 I'm not on mic or camera. Hello everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the Mina Theater Makers Alliance virtual convening. My name is Catherine Corey. I'm with you from Upper Manhattan, land of the Lenape people. And I want to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you are. Let me tell you a little bit about Minotma. The Mina Theater Makers Alliance amplifies the voices of Middle Eastern and North African theater makers and expands how stories from and about our communities are told on US stages. We take space, make opportunities, champion artists, and build relationships with other marginalized communities and allies to build a more vibrant American theater. I want to take a moment to just go over what is happening with the convening today. Now, to this panel, there will be a panel moderated by Mellik Najjar at 11 o'clock Pacific Time, 1230 Eastern Time, followed by a 130 Pacific Time panel called Beyond the Proscenium that will be moderated by Tracy Francis. And then later on course, Open Mic, which I hope that you'll participate in. So, I just want to note that this panel is being streamed via HowlRound, thank you HowlRound, and also on the Golden Threads Facebook page, just so you know. And then I guess it's okay if I just move on and introduce the panelists for today. It's my great pleasure to introduce four of the writers I most admire who joined me here in conversation. Munna Mansour, Heather Rappo, Betty Shamia, and Sanaa Tusi. Nina women playwrights on US stages. Hi everybody. There you are, beautiful. Listen, by way of introduction, I'm going to just excerpt a little bit from their bios, their full bios can be found in the chat. So I'll start with Munna. Award winning playwright Munna Mansour is the author of The Vagrant Trilogy, which will make its New York City debut in April 2022 at the Public Theater directed by Mark Wing Davies. Her play Unseen will have its West Coast debut at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in spring 2022 directed by Evan O'Chicken. When we swim, we talk, we go to war, premiered at San Francisco Golden Thread in 2018. The Vagrant Trilogy was presented at Mosaic Theater in June of 18 directed by Mark Wing Davies. And a play of the trilogy, The Hour of Feeling, premiered at the Humanifestival and Actors Theater of Louisville, and an Arabic translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi in 2015, and in Beirut in 2018 as part of the Arab Voices project. She also writes for New Amsterdam and is working on a script for AMC International. Heather Racco is an award winning playwright and actress whose work has taken her from the Kennedy Center to the US Islamic World Forum in Qatar, and from London's House of Lords to classrooms nationally and internationally. This was read out for the opera Fallujah, the first opera about the Iraq War. And the first openly confront the alarming rates of veteran suicide with part of Kennedy Center's International Theater Festival received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at New York City Opera in 2016. She's the author and performer of Noura, which premiered in DC before moving to Abu Dhabi, Cairo, New York City, and theaters across the nation, and Nine Parts of Desire, which ran off Broadway for nine months and has played across US and internationally for two decades. Heather is currently preparing a film adaptation of Nine Parts of Desire directed by Mike Mussalam. Betty Shamia is the author of 15 plays. Her theater productions include The Black Eyed at New York Theater Workshop, Territories, Fifth for a Queen at the Classical Theater of Harlem, and Roar with the new group. A New York Times critic pick, Roar was the first play about a Palestinian American family produced off Broadway and is widely taught at universities across the country. Shamia is developing a new screenplay as soon as possible, based on her play that was commissioned by Second Stage and Time Warner, and she was commissioned through Noura Theater's Artist Advancing Cultural Change Program to write a comic television pilot inspired by Roar. Shamia was recently named the Mellon Foundation Playwright and Residence at the Classical Theater of Harlem and the Visiting Artist at Stanford. Benaz Cusi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include Wish You Were Here, which was produced as a Williamstown Audible in 2020, and will premiere at Playwright's Horizons in 2022, and English, which will have its premiere at Atlantic in 2022. She's currently under commission at the Atlantic, Williamstown Theater Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, South Coast Recreatory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Sanaz is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writer's Lab at the Lark, and is an alum of clubs on early career writers group. She was a 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow and a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award. Thank you for joining us today, everybody. I'm so pleased to be in conversation with you. You know, I wrote to all of you and talked a little bit about kind of the topics that I would love to cover, and I just want to, I'm just changing the view here to gallery. Yeah, there we are. Okay. Hi. Oh, look how beautiful you all are. Okay, so. I said, you know, earlier that I wanted to talk with you about, you know, the issues of inspiration, collaboration, adaptation, representation, and controversy, which I imagine all of you have been encountered at one time and rather. But I want to start with inspiration and ask you maybe to talk a little bit about what that you started as a playwright, and what got you started telling the kind of stories that you're telling and opening up the stories of our community in the ways that you have. What prompted you, for example, to use playwriting as your medium, Betty Shamia. Thank you, Catherine. It's such a pleasure to be here. And, you know, I couldn't imagine a panel like this coming out of graduate school and playwriting. I'm not going to tell you how many years ago but a minute ago. So it's just fantastic to be, you know, on a panel with such diverse writers. I'm just a deeply social person. And I, I came out of an activist background. And, you know, when I got out of school there was no internet, essentially. So I had two kind of lives one as a playwright and one as an activist. And you could kind of be a very forward person in the activist community and not be identified as, you know, a Palestinian in your work. I think the thing that attracted me to theater was I was deeply, deeply interested in being with other people, and I couldn't go off and write a novel at that point. So I think we're having a little bit of technical issues. So, but what do you think, Betty? I'm hearing somebody, but whatever, fine. But basically, I, you know, I was doing it in the hopes that there would be panels like this where I wouldn't feel like the only Arab or Palestinian or Middle Eastern person in the world. And, and now that the community has kind of grown and there's all these diverse voices, I just am so excited because, you know, I very much identify as a person of color. You know, I'm in residence at a predominantly African American theater company. I really believe in the interchange of communities of color, you know, banding together. But it's also nice to see the growth of this community. So I created and create theater because I want people to hang out with me. And, you know, when you cast them in your play as they do. I mean, yeah, I certainly can relate to that. I think that, you know, my first community was, you know, in grade school doing plays. So I those are the people I related to, and it's never ended. It's never stopped. Mona, how about you? How did you get started writing plays and telling these stories? Excuse me. I haven't spoken yet much today. That's terrible. Good morning, everyone. I'm on the east and west coast. And I did know what you're saying, Betty. So happy to just seal your faces and hear about the amazing shit everybody's up to. It's really something I started as an actor also and really wanted to be like a great actress of the American theater. You know, name a person, you know, Meryl Streep. I mean, one of these, I didn't think I was Meryl Streep, but I was like, that's the kind of career I want classical theater American contemporary, but it didn't quite. I kind of wasn't that good and I didn't really. I got pulled into doing improv at some point and then I kind of went down the comedy path for a while and I was doing like the Sunday Company, you know, the groundlings and and then in that form, that's where I started to write was sketch and and that that notion of having a gun to your head. You just got to you've got to