TEST . >> WHY DON'T WE GO AHEAD AND GET STARTED? GOOD AFTERNOON AND THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE. I AM JEAN MORRISON, UNIVERSITY PROVOST AND CHIEF ACADEMIC ADVISOR AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY. IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME YOU TO THIS IMPORTANT SYMPOSIUM COSPONSORED BY THE BU ARTS INITIATIVE. THE DANCE PROGRAM AND DISABILITY SERVICES. I AM SORRY I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STAY FOR THE SYMPOSIUM. WHILE THE WEATHER OUTSIDE BELIES THIS, YOU HAVE HEARD THERE IS NOR EASTER HEADING THIS WAY AND THE WAY NOR'EASTER -- THE UNIVERSITY MAKES A DECISION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT TO CLOSE IS ON A PHONE CALL WITH THE LEADERS OF FACILITIES AND I AM ON THE PHONE CALL AND THAT TAKES PLACE AT 1:30 TODAY. AS SOON AS WE KNOW, WE WILL LET YOU KNOW. IT IS PROBABLY WISE TO BE PREPARED FOR THE UNIVERSITY BEING CLOSED TOMORROW. WE ARE THRILLED TO HOST ARTISTS IN RESIDENCIES LIKE THE DANCE COMPANY. IT IS A CORE ELEMENT OF THE ARTS INITIATIVE EFFORTS TO ENSURE THE ARTS ARE AN ENGAGING AND MEANINGFUL PART OF EACH AND EVERY STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE. THIS IS OUR THIRD MAJOR RESIDENCY IN THE FIVE-YEAR LIFESPAN OF E.U. -- BU ARTS INITIATIVE AND WE ARE COMMITTED TO PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEEP INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGAGEMENT WITH ARTISTS. INCREDIBLY ENRICHING OPPORTUNITIES AND PARTS OF OUR CULTURE. THEY PROVIDE FELL YOU WILL OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS AND HELP HIGHLIGHT BU'S COMMITMENT AND STAFF FOR ALL POSSIBILITIES. THE BOSTON DANCE ALLIANCE, MASSACHUSETTS CULTURAL COUNCIL AND CULTURAL ACCESS NEW ENGLAND AND THEIR STAFF FOR COSPONSORING AND CONSULTING ON THE STRUCTURE OF THIS SYMPOSIUM AND LIVE STREAMING THE EVENT. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK OUR BU ARTS MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR HIS SEEMINGLY ENDLESS ENTHUSIASM AND ENERGY FOR MAKING ARTS A CORE COMPONENT OF EACH AND EVERY STUDENT'S'S EXPERIENCE. ARTISTIC TALENT AND INNOVATION ARE NOT THE PROVINCE OF AN ELITE FOR -- AN ELITE FEW BUT SOMETHING FOR ALL OF US IRRESPECTIVE OF RACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY, AGE, OR ABILITY, TO ENJOY OR CREATE. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE HERE TODAY FOR THEIR COMMITMENT AND BELIEF AND POTENTIAL THAT LIES WITHIN ALL OF US TO CREATE WORKS OF ART AND INSPECT -- AN EXPRESSION IN ENDURING AND REFLECT THE HUMAN CONDITION. WE HAVE WHAT PROMISES TO BE A LIVELY AND INSIGHTFUL DISCUSSION AHEAD WITH TRULY REMARKABLE ARTISTS, EDUCATORS, AND COMMUNITY LEADERS. I WANT TO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR ATTENDANCE TODAY AND I WILL WELCOME HIM TO THE PODIUM. I AM SORRY I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STAY. THANK YOU. >> AND JUST ECHOING ALL OF MY THANKS. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED WE ARE WORKING WITH CAMERA AND HER TEAM TO DO GRAPHIC FACILITATION. THERE WILL BE A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CONVERSATIONS TODAY. I WANT TO TAKE TAMRA AND GRACE JUST TO THANK TAMRA AND GRACE. ALSO, THANK YOU FOR OFFERING US THE BUILDING FOR TODAY TO WE ARE GRATEFUL TO BE ABLE TO HOLD THIS HERE. ANOTHER HOUSEKEEPING NOTE. WHEN WE GET TO THE Q&A, BECAUSE WE ARE BEING LIVE STREAM, IT IS IMPORTANT THE QUESTION IS DONE WITH A MICROPHONE. I WILL TAKE THIS MICROPHONE AND I WILL BE SITTING WITH IT. WHEN WE GET TO A Q&A, I WILL BE WITH THE MICROPHONE TO MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT ASK YOUR QUESTION UNTIL I FIND YOU. THERE ARE RESTROOMS TO THE RIGHT OF THE ELEVATOR AS YOU CAME UP. THERE ARE ALSO FOUNTAINS THERE. AGAIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING AND JOINING US. WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION. I WILL TURN IT OVER TO CHARLES WASHBURN, WHO WILL FACILITATE THE CONVERSATION AND INTRODUCTION OF OUR PANELISTS. THANK YOU, EVERYONE. [APPLAUSE] CHARLES: THANK YOU. I AM CHARLIE WASHBURN AND I HAVE THE GREAT HONOR OF MODERATING THIS PANEL. I'M WEARING A COUPLE OF HATS AT THIS MOMENT. I AM THE CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER AT MASSACHUSETTS, ONE OF THE SPONSORS, AND I AM ALSO ON THE STEERING COMMITTEE FOR CULTURAL ACCESS NEW ENGLAND. I WOULD LIKE TO START OFF BY ASKING MY CANE COLLEAGUES TO RAISE THEIR HAND. WE WILL BE INFILTRATING THE GROUPS AFTERWARDS. WE WANT TO BUILD AN ACTION AGENDA FOR THIS MEETING. KEEP THAT IN MIND AND HOLD US TO THAT. JOIN CANE. THIS WORK, IT IS IMPORTANT. IN THE SPIRIT OF THAT RAISING HANDS, I WOULD LOVE TO MEET EACH OF YOU, MANY OF YOU I KNOW, BUT WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO DO THAT. WE DO HAVE TIME TO ASK A COUPLE OF THINGS. HOW MANY OF US WERE BORN OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES? A SHOW OF HANDS? VERY GOOD. HOW ABOUT WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI? WE HAVE GOT A FEW MORE. HOW MANY WERE BORN IN NEW ENGLAND? IN GREATER BOSTON? INTERESTING. NOTICE THERE WERE MANY MORE FOR NEW ENGLAND. HOW MANY OF US IDENTIFY AS PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS? A GOOD SOLID REPRESENTATION. HOW ABOUT EDUCATORS? ACTIVISTS? WHO HAS ALREADY SEEN ACCESS DANCE COMPANY BEFORE? -- AXIS DANCE COMPANY BEFORE? ENOUGH OF THAT. I WILL GET DOWN TO MY REAL JOB. I DID NOT WANT TO JUST DO A REGULAR AND TYPICAL INTRODUCTION. I HAVE ASKED EACH OF THE PANELISTS, WHEN I EACH ABUSE THEM, TO SHARE WHY IT IS THEY CARVED OUT THIS AFTERNOON TO BE HERE. WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION TO BE HERE? I WOULD LOVE TO ASK EACH OF YOU BUT I CAN'T. TO MY LEFT, YOU'RE RIGHT, IS A POET AND CEO OF SOULTOUCHIN' EXPERIENCES, KEITH JONES. WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE TODAY? KEITH: MONEY. NO, -- [LAUGHTER] KEITH: THANK YOU FOR COMING, EVERYBODY. ONE OF THE REASONS I CAME TODAY WAS BECAUSE CULTURE, ART, AND DISABILITY SEEM TO BE ONE OF THE FEW AREAS WHERE YOUR DISABILITY CAN BE SEEN AS AN ADVANTAGE, WHERE YOU CAN USE YOUR CREATIVE ADAPTABILITY TO EXPRESS YOUR ART. THAT IS THE REASON I CAME HERE TODAY. CHARLES: TWO KEITH'S LEFT -- TO KEITH'S LEFT, JUDY SMITH, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF AXIS DANCE COMPANY. I THINK JUDY GETS THE CREDIT FOR TRACKING LONGEST AND HARDEST, CERTAINLY FOR THE PANEL. WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO BE HERE TODAY? JUDY: ARTS AND DISABILITY HAS KIND OF BEEN MY LIFE'S WORK FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS. I HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE OF BEING AT NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, ARTS IN THE MILITARY FOR THE WEEKEND. IT WAS NICE. I DO NOT TOUR MUCH WITH THE COMPANY ANYMORE. I AM HOPING I WILL BE ABLE TO GET HOME BEFORE STELLA HITS. THIS IS JUST SOMETHING I HAVE A PASSION FOR AND I AM GLAD TO BE HERE. CHARLES: TO MY RIGHT IS YO-EL CASSEL, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR HERE OF MOVEMENT. WHAT BRINGS YOU TO TAKE THE AFTER MOON -- THIS AFTERNOON OFF? [APPLAUSE] YO-EL: A PLEASURE TO BE HERE. THE QUESTION IS HOW DO WE MAKE ART, SPECIFICALLY IN MOVEMENT PRACTICE, ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL REGARDLESS OF ABILITY, FINANCIAL MEANS, GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND TODAY, IT IS REALLY ABOUT CELEBRATING OUR IDENTITY AND HOW THAT WAS STIMULATED THROUGH ART PRAXIS -- PRACTICE AND HOW THERE IS A MARRIAGE BETWEEN THE TWO. FORGIVE ME FOR MY HEARING. I NEVER HEAR THE WORD DISABILITY. I ONLY HEAR "DIS" ABILITY. [LAUGHTER] CHARLES: JOHN KILLACKY, VENTURING HERE FROM THE GREAT STATE OF VERMONT. WELCOME. [APPLAUSE] JOHN: THANK YOU. IT WAS THE EARLY 1990'S WHERE I WAS WALKING AT THE ART CENTER IN MINNEAPOLIS AND MY JOB WAS TO BRING NEW EMERGING FORMS OUT. BACK THEN, THE WHOLE DISABILITY ARTISTS MOVEMENT WAS A FIELD THAT WAS NEW TO ME. I INVITED THE AXIS DANCE COMPANY IN JANUARY. JUDY SAID I THINK THAT MIGHT NOT BE THE BEST TIME OF YEAR TO BRING US, ME BEING THE CURATOR I WAS, I SAID BUT IT FITS MY VISION. SO COME ON OUT IN THE FREEZING COLD. IT WAS 30 BORAT -- 30 BELOW AND HERVEY -- HER WHEEL BROKE AND FROZE. I WOULD SAY IT WAS MY OWN IGNORANCE. IT WAS MY INTEREST IN THIS KIND OF UNIQUE IDIOSYNCRATIC ARTIST, FROM THE AXIS COMPANY. AID PERFORMANCE PERSON, AND ALL OF THESE ARTISTS TAUGHT ME A GREAT DEAL BECAUSE IN EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER, I HAD TO LEARN NOT FROM MY WORLD VIEW OF HOW TO DO THINGS BUT FROM THEIRS. SO IT WAS PRETTY TRANSFORMATIVE FOR ME. 21 YEARS AGO, I HAD SURGERY THAT PARALYZED ME FROM THE NECK DOWN. I LEFT THE TEMPORARILY ABLE TO WORLD AND ALSO BEGAN TALKING AS AN ARTIST. I HAVE ALWAYS HAD THIS HYBRID CAREER. BEGAN MAKING FILMS ON THE SUBJECT AND HAD A BOOK COME OUT ABOUT IT. I THINK I COME TO THE CONVERSATION TODAY FROM BOTH SIDES, AS ADMINISTRATOR AND AN ARTIST. CHARLES: THANK YOU. TO GET US WARMED UP, THE FIRST QUESTION WE COOKED UP WAS CAN YOU SHARE ANY ARTISTIC CHOICES YOU MADE THAT MAY HAVE ADVANCED THE CAUSE OF INCLUSION, PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, PARTICULARLY IN THE PERFORMING ARTS? THE WAY WE DID THIS, I PUT TOGETHER FOUR QUESTIONS, NOT INSISTING EVERYBODY REPLY TO EVERYTHING, BUT TO GIVE US A WAY OF PRIMING THE CONVERSATION. WHO WOULD LIKE TO TAKE ON THE FIRST QUESTION? ARTISTIC CHOICES THAT HAVE ADVANCED THE CAUSE OF INCLUSION? KEITH: I WILL TAKE IT AT I HAVE DONE NOTHING. [LAUGHTER] KEITH: NO, WHAT WE HAVE DONE IS SOMETHING CALLED CRIP-HOP. A COLLECTION OF RAPPERS, POETS, MUSIC PRODUCERS, WRITERS, TO TRY TO EXPAND ACCESS TO THE LARGER MARKETS IN TERMS OF PERFORMANCE, ACCESS TO ART INCLUSION OR THINK LIKE THAT -- THINGS LIKE THAT. WE USE OUR PLATFORMS OF POETRY, OUR PERFORMANCE ART, OFFSHOOTS TO TALK ABOUT TRANS-PHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, AND THINGS LIKE THAT. THOSE ARE THINGS WE HAVE DONE TO TAKE THE DISCUSSION NOT JUST ABOUT, THAT IS SO CUTE, DISABLED PEOPLE CAN DANCE, BUT REALLY UNDERSTAND IT IS NOT ABOUT THE DISABILITY BUT ABOUT THE ABILITY TO PERFORM AND PUT FORTH REALLY GOOD ART. THE SECOND PART IS TO CHALLENGE PEOPLE'S NOTIONS OF WHAT IS INCLUSION, ACCESSIBILITY, AND DIVERSITY? JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A WHEELCHAIR, IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE DIVERSE. IT JUST MEANS YOU HAVE A WHEELCHAIR. [APPLAUSE] KEITH: THAT IS SOMETHING WE TALK ABOUT IN THE ACADEMIC AREA, WHERE IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE BUT EVEN IN THE WAR -- IN THE ROOM, YOUR ETHNICITY CANNOT BE REPRESENTED JUST BY ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION. [APPLAUSE] CHARLES: THE LIBERAL BASTION. ANYONE ELSE CARE TO? YO-EL: I AM INTERESTED IN APPROACH, THE ART OF TEACHING. HOW DO WE CREATE AN ENTRY POINT INTO ALLOWING ONE TO ASSIMILATE THE MATERIAL? NOT NECESSARILY ABOUT TEACHING STEPS BUT REALLY ABOUT TEACHING CONCEPTS THAT ALLOW US TO HAVE CONTAINER FOR FREEDOM TO HAPPEN IN TERMS OF A SIMULATING STEPS. IF STEPS WERE GOING TO HAPPEN, HOW DO YOU DECENT FOR SIZE THE PROCESS OF THOSE STEPS? IT IS ABOUT THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX TO ALLOW FREEDOM OF EMBRACEMENT, RELATED ABILITY, ENGAGING AND EXPLORING THE CONCEPT, BUT IT IS NOT ABOUT REALLY PULLING OUT THE HUMANITY AND LETTING THE ART FORM, LETTING THAT THE A CONTAINER TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SUPPORT THE INDIVIDUALITY. CHARLES: THERE YOU GO. [APPLAUSE] CHARLES: INTERESTING THAT THAT SEEMED VERY UNIVERSAL. YOUR ARTICULATION. JOHN: MINE WOULD BE ALMOST MYOPIC INSTEAD OF UNIVERSAL. I WENT IN LOS ANGELES, A YEAR AFTER I HAD SURGERY COMPLICATIONS, I WENT TO A CONVENING FOR ARTISTS WITH DISABILITIES AND EVERYONE WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW HOLLYWOOD STEREOTYPED. I WAS LIKE, WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT STEREO -- ABOUT HOLLYWOOD? WE HAVE GOT TO MAKE OUR OWN IMAGES. WE WEREN'T GIVEN THE ACCESS TO GO TO DANCE CLASSES, BUT PEOPLE LIKE JUDY MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR OTHERS TO DO THAT. I ACTUALLY STARTED MAKING FILMS ABOUT IT AND I DID NOT CARE IF I KNEW HOW TO MILK -- TO MAKE FILMS. I HAD A BOOK COME OUT ABOUT DISABLED TO GAY MEN AND THEIR STORIES. I DECIDED TO BECOME AS FOCUSED ABOUT MY REALITY AND NOT ANYONE ELSE'S REALITY. THIS WAS ALL I COULD BRING FORWARD, MINE, AND I FOUND THAT WAS A WAY -- LET DANIEL DAY LEWIS WHEN HIS OSCAR FOR LIMPING AROUND. IT IS OK. WE ARE NOT GOING TO GET THOSE UNLESS WE CREATE THOSE IMAGES OURSELVES. I WENT FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ABOUT, THERE IS NO MAINSTREAM IN THIS, THESE MULTIPLE -- INTO THE STREAM THAT GO INTO THE OCEAN P ARE NOW WAS MORE INTERESTED IN STARTING WITH GRASSROOTS. I CALLED UP JUDY AND I SAID, CAN I COME FILM YOU, YOU KNOW, AS YOUR IMPROVISER? SHE ALLOWED ME TO DO THAT WE DID NOT KNOW WHERE WE WOULD GO WITH IT. IT BECAME A FILM. I WENT WITH ARTISTS I KNEW AND ADMIRE AND STARTED FROM THERE. I HAVE FOUND IT HAS MAINTAINED MY ARTISTIC PRACTICE. YO-EL: -- JUDY: I TOOK A DIFFERENT APPROACH. WE WERE TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE THAT WHAT WE WERE DOING IS REALLY DANCE AND NOT JUST THERAPY. I TOOK OVER THE ARTISTIC DIRECTION OF THE COMPANY 10 YEARS IN AND DECIDED WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO DO WAS COMMISSION WELL NO ARTIST -- WELL-KNOWN ARTISTS TO COME IN AND MAKE IT WORK. THAT WAS SELFISH BECAUSE I WANTED TO WORK WITH THESE PEOPLE AND COULD NOT GO TO THEIR STUDIOS AND WORK WITH THEM. I FELT LIKE IT WOULD INCREASE MY ABILITY TO LEARN, IT WOULD INCREASE WOULD INCREASE THE QUALITY OF ORACLE WE ARE DOING BECAUSE IT WAS NOT AT THE LEVEL I THOUGHT IT COULD BE, AND THE FIRST REPERTORY OUT THAT I COMMISSIONED, WE WERE HERE IN BOSTON, OUR SECOND HOME FOR ABOUT A DECADE WHEN DANCE UMBRA WAS HERE. AERIAL WORK, AND A PIECE BY A FRENCH CANADIAN CHOREOGRAPHER WHO WAS JUST BECOMING KNOWN IN THE BAY AREA. I SET THE BAR HIGH. WHAT IT DID WAS COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WAY THE