 Take a seat for a second. All right, all right. So if you hear my voice, I always mess this up. Clap once. If you hear it, clap it twice. And if you hear it again, clap it three times. All right. Thank you all. We got through it. I went up to the hotel room, and I put on a pair of pumps to celebrate. Here, I'll show you, actually, because my colleagues, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, too loud. All right, here we go. Thank you. So last year, for how we move forward, we did a little exercise inspired by theater and also sports and also Korean saying. So I just want to make sure we start with just really acknowledging, still, the excitement on this final day. So we're going to do the manse exercise. Can you raise your hand if you remember the manse exercise? Thank you, Teresa. Thank you. All right, so here's how it's going to work. So during the World Cup and stuff in Korea, people would get very excited. And when the goal would kick in, folks will say, goal. Right? OK, we're not going to do that. Instead, we're going to say manse. OK, can I hear everyone say manse? Manse. Not your mama said. I mean manse. All right, here we go. Manse. Nice. All right, so we're going to fill up the space with some of that manse goal energy since we did make it through the week. I'm going to divide it up here. Manse team one, manse team two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Now you're going to have to bring it, because the conference team really brought it this year, all right? So when I call manse team one, I would like to hear the manse, the loudest manse you can bear. OK? And then we're going to go around. Manse team one, I'm hungry because I'm pretty sure I heard a mandu or something, Korean dumplings. All right, manse team two, I like that little kick you put in there, all right. Manse team three, manse team four, manse team five. Wonderful, we started here from this groin area, and we just went manse six, right? Manse team six, manse team seven. Force was very strong in this group. Manse team eight, by butchering this manse exercise, I have to be accountable. All right, on a count of three, let's hear a manse, OK? One, two, this felt like I was in this whole stadium, so thank you for that. So what we're going to do here for how we move forward is now just here for a couple of minutes each, some session report outs, because we had one of the strongest at the Intersections arcs in the history of TCG. So that's what we're going to do, all right? Are we ready? Yes. We're going to hear a manse, are we ready? All right, I'm going to pass it over to you guys. OK, so to get us started and to kind of just ground us in the space after we summoned all of that energy, I'm going to invite Malik Ghilani from Silk Road Rising to share a reading of the Quran. Thank you for having me to share a reading from the Quran with you. Today, as I speak with you, there are 28 anti-Islamic rallies happening in America right now. 28 rallies in cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Rally. There have been 35 mosques that have been attacked this year already. So as a Muslim American, it means so much to me, that TCG has asked me to share my faith with all of you. I'm going to share with you Surah al-Fatiha. It means the opening. It's the surah, the Quranic words, that opens the Quran. And we say that the entire meaning of the Islam is in the surah. I will recite it in Arabic, and then I will translate for you. And we are asked to face east when we recite the Quran. So I will face east. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahirrabi alameen. Ar-Rahmanirrahim. Mali ki-yumideen. Iyakana buddhu wa Iyakana steen. Ehidina sirat al-mussaqeen. Sirat al-ladina al-amta alayhim. Gated maghdubi alayhim wa lad-daalin. Amen. And I'm going to hold the translation for you. In the name of God, the infinitely compassionate and merciful, praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds, the compassionate, the merciful, ruler on the day of reckoning. You alone do we worship. And you alone do we ask for help. Guide us on this straight path, the path of those who have received your grace, not the path of those who have brought down breath, nor of those who wander astray. Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much. Compassion, mercy, grace. Thank you. Okay, now what we're going to try to do after that is to share what we've been doing over the last three days with each other. We came together at the beginning of the conference for how we show up to talk about the work we were going to do. And then we went into a bunch of rooms and we did that work. And sometimes it was hard and often it was joyful. And now we get to come back together and share it. So each group is going to have two minutes to share. I'm going to try to tie you, but I also trust that you will feel the rhythm of the two minutes and you're reporting out heart. And then we'll have a closing moment. So we're going to move kind of in a chronological and then alphabetical order. That's what this is. Also, you'll note that the seats are a little less full. Some folks have had to go to do the things that they do in other places. So there may be some sessions where none of the session leaders are here. And if you were in that session and you feel like you can come up and share a little bit about your experience so it can be brought into the room, that would be appreciated. But at the very least, we're going to at least name all of the sessions. Okay, is there support for this? Yeah. Thank you. So anti-racist resources for white people. Hey y'all, I'm Libby Peterson and I'm the program manager of Art Equity. So thankful to be with you all. I was one of several fierce white folks who co-built and co-facilitated a session, well three sessions actually. One focused on white fragility, one focused on white supremacy culture, and one focused on allyship and action, unpacking racist dynamics in our field. And these were jam-packed sessions of generosity, deep questions, profound statements. And in some spaces we were on floors against walls and chairs. And from that came a lot of energy and a lot of conversations that will continue to happen. And we were both in spaces of predominantly white folks and then also colleagues of color coming in in solidarity and support because we never do the work alone. And I