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>> OK everyone , we are back. Some of you may have noticed the sound of a child's laughter in the hallways, a staffer pushing a stroller or a father with his young son making visits with us on Capitol Hill. For the last three years, tsg's conference has been family-friendly. And it's so much fun, to meet all the children, nieces and nephews here at the conference with all of you. This is also the legacy of our time in San Diego. While there is something from every conference that stays in our host community, there are also things that leave with us, and that's one of them. The legacy from this year is increased global connectivity, a sense that as leader makers we can work towards building our own theater nation that transcends cultural borders and political borders, to create shared spaces for theater making and examining global issues we can help solve together. Over the past year, TSG and laboratory for global performance and politics at Georgetown University developed the global theater initiative, by combining the unique reach of TSG's international programming with the lab's distinctive experience in humanizing global politics through the power of performance, GTI strengthens, nurtures global citizenship and international collaboration in the theater field. It also honors and intersects with the work so many theater colleagues already invested in cross-cultural exchange and understanding. This week we hold our first major project together, a global theater preconference, and to tell us more about it, I would like to introduce DEREK GOLDMAN, cofounder of the lab and partner in the global initiative. [APPLAUSE] 

DEREK: Thank you. Thanks, Teresa. I have been coming to TSG conferences for over 20 years, first as a fresh out of college new B who had found -- founded a small Chicago theater company that joined TCG. I remember the sensation of feeling like person after person would take a glance at the name tag and move right on. Equally as strong, I remember the sensation of being welcomed into circles I felt far too young and clueless to be in, and being treated like a peer by people I revered and would come to revere. For the past few days as never before, this theater nation has felt like the nation I want to live in. In my 11 years living in Washington, D.C., this is the most proud I have felt of our community, locally, nationally, globally, and its capacity for radical hospitality and galvanizing action. We've gathered against wildly eventual, tumultuous backdrop of Brexit and crashing global markets, a Supreme Court ruling blocking Obama's immigration plan, vital Citians on gun laws of the capital, and panning the camera out , a boarding to the last reports from UNHCR, 65 million people are being faced with the travails of forced migration as a result of conflict, violence, and deprivation, the highest number ever recorded by UNHCR. The theater nation I have encountered here is a nation that is not in pursuit of nationalism or any other kind of isms or schism s, that instead of building walls, seeks to foster genuine human exchange, empathy, collaboration, and relationship building across differences. Those who would build walls have always understood the power of silencing artists, of nipping culture in the bud. At GTI's global preconference at Georgetown, we hosted artists and thinkers from 25 countries, almost all of whom have stayed and participated in our conference. Profound thanks to these friends for making the long journeys, and to you who have offered them hospitality, fellowship, have been hosts in the fullest sense of the word. There is inspiration to be taken from our guests. Many of them have spoken of their experiences facing down danger, repression, and violence in their own countries and how they have found it essential to continue to make their art amidst mortal dangers. Our friend, UNESCO artist for peace, arrived today from the Sudan and has been doing this work in camps in the Darfur region with war orphans and perpetrators for many years, using theater to do large-scale healing and imagine a new future. As Teresa mentioned, our laboratory for global for performance and politics at Georgetown was founded to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics, something so many in this room are already doing. I'm thrilled by this partnership with TCG, the first few steps the global initiative is doing towards that future, and grateful to have wonderful collaborators on that journey. Special thank you to Teresa , and Kevin Bitterman at TCG, to my wonderful lab colleagues. Whether a peer I revere or someone simply interested in a global initiative, I hope you will reach out to us and get involved. I look forward to what our theater nation can achieve together. 

TERESA: Thank you, Derek. We are so excited for this collaboration and all the work you do and Georgia does into making the preconference such a success. It's out my pleasure to introduce our presenter of the TCG theater practitioner award. Susan has designed over 300 productions across the globe, receiving multiple Tony awards, as well as an award for sustained achievement. She chairs the Department of design, prestige, and film at MIU's Tisch school of the arts. Please join me in welcoming Susan to the stage. [APPLAUSE] 

>> I'm so excited to be here today, to see all of you, to be part of this conference, but also for the special moments. We are here at this moment to celebrate the mythic spirit that is Michael Kahn. Artistic leader, educator , artist, mentor, colleague, and friend. Michael has been an influence in the American theater for so long that I'm sure even he is astonished. His vitality is a force in the arts in this country, only continues to grow. Michael's contributions have been extraordinary. The list of his accomplishments is too long to read. But for me, his most impressive talent has been his nurturing generations of theater artists. I believe a great leader recognizes and acts on the task of inspiring and encouraging the future leaders of our field. Fearlessly husbanding talent, that is how I see Michael Kahn. Whether it is his leadership at the Juilliard school, guiding an impressive list of actors, or his creation of the Juilliard school of a directing program with Garland right, or the establishment of the Academy of classical acting here in D.C., Michael has always been a leader in conservatory education. But as Michael's role in it -- mentoring individual artists I am especially proud to celebrate today. He has supported and encouraged countless artists who have gone on to become influential in their own right in the American theater. I think there are probably many of you here today. I have known Michael for years, but I have designed twice at the Shakespeare theater. Experiences separated by 20 years. The first, "the Tempest," directed by the late, great Garland Wright, and the second, "Salome." I think these two artists helped to define the depth of Michael's influence. Garland, who if you don't know -- and I can't believe it's possible you don't know -- but if you don't know, before his passing, Gerland was the artistic director of the Guthrie theater. After blazing a deeply passionate career across the stages of America, Garland's first job in the theater, though, was assistant director to Michael at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. This relationship nurtured the astonishing talents of Garland in the beginning of his rich career in the theater. Over 40 years after first working with Garland, Michael continues his unstoppable, fearless commitment to vital challenging theater that he has always encouraged by supporting the work of a South African director by inviting her to come to D.C. and share with us her vision. In this case, a radical revisionist version of an ancient narrative in her production of "Salome." These two amazing directors book-end Michael Kahn's visionary leadership in the encouragement of new talent. It is Michael continual recognition and support of developing talent by his many acts of mentorship that have strengthened the community of power theater. The TCG theater practitioner award, the TCG theater practitioner award, recognizes an individual who's worked in the American theater has evidenced exemplary achievement over time, and who has contributed significantly to the development of the larger field. I can think of no one better to deserve this award than Michael Kahn. Michael, come on up. [APPLAUSE] 

