 Do you believe in magic? Yes. Miami. It starts with the heat. I'm not talking about the basketball team, but the gleam that comes from the beams of the sun. It's not the least bit fun. If rays were inescapable, I would run fast. But I still believe. What's hard to conceive is how car after car filled with people from near and far who go to work or from the bar don't know how to drive. And hey, who would even think that the habit to save us all would ever go extinct? R.I.P., the turning signal. But I still believe in the magic. I believe in the sounds. Latin music blasting all around. The dominoes of little Havana slapping on tables. Pound, pound, pound. Oh, yeah! I believe in the words, bro. Like for real, yo. Like how no yeah means yes. And how yeah no means no. Whoa. The auditory sensations range from Cubans in the south to the north with the Haitians, and that's only a fraction of all of the nations. These are my Miami people. You are in a city that puts the city after diverse. A melting pot so hot it would make your abuela want a curse, which is why I as a local thank you for being here. Good theater tells stories of people and places. Great theater tells truthful tales that transcend through various spaces and races and is laced with you. You are the weave. A group of folks who have suspended their disbeliefs over and over, which is why I believe in the magic to TCG and all of those in between who let this little Haitian boy share some words you have received. Enjoy your time. Take a breath and absorb every piece of magic this city has to offer. So when I ask you this question, yes, is what you will holler. Do you believe in magic? Do you believe in magic? Yes! Welcome to the magic city, Miami. Thank you, Joshua Jean Baptiste, for that hot welcome. Welcome to Miami. And welcome to TCG's 29th National Conference. We are so glad you're here. There are close to 900 of you and to the 40% who are here for the first time at a TCG conference, we extend a very special welcome to you. This is our kickoff plenary. We've already been here for several days and I just wanted to give you a little glimpse at some of the things we've been doing. We've had several pre-conference gatherings including two equity diversity and inclusion institute meetings, a meeting of the Fox Foundation resident actor fellows, our rising leaders of color, an education director's pre-conference, and a convening of theater in higher education. That's amazing. So thanks to each and everyone in this room for your commitment to our art form, to the health and vitality of our theater field, and to our potential for collective action through advocacy and activism. In case you don't know me already, I'm Teresa Eyring, Executive Director of TCG and a recent convert to the magic of magic city. In our prep visits here, I was struck by the strength, power, and innovation within the arts and cultural communities as well as the welcoming spirit of the people. For our field, it's a particularly good time to visit because this city has much to teach us about thriving in a time of constant change. For in many ways, the future of our country is already here in Miami. People of color make up 88% of the population. There may be some truth in the old joke that people love Miami because it's so close to the United States. And in part because of its rich history of immigration, the culture here is truly representative of the broader America, the broader Americas as well as the Caribbean. We also meet only 45 minutes away from Parkland where a group of theater kids changed the conversation about gun violence last year. Miami communities of color have long been taking grassroots action to change our country's culture of pervasive gun violence. Earlier today we held a session on how theaters can respond to that culture through our work on stage and we'll report out on that at our How We Move Forward Gathering on Friday. We also invite you to wear orange as part of a national consciousness raising action on Friday, which is National Gun Violence Awareness Day and we'll take a post plenary picture together in the beautiful Knight Concert Hall at the Adrian Arsht Center. Miami is also on the front lines of climate change. Xavier Cortata, TCG's first ever artist in residence at a conference, is one of the many Miami activists leading climate actions and I wanted to extend a very special thank you to our climate committee who have done so much to weave climate action into the fabric of this conference. And I'd like to just take a moment and ask the committee members who are here to just please stand or signal as you are able so that we can recognize you. We also know that people of color and indigenous peoples have been stewarding the climate for generations. We acknowledge that we meet on the lands of the Seminole and the Mikosuki and that the wealth of the city and that our country, the wealth of the city and that of our country was built by enslaved peoples from many African countries. To help us honor the land, I'm pleased to welcome Houston Cyprus of the Mikosuki tribe. Welcome, so good to see you and I'm glad to be with you as we give some consideration to our relationships, to the land, to history and community and reconciliation. I've been really impressed to hear this land acknowledgement that my friend Elizabeth Dowd and the TCG team have been composing and using here. I encourage you to refer to it because it has some great actionable items. These sorts of public ceremonies are done in the spirit of reconciliation and I want to continue working with you and collaborating with you as we aspire to do this. Here we find ourselves in the second month of the wet season here in South Florida and my community marks this time of the year with spiritual festivities and some of the principles that we honor are things like knowledge of community. Whenever we get together, we always try to make sure to learn something from each other and from our elders. In that spirit, I'd like to honor and offer some of the lessons that