 All right. Hello to people live in Philly and hello to our friends joining us on Zoom or on HowlRound. My name is Todd London. My pronouns are he and him. I am on the board of the Network of Ensemble Theaters. And today, a day we're calling Breakthrough, which is a big day of a lot of different events, is happening live from Philly and hybrid over Zoom and for part of the day over HowlRound and will be recorded. So people will be able to watch after the event as well. And this is our first experiment at NET in hybrid gathering. We've been online for the past two and a half years. And before that, we were never online. We were always in person in really specific locales with a deep connection to place. And so this is a big experiment for us. And you are already part of that experiment because we've started 15 minutes late while we got the technical stuff up and running. But we're really grateful to the tech wizards here at the neighborhood house in Philadelphia. And we'll be here all day. So there's a lot going on. Our executive director, Alicia Tonsik, was going to welcome everybody, but she's handling a lot of the logistics of this complicated day. And she'll be in from time to time during the day to talk about the day, to talk about NET, to welcome you. But I am your guy for the moment. And we're here for a really exciting starter event that is near and dear to my heart because it involves an old collaborator of mine, Jan Kohn Cruz, a colleague and a newer but deep collaborator of Jan's, Rad Pereira, who have written a book, collected a book, edited a book, written a book, researched a book with almost 100 interviews with people from many generations who are doing socially engaged work across the U.S. It's a profound book. I can't say I've finished it, but I've certainly started it. And one of the things that I just want to mention that is particularly profound is that with something like 40-year difference between them, Rad and Jan are exploring, modeling, experimenting with real deep cross-generational research and communication. And as you'll hear, their book deals with people who are fairly newly practicing in the field of socially engaged theater now and people who have been doing it for 50 and 60 years. The book spans 1965 to 2020. 2020. And it is now, believe it or not, 2022. So they're going to work with us some and talk some about the book today. But before they do, I want to just read a little introduction to them. Rad Pereira is a queer immigrant artist and cultural worker building consciousness between healing justice, system change, re-indigination, and queer futures based in the Lenapehoking Brooklyn and the Haudenosaunee territory, which is the northern Hudson Valley now. Their work in performance, education, and social practice has been experienced on stages, screens, stoops, and sidewalks all over Turtle Island through the support of many communities, institutions, and groups. They co-founded Are You Here, an ever-evolving organism of art, performance, and healing created with and for the QT2S GNCI Plus and BIPOC communities. They are building a native-led food sovereignty project called Iron Path Farms. And that's Rad Pereira. And Jan Kohn cruises previous publications include Local Acts, Engaging Performance, and Remapping Performance. She edited Radical Street Performance and co-edited Playing Boal and a Boal Companion with Mady Schutzman. She worked with a blade of grass supporting socially engaged artists as director of field research and co-founder of its magazine. She directed Imagining America, artists and scholars in public life, and co-founded its journal Public. In 2023, Jan will collaborate with Mark Valdes and Ashley Sparks on a new iteration of The Most Beautiful Home Maybe in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So I'm going to turn it over to Rad and Jan. We will unmask when we're talking today and mask when we are not. And here we go. Thank you. Those of you who are here live and we're so glad that you're here live, would you just tell us your name and your affiliation? Let's just get a sense of who's like physically in the room with us. Thank you, Jan. My name is Severin Blake, pronouns they all we. I am here representing the company Applied Mechanics. Hi there. I'm Siobhan O'Loughlin. I'm a performance artist in Los Angeles and I'm I think officially the DJ for the afternoon sessions. Hi, I'm Liam Gable. I use they and who pronouns. I teach acting and directing at Lehigh University and I'm also a maker and director. I have a new collaboration called Future Ghost. Hi, my name is Brenna. I use she her pronouns and I'm here representing diecast intergeneration collaboration. Yeah, there you go. I am Dionysio Cruz and I'm Chan's husband. Hey y'all. I'm Rad Pideida. I use they, them pronouns. Yeah, thank you for being here. I'm representing Todd said what some of what I'm who I'm representing. So that's you are here and iron path farms. Yeah. And if folks in the chat at home want to put in the comments who they are, where they're from and what groups they're with, we'd love to hear from you too. Great. So I just want to say a few words about the book and let you know some of the grounding for the book. So then the workshop. So the first third, we're sort of grounding the workshop and some of the ideas that were so that we learned so much from all the people we interviewed. And then we'll do the hands on workshop that comes out of it. So so there was early 2020 little did we know was in store. And I got very interested in I wanted to I was very struck by all the different ways that socially engaged theater has been called. There was political theater and activist theater and social practice and civic practice and it socially engaged theater. And then there are people who don't call it anything, but they do it. They're in ensemble companies. They're they're very embedded with the people that they live amongst. They're people who talk about ritual. They're people who do very theatricalized therapy. And I just wanted the left hand to know what the right hand was doing. And I thought wouldn't it be great also generationally to look at in what ways is the work where I can see values in common a sense that in addition to aesthetics theater so capable of accomplishing things or working towards a sort of things that are also instrumental in our lives together. And how has that changed? How is it different? So I started doing this and and I one of the people I interviewed is a person half my age Rad Paredo whose work I'd admired when she when they were part of a project for the city of New York working with the administration of children and family services. Interviewing Rad made me realize uh-oh I want Rad to write this book with me. I don't want to just interview Rad. Not only Rad is obviously of another generation and other mindset we share values the people that they've worked with over the last 15 years are not people I've worked with and that if we're really going to do this book that would be important and so indeed that's what we did and the only other thing I want to say by way of introduction is it was very tricky as someone who's my career has largely been writing about performance it was very tricky to not have too many ideas about what the book was about if the whole point was the people we were interviewing were going to tell us what was important to them I had to try to step back and so like even in the first chapter which is about history well I mean I knew that everybody was going to say um oh yes uh of course it's the group theater it was certainly important and then some people said the group theater why would I care about the group theater and we realized we really had to find out people's legacies without assuming any one history and what we heard in fact were the kind of this exciting histories there's the first chapter I pass on to rad to talk about subsequent chapters briefly sure thanks jan um yeah and then the second part you know where'd my notes go yes the second chapter was about commitments and like what are the values that we do all share and how are folks walking these values and embodying these values and holding those those questions as kind of the thing that like propels the work constantly and so that's when we were organizing the book we were like oh this isn't chronological this is thematic you know and that was like a huge thing in everybody's work was the values and the value systems that they were trying