Embodying a Multidisciplinary Approach with R. Réal Vargas Alanis

Réal Vargas Alanis: I felt very gatekept by folks from my community, and it was very disheartening because I’m like, “Whoa.” At least I’m under the—I don’t want to say the impression—but my values and my ethics are: how do I uplift the folks around me, specifically people who come from my demographic, even if they might have not a lot of experience? But we all deserve a chance to try something and “fail.” We all need to be able to have that opportunity. And so it was just disheartening.

Yura Sapi: You’re listening to Building Our Own Tables, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Yura Sapi, founder of multiple organizations, including LiberArte, a nonprofit nurturing artists for liberated futures; Protectores de La Tierra, a farm and food sovereignty initiative based out of Colombia; Balistikal, an LGBTQ+ healing and art space for communities in Latin America. And through all my programs, workshops, coaching, and this podcast, I’ve helped countless founders and leaders unleash their brilliance and build thriving movements. In this podcast, we share visionary solutions, stories, and snapshots to support you as a leader on your own journey of creation and transformation.

This fifth season is especially meaningful. I’m recording while eight months pregnant, and this experience of bringing a new life into the world has brought a deeper opportunity for lessons in leadership, in legacy, and in creation, all of which I’m sharing in this season alongside the powerful voices you’ll hear from. You’ll hear extraordinary founders building their own tables for their communities, their lineages, and for the planet in this evolutionary time. You are here for a reason, and I’m honored to be on this journey with you. So, stay tuned and enjoy.

Welcome to the Building Our Own Tables podcast, pulling up a seat to our liberation. Today I’m joined by R. Réal Vargas Alanis of In The Margin. Welcome. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Réal: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Yura: Yes. So you are a two-spirit, interdisciplinary artist from Mexico and California, Indigequeer, intersectional artist with talents including directing, playwriting, acting, dramaturgy, fight choreography, and producing. And you’ve been renowned for your dedication to social justice in this theatre and arts world, specializing in developing new work that amplifies marginalized stories and artists, most of all, as we’re chatting today, as the co-founder of arts and advocacy organization, In The Margin.

And with In The Margin, you’re leading an ensemble of interdisciplinary and intersectional queer and trans BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of color] artists, uplifting historically marginalized voices through this creative expression, community programming, and transformative storytelling. Really exciting.

Would love to start off and have you share with us a little bit more about In The Margin. What are the programs that you’re working on? What are you doing? I know there’s theatre performances and international residency. Tell us more.

Réal: So In The Margin, or ITM, we started back as an unofficial group back in 2014, 2015, and it started with us creating new works through devising or our group providing opportunities to playwrights and just developing new works as we found ourselves not really represented in the works that we were reading in university.

In The Margin was created by a group of university students, and it was my cohort. There was eight of us, and we all happened to be QTBIPOC, I don’t want to say by mistake, I want to say maybe by chance or by the beauty of life and the way it does that. And a lot of us were, in that moment, in the closet, and we were coming out to one another, and we were discovering life with one another while also in perhaps not the most nurturing environment in our university.

And we really held onto each other for support and to be able to get through some of the challenges that we had in our university and our training. And via that, we really leaned into training in different sectors and then coming back to teach each other and sharing our resources and sharing our knowledge. That really became the foundation and the morals and ethics and the values of ITM, which is resource sharing, being able to go out and either train, so we can just continue to share and create an army of QTBIPOC, intersectional, interdisciplinary artists that can really just go out into the field in the industry in any capacity and with high quality art, with really shaped tools.

So where they’re not just filling in roles because they need to or have to, but going towards the roles that they want to, that might not be in the specific track that they might have undertaken. So for example, let’s say that someone is a costume designer and that was the track that they undertook, but they’re also interested in dramaturgy and they’re also interested in producing. ITM is very much the sorts of, “Hey, we’re producing this project, I know that you’re interested in producing. Would you like to come aboard as a line producer or an assistant producer?” And then you’re paired up with an executive producer who essentially teaches you how to be a producer. And we have crafted multiple producers through that bridge or training system, in a sense, or mentoring system.

