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Livestreamed on this page on Friday 10 April 2020 at 2 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 4 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 5 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4).

United States
Friday 10 April 2020

Praxis Sessions for Virtual Collaboration: Cripping Practice

hosted by Unsettling Dramaturgy: Crip & Indigenous Dramaturgies ​​​​​​

Produced With
Friday 10 April 2020

 

Grant Miller: We’re live.

Lindsay Eales: Great. I think we will follow the flow for narrators. Does that work for folks? Cool. So this is Lindsay speaking. Hello, and welcome to Unsettling Dramaturgy's launch for our Praxis Sessions for Virtual Collaboration. In the four-part series we're in now, we are addressing approach…

[Lindsay’s screen freezes.]

Grant: Oh.

Claudia Alick: An exciting learning moment has happened in just this moment. As we were announcing we are beginning, one of our narrator's video feed froze. Our process is to continue, and we look forward to Lindsay rejoining us. I believe I will pass the microphone to Roo to begin our land acknowledgment. Welcome to Unsettling Dramaturgy Praxis Session.

DeLesslin George-Warren "Roo": [Roo gives a traditional introduction in Catawba language.] Hi, everyone, my name is DeLesslin George-Warren, but everyone calls me Roo. Like kangaroo. I'm a citizen of Catawba Nation. We call ourself the People of the River because we've lived along the river, we'd say, since the world began. We are the only federally recognized tribe in the state of South Carolina, and one of two in North Carolina. I give a traditional introduction, which includes my family because we're all family. And so I'm the son of Wanda George-Warren, who was our tribal administrator for a decade, and grandson of Buck George, was was our assistant chief for almost 30 years. I'm an artist and educator 'cause in our language, those two responsibilities are tied in together. If you are an artist, you are automatically an educator and vice versa. And so I wanted give thanks to our land and our river. And I'm calling to you from the Green Earth Reservation, which is part of our traditional lands down here.

Grant: So, in the structure we have... [Grant freezes momentarily.] The one with where Lindsay was, and I hope she'll pop out soon. I'm getting a message that my internet connection is unstable. So if that happens, we will keep filling in. And Lindsay is back. Hi, Lindsay? We cut off right as you were giving that introduction. Roo introduced themselves. So if you wanna pick up from where you were, I think you had said, "Welcome to Unsettling Dramaturgy's launch."

Lindsay: Yeah. Let's just keep going with intros, and then I can dive back into where I was. I think that'll work if that is okay with everyone.

Grant: Okay. So, Roo, could you give, also just for everybody else, a physical description, how you are, your access needs? Any other? Claudia.

Claudia: My colleagues, I love that we're doing transparent facilitation. This is a beautiful way to work together. I believe according to our script, we had land acknowledgments to begin. We were going to have some opening from Lindsay that got interrupted, then doing our framing topics, and then full introductions from all of us. I believe we are just doing land acknowledgments to this first opening moment.

Grant: Okay. Great, let's do our land acknowledgments. Mia.

Mia Amir: Hi. My name is Mia Susan Amir. And I am calling in from the unceded and occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, colonially known as, Vancouver, British Columbia. I am happy to be with all of you today.

Claudia: Jessica.

Jessica Watkin: Am I unmuted? This is my digital obstacle. This is Jessica speaking. Hi, everyone, I am Jessica Watkin. I'm calling from the original territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, the Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit River, here in Tkaronto, or Toronto, Ontario. And it is the meeting place, so I'm grateful to gather with everyone and meet you all here today. Thank you.

Grant: Claudia.

Claudia: This is Claudia Alick speaking. I'm calling from the Bay Area, land of the Ohlone peoples. The people are still alive. And I am taking a moment to recognize all enslaved, displaced, and incarcerated peoples, past and present. Passing the microphone to Andrea.

Andrea Kovich: Hi, I'm Andrea Kovich. I am calling in from the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot nations. Specifically, I am situated on the lands of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, past and present. I live and work as an uninvited settler on lands stolen from the Duwamish over 160 years ago. And I just wanted to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish people. Check. Passing now.

Grant: Carmen.

Carmen Papalia: Hi, everybody, my name is Carmen Papalia. I am calling in from the... Sorry. I'm calling in from the unceded and occupied territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Yeah, I'm happy to be able to gather in this way and talk about accessibility, and meeting together, and acknowledging land. Also happy that the cherry blossoms are in bloom where I am. So thank you.

Grant: Let’s see. Jessica. Yeah.

Jessica Schacht: Tawnshi. My name is Jessica Schacht. I'm Métis-Canadian living as an uninvited guest on the traditional territory of the Cowichan Nation.

Grant: Jessica, your voice is a little bit muffled. I wonder if you could move closer to your microphone perhaps, or--

Jessica Schacht: Is that better?

Grant: It is better, yeah.

Jessica Schacht: New technology. Tawnshi. My name is Jessica Schacht. I'm Métis-Canadian living as an uninvited guest on the traditional territory of the Cowichan Nation, also known as Duncan, BC. This area is part of the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, which is in stage five treaty negotiations. I'm thankful to live here in the Quw'utsun', the Warmlands, where I am never far from the river.

Lindsay: This is Lindsay Eales. I'm calling as an uninvited white settler calling from Amiskwaciwâskahikan, which is so-called Edmonton, a traditional gathering place of the Blackfoot, Cree, Papaschase, Dene, Iriquois, Inuit, Nakota Sioux, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Anishinaabe, and Métis nations. And, again, from another gathering place, if feels, yeah, I'm grateful to be gathering in this space as well.

Grant: I’m Grant. They-them. I am calling from the traditional and unceded territory of the Multnomah, Clackamas, Kathlamet, and Kalapuya people, as well as many other unnamed bands. Settler named Portland, Oregon, United States of America. I wanna offer acknowledgements as well to the nearby Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, whose ancestors survived the Oregon Trail of Tears, and restored their tribal status in 1983 after termination by executive order in 1954.

Lindsay: Thank you, everyone. This is Lindsay speaking again. I'm gonna do the intro again that I got halfway through and realized my order was all messed up. So welcome to nonlinear and incoherent facilitation, part of cripping praxis. Hello, and welcome to Unsettling Dramaturgy's launch of our Praxis Sessions for Virtual Collaboration. It's a four-part series. We're addressing approaches and practices in the online convening that center on settling decolonization, indigenization, and disability justice in process design. The series emerged from our year-plus of work and research in transnational convening and creative collaboration through virtual means. The series has been developed as our response to the turn towards online organizing that has followed the COVID-19 crisis. The second session in our series, which is today, centers on the cripping praxis in virtual, cross-geographic collaboration. Check.

Grant: Unsettling Dramaturgy is an ongoing project, bringing together Crip and Indigenous dramaturgs from across so-called Canada and the United States, who work in theatre, dance, and experimental performance. Using digital platforms, we gather to build relationships, to explore and document the critical convergences and divergences in our experience and work, to amplify Crip and Indigenous aesthetics, ethics, practices, and leadership in our local, national, and international performance ecologies, to push the conversations from inclusion to centring, from reconciliation to unsettling and decolonization. This project proposes a continuation of the thriving legacies of leadership and innovation that shape Indigenous and Crip dramaturgies, but in a whole new way, by bringing together artists from communities that have been historically excluded from mainstream performance ecologies, and which have been further siloed into spaces of making that have systematically prevented critical cross-community collaboration. We are dismantling these silos to advance emerging conversations, exploring the conflux of leadership and representation in creation and production as relate to Indigenous sovereignty, and Deaf, Mad, and Disability culture in the arts. We are generating a platform for self-determined encounter and exchange, where our local bodies of knowledge can be activated. It bears importance to share that this project does not aim to collapse Crip and Indigenous dramaturgies and experiences. The exclusions that our communities face emerge from very specific historical, cultural, and political contexts. Further, the ableism, sanism, and audism that the Deaf, Disabled, and Mad artists face emerge from colonial ways of assigning value and human dignity. We use Crip to include those who identify as Mad, Sick, and Disabled, as well as those who are deemed Disabled by society and/or medical institutions, whether or not they themselves accept that term. For example, those for whom Deafness is a cultural identity, not a medical condition. We use the word Crip as a political intervention to turn attention onto and to disrupt, as our collaborator Carmen Papalia writes, the disabling conditions that limit a person and/or community's agency and potential to thrive. We use the Indigenous with an acknowledgement of the many complex ways the community, family, belonging, polity, and heritage interact with systems of State recognition. The words Crip and Indigenous are both used as shorthand, and not intended to generalize or reduce our vast multiplicity of identities, experiences, and affiliations. This project is generously supported by Roo and Mia. First of all, thank you so much to the two of you who have fearlessly managed to continue to organize us for so long. We were noticing in the texture, Claudia pointed out that you two were not hyper-featured in this introductory section, and if it weren't for you two, we would not be doing these meetings as easily as we are. So before I acknowledge the wonderful donors and philanthropy class, I would like to acknowledge the members of our community who are making this happen, Mia Amir, and Roo DeLesslin. I don't know what your last name is in this moment. Oh, yes, George Warren, thank you email signatures. Okay. The project is also very generously supported by the literary managers and dramaturgs of the arts, Bly Creative Capacity Grant, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Thank you! Huge shout out to our partners at HowlRound, which is livestreaming today's event for us. Thank you so much, HowlRound. All right. Claudia.

Claudia: Indeed. Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. So welcome to everyone who is joining us in this digital space. Through this live and interactive digital panel, we're bringing together collaborating artists who have been involved in Unsettling Dramaturgy. And so you're going to get to experience how we work together as well as getting to learn from what we have are sharing with each other and with you. So we're today going to be exploring the necessity, importance, complexity, and difficulty of cripping practice in the context of online organizing, creation, and collaboration. So the plan for today's session is this. We began with an opening. We began how we always open by acknowledging the land and having a decolonized moment. We begin by reviewing how we're going to be working together, and then also taking a moment to introduce ourselves, again, to each other as human beings. We will then, following our opening, the Unsettling Dramaturgy creative collaborators will engage in an exchange on today's theme for approximately 60 minutes. We'll be speaking from our respective and bodied knowledge and practices, with an orientation towards expanding collective practice as is relevant to all of the different local ecologies that we are working in. We will then, we will always be taking 10-minute breaks upon the hour. A decolonized practice always has healthy bio breaks. We are very excited to have, and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing your name, Tiare Jung. Please correct me if I've gotten that name wrong.

Tiare Jung: Tiare.

Claudia: Say that again?

Tiare: Tiare.

Claudia: Tiare?

Tiare: Yeah.

Claudia: Thank you. Tiare will be digitally, visually recording this event for us. So at various moments during this event, we will share the visual recording that they're creating, and this will also be visually described as well. And then, after that, we get to have some exchange with you. So, hopefully, as this conversation is going on, you are taking notes on your respective devices. Maybe you're on Twitter hash tagging or adding a HowlRound and responding in that way. And maybe you're on the Facebook livestream commenting there, maybe you're at HowlRound commenting there, we want to hear from you. We're excited to interact with you throughout this session. Please, share your questions, share your reflections. And to interact with us during this event, you can use one of the three options. One, message us via WhatsApp. The WhatsApp number is 1-803-323-7638. That number, I believe, is in our other digital spaces on HowlRound and in the Facebook event. You can email us a question at [email protected]. That email address is, again, [email protected]. Or you can comment on the livestream on the Unsettling Dramaturgy Facebook page. Our Unsettling Dramaturgy coordinators, Mia and Roo, will be checking these accounts throughout the session. So please ask questions, give observations, we really look forward to hearing from you. And then, of course, we'll have a beautiful moment of closing at the end. I am now going to be handing the metaphorical microphone back to Lindsay to say a few things about accessibility.

