Hey everybody, good afternoon wherever you are Welcome to this live stream of the inciting incident a conversation about youth and theater and activism connected to enough Plays about gun violence which Michael Cody the leader of that Movement we'll talk about in a little bit as we circle around I want to say again that my name is Michael road and I'm zooming in from Phoenix, Arizona The ancestral territories of many indigenous peoples including the Akamel Odom and P posh Indian communities And I also want to start today's conversation With a digital land Acknowledgement something that my friend will tailor right here on the zoom Introduced me to the summer when we were co-leading some sojourn theater Goodman theater teaching artistry institutes Will has shared this and it is from Adrienne Wong Who's a part of the spider web show collective in Ontario? And it goes since our activities are shared digitally to the internet Let's also take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization Embedded within the technologies Structure and ways of thinking we use every day We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many indigenous communities Even the technologies that are central to much of the art We make leave significant carbon footprints contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples worldwide We invite you to join us in acknowledging all this as well as our shared responsibility To make good of this time together today and for each of us to consider our roles and reconciliation decolonization and allyship And again, that's from Adrienne Wong at spider web show and the other thing that I will say upfront before we get started with this Incredible group incredible group of powerful artists and educators and activists is um, we hope you are all healthy and safe These are hard times 2020 has been a hard year and particularly we would like to lift up the social justice Struggles and movements of this moment and in particular black lives matter and we'd like to acknowledge as a group our care and concern and solidarity with those working to Make black lives and black causes a priority as our nation wrestles with its history and its present day set of policies and discriminatory actions in all sorts of systems that we participate in and We take a moment just a moment to pause for lives lost particularly black lives lost to police brutality and injustice over this past year and beyond of course One moment or even a few moments is not nearly enough But we begin our conversation today making sure we acknowledge that and ultimately The relationship of those movements and those lives to the very work that we're here talking about today So I'm gonna begin with a specific invitation to our amazing guests To introduce themselves and that invitation is I'm gonna ask them to take sort of under 30 seconds To just say who they are and where they work or what they do and then I'm gonna ask them to take like a minute and a half or so To answer this what is something you have learned from young people? About theater and activism What is something you have learned from young people about theater and activism the order? We're gonna go in because we're gonna go Willa and then Barbara and then Halle and then finally Michael Cody who will also talk for a moment about enough The movement the initiative that again is connected to our gathering here today All of them have said they are comfortable with me giving them a sign if they go over time several of the folks here are dear friends of mine so I can be extra brutal with them and Barbara who I'm new to but who I'm a fan of I'll be a little gentler Michael who was once a student of mine gets no gentleness whatsoever So we're gonna begin with the amazing and extraordinary will tailor the question is who are you willa and what have you learned? From young people about theater and activism and thank you for being here. Well every day Michael. I Think about who I am Because it is to change this climate On a regular basis my job title is I am the Walter director of education and engagement At the Goodman theater in Chicago, which is of course on land at the Pottawatomie Used to roam very freely among other tribes in my day-to-day work I run all education and engagement programs that the Goodman has 17 of them and I Also sit as part of senior Linda leadership to set policy for the theater The you know, I learned so much from young people and it has been Amazing what I've learned when we've been in this isolation. I've I've learned a level of resiliency I've learned a lot of tech skills but the thing most that I've learned is that they don't really see a difference between Art and activism that it is wholly a part of one thing for them And that is the way that they live their lives and that really Is very inspiring to me and I hope that I can emulate that Thank you. Willa. Thank you so much. We're gonna move on to Barbara Oh, you're on mute Barbara Okay, that doesn't count as my time. No, no good starting now. Okay, I Am Barbara Pitts McAdams and She hers I live in New York, but I'm coming to you now from swim Washington home to my mother Simone His birthday is today. Happy birthday mom and also the traditional and present home to the Skalem tribal community I'm best known as an original company member and co-creator of the Laramie project And I am co-author of moment work tectonic theater projects process of devising theater Which I teach to professionals high school and college students and teachers and in 2018 in the wake of the March for our lives Movement I co-founded with Jimmy May's Hashtag here to stories of gun violence stories of youth activism. It happens here, too What I've learned from young people. I agree with willa like young people are so Intersectional like that's something I feel like my generation has had to learn how to do and to ask for And yeah, the intersection of arts and activism, which you know, a lot of them call art of ism What I've learned is if there is a structure to plug into whether you make it or they make it young people will exceed your expectations And just to kind of back up 20 years ago when tectonic created the Laramie project You know, who knew since then it has been continuously performed in high schools and colleges and I'm often asked to attend or do workshops or talk backs And what I learned from young theater makers is just how thirsty they are to dig into the deep stuff and how respectful they are that Laramie project is devised from interviews with real people grappling with real issues and they take it on with such responsibility. And I've seen the students in the audience changed by seeing the play. I've seen high school football team captains, you know, stand up at talkbacks and pledge that they'll no longer Allow gaslers on their teams. So all these years of witnessing this. I've thought, how could I create another interview based play Structure that allows students to play age appropriate and maybe aspirational roles and also allow them to experience the interview process that we had making the Laramie project and learn how to generate The content and structure it into long form full length narrative. So the here to project is answering that question and our pilot productions first with Rich Brown And student divisors of here to Western Washington and then with Dr. G. Murray Higgins with here to Penn State. These students are exceeding my expectations. We go to their communities. We've brought in some interviews that we've conducted with youth activists around the country. And they dig into local concerns and events and Penn State this summer they pivoted and did a podcast. So now you can listen to the here to podcast courtesy of the Penn State student divisors. And as Willem mentioned, like they are just not daunted by technology. They tap into community so effortlessly. So that's a lot of what I'm learning from the students that I'm engaged with. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you. And we'll pass over to the extraordinary Hallie Gordon. Hello, Hallie. Hello. Hi, everybody. I'm really happy to be here. I'm in Chicago also sitting on the land of the Potawatomi And I am the former artistic director for Stepanwell for Young Adults. And what I've learned over the years and recently is really, it's not unlike what Willem and Barbara were talking about this idea that young people are multidisciplinary already. They have so many likes that they're not going to just focus on one thing like theater or being an actor, but they're engaged with so many different elements of the arts, of politics, of writing. And Willem, I totally agree with you. It's for them, you know, being able to have their voice heard is a form of activism. And that's kind of why we're all here is because we help support that voice. And, you know, the more that I'm around young people, the more I realize that their voice is really crucial and it's crucial for us to hear what they're talking about and what they need and how we can support them. Thanks, Hallie. We're going to go over to Michael, who's had, I think, an extraordinarily active year in, I want to say conceiving and organizing and then leading the hashtag enough initiative for which all of us and I know many others are really grateful for. So, you know, I invite you to take a moment to introduce yourself and then this prompt about what have you learned from young people about the intersection of theater and activism, maybe you could respond in terms of what have you learned in this last year, working with young people and their educators and leaders around the nation, as young people have kind of taken on this project and that can, you know, give you a little space to tell us what enough is for folks joining who don't know. Thank you, Michael. And thank you, all of you for being here and for joining me on this project. My name is Michael Cody, he him his and like Hallie and will in Chicago, the ancestral lands of the Potawatomi. So my project hashtag enough plays and gun violence has two components to it. First, it starts with a call for submissions for young high school students six to 12th grade to write short plays 10 minute plays about gun violence. And then from that we've selected seven of them that last night, we had readings of an over 50 communities across the country, including three international readings. And we have a version of it currently streaming on Broadway and demand which is this amazing collaboration between companies like the Goodman south coast rep Berkeley, Arizona, Orlando, and I'm missing one alliance theater. And it's been this amazing year long journey to get in touch with these young people get them the right plays get them to submit plays amidst the pandemic. Get people to say yes to a project when there's so much already going on that occupies our brain space and rightfully so and I think the biggest thing that I've taken away from this is that they young people want the spaces that we have young people want to have a place in the theater that they can bring their activism to that they can be heard that they're not just asked to perform in a play but they're asked to perform the words that they write. I learned that is specifically on topics like gun violence which we're tackling. No, people want to use the theater for the space to have these conversations.  And eavesdrop on conversations that were happening afterwards and hearing so many young people say, you know that they, they've, they've never been able to be a part of a play, part of a piece of theater that was written by someone their age, talking about things that they're already talking about. And that, even though that is their life and their experience, that there's something about inhabiting a story that allows them to, that allows everybody involved to step back and have a conversation that that wasn't possible before so I feel what I've taken away from this project is that I think someone said thirsty before I wrote down hungry that the young people are hungry to, you know, for us adults to kind of just get out of the way and and give them the support they need to make to make the theater theirs.  You know, there are other ways to get young people to experience and be changed by theater that aren't just transactional come see our show, you know, giving them the opportunity to learn that they have a voice and to express it is of greater importance. Thank you, Michael. And thanks to everyone for those opening comments. It would be very easy, I think, to spend our time together today just talking about the enough project. I think we won't. I think I think we'll sort of move a little kind of a little more macro and I want to take a moment and read a quote from Idris Goodwin, who is one of the advisors on this project and has worked with all of us and with Michael. This is from something he wrote for the American Theater, American Theater Magazine website at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was grappling with what it means to be a playwright right now and he wrote the same thing intermission it's the show on this stage in this world we the men and women who are merely players in our various roles are walking and waking daily in different plays altogether. This is the moment where everything changes. We are the inciting incident. And I feel like there are two ways that this conversation today could go based on both how it was advertised and based on what are probably really important things to think about together. One is what is theater now in COVID and more importantly even what is theater as we prepare to enter some sort of recovery coming out phase in the next six months to a year. And that's one very important conversation being had in lots of spaces and maybe related to that but but maybe a little different is what's the work of supporting, amplifying and learning from youth from young people in the worlds of theater and activism and change. We all believe that to answer the second is really important before you even maybe should answer what's the role of theater like first how do we listen and support and amplify the young artists in our midst or who we haven't even met or who we don't know. So I kind of want to go down that route for a moment and ask these amazing folks with incredible experience. Large theaters like Goodman and Steppenwolf, a smaller ensemble theaters like tectonic everybody sort of working in higher ed at different moments experience with high school students. Everyone here has lived in the theater field at different scales and in different spaces and has spent a lot of energy believing in and nurturing young artists. So I want to ask each of you to think for a moment about about this question, how can our theaters and our learning institutions and us as individuals make spaces and opportunities to learn and follow. Like, what do we need to do institutionally and individually to learn and follow so that the young artists activists in our midst can invent the future, rather than step into a future that we invent and make some space for them, which you know sometimes we do have to do but how can we make it possible for the young artists that we believe in and all around us and unknown to invent the future what do we need to do institutionally and individually, and I'll open it particularly at first here. Halle Barbara and Willa for any of you if you want to share thoughts and, you know, can talk for a couple minutes if you want or brief her and we'll see where it takes us. I'll start just because I've been, I've been thinking a lot about this and I participated. Well I listened in on a trauma workshop that the Chicago Children's Theater was doing in collaboration with Lori's Children's Hospital. And what it really made me realize that in order to give, in order for adults I think to give youth space and when we talk about space we're also talking about a safe space, and I'm not necessarily talking about a comfortable space but I am talking about a safe space. You have to understand where young people are coming from and they're coming from all different communities, all different socioeconomic backgrounds, and if we don't really understand the full child, it's really hard to provide that safe space. Now look at what Children's Theater is doing in terms of connecting their teaching artists and others to this trauma informed way of asking questions of young people, of being present for young people in a, in a way that allows them to engage in material that feel uncomfortable, but that they are in a safe space, giving that information to other people if that makes sense. So I think for me the future is kind of this idea of partnership is how can theater companies partner with organizations in which we can all help support the whole child. I mean, and, and Willa and Barbara and you know this it's like when, when you work with a group of students, it's not just for that one hour, you know, it's there's a whole lot of things that come into being when a child walks into a room. And I think that we, as larger institutions need to really understand that scope in order to create the environment that those kids are longing for. Thanks, Hallie. Willa or Barbara, what are you thinking. Well, I'll jump in. Yeah, Hallie, you put me in mind of something I wasn't thinking about talking about but it. I think when I'm working with young people, I've become really aware over the years, you know, like, I'm a theater artist but I'm often called in because I'm a divisor to help institutions talk about they basically outsource things to me that are like heavy things like inclusion diversity struggles, bullying, all the things that they know they need to deal with and they outsource it to me and I'm not a social worker. But so over