 Hello, hello. Thank you. Thank you. That's right Thanks. Well, welcome everyone to the 27th TCG National Conference and welcome to Portland, Oregon First all conference plenary session. We've been very busy over the last few days Our grantees have been meeting for networking and professional development opportunities since Sunday and yesterday We held two pre-conferences with our global theater initiative partners the laboratory for global performance and politics We hosted the global pre-conference. It featured powerful conversations embracing theaters function as a space of solidarity Inspired by this sanctuary city of Portland where police departments personally welcome new immigrants to the community and We were inspired by the art itself with a timely performance of Amarillo by Teatro Lenea de Sombra from Mexico City And by the way, it is a remarkable moving performance and tickets are still available for a 7 30 p.m Encore performance tomorrow night. So get your tickets The equity diversity and inclusion Institute convened at Portland Center Stage of the Armory to continue working for equity on a Personal organizational and field-wide level those conversations continued today During the launch of the at the Intersections arc which also saw over 100 theater people take maker-day field trips to roll up their sleeves engage in maker culture and also enjoy a late morning beer tasting So if any of your colleagues seem a little more effusive than usual That might be why? So as often as the case with these things what we're calling the start of the conference is actually more like the early middle So many of the conversations we'll be having over the next three days are picking up where we left off last year in Washington, D.C. That circular sense of progress that we're always somewhere between honoring the past and Creating the future is part of what prompted our conference theme of full circles The conference is also an opportunity to track the progress of our own lives on that circle If this is your first conference, and I know many of you are experiencing your first conference ask me about my first conference in 1996 when I heard August Wilson give his seminal remarks the ground on which I stand That awestruck early career managing leader is still here inside me Just as I know Those who have left our circle over the past year, and it feels like we've lost a lot this past year doesn't it? But we know their legacy lives in each of us So tell me honor those who have left our circles so full of their presence I'd like to welcome a few friends and colleagues to the stage We're going to share a few words from some of those we've lost I'll get us started Zelda Fitzhandler Once we made the choice to produce our plays not to recoup an investment But to recoup some corner of the universe for our understanding and enlargement We entered the same world as the university the museum the church and became like them an instrument of civilization Jim Houghton We get to collide The artists and audience get to breathe the same air We have such an appetite for it whether we're colliding with ourselves in The story we're seeing or the people we're seeing it with or the artists we bump into To me, that's what theater is Gordon Davidson. I believe it must be the job of theater to take hard looks at life at Issues people don't always want to confront. They will listen to what is said to them from a stage That is the power of theater I respect it. I'm an awe of it Spetta We realize we wanted more than a nine to five existence here in the United States of America We wanted to create something on our own Miriam Cologne Giving this to the children Helping them discover the richness of their own culture the richness of what our Contribution is to society when we are gone That's all that stays Martha Lavey This is the central conviction of the theater that by listening closely to the lies of others We will we will know ourselves more fully and locate ourselves in a more generous world I am G. Robertson, Jr. I work with passion. I speak with passion. I create with a passion Because my breath I don't take for granted. I know that the next one isn't promised So every breath I take I may might as well use it These are not the only words they gave us and these are not the only lives we've lost in the past year So let's please take a moment of silence to honor together Whoever we each need to honor right now Thank you Their legacies of courage and creativity live in us when we feel burnt out and overwhelmed our memories of them nourish us and keep Us moving forward and knowing how fiercely each of them loved work in a room full of theater people I know they'd want us to enjoy our time together. So let's do it Here we are Ready for an intense but joyful and celebratory three days together We'll exchange knowledge build relationships share new models dine around and dance and Experience the wonderful theater city that Portland is so to help us do just that I'd like to welcome our host committee chairs Cynthia Furman chief operating officer of Portland Center stage and Sarah Horton Managing director of artists repertory theater Buddy welcome to Portland. We're so excited. You're here. You're beautiful Um, we just want to talk a little bit about Portland for you a moment and then also talk a little bit about coming together for this conference Portland is the liberal quirky small town big city that the New York Times is so fond of reporting about and Then the mockumentary Portlandia made famous chickens in every backyard Legal weed lots of great beer and wine and when you're hungover Food carts that take care of that for you