Lindsay: Thank you. So today's session is being live-captioned and ASL, American Sign Language, interpreted. CART, or the live captioning, is available on the HowlRound livestream. And here, https://recapd.com/w-bfDPlb. Again, https://recapd.com/w-bfDPlb. ASL interpretation is available on both the Facebook and the HowlRound livestreams. We do wanna note that ASL English interpretation serves to facilitate communication, but it doesn't constitute an authentic record of the original signed or spoken language. Only the original signed and/or spoken language or the revised written transcript is considered authentic. And this is part of our considerations in how we Crip praxis with cross-disability solidarity. So ASL interpretation and CART live captioning are essential elements of how we built this event. They're vital and they're indispensable access practices. And they require input from Deaf folks and folks who use these access practices as well to do them well. But they're also complex and complicated to navigate in online forums, which points to the limits of the programs and the systems that we're using, the fact that they have not been designed to consider or make space for accessibility across a multiplicity of practices and needs. But they also point to our Crip commitment to working within and to challenging imperfect systems in order to honor the value that comes from cross-disability solidarity work, and community building. And so, thank you for that, the time and space it takes to do this work in imperfect ways. We're gonna remain in an emergent and a responsive shape throughout today's event, adjusting our pace and the shape of our conversation to reflect the pace and the shape of all of our collaborators. We're going to name our access needs at the top of the event in our coming intros, and, again, as they arise throughout our time together. And when we do this, you'll see some examples of what we mean by this. One thing we wanna do is acknowledge that trauma is in the room. It certainly is for me right now, and I imagine it might be for both our co-presenters and for audience members. In doing this, we want to acknowledge that we all have established practices of care for ourselves that we wanna honor, including those care practices that have been pathologized but done important work. We invite everyone here, from our group and anyone in the audience, to take care of yourself in whatever way is necessary, and we also encourage you to let us know if we can support, so it's not all on you to do that work. Everyone is welcome to vocalize, to use technology, to stim, to move around, or to leave and return throughout the event. Also, learning from the Disabled artists and organizers of the festival, I wanna be with you everywhere in New York. We want to acknowledge those who can't be here and those who can never be here, because of inequitable and inaccessible structures, and the ways that these bump against our realities of our embodied needs and experience is. So you are welcome, and appreciated, and an important part of our community. A recording of this event will be available for future viewing through the Unsettling Dramaturgy Facebook page and the HowlRound website. Check.

Grant: I’m so glad about that last bit that you just said, Lindsay, about this being recorded, because everything you said about that prior is stuff I'm gonna just be looking back over again and again. There's so many aspects that I'm just grateful for. Thank you for including those. So now we're gonna do our check-ins. Yay! For the check-ins, we typically will do name, pronoun, if there's any additional land acknowledgement that you would like to do, a physical description, how you are, access needs, an introduction to some aspect of your work or practice, and what's unsettling about the work we're presently doing right now, and where do we feel or notice that in our body. And if you want me to help clarify any of the check-in details, just ask me if you don't have it in the Google Doc. So is there somebody who would like to go first? I will go first. Oh, Roo. Yes, please, Roo.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Going first twice. Like I said before, my name is Roo. Please feel free to call me Roo. Like I said, I'm a citizen of Catawba Nation. I am sitting in an all-white room. I have a pink shirt with some sort of images printed on it. I have white skin and light-brown beard and curly, unruly hair. On the wall behind me, you see just a ton of Post-it notes which represent all the things I am expecting of myself to get done. The land, I already told you about where I'm calling from, Green Earth reservation of Catawba Nation, down on the southeastern so-called United States. But I wanted to take a minute and tell you what's happening on the land right now. We are fully, in spring, the eastern red buds have dropped their flowers and there's lots of beautiful herbaceous plants springing up from the ground, lots of delicious things to eat. Next week is the time to start planting things, like tomatoes, and peppers, and beans, in the ground, for us. How I'm feeling. I had a call directly before this webinar that I had timed incorrectly. And so for the last 40 minutes now, I felt very hectic trying to plug in and get settled into how to support this space. So I feel like it's time to just take a breath and feel like we're here and that we have all the time that we need. My accessibility practices. I am watching five different Windows at the moment, trying to keep track of all the ways that people might wanna access the space or post questions. So if I mute my video, it's not 'cause I dislike it of you, it's just 'cause I need to really on all the other things that are drawing my attention at the moment. Pronouns. I use he, they, any pronoun that said with love is fine by me. Besides what I just mentioned, I don't have any particular access needs at the moment. And what's unsettling. What's unsettling about the work we're presently with right now, where we feel or notice it in the body? I feel unsettled by the lack of humility in these online presentation spaces. Not for myself in particular, but just because in the last year, I have seen a lot of leadership coming from my colleagues here, my Crip, and Deaf, and other colleagues here who have been developing practices for inclusion and access. And I see that, suddenly in this moment, everyone wants to run to online spaces and wanna romanticize them as being eminently accessible. And so, I'm feeling unsettled by that hubris and feeling the need for most of this presentation to take a step back and listen to everyone else that is here. Thank you. And I will hand it back to our narrators.

Grant: Thank you, Roo. And I will now hand it back to somebody else. Who would like to introduce themselves now? Who would like to have a check-in now?

Jessica Schacht: This is Jess S., I can go. How's my microphone? I tried a different input. Okay. Hi, I'm Jess S. I use she/her pronouns. An additional land acknowledgement. I had my first nettle soup of the season since we last met, and it was incredible. We have a fantastic nettle patch nearby. I'm very grateful for that bounty from there. I have tanned skin and dark-brown eyes with dark-brown hair. I'm wearing a V-neck blouse with a black-and-white pattern that has orange and red flowers on it, spattered throughout the pattern. I'm in a blue room, on a beige couch, and there is a mirror reflecting a door to my side. How I am. I am well. I am at home and safe with my family, and I'm grateful for that. My excess needs. I have a tiny baby and who is napping in the other room. So I expect to feed them in about half an hour, and just we'll need to attend to the tiny human in my house. And so I may come and go. I work primarily as a dramaturg on Indigenous and new work, both in theatre, opera, and dance. Both? They're three things. All in theatre, opera, and dance. And what's unsettling about work? I'll address the feeling part of, I'm feeling an absence in my heart right now because I was supposed to be headed to Banff in the next couple of days to go work on a new project with Kim Senklip Harvey as part of the Indigenous playwrights circle. I had many people that I was going to be meeting and convening with in-person there. I'm really feeling the loss of that in-person convening, but very grateful for convenings like this, where where we get to be together in this space. Check.

Grant: Thank you. Okay. Who next?

Carmen: Hi, everybody. Is it okay if I go? Yeah?

Grant: Absolutely.

Carmen: Yeah. Cool. It's Carmen here. My pronouns are he-him-his. In terms of description, I have, I would say, well, I'm wearing a sweater today, a gray sweater. I have a wool thing going on, wool pants, greeny-brown color, and then this, wool flat cap that has sort of like a plaid design on it. My skin is olive color. I have dark hair, I have a beard. Yeah, I'm enjoying the sunshine that's coming through the window. I've been trying to get outside lately. It's been a little difficult 'cause I do have a vulnerable immune system. So I'm trying to take extra precautions, but not feeling too cooped up. Yeah, I feel like today, most of my access needs are being taken care of. I have been having sort of like increased pain lately, which is something that I have to navigate. But I feel like I have what I need here, in terms of like pillows and heating pads, et cetera. So that's all good. I'm like a socially engaged artist. I'm usually working in communities with folks. My work focuses on accessibility, usually the conditions of my own access. I consider myself like a non-visual artist because I use my non-visual senses as like a primary way of navigating my surroundings. I don't use words like blind or visually-impaired to describe myself 'cause I think those terms, like, they still come out of a culture that privileges the visual, which I often try to resist. And right now, because of all this, it's strange. 'Cause like I haven't quite processed this moment that we're in right now. I kinda feel frustrated in some ways, and then like at ease in other ways. Like I feel like as an artist, I try to figure out what is urgent right now. If I can do anything as an artist, if it's a wide open space to engage a topic, explore a topic, what is necessary, and so, that is kind of has really shifted for me in the last little while. Because a lot of the work that I've been engaged in, you know that I'm planning exhibitions, things that have been like put off for a year now, other projects that I'm developing with folks, and those, like, making something to put in a public place does not seem urgent right now. So I'm trying to recalibrate why I'm doing what I'm doing, and trying to reprioritize things right now. And that's kind of, yeah, how I'm feeling. Some of the frustration comes out of like institutions like so quickly changing their practices, like jumping online, doing things differently, accommodating people's needs in ways that was unthinkable like a month ago. And I am often thinking about what is an institution's response to someone who discloses a need? So that's been very interesting. And I've heard from others in the disability community as well and folks who often have to engage accommodations, that, yeah, this is, it's kind of like a welcome change, but also a bit frustrating. 'Cause like a lot of us have been practicing for this this moment. But this moment isn't unique because I think we plan for our own survival most days. So, yeah, I'm here, I'm in my bedroom. You might hear my less-than-two-year-old squealing from the other room. We're trying to share a space in a good way right now. But thanks for being here.

Grant: Thank you, Carmen. Great to hear from you. Who else would like to do an introduction? Excuse me, not an introduction. Who else would like to check-in? Jessica W.

Jessica Watkin: Hi. Can you hear me?

Grant: Yes.

Jessica: Watkin: Grant, would you be able to remind me like what are the things I'm checking in on?

Grant: Gladly. So name and pronoun.

Jessica Watkin: Okay.

Grant: Any additional land acknowledgement.

Jessica Watkin: Got it.

Grant: Physical description.

Jessica Watkin: Got it.

Grant: How you are.

Jessica Watkin: Okay.

Grant: Access needs.

Jessica Watkin: Perfect.

Grant: Introduction to some aspect of your work.

Jessica Watkin: Okay.

Grant: And what's unsettling about your work. And feel free to ask me at any point to name those again, I'm happy to.

Jessica Watkin: Thank you so much.

Grant: Of course.

Jessica Watkin: My capacity for holding on to anything in my brain right now is a little bit lower than normal, so I appreciate that. Hi, everyone, my name is Jessica Watkin. I also go by Jess. And I use she/her/they/them pronouns. I am an artist scholar. So that's my title. And like already I've forgotten exactly what I was supposed to be talking about. I'm doing okay.

Grant: Great.

Jessica Watkin: Other than forgetting what I'm supposed to be talking about. Oh, physical description, perfect. Okay, I'm back on top. I am a white settler. I have white skin, black glasses. I might have blue or green eyes. I have dark hair. It's up in a bun. Or light hair. I don't know, I'm blind also, that should be said. I'm wearing a necklace that says feminist in braille. And on my wall, you might see a pulp fiction poster and you might see a rug that I made. I'm not sure what you might be looking at right now, but both of those are back there. I already mentioned, I'm from Tkaronto. I was spending today kind of out... Not out and about, none of us are really out and about. But I left the house today, so I'm feeling a little bit welcomed by the fresh air. I have an apartment with no stairs, so I'm feeling a little bit cooped. Similarly to Carmen, I'm sharing space with my partner who's currently making dinner, so you might hear little noises from him. What else am I supposed to be talking about? My practice?

Grant: I think you've said how you are. Access needs.

Jessica Watkin: Access needs. So I am blind. So some of these visual descriptions are helpful for me. Maybe this will be part of what I'm unsettled by right now. I can't access the chat on Zoom, which, as an artist scholar, is all I'm doing right now, is Zooming every human ever. It feels like so many Zooms, and I can't read the chat box, and that has become a problem in many meetings. It won't become a problem in this meeting because we don't rely heavily on the chat box exclusively, but that's something that's really been frustrating for me and infuriating. And I'm echoing Carmen's kind of like complicated experience of the situation right now. Because we, as Crips, we tend to, as Disabled folks, we tend to have a lot of flexibility, malleability, technology in a lot of our lives anyway, but it's funny to watch everybody else come up on to our level, and then be like, "Oh, but we need to have ASL interpretation, and CART, and visual descriptions. We can get into this later, but it is kind of, it's a... I don't know, I wanna say love/hate, but it's a very complicated relationship with the way that we've turned to technology. So all my access needs are pretty much met. And then I wanna talk just a moment about my work. And similar to everyone else, I'm not really doing too much public-facing work right now, other than this, which is great. I'm predominantly an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. I work with textiles. You might see me knitting throughout the time, I'm trying to figure out a baby blanket right now. I think I have the wrong size of knitting needles, which is what I've decided. I also am a dramaturg, so I spend a lot of time disability dramaturging. I'm currently the thought resident for "Spider Web Show," and I've been sharing 45-second thoughts for the past two weeks, and I'm gonna continue for the rest of April. And it's weird to be a thought resident at this time because I'm supposed to be talking about art and the way that drama... Bless you. See? Bless you, again. I'm supposed to be talking about how dramaturgy and theatre and disability all come together in performance, and then there's this pandemic happening. I'm feeling calls in what I'm producing that is public-facing to be about joy, and to be about discomfort, and to be about how we can use models of disability, dramaturgy, in particular, to learn a lot from this time. So I've been doing a lot of that feeling. I meant to say thinking, but also feeling, which has been hard work for me. It's helping me process everything, the global crisis, but it's also difficult. So I'm feeling that in my upper back right now, and I think that's indicative of the amount of time I'm crunching over to read the chat box during Zooms. So I'm not gonna crunch over today to the chat box 'cause I'm gonna sit here and happily knit in front of you. Yeah, I think that's me. Check.