the years I've had to really think about, okay, how can I set students up to succeed. And so for example in my lane of making long form narrative. The reason I came up with this sort of new form of the interview based play with the here to project is to, as you all know like just rehearsing a play that's already written, you don't have enough time for. So how are we going to create something meaningful where students are maybe interviewing each other or talking about things that are really important to them, and end up with a finished piece of work that has artistic integrity and allows students to feel like they really participated they were really seen and heard. One of the things that that I've had to really like reach out and get support for is, how do I create a process where students like we really do a legit check in a legit checkout. And we're really making sure that we're like you think oh I don't have time I don't have time for that. I'm not to do it, because otherwise you end up with a lot of people just like way more frazzled than they need to be, and potentially feeling traumatized and at risk. So really creating a process that will support that kind of interrogation of whatever is going on is one of the ways. And so, just to stay in my lane with with my project. When we made the Laramie project, we were very naive about what it means to go into a community appropriate their narratives, bring them back to the theater and perform them right we're, we're all way more sophisticated and conscientious now as a culture. So my students are teaching me how they want to handle that and what stories they're willing to share and what stories they're like no that's not our story to share. What I hear to is a flexible framework so you know if you've got a brilliant monologue by an African American activist but none of your students are African American. You know maybe there are more local stories that we can plug in that makes sense for their community, or maybe we can have video components where we cut to the African American experience, but really creating a flexible, formal framework. So that students can tell the stories that are important in their local communities, and then feed them into a structure. So they don't have to write the whole play, but they can generate some of the content. So that's one of the ways that you know I've been trying to address this question of how, how can I set students up to succeed and not give them such a big project that it's just going to be a big hot mess at the end. Thank you Barbara. Will I want to come over to you because you have so much experience in Chicago, I know in other places too but in Chicago. My time of knowing you with so many young people and transformative experiences through programs that you've designed and led. How do you think about ways that we support young people, leading and inventing our future coming from institutional spaces. Right. Wow. That's a, it's a huge challenge right. And it depends on the hat that I'm wearing at the time. It has part of a large predominantly white institution that has a history and has an ethos and has a sense of the standard by which we believe our work should be. What I have on that hat part of my job is trying to get people to understand that theater is not just product but it's about process. And that often what we need is more focus on the process and not necessarily the product to include all voices, not just youth, but all voices of people who are really represented in our institution. And I, when, when Michael, Michael see talked about theaters always talking about how do we get new audiences in, you get new audiences in because their stories that you're telling that they're interested in, and that is something that we don't necessarily do. You know, we build for a subscription audience and our regular subscription audits, 50 and above, mostly white, mostly suburban, surprisingly. So how do, as a member of leadership in a room with people who make the decisions, how do I make sure always that upper up of mind is not just the product that's going on the stage. But what that means about how we represent ourselves as an institution and how do we think about opening up that product. In, if I have on my teaching artists cap. You know, I've, my first act of civil disobedience I was seven years old in, in a segregated downtown Dallas, Texas with my grandmother. I've been an activist longer than I have been an artist and part of what I think is my responsibility is to teach to help the young people that I work with understand how code switch. So that when they are in an environment, talking about the work that they want to do. They understand what the language is that they need to use how they need to massage the board, which is different from talking to me, which is different from talking to their peers, which is different from talking to an audience. And what the importance of that is, is understanding that all of that is it, none of that is being in authentic. It is, it is genuinely talking with your voice, but speaking multiple languages, essentially, depending on the audience that you have. And then the only other thing that I would say about that is, I see my primary job as making a space available. And because I'm older, and because I have more experience now because I have more knowledge, being able to lend some of my expertise around how you talk to the production designer, what do you think about working with a stage manager to guide them, but not alter necessarily the process and allowing the process to be what they want that process to be so that they understand both how to lead, how to follow, and how to make changes on the fly. Well, can I, can I ask you another question and then we'll go backwards. So go back to Barbara, and Michael, I'm sorry Michael did you want to do you want to add a thought to that question as well I need to make space for you there, my apology. No problem. Just, I want to echo some of the points that were brought up the process versus product is a huge one and one that just in this project encountering so often and trying to remind teachers, theater artists who are taking it on like, you know, first of all, right now in this moment, the everything's imperfect. So just embrace that embrace the pressure of like making sure that everything's polished or like whatever pre COVID expectations we had of what theater was, don't worry about it. Since we can't make it perfect that way, focus all your attention on process and what are the students getting out of it. And I think the other thing too is just like prioritize. Like, when I first started this project, the first conversation I had with you Michael was this idea of, Hey, you know, we'll do this thing about gun violence and we'll get, you know, well known to write short 10 minute plays. And you gave me the best advice ever you're like, that's great but kind of boring. I mean we kind of see that I mean why give people who have a platform already more of a platform to express their opinions. And that sent me on this journey of like well what what is really going on in the world. And what's going on in the world is that these we have these issues. And the people who are dealing with it are young people, the people are getting things done are young people. They're the ones marching in the streets they're the ones starting organizations, they already know how to lead. I mean just and go on YouTube and tick tock and Instagram they know how to create the only place that they're not really creating is the theater, and that has to do with how the pipeline set up and maybe our expectation of what quote unquote professional is. And another early conversation in this process was, you know, worrying about like, you know, is it going to be successful will we get good plays just kind of the things that you think about early on. And someone just assuring me like, you know, you'll, you'll get what you get, and you'll learn a lot from it just trust that that they will deliver. And that's a huge component of this is that we need to trust that young people are going to come in and, and, and deliver because they will. And I think that goes back to Barbara's point about, you know, remaining flexible, you know, meeting, meeting them where they are and checking in with them and making sure and learning what it is that they're getting out of the process, because I think we all come to the table with notions of what we hope the project to be. But I know certainly on my project that where I am today, I've learned a lot more about what my project is based on how the young people responded to it and the work that they delivered, more so than the proposal I put together a year ago outlines. And it's a better project because of that because I'm listening to what they want it to be. I mean, I think you, you've created Michael Cody that is so brilliant is kind of a hybrid between what I, what we call rapid response theater, and this like really long form narrative that, you know, I've learned to make with tectonic that can take a year or two to bake fully, you've given students, you know, the opportunity to really first reflect to themselves well how do I feel about this issue and how is gun violence, and the gun violence epidemic impacting my life and my experience and, and how could I form that into something creative and then you, and so that first conversation is something they're having with themselves and then with a mentor perhaps. And so, you know, rapid response theater and there's been so much when I got into this space.  