Seven, six, five, four, two facilitators. Punty crowd this morning, punty crowd this morning. How many people are curious, just a raise of hands? How many people were at the Abbey last night? Can I just see a show of hands? All of you, I'm not surprised. Corporate, who's responsible for that? Supposed to talk about festivals, not be festive. So, I'm curious, just through the course of the evening, dinner, as you slept, if you slept, as you woke, were there any epiphanies, anything that kind of came to you about the last day and a half, or about this particular moment together, any thoughts that people would like to share? Yes? Please stand. Just that the birds that fly south in a v-form, and they all ride on each other's, and that's what I got, that all the tips and tricks to be, in a sense, part of my committee, in terms of producing plays, and getting their resources, and sharing my resources with them. Thank you, sharing your resources, yes? Yeah, clarity, not only with the networking and eating a meal with wonderful friends, but this morning I just read Lisa Portes' piece on the Hal Brown site. It is incredible, it just really focuses where we are, where we're going, and the road map is very clear, it's a great piece Lisa, thank you. All right, thank you. One more, one more, one more thoughts, please? All in, I'm gonna take my spot, yes? Thank you, I had the great fortune to sit with these beautiful people, and I was very aware of the cosmic, longer arc, which we're just a fragment or a moment, and we're passing the baton, and how that is perfectly in place, and how we can't be in it and out it in an easy way, but some of us that can do that, whether it's the people riding, the long arc, but how gorgeous it is to surrender to something bigger. And so thank you for that conversation, and also just the awareness that I have in here, that we're passing the baton, but running at the same time. That's pointed, and okay, Luis?  Time goes by very quickly, and in 1974, I attended this thing called the AFACD Conference in Princeton, First American Congress of the See. Three years before that, 1971, I was in Manila, sponsored by the International Theater Institute for the First Third World Congress of the World, and I was representing the United States, you know, Lloyd Richards, Fisale, and Stuart, you know, from La Mama, and along the way, I met, I mean, from my beginnings, when I was the age of some of you that are young, I met some of the elders from a previous generation, you know, William Soroya, John Howard Lawson, Eric Lourman, you know, the group theater, Jean-Louis Barreau, Rosa Mon-Gilder, you know, who was a New York critic, you wouldn't know her name, but she established the International Theater Institute, and along the way, you know, Mexicalos, Emilio Carvalho, you know, Hugo Raspón-Banda, you know, who just passed away a couple of years ago, Mexican playwright, La Hija, they were adorable, Ussigli, you know, the Mexican playwright, but anyway, what I'm saying is that theaters are continuing, and I'm meeting some of you for the first time, you're young people, some of you, and that's where you're at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey, hey. We're teenagers now, and they will be here when, I hope, when you're my age, you know, but the thing is that we're passing the baton, and I just want you to know, I feel that, I feel very good about this group, and what you're having to say, and what you're involved in the organization, this conference, but as one of the elders, I want you to know that we're all passing the baton, and it's a continuum, and that would belong to this long river that is the theater. All right, thank you, that's well put, that's well put. I mean, if we know anything about culture, we know that it's a dynamic moving force, right? And if we're all doing our jobs, we're never really standing still in the spirit of that baton, and passing it, and making sure that we're moving while we're passing it, and I think this war reflects that, you know, the demographics of this room reflect an explosion here, but I think, you know, had we been doing this in the 60s and the 70s, that would have been that period, it would have looked like this, like that, you know what I mean? And we know there's a lot to come, which is what we're gonna focus on today.  Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everybody. All right, a couple of little things, please. This work, as you know, was done with the support of a lot of folks participating and providing their input and their wisdom, and one, such group was the advisory committee for the Latino Theater Commons convening, and if those folks could please stand up so we can applaud and thank you. Last night, we received a beautiful proclamation from the city of Boston. The actual document is now on the altar, if you'd like to see the actual document. It will be scanned into color, and I believe everybody's gonna receive that color scan as well as with the contact sheet later on, but if you wanna take a look, please leave it there. Thank you. Okay, a couple of things. Tonight, dinner is on our own, but so that we don't have to wait at different restaurants for ordering because if we arrive on mass, what's been done is that there have been reservations that have been made at a number of restaurants, pretty close by in the area, and there are sign-up sheets, and those sheets are back there on that table. Please feel free, during the day, go check it out, we're Clyde standing, and go put your name there, and that way we know how many reservations should be made at that particular place. And then, I would like to invite Brian Herera to come up and talk a little bit about what he's doing in terms of collecting some of your reflections over the next couple of weeks as we leave and go on. There is actually a formal survey that's gonna come out as it happens after every of this kind of conference or convening, but this is a little bit less rigid. So, Brian, please, thank you. Thanks for, I don't know, being in this room. So, basically what my official role is, I am compiling the official report of this convening. And of course, this is an initiative because of HowlRound's approach that they make these documents available free for download for anybody, and it's part of HowlRound's initiative to open this proceeding to as many as possible. Our approach as part of the documentation committee is to try to make this a useful document, not a deadly sort of meeting notes, but more sort of a dynamic reflection of what happened here that might be useful to sort of review with your community of collaborators or perhaps your students or others who would like to bring into this conversation. So, to that end, I'm hoping to catch what, like we've got an incredible amount of note takers and the Twitter feed and the daily reports. We've got a lot of things that are coming in that'll catch the official proceedings. And what I'm asking the incredible creative spirits in this room is to catch those other things that are going on, those currents, episodes, those moments of intensity or moments of clarity that would otherwise just, evidence would disappear. And so if you could consider capturing those reflections, what I've got is a deadline next Sunday, quick turnaround, keep it short, 500 words, and what that will do is that'll come into me as the first point and it'll be a sort of part of the deep context that I will use perhaps in composing the full report. And if I do borrow it, I will cite you, of course, appropriately in all of these things, all of those kind of things. But it also is the first line to sort of continue this sort of the ripple effect of the documentation going out to Cafe Onda, perhaps, on then also to the edited anthology that will emerge from these proceedings. So please do consider that on page 18 there's a full summary. If you have any questions, contact me. If there's anything that's happened during this weekend and you wanna make sure that you can give it to me or grab my ear and I'll take notes. But just please help to capture the full spirit and the full dimension beyond the program of this proceeding. Thank you. Thanks so much, Brian. It's part of that documentation, moving it forward. And now I'll hand it over to my co-facilitator, Kenan. So I wanna thank you all for gathering in this space. I know this spatial configuration feels a little bit foreign to us given the large circle that we've had. This is merely a formality. It's a way for us to structure the day so that we can build our collective wisdom. We are not here sort of to speak at you, but is to share in the same way that we've been offering all of our inspirations here. We are all gathered here to share the collective wisdom that is growing and building in this particular room. I would like to invite you again to remember the stances that we have adopted. The idea of embracing diverse perspectives in order to see full systems at play. That is the basis of this particular quote-unquote plenary session of conducting an environmental analysis so that we can start to understand what is happening now that the trends that are emerging, the various initiatives that are already in play, the seeds that have been planted that are going to take us into a new day in the coming years. And so understand that this is part of that session. You can think about it as an information gathering moment for those who are active in the field to share their experiences that might provide a tool for you to use or source of inspiration to take with you to create something. And we've organized this particular plenary session in two fronts. This first one is an information session, knowledge building, collective wisdom. The second one will be devoted to the idea of festival making. And so we're going to start with this first session. One of the trends that it is emerging that we're going to be talking about in a second with all these beautiful, wonderful, creative, brilliant people is the idea of national leadership. Now what does that mean? We all recognize that we have the power to be leaders in this particular room. But these particular leaders are head of national organizations that are affecting and servicing the field at large. And so we're going to have a conversation with these particular leaders. Then we are going to move over into a few particular collaboration models that are already in play. Some of you will be familiar with some of them, but it is important for us to know that already there are these seeds of collaborations that have begun to sprout fruit. A lot of artists and companies have begun to tap into them. And we need to