 Help us to begin, just like kind of all, just taking a collective breath in, yeah, lots of good points on. And exhale, gorgeous. And when I work in communities, I always find it important and helpful to remind us that our breath is a really great place to come back to. You have discoveries, feelings, thoughts. And I forget to breathe sometimes when I get nervous or excited. So our breath is a great way to kind of ground us and connect us, yeah. Okay. So welcome to the radical outreach and directions for activating underserved audiences. As I said, my name is Alison Delacruche and I've come to this work as a community-based theater artist, facilitator and cultural organizer in LA for the last 18 years. I've spent time creating original work, adapting Shakespeare plays and creating hybrid work with immigrant and communities of color, youth, queer and worker communities. I've worked within models based in theater companies at ensemble levels, 99 seat levels, theaters of color, and now at award theater. Other non-profit arts organizations, I've also worked with social service agencies, afterschool programs and workforce investments or job space programs. Currently a producing artistic core member of the ensemble company Teata Productions and our blue and orange cards are going around for a number of projects that we're currently engaged with, as well as a postcard about global taxi driver, which is a project that we're doing with taxi drivers. I also happen to be one of the four new cohorts as part of the community organizer cohort in the artistic department at the Pasadena Playhouse. And I share all of these titles to acknowledge that I am a personal multiplicity as I know all of us are people of multiplicity. And I come to this conversation having been a practitioner in this work and having seen the spectrum of engagement and outreach in Los Angeles and around the country for the last 18 to 20 years. I started actually as a human relations facilitator as a 16-year-old and I've been facilitating the rest of my life. I'm about to be 40. So today what I want to do is give us a chance to have these new conversations and as we welcome folks into the room. Just to continue to announce one last time, hello to our friends streaming live at HowlRound. We're very excited. We have a really amazing panel and we're kind of structured, but I want to take a second to let us just check in about this idea of who are the communities that we're engaging with and to help us start to think about how you and get to know who's in this room, about who's already doing the work, who you're working with and how you might approach this work. We have a very amazing collection of panelists here to talk about a spectrum of different kinds of engagement. And I really as a personal multiplicity, as a queer person, as a multiracial person, as a gender queer person, as an organizer artist, I just value the reality that we don't live in binaries, that we actually live on spectrums. And as a member of the network of ensemble theaters, I've been a part of several processes over the last several years of looking at how artists impact plays. And our colleagues at Animating Democracy have a spectrum of impact continuum that you may have seen and it was a really interesting way to look at how our programs might impact communities, but it has also struck me over the last several years that there is also a spectrum of engagement. And I feel like the field right now is really looking and talking about all these different things that we used to call audience development, outreach, community engagement. And so I just offer as a frame, I'm trying to work on a formal picture, but it's not happening yet. So I think about the spectrum of community engagement and it is like a grid of spectrums. So if I think about knowing that it's not just a binary but the cross-spectrum, a shallow engagement, all the way to a deep engagement, perhaps a community outreach engagement, to a community-led engagement. That sometimes people are looking for stories about, five or four, and that as we think about these different kinds of spectrums that there is everything around community and artistic engagement, as well as from observation to participation to actual leadership in our processes. And as we think about who leads and who's leading and where the resources are coming from. So all these things are still kind of then diagrams in my head, but they're part of a mix of what we're currently doing. So really quick, the community engagement would love us to have two hours to stand up and do and move around. But because we don't have that, what I want to do is just have us, I'm going to quickly read different questions and if this question is true for you, just raise your hand so we can see who's in the room. For our friends on HowlRound, if any of these things resonate, feel free to tweet. Okay, so how many people in this room are currently working in a community outreach or engagement program? Great, how many people are here because you want to start working or creating a community engagement or outreach program that is so helpful to understand? Great, welcome to all of you. How many people are just here because you're like, what is that? I'm interested, I don't know. So now as we start to think about who we're working with, how many people are working with youth? Great, how many people are working with adults? Great, how many people are working with seniors? Great, how many people are working with native or first peoples communities? How many people are working with black, African or African American communities? How many people are working with Asian, Pacific Islander, Southeast Asian or South Asian communities? How many people are working with Arab or Middle Eastern communities? How many people are working with Latina or Latino communities? How many people are working with white, Caucasian or European American communities? How many people are working with international communities? Great, so take a breath. We're not there, but we're good. How many people are working with mixed race or multiracial communities? How many people are working with multicultural, lots of different groups, all at once kind of a community? As we think about gender and sexuality communities, how many people are working in communities with women? And how many people are working in communities with men? How many folks are working with transgender communities? How many people are working in mixed gender communities, so men, women, transgender, across the spectrum? Feel free to come in. There may not be enough chairs. I think there are some more on the way. Okay, so as we think about sexuality, how many folks are working with lesbian communities? Gay communities? Bisexual communities? Heterosexual communities? How many, as we think about shelter communities, how many folks are working with shelter communities? People with houses or apartments or properties? How many folks are working with communities in transition? And how many folks are working with homeless communities? Continuing to think about lots of different spaces, how many of us are doing work in urban communities? Suburban or suburban communities? How many of us are working in rural communities? How many of us are working in transient, itinerant or nomadic communities? How many of us are working in food deserts or around food justice issues? How many of us are working with labor or worker communities? How many of us are working, and as I think about ability and able-bodied, differently able folks in that community? I know that some of the work I've done is like working with folks who have visible different abilities. And how many folks are working with communities that have invisible or not clearly visible different abilities? And how many folks are currently working with able-bodied communities? And if there's a community that you work with that I forgot to mention, didn't mention, I would love to give you a second, and I really mean like a second, to turn to a neighbor and just name that community. So let's breathe in. And exhale. Turn to your neighbor, any communities I forgot. Okay, yeah. I realized I did not name artists or genres of artwork. And I feel like part of what happens in conversations is we go out. Yeah, or we engage. Okay, so thank you all for that. I know it was really fast. I was trying to kind of track, but I hope that you've started to notice who's working with what populations as we think about this engagement. Because I feel like it's always a central question. It isn't just about what do I as the artist or the institution want, but who am I working with? As I look across who is being served just in this room, there are clearly some areas of excitement and lots of folks doing the work. And there are also some places where very few people are doing work. It's not a judgment statement, it's just an acknowledgement of what's happening. Thank you. So today's panel is a great range of the work being done to connect our communities and their stories to artists and leaders. As well as the critical work being done to bring these stories from within the community to be able to share it out to that same community or to be able to share beyond that community and to create information, truth, and opportunity for discussion and dialogue. The way that we've structured this process