Right now we have with us the director of one of our 10-minute plays, Dewey Scott Wiley, and one of our actors and company members, Dan Boyle. We're going to do something interesting with this segment. We were originally just going to show a preview, a read through of the play that we're working on, but the cast and director and playwright suggested that it might be cool to actually see their process at work. So we recorded their rehearsal, and we're going to show you a segment now with some of the reading and some of the discussion between the actors, director, dramaturg, about the play. So that will run about 23 minutes, and then following it, we'll have some questions and answer and discussion with Dewey, Dan, and Teddy Lytle, who is also a member of that show. All right, so we're going to share the video with you now. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Because I feel like somehow in the second iteration that there's a lot less times where I'm like, what, what does that mean, you know, I feel like it's it's much more kind of even handed. Like I don't feel like I'm missing something if I'm not a gaming insider. Yeah, I feel like I'm included in the story already. Yeah. But that's a great thing to kind of keep an eye on Mario. Yeah. And you want to make sure that that's because the script has the right balance and not because we've all become a little bit more familiarized with the story. Right. That's a good point. Yeah. It's a really good point. All right. So Teddy, are you still with us, my friend? All right, cool. I would love to just read it one time through. And now that we're a little more familiar with it, one thing we talked about the other day is maybe just like trying to keep the pace moving. Right. And and sort of yeah, just trying to find the music of the play as opposed to don't worry about what what you're giving me physically right now. Let's just try to keep the vocal energy of the play intact. You know, help me make the music of the play. Thank you. I just finished a musical theater history class. So that was very helpful. All right, we're ready. Jim, you want to kick us off? Stayed direction wise. I mean, it's up to him. I'm sorry. I'm like managing all the windows. OK, OK, lights up to a normal living room for college students in the Midwest. Pizza boxes are lying around empty and stained, closed, open, Tupperware and computers are scattered through the space. Four bedrooms connect to the living room, including the master bedroom. All the doors are closed except this one lights and sounds of death and destruction seat from the room. It builds and builds infecting through the living room till the front door opens and Sam Gray and Sean enter carrying backpacks and pizza. For the reason alone of just creating a game engine from scratch. Why would I dump money into a game that isn't even built yet? Michael, sound because it will be owned by the people that put money into it instead of a company. Isn't it a company that's building it? Yeah, for those who have paid. Michael, sound. The death and destruction dies out and the door slams shut. So how much do you think most Sam? Oh, we need twenty three seventy from you, Gray, for the piece of the toilet paper, and we need fifteen dollars and ninety eight cents from you, Sean, for the pizza. And I need seven hundred twenty three dollars. Well, we need seven hundred twenty three dollars seventy cents for pizza. Toilet paper rent from Michael. He hasn't paid. It's the ninth. Um, looking. Um, no, not yet. I don't see a confirmation yet. I don't either. Dude, I don't care if his dad was the guarantor or not. He can't be late again. He has it. He just forgets. No, he just plays. We should talk to him. Michael. What? We need to talk. Yeah, I'm busy. Let's do it. We should just do it. There's no other way he's going to listen. We're late if he doesn't pay by tomorrow. I don't know. That's a lot. But it was just snowballing ideas. It's crazy, right? I'm in if we have to fight fire with fire. It feels like we're playing with fire. No pressure, but this doesn't work without you, Sam. We were all doing so good. Why tempt it with this? It may be the only way to get through it to our friend. I don't think he will listen any other way. Dawn goes to the power breaker in the kitchen. Are you in? Yeah. He pulls it. We are plunged into darkness, in the darkness. Are you kidding me? Michael stumbles in, banging around into the dark living room. A rage sets in that may change the very nature of his voice. Do you know how far we were into that raid? You couldn't wait 30 minutes? You think stationery opportunities grow on trees? You think 12, dear 12 items jumping at normal top rates. Lights come up. Sam has a cardboard sword and shield. Gray has little cardboard daggers. Sean has a cardboard staff. They have raid gear on like loud random articles of clothing. What are you doing? You don't want to listen to us.  We're tired of it. We want our friend back. And if this is the only way we can get through to you, so be it. Dressing up in winter clothes, cardboard. Enchanted armor by me, Toran Resto Shaman. Reinforced by my leather working and tailoring. And weapons smithing by these. Orc hands. I'm sorry. This is really weird, guys. This just feels weird. Head in the game, Sean. Just like old Jake from Rest Off. Sam, what is this? Most important raid boss we've ever fought. Sam Roars. That's my favorite cardboard sword. You don't want to return our texts.  You're dismissive. I have to get back to my game. Gray. Quick, satin before we get to his room. Okay, when has SAP ever worked on a raid? Like ever. So pathetic we didn't even say that. You know the mechanics. Hey, Rush is in and does a series of quick, short, first attacks. Stop, that wouldn't even work. Oh, I'm pulling too much aggro. Taunt, taunt now. Sam, tank if you're gonna tank. You're doing great, though. Taunt toss is a glitter. Sam's away. Hey, dummy, I need you to pay rent on time.  