share that information about what is possible when people come together in collaboration. And then we will be discussing the idea of online communications as a new frontier for us to stay connected and mobilized. This particular session, think about it. Listen to what's happening because later when we get into our connocimiento groups, we will be discussing what happens in this particular session. And we will be adding to the list. We're only going to touch upon particular models, programs. And when we get to our smaller groups, we will be able to continue contributing into the record so that we can gather that information so we can plant seeds in fertile soil for the future. And so we're going to begin right now with five leaders, some of them you know and some of them perhaps you don't know. They're all part of the quote unquote field. What does that mean? We throw that about. And so I've asked them this first group to address that in their comments to all of you. But to use a very dry academic definition of the field that gets thrown about. And this is from a book called Social Movement and Organization Theory. The field is those organizations that in the aggregate constitute a recognized area of institutional life, key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies and other organizations that produce similar services and products. That's very dry. And we are going to give that word, the field, some life in this conversation with these leaders. We have Aben Lopez, who is the president of Americans for the Arts. We have Diane Rodriguez, who is the president of Theater Communications Group. We have Mark Valdez, who's the executive director of the network for ensemble theaters. We have Noem Montes, who is a member of the American Society of Theater Research. And we have Patricia Ivara, who is the president-elect of the Association of Theater in Higher Education. And we will have three minutes each. And so I will pass the floor to the first leader, Aben Lopez. Thank you, good morning. How are we's everyone? Great. Well, I want to tell you a little about Americans for the Arts. Americans for the Arts is an organization that's over 50 years old and is formed actually, and its mission is to advance the arts in America. Working through Americans for the Arts is actually working as part of the field. And how we're using the field is not only organizations, but actually individuals as well. So you as individual artists are part of that field. And the field is writ large with respect to not just arts organizations and advocacy organizations like Americans for the Arts or service organizations like TCG or the Performing Arts Alliance or Dance USA or Opera America, but also funders as well. So it's writ large as part of the ecology, who is part of the ecology that serves the arts and represents and is the arts community. Americans for the Arts basically, the three goals that we're most interested in are one, building an informed leadership in the field. And that leadership includes not only supporting the arts, but also arts education. And Americans for the Arts, a large part of the field is actually local arts agencies who have many Latino leaders around the country in that field, in that part of the field, which include Olga Garay in Los Angeles, Felix Pagrón in San Antonio, Rod Maria Garcia who's been in several cities and states in the country. And so these are part of the field and our leaders in our communities who are now working at the national level as well for Americans for the Arts. The second one is a goal for Americans for the Arts is actually to increase the resources and adopt policies or create policies that support the arts and arts education. And the third policy area is to advance the value proposition of the arts. And that is not only about individual artists, but also about arts and the role the arts play in our civic society. For me as a Latino leader, it's important that diversity is important, but not as an initiative. That when we look at these three goals and some of the policies that we have that they in fact represent and include the diversity of America. And that means when we're dealing with arts education, how are we addressing arts education and the curriculum that it's diverse as well. When you're looking at who's creating policies with respect to funding, it's not just about the funding decisions and the panels, but who's creating those policies. And so in my particular interest is about looking at not only the board of Americans for the Arts, but the staff of American for the Arts and the implementation of the programs. I really respect the role between board member and professional staff, but as a policy matter and as a mission, I think it's important that Americans for the Arts or any national organization, when it speaks about diversity, that it be part of the core programs, not part of an initiative. So during my working with others, it is now about working with you. Thank you, Abel. And we're gonna pass the floor to Diane. Thank you. I just want to note that I am not the first Latino board president of TCG. Abel Lopez was president in the late 90s. There was one other board member who was Latino, Latina Rosalba Rollon. Currently under my tenor this year, there have been four other Latino board members. Clyde Valentin, Mark Valdez, Sean San Jose, Olga Sanchez and myself. So we are very, very well represented on the TCG board. And I have to say that their voices are very strong and very, very clear. So the TCG is a service organization for theaters across the country. We don't serve theaters. We serve the makers of theaters. And that is a very, very clear distinction. Our goal is to enhance the life of theater makers and the level that it takes, those people that it takes to make theater happen, including trustees at boards and including people in production, including our audiences. Currently we have some very, very strong programming. We had a new strategic plan to place a couple of years ago. One of them is a very big diversity and inclusion program. And we have an institute. And we are trying to help the larger theaters diversify their boards, their programming and their audiences. We also have a big program called Audience Revolution. Strangely and interestingly, Audience Revolution is very, very funded. Our diversity and inclusion, we have a very, very difficult time raising funds for that initiative. And strangely, it has not improved much at the larger theaters in terms of boards and staff representation. And we are working very hard and very diligently to change that. This Friday we are having a large meeting in New York City next Friday that includes all the national service organizations. And there are so many that have been popping up in the last few years, including HowlRound, which is really servicing a very unique part of our field. And it is also a free service. TCG, you have to pay.  And so one would think, oh, it's all about the large theaters. It's really all about the midsize and smaller theaters. I think the importance of us getting involved in TCG is for alliances and networks. And I please urge you to participate when you can. We have a great website and 2.0, which you'll hear about later. Hi, good morning. I'm just, it's really powerful to be standing next to the, to the, I thought of there. And it makes me think about, this is the people who are not in this room. So I just also just want to invoke our peers or colleagues or allies who, you know, I understand that we can't all be here, but I also just want to recognize that the privilege that we have being here and the responsibility that we carry as being in this room. So it's gonna remind me some of the type of that. Network of Ensemble theaters is a network. I think we find ourselves in a moment of movements. There's a lot of movements going on in the country. And I think the fact that we're here at this time having this conversation is kind of reflects that. And so it's interesting that kind of have that as kind of the underpinning of what's happening kind of outside of ourselves as well. And to inform, certainly like as Net, that's something that we think about a lot is like how do we fit into the ecology, you know, the amount of work TCG is that force is huge because it's like they do some really amazing work at a large scale and being at that table, it makes a difference. I'm the first hire, the first full-time hire for our organization. The organization is about 18 years old. It's only been about in the last six years, which is really when I was hired, that we had the critical mass to do something to organize. I don't think it's, we're based in Los Angeles and I think that matters. I think it matters that we're not on the East Coast. I think we're just centralizing. Very much grew out of the grassroots member-driven that's very similar to the conversations we're having right now. What are the needs of the field? What are the needs of the practitioners and building something that reflects those needs? There's a firm belief in the organization that if you build community, you build capacity. And I think that's something that started to talk that happened a lot around economics, the economic models. I think something that we're seeing because we serve a lot of smaller scale organizations, our members vary from like no budgets, very little budgets to five million from brand new just forming in college to 57 years old. So there's a breadth of experience in the membership, but I think that what we're trying to do is just foster that connectivity. So in some ways, the value of the organization is as network as connector. And this idea of building a movement, is one that's really kind of like to what purpose, early on in net subsistence when it first got on, a lot of people were saying like this is fantastic, but to what end? So where are you moving to? What are you doing? I think that's the question that we will always be asking. And the last thing I'll say in the time's up is that we also give away money. And so I have some information about some of our grant programs. So see you if you're interested. Now we have Noe Montes from the American Society for Theatre Research. Hi, I'm here representing the American Society for Theatre Research, which is a US based organization that's invested in the writing of theater history and performance studies. I'm here as a member because the ASTR hasn't had a lot of Latino leadership in its history. We've had people like Patty Barr, Brian Herrera, Ramon Rivera-Severa, Northwestern, who have been part of the executive committee, but who folks haven't quite risen to the levels of presidents and vice presidents