Grant: Jessica, thank you. So I wanna that the chat box has been getting used for technical issues related to interpreters. And just right now, Roo asked that one of the narrators... Oh, that I voice a request that we pause while the interpreter switch. So I'm just gonna pause speaking while the interpreters switch. Okay. And I think just going forward, if there are any more things in the chat, if any of us who do have access to the chat could just verbalize it as it comes through, if that would be I consistent with what I'm hearing. All right, who's next? Claudia, I see you're unmuted. Would you care to check-in?

Claudia: I was unmuting myself partially 'cause I was going to do some of the labor you just did, which I love. But let me introduce myself. My name is Claudia Alick. I'm attempting to slow down my normally incredibly fast rate of speech so that our poor sign language interpreter's fingers don't fly off. So my pronouns are they/their/she/hers. You can use those interchangeably. I am sitting in front of a Zoom background, but the Zoom background is a photo of my wall. So it looks like I'm in my room, and I am in my room. I'm finding this, in another way, hilarious. I'm really enjoying this, it's really silly. So I'm an African-American woman. My hair is black and long braids with purple twists. I'm wearing a dress with musical notes on it. And in that background image is my bookcase and some posters of projects that I work on. The water is life sign from the protests and the ghosts-like project sign from the protests. And it's all art in protest. And let's see. How am I? I am doing well. All of my access needs are met because we do an access check-in. One of my issues has been, with the many digital meetings I attend, because I have a body that's incredibly expressive, and it's expressing things that I don't mean to be saying to you, it's having a conversation with itself, it's saying, "This is incredibly painful. "I'm gonna make your muscles move in these random ways," which communicates noise or misinformation to folks. Unless I let them know, don't interpret me doing a thing like this as communication, that's just my body moving. So I really appreciate a moment to check-in and say, if I'm making up a mean face or it looks like I'm judging what you're saying, that's me just having a moment of physical pain, there's never... If I'm going to communicate, I communicate with my words. Other than that, all of my access needs are met. I am the Executive Producer of Calling Up Justice. It's a transmedia social justice practice. So this is what I do. I meet with people in real life and online to create performances of justice and best practices. And the thing that is unsettling, I'm going to just lift up and amplify what two of our other colleagues have already spoken about. I'm a big fan of the #DisabledAndSaltyAF. Oh, dear, I'm forgetting the name of the woman who created that hashtag. That's bad respect. So I'm gonna try and find that and put that in the Twitter. But it really, that hashtag, we've been using it to communicate how so many of us have been fighting for these accessible needs. And the second dominant culture needed it, suddenly, it was something that was available to them, and yet they are practicing them in ways that are breaking the systems that I need to use, just to have like base level functionality, and also, they are not using them with the best practices that we've been crafting for so long. So I'm so excited to have this conversation, to have more deep thoughts with y'all. Check.

Grant: Thanks, Claudia. Let's see. We have a few other folks who haven't checked-in yet. Mia, Lindsay, Andrea, Landon. Who'd like to go next? I’ll go. And me. Wild card. This is Grant. They/them. Grant Miller. Again, calling from Portland, Oregon. Traditional unceded of the Multnomah, Clackamas, Kathlamet, and Kalapuya people, as well as many unnamed others. Virtual background. Behind me is a photo of the garden at my house. Her name is Lenore. And I am wearing these big, chunky Princess Leia headphones that are sort of gray and silver. I have a gray and black hair. And I'm wearing a short-sleeved black jumpsuit that has key holes and magnets where very difficult to open buttons used to be. Let's see. How am I? Narrowing is, it's a bit of a task. My attention keeps turning to like, "Oh, am I missing something?" And so, I think I'm relieved at the flow and tempo that we've arrived at so far. So I'm feeling that relief and just a lot of comfort to see people. There have just been sort of waves of difficulty and ease, feeling a lot of comfort with not having to leave the house, which, as a person with chronic pain, is something familiar to me. But culturally, other people not leaving the house somehow makes me feel more a part of something in a way. And at the same time, I'm also just noticing kinda the difficulty of just being in the house, of having a lot of plans and projects disrupted. And just feeling really glad to be here for this. Access needs. Include water. I have a sketchbook that I'm gonna be looking down writing. So I am still processing, but I write things down as a way of processing information. So if it looks like I'm not giving attention or if you don't hear audio feedback from me, that's probably because I'm down in my notebook. And I'll probably just stop and take a breath every now and then as part of my access needs. So my work is, I consider myself an experimental performance artist. I do work in dance, and theatre, and performance art, social practice. My most recent project has been kind of put on pause while COVID is happening. I was in a residency that got canceled. And so this project is one of the main projects I'm doing right now. I'm also an equity consultant in Portland. And I do just like work on ableism training and systems change within arts institutions. And I have a couple of applications in, but, again, with COVID, I'm not really sure what's gonna continue. I also just do one-on-one coaching for people who are curious to talk about access and commit the financial resources that they have to have those conversations. Yeah. And I guess, a big part of my work is asking questions about how presence is shared in a given circumstance, and how it is that a given performance circumstance can take responsibility, or that the people in a given performance circumstance are given the responsibility of looking after one another's care needs. And how doing so allows us greater freedoms, and greater flexibility, and greater opportunity to build relationship and to participate in the culture that we're in. And I'll probably say more about that later. Yeah. So I'm a part of a collaboration, called the Curiosity Paradox, with my partner Jonathan. And, yeah, thank you. Johnson Paradox, and Grant Miller, and Lenore Evermore, the garden here. Okay. Thank you. Who's next?

Andrea: I can go next.

Grant: Thank you, Andrea.

Andrea: Hi. I'm Andre Kovich. My pronouns are she-her-hers. And once again, I'm from Seattle, Washington, where the sun is shining, which is kind of rare for us, but I'm loving it. Physical description. I'm seated in front of a white wall with a bookshelf. I'm a light-skinned female with a purple V-neck shirt and a gray sweater. And how am I? Kind of have back-to-back Zoom webinars today, so I'm feeling like, "Okay, this second one, hang on there. And it's a new feeling, but... As far as access needs, I sometimes get self-conscious about home. I don't speak as much as everyone else. So I'll mention that because in this circle, I feel like it's understood, but it's not always understood in other places. So my day job, full-time day job, is working as an accessibility consultant in the design construction field. On the side, I do freelance dramaturgy in theatre. And my work is kind of emerging, but I'm trying to meld those ideas of accessible environments into the dramaturgy that I create. And also, looking at issues of representation, and who's getting to tell the story on stage, and who's being represented backstage and throughout the process. So my work has looked very differently from like putting together a festival focusing on playwrights who have disabilities, to, most recently, reading new plays for a play festival. I'm using my personal and professional lens to look at how disability is being represented in the place, which was an amazing experience, actually. And I think more play festivals need to do that, especially when we're having non-Disabled playwrights writing Disabled characters. So what's unsettling right now for me is, I'm having a hard time focusing on my theatre work. It's kind of a day-to-day thing, but I think that's kind of what everyone is going through. And that's my check-in.

Grant: Great. Thank you. Let's see. Lindsay. Can we finish? Yes. Yes, please. Mia just asked if we can finish check-ins before we break.

Lindsay: I was thinking I would go last 'cause I can facilitate the movement, like transition into the movement break after my check-in if that works. So maybe Mia or Landon.

Grant: Splendid. Landon, would you be up to go?

Landon [Landon is signing as Ava, an ASL interpreter, is speaking]: There we go. I'm just making sure. Great. And that is just saying sorry, that was my cat was actually on top of my shoulder, leaning back, with the tail almost in my face. Anyways, I want to appreciate being here. My name is Landon. So copy me, my name sign is... The scripture is with two fingers, you can see. If you can copy me in terms of what I'm signing, and then do this movement, which is the index finger and the middle finger bent a little bit half, and then it's on towards the eyebrow, just back there. Jessica, I think you got that perfect. Excellent. That looks great. And so, my pronouns, I don't actually have any, because within the Deaf culture, we actually do not include pronouns in our language. What we do is we use reference points to somebody characteristic, the length of their hair or pointing to who they are, but we don't use pronouns in our language. Currently, I'm on screen with a dark shirt with a cowl neck type of scarf. I have my hair pinned up in the back with a bun. I'm currently situated seated in my office with a green back wall. I have two couches. And then I have one swivel chair that's in the middle, so it's quite fun for me. In terms of my access needs, I have sign language interpreting. I would like to say thanks to both my sign language interpreters. Both of them are contracted under a Deaf agency specifically. And I would like to curve continuity in using the same interpreters, and so I thank you for that. I have a relationship with the two of these interpreters. They're familiar with terminology, and I have a comfort connection that's an established trust with them. One sign, I think I wanna just illustrate is dramaturgy, to everyone. So if you can look at the sign dramaturgy. If you do this with your hands, the five hand shapes that's going out to your body, and then the dramaturgy is actually graphed like going up in scale. Now, I did teach interpreters on terms of dramaturgy, and now we have a new sign that we'll use dramaturgy for that. So I just wanna clarify that with the interpreters and everyone here. As I recently just said, what I'll be talking about really is I've been working on a project with my ASL opera, and it has been incredibly challenging. Part of my work has just reconditioning that process, getting ASL recognized, decolonizing the process of English influence and how I do that. We had about 40 Deaf people that were involved in my audience. And my particular goal with language is really to integrate with spoken language or with other theatre groups, or others genres, that could work collaboratively with both signing in English and also those that are of a Deaf audience and the public figuring audience. I am a Deaf American Sign Language performer. And I'm not sure if we understood the last comment that I said. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're saying it's time for wrap up. Okay, I understand. Oh, oh, oh, now I understand, sorry. You wanna talk about how I'm feeling and what's going on in my ASL opera moments. It's been very, very challenging. Very challenging for hearing people to not understand about Deaf culture. And I tend to hire sign language interpreters. A lot of times, within the creative team, we talked about that hearing people are really the ones that need the interpreter, not so much the Deaf people. The Deaf creative team doesn't need that. And so, lots of cross-cultural miscommunication are happening with two groups. And so, as our drama team worked together, I made sure that we provided an interpreter that could understand both. So, again, looking at Peter, who's hearing, and everybody else, trying to work through those moments was quite challenging. When I think about the Deaf intern projects and how they feel when they have, how are they impacted as opposed to interpreted theatrical performances? I think there needs to be some thought in terms of that whole process. It's a constant challenge that I face on a day-to-day basis and it happens with every performance. You know, how many hearing individuals often act portraying a signed character? And we need to be careful about that. Because, yes, it portrays perhaps accessibility, but then it denies the cultural identity of the Deaf person being able to use those signs. So, okay, I'm sad 'cause my cat's not on me anymore. I had to put them down. But anyways, this is a great discussion, everyone. Thank you so much.

Grant: Thanks, Landon. Mia, are you available to check in?

Mia: Hi. Mia, she-her-hers. Description. I have dark hair that is growing out wildly, that is held somewhat in place with a green headband. I have light skin, dark eyes, full cheeks, a gray sweater, a green T-shirt that has diagonal lines. Behind me is a white couch, a white dog, a yellow pillow, some art on a gray wall. Beside me is my 10-week-old baby, whose name is Amad Sosas. And they are wearing a white onesy with blue bows printed on it. And my access needs today are that I am feeling very stretched in my heart and my spirit and my mind and in my home. And so I am just going to ask for patience as I take extra time maybe to pull my parts together. I will be spending most of my attention trying to keep an eye on any audience engagement that is coming at us from the Facebook livestream and from our email address. So really wanna encourage people who are joining us today to interact with us in that way. And I will be there to catch you, and Roo will be there to catch you on WhatsApp. I am, like so many of my collaborators here, feeling the kind of awe and depth-full frustration, simultaneously, about the ways in which the shape of work in the world has automatically seem to be able to shift with this new context even as we have been advocating for these conditions for years. So the ways in which abled community is now trying to reorient towards modalities of work that are really informed by Crip, Mad praxis. And I'm excited for people to have new ways of working and new ways of feeling and sensing and iterating their experiences. And I'm also deeply troubled by the erasure that happens in moments like these of the long work that people have been doing, that our communities have been doing, to try to establish conditions that are in more humane, real world shapes, real world shapes that reflect the real context of our minds and our bodies and our spirits. I'm forgetting somethings, I think, about my check-in. Who am I? What do I do? My pronouns. I did my pronouns. I am the convener and co-coordinator of Unsettling Dramaturgy. My practice spans artistic, creative, and community practice. I'm a writer, creator, performer, dramaturg, sound designer, and disability justice organizer. I'm a Jew of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic accent. I think that that covers everything about who I am and what I'm bringing here today. Am I right about that, dear narrators? Yeah.

