated and needed. I think of power very much in this kind of solitary fashion. And I think of the future as not something, not something forward or away, but like, but now. And so how do we collectively and individually live in that, live in that future that we always project as coming, you know, and that that better future is forward if we only do XYZ. But how can we pull that all here? And so that we are living in that future now. And of course, that is going to take multiple, multiple, multiple generations to actually get to. But I think there's a power in thinking of that future now and in building these kinds of tools and in being hopeful as we are enacting these tools and finding new tools and in that process as well. I think of endurance also. Mark, I think you said that you were not meant to be here. And in the genocidal founding of this country, currently called the United States, I am not meant to be here either. And so I think of endurance. I'm with my friend Adam Sings in the timber today. And we were down at the park that I was talking about earlier. And I was talking about this about endurance as a healing process, endurance to, to, to, to, endurance as, as also a reflection of what my ancestors moved through so that I very much could be here in this physical body. So endurance as necessary and endurance as, as, as healing and that there is something through, I think this long form moment that we, again, individually and collectively with the endurance that yes includes rest, that yes includes nourishment, that yes is not a punishing kind of endurance, but an endurance that, that guides us forward in like, like, beautifully and dramatically clear like vision and thought and heart space. And, and I think I wasn't feeling that so much before this column and feeling it a little bit more today. So I think everyone here for kindling that again today, it's something that has to be reignited and reignited and reignited and hopefully shared more and more. And maybe to say that the Dean of the Yin and Yang of that is, you know, I never want to run away from this other thing, which is that the theater is a very dangerous place, right? The theater is filled with conflict and mystery and magic. And it's, you know, that I was on, I was watching a panel the other day where somebody said, you know, to somebody said so and so, you know, Sean said no say because no Sean. They said, Sean said no say, how have you harmed people in the theater? And Sean said, how have I not harmed people in the theater? Let me take ownership, but also to say that the theater is really, really hard for this, right? And I was thinking right now we were talking about, so the 1990s, I was really part of a big part of the AIDS, AIDS movement. And I was running something called the Game and a Color Consortium. And it was all these Game and a Color, and none of us got along. None of us got along. All we did was fight. And I was just so upset that I called a woman named Bernice Johnson Regan, because I had read an article about her. And she was in Los Angeles, the founder of Sweet Honey and the Rock with this Acapala, Acapala great group. And so I said, I'm in this group where nobody gets along, we're fighting. And I know that if you were in a coalition or you've been in a small collective, what did she say? Listen, if everybody in the collective gets along, the collective is too small. We need to expand the notion of what the collective is. And I think about that a lot in my own community, because these are really difficult times, especially in social media. We can take each other down in seconds. So how do I keep expanding the notion of what my community is? Because yes, a lot of times it's just queer community. And yes, a lot of times it's just Chicano community. And sometimes it's Latinx and all the terms you want to use. But I think that that community has to be bigger and bigger and harder and more complicated. And that's what I love about being inside of an institution sometimes, because I think you have to move towards so this is another concept, you know, I studied with Maria Rinfort-Nez and she used to say, move towards the thing that needs you the most, which is going to be the most dramatic and hard thing. And you go like, Oh, God, right? Moving towards the biggest conflict in the institution is the thing I have to do. It's the thing that hurts my stomach the most, but it's the thing where I'm going to be the most successful in creating change. How do I do it in a way that's warm and welcoming and loving and all that stuff? But I am moving towards conflict and tension, because I'm moving towards change. The systems are rotted. The system is not okay. So I have to change this, I have to move into it, and I have to move into it in a way that's really painful and hard. And I think that's what I'm wrestling most with right now. My spirit is worn. This is a really hard time. Look at me. I'm in Koreatown where I say it's midnight, 24 hours a day. I've been in isolation for a year. I am not that kind of animal. I've suffered for it. But I also think that I've changed. I'm a different person now. I just want to throw that up, because I think it's the wrestling that's hard. This is also something that came up in a conversation that Emily and I were in a few weeks ago. We alluded to the pandemic as precipice. What was happening maybe 15 months ago when so many of us were like, great. We're fucked. So now we can do ABCERD. And there were a lot of projections