Hi everyone, Joe for jazbyscasebrakes.com coming at you with a pack of 2022 panini capstone baseball and giving away the final Nine NT baseball random team spots Big thanks to this group for finishing off this this break here You know what sorry I grabbed the wrong list here That's for a different break later on It's for prison the prison baseball pack. This is the official list right here a bunch of chads Steve's Zang Tristan's Oliver Dennis Brandon Alexander. This is the capstone pack number 54 all baseball teams are in. Let's do the break first Four and a six ten times each for names and teams different dice. Well for the giveaway part Six seven eight Eight nine and ten and then four and a six once again ten times for the teams One two And at 10th and final time we've got ems down to the Yankees All right, no trade windows, but there's the first half of the list right there and the second half of the list right over here It's alphabetized by team print and rip There's the capstone pack The NT baseball will be in the next video a different video and here's your capstone Rosie Contreras to 49 ours Aranya Joe Ryan all right nothing too crazy here But let's see who's gonna get those NT spots. That's like a hit in and of itself So let's copy all of your names one through 30 new dice new list and once again, it'll be the top nine after Nine five and four nine times. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight and Ninth and final time. Good luck everybody So sorry zing from ten through thirty Sad times Zing's close, but just not quite but we'll get him next time Top nine after nine though. You're happy because you're in the next break Steve Herrick is happy So is Tristan Chad right Chad Cromwell Chad Cromwell again Tristan Greg Chad C and Chad C Congrats to the top nine. We'll see you in the next video for the break itself. Just these case breaks.com. Bye


Don't not make the visual novel of superb audiovisual quality, but does the writing measure up? I'll try to explain why I think that it does. I'll pay special attention to why the last chapter of the game works and why it is that you might think it does not. If you do, that's perfectly fine, I get you, I get why, but I've thought long and hard about the shift in tone and I believe I have gleaned some understanding behind its purpose. Before that discussion, let's define the conflict into which protagonist Polly is thrust. Polly returns home to the island of Athena after ten years of living abroad. This is no joy trip however. Ursula, a poet in the heart of the artistic community in Athena, has gone missing. Ursula is also Polly's mother. The strained relationship between the two is defined by long bars of silence, the occasional notes of disapproval and a general lack of understanding between the two women. This mother-daughter conflict is at least part of the reason behind Polly's decision to move to the continental mainland. The world that opens up to Polly as she returns home, however, is going to help our protagonist understand her mother for the first time in her life. What is that world? It is called reverie, a realm beyond Polly's own. The realm of aspirations that correspond to the main forces that drive humanity towards progress, chaos, bliss, bond, power, truth and glory. When Polly, harmony, as the aspirations call her, is first transported to reverie, this realm is in a state of disrepair. Some of the aspirations are unmade or are otherwise beyond reach. It is up to harmony to repair the damaged reverie through the collection of a resource called Egregor, produced whenever she makes decisions in the human realm, decisions I might add that shape the very future of the island of Athena. If you've read Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the aspirations will likely recall his endless, from the naming conventions and core idea, to Bliss' visual style recalling delirium. What has been going on in reverie is not independent of Ursula's disappearance. Both her absence and reverie's present state can be traced back to one entity, the mono-concern MK for short, Corporation, the de facto sovereign of Athena. The conflict quickly moves away from just the search for the missing Ursula and instead looks to MK's usurpation of power across this idyllic Mediterranean island. This usurpation has mystical origins resting in the current state of reverie, and this is where the aspirations play a part. Rather than agents of their own, most aspirations play the part of advisors. Bliss pushes Polly towards tackling different situations, with mine to bringing joy, happiness, personal fulfilment to those closest to her. Power is decisive, seeking control, dominating conversations and leading with authority. Power's voice actor is perfectly cast too. In fact, all the aspirations, all the characters, have excellent voice actors who don't pull any punches, but Power's in particular is close to my own heart because he sounds like a bloody sit-lord and also the voice actor voices not just the aspiration but one of Polly's closest people, Laszlo, her father figure. Returning to the topic of the different aspirations as advisors, there is one exception, which is of course Chaos, whose machinations can cause no end of travel to Polly and her friends. I thought Chaos was a lark, even as I did not follow his every plan, a choice for which I was awarded with his continued attempts to ruin my own designs. Root. But let's return to the title's main conflict. This is not the first game I've played that has a strong anti-corporate message.  Harmony, for with Reverie, enters into a similar conversation. It's not as capable, not as potent a piece of art, but then Citizen Sleeper makes for a high bar. Domtnot's writing team shows at first MK's benevolent face, countless social initiatives, the excellent pay they offer prospective employees, the urban development and modernization of the island. What follows Reverie does well is, it creates real disquiet in those early moments, as I realized how all those initiatives, all that goodwill, MK shows the city of Athena and the old city quarter of Alma in particular, how easily those initiatives can run dry if the corp holds the plug. The riches and benevolence the corporation pulls onto Athena are always conditional. Don't go against our interests or else. As the plot progresses, that is indeed what happens. We get to find out what that else entails. Harmony, the fall of Reverie, has a memorable cast of characters, both human and aspirations. The humans from Polly's family to friends new and old are personable, colourful, unique. That is to say, they contrast in every way the faceless facades of the monoconsoon. Polly and her family, father figure Lazlo, an adopted sister Nora, voiced by the brilliant Abigail Torn, creates lasting connections. With the community, with MK's enemies and critics and even some of their employees. MK meanwhile is an amorphous, shapeless entity, whose exploitative nature is defined by corporate hunger for profit. Like most choice-based narrative games, this one too has pivotal moments that cannot be changed. How you reach those and how they are resolved is very much up to your choices. Making a choice in Chapter 2, for example, will have lasting impact. Whole nodes will open or close depending on decisions already transpired. So, for example, I was hoping to develop a romance with one character, but chose instead to spend time after personal loss with a family member. That romance never had the time to grow following the choice. Because that character in Polly never had their time together. My final decision was informed by an inability to make the romance I'd wanted work. That reminds me, you'll find great non-traditional representation of the family unit here. Polly, Nora, Lazlo and Ursula are far from the traditional family unit and most of the relationships depicted are LGBTQ-friendly. Big fan of the cute romances that grow throughout this 10-hour narrative. And those that could grow, but that I kind of failed it. The most innovative, perhaps, system this title provides is called the Orgural. The Orgural looks like a game board and serves as the visual representation of Polly's gift of foresight of the choices in front of you in the current act. In practical terms, it's a series of semi-linear nodes which provide you with the opportunity to choose a part forward based on limited information. Each node provides you with some small amount of text that explains and allows you to guess about the kind of events that will bring about this particular choice. Think of it as a visual representation of the choices that other games in this genre keep invisible. So, for example, if you go down one part in your first playthrough, it's much easier to follow along a different part on your second, even just through a visual scan of the schematic that is this Orgural. The game also has a codex which provides you with a little extra information about characters, organizations and locations in the two worlds. I like this one, not least because it seems to be a diagetic or in-world document written by monoconsern employees, if sentences such as the following are anything to go by. Unfortunately for everyone, MK reconstruction projects are often delayed by a small group of anti-monoconsern activists. The unfortunately for everyone has a particular positive kick towards MK, which you wouldn't expect to meet in, say, Polly's own notes. An interesting choice, certainly. Some people are unhappy with the 15 last chapter of the game, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video. It was a great beginning of a video, so if you enjoyed it, please subscribe. Anyway, back to it. I understand. The upset, but I do not necessarily agree with it. The reason why the fifth act is so different from the other four in terms of tone is not because the writing is any worse, it's because the writing moves away from character-driven towards big-picture social writing. Following along the shifting makeup of the fight against the MK corporation over weeks and months. It's a change that might feel jarring to some, but I would argue it serves an important narrative purpose, showing how the aspirations work in the long term, how Harmony's quest begins to shape the human world as she is aided by the inhabitants of Reverie. You can look at Chapter 4 as the conclusion to our core cast's character growth. What comes after shows all that Polly and Nora and Laszlo and Ursula and their friends, and the aspirations even, have worked towards. The grassroots movements, the resistance we worked to fan out from a single spark, all come to fruition, and the fight against MK is on. How does it go? Whether it's results? I'll let you find out for yourselves. I never, for a moment, regretted picking up Harmony the Fall of Reverie on release. It's clear that this was a passion project for Don't Not or a small team within the greater company. Whatever the size of the team that developed this one, they took an interesting concept and made it a colorful, socially conscious delight. It reads as a very modern piece of art, no question about it, and one I found myself taken with. It's not the most gripping narrative, yet it has heart, a cast of characters that didn't overstay its welcome, and plenty to say that's worth hearing. My five cents, give it a try. You might find more than you first expected. If you enjoyed this video, why don't you share it with your friends? Let me know in the comments down below.  Are you planning on playing it? I've been a fan of the company since Life is Strange and have played most of the games they have released since. I think this one was certainly different from many of them, but it was also an enjoyable experience. So yeah, next up I will probably have a review of Star Wars Jedi Survivor coming soon. If you'd enjoy watching that, don't forget to press that subscribe button, and of course, smash that like button before it's too late. Until then, I'm Philip Magnus, you're not, and I'll see you again next time. Bye!