DANCE WORLD WAS LOOKING AT OUR WORK. INSTEAD OF JUST GETTING SYMPATHY REVIEWS, REVIEWERS WERE ABLE TO TAKE THE WORK AND LOOK AT IT IN THE CONTEXT OF WHAT THEY KNEW ABOUT BILL'S'S WORK OR JOE'S WORK, AND THEY WERE ABLE TO START WORKING AND WRITING ABOUT IT CRITICALLY. I THINK THE FIRST BIG ARTISTIC CHOICE I MADE, IT DEFINITELY, THE IDEA OF COMMISSIONING THESE CHOREOGRAPHERS REALLY LAUNCHED AXIS INTO THE MAINSTREAM CONTEMPORARY DANCE WORLD, NOT SOMETHING WE WOULD THAN ABLE TO ON OUR OWN. JOHN: WE HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER THROUGH THAT AND I THINK IT IS A TESTAMENT TO YOU THAT YOU REALIZED THAT THE EARLY ITERATION OF THE COMPANY WAS BUILT ON A THERAPEUTIC MODEL AND YOU WERE GETTING SYMPATHY REVIEWS AND YOU SAID THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, THAT I WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS AN ARTIST, AND THAT YOU WERE NOT INTERESTED IN BEING INSPIRATION PORN, TO COMMENT, LOOK AT HOW PRETTY THESE PEOPLE LOOK. JUDY: " ISN'T IT NICE THEY ARE DOING THAT?" JOHN: AND YOU SCARED THEM. JUDY: I KNOW. [LAUGHTER] JOHN: JONES SAID WHAT DO I DO WITH THESE PEOPLE THAT DON'T MOVE? I SAID THEY MOVE. YOU HAVE JUST GOT TO LOOK DIFFERENTLY. YOU LOOK. HE SAID AFTERWARDS THAT IT COMPLETELY CHANGED HIS WORLDVIEW OF MOVEMENT. JUDY: I THINK IT HAS TO A LOT OF CHOREOGRAPHERS WE WORK WITH. MOST OF THEM, THE FIRST THING BILL SAID IS I AM REALLY INTIMIDATED. I SAID, YOU ARE INTIMIDATED? LOOKING AT THIS DANCE GOD. STEPHEN, SAME THING. JOE IS LIKE, I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WILL DO WITH YOU PEOPLE. HE HAS CREATED THREE WORKS NOW AND ONE OF THEM WE JUST PERFORMED IN THE ARTS IN THE MILITARY ABOUT VETERANS EXPERIENCE OF RESILIENCE. BILL HAD TO LOOK AT UNISON COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY WITH OUR COMPANY. WE REALLY OFFER A WHOLE PALETTE OF MOVEMENT COLOR THAT DID NOT EXIST BEFORE. CHARLES: THAT COMMENT REMINDS ME OF THE INTERNATIONAL WHEELCHAIR DANCE FESTIVAL. THIS IS GOING BACK A WAYS. JUDY: 20 YEARS. CHARLES: ONE THING YOU WERE TRYING TO DO WAS TO BEGIN TO BUILD OUT OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEOPLE TO LEARN. NOT ONLY TO CREATE A LIGHT WHICH OF COURIC -- CHOREOGRAPHY AROUND THESE MOVEMENTS BUT TO ACTUALLY BEGIN THE PROCESS OF TRAINING PEOPLE TO ENABLE THEM TO PURSUE THEIR CAREERS. THAT IS A GOOD SEGUE TO THE SECOND QUESTION WE HAD, ABOUT HOW DID YOU RECEIVE THE TRAINING, HOW DID YOU LEARN TO DO WHAT YOU DO? THIS CAN BE A POPCORN APPROACH AND NOT EVERYBODY HAS TO CHIME IN IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE IT, BUT, HOW DID YOU RECEIVE THE TRAINING YOU NEED IT? KEITH: AS AN ARTIST WHO DOES GRAPHIC ART PERFORMANCE ART, THERE WAS NO REAL PLACE YOU COULD GO AND HAVE A DISABILITY. YOU SAY, I WANT TO LEARN PIANO. I ROLL IN AND SAY I WANT TO PLAY PIANO WITH MY FOOT, THEY WILL SAY, WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? [LAUGHTER] KEITH: SO THE TRAINING WAS A MIXTURE OF JUST DESIRE TO BE AN ARTIST, BECAUSE AS AN ARTIST, IT IS NOT AN EXTERNAL MOTIVATOR. IT IS AN INTERNAL NEED TO EXPRESS YOUR ART. THE WAY I LEARNED IT IN THE 1980'S, AND THE 1970'S WITH HIP-HOP, THAT OTHER ART FORM, IT ALLOWED FREEDOM BECAUSE THERE WAS NO SCHOOL OF HIP-HOP. THERE WAS NO SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL BREAKDANCING OR PROFESSIONAL GRAFFITI ARTISTS. IT EVOLVED INTO NOW, EVERY COMMERCIAL YOU LISTEN TO HAS A TOUCH OF HIP-HOP. THAT WAS ONE OF THE THINGS WE NEVER REALLY SAW. THE WAY I LEARNED WAS THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR. AS A PERSON WITH A VISIBLE DISABILITY RULING ON STAGE, TRY TO BE A GANGSTER RAPPER, IT IS HARD. THE WAY WE LEARNED IT WAS JUST BY DOING, AND ONLY NOW DO WE GET RECOGNIZED, WE HAVE PERFECTED OUR CRAFTER A LOT OF THAT WAS TRIAL AND ERROR. A LOT OF THAT, BECAUSE AGAIN, AS A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY IN THE ARTS FIELD, THE FIRST REACTION PEOPLE HAVE FOR YOU IS THEIR OWN INSECURITIES IN TERMS OF, OK, YOU ROLL IN, THE THING ABOUT DISABILITY IS THAT IT CHALLENGES YOUR MORTALITY. THEY LOOK AT YOU AND GO, BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD THERE GEOEYE. THE WAY WE LEARNED AGAIN IS THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR, PERFECTION. JUDY: I AM AN ARTIST, WELL NOT AN ARTIST, I AM A DANCER TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT REALLY. I USED TO SHOW JUMPING HORSES I WAS VERY PHYSICAL. I SAT STILL FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS UNTIL I HAD THE BRAINS TO MOVE FROM COLORADO TO CALIFORNIA AND I MET SOMEONE AND STARTED DOING IMPROVISATIONAL MOVEMENT WHICH CHANGED MY LIFE. THERE WAS NOT A WAY FOR ME TO GO AND LEARN DANCE. I EDUCATED MYSELF BY LITERALLY GOING TO SEE EVERY SINGLE DAMN DANCE PERFORMANCE I COULD. I READ EVERYTHING I COULD. I SEARCHED OUT EVERYTHING I COULD, WHICH, 30 YEARS AGO, WE DID NOT HAVE THE INTERNET. SO WE DID NOT KNOW THAT THIS FORM OF DANCE WAS HAPPENING ALL OVER THE WORLD AND POPPING UP AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME. I THINK REALLY AS A RESULT OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN DANCE, WE'RE COMING OUT OF THE CHURCH, PEOPLE WERE MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT, DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOVEMENT, COMING OUT OF 10 YEARS OF THE INDEPENDENT LIVING MOVEMENT AND DISABILITY RIGHTS, HAVE BEEN HAPPENING. IT WAS AN INTERESTING CONCENTRATION OF THOSE TWO THINGS. BUT EVEN TODAY, THE ONLY WAY SOMEONE COULD GO GET A DEGREE IN DANCE IS THROUGH THEIR OWN PERSISTENCE AND USUALLY BY FINDING MAY BE ONE PROFESSOR WHO WILL REALLY CHAMPION AND MENTOR THEM. SO ONE OF THE THINGS AXIS HAS DONE, WE REALIZED EARLY ON WHEN PEOPLE SAID I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO DO THIS, WHERE DO I GO, WE HAD NO WHERE TO SEND THEM, WE STARTED TO START EDUCATION WITH MONTHLY COMMUNITY DANCE JAM, 60% WHAT WE DO AND WE ARE KIND OF THE PROFESSIONAL TRAINING GROUND FOR DISABLED DANCERS I THINK INTERNATIONALLY AT THIS POINT. WE REALIZED WE NEEDED TO TRAIN OUR OWN DANCERS. A LOT OF US THAT CAME INTO THE FIELD, IT IS ON-THE-JOB TRAINING. CHARLES: ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE QUESTION ABOUT HOW YOU GET THE TRAINING YOU NEED? YO-EL: FOR ME AT A YOUNG AGE, I WAS ABOUT WATCH ROW OR FIVE -- FOUR OR FIVE. I WAS NOT QUITE FINDING JOY AND PRESENCE IN MY EXPRESSION AND MY WAY TO EXPRESS MYSELF HERE I WENT TO THE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF IN NEW YORK AND THEY TOLD US TO PHYSICALLY OR LIKE A LION AND I FOUND IT. I BECAME HUNGRY FOR MOVEMENT EXPRESSION. I FOUND THAT MOVEMENT WAS A CHANNEL TO EXPRESS MY INNER THOUGHTS AND IMAGINATION AND IT WAS A WAY TO TELL MY STORY AND I OFTEN TELL PEOPLE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ME, LOOK AT MY WORK AND IN TERMS OF TRAINING, THE BIGGEST THING FOR ME WAS I WAS SUCH A SLOW LEARNER, IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO ASSIMILATE. I WENT THROUGH A LOT OF CHALLENGES THAT REALLY HELPED ME DEVELOP AS AN EDUCATOR TO LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS. WHAT MIGHT WORK WITH THIS ONE INDIVIDUAL MAY NOT WORK WITH THIS ONE. SO HOW DO I TAKE THE EXPERIENCES, THE FORMAL TRAINING I HAVE HAD, INFORMAL, CHARACTER WORK, ALL THE THINGS I WAS HUNGRY ABOUT, MOVEMENT ALL AROUND US AND THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE THROUGH MOVEMENT, IT IS REALLY ABOUT HOW DO WE USE MOVEMENT AS A WAY TO EXPRESS INNER THOUGHTS AND TO EMBRACE OUR IDENTITY IN RELATION TO IMPRESSING THE MATERIAL PAIRED IT IS NOT ABOUT ME TRYING TO IMPRESS THE AUDIENCE OR MYSELF. IT IS ABOUT ME TRYING TO IMPRESS THE MATERIAL. IF I HAVE MY HANDS AND I AM RUBBING ON MY HANDS, I'M NOT LOOKING AT HER HERE AND I'M LOOKING AT THE HANDS AND I SEE WHERE THOSE HANDS TAKE ME. THOSE WERE THE THINGS I WAS REALLY INTERESTED IN AND THAT WAS THE WAY I WAS LIKE, THIS IS HOW I WILL TRAIN. I WILL FOLLOW MOVEMENT, WHEREVER I CAN SMELL IT OR BE AROUND PEOPLE WHO CAN PROVIDE THOSE EXPERIENCES. THOSE ARE LESSONS I TAKE IN MY LIFE THAT I WOULD LOVE TO BRING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY. CHARLES: GREAT -- JOHN: DANCE LOVE IF I COULD. I RUN THE FLYNN CENTER IN VERMONT. I HAVE NO TRAINING IN ARTS ADMINISTRATION. I STARTED AS A DANCER AND PERFORMED. DANCE SORT OF GAVE ME ALL OF THE SKILLS I NEEDED. I LEARNED ABOUT THE WISDOM OF A GROUP, I LEARNED SOMETIMES YOU ARE A SOLOIST, SOMETIMES YOU ARE PART OF THE ENSEMBLE, IT GAVE ME POISE, CULTURAL LITERACY, IT GAVE ME THINGS THAT EVERY DAY YOU START AGAIN, AND DEPENDING ON WHICH DANCE FORM, YOU EITHER START WITH A PLIE, A CONTRACTION, AND YOU BEGIN AGAIN. AS YOU BUILD MATERIAL, GET -- DANCERS WORK TOO PERFECT MATERIAL AND IT DOES NOT WORK, YOU DROP IT OR YOU LET IT GO, AND NOT EVERYTHING YOU HOLD ONTO. THAT STUFF HAS ALWAYS BEEN IMPORTANT TO ME, AS A DANCER, TODAY AS AN ADMINISTRATOR, ALSO AS I BEGAN TO START DOING MY OWN WRITING, MY OWN FILMMAKING ABOUT WORK THAT I WAS NOT WORRIED I DID NOT KNOW THE SKIT -- KNOW THE SKILLS, THAT WOULD BE PART OF THE JOURNEY AND I WOULD ACQUIRE THE SKILLS OF DISCIPLINE AND THAT IS IMPORTANT. FINALLY, I HAD SURGERY, I HAD A TUMOR INSIDE MY SPINAL CORD, THE RIGHT SIDE OF MY BODY HAS NO SINCE ASIAN AND I HAVE LOST LOCATION IN THE LEFT SIDE OF MY BODY. MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE THIS FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE REALLY TO STAND. THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP TO THE GROUND. IN REHAB, NOTHING WAS WORKING. I SAID TO BRING THE MIRROR OVER AND THEY SAID WHY AN ICE THAT WELL, A DANCER, AND I WAS THINKING, GET ME OUT OF THE BED, PICK ME UP AND MOVE ME INTO THE CHAIR, AND STILL I HAVE NO RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GROUND AND I THOUGHT SOMEHOW MY BODY SEEMS LIKE IT COULD PULL ITSELF UP. I SAID I THINK I CAN LEARN TO STAND UP VISUALLY. THEY WERE LIKE, THAT IS BACKWARDS. I SAID, HEY, NOTHING ELSE IS WORKING. IT WAS BECAUSE AS A DANCER I LEARNED MOVEMENT IN THE MIRROR THAT I WAS ABLE TO LOOK AND SAY, OK, THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO STAND UP. IF I HAD NOT HAD THE DANCE TRAINING, I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BE NAVIGATED WITH A CANE RIGHT NOW. EVERY DAY I'M GRATEFUL I HAD DANCE TRAINING. YO-EL: WHAT IS SO INTERESTING ABOUT THAT IT IS THE IDEA OF REFUGE -- REPETITION P OR YOU HAVE DAILY WARM-UP, BALLET CLASSIC, AND REPETITION HELPS DEVELOP AND STIMULATE TRAINING, TO EXPERIENCE AND DIG DEEPER INTO THE IDEA AND ALSO PERSISTING, OF STAYING TRUE TO THE TASK AND LETTING THAT EXPERIENCE IN FORM. THAT IS WHAT IS INTERESTING ABOUT A DANCE EXPERIENCE, WHERE CAN YOU CREATE AN EXPERIENCE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO DEVELOP YOUR SKILL SET IN A WAY THAT ALLOWS YOU TO BEGIN TO DEVELOP A RELATION TO THE SKILL SET? REPETITION, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PHYSICAL OWNERSHIP, POSITIONING IN YOUR BODY, AND WHERE YOU WERE , THOSE ARE APPROACHES, ONCE AGAIN, THAT IT IS INSTRUMENTAL IN DEVELOPING AND HELPING WITH SUPPORT TRAINING IN A MYRIAD OF WAYS. CHARLES: A QUICK WRAPUP IS YOU HAVE GOT TO DO IT. YOU HAVE GOT TO GET OUT THERE AND DO IT. MAKE IT HAPPEN. DOING IT BACKWARDS ALSO WORKS, APPARENTLY. I HAVE PLENTY MORE QUESTIONS HERE, AND WE GOT STARTED A LITTLE LATE. I WILL ASK FOR MY PANELS INDULGENCE. WE WILL COME BACK TO THE OTHER TWO QUESTIONS BECAUSE I THINK WE WANT TO HEAR COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS. WE WILL WAIT FOR THE MICROPHONE, AND WE WILL CONFLATE THE LAST TWO QUESTIONS IN OUR BONUS ROUND IF THAT IS OK. ANYBODY CARE TO -- >> >> I AM A DANCER AND I TEACH KIDS A LOT. SOMETIMES I DO A DANCE ABOUT DISABILITY AND SOMETIMES I DO MOVEMENT BECAUSE I THINK IT IS COOL. THE AUDIENCE WILL SAY I LOVE WITH THAT SAID ABOUT DISABILITY AND SOMETIMES I AM LIKE, OK, BUT NOT REALLY. SO I'M JUST WONDERING HOW YOU GUYS FEEL ABOUT THAT JUDY:? -- AND THAT? JUDY: THAT IS ALWAYS A GOOD ONE. ONE THING I WANTED TO DO WHEN I TOOK OVER THE COMPANY WAS NOT DO THINGS ABOUT DISABILITY. I THOUGHT THAT WE COULD SAY MORE ABOUT ABILITY, WE ARE NOT A WHEELCHAIR DANCE CUBBY OR A DISABLED DANCE COMPANY. WE HAVE NONDISABLED DANCERS EQUALLY IMPORTANT TO THE WORK. THAT SAID, WE ALSO REALIZED EARLY ON THERE WAS A SOCIAL AND A POLITICAL IMPACT TO WHAT WE WERE DOING BECAUSE YOU DID NOT SEE DISABLED PEOPLE ON STAGE AND YOU DID NOT SEE DISABLED AND NONDISABLED PEOPLE CREATING WORK AS EQUALS, AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT IS PEOPLE COME TO WORK, THEY COME TO SEE THINGS WITH THE BAGGAGE THEY BRING IN. WITH ALL OF THE WAY THAT WE HAVE BEEN ACCULTURATED IN THIS COUNTRY, AND ALL OF THE ISSUES AND STIGMA AROUND DISABILITY, BUT I HAD A FUNNY THING BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE IT IS HARD FOR PEOPLE TO SEE THE WORK, ESPECIALLY FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND NOT JUST SEE THE DISABILITY. I THINK AFTER USE -- AFTER YOU GIVE PEOPLE THE OPPORTUNITY TO STARE AT YOU FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF, THAT SOMEHOW NORMALIZES DISABILITY. AND THEY STOP SEEING JUST THE DISABILITY AND START SEEING THE MOVEMENT. MY FRIEND TOLD ME ONCE THAT SHE DID THIS PIECE AND AFTERWARDS, SOMEONE CAME UP TO HER AND SHE IS NOT DISABLED, SO I THINK THIS IS A CONTEMPORARY DANCE DILEMMA, "I LOVE THE PIECE ABOUT THE COCKROACH IN THE REFRIGERATOR." THAT IS THE BEAUTY ABOUT DANCE BECAUSE PEOPLE CAN COME INTO IT WITH ALL OF THE STUFF IN THE THEATER AND YOU CAN KIND OF COME TO YOUR OWN CONCLUSION AND YOUR OWN IDEA ABOUT WHAT IT WAS ABOUT. I THINK WE ARE STILL AT A PLACE THAT IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO NOT HAVE THIS. WE HAVE STEREOTYPES ABOUT PEOPLE OF COLOR AND GAY LESBIAN QUEER TRANCE, YOU KNOW, BISEXUAL PEOPLE. AND MUSLIMS. SO WE ARE JUST CONTINUALLY STEREOTYPED AND STEREOTYPING. IT TAKES A LOT TO KIND OF OVERCOME THAT. I THINK THE MORE YOU GET IN FRONT OF PEOPLE AND THE MORE THEY HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE THAT YOU ARE JUST PART OF THE GANG ON EARTH -- JOHN: I THINK IT IS ALSO A MARKETING ISSUE BOTH FOR