today, we have these beautiful five panelists who are going to go ahead and talk. Each of them is going to have agreed upon period of time to introduce themselves, the work that they're doing, who they're working with, why they're doing that work, and how they're doing that work. Of course, I believe each of us could spend lots and lots of time doing this, as I know we do in the preparation of our program within our work. But I think you're going to get an opportunity to hear the range across where people are working, who they are working with, and what the goals or ideologies behind their programs are. Of course, we are one of many panels and we are part of a larger conversation. And I'm always interested in us continuing the conversation, but because of time, I'm going to kind of watch time. I do have 30 minutes dedicated to having a conversation with all of us. But to help give us context to who's on our panel, I thought we would start there. Great. So first, we want to introduce Jose Torres-Palma, who's from New Orleans, and I thought he's also a little bit about himself, but where he does, I think he collaborates with. So first of all, I'm a really big believer in time, and I always like to time myself, especially. Before I continue, I want to thank the folks at TCG and the team of McMillan, especially, for inviting me to contribute to this panel, basically following up on what was done last year, when many of New Orleans artists contributed to the TCG. Dallas panels around the issue of post-itrine at the event and who was working with what community. It included Junebug Productions, founded by John O'Neill, a very famous, iconic playwright and civilly engaged artist. I come from a variety of disciplines, trained individual arts and literature, have engaged in street theater in New Orleans, and eventually now create performance work, but also visual arts photography work, documenting the undocumented immigrants of post-itrine in New Orleans. For the past nine years I've been saying that the dirty little secret of reconstruction is that New Orleans was rebuilt tremendously, with tremendous contributions from many undocumented Latino immigrants, most of them who have suffered tremendous atrocities, wage theft, deportation, brutal immigration rates, police brutality, it's been a plethora of difficulties. I am an Ecuadorian immigrant. I'm an Ecuadorian performance artist, which is probably one of the few in the country. I'm also a Latino vegetarian, it was like a contradiction in terms. But I work a lot around the food justice issue. The Emmy Stock and Traffile project, our motto is no guacamole for immigrant haters. Some of you will get that joke later. Some of you may never get it, you know who you are. So I think that as a country, the foods that we consume, it's quite obvious that most often we love the food and demonize the cooks. Andrea is thinking about creating a variety of these shirts, like no humas for Muslim folks, right? Because we can really look at how we digest yet at the same time we have to deal with the 500 legacy of the difficulties for the cultural other. On that, I want to make sure that I give out kudos to the speakers yesterday at the Federation, the sister, especially Native American photographer Matika Wilbur. She reminded us very importantly about the fact of the First Nation. Even though the Canadians themselves are very exploitive, I do like towards the indigenous people, I do like their First Nation monitor. I have a difficult time saying Indian, as we know that's a 500 and plus year misnomer by Columbus and Dodi Landon in India. That's a very difficult phrase for me because I think we have to begin doing, undoing a lot of the Euro-centric paradigm. I am continuously thinking about decolonizing my own body. I push Spanish, but that also is the language of the colonizer. It's actually really Castilian because I am a hybrid. I also have Indian-Indigenous Quechua, most like the Duane student, Mestizo, right? A bastard of la granchingada. Some of you may know what that means, but basically the Mestizaje, the rape of the indigenous women by the Spanish conquistadors who wrote the book on brutality by even building their churches upon the temples of the indigenous people. Even the word indigenous, even some of the words like native, when I think native, I think return of the native by John Hardy in all these terms, they make me go like that, because they're not really appropriate, so we have to look at language. And it was grateful to see her work, right? Very important, I thought, and reminded us of folks that are sometimes invisible within our rooms, right? In New Orleans, I always say that the Latino immigrants have been ubiquitous and invisible at the same time, almost experiencing a sci-fi reality. A lot of my work really exploits that illegal aliens moniker, which has been very detrimental because the first way that you exploit a people is by dehumanizing them, right? And that's the long legacy of the Eurocentric power structure in the United States, everything from creating the three-fifths human compromise, all the way to the idea of the Native American as the savage, the idea of the African American as less than a fully human that allows us to enslave people. In addition to the fact that right here, we're really literally just miles away from the other side of one of the great exploitation possibilities that happened during NAFTA, right? And that is to set up U.S. corporations on the other side of the border so they can continue the enslavement and the exploitation of people, predominantly brown people. I'm also a big fan of folks like George Condon, who once said, when was the last time the United States bombed white people, right? And that was when we were bombing Hitler, right? Because, as he mentions, they were trying to take over the world that's really a job in the United States. So I think it's very important to make comments of that and a lot of the work that I'm doing is called The Latest Pieces, The Aliens' Taco Truck Theater Project inspired by Teatro Campesino and how to really look at radical outreach. What are the outreach methods that are actually part of a plantation pattern? Outreach is, you know, it's more than a one-way street, not even a two-way street, it's much more profound. How do we actually deconstruct the legacy of so many theaters across this country that have been very exclusive because of that plantation pattern? What does it really mean? You know, I also want to give Kudos to the playwright who said enough rhetoric and we need to, you know, paraphrasing, we need to have more action and changing possibilities rather than the rhetoric that we're so used to. Because when I was coming into the art world, multiculturalism was the sexy term, right? And a lot of grants were being used for that, and, you know, I was often, as a performance artist, engaged with projects for the year, from Spain, James Luna, Dan Kwan, you know, even folks like Holly Hughes, we were being presented as a means of presenting performance artists in diverse amount of performance artists. But I find that community right now is being used like a worn-out basketball. It's just kind of thrown around. It's really a lack of community engagement. I have been trying to do almost the impossible in New Orleans and just documenting the stories of the undocumented. But it's gone beyond New Orleans because I've had great support from Gala Hispanic Theater who commissioned the first piece, Aliens and Revents and Other Evil Doers, which is like a sci-fi Latino piece, right? It's a hybrid genre-bending piece, but it's looking at this moniker and satirizing the idea of the alien, of the legal alien, which was first pushed here at the time that the legal alien's moniker was pushed into the public domain, dehumanizing the people, trying to make sure that they didn't have access to health, basically, you know, the migrant workers. And we can't forget, because we suffer, for me, this is the United States of Amnesia. And I know that I'm talking really quickly and I just had some coffee for a while. And I'm a New Yorker, and that's like even, you know, I come next New Yorker living in voluntary ex-owning homes, right? But the idea is we have to really look at what are the power structures that we're still contending with, you know, after this 500-plus years of Euro-centric combination. And within our fields, we have to, you know, engage in doing a better job in doing that. For me, as an Ecuadorian immigrant, it's been very important to document the undocumented stories of people who have contributed tremendously. The taco truck inspired by Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino is to bring the work to the community, but not, but like Gustavo, I have the community, they're protagonists. I'm just a catalyst, you know, and I'm working with people like La Kelama San, who's out of New York and the commissioners are Panjee Worldia, the Deepanker, Mukherjee, who's also Indian from India, right, so we're creating an immigrant's theater alliance, right, and that's part of the nature's how to speak, you know, how to conduct interviews in the end of the year, some type of idea, but really document the undocumented voices to create works, but not just by self-performing and we're looking at having dreamers perform their own stories, we're looking