And the way that we expanded was back in 2019, several of us had gone out and were working professionally in different administration capacities and different artistic capacities in larger organizations. And Fran Astorga, one of the other co-founders, approached me and stated, “Hey, I want us to make In The Margin something official.” They were pursuing their MBA, and so they were learning a lot about nonprofits, the 501(c)(3) sector, and said, “I really think that we can create this into something really great.” And we were on a drive to see Robin in concert in Oakland, and I had a contract with OSF, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and it started the day after. So I needed to go to the concert—not needed to, but I wanted to—go to this concert and then immediately afterwards drive back, grab a bag and take off to the airport so that I can take off to Oregon.

And on the drive, it was this two-hour long drive there and two-hour drive back, it was just business planning and scheming and dreaming, I should say, just dreaming big. And we started to think about who in our networks would we like to approach to work with us and who do we think would like to work with us. Because also it came with a little shyness of approaching certain people and being like, “Oh, I think your art is just so high caliber, and I respect you so much, admire you so much. It’s almost intimidating for me to ask if you would like to work with us.”

And one of the things that Fran would always say was, “Hey, let’s not sell each other short. There are people who do want to work with us. All we have to do is just ask. Just ask. And let’s just pursue the things that we want to and just ask. And if people want to jump on board, they will.” And we quickly learned that there are a lot of people out there who shared our values. And as I continued to work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I met a lot of folks. This was in my early twenties, and I met a lot of folks around my age range/emerging artists that I recognized their talent and was like, “I know y’all are about to be some of the next big names. I see it. The talent is just gushing out of you.”

And I essentially started recruiting, but it started with befriending people and just getting to know their work and what are their goals, what are the things that they want to accomplish. And then to be able to come together and say, “These are the goals that people have and how can we work together to accomplish them?” And in 2020, we became an official nonprofit, and it was a very interesting time since we hit COVID. But the interesting thing is that in 2020, there was that racial reckoning that occurred, and it really opened a lot of doors for us to have a platform to speak on the issues that we’ve been navigating for the last five years, and especially having navigating them without being an official nonprofit or an official entity came with a lot of barriers of people not taking us seriously.

We were already being discounted because we’re these Brown people—Brown, Black, queer people. But then being an unofficial entity, it just provided a lot more challenges. So we went from being fiscally sponsored to being a nonprofit fairly quickly, in regards to that sector transition, that even then it still came with challenges because people were seeing us as a brand-new nonprofit.

So they’re like, “Oh, you’re a young company,” and they’re not taking into account the years prior of all of the programming that we’ve had, the projects that we produced, the artists that we amplified. And the feedback we would receive was, “All of you are very impressive individually, but as an entity collectively, you’re too young.” And so even then it was like, “Oh, my God. Okay.”

How do I uplift the folks around me, specifically people who come from my demographic, even if they might have not a lot of experience? But we all deserve a chance to try something and “fail”. We all need to be able to have that opportunity.

Yura: And that was from funders or potential partner organizations?

Réal: This was from potential partnering organizations. So there is this network of development of works that were courting us, and throughout the process we were really analyzed deeply under a microscope of all of our development processes, administratively. Not about our arts, not our arts. But administratively. How did our finances work? How was our core leadership work? How was the shared leadership model? And because it was an administration level or something organizational that they did not understand, it was this thing that they just couldn’t comprehend. It was like cognitive dissonance. And so we have people who work for Warner Brothers, we have people who work in our ensemble, and we have people who work for Disney, we have people who work at OSF, on Broadway. And so then the feedback we receive is, “Individually, you’re impressive, but as an entity...” It’s interesting because a lot of our administrators also work in different large institutions as administrators as well.

Yura: And that was six years ago or five?

Réal: Yeah, about five years.

Yura: How do you feel on that now?