But we're at the same time a city and a state struggling with a lot of change and really only beginning to recognize that our long history of Determined exclusion has had a lasting presence that still holds us back today Portlanders love their city and more and more of us are committed to making it a more equitable place and We experience every day the deep bravery the love the pain and the hope in that work One of the things that gives us joy is our brilliant and prolific theater community Did you know that two of the Northwest four Lord theaters are here in Portland? But we are only two of last anybody counted at least 80 theater companies of all sizes of all missions But all with a lot of pluck the maker ethos that we're celebrating with this conference permeates our theater community with ingenuity resourcefulness a Collaborative spirit and one that acknowledges our strength as a community and our openness to tackling the frightening and the unknown Many of those theaters joined the Portland host committee this year 35 people from 21 different organizations This group were together for the past year accomplishing a very Portland array of chores borrowing wrestling mats Opening doors to the puppet master of scoops for those of you who went to Michael Curry's studio Recruiting volunteers raising money and making sure that the parties that are two theaters You'll be sampling the best local food and drink the Portland has to offer And we even made sure that a second largest floral parade in the world will be going by the front door of the hotel on Saturday morning Congratulations So we want to say thank you today to the members of that amazing host committee that made this happen Would you all please stand for a second so we can acknowledge you and there's two people we have particularly want to call out tonight We want to say thank you to Hannah Fenlon and Devin Berkshire of TCG Those two women are unrelentingly positive committed Energetic and it is a wonder to behold We both agree Nobody could do this thing better and we both agree. We never want their jobs Also, you may not know that you are truly on the Western frontier of TCG conferences We are now by three tenths of a longitudinal point The farthest West the conference has ever traveled Out here in the West The innovation self-reliance and strong sense of place have a long defined our way of life And these are also the driving characteristics of the notion of full circle and also to making great beer and wine So we have two housekeeping notes as we mentioned the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade and the biggest day of the Rose Festival is Saturday So that parade passes right past in front of the hotel So if y'all are planning on leaving town Saturday, just give it. It'll be fine, but give yourselves a little extra time And the other thing is as Claudia mentioned earlier at one of the sessions We're gonna have a moment at the party tonight to do a little collective action and take a photo So if you're coming to the party hold on to the heart, we'll give you at the front door and we'll gather for a photo opportunity about 845 We are happy and so proud to be sharing our home with all of you have a wonderful time My chickens will be at the late-night party Welcome and tear it up in the name of theater everybody To make sure that we be in the farthest West location That the conference ever has been. Thank you. Thank you Well, our hosts here have been so wonderful and Really making it possible for us to bring you all here The another group has been very instrumental in making this conference possible and those are our conference funders Without them there is no way we would have been able to accomplish all of this And I'd like to take the opportunity to just mention each of them out loud Artslandia magazine Broadway Rose theater company Ellen by and you can hold your applause until I get to the end Ellen by charcoal charcoal blue LLP Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment the Ruth Easton fund Edgerton Foundation Fisher Dax Associates Howard Gilman foundation the kinsman foundation the Jackson foundation Meyer Memorial Trust The Miller Foundation the national endowment for the arts patron technology scan doozy crevs Tessitura Network traveled Portland TRG Arts and the Weisberg Foundation Thank you funders I also want to introduce you to the grantees who are being featured in our spotlight on program Could our spotlight on participants from the rising leaders of color Fox Fellowship and leadership you programs Stand or signal as you are able These are the artists and leaders who are already having a major impact on our field and you should know them Speaking of honoring impact Please join me in welcoming Braden Abraham artistic director of Seattle rep to present our theater practitioner award Good evening I'm Braden Abraham. I'm the artistic director at Seattle rep and As a fellow artistic director and a longtime fan of Linda Hartzell It is an honor to present her with this award. I Realize when I was writing up these remarks that I've been watching Linda's work for about 30 years now since I was about nine or ten actually and My family didn't attend the theater I grew up in a sort of captain fantastic situation in the North Puget Sound if any of you've seen that movie very rural a little magical and somewhat feral and Seeing a play for the first time on a school trip was one of my first encounters with the live arts The play I saw was James and the giant peach which had a familiar sort of acid trip quality to it At the Seattle Children's Theater and their original little space at the Woodland Park Zoo