have you got to create. And then I started to get frustrated. I was like, why can't it seem be 10 minutes long. And from there I wrote sort of out of that experience and then not getting in the ground. I ended up writing of kind of the yeah my first play which was called me in the SLA and it was about my fascination with Patricia Hurst and it will be in things about identity as the SLA also stands for the Southern Southern Lebanese Army and it sort of came around to this thing of I, I thought I was the heiress and it's like no girl you're not that's not you you're you're one of the other people in this story. Your people are the terrorists in this story and it's so it. I think that I sort of never, I mean I performed that show, but I think I knew that I would not be a Heather Raffo and be able to do that I think that Heather is exceptional in that way. In many ways, but I think soon after that I just didn't need to act anymore so that's kind of how that happened it wasn't it was very zigzaggy. In that school, I wouldn't have minded, but then the one other thing I'll say is that I felt very fortunate when I got chosen to be in the emerging writers group at the public theater. Because it was sort of a couple years into me saying to myself I'm just going to be a writer, and it just gave me a whole different sense of what it was to be a playwright. Everyone in the group in my year had very different styles and backgrounds. So, and I guess the reason I do it or continue to do it is that I'm just endlessly fascinated with and bewildered by human behavior. Yeah, that's a quotable quote. Absolutely. Definitely. So now how did you get started. Really I just I want to know. Um, yeah, I, it's so funny, Betty hearing you say like you started, you know, with this urge to like hang out with people I think. So my, the start of my playwriting was much more inward I think I was really. I mean, I wrote like poetry and I love music on my life and I'm Iranian so we all we all feel like we are born public. I was really lost when I left college. I was working at a pizza shop I'd like, I was as lost as like a woman in her early 20s could be. And I was a dumb Cedar kid in high school. There's a, I wear that badge with with honor, I was just like an absurd dork dorky theater kid and you know when I graduated college I was so lost I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was like a failed first year in New York I like tried to move here when I was 23 and like totally like got my ass kicked by the city. And I went, you know, I went back home with like my tail in between my legs and from Orange County and then I went to your own that summer, and I had been going back and forth my whole life that hadn't been in sort of a while. And I think, you know, before I made that trip to Iran I'd written like, you know, a few plays that, you know, I read them now I like, you know, someone would have to like pull me off the ledge of it. When I went to Iran that summer, it was the first time it had occurred to me that I could sort of write about myself, and I could write about who I was and like what I really struggled with which is I think then had an identity crisis all my life between my my American this and my Iranian this and I know that's like not that is not unique to me. So I would really like say that summer, as I was surrounded by my, you know, Iranian family and we don't have a lot of our Iranian family here in the states I really was like, I don't know I had this urge to like vomit out that feeling onto a page. So I don't know that I can I have like a real like answer to it, but I feel like that is the moment I actually became a playwright and the moment I thought like, you know, I have like that that bold instinct that I think everyone kind of has in this industry which is like, Wow, I really feel an urge to write about this. Maybe I should even share this with people like what would happen if I shared this with people. Yeah, that's how I can do it. Yeah, you know, I'm struck by the thread of coming up against one's differences, and that's becoming a really strong motivator in terms of storytelling that you know what I mean there's a moment in that of realizing that you're different from the people around you. And it's a subtle difference in this case, but it's very real. Heather, when you were growing up in Michigan, did you come up against those things that influence your desire to write to just start as an actor. Just talk to me. No, I mean my. Yes, I grew up in Michigan. Yes, I started as an actor and am an actor. And the, and yes, that was my only intended career. As in, I didn't, I did get a literature degree, but I didn't take playwriting classes and never ever thought I was capable. I did always want to be an actor and my undergrad, I would say I was like foreigners and into zaki shangai where everything to my influences. And then where I landed was like, Oh, but I can't be in those plays. Right. So where am I, where, where will I ever get to be in community with that if I'm not from those communities right. Those plays really spoke to me and all my study after undergrad was in Shakespeare. So Shakespeare was a huge influence so that that idea of classical training and that kind of epic mythic characters was you know and poetry just constant constant poetry and language. It was in my mouth all the time and you know how that lives on stage is is clearly come around in my work I can see that now, but, but what made me start writing was really, was really the pole between. I don't see it's I don't see any characters on stage as protagonists that are about the things that I want to be about right, but even more specific than that we'd already had one war with Iraq. And by the time I was in grad school in 98 right that was like a half decade later, and we still didn't have these voices on stage. So it was really like a hot fire underneath me that we were still bombing that country we were still deeply wedded and embedded in that country, and nobody seemed to care. So I like son, I had had a pretty definitive I had a definitive trip to Iraq when I was 23 so by the time I was 29 I finally started writing about it. And then the fire got lit even further when 911 happened. Even in 2000 I remember being on the phone with my dad saying we're going to go to war in Iraq again bush was just elected it was election night I'm like here we go again, this can't happen again. So I just wanted to do something about it and for some reason. I thought the theater was the place to do it. Like I really think about that specifically of like why what in my activist nature thought that would be the best plan. You know, honestly, as opposed to what would I do in DC or how would I write. And I remember, I mean, you kind of poked fun about that nine month run and yes it was exhausting, you know, eight shows a week for nine months in the middle of a war. Right, that was, that's, you know, there wasn't there wasn't much care for like what's actually going on in one's personal life with family in Iraq. But what's very interesting about that process was the Iraqi ambassador to the UN at the time he became the Iraqi ambassador to the United States was like you can do in an hour. What it's taken me a lifetime to do and I do think we all feel that way in the theater like we get we get that distilled. 90 minute two hour window of impact that can rearrange people in a kind of a particular way. Right, and I'm not saying it's the reason to do it or we have to, you know, it's just it's interesting that it, it, it can work out like that. So I think that's why I kept doing it, because the, the, the number of struggles around it have been exhausting and heartbreaking, but that sense of like, Oh, but this one thing is working and it, it's, yes, it worked on in New York. But more importantly, it worked in North Carolina. And it worked in a high school in Denver. Right. And then you go Oh, I like I like this conversation quite a bit. Definitely, definitely. And by the way, I wasn't poking fun at the nine months wrong. I'm just simply blown away that you did that. Okay, I just want to be clear about that. And that's what you just said reminded me of a conversation I brought Ismael Halladay and his father Rashida Halladay together and conversations once. And they started out by saying, he started up by saying, I could write 10 books. And I would not make, I would not reach as many people as Ismael reaches in a week with his snow. In other words, he was getting the word out. He was telling the stories that people were so real on the stage. He felt that the, or she felt that the medium of theater was the most influential. I'm just wondering too about along the way as you've been working. All of you, who your collaborators have been who have encouraged