 Neurodiversity Matters Online Conference brought to you by Spectrum Theatre Ensemble. I'm Clay Martin, the Artistic Director of Spectrum Theatre Ensemble. So our next segment is going to be a sneak peek at a play that we have been working on with SCEE for about two years. It's a play called The Importance of Being a Play in earnest, not to be confused with the Oscar Wilde play, but it's by our resident playwright Jeremy Jay Camps in collaboration with the SCEE company. Following the clip, we're going to talk about the process and how the play was developed more, but I just wanted to give you a little background on the play to give you some context, because we're only going to show about a 12 minute clip of two scenes. So the play involves a family that has multiple individuals on the spectrum. And the two scenes you're about to see, one is by the show's narrator Whitney, who is an artist on the spectrum, who is a stand-up comedian. And then the scene following it is actually a scene of a social skills class that her brother Graham is participating in along with some other students. And not only is the teacher, his teacher, it's also his brother Niles' fiance. So I'm going to bring up the video and start it. And again, if you have any questions, please type them into the Facebook live stream, and we will answer them following the clip. Nenads. Oh boy, sure, I'll hear a joke. Interlude, headbanger. I mentioned yet how beautiful you all are, really, every single one of you. Well, mostly beautiful, a high percentage of beauty, really. We can say that really high percentage, higher than average. I mean, pleasant. Can we agree on pleasant? I want to be accurate, mostly pleasant. Several pleasant looking, don't feel badly beautiful is really a high bar. And you're all fine looking. I mean, you're not John Bon Jovi, but you're not Stephen Tyler either. But man, can he rock, am I right? I like him, but he's not heavy enough for me. Give me the medal. I'm a headbanger, used to be Metallica, Megadeth, Ozzy, you know. Whitney rocks out like a headbanger, sings a few lines of bang your head. Here I am rocking like a hurricane. I mean, I was such a headbanger, I got more CTE than whoever the Jets have playing quarterback. I forget his name, that's okay, so does he. But no, that's not actually the headbanging I used to be into. Earlier in my comedy career, when I was about seven or eight years old, that was sort of my act. Then I started typing in, once I had a way to get everything on the inside, outside, then I didn't need Metallica anymore. Every once in a while, I still get the urge to bang for all time's sake, but then I think of something funny and it goes away. Like for example, some of the funny things I think of include, what are not limited to babies with cigars underdressed penguins, kangaroos boxing people, sneezes that don't sound like sneezes, the face brand makes any eats, grapefruit, rice cakes or shrimp, and the time some older kids beat Nile into a bloody pulp in front of the house and grand just watched and didn't do anything. What, too soon? Act one, scene three, social skills. Today's lesson, unrequited love. I have enjoyed getting to know you, and I think we like the same movies and laugh at the same jokes. Your face is very pretty and I like your overall figure. It seems we're close to an age and I don't know what else to say. Okay, that's a great start. That really is. You're sincere, you're thoughtful, you're respectful. I think now you're going to want to think about how much you need to say. I mean, you might not need to say all of that. But I want her to know. Some of the knowing comes in just experiencing together, like a feeling. Someone else want to try? With you. That's beautiful, Xander. It's from dirty dancing. What about love is too weak a word? I love you. I love you. I love you. That's also from a movie, isn't it? You could play her favorite song in a boombox and stand outside her window. It's nice if it's original, but if it is something you shared in which the movie, in which the movie, but if there's something you shared in which the movie would make sense, like some sort of context that would be good too. You have the witchry of body and soul. I love you. I don't know any movie quotes though. Well, it doesn't have to be a movie quote. Do we just hand them a poem? I have some poems I've written. It might be easier on their own terms and some of the poems are like one in five pages or so. Too long to read in person. Poems are really sweet, but not necessarily a substitute for just talking in person. It's hard to find the words. Everyone has this problem, but you just try and trust your feeling. But what if they don't feel the same? It might hurt. It might be disappointing, but life will go on. You can't dwell on that too much. Plenty of fish in the sea. Exactly. But what about overfishing? Oh yeah, I've read about that. In the past 55 years alone, humans have annihilated over 90% of the ocean's top predators, shark, swordfish, king mackerel. I love sushi. It's just a question. Bottom drawing is the worst though. I've never heard of it. When huge ships drag, huge nets across the ocean floor and destroy everything in its path. Let's bring it back, shall we? The point is it's not the end of the world no matter what happens, good or bad. But if it's true love, if it's your true love and you get rejected, how can you go on? I believe there is more than just one person out there for you. You don't know that. Well statistically, there are 7.5 billion people on Earth, so about 3.25 billion are female? Do I have 3.25 billion to choose from? Not so fast. You can't marry under 18 and I'm guessing over 40 may be a stretch for you. Over 40? So within that range, you have about 1.5 billion, but approximately three fourths are married. Let's be generous though. Let's say two thirds only. That leaves 500,000. That's a lot. Right. But how many of them speak your language? A language of love? You've thought a lot about this. No, it's