And those rapid response pieces are so important when when there's been a tragedy and we're all reeling from it and we need something to focus us and bring us together. So those projects are so important. I think what you've really done again setting students up for success is give them the opportunity to really reflect inward first, get it on paper, share it, and, and really set them up for success. So I look forward to seeing what happens in 2021 with hashtag enough. I'm going to frame a different, a different question a bit and go off of that. And maybe, and maybe we'll all start with you and go on to Halle and come back Barbara and Michael. There's something sort of extraordinary about choosing to make an open source project center on two of the most complex and polarizing issues of our time. There's guns, which is gun violence but guns, and another of course being racial justice and race. And I would like to hear thoughts folks have about your experiences with young people, helping teach us the ways to be in difficult and complex dialogues, and so many adults within so many institutions and within our sort of democracy, utterly fail at day after day after day after day to the harm of our communities, and the systems that are supposed to take care of everyone equitably and justly. But here we have this project where 50 readings or more happening this week, most in this nation. Again, a nation where it's pretty hard for a lot of people to stand in a room with different opinions and listen to each other. So without talking about facilitation strategies that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking sort of, what is your sense of how young people can help teach us and lead us as they are sort of wrapping their heads around the sort of polarization that we have begat to them. So this project or just in general, as you work, the intersection of art and activism, and will I start and see if you have any thoughts. Well, one of the great good fortunes of my job is that I get to work with people as young as eight and people as old as 98 doing the same work with two very different kinds of groups. And I think it's, it always strikes me when we have this conversation that we never refer to my 98 year old folk as old folk. We constantly refer to young people who are younger than let's say 23, which is the age for a lot of foundations as young people as if they are not fully formed in some kind of way to have the conversation now. And one of the that is something that I have to always keep top of mind in negotiating that conversation. I'm, I grew up doing segregation. I grew up during the civil rights era and the way that I think about race has been shaped by a whole set of circumstances and experiences that they only know about from history books. And the way that the world works for them the way that they see issues around race in particular are not ways that I can experience that. And so I have to, I think one of the mistakes we make is only listening to them through our own lens, if that makes sense, not not understanding that their perspective is unique. And that we can't we can only learn that perspective from them, because we are not of that age, we are not of this time in that way. And that's a really hard, hard, hard thing to try and accomplish. And I'm often fail at it. And, and part of what I think I love about the young people in particular that I work with. They know how to gently correct me when I when I fall off that train. They, they pulled me back they they remind me of the kind of respectability politics that I grew up with and assume is the way of the world and it is not for them. Another thing I think is to think about how. How do we get other, how do those of us who work with youth all the time and work with multiple generational do multiple generational organizing. How do we get those who don't do that, who don't experience young people or maybe only experience them as children, their, their children, their nieces their nephews in that way. How do we get them to recognize the value of those voices. It's a really nice moment to lead us, and, and that they have a perspective that we don't necessarily have just because of our age, and the kind of experiences that we've had. It's a struggle. Thank you will a PS if you hear screaming behind me apparently my family has just found a large scorpion in our home, but I believe they're dealing with it so I'm going to pass it on to to hally. Yeah, I, you know, I think young people have they don't have the, they have a different kind of baggage than adults do. And they understand that they're in the process of learning and doing. And as adults, we tend to. Some of us tend to think we have already learned, and some of us tend to think that now is our moment to give over to expose all the knowledge that we have over to the youth, and I think what other people can teach us is to listen, and to actively listen, and to follow through. And I think that young people, there's a freedom that young people have that we forget about as adults. We're worrying about other things and there's the freedom allows them to be creative in ways that are that are monumental in terms of how that affects them. And I think that you know, I think that's why it's so important to be able to give them a space to do that. They know what to do, they know what they want to say they know how they feel. And I think they're much more accepting of each other than adults are of each other at this point. I'm incredibly frustrated and heartbroken about the world today, and on many levels on on race issues on climate issues on equity issues. They're very aware and they're heartbroken. And I think that this is where part of the challenges in terms of how much we support and guide and how much we move rocks for them. It's a balancing act.  I'm not going to get this back this time back. And we have to give them the space to get time back, and to shape the world that they want, which is much better I think than we could ever imagine. Thanks to Barbara you have any thoughts on this one. I hope they're on point. To Willis comment about always labeling the youth the youth, I did ask them early on and I try to ask every group I work with, if they're comfortable with that label youth activist. And most of them not yes yes we're it's, you're okay to call us youth or young activists. So, I do like to check in on that kind of thing and boy, as Willis was saying, they will gently correct you, you know, when you get the pronouns wrong, when I keep messing up that stuff that is there so agile with sometimes with just kind of a look of pity that I can't keep up, but they do make space for it, you know, I mean they're incredibly generous as a, you know, to speak in generalizations. There are some schools of thought that there is no plot there's only character. And so, for me with my project, you know if I started a year later here too might be about youth activism and climate change. But, you know, because I started this like Michael was saying maybe at some point hashtag enough is about youth activism in another sphere or another issue. I think what I've tried to focus on is the youth activism and the structure of the plot of March for our lives and the movement of youth activism are kind of the plot points that kind of tent poles of the piece, but really wanting to focus on the aspirational voices that are out there of youth activists and, you know, the thing that the things that I learned by by letting youth activists speak like Selena in Texas says, and you know the other thing is that they always talk about their intersectionality. They don't want to erase us from the conversation. Lewis Hernandez, executive director of Youth Over Guns in New York City. You know he says it wasn't until March for our lives that he was only working with young people that most of his activism has been intersectional, and that he says to follow women, especially women of color, because when we don't we take 10 steps back instead of 10 steps forward. So they are just like I think I started saying that they are just inherently intersectional. And yeah, so that if if we allow them to they will teach us how to be better and you