Grant: Yes.

Mia: Great. I'll leave it there then.

Grant: Thanks, Mia. Yay! All right, we're gonna take a moment to pause to switch interpreters. We're good? All right. Lindsay, would you wrap us up and then shift us into break a through a movement exercise?

Lindsay: Great. Thank you, everyone. Tiare, I don't know if we wanna be introducing you as well. That's the only question I had before I jump in.

Claudia: This is Claudia with a wild interrupting suggestion. How about you introduce yourself, we have our break, and then we get to meet and witness and hear about this amazing work. 'Cause I've been seeing drawing taking place, I can't wait to see what this is. And maybe after the break?

Lindsay: Love it.

Grant: Yeah, something that people can look forward to, a reason to come back after the break. Who knows what would be on that paper?

Lindsay: Thank you. Okay, rad. All right, I'm Lindsay Eales. I use she-her, and they and them is wonderful as well. I'm currently in a space where snow is slowly melting. And I have come to find affinity with that in terms of slowly emerging from decomposition and follow time that happens for me very often in the winter and into early spring, and time that I often feel empty of thoughts and deep of feeling. But I'm trying to honor and celebrate as important parts of my process. I have a pale, round face, with freckles, and bright-red curly hair. I'm wearing black cat-eye glasses that have sparkles on them. I have a green shirt that's of a forest and a baby sloths necklace on 'cause I'm trying to learn to be slow and honor that as well. And in the background... I'm in my bed, so I'm gonna do our warm up from my bed 'cause that's a thing. And in the background, there's a painting or a picture of trees that are coming together with the sun shining through. I'm feeling... I don't really know how I'm feeling. I'll work into that in a minute. Access needs. I tend to move as I need to. I might request that folks repeat something they say if I've lost where I am in my thought row thinking string thing. Yeah. My practice began in integrated dance and disability performance, and now it includes queer, Mad, fat performance. And I use Mad as an umbrella term for social and political and critical and community orientations to so-called mental illness and to psychiatric power. And Mad performance for me involves thinking about experiences of madness as sources of aesthetic generativity and points of political intervention. And my work in Mad performance has also brought me to thinking and being and feeling into Mad-affirming and disability-affirming trauma informed practice in the performing arts. Meaning that we can actively attend to trauma and craft our creation spaces to avoid retraumatization and to depathologize mental distress and trauma reactions. And for me, Mad and disability-affirming trauma-informed practice, considerations are central to cripping process. So I think that one thing that's unsettling for me right now is, is the push for productivity and for showing up to a bunch of meetings and for doing all of these things in the midst of trauma. The feeling like, am I ever gonna be able to create anything when I have a frozen trauma brain happening intensely right now? I think, certainly, my intimate relationships are made precarious by this particular virus. And so, death looms. And trauma comes with that. And so, I think I'm unsettled by the feeling or the pressure or the amping up of productivity in the midst of this, and how do we attend to all of those aspects of trauma that make us freeze, or flee, or frown, or all of the things we might do to care for ourselves in the best ways we know how in the context we're in. But that are often pathologized. So those are things that are kind of big for me right now. Yeah, and one thing we wanted... I think we'll shift into a break right now. One thing we wanted to do is offer an embodied opportunity to do some movement. Because I think we sit at Zoom, and sometimes it's really hard to like be stuck there for a long time feeling like we can't move. So it's three to five-minute thing. Right now, if you want, your preference is to go take 10-minute break 'cause that feels good. Please do that. Anything I offer in this movement break, which will take five minutes and be followed by a bio break for another five minutes, we can pause and do whatever you need to do. But in this movement break, I encourage you to do whatever works for your own body. Feel into things that feel good for you and avoid things that don't feel good for you 'cause we don't need to feel bad right now. Unless you wanna feel it, and then do that. Sure. Cool. I'm gonna from in my bed. This is a BrainDance. It's based off of Anne Green Gilbert's Brain-Compatible Dance Education. That's the creative dance center out of Seattle. It's something that I do that I have complex feelings about because it's based on normative neuro developmental patterns, which we need to problematize because they make targeting Disabled folks for non-normativity possible, but also, there's a lot of entry points for movement. So I wanna hold both of those things together as you do this. So, to start, we're just gonna feel into breath. And in this, I don't want you to breathe in any particular way other than I will invite you to think or possibly try breathing in more than you might in your everyday life in usual, or just feeling to your breath, if that feels okay for you. And the next pattern is just some tactile sensation. So we're just doing some tapping. We can do tapping. We can do brushing, or squeezing. If there's parts of your body that need a massage, now's a good time to do that. Brushing can be slow if you want to be calming. It could be quick if you wanna be waking up a bit. We're just sensing our body through touch in whatever way feels good for you right now. And then we're gonna focus on core distal movements. So we're gonna get really, really tiny, as tiny as you can get where you are. And then as big as you can get. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Expand, take up as much space as you can. And bring it back to tiny, tiny, tiny. So we're moving from core to distal, which is big, stretched out wide, taking up lots of space, and maybe a couple of cycles of that on your own time, getting small and big as you'd like. Now we're gonna look at our head and our tail connection. So our head can come closer to our tail in the front space, and further apart. It can come closer together in the back space, and further apart. Our head and tail can come closer together in the side space and further apart. And we can also think about spirals, or snakes, or twists. So we're just thinking about how do our head and tail relate through our spine. Great. Now, we're gonna move this upward movement however you might like. Sometimes it's swingy or flowy. Sometimes it's shaky or vibration. Sometimes it's soft. Sometimes it's close to our body. Sometimes it's far away the reaches. Thinking about neck, shoulders, ribs, as well as limbs. Or it's the movement in lower body. So we're moving our lower body wherever we feel comfortable with. This might include moving wheels, moving through space. We're just moving, flexing, and extending as you'd like in place. We're gonna move one-half of our body. So we're planting one side of our body and we're moving in the other side however it likes to move. And we'll plant that side and move the other side. Well, we're working on body side work here. And then we'll cross our midline. So we're crossing our body. It's a classic Macarena, if you like it, crossing our body. You can cross in the back, too. Sometimes we forget our backspace. Excellent. And the last one is vestibular. So often, the best one is to spin in circles. But another way, you can rock or swaying. And we're just getting a little bit dizzy, and then finding some equilibrium as we come back and try a different way. All right. We come back to our breath for a couple of times. Notice how our body might feel differently from when we started. And we take a pause. So we'll back in about five minutes.

[Break.]

Brooke (ASL interpreter): Ava, Landon is trying to get your attention.

Ava (ASL Interpreter): And I don't see him. That's what I'm trying to click on. I can't see him at all right now. All I see is Grant and you.

Brooke: So just scroll to the bottom, there's a, at the bottom of the four images, if you hover over the last one, a title will show up with the arrow. Landon is saying that he can see you though.

Ava: Yeah, okay. I can't see him 'cause what happened is the unsettling dramaturgy break statement came all across my screen, the white screen.

Brooke: Right. Okay.

Ava: Okay, so hand on, I'm dragging it out. Now I see him, okay. Sorry. I was like, "Who?"

Claudia: This is Claudia. I know we're on a break, but could you just say again exactly what problem you were solving in that moment?

Brooke: This is Brooke. We were just saying that, once the tiles went to the side, that I could only Landon or Ava. So the three of us couldn't see each other. So we're just scrolling amongst the participants in order to see each other.

Claudia: Interesting. Thank you.

[Only Ava is visible as Ava and Landon communicate in ASL.]

[Break.]

Grant: All right. I think it's about time to get back in.

Claudia: Excellent. I just wanted to name some of the beautiful processing that was taking place during our break. And then we'll be transitioning to get to know our person who's doing graphic capturing. I would love to know the exact name of what this process is, and we'll get to see it. So what I witnessed was, when we went to sharing a full screen, it made the interpreters be unable to see the Jess and Landon, to see the person they were trying to communicate with. And then, in real-time, we talked about it out loud and solved it in real-time. That's often what our practices have to be when working with technology that was not designed to be accessible. Pass the mic to, I feel like I should pass the mic to Tiare, whose name I believe I'm still mispronouncing, I apologize, to introduce themselves, and then we can witness the work and the art. Sounds good? Excellent. Check.

Tiare: Hello. Can you hear me? Great. So my name is Tiare. Thanks for asking about the pronunciation. It's similar to saying the three letters T-R-A, but with a bit more fluidity. And my pronouns are they/them. I am a tan olive-skinned person with dark-black hair. And I'm wearing a very patterned shirt. And I have glasses. I'm also a thin person, so I have thin privilege in the world. And how am? I'm really grateful for the bio break. Sometimes when I'm graphic recording in live meetings, they like go over, and I'm like, I have to pee so bad, but I can't run across the stage in the middle of the keynote. OMG. And I'm also just quite grateful to be here with all of you. Access needs. My access needs are met. And an introduction to some of my work in practice. So someone is asking the name. There's no right or wrong name for the process I'm doing, but probably the most google-able term is graphic recording. People also use graphic facilitation. And that's just the live process of being really present with a group, listening for sort of the key takeaways or some salient points, and putting that into a visual format that combines words and images. Yeah, so I've had the honor of being able to graphic record in settings where people are talking about disability justice and accessibility, and I always learn a lot and feel really grateful for that work happening. So I'm super grateful to be supporting or collaborating with this series of videos by drawing some visuals. I was just talking to my younger sister who lives with a chronic illness that undiagnosed, but often, during a flare up, she's just stuck at home in bed. And, yeah, she was sharing some feelings with me about what's happening in this COVID time, and she had just shared that, she was like, "Well, Tiare, "I don't want anyone else to suffer, "but honestly, there's a part of me "that feels relieved that the rest of the world is forced "to move at a pace that I have to move out all the time. "And I hope that people have more understanding "and more empathy for what I'm going through "as I'm often in bed and can't do a lot of stuff." And there's a lot of stuff she obviously can do. So, yeah. Maybe I'll just tell you a little bit about the drawing before I share it with you. What I've been doing is I have a notebook beside me, and I'm capturing some penciled down notes about some of the like themes that people are commenting on. And I've started to think of the images I'll create. They'll probably be more than one 'cause I don't wanna cram too much overwhelming information into one image. And so, maybe there's an image that's kind of telling the story of what people are experiencing. So talking about what's happened with institutions suddenly jumping online and people's thoughts and emotions in response to that. And I also was thinking maybe there will be another image, maybe, of someone sitting in bed at the computer, with some like accessibility best practices, there's a list, because I've been jotting down some of those things as I observe people practicing them. For example, access check-ins, acknowledging the land and situating ourselves on it, bio brakes, transparent facilitation, so solving problems as they come up. Yeah, and so I just thought I would tell you, that's a separate image, and then I'll share with you what I have so far. And I'm still catching up. So the drawings, sometimes I like to draw the drawings first so that feels engaging, and then I figure out the most like succinct way to narrow down the text afterwards. So, yeah, let me just share my screen.

Grant: All right, and just as a reminder to everybody else participating, while you show the image, we are going to just be quiet and not speak, and then Lindsay will offer a description after you share it. Thank you.

Tiare: Awesome, thank you. Can everyone see that?

Grant: It’s coming up.

Tiare: Great. [Pause.][ Let me know when, I mean, I feel like there's not that much to see yet, so I can take it down.

Grant: Thank you.

Tiare: Yay, thank you!

Lindsay: So maybe I'll just offer some of the things that I noticed to start, and then, Tiare, if you have things that also you feel like, as the designer, you wanna share, that would be really cool, too. I'm excited about learning more about this practice, particularly, and the process for it. So what I witnessed was a picture of a land formation, that's what I understood was, up in the left top hand corner, that had overlaid the text of the name of the praxis session that we are participating in. So it's said, "Unsettling Dramaturgy Praxis Session." I'm probably missing some words there. And then there's this little green pathway coming from that picture, across the top of the page in a squiggly way, that had some text on it. And I forget what it said. Creeping practice, I think. And then and just below the land formation picture on the left hand lower side, there was a screen, so a laptop, an image of a laptop with four video sections with different faces and sign language interpreter in one of the corners, and folks of various gender and race presentations. And there was a small like little drawing, an outline of a building, in black-and-white, that was a little bit more center and a little higher up on the page, but just under the green pathway. And it said, next to it, it said, "Institutions are coming online," something similar to that. And then the rest of the page, from the center over down to the right-hand lower side, was blank. So it's ready for more ideas and thoughts and sharings to be added, is what I felt from the image. Thank you.