at having the day laborers themselves, you know, tell their own stories, using the taco truck theater as a means to go into the communities and engage, you know, with also a ubiquitous food truck in New Orleans, now the taco trucks by Latino workers were demonized and they were outlawed to some degree, and now the foodie trucks are coming, right, and that just shows your kind of perspective of how things are appropriated and actually the originaries are all these type of food trucks are actually demonized, you know, so, thank you. Sharing works with us is So Jose Flef, Kelly Miller, she's the literary manager at Southwest Repertory Theater in Marsh County, I am, hi, so good to have you here, I'm going to grieve because sometimes in a group I get a little shy, but not in today, let's do this, but I don't have a conversation, so please jump up. So I've been at SDR just a little over five years, originally from North Carolina by way of New York this time, but I live in the country. I'm also the director of the Crossroads Commissioning Project, which is a new two-year program funded by the Time Warner Commission, whereby we went out to commission eight playwrights locally and nationally to engage us on cultural lines in the Orange County. How many of you have been to Orange County? Some of you probably drove through it coming here, right? The National Mythology of Orange County is what the National Mythology is, the real housewives of Orange County, or the OC, that we're this modestly white, wealthy, conservative, surfer community, that's the National Mythology and I'm here to tell you that that is in part true, yes, but that is the past. Orange County is incredibly richly diverse and I'm actually going to read a little bit about Orange County from an essay I recently wrote because I want to do it right. You've never been to South Disarbitory, we're located in the heart of Orange County, 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, depending on traffic. Past Long Beach, Garden Grill, Huntington Beach, famous for its sun-drenched features of professional surfers. Once an agrarian county full of orange groves and lima bean fields were perhaps now most famous for being the home of Disneyland. But contrary to the popular National Mythology of Orange County, as I said, televised with the OC of the Real Housewives of the O Orange County, this is an incredibly diverse part of Southern California, culturally, socio-economically, and politically, not just a stereotypical bastion or the wealthy, the social elite or Nixon era conservatives. This mythology of Orange County is just that, a myth, and one that no longer accurately reflects racially and culturally diverse 3 million plus population, living in the county's 34 townships today. In 2010, almost one-third of people living within county limits were foreign born in 45% of the language other than English at home. There are large active communities of Latina, Latino, Asian, and Asian-American residents living throughout Orange County, including Mexican, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese families in Santa Ana, Westminster, Garden Grove, Irvine, and elsewhere. Middle Eastern American and African-American residents in Irvine, Santa Ana, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Orange County is home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam and the second largest Muslim population in the United States outside of Wayne County, Michigan. So when Mark Masterson joined us three years ago, he enumerated a new addition to our ongoing commitment to community engagement. He said, we need to be engaging the myriad playwrights that we work with through our sort of wide and deep commissioning project to engage our communities, to go into those communities, to meet various organizations, and to be inspired by them to write the work, to present that work on our stages. The work of diverse artists across the board for us was about generating new plays not only for Orange County, not specifically necessarily about Orange County, but inspired by us for the rest of the American theater and for the international theater community. And I actually want to list the 10 playwrights that are leading that revolution. Jose Cruz-Gonzalez, Julie Marie Mayet, Luis Alfarro, Marco Muthi-Joseph, Carla Ching, Julia Cho, Aditi Brin and Kapil, Mona Mansour, Quie Nguyen, and Tanya Saracho. This is just a beginning, right? These are 10 of the 60 plus commission playwrights that we have on our documents. And I will say in my role as a literary manager, I can tell you in the last 10 years of our Emerging Playwrights Commissioning subset of our program, we commission an average of 10 to 12 playwrights a year, three of which are always quote-unquote, I don't like this word, but yes. And then the last 10 years, well actually since I've been there in the last five years, 70% of those Emerging Writers Commissioned have been women, 60% have been artists of color. I don't actually have the numbers for LGUTB artists that they're as well. So I'm here to tell you that the revolution in playwriting is already here and it is coming. Yes? I have a question. How many of those Emerging Spicts? It's a good question. I don't have, I think it's close to, well of our entire history of the program I think the number is around 25% but we commission actively more plays than almost any other theater in the country. Yale Rep is giving us a run for our money. We literally actively purposely commission more plays than we can produce. More plays than we have slots to produce because it's our belief that if we're not able to present a play that should go on to future life and I believe the number is 70% of all of our commission plays go on to future development and production elsewhere. Yes, oh yes, and multiple productions. Now I'm sorry, 70% I know is the number coming out of the Pacific Playwrights Festival but please do circle back with me and I can be these specific members. No, no, absolutely and it really is important to us the commitment to work is long standing and I should say it's something that began with artistic directors, David M. and Martin Benson. I don't know if you guys know much about Southwest Raptor. We were founded 50 years ago. They started with $17 in station wagging and Newport Beach and grew this into a $10 million annual regional, excuse me, theater. They, in the mid-80s, started this endowed commissioning program. So one of the exciting things about our general overall commissioning program is that it's not going away. It's a continue to fund playwrights. Kelly, can I ask you a question? So in the Crossroads program these playwrights are going out into the community and they're creating work and then where are you in that process? Absolutely. We're entering our final summer. So last summer we reached out to over 36 community organizations to connect with our artists along artistic, intellectual lines. Whatever the artist said they wanted to connect. Who they wanted to meet. The intellectuals etc. We connected them. They had copies and meetings and we've done follow-up workshops. It was a four-day immersive residency that happened last summer. They then come back to do one to two days of writing and we are in the process of doing three to four day workshops that are happening this summer in August with all of our artists. We're actually exploring our traditional development pipeline. Typically a play is written, we do a one day sort of reading and then move into workshop. We are getting sort of early drafts of sections of plays but we're actually sort of exploding the idea of meeting a final sort of commissioned draft of a play. And when folks come into workshop with us in August with artists from all over the country as well as locally with directors, with actors we wanted to really sort of be a little bit of theater camp hanging out. Taking a little bit of a page from what OSF does. Taking a page from what Donald Ollman is doing at Berklee Rads with Ground floor. And really make sure that all of our artists are in conversation with each other. And I should really important to our players to make sure they were giving back to many many organizations that they were meeting with. Doing workshops. Queen Wynn, you know Queen is also a fight director. His amazing pop culture company called Vampire Cowboys. They presented New York Comic Con every year. So we actually did a writer's workshop about fight choreography. And it was like how to fight going into writing. Right? So we got up, we thought and we talked about what it means to be an outsider. What it means to be a geek that if it's hard to speak. Modemensor gave an improv workshop about how to parlay improv into writing. So our many artists have been working to give back to them. Thank you. So thank you to Kelly. Our next two guests come to us from Pesos Quintero and Ramon Verdudo are the co-artistic directors of Tijuana Hacé Tiatra. We're so glad that you're here and I know that they were part of the we were talking a little bit about the Tijuana exchange that has to happen a couple of days ago. And we want to say thank you to Carlos who's been translating so that Ramon can fully participate in the conversation. I should have been earlier. Welcome. Hi, hello everyone. I will talk to you in Spanish but because I'm a better listener than speaker. Carlos