know to paraphrase Audre Lorde, that you can't tear down the master's house using the master's tools, they have their own tools. You know, whether it's tick tock or all the different ways they access social media and connect with each other. You know they they have their own tools. Thanks Barbara Michael do you have any thoughts on this before I before I shift to a different question. The only thing I want to add that just is becoming more apparent to me, and in how maybe my generation, which is not, I'd like to think not super far off from the current generation, but like how different that this generation is from mine. The difference is is that this generation just continues to prove itself to be the generation of empathy, the generation of equity, the generation of justice, like that's where it feels like this generation is operating from. And I think, thank God, because that is like that's the voice. And that's the way of thinking we need right now. For whatever reason we find ourselves in the world we're in that seems to be going off tilt every other day. We need to listen more to these voices and to have them guide the programming that we do. But I think in giving young people those experiences and getting them to take on leadership roles and be a part of the creation and not just the doing. You're not just set you like laying the foundation for what our industry is five years from now 10 years from now. You're setting this, you're planting the seeds for these young people. And now I'm very conscious of the way I'm using those words. But we're you're setting the seeds for them to become, you know, the people who are going to guide it, how we do storytelling, as we move forward. And I think, you know, these early experiences to what it is we do in the theater, and what the theater is you know when I was maybe a high school or my concept of a theater was, we did the fall play in the spring musical, and they're probably from both plays are from the 1920s to the 1950s. And it wasn't until college actually that it was doing Laramie project that I suddenly realized that theater can be about people, real people, real issues, and I can leave thinking about how I walk differently through the world. And I think that if we not only put young people on stage in front of us to tell the stories but also tell the stories that are important to them, we can get adults who are walking through life kind of ignoring it. The chance to re see and re hear the world through their perspectives. I would like to propose what I'll call a, a lightning round, meaning I had, we're talking a lot about listening, right, and about and sort of the nature and necessity of that in our work with young people. And I don't wonder if we could take a minute as a group and pop around and what are some questions that when you have the chance when you're engaging in a partnership, or a relationship with young people, what do you think are crucial questions to start with, particularly if you are attempting to support and amplify the work of young people not just fit them into your own work. What are some starting questions and I'll, I'll offer one and I'm going to say no stories in this moment, no paragraphs just like question. Question, question, let's just hear a couple of questions. The first one I'll offer is, what do you need to do the thing that you have been imagining. What's another question. Who's not here with us. What's another one. What does success look like. Great. I might ask young artists or young artists activists so you could support and amplify their work and to know about their work what kind of questions do you would you ask them. What are you struggling with. What are you struggling. Why are you here. Why are you here. How can we create theatrical forms that allow us to share more stories and more experiences. Let's say they're, let's say we're at. Sorry, how does that read to you from the stage. How does that affect you. Another question. Am I in your way. What's another question. How can I support you. I'm going to support you. Where's the best place to do this. Where's the best place to do this. Who's it for. What's holding you back. What's holding you back. Does it feel authentic. Does it feel authentic. Okay, so thanks. Thanks for that. If you have more, that's awesome. And we can share those, but we were at about nine minutes. I don't think questions have come into the comments that I've seen. So we're going to assume that folks are just really happy. To listen to us and not ask questions, but if you have questions, go to the enough Facebook page and put them in the comments. And Michael C. We'll bring them into this conversation. But I'd like to sort of, you know, I started with a digital land acknowledgement and acknowledgement of black lives matter and acknowledgement of social justice. Challenges and upheavals. And legibilities in this moment. And I wonder if any of you want to respond to. What is the work. As an adult collaborating with young activists and artists. To support. Or make certain that those questions. Those concerns, those movements. Are present in some way in the work of the activists and artists that we collaborate with and support. Often it is often it simply is. But sometimes it's not. So I just wonder what thoughts folks have about that. It's, it's been my experience that it's, that it's always there in their work. What it's not in is our work. And how do I, how do I get my, my older colleagues. To understand intersectionality and the, and the need to address. Issues that. That audiences. Actors. Writers. Are not. One dimensional or unit dimensional that, that we all are intersectional and the, the need to address. The work in that kind of way and make space for that kind of conversation. So I'm just wondering, is it sometimes the experience with you or am I sort of making an odd presumption that working for instance with suburban, sometimes predominantly white. Circles of youth may not be bringing an attention to those issues that you want. Or am I just off? Um, My experience has been working with those groups. And I think that's, it's up her mind, but they have never had space. To talk about and wrestle with it. And so when Hallie talks about. Safe space. The other thing that I would add is brave space. The ability to wrestle with something that might be absolutely diametrically opposed to everything you hear all day at your house. And I think it's important to be aware of that. And I think it's important to be aware of that. That that information is not inside you. That that information is not correct. Or that that's not the way you want to live your life or express who you are. To make a space for you to know that that's okay to have that and to be wrestling with that. And how do I support you in being brave enough to have your own voice? Um, that's a. It has not been my experience that it has only been. I'm not sure that you're going to say something before.  Theater for young people or art for young people only, but have this adult. Kind of that's why they exist. They do theater for adults. And they have this education. I mean, this is the way regional theaters were set up, right? And then they have an educational department in which they get funding for. They wouldn't get that funding unless they had. That educational department. But I really think the future are more theater companies like free street theater and more theater companies like. And I just think that the work that they do is specific to the kids who live in the community. They are part of the community. They generate the work in the community. It is authentic. I think the challenge is really like, what are these big regional theaters going to do? Um, and where's the money going?  And there has to be big decisions. This whole, um, you know, the demand of we see you is, this is a really big part of that whole conversation in terms of the way these big regional theaters are structured. They are not structured in a capacity to support. Real racial diversity. And so, which comes generally from the education departments, right? And then it moves up. So I think we have to look at it more holistically and say that if you're a company, you must encompass more than just the people who walk in to see death of a salesman. I want to note, uh, I think we have to look at, um, I think we have to look at, um, in case folks didn't hear you free street theater in Chicago, Coyapaz and others and Albany park theater project and finer and others and extraordinary work. They do alongside, of course, other youth driven companies around the country, but Sierra particularly close to them. Um, we're in our last couple of minutes. Barbara or Michael, do you want to add anything on this subject?  