Réal: It was something that was eye-opening because there was some feedback/things that we heard that came from folks that were also part of our ethnic demographic, and so it really showcased, “Oh, wow, not everyone who comes from our background is actually set out to elevate one another.” And it was one of the major feelings of gatekeeping. I felt very gate-kept by folks from my community, and it was very disheartening because I’m like, “Whoa.” At least I’m under the—I don’t want to say the impression—but my values and my ethics are: How do I uplift the folks around me, specifically people who come from my demographic, even if they might have not a lot of experience? But we all deserve a chance to try something and “fail.” We all need to be able to have that opportunity. And so it was just disheartening to be like, “Oh, there’s someone who has a position of power that’s Latina or Latino and he’s really perpetuating a lot of barriers, or these people are perpetuating a lot of barriers for folks who’ve worked with you directly.”

Yura: But you persisted. Where are you at now?

Réal: Here’s the thing, even with some of those, quote-unquote, barriers or challenges with the equal people who didn’t want to work with us, of course there were the people who really wanted to work with us. So there were people who, towards the beginning of our freshly established nonprofit, we were brought on a lot as consultants for EDIA [Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] or MEDIA, as we would call it, or still do, Multicultural Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.

We think multiculturalism is a big component and factor within our way of navigating within our organizations and life. And so we were brought in a lot to just have discussions. And we had a lot of curriculum to teach organizations what does it look like to be either trauma-informed and/or really honing into your MEDIA values within your entire organization that then seeps through other sectors of production and whatnot.

Via that we also produced a lot of new works festivals. So back in 2021, we produced the New American Theatre Festival in combination with B Street Theatre and partially funded by the National New Play Network and also supported by twenty-two different organizations that we were able to do just some partnership billing that provided a lot of in-kind support and resources.

And this is also the thing, is that we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the works that we do if it weren’t for our community partners. We have a lot of other nonprofits and theatres and arts organizations that really just show up and provide what they can. It might not be monetary, but if they have space, they can provide some space. We’ve had people provide food, and that’s really important to keep people fed and whatnot. The New American Theatre Festival, we commissioned twelve playwrights, and it was ten new works. We hired over one hundred and something artists during the quarantine, which was a very ambitious and hard thing. But it was great where we did this multimedia sector where we really honed in on the hybrid presentation model of streaming online but also being in-person and working with online forums.

We produced Braided in 2022 as a co-production with Theatre of Yugen and CalShakes, which is now closed unfortunately, but also in the spirit of collaborating and uplifting one another and surviving during this time period of uncertainty in our industry. We just did an international residency last year called ITMéxico, or In The México where we commissioned seven artists to come in residency for ten days in my hometown of Sahuayo, Michoacán, just to create in liberty. I just wanted people to be inspired. And there’s a lot of things in the US right now where we can’t even wear our feathers because we can get arrested.

And so I wanted people to just be able to breathe and dance and see culture and create and be inspired. And this September, September 18, we’re going to hold a series of stage readings that are going to feature some of that work that was commissioned in San Rafael in combination with Alternative Theatre Ensemble via their creative youth development program, where we are hiring emerging artists from the ages of eighteen to twenty-four, and pairing them with mentor artists that can really bridge them into the professional industry.

We do a lot of training programs, and a lot of, “How do we get people into the industry?” Whether that is age-wise, and not just youth, but also elders. And we also think about intergenerational work. I’ve been able to get elders commissioned. I got an elder, a Purépecha elder, I got them a legacy award, a culture bearer award, was able to assist in grant writing and things like that. A lot of my views or values comes from uplifting and resource sharing because we all bring something.

What does it look like to really combat something that is affecting us nationwide in the US, which is a lot of our works being banned or destroyed, omitted, erased? What does it look like for us to be able to lean against that, to really provide, and essentially fight back?

Yura: I love that. Yeah. I think also I’m noticing what you’re sharing about that initial challenge, the throughline coming in, the fear of putting yourself out there of asking for support or saying, “Will people like this? Will people be aligned?” Some people saying yes. And then also the truth of some people may say no. But this reminds me of a lesson one of my mentors taught me on the power of being a magnet, where the stronger you repel, the stronger you attract; the stronger you attract, the stronger you repel.

