 need search terms that will lead them to your play. So it actually proves you to be as specific as possible in both representing yourself and also what your play is about. What will be things that you really want to produce. And then the other thing is there's a little bit, I guess it reminds me of sort of social media, where it's that people can read each other's plays, people can comment, people can recommend. I guess it's kind of like liking. So in one version of this, what if, I mean there are some API writers on there, but what if a whole bunch more joined, started reading each other's stuff, commented about it, and even if, you know, what if the theater is looking for this. My play might not be right for you, but guess what? I know a great writer who I also met at the conference, and they would be perfect people. This kind of networking could happen on their infrastructure, which they've already created. The other thing is something that Aguidian also works there, talked about, is they'd be more than happy to help us get the word out about things. For instance, if there were to be, for instance, an Asian-American equivalent of the Kilroy's. You all know what the Kilroy's is? Well, it's partly to address the disparity in gender, right, about plays they can produce. So it's specifically a list of plays written by women. Oh, okay, sorry. But you could have something of the equivalent that here's, you know, another underrepresented group. If you have any interest at all, here's a list, and it comes out, you know, every year. And of course that's something that is very easy for the media to pick up. It's something very easy for NMPN itself to sort of post about, or talk about. It's, right, those sort of sound bites. So that's another way to use the existing infrastructure and sort of piggyback on it, and again, help all API writers to really get their work out so that they can find the low counts. And then some of them might be very unlikely. It might not be the obvious places that decide, you know what, diversity is in the zeitgeist right now. We want to do something, but where do we find the play? Chef, do you know the National New Play Network? In its inception, in its original mission statement, was it conceived as an organization or as a model to serve playwrights primarily, to serve also, I mean, like, who is it, like, who does it serve? I think the mission come, and again, I don't want to speak for them, but it's writers first. They were talking about, you know, development, hell, and those things, and how do people, you know, who aren't going to be able to get their work out there. And then, but it's also helping theaters and writers to connect with each other, and that's theaters of all different levels and all different. Right, so the folks that I brought alongside me here are directors and producers and writers, and I had them think a little bit about the needs and the challenges that they face in their various capacities when thinking about new work, when writing new play, when looking for new stuff. So I was wondering if any of you just want to kind of kickstart the conversation around what it is that you find challenging, but what it is that you do? I know, speaking, using my producer's head, is just trying to, again, trying to find the, trying to find the scripts that fit our mission for our particular group. As, you know, as we all know, we all have specific missions, you know, for our whole organizations. It's not one size fits all for Asian American theaters. For, for corporal productions, we look specifically for genre fiction, horror, science fiction, steampunk, or the, you know, the sort of the big, larger in life characters, literature, the fantastic would have you. That's very difficult to find, you know, you know, in general, and even more difficult to find among Asian American authors. I had to know people. Yeah. So how do you find this stuff? I have to go ask people, hey, Prings, do you have a, your particular script? Oh, it's a, Karla, do you have something that you, you know, that fits in these particular, or we say, a Maggie, write us something, please. So I think it's, it'd be a lot easier for us to be able to under script, if it was out there, there was a little bit of database and a bit of descriptor to say, what's the play about? I mean, it's like, if we're looking at, you know, roles of descriptions of play, I, our folks will take a look, it won't be good, good. I know what I'm looking at. Right. Before I move on, I just kind of want to get a feel for the room. So how many, how many do you identify as playwrights? Just so I get playwrights, directors, great producers, actors, traumaturgs, academics, designers, designers. My theater company in Los Angeles specializes in site specific site responsive work. And so it is challenging to find a play that fits our model. A different sort of model and not just that, that putting the play in a specific location illuminates dramaturgically, right? The play is not just giving it for the play. So it can be very difficult. And so we do have a writer's group to help develop in the hopes that we can develop work that can be produced by the company. But we're also finding that we're producing work that we still don't feel is right for our company. And we want to put in a theater. So we're also we're actually in the midst of trying to figure out if perhaps even our mission statement is a comedy, the kind of work that we do want to be doing. And then on the flip side, I feel like as a director, the play has already been found. Let's hear from Andrew. And then we'll start opening it up to discuss further. Sure. Andrew has a playwright yet. As a playwright yet, a very unique perspective. I guess so. So I'm a member of the NPX. And I think it's, I think the idea is great. I haven't gotten any, any work on from it yet. But I'm also I also can probably be more active on it. So as a, you know, an Asian American playwright, my work was kind of caught in that my plays that not all of my plays have Asian characters in them. And then my plays that do have Asian characters, you know, more Japanese American characters, because that's what I have also have. They're also multiracial, right? And that comes from my fact that my family is Japanese, white, black, and Latino. Although we're looking at them, you won't guess that. So play have been developing this past year. It's about two Japanese Peruvian siblings. There's an Afro Peruvian character, and there's an Indigenous Aymara, not, right? And director has told me, she said, the African American director, she said, that in and of itself, that cast list is a obstacle to getting produced. Because we don't, in the United States, we view the United States as being the only diverse country. Because it's an unspoken assumption, right? My one Japanese American family drama also has one African American character and one Mexican character. And so I, and I'm really interested in cross racial interactions and dialogues that don't involve Asian people. And I, because I feel like multiculturalism in this country is always Asian white, black, white, Native white, and Latino white, right? Et cetera. And so I, I feel like I have some of those, for those plays in particular, I sometimes have trouble finding homes. And then for the plays I write, I don't have Asian characters in them. People think, well, why are you writing this book? But it's exactly for all of those reasons that I as a producer have commissioned Andrew. I found him, there are various network of people, you know, asking around, I need this. There must be a better way. But let me, let me, let me turn the exact same question on to you all. What are some of the challenges that you, you face in your various artistic capacities? What needs do you, do you have that you don't see being fulfilled? Does anybody want to continue this conversation? I mean, specifically, in terms of finding new plays or in the context of new play, before we kind of get deeper into this conversation. Nicholas, I work with a theater company called Artisette playing Los Angeles. And as a producer, finding new plays is hard because we're a smaller company, we're a younger company and we don't necessarily have relationships with a lot of agents who will send us things that we want. So what I find is I have to look for them. And it's hard because like, the only Asian people who write plays that the world will let us know about are like Chilling a Choe or whatever. And like, that's not what we do. We're starting to notice more and like who's emerging, where people can benefit from production or reading by a smaller company, like having to find those people. And it's like, when the killer always comes