I've learned from the indigenous communities here, my extended family. I want to start off with one of the communities that's not federally recognized, which is the council of the original Mikosuki Seminole nation of Aboriginal peoples. One of the great lessons that I've learned from this community is that to be a human, to achieve our humanity, is one of the greatest daily practices that one can honor. And from the Seminole tribe of Florida, I am perpetually impressed by the way that they continue to redefine and expand notions of sovereignty. Now from my own home community, the Mikosuki tribe of Florida, I want to share that we have a decolonial scientific method that's based on our traditional ecological knowledge and that's how we protect the greater Everglades. So our successes are based on the language and the storytelling. So I'm glad that that's something that we can build on together as storytellers. So I invite you all to come on out to the greater Everglades and learn more about the living stories that are part of the circle of life out there. Now land acknowledgments in spirit of reconciliation and restoration and reparation, we must honor and uplift the stories of our black families and the histories of forced removal of people from African lands brought to these lands. We've got to uplift those and embrace those stories and those family members. As well as honoring the family that we have in immigrant communities and people coming to these lands, we've got to honor and uplift and love their stories too. So I just wanted to say that I'm really looking forward to sharing these stories with each and every one of y'all here and so it's an honor to share this space with y'all. Thank you very much. So that was really beautiful. Thank you, Houston. Miami is a multilingual city where English and Spanish are joined by 128 different languages spoken in homes. That's because Miami is also a city of immigrant success stories as we've heard, including vibrant Muslim, the Eastern and North African communities. We take heart from those stories even as we witness xenophobic policies proliferate at the state and federal level because just as the sea level is rising, oops, I lost my space here, so too is the individual personal stress aggravated by the daily news cycle. As a result of these trends and daily pressures, we are seeing, and our friends at the Actors Fund have corroborated, a marked increase in theater people seeking mental health support. It was also widely expressed concern at our November Fall Forum on Governance which focused on organizational culture. Those are some of the reasons we focused one of our three conference tracks on wellness and well-being, joining tracks on theater journalism as well as audience and community engagement and development. I hope you feel that we're always trying to bring you programming you can't find in quite the same way anywhere else. Our goal is not only to address some of the pressing issues in our theater ecology today, but also provide skills-building around time. We also provide skills-building around topics like marketing, fundraising, governance, and of course to make new friends and keep the old ones. I now want to thank our conference funders and sponsors. I'm going to speak their names and ask you to please hold your applause until the end. Stephanie Anson and Spencer Stewart, Arts Consulting Group, Audience View, Sherry and Les Biller Family Foundation, Charcoal Blue, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Drombotus Play Service, The Ruth Easton Fund, The Edgerton Foundation, Fisher Dax Associates, The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, H3 Architectonica, The Hearst Foundations, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Institute of Financial Wellness for the Arts, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Management Consultants for the Arts, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, MDC Live Arts, The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, The Miami New Drama Board of Directors, The National Endowment for the Arts, Patron Manager, The Arts Commission of St. Louis, Spectrics, Stark Weather and Shepley, The Wallace Foundation, Schuler Shook, Theater Planning and Lighting Design, Theater Projects, TRG Arts, Vendini and Wells Fargo! I'd also like to offer a special thanks to the sponsors of this plenary session, Miami-Dade County, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and Stephanie Anson and Spencer Stewart. Thank you so much. Finally, I just want to lift up our Miami Honorary Committee, which is comprised of several nationally prominent theater artists, civic and philanthropic leaders who live in or are from Miami. You can see their names here. Take a minute to look. And again, just huge thanks to them for their leadership as artists and community leaders. Now it's my immense pleasure to welcome you to the stage, our host committee co-chairs, Beth Boone and Michelle Hausman. Entonces, in the palabras y mortales of Willard Carol Smith Jr., we say, welcome to Miami. Bienvenidos, a Miami. Akei, a Miami. Prujim, a baim, a Miami. Ahlan, bich, a Miami. How y'all doing? Como esta mi gente. It is my great honor to introduce you a trailblazer of an artistic leader, a woman who arrived in Miami during the artistic ice age and through Miami Light Project, the organization she leads gave artists time, resources and space so that a new generation of world-class artists flourished and not only transformed the local landscape but also had a tremendous impact in the national conversation. Oh, and also for a gringa, Beth speaks perfecto Spanish. Gracias. My friend, my co-chair of the CG host committee, Beth Boone. Thank you, Michelle. Alright, gracias. It's thrilling for me to be up on the stage with my dear friend and colleague, Michelle Hausman. Michelle is one of the few people in my life around whom I actually feel diminutive and even quiet. His enthusiasm has no compare. Full of passion and vision, Michelle is leading the charge for