MICHAEL: Thank you very -- oh, my God. Thank you very much. I'm very moved by all the things you said. Thank you all for coming to D.C. This is my home now, and it's great that you are here. There are so many of you. I want to thank you for choosing D.C. and thank you for this. I realized in these conversations how privileged I have been, how lucky I have been but also how privileged I was. My mother was a Russian immigrant, a working mother, but she taught me to read at a very early age and when she would come home from work, the bedtime stories were Shakespeare in the Bible. -- and the Bible. She did not think there were any dirty jokes in Shakespeare, so she did not cut anything out. She knew there were in the Bible, so she cut out song of Solomon. [LAUGHTER] Later on when I did Shakespeare I really stout many dirty jokes she actually read to me. Then I went to a school where I told them at an early age I wanted to be a director in the theater, at the age of 6. I was a terribly bossy child. They said, OK, and second grade, you can go off and write a play and directed about any subject you want. I said, I will do the pony express. I wrote a play about the pony express and directed it. Nobody in that school, in that faculty ever said to me, you had just taken the pony express to London and Paris. That was impossible. But they did not stop my imagination and my creativity even though I did not know either of those things, what they meant at the time. Then I went to college and I went to Columbia and across the street to Barnard. They said, what would you like to direct? I said, I would like to direct. Klees and Pere Gent. -- direct Pericles and Pere Gent. And they let me. And I realized when I was doing those plays that I wanted to do -- I loved doing complicated, ambiguous, difficult material. I was born in New York and I used to go to Barbary shows all the time. I was in college, I was walking down Broadway. I was looking at what was going to be my life and I was looking at all the marquees, and I realized I did not want to do any of those plays except for the one Tennessee Williams played. And I thought, what do I do? I'm not interested in this material. Where am I going to go? I was living in New York and it was a wonderful time, as it is now, for new playwrights. It's -- it was the golden time and I think this is a golden time. I was able to work at coffeehouses. I got to do the new plays of Sam Shepard , and luckily I met a young writer, Andrea and Kennedy, -- Adrienne Kennedy, and I did a play of hers. That found me and gave me a Shakespeare play. I thought, this is what I want to do with my life. I realized I would like to be -- I would like to have responsibility for my own career , for the work I do. I would also like to have responsibility of surrounding myself with the most interesting people, better people than myself, and where could I do that. Luckily, the regional theater movement had started and TCG was there, and my life began. I was lucky to be able to follow something I believed in. This has been a hard year. It's been a hard year for the theater. It's a very hard year for the world. The theater reflects the world, and the world changes so fast, and it changes so fast in our own theaters. Coming to a TCG conference is a source of inspiration. Not only the fact there were so many of you with new ideas and have stuck to theaters and brought new life and new ideas into the theater, that you are able to share with me, to hear young people talking about how they solve problems is always a huge inspiration for me. Tomorrow -- this is a great moment trade tomorrow the real world starts. It's a little scary to go back to it, because this is an amazing -- which happens just once a year, but I'm going to take everything with me that I learn today. Because I still believe that the theater is the place that we can break down walls. We can change people's HEAQRTS A -- hearts and people's minds, and we can make our communities a better place. Thank you all very much. [APPLAUSE] 

>> Thank you, that was beautiful. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for your artistry and leadership trait Michael was really help in the organizing of certain parts of the conference. It's just been wonderful to be here and work with you, Michael. I would now like to welcome Rosalind Barbour. Many of you may know her as the chief of staff at the Public theater. We've also gotten to know her as a core participants of our first inclusion Institute cohort, where we have been lucky enough to witness her commitment to justice firsthand. Please join me in welcoming Rosalind Barbour to the stage. [APPLAUSE] 

ROSALIND: Hi, everyone. I am the administrative chief of staff at the Public theater. I have the great privilege of working on the public's government affairs and institutional strategy. In that role, I have the great honor of fostering a relationship with the U.S. mission to the United nation's through Abbasid her power and her amazing staff. I graduated from a small Jesuit the rural arts college with a major in theater and minors in political science and philosophy. But I never imagined how I might use my passion for social justice with my love of theater. About 18 months ago I was given that opportunity as I began working with Ambassador power and her team to bring you and ambassadors to the public theater for performances there. A few months ago during a visit to the United Nations in New York city, a member of Ambassador power's staff pointed out to me and my colleagues article 27 of the Universal declaration of human rights, which reads, everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancements and its benefits. I am so honored to work with the amazing staff of the public theater, which embodies this write every day with the work on its stages, both downtown and in Central Park, and through its programs like the mobile unit and public works, which seek to create a more equitable and compassionate society. I'm equally honored to be represented by Ambassador power, who recognizes the unique power the theater has to shift perspective at in so doing, change the world. Is my pleasure to introduce our closing plenary speakers. Oskar Eustis has served as artistic director of the public theater since 2005. Throughout his career, Oskar has been dedicated to the development of new work that speaks to great issues of our time, and has worked with countless artists in pursuit of that aim, from Tony parishioner and Suzan Lori Parks to David Henry Kwong. He is currently a professor of dramatic writing and arts and public policy at New York University and has held professorships at UCLA, Middlebury College, and Brown University. Kwame Kwei-Armah's artistic director of Baltimore center stage, the former artistic director of the Festival of like arts and culture in Senegal, chancellor of the University of the arts London, and former ambassador for trade and Christian aid. In 2012 he was named an officer of the most excellent order by Queen Elizabeth for services to drama. Ambassador Samantha power is the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama's cabinet. In her work at the United Nations, Ambassador power has worked to promote and defend universal values and human rights. She has become known for the innovative ways she uses New York City's vast cultural resources, especially the theater, in her diplomacy with you and leaders. -- UN leaders. Prior to her role, she served on the White House Security Council . Before joining the U.S. government, she taught at Harvard University John F. Kennedy school of Government and was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for human rights policy. She is a Pulitzer prize-winning author who began her career as a journalist, reporting from conflict zones across the world. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. [APPLAUSE] 