ARTISTS WITH DISABILITIES AND PRESENTERS. WHEN MARCUS ROBERTS, A GREAT JAZZ PIANIST, PLAYS, HE HAPPENS TO BE BLIND, BUT I'M NOT SELLING HIS LIKENESS. I'M SELLING HIS JAZZ TRIO. AN ARTIST WHO IS A NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON ON AUTISM, WHEN WE DID AN EXHIBITION OF HIS WORK, HIS INTERPRETER SAID TO ME, LARRY REALLY DOES NOT WANT AUTISM TO BE IN THE NARRATIVE FRAME OF WHAT THIS WORK IS. EVERYONE WILL COME IN AND LOOK AT, LOOK AT WHAT THIS GUY WITH AUTISM DID. HE WOULD REALLY LIKE THE PAINTINGS TO BE VIEWED AS PAINTINGS. I THINK IT IS AN INTERESTING DILEMMA ABOUT HOW TO BALANCE WHO WE ARE. WE LEAD WITH THE ARTIST FIRST-PERIOD LEAD WITH THE PERSON FIRST. WE ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE ART FIRST-PERIOD I MADE A SHORT FILM , IT WAS NOT AN AXIS PROJECT, BUT DANCERS WERE WORKING WITH ANOTHER CHOREOGRAPHER, I HAD GIVEN THEM THE VOICEOVER AHEAD OF TIME, CALLED DREAMING AWAKE. I SAID TO THE DANCERS, LET'S NOT HAVE ANY OF YOUR APPARATUS IN THERE. IF YOU ARE IN A CHAIR, YOU WOULD BE ON THE GROUND AND NOT IN A CHAIR. IF YOU WALK WITH GAINS, NO CANES. -- WITH CANES, NO CANES. IT WAS ALL THIS FALLING AND CATCHING. AFTERWARDS, PEOPLE SAID TO ME NO ONE WAS DISABLED IN THE FILM. WHEN PEOPLE SEE YOUR CHAIR, THEY SEE YOUR CHAIR. THEY SEE ME WALK WITH A CANE, AND WHEN I DON'T USE IT, THEY SAY YOU MUST BE FEELING BETTER P OR I SAY BETTER FROM WHAT? IT IS INTERESTING HOW PEOPLE DON'T SEE US OFTEN. THEY SEE OUR APPARATUS. JUDY: IT IS VISIBILITY AT THE SAME TIME. JOHN: YOU ROLL OUT ON STAGE AND DO HIP-HOP AND THEY SEE THE CHAIR. KEITH: THEY SEE THE CHAIR AND IT IS INTERESTING BECAUSE WE HAVE DONE A LOT OF THINGS TOGETHER AND PARTICULARLY WHEN YOU HAVE A VISIBLE DISABILITY, IT IS REALLY HARD. I USE A WHEELCHAIR AND WHEN I LEAVE THE WHEELCHAIR, THE VISIBILITY IS VERY MUCH VISIBLE. THE CHALLENGE WE HAVE IN TERMS OF THE ART AND GETTING BEYOND PEOPLE'S PRESUMPTIONS OR PERCEPTIONS OF WHAT MOTIVATES THE ARTIST, IS THAT PEOPLE ARE -- DISABILITY HAS A VERY NEGATIVE CONNOTATION TO IT. ANYTHING WE DO IS A MIRACLE IN HALLELUJAH JESUS, KEITH GOT THAT MICROPHONE. ALL MY GOD, YOU GO TO THE BATHROOM? [LAUGHTER] KEITH: EVEN THIS WILL BE, FOR THOSE WHO ARE AWARE, IT WILL BE SEEN AS A SUPERHUMAN FEAT TO WANT TO NORMALIZE THEMSELVES, WHICH IRONICALLY, WE ARE JUST ON THE SPECTRUM OF HUMANITY VERSUS BEING A WHOLE DIFFERENT GROUP. WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW TO GET BEYOND THAT, YOU HAVE TO BE AWARE PEOPLE WILL NOT MEET YOU WHERE YOU ARE. YOU HAVE TO MEET THEM WHERE THEY ARE. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO DO THAT WITH YOUR ART, IT GETS BEYOND, YOU CAN MAKE BEATS WITH YOUR FEET, TOO, THAT IS HOT. THAT IS DOPE. I WANT YOU TO DO ONE FOR ME. BUT IT TAKES A LOT OF WORK TO GET BEYOND THE PERCEPTION. AS AN ARTIST WHO DOES HIP-HOP OR DANCE OR WHATEVER AND I ROLL OUT , MY MELODY DOES NOT GO AWAY IF I LEAVE THE WHEELCHAIR. THE REALITY OF ME HAVING CEREBRAL PALSY, YOU ARE BLACK, YOU'RE IN THE WHEELCHAIR, YOU HAVE A DISABILITY, WHAT DEAL WAS YOU DOING AND WHEN DID YOU GET SHOT? VERSUS, OH MY GOODNESS, THAT IS AND AFTER A FACT OF BIRTH AND YOU ARE A HUMAN WHO HAS THIS TALENT THAT WE CAN ALL 52. THAT IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARADIGM AND TO USE THE ART TO ADDRESS YOUR BIASES, TO ALERT YOU TO YOUR BIASES, AND TO GET YOU OVER YOUR BIASES. [APPLAUSE] JUDY: I AM TO PLAY DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. CAN I JUST SAY ONE MORE THING? THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT IS WHEN I DO PUBLICITY, I ALWAYS INSIST THERE IS ONE DISABLED PERSON AND ONE NOT. BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE BY NOT CALLING IT OUT, OR BRINGING IT TO SOME KIND OF ATTENTION, IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THE SAME THING, THE FIRST THING, WE ARE A CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY AND WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT, BUT WE ARE GOING TO MISS A LOT OF PEOPLE. SOMEBODY ROLLING DOWN A SIDEWALK IN A WHEELCHAIR WHO MIGHT -- EITHER ONE OF THEM ARE DISABLED AND THEY WILL ROLL ON BY. FOR ME, IF I SEE AN IMAGE OF A DISABLED PERSON ON THE POSTER, I WILL STOP AND LOOK AT IT. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHAT ARE THEY DOING? THAT WAS A PROBLEM WHEN WE DID A WHEELCHAIR DANCE FESTIVAL. JEREMY SENT IN EMAIL OUT TO ALL OF US SAYING WHEN WE GOING TO CALL THIS THING, AND NONE OF US COULD FIGURE OUT WHAT WE WERE GOING TO CALL THIS THING. HE CAME UP WITH WHEELCHAIR DANCE FESTIVAL AND ONE OF THE COMPANIES FROM THE U.K. DID NOT WANT TO BE LABELED A WHEELCHAIR DANCE COMPANY. THEY DON'T HAVE IMAGES OF DISABLED PEOPLE IN A LOT OF THEIR PUBLICITY AND THEY LOST THEIR DISABLED AUDIENCE OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR 25 YEARS. THEY HAVE LOST A LOT OF THE DISABLED AUDIENCE. I FEEL LIKE WE HAVE TO MAKE IT IN SOME WAYS OBVIOUS SO THAT PEOPLE LIKE ME ARE GOING TO SEE IT AND GO, WOW, I COULD SEE THAT OR THAT COULD BE ME. YO-EL: IF WE ARE REALLY GOING TO EMBRACE INCLUSION, TO BE ABLE TO SHOW THAT IS KEY AND INSTRUMENTAL. WHAT I ENJOY ABOUT AXIS AND VIEWING THEIR WORK IS I SEE A DISABLED PARTICIPANT -- JUDY: I WANT TO SEE IT. I LOVE THE WAY WHEELCHAIRS MOVE. YO-EL: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THOSE WHO ARE DISABLED AND NOT, AND HOW DO THEY BECOME PARTNERS? I THINK INCLUSION IS REALLY ABOUT ALL OF THIS BEING PARTNERS. THE WORST THAT WE ARE DOING AND ADVOCATING FOR IS HOW COULD THIS BE INCLUSIVE FOR ALL AND HOW DO WE SHOW THAT VISUALLY? JUDY: I HAVE AN INTERESTING STORY AND THAT I WILL SHUT IT -- SHUT UP. IN ONE OF THE DANCE PIECES, HE WAS LIFTED ONTO A COUCH AND PEOPLE LOVE THAT SHE FINALLY GOT OUT OF HER WHEELCHAIR. I WILL NOT DROP THE F FORD, -- F WORD, BUT I AM STUCK ON THAT COUCH AND FOR ME, THAT IS NOT INTERESTING. IT WAS AN INTERESTING CHOICE AND THE PIECES BEAUTIFUL BUT FOR PEOPLE ALL THE SUDDEN, THEY ARE JUST SO EXCITED THAT THIS IS WHAT GIVES US OUR FREEDOM AND ALLOWS US TO MOVE THE WAY WE MOVE. I FRANKLY DON'T LIKE DANCING ON THE FLOOR. I FIND IT FRUSTRATING. I LIKE TO GO FAST. I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO CRAWL ACROSS THE FLOOR. CHARLES: THANK YOU FOR A VERY STIMULATING QUESTION. >> I HATE TO GO IN ANOTHER DIRECTION BUT I WILL. I AM HERE FROM BOSTON CONSERVATORY OF BROOKLYN WHERE I RUN A BUNCH OF PROGRAMS FOR PEOPLE WITH AUTISM AND STARTING THIS FALL I WILL BE FOUNDING A NEW INSTITUTE FOR ARTS EDUCATION AND SPECIAL NEEDS AT BERKELEY. I AM COMING AT IT FROM A BIG PART OF OUR WORK IS TRAINING TEACHERS. CHARLIE ASKED YOU ABOUT YOUR TRAINING. I WORKED ALL THE TIME WITH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOL TEACHERS WHO ARE TRYING SO HARD AND DESPERATELY TO MAKE CONNECTIONS AND TO INCLUDE EVERYONE IN ARTISTIC EDUCATION AND ARTISTIC OPPORTUNITIES AND THEY ARE STRUGGLING. I WANT TO KNOW YOUR ADVICE FOR THEM, WHAT THEY NEED TO KNOW, WHAT YOU WISH YOUR TEACHERS HAD KNOWN WAY BACK WHEN. KEITH: I HAVE TO JUMP IN BECAUSE I'M A CHILD OF TEACHERS AND BEING THE FIRST BLACK CHILD AND THE ONLY ONE WITH A DISABILITY, IN 1966, WHEN I WISH TEACHERS WOULD UNDERSTAND IS THAT YOU ARE TEACHING A STUDENT, NOT THE DIAGNOSIS. [APPLAUSE] KEITH: THAT IS THE CRUX OF IT. PEOPLE HAVE HEARD ABOUT AUTISM AND THEY START THINKING ABOUT THE LITTLE BLUE PUZZLE PIECE. THEN, RIGHT NOW, AUTISM IS THE SEXY DISABILITY TO HAVE NO ONE WANTS TO BE CEREBRAL PALSY P OR THAT AIN'T SEXY NO MORE. -- PALSY. THAT AIN'T SEXY NO MORE. >> THAT'S NOT TRUE. KEITH: BUT THE REALITY IS THAT TEACHERS, THIS IS A STRUGGLE BEYOND ART. EDUCATORS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TAUGHT STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES ARE NOT STUDENTS. THEY DON'T HAVE THE CAPACITY TO LEARN AS OUR OTHER STUDENTS. IF YOU PULL -- CALL BACK YOUR TEACHERS AND SAY, WHAT BAGGAGE ARE YOU BRINGING, BECAUSE THE TRAINING I DO AROUND THE COUNTRY OR WHATEVER IS YOU DON'T LEAVE YOUR CELL PHONE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR. IF YOU ARE SEXES AND YOU WALK INTO A ROOM WITH WOMEN, -- IF YOU ARE RACIST OR HOMOPHOBIC OR ABLEST, THAT COMES WITH YOU. HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOUR BIASES? HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOUR PRESIDENTS -- PRESENT -- PREJUDICES? YOU'VE NEVER ENCOUNTERED THAT UNTIL YOU DECIDED TO BE A CHEAP -- A TEACHER. ALL THAT BAGGAGE, YOU HAVE TO BE DEPROGRAMMED AS WELL. WE COME WITH OUR OWN BIASES. WE COME INTO THE CLASSROOM, THIS PERSON DON'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DISABILITY. WHAT TEACHERS CAN DO, IS THAT IT IS NOT ABOUT, IT DOESN'T MEAN IT NOR THE DIAGNOSIS, BUT UNDERSTAND YOU ARE TALKING TO A HUMAN THAT HAS SENSIBILITIES, EMOTIONS, AND IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY EXPRESS IT THE WAY YOU DO, BUT IF YOU CAN'T GET BEYOND THAT, HOW CAN YOUR INFORMATION GET PERMEATED TO THE STUDENT TO MEET THE STUDENT WHERE THEY ARE, UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE BAGGAGE IS, AND TRY TO FIND COMMON GROUND FOR IT TO HAPPEN. [APPLAUSE] YO-EL: WONDERFULLY PUT. I'VE -- I LOVE THIS QUESTION. YES. IT IS BASED ON THE C WORDS. CURRICULUM, CONTENT, COMMUNICATION, CREATIVITY, COLLABORATION, AND TEACHING, HOW DO YOU ALLOW THE TEACHER TO BECOME RELATABLE WITH THE STUDENT? WHAT IS THE RELATE ABILITY FACTOR, TO ALLOW THEM TO FIND THEM FIRST, IT IS ABOUT, WHO ARE YOU AS A PERSON, NOT TEACHING ANYTHING YET, AND THEN ONCE THEY BUILD CONFIDENCE, HOW DO YOU TAKE THAT TO ALLOW THEM TO EXPLORE THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FORM SO THE FORM IS REALLY WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FUNCTION? FROM THERE, HOW DO YOU PROVIDE EXPERIENCES, HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN FOR COLLABORATION AMONGST THE STAFF, THE INTERPRETER THERE, IS THERE ATA THERE, IS EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE IN TERMS OF HOW THIS MATERIAL WILL BE PROCESSED AND HOW THIS MATERIAL WILL BE COMMUNICATED, AND REALLY LETTING THE STUDENTS TEACH YOU, LISTENING TO THEIR RESPONSES AND LISTENING TO THEIR HEARTBEAT, SO TO SPEAK, AND THEN MODULATING YOUR CURRICULUM, HAVING A PLAN, A BACKUP, BUT REALLY MODULATING THE APPROACH AND TAKING THE JOURNEY BASED ON THE FEEDBACK AND THE ENERGY AND THE TEMPERATURE YOU ARE RECEIVING FROM THE STUDENTS. JOHN: WE HAVE BEEN DOING A LOT OF WORK AROUND STRIVING TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE. ONE OF THE BIG INITIATIVES WE UNDERTOOK IS TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE COULD BE MORE WELCOMING TO AUDIENCES ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM. WE WORKED WITH THE CHICAGO CHILDREN'S THEATER AND THEY DID WORK SPECIFICALLY, A SMALL-SCALE WORK FOR YOUNG CHILDREN ON THE SPECTRUM, BUT WE WERE HEARING FROM THE PARENTS THAT THEY REALLY APPRECIATED THERE WERE SEPARATE EXPERIENCES BUT WHAT THEY HAD HOPED FOR IS THAT FLYNN COULD FIND WAYS TO HAVE THEIR FAMILIES PARTICIPATE IN FULLER EXPERIENCES. MANY PARENTS SAID IT IS SO STRESSFUL FOR THEM TO COME THAT THEY START FIGHTING WITH CHILDRENBy the time everyone is there, it is hysterical and being told to be quiet. We work with the theater development fund. They took this on as pro bono. We had to really face our own prejudices and our own ignorance and our own fears about this unknown reality for many of us. We had a parent advisor group working with us. We worked with a theater company for the long haul. We kept the lights up a little bit, lower the sound levels, did not change any content. Walking down the aisles with a parent or recipient that they wanted to. The artists says you will hear sounds that may not seem appropriate sounds to you. They were totally fine with it. We had a quiet room, we had special stories online. And what we found is that everyone had so much fun. It is no longer for specialized audiences. Parents say, we can bring our toddlers. The ushers had to be educated to sit down. Don't talk. That is what we teach people to do in these darkened spaces and theaters. To be quiet and pay attention. To what? Our box office staff, everyone had to change. It was transformative. And it was just how to be welcoming. >> We have this a lot. They really don't know how to do it. We have started doing a lot of teacher training. We just did a teacher training in New York. This is something that we are taking on because you can't just start from zero. And there are people from whom you can go learn. And one of the things that I did was to set up master classes where we would bring at bay area dance teachers to us. And we would have some of our community and company. They have a safe container with which to try out all of their teaching methods and make adjustments. I do think that, especially with dance, that there needs to be some kind of training. People need some groundwork to start with it. We started from scratch and we made it all up but it took us a long time. Now if we are asking people to make their dance classes inclusivity, they need to have the ability to develop the skill to do that. And what most of them found is they didn't do things that differently. They had to just open the Box a little bit. >> And how do you do that? That is the key. To think outside the Box? To teach step or rely on other senses and visual art? I know with the work that we used to do with the education community, we had autism class early would have them start in shares, something they felt comfortable with. Just feel it and translate that feeling to a part of your body. It's about how you approach it and what is the entry point. There are amazing teachers out there and quite a challenge of the particular group that allows them to be translatable to all the groups. That is the key having that training. How do we go about that? That is the question. >> It is not easy and it is hard to be everything to everybody. >> I know Ruth has a question and Chris has a question. I want to just ignore it that some of us in the room went to dance training for teachers on Friday night. I know there's at least one. Thank you for that. I know Chris has a question