a brave new world of theater here in Miami and beyond. He's accomplished astonishing things in five short years in Miami so you know, years in Miami are like dog years, so that's actually like 35 years. Which means I've been here for 175 years. It's been over a year now that we've been working to do our part in making this a smart, fun and urgent conference. I believe that all of us in this room believe with every fiber of our beings that we can change the world through our work and I say, let's get to it. Alright. We would like to take this moment to acknowledge our extraordinary Miami host committee. There are so many people to thank. Their names are up on the on the screen and we'd like to ask you to please stand up, take a bow and shout out your name. Miami host committee. Where are you? Come on, let's go. There's more than, there's way more than that. I don't know. We are not known for our punctuality. I guess so. They're on their way. Miami is a city of immigrants, a city of exiles, a city of refugees. Because of that, we are the most American city in the country. It's the mixture of our people, culture, food and religion that makes Miami so unique. We are more diverse than America as a whole. America is slowly becoming more and more like Miami. And so we have here a unique opportunity in Miami to create the type of work that is as diverse multicultural, multilingual as the America of tomorrow. We can help lead the way in the creation of a more inclusive, equitable and diverse artistic future. Welcome to our family. Our big Miami welcome includes a gift to our colleagues. Please pull out your cell phones. And take a look at this slide. It's not behind us. It's next to us. Very good. I can improvise. Oh no, Michelle, you lost you. I'm pulling out Teresa that I don't know where I'm at. Thank you very much. And text the word space in all caps two, three or five. Five, two, six, four, zero, one, four. All right. If you do that right now you're going to see a nice little non-printed and therefore eco-friendly postcard pop up on your phone. We have a very special TCG preview of the wildly imaginative theater artist Thaddeus Phillips and the world premiere of his latest work, inflatable space which was commissioned by Miami light project and which is co-presented by Miami light project and Miami new drama on Friday night free of charge to conference attendees. We hope you'll join us. It's at the colony theater. All right. Okay. So okay, I'm still yours. Thank you. And now Beth and I have the distinct honor of presenting the national communication group local funder award to the backbone of our artistic community. It takes a village of funders to make events like this one happen. Individuals foundation and businesses largest mall but we would be in the wilderness if it weren't for the decades of visionary leadership of the Miami date counted department of cultural affairs laid by the formidable intrepid and wonderful Michael Spring. Michael, yeah true that Michael is an accomplished visual artist and so his every instinct and his every impulse as our leader is on the money no pun intended. Michael on behalf of all artists countywide nay to infinity and beyond we wish to express our deepest thanks to you for devoting your professional life to the cultural richness of Miami Day County. It is because of your leadership at the department of cultural affairs that Miami has become recognized as one of the world's most vibrant and fresh cultural centers and we thank you. Gracias. Thank you. You wouldn't mind coming up to this stage. That calls for thanks and thank you for taking the local funder award and making it intergalactic. So on behalf of our department of cultural affairs and the cultural affairs council which is my advisory board welcome to Miami and thank you very much for this award. I want to acknowledge Teresa and Josh and the whole team at TCG who are responsible for making this amazing convening happen. Also want to give a special thank you to all the staff and to Beth and to Michelle and the entire host committee for all the hard work that they've done. They've assembled a menu of phenomenal activities throughout our community theater community for you to enjoy. So explore with wild abandon as much of our theater communities you can and get away with while you're attending this conference and you'll see that there's a lot of work to be done and as you've heard it even is performed in more languages than one. Now we would like to think of our department of cultural affairs as more than a funder even with our 18 grants programs more than 500 grants made every year and in excess of $15 million of annual investments. So I'd like to take this acceptance opportunity perhaps for just this year. So here are some words that come to mind that could follow local in the title of the award and substitute for funders for us. You could say facilitators, partners, collaborators, policymakers, problem solvers, trusted advisors, admirers, tough love dispensers, enlightened enablers, co-conspirators, I think Beth and Michelle and I would think of ourselves as that, cultural confessors and ultimately cheerleaders and this is my way of saying that helping to build a dynamic and diverse cultural life including a thriving theater scene has many dimensions and like tonight ultimately the proof is in being local attenders so I appreciate your recognizing our department and I look forward to the attendant opportunity to be in your audience as one day. So enjoy Miami and enjoy the conference. Thank you very much. So much Michael for all you do for the Miami art scene and also just for being so welcoming to us coming to Miami and being so helpful now it's my pleasure to introduce our plenary speaker Edwidge Dantaka. She is the author of numerous books including Claire of the Sea Light a New York Times notable book Brother I'm Dying a National Book Critics a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and Breath Eyes Memory an Oprah Book Club selection she