I was wondering if you want to answer that question. I would love to, but I'm reluctant to take up our last three minutes. Um, but thank you. I want to also shout out Coyapaz has that wonderful book ensemble made where she, you know, like really does a deep dive into all the different ensemble theaters in your Chicago area. And just a little shout out that the next year to production is going to be here to, uh, Columbia college, Chicago. So I'll be in your neck of the woods in the fall, which is great. Um, uh, I'm thinking about the young fugitives in Chicago, another really cool ensemble that is very, you know, theater about youth made by the youth that it affects. So yeah, there's, there's so many, um, uh, I just worked with hits theater in Houston. And, um, another predominantly, uh, BIPOC, um, youth group that is working. So they're, they're, they're everywhere. Um, and, and, uh, just, you know, really, I think what Halle is maybe saying is, is there a way like labyrinth theater in, in New York will often host a smaller theater. You know, can these larger institutions, um, adopt some of these smaller ensembles to get their subscriber base kind of plugged into the work that's going on. In communities. Um, we don't have to create new things. Often the structures are already there that we can support. Thanks Barbara. And to note that Chloe Johnston is the co-writer with Coyopause of that wonderful book. Thank you. Ensemble made. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Michael, I think it's appropriate in our last minute or two that we come back to you to, um, bring us to knowing where the enough project is right now. And we're talking about youth. We're talking about art and activism. Here we are after more than a year of work with these readings and these collaborations happening around the country. What would you like anyone who's watching right now to know about how they can engage with enough, uh, in the coming week. And as I, as I take you to that, just say, thank you, Will. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you, Halle for, uh, a really great and meaningful conversation. And Michael, I'll pass to you. Well, thank you Michael for being such a fantastic moderator of this discussion. Uh, you're, you're skilled for asking, uh, the right questions and deep questions and questions that make us, that challenge us is unparalleled really. Uh, so thank you. Um, so hashtag enough, uh, we've reached sort of the culminating event of our, of our year. You can watch the seven plays that have been written by young people all across the country, uh, at Broadway on demand. If you are interested in the project, in the production, in getting involved, uh, our website is www.enoughplays.com. Uh, there you can get the link to watch. We've also, uh, got an open letter that we've written to the next administration that calls on prioritizing and, and the gun violence and also centering youth voices in that conversation. So we invite you to come learn about our project. Um, stay up to date and, uh, sign that letter for us with us for our next administration. Thank you, Michael. And thank you everyone. We wish everyone health. And safety as we head into the dangerous, but hopefully a little bit joyous, uh, holiday season. And wish everyone an end to this hard year and a better next year. Thank you all. And thanks for that great call to action, Michael. See. Yeah. Thanks, Michael. All for this. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. And Michael. Michael, Michael. Thank you. Take care. Bye everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.


Thank you, Joe. Hey, everyone. My name is Sam. I'm a software engineer in New York City. I work primarily on machine learning and applications for a quantitative hedge fund and my talk is called demystifying clear view where effectively I'm going to give you a demonstration of how you would leverage today's existence technologies to one of the same kind of detection and recognition, like the functionality that clear view currently has. The New York Times was the first outlet to actually publish an article by ClearView which went into detail as to the amount of information and the types of people that have actually been using this application. Over the years, a lot of other outlets have come out with more information and in fact, there have been several hacks of ClearView software that went into detail for who was really sharing it. Initially, ClearView said it was primarily law enforcement using it, but then what we come to find out is that there are a lot of organizations that were not a law enforcement and specifically there are individuals primarily like a lot of their backers and clients that were actually using the application for various reasons. A lot of those outlets have talked about the information that ClearView has, which is roughly three billion images. They've also talked about the people that have been using ClearView, such as the FBI, SE, Interpol, and actually some other countries as well. Countries with the questionable human rights records. But instead of talking about those things, I actually want to focus on the technical aspects of ClearView, which specifically boils down to the two methods that they mentioned or went into detail as far as explaining how they actually went about collecting the data and how they're currently using technology to or how they're currently using AI to detect and categorize people. They said web scraping, but in reality, what they've been doing is breaking the law and also breaking a lot of the user and user ingredients that a lot of the websites, just as Google and Facebook has. The difficulty is that it's very difficult to stop it. Largely because to Facebook or to Google, there's no distinction between a bot that's actually saving the image versus a browser that's actually viewing the image. And as far as the artificial intelligence process goes, there isn't really anything revolutionary to what ClearView is doing. And part of the reason why I'm going to the process of demonstrating this app is primarily to show you that without any kind of new technology, without any kind of anything special, I can actually just build something that pulls data from online sources and runs a few libraries on top of it to actually give you very easy tracking and recognition. The kind of tracking recognition that 10 years ago, you'd only see in movies. So going back to the very, very beginnings of facial recognition, the technology itself is extremely old. It goes back to the 1960s when a gentleman named Roldro Wilson-Bletso was doing a lot of research into what pieces of the face can you actually analyze to be able to distinguish one person from the other. Back in those days, a lot of the work was manual, which meant that a researcher would have to manually tell the computer where the noses were, where the eyes were, and based on the coordinates, the computer would kind of like figure out, this is one person, this is another person. The major kind of technical breakthrough that happened was primarily around 2008. And Google and Facebook, you might not see them as being technical breakthroughs, but they very much were in a lot of ways because they made it kind of easy and somewhat fun to do two things that the researchers back in those days were not able to do, which is, one, they made it easy for people to submit their information to a centralized place, and second, they made it easy for that information to be organized. In a lot of ways, Facebook and Google were different companies, but together they enabled a lot of the technology that we currently have today because without all these images from Facebook and without all this indexing from Google, it would be a lot harder to actually train a model right now in terms of identifying not just people, but also objects. So for a bit of context as to the size of the dataset that Clavius collected, the FBI has been collecting facial recognition data since 1992. They were first required by Congress to report how much information they had, who they had the information on, and back in those days, the only database that they had was primarily from booking photos and mug shots of criminals and other people that actually had a record, and for a long time they didn't report to Congress anymore as to what they were doing with that technology, and we didn't really find out up until 2008 that their database had grown to roughly 400 million more people in pictures, and the reason I'd agree with that size is primarily because a lot of state agencies were sharing state agencies and also federal agencies were sharing pictures such as license photos, passport photos with the FBI, and effectively FBI was using technology and using the technology and sharing the technology with them to give them a lot more insights into the U.S. population. The problem with the reality in 1992 and the reality in 2008 is that whereas 1992 the database was primarily of people that actually had a criminal record that had a reason