Welcome once again to the Breakfast and Plusty v Africa. Our next conversation is going to the value of the Naira. Reports have it yesterday that the Naira was exchanging that between 543 or 545 Naira to the dollar. The Nigerian government has, over time, made different moves and set up committees, created new laws with regards to protecting the Naira from its freefall that we're currently witnessing. But that doesn't seem to be working because we can this morning with an economist, Mouda Yusuf, who's a former DG of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Good morning and thanks for joining us. Good morning. Good morning and thank you for having me. Alright, you're welcome. So I'm going to get you to start with your views on what seems to be going on with the Naira. We maybe weren't expecting it to be this bad a few years ago, but we're currently at 543 or 545 and there are fears that it might even hit 600 and more in the next few months. What seems to be going on? Well, what is going on, we can say, is a combination of factors. The combination of factors such as the capacity of the economy to generate foreign exchange. Then there is also a regulatory or policy dimension to it. So basically, it's a combination of those two factors. The capacity to generate foreign exchange to meet the demand and the appropriateness of policy framework that will inspire confidence and ensure stability in the foreign exchange market. Don't forget, exchange rate is a price. And in elementary economics, the price is determined by demand and supply. So you have factors on the demand side, which is very heavy because of the demand for all manner of things that we import. They have factors on the supply side, which has to do with variables around those economic activities that generate foreign exchange. Then there is the top leg of it, which is the monetary factor. That is how we manage the economy, especially around monetary policy and around the financing of a deficit by the central bank. That also has an influence on what you call money supply. So if the money supply is getting too high, it has a way of affecting both inflation and the exchange rate. So basically, we will locate what is happening around those three critical factors. As a progress, we can elaborate on the key elements of each of those factors. Okay, so Mr. Yusuf, let's start with a focus on the policies and policy framework of the Nigerian government, the CBN government inclusive and also setting economic teams that have been set up over time. There have been certain policies that were at first a little shocking to Nigerian people by the CBN governor. These policies were at that time meant to help stop the free fall of the Naira and to give the Naira more value. But these don't seem to be working. So would you say that the policies have failed to address these challenges or the CBN just didn't time these policies perfectly? What I would say is that we have some major shortcomings with the policy. Generally, the kind of policy framework that is being adopted is what you call or what you can describe as an administrative allocation of foreign exchange as opposed to a market-based framework for the management of foreign exchange. Administrative allocation is generally and typically very, very challenging because when you fix your rates, what we have now essentially is administrative fixing of the exchange rates. When you fix your rates at a level that the supplier cannot support, then you find yourself in a situation where you begin to rush on foreign exchange. And the immediate impact of that, first, because the rate is artificial, I'm talking of the official window rate now. Because the rate is artificial and it doesn't reflect fundamentals, it requires a lot of speculation, it attracts a lot of parasites, a lot of people who have some influence and all of that to get the foreign exchange because there is the opportunity of ramp-tripping the foreign exchange. Now, the official window now is around 4.11. The open market rate now is around 5.8. You can see the gap. Once you have this kind of gap, you have a subsidy challenge. That is what you call the subsidized exchange rate. And once you have that, you see a lot of scramble of foreign exchange. Even from people who don't have any signals needed for them. They are in the market because they want to take advantage of the premium between that official window and the open market rate. That is one problem with the current policy. The second problem is that when you fix the rates, you know what is regarded as the market rate. Those that are supposed to bring foreign exchange into the economy will not bring those foreign exchange. Because how will you bring your foreign exchange when you know that the open market rate is 5.38 and your authorities are saying that you should bring your foreign exchange at 4.11. This is a disadvantage to supply. So when you have this kind of things, you create a major crisis. You create a problem on the supply side because people who are supposed to bring in the supply and I can name them like the oil and gas companies, like the embassies. You have foreign direct investment. You have foreign portfolio investment. You have export processes. You have the gas products and the chances. You have the embassies. All of these are channels through which foreign exchange is coming. But if you are imposing a rate on debt that if they bring in the foreign exchange, you will be extending for them at 4.11. Two things will happen. Is that they don't bring it at all or they bring it under the table? Which is the crisis we are having. So what if you have a market-based mechanism? A less regulated system. Here you allow the markets to determine this. You are allowing them to see a much better improvement on the supply side. That is a bad supply. Now on the demand side, one of the biggest pressures we are having on the foreign exchange is in the position of petrol and products. Our refiners are not working. The dangote refinery is there to come on stream. And we are consuming, as there are some figures now, ranging between 19 million to 100 million liters every day. That is a lot of pressure on our foreign exchange. And because the government doesn't want a crisis, around Fuwa, Kiwis and all of that, government keeps pumping a lot of foreign exchange to the position of petrol and products. There are also arguments that Nigeria itself may not really consume as much as 90 million liters. And so there are also some challenges with those figures and the need to also cut them down. But go ahead. And I want you to also add to your thoughts. The point is that once you cut, that is another pricing problem. Because the price of fuel is also heavily subsidized, it is far cheaper than the fuel that we have in our neighboring countries. So what happens is that once the fuel comes in, before it finds its way into all the countries in the West African subregion, and even sometimes even to North Africa, because you have economic agents who move distance. So these things are putting a lot of pressure on the foreign exchange market. Then if you look at even our manufacturing sector, a lot of the raw materials that are used in manufacturing are also important. Because we don't have a properly functioning petrochemical sector. We have one somewhere in O'Neill or something but the capacity is not enough to be able to cope the demands. So there is a lot of pressure also coming from the manufacturers for their inputs and raw materials. The same thing with the equipment that all economic agents use, whether you are in manufacturing, whether you are in agriculture, whether you are in service sector, those of those marginaries and equipment are important. That's our source of pressure. Then we have finished goods. People buy in all sorts of things, go to China, bring in all sorts of things to be sold. People are cheaper. So we have challenges on the demand side. We have challenges on the supply side. What the CBN has been trying to do is to manage demand. That is why the CBN has been banning some imports, excluding some people from the foreign exchange market and all of that. That is still not achieving the right kind of outcomes because you are not dealing with fundamentals. That's a limit to which you can do. And what we are having now is that most of these foreign exchange transactions are even taking place outside the official system. If you talk to a lot of people now, they get somebody abroad who has foreign exchange. You do a kind of swap. You credit a particular account here. They give you dollars over there. These are all sorts of things that are happening just because we don't allow the market to function. If you allow a