I'm the writer, filmmaker, and director, Young Jin Mi. Yay! The event. And the doctoral students in our program nominate an elected individual or an organization that had a significant impact on theater and performance in New York City. Now in its fourth decade, the award has provided a unique opportunity to bring the professional and academic theater communities together. And tonight, I'm excited to say, we're doing it again. In 2005, Young Jin's Songs of the Dragons, Flying to Heaven, was presented at the Siegel Center's Prelude Festival, which is dedicated to discovering new artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater, dance, interdisciplinary, and media ties performance. Young Jin Li has continued to push work and has been called the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation by the New York Times. And one of the best experimental playwrights in America by Time Out New York. It is my greatest pleasure to honor her as our 36th Edwin Booth Award recipient. Ceremony is made possible by gracious support from the doctoral students council, the Martin East Siegel Theater Center, and the doctoral theater students association. And I'd like to give special thanks to our professors, Marvin Carlson, David Savram, and Jean Graham Jones for their gracious support. Five years ago, I saw Young Jin Li's piece, We're Gonna Die, for the first time. This was back in Seoul right around the time I had gotten the word of my admission to our program. And at the time, I could never have imagined that I'd be producing and speaking at an award ceremony honoring her. And I still can't believe our paths have crossed this way. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce our first speaker for the night, doctoral student Nina Angela Mercer. Unfortunately, Nina could not be here with us tonight, but she sent along a video recording. So, here's Nina. I believe in theater. It's sometimes magic and urgency. It's sometimes big bells after a bursting from someone's chest in the house of the strangest moments, revealing some mystery of perception. I believe in the way theater makes a world that simply don't exist except in our imaginations and sometimes on the stage. And I believe in playwrights.  We picked apart, adored, ignored, misunderstood, troubled by night sweats before opening night, cold crowds and reviewers, actors who just won't stick to the script. So, I watched The Shipman by Yevgy Lee online. But because I believe in theater. For those who don't know, The Shipman untaxed black stereotypes. The first half of the play is presented at the Vaudeville show, right with the most reproduced stereotypes of blackness and performance. We are all always performing against them somehow, I guess. In some of mine, most often not our own. But the second half of the play, the black cast members provided the playwright with roles they wished they would play. She created a naturalistic drama in response to that with those characters. Back in February, I listened to rather than Jacob Jenkins, Alivia Harris, Jackie Sibley's jewelry, all the conversation at the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture. This is one of my cents, whole-time. To give inside the auditorium there at the Schomburg, you literally have to walk on top of a congo cosmogram, a portal that you will under which life likes to use the dashes. And on this particular evening, these black playwrights were talking about the representation of blackness in theater, asking what is real black, what is authentically black, what voices are allowed to be black, the black playwright, someone else, neither. In that moment, I wish to make some news because in the back of the Schomburg auditorium we throw it back a drink at a makeshift bar. There was no bar. But after what I thought, I don't want to hear another conversation about what blackness isn't, because it just is. I don't want to hear another conversation about what blackness sounds like. It just is in all of this variation.  Whether this is possible or not, I know theater is a place where it's impossible so I can save it here. I can own it here. I think freedom is really good to imagine and I know it must be funky, like dead face funky and it must not be questioned whether the skies fall in and the ground broken free from gravity and somebody stuck up my shoe and be deserted. I do not think theater should have white as if it were Facebook posts or worse. Those red, red hearts that aren't hearts at all are kind of love rebranded. So I will say this without reading likes or whatever. Young Jean Lee, the shipment is a black soul play and many representations of blackness. But it is black in other ways too and it is you and every actor on that stage and maybe some imaginary friend of someone's too or a nightmare. It could very well be a black nightmare in a white person's mind or vice versa, channeled through you or Korean American woman or maybe it's what these black actors dream they could be. Whether black or unmarked by skin, a thumb, nose or a middle finger at all the struggle for gigs they've known it could be but yes, it is also about race and it is funky trouble and I thank you. While I watched, I did not laugh not once but I wasn't in the audience. I felt no need to perform nor could I catch the spirit of my neighbor's laughter. I was alone at home and it's no longer 2009. Barack Obama is not the president and no one says post-racial much anymore.  I think your play, Young Jean Lee, unleashed something inside me that I did not know was barking in the first place. It felt a little like iodine on an always open wound that's mostly undetectable. We're good at hiding for survival, you know. Where you call people out with your worlds on stage and that play felt a little like some blackness I know, some whiteness too. The struggle against the box meant to hold all of us but it also felt like nothing I've ever known and that is right and good because as I said in the beginning, theater creates worlds, impossible worlds and ask the most dangerous questions and I wonder if you gather those same actors today and ask them what roles they want to play or what blackness or not blackness at all, simply humanness from inside their vest, subjectivities, what would they say? I believe you would confront that particular storm, Young Jean Lee, I believe you would commit to lines on the page and sit in the house and listen to your audience. No matter how uncomfortable I can tell because you are audacious. I applaud you and implore you to keep making us uncomfortable. Clearly, we need it. Next is a stage reading by doctoral students Ash Marinaccio, A. Yulia Kinchi, Jessica Adam and Jenny Yusef. They will read a scene from Straight White Man which played to great critical acclaim in 2014 at the Public Theater and this summer the play is returning to Mark as Mark the first play by an Asian American female playwright to be produced on Broadway. Ed, the father. Matt, the elder. Jake, the middle. Drew, the youngest. So Matt, tell me why you're interested in working for our foundation? Because I guess I'm interested in the job because I graded a lot of papers while I was in grad school. I graded a lot of papers and they were, I have that skill, which is not to say that I have any of the actual copy editing skills were required for this job, but I'm assuming I could learn them if you know I were taught. Matt, that was great. No, it wasn't. That was terrible. It was? Dad, I think you're moving a little fast here.  No, he could do it if he wanted. He could do it in his sleep. He's just choosing not to. I'm not qualified for this job. It doesn't matter what skills you have. You have to make yourself qualified. I'll show you. Watch. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. A little about why you're interested in working for our foundation. Well, Sam told me about the position. Sounds great. He spoke very high of you. Yeah, well, he's a great friend. We met on our year abroad to Ghana when we were both at Harvard. Ghana, that's an interesting choice. We were a part of a project that trained villagers in rural areas to build sustainable housing. That sounds fascinating. Anyway, I've been a fan of your organization for a long time. You guys set the standard for international human rights. It would be a dream to work with you in any capacity. Matt, your resume shows a BA from Harvard, 10 years in Stanford's PhD program, and 15 years at various non-profits and community organizations. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Well, for a long time, I thought I might stay in academia, but it started to feel too theoretical. I wanted to put some of that theory into practice. I felt strongly about working with a smaller, more grassroots organization. But I realized I need to be part of a bigger organization with a broader impact. Glad you see yourself five years from now. Well, eventually I'd like to work in the press office. Why the press office? Because that's where the greatest impact happens. That's how people all over the world learn that human rights violations will not be tolerated. Well, I must say, Matt, I'm impressed. It was very nice to meet you. We'll be in touch soon. Let's break me in you. You could do that if you wanted to. Not if he doesn't think he deserves anything. Harping on his resume, you're just making things worse.  Let's not get into that again, Matt. Did you see what he did there? Yes, I did. Now you try. I saw Jake do it, Dad. I got it. Now I'd like to see you try. So you don't have to do this, Matt, but that one. Oh, you can't come in like that. Like how? Your shoulders are hunched and you're not making eye contact.  Come in again. Much better. Nice to meet you. I'm Ed. Matt. We're in pancake. Very good. Sit down. So, Matt, tell me why you're interested in working for our foundation. Because Sam told me about the job. And how do you know Sam? We met at Harvard. No, actually, in Ghana. We were both at Harvard at the time, but we were doing our year abroad in Ghana. So we were in Ghana when we met. And what were you doing in Ghana? Well, at least in my case, I was teaching a bunch of people something that they didn't want to know. And I didn't know how to do, and they didn't want to learn. Oh, come on. I'm sure you're underselling yourself.  