OK, I'm still seeing the Pacific Playwrights Festival logo. Can we make that go away now? We have a couple minutes still. Oh, OK. Oh, I see. Going live does not mean we are starting. No. OK, Boomer. OK, looks like we're ready to get started. Hi, everybody. I'm John Gloria M.S.C.R. as the associate artistic director and the co-director of the Pacific Playwrights Festival. And if things had gone according to plan, about an hour from now, we would be having the kickoff event for the festival. Needless to say, that's not happening. But we didn't want the festival to go by without acknowledging its importance to the organization and its absence this year due to the circumstances beyond our control. So on behalf of artistic director David Ivers and managing director Paula Tomay and the founders David M.S. and Martin Benson, and everyone at S.C.R. I want to welcome you and thank you for joining us for this 2020 PPF Playwrights Panel, which is all that's left of the 2020 Pacific Playwrights Festival. Couple of things are really different about this year's festival and panel. First, I'm in my bare feet. That's a PPF first. You've got to get your silver linings where you can. And secondly, I'm not going to ask you to mute your phones if you're using them to be part of this. But if you're not, you probably should put them on silent so that we don't have phones ringing all the way through. Although most of you are all muted anyway, but it would be a good idea to not have that distraction. Because we are not doing readings this year, we are also not doing curtain speeches, which means this is my one and only opportunity to thank some people. So I hope you will all bear with me while I make those important thank yous. Beginning with the honorary producers of the festival, these are five couples, all of whom are near and dear to the SCR family, mostly board members and spouses. And they have very generously given not only financial contributions, but their full-throated support of the festival in most cases for many years. So they are Sally Anderson and Tom Rogers, Sophie and Larry Kreik, Kristen and Adrian Griggs, Samuel and Tammy Tang, and Linda and Todd White. And we want to give them a big virtual round of applause for this award they've given us. I should mention that they have all told us, even though we're not really doing the festival this year, that we should keep their contributions and use them to stay afloat, which is great. We would be hard-pressed to do so otherwise. There are also some important organizations that fund the festival, beginning with the National Endowment to the Arts, which has supported the festival specifically for, I think, 11 or 12 years now. The Schubert Foundation and Vicky Reese, which gives us our single biggest general operating grant every year. And we choose to spend it on our new play programs, chief among them, the Pacific Playwrights Festival. And then the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Jim and Laurie Steinberg are two of the biggest fans of this festival that come every year. They were planning to be part of this panel today. I don't know if they've been able to join us or not. But in any case, I want to thank them on behalf of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. And then the Elizabeth George Foundation, which every year funds commissions for playwrights at the beginnings of their careers. The grant also includes money to bring them to the festivals not this year, but one of those three writers this year is Cheyenne Lotfi, whose play, Parque Lalei, was going to be part of the festival. He is here as part of our panel today. So we welcome Cheyenne and then also Charlie Evans Simpson and Spencer Davis were the other two don't know if they're with us, but we are with them in spirit. So at this point, I want to begin with the reason we're here, which is to talk to our seven writers about the work that we had hoped to include in the festival and how it is in conversation with the world we're currently living in. Obviously not with the world we are living in right at this moment because all the plays were written before the pandemic took hold. But maybe they are in conversation with that moment too. So we'll find out as we talk. And I thought I'd start by asking each of them to introduce themselves, tell us the name of the play that was to be in the festival and also where they are in the world because they're kind of scattered around the world right now. And I'll start with the two writers whose plays were to have full productions in the festival. They were both in rehearsal when we had to make the heartbreaking decision to cancel the festival and cancel the rest of the season. So Kate, you want to start us off? Sure. Hi, I'm Kate Hamill. My play, The Scarlet Letter was supposed to have its, it was supposed to open on April 3rd. It's its world premiere at South Coast Drep and obviously the world had slightly different plans for it. I am currently in Minneapolis because I was actually supposed to have two world premieres going up in April. The other one was going to be Emma at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. And when everything sort of folded, my husband and I live in Queens and he was already here. So we decided to stay out here for a while. We are thinking about going back to New York but we're still here. The Guthrie has very graciously allowed us to stay in housing. And sorry, was part of the question about, are we answering if they're in conversation with what's happening now? No, but actually why don't each of you say, give us your elevator pitch about your play, what the gist of the play is. Yours is The Scarlet Letter, it's an adaptation but if you wanna talk a little bit about your take on The Scarlet Letter. Yeah, this is like a radical feminist adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. And it's about how fear, it's partially about how fear of the other misogyny is rooted in the psyche of American culture but it is also about finding redemption and forgiveness and healing after something terrible has happened to you and after something terrible has happened in society. So yeah, that's the play. So Kate's show was to be in the Segersund stage and then in our other main theater, The Argerous, we will to have Caroline McGraw's play, I'll Get Restless. Caroline, tell us about that, say hello. Hi, I'm in Orange County, I'm also in company housing. I am in the South Coast Rep company housing. When the play was canceled, we were in rehearsal for a week before the cancellation became necessary and my husband is an actor and was in my play. So we were here together and we also live in Brooklyn. So I'm nodding like I can see Kate there. Like she could see me sort of like nod to her but also in New York. So South Coast Rep has been very kind and let us ride out some of the worst of that here. And so yes, my play, I Get Restless directed by Tony Takoni was supposed to open on April 18th. So had a little, had a sad day the other day about that.  