Claudia: Excellent. Thank you so much. This is Claudia speaking. I'm going to do our Zoom acknowledgement. I'm going to acknowledge a few more of our practices that we've been doing, and then we're going to transition into a discussion about clipping praxis in digital space with all of our colleagues. We want to recognize that Zoom, the planet form that we're using to come together today, is headquartered in what is now San Jose, California, on the traditional lands of Ahlone and Tamyen peoples. Some practices you might notice we have been doing. Some of these are practices in physically embodied meetings that you would do to make them more accessible. Some of these are practices that you need to do to make your digital meetings accessible for everyone. For instance, the practice of saying check at the end of speaking is the practice we created because some people are only able to hear us, either because they are only on the phone, in conference call mode, or because they are a member of the Deaf community. So saying check is a way to indicate I'm done speaking, the next person can speak. You'll also note that people have been asking, "Can you hear me?" This is an aspect of the technology being inconsistent and sometimes our volume levels being inconsistent, connectivity being inconsistent, but there's also a great access practice to check in to make sure, can you hear me, can you understand me? Prior to this meeting... Oops, I just muted myself. Prior to this meeting, we created a script that had some of the language we would be talking about. Our land acknowledgments were already in there. We made that so that our captioners and sign interpreters would have something to reference. So they wouldn't be just having to react off of our voice to text. It also helps us as a collective to be able to manage a complex space when none of us are in the same physically embodied space. So having that document was very, very helpful to us. Let's see. We made sure to have a meeting prior to this meeting to practice some of this with each other. Planning beforehand is going to be a very necessary process for creating accessibility. And then, of course, if you've noticed, we've been doing some very healthy pacing. Just pacing ourselves for access for all of us. We have a lot of questions that we have sourced from everyone and the folks that's part of this group. Instead of reading all of these amazing questions, I think possibly, I'm just going to start off with the first two, and then allow us to continue. Does that sound good to my colleagues? I'm getting facial recognition, people nodding. Excellent. Oh, actually, that reminds me, I should name one other practice that we've been doing consistently, which is, Grant already named this, we voice what's in the chat if that feels necessary, we voice what's in the Google Doc notes if that feels necessary. No information is only voiced or only visually accessible. The questions we have to begin are these. "What does crimping practice, "in the context of virtual organizing, "creation, and collaboration, "mean to you, "and how is it practiced?" And the second question was, "How can virtual organizing radically reconstruct power "in ways that center Crip, Mad, Sick, and Disabled contexts, "embodiments, and realities? "Where and how have you experienced this happening? "What does cripping praxis mean to you? "How is it practiced? "How is virtual organizing radically restructuring "our powers?" Check.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Hey, Claudia, would you mind reading those again?

Claudia: Sure, I sure will.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Thank you.

Claudia: I could ask all the questions, they're all just really big and beautiful and have a lot in them. So the first question was, "What is cripping praxis "in the context of virtual organizing mean to you? "And how is that practice? "What are the ways you're cripping praxis "in virtual organizing?" And then the second question was, "How can virtual organizing radically restructure power "in ways that center Crip, Mad, Sick, "and Disabled contexts and realities?" And then, again, the follow up was, "Where, how, what are some examples that you've experienced "of this taking place? "What does cripping praxis mean to you "in the context of virtual organizing?" And I will also name, as part of our practice, we appreciate moments to think and take time to respond. Check.

Lindsay: This is Lindsay. Maybe I'll just throw two things that feels simple but also important for me. This is the first Zoom meeting I've done from bed in the context of all of the Zoom meetings I've had. And there's like all these jokey memes going around about how a bunch of tops are being bought but nobody's buying bottoms 'cause everyone's wearing sweatpants and like wear pajama pants or whatever. And nobody can see your bottoms, generally, in a Zoom meeting, so everyone's wearing fancy shirts and sweatpants. And so dancing from my bed in my sweatpants feels like... And knowing that this is a space to honor and celebrate that feels like one of the cripping praxises of virtual organizing that is enabled particularly by this group, but that isn't something that I necessarily feel available or safe in other spaces. So even just acknowledging that we're in bodies and we're wearing clothes, and those clothes have meanings and are safer or less safe to expose in some spaces, is something that's been meaningful for me.

Jessica Watkin: This is Jessica speaking. Thank you, Lindsay. While you were speaking, it reminded me a little bit of something that Audre Lorde... Whenever I teach in a lecture, I always start off with a slide of Audre Lorde saying that, "Taking care of myself is an active personal resistance." And I also really heard what you said earlier about this productivity culture. I watched a video yesterday while making dinner of a woman who was a YouTuber who normally works from home giving tips on how to work from home, and how she suggested never to work from bed, for example. Always get dressed, do your makeup, blow out your hair, and I was like, "Okay." Some people are doing that, this girl's not. I don't do that, anyway, on a regular basis. But I thought it was really interesting when we talk about cripping praxis. And about cripping my productivity right now is a big part of it. Like I'm not trying to work... Well, I'm trying to push back on working the same amount as my colleagues or the people around me. And like a friend of mine, on the bio break, sent me a text and said she did no work today and she's feeling really stressed about it and her family is really sick and she can't go visit them and all this stuff. And I said, "But you still did amazing work today." So, for me, my cripping practice has been lifting up people because I work with Disabled folks all the time. I am Disabled. I'm a Disabled dramaturg, and part of my practice every day is always to be like, "Okay, how are you doing today?" Like this hour-and-a-half long check-in we just did is... We do that, like rehearsals, meetings, everything is, you get an hour to like sit around and hold space for each other and hold each other for whatever you're sitting in. And so, I find sometimes that the Zoom meeting's time and productivity both come together, and I feel like I'm being pushed against an ocean of trying to go faster or do more things, be more efficient, see more people, Zoom calls, Zoom calls, Zoom call, Zoom call, whereas returning back to caring for ourselves and each other is the work right now. And so, yes, sending a text message and saying, "You did amazing work today. "You took a bath and went to the grocery store, "great job." And that, for me, is a part of my cripping praxis right now and is the way that I'm meaningfully engaging both in my, like with my students, but also with my art and with the artists that I'm working with as well. And trying to come from a place of flexible understanding, not assuming anyone is showing up. "Fully ready" or "professionally wearing," not coming from... And that's kind of where it's coming from me. So just playing off of what you just said. I think care is such a huge part of Crip praxis that... And it's so natural for me that it just comes. Like, of course, we'd have ASL interpreters, of course, we would. Of course, we would have audio, like, for me, anyway. And so, yeah. Check.

Lindsay: This is Lindsay. Maybe I can just add one thing that sparked for me, too, is that one of the least Crip spaces or like the least desirable spaces for me is a space where we have to "leave our shit at the door." And so, for me, to that, like you're saying an hour-and-a-half check-in is like and bringing our stuff, like all of our stuff, is so, yeah, that really resonates for me, too. Check.

Claudia: This is Claudia. Today, a colleague of mine posted on Facebook complaining about a problem that I discovered, I wanna say, two years ago. when I started to work nationally and primarily using digital interfaces. There is a natural limitation to your ability to be in multiple places at the same time, or to travel from space to space. So when I was in a work situation that asked for physically embodied meetings, that organization, they did not care about my health or wellness, but they did understand that it was physically impossible for me to be in two spaces simultaneously, or to go directly to one space, there had to be walking time involved. And they scheduled with that in mind. Right now, that colonised scheduling process that wants to demand all of your time every single minute is taking place in ways where there's no limitations. So people are feeling the stress of wanting to be requested to be in meetings back-to-back-to-back, sometimes simultaneously, which is requiring them to really get real about what are their priorities. How do you demand your time if the people organizing the meetings are not organizing them in ways that are accessible? Check.

Carmen: Hi there, it's Carmen. So I have two things. One is that what I've been noticing lately in just emailing with foods and like checking in with them about how they're doing, I don't know, it seems like this sort of moment opened up this space where people can disclose about certain things. They can talk about their bodies, they could talk about how they're feeling, people who didn't really do that before. I'm hearing about health conditions that I didn't know about before from others folks that we don't really talk about, those health diagnoses. And, yeah, so I think it's been a space where people feel like they can share about that stuff and tell others that they're not well, like that they are stressed out, that they are feeling a certain way. That's usually what we try to do when we're holding accessible spaces, making a welcoming space where we don't have to leave our stuff at the door. The other thing, too, and this came up out of like a Unsettling Dramaturgy meeting a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the classroom and how a lot of like learning is going online right now, and how that's there's this exciting potential in that for like that kind of student teacher hierarchy dynamic to kind of like flattened a bit and to become more horizontal. On an online platform, it's kind of strange for, one of the many faces on that gallery view to be like talking all the time. And so like engagement within a crowd, I think, people are thinking about more. Yeah, I feel like it disrupts in some ways the classroom dynamic in a way that opens it up a bit for others that might not feel comfortable talking. I think there are just certain conventions to it that, yeah, kind of relate to some of the issues with sitting in a classroom in a fix seating arrangement. Sorry. Check. I'm just listening to the chat. Sorry.

DeLesslin “Roo”: This is Roo--

Claudia: Roo?

DeLesslin “Roo”: Yes.

Claudia: I’m sorry to interrupt. Could someone just, or Carmen, would you be willing to just say a little bit out loud about what the experience of the chat-to-voice is, just as a point of additional accessibility talk? Thank you, Roo. Sorry to interrupt.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, I could speak to that. So I use like a text-to-voice screen reader just to like navigate what's going on my screen. And I guess how it's set up, I don't know if I could change this, but tips are welcomed. But basically it's set up to read out everything that's going on the chat just in a robotic voice as if I was like a gamer and wanted to be multitasking and listening to chat while I'm playing a game. It's kind of distracting for me, but I understand why that space is necessary. So I kind of like remedy it by just listening through one headphone, basically. Yeah.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Thank you. Thank you, Carmen. Yeah, not realizing that that's the experience of chatting for you. I do wanna not take up too much space, but I just wanted to input here. A particular experience that I'm having in this moment as someone from a tribe and working for a tribe, in the so-called United State, is that the United States Congress has allocated a bunch of funding to come down in response to the pandemic. And what that's translated to for my tribe is that, yes, we have a lot of really amazing opportunities coming up to build capacity often around access for a lot of our tribal members, particularly the ones dealing with substance use disorders and domestic violence situations and homelessness and things like that. But in this moment, what it actually looks like is that, for that funding, is them coming to us and saying, "We want you to get this funding. "Here's a 50-page application that you need to fill out "to receive that funding." And so, I am just so inundated at the moment with writing giant grants for funding that they've told us they wanna give to us. I'm particularly bitter because all of the revenue of the United States is built on land that has been stolen from indigenous communities. So I don't really understand why there has to be a metric for them to give us this money. But I'm just thinking about access, and like, we're lucky because the last decade we've really built up capacity and situations for us to be able to pursue those fundings. But I'm thinking about, within the last five years, there's been a handful of tribes that have been recognized by the federal government who are eligible for this funding. We don't necessarily have the institutions in place to be able to access support. And so, what is that barrier there that people have to cross to access support? And so I'm just curious about how that translates to more personal experiences, this tribal experience translating to personal experiences. Check.

Grant: This is Grant. I think following up a little bit on what Roo, you said, and Carmen, although I think this is, a lot of what I'm feeling just threads from what many of us have talked about already, is related to this question of like cripping virtual space. And I think about access to resources and the ways that we, culturally, are, that the labor that we do is connected to how much money we have, and that that labor determines whether or not we have access to food, access to healthcare, access to housing, whether or not we are more likely to be putting to prison, whether we are more likely to have health disparities. And, suddenly, with COVID, a lot of people's access to those labor markets are completely disrupted. And I think that there is a really powerful opportunity for Disabled activists to really further the disruption, and to say, "We don't need to put on pants to have a good meeting." There was an article in The New York Times that said, that was talking about like best practices for having a Zoom conference. And one of them was like, "Make sure that your kids are put away "in the other room or whatever." And for the work that we're doing, again, going back to what you had said... Yeah, there is Mia. This would not be what we're doing without you, Mia, and your child, and Jessica. This is part of what cripping praxis is. Going back to what--

Mia: Just to describe the image that I just shared, I'm breastfeeding my child, and that's what I showed.