will help me. We have a company called Tijuana Hacé Tiatra and basically now we're going to talk about the school of spectators which is a program that is within one of the four work axes. That is the production of theater, diffusion, divulgation and education. We have a company called Tijuana Hacé Tiatra and basically what we're going to talk about is our audience. It is one of four different programs that we're doing. We're working in theater production itself and community involvement, education and outreach. Audience school started in 2010 and it is a project that brings the audience and theater creators or playwrights together. We have a conversation between the communities and those that create theater. So every year we invite from 15 to 20 people from different social backgrounds not just social, socioeconomic education backgrounds to become part of this school of spectators or school of audiences. They get to see an average of 60 to 70 with not being a single ticket. Then we have these meetings every once a month where we discuss their feelings about what they're experienced about the five or six or maybe eight plays that they got to see in that month. Okay, let me tell you that these meetings are open to the public so anyone can become a listener or even participate in this school of spectators but only these students, let's say like students, they only receive the ticket for every performance. We also are working as as a laboratory like a lab. Like a lab. So we don't teach them this is wrong, this is right, this is better, this is what we try to do is to let them express their feelings, their thoughts if they will move or not and help them find why they are liking this more than that but not telling them, oh this is because this is a bad actor just to let them find these answers to their own questions. We also invite some of the directors and actors that were performing in that period so they can also have this directly with audiences and although that we are not properly, as school we call it school just like a commercial name sort of we try to give them some tools so they can enhance their theatrical experience and engage in as support with with the audience. Also these conversations to us or to the creators that we watch them they work a lot because we listen directly to the audience their direct experience of what he saw in that period of 6 to 8 hours we listen to what was about and additional advantages that through these sessions for us, for the artists, for the creators help us a great deal because we get to listen directly to the audience, to the audience's experience, what they felt what they thought, we get to hear an unfiltered opinion The way to select to invite the audience is that in January in the newspaper in social networks we launched a call for the whole city and through a letter that people send us we select from 15 to 20 in the last years we have translated from 60 to 100 requests and we select from 10 to 20 this is in January in February to November we see the whole theater 50 to 60 works approximately approximately 85% theater we have a small percentage of dance shows and in December we do a show where we interview the audience and they talk about the experience and we get to know their transformation let's say the way this works is that in January we make an open invitation we do it in the newspapers social networks, our website we invite people from throughout the city and then we ask the people to send in a letter and with that letter we select 15 to 20 people we have increased in the last couple of years from 60 to 100 requests and we started with 10 people we invited and now we've grown to 20, that's in January February to November is when they see all the plays the 60, 80 plays about 85% of it is plays and there's a smaller percentage of dance shows and then in December we bring the whole circle, we invite the audience back and then they talk to us about their experience and we can know about their transformation and how they change through this experience I thought that someone said 60 to 100 letters but that's each year every year we have like 100 almost 100 applicants that are to be part of this school of Spectadores they get to see not just local theater one other produce about 50, maybe 60 new shows every year but also theater from national companies, regional companies and international companies because we have this collaboration very tight collaboration close collaboration with the governing institutions cultural institutions and they participate in this by giving us the tickets for every performance that is being presented at their main so we don't ask the government money because every time that we ask for funds they say that they don't have any so we manage to bring this to them so we are targeting a problem in the nation that most government institutions don't attend so and we are doing this because we are not just promoters, we are also actors we are also producers, we are also directors and we need to to have to develop new audiences so that we can continue with our work that we can not just be maybe doing theater as a part job but maybe we will have full time to do this job so it is also a little to do multipliers of your own experience and one of the tools that we have is a library this library serves as a guide for them where there are very quantitative things from a table where what did you think and behind for example they talk about their experience and this is a guide not just for them but for them in a very interesting way and one of the things that we have seen is that the audience, the public also bring their relatives with them they bring their partners, their children and so it also serves as sort of a multiplier of this experience and one of the tools that we provide to them is the notebook that he was showing says the notebook is just a guide there are some very quantitative parts included such as a table that actually asks what did you think of this or that but it also has a space for them to write down their own experiences and this is for them, again it's a guide it's not something they turn in it's something to enrich their own experience well, after this we are currently in our fifth year since four thousand years we have more than 50 students who have graduated from our school and the best proof for us to think that we have done a good job is to meet them at other performances years after they were part of this that they are very engaged with the theater that they recognize and even know a lot of factors and directors by their name sometimes they approach them some audience members approach the actors and they hold them by their names and the actors get very surprised and the more the directors and the people that are not in front of the stage so it's a great experience we are also making this like another not another version but developing a new school experience but for young audiences but this one we cannot make it without any funds because we need to maybe provide with transportation for these underage students so that's our next step and in this one we are trying to not 50 to 20 people by year but maybe 100 or more than 100 students every year thank you are we doing questions we are taking questions and we are going to hear from Zach and then we are actually going to move right into a conversation in the room for about 30 minutes I am very clear that we all need to have conversations especially this group of folks so and so I would love to introduce our last panelist today, Zach Berkman he is the producing director at the People's Light and Figure Company just outside of Philadelphia so somewhere around the chocolate fondue last night I started losing my voice what I feel really good about is since a number of you I've been hearing extraordinary radical and whatever you wanted to find at work but for some reason my voice does go I feel like I can go like this talking about your programs that are really inspiring and extraordinary what I am talking about is new play frontiers and the one thing I want to sort of preface is People's Light Theater and I don't know how many of you know about People's Light we are roughly around 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia we are the only professional theater in Chester County our budget size I think it does obviously have lots of implications about lots of things there is a little over 5.2 million we produce eight plays a year we have extensive arts education programming and we are nearing our 40th season and throughout the history throughout its genesis and its long mark there has been a commitment to community to trying to grapple with barriers of economics, of transportation working with young people working on their stages, working community and it was this history and this commitment that led when I joined the company three years ago to a series of experiments that in many ways new play frontiers is the intersection of a marriage between in a recommitment ceremony sort of between our theater and what is a very rapidly growing county I think we are the 5th fastest growing county I don't know if it is in Pennsylvania or the United States and it consists of a sort of vast diversity of communities that are growing to create that expansion the common example we use is along the 202 quarter there is a bit of mythology to this