out, I have to like, control F and just type in like random Asian names that are like the obvious thing, hoping something comes up. That's my best job, you know. So it's like, how do I do that? Or like you said, like someone sent this or whatever. I find for me, I work at Southwest Repertory for my full-time job in the department and I can go downstairs to the literary department and be like, Hey, who are you reading? Who is Asian that might not be right for this theater, because it's about theater. But like, who could work for me? Or like, what was something weird you like? So like, I can do that sometimes, but like, not everyone has that. So you think a sort of like a larger work theater has more resources? Yeah, yeah, even though you've been around for three, four, five years. Yeah. And I don't know, it's also, at least first on our website, maybe it's something that I can change, but we don't solicit submissions. Maybe I hope in the next few things make to us, because also I consider myself clarinet too, right? And I do see companies to send clothes to, but some companies, it's like, Oh, I can perfect for you based on your mission. And maybe you're like ethnic or Asian, but it's like, Oh, it doesn't look like you want anything from the outside world. And it's like, so it's like, Oh, where do I go? Right. You know, picking back on that, I mean, I was wondering if I could talk to Rick a little bit just because, you know, this is Rick Shiyomi, the grand theater mover for every 20 years. But you've seen theater move from a small company to to a larger company, right? So I'm wondering if I'm wondering if you sort of face the same challenges when you were a smaller company as you did as you told? Yeah, I just I'd actually like to make several comments in relation to that. But to answer yours. Um, yeah, we started in the 1990s. And so I think it was kind of a different time, in a way, where the playwrights like Philip and Katanda and David Wong and Billy Houston, there were there were more a set of prominent writers. And so in some ways, we were trying to do that. But at the same time, we were trying to develop local playwrights because so many times. So we gave a lot of opportunities to first time playwrights, just locally development, and oftentimes actors who who started to get into playwright kind of thing, or even local community people that started to get into playwrights. So so so we went that route. So in some ways, similar to you just cultivating contacts and people locally. But I didn't want to comment about a couple other things. One is the it's interesting because I'm part of a development project funded through the Dorstuk Foundation, building demand for the arts. And the first grant I got through that with Interact Theater in Philadelphia, was to develop a kind of Asian American presence and demand for Asian American theater in Philadelphia, which sort of had not really existed there. And one of the things we developed was a database of Asian American plays. But in some in many ways, because Interact is on that new play network thing, we actually put a notice there and got a bunch of the plays from there. And so in some ways, it was a duplication of resources. But at the same time, it was meant for the local Philadelphia theater community. And so we were really were kind of like specifically pulling those plays and making those plays available to the local Philadelphia theater companies, all of which were non Asian American, in that sense, but sort of beginning to through our cultivation beginning to show an interest in Asian American theater. So there was that. But I just want to comment also, though, that the new play network that list of that database is actually not just new plays. It's actually just like all those playwrights have all of their plays on there. So it's not just new plays, in that sense, I think. Oftentimes, they are newer plays. But you know, because because I'm not sure what the agreement is, because sometimes a playwright has an agreement with Sam or French or somebody else, so that they can't make those plays available on that database, in a sense. I believe that you can post as many plays as you want, whether produced or not produced, as long as it's specified. But you can put as many as you want and distribute so that people will be fine. But it just has to be clear what would be a local theater, what wouldn't. If you want to be part of the rollable premier program, of course, that has to be, because that comes with the grant. But no, it's not as exclusive to other exposes. And then the last comment, which was Andrew, was that I've gone in for a number of years now, not a long time, but several years. And in an odd way, interestingly enough, when I was the Artistic Director of Blue Performing Arts, his plays were a little bit problematic, because where our priority was Asian American, almost purely Asian American, and the sort of access was really Asian American white primarily, in a sense. And so, but I am recently started another company that's actually looking at the larger diversity, which is Latino, African American, Asian American. And so now suddenly, Andrew's work might be of more interest to us. You know, so because of this changing framework of my perspective, which is in fact new for me, is something that where I'm looking for a different type of play, in a sense. So I just want to make those comments. Oh, hi, I'm Jeffrey. And sort of my comments based off of Jeffrey Lama, playwright, director, and I'm also on the artistic staff at TheatreWorks in the South Bay area. And sort of, I guess, in sort of responding to what you were saying, Prince, in terms of different challenges that many of us, or at least I, approach, and I want to look at those of us, which I think is most of us that wear so many different hats, where I think that's where something like the kill roys and what those wonderful women have done, that's what makes that so powerful, because it's a way for us to sort of self-select and elevate the work that we're doing as a group, because of the fact that we're wearing so many hats, it sort of, it becomes a little difficult, like for my personal perspective, you know, I'll see an amazing play, an Asian American play, and I'll mention it at season selection at TheatreWorks. And it's great because more often than not, there's going to be a play that I've found that ends up on the main stage season. And I feel great because that's an Asian American person on the Lord stage. But there's also the aspect of, oh, I could have directed that somewhere else, which is a little disappointing, because I'm not at the point where I'm directing at the company that I work for full-time. Also, I try to represent myself as a playwright, and then, but then I'm someone who's at TheatreWorks, so every other playwright's like, hey, can you, can you show them my play to the people over there? And I'm like, well, I want to show them my play. You don't even show them my play. You know what I mean? So it's an interesting dichotomy where, you know, because of the fact that, you know, a lot of what we're talking about here at this conference, that Asian American Theatre and Asian American Theatre companies as organizations are relatively new, so many of us are still wearing so many hats. Like Nicholas saying, you know, he works at the marketing department at South Coast Rep, and he also runs a theatre company. And so it's sort of hard where it's like you have to both represent yourself in certain creative forms, and also we're trying to make it so we have representation at the larger theatres, but it does sort of, this might not be the right word, but it's sort of detrimental to your personal art in some ways because of the fact that you can't always vouch for yourself or advocate for yourself as a personal artist without being that person. Like, oh, they just want to talk about the stuff that they're doing as opposed to actually thinking about the organization as a whole. And so, and so it's, I sort of want to look at a way to help elevate each other while still allowing us to wear each other's hats. I think that's where we have to look out and read each other's work or look at the other stuff that we're doing so that way we don't have to put ourselves in those positions and we don't have to like say, you know what, I'm just only gonna run my small theatre company and I'm gonna work in a restaurant, you know, which some of us do and that's great, but I think that like, you know, coming from my perspective that's sort of a challenge that I don't know how to exactly approach a way to elevate. Yeah, I was actually gonna say the exact same thing. You literally took the words out of my mouth. You