 Thanks so much David that was just terrific and I feel like really sets us off for this day today in a beautiful way. I'm just gonna take a few minutes not long at all to just share a little bit of the learning some of you many of you sent emails to us with some sort of key learning and it actually gets to a little bit of Jason's question a little bit of Louise you talking about being nomadic and I and I had the opportunity to in the first cohort actually visit all of the theaters and the playwrights except my flight was canceled to OSF three times but I so I met with Bill and Louise here but I did try I did try I just want you to know and and so I had a chance to meet with all the playwrights and theaters I had a chance to have really ongoing conversations with many of you and I wanted to just say a couple of things from my perspective and then share a couple of things that you shared which I put on my phone because I didn't have time to print this morning so the first being that this idea that the playwright is nomadic in some ways when we all sat together and conceived of this program it seemed like a no-brainer right so it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world what a writer wouldn't want a salary and health insurance and actually it wasn't the no-brainer in quite the way that we had anticipated it would be and I really want us to talk about that especially for the cohort that is new to this that in fact there's a reason and also I think one of the things that David's pointing to this morning is that there's been a dysfunction in our field and so the intervention into a dysfunction sometimes leads to the revelation that there's been dysfunction and that that there's work to be done to get past that right and so the biggest thing that I had an opportunity to see and I know those of us Mellon and myself as we talked about this was that there was immediately it didn't go as smoothly as we thought it might and and it was around the idea that playwrights have prided themselves on their nomad-like lifestyle their freelance lifestyle they have intentionally not chosen in many ways to be parts of institutions and and that it that artistic directors have prided themselves on the fact that they're parts of institutions and that they've given up things in their career to be parts of institutions and they were also asking the question of what was it to supervise a playwright or was supervision actually the right word is it just a colleague is it a staff member what does it really mean to be a staff member and so a lot of really I think hard questions arose from that I know I don't think Jack you would mind me saying that in your case it was really a complicated thing around what it was to bring somebody in in parity with all the other staff members and how that would happen and so we we so it was not a bad start but it was there were just a lot of questions that were raised about that relationship and what I saw from my vantage point was that the even though the playwright and the artistic director in most cases had long term connections and that's why they had been selected for the grant they had never been in this particular relationship with each other before so to acknowledge that this is a new relationship is I think a thing that we didn't you know adequately prepare everyone to consider ahead of time so I just put that out there for for you all to think a little bit about especially the new folks and then the other big learning from just my vantage point especially after yesterday I had a lot of learning yesterday which was that these residencies as especially as the first cohort was reporting out that these residencies took a lot of time to unfold and to germinate and to grow and so what I've seen is where there was like this kind of moment of like what are we doing that moment of what are we doing lasted in some cases a year or 18 months or two years that suddenly in this last year there's been a cohesion around the residencies and particularly for those of you who are here as you've renewed and incredible things are coming out of that out of the time right so and that's been really interesting to see so that these residencies take time to unfold that we will all need time and the new cohort will need a particular sense of time and the renewing cohort will need another kind of time to see what the next evolution is the other thing I wanted to just talk about was the way in which you all have reported back to us about your learning and what when when I went around and spoke with all of you at the get go the thing that we all talked about a few years back was that there would be three kinds of level of opportunity for transformation with a residency like this that there would be an opportunity obviously for personal transformation what would it mean to a writer to have the kind of stability and and connection and commitment to production that the residency would provide what would it mean for an artistic director to have a kind of partner in a resident playwright and how would that be personally transforming that there would also be institutional transformation what would it mean to bring an artist on staff and how would that be both bumpy and provocative and enriching to an institution I remember five minutes into the for the announcement of the first residency cohort someone on a staff of one of the theaters tweeting out I'm an artist on staff why can't I have a residency completely reasonable question actually right and so so that there would be implications to the institutions for what it would mean to bring somebody on specifically as an artist given that most of our theaters are staffed with all kinds of artists right doing all kinds of things and then the third kind of transformation that we talked about was transformation beyond the the individual and the institutional what could happen in our communities but because of this work I think the thing that kind of blew my mind yesterday as things were unfolding was just the incredible way in which there has been community transformation as a result of these that all every single theater found a way to take the opportunity and to expand its impact beyond the personal and the institutional and I think that's and that that sometimes happened in the last year in the last six months and but that all of the residencies have done that in some way so I feel like we really we hit on that I wanted to share a few things that I have in super tiny type which I'm going to try to read a few things that you all shared I'm not going to attribute names although you may know who but I just wanted to share some things you said about your own learning that I just pulled some things that I thought might be helpful the biggest thing and this is in the under I kind of put them under personal communal and then our institutional and communal learning this is under personal transformation the biggest thing that I have learned and I'm learning is how much I have to learn as an American citizen born into twin privileges of our country's biases of class and race as a professional charge with the curating of an annual conversation with our community I need to understand fully the vantage point from which I view the world and I need to listen deeply and without ego to the lessons of others vantage points and all of that was in my head as an intellectual idea and lives for me now in the messy and vulnerable space of an emotional reality that's what it meant to bring a playwright on staff for that artistic director another piece of learning the thing I was most afraid of losing my artistic focus not finding kindred spirits having to spend inordinate amounts of time explaining the complexities of race in America not only did not materialize but have ceased to worry me my and then under and then more under personal transformation my residency has clarified for me the why of every play I write and allowed me to take bigger risks and chances with theatricality and with the heart and reach of the play also writing for the production has made me a better writer it's taken away all sense of the mystique of an artistic process and