but essentially you can go from the immigrant and migrant Mexican workers picking the mushrooms that largely are the mushrooms we eat in all of the foods around the country in Kennett Square going up through immigrant communities who are joining part of the thriving IT and financial industries Vanguard, if you have investments with Vanguard they are multiplying like rabbits around Chester County people's life when it began was in a very rural setting now it finds itself in an intersection of rural suburban Wademan's food the largest kind of grocery street you could ever imagine and urban communities as well so it is this vibrant intersection this mix of long history Pennsylvania rich rich history Quaker history constitutional history with new communities who are bringing their own legacies and their histories to us and are now having their second generations and third generations so before I got there as people's life had recognized that the community had evolved and that people's life needed to evolve as well and adapt and change and that was essential for our sustainability for our growth but more importantly it's part of who we are and who our values are and we need to find new ways to connect them so we were in the process of a long-range plan where the spine of the long-range plan was reciprocity and I came there after 10 years of working with Epic Theater Ensemble in New York City where we also were working greatly in community and part of a laboratory actually between artists of epic artists of people's life and artists from the National Theater of Scotland with whom we've had now multi-year partnership and relationship with who do a lot of expensive work they don't actually, I guess now they do have a physical space but at the time that we started working with them National Theater of Scotland wasn't a place, it was an idea that was being plopped in a whole bunch of different areas in Scotland to generate work within the community so their methodologies, Epic's methodologies People's Life's methodologies were then shared in a two-week laboratory with 20 teenagers from the area as well to start trying to sort of cross-pollinate and think about things and through the development of that project and through the people's life and through the inspirations of that project came this idea of new play frontiers which are how to work more in community how to connect more in community in a reciprocal way but also this coincided with Todd London's Outrageous Fortune and it coincided with a real desire to figure out how to implicate and involve playwrights at the center of that connection and when I started Epic my wife and co-founder was a student of Zelda pitch-handlers we met with Zelda and we asked if you've done anything different what would you have done? and I'm going to butcher this completely but basically what Zelda said is when we all got in the truck and we headed off into the regions and somewhere along the way the playwright fell off the truck and we failed to turn it back to pick them up and so when Abby and I were talking about what we wanted to do one of the things was is get the truck and come back and get the playwright and not let playwrights be people who are sitting in trees throwing their pages in hopes of someone meeting them but actually know the audience they were writing for and have that be an essential ingredient to the connection with the community I don't know how I'm doing in time okay great so thanks to basically and this is how it works right funders Pew which had a grant that no longer exists anymore which is the PCMI that's for you how around we need these grants now it was a management grant to allow our organization to reinvent its infrastructure to support residencies of playwrights in the community and then from there that bred the ability to bring six playwrights and I think many of you have the forms going to all of their bios but six playwrights who spent initially five days with us where we got to introduce them to a number of and when I say we we formed a new play frontier committee that was cross departmental within the organization we had about 40 full time staff and we had members of all different departments work together to identify the communities for which contact would be made and the community partners with whom we might collaborate with and we gave them five days of a sort of a crash course introduction and merging in our region and then from there they proposed a specific area of focus and then they came back over the course of a year from 16 to about another 21 days all total the six of them will have done 120 residency full days on site at People's Life in which is basically one fantastic listening tour where they are talking and researching and doing oral history and interview and other ways of absorbing the region's history heritage and such and now thanks to the Mellon Foundation thanks to Barra Foundation we are able to expand this to the next step which is to commission all six writers to write a new piece inspired by these residencies and to then workshop them over five days within the community and inspire you sharing the process with those community members and the community partners and whose stakeholders that they then bring together and then share also with the People's Life audience so there's a truss bridging that occurs with all six works and then it is our intention to produce at least one but hopefully all over the first time looking at the 15, 16, 16, 17 season as the debut about that so let's not take a breath in we just heard a lot of things totally and because I know that we are a room full of I have the stereotype and assumption that we are a room full of talkers based on the hands that I saw go up earlier what I want to just do is give you an opportunity to take 30 seconds I'm going to time it and those of you who have been in my session before know that I do enjoy opportunities for people to talk, share and listen to each other but I want you to turn to somebody next to you because I don't have a lot of time to move but here's what I want you to share what is one thing that you heard that resonates with you and that's the first question if you end up without a partner you can certainly partner with your pen or your laptop I do that quite often myself so what's something that you heard it could be from any of the panels that resonated with you and I will tell you when you have time I'll tell you at 30 seconds so why someone what resonated with you to talk to this partner or partners about is what question do you have what question do you want to talk about and I'm just going to say as you go into this I want you to articulate the question A because I know we won't get to all of them but B because once you have named it it is out it is an opportunity for you to go and seek people and ask people that question to help you frame conversation after this session so this next minute I'll just call it half way so you can time yourselves however you're timing yourselves I just remind us to make sure everybody in your conversation gets a chance to talk and everybody gets a chance to listen what question do you have now having heard this terrible so let's breathe in and exhale and you have a minute to talk about the question you have go questions that you might ask want to give us a sentence or a gift of what resonated for you that also might be interesting too but I know that some folks are probably here for very functional task oriented kind of thing so I must not be talking great, yes I'd like to know from you gentlemen when you collect these letters that want to participate what are you looking for in those letters that helps you determine which people you want to invite well basically the commitment to look for the commitment that is read in the letter we do a kind of analysis of the discourse that is in the letter depending on the profile for example if someone says I am a doctor of course that his letter is probably for a young person of 20 years who is studying engineering so it's different but we try to read it according to the profile of who it is so we look for the commitment so we can see that it will last during the project basically what we are looking for in the letters is the commitment that you can see in how they word their letter of course depending on who writes you the letter or your personal profile it's going to be written differently someone is a doctor of course the doctor's letter is going to be different than one you get from a young 20 year old man who is studying engineering it's going to be written differently but you can still read keeping that profile in mind who they are so that you can sort of identify that commitment that thing that will tell you that they are going to stick it all out and also don't accept people who want to be actors or who are ready because we are not looking for the aberrations in the same that we are I'll just talk about this the way there's questions yes I have sort of a question I do have a question so we have groups of students guest artists who then engage with specific communities and then we have our audience that receives the work and my question has to do with how do we approach the work with communities that are not our own with respect and sensitivity when one is working with students and then when one is giving the gift to an