And in a more kind of background minor way, the current political moment. So while the play is definitely not written and did not imagine this was gonna happen, there is something in the play about how quickly life can change for both the country and individuals that I am thinking about it. So, this is my play. Thanks Caroline, welcome. Thank you. And now we'll move on to the writers whose plays were to have staged readings and I'll just do this in alphabetical order and hope I don't screw that up. Christy Bauer was contributing a musical to the festival, Christy, tell us about it. Hi, yeah, so I'm Christy Bauer. I'm actually in a similar boat, I'm a New Yorker, but I'm in Kentucky right now with family. I ended up driving down here very early on in this whole situation. And I'm not quite sure when I'm going back either, but just kind of keeping an eye on this guy, so to speak. So my show is the Fitzgerald's of St. Paul. It's a two character musical about the relationship of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And weirdly, I think it actually speaks pretty well to the quarantine moment because it takes place, it's a memory play that takes place as Zelda Fitzgerald is institutionalized. So, and it's very much about the space in between those two people and how it expands and contracts. So I find myself in this moment sort of examining like relationships in a different way because of being cooped up. So I think it applies to someone. Felicia. Hi from Australia. I'm actually Felicia King. It's very early in the morning here. I was in Switzerland and then quickly got on the plane and am now grounded indefinitely here. My play, Golden Shield, was supposed to have a reading at the festival and supposed to have a production in New York in January. So we'll see if that still happens and if I can get on a plane. And the play is about two Chinese American sisters who get embroiled in an international legal battle around an American tech company's collusion with the Chinese government in their construction of the Great Firewall and their sort of oppressive online censorship that they have now. And I think questions of how willing we are to hand our data over to nation states and to corporations and have overreaching surveillance come into our lives are kind of more relevant now than ever. So that was a, I mean, we're on Zoom right now. So that was an unexpected development in the life cycle of my play. But I'm really excited to see all of you on the other side of the world. Hi. Now, one of the things that we are missing by not having a festival in real life is the sense of community projects that is generated for three days of a weekend, not just the Southern writers whose work is being seen in the festival, but also dozens more who come and celebrate the work that's in the festival, both locally and from afar. So we're doing the best we can to recreate that on our screens, but it's a poor substitute. Shion. Hello. Hi. I'm Shion. I wrote the play, Parka Lale. I am usually based in New York, but currently I sort of made my way to the Canadian motherland and I'm in Vancouver at the moment. My play basically covers or follows a queer asylum applicant from the Middle East from the moment they arrive in the UK and follows him over a number of years. So that's the plan a nutshell. In terms of applicability to the current moment, I don't want to sort of shoehorn a relationship, but I think usually what I'm sort of interested in is sort of the nature of institution and the role of institutions and decisions made at the institutional level and how they sort of trickle down and affect day-to-day lives and interpersonal relationships. So, and I think that's pretty relevant right now. So yeah, so that's my play. Tony. I'm Tony Meneses, the player of El Borracho. I'm in Hoboken, New Jersey right now. So just on the other side of Manhattan over the river. And believe it or not, that river makes a world of difference right now in terms of what's going on there and here. And then my play, I'll just name the beast. It's the most biographical play I've ever written. It's about my parents. And it's particularly about the time my father passed away in 06 and in our family, we're an immigrant family. So we didn't have the luxury of like hospice care or any kind of outside resource. So my mom had to take my dad back in as he was dying and they were divorced at that point for a while. So it's kind of a reckoning of their relationship and their marriage where they thought they would never have to see each other again and then suddenly are brutally confronted with the circumstances of grief and life and reconciliation and forgiveness and all those tasty human issues, hopefully. And I guess if the play itself kind of mirrors I think what's going on with all of us because much of the character who's my father feels very trapped within the confines of my mom's very tiny little apartment in Dallas. So I think time and memory blur in that space in a way that I'm sort of reckoning with myself now that I'm trapped in my own apartment too. Yeah, thanks Tony. And Erica. My name is Erica Schaeffer and my play is Vladimir and it is about the early days of the Putin administration specifically about kind of an anti-government journalist and her relationships as she goes up against the government and also concerns a whistleblower who uncovers a lot of graft and how their story's intertwined. And I mean, it definitely feels very much a piece of what's going on in terms of living in a world of disinformation and sort of how it affects our psyche and how it affects our lives and our relationship to our family and to ourselves. I am in Los Angeles, I should say. I'm in my bedroom because I have two kids and there's a lock on the door. And so that's why we're all here with me. Well, again, welcome to all of you. It's great to have you here for this hour and I look forward to having you say a little bit more about the plays that we won't get to see but I know that we're excited to hear about. I should just say for the benefit of the audience that I have questions, I will talk with the panelists for the next half hour or so and then we will leave some time for questions from the audience. If you are a part of the Zoom conference you have the capability of answering the question and we'll get into the technology of that later. If you are watching via the live feed on either HowlRound or SCR's Facebook page unfortunately