Grant: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mia. And that, to what you were saying, Lindsay, this idea that we have bodies, those bodies exist in a given circumstance, and that they have needs that will change what it is that we're doing, our ways of thinking that run counter to colonialism, that run counter to capitalism, and that, for me, cripping praxis has the potential to use this moment, or that this moment has the potential to use cripping praxis to change the way that culture prevents our bodies from having access to life and having access to freedom. And so, I guess that like... Yeah, to Carmen, you said that there are people who are now suddenly disclosing illnesses that they've never disclosed before. Like what an amazing time that suddenly people feel free enough to talk about our bodies. So I feel a lot of empowerment from this group, from other, particularly, from digital organizing with Disabled people. And that I would hope that anybody who's in this conversation, who does not self-identify as Disabled, is happy or is willing to interrupt any Zoom meeting to say, "Hey, let's do an access check-in." Or you could even say, "This Disabled person I heard "or this Disabled activist I heard "during this conference suggested "that we do an access check-in, or a land acknowledgement." And so, yeah, I see the ways that we interrupt normative culture, both in real-time and in the ways that we do in order to make sure that we are all participating, that is how cripping practice manifests for me in digital space. Just as a heads up, there's conversation in the chat about inviting audience questions after the break. So I think we've only had about 40 minutes to talk. We have a break scheduled for right now. I'm curious how people... Are there any other like closing thoughts before we shift into a break? I know that, let's see. Just gonna name Andrea, Jessica, Landon, as people who haven't spoken yet, just giving you an opportunity. I see head shakes. Is there anybody else who wants to make sure that they add something before we go into a break?

Andrea: Yeah, I'd like to chime in. This is Andrea. I find that when you're in a Crip space that's really a Crip space, words keep coming up, like understanding and supporting, and all these words that are just love, and that's what Crip spaces are to me. And Crip praxis is taking care of each other, recognizing realities. And I think that we just need to bring Crip praxises into all practices. So check.

Grant: Awesome, thank you. Claudia.

Claudia: Yeah. Well, again, I feel like I'm repeating things that people have already said several times with great intelligence. But I am going to name them with a title. So I began doing something that I called decolonizing my meetings. And some of that was, I begin by asking people like how are you as a human being before we transition into like this is the work stuff that we're doing. Having a meeting practice that allowed people to take care of their human bodies. Like you don't have to ask me for permission to leave the meeting space to take care of your human body. Why would I do... I don't create meetings that require you to like hurt yourself to participate in my meetings. I call that decolonizing my meeting practice. Today, I am calling that relaxed meeting style. Relaxed performances. That's a way to title performances that have the highest level of accessibility to everyone in a theatre space. They were created specifically to serve the neurodivergent community. But I find that I've been producing relaxed performances my entire life 'cause I like to have an audience that maybe has some children in it, and they need to relaxed spaces. So I would like to honor our relaxed meeting practice. It's one that is necessary when your meetings are taking place inside your home, where reproductive labor and home labor and commercial labor and that money labor, all mixed together. In this moment, I would like to pass the microphone back to Grant. But actually, let me say one more thing. Doing digital meetings is different than meeting IRL in meet space. In a regular meeting, when you're talking to a group of people, your body will naturally turn to them and move. You will move your body in different ways. You're not like this, you're not locked in like this. So just wanted to do a shout out for any kind of stretches embodiment exercises, or just reminders that it's okay to stand up or move your body from my colleagues. That is a beautiful point of access. I now pass the microphone back to Grant to usher us into our break.

Grant: Thank you, Claudia. We have one more minute before 4:05, which is a nice round number. Any other any other last things that people say before we do a shift?

Jessica Watkin: Can I just add one tiny thing?

Grant: Please.

Jessica Watkin: Like two sentences. This is just--

Grant: Yes.

Jessica Watkin: Crip praxis is joyful as well. Like we find joy in failure and mistakes and bumbling and looking at someone's chin on a Zoom meeting and unpolishedness. Yeah, bring me the chin. So I just wanna bring that. I think that's a way to wrap this all up, is that the fact that we've had to negotiate that we narrate that we have different, that it's all Crip praxis. Like we're not trying to polish this video call right now, because that's... What does polish mean? The academic in me is like, "Well, that's what it mean." It doesn't fit into my vocabulary. Check.

Grant: Thank you. All right. So we're gonna shift into break. I'm gonna lead us through an embodiment exercise. And I see a finger from Roo. Roo.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Yes, thank you. Excited for the embodiment exercise and the bio break. Just a access note for our presenters is, if you are leaving for your break either before or after the movement exercise, please go ahead and mute your video if you're able. That, we're hoping, will help with the transition for our interpreters as we go into break. So if you need to leave now, go ahead and mute your audio and video. And if you wanna leave after the movement part, mute your audio and video after the movement part. Check.

Mia: And if you don't mute yourself, this is Mia, I will mute you.

Grant: Thanks, Mia. All right. So, wherever you are, this is both for the people who are in the facility or who are collaborators here and for those of you witnessing from wherever else you are through the livestream. I'm gonna probably be speaking a little bit to both in different ways 'cause I can encounter the people on the Zoom meeting a little differently. So, wherever you are, just turn, allow your attention to shift to just the world of sensation. You may be noticing feeling of breath, temperatures, weight, weight of your body. And as you turn your attention to just sort of the sensing place, just allow your body to sort of move in whatever way it feels comfortable, pleasurable. This might change the way you sense. Notice what you're sensing through. It could be touch, taste, smell. And notice the places that might want a little bit of extra attention. Notice the places that are saying, "Oh, I've been doing this for two hours, "what are you doing to me?" Or maybe the lower back has something to say. Notice if they have any ways that they want you to move. For this last minute before we get into a more quiet break, I wanna just invite the prompt of moving with awkward fabulosity. Really, just allow your body to move in whatever ways to feel both awkward and fabulous. How can you really just let that sense of having this clunky, mushy body that feels so fabulous? And just share that. Share that with yourself in whatever tiny or enormous way you want to. Through the breath, through movements, through a tilt of the head. And feel free to carry this into the next five minutes of break. Thank you.

[Break.]

Mia (unseen): Hi, this is Mia. Just wanting to ask our ASL interpreters if you can look at the chat in a second. I'm gonna just type something in there.

Ava: Brooke, can you see the chat? 'Cause I can't see the chat.

Brooke: Yeah, I can see the chat, Mia. That's for checking in. Yeah, but initially, we did start interpreting it. I asked Landon if you wanted to keep going--

Mia: Let's chat in the chat. Brooke, let's chat in the chat itself.

Brooke: Okay.

[Break.]

Ava: Hi there, Mia, it's Ava here, one of the interpreters. I've just been just discussing to Landon, and he's asked me to respond what we were doing, which wasn't interpreted as... There was terminology and vocabulary coming up on the chat. And one of the words was microaggressions. We don't have a particular sign for that in American Sign Language. And so, Landon was discussing with the two of us what could we use for that contextual concept in sign language that would make it easier for us to use it both ways, not only us watching Landon present, but also if we're interpreting from English to ASL. So that's what we were doing. Our apologies for not letting you know that. And thank you for reminding us, if you've seen us, that we need to let you know. Also, too, with Landon, we can't shut our screens off because then we can't communicate with Landon. So we will always be live. So please gently remind us that you can see us. And if you wanna be part of our conversation, or at least hear, we'll make sure that one of us, that's interpreting, can let you know that. Our deepest apologies for that. That was a complete oversight on our part that you could see us, but that we were actually dialoguing about how to framework that particular word of microaggressions.

Mia: That’s really awesome to know. And just wanted to make sure that what Grant was leading was also being interpreted because that was still part of the public work that we were doing. So just had some concern around multiple things happening at the same time that might have been creating some confusion. But we're totally live and I think we're back now. So I'm gonna hand it over to our narrator.

Claudia: This is Claudia. I just wanna say, as part of the point of this very specific gathering, being allowed to witness the in real-time process of figuring out how to communicate with the best access processes is just great. So I want to thank Mia, as well Ava, as well as Landon. I'm not sure who else was involved in that exchange, but thank you to everyone. That was wonderful. Thank you.

DeLesslin “Roo”: Yeah. Can I just insert myself here? I look forward to maybe us having a conversation prior to our next meeting about how to facilitate that even better so that if the interpreters need to have a more private space during breaks, how we might be able to make that happen. So just putting that out there. Thank you.

Claudia: Thank you so much, Roo. And as I always have to remind myself, the practices that we do to meet, those are practices that were perfected by colonialism and bureaucracy for many, many, many years, and we inherited them. So now we get to change them, but that changing takes time and process. This is a process. Thank you. We have several questions from audience members that I would love to be able to honor in this final hour, and then perhaps we can close out with maybe experiencing some graphic design. Does that sound good to you, my colleagues? I'm seeing visual affirmation, head nods, and arm shakes. Thank you. So the first question is from Chase. Just gonna get back to this question. "What was the co-creation process "for the questions asked each participant "in that spectacular check-in "in terms of what questions or requests were chosen "to be included or not included in that sharing?" That's the first question. Check.

Grant: So just as a more logistical answer to that question, the questions that we asked during our check-in, I'm going to read when I find them, and I'm speaking slowly to do it, the questions were for people to say their name, their pronoun, give a land acknowledgement, a physical description, how you are, access needs, introduction to some aspect of your work and practice, and what's unsettling about work we're presently with right now and where we feel and notice it in our body? So those are the questions that this person was curious about. What is the process that we used to come up with those?

DeLesslin “Roo”: This is Roo again, sorry to keep interrupting. I just wanna name that these are the exact same questions that we use in our private gatherings. And so, my goal, and Mia's goal, and I feel like a lot of our goals, was just to live that practice publicly, to show what we're working on together in a more intimate space. Check.

Claudia” Is there anyone else that would like to weigh in on that particular introduction, why we do it, how that was created?

Lindsay: Maybe I can just throw in something that I really like about the breadth of questions, is that, to me, the whole thing is an access check-in even though we asked specifically about access. But just to highlight, which many of you may already know, but just to highlight the idea of physical descriptions and how you are are all trying to get to the fact that there's this really big multiplicity of accesses that we're trying to really hold and support. And I really love what Andrea said about love and like the idea of this being a practice of love storying is like... Yeah, and just that all of those questions are, I think, I'm assuming is, particularly from Roo and Mia in crafting them in relation to everybody, that it's about really acknowledging that multiplicity of access.

Carmen: It’s Carmen. I also wanna say, too, that it really was a space that Mia and Roo modeled for us, in some ways, and invited us into, and it's like a reflection of each of their practices, I think, in some ways 'cause based on like the language that was chosen for the invitation that we all got to participate in these private events together. I think it also resonates with a lot of like practices that are common within more like grassroots spaces that organized around accessibility, safe space. Yeah, these are like access... I mean, they're accessibility practices, and I think they really do speak to the work and the space that both Mia and Roo are dedicated to. Check.

Claudia: Thank you, Carmen. Roo, did you have something you wanted to add?

DeLesslin “Roo”: Yeah. I mean, I think that we had an idea, Mia and I, coming into this about what those questions might be. And they have really flourished in communication with all of our collaborators here. And building off what Lindsay was saying, what I love about them is that they seek to disentangle, as Claudia was saying, the expectations of what you're coming into the space with. And I think that the hope is always that, that through the series of questions and responses that we're able to disintegrate some of the colonial and ablest expectations of what it means to show up in a space and demonstrate through that question asking that we're here for the fullness of the being. That is the entirety of what I had to say. Check.

Mia: This is Mia, I just wanna jump on that. Because I think it's one thing to have architected a list of questions, but the importance is how those questions being activated in the space that we're creating? So are we asking truly to listen, to hear, to witness, to develop an inter-woven space of mutual aid and care? And how is that then shaping the rest of the time that we're spending together? So when we ask those questions at the top of any convening, how do those questions really get held as we're answering them, and then how do those answers get welcomed as an opportunity to reorient whatever we may have planned for the day? How do we embody a kind of responsiveness, rather than staying fixed and stuck to whatever agenda or goal or idea of what should be accomplished is? And then, that, to me, is truly an embodiment of cripping praxis, because it is about us being in responsive relationship. And both of those words are very important, responsive and relationship. You cannot have a Crip praxis that is not relational, that is without relationship, and that is without an immediate and constant reevaluation of what we're doing, and how, and why, and where, and when, and with whom, and et cetera, et cetera. So I think like, yeah, those questions come from Roo and I and have been shaped and nourished by this entire group. And really, what is special and what is important is how this group welcomes and embodies a notion of how we attend to the time it takes to hear one another, to be with one another, and how those questions invite a reorientation of time itself, a cripping of time, or a decolonization of time. So all that time that we took to check-in in the beginning really is how we're trying to model what those questions mean in an activated state. Words are empty without the action that is invited by them, the possibility that's invited. And so I think that that's, it's less about the questions themselves and how they are lived into as a way of being as a cosmology, even. Yeah.