as well. Anyone else with a burning question so I get a sense? >> You are just validating everything that we talked about 20 years ago during the international wheelchair dance Festival. A continuation of the same conversation. The most profound thing I learned at the international wheelchair dance Festival was that dancers conceptions of their own bodies of beauty and of dance change when you see people with all different kinds of abilities dancing and using wheelchairs as props. >> They are an extension of our body, they are not a prop. >> Excuse me. I am still learning. My husband, as you know, had a physical disability and used a wheelchair and a ventilator for the last 22 years of his life. We were watching TV one night, a dance performance. He felt depressed because he couldn't dance. So the wheelchair dance Festival changed our lives in terms of using contact improv. Just thank you. [APPLAUSE] >> My question is about authenticity and casting. What are your responses to educating populations of varying disabilities, educators being persons without disabilities. These little pop-up workshops that may go to the Perkins school for the blind or the school for the death -- deaf? What is your response to that? What is your response to casting in film, theater, stage. Individuals without disabilities representing disability. You get the idea. What are your responses and reactions to that? >> It's very interesting. In terms of teaching as an educator going into a classroom, I have the advantage of shock and allwe. A teacher teaching hip-hop and then I role in. -- roll in. [LAUGHTER] It sets up the dynamic because it instantly changes the conversation about what shocked you about me rolling into this classroom? As much as we are talking about coming to dance or performance, people come with a history already. If there is an educator that has chosen to do this, would you volunteer kids with disabilities? Sure. Why is he running that way? Why is he beating them with a crutch? They are all pointing at me. Because they don't understand that we have our own culture. Our own baggage that we come with and we expect you to treat us in a certain kind of way. Typically, it is that sticky sweet talking. Hello, everyone. You are so talented. It goes straight to what we've heard all our lives. Anything we've done is this miraculous event versus just an extraordinary life. In terms of casting, what is the movie that just came out. The guy that was so traumatized that he wanted to kill himself. It is not our life. The casting issue is analogous to having a white man plan Asian. If you saw Doctor Strange, the white woman played the Asian man. Go back to the year of living dangerously. Go back to Hannibal. It been her. -- Ben_-Hur. Casting the other of someone we are comfortable with. That is the crux of getting past casting. And that they have the courage to cast someone with a disability. I don't look like a typical romantic lead but I can play the romantic lead. I don't look like a typical villain because if you look at any television show anyone you know with a disability is going to be like this. They will call it out because it's fake. The way that we can address it is we start our own testing companies. And you can put it out there. But we cannot be blind to the fact that disability in this culture has a very specific context and connotation. And until we can do with the fact that people don't want to see us -- if you get married, people are amazed. If you eat at a restaurant, people are amazed. Before you even get to the casting, had you deal with the sociological impact of what people see in the media? >> It is interesting, Sam just opened on Broadway -- traditionally, the young woman in that is someone who seems very fragile. Often young actresses decide they should walk with a limp or something. Sam Kass a woman in a wheelchair for that role. She rolls into the theater and has to get out of that wheelchair and on her but go up the stairs and is helped by her mother. And it is a very interesting depiction of the fragility of that character. It is seen as revolutionary. It was never revolutionary that enable -- an able-bodied person would be limping around but that this woman in a wheelchair was actually playing this person with the disability. I don't know what that is that suddenly, it is new when it is actually real. >> I have been dealing with this for 30 years. There are not enough trained and disabled actors. This is a problem. Just because I am disabled and I go do a casting call, it doesn't mean I have the skill to do it. This is a problem that people who do want to cast disabled people are coming up against. There is not enough of us and it is because of this lack of training opportunity. John, you speak eloquently about this. It is a lack of drive to get better. That somehow, I should get cast in a disabled role. It doesn't mean that I should go to 20 acting classes a week. I know that it came up a lot. >> That conference in Los Angeles, I was really eager to find a community of. I was stunned because people were sharing work and there was a comedian who was quadriplegic. It she rolls out and she starts attacking secreted Roy, these two outrageously -- too outrageous queens with white tigers and they were just like Liberace. They were completely over the talk and -- over the top and I loved them. Even here, the queers are the ones being made fun of and it really pissed me off. She was telling her jokes and she missed her punchline. It's like, if you want to be a comedian, you've got to hit your punchlines. But no one was willing to talk to her as an artist. They just saw her as a quadriplegic. And no one wanted to say to her, look, if you want to be taken seriously, you got to work on your delivery. We talked about this a lot. There are a lot of wheelchair based companies and to my eyes, not much of the work is mediocre. These incredible different bodies and stuff. I'm glad that he wants to be seen as a painter it is interesting how we challenge ourselves and have that conversation, not even in a room like this, but in a room with disabled people, it is really a thing that we have to grab hold of each other and say we've got to do better than this. >> We have to improve the quality. >> Can I add a small piece to that? I could not agree more with everything you just said. I also think that there is a point that is not happening, letting people with disabilities know that it is possible for them to become performers. It is not something that people think about. It's not something a lot of teachers or parents or other people surrounding them are presenting to them as one of the options as they move forward in life. It all ties back in again. >> We have planned an afternoon to dig deeper into these questions. That is supposed to start at 2:30 p.m. our time. 930 p.m. in Tel Aviv. And so we have touched on a lot of what the last two questions were. If you would each do your summary. The distinction between advocacy and activism. If we might, what distinction, if any, do you see their? And what is your call to action? You have gone first each time. Keep up the pattern. >> Activism is the action behind advocacy. In order to advocate, you have do have action behind it. Wrapping up the discussion, it is a distinction without a difference. Everything we talked about boils down to the reality of the child of the disability coming up with a system in the society. To get to the point that they can think about advocacy or acting. Everything that you've learned depending on your cultural background is either your core -- you are a curse, embarrassment, or to fragile to do anything. There is this notion of you can't be allowed to fail. That's why we get participation stickers or ribbons. The notion of being able to fail and having it not based on the fact that you have a disability. Once you fail, you will appreciate your success. A lot of students prior to getting there, what is the population? What is the population of greater academia of children with disabilities in higher education? If that is what you are trying to get to, no one can tell you how to be a better comedian because they are scared to have you fail. And those of the things that I think when you talk about activism. Getting people to understand we are human and failure is part of humanity. And success is also part of humanity and it shouldn't be cheapened that you have a wheelchair, you get a ribbon. Let me earn my stuff. You have to fight for teachers to look at you as an actual students. That is an issue. You're supposed to be educated already. What the hell do I have to educate you for again? The advocacy, art, better opportunities. Before you get to that question, what opportunities does the parent have to know that their child can be a dancer or be a human and have aspirations in life. Prior to that, a parent without any disability background has a child, they go down the rabbit hole of the world of disability and they are never supported and they lose relationships, they lose community connections. If you go to a place of worship, look around. How accessible is it? If you're talking about Christianity, Lord Jesus, let me pray. Why are you trying to heal my disability? This is where we are. The activism in the advocacy raising the level of our humanity in the context of our human existence. >> Quite honestly, we received this question and I don't see the difference. There is no distinction because they are both advocating for something. Having the means of how they go about it in terms of activism, they are doing the same things. And how do we do that? Had a while out myself to be in my skin in a field that relies heavily on hearing, music, and how do you redirect your senses. Touching, feeling, connecting to be present and to say that this is an art form that I can do. By doing that, you are advocating for the importance of this humanity. And how it can unlock the channel. >> When you said this festival is 20 years ago, it occurred to me that I don't think we've gone much further than 20 years. I think there is still a complete cultural apartheid reinforced by funding agencies. We are all supposed to have our accessibility, completely ignored. The states. Vermont, Massachusetts, California, you had the accessibility completely ignored. Everyone is talking about architectural accommodations. That is the access plant. Most art organizations are completely hostile to people with disabilities, and they should not receive federal dollars. They should not receive money from the arts Council. They should not receive money and all of these agencies are still perpetuating by giving public dollars to these institutions still talking about ramps 27 years later. If you look at our online work, it is not accessible. Even the typeface is inappropriate. Artists have said to me, I feel kind of uncomfortable having an audio describe her. >> They are describing my work. >> It doesn't occur to them that there are multiple ways in. And by excluding these things, you are not allowing the public to come in. My advocacy is around these issues. I went in my wheelchair. I can literally kick the door in . It's not acceptable. I want to see a brand-new building. No power assist on the brand-new building. The dose and stood on the other side of the door and looked. Not acceptable. I happen to know the director so we had conversations about it. Museums, curators hang art. 61 inches is the center in museums because it is the center of their view of they are standing. That is no longer appropriate. And I get challenged. Some people walk in and say to me, it looks a little low. Sit in a chair and look at it. Museums are refusing to move it down. The culture Israel. It's not any different from 1990 and it is a real issue. I hope one of the things that we deal with is not just empowering dancers with disabilities and we find ways for our public institutions to welcome audiences to come in and have fuller participation. That is where my advocacy is these days. >> My call to action, one of the things that I did was about 10 years ago, I started realizing the field of integrated dance really needed to have a place to meet and a way to do that. I started this project with funding from the Doris Duke foundation to do a national convening on the future of integrated dance in the USA. The first one ever is ridiculous. We followed that up with six regional meetings. It is continuing on initiatives that we put proposals and to advance artistry and training opportunities. It is my personal call to action. I hope you all get to meet this week. He is fabulous and also disabled. He comes as a trained dancer to disability. That is what I am doing. I'm trying to advance artistry in this country because we are a decade and a half behind the U.K.. It is unacceptable. >> A little later than I promised, but I think we've had a good conversation. Let me encourage everyone. Please stick around for the conversations afterwards. We'll all be part of it. The various folks will be joining us and you can give us directions. >> First of all, thank you again. But I really hope is that there isn't another meeting like this 20 years from now where John and Judy and Ruth and folks have to say that we had this same conversation 20 years ago. I hope you can take their call to action seriously. I will remind our facilitators and tell you all that what we hope out of the next 90 minutes is you come back into this room with three solid action steps. Not things that you hope someone also do, but things that you in your life and in your world and your career and your peers will do. And you will hold people accountable to. I know I'm asking that of my colleagues for us. And I hope that we can do that. There will be graphic facilitation. Here is where you're going. Activism is the number one breakout. That is Dawn. That is in the second-floor lounge which is on this side of the building on the left side. Number two is with Charles Baldwin. And that