So really Linda is to blame for my path into the theater For me and so many others Linda has been a role model as an arts leader and also as a director who blazed her own trail through the Pacific Northwest She was hired to lead Seattle Children's Theater in 1984 At first she thought she was the wrong person for the job having cut her teeth as a director in Seattle's more Experimental houses the empty space and the Pioneer Square Theater But the persistent and forward-thinking board leadership at the time knew that this up-and-coming theater artist who had just directed the hit premiere of angry housewives a Feminist punk rock musical was exactly the person who should be running the Children's Theater We all know that theater is an endurance sport The rewards are great, but it's going to cost you something in return I'm not sure what it takes to run a theater for 30 plus years, but it must be some combination of what Linda has to offer Generosity and vision of course guts The ability to think on her feet and think creatively a wild boundless imagination absolute determination And of course a healthy sense of humor She's reached millions of kids like me moving SCT from that little space at the zoo to the expansive and beautiful Charlotte Martin Theater she built at Seattle Center Over the last few decades Linda has created one of the leading theaters for young people in the country Expanding her work as an artist and offering home to many actors directors and notable playwrights She commissioned over a hundred plays for SCT and I just wanted to leave you with a few words From a couple of those playwrights that she commissioned Cheryl West writes who Cheryl West who worked with Linda on several projects She said two of my favorite directives from Linda were you got to get the wiggle room out of that scene Cheryl and Her favorite compliment. It's really moving. Ka-ching Ka-ching Ka-ching I don't think I'm getting the emphasis right on that though Linda's devotion to producing and creating work that ignites joy in our children is nothing short of amazing That's from that's from Cheryl and from Steven Dietz quote Many artistic directors know what their audience wants Linda Hartzell was that rare artistic director who knew what our audience is needed and I say audiences in the plural since Linda had to diligently navigate the complicated double audience of TYA work The parents who pay for the tickets and the kids who go on the ride With with the full knowledge of the magnitude of this comparison I Submit that Linda Hartzell has proven herself to be the Zelda Fitzjandler of American children's theater Her impact is bold profound and lasting There's no doubt in my mind that if Linda had done her work in the eastern corridor and not in the evergreen Splendor of far away Seattle not as far as Portland, but far away Her face would be on currency That's from Steven Dietz. Please join me in welcoming this year's recipient of the theater practitioner award Linda Hartzell Thank you. Thank you my fellow thespians. Thank you. I Can't tell you how touched I am with this award. I Would like to thank everyone at TCG Teresa Ben Cameron who was my mentor The current and past board of trustees the staff the membership Thank You dear wonderful Brayden for that incredible introduction and Very quickly. Thank you Karen Sharp SCT's managing director and Ellen and Nolan on the National Council She's also an SCT board member But she was the original one of the original trustees in America to be put on the TCG National Council Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and I just want you to know when I started the job as artistic director I didn't know anything I spent two years looking over my shoulder every time somebody asked me a question And I finally realized oh, they're asking me. I'm supposed to know that But half of what I learned I learned from being on the board of TCG and learned Talking to people like you at the conferences and at the forums. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you When I started as artistic director at Seattle Children's Theater in 1984 I I tried to get my fellow actors in Seattle equity non-equity to audition I tried to get funding or press for the theater and I kept getting the same response. Well, thanks I'm not interested right now, but it's it's just for children and as a mom and as a Theater artist and a teacher a drama teacher at a private school that really made me angry And I I felt that young people deserve more And at that time I was acting in a production of pal Joey at the Seattle rep when John Hirsch was the artistic director and Dan Selvin was the associate artistic director and one afternoon I shared with mr. Hirsch my frustration with this attitude about theater for young people. Oh my beautiful award It's okay. It's okay. Oh I Only have three minutes. I better talk that's okay My frustration with this attitude about theater for young people and John said well He had noticed this in the States and that it was very different for him growing up in Hungary in the 1930s And he felt that the reason why people in Hungary had supported and attended all the arts theater ballet and the Symphony was that from the very beginning The work for the even the youngest children was written directed designed and performed by the most Experienced and respected artists in the country and that that set a standard for present and future audiences and that made me realize that From one's youngest years that art of the highest caliber should be part of one's everyday life So working in a wonderful arts community in Seattle and Portland and Portland West Coast people it