And actually it is better to really dive in, focus on what it is that you are, what it is that you want, what are your values? What are you looking to do? Who are you? And attract in that way much more deeply those who are aligned. And then also much more deeply repel those who aren’t aligned. But the interesting part of it is that actually the stronger that you attract, the stronger that you put out what you are, the stronger you’ll repel, and that it will actually be almost like those who are not aligned aren’t even going to be close to you anymore. So you don’t even engage with them because they’re so far away, not interested in what you’re doing. So it’s actually the opposite.

If anyone out there is in this fear mindset of, “Oh, if I start something, will people like it? Will people be aligned? Will it be too weird? Will it be too out there? Is it too different?” But actually, the difference is the superpower of it and that the deeper you go into what makes it unique, what makes it revolutionary or transformative is actually what is going to bring people who are really passionate about it closer.

Réal: That definitely makes sense. Absolutely. There’s a friend of mine, she’s a playwright, Lee Cataluna, and she always says, “Rejection is protection.” And yeah, very true. Not everyone can eat the same candy. Not everyone likes the same candy. And that’s okay, right? I love chocolate. Not everyone likes chocolate.

But you’re correct and your mentor’s correct. The people that are going to align with you are the ones who are really going to be attracted and want to work with you. They’re the ones who are going to say, “Let’s scheme together and let’s figure out how we can take over the world.”

Yura: You’re scheming and dreaming.

Réal: Exactly, the big scheming and dreaming. That’s what it’s about. That’s what it’s about, and being able to uplift each other to be able to implement and execute that scheme and that dream.

Yura: What would you say liberation looks like or feels like for you in this moment?

Réal: I think liberation in this moment, artistically, I think it’s the freedom to create. That’s one of the reasons why I was inspired to craft this residency. It was a pilot residency. I hope it can continue, but I was inspired by other residencies, which is you are provided funds, space, time, and a lot of support because I do a lot of producing. I’m also a producer and I do a lot of self-producing and a lot of producing to amplify, but after a while, it can be very exhausting.

And being a producer, there’s so many logistics and so many things that go into it that, yeah, I like doing it, I can do it, etc. And at the same time, I can get tired. And liberation for me would be what does it look like for someone else to support my artistic journeys? What does it look like for someone else to produce a residency where I can be a playwright and I can just breathe and relax and have access to a dramaturg and be in a room to be able to put all the sticky notes all over the wall and to have a composer next to me and be able to write lyrics and have a piano for us to write our music?

And what does it look like to... It’s almost like art camp. I think liberation would be like an art camp residency. And I think that you’ve just awaken something in me where I’m like, “Ooh, now I’m going to manifest that, bring that in.” It sounds so lovely. So yeah, I think that’s just the amplification and support and the resources for me to be able to create in a pocket of time and not have to worry about some externals. That, for me, personally, would be liberating.

But liberation as a whole, in a more bird’s eye view, I think liberation is also to be able to provide that for others. How do we provide launching platforms, or how do we provide a space to create without having restrictions of thinking about either funders or thinking about censorship specifically? One of the things that I’m producing, as I mentioned, in this fall one of the themes is combating censorship, so a lot of the themes of the vendors who I’m hoping are going to be there selling their arts and visual art and the theme of the play is all about combating censorship. So I also think in that sense, it’s also liberation. What does it look like to really combat something that is affecting us nationwide in the US, which is a lot of our works being banned or destroyed, omitted, erased? What does it look like for us to be able to lean against that, to really provide, and essentially fight back? What does it look like to be able to combat that? And for me, in liberation and combating, that’s in tandem.

Yura: Yeah. It sounds like there’s this theme around the freedom to enjoy what you’re doing. Also have been tapping into the artistic side. Always there’s an artistic side of what I’m doing, but in terms of the public presentation side as a performer, actor, musician. So this year I have gotten some specific support for developing my own work, but also, of course, continuing to produce, like you said. And so it’s been really interesting deciding to say, “Okay, there’s going to be a producer for this event that’s not going to be me, and I’m going to be taking on a different role. There’s an editor, there’s another musician.”

So it is really exciting, and I think it is part of that journey of being in both sides as a founder, on the artistic and the administrative, to get to dive into that balance and dive into those two sides. A lot of times in theatre, I’ve seen that the positions are very split. There’s someone that does artistic and someone that does executive director, and then there’s departments shifted all in there. But it sounds like there’s really… And since from the beginning when you were talking about how you’re creating a space for people to get to do different types of roles in the whole process, that it also applies to you and to us as the co-founders, or the leaders.