is on leadership. Who is running the game? How do we influence them? That is the second-floor on the other side of the room. Professional training in the lounge over here. If you want to talk about professional training issues. And artistic decisions. Casting. How do we hire? That will be in this room right here. Feel free to move the chairs around. You are typing notes and you are hitting record on the audio recorders in the room. You all know what you're doing? Restrooms and water fountains are there. We will see you back in this room at 4:00. [APPLAUSE] >> We have the sing happy birthday. So we cannot let that go. And she got a present. Right? Who wants to start us off? >> Happy birthday to you ♪ At Uber the to you ♪ -- happy birthday to you ♪ Happy birthday dear Judy ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ [APPLAUSE] >> Not just good ASL, they have to be an interpreter. You also have to have an actor that has some passing familiarity with ASL. Most of the time, this role is cast with people who don't know ASL beforehand but can pick up a little bit they need in the play because that character doesn't need a lot of ASL. They need a little bit and to be terrible at it. It is not so hard to cast. Our Director trained for the year before she directed the play. It wasn't a requirement of the production or the script. They have people who have directed display that don't know ASL but I think that is ready challenging to do. Our director opted in and took training in order to get conversant, certainly not fluent. We had a lighting designer who is death -- who was deaf. Certainly not a requirement but if you look down the list at who else was on the staff, somebody in the room was our staff who was our coordinator for our interpreters. We had a lot of people working with the production. Not the designers are the actors are the director or the company, the people in the community who we invited to be in the conversation with us. It plays a love story and it involves a same-sex relationship as well as opposite sex relationships. And there is a play that involves a performer that uses a wheelchair. Those actors, the playwright demands that the actors have those experiences. You can do love person with an actor playing the deaf role who is not half. ==-- not deaf. I guess you could, but it would go against the respect of the playwright in the smarts and propriety of artistry. A performer he who uses a wheelchair, it is important. >> Figuring out how we want to work in the spaces we want to working with the collaborators. I wanted to talk through a couple of company processes that may be Warrant obvious to us at the beginning and aren't obvious from the outside. In terms of a company that has no members that are disabled decide to do productions that involve actors with disabilities. One thing that we had to do a lot about casting. That normalized people show up. They just come to you and they submit their head shots and sign up for a slot. You decide and you might have to do a little outreach if it is a role outside of the normal casting pool. We find that company one, it doesn't matter what play we are doing. We are never doing plays sitting at the center of what is considered normative in Boston. We don't do plays with a lot of white people or people over 30. And we often are doing plays seeking out performers that perhaps don't consider themselves professional actors. Our casting processes differ from what you might see at another theater company. We do a lot of outreach to the community and ask people to help us find people that consider themselves to have an affinity with theater but may not practice acting on the regular. We also have a training program in place with our company. And a lot of the actors come through that program, but not all of them. It's not just about where you send your casting call, but how it is phrased or framed. Also, where your locations are and you might invite people to come to audition. What is the idea about what makes a real audition. A professionalized actor might have a set of assumptions on that. Others might not have an idea of what the proper protocol or decorum might be. You have release some of those ideas about what decorum looks like. It is something we talked a lot about internally. We spent time talking about the structures of our company and what assumptions underpin them. What does a rehearsal look like? Here is a tangible example. For love person, we have a deaf actor, deaf lighting designer. Interpreters everywhere. For interpreters in the room at any given time. In tech rehearsal, the room is dark because you're running through the lighting cues. An interpreter can't actually be seen. If you're trying to communicate backstage to an actor that needs to make an entrance and running the entrance over and over again, you have to institute systems to account for the kind of communication that would normally occur with hearing actors like a stage manager saying OK, try that again. But you can't do that. We did not think of that beforehand because we had never done it before. We relied a lot on the lighting designer to help us develop systems in order to communicate more effectively with actors during that process. That's what I mean when I say the structures had to entirely change. And the performers are designers we're working with, when you do a piece that wants to be in communication with different communities, you have to be successful -- accessible. Are you interacting in authentic and useful ways with the people that are those performers support system? These are questions that come up all a time for companies that don't usually interact with these ideas. These are box office structures. They communicate with the Boston Center for the arts. It is not an easy place to get to. And not under the marquee that says the theater's name. So how you help people find that? About wayfinding. If you're working with performers, you can't presume that your death -- your deaf performance -- performers and members of the audience are English fluent. It is our email blast, our website, the ushers. Ushers are hired by the building. They are volunteers. Can't presume they will be ASL fluent or even conversant. Had you help and I sure to do so if they don't speak the same language? Overall, for love person, one of the things that was reinforced for company one that was true across many types of activism, ally ship, as I think everybody in this room knows, it is not something you are but it is something you do and you do it over and over again and you have to be willing to be wrong and be challenged and corrected so you can do it better. I think we made a ton of mistakes we are in greater communication with the deaf community and interpreter community in Boston. With colossal, we had similar challenges not around language, but around not just finding a performer who used a wheelchair but a performer of color who had a dance background in physicality that would be believable. Then to build the rest of the cast around that person because that person, that character, a appear's younger in the play. A younger self does not use a wheelchair and then a father, that trio of actors could be related. These company processes are complicated and I will not go through all of them here. I wanted to talk before I moved into another conversation. One thing we link to these as well as a play we did not two but I think it's worth knowing about, it is a play by John -- his entire body of work is completely worth knowing about if it is new to you. John was a playwright to use a wheelchair and had a series of diagnoses. He passed away several years ago, but every single one of his plays featured characters with some form of disability. Some of them used wheelchairs and some did not. He used a wheelchair so a lot of his characters did. Everyone of those characters has a sexual life, that these characters are often ones that are decent allies by our media narratives. Keep was talking about that as well as other panelists, that John would say the notion of sexual desire is a component of base humanity. To create characters that don't experience that is a disservice. In all three of these plays, I think one of the strengths is they show characters in wide-ranging complex situations. All of them have sexual desires and all are telling stories asking us to think in new ways. That is background info. We have a good amount of time to talk amongst ourselves. We have been asked to think about what are some action items and how do we want to talk about what it used to think about artistic decision-making with regards to performers with disabilities and people not accustomed to working with those performers. It might be a good idea to think about what the term access even means. It might be interesting for us to think about what are the perceived -- perceived or real obstacles. It might also be helpful for us to think about, how do we plan for the challenges we can't anticipate because there will be challenges. I think that is enough of me talking for the time being. Please, let's just make this a conversation. I will just moderate anti-threads together. Maybe what you're trying to get out of this conversation, or why you are here and I could help guide what we are talking about. What do you think? >> I have a little bit of a different perspective because I come from open-door theater and acting. We are open to anybody nine and up. Sexualizing the actors is something I cannot have on the table. Depending on our season depends on who is coming through the door. We usually do a musical. Last year, there were 92 actors and 30% self identified as having a special need. It depends on who comes to us as to how we modify. I find it gives us a little flexibility. We have no facility and no paid staff. They are all volunteers. We do pay positions like ASL but on the one hand, funding is always an issue but on the other hand, it gives flexibility you would not have in big companies so we can build a production on the ground up from thinking about it as a perspective of how to make this more accessible to actors and our audience. One thing I found as a constant hurdle is having the street credibility and community on the door. We have been doing ASL performances over 10 years now and only three years ago did we start having actors who would even come to audition. street credibility and community on the door. I worked 40 hours a week not in the theater and in the theater running it, and it was a good 80 to 100 hour job. It is hard for us to break the glass ceiling as it were forgetting the actors in the door and getting the pieces out even though we bill ourselves as being welcoming to anyone who has auditioned. >> I would love to hear from folks and we can talk about all the things coming up. >> If you want to go ahead and respond to her? >> No P let's hear from folks and then we can talk more. >> I have been an actress for some time. My home base is here in Boston. Sorry, we are figuring it out. >> The live stream is dependent on it so I will hold my microphone. My concern is I have no idea what is in the casting person's mind and so I'd you not know what they see when they see me. I am sure they are looking at it through an autism frame. That is often how theater has been. It is looking at it through a hearing lens. Therefore, the worldview is through a hearing perspective. It is hard for me, a person with a disability, as a deaf actor, to enter the audition and understand what is expected because they can only see me through this one lens. If there is a deaf role, that is one thing but I am usually trying to get cast in any role and I have the freedom to audition for whatever role I want but they can only see the reasons I cannot be cast. I want, what is the reason, that you really cannot hire me? I think it is a limited scope >> Hear from other people what you are interested in talking about. >> We run a dance company here in Boston and as we have listened to this, we turned to each other and said, we have a production, what can we do? I have been jotting down notes and to go off of your point about funding, what would you recommend in terms of, we rely on our website, but we also rely on physical postcards and post service. A lot of things we have never stopped to consider but majorly because we have this much money to make it happen to even promote able-bodied people who can see those and hopefully come. I am curious what kinds of things company one has been able to do from a financial balance of how much you are able to accommodate and make it affordable for the company. >> Great. Do you want to add something else? Do you want to add anything? >> An entirely different direction but the other half of the same company. Another interesting thing is something you were talking about with the company one shows. Anytime we do a >> or an audition, we get young, physical, able-bodied dancers. I do not think we have stopped to consider, what is our responsibility, I guess. And not just able-bodied, but years ago, we had a diverse background of dancers. Diverse in every way in terms of dance backgrounds and Ethnicities. It has become a similar group of people coming to our auditions and it makes us feel we are not a diverse company even though we know who is coming to auditions and waterways to work around that? >> Whatever your concerns are or questions? >> I have a variety of hats that I wear and last year, as part of the program Charles Baldwin runs through the NBC Universal design and access, it really changed kind of my whole worldview, participating in that program and it is awesome and you should look into it. It It is an incredible program. I work as a performer and curator of performing arts and as a presenter. I am most interested in how there can be more roads of access for that, for presenting works that incorporate either performers with disabilities or are written specifically with casting requirements -- >> And presenting, not