You wait to the last moment and it looks bad on all of us. The rent is already high. Most of us can't afford another huge hike when we resign. Sam hurls his sword axe thingy that's attached to a string. He yanks the sword axe thingy back to him. Touch me again. And it's on like Donkey Kong. Sam looks to his hero friends. They all nod. He powers up, winds up. Sam throws the axe. It's extremely anti-climatic. Michael transforms in a way. He jumps up. When he lands, there's a change to the rules of this world. The three heroes fall flat to the ground of the apartment. They all make their way to their feet. Borrow before the unending flame. Uh, Michael? Dominate mind. Michael unleashes a series of sticky attacks that'll go sticky day. All heroes are affected. What did I get hit with? You all left me. This was a gamer's house. It's a damage over time. Guilt. It's a hard hitter, but as long as you stay close, I can heal. It's not our fault you're playing a game. We aren't. It's Michael Hart. He falls to a knee. I thought you would understand. I thought you were my friends. Clear the first stage of the battle. How many do you think there are? Oh, idea. This is our first run. Maybe we're getting through to him. John throws up confetti and one big gesture in the area around them. Michael jumps up with a grand gesture and all the heroes fall to the ground as he lands. Not our fault you're playing. Do you know what it was like? You will stop playing. No more Thursday night raids. You can't just shift games on me like that. You know how hard it is for me to be social. You know how hard it is to run a guild by yourself because your friends don't want to play anymore. Don't want to play. We built a guild from the ground up. Over 100 guildies recruited by us, scouting on us, creating a raid schedule, amending guild rules as new patches come out monthly. It was more than just playing. You all just left. It was too much. I had to let go. Had? It's not a burden. It wasn't me. I'm not this orc warrior.  I'm the furthest from this in every possible way. So yes, I had to let it go. There are more important things to you. Sam, don't get too far. This isn't your first rodeo. We don't know how long this stage is. Sorry, Michael. We didn't mean to leave you. We all had fun guys, right? Yeah, the best. Remember when we were doing a mythic raid on the Lich King and we cleared the final stage and all of us got lifted in the air? Yeah, Sean screamed. I thought it was a new mechanic. We had never gone that far. I thought we had wiped. But it was the cutscene. Yeah, good time. But we have real world responsibilities now. It couldn't last forever. I guess. Maybe. Just not playing all the time. Blanco2580 misses you. Well, so does Josh and Marsha. You are our leader. We want to see Blanco again. Michael, I'm trying. I'm really trying, but I don't think I can do it. I'm not you. I've had to try to be over these past two months, but it's been so hard keeping everyone together. We lost half the guild. I'm trying to recruit to regroup our losses. It's so hard to just be living in the shadow of how great you were. Everyone wants Blanco2580 back. Nobody wants me. How do you think that makes me feel? I can't. If you came back together, you could pull everyone back. You could do mythics again without having to do LF on the general chat. Just pop in every once in a while. I'll do everything, but just be there for us. I can't. It's too much. It's just this idea everyone had of me. It's just not true. And for the first time, in a long time, I feel like I have time on my own. My own time. I just don't think I'll have a hobby anymore. For me, I don't need it. You don't need it or us to take those for heels or pushing it. Wait. Ian goes to his friend Michael. There is a break from this world as he tries to comfort his friend. I'm sorry. We did have a lot of fun, right? Yeah, best. But the hardest step is when it starts a new journey. Yeah? You just have to blindly trust. If anything, that will all be fine. That will all work out, OK? OK. Yeah? OK. Thank you, Sam. You always knew the right words to say. Michael takes Sam's sword and waxes it. Sam falls back. Disarmed? Why, Michael? I will blindly trust Sam. I will take this step to become the greatest skill on the server.  When I'm done with you, they won't as much whisper your name in chat.  Bow before the unending flame. Michael jumps up, and as he comes down, they all fall. Lights and sound of death and destruction seep from the room again, like the beginning. He's hitting so hard. Sam, do something. It's too much, keeping you both alive. Sam, help. Here are the founders. Sean, founders.  Any last words? I will save you. This isn't the end of this, Michael. There is no more, Michael. Witness, Sam. You were such a good leader. Witness my first step. Michael steps towards Sam. Wax him. Sam flounders. Lights and sounds of death and destruction seep from the room. It builds and builds, infecting through the living room, so Michael closes the door after walking back in. Lights go back to normal. The heroes stir. It's been a while since I've liked his heels. It wasn't your fault. You're rusty. We're rusty. We're not geared. We're out of practice, outmatched. Gray's phone bloops. No, account notification. He paid rent. See, it all worked out. Yeah, I guess it did. Sam, you're awfully quiet. This means war. Lights down. Wow. That was a fun close-up. The end of the last night, personally. This means war. So I've just got some general reactions, and I took a couple of specific things. And I figure Oscar and Mario probably want to sound off on some of the things