 Everyone, welcome back from the break. We're here at the Neurodiversity Matters Conference. Our next segment is actually gonna be introducing you to one of our founding company members, Dan Boyle, who's sitting here with me. What we'll do is we're gonna play a video that Dan's recorded about STE and then it's a quick minute long video and then we'll follow that up with making him able to answer questions. So if you have any questions, please put them in the comments on the Facebook feed and we will get them answered for you. All right. Artist, Ministry of Associate, and Secretary of the Board of Directors. As a personal spectrum, I've faced challenges in my life and being a member of Spectrum Theater has helped me to understand the challenges my peers face, both on and off the spectrum and has helped me to face my own challenges. Being able to perform theater, I'm able to give myself a voice and give a voice to others. And being a member of Spectrum Theater has helped me to understand the challenges my peers face, both on and off the spectrum and has helped me to face my own challenges. Being able to perform theater, I'm able to give myself a voice and give a voice. Sorry about that. We had a slight technical glitch, but one so far in the day is no problem at all. So thank you, Dan, for that video and for all you've done with SCE. How are you doing today? Pretty good. So I mean, I just had a rehearsal for the upcoming neurodiversity 10-minute new play festival. So I'd say I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, it's exciting to be doing work, you know? Fantastic. So what role are you playing in this play? Well, right now, this particular play, we don't have a script fully designed yet. What we're doing is we are doing discussions, going over the topic and finding out more about each other and we'll have a script ready a couple of weeks, probably, yeah. Awesome. Well, I know you're working on a bunch of new projects for the festival. Tell me maybe something you like about any particular project or all of them if you can think of a particular thing you like in each of them. All right, so we're gonna start with the big one, the one that will be right at the end of the festival, Importance of Being, A Plain Ernest by Jeremy Camps, our resident playwright. It's a really good play. We've developed it ourselves as a company. It has a lot of good things. I think the best thing about it is that it has more than one person on the spectrum with various abilities, disabilities, et cetera, and it gives a really good idea to the audience just how different a person, any person on the spectrum could be because let's face it, we have this thing where if you've seen one person with autism, you know. Awesome. And if there was one reason why someone should see the Nerd Diversity Play Festival, what do you think that would be for you? I would have to say, if you were to see this festival, you would get a better understanding of people on the spectrum, people off the spectrum, well, not off, I mean, you got the idea. But how people on the spectrum interact with their peers who are not on the spectrum and vice versa. And I think that's a very important thing to learn. Absolutely, thank you. Is there anything else? We've got a couple of minutes. I know you're actually after our conference today, you have another program you're doing on Facebook Live. Tell us a little bit about that. So later on, I'm gonna be working with Anna to discuss the communications. So I was actually just emailing her with that a little while ago, because I hadn't kind of quite gotten the entire shit stuff yet, but yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be fun though. And of course, tomorrow, I will be monitoring two groups with a couple of schools that you have theater programs about, well, not about, but for people on the spectrum and how they can help to socialize people on the spectrum, help them learn different things, you know? Great, and we've got a little time and we actually got a question from Facebook. So let me ask you this. How have you helped SDM meetings adjust to social distancing? I guess that's as SDE as a whole. And how can people interested get connected and involved with SDE? Right, okay. So as far as SDE meetings go, right now, social distancing literally, but not that it doesn't apply, but because we are under lockdown for almost all the country, we're doing a lot of things by video conference like this. So I have been helping to set up the videos and kind of helping to run the meetings and we're doing everything right now via video conference. Once we are able to meet again in person, obviously, not just myself, but the whole company will be involved in helping to keep social distancing rules, especially if we're able to have the conference, the festival in person. Let's put it this way, we have plans for how we're gonna do that, you know? Absolutely, yeah, thank you, Dan. Well, I think that is about wrapping up time, Dan. So thank you so much for taking the time to share. And I'm sure we're gonna see you again later today. Absolutely, thank you, yep. All right. Have a good day, everyone. Keep safe. All right, we have just a couple of minutes and then we'll be into our next program, which piggybacks off that question about social distancing. We actually have a workshop coming up next that is about using the viewpoints acting method to teach social distancing skills. So that's a recorded video, last about 20 minutes and we will start that at three o'clock with a follow-up Q&A. And you know what? We have two minutes before we start and we're still live. So I'm gonna take this time and just ask that if you're enjoying this conference and what we're providing, SCE is looking for support to continue producing and developing our new play festival coming this summer. Ways that you can support us and our work is to go on to our Facebook page where we have an Autism Awareness Month fundraiser and you can also check out our website, stensemble.org where you can donate through PayPal there. So if you're interested and want to help us keep this program going, please feel free to do that and thank you so much in advance. All right, well, it is almost three o'clock so I am going to go ahead and start our presentation of the next program which is a Viewpoints Workshop on Skills for Social Distancing led by Teddy Lytle with Daniel Perkins and Fallon Sousa, all SCE company members. Our diversity matters conference. This is Using Viewpoints for Social Distancing. Viewpoints, Mary Overly's 60 points to be specific are a basic building blocks for devising theater and movement. The six Viewpoints are space, shape, time, emotion, movement, and story. And we use these theatrical conventions in creating theater, but we feel that we can use these same building blocks for helping with social distancing for our universe community. I'm Teddy Lytle. Hi, I'm Daniel Perkins. And I'm Fallon Sousa. And we're about to just offer some ideas in this trying time. So we'll start with space, spatial relationship. What is space? Well, in this regard, we're talking about the space between people and the importance of being six feet apart. But how can we