Claudia: This is Claudia. I also wanna do a shout out for the design aesthetic for the entire meeting. So the creation of how do we meet, what is that introduction like, I'm not sure if an access check-in was actually part of the original aspect, I think that was entered into that in our first meeting. 'Cause the access check-in is a practice that Grant created, and then I have been aggressively pushing for every single meeting I'm a part of. So I just wanna say, just a shout out to the way you scheduled it as well. The fact that our meetings are scheduled to be three hours long, that means something that is a radical act in and of itself. By claiming that amount of time, it actually allows us to be human beings that aren't trying to be capitalist machines and make the meeting really, really fast. I believe these responses spoke to Chase's second question, but I'm going to voice that question and share it with you now, which is, "How would folks speak to those of us wanting to create, "hold, and prioritize these sorts "of radical crypt-centered spaces?" Any wisdom to share in how to co-create these spaces or conversations in a dedicated way, such as this, but also in an ongoing daily way? And Chase, also, I don't know Chase's gender pronouns, so Chase also shares a thanks for the lovely movement practice. Check.

Grant: I wanna use that phrase responsive relationship again and again and again. And Mia, I really love the way that you talk about the questions themselves not being the thing. But the way those questions are activated towards responsive relationship as feeling so fruitful and so core to the work that is happening here. Often, I've seen institutions start to adopt accessibility practices, but they look and feel very constrictive. It's like, "We are making you feel access now, "here are the captions, "and your comfortable space is there." And they don't tell you where the comfortable space is, they don't ask you how you're doing, they don't wanna be asked how they're doing because they're way over-threshold, because they're rushing to uphold these capitalist paradigms. And so, this idea that part of doing these check-ins is for me about welcoming the reality of our bodies on this land into the space, rather than trying to perform the illusions of capitalism, or perform the culture of white capitalist culture that says we have to be a certain way in order to be allowed to engage. If we don't want to engage in this way, we have to have a very good reason for it. If we want to move our bodies in a way that don't look like machines, we have to have a very good reason for it. And if we don't have a reason that isn't perfectly justifiable, then we're pushed out of those spaces. Responsive relationality or spaces of responsive relationship are actually about arriving as we are, for me, and using the space of check-in, using this time to really feel our bodies with one another in a time of ecological collapse, and right now, in a time of quarantine. And that anything, any time or space that takes us away from that, really risks reiterating this culture that actively disables us, this culture that causes us to hurt our bodies in order to uphold people who have more money than us. Check.

Claudia: My brain processes so quickly, so it is an extreme effort for me to hold and create space for others to respond. That was fire! Thank you. That was beautiful. I love all of you human beings sharing your really smart, useful ideas right now. I'm going to move us to a third question, but that second question was really productive. So we wanna to return to it if we have time. The third question we received via Facebook Live from Beatrice, is, "I am very interested in how to deal with microaggressions "in a virtual facilitations/meetings." I kinda wish that we could dialogue a little bit with Beatrice to find out maybe a little bit more about what types of microaggressions they're referring to or experiencing. But I feel like we have all been doing a lot of meetings with people who do not have competencies in either accessible practice or even just digital meeting practice, so maybe some of us can speak to that. So, yeah, has anyone had to deal with microaggressions in virtual facilitation meetings at all, colleagues, before I speak to it? Anyone else?

DeLesslin “Roo”: Claudia, I feel like this is fully in your warehouse as someone who was doing so much digital facilitation. So I'm particularly curious about what you have to say about those.

Claudia: Sure, I'm happy to speak on this. The harassments and the microaggressions that we receive in regular space, we receive them in digital space all the time. So here we have this entire conversation about Zoom bombing, and I had to explain to someone that's not new. Like I've had people crash my event on multiple occasions. I've done my beautiful public Martin Luther King Day celebration and had someone who felt they needed to drive around and honk their horn and yell the N word. That's what we are dealing with. In a digital space, there are some different parameters to think about. And in a shared physical space, I have a lot more access to using body language or non-verbals to communicate with others to request support or to interrupt what is happening. You can always interrupt what is happening, however. So if someone does a perfectly legible microaggression that you have experienced, such as saying, "Oh, where are you from?" if someone has an accent or one of those, you can still interrupt to the meeting. The digital meeting sometimes feels like it's more formal and is requesting you to not interrupt. There are also sometimes the issues of the person who's facilitating or hosting the meeting having really strict controls and not allowing you to interrupt, but you can always interrupt. You can call out something in the chat function. You can do a visual signal to say, "I can't continue until we address this moment." It's not fair that the person who receives the microaggression is often the person who has to say something, but you also have permission to leave the space and leave the meeting. That's one thing that the digital meeting space does allow for in really beautiful ways. There are some issues around safety and blocking that just have not been acknowledged or dealt with with platforms such as Slack, even with Facebook and Twitter, but I'm thinking primarily of Slack and Zoom. If you're receiving microaggressions or harassment in a private chat, that will be visible once the meeting is over. All of that is published and everybody can see it. Or at least the person who's hosting the meeting can see all of that. If you're receiving microaggressions or harassment in a Slack format, screencap. People are publishing what they're doing that's useful. So you can report. So all of the things that you can do in physically-embodied harassment, you can also do in a digital space. Does anyone else have thoughts, ideas, reflections on that question? Check.

Mia: Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to introduce another problem. One is where "owners" of digital spaces, let's say, pages on Facebook, can go in and delete, and modify, and redact comments that have been made. And the way in which, for example, I as a co-moderator on this Zoom today, have the power to mute, to remove any of you. And the ways in which that then can reify some of these systemic issues that we confront off of the digital landscape and on the digital landscape. While everything that you said, Claudia, is so real, there are also these problems of power and control that still exist inside of the digital space. And so, if a moderator is being called out as perpetrating micro or macroaggressions, the ways in which accountability can be sought and found, I think, are still quite problematic in this landscape. And I don't have the answers to that. I have only questions. And so I pose this problem maybe as an opportunity for somebody who has experienced something of this to kind of respond to, how do we assert accountability, how do we address micro and macroaggressions when there is a differential empower and access in the landscape of the virtual space? And how do we Crip our responses? Or what does a Crip response to that kind of event look like?

Lindsay: Maybe just to add or... I don't know. I'm curious about, like in relation to the question about what microaffirmations look like then, too. Because we talked about like here's the microaggressions, but we also get, like Claudia was saying, to be like, "Yay," for things that need to be amplified or to send private emails or texts so that they're not recorded, that are not putting people at risk who are the targets of microaggression, but to still say, "I'm here for you, and that was messed up," or like, "How can I go forward in ensuring "that this doesn't happen again," or the practices of affirmation that we can be amplifying. And what are those practices, particular in virtual space, if we're also like trying to address the aggressions, what are the affirmations to click to? I don't have many answers for that, but I'm curious about it as a way of addressing microaggressions and macroaggressions.

Grant: Um… [Carmen raises a hand.] Oh, Carmen, please.

Carmen: Oh, hi, Carmen here. I was going to say, too, that, and this kind of goes back to that kind of like access check-in and land acknowledgement practice, that for me, that shared set of agreements, or to kind of like elect into a collectively held space is sort of like setting the tone of the space. And it's also like, it speaks to the culture of the groups that you're convening. And I think that can build over time and strengthen over time and bring new practices into those spaces. But your accessible space is always going to reflect the needs, the politics, the barriers or the various things that the people who are present at the time are experiencing and bring to that meeting. I think it's exciting that we get to model those spaces together, and I think we do online and offline. But, yeah, that's the big thing, I think, is really establishing like an accessible and open sort of culture for your gatherings, and knowing that, yeah, like it can start with that set of agreements that people are all sort of like electing into together. Check. Thanks.

Claudia: One of the gifts of this time of disruption is that it allows us to surface what is implicit because we now need to revisit how are we doing these things. What are the rules? What's allowed, what's not allowed? So it gives you an opportunity to perhaps interrupt a power structure that already exists. You know, for instance, that meeting that's always have the same introduction, this gives you an opportunity to say, "We're meeting online, "can we actually introduce ourselves in this way instead? "We're meeting online, what do I do if this happens?" And then you force the entire room to have a conversation about what if this harassment happens, this is what can take place. I'm going to take a moment now.

Grant: Yes!

Claudia: Yes! I will take a moment now to acknowledge that while our relationships with time are often kind of constrained with a colonialist construct, our relationships with time with this group and with HowlRound, are relationships of consent, and generosity, and sharing. Which means, in exactly 19 minutes, this digital space will be shared with others and we will have to go some other place. We have a lot of gorgeous questions that were put into this thing and I'm going to read one of them out loud. I think we have responded to it. "Working virtually can replicate "and amplify the time signature of capitalism. "How does centering Crip embodiments "and practices provide a critical intervention against this? "Where and how have you seen an experience just happening? "What has been the impact?" I don't wanna be talking so much, but there's so many good questions here, and the way they're stated are useful. So I ask my colleagues, should I keep reading your amazing questions, or should we just close this out with everybody saying like one final closing statement and us experiencing the graphic recording?

Mia: Could we ask one more question, have one response to that one question, and then do the other elements that you just proposed, Claudia? Would that be okay?

Claudia: That sounds excellent. And I apologize for reading too fast. Mia, what is the one question that we could respond to? Or Roo?

Mia: Well, I had, just for transparency, I posted this one up in the chat, this may not be the most compelling one. I feel like we did talk to this idea of time signatures being disrupted. So I'm curious, this was the one that I thought we might wanna just have one answer to, how do digital and web-based platforms make possible practices that reflect a multiplicity of embodiments and ways of thinking and perceiving the world? How are they insufficient? And what innovations are needed? And where are we seeing innovation happening? 'Cause innovation is happening, it's been happening from inside of our Crip communities. Yeah, I that was one of the questions that I was excited to hear folks speak into, if others feel excited as well.

Claudia: Could we spend five minutes responding to that, please?

Grant: Just kind of what Claudia had said a moment ago, since so much of how people are communicating is shifting onto this new platform, a lot of what is implicit, or the way things just are, suddenly don't have to be, and we can change that. And that, to me, is one of the really potent powers of web-based platforms, particularly right now. Because, like last night, I attended a Passover dinner that I could walk away from the camera. I could do Passover from my bed. I could blow my nose and nobody would mind. And I could make gross noises that were fun for me to make, and nobody cared. And I could drink wine and embarrass myself from the comfort of my own bed, while also encountering family, friends. And, to me, this idea that we can work from a space that allows us our comforts, granted I'm speaking from a place of privilege, of being housed, and having access to internet and computer, that I do think that this kind of space can allow for a massive shift for people to really relocate how their bodies encounter the work that they are going to be doing. That is completely different from approaches that have existed or approaches that already exist.

Claudia: Would anyone else like to weigh in?

Mia: I think one of the things that we have been doing collectively, this is Mia speaking, has been really trying to introduce ways of being embodied and welcoming multiple ways of thinking into our convening. I do feel that, even in our space, we're still intellect-centric in a very specific way. And I feel that this medium really lends itself to that kind of mode of connecting. So part of it, I think, is around pace of exchange and welcoming in opportunities to respond in ways that are maybe more foreign to this kind of mode of communication. So quiet ways of responding in our bodies that may be private, that may not be publicly, that may not be perceivable by others with whom we're gathering. Finding ways to make meaning of those forms of communication when we're so far from each other. Or we are close to each other, but because we're unable to see each other and be with each other in shared space, we are so far from each other. So I think this question of how to like somatize virtual practice is something that is feeling really hot for me, and a question that I have an ongoing wrestle with. And so, I love that Lindsay and Grant modeled ways that we can be embodied. And I'm interested in how can we merge our embodiment inside of conversations even like this. And so, for me, that is about like, how do we prioritize multiple ways of thinking and perceiving? Which I don't feel that I have the answer to, but it's something that I am longing towards. And I feel that the question is being answered in other people's practice that I get to like witness and be part of sometimes, which is wonderful. But, yeah, I think this medium feels like it's still locked in a very specific form of intellectualization. That's my non-answer.