there is no way for you to ask a question so you'll just have to hope that one of the participants asked the question that you're dying to know the answer to. Also, if you do run into any technical difficulties with the Zoom feed, those of you who are on Zoom do know that you can always pick it up via one of the two live streams. So let's get to it. One of the things that struck me as I considered the group of plays in this year's festival and it struck all of us, it was not by design it just happened this way but there is a real sort of global reach in this year's festival. So, and I'm thinking particularly of Felicia's play and Erica's play and Cheyenne's play all of which take place in countries other than the US and for those of you for whom this question, this series of questions doesn't really apply I have some for you too so hang in there. So I'm curious to know what led each of those the writers who are writing about global subject matter or have international characters as their protagonists sort of what led you to that choice? What did you feel in any way compelled to look at the larger world or was it just that's what you were interested in? Any of you who wants to jump in, please do. I don't wanna have to call on people. Well, I can say my parents and brother came to America from the Soviet Union. And so it's just always been, I'm first generation and so the politics of Russia and the psychology of it and the art has always been a part of my family and also just the community in New York, this where I grew up and where my parents still are. I mean, there's a huge Russian community. My first play was very much about the immigrant experience. It was about probably more about my experience and their experience, but I just knew that I wanted to go back there because I think I just still had questions of sort of why are they like this in my family and these people I know. So I knew that I wanted specifically to write about Vladimir Putin and then it just made the most sense to set the play in Russia because I was, I guess I was less interested in like an American's opinion of it. There is an American character, there's one, but it didn't feel like what the play needed to be about. I'm just curious, was the fact that Putin is so much a part of the political conversation in the US right now a factor in motivating you to write about him? I mean, I think I wanted to write about him before Trump was elected, but I just didn't have, I started doing research and I didn't have an idea for a story. And the more I was reading it as things were happening in this country, it just felt very analogous and I still didn't know how to write about it because sometimes when a story is going on right now, it's just too hot. And so I thought, I will set it in the past because it felt, it just felt like more like, you know, I could explore actually what's happening in this country in many ways and sort of the degradation of democracy by looking to the recent past rather than trying to do it right now. Right. Felicia, you're sort of a global citizen.  Whatever that means now. Yeah. And had school in here in the States and have had productions in London. So was this play just a sort of a natural outgrowth of that point of view? Yeah, I mean, I think by virtue of the fact that I've, you know, I come from lots of different places. I've lived in lots of different places and my family business was sort of working for international organizations. I have always been attracted to telling stories about big global issues often that take place in lots of different places or with people from all around the world. I'm really interested in how theater can act as this sort of aggressively localized microcosm for the world. So I knew that I wanted to write this play and tell it on the global scale that sort of the real cases that the play is based on take place in. And I also knew that I really wanted the play to be bilingual and to not privilege the experience of Mandarin speakers over English language speakers. And in fact, one of the central devices of the play is there's this translator who not only translates between the two languages but translates the context and subtext and paratext so that the audience is constantly having a cultural mediation as the play is going on. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I want to come back to that question of language because it's a factor in a number of these plays and I'm just curious to explore that a little bit more. Cheyenne, your play is about an Iranian who immigrates to the UK. What was on your mind as you chose to write that story? Yeah, it was less sort of the intention to sort of write a story outside of the United States but it was inspired by an article I read that was describing the sort of asylum application for LGBTQ applicants in the EU and sort of that was the seat of the idea and so I just ran with it and it just happened to be set there. So I didn't sort of choose to for it to be set there but it sort of, you know, the inspiration was rooted there. I will say, you know, with that, especially when it comes to something like immigration but a lot of sort of, you know, quote unquote sort of like political topics you might want to touch. I mean, the problem is that, and I've been asked like why didn't I write this set in the United States? I think, you know, as writers, we want to sort of dabble in the sort of the sea of nuance and gray areas and I felt especially with sort of asylum and immigration. I mean, to set in the US, I mean, right now is there's no nuance to the discussion. There's nothing to sort of really grapple with because and the story could not actually exist in the US. This person would not even be allowed to enter. And so, you know, it's in practical terms but also in terms of I'm less interested in sort of arguing or debating whether migration should exist or not but, you know, what are the implications once a society agrees that it should be? To me, that is much more interesting and nuance is sort of the aftermath rather than the yes or no, should it exist or not? Because yeah, so that's why I said it where I did. I'm also interested in the way that so many of these plays deal with an idea of American-ness, whether they have a global scope or not. And Kate, I sort of jumped to you but I feel like in a way your play is telling a global story too, even though it's a very American story at bottom. I mean, it's interesting because the people, the society, Massachusetts Bay Colony which the Scarlet Letter is set in, they were, most of them were immigrants. They were coming over because they felt like they could create this utopia to America but, and they of course, you know, sort of wreaked devastation here by virtue of sicknesses that they were bringing within themselves. And so, yeah, it's interesting because it struggles a lot with when your presence in a place is actively harmful, what does that do to you? What does that do to you spiritually but also what does that do to the place where you've come?  