Okay, we're back live here at Oracle OpenWorld Day 3. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events where the action is. Extract the signal from the noise. And the action this week is at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, California. They're shutting the streets down. 50,000 people. Oracle making big moves in the cloud and big data. Again, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm joining with my co-host. Hi, everybody. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. And we're here with Sam Lucido, who's the owner of the Oracle OpenWorld Day 3. And we're here with Sam Lucido, who's the Oracle Global Functional Leader at EMC. And we're going to talk to Sam about virtualization, a topic that he knows a lot about. And virtualization in Oracle is a topic that we've written a lot about on Wikibon. We've covered on SiliconANGLE. It's a very important topic for Oracle users. So, Sam, welcome to theCUBE. Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate you guys having me back. Yes, so you're hearing a lot about cloud this week. You're not hearing a lot about virtualization specifically. Oracle doesn't really push publicly its OVM. We've written a lot that it's an inferior product. VMware, we think, is the gold standard there. Microsoft has made some good moves in Hyper-V to close the gap with Windows Server 12. But clearly, VMware has the top spot in the mantle. Oracle has decided to compete in a different way. Cloud, public cloud, putting everything into the Oracle RedStack. Give us an update on virtualization within the Oracle environment. What you guys are seeing, what you're hearing from customers, and what you're recommending. Sure, absolutely.  Interestingly enough, I think VMware has won that war. So, when I talk to customers about OVM or VMware at the hypervisor layer, we move the discussion on very quickly away from the hypervisor into the feature functionality that comes with VMware, the new capabilities, like v-fabric data director, for example, where it's the capability to provision Oracle databases from a gold copy automatically, gets you a little bit closer to that database as a service goal that a lot of companies do have. So, what I'm really seeing in terms of virtualization, as it relates to VMware, is the trend of building up the application stacks in terms of functionality that really adds a lot of value to what customers are trying to do. So, what's the latest on Oracle's posture? I'd love to get your take on it. I'd love to share with you our opinion. We went out, as you know, some time ago and did a study looking at Oracle and looking at customers virtualizing, and there was clear indication that Oracle was, you know, fighting it, you know, specifically when it was VMware. It was OVM, that's fine, but nobody was doing OVM. So, there was some friction, but virtually all the customers that we talked to that had chosen to virtualize the Oracle applications had good experience with them, but there was still concerns about, you know, that last mile, if you will. So, what are you seeing? That's interesting you mentioned that, because you know what, the number one concern is no longer technical, okay? When I talk to most of my customers, it's all about the licensing and support and certification issues, right? So, you know, that's how we advance our discussions into features and functionality, but every customer has to accomplish that goal of getting over the licensing and support issues as it relates to Oracle. Now, we have a lot of great partnerships with VMware. We've also been working quite closely with another company called Iquate, and Iquate has a product out there called IQ Sonar, which is able to do agentless reach out to Oracle databases to figure out what a customer's Oracle licensing footprint is, and then they can compare their entitlements versus their deployments. That erases the entire issue around licensing because a customer has a single pane of glass now where they can say, if I re-architect from my physical world to my virtual world, and I do it intelligently, then I have no licensing impact, and I'll be supported. What's the latest on vCenter and vFabric relative to Oracle in the VM world? Because that's a hot area. People talk about that a lot in configuring that. Any updates there?  I think we took a great step forward with the vFabric data director. The fact that it can actually modify those Oracle configuration files in the database and bring up the database automatically is a huge step forward. I have been talking with VMware about the possibility of embedding some of that native functionality with vFabric data director into the base product, like vSphere, so that any customer who's using vSphere will have some Oracle-related functionality at their fingertips, essentially. So I do see that trend building up into the stack, particularly the Oracle stack, but I think there's a lot more opportunity out there for it. We're by no way, you know, or stretch the imagination close to where we could be. So talk about virtualization relatives. We've been talking a lot about relative to BI. We've talked a lot about business intelligence. How does this impact there? And obviously Oracle's showing a lot of demos in that area. Can you comment on just what's going on in that neck of the woods? Yeah, it relates to business intelligence and virtualization, right? Yeah. Yeah, you know, business intelligence, very large databases. You know, that's one of the last lines of virtualization that people go through. Generally speaking, the smaller production databases are a low-hanging fruit. It's now those big BI databases that people are somewhat still hesitant on. But, you know, we do find a lot of customers actually moving forward to that. I was at a great session at VMworld where they were talking about the new storage methodology that's going to probably come out in a year or two as it relates to VMware. Instead of using traditional lungs, virtual volumes are going to replace that. And then that's the capability for VMware to create pools of cash to assist business intelligence systems in doing that data analytics very, very quickly. So I think VMware, interestingly enough, is really going to grow more and more into the storage stack and enable those very large systems to perform very well. Is virtualizing Oracle on VMware and EMC a product issue or more awareness issue? Is it more education? You know, I think it's more of an awareness issue, more of an educational issue. Listen, as I said, the hypervisor is well established. There's no problems with it. It's all about talking to the customers and getting them over to some of that FUD that's out there to be honest with you. What kind of FUD are you talking about? Well, you know, a lot of customers think that they're going to have to pay a lot of money if they virtualize an Oracle database, whether it's a BI production database. But, hey, have you? Oracle's done a good job with that. Yeah, Oracle's done a very good job of that, right? FUD, putting FUD, I mean. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I agree 100%. You know, I saw a slide from Oracle that showed one virtual machine in a pool of virtual machines, and they had some huge amount of millions of dollars attached to licensing just that one machine. It couldn't be farther from this. So basically, it's an awareness issue. It's just got to get out of that noise and create some signal around it. That's basically what you're saying. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and you know, I think we all know the stories that Oracle sort of the posturing and when they found out you're going to bring in VMware or some other virtualization solution, we had a customer on from ATD yesterday. And he said, look, all we did is we sat down with Oracle. It wasn't contentious. It wasn't antagonistic. He said, look, that's what we want to do. We want your help. Here's why we want your help. We want to succeed. And he said, hey, Oracle's been fabulous. We also know we found that when we talked to some people in the pharmaceutical industry that Oracle will actually certify in certain industries. Now, you've got to pay for it. That's right. It's clear that technology works. There's no question about that. Absolutely agree. You know, Oracle's on-demand business, 6,000 servers plus out there, all of its virtualized. Now, yes, it is using OVM, but OVM is a beer metal hypervisor just like VMware. So it's definitely Oracle's embraced virtualization. I've been at those customers too, and we've worked very well with Oracle and getting customers on VMware as well. And I think Oracle's, I love your take on this. I think Oracle's strategy is very smart there. I think essentially you're right. They realize, hey, we lost the hypervisor war, so we got to try to change the game that we can play that in the cloud. We can bury it. Nobody needs to know. It's a service. This is the SLA. Boom. And basically VMware doesn't participate in that. So that's smart by Oracle, and they're going to get their fair share. But so many other customers want to be managing their own infrastructure. Right. Yeah. You know, that's absolutely right. And that's why I think products like Vfabric Data Director give the DVAs a little bit more ownership in the virtualization arena in infrastructure. Also, with products like EMC Prosphere, which allows you to manage the storage from both a virtual and physical level and see into the database at the same time. Very important in giving the DVAs the ownership that they want. So talk about, I want to get your perspective here because it's an area that's growing very fast and just your personal perspective as an industry participant in virtualization, software defined networking, network virtualization. Obviously, that's a path towards the software defined data center. But what's your take on network virtualization? You know, it's kind of interesting. And I'm not a person who homes in a lot on networking, but I do see VMware doing a lot in terms of networking. In particular, I talk about networking as it relates to those layer two and layer three considerations in terms of virtualization. So for example, if you're doing like a extended Oracle RAC configuration over our data centers using EMC Bplex, you can apply virtualization to that and you could definitely use VMware virtualization and networking to accomplish some of those goals. What's your take on CEDIS and the big data play within virtualization? VMware made an acquisition recently of CEDIS. People think that it's related to the big data play, basically big data as a service on top of the infrastructure. What do you see there? And what are customers demanding? You know, a lot of my customers are demanding the fact that they want to virtualize everything and it's those very large databases and acquisitions like that that make it possible. You know, if we were talking two years ago, I would say it's been a challenge to get people to virtualize, but now the discussion has definitely turned. Some of those acquisitions that VMware is making have been very good acquisitions. I think that gets us over those milestones of people virtualizing very large databases. Sam, I wonder if I can ask you to go back to the cloud for a second. So it's very clear that EMC and VMware's strategy and its partners, take a partner approach, take the ecosystem approach. One of the things that people often mention, Joe Tucci has mentioned this as well, is the advantage Amazon has in Google and others is that their cloud is homogeneous. That's right. They got the same everything. It's the stack that's their internally defined stack to their standards and it just works. So it makes sense that VMware and its partners would say, okay, let's take our private cloud environment and try to replicate that in the public cloud environment so we can move data, move apps, bring the edicts of policy and privacy and governance from internal to external. Oracle is now taking a similar approach, all Oracle all the time, but it's really not partner friendly in that regard. So I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Maybe some of the advantages and disadvantages of your