just statistics really. So in terms of probability, it's likely they'll speak Mandarin. So you could right now dedicate yourself to learning Mandarin enough to be able to find a life partner. But if you reduce it to English speakers, it's probably about 20% of that. Of those 100,000, you really statistically have to look at age again. Are you really going to be with a 40-year-old? Let's put it within five years younger and up to two years older given social conventions. That means you're at about 50,000. Yeah, I think we should move on. Really? It comes down to 17 women. Well, assuming you've become fluent in Mandarin. And if those 17, you have to find a way to meet or see one. You could go your whole life and never be in the room with one of them. Or you could be in a room with one of the 17, but never talk to her. There's a couple other factors, I'm sure. Okay, but what about... Why? Well, with Mandarin or without? I could learn Mandarin. That'll be 15. Let's get back to Eric's dilemma. We've been talking about living life intentionally and making decisions and choices. Eric, if you don't ask, you'll never know and it'll keep you static. Like you're waiting. That is not a healthy way to live. We don't know what it was like for us and how people look at us. No, no. Same way. No, not the same way, but I do know when I walk into a room that people make assumptions about who I am without knowing me and no matter what I do, they might see me. They might not see me in any other way. I do know what it's like to feel like I'm not wanted. Like I don't belong. If you don't ask, then you'll never get your heart broken. Maybe, but is that living? Just standing on the sidelines like that? Letting life take you wherever it takes you, not putting yourself out there? No. So when the time is right, then do it. But how do you know it's right? Well, not too soon. People can get emotional and come on too strong, but people can also wait too long that the moment goes away. There's no true way to know when the right time is, but it's somewhere in between those. Do you want to give it a try again, Eric? Can someone else try? Sure. Graham, you said you had a similar circumstance. Do you want to try? Grant? Grant. Grant. Grant. Grant. Grant. Grant. Grant. Grant. Okay, okay. But I need a man to be you in the role play. Why? I'm up. He's gay? Yes, is that a crime? In Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma it is. What about Rhode Island? It doesn't matter, be supportive. That's what we always talk about, right? You can just pretend I'm a man. No, I can't. The parts don't fit together. Don't be a bigot, Andre. Albus Dumbledore's gay. That's not even true. Okay, okay. Hold on a minute. Andre, we have to be supportive of each other here. But it's wrong. You come in here and complain about how people judge and mock you, but think about... But you think you can do that to other people? It's not the same. Next week is your dilemma. I think that's exactly what we should talk about. But today, we're talking about love and relationships, all kinds of love and relationships, and it's Graham's turn. Damn, she's good. Okay, can someone stand in for Graham to practice? But I'm not really gonna do it in her own life. Just practice. Anyone? I will. No, no, not you. Why not? The man I'm thinking of is much more beautiful than you, so if I look at you, it won't feel real. That's not nice, Graham. It's okay. I'm not gay anyway, so I don't want him to be attracted to me. That's homophobia. If it's okay to be gay, then how come it's not okay to be homophobic? Okay, let's... There's a lot going on right now, and we need to rein it in here. We're here to support each other, and what you're saying could be interpreted as... You know? It's okay. I'll just close my eyes. I can just pretend. And just for this moment, as long as you're mine, I've lost my strong resistance and crossed on borderline, and if it turns out we're moving too fast, I'll make every moment to last as long as you're mine. Act one. Sorry, guys. How'd I mute myself? So that was just a quick clip of our first read-through of the new draft of Importance of Being, which I think is now in draft three or four. Yeah, so joining us now is founding company member Dan Boyle, who's worked on this project since its beginning, and Teddy Lytle, who's a company member and also our community engagement director. Yep, and has also been working on the development of Importance of Being since its inception. So hi, guys. Thank you for joining. So we wanted to allow some time for people to have questions in the Facebook, but to start us off, I just wanted to ask. So this was our first play that we commissioned as Spectrum Theater Ensemble back in, who was at 2018 and the winner of 2017-2018 that Jeremy Cams worked with us on. So, Dan, if you can just kind of guide us through how that first process went up until the first reading. So we first met with Jeremy in person. He came up to Rhode Island from New York and we had several sessions with him, where we met several of the company members and we just, for the most part, just talked for a while. We did some exercises. We talked. We gave Jeremy a very good idea of ourselves as persons, as individuals, our personality, our likes, dislikes, that sort of thing. And he fashioned the first draft using us as inspiration, let's say. You didn't design specific characters around specific individuals from the company. Instead, his whole plan was to make all the characters in the play kind of a hybrid of several different individuals from the company. And then we finally did the first reading and, wow, it was like, yeah. He got a lot of things that so many other neurotypicals don't get, you know. Awesome. Well, hey, Teddy, I know you've done some other new play development before, correct? Yes. So how would you say this process of developing importance of being differed from the other processes you've been in? I know every new play development is unique, but are there any particular, I