KWAME: Good afternoon, everyone. Excellent. My role today is just to facilitate these two rather brilliant minds talking about issues that mean things to us. In a week where my country, my home country sent out a terrible signal to the world that could at its least be interpreted as isolationist, it's wonderful to be at a conference where we are talking about a nation. Can I give a big up to the British contingent who are as depressed as I am? [APPLAUSE] So, cultural diplomacy. I think everybody in this room understands within the context of what we do as theater, as a community, within the context of race or gender, we are one community explained to the other who we are and what we are and asking for empathy. Ambassador, I would like to ask you, in the context of international diplomacy, how do you use theater and the performing arts in that context? 

Ambassador Power: I use Oskar to get tickets, and start from there. No. One of the biggest surprises to me in moving to New York and having the privilege of having this great job is how automated things are, just how wrote the talking points are. Sometimes during meetings you really just feel people have dusted off points and arguments and they have ceased -- this not the same intentionality that there might once have been. So, my central challenge in getting anything done is how we bust out of that, what are the ways to puncture that reflexive, business as usual ways of doing things. Theater has been one incredible vehicle for that or it may be the best example is L GBT writes, which is totally polarizing within the UN community. 78 countries have criminalized being gay, a dozen have the death penalty for those who are LGBTI. So how in a million years do you get past that? Tried a bunch of different ways within the lines of the negotiation room or the UN itself, but the best vehicle by far was to take 17 ambassadors to fun home. [APPLAUSE] And, including ambassadors from Russia, Vietnam, a couple African countries. I'm not sure they knew quite what they were getting into. The small print might have been a little smaller than usual. [LAUGHTER] But , the thing about any personal story is that life is lived forward. When they watch Allie herself fighting her own identity or just having a crush and not knowing what to do with it -- there's no human on earth who can't identify with that, if they are proximate to it, living it forward rather than living it out of some textbook or diplomatic cable. Watch these ambassadors initially squirmy, some of them, and they just fall into the narrative and into the trauma of this individual -- drama of this individual, you can see a dent. You don't see the world change, it's not a panacea, but my question is how to create a space to come in and get something new done. In the wake of Orlando, we were able to get the UN Security Council 2 weeks ago to condemn the targeting of people on the basis of sexual orientation for the first time. [APPLAUSE] I can't tell you that there's a straight line between fun home and that, but I can say fun home happened, people lived that, they were moved by it, they forgot about what their position was because they were watching a human story played forward, and a few months later we get what we got. My job is to maximize the means of piercing the architecture and artifice and automation that the institution unfortunately projects. 

KWAME: The straight line between creating art and catalyzing debate or even change -- some might say, Hamilton eclipsed, not just to talk about the plays you have transferred to what was formally called the great White Way but now feels a bit more diverse. [LAUGHTER] On Monday I had the pleasure of being part of an event at the Delacorte. Can you tell us what the own pulse was behind the swearing-in ceremony that the public facilitated? 

OSKAR: It would not have escaped you to notice that Samantha said she could not say there was a straight line. I'm assuming that's because she's a diplomat. I will say there is a straight line between art. On world refugee Day, we used the Delacorte for one of its most beautiful purposes that we are going to do more, which is a kind of town hall. In collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, we put on an event called welcome home, which was essentially trying to memorialize and celebrate the better angels of American nature and the fact that this is a country that was built by refugees and immigrants, all of the strengths, and everything that is actually true about American exceptionalism is because we have embraced immigrants and refugees. [APPLAUSE] It's true. And, just a quick sidebar, one of the unexpected pleasures of having commercial companies with Hamilton and eclipsed is that we are allowed as commercial entities to support whoever we want. All of us know as nonprofits we can't advocate for political candidates, right? As commercial enterprises, we can. I'm happy to say that Hamilton is doing a big fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on July 12. [APPLAUSE] Who would have thought that by going into the commercial sphere, I would feel a bit unleashed politically? [LAUGHTER] Actually, the important thing with the discussion at the company was really trying to take them through from their position, many of them as Bernie supporters, into this, and the company was wholeheartedly behind it, as I hope that will be a conversation that repeated. The welcome home was a beautiful event that had readings and music. Kwame did a beautiful job of reading John with a's -- John Winthrop's speech, including "city on a hill," that was misappropriated by President Reagan, because the way we are sitting on a hill is because we all share, we struggle together, we suffer together as one person, and that is what will make us a nation. You did that beautifully. [INAUDIBLE] It's true. It was a great event, but the real heart of it was the beginning of it, where the secretary of Homeland security delivered the oath of citizenship to 19 new Americans from I believe 12 countries. And, we sat on the Delacorte stage and said, this is actually a worthy event for the stage. This is a place where we are literally sing the fact we are giving -- literalizing the fact that we are giving center stage to these people. It was astonishingly moving . What seem to be about a 75-year-old woman from Afghanistan, taking her own of citizenship and getting her certificate from the secretary of Homeland security, just a tremendously powerful event. We can actually take what the theater does, which is put the spotlight on people, give people center stage, and literalize it, and save we can use this place as a way to celebrate those who are so often not celebrated. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: -- 