approach. You know, absolutely. I see a big trend out there and the trend is this, being able to manage multiple cloud types with one interface. So let's talk about that. For example, if you purchase VMware and you standardize on VMware, but you have some Hyper-V in there, right? Do you really want to separate an interface to manage some of that Hyper-V or what you put in the public cloud? So I see a really trend in companies trying to be all-encompassing and managing all the virtualization that they have both in the private cloud and the public cloud. Now, do I think they're anywhere close to being at that point? I think we've made some great strides, but I think we have a lot farther to go in terms of that. But I think interestingly enough, VMware and some of the discussions I had, they're really trending towards that direction of being able to manage multiple enterprise engines, virtual engines, I should say, under one framework and that's being VMware. What are you seeing with regard to the hybrid cloud that I'll define as the federated applications, not just having some public cloud and some private cloud, but really federated applications? Are you seeing uptake there? Yeah, I actually am. A lot of customers are considering I'm putting some of those smaller servers out there in the public cloud and offloading some of that from their data center, and the public cloud makes a perfect opportunity for customers to do that. So it's all about architecting that solution and walking through how customers might do it, but there's definitely an interest in the public cloud right now. I want to ask you about backup. So virtualization obviously stresses the whole backup process. We talk about that a lot with VMware customers. How is virtualization changing how Oracle customers are thinking about backup and data protection? Well, you know, I think backup's still a very big concern of Oracle customers, but you know, I think the biggest trend that I'm seeing right now is that active, active capability that's come out with EMC Vplex. The resiliency with the Vplex Metro design of being able to do simultaneous access of a database across two data centers. I'm really seeing a lot of interest in that. Now you still need backup, so don't get me wrong. For example, recover point to a third site in terms of backup or using data domain to a third site in terms of backup, but a lot of customers, you know, have independent auditors coming in and for a 24-hour period of unplanned outage that can represent millions of dollars these days to a lot of our big accounts, right? So now it's the conversation around not how we back it up, it's how we keep it up, right? And it's that EMC Vplex, that resiliency across data centers that really has a lot of the customer interest. I wonder if I could follow up on that. As you virtualize servers in Oracle environments, you've now got less physical resources to use to complete your backup jobs. And backup, as we know, is a compute-intensive application. That's right. Are you seeing that people, as a result of virtualizing, are risk missing their backup windows and have to re-architect their backup processes? And what do you see there? What are you recommending there? So that's a good point. I mean, you're absolutely right. What I see there is companies trying to address that particular challenge. Okay, so let me give you a very good example. With data domain, you have DD Boost, right? And with DD Boost, you could run that directly on the Oracle production server. It dedupes on the server so that you're not sending nearly as much over the network to the data domain device, right? So the idea of being able to build into the backup, that type of functionality, where you'll offload a lot of the work so that you're not stressing the infrastructure, is one of the ways that I'm really seeing backup companies address that particular challenge. Excellent. All right, Sam Lucido. Really appreciate you coming by the Cube and sharing with your thoughts on this deep dive and virtualization. Guys, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me back again. Okay, all right. We'll be right back here at Oracle Open World Live Coverage. We've got Pauline Nist coming on the Cube in a few moments, a few hours. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE.tv. We'll be right back with our next guest in a short break.


okay so this question is from a lady she's 41 years old and she said that she has been dating a married man for a while and she says he comes over all the time they go out they do that you know they have a relationship and then like if his wife calls he doesn't answer the phone he turns off his phone and she said this has been going on for a while and he doesn't want to be like on any social media he doesn't want to you know be known as a couple or whatever and she's like she looked him up she googled him I guess and she found out he was a pastor of a church who's married to you know his wife for a long time he says he can't leave his wife the church will look down or something like that he was ashamed and he just wants to leave things as they are he's like 66 years old so she's like what do I do do I leave him do I stay what do I do what do I do what would you do and what do you think about all this what should what should she do okay so if it were me okay first of all let me say that I know someone who the same thing happened to and the preacher ended up leaving his wife not divorcing but leaving and living with the other lady and the whole church knows about it and the other lady left I mean the wife left so legally he's still married to his wife but he's on you know he's with this other lady even though they're not legally married now she's like the first lady of the church and she let's just say that when when somebody wants something they usually get it okay when they want something bad enough if you want something more than the next person you're gonna get it okay because it's just a sheer willingness to get what you want in this world that makes you get it okay so my thing is if you're asking me what you should do if you want that man take them okay I'm not I'm not gonna sit here and be all high mighty and moral it's about who wants him more now if you want to continue the relationship as being the mistress and you know he's paying bills to okay yeah I forgot to tell you all that he's paying our bills okay if it were me I mean you're already 41 it's not like you're in the childbearing age range so you don't have to worry about that his kids are grown I don't know if you ever had kids but it's too late now unless you've frozen your eggs or you have really young eggs I don't know I don't know that situation but if you're not trying to have no kids or anything like that keep taking it and in the meantime look for somebody else who can replace him date you know when he's out with his wife you don't have to be exclusive to him you can get your bills paid and then still hang out with other guys and if one of them ever wants to take you seriously he needs to know that the torch has to be passed for paying your bills you be like you know what I'm being taken care of okay use him as your sugar daddy okay they look I'm being taken care of and like when it comes down to oh let's get me like if you're dating this other guy and he's like I want to move to the next step in our relationships like well I I need to be taken care of and you can hold that over their head because you're already taking care of you be like look I really like you blah blah blah but I'm old-fashioned I want my man to provide for me and take care of me can you do that and if he says no I can't do that I'm sorry but I love you like well that's nice we can still date but we're not gonna move out of this level of our relationship I'm not moving in with you blah blah blah until you can fully take care of me and so that'll be his choice to bounce or stay because you know that your preacher man is providing for you they said the Lord will provide okay so what I'm saying is don't throw him away he's paying your bills okay that's what you that's what most women are sitting here trying to get okay let let him pay your bills you can date while he's at church while he's with his wife while he's with his congregation you can be dating as well okay and I mean shoot you're 41 enjoy your life you can get a younger man and say hey I got I got an old man who pays my bills y'all I mean you know it's an arrangement I get to live rent free blah blah blah blah we can hang out we can do this okay if you're dating a younger guy if you're gonna go for somebody serious like you want a serious relationship with they're gonna have to come correct in order to take you out of that situation and put you in a better one or at least something equal to it okay and let me tell you that preacher man is not gonna divorce his wife because his congregation will look down on him his funds will stop coming in he'll be asked to step down so he can't do that that's his income that's his source okay he might be all high and mighty and holy but we all know that churches are some of the most cricket places in the world and the people there are no different from the people that are sitting in the pews so let's not judge people because I don't judge people I know people are gonna do what they want to do anyway so he's probably not gonna leave his wife she's probably oh I mean he's 66 he probably about to die soon okay so I'm sorry I'm not laughing but it's true okay like how much longer does he have left to live is his diet healthy I mean I don't know so and if y'all you know 66 is kind of young because you know modern medicine will keep you alive a lot longer so yeah he might he might live a while but you if you're going to be with him long term you need to get some documents in place you need to get some you know some money saved you need to do this you need to do that and he needs to look out for you because you know his wife's gonna get everything when he dies so we need to start you a little savings plan or something you know to stash away in case he falls off and you got some bills to pay okay and start thinking about that I don't know if you have a job or not if you do have a job that's good because you can save your own money and just let him pay all your bills okay so if you want to get married you're 41 so you're gonna have to marry someone who's already had kids who've been probably in a relationship or divorced and just want a partner to spend out the rest of their days with so you have time and you have the luxury to actually look for that in other men without having to worry about your bills expenses and blah blah blah blah you can you're free to be very picky at this point I would say now I know this is not the advice people would say is good moral advice but you have to remember who made up those morals okay it is good advice that works it is good advice that will lead you to your happiness in the end it's good advice where you don't have to work in slave hard because you have a man to pay your bills and you have time to date other men who are not married because like I said if you're dating a married man that means he's in an open relationship you're in an open relationship and you are free to do what you want until his divorce papers are signed and he has a ring on your finger okay he don't have to know about it you can keep it a secret I'm going to my sister's house I'm going to my mom's house I'm going to the hospital I'm going here I'm going there he don't have to know where you are at all time no he is not God okay so let's just say you have a golden opportunity if you take advantage of it in the correct way if it were me this is what I would be doing I'll be taking that money dating interviewing men for his position who can take over the bill pay because I have the luxury to be picking down I have the luxury to date men who say they're all that and I have the luxury of finding that out you know so and a good way to transition is like okay the man that you're dating says okay I want to take this to the next level you let's move in together and you tell him oh I need my bills paid he says okay I'll I got it then you can politely dump your married man and say look I found somebody who's single and can take care of me by peace thanks thanks thank the Lord praise Jesus and you can say bye and voila you got what you want it now if no one ever is able to take his place you still got your bills paid you can still date you can still afford to be picky and if he looks like he's getting close to death and about to you know go to the other side you need to secure a way to have income if you don't have a job and you need to realize that you know you might have to compromise a little bit with the type of men that you're going to be with later on I don't know you know what what's your type but you're gonna have a higher expectations because you've already been taken care of so that's a good thing so anyway thank you so much for that question it was a very interesting and very cool to get to cover because I have seen this happen it happens a lot so it's not a big deal like I said don't judge okay I'll see y'all later bye