So yeah, it's a lot about when I was doing the research about it, it was interesting because we kind of think the Puritans is very, very different from ourselves but the foundations of the society they built still affect us very much today. Yeah. Christy, does this apply to you in any way? The idea of Americanists, I sort of feel like Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda are a quintessential American story. Yeah, I think for sure, especially because they did a lot of traveling in Europe and they sort of became inadvertent cultural ambassadors of a certain type of Americanness in the 1920s. Yeah, and especially my show grapples a little bit with gender expectations and, you know, like Scott Fitzgerald was a soldier during World War I but didn't go.  So yeah, I think for sure, especially I think that they were archetypes of a type of tabloid celebrity culture that didn't really exist. And that's extremely American. I think that's a super American byproduct of the times and, you know, technology. Tony or Caroline, do you want to dent on this in any way before we move on? For me, just the, what is sort of the sly subversive goals of my play? I mean, it's very much a family drama, but for me, the political goal and the American goal is to, you know, at least in the Latino Latinx community, are we allowed to be seen that way? Are we allowed to have our own version of a family drama, an American family drama that doesn't have to be topical or sensationalistic or sort of a phrase that's being used a lot is like trauma porn, like it's not that at all. So, you know, Williams and Miller and O'Neill get to do their family drama. So it's like, can I do that too within a very like unapologetic Latino point of view? So I think it's definitely grappling with an American-ness and identity here as well. Well, Caroline. Yeah. So my play takes place in basically over the summer and early fall of 2016, but it's not, the characters are not really talking about the election plugged into the election in any way. It's more a backdrop that kind of like comes in sometimes and then goes back out. The play is a very personal story about taking us through this character's journey to find herself and then sort of like hopefully kind of pulsing in the background is the story of how the country is just sort of not slowly changing but the perception is not like people are not perceiving it until there's inevitably going to be something that happens later that after the play is over that changes the country even more. But the character is someone who's sort of not, is sort of preoccupied with the idea of America but in the end is very so wrapped up in herself that she's not really paying attention to it. Yeah. I mentioned, well Felicia brought up the subject of language and as I was thinking about this group of seven plays and adding up what languages we hear other than English. There's Spanish, there's Russian, there's Mandarin, there's a little bit of French, Parsi and I think even some Arabic in your play, Cheyenne. And Cheyenne, I'll turn to you next just because most of the play is written in English even if the characters are speaking something other than English. The final scene is entirely in Farsi. Can you just talk about what was on your mind as you use language not just as a device but also as a thematic thread in the play? Yeah. I mean, I think it was meant to be and this is coming from someone who's sort of admittedly sort of the sort of knowledge of theatrical canon is pretty limited before I sort of started writing plays. And so one of the things that sort of struck me was the way that language is used. And oftentimes, you know, it's, my experience was that there was always this form where maybe you would use broken English to refer to someone speaking English and then fluent English that they're speaking they're like mother tongue. And there's always these little tricks and stuff. And I always thought that that was at least for this play would sort of negate this idea about the compromises you make when you migrate. And so I thought it was very important, particularly in the last scene where you go back in time and you sort of see this main character who you've only seen speak English this whole time. You know, what did he actually give up? And I think there's so much sort of rooted in the ability to speak your own language. And so I thought it was really important to sort of maintain that. And it's been interesting just, you know, in terms of theatrically, like, you know, how do you logistically make it work? And so, you know, for me, it was just really important to sort of maintain that sort of, you know, idea and the thematic links I had in the play around language. Yeah. Tony or Erica, you wanna jump in on this? So I think one of the things that the play explorers, not my first play explorers too, is this idea that who can understand the conversation and who can't understand the conversation? I grew up in a bilingual household and I never learned Russian. My parents are most comfortable probably in English at this point I'm Russian and went to Russian schools but my family also spoke Hungarian because of where they are from and because of grandparents and border changes. And so I just felt like there are always people at every table that I was at where you understood some of it and you didn't understand some of it. And so this play, though it's mostly in English when all the characters are actually speaking Russian, there are moments that, you know, that are about the idea that some person understands this, some person doesn't understand this. We as the audience understand it, you know, the whole of it. And like Cheyenne, I mean, in my first play, there was a significant amount of Russian spoken on stage that we sort of navigated and got up to that point. But yeah, I think in this one, I was curious about not having everybody have accents, which I have definitely done before. And plus like the great thing is like with Death of Stalin and with like all these other kind of pieces of art coming up, now it's just a given, like why would everybody have an accent if they're all talking another language in another country? It's great. Tony? Yeah, that's a convention I'm playing with is what we're hearing literally is translated Spanish the whole time. So none of the characters speak with accents. There's like slight nods to Spanish when characters are entering or