to abide by and then in the third chapter we thought about because we'd heard a lot about education like here's something that nearly stopped me entirely where what was important to me was so dist and someone else saying oh well this is something that if I hadn't met Robbie Macaulay at that moment I don't know how I would have developed in the way that I have us and then the fourth chapter then we got into part two remapping community and we wanted to understand how identity grounders kind of transformed and address the way people were working and wanted to work so that was about changing notions of who we are and how we are working together or not or not absolutely and we wanted to hold people accountable to mistakes they'd also made in the past you know and how they're addressing that today and so we wanted to show like a broad spectrum of how yeah how we're doing that or not yeah yeah yeah um then in the last section which is regenerativity um getting us oh no I'm sorry there's one more chapter in remapping and that's community-centric civic collaborations one thing that there's been more of in the last since 2010 for particular reasons is artists embedded in municipal partnerships and other civic partnerships well it's partly because of art place which just got millions and millions of dollars so for 10 years that's what they would fund and of course once there's somebody funding something other people say this must be the thing to fund and so there was a lot of that and some of that work we think is really valuable and it wasn't that it just began then it just got more attention and and some of it we found very challenging and the more importantly the artists we spoke to found challenging such as collaborating with police is one of the things we get into in the book and how do you negotiate why a department in a municipal government was started and trying to bring progressive ideas in how do you do that that's tricky if at all if even possible at all yeah which led us to our final uh section which is regenerativity and why we're here today you know Maria Rosario Jackson did this report almost 10 years ago about what what makes a sustainable life in the arts and after reading that and talking about that we wanted to see what is beyond sustainability and that is regenerativity you know like sustainability can oftentimes be about maintaining the status quo and like getting to a place of survival and we were curious about okay what's what's beyond that you know like what where where do we want to grow grow into and like transform transform towards so we we talk a lot about some of the some of the tenets within solidarity economy and how we can apply that into our arts and culture and theater work which led us to our final chapter which was the year was 2020 and about how you know how we dealt how we've been dealing with COVID the the kind of we talk about pandemic time is like this portal that holds so much space for transformation and for really finally like listening to our bodies and our collective body about what we want to be growing growing into and so today of course we're going to focus on this chapter six what we learned about regenerativity and really there were six elements that recurred when we spoke when we were in conversation with artists they just came up again and again so like whereas you might think the first thing you would hear was money well of course we need money and of course we do need money but that was not the first thing the first thing was calling was recognizing that you had a calling for the kind of work you were doing and that you felt you were doing what matters to you in the world and that that is regenerative that is something it's sustaining but it's more than that it's it it makes you want to go further than you're going no matter what the circumstances and just to give one example since we're then going to be asking you all for examples this is a guy named Bob Leonard he's a director and a theater professor at Virginia Tech and he told a story from back in the 60s during the Vietnam War when he was in a theater company in Washington I was doing a play with the Washington Theater Club while protests against the Vietnam War were happening in front of the embassy just down the road tear gas was seeping into the building which was awful but also emblematic we were doing this play which had nothing to do with what was going on in the street and we had the residual consequence of tear gas and I didn't have time to march against the war I had a family I had to work but I was struck by how particularly irrelevant I was that night it wasn't the play it was a great play it was that I wasn't where I was supposed to be I eventually took another direction and found I could go where I needed to go and make theater that was satisfying not entirely I wanted it to be better every time but I was realizing my own intentionality so that is one element of regenerativity we'll be asking you about a second element right and then the next one that we did notice folks talking I was where to live right and how being place-based can kind of sooth so many of the anxieties and the unfulfillingness that comes from sort of operating just in non-place-based theater institutions and I'll quote Carlton Turner who said in 2017 my partner Brandy and I founded the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production in my home community this space which focuses on community-centered design cultural production and community development uses food and story as binders for collective transformation this institution is grounded in many of the values and theories of change written about in this book so that's part of what we wanted to do too was highlight how folks are remaining place-based and how they're finding regenerativity specifically within their community the next element and we've got these written down so when we ask you to do them we don't remember them this is not a test what is the idea of finding community and this is a quote by Rihanna Yazzie who's the director of the new native theater in Minneapolis I think I don't see the point of doing theater if it's not with native people who have lived experience of being native because at the end of the day for me I believe the reason that we are doing theater as native people is to recoup what we've lost and we're not saying in every case finding community means going just to a group that you share a fundamental identity with we're saying that's one of the ways that one of the artists we spoke with finds community and it's a it's a powerful way and it is a recurring theme I'm sure it's very familiar to everyone listening to this and then our next one is about communicating beyond one's own peeps to quote Kathy de Nobrega who says even when I was mayor of my little town I kept thinking this is just a secret play I'm the director no one even knows they're in a play in a play people want something they have to do things to get it there's conflicts and obstacles and they have to work together the residents of my town don't know they're in a show but I know it so how do we make the best outcome possible um yeah Kathy's contributions were like just amazing because she was really cool to hear how she brought her theater toolkit to you know bringing her town together and literally being the mayor of her town well yeah very cool um representation in policy decisions and this gets into another one of the themes of the book which really is extending beyond what you might have learned in theater school in being able to have a regenerative life in in the field as you continue and one is recognizing who's making decisions that are affecting my work and how do I make sure I have a place at the table um because as Carol Bebel said and Carol is the director of the Ashe Cultural Center in New Orleans um if you don't have a seat at the table you might be on the menu so that's sort of one of the most sort of directing straightforward uh expressions of it may be that we really need to know a lot about a lot more of a lot of things besides theater which I think everybody knows anyway I mean all the many hats you wear but this policy hat we go into in some depth um in the book and then our last kind of section about regenerativity is about making a living and we'll quote our friend Liz Lerman who said um our idea was sell your knowledge not your dances we had a touring engagement model I told presenters that everyone in the company could do