better market framework, the situation will not be as bad as it is. Okay. Dr. Mudayisuf, would you argue that Nigeria is currently facing a currency crisis? And more importantly, who would you say profits from the free fall of the Naira? Well, I wouldn't say we can't say this is a currency crisis. I think for me, it's an economic management issue to a larger extent. If we manage the economy better, we will not have the kind of challenges that we are having. Because this economy is very big and it has a lot of opportunities to attract private capital. I'd have to the channel of foreign direct investment, to the channels of foreign portfolio investment, to the channel of export processes, to the oil companies, to the embassies. The opportunities are huge. This market is big. The population is huge. All of these things bring value. So I wouldn't say it's a currency crisis. I think it is an economic management crisis. And now from the monetary management perspective, the rate at which the government or the city is also funding the fiscal deficit of government. When I say that the rate at which the government is following CPN, it's also too high. And when the CPN continues to fund the deficit of gross money to government, it has a way of weakening the currency. Because it boosts the money supply. And once money supply continues to accelerate and output is not growing, then you have a challenge with currency. And that is why there is a lot of problems around the welfare of the people, around the purchasing power, around the inflation. And this is creating a lot of problems around the poverty in the country. Because nominal incomes are not increasing. And prices are increasing. In a ganoping way, there is no greater enemy of the poor than inflation. So, Mr. Doctor, what are you saying? When the economy is declining, and you continue to have these high prices. Some prices have doubled, some prices have tripled in the last one year. So that leads to the next part of my question. We know that the weaker rates seem to boost government revenue earnings regarding oil. So that's why I'm asking, who really stands the profits from all of this? Well, in terms of who is profiting, first, those who are around tripping. Those who have the influence to access foreign exchange in the official window. They are the major beneficiaries. Because many of them get these foreign exchange from the official window and find a way to take advantage of the premium, which is not a legitimate kind of benefit anyway. That is one group of beneficiaries. The other group, which for me is legitimate, is those who are exporters. Even though they have a whole lot of challenges in the processes of exporting. But as an exporter, an exporter benefits from a weakening currency. The weaker the currency, the better for an exporter. Because exporters are earning foreign exchange. So when the exchange rate is weakening, the narrow returns on every export is much bigger. So right now, those who are in the export business are doing very well. If they have the opportunity to export. Every dollar you bring in, you are starting to have 500 Naira. I want us to also look at the CBN governor, Godwin MFLA, and some of the moves that he has made in the last, let's say, one year. The ban on cryptocurrency trading and also the CBN ban on FX to BDCs. How have these affected and also led to this crisis with the Naira that we are currently witnessing? Well, as you can see, we are not getting any concrete results from it. The policies we are working in will not be discussing what we are discussing. Before the expulsion of the BDCs, the rates were less than 500, I think 480, 470, 460 and all of that. Now we have removed the BDCs because we thought that we are the ones who are the problems. The transactions were moved to the banks. Then what are you having now? The situation has further deteriorated. But that is taking back to the issue of addressing fundamentals. What we are dealing with are the symptoms. If you continue to tackle the symptom of the problem, the problem will not go away until you deal with the crisis. And the crisis is the fact that we are fixing an exchange rate at a rate that the market, the supply, cannot support. You create all sorts of problems. So what do you recommend? What do you recommend? The BDCs are not doing it when we removed them. Now the issue is also about the fintech. There has been something around falling as in. Some sanctions were also threatened. Now there was also issues about the banks. Now the banks are being instructed to go and publish the list of people who are coming with market passports. All sorts of problems. It's because we are fighting symptoms. If there are fighting symptoms and you don't deal with the fundamentals, these problems will not go away. So my solution to this is as much as possible. First, is to adopt a market-based foreign exchange management framework. If it is more market-based, if the exchanges are more market-driven, that's one way out of all these challenges. The second is to see how we can accelerate the process of getting our finalists to work. Although that's not a short term thing. Because the pressure that is put on the foreign market is enormous. Thank God we are looking forward to download it. If finally, hopefully, the government is also making efforts to fix our domestic refining. If we are able to do that, it will take a lot of pressure out of a lot of pressure away from the foreign exchange market. And we need to also correct the orientation of our manufacturers as much as possible. We should have an industrial policy that encourages backward integration. The manufacturing system is also not too dependent on imports. If anything, they should be generating foreign exchange. These are some of the things and of course we need to deal with the monetary aspects. The exchange rate is funding fiscal deficit. It's affecting money supply. It's affecting inflation. And it's also contributing to the depreciation of the exchange rates. So you can see that it's a multi-dimensional thing. We want to deal with this problem. I think these are the dimensions that we should be focusing on. Mouda Yusuf, what fears do you have if we don't start to take some of the steps that you've mentioned here? Because, and I've repeatedly said this, that there is an economic management team. There is different committees that have been set up headed by people who you would expect and knowledgeable with managing an economy. But these teams don't seem to be influencing much. So what are your fears if we don't start to take the right steps as quickly as possible? And how would this affect our economy in the next one year? It's already affecting the economy as we speak. Don't you see what the prices are saying? Don't you see the crisis in the market even from the common people? If you go to Enema, you see the way every day they change prices. There's so much uncertainty. So the consequences are already with us. And if you are not careful, it will continue to get worse. So I think it's a question of going back to the joint board. There has to be further engagement. And I know that the economic management team have laid down some very fantastic proposals. But it's wanting to have the proposals. It's another thing to translate those proposals or recommendations into concrete implementation. So we have to go back to the joint board and we also need to engage the stakeholders. Nobody has the monopoly of knowledge. The economic managers, the policymakers should engage with the stakeholders on sectoral basis and on a general basis to address these macroeconomic issues and to also address sector-specific issues. Because all our business is also about holistic management of the economy. So that is what should happen in my view. If we don't do that, the situation will continue to deteriorate and we will continue on this firefighting approach looking for this, going for this, asking for sanctions, bringing the ECC and all of that. Those things cannot give the sustainable solution. Alright. Wudai Yusuf, thank you very much for joining us this morning. We will of course continue to follow the figures with the Naira and the exchange rates. And of course, looking forward to having another conversation with you if things either improve or get worse. We'll have a very interesting Friday ahead. Stay with us. We'll move away from talking about the economy and the Naira to now talk in schools and the Nigeria's out-of-school children seem to be increasing. And also, what the security challenges have led to or have eventually caused with the number of schoolchildren that have been affected. We'll get into that conversation next with, once again, and stay with us.