exiting the space of this department. They enter with Spanish or exit with Spanish. So that's sort of like the outside world is that Spanish speaking world, but within the intimacy of their environment, we're just hearing conversation. And there's like hopefully a fun like flip of our understanding of that, like very late in the play. I think like the second to last scene, the main characters has a monologue of like, I wish we had learned English. And this whole time the audience is like, but we've been hearing English. So it's sort of a, I think for me, the agency of doing that is playing with those jokes of the family drama that, you know, of course, because it's family drama, we want to see the universality of that story, but then reminding ourselves of the actual specificity of who these characters are and culture and background to not surrender that and keeping that tension alive for the audience as we go along. Yeah, it's interesting because it continues a trend that we've been seeing at SCR with our entire season before the season went south. I mean, we had plays in which there was abundant. There was an abundant amount of Korean spoken. We opened the season with a play by Jose Cruz Gonzalez that have a lot of Spanish in it. So it's interesting to me. And as I think back 20 or 30 years ago, I don't remember that being the case, English dominated the American theater in a way that it doesn't seem to do anymore. And it's for me a refreshing trend to see things opening up that way. To move from the sort of global focus to a more individual one. And then I'm mostly thinking of like Caroline and Tony and Christie with this question, but any of the others of you feel free to jump in as well. Those three though, all have protagonists who are struggling to establish independent identities and have a big obstacle to accomplishing that in their lives. Can you just talk about that and what in particular maybe led you to that choice? Caroline, why don't you start? Yeah, so my mate Hazel, my protagonist, she, we see her for about two or three minutes before she in the play, before she loses her memory. She loses her memory right at the beginning of the play. So she sends the rest of the play, really trying to piece together who she is without, and she meets her husband and doesn't know him and is sort of told all these things about her life and has to piece together who she is and has to kind of constantly reevaluate, is this who I am or is this who somebody has told me I am, is this the life I, when I'm given the sort of bald facts of my life, this is your husband, this is your career, this is where you live, what does that add up to? Is that something that I would have chosen for myself without the sort of context and everyday small decisions that lead us through our lives? So I was really interested in creating a protagonist who doesn't know much more about herself than we do and we get to find out with her and who she is and watch her really start to craft her own identity. Thanks, Chrissy. I know that part of your interest in Fitzgerald's was to really poke home in on Zelda's story and she's certainly a character whose sense of individuality and identity is butting up against the huge obstacle of this larger than life literary figure. Is that sort of what, was that the grit that caused you to want to write about them? That's part of it. Interestingly, the bulk of the show was sort of written in the shadow of the 2016 election. And I found myself, and I can only speak for myself, really, really sort of reeling and aching from the way in which conversations about Hillary Clinton were framed, simply because on paper, she's the most qualified presidential candidate of all time. And so, but all of the conversations, but that's divorced of context. With context, she lives in the baggage in the shadow of her husband. And so I was thinking a lot about that as I focused in on Zelda, because I sort of saw Zelda as living in, not even living, it stuck into boxes. There's the literal box of being institutionalized in a mental hospital, but also the box of all of the baggage of her relationship with her husband and not just the relationship in real time, but also the legacy baggage. Because at the very beginning of the show, I showed them meeting and he offers her immortality.  And we sort of see the dark side of that as it goes on. I think, yeah, there's just boxes. I just, I think there's weight in that. Tony, anything to add? Yeah, to piggyback off Chrissy's literal boxes that she mentioned, I'm working off an actual grid of if anyone knows the game Loteria, that's where the title of my play comes from. It's a little Mexican bingo game with all these different characters and images. So the title refers to one of the images, which is El Garacho, which means the drunk. So the main character, which was my father, struggled with alcoholism and sort of transcending that point of view, literally that box. We always joke that like the little Loteria character was our father and eventually as we grew up, we're like, wait, that's a little twisted to associate him with that knowledge and that sort of stereotype. So for me, it was just battling that, to get out of that box of that character, see the dimension and complexity of this man, my father, who I've never written about until this play and trying to understand that. And then in a macro way, dealing with the tension of portraying a character like that, which can be a little hot button for the Latino community to be perceived in this way. That's not the most positive, but trying to mine dimension and humanity from that and hopefully understanding as to why that behavior even existed to begin with and how he contended with it, how it reckoned with the rest of the characters in the play. So, yeah, a struggle for individuality was definitely on my mind when writing and trying to render him. You know, I'm thinking back to something Christy just said, the idea that to some extent, writing her particular story sprang from the events in 2016 that are part of the moment we're living in right now, the political moment we're living in right now. And I think back to like early 2017 and the conversations that were happening among playwrights and other theater artists about how do I respond to this? I mean, I don't think I'm saying the quiet part out loud when I say most theater artists, lean liberal. And so it was a shock to the system for a lot of theater artists. And the struggle to figure out how do I respond to this in my art was something that many were dealing with. And it is interesting to me that I know more than one of you has talked about your specific plays as responses to what happened then and how it is rippling through the culture