is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and lives right here in Miami. Please join me in welcoming Edwidge Dantaka to the stage. Hello, good evening Teresa just as you walked away said break a leg and this is like the third person who's told me to do that I know it's this kind of crowd but I'm feeling like unlucky so good evening to you and welcome to Miami and as we say in Haitian Creole bienvenue you have you have chosen a wonderful city to host your conference and a wonderful time to be here you've come early enough in hurricane season not to have to worry about that you've also come before the stifling heat sets in though after your some of you might have those long Game of Thrones type of winters you might think it's not hot enough there are so many wonderful things about Miami many of which I discovered as a first time visitor 29 years ago and a permanent resident for 17 years now Miami is of course a great tourist destination we welcome around 14 million visitors a year it has a bustling night life and a thriving LGBTQI community is visible this month pride month we also have the highest number of foreign born residents of all U.S. cities there are 59% of us and growing Miami also has the nation's second largest gap between rich and poor New York has the first we have 30 full-time resident billionaires I don't know if Trump counts himself among them but one of the highest concentrations in the world living here alongside a shrinking middle class and widespread poverty which is primarily broken down along racial lines African-Americans are two and a half times more likely to live in poverty here and Latinos nearly twice as likely nearly half of our workforce is made up of low paid workers and the tourism, hospitality retail and food service industries these workers take home an average pay of $26,000 a year the third lowest in the nation and a city that is the 10th most expensive in the country and more and more of our poorest residents which include a large group of immigrants pushed out of the only homes, neighborhoods and communities they could afford by gentrification my mother, God rest her soul used to say that you should always know where you are so this is where you are and you are right to be here for all these reasons and more Miami is a perfect city for your gathering this week Miami is a theatrical city a dramatic metropolis and its landscape its mix of people and even its weather one of my first memories after arriving in the city is of driving down a perfectly cloudless sunny street and then suddenly realizing that I was driving into the rain on the next street this seems so incredibly unreal to me like being on some grand stage two years ago I was at a demonstration in front of the Miami field office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, ICE a demonstration to support the renewal of temporary protected status or TPS for people who are unable to return to their home countries because of wars, epidemics or environmental disasters they're close to about 100,000 TPS recipients in this city South Florida at this demonstration all of a sudden a circular rainbow appeared in the middle of this bright sunny sky a circular rainbow I learned later was quite rare so Miami is a city that likes to show itself the French Algerian writer Albert Camus wrote in an essay called L'Artiste et son temps which was later translated as the title I have borrowed for a book of essays I wrote and his create dangerously Albert Camus wrote that the artist is that is another French translation would be lives and the MP theater Miami is certainly a special kind of MP theater I'm especially happy to be here with you in Miami today because I am kind of a theater person a monkey theater person that is I was almost a theater person a playwright I actually wrote a few one act plays that were produced when I was a student at Brown University Hey Brown one was the creation of Adam was about a young man who was murdered by a racist mob that play was inspired by the 1989 murder of Yusef Hawkins a 16 year old black teenager who was attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 baseball bat wielding white youths and a predominantly Italian American working class neighborhood in New York called Benson Hertz and was shot and killed by one of them the play was about mourning mourning such a death and included rituals that are familiar to many families in such situations ordinary ones like picking out the clothes and coffin to bury your murdered loved one in something many families in this city know all too well it also included songs and movements that the actors incorporated themselves it went over okay though in the Q&A that followed our opening night a few young men questioned my right to tell that particular story my next play was about a woman who accidentally or purposefully she wasn't sure which threw a pot of boiling water on her toddler she was an aspiring comedian and after her child died all she could do was tell jokes that play bombed terribly because it never quite found the balance between the comedy and the horror and the jokes which I wrote myself were awful later in the postpartum the playwright Paula Vogel who was teaching at Brown at the time told me that I should have been more involved in the production of the play I frankly didn't realize that the writer could have any part in the production of the play I thought it was like writing fiction which is primarily what I do you write it you turn it over and you show up opening night that's what I had done with my first play and it seemed to work the biggest difference between these two performances I realized was primarily and the group of people who had put together the play the actors, the director the set designer the person doing the lighting I was so used to working alone as a fiction writer that being part of a collaborative team especially one that met on such a regular basis was unfamiliar to me this and perhaps having a lesser talent for it is probably why I'm not a playwright today the