we were listening for, too. I felt like we were much more comfortable with it. Yes. Right? So we made it a little bit more our own. But in some places, we seem to be a little too comfortable. Some of the things that were happening seemed a little casual in places. Does that make sense? The stakes weren't as high as they needed to be in a couple of places like we had tried to shoot for the other day. Nothing surprised us as much as it did the other day. I felt like we made more discoveries the last time we read through this. And we saw it coming. And we kind of saw it coming a little bit more today. Which, on one hand, we were a little bit more familiar with the lines and the characters, so that was a good thing. But we still need to reinvest in the surprises and the discoveries that happened along the way. Well, today, it isn't a normal day in the lives of these. Right. So it even starts not so normal. But we get a little glimpse of the normalcy of sort of the relationship of these people. And then when he hasn't paid rent yet, boom, we got to do something drastic. And I think it felt a little too much like, well, it's Tuesday. Well, it's Tuesday. Like, let's watch Inside Edition or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, it didn't. But for me, it was Tuesday. I think we could help that by being a little bit more conspiratorial on page two, right? Like, after we find out he didn't pay rent. OK, it's time. We're going to do the thing that we've been sort of toying with, right? But that's such a big plot point. Because at first, we're trying to get his attention. We've got to talk to him. But then at some point where there's a shift at the bottom of the page there. OK, instead of just talking to him, let's do the thing we've been musing about and making cardboard weapons for, right? Like, let's do it. All of a sudden, I think the stakes get bumped away up there. And if all of that page, I think can be a little bit more him not paying rent, it kind of throws down the gauntlet of the frustration. And then we get conspiratorial. And then all of a sudden, let's go for it. You know what I mean? And it all kind of felt like the same thing that was going on on that page, as opposed to maybe three big steps in the ladder of higher stakes and ganging up on Michael. Does that make sense? Page three on the bottom of the page. And I think Michael could be more surprised by it.  These guys have spent, I would imagine, several hours making these costumes and cardboard weapons. You know, like, oh, what are we doing? You know, what the hell's going on here? And they did it without even knowing about it. Right, like, so the game or whatever, you know? Right, so it's the what are you doing? I think could have a little bit more surprise behind it. Michael, that he's just. I'll see what I can do. I just I'm also trying to like. Like I am trying to keep it lower than the previous outburst because I'm just like, I'm just non-plus by this. I'm like, what? So I'm trying to wrap my. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can be non-plus. I don't think it needs to be a big outburst. Oh, but what you just did was really great. Like that, like, what the hell is going on here? You know, it needs to have that feeling of I'm trying to figure out what is happening. What are these morons doing? You know? Yeah. Page four. Oh, and, you know, Oscar, I love to hear what you think about this, too. But after Michael asks, what is this? Most important raid boss we've ever fought. And then Sam Roars. And I feel like maybe the decision to really go all in on the game playing for Sam happens before the the line, right? And the roar is just part of that, you know, or the exclamation point at the end of that. OK, that makes sense. Because I feel like I feel like right now you're making the decision to go all in on the roar line. Yeah, right. But I think it happens prior to that. Yeah. Well, so that was a little segment of our rehearsal and the play that we're working on. Obviously, I'm not Clay. I'm Teddy Lytle. I'm one of the actors in that performance. But we do have Dewey here. And so I just wanted to pass it off to Dewey. It might be interesting seeing a rehearsal played back to you. Yeah. Yeah, it makes me realize how badly I need a haircut in these times. Ooh. Yeah, I think there was it wasn't there a question that I saw come across about one of the hardest things about moving a rehearsal online. I think for me, I've been amazed like how well it's gone considering the circumstances that we're all in different rooms and in different states often. And so that's that's been really interesting. So there's a freedom that we can be in different places literally and have rehearsal, which is great. I think the trickiest part about it is, you know, that after chemistry that you get only when you're in the room together and the getting to know each other as an artist, you know, I've never met any of you before. So, you know, there there there seems to be sort of like a layer we have to get through, right? And I feel like we, you know, after three rehearsals and some conversations, we've started to get through that layer a little bit, but it's still not the same as it would be in person. Not as much as we would if we were in person. Yes. Right. I think that would happen a lot quicker to get to know you phase that like figuring out how people communicate phase would happen a lot quicker in person than it does in this. Yeah. And this was, I think, from our third day of rehearsal. And I do think one of the reasons we didn't use some of the earlier stuff is that we found it was just a lot of us chatting and getting to know each other because it seems like without that immediate contact, we needed some kind of other means of doing that. Right. A question I