have a couple of questions that come as an invitation. So for the white folks that we didn't see in the space with us, I'm a police of curiosity, compassion, love, and challenge. Where were y'all? And question number two, when are you coming? Because we long to be with you. This is necessary work that we reckon together. So come on in y'all, the water's fine. Come find me if you wanna talk. Thank you. Thank you. And in true modeling of racial justice, you were well under two minutes. Thank you for that. That was awesome. Okay, so Asian Pacific Islander artists, the nail that sticks out in other tools for building change. I forgot that there was a subtitle. Hi, so what we focused our group on was we broke out into groups and kind of put ourselves in scenarios in which we're encountering aspects of whitewashing, yellow face, things like, oh, your best friends in the Makato, they didn't know, they invited you to open the night and you guys didn't have a conversation before or that an Asian actor who's been offered a Broadway contract to do Miss Saigon or things like that where we're like finding ourselves in these situations. So one, these situations at these circumstances, it's already too late to agree. We've already, there are decisions that need to be made and thought of before we even get to that situation. So people need to start considering who are in those positions who are making those decisions. But we are still faced with those situations in ways. So we have to come, we're coming up with ideas of how we combat that or how we interact with those situations. And they're complex issues. They're not simple. A lot of people have different ways that we're tired. We're tired of having to educate. We're tired of having to be the ones to come up with the solutions. It's not a responsibility. When you do something that's harmful and yellow face or whitewashing or anything like that, I don't understand why it's our responsibility, my responsibility to educate you. If your school, if your theater is leaking gas into a school, it is not the school's responsibility to educate you on why it's harmful. It is not their responsibility to come up with the solutions to fix what is it harming. So that is a lot of what I came up with as a group we realized was there needs to be, there needs to be accountability from these organizations to realize when you're told you're doing harm that you need to educate yourself and come up with the solutions. We will work with you, then compensate us because it's our time, it is our energy. I don't even do it, I have the patience. Some people aren't and if those people aren't, say that they can't, respect that. So thank you. Next step is beyond diversity, casting and cultural appropriation in the American theater. I know some of those folks left and that someone was here who wants to talk about what happened in that session. For those of you that were in the session, it was a really great, they had a wonderful panel talking about some of the complexities of casting for diversity in theater and then we broke out into groups according to kind of an affinity group based on where you're at, whether you're a playwright, whether you are an artistic leader or a managing leader. I went to the managing leader groups if I can only speak to that so if anybody else wants to jump up, please feel free. But we tried to nail down some really tangible points about what we can do right now to help. And so for instance, what I'm trying to remember off the top of my head, we said, what if we make, we need to make authentic relationships with the communities that we want to work in. If we want to tell somebody's story, we need to go to that community and talk to those people, work with those people. It isn't just in the casting. We have to put those people in our staff. We have to diversify our leadership. We have to diversify the hierarchy of theater, designers, directors and such forth. There is a suggestion to maybe as an idea, what if we offered free acting classes to people of color in those communities so that we can cultivate new actors because not everybody has access to getting their MFA or anything like that. So that was one of the kind of, some of the ideas that we were putting forth. If anybody else wants to join in, please do. Thank you. Crucial conversations, understanding bias and navigating hard conversations. Do you ever want to talk about that? Otherwise we'll never know how to navigate. We need to move beyond crucial conversations and have deep conversations about racism and oppression in the American theater. Brevity is the sort of justice. Decolonizing theater practice. We're gonna de-center our practice and maybe take all of these different mics. And I'm gonna kick us off by talking about what we did together. We meditated on where we come from and the land on which we stand. We embodied complex social concepts of oppression through brilliant, funny, short plays. We reflected on theater-making practices and the challenges of and specific steps people can do to decolonize their practice. Okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what we committed ourselves to in the future. Oh, right, I put this all on conference 2.0. So all of the documents that we shared, including the text of those short plays are all up on 2.0 now. So go to the decolonizing theater practice session and you can find those documents. Do you wanna talk about the Standing Rock Theater Action Group? Yes, so Standing Rock Theater Action is one of the steps that you can take. Join us at our Facebook group. And Claudia is one of our organizing partners, Piedasau and Megan Sanversakia. We are getting ourselves together. We're already doing many things. There's lots of resources there. There's also a really exciting action that is coming very, very soon. So you wanna be on the paper stage so you know what's happening. Keep on it. Thank you. Okay, so El Cuego igniting new play development. Anyone who organized it here? Anyone who is there, who wants to speak to it? I know I wanna hear about it. El Cuego. I did moderate four plant in this session but our moderator and planner are not here. So we basically talked about a model that the LTC is trying out and sort of succeeding and sort of not. In not only new play development, actually as one of our amazing attendees pointed out, it's actually