know, I'm on the side, I run a small Asian American theatre company, mostly to give opportunities, I'm sorry, to give opportunities to local Asian American artists. And, you know, and lots of times when we're looking for new work, I travel everywhere to go look at shows and do a lot of Google searches and have partnerships with a lot of larger organizations and get their leftover scripts. But, you know, and we like will produce a lot of playwrights' first plays, like Lorne's first play, Michael Glanko's first play, it actually usually always, I always look at theatre moves, seasons, all these ones are after they've produced it, but we do the Northwest premiere or the West Coast premiere. And then now they're pretty big-name people, so now us trying to, you know, get rights to do their plays, it's interesting. So wearing that hat, it's like talking with Lorne going, you know, I'd love to produce a new play, but then I'm wearing another hat where I'm looking at the larger art sector, I'm also the cultural partnerships manager for the Office of Arts and Culture in Seattle, but, and I also want to support Lorne as a playwright, knowing like, and this is the conversation I have with her and a lot of other playwrights that we've developed, like Michael, where I'll actually say I would love to produce it under my Monarchist's productions, but if I can help you get it at the rep or some larger theaters, I want to help you do that because that creates greater visibility for this playwright and opportunities for our artists to work on those stages, but then I'm having this conundrum within myself, but then do I really want to elevate those theaters by giving our best artists over there, but at the same time I know for their careers, that's the game changer, so it is a huge struggle I have daily in trying to wear both my hats and honor the legitimacy of both. I also wonder if, I don't know if this is totally changing the point, but there's the thought of by nature of sort of what Jeff and I were talking about outside of this, the inherent structure of the way new play development happens in the country, without anyone saying it out loud, we're basically competing with each other. All the playwrights in this room, we're competing with each other. We're all at the O'Neill. It's very like maybe they'll have more than one Asian American playwright in the O' Neill as a whole, but it's very rare you'll have more than one of us within one of the weeks. We're all sort of competing for a spot, so I wonder if, you know, if it helps us, if we have, again, self selecting ourselves, a festival where it's an Asian American play festival, sort of like what we're doing here, we have the readings here, but it's something where it's presented and the rest of the country, they are looking for plays. They want to find these plays and it's like if we can help them and be like, hey, we're like the grad school of Asian American music. We have, we're the gatekeepers here, take a look at these people every year. Here's the people that you should take a look at. Is that, is that not the idea of what this festival, the festival part of this contest supposed to be? I do think so, but at the same time, it's not only but a predominantly, most of us are Asian Americans at this conference, right? So I think that in sort of like what we were talking about where it's two fold words, we want to be able to share our work with each other and be able to produce our own work, but at the same time, I think it's important that we try and make ourselves part of just theater in general. So I think that there's not going to be a lot of just more predominantly white theaters coming to watch the readings that are happening at the festival. You're actually building up that idea that you think of. At this festival, it's great. And I think definitely the pieces that are being shown here, what's been great is OSF has done a really good job in trying to make sure that the audiences are coming to see their main stage shows or coming to see the festival pieces, too. So in terms of audience, I think that's great. But maybe where we should be organizing is the next time there's a TCG conference or of Atters Theatre Ruinville where there is some existing festival structure where we can actually literally pitch a tent right across the street at that same time and be showcasing our work there, right? Because otherwise at these festivals, it does end up kind of being the people who are already part of this consortium, which is great. I love seeing when you work here. But if we want to kind of open it up, we need to look at other places to do this. Yeah, I can actually, I want to speak about that because actually what you're saying is what we aimed to do. I don't know if we did it and it's the first time. But there's a couple of different things. Traditionally, there's been the conference and then the festival and then they were put together. And that, yes, was for our community to share the work and to see each other's work and also to share our work with the audiences in that area. The two things that are different about this one was, A, we partnered with the regional theater, right? So we brought it to OSF and then this reading series is new. And that was actually modeled off of, again, the Latinx communities, Carnival, where they had a conference and then they had three days of reading because the thing that we hear from literary managers and all those folks is they go to festivals. They want to go to some place where they can in a concentrated capacity see that. So that is, I mean, if you come for the next three days, you can see up to like 15 Asian-American works in three days. So we tried to do that. What I don't think we were successful at is broaching the larger community. We hoped that using OSF as a structure would help, but what's happening is we're bringing people and they're seeing a lot of the OSF shows and they're not seeing our work. So I think that's the next step we have to do. And I like Cathy's idea. I think it's also hard when you're already at TCG, it's a fact. So I think what we have to do is we have to put a stake and say, this is us and all of the plays that we are presenting here are going to be packaged and set. You know what I mean? And they were programmed broadly in terms of size, in terms of scale, in terms of all that. So no regional theater artists could ever, you know, artists could ever say, I don't know any Asian plays or no one's writing plays for my level of theater, whatever that means or whatever. So we can do that. And then what Latino Latinx community did with Carnival was they also committed all of those shows would get production. I think it's going in, 70% of them had committed to productions for the reading and they now since have all, I think almost 100%. And so that's the other thing that they charged their community with and that we are doing also with these readings. I think at least three of them coming in have productions committed already and we're hoping the other two will also. So I think, but we can't all do it like, we need each other's help and we gotta push, right? So that's what I was telling. I was like, everyone who's coming needs to bring five other lit managers with them from PWIs. You know what I mean? That's the way it's gonna happen. So in terms of, and I think that's what this conversation is. So we would love to hear other models also, right? Like of how we can continue to do that, how we can partner to raise that profile. But I think there's a, something in having a concentration. Louis travels a lot and sees a ton, right? And it's when you can see a lot in a short period of time that draws and there's so many festivals now. So you have to find a niche as to how you're drawing people. For the video record that was, Sneha, this side, you know what I'm saying? Okay. Do we have something over here? I have a lot. Yes. You know, like just building off of what you're saying about where you have like the new play network and like all like calibrations or whatever. And then what you're saying with like the festival and these readings. And I feel like, I don't even know, the expenses literally just came to me with like an idea of kind of doing like that festival and that list of saying here's who we are as like producers, artists, directors, literatures, voting and kind of saying, these are the places that we like this year. And then what if there was a way, because every company mostly does some form of a reading thing and then building off that like rolling or anything. What if we just roll those plays through our states and our cities where we as smaller companies do have connections to the larger theaters that we can bring them