you lifted you up challenge you messed with you. So that it made you go to the next step in terms of what you were writing and what you thought needed to be written. Any thoughts about that, Betty. I love this question. Thank you, Catherine, because you get to like give a shout out to everybody who saved your life. Well, right now I'm working with a wonderful Palestinian director, Sam Rose of Saber, and we're doing a comedy of mine at Stanford and we kind of have a big deal Egyptian movie star in our play, which is like making all the old people in my community think I'm actually a celebrity, which is hilarious. But he's a. So, you know, I feel like I've worked with some of the best living directors working today. My first show was chocolate and heat and sample directed and it was one of his first shows. And I worked with the wonderful Marion McClinton, who did all the August Wilson stuff in his later years, or not all the significant amount of his Broadway premieres and. And I feel like I just owe those, those men so much in terms of just, you know, believing in my voice and my work. I want to circle back a little bit to just identity real quick, but and just say that I actually, and I had to, I feel like I had to hide my Palestinianness to be in American theater. The three years I was, you know, paying to be a graduate student in playwriting. I hid all my plays about Arabs and Arab Americans and Palestinians and I wrote like, you know, big, can't be Egyptian female pharaoh plays and and that's what I showed the world. So I feel like one of the things I want to bring into this space is the fact that I felt it was dangerous to my career as an artist to be who I was. And then I realized I really have no potential to be any sort of artist unless I engage with the things that really matter to me. And so, you know, working with Sam or at this stage in my life on this play at Stanford has been really, really transformative to me because if you had told me at 21 that the world would change enough for me to work with somebody at that level who was from my background. I never would have believed it. Thank you for saying that Betty that's amazing and I would like to hear from anybody else to on the subject of what you encountered in terms of feeling that you're. How do I put this something like what Betty was saying that about hiding ones identity or putting it to the side or not emphasizing it. Is that something that you, the rest of you have encountered in yourselves or in your work. I haven't encountered it about my identity. That is something that I think falls to Palestinian Americans in a way that, you know, really doesn't, or perhaps others from the Middle East. I encountered it with content in over and not overly, and I kind of finally just decided that, you know, it's an interesting question what would you write if you didn't, if you weren't worried about that kind of thing. And so, so I have a play on scene and it used to have just generic on purpose locations throughout the Middle East I was like I'm not going to identify where I also at that point. wasn't interested in saying that a scene was in homes or something and then having an audience go Oh God that's Syria, so awful there and go to that path. So, but I finally came around to, you know this scene really feels like Gaza to me. So I'm just going to put that. And if somebody reading this play says, they're not going to have a scene that takes place in Gaza, where a schoolhouse has been bombed out then that's their choice. So, I would just say that in terms of in terms of that, and it isn't. I think we probably know about things where it is over and Betty I think what you experienced was over and covert all at once, regarding your identity I don't want to speak to it but I would like to get into a climate where we can just fucking be honest. You know what I mean but theaters don't want to do that. So we can't do this play because and subtle. No just and and subtle honest answer. So you're saying that you are encountering in terms of theaters across the United States, a kind of what how would you characterize the response. Well, I can't again it's, I can't speak to something that's like this one thing happens. For me anyway, what Heather was describing about. I was really struck Heather when he said, Well, by then we'd already had one war with Iraq. And, and here you are doing, by the way, an amazing nine month run is amazing. And people didn't know what was going on, perhaps in that moment. And I think, as somebody who's half American and half Lebanese. All of us in this room have had moments when we're like, do people really not know, like when I was a little I remember, knowing who Sadat and bacon and all these people were. And you know the Lebanese Civil War was sort of in our house every day, what was happening over there. And so, for me that's a little my secret mission is to make it that, you know, myopia that that that we have as Americans. I mean, a lot of people don't want to know what's happening to towns over, but my hope is to always make it like no no you are, we're all part of this world cycle, you know, and, and so I would say that it's, it's partly that people go, you know, political, oh God, nobody really people want to relax and it's like, I share an apartment with the lovely Nyla Etrash, who should have a panel on her own. And she was talking about politics in the Middle East and she's like, we have it at breakfast, we have it at lunch, we have it in bed. What is vital, I think it's a vital way of thinking about what politics are because I think when people say, I don't know it's really political. What is that really saying to to you. And, and I think as a sports fan I often say, people will spend years evaluating why a baseball manager brought a certain closer in, and they will talk about all the things that could have happened. It's really complicated, but people will go oh I just, I can't, I can't take that stuff and it's really complicated. It's not sometimes. So, I guess that's where I live with all that. And in a way I would rather somebody say look, I'm not going to do that play because it says Gaza. I would rather that than a different type of response. I don't know if that makes sense but that makes sense. What about everybody else running into even now in your careers, running into responses to your work that are coated, you know, resistance based on who knows what, you know, a discomfort. Sometimes when I hear people say, well, you know, it's very political. And I don't know if I want to, you know, it's it's there's a discomfort in the reaction as though controversy is not doesn't belong in the theater. Talk about controversy. Talk about your work. As you see it and as it has been encountered on the topic of controversy or. Yeah, controversy. I think that's, I keep coming back to that. So now, can you talk about that? I actually don't know that I can. I mean, I haven't been produced yet. I can say like, yeah, I can, I can speak to like a how I feel there's like just a discomfort sometimes even within the Iranian community of like that's the only controversy I can really speak to is like a critique I feel on how, because because there is, you know, not a lot of representation of Iranians that alone Iranian women like how I should be writing us. And so I guess I am a little petulant about it at this point I'm like, I would like to just treat myself like white artists treat themselves which is like, let me just write whatever I feel like. So I try to be really, I love conversations and art about responsibility. And I agree, like there's has to be responsibility in our work and often responsibility enriches the work. And yet I have to be honest that sometimes I'm like, why don't I just write jokes that I want to write and not worry about representation why don't I just what what would happen to my art if I was fully self indulgent and didn't feel like this I on me all the time by like people in my community and people outside my community so I don't know that I can speak to controversy. Yeah, I mean, I know that you're at different points in your careers in your playwriting careers and, and you having said that you haven't been produced yet and yet you have two productions coming up in one season which is terribly exciting. And, you know, no doubt there there will be some conversations that happen along the way. But, you know, I'm thinking about, for example, the topics that Heather you've been addressing in your work and not only with Nora. But with Fallujah and with, I mean, not only with nine parts but with Nora and Fallujah and addressing other issues in Nora, you know, a very much inspired by adult house and and Fallujah addressing something very real that is happening to us Americans. As a