Well, why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got here from academia? Oh, well, I wanted to put theory into practice. Can you be a bit more specific? There were things I wasn't smart enough to figure out in academia, so I'm trying to figure them out in real life. How can you say that you're not smart? It's not that I'm not smart. It's that I'm not smart enough. I don't know, maybe nobody is. I'm afraid I don't understand. What were you trying to figure out? How to be useful, how to not make things worse. Matt, I see from your resume that you have a lifelong commitment to social justice. With your background and all these references, why haven't you done anything useful? I don't know. Dad, Matt's interview skills aren't the problem.  Drew, stop helping.  Wait a minute. I've just been sitting here. I've barely said anything. All I'm trying to do is help. Yeah, by continually insisting that there's something wrong with you. Because I care about you. I'm just trying to be useful. That's it. What's wrong with that? You're not happy. Don't you want that? Honestly, Drew, everything is fine before you guys got here. So you were loving doing temp work. It's a decent organization. Somebody has to do what they have me doing. And you want to keep doing that forever. I can't do it forever. It's a temp job. Jesus. Nothing escapes this vortex of negativity. Matt's not negative. He's not lazy. He doesn't lack self-confidence. He's not afraid to risk.   Of course not. Because you've always done such a good job of taking the backseat.  You're being an ally, putting yourself in a service position, right? Making copies for the oppressed? You're trying to live in accordance with what you believe. What's that? That people like us can do. That people like us, that there's nothing people like us can do in the world that isn't problematic or evil. So we have to make ourselves invisible. People like us? What's that supposed to mean?  Women and minorities may get to pretend they're doing enough to make the world a better place just by getting ahead, but a white guy is pretty hard to press to explain why the world needs him to succeed. So Matt's trying to stay out of the way. Jake, you keep saying this, and I find it very hard to believe. It's because nobody else would ever do it. Matt's a freak. Jake! Imagine as a compliment. It's a world of pigs, and that's not a pig, but if you're not a pig, you're fucked. Well, look at me. I'm an asshole, but people kind of like me whether they know it or not.  Yes, I am. My companies run almost entirely by white guys, and I do nothing about it. I make ironically racist jokes.   As much as I'd like to bring someone other than a white guy that client meeting, the clients don't want it, so I don't do it. Together with my ex-wife, I'm raising our kids to be as white as possible, except for when their blackness makes them more appealing tokens. So it's good to know that Matt is out there doing what he thinks is right, being a martyr, so I don't have to. That's not what I'm doing. Yes, yes, you are. You're making sacrifices for people who are other. But what are they sacrificing to make the world better? Nothing. They don't want you. They don't even want each other. They want me. Jake, I don't believe the things you think I believe. Maybe I used to, but what do you believe? I don't know. I don't know anything.   Hey, you might as well be dead. Jake, stop. What? Three days.    Kill me. I'll pull you. Kill your brother?  Your candidate will conduct a public interview with Young Jin Lee. The interview will be followed by a Q&A. Please help me welcome our interviewer and our guest of honor, who flew all the way from Stanford for tonight's event, the 2018 Booth Award recipient, Young Jin Lee. Hi, everyone. I'm going to go ahead and just out myself as a Young Jin Lee fan girl. I'm completely a biased interviewer here. So we'll just put that out there. Your work has been really important to me as a PhD student, but also as a person that's alive in the world with thoughts and feelings and experiences. And I know that that's the case for a lot of us in this room right now and people in our department that aren't here today. So as a result of that, I've reached out online for students to put together questions. So a lot of these are mine, but a lot of them are coming from the student body. A little bit more about my personal experience with your work as it leads into the first question I have for you tonight. I came to your work at a really difficult time in my life. I'm sure you get unloaded on like this all the time, but here we go again, right? I had just moved to New York City, and I was going to start this program, this PhD program. And my sister died. And it wasn't a huge surprise because she was struggling with alcohol, abuse, and substance abuse, and she was struggling with mental illness. But it was also the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And it put me in a really weird place to start a PhD program. I was just not really in a good emotional place and not really caring about anything, let alone theater and performance studies. And I have a good friend, Ricardo Montes, who's teaching at the new school now. I think you might know him or you've met him before. And he suggested that I go see her play, We're Gonna Die. He was like, I think this is what you need right now. And I was like, I don't know what I need right now, but it's probably not theater. And I went, and he was absolutely right. I mean, not only did that play draw out the deep sadness of morbidity and sort of death and tragedy, but it also makes light of it. And there's humor and there's beauty and it's universally human. So I was really glad to see that Diana Owen and Matt Parker gonna play that song for us at the end of the night today because that's the song we chose to have at my sister's funeral service. So it was very important to me. We did it on a beach at sunrise in South Texas. So that it's very personal. And I'm so, so honored to be in your presence today. And I teach the play to my students and they love it. It's always their favorite play of the semester. So enough about me. In light of this, in light of this, that was intense. Sorry, but it's coming from the heart. I have been in such fear of this event because I like just the mere thought of the award makes me wanna cry. And so I was just like, I can't, you know, I can't just cry through the whole thing.  I'm like, oh my God, just like deep breathing. We're so glad to have you here. And to kind of flip the script on this story I've just told you, is there anyone, any artist, any person that has sort of helped you get through difficult times, either creatively or personally? Oh man, this is like another crying topic. Okay, so yes, he's sitting right there. His name is Mike Ferry and he is my dramaturg of the past 15 years. And we met actually in our PhD program, at English PhD program at Berkeley and we both dropped out. And we have been working together ever since. He's worked on every single show with me just side by side.  You know, towards creative things, right? And so like when you're creating a work of art, in the beginning, it's always bad. I mean, I guess I hear sort of mythical tales of writers who just like wrote the most famous play ever in one week, but I sort of don't believe it. Like I believe that they, you know, that there was development happening during the rehearsal process.    I mean, I can't tell you how many, oh man, it's not even bad at the beginning. Like it's bad for years, you know, like the shipment, you know, we heard that amazing testimonial to the shipment.  And we did not intend it, but it was.   And, you know, and this type of thing goes on sometimes for a really long time, you know, where it's just really bad for a while. And so Mike, you know, I just don't know what I would do without him because he's just so, so completely good at his job and so good at keeping the project on track and so good at keeping sort of as much as possible, like my ego out of the way. Well, we're grateful for Mike, too. So as your Facebook friend, I have been at, we're Facebook friends by the way. I have a, and now everyone knows that, so I feel really good. I've noticed that you network a lot with all sorts of really interesting artists and activists and scholars on Facebook. And another colleague in the program, Elise and I were talking about how we love your Facebook page because there's always like juicy things going on there as some sort of relevant discourse, which looks totally different from like most pages that you go on. So how do you view your relationship with social media and I see you as using it as sort of a crowdsourcing way of working through stuff, but maybe I'm wrong. How do you view the way that you use it? Well, a lot of times, I mean, the way that I work is just so intensely collaborative, so like Mike is sort of like my main person, but then there's the cast and then there's everybody involved with the production, there's assistant dramaturgs, my associate director, like there's all of these people who are just intensely involved in the creative process with me. So I'm used to when I'm writing, when I'm directing, just having a room full of people with me at all times and everybody is just shouting stuff out and it's just tons of feedback all the time and we invite people into the room and they shout out feedback. So it's just constant, this sort of cacophony of information that I have become very used to like filtering and Facebook is when I'm just alone trying to write by myself and I don't have that room full of people around me and Mike's at work and I can't text him, then Facebook actually functions very similarly to that rehearsal room where I just ask a question and then immediately I have all of these really smart responses and so it's really like having a very diverse group of collaborators that I can call on and before 11.9 when our current president was elected, it was much more oriented towards the just the collaboration and working on things and since that has happened, I have been, I was just so distraught by that event in part just because it was a terrible thing to have happened but also just thinking about how little I had been thinking during the Obama years, like just how uncritical I was, just how I was not paying attention to what was going on and how I was just thinking like, oh, well Obama's