Welcome back to our lecture series, Math 1210, Calculus I for students at Southern Utah University. As usual, I'll be your professor today, Dr. Angela Missildine. In lecture 29, we want to continue what we talked about in lecture 28. That is, we want to do more problems about related rates. And so before we start this lecture, I want to review some strategies of solving related rates problems that we saw previously, but actually kind of summarize them and put them in an official list. So these are things that I would want someone working on related rates problems to do. The first thing to do is actually to read the problem, but not just read the problem, you need to read it carefully. We're not reading it the same way we read a Harry Potter novel. We have to read it for understanding. Why are these words here? What's the context? What do they mean? What cues are telling me that this is such and such problem or disinformation, that information? So read the problem. You might have to read them more than once. That's perfectly fine. Step two is to then draw the picture as appropriate. Now, not every problem is going to need a picture, but most of the time there is a good geometric relationship that relates the information you're given. This can be based in geometry or physics or others, other situations. Draw a picture when appropriate. It helps you visualize these problems when you can actually see them. Another step that students often skip, which is extremely important, is to introduce notation. We need to use some variables, whether they be X, Y, and Z, A, B, and C, or maybe some other symbols with a mnemonic device. We should assign variables, which should be measuring some quantities. And these quantities should be functions of time. In related rates problems, these quantities are functions of time. So identify what are the quantities that change with respect to time and be specific. What are their units? Are we measuring these things in, say, feet or inches, centimeters, be specific? And also, it can be very useful to actually write out what it is, like X equals, it's the length, maybe the length I said, between such and such. You keep on going, right? It's better to be specific. It could be that as a student, maybe you're required to write this out because you're going to be graded upon it. But even if you're not being graded upon it, it helps you articulate exactly what does that variable mean. We're going to see in a second when we do an example in this video that if we're not careful with the variable, we can get some things mixed up that we don't want to happen. So it's very important to be very specific with our variables, what they're meaning. So with respect to the notation that you've introduced, figure out what information has been given, what information is expected, and when appropriate, make mention of what information are derivatives, like what derivatives do we know, what derivatives do we want? It's a critical step in a related rates problem. Once we've identified the variables we have in play and we know what derivative we need to find, then you're going to look for an equation that relates together these quantities. That's going to be important that oftentimes we can manipulate some type of geometric relationship or physical relationship or this will often, this, how we do that will depend on the problem in play here. Once we have this equation, we're then going to take the derivative of both sides of the equation with respect to time, which most likely time will not be a variable in the equation. So we have to take the derivative implicitly, a.k.a. we have to use the chain rule. Once you have down the derivatives, you can plug in the information that you know into this equation and then solve for the unknown derivative that's not already determined and that then solves the problem. That's how we work through a related rates problem. Let me demonstrate that to you with the following example. Now in terms of drawing the diagram, I took the derivative using the computer to help me produce a picture. So imagine I'm drawing this picture as I'm trying to solve this problem here. So don't fix it too much on the picture side of things here, but let's read through it. So a spotlight is on the ground, shines on a wall 12 meters away. If a man two meters tall walks from the spotlight towards the building at a rate of 1.6 meters per second, how fast is the length of his shadow on the building decreasing when he is four meters from the building? So let's try to process this. Let's go through it one by one by one, these sentences here. So we have a spotlight, it's on the ground, and it shines on a wall that's 12 meters away. So if I just look at that right there, what do I understand? There's again the spotlight, which at the moment not sure why that's significant. I guess it's shining, so the light is coming out of it. So the light must be significant to some degree. It's on the ground. And so that makes me think of it's really sitting on top of a horizontal line. And then there's a wall, which the wall has got to be perpendicular to the ground. So there's some type of right angle relationship going on here. And yeah, the light is shining. So if it's like shine, shine, you get something like that. Okay. So I'm not sure what the significance of the shining is yet, but we do know the distance between the light and the wall is going to be 12 meters. Okay. So if a man walks, or he's two meters tall, so we have our man right here, he's walking, he's walking from the spotlight towards the building, building, what building? When we heard a wall, it's okay, the wall must be a part of the building. Okay. He's walking at a rate of 1.6 meters per second. So that's a speed. I'm also looking at the units there, that's going to be some type of velocity. It's because we know he's walking towards the wall, it's a speed and the direction. So this is a derivative of the position of the man. So that's going to be relevant. I'm going to come back to that in a second. So how fast is the length of the shadow of the building decreasing? So look at the words there for a moment. Fast decreasing, that sounds like a rate of change. That's, that is a derivative, derivative of what? Derivative of length of his shadow. So this is where the light of, this is where the light of the spotlight comes into play here. It casts its light on the building. And so the man has a shadow on the building. As the man gets closer to the building, we see that then the angle of light will be different and then the shadow is different. So as he walks closer and closer to the building, we see the shadow is getting smaller. That's the basic idea. So let's come to this picture that's drawn here by the computer and label what we now know about our problem. Okay. So the man, the man is walking towards the wall. That's happening at 1.6 meters per second. Significant to this problem is going to be the length of the shadow. So what if we call the length of the shadow, this variable here, why? What is why is the length there? And so what we then need to figure out is how fast the length is decreasing. Essentially, what we have to figure out then is what is dy dt at a specific moment in time, which we'll come back to that in a second. So we need to figure out what is the change of y over time. Okay. That's somehow related to this distance or to this velocity right here, 1.6. So if we call y the vertical variable, then x is the horizontal one, but what does x need to be? It depends on a couple of things here. I guess what I'm trying to say is there's more than one option you can choose for x. So if we draw our picture right here, basically our man is just a stick, right? We have y over here. It turns out that we couldn't make x be the distance between the man and the wall. That actually makes a lot of sense for what x could be. Another option is we could make the distance from the spotlight to the man. That could also be x. And for reasons that'll become clear a little bit later in this problem, this is actually where I'm going to set x equal to. I want x to be the distance between the spotlight and the man. And as such, that means that the distance between the man and the spotlight or excuse me, the man to the wall is going to be 12 minus x. After all, the total distance between the spotlight and the wall is 12 meters. So we get that right here so we can fill that in. That's how we're going to decide to get this x right here. Okay. Then let's come back to this idea about the derivative. What's this derivative value going to be? Well, if the position, if the variable x is measuring the distance between the man and the spotlight right here, then as he walks towards the wall, x is going to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger as time elapses. This gives us in fact a positive 1.6. This always shows you a difference that if we had a different variable here, let's call this z, for example. If z is the distance between the man and the wall, then well, the relationship between z and x is this 12 minus x right here. But more importantly, when we take the derivative of z, that's going to be a negative 1.6 meters per second right there. And so the choice of variable makes a difference on other parts of the problem. So choosing one x versus another will affect whether we have a positive derivative or a negative derivative. This is why step number three was so important in this process. We need to be specific about the notation we're using. So here's our x value. And so how is then x related to y? Because we know something about the derivative of x. We know something about, or we want to know something about the derivative of y. How are these related together? So what are some possible approaches? Well, we could think of it as like, well, I know something about the horizontal side of this triangle. I know something about the vertical side of this triangle. It is a right triangle. If I knew something about the hypotenuse, then I could use the Pythagorean equation. That could be like a z or something. But I don't know anything about the hypotenuse. I don't think that's going to be the best approach. But we also would be like, oh, if I know the horizontal and the vertical side, I know the opposite and adjacent sides right here and here, in which case then if I knew the angle, then I could do something like tangent ratio. But I don't know anything about the angle. So that also doesn't seem like the best approach. It turns out that the approach we want to take here is actually to use similar triangles. Because why is the height of the man relevant? So we have this triangle that involves just the spotlight in the man. So the man is X meter or X meters away from the spotlight, and he himself is two meters. But then you have the entire triangle, the triangle associated to the shadow right here. In which case, these are similar triangles have the exact same angles. We know that the spotlight to the wall is exactly 12 meters. And then the other side is a y. And so these are related together in this fashion. So notice we're going to get two over X coincides with y over 12, for which case we could cross multiply and we get 24 equals XY. So just the usual cross multiplication there when you have this proportion problems, we get two times 12 times X times Y, for which then we could solve for Y and get Y equals 24 over X. Now we're going to take the derivative here with respect to time. So we're going to get that Y prime is equal to 24 over X, which as we're taking a derivative, I want to think of this as a power function. So I take it as X to the negative one. So we're going to get Y prime equals negative 24 X to negative two times X prime, or in other words, negative 24 X prime over X squared. So we then plug in the values we didn't know. So which derivative were we looking for? We're looking for the derivative when the distance between the man and the wall is four meters. Now that's not the X value. So if we try to plug in X equals four, we're going to get something that's incorrect. Instead, what we're looking for is over here, we see that if the man is four meters to the wall, it means he's eight meters from the spotlight. That's how we chose the X value. So that's again critical that we're very clear on what our variables mean here. So we need to figure out what the derivative is when X equals four. So plugging these things in here, we get negative 24 times X prime, which is going to be 1.6. And this sits above, of course, eight squared, for which then if we try to simplify this thing, I won't bother you with your arithmetic too much, but this will simplify to be a negative 0.6 meters per second. And we should expect this to be negative because after all, as the man gets closer and closer and closer to the wall, the shadow is going to get smaller, smaller, smaller. So therefore, since the shadow is decreasing, we should expect a negative derivative here. And this then illustrates the seven principles we saw on the previous slide. Notice what we did here. We read the problem, we drew a picture. Have the computer help me, of course. And over and over again, step number three, emphasize the notation. What does it mean? We figured out what information we knew, we figured out what information we needed to know. This step number five, we found an equation that was this proportion equation we had here with the similar triangles. We then took the derivative of set equation and then solved for the unknown derivative right here using the information we had that step number seven. If you follow these seven steps solving a related rates problem, you're going to be just fine. It's a good strategy. And just be patient with yourself. You can work through these story problems. I know you can.