guess, unique components to this development? Oh, absolutely. I think most of my other new play development experience has been a playwright bringing something into the room. We work on it. We may offer some kind of insight or questions or like problems about clarity, but for the most part, you know, your job with your, when you're working with a new play, at least in my training, is to not try to fix the problems of the play, but try to do the play as is, as clearly as the playwright has given it to us right now. But in this process, Jeremy was with us, I think, before he had any idea of what was going to happen. We just knew we were going to be in a room together. I mean, and actually, Clay, you might be able to speak to that. You probably did have some work, but like, to my understanding, it was pretty much, let's just meet. And like Dan said, those exercises, we did some very personal sharing safe space exercises. We drew pictures outlines of ourselves and like, try to talk about what, how people see us, how we feel on the inside. So it was a really engaging process that I felt. Not only was I helping deliver some art to life, but I was actually a part of the main ingredients and helping it. And I mean, you know, the, the story we've created touches on family, on autism, on different levels of autism. And, but also on addiction recovery on, on perception and on how like, and some of the panels we've seen today, I feel like, you know, getting to hear directly from a neurodivergent people, like, you know, how we, might put the brakes on somebody when we really need to let them fly. And like Whitney, I think is an example of a character like that. And it just explores the interpersonal relationships. I think a really honest portrayal of the struggles, but also the, the really high quality of life you can have being different, even with all those challenges that come along with it. But what I, what I think is at its heart too, is it doesn't dismiss that there are challenges sometimes, especially for a family. And in this family in particular, it seems to have three children that are on different levels of, of neurodivergence. Now being probably the most high functioning. Yeah, that's, that's amazing, Teddy. So one thing that I can take away from that, and maybe I've been the director, I guess, for this development of this project. So I've had some conversations with Jeremy leading up to, and he was very adamant about it, you know, being a person, he does have a hearing disability, but isn't on the spectrum. So before he wrote a play about people on the spectrum, even though he had met some of our company members, he wanted to get in a room with them and hear about them and what they wanted to create. And just in the process itself, before he started writing anything. And it's the best advice I think I could give to any playwright, and not only working with neurodivergent or telling neurodivergent stories, but telling any stories that are outside of your personal experience is to engage if you're working with a different community, which I think it's great to tell and explore other communities and branch out. I don't feel that we're all tribal and should be isolated personally. But bringing those people in on the ground from the beginning and really letting them be collaborative in the development of it, not just a tool to try out and workshop things. Now as the place developed, it has become more of a standard practice that at this point, Jeremy sends us an update. He works on it for a few months or a few weeks or overnight. And then he sends us a new script and we try it. And Jen, maybe tell me some of the things you liked or some of the evolutions you've seen in those rewrites. Sure. Well, let's talk about the scene we just saw. So one thing you can definitely get a gauge of in that very scene. That scene is so powerful. There's so many things going on there. For one thing, you're seeing a social skills group in action. And I mean, I know many people out there, unless you're actually on the spectrum, don't know what a social skills group is like, but that is so realistic a representation to go beyond that. You notice that all the different people in that group, each one of them is very different. I mean, we have a saying, you know, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, you know. And, you know, you look at the character I'm playing Andre, you know, he's, he's a little bigoted, but it's not any, it's not a deliberate antagonistic, you know, bigotedness. He's, he's more conditioned to it. And it's not, it's not malicious. And then you look at Graham, I mean, Graham is one of two characters that has aspects of my own personality in them. And, you know, one of those personality is that I am one of those, you know, people on the spectrum who is also LGBTQ. So, yeah, I mean, we're all different, you know, that's awesome. And I know that was one of the first conversations Jeremy and I had of what we wanted to commission with the play with our group is that there are so many amazing plays. Again, like curious incident. And even representations in film now of an individual on the spectrum, but it kind of because of it being one person gives a monolithic view of what someone on the spectrum is like. And so the way we wanted to really confront that engage that issue is by just having multiple characters who not just having one neurodiverse character in the show. And because you have more than one character, you have more than one iteration of autism. And so I think that's something that we really look forward to in our new play festival is how many plays were starting to evolve that have multiple representations of neurodiversity, even at the same time, but not isolated. Yeah, that's a great point, Daniel. So that's been great. I'm trying to think, Teddy, do you have any other point right now you want to make while I think of some other questions. I think Jeremy also wanted to help us address. That, you know, as spectrum