yet. But I see more and more Latino faces at the ASTR conference every year, and that gives me hope. What I'm here to advocate for is the writing of a Latino historical narrative, particularly one that's invested in the theater. And I think that's a question of access. We want to write about you all to make sure that the names Alfaro and Solis and Cruz are as cared for by our students as folks like Vogel and Roel and Mammet. But the way to do that is to make sure that there's an exchange between the theater community and the academics who write theater histories. So please, let us know about productions months in advance that we can plan to go out and see them and write about them. Please exchange scripts, pass scripts along to scholars as well as literary managers to make sure that your voices are heard and your stories are told. And that way we can ensure that this history, this moment in time, is not just reflected here among us but across all theater histories. I want to tell you a little bit about the Association of Theater and Higher Education. There are a number of members of this organization in the room but there are a lot of you who have never heard of it. So basically the organization sees itself as an advocacy association for people who are teaching theater at the college and university level, although we have a number of members who teach in the community or teach at the high school level. It's an organization of scholars but also practitioners and teachers. And I think primarily it's a place where people who are really thinking about teaching theater and teaching the future generations of theater artists come together and work with each other. There's a yearly conference where we present our work that I would invite you all to apply for as well as something that the current president, Henry Beil and I are both very dedicated to is making sure that we're a 12 month advocacy group meaning that when you're not at the conference we're advocates for you wherever you are in your institution the whole year round. So it's not a labor union. I'd like it if it was a labor union. You might not come a labor union when I become president but I just want to make sure that people are being taken care of and we want to make sure there's equity. So we work with some other organizations that are up here to do that. I am the first woman of color leader of APA and I take that super seriously but I think the more important thing is that it's really, really me becoming president is really just sort of the consequence of more and more Latino scholars and artists being part of that organization especially through the Latino focus group that Irma's gonna talk about that we just had our 10 year anniversary and Irma's one of the co-founders so I just want to acknowledge that. I would just recommend that you guys get in touch with me. So you can become a member of the organization and you'll get all of this information and we'll work out but even if you're not gonna be a member of the organization even if you're not gonna ever show up at our conference just email me and if you have concerns about your life as artists and educators I'm glad to take it to the table and advocate for you. So that's what I have to say. Just see me if you're interested. Thank you. So those are our leaders. I wanna thank all of our leaders for coming out here. If you notice there is a mixture between professionals and scholars purposely so that we can work in this convening to build that bridge which needs to get built. Next we are moving into sharing particular models of collaboration and developing new work. And so we are going to ask Chris Acebo who's here along with to address the Latino Play Project at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Good morning everyone. So we only have three minutes. I don't think they said that so we're speaking very quickly here. The origin story for LPP Latino Latina Play Project was a convergence of factors. Armando Durán, an acting company member at OSF for 14 years who was inspired by HPP and LTI in Los Angeles and that gave him an opportunity as an actor to network and commune with other artists, Latino artists as well as my own experience, we're going to LTI as well as HPP as a young designer given that opportunity. And since those opportunities have fallen it was an idea that has resurfaced at OSF as well as with Lisa in the festival at DePaul. So there was that factor, there was a factor that we in the last five years organically but intentionally had premiered five world premieres by Latino writers at OSF. So there was that happening. Works by Richard Montoya, Octavio Soli, Stania Saraccio, Cristia's universes as well as other plays that exist in the canon. And so there were these things that were happening organically at OSF. LPP is mission is very clear. It's to develop and present new work and create a forum for artists, producers and audiences to discuss and advance Latino theater. The mission is clear. The shape and form that this takes is nimble and adaptable and hopefully can hold capacity to change and evolve as our needs change and evolve. The project can hold a weekend of events as we did last weekend which included play readings, panel discussions, social events, as well as a work, for instance a week long retreat for dramaturgs of color to come to OSF and work on new work as well as Shakespeare. It can also hold a workshop for designing, emerging designers working with master designers on workshops. So the idea that this program is inspired by the past but actually looks forward to collaborating and evolving as our needs, as I said, evolve. And thank you very much. So looking forward to more collaboration, I've been given the red card. So that is the Latino Play Project. And next we're gonna introduce another working model. It's Kevin Becerra who's gonna talk about National New Play Networks' Rolling Premieres. Hi. So last season I was a, excuse me, I'm gonna go over it, I'm gonna say it was this fall. So last season I was a producer in residence with the National New Play Network and so we had these programs called the Continued Life New Play Funds' Rolling World Premier. And if some of you have done them, been a part of them, it's obviously this play, Sayama Christina with the Rolling World Premier last season. And so the way it works is NNPN is a 27 member theater organization. And there are 10, I believe, associate members. And so you get two member theaters to agree to produce your play within 365 days at least, you need at least two. And then the third doesn't have to be a member but it's great if they are. And the first three theaters receive a $7,000 grant to help with the production of the cost, kind of like alleviating that there's risk behind producing the new play. So like here's the money, go away risk. And then, and so then there could be other theaters involved in the Rolling World Premier past the three but only the first three are funded. And you get a lot of really great resources. You get a kind of a base camp setup where you can share marketing ideas, dramaturgy research and the playwright gets this awesome opportunity to see their play multiple times and multiple completely separate productions in different theaters all over the country. And last year I produced the Rolling World Premier of a play called Wolves by Steve Yocchi. And it's just really great because it gives you a sense of who else is making theater that agrees with your mission or your aesthetic and it kind of gives you a lot of allies out in the field. This isn't technically what I'm supposed to be talking about but there's also another initiative coming out of the NNPN called the New Play Exchange which is really awesome and it's gonna be an online platform for playwrights to share their work and literary managers to share work that they're reading the playwrights, the front playwrights with each other. So talk to me more about that. Yellow card, done. Ha ha. Now we're gonna talk with Tony Garcia who's gonna talk about, he's gonna talk about the National Performance Network co-commissions. Hi, excuse me, thank you. The National Performance Network is a membership organization. Some of you are members of it. There's about 60 plus members across the country and the primary purpose of the NNPN is to present artistic performance work, performance work. So that includes theater music, everything kind of that involves being on stage and making noise and stuff like that. You don't even have to make noise, I suppose. But one of the programs of the creation fund, one of the programs of the NNPN is the creation fund and the creation fund is a commissioning project that, and the way it works is you, the members come together and you have to write a proposal and be willing to put up $2,000 each. You usually need at least two members of the organization and then the organization matches it with 6,000. So you can put together a commission for $10,000 fairly easily if you get buy-in for that. You can do as much as six, as three members and then so you, people, the artist would have around $12,000 to kind of work with and to kind of develop the work that they're doing. You are then allowed an extra stipend because we each get two residencies a year as members of the NPN, which is a subsidy to present the organization. And if you do a creation fund, the year that that work is done, then you get an extra residency in order to present them. So you have to commit to present the company, the artist, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to present the work. Now, Sutiathro has done a number of commissions and as a playwright, we have done commissions as well. We were able to commission the group that we kind of put together called the Chicano Messengers of Spoken Words, Martín, if you're not there, was part of it. And that commission worked in a really different way and that the guys actually came out, the people came in and we did a lot of work together. I went out to their work and then they were able to tour it quite extensively. You guys got a, that was a great support piece that happened. We were really happy with the work that came out of it. There's a way of us supporting a group of individual artists by putting them into a group and then putting them, lumping the money together. I was able to, one of the projects I did was a piece called Papi Mi and Cesar Chavez, I will jump to the end. No, I just finished one minute, is that what it is? I have a minute to go. It's okay, I need to just jump to the end to talk about how we get involved in that commission. Right, is that, there's a couple of ways you can engage your local NPN membership