inspires us at SET to always always strive to produce work at the highest level and The fact that we are offering children and often they're accompanying adults their first experience of live theater Makes us hone and polish our skills even more and in theater for young audience We we always probably like you do but we always talk about our audience all the time because we realize the responsibility Inherent in introducing someone to theater for the first time We want to develop the habit of going to theater of attending performances of a wide range of stories and subjects and styles of appreciating artistic effort and skills and of participating in one's own possibilities of self-expression and building of communities and We are so thankful especially because of the public schools that we play to every cultural ethnic and socioeconomic portion of our society and As all of you do we work to convince our audience that theater is not an elitist activity It is not or should not be boring or disconnected, but it is exciting and necessary And now more than ever it is important that we come together in our communities To share the experience of being human. So thank you, and I wish you the best. I'm so honored by this Linda thank you for all that you've done for the field all of the young people whose lives you've changed all of the parents whose lives you changed as well and Now I must invoke one of the most famous sayings in our profession or at least one of them The show must go on Because while our original plenary speaker Cheryl Strait is very ill and won't be here tonight Unfortunately friends. This is Portland Brilliant artists and speakers abound and so I am very happy to introduce a speaker who may be last minute But is no understudy Lydia Yuknevich is the author of a claimed book such as the small backs of children the chronology of water and the book of Joan Her recent Ted talk the miss fits manifesto is also being turned into a book She also founded the workshop series series corporeal writing here in Portland, Oregon Please join me in welcoming Lydia Yuknevich to the stage It's a deep deep pleasure to be here with you. Thank me for letting me come into your room But I have to say before I do anything else that Cheryl who I talked to you before I came here is Profoundly sorry. She can't be here with you tonight. I can confirm that she sounded terribly feverish also Nasty bronchial and you you don't want that But she's very sorry, and I'm I'm happy to be here with you thrilled thrilled beyond pleasure. I have a tiny orientation to theater in That when I was seven in my one and only acting appearance. I played a mushroom Some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland. I'm not even sure what was happening there I cried during the entire performance. I Have a vague memory of being kind of scooted off this Because it scared me I was terrified and I did grow up going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for about seven years in a row and I cried at every single play Are you noticing a motif? I was so moved by live theater It completely overwhelmed me every single time at every different age I was particularly as a teen when everything was and I saw Romeo and Juliet as a teen and it just completely crushed me And then in college I I had some time as a performance artist and I noticed Everyone was looking at me And that seems suddenly terrible, so I Retreated to the page immediately and I've been a storyteller ever since so thank you for being able to do and make and foster The stage and I'm gonna stick with the page if you don't mind But speaking of maker culture, I want to talk to you about Storytellers we could all agree there are many kinds of storytellers and I want to talk about storytellers. We don't ordinarily look at as the people who are productive of the art that we're talking about in this conference and If you'll if you'll listen I want to tell you a story about these people who I love With my whole life and my whole body and my whole art and I want to remind you to include them in Your practice Where I work at a community college in Oregon the student body is made up of single mothers and ex cons People just out of rehab or recently relapsed people living in their cars People with two or three or even four or five jobs who are trying to feed their kids and not go nuts People on mental health meds and people who barely speak English and people who are the first Individuals to dare to dream that a life of the mind might not be as crazy as it sounds that wanting to be an artist might not be nut bag Migrant workers and gas station attendants Middle-aged people who lost their jobs and now have to reinvent themselves former sex workers and dropouts and screw ups and yes Former or even current homeless people There are outspoken Republicans sitting next to righteous tree huggers business majors next to potheds Gay men next to football players or football players who are gay men next to boys whose granddad's were in the KKK I work in Gresham Pregnant women next to former gang members straight-a students next to never passed a class in their lives folks Transgendered men or women next to uber conservative Christians a veteran who lost both legs next to a woman who spent the previous week at a hospital on psych-hold Though there are still mostly white people because it's still Oregon There are also African-American people and Asian-American and Latino people and people from of the other two Americas Central and South There are Ukrainians and Filipinos and Somali's there are Vietnamese people and Koreans and American Indians and more and more remember America