two things and could do two things a day in the community although later it became three weeks or six months in the initial period it was one shot deals which could be life changing but weren't enough people were happy for me to do a concert piece as a culmination of the time there but we would also we would also were in schools prisons rehab centers whatever jawole of urban bush women shared that the intention that everyone who came through our companies should be able to do a number of things teach collaborate listen be in a community setting help people do something they want to do we were unique and therefore people were interested now many many people can do what I just described uh which then we go into pulmonine Rodriguez talks about like your economic engine versus your social engine and how being able to kind of delineate what is gonna what is gonna fulfill the social engine and what's gonna fulfill the economic engine having to be hand in hand to actually be able to do this kind of work you know like with integrity and in a deep way wherever you go great um and so Todd um happily has a list of those eight elements of regenerativity which can you see can can people see that pretty well or at all wonderful we'll we'll we'll get to in just a moment thank you Todd you can put you don't have to hold it this second I'm gonna just say one thing before I will ask you to hold it so that so that the structure of this workshop um freedom dreaming um is rooted in a long tradition of black radical thought in action and there are three steps to it the first step is that it invites us to create the world we we dream of it invites us to create the world we dream of by first step identifying what we've already done it does not suggest no we started zero how are we gonna do it we're gonna say well we've done things along this way let's identify them let's hear what other people identify and then say oh yeah that's something that's a thing I've done that um then there'll be a second step and a third step which will talk you through when we get there so for this first step which is what you've already done this is where we turn to you all sitting around the circle and if those prompts help you these eight now if you don't mind holding it again Todd that would be great thank you and people who are connecting through Zoom I don't know um yes that would be great if you put it in the chat and we I think we count on on Todd who will there's a bunch of things in the chat and and as we hear from you Todd will feed into us what people are saying in the chat so we can say it out loud and it'll be we'll try to combine it as part of the conversation great so starting with this idea of knowing you're calling or any of those that landed with you I I'm inviting those of you around the circle to talk about what do you see as some of the steps you've already taken to bring your work into the way you most envision it and the world in which it sits the way you most envision it wonderful would you read that for us Todd oh that's great thank you right so in terms of embrace ones calling I mean was there a moment for anyone when you thought yes I'll do two points of like ones calling the first time was in um high school I did a solo mime uh the teacher gave us a prompt like here have a piece of music make a piece that's five minutes long and I was really digging into like domestic violence at that time and so I made a piece about a person who leaves a situation at the end essentially in the morning and it for me it was something that I was working out for myself and then like I noticed that it started it had touched people people cried I like took it to competition I lost to a really great environmental piece about like saving animals which is also like deeply deeply also real because animals are also people people are also animals but um then I got asked to take the piece to take back the night and I was like oh it's that affecting and so I was like that was my calling it's taken me a while to come back around to that calling uh but so for healing is like the space that really lights me up um yeah um in speaking about uh I guess 2020 I uh I'm you know an activist as well as an artist right and I um was a big like Bernie person and super devastated in April and what I ended up doing was starting a collective of artists um were called the misfits for democracy but I got together a bunch of radical theater makers to phone bank for Joe Biden and nobody wanted to do it and everyone was upset but we I took the time before every session and to check in with every person who would come and our group started having 50 people you know and I gave them space to talk about how they were doing and then we like put in the work and we put in over 40,000 calls to Pennsylvania and then we adopted uh John Ossoff in Georgia after that and Raphael Warnock and we've continued and we're now going to be doing Wisconsin for Mandela Barnes and John Federman here um because we want to swing the Senate so it's not I don't even like doing it but we were utilizing um you know a pedagogy and theater of the oppressed we were utilizing nonviolent communication and taking our skills as artists to talk to voters and um you know as artists we have so many skills but we're seen as like skill lists you know by the capitalist like economy and when you bring people together and say like your emotions your feelings or like your bigness you know is so valuable in terms of like making the world a safer place and and often that just meant listening to people on the phone and like talking to them about some stuff to try to like swing some votes so that is kind of I guess a form of like a calling of like I don't want to do this but I'm gonna because I don't I don't know what else to do right now with myself you know the way you pulled together the 50 other people um yeah yeah and also connecting ones work beyond the immediate circle yes yes which I realized we didn't give an example of that but this thing of that is one of the other elements of connecting ones work beyond the immediate circle thank you oh yeah no it's okay I can I can try um yeah I'm thinking of two moments right now and one is it was so wild to hear all those peoples being quoted and so many of them are people that I have been around for the past like over a decade now and to think about first coming to alternate routes and feeling like I was brought there by Dr. Tanya Pettiford-Wates who was doing work with the conciliation project which really cracked me open and being in that community and knowing like oh I just want to know more of what these people know um and then kind of awkwardly uh asking questions and like following people around trying to figure things out um felt like a moment of understanding something about the calling and then another was um when I first started doing alleged lesbian activities with last call that's now being run by Indy Mitchell and Natalya Falk in New Orleans um and we were interviewing people about lesbian bars and uh we had a party to try to raise money for it and it was just like the house party was so huge and everybody was so excited about this like play that we were making that we had no idea what it was and I felt um like oh this is something like gathering people is something and this is part of the work and how does this become I don't know more what it needs to be yeah I love that gathering which reminds me of one of my favorite Liz Lerman quotes when she realized that a circle was something she said oh when we so often in ensemble theater and in the arts in general we convene in a circle we're setting everyone up equally by the physical space that's a thing we do I have to recognize that as a skill gathering people as a skill that's yeah Todd please I I really want to participate but I'm manning the zoom feed too um apparently if zoom folks want to speak their cameras will be spotlight and show up on our big video screen so we might as part of the experiment of the day encourage that um so I don't know how to do that except maybe call on Nicole who is manning zoom to just feed people in if they want to speak great is there any anything you want to say just did you did you get the chats and there were no there were no other chats as of yet that have been fed through to me got your thanks this is like this is how we do it we give the old guy the technology to like do no they make us learn yes is there anyone on zoom who and hopefully now those points