member and you can go online and you can find that information. But it really is about building relationships, all the commissions that we've done or the commissions that I've done externally have been because we've built a relationship with the organizations. A lot of times at the National Conference, which is in New Orleans this year, the meeting, people come in and they just kinda start handing you and they start approaching you and it's a real awkward situation. It really needs to be, the relationship has to really be built organically so that we can connect it with the communities so that we can actually have a good product at the end of it. So thank you, those were the three models we're looking at, but think about that idea of collaboration models and various opportunities that do exist. Now we're moving into the idea of technology-driven communications. And so this is a new frontier for all of us and we're going to be taking a look at four and we're gonna start with Garida's speech of No Passport. Hi, so hi everyone, good morning. No Passport began in 2003 as an experiment in and with words and music and live in virtual motion. Its core page is a Yahoo Group, very, very simple and it has a website which is its public face. It is an unincorporated theater alliance in press that advocates for, publishes mentors and supports a cross-cultural work of aesthetic difference and diversity. No Passport has published over 20 titles Print on Demand by Magdalia Cruz, John Jesrin, David Greenspan of David Solis, Rindy Eckert, Anna Garcia Romero, Barbara Garcia Crow, Oliver Mayer, Todd London and more. It is, we've also published our first book of fiction of works from Latin America in translation this year with Festival de la Palabra in Puerto Rico and we're publishing five more books between now and May. We'll see if that happens. If I have anything to do with it, it will. No Passport has also staged seven consecutive conferences in the last seven years at CUNY Graduate Center, New York and Poets Cafe, ASU Tempe and the next conference is March 29th, 2014 at LSU in Baton Rouge and it's theme is the D.R. Sporic Imagination. We're also launching, so March 14th, 2014 and Marcus Gardley is our keynote speaker. And what else can I say to you? Many things about No Passport. I also wrote a little something in honor of the artists who have taken part of it. So here's a little quick something. I left a dawn while creation slept, barefoot, breathless, wondering where I'd been. The roads turned dirt, smoke, rose in the air low against the muted horizon. Step, I felt a pull, a tug at my heart, was this home? Is this where I'd been? The road would not say and at other concerns. It wanted something else of me. Step, the lingering face of memory, the unsettling place of doubt. The unknown space of love's serenity. Here were desks dusted with desire. Here were words inscribed upon vanishing sheets of paper. I took a step toward the invisible ink and felt instead a candle burning upon a ledge against a broken window. That somebody had once called home. Speak reason words, my lips cried out, but nothing came from the burning flame. Save a waxy tear, a dying ember. Is this power, my lips asked? Is this what such words lead? Will they lead? No glory here, only fragility. As embers cradled breath, intended civility. The road turned south, horizon shifted. It seemed as if a dance of angels moved upon the damaged earth. Sorry time, someone said, amidst the blur of night, such lustful craving for the language of currency. Must we all be merchants now? A ghost query from an unlit corridor. Must we all package our desires in modular boxes of similar replicable design so that they can be neatly arranged upon the shelves of history? I'd like to think the river came lights a sheltering light of art and trees of weeping leaves and the bones of all our dead. For if living light is truly free, then let it truly be. No power claimed, no conquest named. Only the glean of invisible cities. For it is said and right and left in interest and degrees, the healing clock will rise and stop and call with blissful ease a kindly. Hold back all tears, erase fears, rise up past and through as the sun through the belly. Step, and in that breath, a stone's throw from eternity. Next we have Irma Mayorga, who's going to be speaking about the Latino listserv. Well, I'm also a member of the Association for Theater and Higher Education, that's Patty, but she had enunciated that a lot of us are in this room and I want to just acknowledge that the story of the Latino Focus Group inside of the Association for Theater and Higher Education for me begins with Dr. Jorge Huerta, who I met in 1998 at AFTA as one of the only other Latinos at this conference. It was talking about American theater. We weren't there. It was being held in San Antonio, Texas, which is my hometown, and I looked at all the Latinos out on the riverwalk hustling platters of food for the tourists and there were no Latinos inside talking about theater. And so it really struck me that there was a need that we were, and I was just beginning graduate studies, so I decided to do something with that and he helped graciously and so there's a Latino Focus Group. And one of the things that we did was not only we have a website, so if you Google search, sites.google, Latino Focus Group, basically if you put into Google the words Latino Focus Group, you will find our page which was created by Kimberly Ramirez. I also want to acknowledge her. And on there we collectively started to create not only a sharing of syllabi because we realized that our colleagues in the Association for Theater and Higher Education, which we also call AFTA, for short had no idea and they weren't teaching our plays, Latino plays because they would say we don't have resource materials, we don't know what to do, which plays should be. So they were, we've been talking about them circulating questions of canon. They were constructing the canon for us based on who they kind of could get their hands on. So we have really, the scholars have tried to formalize it and I also want to mark that almost none of the Latino Focus Group members mark themselves as just scholars. They all, they would be all in a row if they were just labeled. They're all identified as artist scholars. So one, I encourage you to go to that website because we have syllabi. We also started to create a list of all the plays we knew and all the playwrights, Latino playwrights. And what was great is that, so this is collective knowledge that we began. And if you go back to the Howl Room post that Anne Garcia-Ramero did, she named some of the kind of, she borrows from the list there and that's really, really great as well. The last thing is we have a listserv that's done through email. And on this listserv I've had a number of conversations with people here talking about artists moving into academia and wanting knowledge about, well, how do I do that and where are those jobs? This listserv has a conversation going that not only circulates, so-and-so is doing a new play and so-and-so is doing this work, but also, hey, there's a job over here in Latino Studies and they're looking for someone specifically in Teatro. Or also over here there's, do you know of a play that's talking about the current debates in Arizona immigration? So if you are on that as an artist, you can participate in those conversations and give us the information directly. We grew from 15 people who had an idea at the Association of Theater and Higher Education to now a listserv that has 200 and it really has been a way to circulate information that I think that all of our members have benefited from and the conversation is usually very lively, you get answers very, very quickly. I would suggest that you can see me because it's a little difficult to get on the listserv but please see me if you wanna be part of that conversation and know about that listserv more. Now we're gonna hear from Teresa Moreto who's gonna talk about TCG Conference 2.0. Hi, I come from Dallas and that's usually a spot that either is a layover to somewhere else, right? Not East, not West but South Central. And we found out about TCG, we meaning our local Dallas community when Kinan came out in December of 2012 and that served to coalesce our community of theater companies to form an alliance which we call Tanto, Theater Alliance of North Texas Organizations. And whereas some of these other memberships you have to pay, the TCG 2.0 is free. So I started posting before I even went to a TCG conference, my first TCG conference as a matter of fact, was a sponsored event as was the participation of numerous companies in the Dallas area when the conference was held in Dallas. So you don't have to belong to TCG to post in the website. Not only can you post in the Latinos in theater, but you also have access to information to the audience development stream, other conversations, the equity and diversity stream so you can access the conversation that's going on nationally through other groups. And I'm a member of the Conocimiento de Scholarship group and we've been talking about the importance of having access to knowing about your work. So maybe this plus HowlRound could be a platform where you can post, artists can post about upcoming events, upcoming fellowships, I mean, sorry, festivals, upcoming productions, workshops, it's a place where that I use to post multiple. I usually do a review for Theater Jones which is the local Dallas arts organ online journal and then I post in Latinos in theater and then I post in Facebook. So if we go to multiple postings we can kind of cross reference and get information about your work which is what we're interested in doing as scholars. Great. And now we're gonna finish with Lalo Ribas who's gonna talk about Cafe Onda. Good morning, how are you? So Cafe Onda is a platform that was designed to create an online community and conversation about the state of Latino theater in the US. We worked very hard with HowlRound's design team to create a logo that reflects the spirit and the vision of our efforts. Our logo's aqua blue letters and spherical lines across the word Onda echoes the bodies of water we traversed, captures the reverberation of our present energies and reflects the waves of our future outward expansion. Cafe Onda will contain articles, blogs, live streaming of theater events and will be linked to HowlRound, just the online journal of Theater Commons. How will this platform work? How will it transform who we are? Well essentially, this platform is your platform. This is an opportunity for you to share, to reflect, to comment, to write criticism, to