Réal: Absolutely. And oh, there’s so many things that you just said right now that I’m... In regard to joy, I’ll start there. That’s something that I say in my rehearsal room a lot, and that’s something I want to lean into always is joy. Oh, my God, our lives are so hard, right? Things around us are so hard and the things that we’re encountering and navigating. And so when we go into the rehearsal room, something that I want folks to feel is I want them to feel excited to go in there and it be one of their highlights of their day. And as a director, I get to cultivate that room and get to cultivate that environment. Something I always say is, “We work on play. Let’s play. We’re not working on a stressor.”

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Réal: In regard to the administration, something that we started in ITM at the beginning was an administration launchpad, which was gaining some of our artistic friends who were either going into the administration levels, they were starting to be associate producers or administrative associates, or were looking for administration type of experience when they can get more administrative work.

It was this perfect opportunity for us to be like, “Hey, we’re starting this organization, and we need some administrative support. We have this ensemble who are willing to provide any kind of support to ensure that it launches.” And we were able to birth that. We were able to birth this launchpad program that really had us learning a lot of stuff about the 501(c)(3). What does it look like to do our W-2s and our taxes, and do things with SSA [Social Security Administration] and ensuring that we’re in compliance and so on and so on?

But it helped a lot, because just like any other sector of the industry that was also a really big, and remains to be a big sector, to have capable QTBIPOC administrators that understand art, that have an artistic background, but that are really good in the administrative sector, when they go out into the field even further, when they go work at some larger institutions, they carry that with them. They’re able to carry and expand on those experiences.

But they’re able to, I don’t want to say infiltrate, but they get to go into these positions of power with their values and their set of ethics and are able to have autonomy over their positions. I’m thinking about a lot of my friends and colleagues that we have all just figured things out together, and I’m just thinking about some of the hours of us spending, the Zooms and reading through some legal documents and being like, “My head hurts, but it’s okay. Can you just explain this to me like I’m a five-year-old so we can move some of this documentation forward?”

Yura: It is a real thing to acknowledge the fact that there’s a lot of aspects of business of having an organization, a corporation, anything that is dealing with having money being exchanged, working with what these requirements for exchange. Even if there isn’t money exchange, this understanding of a contract being something that can help clear up confusion between anyone as to what are the details of “If this happens, then what do we do?” planning.

And so there can be, I would say, a lot of freedom and liberation in feeling confident about these different areas. So when it comes to legal, to contracts, to grant writing, to navigating the field of funding, to marketing, and to knowing online social media and ways to get people to know about your work in this way, to finance, to knowing how to track what’s coming in and out and correctly report it.

And so I do think that you’re right that these are skills that are transferable for anyone doing anything otherwise. Even as an artist, individually, your own fundraising, finance, marketing of what you might do and producing your own work. And when it comes to this title of the podcast, Building Our Own Tables, these tables need to have these systems in place and these foundations so that we can keep growing so that we can keep being able to grow our footprint in these spaces around the world.

So it does make sense that having a safe place to experiment, to learn in a culturally community-affirming situation, it is very helpful to then go on out into other spaces and take that information, take those experiences and keep moving on them.

Réal: And then opening the doors for people, right?

Yura: Yeah.

Réal: And something that you mentioned about producing is it’s an art within itself, of course. Not a lot of people can do that. Not a lot of people can build their own table. Not a lot of people can create and manifest and execute and make it come to life. So there’s people as yourself, you’re creating this entire platform to elevate others, and that’s not easy.

So that’s a skill in art within itself, and I think that’s powerful. I think that’s also very liberating because we provide that liberation for others, but we provide it for ourselves as producers because we’re like, “What do I want to do? And here’s my concept, here’s my idea. Now let me do it.” And again, it’s not easy, but we have that ability to be able to create that.

Yura: Where do you think that knowing or that confidence in being able to say yes to that call when it comes to you, the ability to manifest when an idea comes and you just decide to say, “I’m going to do it,” where do you think that comes from for you?