KWAME: In his environment -- especially everything Oskar said, I cheer and clapped. But in your world, how seriously are the arts taken, plays and theater and drama? [LAUGHTER] 

AMBASSADOR POWER: My batting average in terms of extending invitations to my colleagues, not the like-minded but deliberately trying to do so to a diverse group is very high. I don't have anybody turning me away from something other than some emergency. People really want to give it a go. Oskar is like my soft power projectile, this partnership is just this -- just to take Hamilton, so Rosslyn -- Rosalind enabled us to take the UN Security Council to Hamilton. How I got 15 tickets -- OK, they did not even know. It enraged me. I was like, do you understand how valuable this ticket is? They are like, we are at the theater. 

OSKAR: Six weeks into the run at the public. Hamilton had not quite exploded. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: You guys were winding down. I felt the only way I could get one ticket was to do this hall UN security council thing. [LAUGHTER] Peace, diplomacy. Please. [LAUGHTER] I guess I should not be disclosing this. Anyway, I got my ticket, they got their tickets. The United States ambassador asked. I said it's Hamilton, it's about the founders. I was asking Oskar the other day, what made it so extraordinary, a lot of countries within the UN are underdeveloped or regressing. [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] We look, notwithstanding our current political climate, but we look like a fixed enterprise that can establish democracy. We have so many checks and balances now, including the District Court and what happens in Congress. Nonetheless, they see these as developed institutions, and politically the smaller countries like in sub-Saharan Africa, the idea that we were once a work in progress, that there were these historical contingencies, that these things were contested and fought for, and hard, the fact they could see that part of America, it's akin to be fun home. It's living life again forward, rather than the false necessity of where we are now. So , they came out not only having had an amazing night, totally unappreciative of what had been secured for them, but they came out with a sense of -- we have more in common than not. For all of us, it's a journey. It's actually quite recent, all things considered, given how they will feel and looking at our institutions now, it looks like it has been that way for a while. And of course to see the founder's story turned on its head, the African-American and Spaniard and other actors, the idea that we would be doing that today is also a reflection of the diversion -- 

OSKAR: You said it made America vulnerable to them. I love that. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: It really did. That it could go anyway. They feel like they themselves are going this way and that way. More than half the countries in the UN are not democratic. So many now are dealing with the influx of displacement or outpouring of their own citizens. To go back to see us again in that experimental phase, everything is up for grabs. I don't know if it's because of the United States asking, but it's New York, so -- in Washington also, there is an appetite as well. The question is how to get young people and make sure this is passed as a lw. -- law. In our own mission, how to get diplomats out and about themselves and bringing colleagues. It's one thing for the sort of established heads of the mission. If we can change hearts and minds generationally, we have to think about this more viciously. 

KWAME: -- ambitiously. 

KWAME: I have been inspired by your access for all philosophy. Can you talk about that in terms of nationbuilding, building a relationship with the boroughs of New York, the Delacorte? 

OSKAR: That's not my philosophy. That's what Job have started with in 1954, and George Wolf continued. The most beautiful thing about my job for me is I got to take a job where there was not one iota of air between what I believed and what the theater stood for. I feel like I'm completely invested in an identified with that idea. The idea is essentially a democratic idea, because the brilliance of what Joe first said was, Shakespeare should belong to everybody. Frankl y, I did not even really know this until a couple years ago. He was inspired in high school by his English teacher. She taught him Shakespeare. She was a playwright in the Harlem Renaissance. It's extraordinary. There were a couple of her plays published. He never talked about that. I didn't know if he knew it. Just the idea of this woman, this artist coming to fruition, the Harlem Renaissance, and then not having any other place to go but into the high schools to teach, and that her influence going to -- which is what he was at this time -- tremendously moving to me. Joe figured we would need to do Shakespeare for free. Shakespeare needs to partner with -- needs to be for everybody. Shakespeare is the key to participation in the culture. We all have agreed as an English speaking society that he is our greatest writer. If he were to say, I get to have a place at the table, you have to own Shakespeare somewhat. He did that, and he did that for 13 years. He did Shakespeare in the parks and the boroughs. We eventually settled at the Delacorte. The brilliant thing he did after that was founding the public in 1967. It's not enough to simply offer up culture to people. You have to turn not only the auditorium of the people, you have to turn the stage of the people. You have to let people make their own history, not just receive the canon but make the canon. That's what making the Public theater was about. That democratic circle of both making it available, turning the stage over, remaking the canon, has been at the heart of the public, certainly since 1967. It's my job not to change that one bit. It's my job just to figure out, how can we continue to execute that in our current circumstances with all the radical expansiveness that is implied by that. The thing I love about that mission -- you can never accomplish it. You're never done expanding democratic and French mise meant. -- enfranchisement. It is something that keeps growing. The show you are directing and our public works program is a continuing expression. We are saying, we are going to blur the line between amateur and professional. We are going to say, being an artist is not a binary. You are or aren't an artist. We are all artists, and we are on a continuum of some people are experienced and skilled at it and get to spend their lives doing it and some are doing it for the first time, but it's not a difference of kind. It's a difference of grade. We can put 200 community members on stage, singing and doing Shakespeare, which, you are going to direct them so wonderfully, Kwame -- [LAUGHTER] 

KWAME: No pressure. 