about change, self-change. And there's this moment in, I would say near the closing moments, definitely in the final third, Milo of your film, where there's an audition happening. And one of the people that's auditioning is asked to, I don't know what exactly the prompt was, but he was performing torture. And he takes his shirt off and does all these push-ups and just like performs as a European man, performs the torture knowing that what or who he is torturing is an African man, is a Black man. He uses a chair, is a proxy, and has a whip. Just does really all these heinous things. I couldn't take my eyes off what was happening. It was so sad. And for those of you who haven't seen the film, this is not a spoiler, but it's absolutely an arresting moment because what you begin to witness and you do a great job, I think, where your editor does a great job because I kept saying to myself, okay, the scene ends now. Okay, can the scene end now? And just kind of kept going. And kind of what you see is that this person, given the permission, given a kind of permission structure to embody a violent and probably sadistic man given permission to play torturer, he really, really goes there. And the racial animus and the xenophobia and one of the artfully beautiful things about the moment, one of the great things about not cutting the scene off is that at least through my interpretation, you really begin to see how hurt this person is. Not just the sadism, but like hurt in the sense of a kind of channeling of hatred that is, like I said, powerful, disturbing. It makes me think about not just how much we internalize hate and let it kind of emerge from our bodies and our practices in sometimes duplicitous or surreptitious ways, but also it makes me think about love at scale. And the promise of those early days of the pandemic, when there was maybe the possibility of unification or synthesis or symbiosis, that one of the great tragedies of the last administration was the complete waste of a moment, of a complete waste of our inflection point, when there was something that literally the planet was experiencing at the same time, and what a moment may become together. And instead, things like masks or medicine became these wedges, became these divisive instruments. I don't know if we'll have a moment like that again, where we can scale love because we're all under threat at the same time. But that is maybe the, that's what the box of the theater, I think, and other spaces like it, that's where a lot of the potential is. Spaces like Jack or, this is where the potential is. If not to scale love, then at the very least to, I don't know, hone it, incubate it, model it, distort it, add water. So, the struggle that we're having in this broad conversation that we're having about power, the invocation of my grandmother and the rain, this channeling of love as a kind of power, and our ability as artists and creative people to think both in terms of systems and also in terms of like humanity at scale. I think that that is our ongoing struggle. That's also our gift. But scale, scale is also really small, right? I mean, it's thinking when you were talking. And this is very personal for me. So my aunt died of COVID early. She's a farm worker and she just didn't get to the vaccination. It didn't come to fucking Delano, California. Sorry, right? So there was that, but also the scale of what that action, what that act of her, and I want to say it's almost an act of sacrifice, did to my family is extraordinary, right? And so I think about it a lot in art too. The scale of, so in this dark room, I went to 36 different universities. I also got to go outside of my country, which is so, that's such a wonderful privilege because of Zoom, right? So, you know, I woke up at three o'clock in the morning to go to Shanghai, right? All of a sudden, in small, smart spaces, something real happened, which was real feeling, real connection, small collectives. I think what happened is people got small. I don't know if that, I don't know if I'm being too, you know, like I'm being too rosy about it. But as I hear you, I think, you know, because I'm an institutional guy too. But I think what happened to me in this last year is everything was deeply, deeply connected, not with 100 people with five, right? All of a sudden, I'm talking to a director differently. I'm doing a reading online, and I don't want a bunch of people because you're not going to hear it raw. But I'm going to do it with three actors. And I'm going to do it small. And the smallness makes for such intimacy. So this is the replacement to a kind of, maybe the sexual act even. This is the intimacy that I might, this is the only intimacy I might be able to achieve right now in this moment, right? My McDonald's coffee discount lady that I see every morning, right, reached out and she touched me and she said, please, please, don't get sick, right? I went to CJ's, which is my coffee shop after nine months. And they guess what they said in Spanish, el profesor no está muerto, the professor is not dead, and they all came and hugged me and we were crying. And I thought, oh my God, I never get this kind of smallness. But this is the kind of art that I might want to be going, right? The Denise Jirahara theory, right? I'm moving this way. I'm getting smaller as I get bigger. I want to just, what you're both are just speaking about, because we think of endurance again. See if I can wrap all the threads, because there are