As long as we stick to our values and our ethics and our morals, the mission and the vision of the company. As long as we stick to those, the way that we’re able to present or execute that mission and that vision can look like many different things.

Réal: So I’m thinking of this residency, ITMéxico. I had the idea for a couple months, and then as I interviewed for other residencies, it was just itching at me and itching at me. And to have had an experience with other residencies and, in regard to where the confidence comes from to be able to say, “I know I can do it,” or to be able to so confidently be able to say, “Okay, here’s the way I’m going to accomplish it,” honestly, I think it comes from my parents way back in the day.

Because they used to be party planners, party organizers. So my dad was a DJ, and my mom was a dancer. She also taught quinceañeras like the El Vez. So she was a choreographer, and we also planned a lot of parties. So she was a coordinator. And so it was also seeing not just her work with other people and her clients, but also seeing the way that both my parents would work to create our birthday parties or New Year’s.

In our apartment complex where we used to live in my childhood, there was this community center, and they had a hall and you can rent it for free. You just had to book it. It’s a community hall, so you can do whatever. You can have a party, a gathering. And so since my dad was a DJ, he had his DJ lights, he had his system. My mom also cooks, so then she had her friends who were also cooks.

And so they were the ones who really taught me, what does it look like to reach out to your network? What does it look like to not ask them for money? What does it look like to ask for someone to buy the straws? Anyone can bring something to the table, anyone can contribute something. And if you don’t have something, at least bring yourself because you can come dance and party it up with us. It’s not a party if we don’t have guests. We’re not putting together this big party if I’m not going to have people to come over here and dance and eat this food.

So even if you don’t have something, yes, you do. You have yourself. And that’s how I approach producing. Let’s throw a party. Who can bring the chairs? Who can bring the tables? Who can have the tablecloths? Who has a pinata? Maybe they haven’t used it and they’re like, “It’s in my closet.”

Maybe someone has a Slip ‘N Slide, and all you did was ask if they had some garbage bags that you can use. And they’re like, “What do you need them for?” And I’m like, “I’m throwing a party.” They’re like, “Oh, yeah, here’s garbage cans and here’s some porta-potties and here’s a bounce house. And Padrino owns this limousine company, so we’re going to go pick up all your...” You never know.

Yura: Yeah, I love that. That’s so great. And my parents also always did a New Year’s Eve party, so I wonder if that also could be where that comes from.

Réal: The coordination.

Yura: Yeah. The hosting, the taking on of that role to create that environment where people can experience joy.

Réal: Absolutely.

Yura: And then also the coordinating of what can come from where, being creative too. Yeah, I think for me, three things come to mind on where it could come from. One is, totally existential, just tapping into this is part of my purpose as a soul, this is part of why I’m here to create, to help make something that isn’t exist. And just tapping into that aspect of who I am and who I think many are in this time. I think that there’s a reason why many of us, as souls, are coming into the world now to create a new reality for the planet.

Once the vision comes in or the idea comes in, it has its own identity that sometimes it’s like the vision or the idea is calling you. I’m calling it in, but it’s also calling me in and calling many others in, others who might have resources and things to support. So last year we brought a music group from Colombia for a US tour. And it was an idea, it was a big idea to have basically ten people get their artist visas from Colombia, a rural remote area of people who normally it could be really hard to get visas like that and also just produce this huge tour, basically.

That was two months of traveling and getting to connect, but it did feel like it was something that needed to happen, that it was an event, it was an experience, a moment in time that was also being asked to be brought in. And so just stepping into that role of a steward for it and asking a lot of people for help and what people could do and ideas, and it ended up being a lot of that, a lot of gathering and coordinating a lot of other people and organizations to help make it happen.

We had a moment where the US Embassy in Bogotá in Colombia was taking a bit too long on the visa stamping of the passports. They already were approved, but it was taking a long time to stamp them, and they needed to come already, to come to the US. And so then we had to figure out what we could do there, talk to some of our government representatives, ask them to send a notice in, call someone else who had ideas, did some energetic work to help move things along. So it worked out in the end because it was this sense, I feel, that it was what also was wanting to be created in a cosmic way and in an energetic way of everybody involved making it happen.