meetings the constant meetings I return now and then to the form each time with more admiration and respect for it for the collectivity for the power of love and the instant it is being performed on the stage both as an audience member and as a sometimes aspiring playwright I find a play to be a kind of magnificent dream one that pulls us out of our lives and into a powerful experience that makes that experience our own great theater can open us up to what we have not considered before it can put bits of lived experience a microcosm of humanity right in front of us via live bodies flesh and bone that we cannot deny are real after all there are people standing in front of us speaking their most intimate thoughts tackling their lives most challenging and sometimes funniest issues and questions all while we sit in the dark watching them do it as voyeurs who have been invited or have chosen to share their disasters their joys, their hopes and their dreams great theater reminds our most primal human need which is to make sense of our lives and our place in the world and to tell our stories both as individuals and as a community in the African tradition we have griots storytellers and orators all historians who also happen to be lyricists and musicians griots are living archives carriers of memory who record and recount the stories of births marriages and deaths throughout their villages and communities there are barred troubadours the first performers of musical one-person shows they were praise singers at coronations and mourners at funerals their power was in their speeches and songs which brings history to the present and preserves the present for future generations the griot's power is also in bringing people together bringing everyone around a common story that in the moment of gathering and sharing makes us a community just as we are briefly a community when we all sit in the dark theater together witnessing the same thing theater can build community particularly in moments and in places where it is actively and purposely being splintered my love and appreciation for this particular aspect of the theater goes way back to my childhood in Haiti where I spent the first 12 years of my life living under a brutal dictatorship led by François Papadoc du Valier and later his son Jean-Claude Babydoc du Valier I grew up listening to stories about the world that theater made and resisting oppression both in the neighborhood where I grew up and in the country in general my minister uncle who raised me from the time I was 4 years old to the time I was 12 while my mother and father were working in New York used to tell me about the last official public execution that took place in Port-au-Prince in 1964 5 years before I was born 2 young men whose friends and families had been massacred in a southern town in Haiti on the orders of Papadoc du Valier 2 young men from Jérémie Marcel Numa and Louis-Douin a place which was nicknamed the city of poets because it had per capita the largest number of poets in Haiti these young men had fled the country and had been massacred and moved to Queens, New York there they got together with 11 other exiled friends and returned to Haiti to try to unseat the dictatorship all 11 of their friends were killed during the fighting they were the only ones who were captured and they were executed by firing squad after their execution the young people who often gathered in a community center a place where they studied and went over their lessons and protest these young men from the neighborhood decided to put on a play they couldn't take to the streets and march because they would have been killed so putting on a play was both a way for them to gather and process their feelings together and also resist and protest the play they put on was Albert Camus Caligula and Camus' version of Caligula the brutal woman emperor's life Caligula the brutal open emperor's life Caligula's sister who is also his lover dies and he unleashes his rage by going on a killing spree and executing dozens of his subjects and a preface to an English translation of that play Albert Camus wrote I look in vain for philosophy and these four acts of the play because I have little regard for an art that deliberately aims to shock because it is unable to convince I imagine the young men and women who are putting on the play thinking that their own brutal leader had been seeking to shock and silence them but did not end up succeeding after the executions the young men and women who were read and staged who read and staged Camus' play desperately needed art that could convince them that tyrants were not invincible they needed art that could convince them that they wouldn't die the same way Numa and Dwarth had they needed to be convinced that stories could still be told so they don't white sheets as togas Camus' play and recited lines like this from the play execution is a universal tonic a man dies because he is guilty and he is guilty because he is one of Caligula's subjects the legend of the underground staging of this and other plays was so strong that years after Papa Doug Duvalier died every time there was a political murder where I grew up one of the aspiring intellectuals in the neighborhood would suggest that someone should put on a play and some of those plays were staged in my uncle's church the other instance showing the power of a play was demonstrated by the poet and playwright the Haitian Felix Muisola a Haitian writer who spent the final years of his life here in Miami during the dictatorship he was still living in Haiti and because the writers who were still living in Haiti the ones who had not been exiled or killed could not fully perform or print their plays or their own words of protest outright many of them turned to some of the world's first known playwrights the Greeks when it was a crime Felix Muisola introduced readers to Sophocles, Oedipus Rest and Antigone which he translated into Creole and placed into Haitian settings to bypass the gaze of the censors the people for