Reframing Accessibility in Intimacy Coordination with Chels Morgan

Chels Morgan: When you’re ready to start with that level of confidence or that level. I’m not going to start my company at a discounted rate. I’m going to start because I know that I’ve got something to offer and I’m going to move like I have something to offer. I think that’s something that when I first got certified as a sexuality educator, I put “emerging” or “sex educator in training” or something in my bio and my mentor was like, “What does that mean? What does emerging mean?” You either are something or you’re not something. You have something to say or you don’t have something to say.

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

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

Welcome to the Building our Own Tables podcast. Pull up a seat to liberation. Today I’m joined by Chels Morgan of Intimacy by Chels Morgan. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Chels: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Yura: Yes, looking forward to getting into this conversation as well. So, you are a Black, Dominican, neuroexpansive, queer, writer, director, intimacy movement coordinator of Intimacy by Chels Morgan, a choreography for stage and screen consultancy. You also do education programs and cultural competency, consulting for the stage and screen, working with individuals, organizations, and creatives. So interesting. I would love to dive right in. Can you let us know a little bit more of your journey to get you to basically the moment of saying, “I’m going to go ahead and start my own company. I’m going to start my own practice and consultancy”?

Chels: I think that the goal was originally not to build an entire career off doing this. It was more so to create a space for me in the industry where I felt like as a Black, queer, neurodivergent person, it was difficult to find where I fit and to find spaces that were specifically accessible to me. I understood where I fit as an artist, but I think as a person, trying to find the support systems that I needed to make the industry accessible was really difficult for me.

And throughout my education, undergrad and MFA and all of those things, I was just finding more and more gaps, I guess, in theatre and film education and in theatrical and film spaces, and just gathering experience with trying to make space for myself in these spaces. And then also have always had social justice interests, so I’ve been working in sexuality education and transformative justice and all of these radical spaces that have figured out how to do these things. And so I was like, we just need to bring some more justice and some more of this ancestral knowledge to these other spaces. Because if we can operate within those systems, then we can make the arts so much more accessible to people.

Yura: When did you start with Intimacy by Chels Morgan?

Chels: I’ve started officially working full-time doing intimacy and cultural competency consulting in 2021. When things shut down, it was a point of reflection and reframing and figuring out what did I want to be and what did I want the industry to be when it started back up again. And I started reaching out to a bunch of mentors, and that was around the time where We See You White American Theatre was happening, and I was reaching out to people who were active in those spaces, and just got a lot of education in 2020 and 2021. Just hit the ground running and started to do this basically full time.

Yura: Amazing. Yeah. What would you say some of the biggest challenges you faced this building of your own table have been so far?

Chels: There’s been a lot of learning about what it looks like to, first of all, be offering a service that not everyone knows about. Instead of initial meetings being like, “Okay, I need someone to contact me. They need a service, and I provide it,” I’m more so explaining what I do and how I can help, and then I have to show you that’s possible, because a lot of it sounds radical to certain people. And it sounds radical to all people, but it sounds more possible to some than to others. So I was developing my tools while also sharing them, while also using them. And that learning curve was difficult, but really fulfilling. And then also thinking about logistics. How do I price this? How do I advertise this? How do I do the logistics of keeping this sustainable, knowing that it’s what I’m doing pretty much with my entire livelihood and still doing the work in the way that I know it can be done? That was challenging to figure out, but it was exciting as well.

Yura: Yeah, so how did you move through that? Where are you at now, would you say?

Chels: I think that educational spaces were a really beautiful haven for me, because there was so much that people didn’t know about intimacy direction and coordination, but also about cultural competency, and I do accessibility and all of that stuff for theatrical spaces. There’s so much people didn’t know. So I did a lot of teaching workshops and teaching in universities and teaching other professionals online or in conferences. And just getting the word out about what is possible, while also practicing and doing in some spaces that were willing to jump in and develop with me. But I spent a lot of time really valuing educational spaces and the opportunity that they provide to help other people know what is possible, while also getting better at my craft while I’m doing it.