many, many threads. What you're just speaking of, and I'm thinking of a speculative architecture, a word, how from a gathering of people enough is generated that we have some sort of, if not physical, conceptual, or love sub-dirt, or power-centered structure forward that we can be involved together in the actions to bring that future forward, right? So like a speculative architecture from a movement forward that is community self-determined processes, community self-determined processes of what is our best path forward right now? What do we need to tend to right now? Maybe that's one another. Maybe it's the person right next to you. Maybe it's a larger thing. So that we have the, I am so unsatisfied. I'm so unsatisfied with, yes, all of what could have been in this very monumental moment of change. I'm so unsatisfied with the fucking institutions and our governments and those who we have named here who refused that change. And of course that happens. Of course they refuse it. And of course it's us who push against that. And of course this moment will happen again. It might be in a hundred years in another pandemic or it might be different. We have climate change that is not only emergent but very present upon us right now and has been here since the beginning of colonialism in these lands. And our friends at Red Nation say, what do they say? Decolonization or extinction. Like this is like, we are at a moment where not only we must change, but of course we must push forward and do that together. And that makes me think of endurance again. What is the endurance necessary and needed forward that yes, includes these intimacy but also includes these radical new ways of thinking and being in the world, whether or not institutions are involved or not. I don't want this government anymore. I want 573 and more First Nations nations governing this land. You know, land back is necessary. It's a very real and very specific, very non it's land base. It's physical and please join us in calling for and demanding land back. We're in a moment right now. I was up in Duninaland recently visiting my family and my mom told me that she read an article that during COVID the ground got quiet, which I haven't read this article yet, but I keep illuminating on this thought and this idea and of course it makes immediate sense to me because all of our rumblings kind of quieted down and so the ground got quiet. And now I'm thinking about what is coming up from the ground, what is coming up from the ground, what is necessary, very particularly on Turtle Island, what is coming up from the ground are mass graves of children and babies who are stolen from their families and their nations and taken to residential and boarding schools. And so where are we in this trajectory as we are making, as we are making together, as we are thinking forward through the power through building our power, building our collectives, building our when we haven't reckoned with the fact that this government killed children to get to where we are now. So of course they're going to hold on to that power. Of course they're going to resist everything we're talking about here. But maybe that's where the tools and the structures come back in, but also of course the energy and everything. Yeah, no answer is just what I'm thinking of now. I want to hold space for the lives lost. Impossible to hold enough space, but just take like a moment for that. We have about 15 minutes in chronological time left in our thing. So I want to open up to final thoughts. Alec, I'd love to hear from you about how Jack and your comrades are navigating this situation. I mean, on the one hand, we've heard thoughts about how to locate something very intimate, one-on-one, even very solo, whether it's with someone else or with, as Emily said, a more than human can, which is a phrase I've just now stolen and embodied, or on the level of climate change and the level of big systems. So I'm curious how Jack is thinking about its mission, its purpose, its scale, its sponsorship, all those various things. And then I'd love to hear from Milo as we wind down this small time we shared together. Thanks. The work that Emily does is such a huge inspiration. And as I learned more about it, it just grows exponentially. Specifically in that, Emily, you're working not only to fight for the preservation of the East River Park, but you're also working within our cultural industry as an activist. And that speaks to my own experience as someone who once thought activism was one thing, which is like separate from theater, which was like fighting for addressing housing insecurity or food insecurity or immigrant rights or whatnot. And this is fairly recently that I felt this. And so I thought if Jack was going to be an activist space, it was then going to be in partnership with people who are fighting for things outside of the cultural theater industry. What I've learned over the last few years is that really there's so much to do within our own industry. There's so much activism that needs to happen. And of course, other people knew this forever, but this is just a kind of revelation, personal revelation that the number of people in the arts industry in New York must be equivalent to like a small Midwestern city or something like that. It's a lot of people. And it's a huge, it's a huge, it's its own economy. And that economy is largely held in the hands of white people. And on the staff. So these, these large, larger theaters, 90% of leadership is white. 