there. And it seems like that's an easier way to get people to pay attention to us at their level instead of having passing people like fly here. I don't know about that, but I just thought about that. The thing with the Kill Royce list, I would put it out here is if someone is willing to commit to that, I think, like, you know, I think when I was a literary manager, I talked a lot about doing that. And then it take, you know, that Kill Royce list, it looks easy, but it took, it takes so much time and effort and energy. So we either have to find funding to do it or someone has to almost full time, you know what I mean? Commit to leading that mantle and we support. But it's a bandwidth thing. I mean, that's what we keep talking about. So we have to either collectively say what you're gonna do, you know what I mean? Because, you know, we're happy to do that. I'm willing to commit East West players to help to create, give a platform and visibility to that. But we need support. We need someone to create the surveys and to do the outreach and to read the scripts and to contact the playwright to get the bios and create the website. So I think we just have to, that's what we have to think about and yeah, someone has to take charge. Playwrights? So my name's Jenna Rogers. I'm with Chromatic Theater. I also work with Fujin Theater in the past, I'm up in Canada. Fujin, a few months ago, launched the 49 list, which was 49 Plays by Women of Color, completely modeled out of the Colorize list. And we're in talks with Woody and to try and connect to the NNPN network just so that our playwrights have profiles. But some of our playwrights, these women of color have been like, we don't want profiles on this American network. And that's an interesting conversation, but I can talk to anyone who's interested in the models of how we did that. We have five readers, for example. We're all women of color. And David Eaves, the director of Fujin, kind of got us all to do it and he just said where he just paid us all a flat fee and it took us a year. And we probably read a few hundred Plays. But from our work in the industry, especially the two senior people, like senior artists had already seen versions of those plays. So having them kind of captain the work took a lot of the load off in that, we were trying to cross-read and make sure these three of the five jurors had read everything. But to have two senior members of the community who had already been exposed to do a lot of the work actually helped with that substantially. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about that, if that's interesting. But I'm also just kind of ruminating on new plays and networking and one of the things that I found really useful in Ontario. So we have three levels of funding, Federal, Provincial, Municipal. And in Ontario, at the provincial level, they have this thing called the Theater Creators Reserve. And from about 2000 to 2014, we had an equity-specific fund that was put out nationally to try and increase work by diverse artists in Canada. And then it closed in 2014 because equity would be achieved. But there's more changes happening at the funding level. But it was sort of a two, three-year gap where we were like, what the hell are all the things that came out of that? Is that Ontario has an infrastructure called the Theater Creators Reserve in which what they do is they offer, and I think this is maybe kind of like re-granting, but I don't understand what re-granting is, so I might be really wrong. But they, you as a company would write to the provincial arts body about why your community deserves creative support and you would be given a small pocket of money, say like $10,000 that you could grant in micro grants to your community. And so that's how we started to build an infrastructure for playwrights. It was that the larger funder acknowledged that the company could be responsible for finding creators who could represent their community. So that meant as like an Asian, Canadian theater company, who Jen was able to give out like X amount of dollars a year to playwrights for play development. So we could, you could write a two-page pitch to us. And we could say that's great, here's two grand, hope it covers some rent. Happy writing. And that's it, it's like no strings attached. But it also lets us keep tabs on a couple of projects that are going on, which helps us know what's gonna happen later. And I don't know if that's useful, but I have always found that program really one of the best ones I've ever seen. I just wanna take a moment, can we clarify sort of the model of the Kilroy's and how they function, so if Jeff or Jennifer is failed to do that. There's not like a reading committee that's actually put together, right? This is just a group of like litter-man participants throughout the country who are poll nominative or submit to be readers. Well, some ad hoc group of women who then reach out to their network writer, plays written by women that they have identified be right for their theater, but they've made an impression on them. And then the repeat hits they get, get. Tell them in terms of year in order they have to call it might be a reader, so like they're user. Well, we had a comment over here. I was not quite sure. Oh, and who are you? Nancy. My first play was produced by the Asian-American Theater workshop in San Francisco in the early 80s, and I directed it. And then in 87, we were lucky to become, I mean somehow we accidentally became storytellers. And from that point on, we've always then written our own material. We perform our own material. We have over 100 pieces that we perform with folk tales and mythology and Asian-American pieces as well. Anywhere we put minutes to over an hour. And, but we've always performed it ourselves. So now I'm getting old and I don't know how do I get my workout anyway now and let someone else do it. So that's my biggest challenge right now. But on the other hand, because we've always been able to perform and do our own work and write and became part of the storytelling circuit, we've always been able to perform our stuff. And not in an Asian community, but in the general mostly white community. So, they have a conference. They have a network. So I mean, I know Kata has a network, but they have it so all year, it's all the time. They only produce their workshop, their conference every other year as well. They have a festival afterwards or during. And it seems to work so that in between, there's this, what you were all talking about, how you could continue to be somehow a conduit for membership and provide a newsletter. I mean, I don't know because I'm brand new to Kata, but so I don't know if there are models out there where they really support their communities. Anyone wants to talk about or ask about the Storytelling Network organization. They're doing a pretty good job of supporting. Also, I'm turning about challenges for other models. Yes, sir. So my name is Alex Hazlitch. I'm a producer with Peter Diaspora in Portland. I'm also a playwright on my own. I only recently finished my first full-length play and it's still not to the point where I feel comfortable sending that to everybody, but I'm also a member of a very loosely knit playwriting collective in Portland called PDX Playwrights. And I'm not sure. By show of hands, is anybody here familiar with Fertile Ground Festival? Okay, a couple of you. So Fertile Ground Festival is a festival of new works that happens every January in Portland and it's city-wide. Almost all the theaters get involved. There are a lot of art studios as well that convert their space into small black box stages. And so PDX Playwrights, this group that I'm also a part of, they will reserve this space called Hip Bone Studios for about a week and a half. And everybody who has brought in a play two PDX Playwrights for workshopping, we meet bi-monthly, has the option of co-producing a stage reading of their play there. And it strikes me that if we're looking to do kind of a centralized location with a festival of new works, maybe a co-production model might be a good way of doing it as well. You know, as opposed to just being jury even selected that way, but try to bring that up. Also think we should look at outside. I think like Netflix is great for like how you get lost in that little like rabbit hole of if you like this, you'll like these five things. And then you click on that and there's like, so that I think if we interlace our work in a connected, that is also helpful because it can be overwhelming just to have a pile of scripts and things like that. But it's helpful to know, oh, I really loved Prince's comedy here. Now I can read Jennifer Chang's comedy, and I can read