DeLEsslin “Roo”: Just a request is that, maybe we go ahead and move into our closing statements since we have about 11 minutes left and we definitely wanna see the beautiful visualization that was created from this conversation. So just for facilitation purposes, I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you my closing thoughts on this. I think every time coming up to one of these public engagements, I'm a little bit racked with anxiety and pressure. Not necessarily 'cause I feel like I have to do it alone, because I have such great support with me, and then with our incredible narrators who have been doing a great job today, Claudia, and Lindsay, and Grant, but just that's how my anxiety works. I wanna state that what I was hearing a lot of responses about were about the record, and how digital spaces create records, and what that might mean for holding people accountable, and also contrasting that with the movement in the United States for getting police officers to have cameras on their person to record interactions, and the ways that that does not lead to any sort of accountability. And so, I'm curious about, in this moment of transition, how we might activate the record for justice and for accountability. I'm also thinking about how I got a citation from my tribal housing last year because they let this vine grow up over my porch. it's called a blast theme vine because it has lots of thorns on it. And if you get stuck in it, you're gonna blast theme or curse a lot. I didn't wanna take it down, one, 'cause I am just lazy and I don't wanna do it, and two, 'cause I thought it was cool. And now, I am gifted with a bunch of beautiful sprouts from this vine that are delicious and edible. And so, in my body, I'm feeling very hungry, and I'm excited to go and saute up some of these vines that I did not take down last year, despite that I have a record with my tribal housing department for not having taken it down. So that's where I am at this very moment. Thank you all for just a wonderful, wonderful conversation.

Grant: I wonder if, as a way to just move our closing, Lindsay, you had propose that we... So the last time we did just one word of thought or feeling about what we said. Any other finishing words? We just have nine minutes left. But Lindsay, following with what Mia said, you also proposed that if we wanted to just do a movement or gesture or sound, instead of a word, for what we're feeling from today, that we could do that to close.

Lindsay: Great. I just wanna flag. Mia had just asked in the chat about whether we could do Tiare first so that we can make sure we describe their work, and then we can do the quick word movement gesture.

Claudia: I love this. Let's do it. Tiare. Are you ready to share your work with us in this moment? We are excited to experience it. All right. So we're going to be silent as we screen share and witness Tiare's work, unless Tiare wants to give us a preface. And then we will pause audio caption, and then close out. All right.

Tiare: Yeah. I'll give you a pretty brief preface, which is just that... A lot of the insights or like things that people were sharing about colonized time and forcing oneself to be productive, I just wanted to resonate with that and say that some of my best work in drawing comes when I don't rush myself and I panicked, to be like, "Write down everything, "draw everything." And I really allow myself to move at a pace that my own body is not panicking. Because then the imagery really comes together in a beautiful way. For example, as you will soon see an image of someone breastfeeding while on camera and another image of someone in their boxers sitting in bed. And then it allows the thoughts to precipitate from an overwhelming amount of information, to, "Oh, here are the key things, "here are some of those best love practices." I don't have the text for this image yet, I'm gonna be drawing that in and catching up in a bit. But I just wanted to let you know some of what is gonna be set around here, which is that these love practices or decolonizing and cripping praxises are really about caring for each other, asking each other, "How are you?" And recognizing the way that a culture that disables trickles into the online spaces and asks us to do things that hurt our bodies. So, for example, demanding people be in back-to-back Zoom meetings. And just wanting to create space for the moment of collective trauma that we're all in and the frozen response. And the need for slowness and rest that people are in, as opposed to a push for productivity and a push for doing as much as you can in this other space. And then, what is the balm or the salve or maybe a more loving response than that push for productivity, is a responsive relationship. So that looks like transparent facilitation. It looks like showing up comfortably. And I've already listed some of the other things I'm gonna include. So I'm just gonna show you the image. Share. I'm not doing it. Not yet, I'm not doing it yet. Ah, there we go.

[Tiare displays the image.]

Ava (ASL Interpreter): Brooke, can you... Sorry, just the interpreters interrupting 'cause Landon and I are trying to get your attention.

Tiare: Oh, sorry, I can't see you.

Ava: Okay. We were just gonna describe to you what was there because you can't see what's being on the screen.

Tiare: Should I stop screen share now? Yes.

Claudia: Yes, please, stop screen share.

Ava: Sorry, sorry.

Tiare: Thank you.

Claudia: We have about three minutes left with our time together. We would like to take a moment to describe what we're seeing. Lindsay had been doing that. Does Lindsay wanna take a moment or you feel like Tiare kinda described it before it was shown?

DeLesslin “Roo”: Hey, y'all, just interrupting from a moderator perspective. We do have 15 additional minutes of time.

Lindsay: I’m gonna say Tiare described for me what was in the image, and also I'm really overwhelmed, and so that was like really, yeah, I want to take it in. I'm really grateful, but I don't got . Words, what?

Claudia: No problem. No problem. And thank you, Roo and HowlRound, for the gift of having time to breathe and close out with grace. I do wanna honor the suggestion from Grant and Lindsay that we each just say a word and a movement. Was that the invitation, a word and a movement? That kinda sums up... And it can be a couple of words, we're not overly prescriptive here, to close us out, and then we will transition to the rest of our lives.

Lindsay: Yeah, I think the invitation was, you could do a movement if you wanted in place of a word. So nobody is required to do a movement-based performance work right now. They're invited to if they like.

Jessica Watkins:v This is Jessica speaking. I'm just gonna say words because that's how I'm feeling. Rooted in gratitude. Check.

Jessica Schacht: This is Jess S. I am bringing my shoulders up to my ears, and I'm gonna take a deep breath. And I'm gonna let my shoulders drop. Thank you. Take care. Check.

Carmen: This is Carmen. And I'm feeling held right now by everybody who is present. So thank you. Check.

Lindsay: This is Lindsay. I'm doing a movement with my hands, which is kind of flicking. Looks like I have water on the tips of my finger. And it's for me like little stars sparkling. Check.

Mia: This is Mia. This is my checkout.

Grant: This is Grant. I'm sort of mushing my face with my hand, and then kind of like turning my hand around and just like feeling the vibrations from my face. And then it kinda settles.

Claudia: This is Claudia. I am feeling like I just had a workout, but with my brain. So I kinda wanna have a cool down routine and water. Check.

Grant: I think we've yet to hear from Andrea and Landon. If either of you would care to close out, please do. Carmen, did you Checkout? Yes, you did. Yeah.

Andrea: Hi, this is... Oh! Sorry, Landon. This is Andrea. I'm feeling very overwhelmed. So I can't really think of any movement or anything. But I feel very grateful for everyone here.

Landon: Hi, Landon on screen now. This has been a very interesting experience for me because I'm looking at what the structured zone is. Obviously, there's some areas of improvement, but I'm very grateful to be in this environment. And... The word I want to use is content. I'm extremely content. And thank you.

Grant: So before anyone else does like the final like, "All right, and that's it," just to let you know, thank you everybody for attending today's Unsettling Dramaturgy Cripping Practice and Virtual Convenings. Our next one will be happening on April 20th. And the one after that will be happening on April 30th. Please, follow Unsettling Dramaturgy on Facebook. Look us up. Say hello. And yeah, thank you so much for attending. Lindsay, Claudia, any final closeouts for us?

Lindsay: Thank you all. Yeah. Hearts.

Claudia: Yes, yes, and yes. Deep pleasure collaborating with you all. Looking forward to our next praxis session. Thank you for helping us to create better practices. Just thank you.

Grant: Goodbye. Bye, everyone. Thank you, HowlRound.

Claudia: Thank you HowlRound!

graphic landscape with text unsettlign dramaturgy

Unsettling Dramaturgy presented Praxis Sessions for Virtual Collaboration: Cripping Practice livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Friday 10 April 2020 at 2 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 4 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 5 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4).

Praxis Sessions for Virtual Collaboration is a 4-part series presented by Unsettling Dramaturgy. In this series, we address approaches to, and practices in online convening that centre unsettling, decolonization, indigenization, and disability justice in process design. This series emerges from our year+ of work and research in transnational convening and creative collaboration through virtual mediums. This series has been developed as our response to the turn towards online organizing that has followed the COVID-19 crisis.

SESSION #2
The session will centre on Cripping Practice and Disability Justice in virtual, cross-geographic collaboration.

FEATURING
This session will feature Unsettling Dramaturgy Creative Collaborators: Andrea Kovich, Carmen Papalia, Claudia Alick, Grant Miller, Jessica Watkin, mia susan amir, Roo George-Warren, Jessica Schacht and Tara Moses

FORMAT
- This series will be streamed live on the HowlRound website (link forthcoming) and on the Unsettling Dramaturgy facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Unsettling-Dramaturgy-Crip-Indigenous-Dramaturgies-103665611279674/)

- Following an opening, Unsettling Dramaturgy Creative Collaborators will engage in an exchange on the theme for approximately 60 minutes. We will speak from our respective embodied knowledges and practices, with an orientation towards expanding collective practice as is relevant to local ecologies. We will take 10 minute breaks on the hour.

- There will be various opportunities throughout the session for participants to publicly and/or anonymously ask questions and provide reflections. To interact with us during the event you can use one of the three options:
1) Text or voice message us on WhatsApp at 1-803-323-7638
2) Email us at [email protected]
3) Comment on the the livestream on the Unsettling Dramaturgy facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Unsettling-Dramaturgy-Crip-Indigenous-Dramaturgies-103665611279674

- We also welcome your questions in advance of the session. Please send any questions you would like us to address to [email protected].

- A video recording of the session will be available after the session.

ACCESSIBILITY
- CART will only be available on the HowlRound live stream.

- ASL Interpretation will be available on both the facebook and HowlRound live streams.

PREVIOUS SESSIONS IN THIS SERIES
Session #1 on Land Acknowledgements in virtual, cross-geographic collaboration can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/103665611279674/videos/633106050843829/

ABOUT UNSETTLING DRAMATURGY
Unsettling Dramaturgy is an ongoing project bringing together Crip and Indigenous dramaturgs from across so-called Canada and the United States who work in theatre, dance, and experimental performance.

Using digital platforms we gather to build relationships; to explore and document the critical convergences and divergences in our experiences and work; to amplify Crip and Indigenous aesthetics, ethics, practices, and leadership in our local, national and international performance ecologies; to push the conversations from inclusion to centring, from reconciliation to unsettling, decolonization, and Indigenizing

This project considers the studio, the stage, and the street as porous and interconnected politicized spaces; spaces impacted by and implicated in the current political climate and historical contexts; spaces where urgent critique, and visionary futures can be imagined, practiced, enacted, and then disseminated to/co-created with a wider public.

This project grounds itself as a continuation of the thriving legacies of leadership and innovation that shape Indigenous and Crip dramaturgies, which precede, survive and move beyond settler colonialism. This project brings together artists from communities that have been historically excluded from mainstream performance ecologies, and which have been further siloed into spaces of making that have systematically prevented critical cross-community collaboration. We are dismantling those silos to advance emerging conversations exploring the conflux of leadership and representation in creation and production as relate to Indigenous sovereignty and Deaf, Mad and Disability culture in the arts. We are generating a platform for self-determined encounter and exchange where our local bodies of knowledge can be activated.

It bears importance to share that this project does not aim to collapse Crip and Indigenous dramaturgies and experiences. The exclusions that our communities face emerge from very specific historical, cultural and political contexts. Further, the ableism, sanism, and audism that Deaf, Disabled and MAD artists face emerge from colonial ways of assigning value and human dignity.

We use Crip to include those who identify as Mad, Sick and Disabled, as well as those who are deemed disabled by society and/or medical institutions whether or not they themselves accept that term; for example those for whom d/Deafness is a cultural identity not a medical condition. We use the word crip as a political intervention, to turn attention onto, and to disrupt, as our collaborator Carmen Papalia writes, the disabling conditions that limit a person and/or community’s agency and potential to thrive.
We use the Indigenous with an acknowledgement of the many complex ways that community, family, belonging, polity, and heritage interact with systems of State recognition.

The words Crip and Indigenous are both used as shorthand and are not intended to generalize or reduce our vast multiplicity of identities, experiences and affiliations.

This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada and the LMDA: Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Bly Creative Capacity Grant.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.

The ASL-English interpretation serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of the original signed and/or spoken language. Only the original signed and/or spoken language, or the revised written translation is considered authentic.

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