80 to 90% of staff is generally white. And it's hidden, of course, by the programming, which increasingly is includes people of color. But Les does not forget that that is a veneer, really, to, to the reality to the, that is the fiction to the nonfiction. And so as we, as we a Jack move forward, it's really thinking about, yes, to partnerships with activists who are doing work around the city outside of the theater, but also what can we be doing to push conversations in our industry in our culture. So that, so that has meant looking at what reparations within the arts community could look like, not just reparations in general or federal, federal check, but like, what would an organization, what would it take for an organization to look at itself, a predominantly white or institution, and, and see what it owes. And, and what are the, what is the first step in that, and then what is the last step in that process. What, what is that for us as an organization that is founded by, you know, primarily a white male in, in community with other folks, but certainly my efforts were a large force of it. And the privilege that I brought to that position to bear in our organization, what, what reparations do we ourselves oh, in comparison to, you know, looking at ourselves in comparison to people of color founded led organization that may not have gotten to the point where we have because of structural really structural racism in the, in the funding community, for example. So these are all things that are on our mind. Certainly during the pandemic we had an opportunity to partner with a mutual aid group, which is also an activist group called we keep us safe that grew out of the known jails movement in New York City. And, you know, it was an opportunity for us to be on the daily basis learning from people who are, who are out there doing the important work, sacrificing themselves every day, and to be inspired by them. So that relationship is influencing our future. And, and it's showing up in a lot of ways. We did a whole planning process. The pandemic allowed us the opportunity, the space, the time to reflect on where we wanted to go in the future. And that meant a jack that was, that was even more accessible than we have been, to address issues like our blind spots or our weaknesses, the points where we, where we need to grow in terms of being accessible to people with disabilities, for example, or, you know, we just started a conversation with Emily, ourself, to address our own blind spots around our land, the land that we're on. So this, these are all, it's been a really catalyzing moment for us. And we're quite hopeful for the future. Milo, and the final, you know, we're coming to, I wanted to ask you something. I'm taking kind of personal space here, because I'm curious about this, but when I watched the film, you know, it, to me, it resonated with Brexite, the layer stuka, that this is a learning play. People are learning how to step in these roles, how to be apostles who are also activists in fighting. I'm curious for you as an artist, you know, you've gone into so many different communities. I saw Orestes and Mosul, for instance, the new, the new gospel has a similar setup where there are actors coming into, to a community that's, that's fighting for itself, and it's right to live. And among other things, I'm curious, what did you learn from working with Yvonne and Rivalta de la dignità? What was, what was surprising or enlightening for you in that encounter? I mean, as a European, I have anyway, direct connection to them by going to buy tomatoes in Italy or in Switzerland, or in, I'm directly connected to them, but not personally correct. I'm economically connected, but I'm not, I'm not in a personal way connecting. It's just like finding a connection I already have and give reality to it. That's what we do by doing what we call the global realism or to trying to bring these antagonistic positions together, like going to Mosul, your beliefs from the petrol of Mosul, of course, is fueled by Mosul in North Iraq. That's why this whole war happened, of course, not because we, we love the architecture of Mosul or whatever, or we love Ninife, or I don't know, because we need it. But we don't know these people. We exploit them, we exploit the fool, we exploit even their stories and everything. And why don't we build solidarities? Why don't, and solidarity is always a project for me, because I'm an artist. It could be different if I would, I don't know if I would work in another field, but for me, it's a play or a film. So that's why I was, I just, perhaps it's a thought a bit that's already, already gone in the discussion. But when we were discussing about the possibility of change, and Emily was talking about this, this kind of memory of violence, and, and, and also about this. And then before it was about this, this, this scene of the torture of the, of the black chair, the brown chair in the, in the, in the new gospel. How comes when you do an improvisation, that we know all that, because this guy, this young citizen of Italy is a leftist, is, you know, but when I say now improvise, you are, you're a Roman soldier and you, you torture, you are depressed as all soldiers. And now you have the chance, you can, you can, you can torture the black Jesus. What are you doing? Why does he know exactly what he has to do? Why these emotions are so accessible? Why is the, is the, is the system dreaming through us all the time? How