have for you, do is this your first time working with people on the spectrum? Or have you worked with people on the spectrum before? I have some students. I teach at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, where Clay went to school and I have some students that are on the spectrum. So it's not the first time I've worked with actors on the spectrum. But but maybe this is the most people on the spectrum in one cast, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Can I make a point, Teddy? One thing I was thinking through that whole video and I'm not sure exactly who was recording it. But I know when I have the the Zoom app up here, I always have it in gallery mode. And that was obviously in the other mode. I just felt it would have been a little more people watching this would have been a little more we've seen more if it had been in gallery mode, you know? Because then you can see everyone has. Right. You know, start to see who's talking. Yeah, I was surprised that it wasn't in gallery mode because when I was when I was watching the rehearsal, I think the first rehearsal I might have done it on my phone. But then I purposely moved to my computer so that I could, you know, see you all at the same time in gallery mode. In rehearsal. I think that's a great point. This goes back to those challenges, is that like we were planning on rehearsals and we I think we thought we were recording it in gallery mode. But we were. But we but yeah, we that is definitely a lesson we learned that gallery mode works much better being able to see everyone communicate nonverbally as they're like doing these little acting in this acting to a box. Right. I will say for me rehearsal and performance, the biggest challenges of moving it online is also, you know, I think where my skill set and the thrill of acting comes for me is that immediate interaction and being able to feed off the audience and use that. But it was nice to when we were rehearsing to still be able to like interact with faces like the Brady. And so I know that's that's been an interesting thing. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, even if people couldn't see us do this, they could kind of if Jim or I were would say something with our screen off. But those of us who weren't speaking turned our screens off, you know, turned our cameras off so that we were only seeing the actors in the rehearsal when we were reading through the script. And I thought that was really useful because we didn't see the playwright go, you know, like in the middle of somebody reading a line. Right. So, you know, I think that's been a really interesting component of this developing a new play. We've got the playwright in the room. We've got the dramaturg there, the director there, the stage manager there. And so I think it could be easy as an actor to get distracted by people's reactions. But that's a nice thing to be able to do that you can't do in person is what we're doing that person, right? Yeah. To piggyback on that, it is kind of a double edged sword because on the one hand, we're able to see everyone's reactions in, you know, when we're all together, but in this medium, you know, certain individuals can shut off the screens. And, you know, on the one hand, it prevents people from seeing some reactions that might have a negative impact. But also, on the other hand, prevents them from seeing good reactions. You know, true, true. Yeah. Dan, can I ask you being someone on the spectrum, how do you feel working on a play like this? I mean, a specific play. Um, yeah, the topic is an interesting one. It has so many facets and it can be interpreted so anyways. I mean, the whole point of the script is that it works with addiction to video games. But I can go, it can be applied to any form of addiction. At the same point, when you look at the specific detail of video game addiction, we're trying to prevent, we're trying to present a certain message that while video game addiction is different from other addictions, we think that there are some benefits and drawbacks to it where most other addictions are, you know, mostly for, you know, drawbacks. But, you know, we're trying not to vilify character of Michael by the same point, pointing out some of its flaws. And same with the rest of the cast, you know? I think that was really well put. I think the only word I would change there is, instead of Michael's flaws, let's say his challenges. Because as he says, the video game itself isn't the problem. It actually is a mode for him to communicate and to socialize. Yep, yep. But it's how do you balance that? And actually someone in our Facebook message mentioned that they felt very seen and they could relate to this. It was hitting home for them. And everyone needs a balance of living in the real world and adulting and fun. And to change that relationship and stuff can be hard. I think I also loved the sense of community from this piece. Absolutely. More so than friends, they're brothers. They fight like brothers. Even when one appears to turn on the other or the other turn on that one, depending on how you interpret it, even when that happens, there's still camaraderie there. It's very palpable. Absolutely. Dewey, I don't know if you had any other thoughts. We're about to close. I think we have about five minutes left. Yeah, no, I think it's a great plan. I think that we were talking with Oscar at the playwright about it. Did he really write these characters as characters on the spectrum? Maybe, maybe not. And I think we're still trying to determine all of that. But I think what was so exciting is that the connection that all the actors found with the piece and that it's obviously something that resonates with people. The sense of community that can be formed in a different way in the gaming