are in the chat is there anyone on zoom who would I see there's 21 comments it's killing me right what are they saying um please I know that I spoke earlier about myself but I just wanted to talk about my theater company applied mechanics um I think that proceeded the table and policy decisions uh we have been members of the Philadelphia Coalition for Affordable Communities for about five years before the pandemic started and like so like all of our other work kind of was like on hold and we were shifting and figuring out how to make our worlds move forward and we have but specifically we then had more time to be present and be available to like make actions that were socially distanced and also safe and fun and interesting and help with those campaigns um throughout the pandemic and that has been yeah it's been interesting it's been it's a work and so we also have to like figure out how to like that kind of fits into make a living so it's like how do we make sure that being an organizer is a lot of work and so is also being an artist and also being an administrator so yeah figuring out how to get that balance so having representation so I it's it looks like people have um put in chat I'm thinking maybe what resonates with them of the elements great so now people can type messages in and we can all see them you all on zoom we're now seeing what you're putting in chat but it's it's since no one's putting anything in chat at the moment I was going to say rad you up there's something and then rad you might want to move on to the second point will feel george wrote loving it thanks bill um if anyone wants to talk at any time please raise your hand and we will pin your video um actually just before we get on to the second point let's go kit let's hear from kit baker go ahead go ahead kit baker hello can you hear me great well uh first of all I'd like to give a shout out to shivan um who has been doing yes who has been doing an online performance serial for two years now um and I think I mean for me that's been possibly the most significant engagement with theater that I've had in that period and it's relevant because you know a lot of people who are coming were devastated by the pandemic and actually found a community addressing that particular part of the regenerative role of of of theater involvement um and I think they people it was really amazing watching what people got out of it and we heard some pretty quite honestly harrowing stories of what people had been through in their lives and that the ability to share it over this you know kind of digital space I would never have thought that it would actually have a transformative effect but now you know we're friend well shivan called them friends and lovers which was slightly tongue in cheek but it turned out to be true there are couples who have been formed and babies to come from that uh theater ensemble experience um but personally I'm working in Colorado for the past three years I've been working a lot with indigenous artists and um for me that's uh that's the uh kind of in a way activist aspect of my work that you know I support these indigenous artists for example greg deal who is really uh very active in um really uh well sort of resetting our understanding of who we are in america basically um so I that has been profoundly uh profoundly uh life-changing so in in a lot of ways that's that's a focus that I feel is very powerful in the present moment given the awareness of indigenous artists and indigenous issues and the fact that we're on indigenous land is um is playing a big role just one example before I stop this video but um alexandra cosio-cortez was in a hearing uh just the other day about um how the regenerative potential for indigenous practices that are many and various and we're actually on the list of measures being uh being proposed in that committee meeting in washington um and that really reflects you know my engagement primarily through art hopefully more in theater because there are some really good indigenous uh actors in denver and there there's a lot of potential for more ensemble work by indigenous um artists here um but but that's just an example of where I find my bliss thank you yeah thank you kit okay babies anyone else want to share anything before we move on to the next section anyone else we'd love to celebrate you carry j Cole apologies my my um zoom you know I'm having technology issues on my end a bit too uh so um it took me a while to get my hand up there but hi from uh Tucson in uh arizona time pacific time whatever time I'm in um I just wanted to say thank you all um uh for sharing your um wow the first word that came to my mind was ecstasy in terms of the work that we're doing um in in the midst of um some really adverse or challenging uh conditions the um the pandemic for me has been all of the things that we've been talking about um but uh even in the adversity also a great gift in so many ways to be able to stop and and do the reassessing that we sometimes don't give ourselves the opportunity to do because we're um as as artists in our current us culture we're still breaking down that grind culture of we have to be doing we always have to to have three things laid out and I have um uh been embracing monotasking and working on one thing at a time um and in doing that have found the space for um my own advocacy work um particularly right now um we've we've been talking a lot about that and that was really resonating with me in in particular um uh looking at um uh the aging of individuals the aging of myself um and also the aging of some of our um ensembles um and um uh theater structures that don't serve us uh in the way that we assumed that they always would um and uh so for me the what I've what I've come to embrace is um a bit of dismantling of institutional structures I'm sure my department chair will love hearing that um uh actually probably he he would I'm I'm uh I say dismantling and I think that what I'm always looking for now are the the colleagues that and collaborators and co-conspirators who are um embracing that change even when it is incredibly uncomfortable especially when it's incredibly uncomfortable so I just wanted to share um my my particular moment right now and uh my admiration for the work that um uh we are all doing uh at this moment so thank you thank you Carrie hey Catherine do you want to want to go next hello yes I can go next can y'all hear me oh cool yo hello y'all my name is Catherine by Ana Benitez I use they them and a year pronouns I am a queer indigenous human tuning in from Lenape land aka New York City um I believe the question was what am I finding like blissful moments in correct or like what is like some joy that I'm feeling right yeah and things you've already done that um that are bringing you closer to a kind of ideal world an ideal kind of work that you aspire towards right so I do a lot of like indigenous storytelling um and I use a lot of reclaiming of language so my language is Nawa which is like a language that is like like you like there's a lot of erasure of native language correct you know as we know there's like a lot of erasure happening in general um so what I do is I intentionally write pieces that come from my own identity as a two-spirit queer human but also like acknowledging that we need to have deeper conversations of other native languages in the room so like what brings me joy right now and what I'm practicing is how can I invite more indigenous artists into this space that do not speak Nawa but speak different languages and that brings me joy because we can all be in a room together in a circle gathering and there's different languages all these languages that were taken from us and that now we can talk and bring them into the world like actually allow them to be alive in ways that um it wasn't always allowed to so that's what's currently bringing me joy it's like I'm trying my very best to be intentional of how to bring those voices forward because if I don't and if I don't find a way of bringing us together then how will we find those spaces of communal like sharing and ceremony and ritual because there's something so beautiful that happens when we can share music with our times when we can share like um ceremony with our sage our Palo Santo or any of the things that we use to like ensure that we carry ourselves with energy with light and joy um I'm also like being intentional of like how I carry myself in spaces I realize that