producing or using -- how you are presenting. >> Producing is me making and presenting is supporting and presenting it, finding ways to bring it to town or push it elsewhere. That is a large part of things I see in the Boston community. It would be nice to move beyond that and become a presenting community as well. >> Thank you. >> I work for Boston dance alliance, an organization that helps dance companies and artists make their work. My concern would be as a -- a service organization, how do we facilitate dance companies in making these strides? >> Great. Please. >> Another thing that comes up is, well, when I am talking to another deaf person, in terms of their viewing of performances, people do like to go to show, but they are tired of seeing shows where there is H -- an interpreter at the point of access. The community wants to see themselves represented up there in the stories. Where do we find theaters and companies that are not only hiring those actors but really feeling they are welcoming? It feels more like segregation when you have a show with no figures on the stage and you are adding on that access point. >> I understand that. I want to pull together some things that came up because some of them are interconnected. We had questions that fall under the heading that you brought forward, the notion of street credit, essentially. Several of these fall under authenticity or the ability to enter into conversations that go beyond marketing your call. Who feels comfortable coming, blitz -- which gets to what was said about your comfort level in an audition and your questions about how you are being viewed. These are really interconnected. Another question about how you get resources to tell your story, if you could have the best authentic intentions in the world, but how do you go out and be in conversation with communities that are far from you whether that is geographically or whatever that is. There is a question about how to sustain these efforts, so the one and done question, how do you keep doing it which actually goes to the second point, which is, we put a lot of effort into something, so howdy you build to create a finance -- a moment that exceeds other experiences? How do we communicate structures of support that help individual companies do the work that are? These all feel like they are in the same pot. I certainly feel we have encountered these several times over. I want to say one thing from my own personal experience before we crowd source. At company one, we try, and we do some things OK. We don't do them all very well and we fall down a lot. The only real piece of learning that I can bring from that is to be unafraid to fail. It feels like a lot of things that keep us from trying is the fear of getting along and offending somebody. I am sure we offend people when we do things that they were we try things, we do it well and the next time we do it badly. We build on our momentum. Something we try to do as a company is be transparent with ourselves and collaborating partners and where things work and where things did not. One thing I have learned a lot is to try to be authentically transparent. Some of the challenges that each of you brought up our things we have encountered, tried to solve, and have done OK at and we are trying to do better at for whatever that is worth. I would love to get internal responses. I know you had something you wanted to say. Great. >> One thing that I found that was indispensable was the feedback from our actors and the audience, one thing we learned was the surveys but it is not just the service. What we are finding out from our actors is our actors would tell us, we used to do, and autism friendly training and the first time we did a friendly show was five years ago, and we had MetroWest autism alliance come and train our actors and our staff and we did not learn how to do that show except we didn't. And we learned through that our training was bad because it was not reaching autistic cast members. It was disenfranchising to them because it was paint -- it was pedantic and did not include a user expert in the formulating of the training. We got better at that and learned to do it that her. It is a brief training that incorporates our actors perspectives and it is a discussion like we are here which trained us to do better. It is the feedback from the community that allows you to learn from your mistakes. We all do really stupid things. I did a program in dyslexia friendly font that was not reasonable -- note was not reason -- was not readable. >> We talk about this a lot internally not just with programming we do around plays that involve characters or playwrights with disabilities, but around all of our programming, nothing for us without us, which speaks to the exact idea that you cannot do a training or a play without the voices of the people creating it , who it purports to serve. That is an important lesson. Thank you for bringing it up here at other thoughts about things that came up were different things? I feel like this can be conversational between all of us. Go ahead, please. That is OK. >> Another point is for our company, I love the work you are doing but there is no way I would be able to stage this because our model, to have 30% of our actors self identify as having special needs, I need a 100% cash -- cast to support the infrastructure and I needed family friendly because of ages and I also need to fill an auditorium because we are solely driven by ticket sales and grant funding. I have to stage Cinderella and beauty and the beast and think outside the box how that will work with the mixed population as far as age level and everything. Back to your point, the only thing that would prevent us from casting you as an actor would be if Cinderella was a 15-year-old girl. As long as it is not sexually inappropriate, that would be an active choice. You were asking what makes a director see you as an actor. >> Right. Relating it to the role you are auditioning for, I understand in general, maybe there is a character and I say, I want to try out for that but I wonder what the cast person is thinking in that moment. Maybe there is a character that is black and I am black and they see that might be in line with where they are going. They may also have a hearing character and they see my blackness and once they know I am deaf, they will not cast me because they're like, that is how you are different, I am not hearing. The question is, will they be willing to take the risk to alter the character a little bit to do something a little different, maybe they will say, maybe I do want a deaf character and they take the risk and going to give -- a different direction. Moreover, the casting Moreover, the casting person is not willing to take that risk and they want to play it safe. So that is clear for me. So if I am that casting director or producer and I see a talented actor with a disability who comes in who I want to cast regardless of the role, and then it will tie into the next question, if I see talent in someone I want to hire who, through their disability, will necessitate added expenses to my budget, I've not been in this situation, but I imagine that would become a defining factor. Where do we find the extra money to make the artistic choice that will bring about the artistic fulfillment of the production when it can be seen as a barrier? >> I feel I could are playing musical chairs with this microphone. There you go. That is definitely a concern. Budgets are a concern for everyone. I really think there is the ability to negotiate with that actor. Start with the ability to say, I want to hire you and I want to take the risk him and find out what the actor needs and wants. You have to hire you first and be unsure of those decisions, really you have to put the actor first. You say I want them and have to hire them and then workout concerns together. You have to figure things out and maybe they only need for rehearsal and certain things, but a lot of it is negotiation. There is a play called Arcadia. The theater had hosted it and I was involved in a director new I was deaf and wouldn't be wanting interpreters for the reversal process and they were concerned about budgetary issues. We tried to negotiate some things. And negotiating point was the director would have to talk to me one-on-one. If we had no interpreter present, he could not just put out cues and lines and feedback. We had to figure out time. He set 10 minutes aside to direct me one-on-one. The director has to be willing to negotiate on both ends of the scale. Those were easy accommodations to be made to find the balance. >> I will offer, I will give you two examples, there are two examples I will offer, so it premiered at the theater in New York. That was a play developed with that actor who used a wheelchair. The actor came in and it was for a development process, for workshops, and they are work shopping at their office space and rented spaces. When they set to do the production itself, it was in a different building, it did not have any accessibility whatsoever, so the theater company contracted with a company that would rent them a lift to get the actor from the floor to the stage. The theater was not accessible backstage. The actor in the wheelchair could not use the backstage area so they rented a lift and tried it out and it was a nightmare. It was too slow and noisy and it would not function the way they needed it to function artistically to help the actor make the entrance. They scrapped it and decided to do one of the stair lift wheelchair movers. This was even worse. They installed it and went into tech rehearsal. Without -- they are now a couple days from open and it is a nightmare and nothing about it works and everything about it is detracting from the experience of the play. They redesigned the front of the stage to imagine a new way for the access backstage. They pulled out the front three rows and they built a ramp and reimagined the entrance from the audience level as a piece of the action itself. They can do that because they were faced with a problem and had to solve to solve it, so that is one thing, the pressure of having to do that, they had artists who were willing to problem solve. That is one example in terms of, how do we handle this budgetary early, how do we handle the challenges of negotiation. The actor did not -- did not negotiate anything in terms of, I need to get on stage because it was assumed that when it came down to it, the actor could not use the accommodations provided. From a casting perspective, one thing I think Boston has an advantage in is because we have so many deaf studies program here and interpreter training programs here, a lot of students are learning to be ASL interpreters and the people who are learning ASL in general, so we had a lot of people working around the show who were practicing their learning and we are a mentor ship company and that is one of our values. It would have been wicked expensive to hire everybody at professional interpreter level to work on the show but we did not have to because we had an opportunity because Chris Robinson was working with us and is here today doing interpreting and helping to host the event, he was able to connect us. I think this gets to what you are asking about tiered it is about finding connectors in your community and being in conversation early enough, well before you decide to do the thing, so they know you have the right intentions and you know where your blind spots are. I talked with Chris a year and a half or two years before we premiered the show about how we were going to do it. It is sometimes time and not money. >> I want to add is very easy to grant stuff like that and very hard to for stuff like the flight equipment to fly Peter Pan. There are a ton of sources for grant writing. For our budget, because we had a death actor for almost all of the rehearsals, we had a master who translated Dr. Seuss into ASL because it is not even in English, that was a quarter of the show budget essentially. You have seen us, and we are the tiniest theater company around and we are dirt poor and we were able to budget for that because of grant writing. >> I will tell you one thing we wanted to do we were not able to do, which gets to your point about audiences feeling welcome beyond the single interpreted performance of the run of a show. That play is itsThat play is its own interpreter. And it does not have interpreters working the show. The way the play is built, everybody's left out of something and everybody has access to something. That is the design of the experience. Because of that, audiences could come to anyone of these performances. Something we were not able to do because we did not have a good grant writing system in place to a comment this, and we did not think about it in advance enough, because it was a blind spot, it would have been great to find performances where we could have had the deaf and blind community to come in and see the show, but that is a level of interpreting that we had no experience with. Every patron needs interpreters. If you were to do a deaf and blind friendly performance, you're talking about budgeting, two thirds of the seats in the house are interpreters. One third of our patrons. If you are trying to make your budget from ticket sales even partially, there are so many other things to consider. That is something I wish we had done and that -- and that I hope we do in the future and requires much more time than we thought to offer it. >> For years, we did not do captioning because every time we looked, we applied for the grant and it is so expensive that we never did it and we decided to do it ourselves two years ago and with help, he has a software program our tech staff was able to tweet because his program is only four handheld devices. We had our set designer illustrate and then project on the walls our captions now and for under $1000, which again, we got a grant for, we bought projectors