world than in the real world and how that has real-world implications. And to me, the whole thing is about friendship and how the dynamics of the friendship have changed and gotten out of whack and how they're trying to get them back. Yeah, I also would say this is the, I think, the second draft. We went through the first draft, it was the first day. And then Oscar went back and made some adjustments. And I do think those adjustments addressed some of our current concerns. Like Dan said, the vilifying Michael, also not vilifying video games, finding that gray area. Also, to piggyback on Dooly's point, I mean, yes, you could make an argument that all four characters are somewhere on the spectrum. But again, it shows that it is indeed a spectrum. And again, it's not meant to show necessarily all, I mean, it's part of it, but it's not the focus of it. You know what I'm saying? Yep. Piece of the pie, it's not the entire ingredient. It's not the... It's the sugar in the pie, not the entire darn pie. Dan, thank you for saving my metaphor. Well, and we don't have any more questions. I do want to say, Dooly, it has been such a pleasure working with you. I'm so excited to continue engaging with you. I agree. Yeah, I look forward to seeing you guys in person in the summer. Oh, absolutely. This is just one of the plays we're developing for the Neurodiversity New Play Festival this summer. And they have a wide variety of immediate topics, but they're all under the theme meeting neurodiversity, meeting autism. And we're so excited about that. I think this has been a delightful conversation. It's so good to see you guys again. And I know I think we have a little time before we continue working on that, but hopefully we'll continue to delve deeper into that. Absolutely. That actually, I'm handing it directly over to Clay, who's going to close out our conference with actually talking about our Neurodiversity New Play Festival. So Dooly, thank you so much. Dan, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Bye, guys. Happy us. Have a great rest of your day. And with that, I'm going to slide out of view and Clay is going to slide into view. Awesome. Hi, everybody. So we're winding down on day one, but we still have one last presentation to go, which actually I'm doing it. And I don't know if I've introduced myself. My name is Clay Martin, and I'm the Artistic Director of Spectrum Theater Ensemble. Before I get into our last topic and presentation, though, I wanted to just make sure that we thanked again some of the people who made this conference and our work possible. First, we would like to take Thea Rogers and HowlRound. Thea has been amazing today working behind the scenes to make sure all of these videos and everything comes off smoothly to y'all. And thank you, HowlRound, so much for co-hosting this conference. Again, we want to also thank Spartina Consulting who helped us develop the conference and the funding from Rhode Island Foundation that made that possible. We'd also like to thank the Rhode Island State Council for the arts, for their support of the Neurodiversity Matters Conference and the Neurodiversity New Play Festival and the Prone Family Foundation, which has been a tremendous supporter of SCE and always. So just wanted to make sure that we thank them now. With that being said, a lot of times during this conference, we've talked about this thing, the Neurodiversity New Play Festival. And I wanted to take a minute to share with you the audience what that is, what the development has gone into it and some of the goals that we have. This festival has been an idea in the head of SCE leadership and company members almost since we formed that we realized that there just aren't that many plays with different representations of neurodiverse individuals. And we're a neurodiverse company. So we realized that the amount of canon there was to authentically represent our members didn't really exist. So instead of worrying about that, we decided to start creating it. So with that, I'm going to share a PowerPoint that explains the festival to you. All right. So the SCE Neurodiversity New Play Festival is happening this summer from June 22nd to August 2nd. And it's in partnership with the Miracle Project New England who you heard about earlier today, as well as Brown University's Department of Theater and Performance Studies. Now, we know that those dates fall in an uncertain time. And we'll talk later about some of the contingencies and adjustments we've made for that. But first, I want you to understand the festival itself, which in its essence is not going to change no matter how it's presented. So what is the Neurodiversity New Play Festival? In 2020, Spectrum Theater Ensemble is launching a partnership with Brown University to create accessible programming for a community of Neurodiverse artists and audiences. So the Neurodiversity New Play Festival has five key components. The first is the 10-minute play festival, which you just saw a portion of a rehearsal for with Dewey, Dan, and Teddy. So what we realized was that access points to interacting and participating in theater, as I remember them growing up, some of the first plays that I did in high school and college were 10-minute plays, which were short enough to memorize as you're learning the art, but also had enough material to really grasp characters and find audition pieces, things like that. So we wanted to make a series of 10-minute plays that were geared around Neurodiverse characters. Our resident playwright Jeremy Camps, who's worked with us since the beginning, is amazing. And he spent over a year reaching out to playwrights that he trusted and really felt like were collaborative, great minds to bring in to that we would commission to write new plays with our company