 And Kyoko, it's you, you Jen, right? You again. Oh, thank you. You again, you again. I have a pronunciation checking too. May I see, is it Ramey Tush? Ramey Tush is correct. Ramey Tush Oroni people is the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramey Tush. Ramey Tush Oroni people is Hawaii. Gathered from Google. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, that one is, yeah, I have it. Oroni, yeah, Oroni. Yeah. It's, I know it's Oroni. Yeah. I wasn't sure about the other tribe you mentioned, but. I don't know either. Yeah, Timmy and Oroni and Toonian peoples. I want to say where you are. Yeah, this, this we did, did check. It's Ramey Tush, but the pronunciation varied from, from like site to site. Yeah. Yeah. Ramey Tush. I have, because I'm in Oakland, I have the Oroni, but the Chocaniel, which I think is also part of the, like affiliated with Oroni. And then. Like you would, you would say on the unceded land of the Pueblo people. It's interesting. How would you phrase it? Yeah, I would say something of the, the traditional lands of 26 Pueblo Tribal, that would work. Cool. It's one of the few places where it's, it's funny. It's like, I could, I feel like I, I either have to answer it with that or at the 20 minute long explanation. So I'll. Gotcha. I actually researched and I got like a three page thing and I'm like, how do I convey so long back in my life? Oh, I so appreciate it. So that's so exciting that you're there. Yeah. Yeah. So from the traditional land of the 26 Tribes of the Pueblo people. Yes, that works great. Thank you very much. So. Good evening and welcome to the opening event of the Ringlings eco performance week and tonight's performance and environmental justice panel discussion. I'm Elizabeth Dowd, the Curry Coleman curator of performance at the Ringling Sarasota thing and welcome. Oops, double streaming there. Before I introduce the moderator of tonight's panel, I and the Ringling would like to respectfully acknowledge that we are on the traditional land of Florida's indigenous populations, including the Calusa, the Seminole, the Mikosuki, the Tokobaga and the Uzita peoples. We would also like to acknowledge the Angola community known as the Black Seminals. We recognize the privilege we have as a cultural institution occupying unceded territory, which came at the expense of peoples that experienced imposed occupation and forced removal. We pay our respects to elders, both past and present who have and continue to experience the ongoing repercussions of colonialism. We honor the earth for the resources it provides and those who came before, who valued and protected those resources. Truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connection across heritage and culture. We begin this effort with the recognition of what has been suppressed. Our week's programming includes several activities focused on arts practice at the intersection of theater, performance, environmental and climate justice. And we invite you to check out more at the link we've put up in the chat. As our conversation advances, you're also welcome to post questions and comments in the chat and we'll have time for discussion at the end with our panelists. It's my pleasure to introduce the panel moderator, Dr. Jessica Young, a Sarasota colleague. And I'd like to thank her and all of the panelists for giving their expertise and time tonight. Jessica Kay Young is an assistant professor of Global English at New College of Florida. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a concentration in Holocaust, genocide and memory studies. This foundation in memory and trauma studies deeply informs her interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching, world literature, film and art, where she focuses on issues surrounding colonialism, migration, indigeneity, genocide, state violence, commemoration and restorative justice across multiple global contexts. Her research focuses on representations of trauma and memory transmission in contemporary South Asian literature. And she is currently at work on a research project that examines the memory dynamics of gentrification and urban landscapes of remembering in multiple global cities, including New York, London, Mumbai and the San Francisco Bay area where she is from. She has been invited to present her work at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, McMaster University and in 2020, emcee the Sarasota Native American Film Festival. She is the citizen of the Seneca Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma. Please welcome Dr. Jessica Young. Thank you, Elizabeth, for that kind introduction. Thank you also to the panelists here today. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you and thank you to the audience for tuning in. We are looking forward to hearing your questions and thoughts when we wrap up the conversation to talk more. I also, since I am skyping in or zooming in as it were from Oakland, California, I wanted to continue on the land acknowledgement, to also acknowledge that I am on the ancestral homeland of the Ohlone, the Choceno and the Miwakwa people, and as well as acknowledge the ongoing activism of urban indigenous people who have sought to brought issues of sovereignty and land stewardship into the national consciousness over the course of the last 50 to 100 years in this area in particular. Without further ado, I do want to introduce our three amazing panelists. They're all very accomplished and have a lot of really amazing, amazing resumes. I'm just going to give an abbreviated bio here to give them a little bit more time to talk about their work and the specifics about their work. Suffice it to say, if you want more details, it's definitely on the website for this panel, if you want to learn more about. First, we have Hector Flores Kamatsu, who was born in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Flores is his father's last name, where Kamatsu comes from his mother's family, originally from Nagano, Japan. At a young age, Hector immigrated to the United States. And in between her worlds, he was naturally drawn to theater. At age 17, he directed his first production and he hasn't stopped since, luckily for us. Currently, Hector serves as artistic director of the Maquillaca, sorry, Colectivo Teatro, founded after a year-long exploration of Mexico supported by the Teymarville Theater Fellowship. I'm excited to hear more about that. Next, we have Ronny Penoin, who's the Gunam Pueblo Cherokee. Welcome. She's a producer, composer, facilitator, and activist. She recently joined ArtsEmerson as the director of artistic programming. Previously, as a producer at Octopus Theatricals, she advanced the work of many outstanding artists from development to production to touring in the US and internationally. Ronny is a composer at work on two new musicals with collaborator, Ann-Lisa Diaz. And she's on the advisory board of the First Nations Performing Arts and as a co-founding member of the industry standard group. Many other notable achievements and advisory positions are looking to expand investment opportunities for BIPOC black indigenous people of color and people of color commercial producers. Her current anti-racism practice builds upon a decolonization framework and embraces systems change as a key component of that work. Finally, we have Kiyoko Yoshida, who is the executive director of the US Japan Cultural Trade Network, our CTN, and co-director of the theater of Ugen. She served in the performing arts field for over 35 years as a presenter, producer, and consultant. Her primary focus is on artistic and cultural exchanges between the United States and Japan. Kiyoko is the founder and executive director of the US Japan Cultural Trade Network, CTN, which designs and implements exemplary arts and cultural programs in both countries. During the past several years, the CTN has been exploring the intersections of Japanese cultural traditions and environmental sustainability with concepts such as 72 seasons and Motonai, which we'll hear more about shortly. So thank you everybody again for coming. Without further ado, I just wanted to pose a couple of questions, some follow-up questions, but the first one that sort of struck me when reading these bios is that you all seem to be working at different cultural intersections. And in addition to these short introductions that I just gave, I want to invite each of you to tell us more about your work and your practice with these sort of cultural intersections in line. Kiyoko, you focus on cultural and artistic exchanges between the US and Japan. Rani, you seek to promote BIPOC and especially indigenous producers. Hector, you also work with indigenous practitioners and audiences. I'm interested in learning more about how you see these cultural intersections in your work and how they inform your practice. I don't know who wants to go first. Feel free to jump on. Oh, I'm happy to go. I'll do the honors. Hi, everyone. Rani Finoy, she hers and calling today from the ancestral lands of the Piscataweepa monkey and Piscataweepa monkey and Acosta peoples today. And so excited to be here for this conversation. Yeah, so I'm really, thank you, Jessica, for that great question about cultural intersections. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of my work while rooted in producing and composing and facilitation has always had this thread running through it of, you know, what are the narratives that are getting left out? I mean, I think that in our society, we often talk about like, yeah, we need more stories. We need more narratives. And I think that something that we don't talk enough about is that there is a dominant narrative that does need some, you know, some restoring. That's my lens for it that I find useful, that it's not just about adding to the narrative, but really shifting what that narrative is. And I think that that's something that's important, especially for Black, Indigenous, and people of color in particular, to really be able to bring the stories, information, and wealth of knowledge to the conversation. And I think that climate justice is one area in particular where, you know, Indigenous knowledge is so critical. So, you know, there's, you know, I often find and I'm so thrilled about this discussion because I often think that so much of the focus around work that is at the intersection of climate, climate crisis, climate justice, eco performance can focus on the work on stage and not about all the universe of work happening around it and how we make work and who's sharing who's telling those stories. And, you know, Indigenous peoples, you know, often have some of the longest running expertise over tens of thousands of years on land stewardship. You know, I think that, you know, Elizabeth made a beautiful land introduction at the beginning that mentioned the stewardship, you know, of elders past, present, and future. And that that's always been such a key relationship between Indigenous people and the land is that aspect of stewardship and, you know, sustainability is key in that way. So, you know, there's a lot to say about the ways in which Indigenous folks have not necessarily been at the table in those conversations, but I think whether it's an artistic practice, whether it's in, you know, how we, as an arts industry or partnering with others, I think that there's so much opportunity to bring the wealth of expertise that Indigenous artists have to the fore. And I'll just close by saying, I think a great example of this is actually a work that's happening in the New Orleans area right now with Mondo Bizarro that is a work that is taking the ancestral knowledge of Monique Ferdinand and her tribal nation of what the waterways were like before the levee system. And so as they're making changes to, you know, to the design based on all of the hurricanes, you know, the Indigenous knowledge is being pulled into that and the artistic piece is actually contributing to the climate conversation. So I think that's such a beautiful example of how all of these issues are really intertwined and you can't kind of pull out one thread from the weave, so to speak. And I'll leave it there. So yes to all that. How can I follow up to all that? Yeah, yeah, yes to all of that. In my particular case, you know, grown up as a kid in Mexico, I remember thinking, why are all the people on TV and in movies that are made here white when most of the people in Mexico do not present as white? And it seemed like that was fine for the majority of this is back in the, you know, the 90s. And I remember when I moved to the States, this is early 2000s. This was like maybe at the height of like the, sort of like anti-immigrant high peak of like Mexican immigrants coming that suddenly from like just being a person in my life, the moment I got to the States, I suddenly became the Mexican and I felt racialized now have a word for that, right? Whereas before I never had to think about that. And so after so many years in the States of trying to, you know, as a kid, trying to be in theater and whatever and feel like my narrative or who I was, wasn't even allowed to be able to share themselves on stage in arcades. When I graduated college, I started asking myself because I had the privilege of having papers to go back to Mexico and seeing how society was changing and evolving and asking you questions. Who are the people in my country who are facing the things I'm facing here in this country? And to me, that was very clear that it would be the indigenous people of Mexico of whom I knew nothing of because we were only taught in school that the Spaniards come, they conquer and like now you're Mexico, right? And that's not how 500 years of history actually, you know permeates throughout society in people's lives. And so I spent a full year traveling across the country and trying to have direct human contact with people whose experiences were so different than mine. From that experience, I mean, I saw really cool things, right? Like amazing landscapes, really old intricate powerful ritual as well, which is very rich still in indigenous culture of Mexico. But I think the thing that struck me the most were the actual individual stories of people who were living their life nowadays as young indigenous people who were asking themselves the questions that I was asking myself at like 24, you know like who am I? What's my path in life? Where should I go? Which I think is a universal question probably most of us ask ourselves. And from that question, invite indigenous artists, actors either very experienced or like total newcomers to join forces and say, hey, let's make a play that talks about all of this. And we'll discover it as we go me as like having the theatrical expertise but you actually giving all the pulse in life of what that means. And the result was quite, if I may say so extraordinary for ourselves, the points of connections that were formed between, you know what is a Mayan actor have in common with a mushe, a third gender sapotec actor to then a Uralica, you know Uchol person to the Nejarocho who plays music and all of these points of connection reveal something very strong that we have since then being able to show with people across Mexico and thankfully across the world as well. Although now I can say that we're starting to ask new questions since COVID because things have sort of turned upside down. And I think we're going to where the I think it's very interesting the idea of eco performance because even though we don't necessarily intentionally deliberately say we're gonna talk about this in the play and in the work that's present and it's now time to sort of be more intensively saying let's ask what's gonna happen to the entire Mayan peninsula if you know, X number of meters will rise up within the next 100 years, right? Hundreds of people in history will be erased and who will not have to face the consequences of that. Funny, I don't know if it's funny but you know, strongly enough my creative partner in Makuyeka Jose Maichi who is a Mayan actor, dramaturg as our playwright, director from Cienco, Jove Ciencampeche was just here within Albuquerque. Oh, I am calling in