theater ensemble and as we've developed our mission has only deepened further into what it initially was and we want to aid the community around us and we're finding the community around us. It's not only neurodivergent, but there's also different ethnicities that are not represented in different. Well, and I just said neurodivergent, I think I meant more specifically people on the autistic spectrum, but also on top of that, the fringes of neurodivergence that like we've been discussing in these panels that are like, that might have substance abuse disorder PTSD, BPD. There's, there's a lot of these bipolar. There's a lot of these fringe kind of representation issues that Jeremy, I think very deftly and as like Dan said, in the scene we just saw kind of addresses that fact and how you might be able to educate someone who is a little bigotator homophobic through conditioning, how to change their purview and how to also, I think what you see there is Cassandra's character do a wonderful tactic of educational empathy of being able to say, I actually do relate to you in a different way that you can understand. And I think that that's also just an element of this. And I think Dan wanted to piggyback on that. That brings up an excellent point because that very line in that very scene was not in earlier iterations. This was a brand new line for that scene. And I mean, in the first iteration of the play Cassandra was played by a white woman in the second iteration we had her played by an African American woman. And again, in this version. And in the second iteration, obviously, you know, Jeremy realized that it was an opportunity to it, to expand a bit on that whole concept and added that line into this version. Absolutely. And I love that you're talking about representation because that's something that our company has been interested in. Again, wanting to be an inclusive company in every way humanly possible. But something Jeremy and I have talked about a lot. As you may know, in the community, people watching the diagnosis rate for people on the spectrum is, I guess, more trends towards men and more tense towards white men and demographics. But we know for certain that that isn't, it's not exclusive to white men as you've seen through our conference, seeing so many people on the spectrum that do have different identities and cultural backgrounds and genders. But what we've found in talking to the community is that there's an added stigma of being from a different culture and having a disability that makes some people reluctant to identify as being on the spectrum. But also we realize that there's no material in theater that shows people with different cultural backgrounds on the spectrum. One thing that we're doing to try to address that is with the 10 minute play festival this summer, and you've seen him in some of our panels, the amazing Mario Gomez has engaged with us. He's a Latino dramaturg whose focus of the festival is to translate all the 10 minute plays we create this year into Spanish as well so that they can be published bilingually. So there would be representation of, Spanish language representation of neurodiverse individuals. Teddy, you want to say something? Yeah. And as you were speaking, I got so excited by it. I think I forgot my point. Yeah. Just going back to that also, in our immediate community in Providence, there's a large Spanish speaking community. And I think just another thing that Jeremy as a playwright has been so beautiful in doing, his artistry on his own, as we've said, it's been a little bit more typical that he goes and he writes his drafts and just brings it to us when we talk about it. I mean, when he employs that, it's outstanding. But also just his, well, and also him and you, frankly, Clay, I think are just very good at putting your finger on the nose of, well, where are we? We're in Providence. What is our mission is neurodivergent inclusion. And then what are the fringe elements of that? And I think again, something you touched on that the diagnosis is usually for white men. And that that is not necessarily a fair representation of that community. And I think it's important that to know the power of art, if we're able to show in a performance or, you know, in any widespread distribution of entertainment representation in that it can help destigmatize and I think give strength and voice to these people who feel that if they were to be diagnosed or open about their diagnosis, that they would be further ostracized from society. And if we're able to in this new play festival or in this, the kind of, because especially feels like with social distancing, society is at a hinge right now. And I think we can take that opportunity while we're trying to produce these works that I think really are open to so many people to do them, but they were just created in neurodiverse environments. I remember we had a conversation early on talking about the good doctor had just started. And it was a show about a doctor who's on the autistic spectrum as a surgeon on time. Coronavirus, but yeah, I believe it's still running. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good show. I just commented that I thought the actor, you know, playing someone on the spectrum, like I kind of made a comment about like, couldn't they find someone on the spectrum to play that part? And one of our company members, Adam Bram said, I don't want to always play someone on the spectrum. I want to be able to play people off the spectrum. So I, and he, he voiced that I have no problem with a neuro typical person playing someone neuro divergent. I just want a neuro divergent person in that room. And it turned out, I believe most of their visual designers are actually on the spectrum. So they have, I think, you know, that was just an example of like, this is, it's an interesting strange time. But like, how can we start these conversations of like, we're asking for people to be allowed in the room. We're not, we're not taking anything away and