Réal: I agree. I agree. It takes on its own identity. It starts to unravel itself, and it’s also a key thing to be flexible and being able to say yes to the way it wants to shape itself. Like you mentioned, we have the vision and we’re executing the vision and it’s coming to life. It’s going to ask different things of us that might not align. It’s like our child, right? It’s going to ask different things of us that might not have aligned with what we thought it was either going to be or what we wanted it to be or what we hope. And sometimes it’s even better than we thought, or sometimes it’s really rough but you’ve learned so much. And sometimes it can be really rough, but it was an exciting thing for someone. It was the most incredible thing, and you’re like, “Oh, this is why I do what I do, and this is why I was able to.” Like you mentioned, this is why the project existed, producing.

Yura: I love that. When it comes to how you define success, what does success look like for your table? And how has that definition evolved over time?

Réal: I think that’s our biggest strength is being able to pivot with things. As time growsm and as time continues to change, it’s reassessing where we are. But one of the things that the core leaders like to do is we come together to talk about where are we currently? Where are we currently in life? Where are we currently in our careers, usually administrative and then also artistically?

And what are our goals/dream projects? Because then having this information, we’re able to then establish, do I need to step down from a core leadership or administration level position and go into the ensemble until I’m ready to step up again? Or what does it look like for me to remove some responsibilities or bring on another person? Or what does it look like if a programming just no longer aligns with what we’re creating?

For example, at one point, we used to be called In The Margin Theatre Company. And now we’re no longer called In The Margin Theatre Company because we don’t just do theatre. We’re an arts service organization because we provide services in different capacities, such as we have done labor rights workshops for workers in canneries and whatnot, just provided free workshops or teaching artists, just created a lot of curriculum.

We went into different places and coordinated having people in their front yard and just really teaching them how to protect themselves and whatnot. Just one example, but we also acknowledge that we have activists and community organizers that intersect with the things that we do, and we are able to utilize artistic skill sets with our community organizing and vice versa. And there are people who do augmented reality, virtual reality, film, television, commercials, visual art. We have beaders. We have artisans. We have visual artists. We have muralists.

And there was just a moment where this no longer serves us. In The Margin Theatre Company no longer serves us. It did. It really did. And we can appreciate it and love it and say, “Thank you so much,” because it’s not dying. It’s just transitioning. It’s to meet the current needs, to meet the current needs of its members and its leaders and where it wants to go, and that is okay. And there is this big consensus that we know things are going to change.

They’re not going to stay the same from when it was founded, from when it was conceptualized. And that’s okay, as long as we stick to our values and our ethics and our morals, the mission and the vision of the company. As long as we stick to those, the way that we’re able to present or execute that mission and that vision can look like many different things. And so I think that’s one of the biggest strengths of our organization and the way that it continues to evolve, and I’m excited for it to continue with the growth.

Yura: Yeah. What are you dreaming into being right now? What’s the future that you’re all building toward?

Réal: Right now, we’re looking at a self-directed work or nonprofit, and it’s a bit of a combination of a somewhat traditional nonprofit structure. So I’m like a core leader of artistic vision, and we have a core leader of technical innovation. So it’s the core leaders plus our respective domain or expertise, but we all have autonomy of the organization. We all have autonomy in making decisions.

And so the way that I see it evolve, because it’s already happening, is it’s becoming a project-based organization, which is as a way of survival, we can no longer be a day-to-day operational organization, and I think a lot of smaller organizations are encountering that as well. And so we understand that, and we understand that we have limited amount of hours for operational and overhead costs, but when it comes to projects, this is where the conversations are very important of, “what are you currently thinking of or leaning towards and what not?”

And two different things. One of them is the big asset is that the core leaders are all producers. And so when it comes to them having their own idea of a project, they know how to execute it. And so they know how to apply for funding or get funding and create that project. And the thing is that when they create that project, they hire within. So we hire within ITM, and then if we don’t have the talents or the toolsets or skillsets or whatnot to cover the certain roles, then we expand externally from our affiliates and then our community partners, and then more general. But we want to keep the relationships going.