president, so I don't have to care about what's happening in the world and I think that was the thing that I felt the most terrible about and so since then I have been really making such an effort to know what's going on and to question more and to be more critical and that journey has been sort of a parallel track on Facebook that is sort of starting to dovetail with my work now but for a while it was just sort of distress and trying to be a better citizen. Thanks for that. So tying into your use of Facebook, one of your posts talked about your complicated relationship with academia and I hope what we hope with this event is that you do realize that your decision to focus on your work has been incredibly valuable to people in institutions and beyond so we're glad you made the decisions that you did but playing, it's kind of come full circle now because you're a professor, you're teaching and playing to our audience here, I'm curious of what is your teaching style and do you have any juicy student stories or anything like that? Well, seeing as how this is being live streamed, it's probably not a good idea for me to, if I want to continue teaching to expose my juicy teaching stories but for me, academia was, I've actually like based on a recent Facebook post about academia, I've learned that there are academics whose minds just love to push themselves to the extremes of abstraction, right? Like where it's just like there's all of these systems and your brain sort of holding them all in place at once and it's just so many degrees removed from anything you can actually hold. Like it's just so purely intellectual and I have encountered people who just love that experience and for them, I mean, I think one woman said that she can't boil an egg but she can do that. So for her, that act of like going into like level after level of abstraction feels natural and like something she's competent at but pretty much anything else in the world would be difficult, you know? And so I am definitely not that person. I'm probably the most like I'm very, very extreme opposite to that in the sense that if something isn't practically applicable, I just have a very hard time wrapping my mind around it. And so for me in academia, it was this very strange experience of I would read this stuff and I would like listen to people talk and then I would just sort of say stuff that sounded, you know, I'd be like, okay, these are the words that you use and like what's a crazy way of using those words that like just doesn't make any sense and everybody would say like, amazing, like that's so interesting, you know? And at the time I was like, what is going on? Because these were very smart people who were doing, and like they weren't like these jerks who were just pretending, you know, like it wasn't an emperor's, well in some cases I think it might have been other people like me who didn't know what was going on but there were people who were just like, they could take my nonsense and actually map it in the grid of the abstraction because that's how good they were, right? You could just say something that just a string of nonsense words and they would be like, I am now mapping it in the grid and this makes sense.    So I was like, when I was trying to write my dissertation and really when I tried to write anything I was like, oh my God, like I have to make the most true best argument that has ever been made about this and I don't even know what that is and I don't, you know, and it was just so terrible. And so like eventually I had to drop out and I had, I was such a devoted academic. I mean, I think that's something that people don't know about me was that like freshman year I was just like, I wanna be a Shakespeare scholar and I devoted myself. I mean, I studied so hard, like all the way through undergrad. I went straight through into grad school, like I was like a research assistant to Stephen Greenblatt, like I did my honors thesis with him and I, and I, and it was just, I was very, very serious about it and it was just very heartbreaking to me that I was too stupid to continue. I mean, that's really what it felt like.  Here's the other fun thing, which is that not only, like so not only am I stupid, like it's like the reason why I'm stupid is because I'm evil because I'm so, you know because I'm so committed to like the heteropatriarchy you know, like the white heteropatriarchy and I want language to be this way and I want to talk about beauty and so I'm evil and so that's why I'm stupid and so that was sort of like how I left grad school in shame and then it was in this mindset that I was trying to then be an artist and like, you know, I was just like this sort of like brutal attitude towards myself where I am then trying to like create so that was a very difficult process but I have noticed that, you know I'm now in drama department theater and performance studies, I mean I do think that and I've now like read the criticism that has been written about my work, you know for example by Kieran Shimokawa and it's written mostly by theater and performance studies people and I can understand the articles and they don't have the like I'm the genius over all these stupid people like it's just, it's a very different type of thing from what I was, you know, doing in the 90s so now, you know, I think that, you know being in these departments, I mean still like I'm, you know, I'm at Stanford and you know all of the tenure track faculty like they're all like academics, you know but you know and I'm coming in as a practicing artist but it is, I don't know like I mean I'm definitely, you know I always sort of the way that I've tried to avoid students feeling alienated the way that I felt alienated is I will especially for freshmen and sophomores were just coming in and they, you know they haven't learned a lot of the vocabulary that is, that gets used in these academic settings I'm very adamant, I'm very adamant about babbling you know by which I mean when people just talk without trying to communicate and I'm very strict about spacing out and those two things go together I'm like I'm gonna control the babbling but then you have to control the spacing out because if babbling is happening like of course you're gonna space out like that's the only defense against babbling is to space out but if the babbling doesn't happen then you can't space out and you're also not you're not allowed to, you know not ask what something is if you don't understand what it is and so like all of these things I have like very strict rules about making sure that people understand and I'm always like looking around and I'm like do you understand what I'm saying you know I do that constantly I'm like does everybody understand and I'm like looking into their eyes suspiciously and everybody's like yes, yes, we got it Great, I think we all wanna take your class now so one of my favorite shows is just a completely pivot one of my favorite shows of yours was Untitled Feminist Show and it totally electrified me and I'm curious what you see your responsibilities as a playwright is advancing the project of feminism in light of the Me Too movement and intersectionality and things like that that we're actually talking about right now You know, Untitled Feminist Show I'm working on, I'm finishing up a script of it now which is gonna be published with Straight White Men this at some point this summer and I'm really excited about it because it's a show that doesn't have any dialogue in it and it's all basically stage directions and movement and you know, the cast and I like we made the decision to put the word feminist in the title just to as a sort of public embracing of feminism but that show is actually not it's not really about feminism it's I don't think it's really advancing feminism like that is basically like, you know we were trying to make, you know I don't know, like I feel like there are entertainments there are like popular Disney type of entertainments like maybe like a child's response to Disney on Ice I guess that's what I was looking for with Untitled Feminist Show which, you know, didn't go over that well with the you know, the super like boundary pushing, you know experimentalist where they were just like this is like Disney on Ice for feminist but it was great, you know, like these lesbian couples in their fifties would come and they would have their arms on each other just be like laughing and they did seem like they were watching Disney on Ice for them, you know it was just like laughing and having a good time like this was not boundary pushing art this was not feminist boundary pushing art like it was just, you know I just wanted to make this gender fluid good time and that was that show and we just said it was feminist because we felt that, you know creating a space for gender fluidity was a feminist act you know, and we just wanted to put that but that actually ended up getting us into trouble just because, you know, the word feminist comes up and then automatically it's like what's your thesis? What's your thesis about feminism? That's the best thesis in the world that's ever been you know, that's ever been thought of and it's like, I don't know So I want to kind of turn to straight white men because I would hate to neglect them in this interview but kind of tying that in with the untitled feminist project and what you're showing what you're talking about with gender Q and Kim who's one of my colleagues here she noticed that you modified and I have to read this because it's kind of complicated that you modified the earlier character of the stage head in charge in the play to two characters and that you said that they should be played by gender non-conforming performers preferably of color and the performers playing person in charge one and person in charge two should be empowered to say whatever they want to audience members can you tell us a little bit about that particular change and that choice? Well in the original production that we did at the public there was only one character who was performing all of that and we spoke to the performer Elliot Genetopoulos and there's something about being one that feels a little bit tokenizing where it's just like, oh, there's just one person representing all otherness for this show and to have two people sends a little bit it's like, it's not just one person like there