from Albuquerque the ancestral lands of 26 tribes of Pueblo people. And we were talking about how striking it was to find again points of connection with native people here in the United States but then his father, because you know a lot of people have been forced to use glyphosate it's the word in English in order to keep up their production for themselves and to sell and become part of this globalized economic capitalistic system or were not, got sprayed all over his hand with this glyphosate and he had to fly back to his family to see if the zone okay. And of course, all of those activities are also impacting the aquifer of the Yucatan peninsula in this case and a place where it's known for it's big water deposits from which people would drink water and now because of what happened to his dad and this product people can drink their water anymore and then Coca-Cola comes and sell that water and so this has been happening for so many years but I think now we're starting to not only deal with the personal but how can we through our work also raise these questions that we can't simply keep moving that away. So I'm very excited to be here and listening with you and thanks for the invitation. Okay, so now I'm muted, pardon me and it's hard to follow Roni and you Hector. It just reminds me that one of the reasons that I stay in this country for 30 years and counting it's because people like you and this conversation. So thank you. It's been a great opportunity and privilege for me to work in non-prohibited arts field. And, oh, my name is Kyoko Yoshida and I use she her pronouns tuning in from San Francisco, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramritush Oroni peoples. And I want to respond to Jessica's question about the, how the cultural intersections how they inform our programs and practices and to do that, if I may share CTN's renewed recent, very recently recently renewed vision statement because this was a result of our long process of strategic planning which took place during the COVID shutdown. So pardon me, I'm gonna read this. We're saying we envision that people in diverse communities in both Japan and the United States will deepen their appreciation of and respect for all beings, discover their innate creativity and its transformative power and increase their resilience and vitality through dialogues, collaborations and engagement in creative activities. So this, I wanted to highlight the concept of respecting and caring for all beings because I think it is deeply embedded in Japanese culture traditions. And I think I understand native culture too. And it's also philosophically and practically connects directly to the environmental sustainability. And my personal theory about this is that it's rooted in the ancient Shinto belief that there are, we call it Yau Yorozono kami which means eight million spirits or gods. So eight million pretty much means infinite. So it means that in every being, the sacred spirit is residing. So naturally, we cannot waste them otherwise we would be doomed. And the word Mottainae which Jessica highlighted at the beginning, in today's language, it literally means it's a waste or don't waste it. But it also means it is too good for me. And if it's so good, we are not going to waste it. And there's also an important kind of nuance of being humble in this word. So maybe I'll elaborate a little bit later on this interesting deep word, Mottainae. And I've been based in the United States for 30 years and I realized that I've been carrying those values, these values and traditional thinking. And the more I'm away from Japan, I'm finding myself working more and more with Japanese immigrant women. And some of them are artists and some of them are like specialists who are making miso or koji fermented foods. And they, as well as actually myself as organizer and my awesome colleague Miwa Kaneko, we work very closely for both CTN and Ugen. We're cultural bearers. And we collectively, you know, integrate these different respective expertise and ecological practices into arts programs. That's how we've been operating for the past more than few years. And I would like to give some examples, like 72 seasons but I do want to check back in with Jessica. Yeah, if you want to, we can move on to the next question or you can talk a little bit about the 72 seasons for a minute or two if you want. Sure, okay. So can we look at the slide please? Yep, the PDF if you can be screen shared. So I think many people know that Japanese culture has a lot to do with seasonal changes but maybe this people would know there are 72 micro seasons in a year. And this originated from hybrid calendars, lunar calendar and solar calendars. It was adopted in Japan from China and used for 1,000 years and really represents a way of looking at the year through gradual transitions in nature, subtle changes and also cultural and ecological practices around them each season. So we are sitting in 72 seasons as a programmatic framework. We will be presenting performing arts showcases and collaborations and digital residencies and all these activities. The picture of the 72 seasons, it's already artists who are contributing, Ari Coco based in New York, for example, is the visual artist and she does performances too. And her work is on the right bottom side, right middle, bottom middle. We have a picture of Japanese American choreographer, dance artists Megan and Shannon Krashie who are going to interview senior citizens and other marginalized members of the community and listen to their stories and we'll talk about the season, we'll talk about the food. And then from there, we will create dance vignettes then that will eventually culminate into a full evening piece. And then next to it is another community photographer, actually my friend from old days in Tokyo who's contributing beautiful seasonal photos and Ari Coco and her name is Sachiko Takeuchi but Ari Coco and Sachiko already started to find each other on our platform and started to work. That's why we use the cover of 72 seasons at the top. So that's 72 seasons project. Yeah, it's really awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. This sort of brings me to the next question which has a couple of parts for each of you but generally I'm wondering how your placement within these cultural intersections that you've just talked about, how does that inform how you view or define performance and specifically for the sake of the programming this week, eco performance, what does performance or eco performance mean to you and how does it influence your practice? And specifically, given what you've all been saying, I'm sort of interested in following up, Kiyoko, you just talked briefly about the concept of Montenai which in addition from not to waste, the CTN website says it calls upon us to respect and express gratitude to our environment both in its natural form and as it's transformed by human creativity. I'm interested in learning more about that but then also the 72 seasons project, it's multidisciplinary. I'm interested in how different forms of practice also come about and are part of what you're doing as part of that project as well. So two different projects I'm interested in here and more about. And then also for Ronnie and Hector, I'm interested in how your performance practice or how you see eco performance might be influenced by indigenous epistemologies. Ronnie, you talked a lot about stewardship of land, ancestral practices, Hector, it was really interesting to think about the different, you sort of remind us that indigeneity is not a monolithic concept. It is already sort of a trans-cultural, cultural intersections. There's 572 or 75 federally recognized indigenous tribes in the United States and what we now see is the United States. In Mexico, there's a lot of different tribes that are all sovereign. They have different language groups, they have different cultural customs. What does it mean when they sort of all come together and how does that sort of affect the performance I'm interested in and hearing a little bit more about that. And