in mind. So we worked with them for the last few months. You just saw a section of our spring workshop and all of these playwrights, along with guest directors, will either come to Providence this summer or be working with us online to finish developing these plays, not only in English, but also translated into Spanish so that they can be accessible to as many people as we can possibly do at this time. So component two is the final workshop of our play, the importance of being a play in earnest, which is by our resident playwright Jeremy Camps. This play has been developed over the last two years. by S.T.E. and Jeremy and was made to be a play that had many different neurodiverse characters that had different personalities, different identities without the place singularly being about the concept of autism. We've been workshopping it with Trinity Rep and last summer with Brown University with their neurodiversity conference and we'll do the final workshop of it this year before our world premiere of it in 2021. The third portion of the festival, component of the festival and the one I might be the most cited about right now is that we realized that we were bringing in these great playwrights to work with neurodivergent actors and thus create neurodiversity and we always plan to one day have writers on the spectrum in the room as well. But we realized when we were developing the festival pretty early on that there's no reason to wait. So we contacted and reached out to find writers on the spectrum and asked them to solicit submissions for our festival and tomorrow at the end, at this time tomorrow, we'll be announcing four plays that have been selected and we'll receive a brief workshop rehearsal and a reading at the end of our festival. We're very excited about that and excited to let everyone know who those playwrights are and their plays. So that's our third component. And the fourth component is with our partner, the Miracle Project New England. The Miracle Project runs a summer camp that does more theater training rather than play development and production and they'll run a camp concurrent with our festival during the first week that we hope will then bridge collaboration and bringing some of their members into work on the new development of plays and other work that we will create during the festival time. MPE is a great organization and I can't say enough about that partnership. All right. And then finally, component five is our nice certification launch. So nice is and I'm going to get this acronym wrong probably is the Neurodiverse Inclusive Certified Entertainment which is something SE has been developing the concept of since we began of finding a way to implement a set of standards and codification for sensory-friendly entertainment so that it can be more understandable and accepted and bring up the awareness of it through the community throughout the country. During the summer we will be working with a few initial pilot programs to help other theaters implement their sensory-friendly training and programming so that they can make their entire seasons accessible to people with neurodiverse needs. This includes people on the spectrum but also people with other neurological sensitivities such as PTSD or trouble with strobing lights, things like that. We're very excited about this launch and there will be more information to come on our website about that soon. So some core goals for the festival. Again, it's to develop original works that expand the theatrical canon including roles for many different kinds of people with ASD. Also to challenge the misconception about ASD and educate artists in the community on how to work with individuals on the spectrum. We also want to create opportunities for neurodiverse collaboration and develop career and social skills both for our acting company and by bringing in other people from other organizations into our process hopefully opening the door to them to explore a potential career or at least a passion in performing theater. We also want to cultivate relationships with prominent playwrights, designers and administrators and directors for future collaboration with STE. Now this is not because we need a bunch of attention but rather that we want to have these people who are leaders in our industry understand both what the benefits of working with neurodiverse artists are and how similar it is to working with any other kind of artists so that we can destroy any kind of barriers or myths through the industry that working with people on the spectrum is especially challenging or different in any way than it's different to work with any kind of actor. We also want to develop a working relationship between STE and MP&E which are both based in Providence, Rhode Island and sort of a very similar mission. So this festival will start to bring that collaboration together between the two organizations. And then lastly we want to further foster a relationship between STE and the Department of Theater Performance Studies at Brown because we find that while professional production is great an educational component of it is always valuable. I'm 36 years old I've been working in theater for 15 years and I cannot foresee a day where I couldn't learn something more about theater or how to do this better and working with the Spectrum Theater Ensemble has proven that more than anything else in my life. So we believe that partnering with education institutions is a amazing potential for spreading neurodiverse inclusion through the arts. So the big question that you're probably all going to ask is how are we adjusting to the coronavirus outbreak? This is an interesting topic that we were lucky to be thinking about early on in our development process and have a model that we think may work regardless of