are more, there's more than one person and they also were able to and another change that we made is that they interact with the audience before the show and one person takes one half and the other person takes the other half and also like another change is that they position the actors into the scenes and for me those characters were important because the public theater was my first kind of non downtown space and I have a lot of audience younger audience members like a lot of queer more diverse audience members who I was just afraid that they would walk into the public and the audience would be so sort of middle class and older and whiter and they would feel like they didn't belong there and so that's why we blasted this hip hop music which I noticed that you guys blasted the hip hop on the way in and it was like specifically hip hop by female rappers with like very raunchy lyrics and people think that I put that in just a torture the regular audience, the public audience members but I absolutely did not like it was actually meant to be like a nice thing like a welcoming gesture to to people who were not of the main demographic and also that was the purpose of the two people in Chargent and also like I felt that for me gender non conforming trans characters were important to the play because I feel like that yeah I feel like those identities are you know are still like too invisible in the world of performance and I think that you know for you know probably for the people in this room you know it wouldn't be that big a deal you know to see like a transgender non conforming person sort of you know emceeing or hosting an event but for a lot of the audience members in the spaces where this show is being done I think it is you know a little bit mind-blowing so that's you know that's always kind of a line that I'm trying to walk where like there's one group of people where it's just like pretty much anything you do they're gonna roll their eyes you know because they've just like seen it all and like everything's cliched everything is you know is boring and then on the other hand unlike on this other side is you know when I did a show at Steppenwolf in Chicago I was told pretty definitively by like a lot of people who were locals that the majority of my audience would not have ever heard the word privilege used in the way that it gets used these days among you know you know among academics and artists they would have heard it in terms of like oh he's very privileged meaning he comes from a lot of money but they would not have ever even thought or heard of the concept of white privilege and I refuse to believe this actually like I was like this is impossible and then everybody you know all the you know everybody went and like they asked their grandparents and their parents and you know they said have you ever heard this term and they were like I don't know what you're talking about so there's this whole audience whose minds are like can be blown by like almost anything you know like if you just introduce the tiniest thing so it's just sort of trying to get this group of people to understand that you know like you know that I'm also sort of kind of interested in you know what happens with this group over here does that make sense? Totally and congratulations on your success with the play by the way and it's about time that we have an Asian-American woman playwright on Broadway so we're all excited to go see that. Well I mean one thing I have to say really quickly about that though is that you know there's this sort of idea that somehow the doors of Broadway have generously swung open to include me you know to include an Asian-American female actually that's not what happened this woman Carol Rothman who's the artistic director of Second Stage which is a non-profit theater she bought like she had the theater by the smallest Broadway house on Broadway so that she could put whoever she wanted there so I have basically been forced upon Broadway by this incredible person and theater. Great, we wouldn't have it any other way. So just sort of on that topic can you tell us more about this production's journey from its beginnings I think it started as a workshop piece at Brown and then it came here to public and there's a whole bunch of places in between in Chicago and now it's going to Broadway. Can you tell us about some of the challenges and maybe what's changed about the piece? Oh naturalism is really really hard to write. It's you know because I always used to think that just naturalistic plays were bad you know because I saw so many of them and now I know it's just because they're so hard to write because you know in a naturalistic play any tiny thing you change is gonna affect like a hundred other things in the play it's not like that in experimental theater at least not for me you know you can change something without everything just collapsing and so it's just very very like slow painstaking methodical work and you have to care a lot about character I don't care at all about character so that is a huge challenge for me with naturalism and my dramaturg Mike would constantly be like why does this character do that like why does this happen I'd be like I don't know I don't care and be like you have to figure it out and I'm like I'm not interested in that like I just want him to do a dance now and he's like no like in naturalism like you have to there has to be something he wants and I like I don't care what he wants I'm like don't why are you talking to me like this you know and so that was basically the process of making straight white man fantastic well on that note we're going to open it up for questions from the audience and when you do ask a question into the microphone can you hold it like really close to your face because this is being live streamed so we care about that but yeah any any questions my name is Heather and I'm here in the program and we've kind of crossed paths a couple times I was at TCG and you left and anyway I saw songs of a dragon here and then I was in Berlin when you were touring it there at HAL and I just wanted you to talk if you would about your international reception oh yeah so the my identity politics shows have been very popular in Europe and at the bar afterwards I always sort of get the same response which is like oh it's so it's so hilarious how you Americans have all these race problems like in Europe like we don't have these problems at all you know like you like they're watching some sort of you know you know some sort of like rare zoo exhibit of race problems you know and you know in the meantime like their whole you know their whole you know Middle Eastern kitchen staff is like so enraged all the time like over you know like we're in the cafeteria and they're like telling us how racist everybody is at this theater and how enraged they are all the time so we actually there are in the shipment at least like there's like an insert for European audiences where like in the stand-up act the stand-up comedian like you know targets something directly at European audience members so I mean that's been sort of the biggest thing that I've noticed is just you know a real delight in sort of engaging with a piece of art that concerns race without having any idea that they also have a relationship with race in their own country. Hi, I'm Nick and I'm also in the program. I hope you'll forgive a semi-theoretical question. I'm struggling between two of them and I guess I just have to pick one. I guess so your work deals a lot with issues that are political. Do you think that there is an imperative for artists to deal with political issues or is that just something that interests you? I think you know I've made plays that deal with identity politics and I've made plays that really don't like we're gonna die is one that doesn't that's sort of purposely as sort of generically human as I can make it. I mean I, so I'm sort of obsessed with this communist rapper named Boots Riley right now who he just had a film at Sundance that's gonna be coming out soon that I'm really excited about and he has a very interesting theory about how all of the communists from the old days when communism was strong in the US and people like we're literally card-carrying members of the Communist Party that in the aftermath of McCarthyism they all fled into academia and the arts and so now we've got all of these universities and all of these nonprofit organizations and we've got all these artists who are just all the radicals are just as radical as can be and yet academia and the arts are not they're not well equipped for actual organizing as you can tell from like any graduate students who attempt to strike anywhere like it's very challenging and so I guess where my thinking is now is that I think that it's great if people can make art that makes people feel very strongly about things that are happening in the world and that can make people angry about injustices that are happening like I think that art is very good at doing that art is good at depressing people and making them mad about things that they should be mad about and that they should be depressed about but when it comes to like actual change I sort of think that having some sort of community organizing practice is sort of like Booth Riley says, like that's the most important thing for an artist, for an academic, for anybody is to have some sort of practice where you are organizing people to basically withhold your labor because that's sort of the only power that we have right now so I guess my answer to that would be I think that it is it is, it's awesome if you're an artist and you can make this work that gets people emotional and riled up about things that we need people to be riled up about but if anything's actually going to happen I think, because like our demonstrations are going unheard, like there's, it's I don't know, I guess I agree with Booth Riley that withholding our labor, figuring out how to tie that to tie the withholding of our own labor not only to the circumstances of our own working conditions but also to causes that we believe in, that that's sort of like our only source of power right now and so I guess that's my thinking. Anyone else? I just wanted to go back to your hi, I'm Margaret and I'm also in the program, hello. I just wanted to go back to your pedagogy statement about babbling and spacing out. Did you mean you're babbling and they're spacing out or they're babbling and you're spacing out or both and how you, and if it's both kind of how you're circulating that or dealing with that?  