to actually be within the FBI database, by 2008 the majority of the people that were actually within that database were people that didn't have a record at all, and so that was very concerning to Congress, and I believe at that point the FBI started getting like a lot more oversight into what they were doing and whose data that they had, and I think beginning in 2008 they got a lot of pushback, a lot of congressmen were actually trying to put legislation in to make it such that they don't use those kind of technologies, and for the most part the FBI's capabilities as far as official recognition goes effectively started to stagnate around that time, up until the September 11th in which case we haven't really heard much about it, but nonetheless that's kind of how to become irrelevant, but within the context of Clearview in just a couple of years because Clearview started back in 2018 or so, within a couple of years Clearview has obviously surpassed what it took the FBI roughly 10 years to do, and there's a very specific reason for that primarily because the technology that they're using somewhat mandates having that large of a data set, whereas in the past to have 300 billion images to sort through would be an impossible task to find one person, but because of the way that technology actually works it makes it such that you have to have that many images to be able to effectively track and identify people. So, like I mentioned, I'm going to actually go through the development process with you guys as far as collecting data, processing data and analyzing it and putting it in a way such that you can actually carry out whatever application that you're trying to carry out, but I'm going to give you a broad overview of what the process would be if we're actually to go into NSFORS productionizing it, but today what I'm going to focus on is like the first four steps, primarily showing you how the data collection process would happen, the kind of things you would do here and there to clean the data, fill the gaps in, and then secondly, I'll talk about the actual machine learning models that you would build to either do classification or to do kind of categorizing one object from a different object. And lastly, I'll kind of give you a broad idea as to how you can actually take the deep learning technology or deep learning methods and then combine that with just broadly speaking, just regular product development, software engineering to actually get one type, like a specific type of capability out of it. Like for me, the process of actually getting CTCV data was very transparent and straightforward because the Department of Transportation actually has a website where it lists all the webcams that are currently running live on all traffic that goes within Manhattan as well as Brooklyn. I know for a fact that San Francisco has one, but I'm not quite sure about like a lot of other major cities, but the gist of it is that this information is public and anyone, it's available to anyone who actually wants to get to it. And whereas the DOT has a fairly open API for a lot of the information that I'm trying to get, for a clear view, the equivalent would pretty much just be going to a site like Twitter, looking into the source code or just watching the network traffic and pulling in all the images that get fed in through the browser. As far as Twitter's like end user license agreement goes, they're not supposed to be doing this, but as I've just shown you, Twitter doesn't have a very easy way of distinguishing a person that's legitimately going to their site versus a robot that's don't go into their site and scraping their pictures. So the hardest part for me anyways, ended up being, or at least it was kind of fun, but the nuts and bolts parts as far as pulling in the data was really having to do it, figuring out how many cameras that I wanted this happen to. And once I had that, like the broadly speaking, the cameras that I wanted the target on, it's a matter of like basically setting up processes such that as the cameras are recording, I'm actually able to record that data and put it somewhere where I can actually access it later. It's easier said than done primarily because I might only have one laptop and so I have to use a laptop for the things and all these, all this processing is very, very, very like CPU intensive. And so the solution to that is actually using a service like AWS. And so what I ended up doing is actually, well, I created an AWS account and unfortunately they give you 750 hours for free as far as compute power goes. And so once I had roughly a cluster of A computers, I spun up each computer such that it would record a camera feed and through over the course of 72 hours, it would just effectively record every second that was coming back from a CCTV camera and saves it locally such that I can process it later. And what you're seeing here is pretty much for compute instances of Amazon that's taking in data from the CCTV feeds and just either saving it or processing it on those specific machines. And ultimately what you end up with is a real time feed, well, not real time feed, but it's effectively what you would normally, what you end up with is like a local recording of the CCTV cameras that you would otherwise have to go through the Department of Transportation webcam website to analyze. Running the machine learning models on top of it gives you what you're seeing here, which is one, you have the original feed on the left side and the right side. You have all these kind of like objects that are being tracked on the frames. Depending on a model that you're running, you can actually track a lot more than just cars. Some models track people. They track bicycles. They track motorcycles and buses. But for our methods, I'm only tracking cars because one, it takes a lot less compute power. And secondly, as you track each object, the library also pulls out and extract the objects into individual kind of the detections. And the reason for that is, obviously, you have different things that you could apply this kind of technology to, right? So one application is like speed limits within school zones. We already have a camera, so that does this. Another application that's a lot more specific to this kind of technology is something like Amber Alert. And the reason is because as I mentioned, when the machine learning model pulls out each of the individual cars that are scanned and from like these snapshots, it is able to like order the cars within a classification that says that this car is closer to another car. It may not be because of color, because of make, because of model. And based on that information, you can specifically pick, for example, I'm looking for a red Acura and simply by giving it that search term or giving it like what a red Acura would look like, it can tell you from all the different traffic cameras throughout the city where such a car has been spotted. And so this is great for if you have any police officers within the area, you can tell them, hey, watch out for this car within third and 23rd. So that's a very simple application that I'm not quite sure if it's currently in use, but it's certainly one of those things that can actually be implemented fairly easy right now with this kind of technology. And just to mention in terms of the development of this, it took me roughly three days to collect the data and one day to preprocess it and another day to actually run the machine learning on top of it. So this is just me doing this on my laptop and also with a few AWS computers. So you can imagine a clear view with several million dollars of backing and also the Department of Transportation with their existing feed into this data, not even having to do the preprocessing that I'm having to do. They can certainly do this kind of stuff in real time. Sam, you have five minutes. Oh, wow. Okay, great. So I guess real quickly, so there's a detection part and there's also the search part. The detection itself is fairly easy and the thing that concerns a lot of people is really clear visibility to search throughout different images and match up one person from another. The reality is they don't actually do recognition as much as they do image searching and from screenshot of Tick News app, what they've basically done is implemented Google's image search, but the difference between image search and what they have is obviously the fact that they have a lot more pictures of people that they're able to match up together. And so the danger of this is a lot of people are not aware that these pictures are within Clearview's database and oftentimes they're not publicly available pictures per se. For example, if a law enforcement officer was actually using Clearview without being sectioned by his department upflows a picture of your driver's license. All of a sudden, Clearview now has that picture which it