result of participation in the Iraq war. Can you talk about the responses to that. And was there a broad, what's the word, you know, diversity of responses to those those stories that you told with the opera. Yeah, I mean I can say that I've kind of known nothing but controversy on one hand, and then nothing but kind of the most honest of audience conversations on the other, which is really thrilling so the controversy is is the unproducibility until the zeitgeist moves. Right. So, like, to be like nine parts was literally, I couldn't get a reading. I'm not talking a public reading. I'm talking a can I come to your theater and read it in a back room and get some feedback, unanimously rejected at every turn at every front. Right. Like, this is how dicey it was to say anything about the Iraq war during or on the eve of the Iraq war and even after so like the fact that I had to go overseas to do it. And then even then, I couldn't, you know, like it was just like no no no until I did finally get one reading and then it was really it was still unanimously rejected until one producer anyway. So these like you get these, you get these one shots, you know you get these hundreds of knows for this one shot and then the one shot kind of crack something. And then the conversations that come are wild. I'm sure you're I see you're all nodding your heads. I find it just extraordinary I find it extraordinary that I could be in conversation during that war with Republicans as well as Democrats right with people from all sides of different issues. So, I've kind of like with Fallujah it was just like the war was still a good idea until 2016. Literally, like we can't we almost forget, but until the until the public zeitgeist or at least the military zeitgeist moved toward Oh well that war wasn't such a good idea. The opera couldn't get produced. And I find, I mean, I personally just find that a bit problematic for artists, trying to write about the thing in the moment that it's happening right. And not being able to have that conversation with the public until until the needle moves and makes it kind of a little bit safer. And I don't know that artistry needs to be safe. So, I want to just jump in there. Please, I totally agree. I think that the safe thing. Right. What do we mean when we say that I wanted to just, because I don't know that we answered Catherine your, your question about the places or people who helped and I and I will say, one of them just stepped in and it's ever and and anyone who's worked with ever knows just how fucking smart he is and like, I don't want to speak for ever and but you know he'll say I was an engineer, I'm an engineer brain, and I, and yet he's an artist so he has like very many ways of seeing a piece of work. I think for me it comes down to like drama turns that I've worked with a lot of the time. Jesse Alec at the public. It's funny because Sonaz and I met when she was a kind of cultural consultant on a play. And there is something that the more of us that can be in those rooms at those junctures. I think the better our work will be because, you know, that was that was a workshop that ever and directed and then we had Sonaz and it was like, oh, she'll weigh in on this, you know, this character. So, I think, and I guess because I've worked with certain actors quite a lot like how do you to ball, tell ash, you know, I learned so much from them and you know you fight. You've been working on a piece long enough, you get into these like fights, because you might make a change in there like what. And I think what thing I want to throw in as well. These are very start these thoughts are all over the place but I think for so long, and an actor from our community was a show, they were serving as actor drama turned cultural consultant. I think that that's shifting and that makes me happy. I mean it's not there yet, but oftentimes they were tasked to be the one who could explain the 1967 and war to everybody else. I think whenever we can, you know, we bring people into these rooms and say, oh no you, you have to have Halibaki here. I think I was doing a panel later today or you know you have to have that voice, I need that voice, because sometimes when you're Heather I don't know how it was be curious to know like when you pass the baton other actresses, you know to embody nine parts of you know was there a huge dramaturgical packet or was it like listen, how did you, you knew all that stuff or you learned all that stuff. Anyway, those are the things that are swirling around for me I think, and Catherine you've been somebody who's really pushed us forward, even just this panel or the Arabic Theater Festival in Abu Dhabi. I could have put that together. I can't like get a translator and get a great reading in front of people. And you know you've got this like, you're a little like in Lebanon they call them design, but I guess it's a Zayma. You're like the Zayma a little bit and just like how does she wait what, you know, it's all above board, but she got a lot of shit going on. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. My cousins will be so glad that you use that term. Let me just come back to Betty and everybody you know I just this is becoming exactly what I had hoped which is around table. Okay. You're just taking charge of this conversation and I just dig that I really do. And what I would love to hear about to Betty you were mentioning the director you're working with and I'm just wondering over the years. It seems as though the rooms are getting fuller and fuller of people from the community and people who really understand what the play is about. And can you talk a little bit about that about the rooms that you're in. Betty any thoughts about that. Well, I think, you know for me it's something it's, there's a there's the rooms you want to be in and the rooms are in, you know, and I love that you mentioned everyone. Mona, because I'm delighted when when everyone's career started to take the ascent that I that we all saw, and now he's, you know, a sentinel figure helping develop this work. You know, I knew everyone when I worked at the magic. And I don't like to age myself but a long time ago. And I was like, how is this Turkish kid who graduated from Princeton, not getting the kinds of directing opportunities that like flabbergasted me that that the San Francisco community was not, you know, embracing this town. And, you know, so when I see things like now he's at Oregon Shakespeare. I feel like the room, you know that we've always been there we just haven't been in those rooms. And you know for me. One of the things that's really important to me is, is I am an artist. And I, you know, my play that I'm working on with classical theater Harlem is a sequel to shape Shakespeare's 12th night it's called novel Leo. And I feel like one of the things that was nice about having somebody who was not from our community, being a director like Sam Gold is people were like, she actually can write to him they would say things that, because the assumption was somebody who, with all the pedigree that I had and worked really hard to get with somebody who was not really an artist on par with other white artists. And so the fact that I deal with form. And, and almost every play I create is a new play like this play. I read all of Neil Simon to write this comedy that we're doing. I'm very much committed to the form I work my butt off to be the best artists I can be to develop my own craft, and to learn with each new play which is why every play I do is wildly different because I'm like, let me deal with the Shakespearean let me deal with a Neil Simon comedy. And I so, so, so the fact that we I feel like what's exciting is we are now in those rooms and able to pull other people and showcase our artistry, which is really, really exciting. I, I kind of made a pivot in my career. And I wrote about it in how around so high how long people who are listening, but about really investing, you know, when I got out, you wanted to be produced off Broadway in the fancy places. You know, I had that kind of career very early on. And I realized that it was going to keep me in the box of writing roar, every three years, and I needed to expand in the only places that we're willing to do that were places like classical theater or places where there's a professor who is actually Palestinian on staff. So I think that one of the things that that is so nice about the multiplicity of voices is that we're actually artists, you know, we're actually contributing to the art of this culture and this country. And that gets lost sometimes. And the more we have people like everyone in positions of relative power, the more we can really showcase that we are, you know, the next Neil Simon, or the next Arthur Miller, instead