So it's not really that you're not allowed to babble, it's more just like if you have this idea in your head that you're not supposed to speak without trying to communicate a point. I think that's what really rains in some of the really bad babbling, you know which is when people just range from topic to topic to topic to topic and they just get further and further away from what the point is. And yeah, I think, is that answering your question? Is that answering your question? Like I don't know if that's... Oh, yes, there definitely is. And I think this is exactly the kind of conversation that I have with my students actually, you know which is you bring up some rule and then there's like immediately 20 different reasons why that rule is a problematic rule. And so, yeah, like that's absolutely right. I think that babbling is useful. I think that we do do it, but I do think, I guess what I would say is it's very useful to say in a room there's no babbling because it gets people to be a little bit more aware of what's happening in the room. And is this, this is a graduate level seminar? No. This is under, this is under, because I wish my undergrads would babble more in silence. Are there any other questions? Do we have time for one more, Hansel? Yeah, Keon. Hi, I'm Keon. I'm in this program and Ryan Donovan who's also in our program asked this question in our own life space and I seconded it. So I'm asking this question on behalf of him. So you made most of your work public in your website, the recordings of it. And I want to hear more about how you decided to make that public. Oh, well, I closed down my company, within the past, about a year ago, I made the decision to close down the company. I had been writing, directing and producing my own work for about 13 years. And it was just being an artist and running a business is really difficult. And it just didn't make any sense anymore. And so when I closed down the company, I wanted to make the work accessible to people who would not otherwise be able to see it. And actually you can make so much money off of DVD sales from academic because universities will just pay like $500. Like, oh, that's the price. Like, okay, we have the budget for that. So there actually was a sort of, for a while we were making money off of universities selling the DVDs. But I realized that I wanted, I had this pipe dream of some kid in a small town somewhere stumbling upon it. And getting to see it without having to go through any, without having to pay or anything like that. And so, and actually on the boards who recorded the video of the shipment, they were amazing because they are selling, that I mean, they shot that to sell. So they're selling it on their website. And they let me put it on my website for free even though they're still selling theirs just because they're so awesome and they're so artist friendly and they just got it. And accessibility is actually something that I worry about a lot these days because with my company we would tour around to these very sort of high brow venues like the Pompidou in Paris and you'd get all of these intellectuals and fancy people. And when I was interested in reaching people who weren't just that. I know a lot of us use those resources in our classroom so we're very grateful for that as well. Thank you so much for this public interview and for being here and receiving this award. We are just so happy to have you here. And a round of applause for young Jane Lee. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Q and Kim. I have been teaching speech communication at Barwick College for two years. So I guess I'm supposed to be very good at public speaking by now because I always emphasize how important it is for my students. But just to be very honest with all of you, this is my first speech of commemoration. And I'm so honored and glad that my first testimonial is dedicated to you, young Jane Lee, my longtime artistic and academic inspiration. I first saw young Jane Lee's performance in April of 2013 with Hansel at the intimate theater space at Tucson Art Center in Seoul. We were about this distance back then too, but that time you were on stage wearing your signature navy sweater and yellow pants, performing We Were Gonna Die as a part of theater festival. I was just a 23-year-old MA student in the English program at Career University who was also interested in writing a dissertation about Shakespearean performance.   Now I'm the third year doctor theater student here at the Graduate Center. And again, you have become the first Asian-American woman playwright whose work is to be produced on Broadway soon. After almost three years of theater going experience in New York, I've learned that, how liberating and how rare it is to have strong female presence on stage and also off stage. Like you, like Diana O here today and like all my colleagues who performed or organized this event today. I do not want to label or limit your achievement by calling you simply an Asian or a Korean-American or even a female artist. As you also said in a recent interview with Rich Smith that, and I'm quoting, just the mere fact of my contributing to diversity and Broadway is not enough. But I do appreciate your direct and playful challenge of the stereotypical representations of Asians or Asian-American identities, which can never be separated from gender and power dynamics. In Songs of Dragons, Flying to Heaven, one of the characters named Korean-American says, and I quote, have you ever noticed how most Asian-Americans are slightly brain damaged from having grown up with Asian parents? Asian people from Asia are even more brain damaged, but in a different way because they are the original monkey. As an original monkey by which I mean Asian, Korean, female, non-US and international student, I'm so excited to see how embracing of my own identity would help me through my academic journey.  But I admire you more because your work is not only limited to Asian or Korean perspectives. As you're not afraid of exploring the identities beyond your own and bold enough to play with identity politics. When I applied for the PhD program here, I wrote in my personal statement that, and I read, witnessing Young Jin Lee's theater company's work as a starting point, I will further delve into playwrights and theater practitioners whose work extends beyond the confines of their own ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds. I sometimes feel really pressured to represent Korean theater or Asian theater because that's what people in the U.S. often expect to hear from me. But you give me your courage to keep moving on and do what I love to do beyond the narrow confines of what we call identity. Let me conclude by sharing a moment I encountered in my first year. I was writing a paper on your play, Lear, in Professor Marvin Carson's contextual and intertextual studies in drama class. As some of you might already know, Young Jin Lee's Lear is an absurdist, funny, serious mixture of Shakespeare's King Lear and Sesame Street. And more than halfway through the play, Paul, the actor playing Edgar, removed Edgar's false mustache and beard and speaks directly to the audience, saying, and I quote, what are you doing with your life? Every minute, every second of the day, this is your one chance. What are you doing? What are you doing here? Is this really what you want to be doing with your life? Being here, doing this? If not, then go, run, run away and do something better. Paul asks the light operator if they can bring down the stage light and remains offstage for at least a full minute. When he comes back, he remarks, and I quote, we shut out people's pain when we are not in pain ourselves. This part struck me then and it still resonates me a lot. Not only because it made a striking transition from the Elizabethan tragedy to the stories of our lost pain, remembrance and responsibility in the play, but even more because it questions our own existence, purpose of living, the meaning of life, the meaning of living the life you want to live until we're gonna die. Sometimes, whenever I feel like an imposter in academia, as many of women and people of color often do, I go back to this passage, think and even dream about running away to see if there's something better than being in theater or in classroom. But I find myself always returning to theater, to home like this moment, because that's where we do not shut out other people's pain. And your work has taught me that theater is where we find joy, even in the moment of despair. We can dance crazily like the characters in straight white male, even in the moment of depression and where we can learn that we're gonna die, but keep moving on to live the life fully. Yongjin, you taught me to embrace my own identity, but only to transcend it. Congratulations again on receiving the Booth Award. I can't wait to see you. I can't wait to see where you will be in five years and I hope our path will cross again. Thank you all for listening and I hope you enjoy the moment. Thank you. It is now my great honor to welcome back of our guest of honor, Yongjin Lee, and present her with the plaque as a commemoration of tonight's ceremony. Lastly, we have a special guest performance. Diana Oh and Med Park will be performing A Song from Yongjin's Cabaret piece, We're Gonna Die. I remember so distinctly, like the thing that stays with me forever is how Yongjin Lee danced in it. Like that's the thing that's with me forever. Did that happen for anybody else? Or is it like, no? We were just really distinct like this thing. And then she's like, recover and do like a hair thing. Cool. So, this is Matt Park. Hi Matt. Hi. Hi, I'm Diana. Hi, Ann. Hi. And we are clearly two people and not a full band.  And we decided that, yeah, that, I mean us coming together to put this cover together, we're like, yeah, we're gonna be a punk band. And our punk band is gonna be called Cute. Look at the gift you gave us, Yongjin Lee. Great. Okay, let's do a vocal warm up because we're all missing together by the end of this, right? Okay. You're all sheep. Okay. Oh. How are we with line checking? Line sound.