We have Lydia Diamond, Kirsten Greenidge, Keith Joseph Atkins, playwrights who will join us up here, who have all arrived this evening in Baltimore, some for the first time, some not for the first time. We've had a few moments to start the conversation, warm it up, but they'll be thinking fresh here along with you. And to moderate or really more to be part of the conversation, as I think everyone will be initiating many ideas, the Kwame Kweyama Artistic Director, who's joining us in a minute. That's right, are very, very wired, very well traveled. Just for the purposes of the conversation in here, perhaps make sure that your cell phone rings are turned off. However, you are welcome, as far as I know, to take photographs. It'd be great if you don't do flash photography. You can get in their eyes, I guess. But you can take photographs. That doesn't apply once you get downstairs, of course. Equity rules take over. But feel free to photograph for posterity also up here. We'll do 15 or 20 minutes, I think was the thought, and then ensure that we turn it out to there. Partly because of the logistics of the live stream. If you have a comment or question to share, once we do that, the mic will be set up down here. And I would ask that you make your way over here in your comments so that we can all hear it, and it goes out. But anyway, without further ado, Kwame. Thank you, Gavin. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to this, what I think, well actually, I know will be a wonderful debate with three writers and organizers. They're an activist that I respect so very much. I said, we discussed before we came in, that even though I'm in the moderator's chair, we don't really do things that way. These are wonderful minds and intellects. And so it's really, we'll start off with just a little conversation amongst ourselves, but really anybody can lead it at any one time. I want to begin, if I may, by saying hello to everybody at home. And hi, that's the nine. Have we got over 10 people yet? At home. Yeah, we have. Hey, double figures at home. We love you. Please send in your questions, because we will try to answer them as well. I suppose I wanted to begin, and anybody can answer this, really, by speaking a little to the world that you walked into as a playwright. I know we're going to be talking about expanding the black narrative, if in fact it needs any expansion. But I'd love to just kind of know the worlds that you walked into as playwrights. Lydia, we'll begin with you. I'll go first. It's interesting. It's hard to answer the question without thinking about it, without sort of backing into it from how things look now. But I'm going to do that. And I'm going to say, when I graduated college, we didn't do the Google thing. We didn't have Google. And so actually I was, in my junior year, I started playwriting. I didn't know I wasn't a playwright yet. And I was writing because I was an actor. And at the institution that I was studying at, I was one of two people of color in the theater department. And I was not being able to be cast as much. So I'd gone off campus. But then with a great deal of hubris, I was 21, thought I was inventing roles because I hadn't been introduced to the playwrights who had already written really beautiful things that I might have been able to do. So the landscape looked bleak. And that was good for me because it made me sort of have an activist sense that I needed to add voices and roles. I feel that also 23 years ago, I wasn't seeing contemporary plays for people of color. I wasn't seeing us get very often to wear elegant clothes on stage. I wanted to be able to make a space for us to be in diverse rooms and be horribly flawed and terribly funny and very clever in rooms with people who didn't look like us. And so the landscape looked a little more bleak than it was, but it was relatively bleak. And I don't think there was much diversity. Excellent. Kristen, do you want to go? I mean, I think I would have to agree that the landscape did look... When I started writing plays, I wanted to write roles that I would think that black actors would be proud to play. And I, too, wasn't... I don't think I was adept at knowing how many roles actually did exist already, that the plays weren't being produced or had been written 30 or 40 years ago and were no longer being produced if they had been initially. So I, too, walked into a world that I thought actually was much bleaker than it actually was, and yet. You know, when I started writing plays, I kept it a secret because I didn't think I could write a play being black and a woman.  And one thing that I think will stay the same is the amount of writing by black writers that actually does get produced is not, hasn't changed in a way that I would have thought it was 20 years ago when I started writing plays. Kate. I kind of agree with both Lydia and this wonderful alumna. Mike, we actually both went to University of Iowa playwrights workshop. Yay. For me, I was actually living in San Francisco, Oakland for a while, and I was part of what they then called performance poetry scene, then morphed into the spoken word scene. And so for me, I was inundated and surrounded with a lot of political conversation, political art. And one day a friend of mine challenged me. She said, your poems are like monologues. You should write a play. And so basically what I did, I read Raising in the Sun like 50 times. No lie. And I wrote a play called Plum Wine Dreaming, which was basically a rip off of Raising in the Sun. And so a friend of mine, my same friend came to one of my readings of this play and said, you basically ripped off Raising in the Sun. But I actually, and I admit I did, but instead of a check, they were waiting for wine, you know, whatever. But what happened, I fell in love with playwriting and I fell in love with politics on stage and social justice on stage. And so I applied to several different programs for playwriting. I got into the University of Iowa. And I was surprised that they weren't ready for me, even though they accepted me. They weren't ready for how anxious I was to put politics on stage. They weren't ready for the lack of actors. I had to go outside of the theater department where my peers actually could pull from the MFA acting program and I had to actually find people who were in the engineering program who one day did a church play, you know, that kind of thing. I should have given you some of my posters from those three times. Right. We had to go all over campus like hunt down people. So by the time I actually came out of Iowa and was in New York City, I was surprised even more so that the world that I was so allowed to play in as a poet and as an MFA student wasn't the world of theater institutionally. People weren't as interested in the layered, complex, funny, rich, poor black experience. There was this one narrative that everyone was sort of trying to force me into. It was like be August Wilson, be Lorraine Hansberry, be August Wilson. And I was like, well, I love August, I love Lorraine, but I'm from Ohio, my mom is Catholic, my dad is Baptist. I want to write about that. And that's been the struggle in that for me sort of showed me that it was a little bleak that I was going to be a struggle. The hallmark of all of your works. And when I arrived here, I mean, I knew of all of you before I arrived in America. Of course, I'd read your plays and been big fans. But I think, and forgive me for being if this sounds however it sounds, but I think I found you and maybe probably only a few playwrights who seem to have the hallmark of cerebral activity as part of their theme that seemed to write from the cerebral cortex rather than the experiential I have lived in the ghetto or I have lived or... Talk to me a little bit, either of you, any of you, about writing outside of the box, writing... And when I say the box, I mean a box that I... And I mean, no way chastising any writer that does that. I have written many of those plays myself. But talk a little bit about trying to stretch beyond the narrative that feels like if I do this, I'll get produced. When I was in Iowa, my first plays took place in like an unnamed mid-Atlantic type state, somewhat southern maybe, and I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. And I remember having a feedback session with Oscar Hustis. And he said, you know, I like this play. And it's a play that I had sent around. It had gotten a couple of awards and it had gotten me into grad school, certainly. And so I was very proud of it. And he said, I like this play and it's good. But where are you from? And I said, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. And he said, what do your parents do? And so, well, my dad is a lawyer and my mom is a social worker. And he said, so that's not really in this play.  And it doesn't have to be from the ghetto if you're not from the ghetto. And that was actually mind-boggling to me that I could write about people that I knew and I had grown up with. And I didn't have to appropriate playwrights of past years to be able to get.  And my writing changed after that. So that's what it is for that play. I think because I didn't identify as a playwright early, because I thought I was an actor who was writing plays for actors. I didn't actually... That's funny. Someone at home said you really like what you just said. I didn't actually feel the constraints of what I was expected to write or what I should write. I was very lucky that way. I was the girl who sometimes almost got beat up on the playground for talking proper. Or the girl who was the one black girl in the all-white college town and I'd be having a crush on the one black boy and he was having a crush on all the white girls. Right? No. And so I was only writing my experiences because to me they were very authentic and it hadn't occurred to me that there was anything else. And I don't think... I don't know. I don't think that I was unique in that. I think that it's just really hard for the diversity of African-American voices to get produced.  