I feel like teaching, there’s so much learning involved while I’m teaching and consulting with folks in problem solving with theatre companies and saying, “Okay, let’s use the tools that I have and figure it out together.” And now I have a wonderful opportunity to continue teaching. I teach in some universities. I teach workshops and stuff still. But also now folks know what intimacy direction is. Cultural competency is still very new in theatrical spaces, but I get to show up and just do my work more often now, which is great. But education was very much a way in to teach folks what I have to offer them.

Telling our stories is so important because sometimes these art spaces are the only places where we can guarantee that they’ll live on.

Yura: Let’s get into it more on intimacy and cultural competency. So for those listening, what more can you share about those two topics? How would you describe them now, having gone through years of explaining?

Chels: So intimacy direction and coordination, to start there, it’s a field that has been in the works in theatre, film, and TV for decades, but under this name for about a decade. There are wonderful people who’ve been advocating for folks on set and in rehearsal rooms when doing scenes of intimacy for a very long time. Then in 2018, it became a little bit more standard after the Me Too movement. So essentially the role of intimacy director, or coordinator, but director for theatre is to just be an advocate in the room. To do the creative work of developing choreography that serves the storytelling, but also to do, in my opinion, human rights work and social justice work of advocating for the people in this space and for valuing their needs and for teaching them the skills to care for themselves during heightened scenes of vulnerability.

And once intimacy became a little bit more of a thing that folks knew about, there was so many other questions that came in. What about when something isn’t inherently sexualized but is still vulnerable and hyper-exposed? How do we care for them? There’s an organization called the Association for [of] Mental Health Coordinators that are focusing on the mental health piece. What if something is mentally taxing or emotionally taxing in that way? But my mentor, her name is Ann James, she’s wonderful. Ann mentored me, and she was like, the mental health piece is important, but also what about folks who are made to feel vulnerable because of their identities? What about cultural intimacy? Something that happens that is unique to a cultural experience, or what if there’s racial trauma on stage, or trauma against trans bodies, or any other vulnerability that draws on your identity? We need to have tools for that as well.

Ann developed the sensitivity specialist for theatre, and we’ve been working together, since this is the beginning where developing this pedagogy. She’s gone off to do that on some of the biggest stages, which is incredible. But I think that was the initial question that folks had of what happens when the thing that is hyper-exposed or vulnerable isn’t necessarily sexually intimate or isn’t nudity. And so, that’s what the cultural competency and cultural sensitivity work is. It’s providing tools and helping folks from casting and being confident in the story they’re telling with casting, helping folks to tell emotionally vulnerable stories on stage and screen in a way that can just more accurately represent the people in the space and care for them.

Yura: What are some of the success stories you’ve been a part of? 

Chels: I’ve done Hair I think eight times now. Coming back, and I think that every time I do that, I feel the first time it was given to me and I was like, “Why are we doing this script? The script is all over the place.” But I learned so much during that show, and I think that being able to do it over and over again, I’ve developed a real love for it. The music’s great, which is also helpful. But I think that it’s been a success to learn how well these tools work, because if you work them and you consider it, you could turn a show that at first I was like, “Absolutely not,” into something that I’m like, “I want to direct this one day. This looks fun, and it really does tell the story it’s trying to tell.”

I think watching that intention come to life, even using the classics has been really successful. And also just being able to help theatres and university theatre programs to cast more openly and to reconsider what does it look like if we don’t think about our actors’ identities, but we think more about the story we’re telling and preserving the show, and seeing more opportunities for trans actors and more opportunities for actors of color play roles that they wouldn’t have been cast in the past has been really successful.

Yura: Yeah. You mentioned that you would be interested in directing, so would you bring on an intimacy coordinator as well? And then going into that, what’s the difference between during and having an intimacy coordinator or consultant with the production?