just on how that all sort of goes into, helping you understand what you mean by eco performance and how you define it for yourself and how it influences your practice as performers. Hopefully that's open-ended enough to everyone has a little piece to talk about. Yeah, I can jump on on that last question. What happens when that encounter happens? And I'm just gonna put it out there. Our first encounter was telling everybody, okay, my grandfather has this, I was 24 by okay, my grandfather has this abandoned house in my hometown. He's gonna allow us to like go in there and live together and work together for a full month. And of course, like everything happens and it's really powerful and strong, but not only the product, the artistic product becomes interesting, but also the process of not only how do you work together, but then how do you live together when you have such different cultures? For example, the South of the culture of the South of Oaxaca, the Isthmus of Tuantepic and specifically Mushe, Alexi Sorosko, who's a Mushe perform, which is a third gender. It's usually men, well, people who are born as men, but live and love as women and dress as so. What happens when this very powerful, like usually in your face, a matriarchal culture meets the very solemn, soft-spoken that in the state of Jalisco. So we suddenly had this very different energies living together in the same space and also working together. And in the case of how do you turn it into performance or equal performance in this case, at least for me, it was a matter of saying, just as we say now, like introverts and extroverts both deserve equal respect of their sensibilities. As a director, how does this bombastic, strong forward personality also live harmoniously with a much more solemn and quiet and introspective way of looking at the world? Speaking of a model, nothing to do with that with Raritari people who are the ancestral guardians of the Bayote or the Hikori as they call it in Mexico versus the Zapotec Isthmus Tehuana culture, right? And so a way for me of having people gathered together is how can we try to live in the same world in spite of our huge differences? And I think that's a huge question around the world regardless. In this case, it was sort of seen in the microcosm of Mexican society or indigenous society, you can even call it that, and in the theater community, right? And so we have a responsibility to make that happen for us if we wanna actually share work that is talking and asking for better harmony and better understanding of each other to happen. And eco performance wise, I think after that year of traveling, just seeing how much you can do with quote unquote so little, and it can go so far out, right? Like everything you need is already there. I think I connect with that a lot Kyoko Yoshida about a humbleness that is necessary to do things. So we began saying all of the resources we're putting in to make sure that if we are okay and that we can gather, we're not gonna think of any kind of stagecrafts, right? We're gonna use what we have available and also try to make it poetic and evocative because it's all the theater, right? And we like that, but then how the power of seeing, for example, Josue Machi's father called for the wind in a completely non-romantic way, but simply a practical way of when I'm about to burn my fields, I call for the wind because I need the wind to help the flame spread apart so that we can now cultivate the new crops. How can you use that, for example, moment of magic, not again in a romanticized way, but of simply putting faith and humbleness of I am at the mercy of nature. I'm at the mercy of the wind coming and the rain coming. And I think as we're experiencing, as with the, you know, eluded proxy, we're at the mercy of nature at the end of the day. As just yesterday, we had a huge earthquake. Thanks, Kyoko Yoshida for reminding us in Mexico City of 7.1. And I think we have to live with respect to that and what we can control and what we cannot control. Only first thing on that is, thanks, Elizabeth, for the shout-out, we're so excited to be joining you. We were supposed to perform in Tehuantepik in 2017. This was in September in this beautiful cultural center. And a few days before with tickets already bought the earthquake of September 2017 in Mexico happened. The house of one of our actors collapsed. The cultural center we were supposed to performing collapsed. And of course, in that moment is, how do you go on in a moment of human crisis, right? But I still believe that, you know, they did power of theater and storytelling is that, not only out of, you know, bread do humans live and stay well. We also need a chance to be able to have a human connection from a place always of respect. And so it was, I think, a very huge defining moment of us going in spite of what had happened and just try to be there for the community and share the stories of indigeneity in this case that connected strongly with people. And I think that for, at least for me, stripped away any kind of like huge artistic intent. Okay, yes, I need like, you know, 20 ETCs because I want the light to like work in this exact way. Forget about it, you know, like, you don't need it, you have the sun right there for you. And at the same time, you know, being also practical as to like, when do you do need light and whatnot. So I think it's, I think just, it's embedded in it in a very inherent way. And with new productions, we're making the commitment to have all of the material that we actually create, like any physical material has to be biodegradable. And if it's going to be diet, it's going to be with natural pigments, which some stage designers in Mexico were like, what you want to do? But that's something that we can do that we have the privilege of doing based on the work that we do. And maybe I don't know that can take the help also some of the people try other things. And just to end that, the one thing that I can say, we always feel a little guilty about this. Of course we'll want to travel with our work. Of course we want to meet people from other parts of the world and share an exchange. But that also means airfare most of the time, right? And a lot of carbon emissions. And so it's also a matter of saying, well, when is it more beneficial that it is harming? And why should I also ask the privileged person that's gotten to travel a lot in this life, tell young indigenous people, oh, you shouldn't be traveling because it's bad for the environment. When my carbon footprint across my life has been much worse than one single trip. But we're still post-COVID, we'll see how. But there is a post-COVID, I hope so. How we think around that. No, thank you Hector. I'm happy to jump in next. I think one of the things that really struck me about what you said was this notion of the calling on the wind, not as something that was, you know, woo-woo or romanticized, but it was real, it was very matter of fact. And I think that there's, and also to Kyoko, when you talk about your work as a culture bearer and the women that you've been working with and speaking to, I think what is really moving me about this conversation and the intersection points is really the way in which this work as we're talking about it is so intersected with those that are on the front lines of nature and on the front lines of the effects of climate change and the climate crisis. It's so, for me, the strongest work in this space is one that doesn't over intellectualize and say I'm gonna put an idea on the stage, but it's one that is, okay, how can I come at this from a space of cultural practice of history of holding who and what is marginalized? There's such an aspect of responsibility and accountability in it more than I have an idea about how we're going to save the planet and let me tell you all about it. It's a different kind of relationship and it's a thread that I'm seeing through everything we're saying so far that I'm really excited by. And going back to your question, Jessica, about what we think of when we think of eco performance and also some of