But I think that what Center Stage is doing and I think that what now several more companies are doing is giving a wider range of voices that those of us who have been sort of screaming into the wind are actually having our screams have a chance to land. So... Okay. Okay, so I'm just kind of stuck with this question because I feel that there is a lot of advocacy and encouragement to break the mold and do things outside of the box and the promise of that outside of the box thing being produced. I feel like that is a conversation that's been happening. I do feel that a lot of theater companies and institutions are eager to see that happen in development and how they commission. However, I don't see the producing... I see a lot of development and not a lot of production. And I started an organization a couple of years ago called the New Black Fest, which is a festival... Woo! A festival that I wanted to do to encourage and celebrate the diversity within the black experience that I felt that, one, that the black demographic and black artists were not necessarily subscribing to because everyone was subscribing to the larger institutional narrative. And so I wanted black people to learn that they're black folks in Germany or there's black people who are from Massachusetts or, you know, but also exposed to larger community, theater-going community, to that diversity as well and to see that diversity as being potential things that can be produced and make money. And so I'm still not convinced that, although there is a lot of encouragement and advocacy around diversifying the black narrative, that it actually is happening and making a real impact. And I think that, for me, that it's taking individuals and smaller collectives to make something... to make the puncture happen. I would absolutely agree. I would absolutely agree. And I think that another conversation to be had is about the ethnically specific, the black theater companies and how they're struggling and the people who've been telling the stories consistently for all of these years aren't being able to do that anymore. That's really frightening to me. But then there's also an aesthetic thing that I find disturbing and really interesting, which is that there are safety zones around which... and, you know, maybe only not in Baltimore. In very few places have I seen regional theater audiences be diverse. And so I feel as though there's this comfort zone in white audiences around the way we've been taught to expect that people of color interact with each other and look on stage. And so aesthetically, we've been sort of boxed in. And again, I'm Pollyanna-ish about what writers write. I think writers write what they write. But even the very few productions that have gotten produced over a span of time have had to fit into a very narrow aesthetic, which I think is where we started. You started us with that. I think I agree. And this is going to be my last question before I jump out. Do you have something going on today? Yeah, just a little thing. Something that I thought I'd wear a really quiet suit to. On a scale of one to ten, I always worry about this question, but when it goes through my mind, because there are so many connotations, but on a scale of one to ten, how bored are we of having to talk through the context of race? I'll start. As I throw it out. I would say that on any given day and at any given moment, it fluctuates. And any different context, it fluctuates. But I would say on a scale of one to ten, and being someone who is behind this debate, I think I'm about a nine and three-quarters as an average on talking about race. And that doesn't mean that I do not feel that race is phenomenally important, but I do think on a scale of one to ten that I find myself frustrated by the perception of a box, rather than the world which says all of our writing styles are different, but they're equally as valid. And that while I can speak about it through the lens of race, I would far rather speak about it through the lens of a practicing playwright trying to tell the best stories that I can through my specific cultural lens, and that not being labeled. That was a long one to ten, but... Anyone else? Eight. But nine. Oh, eight and a half. And talking about it that I mind, I actually over the course of my career have been called upon to talk about it so much that I fancy myself as really quite good at talking about it. I don't mind talking about it. What I don't like is talking and talking and talking for years, and nothing changes. So that's the problem. It's fun to talk about stuff you're good at talking about, and you've got some anecdotes, and ooh, it's hard, it's hard. But it's the things not changing that I would make it like a 12. Very good. Good. Did anybody else want to jump in on that? No. I think I grow weary of it. I grow weary of it because sometimes the weariness does take away from being able to engage with being a playwright in a different type of way. So weary as well. Please, please. No, don't talk. The other thing that I will say that has happened recently is there's been lots and lots of talk around gender parity. And I only have recently realized that I've never been invited into that conversation because I always get to talk about being black. And so I also am becoming aware of what happens when we're called to talk about race. And I think that the people who've asked me to be on panels and talk about race have great intentions. And I've worked with theater companies that actually have really made progress and have listened to me. I mean, there are certainly people working really hard, but I think collectively the theater community really smart. We solve problems. We make angels come down from the sky. I don't know why it's hard to figure out how to diversify the audiences and diversify the theaters. Okay, I'm done. Okay, can I tag onto what you're saying? Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I was invited to sit on a panel to talk about race in New York. To talk about what? Race. What was interesting was that it was a Shakespeare production that was diversified in the way they sort of aesthetically did it and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, basically what happened afterwards was that we were talking about diversity and race. And the artistic director was telling us a story about how he sat on this panel himself about diversity. And everyone in the room was a white male except for one Korean-American woman. And the Korean-American woman apparently got up to go to the restroom. And as soon as she walked out the door, someone said, why do we have to be responsible for this? We have to be responsible for ourselves? Now this is apparently like as a legit grant given and receiving organization, right? I think you should say who it was. No, I'm not going to say it. No, I'm not going to say it. Legal? However, however, the artistic director who was telling his story was saying how he was appalled by it and rightfully so in that he just wanted to get up to whatever. So a woman in the audience who claimed to be a Ph.D. student who her work was around race said to him, that's a cop out. She said, no, what you needed to do is stay in that room and tell those people that this is how you deal with diversity. You deal with it head on. She said, because we need more view in the rooms with them to advocate for us because we're not in those rooms. So instead of you saying I don't want to be a part of this that I'm too good for this, actually, no, you are the warrior that they need in that room. So I just wanted to put that out there. My last comment is I had a remarkable thing the other day happen to me. I was in discussion with three or four different theaters and someone had written a letter in complaining about something that we had collectively done and they said but there are no black people in your organizations. And I was a bit like I was really in a dilemma. I was a bit like, do I say hello? On the flip side, do I go yes! Because actually in some bizarre way that they had disavowed me of my cultural attributes and that somehow it felt like and it was really weird because what I decided at the end was that the person who had written that letter had said that I am the black head of a white institution and I just saw myself being the head of an institution and so I find myself as I say, as I went home that night to talk about it to my wife and I went I am so bored about talking about race today but I am so excited to have other people across the country who actually can be jump inside the box when they're called for but can jump outside of the box when needed and can create work that speaks to all the interlocking communities in America that they serve. Let me go out to anyone in the audience please, there is a microphone here. Are you in the lobby? You're beneath her. We watched it. I am in the lobby. So Kwame, I think I've heard you say in the past that you find the conversation that many of us understand why you were bored by it more so here in the US than you found at home so I'd love some perspective on that maybe I misunderstood but I'd love your perspective on that. I think Benita I think what I think I may have been hinting at was that the debate around race seems to be more foregrounded in America than I am used to in Britain. That's not to say that it is not exactly the same thing and doesn't manifest in almost the same ways but there is a frankness to the American personality that allows conversations to happen directly that in Britain happen subtextually and so you find yourself having to go, what did you say? As opposed to don't say that again if that's a metaphor if that metaphor works. Hi, Kwame and the whole bunch of you it's great to be here and I can't believe on this world premiere night you're doing this an hour before your show which I cannot understand but you're an amazing individual. This is for Lydia really because my cover theater in the Baltimore Washington area for Broadwayworld.com and I had the privilege of seeing stick fly down in Washington I think was the arena and in my review I said this should go to Broadway and it did so I just wanted to get your feeling as a playwright