Mentoring students is one of the most fascinating aspects of being a professor at the university. It's basically if you want the energy I have in the morning, it frequently comes from the interaction with younger students that are interested and excited about the stuff we do at the lab. In general I'm working in game theoretic aspects of cryptocurrencies and this means that I'm studying if players have incentives to follow the protocol and which means that following the protocol is the best strategy for them because they will earn more rewards and in these months the specific project I'm working is that given a specific reward mechanism I'm studying how players have incentives to play and in which state they will end up and if the state is stable and which properties this state has and this is useful because we want to find a reward mechanism that will incentivize players to follow the protocol because they will earn the most rewards in this way and in addition this reward mechanism will incentivize them to end up in a state that is stable and it has some nice properties. For example one nice property is that players are organized into a given number of pools for example are organized in k pools that it is not too many not too few for example one or two pools to just mine and this is the general idea from what I'm doing now and the way we are doing is that we combine game theoretic aspects and cryptographic aspects in order to find a definition to support the theory from this problem and to prove theorems regarding the state in which players will end up with this reward mechanism. Right, so for the past months we have been working with Margarita Larrageira from Tokyo and Professor Kajas on designing the account management scheme and the different actions that a user can take using their wallet such as issuing transactions, issuing delegations or even creating blocks. So we have designed the scheme that will be implemented in the next Cardano release surely and we have designed the implementation and also we provide a theoretical model that this implementation actually covers so we have structured a theoretical model we provide some proofs that we can go from that model using some steps all the way down to the implementation that we will actually define. So now we are working on attestation techniques for injection detection attacks for injection of code and data and our job is to detect and alert the user that system has been attacked and we are thinking of extending this to use secure hardware on how to protect against different blockchain attacks or to make the blockchain more usable. At the moment I'm involved in two projects one is called Oxchain which is providing some blockchain based services for a famous charity called Oxfam. My role in this project is to design and implement some smart contracts. Also I'm involved in the second project which tries to answer the following question Can we use blockchain and its capability to check availability of some service? This service can be provided by some off-chain companies such as cloud computing and the service can be like data storing the data and checking the integrity of data. My research is fairly open-ended so there aren't any concrete results I can show at this time but what I've been working on is formalizing what smart contracts are and there has been quite a bit of progress online so right now I'm working on trying to decompose Ethereum into many small components which put together make up the entire system and then working from there we'll see which of those components are actually necessary for smart contracts so one of the preliminary results for example is that you don't necessarily need a token to back a smart contract so well obviously it makes sense that you have some sort of incentive from miners and so on it's not necessarily integral to the concept of smart contracts you could imagine for instance private blockchains which don't have tokens at all but only deal with contracts and contract states in some way. Since recently the lab is growing and we are having more scientists and PhD students it provides more opportunity to create more projects and collaborate with more people from different backgrounds and knowledge and which is very interesting because we can tackle the same problem from different angles and also we can expand one specific idea and project which is great. All the researchers and the students here at the lab are working in order to enhance and add new features in the protocols that we already have under the assumption that these features are tested and are proven secure in the theoretical models and frameworks that we use from the literature and every week we also have iterations so that each researcher and each student knows what the other teams are doing and also provides some feedback that they might want. We have a very good relationship with our professors, with the members of the lab and it's very fun to work here and very satisfying.


On week eight, in 10 weeks in Jamaica, there are conversations from Jamaica to the world. I'm Agilina Co-Founder and co-artistic director of Akiba Abaka Arts. We are an international theater company that creates plays, concerts, talks, and processes for making plays, concerts, and talks for the global stage. 10 weeks in Jamaica, the theater conversation from Jamaica to the world is a talk series that features Jamaica's leading theater pioneers and practitioners. Each week, these amazing artists share the behind-the-scenes stories of Jamaica's theater community and offer their visions for the future. We are very grateful to reckon collaboration with Ms. Nadine Rollins, founder of Raw Management Agency and co-curator of this series. Raw Management Agency is an esteemed talent agency representing artists and groups from all genres in film, television, theater, voiceovers, branding, and endorsements. This series is made possible by our publisher, HowlRound.com, a free and open platform for theater makers worldwide. And our sponsor, the Martin East Eagle Theater Center at the City University of New York and Manhattan. Now, whether you're joining us for the first time or you've been watching us weekly since we started the series on November 1st, shout out to you, by the way, if you've been one of those people, we thank you so much for being in our audience today. And we hope that you will return weekly through the end of the series, which ends on January 3rd. I'd like to invite you right now, right now to subscribe to our channel. Go ahead and click that subscribe button. And while you're there, that little bell, click it so that you can stay in tune with everything that we're doing and be notified of our upcoming, of our next upcoming series, episodes, and other events. And while you're at it, go ahead and join us and like us on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. We are Akiba Abaka Arts on all platforms. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce my partner, I'm from Boston, so my partner, co-founder and co-artistic director, Akiba Abaka. Now, she's been involved in theater for over 20 years. How I don't know, because the woman looks like she's 16. I may need to see an ID. I don't know if she can handle today's conversation, but I won't spill the beans, you'll see. Right now, I'd like to introduce to you, Ms. Akiba. Girl, I am of legal age. I am all of 21. What, you're older than me? How? Hey, this is Magalie, week eight. Week eight. Oh my goodness, this is, I think I showed up to this more than I showed up to class when I was in school, but this is great. I mean, this is, and really, this is like the best master's class we've had in the last, honey, I got all my education in the grade. Right? Right. And of course, my trusty notebook over here. So, listen. I don't have minds this week, but I'm driving this conversation, so it's gonna be fun. Absolutely, I can't wait. All right, thank you so very much, Magalie. Theater is a place where all people have permission to exist and explore and expand their truest selves. We use performance as a tool to form our narratives, the stories about how we show up in the world. As we talk about Jamaican theater, we believe that all voices should be heard. All faces should be seen and the stories of the lesser known people should be elevated. Among the voices that have been silenced and shadowed within the Jamaican culture are the voices of queer people. In creating this series, we asked ourselves, where are the voices of Jamaica's queer theater makers? They are making theater too. Are not their voices important? What stories are they telling at this time? This conversation is significant because Jamaica has been shrouded in an armor of caustic homophobia and much of the progress that has been made to understand and embrace the differences among us. Oftentimes goes unseen. Our three panelists bear light on the subjects of queerness, their Jamaican hood, and their responsibilities as artists. Carl O'Brien Williams is an award-winning actor, director and playwright whose work has been produced in New York City, the Caribbean and the UK. In 2013, his play, Not About Eve, received three adelko nominations for excellence in Black theater, including Best Playwright. His play, The Black That I Am, has been staged in the Glasgow and Galway, in Glasgow and Galway, for the National Theater of Scotland. And at Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. His recent projects include Reset, theater coalition's online series centering BIPOC playwrights and the Black Lives Matter movement, and developing plays about LGBTQ plus lives in Jamaica. He is currently the author Miller Foundation mentor, the artistic director for broad, tough productions, and the deputy chair of speech and communications at the theater arts department at BMC City University, Borough BMC City University of New York. Welcome Carl. Thank you very much. It's good to be here, Akiba. Thank you. Happy to have you. Seven blue Yankee Koon, Yankee King Pikiboo, the seventh generation maroon, Simone Harris, queer artists and activists based in Kingston, Jamaica. Her work in the cultural and creative industries spans performance, arts administration, business consultation, education and creative producing. Simone is founder of Choreography is Copyrightable, a public education program focused on intellectual property, protection and choreography. As a cultural and creative industries consultants, she has served as local expert for the development of a business plan for Jamaica's cultural and creative industries commissioned by the Planning Institute of Jamaica, PIOJ. Her arts management consultancy, 360 artists promotes diversity, inclusion and equity through a range of creative and cultural initiatives which have been supported by the British Council, Outburst America's Queer Arts Network and the Puma Creative Caribbean Network. Her latest projects include Walking Tall, a still walking performance art program, Lady Blake Ophelia Stratum, a nine week program that was developed to support creatives in designing their online communication practice. Simone is currently an analyst in a dynamic tourist agency and an educator at the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts, School of Arts Management. Welcome Simone. Thank you so much Akiba, it's a pleasure to be here. Happy to have you. Webster McDonald is a Jamaican theater practitioner and educator. In Jamaica he taught theater arts for five years at the secondary school level. His quest to promote the theatrical skills of his students and the indigenous cultural forms in Jamaica, particularly revival, brookens and kumina was instrumental in bringing 14 students to Guyana in August of 2016 to conduct workshops on improvisation and playmaking with the frame of emancipating theater from colonial prescriptions. Webster has presented at national and international gatherings around the themes of our history, our heritage, black masculinities in African diaspora theater and interrogating hegemonic beliefs about gender and sexuality unfolding in the Caribbean. Webster is co-author for the anthology Dubbin Monodrama Anthology One, black masculinities in the African diasporic theater, edited by Dibi Young Anita Africa and Christopher Oliver, published by Spoulous, Spoulous Publishing in 2019. Webster's research delineates, deconstructs, and I'm gonna let him talk to you about that because Webster is brilliant, amazing and brilliant. He is a BFA at the Endermanic School of College of Visual Arts and a fellow Emersonian. Webster just finished his MFA at Emerson College in Theater and Community and is now a candidate at the University of Kansas School of Theater and Dance for a PhD in Theater Studies. Welcome, Webster McDonald. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Akiba. Thank you. I'm so happy to have you, Webster. You know I just love you. You know I just love you. So Simone, tell me, what brings a champong maroon woman like you into the theater and the arts? Well, it's a long story, but I'm going to give you the short version, right? Because it's more of a return and a return in a way that's disrupting the traditional, right? So Simone Harris, I'm a Seven Blue, Yang Kung Kung Pikibu, Seventh Generation Maroon Child and I am from the line of Nanny of the Maroons. My grandmother and my great-grandmother were both dancers with Queen A, the Queen of Komina. And I sort of got that in my DNA. So I started out in the theater space with dance and I ended up discovering a deep connection to the drum. So right now, fast forward to 2020, I moved to the beat of my own drum. I am a mover, but I'm also a drum. I see, I live in Jamaica and I am an activist. I am in the LGBTQ community and I feel that survival is about navigating and navigating is also about performance. So the stage for me is the world, society, public spaces, working with bodies in public spaces. That's how I tap into this idea of visibility. What's important for me is not so much, hey, shouting I am here, but more so using arts and culture to discover myself while creating room for others to also discover themselves outside of the frame of you're worthless as a queer person. You're the other, you don't belong outside of those narratives. I'm here to use art performance to teach people in the LGBTQ community and also to teach allies that we are, we're here, we have value and we're gonna teach you something. Later on in the conversation, I'll share more about walking tall and show you how that methodology for me, I'm carrying it into the advocacy space pairing arts with activism.  Okay, I'm minister today. All right. So Mr. O'Brien Williams, what brings you into the theater, sir? Oh my goodness. I'm gonna steal from someone who's a genius, Dominique Marisol, right? When she was asked about that, she came in for black liberation. And for me, I'm always saying that the art saved me, the theater saved me. It has, so I think I came into the theater to figure out more about myself and because I just had this itch, this drive, this burning desire to create art, no matter what, I knew that everything in my life revolves around theater, every striking thing. I teach it, I write it, I'm an administrator, everything, everything. So that's really what brought me to the theater. And I'm very happy to have had parents who took me to see, who believed that we should see work, right? I was, my mother, you know, before she went to the hospital to deliver me, she was on a dance floor with my father. You know, I was going to plays, falling asleep, seeing Louis Marriott's stuff. So that was my, I knew that I had a definite calling to be in the arts. I didn't know what exactly it was, but I used to do art classes at the other Manly College on a Saturday. I was taken to the theater, the pantomime, just all of it, seeing Jankuno, you know, so everything that and all of those things just, just, just, just literally didn't need to do that. So I said, I have to be involved in this thing somehow. Went to NDTC, everything, National Dance Theater Company, had their shows. I was just always going to the festival, you know, Grand Gala, all the big things that were at stadium. We definitely went there. So here I am, a theater practitioner.  That's amazing. Webster, what brings you into the theater, sir? Oh, that's a big question. But the short answer is one, I grew up in a deep world part of Jamaica in this beautiful parish called St. Elizabeth. I did not have access to theater. The only kind of theatrical experience is that I would have had access to was the performances that happened on the football fields, the performances that happened in the church, performances that happened in the school. And as a result of those performances, I was almost forced to believe that my experiences would have been delimited to those kinds of performances. Then when I went to high school and was introduced to drama, dance and music, I realized that there was this world outside of my community, this space that allowed me to show up as I am, this space that allowed me to create a voice, a kind of expression that would have been seen as this kind of outlaw where I was coming from. So I was brought to the theater because, and to borrow from Jose Munoz, Esther Band's disidentificatory work, I was drawn to the theater because I wanted to have that space that disidentifies with some of those sociocultural norms. And having access to that theater, I think what I have now is this container collecting stories from across the world to broker some kind of activism, social change and that kind of self-making, space-making praxis. Yeah, that's me. Webster, I'm gonna do my best. You know, when your parents named you Webster, they knew what they were doing. Webster, I'm gonna do my best to tell you how much I love you. Guys, everyone watching, I'm just gonna keep loving on Mr. McDonald throughout this whole conversation and when he's done, I'm gonna put on some trap music because Webster talk big with some big words and I love it and I always learn from it. I love you so much, you're awesome. So Carl, speaking of talking big and words and meaning and language and discovering ourselves in words, meaning and language, words on power as the rest of them then said. What are the words queer narratives mean to you? Ah boy, queer. So queer is always contentious, right? Because of course it's coming from this history of speaking badly about a community and then it evolved into us taking it on, you know? We're gonna flip it, we're gonna own it and it is used to again for me this big umbrella because I guess it's too hard to say all the alphabet but I've got to say I love the alphabet. I love the alphabet. I love every addition. I love the struggle that it involves for the people who are outside the alphabet to do it because I think it's great metaphor for you to understand that language is evolving. It's part of our history. There are words that keep coming and changing and so to our narratives, we've always been here and so when I hear queer narrative for me that means representation, it means storytelling. It means where we get the story from which is not just our words but and especially as Caribbean people, Jamaican people we know that the story is in our blood and our bones and there's a way that we move and think differently from everybody else that is our own and we can't figure it out. So that's why we write, that's why we create. That's why we do it because it's always an interrogation and investigation, a curiosity. Professor Nettleford said that to be an artist is an intellectual act. It doesn't mean that you have to have the PhD or the degree when you sit down to do anything or get up to dance because not all of us sit down and type, right? Some of us when we start to think we start to move the body just start to move and we start to get inspiration from spirit, from drum, from all these things. And I think all of this is a part of queer narrative. So, because when I think of queer narrative I think of inclusivity. I think of taking up space and we have to because as I said before, we've always been here. So now it's time to reinsert ourselves into the dialogue since they've tried to take us out of it. It's time to be loud about the whole thing. So, yeah. Simona, I see you. I have a jump on that Carl, I have a jump on that, I have to say something. So, in 2016 I showed my work, The Tribe, a collection of images that I have. I showed it during the Outburst Queer Arts Festival in Northern Ireland. And that's when I, and it's a queer arts festival. And that's when I, for me discovered a meaning of queer that I latched on to and to this day. Yeah, disrupting, counter, anything counter to normative. Like I'm about that, okay? I want to be able to live in my skin. I want to be able to live as me. And that is going to be a fight. And I might not even be able to get to the ultimate level of that in my lifetime. But people have to put in the work. And I'm gonna be one of those people gonna willing to put in the work because we can't be afraid all our lives. As I tell you, I'm living in Jamaica. I'm out because I have to live in my skin, right?  And the change is coming, change is happening. You know, Simone, as you talk about being in your skin, you remind me of, I think Pearl Clay wrote about the people who could fly, but growing up, one of the myths that I grew up hearing in Jamaica was about the Ashanti people who used to leave their skin to have freedom when we were enslaved, right? We flew out of our skin at night to fly back to Africa. But we're not leaving our skin now in the modern days. We're staying in our skin. We're gonna be free. We're gonna be African people on the side of the earth. We don't wanna leave our skin anymore. Thank you for that. Webster, what are the terms for your narratives? So just to bounce off what you alluded to, Nikola, about this language of disruption, this language of dismantling the grain of the status quo. So I was brought to queer theory when I was introduced to Dibby's process through the surplus methodology, which is a process grounded in self-discovery, self-knowledge, liberation, community. And I think queer narrative centers the experiences of people who are identified as, whether you're gay, whether you're bi, whether you have this kind of burning desire to go against the norm, to go against what is perceived as essential, what is perceived as original, what is perceived as natural. And within that community, you're able to create these narratives that counters the norm. So you're building a kind of identity. You're building a personhood. You're building a kind of poetic that says, hey, I will not be reduced to this identity of queer. I will not be reduced to being a guy who has sex with guys.  But I can also have those experiences, but I can also still be a Jamaican. I can still be black. I can still weave the power of some of these cultural practices that evolve. I can also find space in sacred spaces, sacred spaces that once would have said that queer people cannot have this relationship with heavenly spirits. That is it. I'm holding for a reason because I want some listening. We had some wonderful engagement pre the conversation today. And one of the ways that we're becoming more progressive in Jamaica is we say the bedroom. Let's come out of people bedroom and come out of people bedroom or get out of people's bedrooms is a, I think euphemism for, we're not going to talk about gay people. Leave the bottom on them alone. Come out of people bedrooms.  