audience that can be literally from anywhere and everywhere and I would just love people to talk a little bit about that what one does to ensure that it is a respectful collaboration and that everyone is heard are there any tools or techniques that can be employed can I ask a question the guest artists go out and work with students or the guest artists who go out in the community I work at Long Beach and we have guest artists and we have incredible students so we've been doing a lot of community based work and are continuing to move that forward and so each project is different so how do we build respectful engagement and fighting so the first thing is what does that really mean to you community what are the aspects of community and what kind of legacy does the institution have and doing so quite often when I travel across the country almost always and well meaning brilliant centers that brought me in and I'm grateful quite often I got there and they would tell me that we would have a conversation and quite often the outreach coordinator was usually a person of color and that happened quite often and there wasn't enough I found investment really in how the actual theater center or art center or alternative venue really engage with the communities outside of their Euro century perspective or power La Petite Theater in New Orleans maybe once every five years and they look and try to reach the American community but they don't have a real legacy of putting forth a lot of African American playwrights so I think the amount of investment real genuine investment that you have and engage that community rather than just like offering them to come to your house what do you do to go to their house to really engage I just received something from the New Orleans Fringe Festival and we've had some discussions about the fact that predominantly what they present is a lot of post-MFA's who have come to New Orleans who want to be part of the thriving post-Katrina theater scene there but really lack of connection to the African American community certainly the Latino community it's like oh can you inform us on what other Latino artists they may be because I'm deeply connected but they don't go to the demonstrations of the immigrant laborers they don't go to the organizations that engage with this predominantly Latino organization with whom I founded a Latino youth theater project because I have a 15 year legacy 15 years of working with homeless Latino and African American teens across the country from Miami to Houston to I encourage Alaska Various national performance that it presents but again it's what kind of investment is there really like someone said if it's not in the budget you know I think Mr. Brochure said something like that but it's not in your budget it's just top but it's got to be more than that right it's got to be more than that it's got to be not just you asking people to come in to your home simply because you need larger ticket sales to a demographic community that is basically surrounding you know maybe a plantation power iron of an art center because I think we suffer from an apartheid economy and we don't like to look at it we also suffer from apartheid you know we really are in denial about those things so again it's like what kind of genuine investment is there and does is there diversity for the Latino or African or Asian community to see in terms of you know who your staff is I always say that you know as a person of color the first thing I do is like I look at who's in the room what does that have to say I just want to add on to it because I actually in trying to get crossroads across to you guys forgot to mention another phenomenal evolutionary project happening at South East Victoria called the Dialog de Lobos project headed up by Sara Guerrero and Jose Cristianzales and essentially what they are doing is taking the cornerstone methodology and applying that within a major regional theater and I invite you to reach out to them because they are doing exactly that they convene a series of 12 story circles across different Latino Latino health access organizations across Santa Ana they provided music and food and day care and literally did community organizing events or sort of exercises and artistic exercises and then did story sharing and from that Jose Cristianzales our playwright collected stories then we moved to a series of workshops artistic workshops improv stage combat puppeteering acting directing so that it was then hey come join us play with us share our craft and then now they are moving into the final phase of the piece where Jose Cristianzales has written a site specific piece about change about hope that would be presented in Santa Ana in September and so much cross-qualification has happened between our two programs in fact when we get to the point where we have plays that are ready to be seen and shared in full we will do readings at South Coast Repertory and also in the community myriad of readings it's important to exist in both spaces to be speaking to both audiences to merge them and to be sort of as omnipresent as you can be and I would just say and then Norma go over the same question I feel like that question is really helpful and I feel like part of what I have seen be successful in terms of creating respect is just the way that you would give respect to elders or scholars or people that you honor how can you learn how can you listen and how can you learn the most about the community you want to engage with who are your community leaders and are they willing to talk to you and if they're not is that because of some of what Jose was talking about or what are the barriers that prevent people yeah I really feel like if you as an artist or an institution wants to be the bridge and go in I really believe you have to enter with the generosity of spirit and the generosity of ignorance and to understand that it is not the job of your new community partner to educate you about them but it is your opportunity to begin to do the internal research and think about talk about what does respect look like in our institution I had a conversation with some friends from a center theater group about when they have audiences with different abilities come to their shows the multi tiered and leveled engagement they have to do with staff from front of house to box office to ushers as well as to folks in the office who don't understand infrastructurally the different needs and at different times different people don't have the patients well that's somebody who's deaf or that's somebody who's blind don't they want to hear your device no let allow people to make their choice and I think that's the other thing is that these boxes that sometimes I feel like we want to create are the very boxes that prevent us from seeing what's actually there's already a container and it may not be a box this community may envision its container as a spherical triangular pentagon of some sort and like what does that even mean I don't know there's going to be words that we use that don't mean the same thing and respect looks, feels, sounds, tastes touches differently in different communities and so what do we do to be purposeful and intentional and clear that I may not know but I know enough to know I don't know and I know enough to know that it is also my job to learn and I'm here to listen I feel like for me that's the biggest moment I have with different folks who are asked who come to me and say oh I want to do a project with the Asian community and I want to have all these different languages in the room okay well do we have money for translation we'll know they should be able to join it but we're not going to be in a room with multi-lingual API folks if we don't have multiple translators going at the same time so and then to think budget-wise what are the needs of this community and how do I make sure I build it into the budget so I'm not complaining about how much translators cost but your problem is about working with multi-lingual communities translators need to be in your budget and I'm not saying we're communities that work with an LA where we scramble to share the same 45 pieces of equipment in Los Angeles but I also know it's a resources issue so I also ask them to invite you to think about where your resources coming from and who are they going to who in the structure of your program is getting the most or the least resources and I think it's been said if you are not putting resources towards food and hospitality you are not going to get it also I do want to add to this I feel like you've heard us say things about these foundations do not let a lack of foundational support be getting the work that you want and need to do because 99% of the money that we got went to our artists as it should for their commissions, for their travels, for their hotel for their per diems I had a very small contingency budget for meetings but that didn't stop us start small but think big meet for coffees, meet for meals, break bread that is universal, that will inevitably deepen the conversations that you begin you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars but just ask for it ask for that money try to build the infrastructure that you can but don't let that be a barrier to you beginning and continuing your work and the last thing I will say is if you're budgeting to