does this come? I give you another example. I was thinking on that when I was listening to Emily. I'm doing now another film last week. There was a big massacre in France, not far from here. The SS killed a whole city and several hundred of children and there are still some survivors. It happened in 44. So some years ago, they killed 700 people in one morning and there are some survivors. And I decided to restage this massacre with the, the whole families of the survivors were relocated and live like 500 meters from there. Still the grandsons and the grandtathers, it's somehow the community of grief still, because they were declared as a national monument of grief, you could say. And then I was, I was, I was going there and saying, okay, now let's do a film about it and see how we remember it and what it is. And we had all the uniforms from SS and then you give these uniforms from the SS to these young guys and they immediately know what they have to do. They immediately know how they have to kill and how to they have to separate men and women, what they have to tell them that they stay quiet. This knowledge is there and why doesn't it disappear? Why can you wake it up like this? So it's, it's, I mean, I don't want to play this a bit boring role of the morbid European guy, but I'm really a bit, I'm wondering why this system is so strong. So I don't have an answer, but I just was thinking about this when I was listening to you. Yeah, I think I'll say briefly, you know, as someone who is a prodigy, who is a settler himself is a prodigy of generations over centuries of settlers. The task that I set for myself so often is actually about unlearning is about getting rid of the script because that hatred, that that desire to handle, to manipulate, to hold, to seize, to occupy, that is so deeply inscripted is like, I'm speaking from my social position, of course, that isn't coming upon someone like me to unlearn, to try not to put on the uniform, right? Because the SS uniform comes in all different colors in the United States and around the world. So, you know, well, we have a couple of minutes, I'm happy to open the floor to, to close the remarks. I want to, you know, thank all of you for sharing time and space and thought and energy. It's been great, but we can go wild for three minutes or I guess I'm riffing on me. Can you hear me? I'm riffing, I'm riffing on this DNA of trauma. And I was thinking, you know, in the theater, I was like, one of the things I'm not looking forward to is the 150 COVID plays I'm going to get. But I was, you know what I am looking forward to? I'm looking forward to the 100 plays I'm going to get about grief and loss. The internal work that we're going to get this year, I hope that happens, and I'm already seeing it in the next generation of writers who are really writing this moment so beautifully, so beautifully. And there's something about, there's something about what the isolation has done, and I think it's smaller, it's more nuanced. It's like we're going back to poetry in a way, right? I'm thinking about my, my crime in like the most densest neighborhood, and people are throwing dance parties out here in front of my thing. And you know, like people, somebody just set up a trash can last night and, and made, you know, meat for everybody, right? So it's just like that, that, that very, very communal small thing is something I'm thinking about. And yet it's the, the sadness is built into us. Oh, go ahead, Alec. Sorry. I recall that Amiri Baraka once said that poetry is speaking the truth in a world of beauty and lies. And I just read a pandemic play written by a friend of mine recently, I read a, you know, first draft. And I've never read any of it, none of his work prior to that has been as deep as this play was really, as showing the full truth of his own person in all its ugliness, in all its darkness. And that gave me encouragement because, yes, I agree, at least that, you know, that the idea of pandemic plays is a little bit daunting, or a slew of them. But yet I see that that what it, what it, what has the potential of doing is ripping off the, the fake, right? And really giving the chance for artists to share again, what, what true art can be. Well, with that, I want to, we have to go, so people have to live their lives and mourn and, and write and find pleasure and new and exciting ways and be in community with people and also more than human beings. But I would just want to thank very quickly our partners at Howround, especially Thea Rogers and B.J. Matthews, Frank Hinkcher at the Segal Center, Armini Kohos, who spread the word about this event, Milo for his work and willingness to share it. And finally, many thanks to, to our invited speakers, Mahmoud D. Emily, Louise Alec, and Milo, as well as Melanie, without whom none of this would have been possible, despite whatever she might say. And join us tomorrow. We have a conversation at 4 p.m. or not tomorrow, sometime in a future that is moving toward you that you can hold and share. It's at 4 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, July 10th, titled, How are artists and organizers building solidarity between art and movements? And please watch the new gospel either in the next day and a half or at some point, again, in a future that you yourself create. So thank you all so much. And I'm sure we will all gather in some way or some fashion in a future moment. Thank you. So thank you. Take care, everyone. Thank you, David. Thank you.