allowing those people in the room, I'm going to say from my experience, enriches the art in such a way that you cannot do when you're excluding anyone. And something that I think we've, we always say in our media is like, inclusion is inclusion is inclusion. We had spectrum theater ensemble. Just think that we have this vision of the world. And Ava had said this in our last panel about this is something you say, Clay, is, are we showing the world as it is, or as it should be? And I think we have an image of how it should be. But we are rather far away from it with how it is. And so I think with our mission, if ever, you know, we want to make this as accessible as possible. Granted, we are a rag tag team of silly folk. Who this has been a really interesting conference experience. And I can tell you Clay and I have been up for a few days, making sure this is still cohesive and together. And it has been so heartwarming to hear the responses and stuff. But I do like to comment on like where we never mean to exclude anyone. We are a company that is open. But our main goal always is that we create good art. And our mission and I think our thought process to that is that when you create good art and it's inclusive, that in itself is therapeutic. However, we are not therapists. We're artists. And I think Jeremy in such a way to be able to include social class, social skills classes into this conversation about a family, have a character like Nile, who I play, who is, can be pessimistic to be light about it. Who has challenges. It shares honesty and I think it, it shows a step forward in the world as it is. Absolutely. And getting closer to how it should be. You see people get closer to how it should be. If that makes sense. Dan, do you want to share a final thought? And then I have something I want to piggyback on to wrap us up. Sure. So everything, everything tastes just said. I actually came up with a came brought up a lot of thoughts in my mind, but I think that the primary gist of it is. I agree with the inclusion. In fact, I strongly agree with it because we want people on the spectrum to be able to play roles of people that are not and indeed vice versa. I mean, if a neurotypical with the right support of having someone on the spectrum involved in the group in the discussion, we want them to be able to play that kind of role because it will actually help the neurotypical community, maybe better understand what, what our experience is. We can actually, can I say that actually applies to our core values. So, and you can check out our core values on our website, but some of those core values are collaboration, understanding and empathy. And one thing we've talked about as the group evolved was that those are, there's no hierarchy in our core values. They are always that when one is lacking, you have the other. So, first, a person neurotypical that doesn't understand what it's like to be on the spectrum, by collaborating in theater and play a character like that, maybe they're able to empathize and help an audience empathize more and by doing that understand the neurodivergent culture more and vice versa. So it's a mixture of those, those core values are always best when used together. They're not singular things. And then, and I've learned that is that yes, you can't do everything, but you don't have to prioritize one thing. Like Teddy said, we always try to create good art, but we never have to prioritize creating good art over inclusion. In fact, because our mission, we choose pieces to create and do well that are about inclusion in some way or address inclusion or exclusion. And by doing that, we find ways to put those things together. And again, hold to our values without sacrificing one for the other. I'm going to go to Teddy was saying a great thing and it made me think that, you know, he talked about the world as it is in the world as we want to be. And yeah, when Ted, when Jeremy and I started this, it was right at the beginning of our company and we were excited, but there were a lot of questions about, oh, but we're not representing this and we're not doing this yet. And man, we want to do that. I don't know if we can do that yet. I don't know if we can do that yet. And this is probably the best advice of anything I can give our audience is that we all want to get to a world that we want it to be like. That's inclusive and addresses everything. And I wanted to work about all kinds of people, both on the spectrum and not on the spectrum until all kinds of different stories, but you don't have to be afraid that you can't do everything. What you have to do is begin. And I think this conference is a great beginning for people. For the connections that we've had that can create more inclusivity and create more advocacy and more discussion and ideas. It can create more just connections to share and empathize with each other to understand each other. Again, hopefully collaborate with each other. And we want our audience to do that as well. So please reach out to us. You can go on our face, our website. You can go to the contact button that you can share your email. And we would love to talk to you and find ways to engage with you. And talk more about SD and how you can be involved in it. So thank you guys so much for sharing this and for your work on importance of being. And thank you audience. We're going to take a break. Right now, but when we come back at five 50, we have a very exciting announcement. We are going to be announcing plays by that. We've had, sorry, we've had plays submitted over the last half year from playwrights who are on the spectrum. And we've been reading them as a company. Dan Boyle's been great leading that initiative. And we have selected four of these plays that will be presented, rehearsed, workshopped and performed at the neurodiversity new play festival this summer. So we'll be announcing those plays and the playwrights at the neurodiversity on the Facebook live stream. So join us on the SD Facebook page on how.