I'm going into spaces more so where it's only me and that's a lot of labor it can be very difficult for my spirit so um I always try to invite somebody else of my identity or similar into the space I was like come with me I think about Maya Angelou she's like I need you come with me I invite you into the space come with me um so that's what's bringing me joy and the more that I see us in spaces that excites me because we are very deserving of being in these spaces we are and I hope that we can continue moving forward into a narrative of creating art where we see more of our indigenous siblings into the space so yeah thanks y'all thank you everyone so much for sharing about your joys and blisses and ecstasies I think that that leads us really well into our next section um you know as we started talking about regenerativity and what the future could feel like and look like we kind of heard three different paths that folks were taking um either at the same time like multidimensionally or choosing one path and as Carrie said monotasking that one path um which was um it felt like some folks were dismantling abolishing ending systems that no longer serve us systems and structures that no longer serve us um some folks are in this kind of like central center path are figuring out which groups which institutions which structures have a capacity for change and are transforming them um and then this kind of third group we saw are holding and building the next world um and so we really heard heard those those three main paths when we were asking people about the future and about where they wanted to be growing growing in growing towards and we wanted to utilize that kind of those three ideas to guide us in this next section so I'd love to invite everyone to do a visualization for a moment before we talk about this next part so folks at home if you can also close your eyes and find a comfortable way to sit find your feet on the floor connect your your bottom to the chair the ground or your feet deeper into the floor if you're standing and we want you to recall memories where you felt supported to be creative and brave um where you felt creatively cared for we want you to really embody those moments you know for me I think about my first black acting teacher and we were in this really rundown children's theater but he introduced me to liberation work and I just think about like the way he invited me to be free and to be wild and I think about that caring I feel that really well in my like I don't know my shoulders feel like warm and they feel aligned when I think about that moment so I'd love to take a few moments for everyone to just recall some of those memories for themselves where you felt brave to be creative where you felt safe enough to imagine where you felt held and uplifted where does that sit in your body the memory come in a physical come in a physical way does it connect to a physical place on your body let's take another minute to just breathe into those memories maybe share a gratitude to those memories when you're feeling like you have a bit of a fuller picture a fuller remembrance of that memory you can open your eyes and come back into the space you know I invited y'all to do that because when we were talking to people in the book and we would ask um we would ask you know what why regenerativity and what future hello welcome um what what does the future look like for you so many folks during covid said I hope my work become like I don't have to do this work anymore and I just want to rest you know we felt this immense exhaustion exhaustion like just run dry from so many people um but when folks connected to their to the physical to their physical embodied memories of this creative bravery and of this joy it allowed them to start dreaming into a future and so we'd love to just hear from y'all you know being rooted in those good memories and in those good thoughts um what what does a regenerative future look like for you you know like what what would it be really specific or can be broad it can be surreal or it can be realistic um and how do we bring those kind of three ideas you know of dismantling harm reducing building you know how do we bring that idea into that visualization so for example I think about housing you know I think about like I just want to have a home and a place to live and I don't know when I let's let's talk about that first you know what would what would a solid space look like for you and then next we can envision we can pick a few and maybe build out what those three kind of paths look like towards that so if anyone wants to share what what a regenerative future feels like for them or might look like for them I'd love to love to hear it no solutions needed yet we can brainstorm some of that together but we'd love to hear some of your dreaming and and visioning around that first and anyone in the chat too can join us on that it's Leo season y'all um uh just mm-hmm for me again it cycles in around this piece about healing I think that in these past two years I've had time I was tired I've let a lot of things go I'm trying to retrain my brain I've been looking back at the things the situations the things that my trauma is based upon that allow me to be a very open and tender person and I want to infuse that into my art I'm interested in like inviting people into a space to share like memory in a way that is not continuing harm but allows space to like think about the different ways in which uh the world tries to annihilate us but also then like allows me or a person listening to like sense that like we've always been free certain way like free to choose and I think that like the ways in which the world exists but like being able to see the different ways in which everything is intersect intersecting but also realizing the ways in which we are all intersecting with one another um I'm excited about continuing to like make work and see other work resonating um in the atmosphere so I'm starting to see other artists doing work that doesn't look like the work that I saw when I was growing up but I'm starting to see it happening and I feel that like continued resonance is necessary even though I see what the I see how the government specifically any anything that Congress is doing or the Supreme Court but I'm like I see that but I also see that we on this room are here we are still alive we've got this bar our ancestors have been calling us in saying I need you they're inviting us and so inviting them to like continue with us on this road forward it's a long game that's thousands of years old I'm excited I'm like let's just keep going this is an opportunity to resonate um um yeah I'm excited to like do that in tender and gentle ways oh hello yeah oh that was beautiful I was just sitting there kind of just I'm sitting in the moment of thinking about the language you'd shared thank you for those good ideas um I just wanted to share um this this is partially in response to the last question and this question so in a lot of the spaces I'm working with marginalized people so we're being worn down by just the regular rhythms of the world we're being worn down by everything so the question is how can we make all of our spaces regenerative replenishing how can we make all of our spaces and all of our processing it's um pleasurable so one of the things we noticed was when you're working with exclusively marginalized people and you're working on content that is full of harm it's full of trauma as we are working towards our liberation we are brought into encounter with all of this stuff so one of the things that we did was we created a relationship repair fund we put we literally budgeted part of our funds to um repair and replenish ourselves and so at the end of our beautiful production it was gorgeous we sat down and we said how are we feeling do we need to do relationship repair do we need to actually have a conversation that's facilitated to help prepare relationship do we need to do we need to go have a massage what do we need to do and we decided to all get ourselves beautiful outfits from sassy jones so I am wearing something that is an artifact of collaboration of ensemble of thoughtfulness and I I found myself sitting here being like I feel replenished just wearing this it's an artifact of great artistic outcomes and beautiful process I'll then talking I'm all done speaking and having trouble hearing you now I started doing after my second zoom show and I was doing zoom