Chels: So I would definitely bring somebody on. One, because part of the intimacy director’s role is to interrupt that power dynamic, to be someone that you can be like, “No, I don’t feel confident doing that.” And you have this professional be like, “Okay, cool. We have an alternative, that still works with the director’s vision,” as opposed to the power dynamic of saying no to your director or to your choreographer, which is not something that actors are taught to do.

So part of that is interrupting the power dynamic, and even though I suppose if I were running a rehearsal room, I would do everything I can to make sure that power dynamic isn’t there. It’s still going to be there because I have the title. I can’t completely get rid of it. Plus, I love collaboration. There’s so much that having another person looking at a particular part of a show adds to the show, to having experts in the room looking where experts need to look as opposed to directors, which are looking at the entire picture is always wonderful. So I would love to have intimacy, cultural competency to be a part of a production that has all of the things. It would be really wonderful because I feel like I also have a unique view of how to utilize these people and their expertise.

Yura: Yeah. So what would success look like for your table—for your company or organization?

Chels: I think that just being able to work with more people in more stages. I think specifically adding cultural competency and accessibility to the services that I provide for more spaces. I think that intimacy is something that a lot of folks are now looking for and happily integrating. But understanding how much more inclusive and radical these artistic spaces can be would be success to just continue that process. And hopefully that trickling down into being able to tell more emotionally vulnerable stories specifically of people with marginalized identities and pushing queer and trans stories and Indigenous stories to the forefront, knowing that those people can be supported and that they have tools to take care of them and to tell their stories authentically. That’s the dream. So just keep doing more of that.

Yura: Yeah. Would you say that vision has remained the same since you started or has there been an evolution?

Chels: I think it’s been both the same and different. I think that I had a bit of that vision. I could see a little bit of that world in the beginning, but I didn’t quite know what it looked like or how it was going to happen. It was very much, “I just want there to be a world where on all stages there is space for me and people who look and feel like me.” And now I feel like I know more about how we can do that, and we have the tools and we have—it’s not just me—we have many professionals who have the tools, and we have spaces that are a lot more spaces that are ready to use them. And I think that the more this becomes industry standard, the better this work is going to become. So yeah, just moving toward an industry standard and I feel like now I have more of a clear vision on what that looks like and how to achieve it.

Yura: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Speaking with you and others in this kind of Building Our Own Tables energy, we oftentimes are almost ahead in a way where it’s like we have the solution, and it’s just here so you can come in and join. Be a part of it. It’s right here. But then also the truth is it’s “Okay, there’s this whole rest of the world or people who aren’t informed yet about it.” What would you say that the theatre industry, as it’s evolving, as the solutions that you are stewarding and being a part of bringing forth, as the industry’s evolving, what do you believe it’s asking of all of us as creators and leaders?

Chels: First of all—and unfortunately for me, because I hate it—I think it’s asking us for a little bit of patience. Because I think that, even though the arts world sometimes feels separate from the rest of the world and a lot of us are a little bit more on board, there are a lot of things that we are at liberty to when it comes to funding and when it comes to just what we’re allowed to do and say and where we’re allowed to do and say it. So I think there’s a little bit of patience there, but I also think that it’s just persistence. Because I feel like there’s so many moments and for so many reasons that it feels like, “okay, is this really helping, or is doing this activism in the theatrical space where I should be doing it, or should I be out lobbying? Should I be out doing things elsewhere?” I know I have that feeling all the time.

And it just reminds me that there are a lot of different roles in the revolution, basically. Artists are such an important part of that. It’s such an important part of change, and doing this work within a theatrical space is such an important part of change. And it’s such an important part of preserving our histories and preserving our stories, and telling our stories is so important because sometimes these art spaces are the only places where we can guarantee that they’ll live on. So I think that it’s asking for patience constantly, but also asking for persistence and for us to just keep envisioning because even right now being like, “okay, I feel like I can see it’s a good thing, but it’s also like I can’t see the future, so I need to keep envisioning. I need to be going for something that I can’t quite see yet in order for this to be sustainable.”