Hey guys, it's Julia and welcome back to my channel. This is too close Welcome back to my channel. I am sorry about the sliding. I'm going to figure out a better solution But I'm in a new place. So last time I spoke to you guys I think I was in my old house in my third year of uni now I'm going on my fourth year and I'm in a different house But yeah, it's been a long time. I look he ran in my room soon as I was out of my meeting I'm like it's time to film if I don't do it now It's never gonna happen, but I want to talk to you guys about the books. I've read so far this year I'll talk about the first 10. There hasn't been that many. My reading goal has been like My reading has been like the lowest it's ever been But it's also because I I work full-time. I go to school That kind of thing just Recently I got back into audiobooks and that's been helping me out like a ton. Let's start with the first book It's a graphic novel called Oddball by Sarah Anderson She's the same person who wrote writes like Sarah scribbles and like those cute graphic novels with like kind of like very Relatable like quirky little comics like she talks a lot about like procrastination Creativity like growing up in securities. I really like her work and I've enjoyed her graphic novels in the past So this one was no exception. I ended up giving it four to five stars and really enjoyed it Next up here. I have a censor by Jo Jo Ido If you don't know Jo Jo Ido is an amazing horror manga artist and creator writer Stoning this one was very weird This one was like about hair fibers and follow-up kills It was did she wander in or was she drawn in and it was it was odd This one was just odd, but the the naked hardback is good. It has all the hair follow-up kills It was interesting it was very mysterious. I didn't get connected to it Like I did some of his other works in the past. I didn't feel that Connection and I didn't wasn't invested in the story as much as other stuff My neighbors are probably watching me right now. That's embarrassing Probably like, okay, look how pretty this is though That's beautiful. I only ended up giving it three stars because it wasn't my favorite thing ever Oh, wow, you see the light difference when car pass the car passes, but yeah, I Ended up giving that one just a three-star. It was okay. Not my favorite next up here. I have heart stop or volume four Yes, I love this series so much It's basically about two boys falling in love and there's some like struggles throughout the book Like there's mentions of a sexual assault as a trigger warning and stuff But most of these books are pretty wholesome. There is some bullying that happens as well But the relationship itself is very wholesome and I love it so much Alice O'sman just has such a like a beautiful art style too. I love it. The heart stopper show was phenomenal I watched it twice. I would highly recommend watching that on Netflix if you haven't But yeah, these are so good. I like I really want more kind of bothers me though because this one is Like the US or Canadian version I guess usually I get the ones the UK ones So it's short. It's actually shorter, but usually UK books are shorter But this one's shorter than my other graphic novels for this series. They're like this tall. So it just looks weird now, but It's not really the point. Just so cute. I Ended up giving that one up for or a 4.5 out of 5 stars because I loved it. Next up I have another Junjo Ito and this is Remina So this book follows someone who discovers a new planet called Remina So they they named it after their daughter. So because he named this new planet after her She's just automatically famous like she's She said like everyone's talking about her. This was also extremely Extremely weird. Like it's a very cool book and stuff The art style was really cool. It was really interesting, but I didn't fall in love with this one Unfortunately, it was still good though. There's also just a point where like a planet was licking another planet or something And it was it's been a little while since I've read this But a planet was like licking and turning the orbit and it was what? I ended up giving this one 3 stars as well. Sensor and this one were like the same kind of book for me Like they were good. They're interesting, but kind of weird, but like wasn't What I wanted I wasn't too engaged. So they just were decent not phenomenal. Next up here I have Aristotle and Dante discovers the waters of the world. This is the sequel to Aristotle and Dante discovers the secrets of the Universe. We finally got a sequel It's finally got a sequel. This is what the other book looks like Basically that book is about two boys kind of falling in love kind of forming a relationship And this one follows them more when they're together. That's kind of all I'll say for synopsis wise They're both navigating the end of high school. So it's kind of about that and how they're going to be transitioning to like University college that kind of stuff. I didn't think this was good as as good as book one I don't think anything will top Aristotle and Dante like the original one I wonder if I reread that if I would feel the same, but I loved the first book like five out of five one of my Favorite books ever. This one I ended up giving three stars. It was interesting I liked following the characters and like I missed them But like especially after reading heartstopper, I think heartstopper just has a way better Like love story than this like I would rather read heartstopper than read more about Aristotle and Dante in this book Yeah, but it was still it was still good. It just wasn't amazing Uh, this does have some sort of ordinance for like homophobia. There's a lot of grief in it and that kind of thing Next up here. I read a Stephen King book. Uh, it's actually a short story. It's called Finn Basically, it's set in Ireland and this young boy gets kidnapped due to misunderstanding. So that's what the whole little story is about It was interesting. I didn't think it was that great. I wasn't a huge fan of it. Uh I don't know the ending wasn't great It just it just wasn't my favorite king short story like at all I don't know. I think it could have been Shit, it's getting dark now Yeah, sorry the lighting the lighting's changed The lighting's changed a little we're getting we're getting dark in the evening But yeah, Finn wasn't my favorite was my favorite king story It was exclusive to scred so I listened to it on you a book But it was okay. I gave it three stars next I read a book that I thought I would really like and I was kind of Confused that I didn't enjoy it much like I might try reading it physically. I don't know. Maybe I just hated the audio book. I I don't know but a stardust by Neil Gaiman Basically, the main character tries to win over this girl He likes by getting her a shooting star like just getting it out of the sky because you know normal It's kind of like fairy tale like the writing styles great Neil Gaiman is like a phenomenal writer I I always enjoy his writing style and some of his books are my favorite like the graveyard books I think is really good core lines really good the ocean at the end of the lane is really interesting I read that one a long time ago But I hated the character Tristan like I thought he was just an asshole Misogynist and like I pretty sure this is like a middle grade book too And I'm pretty sure stardust is like in between I thought that was middle. I thought stardust was middle grade, but maybe it's adult Maybe I need to double check that but I I did not enjoy that. So they spoke very much I thought the story was kind of weird. I thought the main character was like I know some characters are meant to be annoying but this dude Not it. He wasn't it. So I ended up giving this book a 2.5 out of 5 stars Next time I read Burndown Rides Up. So this is actually a newer book I read this because of Jesse from Botanism books They were doing like a book club for it and stuff and I wanted to read it because I heard Jesse talk about it I listened to an audiobook. It's been compared to like stranger things and something else We follow our main character Raquel. She's a personal color. She falls for a girl So there's some nice representation there But this whole thing revolves around this game called the echo game So there's many like disappearances happening. So people that Go through this echo game usually don't make it and it's a big mystery So that's what the story kind of follows is Raquel's mom becomes very very very sick And the only way that she can kind of help is by exploring this mystery and trying to find a solution for her mother So that's what the story kind of revolves around. It's dark at times. Like there's nightmares There's some really good descriptions in there that I enjoyed It was a New York City setting and you could just feel the pressure the whole time because like the mother was dying throughout the book So the main character really had to just figure shit out fast and It was just a big mystery, but I really enjoyed it. It was young adult. I didn't say that yet It was good. I can see the stranger thing kind of comparisons in a sense I ended up giving this one 3.5 out of 5 stars. It was an enjoyable book Um, I'm glad I read it and I listened to it on audiobook But yeah, I ended up giving this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. I thought it was pretty good Like I thought that's pretty good. I enjoyed my time reading it I would recommend it if you're interested in picking it up two more Next up here, I have Boy Meets Boy. I wanted to read this. This is by David Levithan. I wanted to read this because It's a very like older classic like classic YA Gay book. So I was like sure I'll read it. It's about a boy meeting another boy. There's lots of representation in this.  The author is gay themselves So it's own voices. There is some like homophobic slurs in here. So be aware of that It took place in new york. So again, I was back in new york. I was happy. I like these new york settings I thought it was actually really excellent and raw and just a really good Like really good representation of what high school can kind of be like like it felt like these were real people to me When I was reading it, like it felt really real to me I just thought all the interactions in high school were realistic as well And yeah, it was excellent for how short this was this book is really short I listened to it very fast on audiobook and it was really short But it was actually very very good for how short it was. I think it's actually a pretty good book I'd like to own it physically. Next I read a really good book. Really good book. I didn't expect it It's a very by Colleen Hoover I did not expect to like this as much as I did, but I flew through this one I really enjoyed it. Basically, it's about this woman named Lowen who's a writer She's kind of like doing meh in her career, but she gets an interesting offer for this famous writer that's currently like dying in a coma kind of thing and Her husband approaches and says like my wife is a really big fan Is like a really big fan of your writing. Can you take over her series? She gets offered a ton of money for this. So she's very intrigued and it's She kind of goes over to their house to see her office and she starts covering things But this is like a huge mystery So interesting like I was I couldn't stop reading this trainwreck just It's so dark and there was just so many things There's so many things and Lowen it starts reading like the wife's manuscripts And goes through like a bunch of stuff her stuff and she realizes how really like disturbed she really is And I just was so enthralled and interested and It was just like you couldn't stop reading it But yeah, I thought it was captivating and the ending kind of leaves you room to kind of decide what you really believe So I'm not going to say much But yeah, if you've read this book and you want to talk about it, please message me I want to talk about this with somebody. Um, I talked a bit about it with a few of my friends But I really want to talk about this. I really enjoyed this. I gave it four, uh four stars originally But I think I might boost that to a 4.5 because I had a really Good time reading this and I haven't read something like this before Uh more like I really hated when the main character was reading the manuscript like I really hated this person Like I really hated them. Yeah, it just made me feel a lot of things. That's all so yeah, those were the 10 books I read recently. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I'm so sorry. I know I've been uploaded in a really long time But I still hope you're Around or interested in more content Please let me know this video like if you enjoyed it mean a lot to me And I right now we're doing a book club in my discord server if you want to join in with that We're gonna be reading full dark new stars Starting mid july so probably around the time this video goes up till For a month so mid august, but feel free to start early and late. I don't care. Um You do you but we're gonna be listening or listening. I'm gonna be listening to it on audiobook while I'm working But we're gonna be reading full dark no stars. It's a short story collection by king So if you want to join us, I'll have the discord link down below You just have to react to the proper role But yeah, I'd love to have you guys in my discord server If any of you want to chat more talk about things Whatever I've been loving twitch if you've been wondering where I am. I have been more on twitch I'm posting any content. It's been on twitch and tiktok and it's been gaming content kind of thing But if you guys are interested in the discord server, we do have book channels talk about book things Which I'd love to talk to more of you guys And I can't wait to reply to the comments Because I miss you But yeah, I'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you so much for watching And I hope you have a great day. Bye


All right, you guys, welcome back. I'm going to keep this real simple, your weekend reading Friday, November 4th through November 6th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you're new to my channel, do click, like, share, and subscribe. If you want to get a personal reading, there's a link in the description box below. So welcome everybody. Hi, everyone in the chat. I hope you guys are welcome fills. Yeah, so this is a Virgo channel. Virgo Sun, Moon, Rising, or Venus. So as always, some of the messages may or may not resonate take or fix, leave the rest, and let's get into this. So the first card popping out here, a deeply loving male. All right, so I got some falling cards here. Deeply loving male or female on Friday, showing up. Luck is on your side. Something's in your favor. Cancer Scorpio Pisces. This is the Wheel of Fortune. So something is turning around. Test of faith and boundaries in the reverse. Negative thinking and emotional wish, not being granted. Okay, so, hmm, okay. So you've got somebody here, I feel like, who is going to try and test you over this weekend, and I feel like you're going to say no. This person might be trying to manipulate or trying to get their needs met over the weekend. And I feel like you're probably going to say no or things are going to turn around. I don't know. I feel like this person is hoping they're going to get lucky with you. Okay, doesn't have to be a water sign. It could be a reason something comes up that something can't happen, but let me let me stay here. Hold on a second. Now, okay, somebody's like feeling like has has faith because something's definitely coming out of isolation though, and they have faith that they'll be able to connect with you. Okay, but they're very, very greedy, and they're looking for a quick result here. Okay, this negative thinking makes me feel like this person. Also, like, it's like they have faith, but they don't they're not so sure that they have a chance or that there's going to be some type of comeback around situation with you. But I do feel like somebody here on the weekend, I don't know if there's someone you're connected to or reconnecting to, but it feels like this person thinks that they have a shot with you. Okay, so you might get a call or you might get some kind of message from someone. You know, I feel like they're going to try and test you to see if there's like an opening to get in to get in that door. Maybe you said no to someone, and they're going to try again. It's going to feel like it's going on here. But they're not fully, it's so it's kind of like this person knows that you aren't going to say yes. You might have already told them no to something, but they're just going to keep trying. I don't know if that's connected to yesterday's reading as well, but it feels like on Friday, you're going to be hearing from someone and they're going to try to shoot their shot with you on Friday. So expect some kind of message or phone call from someone. Now this deeply loving male, which comes forward as male or female energy, deeply loving coming in the form of water sign. So this person comes in as very apathetic, tolerant, nurturing, healing supportive. So they might come in with that energy. I don't know if it's manipulative, but I feel like they might try to just be very supportive and I'm just hearing like, I don't know, lull you to sleep or try to come in with sweetness, kindness, that kind of thing. So Virgo, keep your ears and eyes peeled for Friday. There's some type of thing that's going to turn around here. Be ready for this call or this message or this person coming in trying to, I mean, I don't know how is this person like, what's the deal with this person? Hold on a minute.  Let me see if I can get another message out. What's what's going on with this person? Oh, this person is not okay, hitting rock bottom in the reverse. This person is not willing to give up. That's really what I feel like is going on here. Whoever they are, they're just going to keep trying. They keep trying for a new start, try to recover what was lost here, hoping you'll forgive them for something. Yeah, I feel like you're going to hear from this person. They're just not going to quit. Okay, yeah, keep waiting for an answer from you. Even if you gave them the answer, I guess to them, they're like, No, that's not the answer. I'm waiting for a yes. You know, Virgo, I feel like if this person you're going to hear from them and they're going to be sitting by the phone or checking their texts, checking to see if you call checking the voicemail. Some of you have this person blocked, they may not know it. And they're not going to quit. So you're going to hear from someone and they're going to be waiting to hear from you. They're not hitting rock bottom. They're not letting go of something here. You know, they want to connect with you. They believe in a lot of ways with the negative thinking that that's not going to happen, or that you don't want them or something, they're not going to get their needs met. But they're going to try. Okay, I feel like this person, they're very greedy. And they're looking for that quick. They're looking for you to respond quickly to answer them. You know, to say yes. Friday looks like something. Friday looks like something. Alright, let's take a look at Saturday. Okay, the struggle is over in the reverse. So Saturday is an energy of something. There's it. There's a break. I feel like for some of you, this is finally saying no freedom. Okay, so Saturday is like you not having to deal with something. Okay, let's see what else is going on here for Saturday, Saturday, November 5. Okay, learning a new skill, standing your ground, material wish not being granted. Oh, but a lack of fear of anxiety. So that's good. Alright, um, so I feel like Saturday, it's, I mean, I, I feel like Saturday, you're, you're kind of in this position here where you're taking some kind of a break. Okay, you're learning something new.  You may not be getting some type of material thing. And I feel like that's taking the pressure off is going to take the pressure off you and you're going to try something else on Saturday. Okay, because I feel like a lot of you, it's kind of like waiting to get answers about like, did you hit the lottery? Are you getting that pay raised? Is that job coming through Saturday? I don't feel like you're going to get any answer about anything. I feel like you're just laying it to rest, whatever this is. This learning a new skill type of energy is kind of like, alright, maybe you got to do something else.  You're not going to get that thing. So I feel like this is plan B for you. I feel like you're in like, okay, I don't know if that's going to work out. So I'm going to devise plan B to see and that that takes the pressure off because I feel like a lot of you are kind of focused on this one thing, one thing and you're not hearing something else. And then if that doesn't work out, like you've got nothing, I feel like a lot of you I'm not exactly sure what this pertains to. But a lot of you are I think you're going to sit down on Saturday and devise a plan B. Let me see what else. Okay, all right, spending time with good friends committed love relationship. Wow. Alright, so as far as love goes, for some of you, this could be kind of like, you know, if it's connected to Friday, I feel like a lot of you are like, telling somebody no, that's going to reach out to you on Friday. And just kind of be like, Oh, you know what, I'm taking a break from this. It's been time with my friends. You're looking for committed love relationship, but not with just anyone. And some of you might have had your hopes that somebody was going to come into your life. And somebody shows up and that's not the one that you want showing up. Or you just put your phone on do not disturb and go spend time with your friends on Saturday doing something you might connect with someone where there could be also somebody in your friend group that is looking for committed love relationship and there might be some kind of an attraction that happens also among your among your close and good friends. Okay, so that kind of energy is like two different messages. But I feel like if you're hoping for like one particular person and this person's coming in who's chasing you, but it's not hasn't doesn't have any follow through. I feel like you're going to like on Saturday, you're not going to answer this person. And I feel like on Saturday, you're just going to ignore and spend time with your friends and do something else that you're doing for yourself. Like I said, devising a plan B or doing something else for yourself, distract or go out with your friends and you might actually come across somebody else you're looking you're still in a position of wanting to have someone who's right for you, not just someone who, you know, might be emotionally manipulative. Okay, so yeah, Saturday, I just see like putting your phone taking your phone off the hook and go and spend the time with friends and family and other people and lessening your fears and nearing anxieties. Okay, because I don't know. I just feel like there's someone on Friday that's trying to hook up and then I want anything else. They're just trying to get that hook up. Okay. So what do you have for Sunday? Okay, well, basically the sun's in the reverse on Sunday a little bit. So maybe it's going to rain on Sunday where you are. All right, even the sun in a reading, whether it's reverse or upright is still a good card. It's just kind of like equivalent to Dawn and dusk. Okay, maybe somebody's name is Dawn. So the sun in reverse is kind of like, it's not horrific. You know, it's not like, it's not horrific. It's just an energy of like, delay. Okay, or waiting or just like a temporary, maybe depression for some or just being very melancholy, delayed gratification. Okay, a lustful fiery spirit. Oh my goodness. You've got some kind of player hovering around you over the weekend. A lustful fiery spirit in reverse. So that's the night of wands in the reverse.  