artist development and playwright development and talking about getting playwrights of color and specifically at Next Playwrights out of the reading cycles. Y'all are really good at giving us development opportunities and that's the good expertise in the play. So yeah, we don't have a choice so we're gonna do it ourselves and we're going to work with the companies who've already been doing it, like Will. Great, so Next Up is Middle Eastern and Muslim American theater artists. Now more than ever. Hi everybody, I'm Evan Archigan with Golden Thread Production. And I'm Jameel Corey with Silk Road Rising. And our organizations were the leaders of two sessions that focused on this field. We, in the actual affinity session we had about over 30 people. Well when we are affinity group babies, I think you'd say, this is our second consecutive year of meeting and yet we've been meeting as an affinity group outside of TCG as a Middle East America initiative convening in New York at the Lark for quite a few years. So we're actually in the working group kind of stage of the process rather than the talking about the problems part of the process. And a big part of that was working on two documents. So I will share two points from the first document which is a Middle Eastern and Muslim American theater artist Bill of Rights. I'm giving two but there are several. We have the right to define our own cultural identities free of coercion, policing and stereotypes and to embrace our myriad identities simultaneously. We have the right not to conform to preconceived notions of our cultural identity and to resist political and social judgment in favor of stories that reflect our own truths. And the second document that might be of interest to a lot of people in this room is the Dear Producers Letter. That is a very simple step-by-step guide to interact with these stories, artists and playwrights in a culturally competent manner. As you can imagine, we're dealing with casting, play selection and all these other issues. Obviously there's a lot of disagreement about some of the issues that are in the letter so I'm not actually gonna share anything because it's not finalized yet. But please expect this to be shared through TCG and Golden Thread and Silk Road specifically as companies are more than happy to be resources for anyone interested in having this conversation further. And please support Middle Eastern American artists. No, thank you. No, thank you. The fire now. Urgent Black Theater Coalitions today and tomorrow. And this is my first time since I've been at the Black Theater Association. This is the focus group of athletes to the Association of Theater and Higher Education. And I wanted to call this meeting to organize Black Theater Association with Black Theater Commons, with TCG, and also with the Black Theater Network. This is another organization, independent organization that also promotes the observation of Black Theater. So in our meeting, we basically, it was pretty much a session of getting to know one another and what the different organizations do so that we can develop strategies on how to organize. So next steps for us, we will be organizing around different projects to support one another with that. I know there's gonna be a call to action, so some of you will hear from us. There will be a letter that will be put forth. There are, what, 16 open musicians at different institutions. And we will be asking organizations to step up so people are calling for equity, diversity, and inclusion, we wanna see it in action. So going forward, we will continue to organize, continue to work together. And at some point, we do look forward to collaborating with other folks with us. Thank you. Theaters of Color Breakfast. Yes, so yesterday morning at eight o'clock, we had a Theater of Colors Breakfast. And it was a very colorful, convening, as you can imagine, as long as we were able to stay awake. One of the major issues we discussed was finding common ground. And we know that there's a lot of common interest and issues between us. We also talked about funding and funding equity and what were opportunities out there for doing that. And what were some of the challenges involved with doing that? Particularly with a stronger sense of strength amongst organization and the need to basically, not necessarily DIY it or do it yourself, but to be more independent and not necessarily dependent on other funding. We talked about intersections and opportunities to work across communities of color and to start exploring those opportunities. I run a Latino theater company, but we should be able to open our doors to other companies coming in and sharing our space or doing collaborations with us. We also talked about, I think the light just went out on me. I think one of the most important conversations we had is that now, almost 15 years after the White Oak Conference, which was organized by TCG to get leaders from organizations of color together in the same room to talk about things that were important to them. It's time that we have another conversation coming along the line. And this morning, we set about setting the table for that kind of discussion as we move forward. Great, we also, to add to that, we talked about writers and how can we support and facilitate writers of color from academia, from journalism or people in our communities to reflect, archive and critique our work from a cultural and authentic voice instead of relying on the systemic racist lens that's currently dominating writing methodologies and criticism today, right? So how can we make that happen? And also another really important thing that came out of this breakfast was sharing our successes, sharing it with ourselves and standing up and saying, yes, we are, we're gonna thrive, we're thriving. Yeah. Thank you. Latinx, affinity, lunch, regional alliances and how we support Latinx work on the local, regional and national levels. This is what happens when you're not really paying attention. And suddenly you get elected to be the speaker of this session. Anyway, we had a great session. There were a lot of beautiful people there, different ages, young, old, light-skinned, dark-skinned. Some of them speak Spanish, some of them couldn't. But that's our community and that's what's beautiful about it. We talked about a variety of issues. We actually broke