whom the message was meant in these plays clearly understood what was being said this staging of the Greek plays fell into a double entendre a transition of protest that both artists and non-artist Haitians have always practiced it's called voyepoint which little means throwing darts musicians at Carnival use it to criticize the government protest singers of all kinds use it loading existing expressions and metaphors with renewed power a song that has existed for generations for example a song about leaves falling off a tree could suddenly become about famines or massacres depending on the current political situation in this same way great theater helps us frame a common story and makes the entire legacy of human history ours and those moments where Caligula and Sophocles were being staged in Haiti these playwrights were repatriated for our needs Sophocles and Camus became Haitian writers Toni Morrison once said that Tolstoy could not have known that he was writing for a little black girl and Lorraine Ohio Toni Morrison in turn could not have known that she was writing for a Haitian girl in Brooklyn, New York Camus and Sophocles did not know that they were writing for Haitians trying to survive a dictatorship but their work brought us to the same stage where issues of resistance were discussed with no new words being exchanged and people we would never meet or never know people long dead reached from the distance past to comfort some young men in Bel Air and give them strength to resist these kinds of plays were unintentionally inclusive without this even being a goal imagine how much further we can go when we make concerted efforts to be inclusive being inclusive sometimes requires some innovation and creativity the first play I attended that was simultaneously translated where you were giving headphones as you entered and could have the play translated from you from Spanish to English was Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father at the black box here I thought this was an amazing idea to not only invite people who might not have understood the play but it was a wonderful way to broaden the audience the only drawback was that those of us who didn't who weren't fully fluent in Spanish were always laughing like 30 seconds later than everybody else but there was even beauty in that recently I attended or should I say experience Viva la Perenda a new musical at the colony theater in Miami Beach which tells the story of the Afro-Venezuelan band the play included storytelling music and a soup which was cooked right there on the stage and shared at the end of the performance with the audience there was also simultaneous translation on stage two years ago one of this conference's host committee I think he was responsible for the last one too Michelle incorporated Spanish and Haitian Creole which made the play resonate even deeper with those particular audiences all these are innovative methods that opens the door to an audience which might feel like some museum and other spaces that might be intimidated or not for them I remember once asking my neighbor across the street in Little Haiti if her daughter had come to see a play had gone to see a play that was free for families in our area and she said that's for the blancs the gringos, the white ones it's not for us she said my parents would have said the same thing when I was her daughter's age I knew even then when I was her daughter's age that my parents just weren't sure that if they tried and made the effort to go that they would feel at ease that bit of Creole in our town would have gone a long way with them as would have having representatives of the community as an integral part of the theater people they might recognize on the street or see as their neighbors the first plays I saw when I was in school were on school trips theater professionals please never underestimate those shows the free shows you put on for the school kids especially the ones for underprivileged kids of which I was one even if the kids don't seem to care it makes a huge impression especially if they see something that reflects their lives on that stage I remember first seeing a production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in Brooklyn as a high school student the actors were not famous but I was totally smitten in class we were reading Shakespeare and memorizing the lines as instructed by our wonderful English teacher but sitting there in the theater watching that family struggle with similar problems as my parents who were trying to buy a dream house for which so much had been sacrificed I not only felt seen but I understood my parents a whole lot better why can't we read that play and memorize those lines I remember thinking I was particularly moved by the younger sister in the play the rebellious Benita and tried to memorize her lines a shy and compliant daughter I wanted to be her I also remember seeing an Tazaki Shanghese for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough Achey for an Tazaki I remember seeing her play on one of those theater field trips in high school I remember hearing the lady Brown utter the name Tussé for Tussé Louverture one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution hearing her express her admiration for one of my country's heroes someone who was like a god to us made me feel like both my culture and myself were part of the world I had just migrated to plus the lady in brown was also talking about books and libraries which I also loved the writer Brenda Eulen in her book if you want to write says that the more you wish to describe a universal truth the more minutely you must describe a particular truth sometimes it is believed that our particular truth are niche and cannot be universal but that is absolutely wrong so many of our great writers and playwrights have shown that our particulars the specificity of our experiences be there based on race personality class gender fluidity different levels of physical ability these are not niche but particular and are