and the ethos right now. I don't know if any of you have anything to say to that point. If so, please chime in. And then I want to move to one final question before we open this up to questions from the audience. I have something to say, which is just that I think the most interesting responses to a charged political moment are the indirect ones. Just because, and someone earlier talked about how the moment being too hot to directly respond to. And that's not to say that you can't, but my way of processing is to pull back into history and see how it refracts. And that was absolutely how I processed that aftermath. Yeah. I similarly the morning after the 2016 election, I woke up in a certain amount of shock which in retrospect was fairly naive. But I thought I wanted to write this. I thought that morning I want to write an adaptation of the Scarlet Letter because I feel like we tend to think even now in this moment that like every trauma is completely new and every sort of social more is completely new and people's reactions are completely new. But if we actually, it's that old trope. If you look at history, it's just repeating itself. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see what comes out of this collective trauma that's happening right now, which I don't know about anyone else right now. I have no perspective on because we're sort of living day to day in it, but it's going to be interesting to see artistically once our communities need the catharsis that theater brings, what catharsis we can make out of this and what meaning we can make out of this collective trauma. Cause even in election, something is decided very fast and then you sort of live with the ramifications. This is an ongoing trauma. And I think it'll be interesting to see what we as artists and people are, what storytelling, what meaning can bring to it because I don't know yet. Especially because, you know, it's going to be a minute before we can even get into the room with each other. And, you know, we're going to have to have a really good reason to get back into the room with each other. Before I ask one last question of my own, let me just tell the audience that's with us in the Zoom conference about the procedure for asking your own questions. If you go down to the bottom of the screen, you see a participants icon. And if you click on that, you should get a list of all participants and you should be able to find your name on that list. And let's see here. I'm just going to read this to make sure I get it right. In the participants sidebar, click on the small button in the lower right corner that says more options. And one of the options there is to raise hand. You can also lower your hand in the same spot. Or you also have the alternative of asking a question in the chat. You'll see down there at the bottom of the screen a chat option. Many of you have been using it during this. I can't wait to read what you all have been talking about while we've been talking. So that's how you will ask your questions. And you can ask questions to the group as a whole or to any of the specific playwrights. And we will use the rest of our time that way. But before we move to that. So I went back and reread all of the plays this week just so I'd be ready for today. And the last one I read was Vladimir. Last but certainly not least. And I came to the final lines of that play and they resonated for me. And they sort of echoed back through all seven plays in different ways. So if you'll forgive me, Erika, I will read those final three lines which are exchanged by I think what you would call the two main characters of the play as they consider the battles they've been fighting and how they can possibly go on when those battles have taken most of what they've got from them. And those final three lines are, it's my home, I'll be home, it's home. And the idea of home is the thing that seems to really sort of resonate in all of these plays in different ways. So if I can just ask each of you one at a time to say a few words about what the idea of home means to the play you've written. Kate, you're unmuted. Maybe we should just do this in the order we started. If you feel like you're ready to jump in and talk about home with respect to the scarlet letter. Yeah, I think once you've been through a trauma or something you can't forgive yourself for or a society has undergone a collective trauma, it's really hard to find a home. And again, as I was saying, people tend to think if they put themselves into a different circumstance, I'll have to go to a different country, I'll start a new society that I will find a home in which there is, I won't like run up against my past or they would think of it as sins, but my traumas. And this play kind of asks how can you find a home for yourself even embracing your own imperfections? So how can you heal after a kind of collective trauma as a society? But all of these people, the Puritans were coming, trying to find a perfect home and what they sort of find throughout this play is, you're gonna meet yourself in every corner of the world. So yeah, that's what it is to me. Right, thanks. Caroline. Yeah, it's interesting you talk about trauma, Kate. It's almost, there's a reason that our plays were programmed together. My main character goes through both physical and a lot of physical trauma and then emotional trauma that takes kind of longer to unwind itself over the course of the play. And she goes through a tremendous amount of loss. She even though her mother, she re-loses her mother, she loses time, expertise, relationships and for a long time her sense of self. And one of the things that I hope the play brings up is that she has herself and she's incomplete and there are parts of herself she can't access immediately but she, by the end of the play, she has herself as a home. And that can be, you can look at that in a couple of ways. It's like, oh, somebody only has themselves. That's horrible, but it's also, it's a place where she finds refuge and I think strength. And so I think I don't only have myself but in these times when we've been spending time away from the people we love to sort of be able to go into your own thoughts and personhood at this time is really important. And then once we all get to be together again, we can share what we discovered, hopefully. Yeah, Christy? Yeah, so, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald never lived in one place for longer than a year. They were constantly chasing an idea of home that I don't think they fully understood and sort of the conclusion that I came to examining their relationship was that the closest thing they had to home was each other. And so I think that that's what my show really grapples with