off into small groups. So each group kind of sort of set the tone for its own areas of interest and own topics of conversation. One of the things we talked about was the need to create more local and regional alliances of color or of Latino interest. Not to gain, say, the national movement that's going on, but in each area we have different issues that we're dealing with, different kinds of resources and different kinds of communities. We also talked a lot about supporting artistry, but going beyond just sort of at the upper level, but looking at artistry that is involved behind the scenes as well and the importance of sort of filling up the whole spectrum of opportunities for Latinos at the bottom and at the top and everything in between. We talked a lot about empowerment and the need to basically get our place at the table where decisions are being made and not necessarily be satisfied with someone else making those decisions for us and just taking the leftovers, but that we had a right to be there and we had a right to ask and we had a right to make our place secure. And then finally we sang Las Manonitas, which is a happy birthday song to Viviana. Thank you. Where art and motherhood collide. I'm Kanisha Buster. Ask not what a mama can do for you, but please ask what you can do for a mama. So a mama, and you may even have a mama, you very well may. Okay, so forget how much we do. So we really had a practical conversation about what we need. I'm gonna talk to the mama to learn about things that we can do and I'm gonna talk to everybody else about things that you can do. So some really practical things that came up is just so you know when women in your organization, whether they are outside working for you or inside, get pregnant, one of the first things we feel after joy is fear and shame about having a conversation with you and that shouldn't happen. So, and people don't even know how to approach an organization to tell them they're pregnant. That was the biggest question in the room, which means we are not creating a space where women can feel proud of that. And we are not creating a space where women can feel safe. And that's not okay. So if you don't feel safe and you're wondering how to approach that conversation, there were some great things that came up. One is make a plan in writing for how you would like your maternity leave to go, how you would like to be compensated, and how you plan to come back into the workspace. Gather other people in your organization of all genders to come and be in the room with you to have the conversation to support you. Go to a board member. Often, board members do have children and people in the theater do not. So you can go to board members and talk to them about your plan, ask for their support, ask them to read through it, and ask them to walk into the space with you. Things that people in the room can do. Celebrate when somebody says that they're pregnant. Don't say, oh, you're coming back, you're not coming back. You're coming back to them. Don't do that. Do not do that. Ask, how do you want to come back? How can we support you? Giving them days where they can work at home, even when they're full-time, once a week, twice a week. Creating ways that parents, even in your organization, can have cooperative parenting together. So are they having work days actually together that are play dates in one of their homes, but they're doing work for your theater? For parents, look at the schools around you to get support. So create groups with other parents, especially if you're moving across country for a theater, and you're leaving family, you don't have support. One of the biggest things, and if you're hiring a parent to come across the country, one of the biggest things they're thinking is, where does my child go? Where does my child go? But they cannot say that to you, you know why? Because there are many people, even people in this room, whose offers have been rejected once they ask that question, for either a directing job or for a full-time theater. And that makes us afraid. And you can stop that fear by being the person who said, can I help you with that or having conversations about that? What do you need? Do you need to work from home? I trust that you will do that work. I'm not gonna make you feel bad, and I'm never gonna save you. Remember when we took that break? You actually were having a baby. You were raising a baby after I came back. Self's accountable too. We identify so many gay men, and we honor their leadership and their willingness to step back and look at so many gay men. We had a 200% increase in lesbian representation. And whether by identifying ourselves and moving to that identity, were we othering the other? A question raised by young trans people. We looked around at the generations among us and realized that we went from boomers to acts to why to millennials. And so we told stories of queer organizing and artistic success across generations. And we believe we will win. And so we told one another how. One of those ways being that we intend to break out of the time constraints of a one hour luncheon and claim time and space to do some organizing, which Harold is now going to tell you about. So we have pulled together a design justice team and as LBGTQQI individuals, who are interested in helping us design what kind of queer and trans movement space that we want here at TCG and working with the staff and leadership at TCG to make that happen. So if you're, it's a shared leadership thing, it's not just me and Lisa. If you're interested in being a part of that, design justice team, please see. You know, Lisa Mount told me, nobody stays under two minutes unless you like, you know, have the watch here. And she was right at two minutes, very, very, very impressive. As most have been. So now we're going to do allyship, moving beyond diversity and inclusion towards curating, affirming and reflected spaces that transcend gender. All right, hey everybody. I'm trying to do this justice. My colleagues unfortunately had to fly back to New York City because Laura's Ashley Hunter, the executive director of the trans women of color collective is just don't talk about trans identity. We talked about just doing it. We talked about the urgency that it is important to call, lean in and call out and name certain things because some folks in