pay artists but you're continually asking community folks to come in and be a part of your process they share their wisdom do not pay those folks do not carry the banner of pay the artists and then expect all the community people from low income working community think about parity at all kinds of levels and think about basic needs of community and resource infrastructure okay so I'm going to go this way any questions that are burning? I'm also so inspired by this idea of engagement communities in a way that fits playwrights at the center of that but I'm also thinking about how to hold that idea next to this idea of letting the community lead the design of the programs I'm curious in both these cases whether there was an initial conversation in which the communities were partnering with express to desire for writers to come in or whether that was something that you designed and brought to them and what do you think might have happened in an initial conversation of saying what could our theater do in partnership with you yes we had a lot of preliminary meetings with a number of community partners something we had past tangential relationships with something we had more solid relationships with something that were brand new for us there was often food involved and it was always at their location and and it always began with us expressing what our interest in this program is but is there is there value to them for this so I'll just give two quick examples so one is we met with the executive director and some staff members at Johnson House in Germantown where Johnson House was a stop on the Underground Railroad has gone through various different ownerships and evolutions since Quaker and African-Americans it is now a small museum for the history of the Underground Railroad but they are finding it more and more difficult to find younger generations having a sort of visceral understanding of what that means so they have some money in doing projects with people actually doing a walk and other kinds of investigations but they were intrigued by the idea that possibly a playwright would be able to immerse themselves in this history and somehow share it in a way that would be meaningful for their communities themselves nearby there is a place called Dawn's Place which is a shelter for the one by nuns where women have been going to escape and who have been human traffics and are trying to escape from that and one of our playwrights Karen Hartman saw that connection of the Underground Railroad and human trafficking and I should say all six writers the selection process was pretty intense and a lot of the interview engaged on what their interests were and their ability to listen and ask questions and their either experience or familiarity with that dynamic because that's going to be the number one ingredient for trust the number one ingredient for reciprocity we're asking a lot of these writers beyond writing a play because playwrights aren't just people who write plays playwrights are connectors in relationship builders and community gatherers and all of these kind of things so that's what was asked of them but that's one before the playwrights got selected we created a database basically a literally new database of all the information we gathered from all of these different meetings so that we could do sort of a match.com kind of thing when the playwrights said this is something I'm interested in I'm interested in food equity Asa Davis says I'm interested in food equity and so then we connect her to Lockham Indian Valley and at Square and that starts the hub because from one community partner it leads to the next community partner so in relationship to that the organization Pointus New Orleans that was founded close to Katrina simply to try to meet the needs of the growing Latino immigrant community but also the long-lost legacy that there is in New Orleans so they had come to see my work and when I was developing Aliens, immigrants and other evildoers and as I'm developing a new one the Aliens Taco Truck Theater Project I just made sure that I connected to whether it's the pastors in the Latino churches or the organizations and they came to see the show they said you know we have a program where we're trying to create a more solidarity in the suburbs of the schools of New Orleans which are in Kenner and Marrero where they have the Minnicans they have Anduans, they have all a variety of Latino immigrant youth and I just went out there we did some data things and then it spawned from there and said would it be possible to create a Latino youth theater project and I said surely but this was one where they and they wrote the work and I transformed them into performance artists I just guided them and made them aware because a lot of them were interested in the theater and they thought well what player are we going to perform and I said no we're not performing a play you're actually performance artists in this process and that is that you're going to write the work yourselves and they didn't it's a very successful program now we've been funded by the Jazz Heritage Foundation there and they've increased the funding that's helped tremendously but that was born out of just an organic relationship with them to try to get the word out to the Latino community as they had become very important and also reaching out to a variety of folks that in the past for example later somewhere I'll go and I'll perform the unplugged version of one of my theater performance pieces and for the community and then look to see how I engage their voices so not just being like an outside force or a playback but actually looking to have them engage in creating their own work for me that's very much the thing that the community themselves can be the best protagonists for their concerns and now that we know that Rebecca has that question and I like Kelly and Rebecca to talk together offline to hear that answer I know there's not much time and this is a big question but I've been interviewing homeless people all over the world for 15 years and now I'm at this stage in my work as a playwright where I'm trying to turn that into the presentation and I found I come from a background of doing solo performance character work but I found that some of the video interviews I've taken are far more compelling than what an actor can reproduce and I want to create a multimedia piece that is site-specific and engages the homeless community I wonder if any of you guys have opinions about that from your own work that you can give me advice or help me at this stage of moving into that presentation and whether you have an opinion about using the video or using actor before I invite the panel earlier in the room I asked how many folks are working or have work with homeless communities can you raise your hand so just to see who might be a resource in the room to also have a conversation with great I would say look at the LAPD not the police department but Los Angeles property department brilliant work Elia Arce used to be engaged with them as well and I'm blanking out John Milky and his partner John Milky M-A-L-P-E-D-E and his partner they're doing work around this issue and actually when Elia did her work she actually engaged and Elia is the kind of performance artist who engages and goes through guides and trains or just guides I hate even using that word training just guides the folks to do their own work because that could be really challenging there's always a process at the end of the Beersmith process where you might look at this and transform yourself but there's nothing like hearing the genuine voices perform their own work and I think that's where we're talking about a different type of empowerment where you're not just the imposing participant but looking to engage them in a more fully engaged and empowered production because people really need to tell their stories and they I know as far as their work have grown they have an artist network within the LA Skid Row community and they put on a festival and they help people create electronic press kits and CDs and samples like that so I would definitely say it sounds like your instinct is moving towards wanting to let authentic voices be heard in the way in which they're spoken and that might actually be an interesting tool they just did their walk the talk every two years they do a walk the talk piece in Los Angeles where you actually walk the Skid Row and do something they just did it I think LA Poverty Department great I would also say though I'm sure there are many people here who have there are release forms that Cornerstone works with so that everyone who came in will be taking pictures will be collecting stories and they were made very aware as they came into that process with Sarah and Jose so what the process was so I invite you to reach out to me and I can connect you to them if you want to look at active models of how to let members of your community you're collecting stories and in conversation to make sure that they're aware of the potential collection of stories it's really briefly on that the ethics of the illiterate and then and as a way for I think it's not just about the illiterate but I think it's looking at release forms and the language and the availability with which they're in and to think about accessibility beyond just the words but some