is the idea of home is not a literal place, but as an emotional place. Yeah. Kalisha, I sort of feel like home is almost an absence in your play, maybe not an absence, but it's elusive at least. Any thoughts about the idea of home with respect to Golden Geo? Yeah, I mean, I think fundamentally when, it's interesting to think about in this present moment where we're all trapped in our homes, that when we talk about the idea of home, we're usually talking about what it means for our sense of security, comfort and freedom. In fact, I was just thinking about the fact that the Mandarin word for home, for families, all right, jia run, it means home people. That's what it literally translates to. And I think that the play really explores what it means to be between worlds and between homes, what it means to be a liminal person, whether that's between different cultures, whether it's the result of a familial trauma that means that you don't have a sense of home and what it means to be straddling different worlds in a sort of more institutional sense. And the conclusion that the play ultimately arrives at, which I think is something that I've been thinking about more and more is that you can find a sense of home wherever you are, so long as you are willing to speak it into existence. And if you can find the linguistic means from manifesting a home for yourself, and the biggest tragedy is when we can't overcome our cultural or linguistic distances, that's the point where home starts to fall apart and we lose that sense of security and freedom. Cheyenne, your character's central quest is in a way a search for a new home, yeah? Yeah, and I think there's actually a lot of parallels to what Felicia just said. And I think if there's one thing it's sort of, you know, I think the, I mean, this isn't surprising, the elusiveness and abstractness of this concept of home, but, and also, you know, and it goes back to your sort of language global question. It's really this definition, this concept is actually an immense privilege that in fact the vast majority of people in the world don't have a luxury to say, you know, this is my home or grapple with what is my home? Like these questions, and the fact is that many people, just by the virtue of where they were born and who they are when they're born, will never have that and that's just the fate. And it's sort of, you know, to me what's interesting is once you realize that, then how do you sort of navigate that reality? Because most people have to and come to a conclusion that that really won't exist or it might exist in a much more compromised way than I had or somewhat had idealized. So yeah, that's what I was really interested on that question was in terms of my play. Tony. Yeah, I mean for my play, so much of the idea of home is just integrated into the plot. The inciting incident is that the main character, my father has no home anymore and has no place to go so that what that results is an invasion of my mother's home and sort of the contention and the caustic reaction that that causes. So it's just the falling out of that action is just exploring that. And then, you know, in the macro sense too, you know, I sort of very proudly am writing about Mexican immigrants, probably in all of my plays and in showing them in subversive surprising ways and sort of speaking to the larger theme of Mexican immigrants here in this country, this is our home. And here we get to sort of spend some time with this specific Mexican family in their home and sort of hopefully connecting the threads of how much and how similar it is to anyone else's home who's sitting there too, grappling with their own family pathos that they get to witness and hopefully project on to the characters too. Yeah, as I was thinking about your play, that phrase that truism home is the place where if you go there, they have to take you in, which seems to be sort of your story in a nutshell with respect to your father and his need to be taken in. Erica, wrap it up for us. Wrap it up. Well, I think like the where I ended up at the end of the play, it was interesting because it's like, you know, you just sometimes, you don't know a lot of times where you're heading, but it ended up being this kind of exploration of like what, when your home, if you have one, is beginning to be unrecognizable, to betray you, to become something ugly and how you balance that with your love of it, with your connection to it, with the way it has fed your identity, I think that is the thing I'm struggling with, it's like in the play and as a person, and also kind of tying it back to my parents who left their home and created a new home and how that home has changed. So all of those things sort of like, do we stay? Do we fight? Is it worth it? Do we protect ourselves? You know, do we put ourselves before our community? Yeah, I think those are the struggles that I deal with. Thank you all. As usual, I have used up more of the time than I expected to, but I think hearing all of these thoughts has been so illuminating and I thank you all for all of them. Anna Jennings has been fielding questions from the audience. Anna, do you have a question? I don't see any hands raised right now, so we'll take one from the chat. Brianna asks, if there's any advice for young aspiring playwrights? You all, of course, are grizzled veteran playwrights. So you're... I mean, I'll just answer that real quick, because right now I'm in the throes of teaching on Zoom. Every Monday, Wednesday to 18-year-old playwrights, college playwrights, so obviously, I wrestle with this question all the time. So I'm hearing about five, 10-minute plays every time we meet. But yeah, just advice that I've got is you pull from your stuff. Whatever that means, it's a very generic answer, but we have the things that probably think about when we go to bed, so what are those things and how you can sort of make something out of that and what feels true to your voice, I think is essential, especially as it intersects with obviously all the issues that we have to grapple with our own identities, globally, intimately, family, but I think that's something that I heard early on, is you pull from the stuff that you got and you'd be true to that. I wanna hear from Cheyenne on this question because Cheyenne, you had and still have a thriving career as an urban planner and yet you chose to go back to school to study playwriting. What's your advice for that? I know, ridiculous, huh? I shouldn't be giving any advice. That's, yeah. I think actually right in this current context, I think this is a moment to really sort of consume things, as we're sort of sheltering in place, is consume things that aren't theater, is because there's a language of cinema and