what the conditions are. So first our stage managers as you saw Jim Armstrong have been contracted early to start to think of procedures and prepare signage and other things to keep visitors and artists safe in whatever kind of venue that we're going to be in or whatever the model of our rehearsals will be. So our rehearsals and meetings will be broken to separate rooms and limit to groups under the health guidelines. The great thing about Ten Minute Plays is that they usually don't have more than four to six characters. So even with a playwright and a director in the room you can still say under 10 people at any given time. And then if we have other artists such as designers or respondents collaborating we're going to have some of those people would be in separate rooms observing the rehearsals via video but in the same way you're able to interact with us be able to live connect to the process happening in the room. That's if we're able to work in a space. If we're working online you can see through this conference how we've been developing tools for that. Now alternative ways to connect with the public. We have many different options that we're considering for this. Of course streamed and recorded readings like we're doing right now for our conference and talk backs throughout the festival which we're already starting to engage amazing artists and individuals on the spectrum to bring more topics to the public through the festival. Site visits by small groups the great thing about Ten Minute Plays as a model is that because they're so short we can repeat them five to eight times in an hour and that's still only the length of a regular play so we could move groups of five to ten people to see a play at once so that they're not close to each other and don't violate any guidelines while still being able to have fifty to a hundred people see any given performance. Multiple venues short play small audiences like I just described and added attention to getting the word out and press coverage for the festival which is the way that you can help us by spreading the word about the festival so that regardless of what medium we have it in we know that our audience and the people both in the autism population and in the theater industry know about this work. So for more information about this and anything regarding the festival you can email us at infoatstensemble.org you can also and we would kindly ask that you like us at facebook.com slash sdensemble and check out our website www.stensemble.org and lastly please if you can support the Nerdiversity new play festival. One thing I'm very proud of is that through our history approximately 90% of our funding goes directly to artists and paying artists for their work which I know in this time is something that is very important. So know that your money will be used well and that it will go to help people both on the spectrum and professional artists continue to create this amazing amazing work that we've been doing. And with that I think we're at the end of our session today. Please tune in tomorrow again at 1pm to 6pm we'll have a whole another array of panels and workshops and a clip of the reading from The Importance of Being by Jeremy Camps. We hope you can join us you can check out our schedule on our Facebook site and our website. So please join us there and again share with any of your friends. Have a great night.


My name is Jerry Condon and I'm a proud member of Veterans for Peace. My comments today are directed to the youth, to young people in middle school who are already seeing military recruiters in the hallways and the cafeteria, to young people in high school who are told they must register for the military draft, to young women and men who have already enlisted in the military and are being trained to fight in multiple wars. So I'm addressing my remarks to these young people, but I ask that their parents and grandparents listen closely as well. The reality of resisting war is familiar to me. When I was 19, I enlisted in the Army right during the middle of the Vietnam War. I was feeling the draft breathing down my neck, so I jumped into the military before I was pushed, even though I had doubts about the war, even though I did not want to kill another human being, even though I did not trust the pro-war politicians.  When we did not perform up to our drill sergeant's expectations, we were called girls and cunts. Jesus Christ, I thought, this is wrong.  Nonetheless, I kept on going with my military training. I was not yet ready to resist. I was recruited into the Army Special Forces and trained as a Green Beret medic, which ironically kept me from being shipped off much sooner to Vietnam. The Special Forces medic training took an entire year, so it gave me plenty of time to think. It also gave me opportunities to speak with returning Vietnam veterans who told me horrifying stories about their experiences in the war. They told me they had tortured Vietnamese prisoners of war, that they had mutilated the bodies of dead Vietnamese soldiers, that they had seen other US soldiers rape Vietnamese women and kill innocent Vietnamese civilians. That was enough for me. I knew then that I could not be part of that war. I went to the newspapers and announced that I would refuse all Army orders. The Army responded by kicking me out of Special Forces and ordering me to Vietnam. I refused. I refused those illegal orders to participate in an illegal war. So I was court-martialed, convicted of two counts of disobeying orders and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. Luckily for me, though, I managed to escape from Fort Bragg, North Carolina during my court-martial. I fled to Canada, to Europe and to Sweden, where I joined hundreds of other US deserters and draughty sisters who