And what happens in the bedroom of heterosexual people is loud. It's front and center. It's every day. It's in our face. So the idea that the bedroom is the demarcation of conversation of humanity. That's not the levels that we're on. We're on higher levels, different levels. So it's not about people's bedrooms. What happens in our art. It's about what happens in our lives, including the bedroom if you want to go in there as well. What are the questions that you all are asking because art is inquiry.  What are the questions that you all are asking at this time in your work as creatives, as scholars, as pedagogues, teachers in the Caribbean, Jamaican Caribbean space around queer culture, in the Caribbean and globally? Webster, what are some of the questions you're asking? Anyone can jump in here, Simone, Carl. So as a part of where I see my dissertation going, I'm asking this question of what are the ways in which Danzol is my site. I'm using Danzol as my site for discourse. So I'm asking what are some of the ways in which the performance of masculinity in the Danzol challenges racialized hegemonic structures, but also enacts erasure and terror against queer identified people. I'm also asking the question, who can enjoy the Danzol space? Who is the Danzol for? I'm also asking the question of what happens if you extract some of the poetics, if you extract some of the space-making, the liberatory politic in the Danzol and take it to another space, would that distort Danzol authenticity? Would that distort its violent emergence? Would that distort some of the masculine epithets that foregrounds the Danzol space? Would that distort compulsory heterosexuality that presents this kind of superstructure in the Danzol space? I'm also asking the question of, can the queer body have a spiritual experience through this syncretic framework where you merge Christian practices with African religious practices? And I think that is where the revival that evolved in the 1960s comes into the conversation because there are a number of revivalists who are able to be queer and have this kind of merge between the sacred and the sensual. I'm also asking the question of, what are some of the ways in which performance modes in the Danzol space can be hermeneuatic tools for deconstruction? So I'm thinking about how is it the body? The body's response to the encroaching commonplace of Europeanism, how does the voice, how does the orality, this kind of celebration of Jamaican dialect can also be a part of that space of, one, emancipating the theater from colonial prescription, who creating this space where one, the bodies are in this process of self decolonization, self theorizing. And I think Esther Bann paints that in such a perfect way when, and I'm gonna read this, this identification is a point of departure, a process, a building, although it is a mode of reading and performing, it is ultimately a form of building. What can we use from those spaces to create a blueprint for the social change that we have been envisaging for years? You know, Webster, your questions are calling to mind a term in Jamaican language, dope conqueror. And I use the reason why dope conqueror comes to mind as I listen to you is for those of us who are not Caribbean, and dope is a ghost. But what is a ghost, but something, some memory of a thing that was once alive that haunts us in the present, that we rest our beliefs in. It is not a thing that is present. And I think about dope conqueror because I hear Bob Marley's song run through my mind as you speak because the areas that you are questioned, that you're asking your question into dance hall, religion, spirituality, academia, all of these spaces are in some ways ghosted spaces for us as black people, as queer people, as people who want freedom, people who are shut out.  And you are coming with your question to conquer. I hear you taking space, not just claiming space, but conquering space and filling up space is amazing. Simone, what are some of the questions that you are asking? Well, so my process has led me to three C's. Simply put, culture, connection and community. And those three things at this point in my life are sort of my guiding principles, right? When I talk about culture, I'm talking about the practices of Caribbean people, the things that give our lives meaning, exploring those things, having the ability to explore, engage with those parts of our history and heritage. When I talk about connection, it's about inclusive spaces that promote networking and relationship building, not just with others, but also with yourself. And then community is about bringing diverse groups of people together to learn, to share and to grow. So what I'm exploring right now through the still walking program called Walking Talk, is it okay for me to start talking about walking? We're actually gonna go into that in a second, but we can, as a matter of fact, if you wanna set that up, we can. Right now, I think we can. I think we go to show in some of your work. We're gonna go into the work into the next segment, but tell us about Walking Talk. And we're gonna be showing some of the images from Walking Talk, but why don't you set it up for us and we'll show the pictures as you speak? Okay, so in 2019, I was fortunate because, you know, as we agreed, Carl Webster, we spoke about this, this idea of privilege as queer people, acknowledging your privilege, acknowledging when you have access to knowing that others do not, some others do not have the same access, but for me, it's what I do with it. So I had the opportunity to run a program for LGBT community in Jamaica and I chose to work with still walking. At that time, I didn't know that my father was actually a still walker growing up in Morton, Portland. He, they call it joint up and it's made out of bamboo and they don't strap it on, no protection and they just walk and that's what kids did for fun, growing up, my dad is in his 70s, right? So last year, I, because I had fallen in love with still walking in Trinidad, I decided, you know, this is gonna be a great way to build confidence, but not just do that, also build community. So it started out at bare minimum as that. And then I recognized that these three guiding principles of mine are actually reflected in this program because through walking tall, culture is integrated. Walking tall is a space to explore cultural practices through workshops, field trips, presentations, discussions, just an opportunity to explore connection. It is a space to learn to walk still, learn to build confidence, you're networking because all kinds of people are welcoming the space. It is an inclusive one. And what we've seen over more than a year now, it's a diverse space. And when we say community, we're talking about a space for everyone. So in walking tall, it's not just about coming into the space and the space is wherever we don't own a building, we don't pay rent to meet up. We meet in a parking lot, we meet wherever and we take it over. Visibility also important, right? So everybody has a role in walking tall. You have the walkers. I'm a proud still walker, two feet, I've conquered that. And you can go up as high as three and a half feet, five feet, seven feet. We aspire to get as tall as possible. You have walkers, you have handlers, you have people who deal with administration, you have persons who deal with the music, we have vocalists. We aspire to build out a whole performing group as part of this walking tall program that anyone can really come and book a space and learn how to walk on stilt. It really does something to your body. We have trans people, trans men, trans women, gay, lesbian, it doesn't matter, it is, we have allies. It's just a space where people come together. And the beauty about it is you see that fear, everybody thinks about falling first. That's the first thing they think about. Everybody, whether you are in the community or you are not, because you are human, you have the same feeling, you're fear falling. And guess what?  Imagine I've seen people just passing and seeing people up on stilt, trans women up on stilt and just the amazement, just the amazement of that act. Just in that instance. The imagery of the mind. The imagery of Simone, a picture of that. The people who are repressed, suppressed, pushed down, poor people, gay people, trans people, non-binary people, children. Above. What you're doing is you're creating a space where people who can, who don't have the certain levels of elevation there, the actual picture of people on stilt. And the fear, also the fear of being, because the body, I like what you're saying, it's like everybody, but the body, the soma feels fear when it's elevated from the ground. I work with body. A fear within our stories and within our narratives. Right? I said it earlier, living inside your body. So elevating yourself onto pieces of stick. Elevating yourself. The transformation that happens inside your body. I can't explain that to you. You would have to go up on stilt to feel it. But that is the method that we use in to change hearts and to change minds and to bring people together. As part of walking tall, we went on a field trip to Charleston, which is another maroon community in Portland. And we hiked 2,500 feet above sea level. It took us three hours to get up, three hours to get down. And just the process, what we had to put our bodies through to get to the peak. This is a mountain top that our maroon ancestors used to climb to be able to use as a lookout point to see the British coming. And to take the group to the peak of this mountain. They still live with that experience because when they are now faced in the world with the stigma and the discrimination, they remember what they went through to get 2,500 feet above sea level to where their ancestors once stood. That's the power of walking tall. That's the power of walking tall. That's what I'm working on right now. I'm beating this tambourine because again, I'm looking at pictures. I'm seeing images, right? I'm a theater director. One of the things I do is I work in space and I create pictures on stage. 2,500 feet above sea level. Yeah.  Yes. I am here to continue the legacy of my ancestors. I am from the line of Nani of the Maroons. I claim space for my people and I do not have, I'm not wealthy, but the access that I do have as long as I have breath, I will use it to continue programs like this. And as we move on, so those of us in the audience who are in the minority I'm not knowing what we're talking about when we say Maroon and Maroon people, just give us a quick reference, quick definition of what Maroon people, who are the Maroon people that you referenced that you are descending on? The warriors who fought for our people's freedom, fought the British, fought the Spanish, fought for our freedom. Their story has been corrupted, especially here in Jamaica, but I am here today as a proud Maroon knowing that centuries ago, somebody just like me was fighting for me to have freedom. Sure. Yeah, the Maroon people were inflamed African to left the plantations and ran into the mountains, the cockpit country, Nani, Portland, St. Elizabeth specific areas of year about a compound nation, Mortown, Naniville and these areas. And there were never slaves, they were, they left Africa, they left the continent of Africa, they were actually soldiers, they were actually warriors. And because of that, they could not be inflamed and they took flight. Moving on, Carl, what are the questions that you are asking inside of the space as a creative scholar and as a queer Jamaican man? For me, my questions with art and how I make art have all been reactionary. And I'm asking the question, how do I move from a space of reacting to trauma and get to another space of more empowerment? I'm fully aware as an artist that what I write can change hearts and minds, where this power, language is power, body is power. What happens in a theatrical space, whether it is a proscenium art or a parking lot or a gorilla theater where we just get up and we just do something in protest, all of it is valid. So I keep asking the question, oh, where are we? Where are the people like me? Where are the people like me in the different spaces that Webster spoke about, you know? And I see them. So how do we get from outing of people? How do we get from this notion of and move beyond?  