you, you know. I'm wondering how we can utilize new technology to connect our work to each other, but also to get those recommendations and their role in the story. I wonder if, this is gonna be an awful idea, but the documentation of readings, how much that helps, you know? Or like video documentation of readings. Or I mean the podcast, we have some of that hard to get right, or video that like, really important to read. Or you link to other people's pages. You link to other people's pages and that. So this is actually an idea that actually I've been kind of playing with, talking to Marvin from a collaboration. They've been producing a number of podcasts that are kind of making it out through their networks. They are collaborations which kind of mostly focus on the music industry throughout the country. But seeing if there is interest in all the ways that we could do kind of podcast readings. And initially I was kind of thinking in terms of more of, you know, classic canon, because I'm very interested in, it's like, you know, how many, you know, next generation or new Asian American artists have never gotten to see a production of a social dance or a brush off the boat or, you know, any of these, you know, any of Alina's work or whatnot. And in terms of, you know, both kind of unifying our movement, you know, it's like, I mean, you can go back and go, okay, you know, August Wilson, right? Or, you know, the Capesino's, right? And that legacy kind of feeds into, you know, who is the next every block, right? So that's something I'm also interested in in terms of, okay, can we document, can we podcast, and just have these available? And if it's for new playwrights too, suddenly, you know, okay, now I've heard a staged greeting of She Kills Monsters and Queen Wynne's, you know, The Viet Gan is opening up in New York right now, right? And I can go and buy an AGG, you know, and it opens up this whole, you know, leveraging the whole kind of digital revolution and the mass audience that should access from that. Of course, the question is, how do you convince agents and managers, you know, to let that happen? You know, there's also a lot of playwrights who don't have agents around here. Yeah, who could really benefit from that and would let you just do it. And I think if we are talking new plays and you want to do a podcast like that, if you focus it on new plays, like, it'd be like so beneficial to a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to do anything. And also potentially reach a whole new audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very important to the podcast and YouTube and whatnot, but it's relatively easier to literally do it. Yeah. You know, like another thing we're using, like, for ourselves up, and I think that, which is said with the new play exchange, is like if we're reading things, we should recommend our works on that page. If we're there, it's like, there's a feature to recommend a play, because if someone's looking for a play and they read a blur, they're also reading 10 other plurals, like which one do they choose? And if there's a recommendation underneath their play, that has like snails saying, oh, this play was good for the best and whatnot, it's gonna like help the favor go on your side, because someone recommended it. So I think like, we are reading, and we wanna help lift ourselves up, and you're on there, we should recommend each other and our works. Again, with the storytelling conference, we are now going to be working with, yeah, Nancy, who is trade winds in Kansas City. So it's a way of getting the Asian, because the storytelling network wants to diversify more. They want their conferences to have more diversity, so we're working with Mandi to bring them into the conference somehow. Somehow we're gonna make it more Asian, and so there's always the, when you partner with an organization, that you actually create a mutual benefit. So like I know you were, you're always hoping for more of the general public to come to this step, but it hasn't worked as much as you'd want it, right? Is that what you said? I think it's snail snails. Yeah, yeah. So there's somehow that there's a different kind of contract you have to have that really supports that the general public comes more to this, and for us it's having our general public become more involved with the Asian. Yeah, I think you can also look at the other thing that is the class, class, class track. The gym membership thing where you can go to, you buy a pass and you can go to multiple gyms to go to classes at that, and I'm wondering if we need to start banding, in cities where possible, start banding together as theaters, particularly of color and say, for $10 a month or for $50, you now have membership to all theaters of color, and you can hit a show at each one each month or something like that, so that we're collectively raising our visibility and notice, you know what I mean? Or it's like an airline thing. You know what I mean? And it's by, oh, I love this theater, and if this is in league with it, then I trust, you know what I mean? But I think again, is how can we connect to each other more, and help each other's work and support and lift it this way? I'm gonna say that last year in Seattle, let me see, a bunch of theaters of color did a thing called Spicebox Passport. What was it called? Spicebox Passport, and basically we listed all the productions with the cast of 50% more of people of color, and said that you get a discount to going to these if you get a code word from the production, if you want to take it to one, you get a discount to the others. I'm not sure how well it worked, as far as ticket sales concerned, because I think that it's sold to people who are already interested. On the other hand, we certainly got a lot of interest from people outside. So it's like, they might have just said, I don't care about the discount, but I do have a list of shows I can see now. So putting that out there. I also wanna sort of piggybacking on this idea. Sort of, I don't know, I think it came up to me. What if it was one of those things where there was a network of theaters locally that I don't know, identified themselves as let's say theaters of color, and all of their subscribers, they created like one universal pass, right? Where all of their subscribers, they got one pass in addition to it, and I said, here's the list of theaters, you get one pair of comps to see one show at any of these theaters. Just to sort of expand it, they don't, these are people that are already clearly interested in a certain type of theater, and it sort of encourages them to go somewhere else. And then maybe you get a new subscriber at another theater, where you get at least single ticket sales at another theater. But yeah, sort of just, it's just an expansion of the idea that you guys are really caught up in. Oh, oh, from a while ago. No, it's just picking up on Snail's side. I'm sorry, Michael Bateman from A Noise Within in LA. Picking up on Snail's idea about leveraging technology, to look at the idea of this, you know, of having a place where you can go and look at many different scripts, makes me think of a LinkedIn model where you can, where you know, if you read a bunch of plays, you can say, I really like that one, and then it does build up, you know, builds up like 20, 30, 50 people liked that play or, you know, tagged it in that way, means that you have people vouching for you, you know, on that site, help you navigate it. Also, I just wanna bring up that idea of commissioning. I know there's a lot of problems with commissioning, and a lot of, but at the same time, I think it's, there are many different ways of doing it. And I think the re-grinding is one system. When I was at move, we had a similar system of starting out with small amounts to several people and then selecting from that the development of the next sort of, maybe we gave small amounts to four different artists, and then of those two of them, we then moved on looking at that, and then we ended up producing one of them kind of thing. So there's different models for that kind of commissioning, I think that can be very useful. And certainly, I'm not sure what the playwright gets out of the role of Premiere other than the production. Do they get a commissioning fee out of that, or is it just that the producing companies get a certain stipend? Because I know that the companies get a certain stipend, it would be fine. If you, a bunch of you, are small out of the role of Premiere program, it is granted the money, and in split goes to the production, and I can't remember the exact percent of music that went out, but it benefits both, if you're part of that. Part of that role of