the other questions you posed, I would love to give a shout out to Groundwater Arts that I was one of the four founding members of and I'm now moving to be a core collaborator. One of the key documents that Groundwater worked on for the last, oh gosh, probably three years now was called the Green New Theater and I'm gonna drop a link to it in the chat. And really the notion with the Green New Theater is that it's sharing that the work of bringing together climate justice in the arts is not something that should be seen as siloed or kind of like off on its own somewhere as kind of a, oh, we do our kind of regular work and then sometimes we do work that talks about the climate crisis. It's really, I get excited and I really have to give a lot of credit to my colleagues, Annalisa Diaz, Tara Moses and Anna Lathrop for in many ways, helping me build my own sense of this. But climate justice for me, it's such an umbrella for understanding racial justice, economic justice, the work of decolonizing society. I'm really excited by that idea and if I had an additional 20 minutes I would go off and just keep talking about it because I think it's a critical work. But for me, all of those things are kind of the same. If you're addressing climate justice, you're addressing all of those things. We know that marginalized communities are really on the front lines of receiving the bad effects of climate change, whether it's cancer from toxicity, whether it's the folks that were living right around the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. So it's, I'm really interested in a frame of looking at climate justice in the arts. They really think about it holistically. So with the Green New Theater thinking is that we wanted to really shift the conversation to be one where arts workers weren't, we're thinking about, okay, here are five ways that you can kind of shift the way you're thinking to bring climate justice forward. So you wouldn't necessarily think the publicly transparent budgeting might have much with climate justice, but when you actually think about what that does to be transparent about what you're spending as an organization, if you're an organization or what you're spending as a small arts collective if you are, it brings in conversations around fair wage and work equity and taking care of each other in such a way and really making sure that your values are aligned with your resources. So, I mean, when you start to look at it in that way and think about how is what I'm actually doing reflecting my values, then you can kind of see why, oh, okay, that has something to do with climate justice. So, and it's things like that, we also talk about breaking, oh, let's see, shifting forms of leadership to be less hierarchical and vertical and kind of extractive and thinking about other ways of making decisions. That's another one. And there's a lot more on the Green New Theater website, but it really, it shifts the conversation from being one of what can just I do, but what can we do? Like, what can we do as arts workers? And I so appreciate your point Hector about travel and about the impact of the work that we do. And I think that's something that doesn't get enough of the airtime is the way in which the arts really gives the oil and gas industry license to operate in a lot of ways, whether it's the BP sponsoring the New Orleans Jazz Festival every year, whether it's the money that's going into the museum sector or who's on your board, right? And the kind of low hanging fruit is, oh, well, and not to say that it's not incredibly important, but there's a lot of things that feel like, oh, that's something I do. So I can maybe stop doing that, which will kind of be part of making a difference. But there's also a lot of levers and a lot of influence that the arts field can have if we come together and say, you know, no, we're gonna divest, you know, we're gonna not take money. We're gonna not take sponsorships from oil and gas and related industries. And, you know, if the performing arts starts and the wider arts field follows, that would have a huge impact. And I would really encourage folks to take a look at fossilfree.org. I mean, of all of the strategies they talk about of how we could really turn around the climate crisis, working with the arts sector to divest is one of their top three strategies, which just blows me away. So I get really excited about that aspect of eco-performance and I guess for me, eco-performance is a really helpful language for work that folks are doing right now in this moment to get us to a place where all of the work we're doing is really trying to move us forward to be in a future without, you know, climate crisis. So hopefully we won't have a need for eco-performance in the future because all work will be within that umbrella. So, you know, just in the spirit of, you know, it's hard for me to think about this without thinking about a holistic way in and about responsibility and accountability. And I guess the last thing I'll just say is that, you know, it's, I have, I do wear a lot of hats in the different practices that I have, you know, with groundwater with my new role at ArtsEmerson and then also as a composer as well. And, you know, the values stay the same and then the way that it manifests is different. And I think to, you know, for instance, at ArtsEmerson, my focus is really one of stewardship, you know, of who is receiving resources, whose stories are being heard in advance and who isn't, you know, and then in my composing practice, it's, you know, about holding that kind of sense of responsibility and accountability in a different way. So it's, you know, I really, you know, I want to encourage folks listening that, you know, of course no one person can do everything, but if you take that kind of values lens into your work, there's a lot, there's a lot of doors that might open and a lot of ways in that you might not, that you might not think of. Yeah, well, thank you so much. There's so many things that I wanted to respond to both of you. Yes, regarding travel, you know, TDN myself used to lead. And I know Elizabeth was in this position doing American delegation to Central and South America Performing Arts Curators exchanges too. And I was doing that for Japan. And but then, you know, we are reflecting and, you know, we are so determining that if we're going to really travel, it needs to be really meaningful. We share what the resources that we collected. And once we make that connection, you know, utilize digital communication like how I think a lot of people, one of the things about COVID, of course, it's been devastating, but at the same time, you know, it made us realize so many things. Time to, you know, look back, slow down a little bit. You know, birds are flying lower now, not all the way high up in the sky. You know, oh, and then again, this whole thing connects back to the appreciation and recognition and respect for the nature as well as, you know, different culture, different people, you know, because by really learning each other, differences and similarities, that's, and then especially if that's put into or combined into the process of creation or making something together, that is a really strong potential of bonding and sharing and understanding each other. And yeah, so going back a little bit to the Mottai Nai, you know, this, the humbleness, and you already said about this too, but it's really used a lot by Japanese environmentalists. Also Kenyan environmentalist, Dr. Wangari Mathai, who received Nobel Prize, she articulated the slogan at United Nations and it's now in the English Wikipedia. So I do want this word of Mottai Nai to be, you know, shared more and, you know, not just our industry, but, you know, larger community to embrace. The bigger, that doesn't have to be better, you know, that's one of the things, although I do, the exchange that I've been doing has been reciprocal. We are not just bringing Japanese artists and their works here, but we do send American presenters and artists to Japan. And, you know, when we did that, we did engage in