OSKAR: We pledge and front of all of these people. [LAUGHTER] That same idea, it's just a during out a new and groundbreaking expression of that idea. 

KWAME: I'm slightly loath to even mention Britain at the moment, but we have the British Council, which is tasked and funded to go out in the world and say, here is Britain, here is Shakespeare, here are many of the things we define as great, and we interact with you as a nation through that lens. How serious does the American government take cultural diplomacy? 

AMBASSADOR POWER: You may know better. That doesn't sound very auspicious. I know how seriously President Obama takes it. I know Hamilton was conceived of for a casual encounter -- 

OSKAR: I'm sure most people know this by now. When Hamilton was only -- on the concept album that Lynn thought he was creating, the first performance of it was at the White House in front of the president and first lady. He said to us the other day that he thought he should get to pick up the -- 

AMBASSADOR POWER: Along with his Grammys. I recommend looking on YouTube. If you want to see the power of art and the piercing I was talking about earlier, I think it was a little bit in the presentation before hours -- look at President Obama's face. Now we all know Hamilton. There is a hip-hop musical with all these actors. You don't know any of that, you are the president and invite this guy and he decides he's going to do a rap about Alexander Hamilton, and Obama -- at the very beginning he's like -- [LAUGHTER] At the end, he leaps to his feet. It was on YouTube and its magical. Some of it is personal. If you yourself are interested in the theater, or believe in storytelling, believe in narrative, you are going to embrace this as part of your role. And see it as a secret weapon. 

OSKAR: You talked to me the other day in the Security Council with the kids about the way you use personal stories and testimony at the Security Council. Although that's not technically theater, I thought it was incredibly inspiring. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: Using my secret powers. Thank you. So, I mentioned the context in which we are trying to talk about the refugee crisis. We have made an effort every time we are doing a meeting in the Security Council of some importance to break through. Here are batting average is much lower than invitations to New York theater or public theater in terms of raking through, -- breaking through, but bringing individuals were speaking from direct experience -- to someone in the theater, this will sound so obvious. The best example of this for me was lots, because we try it in every context. During the height of the ebola crisis, when our director of the CDC was showing us internally charts -- this was in September 2014, showing charts that there would be 1.5 million infections by early 2015, and just after we had had the Liberian man die in Texas, and a New York health worker come back and get infected, even some Democrats just freaking out, to use a diplomatic term, and -- I happened to be the president of the Security Council in the month of September 2014. We staged the first ever emergency meeting of the Security Council on a public health issue. Security, war, and conflict resolution. This was something that was ravaging these countries. We thought, how do we get away from the WHO reading numbers, and as graphic and dramatic as the chart was, how do we humanize this? We did a video conference into the security council , behind where the president sits and the Secretary-General spe aks, completely covered with this video screen that drops down and this Liberian health worker, not terribly educated, the way the Ebola response work is sanitation, chlorine, is every bit as important as being an epidemiologist. The reporters had come forward to us and said, he would be your best speaker, talking about what it was like to have no beds for people who have Ebola. He talked about a man coming to the clinic in Monrovia carrying his daughter, desperate to be able to deliver his starter to Doctors without Borders. Jackson saying, we can't. The way the Ebola treatment was, you can't pile people up. Each of the beds are a specific unit. He had to tell the father no. The father just laid his daughter at the gate of the clinic. He tells this to all the ambassadors of the UN who crammed into this first ever, historic -- he made it so devastating, to imagine what it was like as a father, but to leave the daughter, but also to know that the father was going back to his family and he was going to infect them all because he had been carrying his daughter, forget about it. He said, people, you must understand, if you do not come, we will all be wiped out. He said it and it was like that at the Security Council, everybody stopped. I view it as a lot of inflection points, the main one being president Obama deciding to send 3000 health workers and soldiers into the eye of the epidemic, but the combination of us decided we were going to act, and when you return 192 other ambassadors into advocates for action, extended into sort of messengers of instruction, people were much more personally at stake. We had done that on Syrian chemical weapons, the doctors who treat the people who had been afflicted with chlroine, when the Assad regime had their weapons taken away they started using chlorine, household chlorine, and were not breaking through with Russia and some of the other countries that decided the regime -- we brought the doctors who showed the video, the hand taken video of the kids they had treated you had no cuts on them, nothing, just were frozen, almost Pompeii-like by virtue of the chlorine and killed. Out of that, we were able to get an accountability mechanism to hold accountable those people who carry out chlorine attacks. When you break through -- it doesn't happen every time, but you have to try unconventional ways to get around the same old. 

KWAME: Tremendous use of first-person narrative. I'm going to open up for some questions from the floor, if that's all right. There is a microphone there and a microphone there. There are also some roving mics. Evidently not. [LAUGHTER] So if you have any, please do just line up in the aisle and ask them. I would beg that the question be a question. [APPLAUSE] And with that, I open the floor. Thank you so much. 