of, you know, just, you know, a diversity pick. You know, so it was really nice to have that kind of lens of a white man getting the feedback he was getting on a play, like the Black Eyed, you know, which is takes influences from Ntozake Shange, but also from Samuel Beckett, you know, so, and the kind of the honesty they had with it's actually a play. And it might be a good one, you know, was was something that I working with it with just other Middle Eastern artists, you wouldn't get that level of honesty about how we are pigeonholed and seeing within a season and within, you know, the predominantly white American institutions that we are all fighting and struggling and sweating to get a spot out so. Oh, Betty, thank you for saying all that. That's amazing, really. And talking about the multiplicity. That's, that's so important. Anybody want to talk about the rooms again a little bit more the rooms that you've been in the room you want to be in. You know, moving forward now having, you know, certain experiences behind you talking about, you know, people you want to have in the room with you people. You would like to have in the room with you talking about the, the, the strength of being surrounded by people from the community you understand what you're talking about and, and it isn't the other for them, but then also working with people who don't come from what you come from, and actually finding a way to each other. Can you talk about that at all, Heather any thoughts about that. Yeah, I can. I mean, yes, and I want to just uplift my collaborators at Georgetown University, but it, it leads to this conversation completely so that. Derek Goldman and Maya Roth at Georgetown have just saved my life and saved my career. Hugely because they, they work in a way that I like to work which is hugely process oriented. But let me come in with questions and dig around in communities that were both similar to mine and completely opposite to mine and I like to fire my plays in both environments. I want a bunch of Arabs, looking at it talking about it right and then I want people in Kansas City to do the same right so I'm, it's really, I'm kind of work in those polls but I'll say that like, when it comes to rooms, I mean, I, I agree with Betty there's there's a, I agree with Betty that this might be, but this might be in the past. I have real hope that this is in the past so the room was like with nine parts, it went, it went to a bunch of different rooms let's say right, super lucky, super lucky, right, but nothing came of that. It was 17 years before I was able to do another play and I wasn't commissioned by the American theater. So without Georgetown, I literally, and especially because you know I had two kids in the middle of that I was like I wouldn't have had a career. Literally, it was fundamentally I tell Derek and Maya that every time I see them practically it's just like without you saying, come work on something come do something Nora would never have happened. I mean, fluja, you know, wasn't an American theater project was Canadian, but I even went to them to develop it. Right. So these, these, these places where we have friends and collaborators matter so much to keep you afloat during some really hard and dark time, you know, during times where you are pigeoned hold or you, you, you can't make the next opportunity happen so. So yeah, as a, but what I'm excited about now is that for the first time in my entire life. We have three writers from our community in my environment here in New York, right in this off Broadway we have Sena's and Mona and Sylvia. And then in one theater we have to we have Sena's and Sylvia in the same season. And this is not happened. Right. This has not happened if we say this movement is called it is 20 years old. This is the moment that this is finally happened. Yeah, I want to just add to it. Sorry Heather. I just wanted to add really quickly that when this is like, maybe embarrassing to say but I remember when Sylvia's play was announced and her plays amazing shout out everyone go see it go see selling cobble at its horizons. When it was announced, you know pre pandemic I was like, Oh so like that. I'll be maybe another year I can be I can fill another Middle Eastern slot so I think it's really saying something that like to Middle Eastern artists and in this in that season. I want to like, it really means something I think it's like we're in this moment now like. That it almost angers me a little bit that it took like. In many ways I'm like it feels like it took Trump's travel ban for people to believe us that like there was a lack of representation and like that Islamophobia and I'm just sort of like applying that very widely to Middle Eastern people like. I don't know I felt like before that I have felt gaslit a lot of the time by the American theater in a way where I'm like these things that affect my life so profoundly. No one else really seemed to be concerned with. So I think it's a really, really exciting moment as well. You know, I'm really glad you brought that up to us and, and, and even the topic of representation because I really want to. I want to open that up a little bit and Heather will bear me out on this to that. It wasn't just the travel ban. It wasn't just that all the time has come. There have been a lot of bumps along the way, and there was a particular controversy at playwrights horizons, a few years ago that we encountered that we were in broad discussion about a play that actually Heather was in the cast of and it made people speak up about their feelings about representation and low and behold, someone was listening and people were listening and Adam Greenfield. It's got to lift him up because, you know, he was paying attention. And, and not only he but other people and this is what happens I think I could be wrong and I want y'all to speak about this because you know more than I do but it does seem like when one person starts sitting up and paying attention and taking action, then other people start to do it too. And he talks about that. I mean, it was a long time coming that yes, these plays needed to be in these seasons. I mean I just want to, I want to say on behalf of Mona. Like, the public developed her play, and how long did it take for them to do it. Right, like, yes, yes, they're doing it, but like, come on, just that, I don't know. 17 years between projects. And in the middle of that time the Middle East was like, nothing, nothing was simple. I don't know that people were noticed I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's just a reaction to like, what was made of what happened in the profane. Oslo was happening down the street and nobody said anything. Right, like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if I don't know what kind of discussions were happening I think that I think that I do want to just love on this moment. Because there are the, this is a collective moment for these women. That is that we've all got to feel so good about that none, not one of them is alone in this season. And it's across New York and may it may it go forth across the nation. Anything. She might, she might be frozen. Well see I'm glad I brought up a painful subject. My strength actually. Would you like to say anything about that Betty. I just want to second what Heather said, you know, it was, it was a lonely field out there. And what it did was it, you know, there was a real hunger for war porn, and, you know, sexist porn, you know, because one of the things that I write about is, is the intersectionality between sexism and an Arab and American and that's kind of what play that I'm working on is about how the two different cultures work on women and commodify them in different ways. And that is not welcome in American theater. I always say this, and I believe it's true. If I wrote a play about a girl named Fatima who got killed by her father named Mohammed, that would be on Broadway. I, I fundamentally believe that if I reinforce stereotypes, that that would herald my career in a way that it has not been doing the kind of work where I'm asking us to really interrogate our own culture as Americans, rather than look to at least to feel better about our situation as women here, which is actually a tactic you use to divide women are 50% of this world, and we're divided, and we feel better about some things in our culture and worse about some things in our culture. But I try to write about, you know, and being Palestinian is an enormous part of my identity. I feel Palestinian and American, which is easy to do and because of the diaspora kind of that identity I hold both of those in my body. I'm also a woman and that has become for me, you know, I'm a woman of a certain age. I'm not the same kid who came out of drama