exchange ideas on our site and we pay a very modest stipend for people to contribute. Blogs, posts, journal articles. We wanna include reports from the field regionally, locally, through universities and on the national scale. So essentially, that platform is your platform. And the ways for current practitioners to access and engage the platform is really simple. It's just to contact me, contact HowlRound, contact Cafe Onda, and pitch your ideas, your posts. We want this to be a 24-7 hub for artists, students to access the work and find out who's directing what, who are the new playwrights, what kind of plays are written about, what are the conversations that are happening. I want this place to be a receptacle for students, especially our future generations, to know who you are, because they are the next generation and we want to know, and they wanna know where's Latino work being done, where's Latino training happening, where are the teacher-scholars who are trained in the next generation of actors. So that is the place that will contain all of this information that you'll be, that you've just heard, into one place. And the dream is to make it a homepage for all of us. Thank you. Thank you. So we just had a conversation I heard from our leaders, from various leaders. We've heard about new play models and models of collaboration and also existing communication technologies. And so now we're gonna do a quick check. If you have written for Caffeonda as of yet, please stand. Thank you. That could eventually be over. If you have posted on TCG 2.0, please stand. Thank you. If you have accessed the Latino listserv of the Latino Focus Group, please stand. Thank you. If you have been a part of No Passport, please stand. Great. If you have written or been commissioned or been a commissioner on a national performance network world premiere, NPN, please stand. If you have been a part of an NNPN rolling premiere, please stand. If you are a part of the Latino Play Project, please stand. If you are a member of the Association of Theater and Higher Education, please stand. Thank you. If you are a member of the American Society of Theater Research, please stand. If you are a member of the Network for Ensemble Theaters, please stand. If you are a member of TCG, please stand. Thank you. And if you are a member of American for the Arts or have been to an arts advocacy day for Americans for the Arts, please stand. Americans for the Arts, TCG, Network for the Ensemble Theater, American Society of Theater Research, Association for Theater in Higher Education, the Latino Play Project, national new play network, national performance network, No Passport, the Latino Lister, TCG 2.0, Cafe Onda, all of us must access all these resources, please stand. And I will pass it to my co-facilitator. We know everybody really enjoyed standing. And so it is my distinct pleasure to bring up Elaine Romero, also yoghista, who's gonna lead us in a little stretch while we make a transition. Yes, at your chairs, it's all good. Thank you, Elaine. I guess at least when I answered it last spring, there was already some intention in terms of what was to come. Specifically, Luis Valdez wanted to, or wants to, or will rather produce a festival in the fall of 2014. Jose Luis, sorry, sorry guys. I was, well, you know, I don't even have a good excuse like I was out hanging out with you guys. And Lisa Portez is planning a new play festival in 2015. But just a note about festivals and some reflection, I was thinking about this a little bit yesterday and this morning. You know, in 2003, I attended this joint convention convening between APAP and TCG members. It happened in Pittsburgh, and I think it coincided with a much larger conference with the American for the Arts. Oh God, I think you might be a major part of that actually, along with some other folks in the room. But it was kind of my first entry point into being in a much larger room. There was a lot of big players there.   And at one point, Danny was like, my head hurts, I gotta go back to the hotel. You know, and I stuck around and I was really trying to figure out why we were there. And, you know, at one point it kind of hit me. I said, well, you know, it seems to me there aren't enough festivals in this country, right? Because festivals provide a moment of now, they're much more fluid, much more flexible, and you can provide a snapshot in a different timeline versus kind of the traditional regional theater model of, I gotta plan my season, you know, two seasons out. And, you know, we have subscribers that we're doing this thing, or presenters similarly have to do the same thing. There's a fluidity in festivals as they're modeled and there are various models that we will hear from right now. So, you know, that kind of hit me. And then under the radar, I think that was the first year under the radar happened at St. Anne's. And quickly as under the radar began to grow, there were shadow festivals that emerged in conjunction with under the radar, specifically in New York. The Coyle Festival at Pierce 122 here and now. Other festivals emerged that were inspired by under the radar. Radar LA, which has now happened twice. This year I think there was a shadow festival that emerged in Los Angeles called LAX, which focused on local artists, but it started to happen in conjunction or a response too. So, you know, we begin to see that, I think this particular model of kind of coalescing and bringing people together in a different way inspires other folks to kind of become a part of the conversation, whether they're formally invited or not. They invite themselves. This happens in other forms, you know? Art Basel in Miami is not quite an art festival. It's more of a marketplace, but right across the water in the city of Miami, there's an entire street festival, a public art piece that happens now, which is much more festival and much more festive and just kind of creates this incredible access. People are walking through the streets, why artists are making art on the walls, and it doesn't cost $45 to walk into the Miami Convention Center, you know? So, I think there's a lot of power to, you know, what's taking place and what's about to take place. So, I'll leave it at that, and we're gonna start with one question for our panelists, and that is, how is your festival structured and why? So, the how and the why, but those of you who haven't produced yet, it's, this is how I'm thinking about it, and this is why I'm thinking about it. And I'm gonna ask that you take three to five minutes to answer that, and then our conversation will go from there. Who would like to go first? Okay. Good morning, everyone. Can you stand while you're talking? I'm Sandra Delgado, I'm the producer of the Yo Solo Latino Theater Festival of Latino solo shows that is a co-production between my two artistic homes, Collaboration and Teatro Vista. The first annual festival was last summer in Collaboration's home, and the shows that we do are, we wanted to give Latino actors a venue, a home to develop their own voice so all these solo shows were created and performed by the same person, and we wanted a cross-section of actors that are playing with form. So, our shows went from movement-based pieces to very traditional text-based solo shows, and we were also interested in actors that were in different levels of their career. We had a woman, Lisandra Tenna, who was just out of college, went to DePaul. And then another woman, KJ Sanchez, which I'm sure a lot of you know, who was a veteran, brilliant actor, director, and writer, but she had never performed in a piece that she had written, so it was a really exciting opportunity for her. And for me, too, it was, I got to perform my first solo show. Another thing we did that we aimed to do was get, we got national submissions, and for me, one of the most exciting things was getting submissions from Chicago. I thought, you know, after 15 years in the business, that I had a pretty good grasp of all the theater that was happening in Chicago, and through the submission process, I found out that I was so wrong. I got to know all these theater makers that had been making stuff in their neighborhoods in Pilsen, in Humboldt Park, in Little Village, that had been doing things at community centers, and at parties, and giving them, giving them a place to share their work. So that was one of the things that I was really, really most proud of, to give those people a venue with full designers, and so what we did was we took six solo shows, and we put them in programs, we had three programs of complimentary, what we felt were complimentary pieces, so duos. And let's see, what else do I want to say about the structure? Do you want me to talk about the submission process, or just pretty much how? No, that's too much, too much. That's too much. Another thing we did was we had a visual art and music component, and with Collaboration Theater Company, and we do a festival every year called Sketchbook, which is our baby, and what we're probably best known for, and it's a festival of visual art, music, and theater as the centerpiece, and we brought a little bit of that to your solo. In our gallery space at Collaboration, we had featured the work of 10 Latino visual artists, and in that space, we also had music. We had a couple of big parties with Latino musicians, and it was just a beautiful cross-pollination of a lot of young people, a lot of young Latino artists of all, just different musicians and visual artists and theater artists, and it was a great big theater party. It was, I can't wait to do it again. I was tired for months afterwards, but can't wait to do it again. I do a festival called Radar LA. Radar LA could not be possible without my partners. I co-curator with two men who really are very deeply ensconced in the field, Mark Russell and Mark Murphy. Mark Murphy runs Red Cat and Mark Russell is the curator of Under the Radar in New York City. The other partners are the City of Los Angeles through Olga Garay and Jose Luis at Latino Theater Company. We use Latino Theater Company as our base of operation along with Red Cat. Olga was the primary force behind this founding of Under the Radar in New York City when she worked for the Doris Duke. I say this because the partnership with the City of Los Angeles has been very, very beneficial for us. I am very interested in this kind of festival because of my background, because I worked with the Teatro Campesino for many years, because I am very interested in ensemble-generated collective creation. The festival is focused on ensemble work as well as collective creation, as I mentioned, or what I call hypercollaboration, where