not marginal but center if you open that gate just a bit wider and allow them in one of the mistakes I made with my very I mean very limited experience in the theater in my colleagues and my audience as collaborators your community the less obvious ones the ones you are not seeing show up can also be your collaborators and if they feel welcomed in those spaces if they feel as though these spaces also their own they are more likely to feel at ease and they are more likely to come and then when they come you won't be preaching to the same choir you will get converts and the theater which has so much more competition for eyeballs these days will not only be trying to survive but might thrive we also need to see more diversities in the spaces where you gather like here hey rising leaders of color in my own life I have seen how theater can transform lives Haitian community organizations when they want to make a point or teach or show something to the larger community especially in rural areas of Haiti will enroll community members to take part in a play these plays will depict a situation or a problem and ultimately it's possible solutions or will lead to a discussion asking the people in the play and those in the audience with a solution together and those settings I have seen theater be used to teach us empathy and bring people of different political points of view together it may not always work but we should at least try we can learn empathy and compassion by watching a play and we need so much compassion and empathy right now for the climate one of the plays I had to memorize in high school lines from not the whole play was Shakespeare's Hamlet and one of the lines I will never forget perhaps also because it's so often repeated is the plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscious of the king the plays the thing ladies and gentlemen and we're not going to catch the conscience of our current king but maybe we can catch the conscience of a few of those who follow him so what can you learn about being here in Miami as I mentioned we are not perfect our own inclusivity is far from perfect we're a group of people a lot of us from different parts of the world and we are trying to live together at least before the floods come we are after all at ground zero for extreme weather and climate in a couple of decades I hate to be dour but this might all be underwater but having a large percentage of people here who come from difficult places we're going to hold on for as long and we're going to do our best to survive these things might sound apocalyptic apocalyptically familiar to people in your field when I make mistakes like this I remind my children I said I am an immigrant so these things might sound apocalyptically you know the word familiar to people in your field some of you are going to have to innovate to be creative to cut corners to stay open to survive cast a wider net reach out for every hand you can be brave be bold push the envelope and both form and in subject dream us a better world a world that looks more like ours in the one to come or facilitate bringing visions to the world in front of others dream us a world where voices from the so called margins are brought to the center one where people like those of us who live in this city and speak about 120 languages dream us a world where voices like ours can be heard on stages so enjoy Miami and we hope you will come back there are a lot of driving jokes about Miami Joshua told you one one of my favorite is Dave Barry he says that everybody in Miami drives by the rules of their own country Dave Barry had once also proposed a possible slogan for Miami tourism come back to Miami it said we weren't shooting at you so please so please come back to Miami we promise we won't shoot at you at all thank you what a way to start thank you Edwidge I really appreciate that wide ranging and personal and heartfelt expression of theater's importance and impact and the very real role that theater can play in resistance and the way in which artists work and how their work goes far beyond particular geography and of course just the idea of being more bold and more inclusive and more collaborative every day I think is an inspiration to all of us so it's time to party but before we go I have a few announcements first off I just want to recognize that we have some very special guests with us visiting from Catalonia in Spain and a programer who are going to be hosting a breakfast tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. in Merrick 1 and I really encourage you to attend and learn about their work and their writing and what's happening in their country so that's again 8 a.m. in Merrick 1 the other thing I wanted to say is if you felt deeply about this last session I encourage you to go to your conference app that really cool conference app we have and offer your feedback there's some instructions on the slides here so if you take time and be our critics there are hardly any critics left anymore so right Bill so that would be great and while you have your phones out turn your app notifications on because we do make changes and we have special announcements to make so if you have your app notifications on you'll be able to see those two more things as you exit the plenary space I want you to please pay a visit to our business partners who are on the mezzanine many of them are presenting in trend workshops throughout our time together and it's just really important to meet them because they are thought leaders they have solutions and strategies to offer the field they're really fun to hang out with and the conference would not happen so please visit them yeah we can cheer our business partners last but not least if you are a spotlight on partner can you meet stage right after the plenary and finally it's time to go time to party if you head out the doors out the front door of the hotel there will be buses that will rotate to and from the institute for contemporary art for the next few hours we'll see you there