Yura: Yeah. I love what you said also about everyone has a role in the revolution. I definitely say that often, and it does remind me because I studied acting myself in undergrad, theatre. I had entered thinking that it is about the representation on stage and wanting to be a part of that shift myself as an actor. And then I started to understand more of the different roles and how things get decided. And that really led me further into producing and management and being able to be a part of decision-making sides in a different way, where it’s deciding who gets to be on the stage, who is in the audience, what is the funding and the payment and all these different aspects of making that happen. And then just hearing your story about this particular role that you’re in of supporting the performance and the show and the actors and the people involved in that way.

It is such also a very clear, tangible thing that is part of it all. And so it’s been a really helpful thing for me, also as a founder, to lean into that. Knowing that everyone has a role in the revolution and the evolution, because it means that I don’t need to force anything on anyone. And feeling that there’s a sense of purpose for everyone in their role in life even and purpose as a human on Earth. And then there’s that kind of realization, too, that has come from feeling like I’m filling my purpose. And so then there’s less of a kind of need to fill a void by feeling like I need to force other people to do a certain thing or to sign on to a certain idea.

It comes also with what you’re saying about patience and persistence as well. In terms of saying that if something isn’t clicking for someone or if it’s not the right group or community or partnership, that it’s okay. And just letting that go and knowing that there’s always more happening and trusting in what I’m doing already. And that’s been a really big lesson and opportunity to level up because then it’s less focus on what everybody else is doing and more on, “but this is what the vision is for what I’m working on.” And actually, that brings the project to the next level.

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So I’m curious about what you are dreaming into being right now. So what’s the future that you’re building towards?

Chels: I’m working on a lot of different things. I am collaborating with a couple different intimacy education companies right now—with the Intimacy Professionals Education Collective, and with Intimacy Professionals for Theater and Cinema at DePaul University—and really thinking about what it looks like to usher in another generation of, specifically, intimacy professionals with accessibility and culture and accessibility in mind. And just thinking about what it looks like to have a role in bringing more folks into the industry who specifically are looking to use their lived experience and their ancestral experience to enrich what we’ve been talking about this whole time.

I come from my particular perspective and have my background, and I always said, “I can only show up as me with my identities forward, which is why I present them.” There’s so much more ancestry and so much more expertise in the world and so much more knowing. So I’m thinking a lot about what it looks like to continue to work in educational spaces, hopefully consult with more theatres and with more departments earlier than production. I’ve been working a little bit in testing and play selection and that kind of thinking about working with more artistic directors about what it looks like to create an entire space that has these things in mind. To choose your season with these things in mind, and to think of the different ways in which you can add accessibility and also representation into the work that is not just the actors on the stage.

So thinking about that is a big part of what’s next for me and the company. And then also I’m still working on shows. There’s also just that, just continuing to do the work in theatres, continuing to learn from folks, continuing to spread the word about the work that I do. I’m really interested in working with artistic directors and to see how companies can be built with these things in mind.

Yura: That definitely sounds interesting. I can definitely see that for a future practice or an organization of just having that role be part of what happens for every production, for every program. It’s like HR [human resources], but on site, that area.

Chels: Yeah, it’s got the HR energy, but without the power dynamic of consequence. HR has hiring and firing power, which makes it sometimes difficult to feel like they can be your advocates depending on the space. But instead just thinking about, what if we just, like, it’s tools and it’s also creativity. It’s what happens if we cast the show in this way, or what happens if we add this layer of racial tension? If it’s like Shakespeare, what if we bring it into this decade? What does it look like when people are trying to reshape or having extra dramaturgical support? It just looks like having support in and providing tools to folks, so hopefully the conflict resolution tools, all of that stuff, so that HR can deal with the rest of its job or can be a space where we escalate to as opposed to our first and last results.

Yura: Yeah, it’s more on the ground in the moment. Because with conflict resolution, it’s definitely, from what I’ve experienced, the best situations are really just in the moment and immediate as soon as something comes up, just being able to talk about it and work through it. And then obviously, of course, part of that is being able to set up the space for that freedom. Would you say there are key values or cornerstone words that you use to talk about what you do when you start in a space with a group of people?