school and was getting, you know, the kind of visibility that the first person usually gets in a, in a, in a culture. And I applaud and I'm so excited about these women's voices. But I also feel like we, it's not just who gets to tell the stories, it's what kind of stories were allowed to tell. And I have not found personally, one of the stories that I want to tell most in American theater in America about American this are are the ones that that people are interested in. And, but I'm prolific, I'm going to write and keep writing a lot of plays and not, you know, but I fundamentally believe that that the plays that are of are the most complicated are the most difficult to sell in the current cultural environment. And so I can only speak to my own experience, but it is such a relief to not have to carry the burden of representation. Because, you know, we all come from different races, classes, parts of the Middle East, parts of this country. And that's what we need to see. But we also need to be seen as artists, fundamentally, and Americans, and part of the fabric of the artistic development of our field, which is something that I'm really struggling to keep in my own like mid career kind of struggle at the forefront, you know, that our artistry as much as our identity is something that that we should be allowed freedom to write, you know, sequels on 12th night and get that supported in the way that, you know, white men are of a certain level are able to get that kind of support. We're like engaging with our world literature is something that is after 20 years in this game, something that's really, really important that that that that the people coming out of drama school now don't feel like the only kinds of works I can get produced or the deal with these topics in these ways, and simplified, you know, and not complicated and not interrogating our own Americanness as well. Oh, Betty so beautifully put really honestly. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you all so much for your candor. I am just so grateful. Honestly, I want to switch gears a little bit. Before we open it up to questions from the attendees. I'd like to talk a little bit about what you're doing now. And it's exciting to me, for example, with the commissions that you've received and the work that you're doing that you are also at least Munna and Heather and Betty taking your work into other media. And, and I'm very interested in that with the commission that you have from nor Betty and, you know, Heather with nine parts in film and Munna writing for television. And I, I'm just very curious about, you know, the topic of the adaptation, in particular, but in general, moving into another media with your writing and what it feels like and what's frightening about it and what's exciting about it. And, yeah, like that. Any thoughts about that. I'm going to jump in, because I have a funny story. When Roar was produced, HBO came and saw it and at the time the only show I felt or that was worth writing for was the Sopranos. It was a whole different world kids it was like, like, it's beyond showtime and three network it was just and I had somebody who was Emmy nominated for a role in the Sopranos in my play. So I'm thinking HBO is calling me to invite me to be part of the Sopranos writing team, which is, you know, and you'll find out later in the story, absolutely ridiculous because you know, they were white, mostly white men who had been in television for decades were on, you know what I mean. So they sit me down and, you know, I'm in my twenties and at HBO NYC, you know, just set my off Broadway premiere. And I'm waiting for the offer, right. And they said to me. Well, we liked Roar and want you to write a pilot based on Roar. And my reaction was, and I'm still kicking myself about it. No, I don't want to be pigeonholed. I want to write for the Sopranos. And they were like, thank you. Goodbye. And it took me 20 years to get a commission from Newark to do the thing. And so that's something I got to tell everybody, never say no to anything. Just say, all right, let me think about that. You know what I mean? Because your expectation of it's actually the best thing I could have done. But at the time there was no insecure. There was no Kim's convenience. I didn't see a way forward for a play in a storefront in Dearborn to be a show. So I didn't have the conception that that was actually an offer worth. I thought that that was just, you know, you're going to throw some money at me and make my nominated star happy. You know what I mean? So the world has changed. And now there is insecure. There is Kim's convenience. There is Romney. There are these things in the culture. So now I'm back to, you know, trying to do what I said no to so foolishly in my twenties. Well, and that's very meaningful for me because, again, Newark didn't exist when I came out. It actually came out around the time I was being produced in New York Theatre Workshop. So it's very meaningful to me because I do tend to work with other people of color. And so the fact that I'm working with an Arab American theater company, do you know what I mean, is so deeply meaningful to me because that hasn't been the case in my career. I've been either working with predominantly African American companies or straight old white institutions. So it's deeply, deeply meaningful that Newark is giving me the opportunity to say yes to something I should have said yes to a long time ago. I know we're super excited about it, Betty. And actually that is a before I tap the rest of you. This is a good moment for me to just, you know, also acknowledge the shout outs in the chat and give my own shout outs to Newark Theatre and Lamees and Nancy who started the theater and, you know, Jamil in Chicago and Taranj and Sahar at Golden Thread and, you know, all of the companies that have devoted their resources and their time and their support to lifting up Middle Eastern playwrights. And but on the topic of adaptation and moving into other media, any thoughts about that Heather, you having fun there? No, it definitely wasn't easy because, I mean, Nine Parts is a monologue solo show, so no matter without a protagonist or a narrative throughline. So that's like the opposite of film or TV, right? And also this version was never going to be you get nine actresses on location in the Middle East, right? It was, unfortunately, unfortunately, that's not like, but what's been thrilling is having spent nine months in Michigan during COVID, which I call my swing state summer, right? And I'm deeply from that place. So I found out I had a lot to say. So when you look at a play 20 years later, and you look at what's at stake when you wrote it, and then you look at what's at stake now and you can draw an absolutely direct straight line from Iraq to Michigan, in 2020, and the kinds of divisions and the kinds of polarity and everything, every single thing. And you can even draw a straight line to, you know, where was this set in the original play? Well, it was set on the Tigris and Euphrates and what's at stake in Michigan and how does this, you know, it's set on the Flint River right now, right? Which is, it's all, it's all right there. So that kind of sense of do I even want to pretend this is being shot in the Middle East and being in this story is happening in this way or do I want to absolutely plop it straight down in the middle of an American identity and let the same characters say what they have to say. That's been the, that's been the thrill is not thrilling because one doesn't wish for this for America to be in this moment. But to be able to work from the Midwest and from inside the American zeitgeist with this has been a really powerful way to consider moving medium and moving in the adaptation. Ever since you told me about it, I've just, it's been in the back of my mind and I've been wondering how it's going and all of that, I really, it's such a thrilling way of looking at it, Heather, just amazing. And Muna, you're writing for television, you're working on a new pilot, is it, too? Yeah, it's, yes. For AMC. Yes, AMC International. What is AMC International, exactly? Well, it's, I mean, I'm not exactly sure either, but it's, you know, AMC is their network, right, and so it's, I think the international might just be works that do straddle these different countries and places and time zones. But I think what I just keep thinking about is that, like, it's about, you know, I don't know, it's going to sound Marxist or something, and that's fine, but like getting the means of the production in your own hands, right? So it's like, like, I don't have those means yet, but if I did, I would be like, we're going to have a theater festival every two years, right, with, like, all of the writers on