communities need to have visible tools and so yes maybe someone sits and reads the consent forms think about all the ways you can create access in your programs for people of multiple learning modalities and engagements and language of accessibility yes maybe about two and a half minutes for this last question just a quick statement that I'm so encouraged to hear these different strategies and I would also just encourage all of us to think intergenerationally and go back because John O'Neill and Junebug and the story circles are 30 years old and not to say that that invalidates what's being done now but I do feel that there's a lot of history that's been lost in terms of models that were working very well 20 years ago I think about Robbie Macaulay doing a project called the Underground Project that was about the Underground Railroad and we went into there was Native, Asian Black, white, poor, rich like communities all of whom had a member who was part of the project we went to their homes for dinner, we sat we heard stories from their families then we put together the piece and they performed the piece with professional actors and Robbie on stage too and that was 1995 not that worked super well but because of this aphasia this United States of Amnesia that you talk about, we forget it so I would just say like go talk to the old book too just to say the few last documentation unless there's a larger body of text that explores the different strategies because I'm a big fan of Robbie Macaulay's work and unless there's a text, a book that explores how these community engagement processes that I've done before can actually help to educate us now I would also suggest Dr. C.D.'s new website we need to have a place a common place like the Commons American Theatre website so great so I want to acknowledge and just ask does anyone else have a question for Duamon or Jose I actually wonder if you could talk a little bit about in this process of working with audiences and what I heard you talk about in your presentation was that the other theatres that they go to see actually don't make a ticket so that folks don't have the paper how did you build those relationships was it hard to ask other institutions to give tickets or did they see the value of this or are they seeing it now we have a company that is seven years old and as a company like this collaboration but before we had been working for more time we had a theatre for 30 people we already had work done when we have this idea we touch on the institution the theatres, we plan it they think it's a collaboration idea that can work and that's where this first approach comes after a year it was valued, it was dimensioned and it continued until the next date each year it is valued a new dialogue a new relationship with theatres and institutions it was an interesting approach and so that was their first agreement to do it and then after that every year it's been reviewed, reassessed and they have like the results so it has continued on so every year it basically gets assessed once again and we approach the theatres once again and ask them to continue with their collaboration great so I see your hand and I'm just going to say just as I talk this last closure I'm going to invite panelists if you had one more nugget of advice in a 30 second phrase that would be awesome here's what I'm going to say to our community here in this room we have been invited I believe to repeat our session on Saturday so if some of you had to come in late or if you know other folks who you think might benefit from thinking and coming into this room we invite you to send them back to us and I feel like we have done some really magical kind of openings and what I want to just offer is this and Danny you totally read my mind in my email is that there are elders who have brought this work into our space and there are elders to come who are going to innovate the work that we are doing so I invite you to think about and name we'll do this as our very last thing together is there an elder who inspired the work that you're doing or who has led the path that's created a space for you to do what you're doing and some of those elders might be in this room some of those elders might be people you just met and or who are the elders to come that you think about like I think about my 14 year old niece Makaria who is just beginning her status as an elder and she's 14 and I think a lot of us and I know that her godmother is in the room but I think a lot of us knew when she was born so I just think about it's not just about who has come before and celebrating them but the honor of being in the path of the legacy of who is coming and how can we prepare for them to have the widest open place to do this next level of work so that all of us have a place on stage and in audiences and in the words and movement and text and lights that we create as artists together yeah so think about your elders let's take that breath in there's literally 45 seconds left for the next session if you can stay for an extra 2 minutes will that work? thank you for your too panelists one last nugget of advice or thoughts just we want to develop new audiences to those audiences to engage with our theater we are the first that need to engage with them and also with our theater community because I don't know what it is but we need to become just solid thank you gosh I'm right now lost in the whole elder well I'm just saying the fantasy of merging Carol Trichels Matt Taurus with August Wilson the fantasy of what Cornerstone has done there's a lot of elders the real quick thing for me though is one of our community partner leaders said on June 9th at a panel about this she turned to the writer and she said I know you, I know you I trust that what you're going to do with this whether or not it is documentarian, whether or not it is directly specific to what her experience was I trust that you will tell the story that is of meaning and that trust and that sense of knowing is huge and it made a crowd of 150 people super and that's what we're after so I'm just thinking circular outreach in terms of how we engage communities that maybe our institutions have not been engaged with I think of Rodessa Jones and all the work she did with the Medea project very inspirational African American Latino women in jail incarcerated and letting their voices speak the government has voice has let that voice speak not just coming there to engage, to have the other actors perform the stories, let them speak their own stories and respect, ritual and food is always good I just want to take a moment for Elders to personally and institutionally thank every single playwright, artist, actor who's a part of this playwrights project for two decades in South Coast Repertory they are our leaders and I think we have a big, big mantle we are taking on to continue I just want to say two other things as you stay connected reciprocate, yes build an email list, Facebook, Twitter build that community across myriad platforms and make sure as you said pay your community artists everything you can to support reciprocally if you don't have money make sure they have theater tickets invite them to all of your shows show it reciprocally to support their events their galleries etc and also start small but think big keep your initial community requests simple it's non-profits, people are under staff often, many of the community partners that you're working with are serving so, so many people with so few resources ask for a small meeting, a coffee that also provides context for a long term engagement, right start with coffee, invite them let's meet, we want you to meet our artists while they're here on the ground join us for work, this entire next season we emailed this growing list of a community for every single show and invited them to a special process community event free show, give them what you have share with them your commodity, your art and your artists and then invite them to come back and enlarge the community and share the work that comes out of that great, thank you so, and I would invite you to think about what is the one nugget you would offer to someone else and I invite you as we exit the room after we say thank you to elders of before and to come I invite you to share that nugget with someone, if not from this room then someone outside of this room because this is an ongoing, intense conversation I believe within the field and so I hope that we share that thankudos to Alison it is always about listening, it is always about sharing and if you're talking more than you're listening maybe it's time to listen yeah, cool so I would love us to breathe in all of the gorgeousness that we heard and the exhale and before we give thanks to elder I do want to really give thanks to the two people who have also been working in different capacities for us Jamie from HowlRound who's been nice to me and Carlos our gorgeous and elder who has paved the way or inspired you to come to this room and the second being an elder who is the compost yeah, so let us breathe in and exhale and now I invite us to share the name of the elder who's created the path Joe Carlos gorgeous, breathe in those elders and exhale and lastly I invite you to say the name of an elder who is to come and dance it out glorious, thank you all for coming have a beautiful life to you