>> Hi, everybody. I'm from Spain, from a theater group specializing in emigrant, refugee, migrant theater. I have a question for the ambassador and maybe all of you. I was really shocked the other day in the preconference day, and my question is, why you are afraid of some Syrian refugee in Jordan to get to the United State to talk about theater. Why she didn't got the visa to come here to display her wonderful story? Why you are talking about going abroad to save the world, but you close your world two other people to come and share the wonderful spirit? That is my question. [APPLAUSE] 

KWAME: Not in any way am I trying to deflect. There may be some questions we ask like that that ambassador power may not be able to answer specifically. I want to put that framework out there, and then ma'am, please. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: I know nothing of this case. I'm going to sound like a bureaucrat here, but it just takes a little time. We have to run the security traps. I promise you it would be good for no refugees, Syrian or otherwise, if we had an incident. I take your point and I know you are vouching for this woman, but that's not how the system works. We just have to run it through the system. We have, as you know, not taken a huge number of Syrian refugees up to this point to resettle them, which is a huge issue for us and we are trying to get the number up to 10,000 by the end of this year, and our overall number of refugees up to 100,000. We are trying to do better at achieving both of our objectives, which are being a country true to what Oscar has described, true our values, enriching our country with perspectives like the one you describe. Also keeping the American people safe. Our political climate is such that we need to maintain political support for this program, and right now over the course of the last year that has been much more challenging than it has been in the entire life of one of the most important programs of the United States. I don't know anything about this specific case. I wish I had known about it. Some of you have Oskar's email. These are the kinds of things if one knows about it -- [LAUGHTER] 

OSKAR: Happy to help. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: Helping, to be clear, means people -- putting people through a process where you try using the information you have to ensure that the can get a visa. It's not a willy-nilly -- it's got to be a good process for the sake of the program as well as for the sake of our country's security. 

KWAME: Apparently she was not denied for this conference, it was for a previous engagement. Good. Question over there. Mic coming to you, ma'am. 

>> This is also a question for the ambassador. You reacted when we left about the support of the U.S. government for arts and culture in the U.S. -- laughed about the support of the U.S. government for arts and culture in the U.S. My personal view and probably of many people in this room is that there is a significant lack of funding and support by the U.S. government of arts and culture in the U.S. I was wondering if you had any thoughts in your position how you can advocate to your colleagues for more support and value of arts and culture in the U.S., and what we can do as advocates. I know many people went to the hill and met with representatives, that what we can do to showcase the value of arts and culture and change the viewpoint of the people in power in the U.S. and the American people to view it as a pillar of society rather than as an entertainment benefit. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: I am definitely on the foreign policy side of the house, so I don't have a huge amount of insight into the funding picture and what is the hill and what is the administration, but I think -- my answer is that of a citizen, which is the more personal exposure people have, the better. All institutions are comprised of individuals. They develop as collective habits, in the case of arts funding, it being way down, steadily down over the course of the last two, three decades. I can imagine that makes your jobs incredibly hard. The question of how to take these collectives and disaggregate them so that people get off their talking points, are living the experience of theater. I think Hamilton -- not every theater director gets out of Hamilton every year, but taking advantage of something like that, that has history lessons in it as well as contemporary political lessons as well as insights into sociology and the reaction of the theaters, its own sociological theater -- Syria in the making, to take some of these large successes -- theory in the making, to take some of these large successes, pearls the lie out there in our respective theaters. Oskar, you have been fighting this fight for 3 decades. 

OSKAR: One of the things we can do is try to make sure that our work matters, to try to make sure we are reaching the people we say we are supposed to reach, and try to demonstrate what I believe is true, that the theater has something to offer to our civic discourse on the largest issues facing our society. There are things that theater can bring to that discussion that are vitally needed. Samantha's example of the Security Council, first-person testimony, we have to make work that actually demonstrates on the face of it that we are reaching the broadest mass of people and reaching them with something that matters. I'm not saying we don't do that, but that is what we can do. It also has to do with the immigration question, not being a member of the administration, I can say -- [LAUGHTER] Semi-close now? -- can we close now? I have a discussion. There is a huge epic making conflict in this country that has many different faces. That conflict on some level is between two strands of American history. One of them is about immigration and openness to the world and about building a nation for everybody, trying to recapture a mythical past that never existed, when this was a white country. [APPLAUSE] On the one hand, what we are seeing is a joke, a clown. On the other hand, it's a representative of a very really force in our society. We have to struggle with that and we have to win. One of the ways we are going to win is by not simply struggling, by also bringing people over to our side. That is going to change arts funding, change our border policy, change a lot of things. We can make an America that cowardly is standing up for the best of America, and that's about who we elect, it's about who we support, what their policies are, the pressure we bring on those people we elect to follow their most progressive selves. That is something we can all do as citizens. 

KWAME: I profoundly believe in theater as foreign policy. Not being a member of the administration, I think I can say this -- during the Bush years, America across the world not in his thoroughly seen in the best light. Yet one would go to the theater and see Jesus pop the a train -- A-train, where the heart of America was being displayed. That's the nation I know and want to celebrate with. This anti-intellectualism is very dangerous. We might begin to think as a nation of idiots. Really, that's what you want ? Our role is to make sure that the work we create matters, so when it is exported and it does travel the world, it represents America's best self. Any questions? Thank you. [APPLAUSE] 

>> Thank you guys for speaking today and an often -- awesome conference. It is remarkable that you see theater as a tool and I'm curious about the discovery of that. Was it a slow discovery, or one day you were like eureka, theater! I'm wondering what your personal journey to using theater as something that can affect change outside of -- all of us, that's like our goal. You noticing it and actually using it, I'm interested in that discovery. 