Somebody spying on you. Okay, wow, you find out.  Okay, like the truth comes out, maybe you catch them. I feel like either you catch them, or somebody else catches them. What is this financial decision is in the middle? Let me see here. Okay, no contact. Some of you find out somebody gets into like your bank account. I don't know if you had a connection with this lust, this night of wands energy, or someone that you might have a connection with on Sunday. There's some kind of connection with your money to this person.  They're looking at your money, looking how you spend in your money. That night of wands in the reverse is very chaotic. That person, not violent, but they're very impulsive. But you I feel like with that sun in reverse, that that might be a little bit delayed. So I feel like you're really not going to find this out until late Sunday evening. Somehow you come across it, or you see some strange logins into it could be social media account, it could be somebody's looking at you know, your money, I don't know if there's money owed, it's strange, but you're not in contact with this person. Okay. Like, I don't look Saturday looks great. Saturday is like, no, put my phone down and going out and having a good time relaxing with friends, family, meeting other people, being open to somebody who could be in your life. Okay, highly logical mail in the reverse. Oh my gosh. Hold on a second. So, okay, this is a king of sorts in the reverse male or female energy.  This person, not so much violent, but very cold, dishonest, this person, very unkind. I don't know if this person is like, kind of put on a front, but who they are underneath, I just feel like you see some truths, you get some clarity on Sunday about someone who you thought that they were before is really not who they are. They're kind of like they've been lying and you find out some truth about somebody could be a friend or a family member. The truth gets revealed.  Sunday night comes like delayed, that could be the delay, like it's not direct, it's indirect.  Let me get a couple of island time cards. Okay, healing heart and mirror. Healing heart, healing from heartbreak, freedom from toxic relationship or addiction, and then mirroring each other, self image relationships reflect our wounds, introspection. Okay. So I definitely feel like you're spending a little bit of time over the weekend also, like you're get you're trying to get away from some kind of toxic situation, relationship or addiction, taking a look at yourself, your self image, doing a lot of introspection as well. Healthy choices. Yeah, making healthy choices in love and life, self love, self care, being happier. I don't know, you get someone who's just kind of like coming in on Friday, and then you're just your so the overall message I'm getting for the entire weekend is Friday starts off with someone is trying to connect with you and they are really like trying to, to connect in some way, get a response from you. Saturday, I just kind of feel like you're like, nope, you're not talking to somebody, you're not communicating, you're staying away. And then Sunday, there's backlash, like a little bit of backlash because of that. Okay, Sunday is like someone is not taking they want to know that I don't know if somebody is very jealous or obsessive or possessive energy, breaking into your stuff to see what you're doing who you're spending money on what you're like who you're talking to and I feel like some of you may not realize until Sunday, the true colors of someone here, true colors. So we have air, we have fire and water. Okay, let's see what else drama. Okay, someone you might have thought was your soulmate. Soul contract turns to no contact. Okay, or this is someone you're not in contact with. Like I said earlier on Friday, maybe you blocked somebody. They don't know they're blocked. And then you find out they're trying to like get get unblocked somehow. Oh my goodness. So much drama. Okay, there's the acts break up separation stopping the pattern silent treatment abandonment. Yeah, I feel like you're going to put the full kibosh and acts a situation 100% on Sundays. I call my gosh. Now I see. Now I see. There's just a very possessive energy. Let's see what your love messages for you are. Okay, release radical acceptance surrender can help you let go. So Sunday is like, okay, Sunday, your energy is like, you see what's going on here now. And you're like fully releasing, like changing all your passwords, doing everything you need to do, because it just comes forward on Sunday.  And you make some kind of radical move to you have to block even further. I feel like, what the heck? Why are you so much drama in your life? Apology.  Is it true? I don't know. Is it real? I don't know. Maybe. But I tell you what, if somebody apologizes and you don't accept their apology, and then they act like that, I wouldn't say that's true. Remember I was saying in the beginning, somebody's going to come in with real kind sweetness, you know, thinking that they're going to be able, like part of them knows that you're not going to accept it, but they still think that they have a shot. Okay, it is safe to trust in this situation. You can trust that somebody's like, not who they say they are, regret someone feels remorse for the way they treated you. Okay, marriage is a situation to relationship moving towards the sacred union. Maybe they think that I don't think you think that maybe there'd be somebody else knew you might meet and that can move towards the sacred union. But I don't know about whoever this person is twin flame. Go figure twin flame marriage, regret, apology, like Virgo.  Is it your twin flame? In separation or someone who's gonna give you a hard time over the weekend, the struggle, the twin flame struggle, lessons always being learned in those connections. Let me see. I just feel like somebody's spying on you online. So listen, you can tell me that you're blocked or you're not online. Somebody's looking anyway, they're searching, they're gonna find stuff out on you.  Well, and it's past and it takes a long time for that stuff to like, fizzle out. So even if you just you've deleted stuff or whatever, you still have a footprint somewhere on the web. And they're looking for anything they could get. You can block somebody all you want. They make fake accounts. They try to they call from fake phone numbers. Like, there's no way around that. You're just gonna have to just, you know, but if somebody's getting into your bank account and stuff like that, you've got to change passwords. Okay, different pages, even this person do not share the same vision. I feel like that's what's going on here. Somebody's just obsessed with you abundance. You've done the work abundance flows to you now. Keep it going. Keep it moving Virgo. Keep doing what you need to do. Healing old moons childhood issues need for visiting. So you keep on healing Virgo. You know what you guys, I believe coming up, there's going to be another lunar eclipse. I'm going to do a lunar eclipse reading. We also have daylight savings on November 6th on Sunday. That could be something to do with the delay as well. Alright, let me see these Chinese signs. Okay, year of the dragon. Year of the goat that was sitting upright. Year of the horse. Excuse me year of the snake. Year of the pig. Year of the monkey. You're the dragon again. Year of the goat again. Did I say rabbit? There's year of the rabbit. One more year of the ox. Let me get two more. I said pig. horse. That's eight. All right, year of the rooster and the tiger. So again, that could be you. That could be this person. It could be none of you take over the grain of salt. Alright, let me see. I just want to get a moon message for you guys and then I'm going to cut it short and hopefully the Phillies win game five tonight. I'm so hopeful. I know some of you might be Astros fans and all respect to you guys. Well played. You deserve a win as well, but Phillies deserve it first. Alright, let me see. Oh, and then we have the World Cup. That game's coming up. Alright, let's see. What is Virgo's moon message for the weekend? Virgo's overall moon message for the weekend. Alright, step out of your comfort zone, Virgo. Yeah, you got to do something radical, something like completely out of your comfort zone, something that you don't normally do over the weekend. Don't stay tethered and tied to a narrative or a certain way of doing things or seeing things or just believing something something's going to come to light here and things are going to be revealed, especially at the end of the weekend, where you're going to know like you got to do something radical now because of some situation here. It's not really a warning. I feel like a lot of you are like, Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. I just feel like this is kind of something comes to light. Some of you are just not trying to deal with something and you're just trying to be free and keep yourself in like good positive vibes and you are but I also feel like it might put a damper on things when you feel like, Oh, you got to deal with something again. Okay, so go leave your your reading there. I hope that was helpful, a little bit informative. Hopefully, none of this comes true for you guys and you just have a marvelous weekend and you just have a lot of fun and you relax as well. But for those of you where you're like, Oh, damn, take care of business, do what you got to do. Alright, you guys, I will see you all on Sunday and be back here with your singles reading. I love you guys. Have a great weekend. Believe there's something that'll give you relief. There's something that'll have what you need. What you need. We're broken. It's tragic. We're not all elastic. But maybe there's magic.


Good indication. Right. Good. Yeah. Hey, John, I got a question for you. Yeah. Of course, reliving bad memories, your first hitter you faced? Ricky Weeks. Ricky Weeks. Yeah, I don't like to live that memory, but I'll tell you what, that's a bad memory, and it's like a welcome to the big leagues kid moment. Well, you recovered on your second start. Well, thank you. Yeah. I was only mad at you for one game. Thank you. You probably mad at me for half of my games then. Oh, good. Thank you. I put you in rotation. All right. Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, we should all be doing pretty good, all healthy, and you know, us pitchers will hold the fort down for you. Let's go south. What are we going and how is he doing? As far as I know, he's recovering well, and he should be ready for spring training. Good. Good. Yeah, we'll be tough. Yeah, it'll be exciting to watch.