literature and poetry and there's just a whole wealth of other art forms that we can consume right now because at the end of the day, when we come out of this, the justification to sit in the theater is gonna be even more and this might be a time where systemic shifts happen theatrically and so I think being able to sort of tap into other art forms and really reevaluate what you want, why you're saying something in theatrical form and theatrical language I think may serve you even as a beginner, yes. I'm gonna move to another question but if any of you want to address that first question, feel free to do so. Paige is asking a question that I actually had on my notes as well which is, do you have any thoughts on the future of theater during and post pandemic? I mean, none of us are soothsayers so obviously it's a guessing game but I imagine you've probably thought a little bit about where the theater is headed in the wake of this or not. I feel like it's, you know, I'm someone who often is trying to reevaluate like, what am I doing? Is it useful? Is it useful in the world? Am I giving back in some way? And I feel like if nothing else, this has taught us how irreplaceable in-person connection is and community connection. I feel like, you know, everyone including me enjoys watching Netflix and the arts are part of what get us through but the difference between that and sitting and having the same experience in a room together that's never repeated, that's live, that's kind of like a sand mandala it's created and then it's gone. That can't be replaced. So I feel like obviously a lot of, we're having sort of an existential crisis right now in terms of things are scary and we don't know quite what's going to happen but I feel like it's taught me that it is essential in the future that we have this work again, that we provide this catharsis to our communities. I hope that theater comes back more equitable, you know, less, you know, there are still racism and sexism and classism issues in theater and I feel like we're going to have to rebuild and we have to rebuild. Now is the time when we can really think about, okay, how can we rebuild better and you know, with safeguards in place because I do feel like we can rebuild my fear is that there'll be a sort of stampede back to the status quo of, you know, more quote unquote, conventional stories but actually now that we're being taught that I read this fascinating piece which said in times of crisis, people actually want change afterwards they don't want status quo, they want a kind of revolution. So that's a slightly formless answer but I'm just hoping that we take this time now because I am being taught that it's really important to come up with a way to make it more equitable. Anybody else have an answer to that question?   I think there's something also the last show I saw before all of this kind of craziness started was called Home. It was at the broad stage and it was like, I think Jeff's so beautiful and it was so beautiful and it was just all about being in a room together and it was all about creating a home, you know, literally they build one in front of you and it was, and we were just thinking, I was talking to a playwright friend and we were like, I'm like, you know, like how they touched each other and how they touched strangers in that show. It was so jarringly different and I just think like, elementally, I love again, which I think this is like a love that like ebbs and flows because, you know, like there's ambition, there's business, there's all of that, but I love being in a theater and like hearing the noises of strangers and like hearing them gasp and hearing them snore and like hearing them do all the things that like you just don't get in your house on your computer and we're all there and in some, you know, a lot of us don't go to church or temple or mosque or whatever. Like this is where we go for that to sit in a room with people. So I mean, I'm looking forward to it. That's, we're three minutes into overtime and that seems like a lovely thought on which to end. Before I do that though, first of all, I want to thank our seven panelists for sharing this time with us. What else are you going to do right now? But anyway, thank you. And I want to thank Hal Round for helping facilitate this conversation technically and otherwise. And then above all, I want to thank the SCR staff. You know, the festival didn't happen this year, but the work of the festival, most of it did happen before we got to the point where we had to pull the plug. And so that goes to the hard work and dedication of a lot of people on SCR staff. I can't name them all, but I do want to especially thank our casting department, Joanne and Stephanie who put together a wonderful cast for our two productions before we had to scrap them. Joanne and Stephanie got off easy this year. They didn't have to cast the readings because we just didn't get that far. And then also to Andy Knight who is my new co-director for the festival. Andy likes to pretend he hates the Pacific Clare Arts Festival because he's had to coordinate it all these years, but I know it's not true, Andy. I know you love it. And that it's a disappointment to you that your first year as co-director didn't pan out the way we all hoped it would. And then also Anna Jennings who's been with us and the stage managing this event and who is our artistic coordinator and a member of the literary staff and Molly Fitz Morris who is somewhere in either Connecticut or Martha's Vineyard somewhere back there at the moment, but she's I know with us in the spirit. I thank them all for their dedication and their hard work and everybody else on the staff who I did not mention by name. I thank once again, these seven writers. There were a couple of questions about these plays sound so interesting. How can we see them, read them, whatever? A couple of them I know there are productions lined up for them. Hopefully those productions will happen. I'm knocking on fake wood at the moment. But even if they don't, these plays are all too good not to have productions down the line somewhere. They will have productions. There will be opportunities to see them the way they are meant to be seen. And I am noodling on whether there's a way for us to make them available some other way in the meantime. So stay tuned, check the website regularly, subscribe to SCR emails. And if you're interested in finding out more about these plays, maybe we can make that happen. And with that, we'll sign off. I'm going to go over to the leave meeting button. Hope you all do the same. Enjoy the rest of your days, wherever you may be. Felicia, yours is just getting started. I have another cup of coffee. We'll see you soon, I hope.