you might have more than one person involved in the creation of the work. It's not the sole vision of a playwright. And this work is expanding nationally in a very, very quick way. And we realize at CTG at Center Theater Group that this is another way of getting new work to our stages. So I run a developmental program that commissions and develops this kind of work. And I commission national artists as well as international artists. And Radar LA for me becomes a place where I can feed into, becomes one of my outlets where I can produce work. I could just work at the taper. I could produce work at the Douglas. But Radar is a really very unique opportunity for me to get work out for our audiences in Los Angeles to wrap their heads around this new kind of way of developing new work. One of the other reasons that we do Radar LA in Los Angeles is we wanna put Los Angeles Theater on the map. We have a number of theater companies producing theater companies, over 250 producing theater companies that do work. But a lot of artists are now staying in Los Angeles in contrast to New York because real estate is much cheaper. You can get a space to work in. We also have a really great university system in Los Angeles that feeds into the ecology of Los Angeles. And I have to note that CalArts is one of our biggest partners in terms of the types of people that they are training as producers and as collective collaborators. I think I've answered pretty much all... Oh, I know. There is a focus, regional focus of our festival. Our festival focuses on Latin America, Pacific Rim, Western States and Los Angeles. We are the only festival in the country that has this perspective. I'm very interested in representing our Americas. This festival, honestly, we didn't try. It's just that the work out of Latin America right now, and Maria Nisto can talk about this as well, is so strong. And it just was like the theater that was so resonant to us. So we had a number of work from Latin America, from Mexico, from Chile, from Colombia, from Argentina, amazing work, inspiring work. So I think that that makes the festival even stronger in that we're really highlighting our region of the world. So that's it. My name is Mario Ernesto Sanchez, and I'm the founder, producing artistic director, and Janitor of Teatrabante. We started in 1978 with Electra, as we go, by Vigilio Piñera, and by 79 we were officially a non-profit company. By that time, Miami was lacking artistic quality, some of them. We were lacking identity, we were lacking everything. But, do I need the microphone? Yes! I need the microphone, okay. Okay, so we wanted to do some changes in Miami because there was also a very funny ordinance called the Anti-Bilingual Ordinance, where it says that no public money could be used in anything that was done any other than the English language. So at that time, in 1984, a woman, by then working for the Department of Cultural Affairs, who had a lot of cojones, came to me and said, let, we have to do something about it. So we did, we did. That woman, by the way, it's Olga Garay. So we started thinking about what to do, so we formed a company called Acting Together. That was a collaboration of two companies and we started the festival in 1986. And it was local for 86 and 87. In 88, we got a grant from the Ford Foundation and it became national. And in 89, we became international thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation grant. So it's been international ever since. Why? Because we wanted to preserve our Hispanic slash Latino. Culture of heritage. That is it, why? That was very, very, very simple. How we do it annually, in the month of July, three continuous weekends, Thursday through Sunday, we invite anywhere from 12 to 15 or 18 companies, depending on our budget. The festival is divided into the artistic and the educational side, the educational for over 10 years or 15 years. It's been handled by Dr. Beatriz Rizco, who's also here. And it has become something as important as the artistic section of it. Each company performs twice and we do, the educational component has anything from forums immediately following each performance to a huge conference, today conference, to talk about what's happening in the Hispanic world. It's mainly U.S. and Latin America and Spain. So basically it's a very American festival. And we do a theater, a director's conference, I mean a director's forum. We do a, one day we dedicate to the International Children's Day, which by the way, I brought some posters and programs that you can pick up at the end of this session. So basically we've been at it since 1986. So we're already working in our 29th year for next year. Since 2008, we've been honoring countries for Spain, then Colombia, Mexico, Chile, U.S., Latino theater, this year was Peru, next year is Argentina. The following year is Brazil and so on and so forth. We perform in several locations. And ever since we started the festival, we've had extensions in New York in 2001, in LA, 2002, and in Chicago, 2003. And it just happens that all one minute, oh God, don't you wanna go to the restroom? No? So, I'm through. So, all those cities have now festivals, so I kind of think that perhaps we did something to push those people that are doing the festival now. So, that's it. We wanna keep on trying. My mentor from FIU told me, he says, don't ever do anything because you feel that, if you think you're talented, you feel that people have to treat you with God's gift to earth. Do it by your work, let them find out. Don't ever do anything because it's your last page of the book, there are other more pages. And the third thing that he says is you need, if you don't like the theater, then where you're living, do it. If you don't like the writing, write it. If you don't like the company, create a company, or do a festival. So, and he said that's empowerment, which is being in charge of your own destiny. And I'm still trying to reach it, but I'll get there. Thank you. Hi, my name is Mark Valdes, network with the Network of Ensemble Theaters. And we've been for the last few years doing a festival that is a roving festival. We're a national organization, and so something that's important to us is that we actually get out nationally. And so it started out with the question of like, how can we organize and gather regionally for national impact? And that was kind of like the underlying that the initial round of festivals, and they started out in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Minneapolis. And then we just completed a second round that kind of took the evolution of these festivals a step further, really looking at how do we start to look at work that is happening locally. And regionally, some of the places that we were in. Knowing that a lot of this work is under the radar, it's invisible. It's invisible within its own communities, let alone nationally. And also really looking at how does the work go beyond the production itself? Who are we partnering with? How is it happening? How is it getting done? And so this most recent round took place in Detroit, Appalachia, we were in Harlan County, Kentucky, and Knoxville, Tennessee. We went to New Orleans and then we ended in Honolulu. And also places that are just geographically remote, hard to get to, places that typically don't go to festivals for. And so it's been a big learning lesson, and it's been inspiring.  I think everything else happened in various locations because the work is happening in various locations. It's gone outside of theater buildings. We worked with architects, scientists, graffiti artists, musicians, environmentalists, coal miners, we saw some amazing theater that was being done by coal miners. So it's like, we're not artists, but they're doing the work. So that's been a big part of those structures. The why's, there's also a question that we're asking is like, how do we start to organize around the values because we're an ensemble organizations. And so the ensemble work is just so hybrid in its nature that it seems like the people organize as much around values as they do structures because the structures just vary from company to company. So that became a really interesting focal point as we're going through these festivals. And what we're finding is that people are coming out, like especially the local communities, getting to know one another, making connections. So when we were in Appalachia, Hurricane Sandy had just hit. And so suddenly the New York artists are talking to the New Orleans artists who were there. And it's like, what do we do? How do we respond to this? How do you use art in this? So in addition to just highlighting work, we started to, something I mentioned earlier, it's just to build a community of practice and make these connections and in that way, kind of building the field in that respect. It's curated, there's a local advisory groups. It's like something that Diane mentioned, these things happen because of partnerships. And ours is no exception. We work with a lot of people who make it happen, especially on the ground. Typically these events happen over two days, two to three days. Usually highlight about 20 to 30 artists' companies. They're kind of durational. It's like a performance tour. You get on a bus and you don't get off the bus until like three days later. It's a little exhausting, but it's also kind of cool in its immersion. The other thing is just because it deserves a shout out is coming from ensembles. Oh, the garai, her hand is just in a lot of places and thank you because she was an advocate of ensembles really early on and had a grant program for ensembles. So part of why we're here, so just because you're in the room, I don't want to not mention it. So yeah, so that's, they were called these micro-festivals and there's gonna be a next round. We're going back to Detroit. We're gonna go to Tucson. We're gonna go somewhere in the deep south, Alabama, Mississippi, somewhere around there. And then there's a fourth location that we're trying to figure out, maybe Alaska, maybe Puerto Rico. Who else, we'll see, let's see. Hi, my name is José Luis Valenzuela and I'm the artistic director of the Los Angeles Theater Center. And we are planning the 2014 festival in Los Angeles. And this is the first time. We did a festival in 2008 when we opened the LATC, like an international Latino festival. It was fantastic. But this is really, I'm not calling it a festival, I'm calling it, we're calling it an encuentro. And I have to say, we, because we're an ensemble and the entire company has a lot to say with what we do, including Chantel. And she's not even a company member. She has a lot of power. But we call it an encuentro, especially my wife, Evelina, she does have a lot of power. And she's beautiful. But you all know that. But we started really when we got together at the arena and we're never, that was 18, 17 months ago. And we talked about the convening and we thought, well, you know, this really should be a process of three, four, five years. Because it's really hard for us to understand the field where we are. And, you know, we always talk about was, you know, I went to see the Latino play, it's not that good. But don't say anything, you know. Okay, so we're gonna have a convening, but we're not going to talk about static, which is this one, which I understand. You know, because we have to be nice to each other.  