Premiere. At least a few years ago, it was $21,000 that was split evenly amongst minimum three theaters, at least two, which have to be NNPN partners. And I think at least one has to be a core partner. I don't think there's a playwright who's for the people. But they get the royalties. Yeah, or each of the productions, okay, great. Anybody else wanna chime in that we haven't heard from? Yeah, you have it, it's only a digital one. Well, I can wait for some of us. Well, why don't you go ahead? Well, just a couple ideas about going back and saying it was after the role of Premiere. So I've been participating for the last couple of years in a national study sponsored premiere on the bit of theater development in New York called Triple Play, and the playwright's gonna be audience members to get ideas about their views and opinions about New York. And in general, there's not much of a distinction amongst most theater-growing audiences as to what the new play is. And they definitely don't care about the title or the term role premiere. That is more for foundations. Yep. And some of them even said that some audience members, well, I don't wanna see it play its very first production. They want it to be battle field tested, right? But in terms of the critical second, third productions, playwrights around, which is a theater in New York, has what they do, they support the second productions of their plays that they premiere by trying to find a theater that will do the second production and they give some money to support the second production of the play that they premiere. And then the National Performance Network, their commissioning program, Creation Fund, you grant taste and qualify for something called the fourth fund, I believe that's what it's called, which is the link to the support of subsequent production of the commission work once it's created. And when I was at Cuttyville, I was extremely blessed to be full-time as a playwright and, you know, commissioning is, like all playwrights from commissions, probably more, especially when we're earlier, I'm curious, but then how many commissions actually get produced? So I really, I think all playwrights would read that. A production commitment, commitment to production with a commission is an ideal situation along with the development process with one primary development partner. And, you know, just with Cuttyville, I was a Rob Miller as a director committed to producing my playwright misery about Donald Rumsfeld and Frederick Douglass before I had ever written a word of it. And so I didn't have to search and go from director to director to institution to institution. And I'm wondering to what extent that develop, commissioning to production could be something that at least in this community could be actually very compressed. That comes with its own challenges too, right? Oh, sure. And I may have missed this first part, but commissioning is a very, there's only a very few theaters in this country that have the funding and resources and they're predominantly white institutions, right? Most of that money that goes towards commissioning that comes from other places, none of our theaters are getting that money, right? When we commission, we're commissioning out of our theaters and pockets. So like there's a number of funds out there, but we either don't get those monies or we're traditionally excluded. So if you look, and OSF is a primary, it's a great example of a commissioning program and they've gotten a lot of money, but the foundations have made it that we can't get access to those funds. So that I think is a problem because I will say that when we commission and Rick's theater commissions and when we commission and all that, we're commissioning and we're producing because we can only commission once, right? We can commission one player in a year. So you're gonna bet that we're gonna, you know what I mean? And so that is one thing that we do, I will say for almost every content member theater, every theater, color, every Asian American theater, because we can commission so few times and we have to fight so hard to get that money that we do produce it or we'll work for it or put it in the pipeline. So that is something I think we're proud of, but I think there is a huge barrier to theaters that make basically two million and less in access to funds towards commissioning. And so that's a huge structural inequity that we have to, because I think, yeah, look at Vietnam, look at these amazing plays. They're itself, you know what I mean? And then what's happening is we've often given those playwrights their first break and now I love Lauren, but we can't afford her or King of the East, you know, is at the KDT versus East, you know? So I think that's, and it's great that they are finding that, but that is a structural inequity that we have to start speaking out against because of the way those programs are, because then they're also then just commissioning playwrights that they, you know what I mean? That they know and things like that. So, yeah. I have a question. So when you've already written the play and it's already been introduced, could you produce yourself if someone else produced it? Does it help to workshop it somewhere? And does that then help you get known? You know where you can do a writing retreat at some place where you get to read it with other people and where you workshop it somewhere, does that, would that help get you a work out? I think the most relevant program works, so I don't know a place that I've already produced go on to some other kind of workshop for development. Well, because there's always rewrites. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I mean, you'll find very often playwrights will be very careful about how they allow the players to build their play, right? I mean, at the lower playhouse, we can have a new play development program and we actually, we call it, oh shoot, what was the program called? Play. Yeah, the, so basically the lower playhouse would do these workshops in new places. The idea was that the press was not invited so that you couldn't say it was a world premiere, but these were basically fully reviewed. Oh, a workshop. Yeah. The workshop. The workshop. Well, they had a few buzzword names, too, I can't remember. But they would do like a couple of these every year. But, Well, page to say. Page to say, thank you, there it was. See, you can't see buzzword names. But yeah, so they wouldn't invite critics. They would take audience input and they would actually do basically a long run. Like a full run, but the rewrite process, like, it's like tech never ended. It's pretty, it's horrible. And the challenge of a lot of, well, not all, some of those programs got to the point where a lot of large institutions, we have a lot of resources, it was their diversity initiative where they get a lot of large foundation funded to support these programs and they could show and anyone said, oh, you're not diversity enough. Oh, here, we've got, like, we're developing these playwrights over here, but the percentage of those playwrights ever reaching full production that got full support was, I don't know the stats, but it was minuscule. It was, you know, one, two percent, if that. So it became like this thing, like if you got developed there, then it was never gonna ever get produced anywhere else or get a full production before in a world premiere. So it was a very challenging thing and then you kind of get isolated just into that route of all Asian-American plays are workshopped to death in some cases everywhere. And the number of full productions is not there. Yeah, I think that, I mean, there were the programs like the CTG lab that- Arc taper? Yeah, and Arc taper that, you know, none of them ever saw production at end of Arc taper. However, all of the artists that got to work there suddenly had this great credits and they were able to use that to launch themselves for other things, right? But, yeah. I wanna make sure that we leave enough time to make things happen because, you know, oftentimes we get into these conversations and we just talk and talk and talk and then we go home, you know, do whatever we do. So why don't we just start talking about how we might start making some of this happen. Don't worry, we're not gonna like entrap you into like doing stuff that we do because we do. I think that's okay, entrap people. Okay, I'll Asian-gill you. It's on tape, everybody. I don't think that is gonna happen. I know everybody's busy and we're at full capacity but why don't we just talk like if we had somebody out there, not necessarily in here but out there, we had all the time in the world to help out on whatever it is that we wanted to do. You