in a way I teach in the classroom of American broken-down dreams and Yet it's in these classrooms That America is secularly born again the classroom of no choice who you sit next to No way to separate yourself from otherness No way to get out of the room unless you agree to be together for a little while It's like a Petri dish of who we are and where we're at right now Teaching and learning and at a community college classroom like on a bus or the max Last year I attended a legal hearing Designed to determine whether a student in one of my classes should go back to jail Or be placed in a special program that would allow him to continue going to classes part-time I'd already bailed him out when he got arrested again whether or not that was the right thing to do I'd already written to the district judge on his behalf I'd already provided evidence of his mind and talent in The classroom this man wrote essays about how hard it is to move from gang life in Mexico to regular life in Oregon His essays centered on a dream. He had a dream of starting a program for gang youth You know like a rec center some classes some visiting artists and writers and business leaders He said the gang life just Relocated itself in micro versions once Latino men got here and he wanted to spend the rest of his adult life Trying to interrupt that motion He wanted to teach people how to make art His essays were passionate. I worked with this man for two years. I Mean he was in my classroom for two years. I watched him inspire people without even knowing he was doing it He just told the truth For two years what he worked on the hardest was where to put rage And I'd convinced him the page like the stage would hold it He became more and more articulate and then he became eloquent and then he became a person who could truly effect Change his beautiful pages rising like birds in the sky So when he asked me to speak on his behalf at his hearing and to write the district judge, I did Enthusiastically repeatedly, but his past kept coming up getting bigger and bigger and not white and harder to explain and nothing I said or did seems to matter Not my PhD Not my 30 years of teaching experience not my passionate plea about the excellence and eloquence of his writing in the end We were just two people who had both at one time in our lives broken the law and Interested and gone to jail. I have a past too. I got another chance He had to go back to that other institution The reasoning used is mind-numbingly idiotic even if we call it the law Now he's writing essays from jail and I don't know if he'll lose heart But I would understand if he did People make mistakes every day big ones I do You do Another student I'm working with is currently living in her car She did two tours of duty in the Middle East and came home to her daughter minus the use of her right hand and half of her face The one-bedroom apartment she was living in important Portland raised the rent from 400 a month Which she could barely manage as a single mother with a disability and PTSD To 950 with less than 60 days notice Which is legal in Oregon Boom Like a bomb going off Homeless The wait at the social service office in case you don't know this where she can get help is 90 days The wait at the women's shelter right now is 28 days And she's not as high on the intake list as the women who are being beaten and in immediate danger One day. She's in my American lit class hoping to become a teacher The next day. She's living in her car her daughter passed off every day to a different friend. I Couldn't live with knowing that so I found her some immediate help, but here's the thing I Know I can't keep doing that for everyone The choices we're making every day of our lives will mean that more people who can't make it emerge They are the new walking wounded of our country Where are the purple hearts for women men and children who have managed to endure? Listen, I'm not telling you this to highlight my efforts I'm telling you this to highlight how much we are all pieces of them I'm like them You might look at some of my life events like a list of indicators of trouble ahead. I'm gonna tell you what they are You'll see what I Between the ages of four and ten. I ate non-nutritive things It's called pica like dirt and paper and small stones and pennies Yes, they came out as a kid. I miss quite a few developmental stages I didn't speak out loud for a good long time much later than child Psychologists and doctors suggest. I wet my pants through sixth grade And I couldn't ride a bike until I was 25 I'm the daughter of an abusive father whose house I narrowly escaped with my life I have two epically failed marriages under my belt and I flunked out of college as an undergraduate twice I've had one episode of drug rehab and two brief stacations in jail. I've also been homeless But I'm not a deviant and I'm not a loser and I'm not a criminal and I'm not a bad person Perhaps that list is mapping out the fault lines of a life But can't we admit that everyone on the planet everyone in this room carries fault lines in their lives So isn't there a way to see the echo effect of all of our vulnerabilities? Inside all the stories of our lives our Vulnerabilities make us most human most beautiful most like each other What was mostly wrong with me when I did those bad things and I still make mistakes Is that I took a nosedive at that point in my life the day my daughter died the day she was born and When that piled up on top of where I came from abuse and addiction Honestly, I just didn't know how to live with that story But my life like a lot of other people's lives also has interesting positive