society just don't want trans non-binary two-spirit to breathe air. So we actually named people of trans women of color that were murdered. We held the moments of silence for those folks. We watched some videos. We said, if you're a person and you call yourself an ally that at your theater or in the park, to your grandmother or your grandfather, your mom and dad and families, you should be interrupting and dismantling anything that has to do with oppressing trans people, non-binary people or two-spirit folks. And if you're not doing that, if you're not doing that kind of work, that low hanging fruit, then you are complicit and you are an oppressor and opting into a white supremacy culture. We also talked about allyship, diversity and equity, how these definitions are definitely defined by a white supremacy culture and we will not adhere to those. We talked about creating reflective and affirming spaces that you should work with in community versus imposing, imposing stories on trans people and non-binary people and two-spirit people. So we talked about doing the work needed to uplift those stories. And we talked about things that you could also do. You can make a meal for others. Something simple as that goes a very long way. We talked about not necessarily having people come to your theater or your organization that you should actually be going out into the community to see theater as best as you can. Even if it's not a show that you're working on, it should be throughout the entire year you should have a strategic plan. So get a plan, people, and the bathroom thing. We've moved beyond that, and if you haven't, look that up, you know, the train is passing you by. It's passed you by. Thank you. Women's leadership in the theater. So this was actually put together by Kerry Perloff, the amazing Kerry Perloff from ACT and Arianna and I were part of it as was Heidi Stelman looking for us, Peter Tiffany, she'd be a writer from Oregon. She's a Shakespeare and a commentary from Center Theatre Group, Center Stage. Baltimore, sorry, I'm losing my mind, right? Those were the six of us. Wait, that's me. It's you, right? It's me. And Erica, yeah, so those were the six women. You got everybody, okay, make sure. And Kerry reported out to everybody in the room first about we all were together to start and then we broke off into two groups, but we started with a Lord Theatre research thing that was done by Wellesley College, which really spoke to the non-movement of women in leadership positions, artistic and executive director, so that those big organizations, the finding found, first of all, that we have no substantive training in our field. There's no training happening to train the future leaders. We work in a field where those positions are chosen by people completely not in our field. There's a lack of trust for women. Men are hired on their potential and there is no trust that a woman that doesn't have a resume that looks right, looks right for the job. And also, of course, the family work-life balance is often put into question, even though it's not legal to really bring up. People make the assumption that a woman would not want to relocate. So we really tried to skew the conversation into how do we, first of all, how do we as women look at a job differently so that we are saying, when we don't have 100% of the skills, we might have 60% of the skills, we're still going to apply. If as a managing director, applicant, we go, I haven't done fundraising. We realize, well, what does fundraising entail? Relationship building, communication. All the skills women are actually really good at. In artistic directorships, if you haven't produced what does that actually mean in breaking that down to realize, oh, we produce in everyday life all the time. So men seem to apply for jobs if they're like 40% accurate for the job, whereas women, if they've got 90% of the skills, we're not putting ourselves out there. Now, even if we want to put ourselves out there, how do we then change the minds of the board of directors at theaters across the country and the search firms that really own those job searches, all of which are really run by white men? And so we really are trying to shift into how we look at everything as capacity and potential as opposed to skills. What is the capacity of this person to get the skills on the job? And I know our time real quick. I want to... It's time to watch. Oh. We also acknowledge that this problem that is for women is double tripled, quadrupled for non-binary people and people of color, women of color. So we wanted to just acknowledge that in the room. And then additionally, it's a fact. It is a fact that men are hired on potential and women are hired on their resume and what they have done, not what they have the potentiality to do. So how do we start talking and changing those minds to have people see our potential? Because we can do, we do do. And we need to start thinking about how we can change that mindset in that language. All right, so I want to make sure we have enough time for everyone. Is there support for women across two minutes for me to say, two minutes? Yes, yes. Thank you. Okay, beyond, let's see, beyond 360, women's advancement in theater leadership? Presentation, San Francisco. I want to ask you what are the tactical things that we can do to address this? So our session was about talking about the Berkeley, sorry, to me the Berkshire, listen to me, Leadership Summit, which will be in October and it's hosted by WAN Theater and it is designed to do a deep dive of looking at how we can address gender parity in leadership positions with theater. And we will be doing that by looking at barriers of implicit bias, barriers that are structural as well as psychological bias. And so we gave a presentation about the planning for this event to our group and then opened it up to really examine and people are like, why do you lead? What's the choice? What do you bring to your leadership? What are the barriers that you're currently experiencing in your own leadership path? And it was a really incredible conversation because we had a great group of intergenerational leaders who were really talking about some ways in which generationally we might be doing damage to each other and so that that's something to look at and something to unpack. Looking at how we can create mentorship