shows twice a week um for all of 2020 uh after you know march right and what we did after the second show was decide not to ever close the show at midnight it would become someone else's makeup demo at 2 a.m and nobody had anywhere I mean work was kind of over and all this stuff was like it was wild you know so someone's like let's do a karaoke from youtube and essentially it was that sort of like and I love the reframing of I appreciated so much your your presentation at the beginning talking about everything is like sustainability sustainability and it does speak to the exhaustion you were talking about and the like survival that we're all kind of like it's so tense you know and I have never really imagined I don't really imagine beyond sustainability honestly because I'm so like stressed out and you know sad so but keeping like a zoom open if in the in the physical space we can't right because we paid for the space we're never gonna get out we got a load out but on zoom for me it was like at a certain point I'm like okay I'm gonna change into my pajamas and I would like you know turn off my camera and they got it they're talking and if kit is still here those relationships forming what he's talking about it's just people having the space of having some sense of togetherness in a time where nobody had that and forming new relationships which we as as beings you know thrive on gave us gave a sense of that kind of like possibility even in this all of this devastation of like hope and and moments of joy and humor and connection and I think I'm always seeking those things in in my life and talking about the kind of art that we make how we can continue to create space that is comfortable for everybody and I appreciate everything Claudia was saying too because joy is so important and and so difficult to find so yeah that's what I wanted to share hi I'm Elise I'm a ensemble theater maker in Philadelphia I go to pig iron um originally from LA now I live in Philadelphia um yeah the idea of like free like we're already free like that was something that I found really resonating from what you said and I think something that's like really powerful about like deciding to be an artist is that there's like no one way to get there and I find that like is really challenging because it's not a guarantee like you can't map it out unfortunately like there's just so many different things to think about and there's not one route there and I like just recently left a job and it was like a survival job to make sure I could like keep doing theater in Philadelphia and it was like a summer situation and I just felt like it was really beginning to feel like not worth it but I was like well I just I need this like $2,500 in order to like come back to Philadelphia and like be an artist here and then I was like I don't think I can do it anymore and so like I resigned and then like the next day I like I heard back from like a scholarship that I applied to and it was like for $500 more than I would have made from that job and it just felt like a cosmic sort of like reminder that like there's not one way to get to where you want to go and there are like limitless possibilities for like how you can ensure that you get to be an artist. Yeah I feel like the invitation is a really beautiful one because I'm going to unwrap this microphone so I can sit back hold on. Okay and because I feel like when you ask that question which is like what does something around what does thriving look like or like what do you want your thriving I was like oh my god I spend so much time trying to like get like figure out what something could look like that like that type of envisioning like what if I really got anything that I wanted isn't a space that I've had a lot of time for so thanks for that and for the invitation of like it's already here from both of you. Yeah so I'm going to try when I think about the things that I I want to be able to have a family where I care for small ones and where that doesn't mean that I can't make art and where it doesn't mean that I can't make art that takes like I want to be able to take six years to make a piece if that's how long the piece takes and if it's generative that whole time I want to be able to like end things when they're over and begin things when they should begin rather than having to be in funding cycles that ask me for specific start and end dates that sometimes outlive a project or sometimes end it too soon that was what I don't want but I'm trying I'm really trying I want like space where intergenerational making and gathering can happen that both like has structure but also can sometimes be unstructured and joyful inside of both of those things. Yeah I want to be able to tell my students that they can make a living doing what we do and that it can be a generative thing even if they don't come from money which I think is the real problem. Okay those that's I played out thank you. Well we lift we lift that all up into the earth and all of everything everyone shared. I just I just love that you also said what you didn't want. No because that's part of figuring out the vision so that that's I mean I'm someone who I feel like sometimes I've been told oh you're too critical but if that's what you see it's what you see what are you supposed to do with it so I appreciate said that. Yeah and that's how we wrote the book y'all literally that interplay thanks for sharing that y'all yes and lift lift all those once lift all your once I just wanted to you know something Claudia said about making space for the humanity around the piece as well you know what I mean I feel like part of writing this book during the great uprisings of 2020 was like how do we also embody abolitionist principles into our theater spaces um and I feel like you know this idea that we are already free you know what Claudia brought up about how do we make space for repair space and resources for the repair you know how do we sandwich the creation with the room for the humanness around it and I'll quote solidarity economy artist Caroline Wooler talks about like if the art is the shiny apple you know we have to give just as much value to the branches and the tree and the trunks and the root and the mycelium you know so I'm really excited to live into that you know how do we uplift and value and center everything that holds the apple just as much as we value that apple um and so I just wanted to see if for this next section if folks wanted to talk a little bit about how we make some of these things come true you know like how do we use our I feel like so one of the things I learned through the pandemic is that our theater toolkits our community organizer toolkits and that if we make ourselves useful with political organizers with community grassroots organizers y'all the potential that I'm sure many of you've seen and many of you shared what that can hold um so I'd love to you know unite our visions here and in the digital realm to talk about how we might make space for some of these visions you know like how how do we make room for tenderness and healing in our in our processes you know what what how do we create the environment and the culture where that's actually lived and not just um theorized you know I hear a lot of people like saying they want to be caring and having these concepts of care but like how do we actually like prepare ourselves to to make that that space you know so that that was one I was thinking on so if anyone else wants to wants to share more visions or wants to lean into each other's and share some ideas around building that um yeah I've found supporting people and learning how to communicate directly um and how to untangle tensions through repair has created more space for existing within a caring and nurturing and tender process that's how I've been trying to hold that as well in my work I was thinking a million things after you said that right and then I had to distill it to like this foundation which is um self-love you know and it's some of the hardest right because it's like how do we have a caring space well when I was thinking about that in theater people come in and it's a competitive field and we don't feel like we have enough and we're all fighting over you know and there's like this this this kind of energy that I've felt unwelcome in a lot of theater spaces you know and I felt like people come to my stuff not wanting to like it you know or wanting to criticize me and and I think like for