Chels: I think that for me, what’s really important is to start with my value system and to showcase the frameworks that I’m using. Because those are not buzzwords nor the things that I invented. Those are ancestral practices. So I talk about the disability justice movement, which was started by queer, disabled people of color in theatre spaces. So disability justice is huge, because it was born out of a disabled performance art company was sick of going to theatres and not being able to access the stage. And that just turned into an entire movement. And transformative justice, which is an Indigenous practice, multi-Indigenous practice all over the place. And there’s different frameworks of it that I use in conflict resolution that I think is really important and thinking about racial justice intersectionality and all of the scholars and all of the Black women and women of color that pioneered intersectionality as a framework that can be used almost scientifically to figure out who is the most impacted in the space and how we can help them, how we can empower them.

I lead with those frameworks, loving justice—which is about healing and assuming that everyone in the room is showing up with love at the center of their mind, love at the center of their practices and what they’re doing. And understanding, how does that change communication? How does that change conflict? How does that change the way that you approach somebody who may be at odds with you in some way? So those are some of the values that I bring into this space, but I’d just love to refer to them as their framework so that folks can go and find those people and look up all the folks who’ve been doing this work before me.

Yura: What’s been really helpful for you in your own practice as a leader?

Chels: The number one thing is, again, disability justice, accessibility. I am only one person, and running your own business, you’re actually doing the role of a thousand people. Because everything we just named is a part of running your own business and building your own table, but it’s also a bunch of different people’s jobs usually. And knowing that I started doing this because I was passionate about the work, and not because I was passionate about sending emails and invoices. So a little bit of it has been giving myself some grace to keep this successful and to keep it radical and the way that I’ve said I also need to take breaks, and I need to relax and go to happy hour sometimes and not feel guilty about it.

So there’s a lot of that, but also thinking that when it comes to marketing and advertising and finances, making sure that I’m asking for a livable wage for myself because my brain wants to be like, “It’s anti-capitalist if you can’t afford it, here I am, but also I need to be able to make a living wage.” So I offer sliding scale pricing pretty much on everything that I do because the highest scale, the companies the schools or the theatres that can afford it, pay for the lowest scales that can’t afford that rate.

So making sure that balance works for me and also encouraging if folks do not have the money for this, but they want to try to integrate things to be open to working with mentees and with students. There are folks who are gathering experience and who are, or there are folks who come from privileged backgrounds who are trying to offer these services as reparations or as just other activism. So knowing that there are still options available for you. But for myself, knowing that part of building my own table is making sure I can afford to sit at it. I need to be able to make a sustainable living while offering accessible options to folks.

Yura: Yeah. And then as you grow, I’m sure you’ll also be bringing on more people at the time.

Chels: Yeah, that’s the dream.

Yura: Sometimes it ends up being actually the most helpful, too, is to start bringing other people on. Sometimes it’s hard to do it for ourselves, but we can advocate for others. That was one big thing that I always try to do. There’s so much of the sweat equity, they say, especially in the for-profit side of what is the investment that we’re making that is our labor, which if we weren’t working on this, we could be working on something else that would be bringing us income for that. Being able to be honest and quantify that too.

Then later also, if we’re not there, then the organization, the business is set up to know that this is what you would need to pay someone for this great program to keep going, to keep running. Even with grants, too, being able to say, this is the labor that was donated in kind. That’s how much we would need to have if we wanted to do this again and in a sustainable way. Because yeah, it probably won’t end up being sustainable for forever, if that labor is always going to be donated in that way. I think that is a really good practice to highlight. Yeah.

Chels: Yeah, definitely.

Yura: What advice would you offer to someone who’s just beginning building their own table?

Chels: Yeah. First and foremost, I feel imposter syndrome is such a big barrier to starting. “I know I have this to offer, but how do I know whether it’s something that can turn into something sustainable or not?” I think just releasing that. I think something really early on that when my mentors said to me was that in order to be an effective educator, you just have to know one more thing than the person you’re educating. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t need to have all these degrees and certifications.