what was that feeling like having this play done in an original theater being taken to Broadway? Well first of all, thank you You played no small role in that I'm sure and it was trippy it was really really wonderful you can't feel when you're sitting in the middle of a moment like that it doesn't feel as much like a moment as it does like you're putting up a play and then people say do you do realize that you're in a moment and but I've only actually now a year later been able to look back and really see what the moment was and we can have drinks I'll tell you all about it Good, thank you someone's coming straight to you Good evening, pleasure to be here um bored, being bored being black we are bored and it's interesting you mentioned that being white they don't want to talk about it that's why we become bored so my question to you and I got gray so I've been around a little bit I was in New York and there were bastions of black theater everywhere which the voices were there that could be seen you know if we were lucky enough so my question to you, what do you think we need to do um stick fly, wonder if I can see if I heard about it you know so that's commercial we're talking about commercial but how do we get those voices out what do you think we need to do to get those voices out like I said in New York all these and those statuses are starting to die also because of not being supported some are coming back but what do we do to really get the voices out there and even to change artistic directors' minds and stuff like that well I would say first of all it doesn't start out commercial theater it starts out my play stick fly started out in an all black theater company, Congo Square the gentleman who directed the gentleman who directed Kwame Shodanite came and saw a reading of it and I hadn't written the other half because I was pregnant I don't know why I looked at you that was weird she has children and we talk about being mothers and theater makers came to see it so I also think there's something about the way to figure out how my thought is to figure out how to acknowledge the ecology of the food chain of the way that theater works and to figure out how economically to make sure the people who are fertilizing the world actually are reaping the benefits of that fertilization economically later I also think there is an artistic or aesthetic thing we were talking about earlier that's a problem that I've noticed and observed within the black theater community in New York City there's a lot of recycling of the same types of storytelling although I pay major homage in respect to writers like Ed Bullens and the works of Woody King Jr those are some great folks and they're still doing great work however I do feel that that generation of theater makers are not necessarily engaging with the younger generation of theater makers and that there's this recycling of those same plays and they are also nurturing younger playwrights who I feel are sort of regurgitating the same style and aesthetic and that's fine there's a place for that but like we're talking about today there is a diverse aesthetic that has been growing that has been in existence I mean even Adrienne Kennedy her work when she was writing and still was considered way way way off base even for the black community and so I do feel like there needs to be some advocacy around what we as audience members demand to see of ourselves because a lot of times I think that the black community in particular subscribe to one narrative about ourselves even though it's not necessarily our personal narrative and that it's important that we actually one learn who we are specifically not generally learn our history specifically not when someone else is sort of sort of informing you about your history and then that for me is a way for us as a demographic and as an audience to demand those stories to be on stage to say that's great to do August Wilson for the second time this year but can you guys actually do a story about my grandmother's family who was actually from Cambridge Mass or boat sellers I mean whatever it is you know but just to be advocates for your own diversity while this question is coming up which I hope is a question and not a restroom break dash but here's something that I wrestle with guys I wrestle with a lot you know I am Derek and I sound as he's directed the raisin so can we talk about this a lot we are sons of August now Derek was very fortunate in that his direct experience with August and allowed him to set up his theater company or made him set up his theater company I am son of August in that though I never saw him or he saw him from afar was so inspired by his manhood and personhood through his writing and that he did not sell truth for access that I though 4,000 miles away and of a different culture could feel inspired to want to contribute but I hear a lot of this kind of I hear a lot of kind of and it's not August dissing and I'm not saying that you were doing this in any form but I hear a lot of oh my god I've always been asked to be August and so I want to push away from that how do we stand on the shoulders of our giants how do we keep them center of our universe build upon their canon and still find our own identity does it have to be an either or it can't be it absolutely can't be and I think that we I like to think that we have a sense of our history that way but it does concern me there tends to be even around the conversation that we're having about aesthetics it seems that there's always this either or this push this pull and I don't know why we can't all just be friends and make art I didn't mean to make light of that though what you're saying I think is really very important and I don't know that we're teaching our young people and you know what else the demographics of the theater programs in this country aren't actually changing another thing to be critiqued and really really scream about and so how would we learn how to have respect for and honor if we're not even being taught I didn't see an Audrey and Kennedy play until I was grown up I mean I think there's a myth that there isn't enough room for everybody at the table and that is a myth about America that there's not enough room and there is enough room at the table for everybody and I think once that myth is dispelled that there's only certain slots there's only a certain amount of slots you've got your four slots in February and that's it is ridiculous and I think things won't really change until that myth is exploded and then the art is better because we're in dialogue with one another I agree that actually leads to my question in some ways one of the things that you're alumni from Northwestern Performance Studies love it but wow cats yes but the real question that I wanted to ask and I'm really concerned about this idea of race fatigue and I think that this is a current with an American culture and I'm wondering if it's really not a race fatigue but it's the fact that race has been so static a concept that we don't do what Lydia suggested in terms of talking about race, gender, sexuality, and class as being collaborators like the way in which they collaborate and aren't dialogue and so for me what's fascinating about your work is not so much this question of the cerebral or the heart or the emotion but it's really when you can actually bring all of these worlds together when we talk about the fertilizers of the world as being equally important as these kind of patriarchal figures men if you will I think when they come together that's what made August beautiful to me was not his machismo manliness but the way in which he was able to create conversations between folks and so I'm wondering about that tension how do you find that tension in your work and do you find that to be a productive place to create as well maybe a clarification about what the tension is I would come back so you wanted me to clarify the tension okay so the tension between having to do quote unquote a race play if we think about them in that way I don't actually think that as producers of work at least for me I should say in my work I'm not thinking about I'm creating a black play but I'm often thinking about intersections so when I'm talking about when I'm building a play about a community I have to think about communities don't just involve brown people right it's women, gays, lesbians straight people, reproductive people who don't produce all these things like we have to really you know dig deep for that and I think sometimes we discount what's really going on in this race fatigue because we don't really realize that it's much more complicated there are real tensions here that we're kind of unpacking I think sometimes there is a push I can only speak for myself but I think sometimes there is the push to create plays that aren't as complex for whatever reason and that it's sometimes seen as easier to produce those on a wide scale I don't know I don't think that's true I hope it's not true but I know sometimes when you bring in a first mess of a draft and it's all complex there is the feeling sometimes to make it to put it into a specific box I don't necessarily create from that way but I know that sometimes that does seep in because of the commercial nature of what gets produced yeah I thought I had a response to that but now that I think about it that's a really complicated question I don't I don't know if I have an answer I don't know if I personally have an answer for that I do I think this whole idea of race fatigue is a nice diversionary tactic for getting our eyes off of the problem and I don't know why we would be fatigued talking about something that statistically is so tangibly a problem still so it's interesting because I just wrote a play I'm having the hardest time talking about it in press because I was sort of wiggling around oh what is it about it's about the intersection of the blah blah blah and how they bounce against each other and the blah blah blah and the tensions of the yada yada yada and you know what it's a race play and I was like white men can write race plays I can write a fricking race