and we captioned the shows for under $1000. It is the time it takes to type in the script, and I am trying to get more companies to at least request the electronic script from the licensing companies so they will start releasing these things electronically. Pressing go go go, it is very cheap to caption. >> I did the same thing with performance last summer where I used the stream >>, -- stream text, where you enter it block by block at four lines at a time, but you can stream it live on your personal device. If you have a smart phone or an iPad, you log into the website and watch it scroll real-time. If you miss something, it is gone. It reduces the cost of having a projector or interpreter or a cart there and everyone has a phone so you can login and watch it. There are ways to get around that I am bartering and trading and selling my soul and other various methods of collaborating to make a more universal access for experience. Earlier, talking about the autism friendly show that ended up being everyday matinees because they are family-friendly, once the concept of universal design kicks into your brain, it is a basic concept that if something is helpful for a person with disability, it should actually help everybody's experience. Changing my mindset toward that end saying, I would love to use an interactive 3-D map to find my way around, that would be awesome and my 2-year-old would dig it. Changing the mindset has been a fantastic experience in learning how we can grow and exchange as a community. >> I wonder if you have something you are thinking about or if you want to ask follow-up questions. >> One thing I am thinking about, all of us feel it we don't want it to come down to money and budget but there are things that inherently eat away at the budget very gradually. I am thinking the different types of disabilities we are discussing keep coming up again and again. I will not say which of our favorite venues, but the multiple code -- multicultural is a wonderful venue but the seats are so uncomfortable. It might not be something you initially categorized as a disability, but we once had a reviewer with back issues, she did not write a review but she said, I do not feel comfortable writing a review because I was so much in physical pain sitting in the seat in that particular theater that I was distracted by it. These are things where they are not necessarily a disability for the -- in a sense of, can we put it wheelchair there, but it is still an issue where, who should that fall on? Does it fall on the theater to provide seating that is more comfortable for people who might have back issues? Does it fall on the company coming in? You are trying to prepare for so many different elements, which ones do you pass by? >> We had a similar issue, we don't have dedicated space for brick-and-mortar. The way the junior high school is set up is, the spotlights are run from essentially wheelchair accessible seating, so there is wheelchair accessible seating and the house but they had the theater set up so they don't use some of it. But we were really excess -- successful and they did not realize the problem. Sometimes they have 10 or so and then we have to juggle seats around and we know this will happen. We were able to talk to the venue and offer our services to remove the seating, move the lights to that corner and you really have to be creative and use your own people as physical labor to get things done. The venues are usually pretty cooperative. A need for it, I think. That has been my experience. >> Because we don't perform in the same location all the time and move around a lot, we are always in different conversations with our collaborators. We tried to enter into those relationships as we go with a set of standardized questions and concerns. Sometimes collaborators just have not thought about these things. If you bring it up to them, it goes back to the after walking into the casting hope, if you bring it up to them, the first response may be, I do not have that in my budget. You have to let that he the first response because people get nervous you will make them spent a lot of money on something you did not know they have to spend money on and they will try to find ways to work around it. If you persevere, I find when we continue the conversation with an openness, like, you have to, like OK, here are some things we thought of as solutions, with a couple of ways to problem solve, even if it requires them to do something, it usually opens up the conversation more productively. It does not always solve everything but this is not unlike this negotiation you are talking about. Sometimes, producers, artists, anybody in this relationship, I think we get nervous we will be judged as being wrong or nonprogressive or failing or offensive, and we just throw up these defenses to power through the thing. Sometimes, there is a lot more to be gained then there is. If we continue that open question and from the point of negotiation, one thing we tried, we try to come back and approach them and say that must have sucked, I am so sorry. I understand that is hard for you that this is where I was coming from. It is a lot easier to walk away or not have that conversation but it does not get us anywhere. We get nervous of offending a collaborator because we think maybe they will cut off the relationship with us. >> That is a very good point. It is a tough balance. We are going into someone else's space. At the same time, it is there -- it is their space. I think what you said is absolutely right. As I am hearing different things, I'm thinking back to a positive note. That was an example where the community time and again run into an issue they had with going to a presenter who said I would love to present you in the space but did not have the necessary resources. Could they go to home goods and buy a ton of cushions? >> We need to come up with more channels of communication things like projection equipment. We can share resources to make accessibility easier and cheaper for all of us. >> I am not sure if dance has its own set of the zone groups. Boston United feeder potluck Facebook group, I did not name it. It is a point for people to swap and share from this -- French community. I have too much lumber, so it seems there is already a desire for the needs sharing spirit I wonder if this could add into that. We are about 15 minutes from the end. We are supposed to come away with some kind of action items. It feels like there are dynamic questions coming up. One thing we want to think a little bit about is what are the real or perceived obstacles keeping us from being openly accessible and collaborative? I wonder what some action items are that are on your mind's and maybe we can brainstorm a couple of them? >> Yes. And one thing we have noticed is there are groups. One thing is it becomes a promotion platform and that is wonderful but it would be great to have a resource Pacific -- a specific sharing platform. >> Certainly one thing I could do is contact the person and ask if we can expand to include things like technologies. That is a great action item. What is something else you might do personally or something you might hope to do? I will offer one while you are thinking. I love what you are saying about where the spaces were deaf actors can come for roles. I am not sure we thought about that in quite that way and we should. >> It is not just company one. It is the theater world altogether. The challenge Israel real and it is everywhere. -- the challenge is real and it is everywhere. I'm just wondering, what is your excuse? They are not trying to collaborate. They will think of one character and one role. Not that. I come in like any other actor and I leave really not thinking anything will come of it. Like I don't have a future here. >> I will speak for me and not anyone else. For me, I am not sure in turn we as a company, that we have even had the conversation about shifting our thinking about what it means to invite theft act -- deaf actors in. There is no reason we shouldn't accept we have not thought of it. >> That has been a long wait. I have approached many people in the community and even with that, they are still thinking either they are not interested in exploring it, or they cannot see past my lack of hearing. It is not an excuse any longer. I just want the opportunity really. I want to be able to work like any actor, as other actors are in the same boat. We want the opportunity to audition. It is a continued segregation and it is frustrating. >> Yes. I hear you. I want to talk about that more. My action item. >> To flip it back to casting, we have always thought of nontraditional casting, but it is hard to get actors out to our theater and it is hard to publicize the availability of the roles for our theater. While there is an opportunity for our company to do that, getting the word out into the general community -- >> It seems connected to what you were saying earlier. >> I keep grabbing the microphone. I am hard of hearing. It is not out of my scope. I would say go ahead and at for ties to the deaf community. There are channels. There are some young deaf actors who are thirsty for an opportunity. The question is, where are the programs for the deaf actors to be able to get the initial training? There are not any. We need at least one company to break the re-up -- break the ice and be first and set it in motion. Once that starts, you will see more people addition. It is really about the opportunity again. Doors open, people will start to take it. >> that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to train actors of different abilities and deaf actors, especially young, so there are more opportunities. >> Certainly I see this around Boston, more training opportunities are opening up to performers with physical disabilities, right, and often times it feels like a first step that training programs are encountering. Maybe it then stops there. I wonder whether there is more conversation to be had, especially perhaps this summer around the stage source conference, framed in the notion of activism and art, whether there is a conversation to be had, whether there are perceived barriers to word providing the training toward deaf actors, for instance. I think it is perceptive and not actual. Real or perceived barriers. I often know the person I am auditioning for, but very often, training needs to happen first you cannot just go ahead and audition without any training. The training for the actor, I happen to have contacts but still, it is the cart before the horse on this. There are some people who believe entering into the addition is very easy, but we know it takes a lot of work and if you don't have the professional developer for the addition training, you will also have the Mrs.. If I have someone who reaches out to me and know who I am, very often the deaf actor may not have the training and it impacts their ability to be able to audition overall. >> This feels connected to what you were talking about, connected to all of these points, which is, the act of asking people to come in, to participate in some way, so when actor, even if they are able-bodied, they hear, they can see, they are narrow typical -- neuro typical, it is an emotionally challenging activity and it puts someone in a vulnerability before you say go. Add on top of that the fact the performer may feel there are so many other barriers to being seen for who they are, so your question about how do we reach out to those people, it has to start while before you want to put the call out for the addition. It has to start with meeting people where they are and having conversations about experiences and specifically issuing personal invitations to people to come in and be part of the process. Almost all of the performers we work with has people in it who would not turn up for an audition. For many reasons. >> We do audition workshops and gear them toward the deaf community. We did audition workshop where we ended up with, everybody had various disabilities and we did not have the support staff, so we specifically gear our workshops. >> We do those and we do a kind of audition that is nontraditional. Traditional audition for theater is one person comes in and delivers a monologue and weights in a hallway and is tortured for some time until they are told to stay or go. We try and do group collaborative auditions where we ask people to interact with one another. Some of it is just responsive. People can let their guard down a little bit and curated to speak in that given moment. Those are other ways we worked on that we are not always successful. I thought your question was good about how you get people to come in. That is our constant question and it is never just, I sent an email. The email comes first and in the -- a year later we might get the person to come in for us. >> I think we have a couple more minutes. We have space for a couple more action items if people have action items they would like to investigate for themselves. You have been quiet over there you don't have to add anything, but you had a good entry point that was different for a lot -- from a lot of other people. >> One thing is when we talked about resource sharing platforms and such, I think a lot of people are trying to do the work on the Rhône -- on their own but no one is sharing resources. People are taking ownership that they are doing something novel and helping. It does not really move effort forward. >> Yes. The thing about doubling up efforts, as opposed to coming together to magnify and amplify the efforts, doing the same thing in a lot of different pockets. >> About how they can do it themselves. >> Grade. An important resource idea. >> One thing is I am all in favor of open sourcing these things. Anyone who asks, I usually give them in training materials so that you don't have to create the wheel again, it is so hard and the other thing is there are awesome online resources are totally