had been granted asylum. I joined the American Deserters Committee in Stockholm and worked on their newsletter, The Paper Grenade. My political education was just beginning. I met Palestinians and Chileans and South Africans who had fled persecution in their countries and found sanctuary in Sweden. I met Portuguese deserters who had refused to fight colonial wars in Africa. I met with Vietnamese representatives of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam. The American Deserters Committee worked closely with the large Swedish anti-war movement. We attended international peace conferences in Sweden and France, and we met with leaders of the peace movement in the United States. I learned that my country was not about mom and apple pie after all. It was not the defender of freedom and democracy around the world, as I had been taught by my parents, by my teachers, by my church, by the media, and by Hollywood. It was all one big lie. How could they send 58,000 US troops to their deaths for a lie?  This shocked and outraged me as it did many thousands of young people of my generation. When I returned to the US six years later, campaigning for amnesty for war resistors, the mood of the country had changed. Most people thought that the US war against Vietnam had been a big mistake, if not worse. There was widespread support for amnesty for Vietnam war resistors. I didn't spend a single day in jail, but US wars continued one after another. We invaded Panama. We invaded Grenada. We invaded Nicaragua with CIA trained terrorists. We armed both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We bombed and destroyed Libya. We armed religious fanatics attempting to overthrow the Syrian government. We fought in Somalia and deployed troops throughout the African continent. We refused to make peace with North Korea and threatened them even with total destruction. Many of these wars continue today. Now, we are threatening war with China. We are building new nuclear weapons instead of working to rid the world of nuclear weapons. We have brazenly intervened in the elections of dozens of countries, and we have imposed sanctions or economic war on 39 countries, about one third of the world's population. This is the term we very loosely. Normally I try to avoid saying we when I'm referring to actions of the US government, the military industrial complex. The US government has been completely captured by the billionaire class, by the corporations that profit from war, and profit from the exploitation of natural resources, labor, and markets around the world.  No war carried out by the United States government military can be justified in any way. These are not defensive wars. These wars are not only unjust, unnecessary, illegal, and immoral. They now threaten the very existence of human civilization.  That is why young people must resist for their very future, not just their long term future, but their immediate future. Middle school students and high school students can organize to kick the smooth talking military recruiters out of their high schools. 18 year old men and soon possibly 18 year old women can refuse to register for the draft. Young people who have already enlisted in the military can refuse to obey illegal orders, as I did. Young people who attend colleges and universities have great opportunities for organizing against US intervention for climate justice or racial justice for gender equality and for economic justice. And also of course to abolish nuclear weapons and war. Your future is very much in your hands. Sometimes you may have to make sacrifices in order to resist war and injustice. You may suffer negative consequences, such as rejection by family members and friends, such as denial of jobs and educational opportunities, or even jail time. But such consequences pale when compared to the to the traumatic scars carried by veterans of war, those who survived the PTSD, the moral injury, the suicides. Whereas great joy and fulfillment can be found in communities of resistance. Without the friends and allies that will help you build the youth led movements that are so needed today. You do not have to be alone in your resistance. There are many who will support you, including veterans for peace resistance to war takes many forms from educating ourselves about the realities of US foreign policy.  Thank you.


Information technology can be a beacon of hope, allowing billions of people around the world to connect. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these connections, with loved ones, with schools and colleges, with workplaces, with healthcare professionals and the essential supplies, are more important than ever. The International Telecommunications Union continues to work with the information and communication technology community and UN agencies to help manage and end this crisis and recover better. New technologies, from 5G and big data to cloud computing and artificial intelligence, are powerful tools to tackle the world's most pressing challenges, including the pandemic. Leaving no one behind means leaving no one offline. World Telecommunication and Information Society Day reminds us that international cooperation on digital technology is essential to help defeat COVID-19 and achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Thank you.


The clone libraries were prepared using bacterial artificial chromosomes or BACs. Each BAC clone contained 100,000 to 200,000 bases of DNA sequence. The large BAC clones were used to establish the order of the DNA sequences. To sequence the DNA, smaller sized clones were needed. Project scientists cut the large BAC clones into smaller fragments of about 2,000 bases. These smaller fragments were typically stored in viruses called phage that can infect E. coli cells.