made me feel useful like I have a job one that feels important and then again one more under personal transformation I think I learned how to be a producer and feel empowered to contribute to all aspects of the development and production of a play of mine this included the design of my own development process and working to hire the most important collaborators I participated in the entire design process and was involved in marketing fundraising and bringing in new audiences I felt like an equal partner in the process of bringing the peace to fruition which incidentally was a major formal risk for me and so I think that's both personal and institutional right I'm sure that institution was significantly changed by a playwright entering into the process in that kind of holistic way another in the world of institutional transformation humility I've gotten a crash course in how hard it is to run a theater how hard everyone works to keep the doors open and how hard the staff works to maintain the level of excellence that I see every day at the theater sitting in sitting in season planning meetings and understanding how much goes into picking the seven plays that will represent an artistic vision and also fit into the budget and also represent our community our artists and also challenge our audiences and also it's been overwhelming but in a critical way I am both despondent over the challenges that face every individual artist who hopes to have a lasting career in theater and also honored to have that in my life at least for the moment the experience of being on staff has made me so humble to be a playwright it hasn't made it easier to write but it has made it more important that I continue to write and then another insight another institutional insight I learned that there simply is no substitute for producing the work of a resident writer and then another institutional insight it's made me want to incorporate more artists more fully into every aspect of our organizational life another the playwrights active participation in all aspects of our organizational presenting developing marketing financing growth has added a new element and thought process to all of our discussions we now have we now have an artist sitting at the table bringing up new ideas and offering critical perspectives we may have overlooked in the past and then then yeah and so I feel like and then the community piece of it I just kind of wanted to leave a provocation there because most of you really covered that yesterday so I didn't want to repeat that most of the stuff that you wrote down were things that you said yesterday but the community piece of it the the the moment in my career I think that has most wowed me came out of a playwright residency and it was actually out of the first kind of pilot residency program that David headed at arena stage and it came from Karen Zacharias who David mentioned earlier Karen when we were at arena and actually Karen when we had our very first cohort meeting a few years ago actually was at that meeting I think via Skype and she really created in my mind like the model of like the ultimately great playwright residency and she had these development funds as you all have development funds and she decided that with her some of her money she used some of it for things like developing a play but with some of her money what she wanted to do is bring a bunch of Latino theater artists and put them in a room and just have a deep conversation for two days and see what happened and we talked about that and it was kind of an awkward time we were we were in the process of leaving arena to come here and I was like oh God Karen do you have to do that and she's like yes I absolutely have to do that and so she she insisted and I and and and she said and it's just I said well who would you know who do you want to bring and she's just people that I've been interested in like people that I've been interested in who I'm curious what they have to say and so we said we said yes we did that it was going to be I think we invited 15 people and eight showed up and those eight sat in a room with a haul around for really I don't think we were together more than you know a 24 36 hour stretch and they created a thing that is now called the Latino theater commons and in the in the convening they said they wanted to do four things they wanted to do a major gathering of Latino theater artists one that had not had not happened for 25 years they wanted to do that they wanted to create this convening and just create a massive group of Latino writers in a room and see what would come of that that they wanted to Jose Luis Valenzuela was in the room and he wanted to do a big festival of Latino plays he and he was calling it in in Quintro he wanted to do an in Quintro and encounter and then Lisa Portes they were just building this new space that Paul wanted to do a thing and she already had a name for it she wanted to do everybody had all their ideas right she wanted to do a carnival of new plays and read new plays and then Salak Rivas was there and he said I want to do an online journal I know the name of it it's called Cafe Onda we were like oh well you know everybody has like a plan and so we started that conversation haul around provided some infrastructure we can now say after last summer that every single one of those things happened every single one of those things happened that for someone who's had a 20-year career in the theater that just has blown my mind it has blown my mind and it came directly out of a visionary moment by a playwright in a playwright residency and so I just want and that movement is still going strong they're having their next convening in New York in November many other things are cropping coming up and growing out of that so I feel like one of the things we're going to challenge you to and I think in many ways this is what David was saying as well is really challenging you as a cohort what's the what's the what is this investment I feel like when you think about investment to impact Karen really gave us a sense of investment to impact so that's really all I have in terms of just a little report out the learning and how far off time am I oh no I'm great perfectly timed yeah pardon yeah yes you can actually tie it back to the documentation because one of the things that's different in this round and the playwrights all right and you guys all talked about it a little bit we're gonna talk about it more today the responsibility for documentation now falls in your hands and something that was special about that with Karen was that you guys were on site with them how around was embedded with the American Voices New Play Institute which was at arena stage which is what the five residencies were all a part of how around is not embedded in your theater they're not sitting next to you but the infrastructure is there and the documentation process is part of this and so I would say as you use your development funds or as you participate in these residency activities and things are happening bringing how around into the conversation is a way to nationalize to bring to the forefront to create movement and organize in ways that it's very difficult to do in isolation in your individual institutions and so I'm putting in a pitch for really trying to be in communication to the extent that it's not super onerous but is going to benefit and try to move the needle the way that David was talking about earlier it's helpful for all of us it's helpful for learning and enormous things can come out of it the LTC is a huge movement now and it's extraordinary to see that out of one conversation can come something so tremendous so it's my plea to you to try to keep the conversation lift the conversation out of your individual institutional context and into the commons thank you any any quick question come up from that I'm going to keep us moving unless there's just like a you know quick thought or question yeah Peter yes that's exactly what we're going to do then yep thanks Peter that's exactly what we're going to do great so next up we're going to do just a little shift in not really a shift but