me like going through all the things I'm going through and currently I'm quite a therapy journey etc is very much like if I can hold the love and confidence for myself then I'm creating the stable I'm starting with the stable foundation and then I can invite others into it like it's safe to be here with me I've got myself and and I've got enough for you then you can get yourself you've got enough for the next person you know and we can sort of hold that and it's so difficult for so many reasons I think primarily you know our system are the what we're born into it we're it's designed for us to not hold that for ourselves that love and that confidence and that self-esteem that allows us to have some for others so I think if we give time to that for ourselves then we'll begin to build like the force field that lets other people in I just want to piggyback off of that I just want to say like checking the stigma of the language and like shifting mindsets like the idea I got this journal from somebody's like current part-time struggling artists soon to be a full-time struggling I'm like I want this journal because I am like flying through journals right now so I was like I'm not going to waste this paper so I took some like masking tape and wrote over it full-time abundant artists hat and part-time abundant artists like I don't have time for this nonsense but like there's so many little things that like they're just there's so much stigma like I and also a dear friend of mine Tomani and Garza was in a theater space with us she's a director and she had this concept that she calls radical care or no I'm sorry radical grace is what she calls it and so she brought that into like a play space and essentially the the idea behind it is that it's people over process over product in like that order and so there were you know we built like a set of like community agreements and we built like what a ritual in and a ritual out at the end of the day and then like things we built a really beautiful trusting space and then we also like people in the room were also like parents and so we like made space for like their needs as well and had like daycare not daycare but like quiet spaces and then we got into tech and that's when the machine really starts to like work itself because like everybody's like things just happen and then we had a moment that kind of like where several people were harmed in the matter in the space of like five minutes and at the end of the night thankfully we had made a space to be like let's talk about what's just happened here and so people were able to like voice what was how they'd been hurt and people are also able to like see how they had hurt people I had hurt someone in the space because I was hurting and so you know we like took the time and everybody was able to like speak and then we were like able to go home and come back but because we'd built that trust we were able to come back to that trust so like yes and yes self-love and like having having that well I've been thinking about like a well and like the well is always full it's overflowing in fact and then the work goes like the work outside of it goes from the overflow so that if anything feels like it's pulling from your well that's that's when it's got to go it's a signal to resonate labor's love leo's kit did you want to say something kit sure yeah first of all really quickly I would like to attest to the fact that uh this is not the first time that uh shavanna has been overwhelmed by millions of ideas it happens all the time and it's a joy to watch um um I I I for me it's really a question of continuing in terms of you know what to do next in a way um it's continuing my work with uh indigenous artists and what I've learned over the past few years of working directly with indigenous artists and members of you know the community and I you know again million things but three particularly stand out um one is that I learned from um leaders that of the principle of staying one step behind so as a white man not kind of imposing my own working methods etc which was initially very frustrating because I'm working with indigenous artists to find the resources to get grants to you know kind of develop strategies organizational strategies which I used to do in New York and of course in New York you know you're always behind so you're always kind of pushing to get ahead this is this is quite the opposite that I had to fulfill a role where I was actually very patiently waiting and just you know feeding things in much slower than I was comfortable with um and so that was that's a principle that I'm I fully intend to keep going on uh going forward um and actually probably the biggest uh impact the biggest thing I learned over the last three years was from a Lakota leader Tatewi means who's the daughter of Russell means who was very active in the aim movement and she was talking about something that is widely known but it was the first time I'd really encountered it and it was actually on an art place America summit where she spoke and it's thinking in terms of seven generations so you're not doing it for yourself you're doing it for the you know the seventh generation seventh generation to come and for me that completely transformed the goal of my work and you know we all work according to production schedules which are very focused on the next few months possibly a year if we're lucky um so that was so freeing and actually really uh basically ventilated my head to think in those terms and um yes it was mentioned before take six years to do a production it's that kind of thing that I think is uh is you know not really recognized as a valid way of working in our society but it is and uh that's one aspect where I get huge inspiration from from that kind of you know that Lakota tradition um to be specific and I and then I started noticing it for example in the work of Romeo Castellucci the Italian stage auteur etc it's everywhere and you can access it the final thing is I was working with a Navajo um leader in Fort Collins she organizes the powwow up there and she's uh she works closely with the CSU the Native American Cultural Center there and when I first started working for nothing seemed to happen I was work you know meeting with her for a year and nothing seemed to happen and it was frustrating and then I got to know her and really put in the effort to stay one step back and one day I was talking with her and and trying to kind of get things going and then she said to me and I think it was because we'd become friends and she felt comfortable saying it she said I just want to do it in the right way so I'm kind of learning how long it takes to do things in the right way and and much more comfortable doing that okay I'll step off there put in a sony principle the seven generation principle um and that you know to me that ties into whatever I was talking about that like the urgency dropped in in the tech process you know and like how do we hold that kind of container of slowness when we do have to pop back into the machine you know or how do we how do we infiltrate the machine with the slowness too that's something I've been trying to figure out because it's true once you're in there you're grinding in there that awesome I love the whole thing of taking the long view remembering the long view which is for me in terms of my calling one a really important moment was rather than seeing this you know love affair I was having with socially engaged theatre when it was just really marginalized um and being pat on the head for being so nice because I'm really not especially nice I realized I was part of the long tradition if you look at what art has done through time it's the kind of thing we've been talking about and the much faster snappier sort of some of it's wonderful and exciting it's not like it has to be either or but nonetheless it sits in a much longer tradition that includes all of this and I find that a helpful perspective to remember um also a kid made me think when he said about being a step behind it and you also made me think when you mentioned roots um alternate roots the wonderful organization in the south regional organization of theater south um they say if you're someone who tends to step forward a lot challenge yourself to step back a little if you're someone who tends to step back challenge yourself to step forward and that's one of their kind of community agreement which I always find very interesting what it took us