KWAME: Is that a question, tell me about your first time? Sorry to be cheap, but alas. [LAUGHTER] 

AMBASSADOR POWER: A couple things. If I can respond a little bit to what was said before, while saying I can't get into politics and the elections, we don't speak to that -- I think there's a little bit of a risk particularly given how dark all of us feel in the wake of Brexit, that not looking at some of the glimmers here. We did just have Barack Obama -- will have taken Barack Obama as president for eight years to take that for granted. As a relates to LGBT rights, we have gone in the shortest period of time, the most astonishing pace to a place at none of us thought possible. We have universal health care for Americans, one of the most polarizing issues and complicated, imperfect, but different. There's a lot to be said. The thing I found most striking, crunching the data about Brexit, all the young people who wanted to be European. There is this very dispiriting but also uplifting feature of the numbers, dispiriting insofar as you have all these young people saying -- if I could only have done it on my smart phone without leaving my apartment. [LAUGHTER] Others saying, we are saddled with this decision that is so not us and our generation. Anyway, I reject a little bit the this close to being a nation, to use your phrase. 

KWAME: I don't think I was saying we are this close. But it does hang over us. I think you are right to say there are kernels of great hope out of the road we have traveled thus far. As a challenge to us as theater majors -- 

AMBASSADOR POWER: I understand. I don't think this day in 2016 is a day that anyone is feeling particularly complacent. These forces are getting strengthened as a reaction to some of the headway. Now, my mother -- [LAUGHTER] My mother, who is the most amazing person in every respect, she split up with my father. She went to middle school. She went to medical school in England. She would sneak away from medical school to go and catch the matinee, waiting in line. Between her night shifts in the emergency room, she would gobble up as much theater as she could when she lived in London. She emigrated from Ireland to Pittsburgh when I was nine. I would hear the stories about her. She always had to choose between did she use her money to eat or go to the theater. She was tiny and she would always go to the theater. That was an appreciation. When I was a senior in high school, moved to New York, to Brooklyn. When my mother at the resources, forget about it. There's not a show in New York she had not seen. She dragged me along. She works at Mt. Sinai, she's a kidney doctor, she's a tremendous athlete, I bring her down to the Security Council, she's an omnivore in terms of politics. A movie class in the morning and squash game in the afternoon. She's nuts. I have taken like one small comet tiny piece of her passion. I think being in this job and having the privilege of this platform -- I take what I took from her, and now I've lived it and I've seen the effects of people. I've never been a person who brought people into theater or go to the theater, but what we've done together with Oskar and Public has allowed -- what Michael had when he was six years old, I'm having in my 40's, watching the effects it has on people. 

KWAME: I have time for one more question before we run out of time. I believe you have the microphone, but I'm going to say -- I saw Ari put his hands up 10 minutes ago. 

>> Thank you for this conversation. It's fascinating. It is something I would love to extend, whatever brief answer for all three of you. One of the great beauties of these conferences is giving us a chance to envision a better future, and American theater moving forward. I would love to hear your thoughts about how you see American theater working both as a global citizen, the recognizing we are hyper local, and what you feel like are the great things we have yet to achieve. Oskar, I've heard you speak about more theater that directly addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would love to hear from the three of you what you think are the issues or vision of what theater can be that does not yet exist but you hope to see. 

AMBASSADOR POWER: I would have a hard time answering that question. In terms of ISIL and the Russians -- To have that extra sliver of bandwidth, it just goes to my seven-year-old and my three-year-old. When I leave government, I will come back and have a better answer. 

OSKAR: I would like to think Samantha can't answer that because she's getting everything she needs from the theater. That must be it. [LAUGHTER] The thing that I feel particularly passionate about these days is the question of expanding our reach. It still feels to me like we are reaching way, way fewer people, a much smaller percentage of this country than the theater should be reaching. We have something that is needed by everybody, and it goes to about 5% of the population. Figuring out how we change that, which isn't just a question of mobile units -- mobile units are good things. It's also a question of reimagining what the form can do in order to make sure it matters to more people, in order to make sure that we can actually place it at the center of people's lives. That is fairly general, but I think we all know what that means. We don't know exactly how to do it, but the biggest thing I want to say is we can't cut our ambitions short. We should not settle for what we have. We should be aggressive and ambitious and not self-satisfied about what we are currently doing. The other thing I want to say is yes, Israel and Palestine. But in general the experience we just had with "eclipsed" was extraordinary, and being able to speak about an issue and reach tens of thousands of people, and to say that the theater is a way of bringing home sexual slavery , the problems of the civil wars in Africa, the problems of female soldiers, and bring that to a visceral reality, that is something we can do that there are not many forms that can do that. In order to do it, we have to say we are going to tackle -- we need to speak about these issues, we need to tackle them. If the plays aren't there, we have to figure out how to bring them into existence. I want to argue for our ambition and how large our ambition should be. 

KWAME: I would echo that by saying I would love as an artistic director to see less plays they use the metaphor of the American family to discuss politics. I am more about it just hitting it straight on with great skill and structure, and allowing political theater to be something that you don't have to run away from or cover over. [APPLAUSE] 

>> Just to press forward on the Israel-Palestine question, Ari Roth from Mosaic Theatre, huge props to both of you -- how can this collaboration, as it were, between the United Nations and the public theater, help to reconvene conversations about peace in the Middle East, particularly with respect to Israel-Palestine? This conference, this international preconference invited the freedom -- freedom theater of Jenin for a first ever encounter between artists who could have and should have been speaking to each other, but because of the real politics in the region, never did. For over 15 years. This conference achieve that dialogue, thanks to the lab for global performance and politics at Georgetown, and its collaboration of TCG. What can the great public theater do in collaboration with the United Nations do to do something that the politicians can't? [APPLAUSE] 