It's hard to tell somebody you play is not that good. I know you think it is, but it's not. And it's really hard. So the point was, okay, let's have an encuentro, not a festival, because the festivals in our time had become kind of, now festival coordinators, they call themselves curators. We all should see, read this book, called Mix Blessings, a Mix Blessings, yeah. Mix Blessings, which talks about how we were able to throw people of color out of the museums through the curator process of becoming, you know, because we become the gatekeepers of the art form. Okay, so it's really important, this transformation from festival coordinators that happened in the 70s and 80s to curators. Because now they're the art gatekeepers in the world of the art, including theater. Very important. So we're not doing a festival, we're doing an encuentro because what interests it is in our company is to have an aesthetic dialogue about our work, about what we're doing without having to offend each other in a way, but in a way of creating a process of working together. And by that means we are going to invite or work with ten theater companies around the country, which on Sunday we'll talk about it. The guidelines will be created by the steering committee on Sunday after this is over, to see what the needs of the field are. So we will invite ten companies to Los Angeles and the difficult part there is going to be as for four weeks. Chantel said it should be six weeks, but I think it's only gonna be four weeks because six weeks is pretty long. And the idea is we are going to bring ten companies, we have four theaters, but actually we have six spaces where we can perform maybe seven spaces where people can actually perform, which is a gallery, we have rehearsal rooms, dance floors, and maybe we can go to other theaters around. But it's the company who will have a four week run in our theaters, but that means you're going to perform whoever the company is, you have to do 20 shows in a month, which is pretty ambitious, I think, but I think it's pretty, but I'm very ambitious, so I don't care. And during the day, the idea is that we all work together and create new work, but not work with our own company, work with another company and exchange methodologies and knowledge and ideas and perform that 15 minute piece at the end of the festival or 20, you know. It's just, I'm gone. So that is the idea. I have to, you know, we already raised, I think the festival is going to cost a million and a half, but we're going to raise around 150,000. So I'm very optimistic and happy that we will get it, thank you. Hi, good morning. You still awake? Yeah, everybody have coffee? Before I say a couple of words about this fame thing at the theater school at DePaul University, I want to acknowledge a couple people. I want to acknowledge my compai, Henry Godinas, who's not here today, but who Facebook some of us this morning and said he wishes he were in Beantown, no pun intended, because he really formed the, you know, the first festival of Latino theater in Chicago. It's an international festival. It was formed, I believe, in 2003 and I need to acknowledge him and also let you know that he and I are working in partnership on this little endeavor. It's a Latino theater commons endeavor. It's not a Goodman endeavor, but we want to reach across and use our collective resources. I also, in the spirit of kind of reaching back, I want to acknowledge Jose Cruz Gonzalez and Julia Carrillo, as well as Luis Alfaro and Diane Rodriguez for the work on whose shoulders Chris Assibo and I are trying to build with LTI and HPP. Those of you who read the blog know the origin story. There was eight of us in DC. We had a couple of dreams. One of them was a convening. Here it is. One of them was Cafe Honda. There it is. One of them with the LATC festival. Gonna be there. And the last one was a biannual festival of new Latino work. And at the time, I happened to have a, they were breaking ground on a new building at the theater school at DePaul University. It's a fantastic facility, designed by Cesar Pellian Company. It's got two state-of-the-art theaters and fantastic rehearsal studios and et cetera. So when we were like, we need a place. I was like, I think I have one. I'm going to just take a page from Pauli Carl. I'm just going to read because words are important. You can also read this online. But in the summer of 2015, the Latino Latina and Latino Theater Commons will host a festival of new Latina and Latino plays at the theater school at DePaul University. This will be a national festival focused on new plays by Latina and Latino writers living in the United States. A small coalition of Latino Theater Commons members will curate. We intend this, and that's because, that's as opposed to artistic directorship. I'll explain that in a second. We intend this event to become a biannual festival which fills the void left by the disappearance of the Hispanic Playwrights Project and the Latino Theater Initiative. We subscribe to the belief that as an artist-led event produced independently of any established institution, we will no longer be vulnerable to the vagaries of institutional commitment. We aim to showcase the state of the art as we, those of us who make it, see it. We champion the cultural and aesthetic diversity of our work and look forward to creating a vibrant dialogue about the many faceted experience that is Latinidad in the 21st century. Finally, we want the festival to provide a regular opportunity for us to meet, drink, trade stories, ignite one another's imaginations and create the kind of unstoppable critical mass that movements are made of. We intend to re-establish the hub. The structure as it is right now, I think we're gonna start a small, we're gonna start with seven pieces, that might be new plays, it might be pieces created by ensembles, they might be devised.  This is a Latino Theater Comments Initiative. I think we want to remember from the north, the south, the east, and the west to honor the four directions. And we're gonna pilot that idea. There will be seven pieces. They'll take place over the course of a weekend, Thursday through Sunday. There will be parties. Is there anything else I want to say about that? It'll be in August, 2015. And we hope to have writers from all over, directors, local as well as all over. And artists, probably the actors are gonna be mainly from Chicago, if you're still there. If Andrew D is still there. But yeah, so that's essentially the function. The idea is that we want it to have the feeling of HPP. We really want it to be a place like Chris does with OSF, where we all come together, see one around the work, see one another's work, talk about it, show it to other people. Yeah, show it to other people. And take our own temperature once every two years. And again, I want to say, this is a Latino Theater Comments Initiative. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, it's great that we ended with Lisa because part of the goal for us was to kind of establish for all of you, and I'll say, Luis, the access points, the entry points that you might have moving forward, right? Because in the spirit of the commons, the steering committee is gonna morph into another steering committee. So the folks who served a purpose up until this point aren't necessarily the folks who are gonna move to and serve towards 2014 or 2015. So, I wanted to put that out there as well for folks to just kind of marinate on. All of you talked about partnerships and collaborations. You talked about responding or fostering or the intention of fostering an ecology. The festivals seem like they range in scale, you know, from an economic standpoint, what they will cost.  So you should know how much it's good. But I'm curious, like, if you could just talk about what each of your festivals cost, like scale, just so we can have that economic conversation quickly, just hear that. Yeah, I think Yosolo is definitely the smallest budget size. Our budget was $45,000, yeah. We ran for about a month, which shows Thursday through Sunday. And what we were able to accomplish for $45,000, to me, is pretty remarkable. I wish we had had more money to, one of the things we wanted to do was actually to bring some of the solos out to the community. And that's a program that I would like to expand when we do it next time, so we need more money. And none of us were getting paid enough. We were able to pay everyone, but definitely not enough money. I'd like to see it grow by at least $15,000 to $20,000, I think would be a real sweet spot for us. I would say InKind came from the artists in that we all were not, Lisa was one of the directors, we were not getting paid enough, you know?  