all through to try to do that um I think we're pretty much near the end of the workshop and actually I wondered if I thought it would be nice to give anybody physically or digitally hear a moment if there's any reflection any final reflection you'd like to make um we would just love to hear it it's been nice to hear so many different metaphors that are really practical helpful today like the uh the blue apple and valuing the branches in the group system and the idea that self-care uh being there with the ability to be a safe space for somebody else I never really thought I just wanted to hear this has been really wonderful and for me it's the reminder that you guys started with and to move through which is some of the answers are already things that we've done for our deepest calling and and I've been sitting on that because I didn't feel like I should participate entirely um but when you asked about callings I remembered something I did years and years ago in graduate school that became a piece a theater piece that was called calling and it began with the question who do you want to talk to which began with me on a trip by myself being very lonely and having conversations with absent people imaginary people fictional people and I started to think just today how much personal calling has to do with also the calling to someone else who isn't there and um and that's a and I thank you for that because for me personally it's a really profound connection that's been sitting there inside for 40 years in my life but I uh I needed yeah I also think that the starting the conversation about how to have gender sustainable or regenerative work with the question of like why knowing why the work is happening it has been really profound because I still even at the end when you asked the question about care I was thinking oh well okay I think we need to do less with more okay so how do we get the more so then I started like my fundraising brain is going again and so it's really nice to like keep kind of touching back into this like there's lots of ways to make the work regenerative and lots of resources that we have that are not only the resources that come to us from the people who hold the checkbooks um it's just like we're all a thing that I'm in the space of believing right now is that like we're all artists even when we're not making art and that art existed before the structures in which we make them right now and then like how do we how do we make more and do less right um but yeah yeah I don't know art's a birthright that's all we're artists by being here by breathing uh my super tangible thing that I've been trying to do is um have a time that I stopped working in a day and then I have to do something fun I have even if it's just reading or have a like sometimes I schedule something that I need to go to or attend you know whatever go to means but um because I uh am you know brainwashed by the capitalist system and I feel guilt when I haven't accomplished things when I feel that when I miss out on things or don't get the grants or whatever it is I feel bad about myself and that makes me feel like when I go to bed at night I didn't do enough you know and I'm like forcing um the time that I stop and I do something that brings me joy that is not work and I don't know if I can offer that as well as a thing to try to implement it's very challenging but um it does have a lot of rewards I mean I guess my the last thing I'd want to say today is is is thank you for letting us do this experiment with you not just the zoom and the live and coming out when COVID is you know popping up again um and and howl around including in your archive which is such an honor um but for us to have spent this time writing the book and then saying but we don't want to just come in and give a talk about the book we we're starting we want to try to find a way um that we're continuing to hear more from people where these ideas are alive and moving and that you're helping us keep them moving by trying to do this kind of hybrid presentation so we're this is the first one we've tried to do the book just came out in June so thank you so much for bearing with us in this experiment that we're doing yeah ditto thank you thank you so nice to see all of you and hear your hear your hear your contributions thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you see y'all soon thank you really a wonderful way to start out our first net thing back and um and thanks to the folks on zoom and howl around for um your patience as we took time to get started and had some glitches along the way and thank you for bringing everybody including the people on zoom and online into the room because we just need to be together so bad so thank you for that thanks y'all for being here i'm going to turn this over to our executive director alisha thomsek hello howl around folks thanks for being part of this amazing experiment day we're doing um like all of you we like to co-create at that and we like to try things and we know that we're in this space where we're all going to be trying a lot of this kind of stuff for the next who knows how long so we figured we'd stick our necks out a little and see what we could learn on behalf of all of us so thank you for being part of that learning it's going to keep going through the day the next thing that we are about to move on to for those of you who are staying with us or joining we're going to move into some uh casual break time for some net dates so those are just meetups you can do those either with folks here in the room go out someplace in philly have have some lunch if you are someone who's on zoom with us and you have registered you will get a link to come to a different zoom room and we will magically put you in some little small groups to meet up with them folks for some meal conversation um I want to just thank uh all of you thanks for the starting out I was still doing some logistics out there in the front um but that is why we do ensemble because it means that my fantastic board member uh Todd London was able to get us started this morning so thank you for that uh and thanks to both of you for a workshop that was a really wonderful way for us to start the day um I really want to give big thanks to James and Ben here in the space with us uh who are responsible for some of this technical wizardry that we are asking of folks also Adam uh Cooper Turan will be joining us later today as well as our technical director for the event and three of them have really been working hard to try to figure out how to do some of these things that we're saying no no no we want in the room but also how around but also zoom but also and can they talk to each other so thank you for the work to make this happen and we'll keep learning um so go have yourself some lunch or breakfast for my west coast um compatriots I'm usually out there with you uh or coffee break or whatever else and hopefully come on back with us later this afternoon oh sure of course um I will say the the best way go to the net website and you can get all of the details if you don't already have them uh but after we come back from the break we'll have a wonderful conversation between Rhodessa Jones who has just arrived here uh from the Bay Area to Philly for the year she'll be spending the year here as a few fellow um and so she's going to have a conversation with God for Simmons who's another of our fabulous board members at net uh who's the artistic director of Heartbeat Ensemble in heart earth Connecticut um just talking about you know how do you how do you make a life doing this work over decades and still stay in it um and joyful and and have the spirit to keep going um so that's going to be great and then uh this later this afternoon I'm almost tempted to hand to Siobhan but I won't um uh so we're gonna do a kind of three-hour multi-part kind of deal where we'll um go into some small group kind of art-based breakout workshops that will also blend people over zoom and people in the room here and then we'll come back from that into a kind of big community town hall where anybody can just kind of speak their mind um Siobhan is going to be our emcee joker kind of leading us through that whole experience and making sure that the folks in the zoom and the folks in the room are all being able to interact that's good okay well I'm gonna opt out of the baby conversation and take us to our break but thank you all for being here thank you all for being here