that is really empowering, as well as how can we start addressing those issues of trust and familiarity, affordability, work-life balance that's so necessary in terms of allowing all of us to succeed and allowing all of us to be in leadership positions for those who aspire to. So that was the beginning of our conversation. The equity on our stages, creating a toolkit for change. I think that one was the Kilroy's sharing some of their strategies, I think. So Go 2020, a clear vision for intersectional gender equity. Hi, I'm Jane Vogel and I'm founder of Age and Gender Equity in the Arts and my two access issues are that I hate talking with my back toward anyone and I get dizzy to walking in circles. So I wanna give a shout out to my Portland theater community and family, many of them were here and they have been amazing partners in Age and Gender Equity's short tenure. We're only three years old here in Portland and what we're trying to do is advance opportunities for women in theater. The incidents of violence against women every nine seconds, a woman is raped in this country, every nine seconds a woman is assaulted. The underrepresentation of women is really horrible and all of those statistics are layered and increased when we look at women of color, when we look at trans women, queer women, women with disabilities and I am very interested, we are very interested in doing something about it, not just talking about it anymore. And so one of the things that we are doing through our organization is that we have created some funding, some initiatives with incentives for theater companies that are looking at this, we're creating community engagement programs for the year 2020, that is the 100th anniversary of the women's right to vote. That was not just the battle fought by white women by the way and one of the things that we would like to do is create some kind of an event and one of the wonderful things I've learned by being here is that there are other organizations who are also interested in doing that. Portland is always up for a good party, we're going to have a good party, we're going to not only have theater be the epicenter of our party, we're going to invite other arts organizations to participate in this and get everybody in Portland and around the country, 51% leadership, directors, lead actors, designers, producers. Model or mentor, the mentorship model. Terror foundation for intersectional gender equity in the theater and we spent just an hour, which was not enough time to talk about the subject and something that I'm really passionate about and I feel like people talk about mentorship or the need for it in the same way they talk about going to LA for pilot season. What is it a tent that you just show up at and it happens and it's successful, you know? So in the spirit of building on all of the great sessions in this arc of at the intersections and also the space that's created here for all of us to speak aloud the barriers we face, like that there are not enough marginalized voices in leadership, therefore there are not enough models or mentors available to those who need them. We have to spend the hour talking about a couple of specific tools to either make our current mentorship models or relationships stronger or to create mentorship relationships from the get go that then can turn into great long-term organic relationships. So the first is to make the relationship formal and to articulate a need statement first off going in so that you have a means and end statement the way we create our missions for our organizations so that we know specifically what we're in the relationship for and then that helps to give us specific questions to ask and a mentor specific questions to answer then also to set a specific timeframe and formalize the frequency and type of communication and then third to make it mutually beneficial so to make sure that it's not just on the mentor side that we're talking about joy bugs from passing on our experiences but that we're passing along the pathways that got us to success. Thank you. The fallacy of good intent, the emotional journey of confronting your light bites. I didn't know I was gonna be talking in front of such a huge group of people and very nervous so please forgive me. So this was handled together by my colleague Dr. Angela Parchiller and I talking about white bias through the lens of my particular community the Atlanta theater community. So some of the things that we talked about was how you move forward through your fear and shame and we talked about some specific actions specifically that naming starts with naming your own actions. We talked about how white people think we are more woke than we actually are. We talked about taking the invisible burden off of people of color within our institutions and we talked about putting people of color into positions of power in organizations and gave examples of how. I hope it was generative for the people who came to the talk and I felt it was really powerful for me and I hope that the people who attended got something really good at it. So thank you. Thank you. Created access. Accommodations for professional performers with disability. Thank you. I did not lead this section or plan it but our colleagues they've all left town and I agreed to report out. It was led by a tallory and they had some really good advice for the field. One was do not stop working with actors with disabilities because you think you have to make something 100% accessible. Do not allow, it's okay for something to be possible. It doesn't have to be perfect. So aim for that. Communicate, communicate, communicate. One of your biggest roles is going to be talking and allowing them to tell you as a producer what you can do to be more accessible. You're an expert in your own theater so you know what questions to ask the artist and the artist is an expert in their own body and they can talk to you to talk about accessibility. Thank you. And I also will be reporting out for the ghostlight project. So give me a moment. So and please visit conference 2.0. There were some really great resources that were shared in the disability session. So organizations, you can go to find out where you can find actors with disabilities. There are a lot of really great databases out there as well as tools for actors themselves. In the ghostlight