really deep, you know, conversation about what is your burning issues from aging to self-sensorship and of course, environment. And so, you know, I think, yes, we were, and even more now, aware of the carbon footprint, but sometimes, you know, visiting each other's country and meeting in person, especially for the first time, has the value too, I think. And I believe, and yeah, I really appreciate it. We're promoting this notion of eco-performance as well. I was at our super colleague, Elizabeth, who's created this word and eco-performance week. You know, I think this is a great context that we push forward the notion, yeah. Great, thank you. You have all made my job as a moderator either very easy or very difficult because you have all anticipated all the next few questions that I was going to ask, including, you know, what is environmental justice to you? How is it bringing issues of other forms of injustice, racial injustice, colonization? How can environmental justice be linked to modes of decolonization, anti-racism work and things like that? So let me just put that out there that you can talk about how you define environmental justice. Ronnie has already really got into that, which I appreciate, but you said you had another 20 minutes of material, you know, maybe not 20 minutes, but you know, you can tell us a little bit more about how you see environmental justice playing out. And maybe what you hope, since other people have talked about COVID, where do you hope that on stage, off stage, where environmental justice might go in the future now that we're sort of really fundamentally rethinking our forms of human attachment, rethinking performance and how, and the stages, both virtual and real, that are possible at this moment. How does that also get us to start thinking about equal performance environmental justice? So just to recap, since we're putting a whole bunch of things together, slow down, back up a little bit. Tell me a little bit what environmental justice or climate justice means to you and how might we envision a better future along the lines of how you envision environmental justice through performance, both on stage and off, especially as we're sort of rethinking the world and the performative world in this hopefully soon post COVID world or at least more normalized world. Yeah, I'm happy to start us off since I got so excited and already went on a justice kick. But yeah, for me, really unpacking and understanding decolonization was so helpful to me in understanding how we might transform our society to be one that is regenerative instead of extractive. So I think we often talk about climate crisis, but we don't always have a great language for what the next thing is. Is it, are we making an equitable justice? I find that folks, one of the biggest challenges that folks can have is often getting to the, so what is the thing? And to really dream and vision what the new thing could be beyond saying, okay, well, here is the risk and here is the kind of minor steps you can take. Have you really kind of imagined what that future world like smells like, what it feels like to leave your house in the morning? And I mean, that's the kind of dreaming and imagining that arts workers are really primed to do. And I think that sometimes an opportunity, it's a really daunting one, but I'm excited to see more of the speculative visioning of the future that is a good one rather than a cautionary tale about what could happen if we don't get it right. Because in a way it's a lot harder to imagine getting it right than it is to imagine getting it wrong. But to talk just to hear more about decolonizing and yes, thank you, Elizabeth, for giving a shout out that Groundwater will be leading a decolonizing theater basics workshop this Saturday. And this will be touched on in much greater depth there, but so much of American society is really an echo of the moments of our history. Everything from capitalism to the way that we think about labor, so many cultural things about our society are rooted in the kind of history of extraction of folks coming from elsewhere, taking resources from land, from the people that were here, from the indigenous people that were here, the long and violent history of slavery. And in the way that we tend to treat each other now and the way that we see it as so transactional often, the way that our economy is built, it can all, you can draw lines back to the kind of extraction of settler colonialism. And it's something that is, you know, academics have spent a long time really drawing those lines. And in a way, it's a whole body of work that hasn't really made it into the popular zeitgeist of it being connected to some of these bigger issues. So in a way, if we think about, okay, what would it look like to decolonize our society? It really does kind of operate in tandem with, ooh, what would a climate justice, what would a regenerative society look like, that isn't extractive, but is moving into this other space. And there's a lot of really tangible tactics and strategies out there, some of which I alluded to earlier. But if just as folks say that racism is structural, so anti-racism has to also be structural, we're in this settler colonized state, and we're living the aftermath of this history. And so, it's gonna take a similar kind of structural change in order for us to see this justice society. So in terms of bringing it into arts practice, I think both on and off stage, there's so much modeling that we can do, and both with the kind of imagination and vision, and also with leading and how we treat each other. And I think that brings me to the, Jessica, your great question about COVID, that for some folks, some folks were furiously working just as hard as they would be normally in making virtual theaters. Some folks were working just as hard if not harder to put food on the table while their live theater industry job end. I mean, everyone's story has been different and the society we're coming back to, well, it can feel like, oh, I'm the one who's out of shape and not ready and trying to meet it. Everyone and every organization is in this moment. And I think it's gonna be a real risk to wanna fall back into something that we're familiar with, but we've all gone through a collective trauma together. And if we don't hold that that's really what it was, was a collective national trauma. We're never, you know, it's all the kind of hope well, it's post COVID, so it's gonna be different. Isn't necessarily gonna be the case if we don't actually acknowledge the real pain and like actually go through a grieving process, you know, of what was lost as well as what was learned, you know? So some big, heavy stuff, I guess that's kind of my brand, but for me, all of this is like such an opportunity as an arts worker to kind of hold all of this and bring it into your practice wherever you are. And I guess the last thing I'll just say is that I think artists in particular can kind of infantilize themselves sometimes that this is just too big to take on. And it's like, that's exactly who we need, you know? Who better than artists to kind of lead us into a kind of a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing, because we all need such a new way of seeing, but all in there, thanks. Yeah, so I resonate a whole lot again, but just harrowing up on what you just said, Rony, that if we can show this slide again, I'm sorry, the PDF, the other project that I wanted to just share with you all was, this was right, well, I mean, 2019 May, so pre-COVID, but multidisciplinary composer Tomoko Mumiema, we've together, you know, different stories of Japanese immigrants. And just quickly from the top left, the first one was the CEO of Ugen's founder, Yuriko Do is also a CEO adventurer. So she was talking about her journal in Japanese, Tomoko is a professional translator too, so she was simultaneously reading it in English. And we have, there were five koto, the horizon to sitar, Japanese string, traditional string instrument, set up inside a little firehouse, but we carried one to each spot for the journeys. And