OSKAR: This is the hardest issue I have faced in my professional lifetime. I have found it more difficult to figure out how to fully address this issue than any other. And it is an issue where -- you know, Ari, one of the few places that the difficulty that the theater has in speaking about engaging this issue mirrors the difficulty of our society is -- societies as a whole. All I know is we have to do it. We have to do better. We have to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to talk about. We have to push the boundaries of who gets to talk about it, who has agency. It's also one of the very few issues in which I think New York is the hardest place to talk about this, but we have to do it. I have never actually asked Ambassador power how she can help me. But now that you brought it up -- [LAUGHTER] You don't have to necessarily answer in public. [INAUDIBLE] 

AMBASSADOR POWER: Just to echo what Oscar is saying, and then I want to end on a more upbeat note -- this issue, polarization all the way down , within the UN community it's very hard to create shared spaces, other than the UN security council space itself, which is such a divisive one fundamentally, people come in with the strongest version of their argument for why nothing on the other side is right. It's a non-listening venue, by and large. Culture and art should be the vehicle. In so many of the other issues we have discussed, it has been. The ways in which strong views on all sides kind of look to see what is a sign of bias on the other side, and that then becomes a disable or -- di sabler. It's like, what is the way to give it a second chance, to give any piece of art a second chance to make a first impression if one is already looking with such suspicion to put it in a box or a slot? Oskar and I will take this and talk about it and think about, is there a way to do that. For it to work properly, I think about it as a U.S. government person and somebody who gets to interact with diplomats from other countries, including the Palestinian authority and Israeli ambassador, to imagine his or anything cultural that we can do together as a starting point. Particularly in the current climate, without talks and without things progressing, it's like culture can and should be the Trojan horse through which you can move the other, but absent progress and movement towards talks, it feels at least in my world frozen and lots of other fronts. The more upbeat thing I wanted to add, Oskar mentioned "Eclipsed." Of the 193 countries represented at the UN, there are 36 women ambassadors. It's a little strange in 2016, but it is what it is. When "Eclipsed" was off-Broadway at the public, we invited the 36 women ambassadors to attend. One of the women ambassadors was there who is now the Foreign Minister, the Liberian ambassador to the U.N. This privilege I have of sitting and watching the play, but also watching my colleagues watch the play and watching her watch the play, and she said this is my life, this is what I've Lived, I knew what was happening in my country but because I did not experience it myself, I don't think I really understood what my country went through until I saw this play. She's now the current library and Foreign Minister. That's the power of art. Hearing the experiences of those women up close and personal, she said it was the first time she understood sexual violence, and that now she had a responsibility to someone who was just voted -- promoted, grows out of a motion, the heft of that. [APPLAUSE] 

KWAME: There is the straight line we were talking about. Thank you, ambassador. Thank you, Oskar. Thank you, TCG for inviting us and having a bloody brilliant conference. [APPLAUSE] 

TERESA: Wow. OK, everybody is all on Twitter now. 862 references to Hamilton. I want to thank Kwame, Oskar, and Ambassador power. Their talk so beautifully reflected so many of the strands of thought that have been moving through this conference. It has given us a lot to think about and talk about going forward. Here we are. We are in our last moments now. I'm going to take a few minutes right now to give some thanks to people here in the room. I really want to start out by recognizing the volunteers who have been helping us throughout. [APPLAUSE] Throughout these days. Volunteers, if you are able, could you stand? If not, could you raise your hand? Thank you, thank you. Now, I want to ask our host committee to please stand and be recognized. These people are like honorary TCG staff. Speaking of TCG staff, I know you might all be -- they are probably asleep right now in they be asleep after this last panel? If you're are able to stand, please do. We would like to give you all a huge round of applause. Because of their deep commitment to teamwork and shared leadership, they would never give themselves this credit, but I must recognize Devon Brookshire and Gus for their incredible leadership. There's another TCG staffer who I would like to ask to stand again. It is Emilia. It is Emilia's 25th anniversary at TCG. We believe that attention must he paid. -- be paid. Emelia, would you join me on stage? So, I want to say that we have been talking a lot about how our impact in people's lives ripple out and touch people we don't know and we may not know. [NO AUDIO] OK, ready? On three. One, two, three. [INAUDIBLE] All right. Thank you, Emilia. [APPLAUSE] Do you want to say something really quick? 

>> Thank you for all of that. Many of you in this room know what this means when I say this -- head of the penny. [APPLAUSE] 

TERESA: So, we are at the end of our time today. We have to run off to our planes and trains and automobiles. That Thursday feels about two months ago of how Anna DeVere Smith Reynold the ground on which we stand and urge us to move if we are moved. I'm thinking about John and his call for creative leadership, daring enough to jump off hills. I'm thinking about Stephen and Nicole holding us accountable to telling the truth. And I'm thinking about Samantha power and her advocacy of the power of theater and her constant reminder to live our lives forward. I'm thinking of a flood of moments in breakout sessions and affinity groups on the hill and at the bar where a moment of connection happened and something new became possible. Above all, I'm thinking about the sounds of those kids laughing in the halls, the contagious energy of the teens in attendance, the voices of young refugees telling their stories, the exchanges between leaders and students, and reports of an intergenerational leaders of color meeting so big it kept running out of chairs. Yes. They are the voices of our legacy leaders who are here, the voices of those who are not, the voices of the indigenous peoples on whose ground we stand. I think of all these people communicating a -- in English and Spanish and Karen and ASL across borders of conflict and time, and I think if there is a theater nation, these are its sacred documents, its Constitution and Bill of Rights, written not in multi-documents the living bodies, bodies moving, jumping, truth telling, connecting, laughing, weeping, singing, and signing a declaration of interdependence, carried -- carrying bodies from one generation to the next. Before we know it, it will be June 2017 and we will gather together again in Portland, Oregon to reconnect with our theater nation, our theater family. [APPLAUSE] Therein is. Thank you for being here. See you at the party. See you next year. ♪