play and I don't feel fatigued I just think that we have now we're writing the race play at a level that is deserving of the nuance and the sophistication of the conversation it has to be worthy I worry it even trying to slightly disagree but only slightly you can't argue with you on your open you can it's all good what is that thing that's happening downstairs the only reason and I don't really disagree I just wish to throw into the mix if I'm in Nigeria a country of 180 to 200 million people and I write about my family and I write about my community is it a race play or is it a human play I'm just saying mine is a race play if that play was written in Nigeria would it be a race play I know what you're saying I hear you it's your house I'm giving you the room to fight me in my house it's all good in America that's the distinction in America race functions so much as culture so we can't really disconnect culture from race and we keep trying to really talking about a fruitful culture your work all of your work that I've seen in Chicago all over I know that it speaks to certain types of cultural richness I just don't know that we have the luxury thank you I don't know that we have the luxury it would be great if I lived in a place with 80 million people who looked like me but I live in a place in which the people who look like the people in my audiences enslaved the people who look like me there's a conversation to be had I think there is absolutely and I think the comment about race fatigue is a magnificent one and your comment about it is that it can be a diversion I think that's absolutely right what I fear however is that we paint ourselves into a corner of storytelling that means that the way we access it is often through our pigmentation or our culture I firmly believe and I describe myself as a black political playwright I have no problems with that but I also perceive it as being a member of the majority of the globe rather than a minority of the globe I think the tension no, you know what there's a lady on crutches and we're going to ask this to be the last question just so we can make sure we can push the cat back it's your house so Shirley go ahead Hi, I'm Shirley Bastfield Dunlap and I'm coordinator of theater at an HBCU Morgan State University and I'm very proud to be able to say that some of my students have gone on to graduate school at Cal Arts our actor studio and so forth because we do want to get rid of that stereotype that black universities are only training their students to be excellent audience members but I also am a Ph.D. student who is interested in studying race and gender but also from a directorial point of view I'm an SDC member and it really kind of hits hard when you have a board member say oh this was the best February play we had in years or for a person to say you know well so-and-so really doesn't have a problem with white people directing his or her play that becomes very challenging so I ask the question I'd like to know your thoughts on the black director and especially since New York Times had a wonderful article two days in which they talked about women directors making their way to Broadway as if maybe they had lost their way or something had lost the map but of all of those women it was only one black female director and I'm having some challenges about that I know my first gig was thank goodness that the playwright was the one that had a handle on her play and if it weren't for her I would not have been able to make that feel that she won for her recommendation so I wanted to sort of change it I'm not bored with race and I'm not bored with black plays but I would like to talk about the people who tell your story I would like to jump in first on that yes yes I feel you one of my challenges is to tell our stories and who has power over the production of our stories and it's a double-edged sword because one as an artist I want I think that people should be able to tell whatever story they feel they can tell and they should be able to do whatever they want to do but at the same time what happens is that because the larger institution the larger white community is running mostly all the theater companies that have any real economic whatever in the country that a black play can be produced and then the white director is chosen and then it leaves out the opportunities for black directors and so then as a black artist I want to be able to choose a black director because I want that black director to work even though at the same time I want to be able to choose whoever I want so I'm in this weird sort of dichotomy of like what do I do I want to work with whoever I want but at the same time limited opportunities for black directors and even black playwrights for that matter so it's a very challenging challenging challenging I mean I can keep going on and on but I want to be able to share my I mean it's interesting what I would I think I'm pushing towards a world where I can have a director who might be the director who I met you know five years ago and we really clicked and enjoy working my work and we get along and that when we work together it's not seen that that director was imposed on me that I actually chose that director I think there aren't a lot of opportunities for artists of color there are many opportunities but I think bringing them together to have a black playwright and a black director scares many people sometimes it's also really hard to book Kwame Kwame I actually I'd like to answer that and I know then we're going to wrap up we have a question from a Philly theater company a challenge a challenge from Ryzenwalk Theater who notes that the question after these forums always is where do we go from here which I think Dwight had alluded to but I wonder if in wrapping up maybe think about that challenge to us and in your way from them where do we go from here was that you directing me mate? no sir I would very much like to speak to you and I think what you've said what's very important is parity if a white director for once quote unquote is directing a piece that is quote unquote black cool in the gang are the black or the black directors getting the chance to work on the classics at the highest level all of the time and I think that's the dilemma that's the question the question isn't whether I can interpret Ibsen or whether someone can't interpret Elmini's that for me is a secondary debate it's about parity it's about equal access to the pie and I think when we get to a place where there is equal access then I think the debate around races and culture is secondary because if it's a new play in particular that playwright of colour is going to be sitting in the air of that director no matter who they are and saying we didn't say it like that in my house and is going to be able to guide so I think if there is a debate to be had about the future and about who's telling our stories and who's guiding our stories it's about trying to seek greater diversity in the palette of work being placed before African American director and I think I will just do a last round if I may and thank you Philly and as to I always worry about where do we go from here as if we are somehow going to reinvent the wheel here today I find myself far more interested in in maybe asking each of you to tell me a little and tell us a little bit about the best experience you have had as a playwright and what you would send out to the universe as the way that things really should be done I'm going to start with you Lydia when it all comes together sublimely when the art and the people that you're engaged with and the company that you're being produced by have a shared aesthetic imperative that meets a predesorial sophistication and then you laugh a lot in the making of it have you had one of those experiences? I've had a few of those experiences good so I wrote a play about that was inspired by my grandparents and them buying a house in Arlington Massachusetts and it was put on last spring in Boston and I think what was really warmed my heart as an artist was that you were telling my story simply because when we were doing the dramaturgical research we couldn't find anyone who would talk about it everyone wanted to say oh that never happened you're talking about this, you're talking about that this is what I'm talking about and this is what my play is about and so to have people say either thank you for telling my story and those were not all black people they were also white people or I didn't know about that thank you for letting me spend an evening we can nurture our theatres and as an artistic director I would also just throw in tell me and help me how we create the environment where those experiences that you have for each and every new play maybe that's post-show that's post-show discussion you want me to answer the last question? any of them brother I will say this I will say that I did a little bit on the experience being when people say I appreciate or thank you for that I think as far as how to make our theatre more vibrant and how it's what we can do next Philly I think Philly is that way is that support everyone's work not just your own work come out to everyone's theatre that's on the most remote part of town come bring your entire community and support that work because I think what happens is that we subscribe to only supporting institutional work and the folks who support and the audience in those institutions don't come to the black theatre they don't come to the Asian theatre they don't come to the Native American or LGBT theatre we're all telling each other stories we're all responsible for our own vitality to integrate in order for us to survive as artists and as a community of people that's what I believe Lydia, Kristin Keith I just want to thank you all for travelling from your homes to come to this house on this night to talk about not just race but who you are as artists and the future that you wish for all of us that you would honour me by being here tonight thank you everybody for coming to this can I catch it so you'll make your way down to the first floor and quickly we do want to remember