There's so much happening. And I tend to be the artist that looks at the paper and reads his headlines, and then I create something from that because I'm like, what is really going on here? When you talk about vicious gaze, is this is an oxymoron if I've ever heard one, right? How vicious are the gaze? And when you talk about vicious gaze, how can we separate that from poor, poverty? Because there's an anti-poor sentiment, not just in Jamaica, but everybody, right? And we don't like to talk about it because it takes us out of our sophisticated intellectual musings that, of course, we're here, I have charities, I do this, but we're anti-poor. We're very anti-poor. And my work looks at people that are similar to me. So yeah, I'm looking at the violence. I'm responding to the violence. I'm looking at the trauma. I'm responding to the trauma and I'm constantly asking myself, at what point and how do we heal and move past that? Because these people are everywhere, right? And I'm looking at now, what is the root of this? Because we're obsessed with figuring out where we come from. And if it's a continent, if everything is coming from that life source of the African continent, then it means that we came over in these ships as well. We were captured as same-gender loving people, as trans, whatever you want to use. The indigenous people of the island who are killed off. I know there's some research going on now that not all of them are killed off, but what happened with their sexuality? What happened with their religion? And when did we become this way? All of these things affect my work. Those are the questions that continue to drive me. And it is from a place of, I guess, trying to be visible, to be validated, but also it's from a bit of an FU as well, right? Because I'm just like, why do I have to validate myself? Why do I need to be explaining my loves and various likes? And it's so interesting that what the theater, because when you look at Jamaican theater, I remember seeing, was it Dear Counselor by Trevor Rohn? And the protagonist in that is going through something harrowing. And he said to this woman, I thought I was gay. Can I tell you, as a young practitioner, I think I was in the pantomime that time, my ears perk up.  What is happening? And then I began to look for things. So God for Seal is one of our sons is missing, which again is a work in response to trauma. God bless God, rest his soul. It started a movement. This is about HIV AIDS, it's responding to that, right? And when I saw that on the university campus of the West Indies, because again, those are the places that you can go and see work. So I was very excited to be on the campus because I'm like, oh, this is where I'm gonna see lesbian and gay stuff. This is where I'm gonna see, because again, it is still pushed back into these intellectual spaces. So I'm constantly asking the question, how do we get the work out commercially? How do we get the narratives out into the space and let the people deal with it? Because they deal with it on TV.  I've only been involved in relationships with Christians or most of them are Christians that I know of. So I'm just like, I don't know who these Christians just speak of that are not lying with other men and women that are lying with women. Largia was a Christian. We have our children there and we, you know, but it's like, where do we get to the point where LGBTQ is not a catching disease and we have to root it out. So those are the things I interrogate. I look at the comments, people say, don't read the comments. I read all of them because the comments come from people, the people, the same people that I want to come and see my show or come and see my work and engage with. So I read them. I don't take things for granted.  Just jump on it from where you still live on Red Hills Road all the way to Parade and just listen to the conversation and just walk around and listen and just listen to people. And not everybody is as beating the vitriol drums of homophobia, but it is almost like it's a hushed tone as to when you actually become an ally. Because sometimes we don't like that. We don't like those things. You know, the constant thing is why you have to go on so? I remember someone saying to me, you know, talk to your friends, why they have to go on like that?  We're not allowed the same passions. Everything is a crime of passion for us. I'm just like, if you're passionate, you're passionate. If you're angry, you're angry. There's a lot to be angry about. So I think I'll go back, I'll probably rambling on, but these are the things that feed my work. And to me, I always say, Anantination, it go back to that deity, that little spider that is the metaphor for the small man, the small woman, the small person that overcomes everything because that creature, that deity is genderless. You know, right? That creature takes on form and appearance and you'll kill it. So I like, any time I'm creating anything, I think of that ananty because ananty comes over and then we have cuckoo, the actor boy, right? Who is not a woman, but is dressed in women's garb. They have belly woman. Belly woman is not a woman. And, you know, and as we're in the season for Jankuno, I think of these Jankuno characters. I think about the African retention that is embedded in that. I think about the music. When you hear that, they found objects as well as the, so there's always this thing with Jamaican art, the sophistication and not, you know, classes in going kill way, but it's perfect for artists. You know, it's great fodder. I love it. I adore all of this. Because today, today, day in 2020, we are still finding people's malapropisms and grammatical errors as absolutely hilarious, right? It is absolutely hilarious. And that's all well and good. It still is, but can we be honest with ourselves on where that comes from? Let's be honest. Language was used to oppress people.  You went to a good school. Why are you sounding like that? Speak like you come to a good school. And then you realize the code switching thing is a big old privilege, right? I know I work with wholly per privilege. And I think it is only right that I interrogate it. And I can't literally write about it because that's the only way. I think I'm gonna liberate myself from it. But yeah, these are the questions that they haunt me all the time, every single time I create art. Leap over my soul. Weep over my soul. I don't know why I don't have my little tamarind because right now I would give it that little shake. You know, the little shake makes it sound like wind. Do a little shake so that it's like the wind went through my tamarind. You know that little shake? That's what I would give right now. Because you see, I grew up in, I was Christian at Open Bible Christian Church. Yeah? Yes, yes. And I know that those wooden pews and the woman would just get a little shake. You know? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So much is in here. And I actually wanna move on to show a little bit of the work that reflects the questions that you are asking, that you just articulated, Carl. But before I do so, I wanna dialogue in this space with you. So that I don't want none of that to get lost. I wanna rest in that. I want everybody to listen, remember, and recall what you just said. So let's just rest in that family. Religion, how we got here when we started. And when I say we, we as people, but there's this idea that queer narratives and queerness is this, especially in Jamaica is this new thing, this popular thing. And what you're saying is no, we came over here on the boats. We left Africa, we were in Africa. We were present and we've always been here. We were not transformed through certain practices used to suppress us, buck breaking and all of these. We think that homosexuality in Jamaica comes from that or we are abrasive to the idea of homosexuality in Jamaica because of buck breaking, right? But that's not, what you're saying is no, this is, we've always been here.  Through time, the suppression of our tongue and how we express ourselves, speaking the language of our mothers and our mother tongue. My favorite was when people would beat you and say, you chop, buddy. Well, they were speaking the language. You chop, buddy. Massenya Glass School for Chatsaw. The irony of that, you know? The work we're about to see, we have a bit of your work from the boys on the hill. Tell us about the boys on the hill. I set up this clip for us. Very quickly, this again was, I started to write this piece because in the year 2013, two big things happened on the headlines. The murder of a young trans person. She was known as, you know, AKA Gully Queen. The name before, she was trans as Dwayne Jones. That's the name that kept everyone around, that everybody knows about. And also the title, there was another print media that had the title, vicious gays, steel stuff or whatever it was at the time. And I just thought to myself, to me, this had a lot to do with homelessness because I'm always trying to figure out what's going on here. When you're homeless, what do you do? You're desperate for things. You're poor.  Of course, that's not what they would say, but I don't want to get into what they would say, right? No, but they're running for their lives and they're kind of calmed down. They feel like they're out of, they feel like they're in a section of the terrain that's safe, so they're having a conversation, right? Yeah, so we can leave it there and we can pick a path that you want. All right, so thank you for setting that up. We'll play that clip right now. I'm glad for the rest of me to go through and then I can't you run the back of the church. With the man, we would still be living in that court in our house. As they kick you out, sort it by me, except they pick up janitor, animalized animalistic habits and start to keep on half-sex money. Crap, since they're all alone. That's why society don't like to know.  Help me love you, eh? We was all in the body. Don't get that. Don't you get that? The whole other way. I didn't forget why and how that happened to me because the world would make the whole woman kick me out of the room. They'd go to the room but it's my path. Sorry for mad at that. It's your matter. The society can't help but tell me what I want to see and where. Lee, listen, just lay low and we'll take you in a couple of minutes. Then we'll go over the new spot over here. You see that one? Up where it's at is now. It's not really there. Where you want me to go? Back to the golly. Babel and a beat, we have too much in there. But it's where you going, going. Uh-oh. So now you're concerned. Don't worry about eating, you know. If I get these other little skills, we'll have much of business. We'll have to pay a lot for our channel. We'll find out about the whole island and match it up. Throw it out just like I'm throwing the boys.  They're too bad-mined. Ah, it means that I can't get better than we.  It's not chopped all that we eat, eh? Do you know? You see, when I get my money from my surgery to become a real man, I'm living for it. They will personally mention you in my social media update.  