So the way that I see it developing is to really give the core leadership that autonomy to be able to pursue their own projects and create a system to where the ensemble can pitch their projects to be able to have an assistant from a producer. Or if they’re able to onboard their own producer, have a process that allows them to also have autonomy to create. And rather utilize our nonprofit as a, it’s not a sponsor because we’re not serving as a fiscal sponsor, but it’s almost taking an inspiration of a fiscal sponsorship model where an artist comes in with their project and then the organization navigates the operational finances, etc. So we’re inspired by that. It really leads to high morale because people are feeling satisfied. They’re feeling artistically satisfied because we’re getting to work and amplify the works that they want to do.

Yura: Yeah, I love that. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I’m also really interested in diving into these options. We’ve started with people who have come to me and say, “I’m working on this project, can you fiscally sponsor as LiberArte?” And I always say we’re not ready to do that yet, but actually there’s maybe a deeper partnership that can come through where we have all these other resources too, that traditional fiscal sponsorship isn’t doing that, isn’t just saying, “Okay, let me take a percentage of what you raise and then be your fiscal sponsor for donations.”

But what does it mean to say, “Okay, let’s make this one of the programs, one of the projects that we’re doing”? We’re supporting a film, in particular, that talks about immigration through a metaphor of being in space and things like this. And there’s also other things that we have access to folks who are at public universities in New York City who get paid internships and are partnered with us specifically in film and media, actually. So it’s a perfect connection to say we have this access, let’s bring this into this project.

Réal: We currently have a partnership with Dominican University of California, and they tend to have fellows or assistants that are students, but they might not have a theatre program, but they have some theatre classes where the professors want them to know more about the theatre industry, and without an actual theatre department, their opportunity/exposure is a bit more limited.

So it’s also what does it look like to have partnerships with universities that are able to provide us assistance to help us in producing projects and come in as either an ASM—an assistant stage manager—or an assistant producer or assistant director. And again, it’s thinking about the multiple ways that we’re able to help one another.

Yura: Yeah. I’ve also been doing an inventory of all of these subscriptions that we have that are Canva and Zoom, all these things that you have to pay to maintain, although many of them have nonprofit pricing, so just in case anyone didn’t know that, and Canva Pro is free for nonprofits.

Réal: Google Suite, free for nonprofits.

Yura: Yeah. So being able to offer those resources as well as part of the project, you can access all of this if you need to produce something. And so if you partner and join in, we can provide all of these things that maybe it’s not necessarily the funding per se, but it is something that you would’ve had to pay for otherwise, or there’s another option there that we didn’t think about yet.

From the beginning when you shared about this early feedback of saying, “Everybody’s doing really well individually, but the organization is new, and what are you doing?” But now, we’ve done all these things as an organization, and it helps everybody individually.

Réal: Yes, exactly.

Yura: Yeah. Beautiful circle closing there.

Réal: Yes. You’re so right. You’re so right. What started off as our biggest critique became our biggest strength.

Yura: So how can we stay updated with you with In The Margin? How can we follow you? Find you?

Réal: Yeah. You can find me on Instagram, @realvalanis. R-E-A-L, V as in Victor, A-L-A-N-I-S, Alanis, like the singer, Alanis Morissette. In The Margin is @inthemargin_itm. Our website is also inthemargin.org. My website is realvalanis.com. I also work for Alternative Theatre Ensemble as an ensemble member, which is very similar to core leadership structure, and I’d be more than happy to see how we can all help each other out because that’s what we need at the moment. We need community.

Yura: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Réal, In The Margin. This has been so lovely to connect. This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and any HowlRound show wherever you find podcasts, including non-commercial, open-source apps, like Anytime Podcast Player for iPhone and AntennaPod for Android. If you loved this podcast, please share it with your friends. You can find a transcript for this episode along with lots of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com. Have an idea for a meaningful podcast, essay or TV event the theatre community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to this knowledge commons. Thanks for pulling up a seat to liberation with us at Building Our Own Tables. Catch you next time.