project, we crowdsourced information from the room around collective action and some of the takeaways were connect with the communities that are most affected and take their lead. We raised the question, should you start a project or is there something that is already happening in the world that you can amplify or participate in? Be mindful of the human and monetary cost of participation especially when you're collaborating with less resourced organizations. Listen, listen, listen, listen to the field, listen to your theater partners, listen to your community and listen to, just listen, that is going to be the linchpin of your organization. There is power in many people making a small investment to create a large thing and you can participate by doing something as simple as liking or commenting on something that gains the algorithm and makes your more eyes see the important message. You can take action by writing something. You can take action by embodying something. You can take collective action by simply doing a training inside of your own organization so that you are helping to share that information. So there's a lot of ways to get involved and we encourage you all to join us with theghostlightproject.com. Confronting white supremacy in theater production. The action to have more production staff at this conference, I encourage bringing them with, because it's not being talked about much at all and you can all attest to that. I support that. Actually our conversation talked about a couple of things and we certainly wanted to make sure that we were clear that when we talked about white supremacy culture that people understood the daily grind of that and we weren't talking about a white nationalist organization. We're talking about the majority of organizations that we live and breathe in and how we've deemed as normal is actually part of a white supremacy reality. So the question then became is how do you confront those things? And one of the things that we talked about, one of the analogies that I use is when we understand what we're up against, sort of the formidable nature of structural racism, if you look at it like a weed, you won't be surprised when it continues to resurface. And what you're looking for are people in your company who are weed killers who will help you continue to kill those weeds. And the potency of your weed killer is largely dependent on your own analysis. So what we need for you to do is to really sort of put a value on deepening your analysis so the potency of your weed killer is more effective and you're not bringing in people who are bringing in weeds with them, but you're actually getting people who are gonna help you kill those weeds. Because as one person, your hands get tired and what you really need is an army of people killing weeds with some potency. So we charge you to really put a value on analysis building so your weed killer is actually effective. Investing in the future, changing theater training to embrace today's America. Hi, good afternoon. First of all, I just wanna say that I am full and so there's a lot of generosity in this room and a lot of information that we share. And so thank you to everyone for your time, your talent and your artistry. Our session was essentially about looking at the method in which artists are being trained and de-emphasizing or decentralizing this kind of white method of training people in theater in the first place so that we're looking at other institutions that are cultivated and created on centralizing other worldly narratives in order to train people of color. I think that's really important. It's also important for institutions that do train people in our centralized and a white methodology to say what you are in your mission statement. Say, you know, that's what we study, this is what we teach here. So there's no mistake about it. If someone comes to join your organization, they know what they're signed up for. And we tried to, in our workshop, we just tried to model, show different ways of disrupting white supremacy and other forms of oppression. Through pedagogy, through curriculum, of course, with faculty, administration, all these different levels of oppression that create these systems within these institutions. And we asked at the end for everyone to think of two things. One thing that they can, one action item that they can personally take on to disrupt white supremacy and other forms of oppression in their institutions, whatever those institutions are, from their own position of privilege or access. So one thing that they can do, and then also one demand they're gonna make of their institution, asking the folks who are higher up than them to make, to disrupt white supremacy in their institutions. And so another thing we wanted to ask all of you, even if you don't work in a higher ed or some kind of educational setting, many of you went through these programs. You are alumni of these programs. Go back and make some demands of institutions that you came out of and say, these are things that need to be changing in order to serve students of color and all underrepresented students. We are at two minutes. Email me. Ha! Our voices, perspectives from working actors with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Yes? This is purely coincidence that I'm here. I had no idea this was going on. So my name's Liza Jensen. I'm a part of FAME Academy. It's a small performing arts school for adults with disabilities, particularly intellectual and developmental disabilities, which I haven't as you wish. But we basically talked in our panel today about breaking down those barriers and specifically hiring talented folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities, but really disability, disabilities. And just the recognizing the oppression and letting that go. And we talked a lot about the challenges that we've faced in the past and what professional organizations have been doing from now forward and just had a conversation about where we're going. Know what else to say about that. So you know this is always a learning thing for us. We're constantly adapting and we're learning it based on feedback that we give, calling us in in various ways. And so we're gonna do something a slightly different here, which is that a professional affinity group has asked to have some space at the mic. And I