this zoom, you know, instead of waiting for someone to decide that, you know, every 10 years still do like Middle Eastern, a taste of the Middle East. So while there's been a ton of progress, I think that's how you, you can, I have those dreams. I think, along those same lines, like a look at all the women on this zoom and I'm like, we, if I were at this place in my career, I would be like, let's each write one episode of a short, what do you call it, a, you know, like a Netflix, like, yeah, like a limited series. That's about these questions. Like, wouldn't that be amazing? And that's not pie in the sky. That can happen. It's just, we're not quite there yet. And so it's, it is not to sound corny, but it is propping each other up. It is lifting each other up and having conversations that can be hard is part of that. And it is a sense I feel that that is part of my mission is to be like, you know, bring just these stories. You know, yeah, no kidding. My mission to my mission to trust me. Yeah. Heather's in by the way. Yeah. Yeah, no, I just, I just I uplift that Mona. I've, I've long wanted to like just be in a writer's room with our group. Right. And make that make that program happen as a collective group. But beyond that, I agree, Mona, with just the fundamental idea that it's sort of like the Betty and you and I have have felt the decades pushing to this moment. And it feels like the collectivity of it is something that's really the next phase. So more than even great that there are multiple productions at the same time, there sort of seems like a collective group effort as to what the other thing is that can actually be built out of this. And in some ways, I think the moment that we're in, in addition to all these things is that in some ways, the, the most daring, the most daring narrative narratives, the most daring ways of showing narratives are happening in TV. Unfortunately, I do think American theater, which I love and I grew up going to like the old globe theater and then eventually the playhouse and, but I, I personally feel that it is still like the really, really there's, we're all incredible. Okay, but I'm saying like the things where you're like whoa I don't know how they did that or this show showed me this this this and this. Those are happening more on cable, you know streamers and things like that. And, and I don't exactly know why I think that there is something in American theater that is just so afraid of controversy. And as you said Heather why, like if a play gets two people to have a heated discussion is that isn't that kind of why we know it means something has been moved inside them. And at least in my experience. And I can't speak completely to this because I haven't had a million plays produced but I think American theater, by and large still is like Oh God a couple patrons left in intermission. I remember seeing a play a little way a playhouse. When I was in college and it was a figure oh gets a divorce it was directed by, I can't think of his name but a very like avant garde American theater director. I have the Hawaiian audience left in droves in droves, and I got my brother a ticket to see it because I could get a million people tickets to see it. And I said yeah you know a lot of people are leaving he goes well, I said you know I just don't know and he goes well maybe they're the ones who need to see it. And I think the model of, you know this upset a patron. Right, so again I'm not in that machine so I can't speak to it, but I think that you see things more I see things more edgy on HBO. Then I often do in the American theater and I and I want to just keep reminding myself of that as just an artist that what are the what are the things that you would write if if you weren't afraid of of it being node. Sorry that made no sense but I'm having technical problems and I'm now on my phone so I'm just like, who knows that that made a lot I thought that made a lot of sense absolutely. Oh, I think we can take a sorry. Go ahead. Sorry, did you I just, I just want to uplift that too because one of the most exciting things I have seen is, you know, Tanya Siracho become a showrunner and do an entirely Latino writing team. You know what I mean you used to have Samford and some and there would be like almost no black people writing that show, and now you can't do that anymore. You can't have a Native American show and not have people feeling like it should be predominantly Native American writers which you know what I mean. I think is is also such an exciting moment in terms of TV. That that you know if somebody is going to try if one of us is going to try to do a show, the network is going to be like well where are your cohort of other Arab writers who are going to be writing with you and I think part of the difficulty of you know the loneliness that I felt and was that you're in American theater you're seen at you know, like, for the first time Karim Fahni and I were in a reading series, and it was at theater work Silicon Valley it was the first time in my entire life. It was two Middle Eastern writers, and it wasn't about a Middle Eastern thing, and it wasn't kind of in reaction to. Oh shoot we really blew this so let's get to Middle Eastern writers, you know what I mean which which I feel like a little bit that knee jerk a like let's throw, you know what I mean, which, you know, I have benefited from because, you know, there's there's that impulse to be a person, let's not look like how we look you know and so it was really meaningful to me to be in like an online reading series with another Arab or wasn't about. They had this controversy and now they're doing us here, or they have you know this, they decided that they're doing a Middle Eastern series and this is it it was just, we were two writers in the same series it wasn't in reaction to this kind of. We really blew it, you know what I mean like kind of feeling that I feel like, and that's why I'll keep coming back to the importance of our artistry and what we're contributing as artists, not just as Middle Eastern artists but as, as people who are making work in this field. The insistence upon that coupled with yes if we if one of us has a TV show, they're going to think it odd and strange that we don't work together and make that show. You know, a comprehensive like you know, kind of community building thing in the way that Tonya Sriracha was able to do with the Latino American community and the Native American shows that are coming out are doing. So I think that's what's nice about this cultural moment where you do have different writers, you know in the off Broadway scene where there's more sense of, we can work together rather than you know we are pigeonholed and, you know what I mean, and we're given opportunities as a response to people blowing it, you know. Yeah. Thank you Betty. You know before we open it to a few moments of questions. Did you want to add anything or Heather. I agree with what everyone's saying and I'm also like, I was sent a script for TV a few months ago and which an Iranian man was praying over a rocket headed toward Tel Aviv so I'm also very much like And they were they wanted to hire me to like write the the Iranian. So ridiculous. So I feel like yes things. I just want to like, I do think things are getting better but sometimes it's like the more I'm also the same. And I feel like I change my opinion, like, kind of every hour on how I feel about that so I don't really, I don't know maybe it's okay like yes we can hold those two things out once but I still, I don't know I haven't been developing something with TV right now and I'm like I actually don't know who's who's more risk averse theater or TV like I actually cannot tell. I don't know I still my heart wants to say like, we are more willing to have harder conversations in theater, or those those hard conversations are more effective because like it's rude to get up out of your seat like I just can't really tell. But um, yeah, that's really all I, I have. I hear you, I hear you totally yes. Heather anything you want to say about that before we open it up off subject but not. I'm really interested in the Shahar Zad squad. Because I've been as some of you know I've been talking about what are the systems of care. How do we come together so back to this how do we come to what are we working on together as opposed to working on individually, and due to decades of exhaustion and loneliness and you know all these things that all you know I'm pretty open admitting to. And this idea that our community that there's, you know, women in our community that have created an environment that's built on care and care for each other and the needs of the care systems I'm really excited by I'm just super excited by how we address it, and I know