know, out of all the things that we've been talking about, I know that all of this stuff takes a lot of work but out of all that stuff relatively, what to you sounds like stuff that is a good starting point where it's like, oh, that seems relatively in the realm of all the stuff that we've been talking about. It's relatively easier to kind of get that off the ground and launch. And then I wanna talk about how we might go about doing that. So does anybody wanna start? Yeah, Andy. And we're just filling out what Snail said about how it's hard for organizations under $2 million budget size to get that those grants specifically for commissioning. I mean, that suggests the need for a conversation with arts film, arts philanthropic community to, that's a clear need, probably wouldn't be that too hard to fail given certain decisions or made in foundations. About having more access to that month. Yeah. Because if you're facing on budget size, you're automatically biased toward primarily white institutions. For commissioning programs with theaters of color. Exactly. Probably, there's a lot of things we were saying about grants. I almost suggest that CATA is actually perfectly set up to carry out that concept in a way that CATA already is a national network, that CATA already has, does these festivals and conferences that if they could get some commissioning funding as a part of this event even, so that playwrights who get readings here then get some kind of commissioning or to develop their plays or encourage the theater companies that are connected to CATA or that are a part of that work already to encourage them to offer some funding to them to produce so that rather than trying to invent another organization, yet another organization because we don't want to do, right? I feel like CATA is in the perfect position now that I'm not on the board anymore. It's in an, I feel like it's in a really good position because they've established over the last 10 years basically a track record of being able to do this next year. Me? Yeah, it could be a good one. It could be a good one. One of those things, one of those things. I'm like, it's okay, it's okay. Subway. Subway. Doctor, I changed my mind. I have to think it through more. Okay. Hi. Hi. Deep Tran, American Theater Magazine. I don't usually speak, but I feel like I should probably give because American Theater is about to write an article about the SOL project, that initiative from an independent group of Latino theater artists and they partnered with 12 off Broadway theaters to commit to producing, commissioning and producing world premieres of new Latinx works. And then they're planning on partnering with organizations around the country to do second and third productions of those works. And so something that high profile can get you the attention of places like The Times and American Theater. And they've already gotten buy-in from quite a number of theaters because of that profile. But these are not necessarily theaters of color, they're off-Broadway theaters. Not all theaters of color. Some are, some aren't. Thank you. Oh, and then Manuel Miranda gave him money. And do they have plans? No, they're all Latinx artists and so they're focused on creating a Latinx new play canon. To start with that, but I've been noticing a very similar navigating that field of workshops versus working towards the world premiere and who to contact and who to call because she's not on stage yet. She's probably there where she needs an agent but she hasn't gotten there yet. So I feel like that navigating that mind field and knowing where else to apply for. So you're talking specifically about the business side of playwriting as mentoring. Well, especially if we're talking about how you find these plays, also being able to be in touch with the right people so that your play can be found. Yeah, yeah. And I know it's with some of our lower writing, it's like, there's always a big question, how do you do the business end of thing and how do you write a criticism and how do you submit or who do you really want to submit? Who do you submit? Yeah, yeah. Holographers are sort of thinking about that sort of what the Cherry Lames playwriting mentorship program is like an API focused version of that where we're playwrights, we're emerging API playwrights get paired with established and then career API playwrights and or an organization and they just do workshops and they sort of elevate each other that way. Here do you know what these scholarships are? Scholarships to take are writing courses which I've been reading and workshops and then we have a mentorship the mentor that's also plugged in who reads the scripts and talks to playwrights and so David Henry Wong is one of ours and then we try to do a playwriter for us. I mean the other things that we're not talking about is how hard it is to have the transactional nation or the business for artists these days so that you're only as good as your last play, you work eight years on a play and you get a production and that's, you know what I mean? So I think sustainability for our artists is another larger question, right? How can we give them money just to live and to eat so they can do their work? The other thing that came up in the Beyond Orientalism thing is for us to also think outside the box so that a lot of these things are great models but they're either reactionary or they're taking up other traditions which is great, right? I think Latino comments and the Latinx movement has found something it's happened something in the last three years but what is something we can do that's separate and neat that also is reflective of our aesthetic and form, right? So what are things that are, you know, these are bad examples but like, should we do readings where everyone does bad examples? But, I'm just telling you but it's just that that everyone has to take out their shoes before they come into our readings. You know what I mean? Or is it a storytelling tradition and instead of doing this we just, you know what I mean? How can we let the art form or structures inform these movements? You know what I mean? So that it's all cohesive and it's reflective of what our Asian American aesthetic is what that means as well as I was saying but there's been a lot of talk about an app like no one has really quite have gone to the app development world so that's something that Randy over there has been pulled into but you know what I mean? Structure equals form or form equals structure something like that in storytelling so we can kind of look at that also As we continue to talk in this last 15 minutes I'm going to pass around a sheet of paper where you can put down your name and email address and we're not necessarily going to ask you to be a part of, to do anything just give us your information I might be a monster but let's be in touch about this right? So okay let's go on. Also this might be a bad idea but I'll just pop to my head I was thinking about you know that collection that comes out every like the great short American stories or something like that American short stories I wonder if that's sort of a thing where although not a perfect model it's something where you know if we identify certain API playwrights and have them and we have someone who's a curator to pick say eight short plays and that's something where we have different API theaters or theaters of color around the country that commits presenting that at their theater that's sort of, that's something that I don't think has been done before food, food is a big part I think food their team said make dumplings while we do stuff Yeah, it's sort of similar in the beyond orientalism form somebody had talked about the idea of Kilroy's type list because that's really helped boost the visibility of playwrights and their shows and maybe it is something similar and then also there was an idea that did come out of the Latinx forms that at a conference or something it's my understanding that everybody was given a thumb drive of 50 plays so you have access everybody has access to look at all these plays and recommend them and et cetera or you can call in and ask who do I need to talk to or have you been in this thing I don't know maybe that's just like the old Do we outsource this to the Philippines? Yeah, I've heard a lot of thinking about performing advisory boards that sort of thing and saying, hey, who do we talk to who can I talk to about this topic Like an advisor maybe It would be interesting if there's more of an investment for the writers I think it was in one of the punters who were saying yellow faces to invest in our own voices and writers but kind of like there's the minds writers and they're doing their work