the second one to the right, that was Aisuke who collected the stones from Japanese internment camp in Topaz, Utah, and brought back and he would put each and one stone for the years that his great grandfather spent in the United States, but then and asked audience to count together the years, but then for the internment camp years, 1941 to 45, we just put the stones inside us. And then below that is a Kanakoa weaver, she's a seed specialist. She was explaining about the rock behind her that has millions of years and the, you know, asking participants to think about the microbe beneath the land she's standing. And then the final scene was to the left bottom where Tomoko is now talking about the migrating birds, how they changed because of global warming and how they, some of them are lonely, but trying to mate and crying. And up until this moment she was asking participants to make noises inspired by the stories told, be it the sea turtle approaching the boat or the microbes underneath the big rock. But here she says that now please think about one sound that you, it's so precious to you that it can, you want this sound to be passed down to generations, but don't have to vocalize now, don't have to make noise yourself, just think about it and hold it. And then we all went back into the firehouse too for the final Koto piece with Shoko, the Koto expert. But I think that there's a space and opportunity, arts can be powerful tool because it can really move people's emotion. It's, the vicarious experience, if you can engage, so be it lecture performance like this or I ask Ludic Proxy, the ways to think about the ways to engage them, it's important for the art piece to be powerful so that more people can really get it and act on it as opposed to just reading about it or looking at the scientific data or the number. It's supposed to be telling stories, but when artists or the rocks or even the little stones from Popa's internment camp, they can tell stories too when artists are involved and the audience are engaged. So just wanted to share this piece, which it was difficult to do because of the visa problem, the borders, but that piece too that instead of bringing a finished piece and performing there, this was just Tomoko coming here by herself in residence for a month and then creating artwork with local artists and community members. So that's from the carbon footprint point of view that was a better, that's a good way to do this arts program as well. Yeah, thank you. Wow, well, you know, Ronnie and Yoshida-san, it's just so inspiring to hear both of you. I am leaving this Zoom meeting feeling much more inspired and most of the Zoom meetings I have been in the past two years, truly. I keep going back to the, it's kind of as a theater maker, drawing to think that the discipline that you chose, perhaps is the most inefficient one of the narrative arts, just based on the amount of people you can reach, the amount of time you have to put in. At the same time, I do believe that it's one of the most profoundly impacting forms that it can be for those that get to experience it. So Ronnie echoing on that idea that, yes, we can't, we're not, we shouldn't infantilize our work. We should believe it has the power to do stuff. As we've seen how so many things have changed from the grassroots movements from the ground up, we can do so as well for the theater arts. And if maybe we start doing it, then maybe the regional theaters will start doing it and then maybe Broadway will start doing it and maybe like society, there you go. I got what she meant. And I think even if it's slow and it's maybe not as clearly effective or immediately so, I at least say it's also the power to change us or those of us who engage with it and tying it back together to eco performance and the idea of indigeneity and how we can learn from each other. You know, Yoshida-san, the first time Makuyake, we as a company would travel to Asia, we had the privilege of being to Wuzhen China and seeing the situation there. And, you know, the effects of a rapidly developing push economically and the effects it has on its different native peoples as well. And then being able to spend some time in Japan and for some of our company members to see, for example, you were talking about Kami and Abachinto and seeing how their own perhaps spiritual relation to nature would, they were able to see it in a place where it wasn't colonized, right? And given them also a possibility of managing a different way of continuing their practice in their own context. And it's interesting because we remember getting on the, maybe this is too specific, but we remember getting on the bullet train, which I believe was actually modeled after the beaks of birds, as to how to like make it best to travel in the most efficient way possible, both energy-wise and time-wise and whatnot. And one of the, you know, Khosromai Chihus from the Yucatan Peninsula and right now the government's planning on investing this huge amount of money to building a train that runs on diesel in the middle of a very environmentally precarious space and just making the connection of, you know, how could it be possible for us to create something that is in harmony with nature, but at the same time allows us to also interconnect with each other in a much easier way in this case, transportation. And I think at least I can say for us who have been able to benefit from not only sharing our work, but to also enrich ourselves by that same sharing. It's something that gives us a lot of hope that it's still worth it to be doing this crazy theater thing that we keep wanting to do. So thank you both for the inspiration and Jessica for the facilitation and everybody else's work listening. And I'm sure sharing some questions or thoughts soon, right? Jessica, am I just jumping into the next section? We have about maybe five minutes before I do wanna leave some time for quick questions and from the audience, but I do like wanna follow up on something that you were just saying Hector. So very, very briefly and Kealiko, you were also talking about storytelling. Many of you mentioned ludic proxy Fukushima, which is a performance, a virtual performance that people can see through the wringling. Hopefully we'll post a link in the chat. But in it uses sort of a video game dramaturgy where your avatar Maho visits her sister in Fukushima four years after the reactor meltdown and we experienced the struggle to understand the difficult life choices one makes when living just outside a nuclear evacuations zone. It's incredibly compelling and it has this really interesting storytelling structure where you have this avatar, you get to make decisions and that affects the performance as an audience. And one of the things that made me think about this is storytelling, but then also like Hector, you said this was a, performance can be a very labor intensive and maybe not efficient way of communication, arts communication, but at the same time, I think it's the proxy, the proximate interaction, the relationship that you build with an audience makes it uniquely powerful. And I'm wondering just a minute or two each if you can say just a little bit more about how you sort of see maybe the possibility of change based on that very important interaction between the performer and the audience broadly conceived and how that might actually work as a way through to envision the speculative future that Ronnie was talking about. So I was just talking to a couple of friends from around the world who are also theater predictioners and we were saying that if we wanna create a space where maybe not everybody will get or even life if you can use that word, what you're sharing with them, but that at least people from any kind of background get to see into the work from their own space, not level, but space of understanding, right? And I think one of the most powerful theater experiences that at least I've had is when I leave the theater with a question, is not immediately solved and that question sits with me for a while, right? And sometimes I'm even now trying