If you do, great, but also you just need to know more about the thing you’re teaching them than they do. And the same thing with the consulting. I’m not going to pretend to know more about what it’s to be an artistic director or a director or any of these positions than the person who is doing them, but I know a lot about what I do in the angle that I’m coming at this with. I know that I feel confident in my ability to problem solve too, and that my tools are solid enough that if I’m approached with something that I’ve never seen before, I can just go one by one through my tools and help folks figure it out.

When you’re ready to start with that level of confidence or that level. I’m not going to start my company at a discounted rate. I’m going to start because I know that I’ve got something to offer and I’m going to move like I have something to offer. I think that’s something that when I first got certified as a sexuality educator, I put “emerging” or “sex educator in training” or something in my bio, and my mentor was like, “What does that mean? What does emerging mean?” You either are something or you’re not something. You have something to say or you don’t have something to say.

And just being able to allow myself to take on these titles. Even if you haven’t quit the job yet, if you have this vision for consulting in this way, then you’re a consultant and you can start doing it. And obviously don’t push yourself beyond your safety or your comfort. Sometimes beyond your comfort, but beyond your comfort as far as getting your basic needs met. But give yourself permission, I think, to be an expert in the field that you’re an expert in.

Yura: One of my mentors, Justin Michael Williams, has shared this about teaching, of share what you know, always teach what you know. That’s the simplest thing, a way that you can always step into a space and have that confidence because it’s like, this is what I know. And sometimes what we know is our lived experience, which is super valid, and there’s a kind of spiritual side to that where we can consider our soul, having basically chosen this life, we want this experience. Our soul wanted this lived experience of whatever identity or challenge so that we can really dive into the outcome, the kind of transformation and the offering that we can give to others going through that same thing or those who haven’t gone through that, so there’s always that side too, of being able to tap into that lived experiences, being able to share on that.

Chels: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I feel like that’s also something that often folks who are coming to me either as wanting to do this work or just asking me this similar question, it’s just there’s so much lived experience people have, especially when thinking about cultural consulting. I started off limiting myself to consulting on the cultures that I was a part of and educating myself more and more. But even now, I definitely focus on telling Black, Latine, and Indigenous stories because that’s what I know and that’s who I am. That’s valuable experience. I don’t need to go and get a degree in that, because I’ve been doing it my whole life and my ancestors have been doing it their whole lives.

And that doesn’t mean there’s not more to learn. But just valuing the different ways that education can look and the different ways that qualification can look, and knowing that there’s so many ways to learn and that it’s not all based in this Western white ideal of education and degrees on a wall, but thinking about what is everything that I bring into a space and valuing that as important as worth talking about is—that’s a big one. I feel like especially when you’re going into consulting and you’re selling yourself more than you’re selling even what you’re offering.

Yura: Yeah. It has helped me to leave, one, the theatre industry, two, the US. Because yeah, I was actually a diversity inclusion coordinator at Actors Equity Association, which is the stage managers and stage actors union. And I was definitely learning about all kinds of identities and all of the needs and resources to provide for basically everybody who could be marginalized when it comes to diversity inclusion. Because I was also, I would say, younger and new, I really wanted to move faster in terms of the change I was seeing, the impact I wanted to make on a, now I understand, global scale on the world, really.

So I did end up leaving and there were other reasons as well in terms of my own way of life that I prefer to live, so that ended up taking me to Ecuador and Colombia where I also hold citizenship, my ancestry. Ended up now being mainly a lot of the time in Nuquí, Chocó, which is Pacific coast of Colombia. Basically in the forest, living on the river and just a totally different life. And of course, yeah, a lot of different wisdom about way of life there that helps me remove from what you’re talking about, of the only wisdom is your university studies, which has actually been funny too, because sometimes there are scientific, scientist, university studied people who go there to study the forest. And then it’s actual Indigenous, Black and Indigenous, community ends up knowing more because it’s like we’ve been living here, we’ve been learning directly from nature. So I think overall that whole decolonization offering there comes in.