shouldn't be having in the first place and it also makes it easier for other people to kind of like if they were to hack Clearview not only are they able to get Clearview source code, Clearview's client list, but they can also now have your picture which Clearview like just made a lot easier for everybody to get. So in terms of how you can defend yourself against such a technology, there's been a couple of different ways that's come up over the years. One of the primary ways was primarily using strobes to interfere with the camera's ability or infrared strobes anyways to interfere with the camera's ability to effectively get the pixels back to match up one person with another. But another for Clearview's case which is where they're actually taking pictures that they're not supposed to and uploading into the database the primary way that you're actually going to defend yourself against such a thing is actually by modifying your pictures to begin with. You can think of it as being a filter that to a human being is actually not noticeable but to a deep learning model because of the way that the model is implemented it's able to trick them into believing one thing is another or rather it's able to confuse them as to what exactly they're looking at because deep learning models are actually looking at every pixel of the picture they're not looking at the high level abstraction that the picture is trying to demonstrate. And so the gist of this is that like a lot of this the technology is not new and the defenses for it like they're there but they're an inconvenience to you and I as far as the reason why Clearview has kind of been so brazen with what they're doing is because they're using the argument that it's legal but the reality is when you look at laws such as CCPA what's nowadays mandates that companies have to tell you what they're doing with your data and specifically you have the right of asking them to delete your data it's very easy for you to go to Clearview and say like delete all my pictures the problem is as I've shown you a few steps back is there's a lot of information that's generated by this by these machine learning models for example these pictures as you're seeing them right now they're just the regular RGB representation but there's also intermediate representations that you and I can't see because they are not in 2D or 3D space but rather in like multi-dimensional space and those pictures are saved on Clearview servers and Clearview uses those pictures to train their models and so in reality they might say they've deleted all your pictures but they're still using representations of your face to train their models and optimize their models so to the extent that the law believes that that kind of like derivative data is your data Clearview still has the ability to kind of use your information against you and up until people recognize the process that Clearview uses in technology that they use in fact to do these things it's going to be very easy for them to kind of like circumvent the law because you can't make a Primify-C case that Clearview actually has your information just based on what we know about them and just not even based on the fact that they're able to match up your face because when you train a model you do away with all the training data and ultimately you can actually have a new set of data but the whole, the gist of deep learning is that the application is able to predict or understand things that it has not seen before so once the model is trained and you've saved the model weights and you save the model state and are now using it with like a completely brand new picture you're not aware of the fact that within a model state all these other pictures that belong to you are actually still there so legally speaking if you have a judge that's able to agree with you and a lawyer that's able to articulate this if Clearview, if you have a right for your data to be deleted it means that Clearview would have to retrain the models without your data to make it such that they're actually not using the data anymore and that's prohibitively expensive because as I showed you before where I had to set up a cluster of Amazon AWS servers to actually train this model because of the fact that Clearview is training on three billion pictures as opposed to several hundred pictures as several hundred thousand pictures as I'm doing it becomes prohibitively expensive to start training models with pictures that you don't have the right to so but again that's an argument that's going to have to be made and that's an argument that enough people are going to have to understand before they can actually start exercising those rights there are people that are currently doing regular CCPA requests such as give me all the pictures that you have on me delete all the pictures that you have on me but as far as asking Clearview to retrain the models without your pictures that's something that I've not seen anyone go as far as doing and I think that's really where you're going to have the cost associated with this technology that's going to make companies like Clearview a lot less a lot more reluctant to actually do this stuff. Thanks, John, you need to say that very quickly if that's okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sam. Are you done? Yep, you want to close it up with any final comments? Yeah, the source code for this this is actually a Jupyter notebook where I was going to demonstrate the distance metric that you can actually use to analyze one picture versus another because when you convert a picture from pixels into something that a machine learning model can understand it pretty much converts that into a multi-dimensional vector and it's just a matter of figuring out like which vector is closest to another vector which is a very simple mathematical operation and you can do this for any kind of picture it's just a matter of like processing it correctly such that the pictures are the right size and the right color and what else the source code itself I can certainly like show you if you're interested in looking at it because of the fact that I had to deploy this in AWS I ended up using Node.js for a lot of the processing and then for the actual machine learning model in terms of object detection and object classification I use the library called Image AI which is actually a high level wrapper for the TensorFlow and Keras libraries which made it very, very easy to actually just process a lot of this information. There are also a few other utilities that I use primarily FNPEG which is an open source like encoding application that makes it such that you can actually slice images and kind of format them into different encodings. That was, yeah, I can show more details about that if you have questions but yeah, there's pretty much interest of it. Yeah. Okay, Sam, thank you very much for fitting us in in this unusual session at CSB Comp. Just to reiterate what we're going to do so we're going to share this in the general channel in Slack and give people the opportunity to watch this in their own time and then if you're available tomorrow to maybe continue some of these conversations on Slack you can do that by text or we've got a core functionality in Slack so maybe you want to organize yourself a session where you can talk through some of these issues in a bit more but that was really fantastic and I'm really pleased we managed to fit this in because yeah, me too, thank you. Yeah, this is primarily to supposed to be like a discussion piece because the technical stuff is very deep but it's just one of those things that I've noticed that a lot of people haven't really talked about despite the fact that that's really where you're going to have the ability to make any changes. May that be changes in the law or changes in clearly behavior? So I just wanted to go into a bit more detail about that and also kind of share the how easy this actually do.


Whatever we do, there is always a human being at the center of it. Someone who could benefit from our work. I am Nilkan Patel and I am a computational biochemist at USC. Addiction to opioids is a major issue in the United States. Our goal is to develop drugs that can relieve pain without the high risk of addiction. Developing new drugs can take as long as a decade and cost billions of dollars. We start with a library of over half a billion virtual compounds. Navigating this vast ocean of compounds is challenging. But we are always thinking of that person waiting at the end of our journey. How can we get to them sooner? Working with Google Cloud, we have managed to narrow down 680 million compounds to the 120 most promising ones. Doing this job with our lab computers would have taken a year. Instead, we did it in just 24 hours. Meaning, we are that much closer to alternative medications. And that much closer to helping those who might need them.