And while you were trying to go so hard to be a real man, the pilot didn't want to buy from you, but they were dumb. First of all, I love the sound. I love the sound of Jamaican, the Jamaican accent on English, and the tussle between the two characters. Where are these young men in their lives? What will happen next for them? See, that's the thing. I like to look at it this way. Not everyone can leave. I mean, even on the screen right now, Simone is in Jamaica, Webster and I are not. One of them wants to stay and one wants to go. And I, you know, since, I mean, the players develop since then and I've definitely been working with more trans voices because that's very important to me. That's, you know, when we talk about identity and who can tell whose story, if I present as a cis gender gay man, so with some of the privilege and education, so therefore I'm writing about people who are not from spaces that I come from, but at the same time, we share nationhood, we share a number of things. So these two people, Ronaldino is battling for his life as well, but he comes from a two-parent household. He was kicked out. Riri is not from a two-parent household, but she was also kicked out. And for me, I didn't want a victim's story. So it's very important that this is not trauma porn or this is not, you know, but that the characters are not magical either. So I am very interested and very committed to having her story be one of liberation, however she finds it. And for him, his liberation, he feels is still to be found in Jamaica. And that for me represents those people who are within the community who either cannot go or choose not to go. They're choosing to fight. They're choosing to stay and figure it all out. I'm happy that you connected and in connecting, corrected my language. And I know you weren't intending to correct my language, but I'm gonna speak into that space, right? Because we're talking about progressiveness and transformation. You know, I use the term where these two young men, it's not two young men, it's one man and one young woman, right? And people are as they choose to be or not as they choose to be as they say they are. We're working in the way of learning spaces, progressive spaces. So there's a lot that even as much as I consider myself a member of the community through allyship, there's a lot that I'm very ignorant to. There's a lot that I do not know but there are gonna be times when my language is inside of my upbringing, right? I see the male body, the male body is messed up and the female body is missed, right?  And the reiteration of this is what this being is. Because this is what this being says they are. Listen to that. So as I talk, thank you very much Carl. As we go into this idea of the being and the body, how the body is born, but what you feel inside of your body, how you feel that you are. I wanna go into Webster's work. We have a clip from Who Am I? And I told you all, guys, I'm partial to Webster. I'm gonna love on Webster this whole, I'm an auntie. I got about 12 or 13 niece and nephews and I pick out two of them and tell them they're my favorite. So I'm one of them partial people. I don't care. I like who I like. And Webster is my bonus. Okay. So Webster, I saw Who Am I? And when I saw Who Am I, I said I realized why this gentleman, this person gets into every academic program that he applies to.   Tell us about this clip from Who Am I, this dub poem that we are about to present. Just set it up for us before we show it. So I think in the first, the first time I spoke in this forum, I alluded to the fact that the only kind of performances that I had access to was the performance of masculinity on the football field in the church and the school. And after living in that kind of world for years, being almost forced to believe that I was this, the sickness, this, this invader feeling as if I, I didn't belong in those spaces. And so even if you were able to see the full production, my path from home to school was set up like this, this obstacle course, jumping from tires to tires. And if I should not jump into one of these tires, then something will happen. So I feel as if my journey to school, to church was almost paved as this obstacle course. And the obstacle was this challenge of performing and approximating these notions of maleness. And I remember at one point I was in a classroom, which is a scene before this scene.  Stop going like you're picking me. And the turmoil that came with that, the consuming phenomenon that was happening in that space. And that was what drove this dub poetry. It is a resistance. It is a revolt.  It was a moment where I said that enough is enough. And so I draw, I think I use this kind of, this selector in the dance hall to create this. Sometimes I was trying to embody the language of the oppressor to kind of draw power from being this, this, this, this, this Cheryl Brazer, this, this kind of nanny, this kind of guerrilla warfare kind of character. And so it was the first hint at saying enough is enough. Great. Well, thank you for that setup. We'll play that clip right now.  Whenever I see good work, I don't say anything. I just let it happen to me. Oh my goodness. What did, what happens to you when you perform that piece? And what some of the happenings that you experience when you perform this piece, the piece from your audience. What happens to your audience when they see the piece?  I remember when I performed it the first time in 2012 at the School of Drama. And there were a number of straight people who, who saw me on campus. And of course I was reduced to this, this, this batty boy. And, and I think what it was, it opened was this conversation of, Hey, you don't have to view same sex encounters as this, this social contagion. We can have conversation that doesn't threaten your, your straightness.  I remember there were a number of guys who were just, just, just crying because it created that space for conversation. And especially in the top back. The top back was so powerful because I didn't realize that there were a number of persons in the audience who were having these same challenges. And now being able to sit on stage, it created that, that space for healing, for conversation and for, for being able to talk about. That space and sexuality in a, in a open, open space. And so for me, it, each time that I. Revisited. I mean, last time I performed it, it was in, in Canada, January this year. I try not to go back to it because I, it is one of those experiences that I feel ambivalent because it was difficult. It was difficult to embody it because I was there wrestling with, with some of these ideas, these notions that were lodged into my consciousness. And I almost believed that I was a sickness. I was almost believed that at some point I would be cured. As if I was sick at some point, I believe that going to church praying constantly, speaking in tongues constantly would at least exercise this gain is from, from my spirit. And so it was liberating, but of course I'm still grappling with that. And at some point I still believe that there's some hope. That some cure might evolve. And I think when, when Simone mentioned the, the privilege of being here in the States. Is now being able to, to critique even that performance at hindsight. And now being able to use that as a springboard for new narratives and narratives that goes. Beyond that. You setting us up so wonderfully here. Narratives that go beyond that. Let's start to open up the Q and A with the audience. Your audience is on the Q and A in the chat here. And they are on fire. Thank you all for being with us on this live. And the subject of where do we go from here? One recurring theme in the chat is around healing. Aaron Washington says that. Who is a member of our audience here. Aaron states that Tony, Tony, Kate, Bambara said that healing is a deep endeavor. Hurts more than it feels good. No. Simone. You are a. Very serious. Space maker administrator. But I also see as a, as a herbs woman. A healer. Where's the healing work for us as artists. As Jamaicans. I don't like the term ally. I'm not my brother and my brother and sister's keeper. I am my brother. I am my sister. So where is our work? I'm not going to say that. What is our work in the healing? Simone. Man. Work is every day, everywhere. Where do I start? You know, the idea of space. Holding space. Is so important. Especially when you are privileged to have.  Recognizing that. Being able to, you know, facilitate. Help. Help. Help. Help. Right. Help is not always money. And in fact. Sometime. The money actually do worse. In my intro, you spoke about a program that I just wrapped. Communication for creatives, which was a nine week program. I did in partnership with Ory consulting a group of. Powerful people here in Jamaica. What we've discovered is that. We need to create space and we need help to create space. To allow queer people to. Find themselves. To be able to sit with themselves. To be able to sit with them. To be able to work with them. Find themselves. To be able to sit with themselves. To be able to see. Themselves for the first time. Because when you're running. When you're constantly running. When you're constantly in survival mode. You're not having the time to stop and ask yourself. Who am I. Why. You don't have any time, but those things are so important to knowing. Who you are. If you're going to stand up and say, yeah, I'm a gay man. I'm a trans woman trans man. Non binary, whatever it is. You need. To have that opportunity. To find yourself and know who you are. So as a creative know. Queer creative. How can you even speak to your work. If you don't know who you are. How can you even begin to make work. How can you begin to tell stories. We're talking about queer narrative. I will acknowledge in that there is privilege. We know that. People in the community.  But it doesn't mean they don't have stories to tell. Or we're going to get them to tell their stories. How we're going to get them there. How. So we need help. Reach out and touch. Carl is doing work. Webster know you're going, you're doing work. You're going to be doing some work. We need some help here on the ground. Because like I said, change is happening. Reach out and touch. Challenge ourselves. How can we form a community. How can we form a community. I can go as far back as what my first party was. 2005, 2006, something like that.  There's a whole new generation now too. But where's the community. Where the elders. Who can teach us what to do. Who can tell us about the history. Of the community. And the movement and the fight and the struggle. Where is that. Where is that. I don't even have that me constantly have to be researching to find that to meet people like you. To find that. But that is something that is needed on the ground floor for a strong foundation. For a strong foundation. There cannot be change if you don't have a strong army of people. Inside. Working inside. And also on the outside. So it's hard to answer your question directly. In terms of. If you get what I'm saying. A plenty work that if you do. A plenty work for the. Underground. Come on and come on. Come on. We're not turning back anybody. Once you. Understand that we are all human beings. And it's one love. One divine love. With Bob Marley talk both with Marcus. One love. That's all we need. And give it a chance. We just need to work together. Much more. Much more. We can't just continue to criticize. We have to do something. To disrupt that. To mash up that darling house there. And we have the power. But we continue to be separated. And segregated. And you know. We just need to come together. May I sweat. I keep saying it over and over. Offer to help. And that's across the board. That is across the board. Enough times we. We criticize. We offer. These scriptures we did. And I'm not. I'm not going into that because that's not this conversation. But I love the fact that you say help because inside of help. I hear the word empathy. Help feel. Help me feel. Help you feel. Carl. Where's the work in the healing for you. Or what is your. Work in the healing for us in the healing, sir. You know, it evolves, right? Because before the healing for me would be going to the parties. And that came even later because, you know, the joy of space, the camaraderie. It was in your little subsets and groups, even though, you know, there were, there were kind of problematic because they're not necessarily all inclusive, but there's a lot of fear and doubt that is within that. So you're not necessarily truly healing. But what you're getting is, you're getting a little recreation break when you go to these parties, you're getting a little looseness, you know, you can set free and do your thing.  