and all that work goes everywhere else but in our communities do we have something like that? For our writers where we can give them a safe space that's free not like, oh, I'm going to pay to take this class and now I'm broke Do we have places like that where we're giving them that safe space where they can work together and then work on each other the same way you're saying like the mentorship kind of thing where should I submit and they help those people to go to I wonder if that's a way to start like very easy and like ground level You know When you have a writer's group you don't have to pay any part of it it doesn't necessarily have to be you have to know somebody like Joe For me, like in Los Angeles like I got into like the white writers group and I was like that's weird You know what I mean? I was like where is it the one with the people who are like me you know I was like ideal is just something that came up and I was like oh I never know how that happened Universities are sometimes like an underutilized way to get your work out there whether it's through anthologies or thumb drive allowing your play to be taught can go a long way for students because they tend to recall the things they're taught in university and tend to go produce it in the real world and in terms of amplifying volume universities have such incredible power that's often forgotten and underestimated and I think like if you're looking at doing an annual anthology of eight plays or something like that it's the universities that's where it needs to go because you know and it might not be cashed with all Asians but the two Asians who remember doing that are going to be like oh shit they're going to buy that book and they're going to hold it and they're going to use it when they need audition material and when they go on to direct to produce universities are so important I'm just tagging on that too so so that how can we better reach the academia community granted we're competing with the academia panel right now right now but but I mean perhaps as a group right I mean in terms of permeating I mean even if it's just a group of ethnic studies I mean you know ethnic studies even necessarily engage with theater departments right theater departments rarely have Asian Americans on the top of the idea right yeah but so how do we engage with those either of those departments do people know about booking conferences because that's also a place you can always go to get to be on stage to do maybe seven minutes of your work and then all these presenters are there to say oh I'd like you to come to my theater or my school or like go ahead oh no no no it's okay go ahead no it was being there's other conferences and things like I don't know I know that LMDA this year was like painfully white and they were so embarrassed about it and they were like how do we fix this and I go and half of them are scholars you know I feel like if two people showed up and were like we got plays people would be so happy you say LMDA yeah oh so I'm Lily Tung-Crystal I'm the I'm with Regis Lotus theater company in San Francisco I think for us because we're we're a new theater company around for six years now but really producing regularly the last few years it would be helpful for us to have a group even like an email group with the other leaders of Asian American theater companies throughout the country because we're sort of producing I'm realizing in the last few years we've been producing in sort of Bay Area bubble like you know we did Chris Chet we premiered Chris Chet's month but then we premiered J.C. Lee's Crane but we didn't really talk to anybody else tell anybody else in the of the other Asian American theater communities I mean theaters in the country that we were doing this and so now I've met people here which is great like Kathy and Andy and Snehal so it's it would be helpful to have that communication open so that we can share the work that we're doing and even if this one email saying oh this year we're decided we know like this coming year we're doing what's that? Oh well yes I I ran a national email listserv Asian American theater Asian American theater it's sort of fallen this use as a way because I think people like you know this have moved to Facebook and all that but I think I want that listserv it's a larger listserv right of like a lot of different I mean it's sort of downsized in the last few years yeah but if people want to you know pick that up again and do more something to discussion or to the group or do we think that this email is kind of cumbersome half yeah I want to set up a version of that on Facebook where because a lot of other yeah it's a lot of other communities of color how we organize Facebook now I don't know I mean that's something we can do right now yeah that's very easy or the kind of I don't you kind of has a page is that a place kind of just made a group right or yeah Facebook yeah anyone want to run it well but the nature of the secret groups you don't really need anyone to run it it's really just it's a private discussion more or less and then we can invite anyone to do it who we want we have a we have a public one I think we can do it yeah another okay yeah we have a very specific group which is true yeah of the Asian community so that you know if I have a question about you know we're commissioning this work and if I have like a very specific question about how that would work or if you're interested in you know doing a world world with us like that could go out to just the leaders not to the entire everybody who's we all until we can get outside support if we just find way to each give ten dollars or something to raise money to fund one artist for a year or a month or six months like I'm wondering some of it is like it's going to take other people time to catch up right and so we have to kind of do it ourselves and so yeah I just and I think whoever that playwright or director is that we've given them money that they don't have to work for one month or two months they're going to be more than happy to dive into that work that you know what I mean to tell our stories and to engage with us so I'm wondering if we just start that somehow we just and we do it ourselves and come up with a you know like create our own yeah we get it we get it but like I don't think we can start because the number of our artists out there that need to support it is great we can get a critical match and whatever we can do you know it's funny like when we first started talking about this idea of a potential Asian American new playing network the funny thing that occurred to me is that unofficially that's been happening right like when Chinatown and Chinatown came out everyone did it within the two years back in the day when it was Sam I am everybody did Sam I am I mean you know so I mean it is really kind of like just how do we facilitate this dialogue yeah more streamlined back now what you guys said about like the confidence you want to do you do it I feel like you know like we are at a conference right now maybe this is not something you can do or maybe it is it's really easy or sometimes the next time but like if you have an open space and being like hey I wrote here's 10 minutes of something I wrote all of you guys are looking for to share your work what if because we had an open mic yesterday what if that was like that for writers and producers to be like oh that's a big voice that 10 minutes makes me want to read more and I feel like that's something easy because we are all here and this is the place where it's all bringing us together so like it's like a simple solution this morning at the plenary I was suggesting like in Seattle we have this event that's a speed dating between directors maybe it could be here at the festival the next festival between production companies and playwrights and that's what all the directors are supposed to be similar yeah the storytelling festival has regional tellers perform and then new voices so that there's always there's a place for all that so it's like very inclusive great well I want to thank everybody for spending the conversation today we have a lot to we had a lot to talk about a lot to think about um I'm going to try to uh in my zero free time to organize some of these thoughts um and try to make them a little different so reach out to everybody give you an opportunity to directly subscribe from whatever it is that I am creating but if you want to stay in the blue button on this particular conversation don't hit the unsubscribe button and maybe you can get involved somehow in in one of these or all of these initiatives that we've been talking about um but thank you so much and we'll see you around the festival okay