to figure out a question from that one play I saw five years ago. I still believe personally that theater is also entertainment and so how do we get what we wanna say to people from all kinds of life? And I say this from maybe a very pragmatic like we have thinking about it, which is if I go to a small, let's say sample decor in my community in Mexico and I start trying to talk about all of these ideas about whatever eco performance and like climate restorative and they'd be like, I just came back from like spending six hours on the field, can you just like chill? And so it's a real thing too, you know? So how can we be able to reach all kinds of audiences in a way that allows them to sit through the question in the moment that they're going to be wrestling with it and from their own space? And I think that that's also done through work that is accessible both at a thematic and rhythmic and aesthetic and musical even level, right? And so that's why I think it's important that we also acknowledge that those questions we should be able to oppose them from a place of not a hierarchy if I have this solution or this question, but I agree with you absolutely that the relationship you build with an audience, I mean, one of my favorite experiences ever, this is maybe like true democracy, I don't know. We were in Tinun Campeche, which is the Mayan town and we started performing the play at the evening and people would trickle in and set up chairs instinctively in a semi-circle around the performance space and one of the performers who has musha, which is their gender. So he or she or they were wearing a dress, although they presented a smile, and suddenly two men who are a little bit drunk, I gotta say it's okay, it's like the end of the day, why not have a couple beers, that's fine. Just sort of join in and one of them looks at her and says, that is not a man, that's not a woman, that's not right. And then the other guy slightly less drunk next to him says, oh, but isn't that theater, I mean, freedom of expression. And the first guy goes like, oh yeah, I guess I hadn't thought of it that way. You know, just in the middle of the performance, right? And I think that the beautiful lesson for us was not that we didn't have to come and like sort of like push the idea onto them, but also like people to wrestle with those questions as they came up in a communal way and from their own understanding and life path. Yeah. I think that's beautiful. I do want to leave some time for audience questions, but hopefully this is also something that will come out from audience questions too, like and help us think about how does audience interaction change the dynamics of performance and move us to the futures that we want to move to. So first I wanna thank you all for answering my questions and open the floor to Sonya to tell us what the audience is thinking. Oh, so we can move towards closing or I can leave it open to Rani or Kiyoko if you wanna talk about audience and how the audience, that relationship that you build as a performer with your audience, how that works out if you have a few words you wanna say about that. Yeah, I was wondering if you had a chance to go for it. Yeah, no, I think it's... No, thanks for this question, Jessica. I was really riffing off of Hector what you were saying about the... We talk about these big ideas and how important it is, but yeah, it's like the incredible work of the artist to distill that into an experience that you know is gonna have a transformative effect on the particular audience you have who may just be like, yeah, I'm really tired. I had a really tough day. This is my way of unwinding and like, yes, there can be challenge. Yes, there could be questions. Yeah, it can be provocative, but you know, it's not... There's gonna be different approaches for different folks needed, right? So there was a piece I felt really privileged to work on during my time at Octopus, at Octopus Theatricals that was Phantom Limb Company's work falling out that was also about the disaster that happened in Fukushima and the approach that they took to, I guess, both to unpacking what happened and to imagining hope was one that really took art forms you wouldn't think about. So life-size, life-scale puppetry and buttoe and crump dance and put it together with this gorgeous projection and original music that you felt like you were watching a bit of a meditation on what transpired and then, you know, from that imagining something different. But I'll also say, you know, I think that there is some of my favorite work that's happening right now is work that is, you know, imagining something different. And I loved it, like that sci-fi is actually getting a kind of a fresh look for its ability to kind of imagine new futures and, you know, indigenous artists and, you know, incredible black visionaries like, oh, gosh, of course, is it going to go out of my head, like parable of the sewer and things like that, the kind of Afrofuturist. Kibya Butler. Thank you. Okay, great. It's like, it's right there. You know, I think that work like that that previously had not been given the attention and it really deserved. And now that it's really coming forward, I get really excited about that as a different way in, yeah. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, I think performing arts is such a rare and maybe cost-ineffective in a way, form. But that's just, if you just look at that, especially in non-profit, but if you look at the depth of the impact, the lasting impact that the production can have, definitely, you know, it's a very special. And I, other word that I'm thinking about is, you know, there are two thoughts, opposite thoughts. The one is that, okay, arts or performing arts or something wouldn't stage, it's something different from your ordinary life. So that's special. So that's kind of evoke interest. But also with how the world is going with the availability of the Zoom technology and everything, digitalization, you can, you know, our conversation can be shared with whole world now, right now. It is amazing. What to say? So, you know, it's about integrating different, what you thought was different people in different locations, also people with different like, you know, expertise or the knowledge. And, yeah, and then also like, I think it was in the questions that Jessica sent us to that, how do you engage people when you're addressing the global burning issues? You know, you know, food, for example, that connects everyone and every culture have different beauty in the food way, you know, and then it connects with the health. Everybody cares for that, you know. And like you again, we have the part of the mission is to appeal to five or five senses, you know. So to feel, to smell good, to, you know, feel good and, you know, to make that kind of the welcoming and again, engaging arrangement for the audience too is good, is an important thing. But, you know, live performance, I mean, it's not just the performers who's on stage, it's the audience energy and reaction that feed back. And that makes something special. And I think it has a powerful, very powerful potential to address any pressing issues as well as stories, yeah. Great, thank you so much. Thank you again to all the panelists. And thank you, thank you for the wringling. Thank you for Elizabeth, for getting us all together for this really important conversation. I've learned a lot and I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed this and I'll hand it over, I'll hand it back to Elizabeth. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you, Ronnie. Thank you, Kyoko. Thank you, Hector. I, if you know me, you know, this is one of my favorite things to talk about and it has been such an honor to get to know you all more through this conversation. And I think that our audience is really going to benefit from having some of these really foundational concepts elaborated and such an important conversation for now. I can't wait to see you all again here in Sarasota when that time comes. And thanks for all of our viewers today for coming on.