tell what is six feet apart? There's Dan standing up and next to a fan and trying to say six, are you six feet apart from that? Feels like it. What are you doing to help give yourself that reference that you're six feet apart? Well, I actually did this in January when I was learning how to swim with amenities using passive optimization. The goal is to make sure you're six feet apart and to not approach them unless they approach you. But in this case, because it's social distancing, they're not gonna come to you. So you're gonna imagine yourself like the width of a manatee here in this band. Beautiful. Fallon, in your room, is there a piece of furniture that you think is about six feet apart from you? I kinda think that the coffee table is probably like six feet apart at an angle, maybe. I would say so. And what are you visualizing in between you and the table to help you do that? I'd say like a small car, like a VW Beetle, maybe. Beautiful, and that can sit sideways in between you and the table. It can park it between you. I would, I can visualize it. Very cool. Well, and also I'm sitting in a chair. If I put this chair here and I stand here, I'm imagining, I have a big lab named Digby. I'm imagining two of him laying in between me and the chair. And so I can use two of my dogs and there's me and all people at all times. So that's what I'm doing. Excellent. Next. Yes. What are different ways you say hello? Well, Dan, I know you have a couple of favorite ways of saying hello. Well, there's the usual air high five or my personal favorite. And this is perfect if anyone ever has the flu, the air high five, but that way. Yes, well, because as much as we love human connection, we can't touch each other right now. So as you heard Dan say, air hugs, air high fives, handshakes, what are other ways that we could say hello to each other? I think that using technology right now is a good way to say hello to people. If you can't use physical connection, say hello to them also just like writing letters if it's someone that you... And so we were just gonna offer kind of a free for all. You know, we can wave and stuff, but we thought we'd come up with some new ideas. I don't know, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, I like that, I like that. How could you come up with spatial gestures with your friends that have significance and maintaining those important values that we get out of those connections? I like this too, this was fun. What was that? Any other ones that aren't coming to mind? Yeah, vote, vote. And now another thing that we have to deal with is kinesthetic response. Now kinesthetic response is things that happen to us or around us. And now we're naturally kind of built to listen to our bodies, even if we need to be more active in listening to them and what we need and how we can take care of ourselves. But how do we respond when we sneeze or cough? Well, yes, this would be ideal now, but I know that even as a kid, I sometimes we just sneeze and let myself sneeze and send the germs out everywhere. So how do we build up reconnecting our neurons to automatically respond in safe ways? Now, I think that is something that each of us individually just needs to practice being safe and doing, but how do we also then listen to other people's bodies and in response to that? So we have a role-playing scenario, imagining Fallon and Dan are in the same room and Dan goes for a hug. Hey, Fallon. Social distancing, sorry, how about an air hug? There we go. See, we don't always have control over other people's bodies or their choices, but if they start coming into our space, especially in this time, we can always make sure that we focalize our needs and offer alternatives as to not be feeling like we're rude or causing any stress. Thank you very much. Now, the last thing we have that we think can offer some help with us is repetition. Sometimes in scenarios where you have to go out and go to the store or be around strangers in more constricted spaces, we may not know how we respond to somebody, whether it is just a greeting or in sharing space. So one of the best things you can do in that scenario is imitate or repeat what you see someone do. So if I was in the store and we'll go meet Dan Fallon, we remember this round, we did this round, Robin guys, is if I came across Dan, I might do this. And then if Dan had another offering, there is always this scenario. So sometimes when someone backs away from us, the best thing you can possibly do is back away from them. So that was using viewpoints and social distancing for our neurodiverse community. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you Fallon, thank you Daniel. I hope this was helpful and I hope you guys had some fun. Have a lovely rest of your day. Bye everyone. Well, that was using viewpoints and teaching social distancing. I'm Teddy Lytle. I just wanna thank first, Madison Minehofer developed that workshop for us over in Germany. And so we were very excited to be able to share that with all of you. But just to do some follow-up, there were some questions is why do you use viewpoints with people on the spectrum? Now, I'm just a theater artist. I'm the community engagement director for Spectrum Theater Ensemble. But in my experience, I have found that viewpoints is not just like I said, it's a basic building block and foundational theatrical convention, but it very specifically defines and specifies sensory intake and sensory interaction. And in my experience, I have found a lot of people on the autistic spectrum thrive with precise, clear direction. So if you wanted to look more into these viewpoints, my own experience is I studied theater and music undergrad at Muhlenberg College where I had a little interaction with it. And I got my master's degree in acting at Brown University Trinity Rep Program recently where we had a whole year on viewpoints and actually STE, our first project, Spectrum Identity, Richard Brown came in and did a workshop with us. Mary Overly created the six viewpoints, but then Anne Bogart built off of that and developed the nine viewpoints and actually founded the city company, which also does workshops and plays utilizing the viewpoints heavily. So I think viewpoints does work really well in this scenario, but the fact of the matter is that theater in itself is rehearsal for social interactions. So there are varying acting methods that can work for varying different people on and off the spectrum. And so we have just found at Spectrum Theater Ensemble, it's a language we commonly come back to, but it also is versatile enough for us to be able to accommodate everybody and how they want to be heard in response. And you're welcome, Mary, thank you for watching us. I don't see any more questions on the Facebook and I think now is a good time since we ran through, we'll probably take a break, but thank you so much for joining us. We'll be coming back shortly with our next program, which I think is me again. So you'll be seeing me again very shortly. Thank you so much for being here today. We really look forward to keeping this going. Please continue asking questions. If they come up, we'll be sure to get to them as we can in all of our sessions.