expect we'll be happy that we gave them space. So individual artists. Participated, I invite you, if you're able to stand, raise your hand or blink twice. Let's look around at these individual artists. Good things, talk to them. So things that we talked about, we talked about a lot of things. It was charged, right? It was charged. So at the end of our session, we came up with a list of genius ideas. I'm gonna read some of those. We're talking about how to infuse spaces like this with more input from individual artists. And the space we were thinking, how do we digest all that we've been soaking in as the CEO of ourselves, right? So one thing that we talked about was for organizations to develop an individual artist advisory board to be part of their institutions or a fellowship, creating virtual circles for ourselves, conferences and spaces focused on aesthetic art and focused on the artists. Conversations when there's, or conversations like with managing directors or whatnot, to bring in conversation with individual artists, more youth at these conferences and opportunities for youth. An idea coming up of how do we create more community engagement with conservative communities? Cross-talk opportunities with individual artists, institutional leaders and funders. Big, panel-y, cross-talking opportunities. Oh, for member theater, PCG member theaters to pledge for open advertisement of positions and also to think how open are the positions? Oh, and increased subsidies for increased access for individual artists at these spaces. Am I leading out something that's important? Thank you. So as this work has grown at the conference, it's honestly gotten a little confusing to know what an anti-intersections is it isn't. And that's a good thing, right? Ultimately all the work is either in service of justice or in service of someone else, right? So I just want to acknowledge that in this running order or show flow, something may have been less, a session may have been left out that should be able to speak in this space that is about movement, that is about justice. So if I've left something out, A, I apologize, and B, we've got a little time now. What about the intergenerational space? I think we needed to take up space at this particular meeting, but if there are folks that would like to speak out about that, about what they experienced or they felt, what they heard, what they said, then I will yield that space now. I don't need to talk. Somebody else should be talking. Come here. I'm just gonna say one thing which was, I opened to the intergenerational leaders of color meeting in Los Angeles, I think it was six years ago, and remember us sitting in a room and there were like 20, 25 of us or something like that, and that number has grown to what, 200 or something? In that, and I have to say, that's tremendous. I really, I just remember, I applaud TCG for really making that space and opening up and really pushing that forward for that number to expand to what it has now and for people to feel welcome and included and ready to actually tackle items that really face our community. So thank you. I just wanna say we want more time. We want more time together, maybe a whole day, maybe a pre-conference, more time. They were there and have something that they want to speak to on this sort of movement building theme. You probably know that on Wednesday, there was the global pre-conference that happened at PICA and I see Jojo over there and I don't know if Kevin is still in the house and Jessica Lewis and I want to give a big shout out of gratitude to you all for heavy lifting. In the afternoon session, particularly, and it connects to at the intersections, particularly because we were challenged by bringing our nine colleagues from Mexico City from Teatro Lina de Sombra and one of those artists had been detained several hours and he did get in, luckily, but not without a lot of prayers in that way. So a lot of heavy lifting and energy to get them here and we focus this year on immigrant and refugee communities and how we in the field can bridge the divide between immigrants and refugee communities and those born in the US and there was a lot of amazing work and we started the day with a decolonizing session that Annalisa did and ended up the day, I don't know if KJ is still here, with a session that KJ did about just collective action steps. So we are gonna be posting some of that information on 2.0, we just haven't condensed it all yet. And if there's anybody else who is there that want to add in, then I probably did a disservice to not saying something. I just wanna add just super quickly for future global pre-conferences and conversations around international work, that it doesn't have to be limited to people who feel like they program international work because increasingly the global is the local. So I just wanna encourage that for the future. So I think we're moving into a closing then and this entire time that I've been sitting here listening to all of the amazing work that's been happening in the sessions, I've been thinking about something that happened in this space last night, which was a performance of hands up who saw that performance. And if you saw that performance, you'll remember one of the last monologues ended. These monologues are about state violence against black men, by black men, very, very powerful pieces. And thank you, thank you. And black women. And the last piece ended with an actor asking us to keep our hands up for a very long time. As an example of how difficult it is to be the kind of perfect you need to be in a white supremacy society. You can't keep your hands up that long. And my shoulders were shaking from it. And so much about that play was also about breath. And when we're doing this work about equity, diversity and inclusion, I appreciate that language getting called in and challenged a little bit. It's so important to remember that fundamentally we're talking about who's got a right to breathe. And so I am asking for support here in close. I'm asking for support in someone or someone's coming up and leading us in a shared breath. It can be one, it can be more. If someone can come up and lead us in a shared breath, I'd like to give the microwave what I'm trying to say. It can be more than one person. I think there is word for breath. Pradyum? Pradyum. Thanks everyone.