mutations in it in addition to all my fuck ups. I Have a PhD I Teach I publish books Sometimes I get an award or something or I get to stand on a magical stage You want to know what makes me different from the people I'm telling you about Exactly nothing Which is to say that I've been like the people I'm talking to you about and some of you are too and we're all standing in rooms Next to one or another and the one language we can all understand if we remember if we choose it is empathy and compassion No one is a perfect person. No one got here without occasionally falling to pieces Maybe it's time. We admit that we need all of us for any of us to make it even the people who blew it We may be misfits But that's only if you look at us at the wrong angle turn us even slightly your angle of vision And we brighten like the phenomenal colors inside a kaleidoscope now more than ever We have to let go of the idea that categorization categorizations such as business and industry and Education and theater and government and art and law and medicine and technology are separate and Isolated from one another We have to figure out how to braid our languages and differences Before it's too late Before they separate us some more into camps where we hate each other and can't remember how to talk to each other. I Understand the stories. I just told you our sad stories So let me tell you about someone who started out sad and shot the moon This woman started out in a series of foster homes Her story is so bleak. I'm not even gonna tell it You already know how bleak you've seen it in crappy movies Even though we don't like to look at it. We know Passed from home to home from bad to worse her body the word for it Her entire childhood Brutalized I'm not ashamed to tell you. I'm surprised she came to my classroom alive But here's the thing when she showed up what she had in her was an undying burning fire passion for three things math science and poetry Like a strange new species She graduated from community college with a transfer degree which for those of you who don't know is like a ticket to ride To a misfit that's a golden ticket She went to get a degree at Portland State University from there She went to MIT which I bet you've heard of and from there. She did postdoctoral work at Yale You want to know where she works now? CERN Where the Hadron Collider is I? Hear her first book of poetry is forthcoming Everything against her Nothing stopping her except all the people who tried or the people who looked at her and misread her or The people who couldn't see her at all her brilliance her artistry Her beauty. I hope with all of my heart that my Latino friend for I can no longer limit The word for our relationship to student Keeps writing his essays from prison He's a part of me. I Hope with my whole body that he does not lose hearts. I believe in him For as long as it takes I Hope that my single mother friend doesn't fall through the cracks I hope she doesn't let go of her dream to study and teach world literature in another country Preferably the Middle East is what she told me. I hope our country doesn't let her down What I hope most of all Tonight is that we all begin to recognize how much we have to change in the face of our current culture. I Hope we learn to admit that we carry the trace of one another No matter who you are That our all our languages may yet reach one another inside our differences and A thing you can do tonight tomorrow the next day is Stop treating the people like women like people of color Like LGBT people like poor people or people who have blown it as The raw material for building the rest of culture Tonight and tomorrow and the next day we can treat the people who've been used To make everybody else look shiny As brothers and sisters Thank you. Can you see me trying to physically escape? I I'm happy to talk to you I understand ordinarily there would be a kind of Q&A thing right now and I'm not scared of you to talk to you But I also understand if that you've never met me, so I could also understand if You don't want to so I'll just stand here awkwardly for a little bit Thank you so very much Again for being here with us. That was really Just moving enlightening I think that you gave us a lot to to think about and I also love just from having seen your your talks that just the way that you Inspire us to think about Your real story telling the many different stories that exist and really committing to your own so thank you, thank you for sharing the stories of the people you're teaching and We're glad to meet you So and I know that we have some of some books some of Lydia's books here So after we're done, hopefully you'll be able to sign a few great so another of our favorite theater terms is opening night party and That's what we're gonna do next and what I want to do is invite our opening plenary and our opening night party one of our opening night party sponsors Carlo scant scan dootsie of scan dootsie crabs to join me up here for a minute Thank you It's it's it's very difficult after Lydia What you have said the humanity that you have given us tonight is extraordinary and Really all I can say is is that you know we can all go on and maybe drink and maybe not But have fun and remember What Lydia said and remember that you know the people that are around us are part of humanity They are part of who we are so as can you see crabs? We are very very proud and very happy you know to actually sponsor this evening and sponsor the party So without further ado have fun So that's it we're gonna go party together now there's transportation to the Portland Center stage and we'll see you there