I forgot back in the staff room. I have to go back to, and they deal with all of that. That's in your here. You know, last time I said, I keep saying this to people. I have never felt a stone or my, my skin has never been cracked because of homophobia, because of anything anti-gay to my body. But in terms of the silence, I have felt what that's like to hush up in the barbershop, to hear people saying the most ridiculous, the most heinous things and shutting up. I was that one at the dance hall, a bonfire for people like me. I was, so I had to heal from that, right? And I'm there with my friends who I love dearly, so many of them, and realizing they're saying some of the most problematic things ever.   So I was, for me, the healing came through art.  I'm going to, you're going to know how I feel about things, by what I produce for the stage, by the art that I create. And where I am now, who I'm looking on, and I'm asking myself this, like where am I in my healing process? And where are the, for the people who are on the ground constantly trying to get legislation passed, because we need that too. That's what we need as well. We need the safety of policy, of that, because, you know, the activists will do what the activists do. The party planners will do what the party planners do. The friends will do what the friends do. But we need to keep pressuring the parliamentarians to do what they need to do. And we need to, so it takes everybody, right? All of these support systems. And I think the healing needs to come when we start to look at each other, one in front of each other, face to face, right? Because we keep thinking it as, you know, they might take over Jamaica. So that notion is this big. But if you come and talk to me, come and look in my face and have a conversation with me.  And have him twirl in a pink frock. And if that's what he wants to do, he's going to do it anyway. I'm going to find a way to do it, because that's where the healing is. We keep forgetting that if we keep stopping people and keep setting up barriers, people are going to find a way to get their own healing and their release. And some of the ways are going to be very toxic, because, you know, people say, go where the love is. When you're not sure about who you are and you're getting all of this angst and awful things coming at you from the society, from the laws, then you're going to find them in places that you think are safe. And then you have to do a double work again to liberate yourself from that, right? So very much in line with what Simone is saying, these spaces need to exist. Research, people who claim to be either ally or whatever. Do the research that is needed. If you mess up, get up. Same thing you would say to somebody who's straight, right? If them drop, just get up.  You misgender me. Say the right thing. Say sorry and move on. Don't throw away. Well, I tried. I tried with these people and I just can't. I try, you know, it's just not, yeah. I donated once and, you know, really. No, it's a constant thing, right? It's a constant thing. It's a constant thing. It's a constant thing. It's a constant thing. And anybody that knows anything about anything that you want, you have to keep working at it. And understand that people evolve. People evolve. I am, I used to be with the cancel culture. I can't cancel nobody again. When I look at my problematic past. And how I came up. You know, it, that's also part of the healing, but it takes, it takes a while to get there. I could have come up. There was a time I wanted to come off the stage because I'm acting. You know, somebody, somebody. The audience is just like, you know, watching my guy like he's straight, watching about the Monday, watching him like I'm really working.  I'm not performing again. And then I'm just like, no, actually what you're going to do audience is look at me being placed in this straight body as a character and you're going to deal with me. Cause you're going to continue to read about me. Right. And people like, you know, aren't you afraid of, um, of death? That's, you know, the loss of love. We all will leave. And I keep saying it. They killed one of a more away bond.  More am I going, right. It's just so it goes. So I'm no longer afraid of death. And when I go to Jamaica, I do, I don't go in this way. Like, you know, let me, let me, let me hide out. I didn't, if I didn't from people it's, it's one of the, because I can't see everybody that I want to see in the same breath. You only had some of the people who owed money, right? Listen to me. I only had some of the ones that owed money. I feel a lot of them, but still. It's a privilege to be able to walk and because some people can do it. Some people honestly can't do it. They have to hide. They have to run away. They have to move because the very land that birthed them was so toxic to their progression that they had to go somewhere else. So we have to figure out what is the root of that and kind of attack that in as many spaces as we possibly can so that the healing can just keep, can basically. We're going to start to wrap up for the afternoon, but I just want to say on healing, sometimes twirling in that pink dress is the healing. Yeah, for real.  Let us think about legacy for all the work that we are putting in for the change. If we do it together, we're stronger. I want to thank you. Thank you for that. We do need monuments. We need different structures to look upon, to reflect ourselves, our triumphs. It needs to start to be triumphs when we come together. You know, we have a question and I'm going to take this as our final question before I give my final question to close out the conversation, but I can't leave out our number one audience member, Ms. Chris Alid. She is in the audience every single week, been with us all eight weeks. Chris asks, for any of the panelists, do you feel an obligation to tell more queer specific stories or to tell shared human experiences to demonstrate that we are all, that we all are no different from each other when the labels are removed?  Are you essentially writing non-queer works? Are you creating a non-queer spaces just to show where the intersectionality is? Is that even a question to be answered for you all? But I do want to pose it. Yes, sir. Webster. I'll take it because I, well, I created who am I from a specific position, specifically effeminate presenting queer men. And I think that was necessary for me to use that specificity to deconstruct some of the inner workings happening within the culture. And I think it's necessary for you to be able to identify, to define what it means to be effeminate in mainstream spaces and to also create a distinction from masculine presenting men whose experiences are different. And so I think it's important for me to kind of bracket that kind of experience and then use that as a compass to find intersectional narratives. And so it's specific, it's specific to queer men who are effeminate because that is a specific experience. And I think it also important to have this self-reflexive approach to understanding that position. And because I'm also interested in performative auto ethnography. I think it's important to locate the individual stories in order to create change. Simone or Carl, any response to that before we do our closing statement here? Really quickly. Yes and yes. Everything he said. Everything. Work intersectional for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just going to take another approach. So from a business perspective, I use the 80-20 rule. 80% of my time is spent on working on developing, working on projects geared towards the queer community and the other 20%. Yeah. That's for my other pool of clients. But I recognize that more investment is required for this particular audience, this particular community. And so I use the 80-20 rule. Thank you. We're going to do, we're going to close out with a dream scape. It's landscaping the future through vision, through dreams. But we are also coming to the end of our time. So I'm going to do a little bit of scarcity directing here. In 10 words or less, or maybe take 12 if you want, if you need a few more. Give us your dream scape for the future. What happens when the world, which I think is extremely open and more open than it has ever been, opens more after COVID-19, the vaccine, whatever comes next, after we pass through this gateway of 2020 into further and deeper into this 21st century. Where do you want us to go? I'm going to start with Carl. Because I think as a playwright and a director, you can play along with me. 10 words or less. What do you need a dream scape? Or take a couple more if you need it. It's very simple for me. I always start with a love. I start love, humanity. That's my dream scape, that we continue to see ourselves as Dominican and Caribbean people, as people identify as LGBTQ, that we continue to look at the humanness of each other and love and protect. So we need the laws, we need the laws to protect us. So that's my hope, that the struggle just keeps going. Because after we pass, it'll still keep going. But that every time it just gets better layer upon layer. And we have the constitution behind us. South Africa alone can be the one. We need to show that we can do that too. Webster, what is your dream scape? As we go deeper into this 21st century. So in a sentence, a world where love, empathy, inclusivity, diversity, equity can reign supreme. Simone, what is your dream scape? I feel like Carl Webster and I are all looking at the same dream scape board. Yes, because I agree, and I love what both of them shared. Especially on the love class, I'm always saying one love. I feel like, you know, that's my life philosophy. I think, you know, one thing for sure, what we did for an island like Jamaica, was fast forward immediately for the industrial revolution, connectivity, connection, you know, everybody's online. I'm hoping that we'll see more collaborations, more opportunities like this, more platforms like this. For us to discover all the amazing work that's happening. I think this is the most welcoming thing for me this year. Connecting more, meeting more people and recognizing that you're not alone. Not so much alone, no. And it not only, not just in some kind of toxic social media kind of way, you know, environments that are empowering. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more people stepping up. Thank you, Akiba. Thank you for this opportunity personally. And yeah, just more love and one love. You know, that first love is the love of one self. One love for one self. You learn how to love yourself. You learn how to love the world. You learn how to love yourself. You learn how to love the world. You learn how to love like Jesus said, like Bob Marley said, like Dr. King said. It's a deep one love within one self. That's my dream scape too.  Anytime I get to speak a little maroon, I'm going to do it. Brian Williams, I want to tell you all, thank you. Thank you on behalf of the team here at Akiba Baka Arts and Hallround and the Siegel Center for standing and making the space for us. Bless up on yourself. Bless up on yourself. And in the words of Miss Lou clap on yourself. Thank you. Big up on yourself. Big up tall. And slide. Be brave, be low, be ratchet. I love it. Thank you all. Next week. We will be continuing on to week nine of 10 weeks in Jamaica. And we are speaking with the next generation of leaders. Leaders of a new stage. We will be speaking with Evernay Walters, who have already dubbed the great Evernay Walters of Archibute Jamaica. We will be speaking to Andrew Barracks of Barracks Entertainment. And we will be speaking to the world win playwright and creative Rayon McLean of Quilt. And let me tell you, remember that name. He's one of the people that Garby talked about when he was a kid. And he's one of the people that I've seen me in the world with. That's that Rayon McLean. He's incredible. All of these creatives are incredible. So we will be speaking with them. They are the leaders of the new Jamaican stage next week. Listen, you've heard me say it every week. And if you are a new member of our conversation, I'm going to share this with you. Jamaican people, we have a saying, we say walk good. We theater makers, especially actors, we say walk good. Walk good means see you at the next gig. Walk good means walk good in life. So listen, walk good on the boards. You hear?