that, and I'll say this because this is a Monatma gathering but like in gatherings in the past when we're doing these things so often we get asked can you, not this panel nothing like that just like, can you come give yourself in these ways and when some of us are just so exhausted to the bone in all the ways we've given and given and given it's like, yeah but can we have one place where we're, where we're drinking in a workshop, where, as opposed to always leading take it or can we, you know, do something for each other and I think that I really want to advocate for that being said and being continued to be part of conferences and how, how we arrive to something not with just what we can offer but how we can fill up. Right. Because I think a lot of I'll just, you know, a lot of us artists have been out. It's been it's been exhausting carrying what we've been carrying. And I'm interested, yeah, I'm interested in how how this post 2020 environment acknowledges that and goes forward in these really different ways. You know, I'd like to see if anybody has any questions for the for the speakers and and but while people are considering that it would be wonderful. Leila or whoever is involved with she has a squad if you could put something in the chat that we could link to and and and get more information about what you're doing. That would be great. But in the meanwhile, I wonder if anybody who is, thank you Leila, attending can do you have any questions, and you have an option you could two options you could put the question in the chat or you could turn on your video, which you are enabled to do and raise your raise your hand that little yellow hand, whatever you like. Aha, here's a question from Zana. What empowers your creative audacity. What is it that supports you in feeling most grounded, confident or confident in your vision or voice on a project. Interesting. That's a great question. I'll jump in. Long live the lark. My, I'm speaking this because I think what grounds me is often working with collaborators working with actors and a director and saying, you know, I think I'm fairly comfortable with the question of like I don't know what the fuck this is about I don't know what the fuck this is going to be yet. Those places. Obviously, a lot of institutions will offer, you know, workshops, but an institution is different when you go to an institution to do that sort of thing. You can't help but think, you know, I hope this leads to something. And so that is a huge loss. Right. But that's what grounds me and I and I working with actors and sitting in rooms having discussions. We started a theater company a couple years ago, and we are we loosely loosely create work based on like the joint stock method of making theater so interviews conversations, whatever and and the joy of it to me is that working in the room with actors from day one, and the notion that you know if you're here in this room you're going to kind of be in it, you're going to do this. And that's what anyway that's what really grounds me is is taking these like nascent pieces of something sharing it in a safe place. Sometimes you don't even need to talk about it you're like, great, just heard it. And it's given me a great deal of food for thought. Wonderful. How about you. Yeah, that's such a good question. I think like in my process, I need a lot of, I guess I do need some hand holding. I just need to know that like, I always think about like what we would ask for if we could like what you want your play to smell like I just think I just lead really lead with smell I don't know, because I'm running and like have a big nose like I don't know what that's about but like I feel like it's important to have a confidant really early in the process for me who like shares all like the who like knows all the ugly parts and the secrets I want to put in a play and it's like yes, do it. It's worthwhile. So I think it's just like, yeah, that's, that's the most I know. Yeah, yeah. Betty. I'll say two things. One is my life could look very different. You know, some of my family went to Kuwait and then they were thrown out of Kuwait after the first Gulf War. I could have been Palestine, my grandfather's house in Ramallah, or, you know what I mean you have to like sometimes brave guns and refuse to put on play. I feel an enormous and overwhelming sense of responsibility to actualize myself as an artist for all the versions of myself that might not have been here. I feel the women who may be more talented than I am who are living in conditions who are just like me in every way in terms of, you know, ethnic makeup and family background, who do not have the opportunities that I have. It's very intense. And part of this stage of my career is being more gentle with myself. But I think my intensity served me well, because I did write about load of plays, and I have them. But it was driven by that sense of, you know, it really could have been different for me. And it's really different for people just like me. I need to use every ounce of ability and talent and life force I can to make these plays matter. And the other thing is, I write comedies, you know, and nobody knows that about me. Nobody knows that about me. I'm really effing funny. And, and you would not know that by looking at the plays that I write that get produced. And I believe having a sense of humor about your rage is so important. And the thing that grounds me is, when I put on a play like the one we're doing at Stanford, I will watch an audience laugh. And that to me, you know, I do meaning plays about, you know, being a woman, being a Palestinian woman, being an American woman, you know, but I also love making people laugh, because I feel like it's the immediate feedback of, you know, you cannot, there's a fleeting sense of power over someone when you make them laugh because you suddenly recognize, oh my God, the same absurdity lives in you and me and everyone and you've just named it, that thing we're all hiding, that thing we're all diminishing, things we're all being like, I'm professional, I'm not projecting this insanity that isn't, you know, a daily mental space. So I think it's important to, to really write towards that, you know, and, and, and Edward Said, who is kind of, you know, I don't think I would exist in the same way, if he hadn't made it possible for me to, you know, he was a really angry guy. And I think I'm a really angry person. And I think that helps me somehow. I think Ray did the wonderful thing. Heather, do you, any final words on that topic before we say goodbye for today? Well, quite like Betty, I've stakes. I'm always looking at the stakes, you know, what's it feels like they're everywhere, right. So that's what grounds me and gives me, according to the question, the audacity, right, is just that the stakes are, I've been waiting for the stakes not to be so high. When I was 20, there was the first Iraq war. When I was 30, there was the second one 911 was in there, you know, it's every time I think, oh, I'm gonna, I'm going to go write this other thing because the stakes aren't so high now I get to do this right. And the stakes just keep getting higher. Yep. I'm still excited to write my other things. Yeah. Listen, before we before I move on, I just want to read a comment in the chat that's quite lovely. As a female this is from Vana. As a female Middle Eastern actor, it is so incredibly exciting to have female Middle Eastern playwrights who plays I can read, identify with and work on. Thank you all for your time and for your wisdom, which I think is just a lovely, lovely final quote. I just, I mean, this is my, my brain is on fire from everything you've been saying, and I just want to thank you all Moon and Mansoor and to see and Heather Racko and Barry Shamia. And I am so looking forward to seeing Sonata's productions and Mona's production at the public theater. And I mean, I've been such a friend and ally to the vagrant for so long now. I'm just sort of so invested. And I cannot wait. And I'm taking 35 students to see the show. Yeah. Amazing, right. Okay. So, I just hope everyone who's on this call will be able to return for the next of today's panels, which is academia and the next generation moderated by Malik Nazar that starts at 11am Pacific time and 2pm Eastern time. And, and that you check in on the other events throughout today and tomorrow. Okay. It's very meaningful for us all to be together. So thank you so, so much. This meeting will be ended momentarily, but if you want to return for other panels you today, you need only click on the same link that you used earlier. And, you know, I hope everyone has a fine morning afternoon or evening, depending on where you are. And I'm to send you all my love. Thank you so much. Thank you, Catherine.