So I would say that InKind came from us. The space, yeah, I would say about half then. Half was InKind. I don't know yet. We're gonna go into the process of budgeting. Actually, right when I get back, we've just put together a structure for it. And we're gonna budget it out with my folks at the theater school soon, next week, soon. I do know that InKind is the building. The building is InKind, but the staff and the utilities we're gonna have to raise funds for. And of course, one of my goals is to try to, I hope, you know, it's our goal, to try to pay people pretty well. We probably use cash around 800,000. And I'm really, this is an estimate. InKind, including space, which is around 60,000 at LATC that was InKind. It went to about 1.5, including the CTG match, et cetera. If you include the partners that we had, which are the Getty Malibu show, as well as Center for Art and Performance. We're also in our festival. It goes to two million. So, there you go. We have a utopic budget of $500,000, but since, unfortunately, we do not have a Ministry of Culture here in the United States where, you know, Gaddis, for example, they say, you have one million heroes to do the festival. We have to rely on grants, and you ask for 100,000 and you may get five. So, we are constantly updating and correcting, you know, the actualizing the budget. So, sometimes we start with 500,000 and we end up with 150, but we do have almost half of that InKind. When we started the festival, we said, well, what do we need? We need airfare. So, we went to American Airlines. We needed a hotel, meals, whatever we needed. Marketing, we went to the newspapers. So, we kind of switched and, you know, they exchange. We have the American Airlines logo on the newspaper, so the newspaper gives, you know, that type of exchanges and it helps us a great deal. So, again, it is 500,000, but sometimes maybe more than 250,000, it's InKind. We, for the four that we did most recently, it was probably in cash, about 400,000, they're about InKind, probably another 200,000 easily. The thing to note about like our events is like we're going into communities that are in economic distress. So, our events, it's like $5 to come. So, it's not, you know, like for the weekend, just because of where we are. So, that income part is really small. You know, Mark, when, I just want to reiterate something you said, which I thought had a lot of power to it, which is the idea of gathering regionally for national impact. And, you know, I think another spin on that is gathering locally for national impact or even international impact. And, you know, later on, we're going to kind of think about our contributions in that context, nationally, regionally, locally, and individually. Do folks out here have questions for the folks up here about their festivals, the structure, or just some clarification, or just some more insight? Shantel. When you talk about the process of selection, because that tends to be a contentious place, in which, especially coming back to the idea of competitiveness, and how do we know, with all of these sort of limited slots, how do we get an accurate cross-section of the field, and then how do we create selection processes that are fair, and that look at all of the different kinds of companies that there are in the different kinds of forms. Who would like to tackle that first? Three of us that are the directors, and we travel all over the country, we travel internationally, we see work, and then we bring our projects that are our favorites to the table, and some of them overlap, and some of them don't. And then we convince each other.  So it just like had a huge range of work, and that's because of the three directors. We have a form that you need to fill out. The deadline is October 31st for the following year, but I'm lucky enough to be invited to all the festivals, Cadiz, Chile, and so on and so forth, so I get to see a lot of work that I invite. We bring this year, for example, we brought 15 productions representing nine countries. Now, how do I equirate it? It's a formula, it's not just artistic quality, it's size of group, technical difficulties, it's a whole thing. We also look at what Miami needs to see, sometimes it's something that I really don't like that much, but I feel that Miami needs to see it because the festival is not mine, it belongs to Miami. And the same thing happens to all the works. We try out there, they don't have our limitations here, sometimes the play puts down black people, women, gays, we don't bring that, so we try not to offend and try to make the festival as inclusive as possible, not exclusive. So it's a whole, but the most important thing is that I see the work because then I get to see the size of the company and what's the place all about. We are getting anywhere from this year, for next year we're already at 126 applications with DVDs for those companies that I don't see. So it's hard, the selection is very difficult because we can only bring maximum maybe 18 companies presenting, and by the way, US is invited, you all are invited to the festival, it's not just Latin America and Spain. One thing that I wanted to say is that because our mission is to preserve our Hispanic culture heritage, not the language, that means that any country, any country can participate as long as they bring a play written by Hispanic playwright. Or an adaptation of classics by a Hispanic. So that's our only thing, so we've had Slovenia do a play from Argentina, we had Russia, we had Italy, we had many plays and they speak, you know, they perform in their own language and if we can, we do these super titles in English. Avanti, we always perform in Spanish, we super titles in English, but that's another story. Clad, if I could just jump in, what we do is also because it's similar, there's an intention, like what is the intention of the event and that suddenly becomes a selection criteria that just will automatically just narrow down the pool and then because we're doing local stuff, there's a committee of five, three of them are local voices, one national and one producer of me and then so on, so the primacy is kind of on the local. I think for this, and we'll decide once we put together our little committee but I really believe in, I want this to be representative, so representative across generations, representative across the nation and representative across aesthetic. Those are the three things that we're thinking about in terms of representation of the field. We always do. I think we have time for one more question and I saw a hand up, we got Daniel back there. Jerry, why don't you come up here, man, come up here. And just a note, there's a festival's conocimiento so we could do that but just talk about it real quick. Thank you, Tanya. So yes, the Crossing Borders New Play Reading Festival at Two River Theater Company has been going on for three years. It's a really cool festival because the reason for the festival to be in existence is that there's a large Latino community in Red Bank, New Jersey, that's where the theater is that has never really been, or has never really felt, well, included in the theater's offerings. So John Diaz, when he took over three years ago, he approached me about putting together a festival of New Play Readings by Latina and Latino Playwrights to try to build a bridge to this community and to try to reach out to them. And their readings, they're open to the public, they're free, we have some surrounding events, we do talk backs with the artists and it really has made an impact in terms of bringing new people to the theater and making them feel like they're a part of it and really just getting them into the door. So that's an exciting festival that the theater has committed to and that will keep going for the foreseeable future. So next year, it's usually every summer, next year will be our fourth year and looking forward to more. Thanks. Thank you. So we got a couple of more minutes and if there aren't any burning issues or there any other questions, we can close a little bit early. How are folks feeling? Yeah? All right, so then we're gonna break right now. Oh, Luis? Yeah, just English only, it's English plus. As a concept, I'll share that with you. English plus, if it comes up, the issue is not the learning of English. Obviously, a lot of us are writing in English. That's not a problem. We're conversant in English, you know? It's English, it's our language. But out there that people that are not familiar make that accusation right away, question of English, you know? When I was in New York and reviewed by Walter Curry, you know, as the dean of the critics, he wrote in his review of, because I was quoting letters from the guys in prison, you know, in the case. So I was using their text, but he wrote in his review that English was my second language.  But it occurs to me, I mean, that's kind of generalized. So if it's still an issue, I suggest to you or submit to you. Go to English plus, where no one's arguing about English, you know? But English, today our young people do not only speak English, they need to speak other languages. They need to speak Spanish. They need to speak Arabic. They need to speak Chinese. So do the plus and go, okay? English plus. Okay. Okay. This notion of America is that we keep coming back to radar LA in particular, in terms of the region that you're focusing on. That juxtaposed against some of the international work out of under the radar, which is also has international, but maybe it might draw more from Europe, is really interesting to me. And as a participant this year who saw, I think that crazy thing in the museum, late at night, in addition to other things, you know, it really energized me, you know? So I appreciate it. We have one more, we're good? Okay, so we're gonna close it out. We're gonna take a break and I'm passing the mic. Okay, so that concludes our opening plenary session, where we looked at leaders, we looked at play models, we looked at communication strategies, and then we just spent an hour talking about festivals. We know there are a lot of models, a lot of festivals, a lot of communication platforms that we already access that may not be a part of the record. And so what we are going to do after the break is we're gonna come back in order to be able to engage in our conocimiento groups. Our conocimiento groups, and I'll explain more after the break, are going to be about bringing those festivals, those models into the record. So give voice to the things that we did not mention today so that we can build our collective wisdom. Give voice to those makers that are not present and the things that they've constructed and shared. So that is part of our next task, is to build our collective wisdom through the conocimiento groups. And before I send everybody, before Olga sends everybody on the break, I need to touch base with all the conocimiento group leaders. Today we're gonna be doing it by wisdom. So that is Enrique Corrieta, Tanya, Saracho, Christopher, Ecibo, Anthony Rodriguez, Juliet Carillo, Tony Senera, Octavio Solis, and Jorge Huerta. Please see me right at the top of the break and I'll pass it to Olga. Thank you so much. Okay, just one, two little quick things. Please take a look because dinner is on your own, which means it's not hosted by HowRound, but what HowRound is doing is enabling reservations so you don't have to wait a long time to get fed, especially if you go in groups. Please take a look now that we have a little bit of a break and maybe at our quick 15 minute lunch break, because lunch is gonna be worked through, at the sheets in the back there, describe the restaurants and sign up so that they can go ahead and start making reservations for us later. And the second thing is, please be back sharp at 11.15. We need to gather everybody so we can keep moving forward. Thank you so much.