Chels: Yeah, definitely. That’s beautiful. I just am receiving, and what you’re saying about the way that you’re living your life, and that’s beautiful. I’m glad that you made those choices for yourself. And I feel like just whatever, decolonization or there’s some folks who use rematriation instead of returning ourselves to our motherland or returning ourselves to the land in so many ways, whatever that looks like for you, I encourage everyone to do it. I encourage, obviously, people of color too, indigeneity has been stripped from them, to integrate themselves with that. But also has been stripped from everyone. My partner is part Irish and I’m always like, “We got to go to Ireland, and you got to run a lavender fields. You need to know what it feels like to be on your motherland.” They’re like, “No one’s ever talked to me like that as a white person,” and I’m like, “Rejecting whiteness is rejecting the concept, not excluding anybody from it.”

Go and find your history and reconnect with that knowledge, and then come back to us with it. I feel like people will find that mindsets shift and the way that things are done will shift, and art will shift and everything will start to change, and that’s really a lot of the origins of all of this work that we’re talking about, all of the work that I do at the core is, “What if we just did this in a way that felt a little bit more authentic to us as people, as individuals?” As opposed to trying to work within systems that were built for organizations to thrive rather than people to thrive.

Yura: And the ecosystem. I see it a lot as being a being of earth. So we have cells in our body to make up one, and then we’re also cells as individual as humans. But also there’s all kinds of other cells on the planet that make up the body that is the Earth, even more so the universe. So really tapping into what that means of being like a cell of this entire planet and existence. And so that offering of connection. And definitely with LiberArte, our nonprofit that runs this podcast too, it is about helping us reconnect to each other, to ourselves and to the earth. What we talk about as arts and storytelling and emotional connection, there’s studies that have proven it too about how these are the things that are really what change to happen.

It’s not just putting out facts or numbers or just saying something, but really the connection that can happen when we hear a story, when we feel something, when we are with other people and are able to experience something together in that way. Yeah, that’s definitely on point for what we’re doing too. 

I definitely focus on telling Black Latine and Indigenous stories because that’s what I know and that’s who I am. That’s valuable experience. I don’t need to go and get a degree in that, because I’ve been doing it my whole life and my ancestors have been doing it their whole lives.

Chels: Amazing.

Yura: My last question for you, I would love to hear if you have any sort of intention or blessing or medicine that you would offer to anyone listening.

Chels: I share this quote everywhere I go, because it’s the concept of it really stuck with me. I’m going to read it. It’s by Mariame Kaba, who is a wonderful transformative justice activist and abolitionist.

And she says, “Abolition is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need. Food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more, things that are foundational to our personal community safety.”

And the reason why I wanted to read that, it’s always up my desktop screen and it’s painted on the wall of my living room. It’s because I think about what our basic needs are and in the way that she lists them and thinking about art and beauty being foundational to our personal community safety and our ability to feel safe. I think that anyone who is on this journey of thinking about what it looks like to decolonize the arts, or even just the concept of paving your own way, even if it isn’t specifically in this way in the arts, I think just remembering how foundational it is to moving us toward safety as a community, how foundational it is to the evolution, as you say, how human beings, we need art and we need beauty.

So whether that looks like moving to a space, like moving to the forest and taking that in or taking time to rest, taking time to go see a show or do a show to do your own art, to receive other people’s art, that is not time wasted, but that is time pushing us toward the revolution. Yeah. That’s what keeps me going sometimes, is remembering that art and beauty are foundational needs, and we’re contributing to that.

Yura: Yeah, absolutely. Chels Morgan, thank you so much. How can we find more information? How can we stay updated?

Chels: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at @mxcmorgan, or mxcmorgan.com is my website, so those are two places to find more information about me. I’m always on Instagram. Technically on Facebook too, but yeah, follow me on Instagram, follow my website.

Yura: We’ll add all those links to the show notes. Thank you so much once again.

Chels: Thank you.

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