awesome. I'm an attorney but I've never written a contract and I don't know what the expectations are. >> One thing we found successful is when we were entering into our collaborations with the deaf community, we were coming with -- as total beginners and novices and we did not know the language or the processes or what systems we needed to navigate. For us to stumble into the community and demand to be taught was not going to service or the community. You have to recognize we are behind the place we needed to be . One thing that was helpful to us was to find a collaborator who was a bridge themselves between the hearing and deaf communities. Somebody who also works in education, we collaborate several times. We could meet with Chris and say this is where we hope to be. What are the steps we need to be taking to get there and he could say don't do that, people will look at you and laugh and not want to work with you P or you have to come at it from this direction. In some ways, it was about identifying cultural dialogues that were spaces of entry for us as opposed to -- That was really helpful and it is something that sometimes we get very excited about wanting to collaborate and we have good intentions so we storm into a relationship that people on the other side of the relationship may be have some thoughts THAT IS SOMETHING I WOULD OFFER TO YOU. >> ARE WE GETTING CLOSE TO TIME? DO WANT TO ADD SOMETHING? >> I SPENT PART OF THE WEEKEND WITH THE FUN AND HAUL AROUND -- HOW AROUND ON ARTS IN THE MILITARY. THAT EXACT THING CAME OUT, THE IDEA OF SOMEONE WHO HAS THE COPE -- CULTURAL CAPITAL WILLING TO BE AN INTERMEDIARY AND OPEN UP DOORS AND DIALOGUE. YOU ARE REITERATING MESSAGES THAT I HEARD ALL WEEKEND, THAT WAS NICE TO HEAR FROM YOU. BUT YES, WE ARE AT TIME. IF YOU ARE READY, WE WILL LET PEOPLE KNOW THEY CAN COME IN. >> HOW DO WE REPORT BACK THESE ACTION ITEMS? >> YOU CAN DECIDE THAT, I WILL LET YOU DECIDE THAT. [LAUGHTER] THANK YOU. YOU CAN LET PEOPLE IN. HOW DO WE FEEL LIKE WE WANT TO DO THAT? DOES SOMEBODY WANTS TO HOLD THE BANNER, WANT ME TO DO IT? I'M HAPPY EITHER WAY. OH GREAT, A LOOK AT YOUR ACTION ITEMS, YOU EVEN DREW THEM OUT! [LAUGHTER] WE WILL JUST DO THAT, THEN. GREAT. DONE. THANKS EVERYBODY. I HOPE THIS WAS USEFUL TO YOU, IT WAS USEFUL TO ME. ALL RIGHT. I'M GOING TO RETURN THIS TO SOMEBODY. EXCUSE ME. >> THANK YOU. HOW IS EVERYTHING? >> HANG ON, YOU CAN HEAR ME NOW? PEOPLE ARE RETURNING TO THE ROOM . THEN WE WILL GO LIVESTREAM AGAIN, JUST SO YOU ARE AWARE. WE HAVE A NEW TECH GUY, COME OVER HERE. SO, WE ARE JUST KEEPING AND I OUT. IF WE ARE MAKING PEOPLE, HANDING THEM SOMETHING OR THE LAPEL'S HAVE TO GO HIGHER. THEY ARE NOT GETTING AUDIO. ONCE THIS RETURN IS DONE, YOU GUYS ARE DONE FOR THE DAY. IT WILL BE PRETTY EVIDENT. I'M GOING TO GO TO THE RESTROOM. TURN OFF THE MIC. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] >> IT IS GREAT TO BE IN CONVERSATION. >> I WILL SEND ANY MAIL TO INFO. -- AN EMAIL TO INFO. [CHATTER] >> HAVE A GOOD DAY. >> I ALSO DO NOT KNOW IF IT IS INTERESTING TO YOU TO DO, CHRISTINA TO DO SHE IS IN NEW YORK. SHE CAME FROM A DISTANCE. I MAILED 20 PEOPLE. [LAUGHTER] >> I'M GOING TO TRY TO GET TO ALL TOGETHER, JUST A FEW MORE FOCUSED MOMENTS. THEN WE WILL BE ABLE TO -- CAN YOU HEAR ME? INTERPRETER, CAN YOU HEAR ME? YES, THANK YOU. THERE IS A FEW PEOPLE, HOPEFULLY MAKE IT IN THE ROOM FROM OUTSIDE THE ROOM. THOSE MY THEATER VOICE. SO WE ENDED UP HAVING THREE GROUPS TOTAL. TWO OF THE GROUPS COMBINED. BASICALLY, WE HAVE UNTIL 4:30, WHEN WE WILL LET YOU GO DOWNSTAIRS TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND SOCIALIZE. WE HAVE FOOD AND ALCOHOL AND NON-ALCOHOLIC STUFF TOO. ALL WE WANT TO DO IS HEAR THE REPORTS. ALSO JUST TO LET YOU KNOW, WE ARE GOING TO COMPILE ALL OF THIS INFORMATION, ALL OF THE NOTES, AUDIO RECORDINGS, ALL OF THE GRAPHIC FACILITATION. IT MAY TAKE US TIME TO GET IT ALL TOGETHER, BUT IF ANY OF YOU WANT THESE PIECES, THIS IS FOR THE COMMUNITY. PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO US. WE ARE THE BU ARTS INITIATIVE, YOU CAN EMAIL ANY OF US THERE, WE ARE EASY TO FIND ON THE WEBSITE. SO LET'S START WITH ALANA'S GROUP. IS THAT A RIGHT? -- ALLRIGHT? AGAIN, IF YOU DO HAVE -- WE WILL DO THIS PRIMARILY AS A RECORDING, IF YOU HAVE A BURNING QUESTION THAT IS TOTALLY FINE, BUT WE NEED TO RUN TO YOU WITH A MICROPHONE, PLEASE REMEMBER THAT. IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION, GO AHEAD AND MAKE ITS KNOWN, BUT WE WILL HAVE TO BRING YOU A MICROPHONE. >> THANKS. HI, I AM ALANA. I AM ON FACULTY HERE AT THE YOU IN THE SCHOOL OF THEATER, I AM ALSO THE DIRECTOR OF NEW WORK AT COMPANY ONE THEATER COMPANY, COMPANY ONE THEATER COMPANY. WE HAD A SMALL BUT VERY FERTILE CONVERSATION ABOUT ARTISTIC DECISION MAKING. WE WORK WITH COMPANIES WHO -- WHERE COMPANIES WHO TRADITIONALLY DO NOT WORK WITH PERFORMERS WITH DISABILITIES CAN COME TOGETHER AND COLLABORATE. WE DO NOT HAVE FOR ACTION ITEMS, BUT WE HAD TO REALLY DEEP ONES AT AN OFFSHOOT. ONE THING THAT CAME UP IS A DESIRE FOR COMPANIES THAT HAVE THE WILLINGNESS AND INTEREST IN WORKING WITH PERFORMANCE WITH DISABILITIES TO GET INTO OUR RESEARCH SHARE -- RESOURCE SHARING MODE WITH COMPANIES. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT MIGHT MEAN WOULD BE SHARING CAPTIONING TECHNOLOGIES OR SHARING TRAINING MODULES. FOR EXAMPLE, WORKING WITH AUTISM FRIENDLY PERFORMANCES. THERE WAS AN OFFER OF A TRAINING MODULE THAT OPEN DOOR THEATER USES. THINKING ABOUT A WAY TO SET UP A FORMALIZED PLATFORM, OR INSTEAD OF DUPLICATING WORK, UTILIZING PRE-EXISTING SHARING PLATFORMS. THERE ARE A COUPLE FACEBOOK GROUPS THAT SHARE TECHNOLOGY, THEATER TECH. THIS IS ONE WAY THAT WE THOUGHT ABOUT DOING THAT. IMPORTANTLY, THAT PLATFORM SHOULD HAVE NO PROMOTION, BUT RATHER, JUST ABOUT IDENTIFYING RESOURCES AND SHARING THEM. THE OTHER THING WE TALKED ABOUT WAS SPECIFIC TO DEATH ACT -- DEAF ACT DOORS, WE WERE TALKING ABOUT HOW DEATH ACT DOORS ARE ONLY SEEN IF -- IF THEY ARE SEEN AT ALL, IN BOSTON THEATER, THEY ARE ONLY SEEN FOR ROLES THAT ARE DEATH. -- DEAF. WE WERE TALKING ABOUT WIFE EITHER -- THEATER COMPANIES HAVE A PERCEPTION AGAINST SEEING DEAF ACTORS FOR HEARING ROLES. WE TALKED ABOUT THE OBSTACLES A COMPANY MIGHT AND COUNTER. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT CAME OFF OF THAT WAS TRAINING, NOT JUST FOR PERFORMERS, THAT COMPANIES IN TERMS OF HOW TO WORK WITH PERFORMERS WITH DISABILITIES IN GENERAL, AND THE DEAF COMMUNITY SPECIFICALLY. WE TALKED ABOUT ANOTHER ACTION ITEM THAT CAME OUT OF THAT. THINKING ABOUT, IS THERE SPACE AT THE STAGE SOURCE CONFERENCE -- HI JULIE, TO TALK ABOUT RETHINKING HOW ACTING TRAINING WORKS IN THE FRENCH COMMUNITY IN BOSTON. IF THE COMPANY WANTS PDA TRAINING CLASSES OR OTHER TRAINING CLASSES FOR ACTORS, CAN THEY BE MORE ACCESSIBLE, WHAT ARE THE OBSTACLES THAT KEEP US FROM DOING THAT. THEN WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT -- SORRY CHRIS, YOU WILL BE ANOTHER EXAMPLE. WE TALKED ABOUT FOR COMPANIES THAT WISH TO DO MORE WORK IN COMMUNITIES FOR THEY DO NOT HAVE MUCH FAMILIARITY, STORMING INTO THOSE COMMUNITIES AND DECLARING YOUR WILLINGNESS WILL GOT -- NOT GET YOU VERY FAR. INSTEAD, FINDING AND WORKING WITH BRIDGE BUILDERS WHO HAVE CULTURAL CAPITAL, WHO WERE ALSO -- WHO POSITION THEMSELVES AS EDUCATORS. NOT ASKING PEOPLE TO TEACH YOU WHEN THAT IS NOT THEIR JOB, BUT RATHER, WORKING WITH FOLKS WHO IDENTIFY AS EDUCATORS, AND TO HAVE THE CULTURAL CAPITAL TO CONNECT YOU TO THE COMMUNITIES YOU ARE INTERESTED IN. IF YOU'RE A COMPANY THAT DOES NOT USUALLY WORK WITH ACTORS WITH DISABILITIES. THOSE ARE ACTION ITEMS WE TOOK AWAY. HAPPY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS OR PASS THE MIC TO THE NEXT GROUP. HMM? I DO WANT TO HAND IT TO YOU. [APPLAUSE] OH SHOOT, OH WELL. SORRY. >> I AM CORI, WE WERE TALKING ABOUT TRAINING. THAT WAS A VERY WIDE RANGING DISCUSSION. IT WAS HARD TO BRING IT DOWN TO JUST COUPLE POINTS. SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT WERE TO OFFER TRAINING, LIKE TODAY'S SYMPOSIUM ON A LARGER SCALE THAT BRINGS TOGETHER A LARGER COMMUNITY. WE HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM WHO ARE ALREADY BE CONVERTED -- I THINK THERE WAS MENTION OF THIS EARLIER TODAY. HOW DO WE GET PEOPLE FROM OTHER PLACES IN ON THIS CONVERSATION AND EXPAND IT AND SCALE IT UP. ANOTHER SUGGESTION IS TO HAVE MORE FUNDING FOR STAFF AND TRAINING IN PEDAGOGY AND DISABILITIES SERVICES. WE WERE TALKING ABOUT WITHIN BU, I THINK THIS CAN TRANSLATE TO OTHER PLACES AS WELL, TO MAKE SURE THAT NOT JUST THE STAFF OF THE DISABILITIES SERVICES DEPARTMENT, BUT ALSO OTHER MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY AND STAFF GETTING TRAINING ABOUT HOW TO INTERACT WITH PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES. SOMEBODY MENTIONED SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THIS. THANK YOU LUMMIS SAID SOMETHING SIMILAR ABOUT OFFERING TRAINING FOR CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS, POSSIBLY USING ONLINE PLATFORMS OF ONE SORT OR ANOTHER, AND I HAVE A FEELING EVERYBODY HAS THAT'S GOING ON IN THEIR MIND SOMEWHERE. THE LAST THING WE HAD WAS BASIC REQUIREMENT, THAT A CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS -- WE MIGHT WANT TO FIGURE OUT SOME KIND OF BASIC REQUIREMENT ON DISABILITY SINCE ATTILA -- SENSITIVITY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES, LIKE THERE IS -- IS THERE SOME SORT OF CERTIFICATION PROGRAM OR PROJECT. THAT IS SUCH A TEENSY LITTLE PIECE OF WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT, THERE YOU GO. [APPLAUSE] >> AS LEADERS AND ACTIVISTS, WE MERGED. >> WE DID MERGE. WE FOUND THE SLIGHT CURTAIN BETWEEN THE TWO OF US IS NOT GOING TO ALLOW US TO HAVE SEPARATE CONVERSATIONS, SO WE THOUGHT WE WOULD JUST BECOME ONE CONVERSATION. NEITHER DON OR I KEPT NOTES, SO THANK YOU FOR OUR VISUAL DISPLAY. WE TALKED ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND ACTIVISM. WE DO -- I THINK WE WERE ABLE TO MERGE EASILY AND QUICKLY, WE BELIEVE THAT TO BE A LEADER IN THIS CURRENT MOVEMENT IS ACTIVISM. WE DID TALK ABOUT HOW 20 YEARS HAVE SEEN SOME CHANGES, BUT MAYBE THIS IS THE NEXUS OR TIPPING POINT THAT WILL -- WE WILL REALLY BE ABLE TO BE SUBSTATE -- SUSTAINABLE FOR SPEEDING UP SOME OF OUR IDEAS. WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT TRAINING, AND WHAT IS CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT IS THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE A ONE-OFF. IT SHOULD CONTINUE. THE PROCESS IS NOT DONE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TAKEN A CLASS. IT REQUIRES REFRESHMENTS AND THERE IS NEW PEOPLE WHO MAY BECOME A PART OF THIS MOVEMENT. THERE IS A NIMBLENESS THAT NEEDS TO BE A PART OF THE TRAINING, SO IT REALLY EMBRACES ALL PEOPLES WHO FEEL LIKE THEY ARE ON THE MARGINS TREAT OUR ABILITY TO WORK AND EMBRACE THEM. >> THEIR DISABILITIES ARE IN THE COGNITIVE AND DEVELOPMENTAL SPECTRUM. THAT IS A POPULATION THAT IS FREQUENTLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT IN THIS SPECTRUM OF DISABILITY. WE TALKED -- I WANT TO HIGHLIGHT SOME OF THE ONES THAT WERE REALLY MEANINGFUL FOR ME. WE TALKED ABOUT AND MANAGE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE LEADERSHIP AND ACTIVISM, ABOUT THE POWER OF STORYTELLING. ALSO, BEING RESOURCEFUL. THOSE RESONATED FOR ME. THE ONE THAT WAS REALLY STRONG WAS BEING A DELIBERATE MESSER UPPER. DELIBERATE LEAD CHALLENGING AUDIENCE, CHALLENGING ARTISTS, TO REDEFINE IN THE MESS YOU UP. WELL SAID, I WILL MISS YOU UP ON PURPOSE IN ORDER TO GO FORWARD, TO HAVE A PLACE TO GO FORWARD FROM AND TO NOT BE AFRAID TO MESS UP. THEN ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT WAS MESSY ABOUT IT, HOW TO CLEAN IT UP, IF TO CLEAN IT UP AT ALL. HAHAHA. ANYTHING ELSE? >> I THINK THE MESS UP TENDS TO RISK, OR SOMETIMES THOSE OF US IN AN ADMINISTRATION ARE ADVERSE TO RISK, WE ARE CONSTANTLY AWARE OF FINANCIAL, BOTTOM LINE, NOT WANTING TO OFFEND PEOPLE. I THINK MESS UP TIES TO RISK. THE VERY NATURE OF ART, MAKING AND BEING INNOVATIVE, MEANS YOU NEED TO TAKE THOSE RISKS AND AS KEITH WAS SAYING EARLIER IN THE DAY, IT IS NOT A MIRACLE, WE NEED TO PUSH OURSELVES FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE DISCIPLINE BEHIND THAT. >> FUNDING, WHICH WE WILL JUST TOP RIGHT OVER. [LAUGHTER] >> CHARLIE MADE A REALLY GOOD POINT, CANNOT REALLY BEAT OURSELVES UP. 20 YEARS AGO, THERE ARE ASPECTS OF WHAT IS HAPPENING TODAY AND HAPPENING THIS WEEK, AND THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM 20 YEARS AGO MIGHT NOT HAVE HAPPENED. TO NOT BE SO SELF-DEPRECATING. AS TO SAY, WE HAVE NOT TAKEN STEPS, BECAUSE WE HAVE. I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN HERE 20 YEARS AGO. IT IS NOT BECAUSE I'M 29. [LAUGHTER] >> THAT TIES IN NICELY TO THIS POINT. HELPING PEOPLE -- YOUNGER PEOPLE FIND THEIR VOICE. 20 YEARS AGO, THINGS WERE DIFFERENT. THE ADA HAS PASSED LONG AGO. CAN WE WITH YOUNG PEOPLE WHO ARE BECOMING ADMINISTRATORS, ARTISTS, PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE SUPPORT OF THE ARTS, CAN WE INFILTRATE ALL ASPECTS OF THE PROGRAM AND THINK ABOUT ACCESS AND INCLUSION BEYOND ARCHITECTURAL REGULATIONS. TO REALLY AND THE -- INFILTRATE EVERYTHING. I THINK THIS IS KEY, AND TO TIES TO SOMETHING THAT I LEARNED EARLY ON FROM JODI STEINER. WITH US, NOT FOR US. I SEE A COUPLE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES FOR INPUT. YOUR BOARDS, STAFF, ACTORS, PERFORMERS, CREW PEOPLE. AUDIENCE, IT IS PART OF DEVELOPING A TRUE SENSE OF LONGING. THINK THAT IS ALWAYS GOT. [LAUGHTER] >> THANK YOU. AGAIN, A QUICK THANK YOU TO OUR FACILITATORS. WE ARE SO GRATEFUL FOR YOUR TIME. TO HOWLROUND AND THE INTERPRETERS AND TO STAFF COLLEAGUES WHO WENT ABOVE AND BEYOND TO MAKE SURE THIS STUFF WORKS TODAY. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO US. WE HAVE THE STOCK INVITATION, WE WILL BE FIGURING OUT WAYS TO DISSEMINATE AND PUT IT UP AND SPREAD IT AROUND HOPEFULLY WE CAN ALL KEEP CONTINUING THIS CONVERSATION OVER DRINKS AND SNACKS. DOWN ON THE SECOND FLOOR. THANK YOU AGAIN. YES. >> ARE GOING TO GET DOCUMENTATION OF THOSE? A SHOUT OUT TO WHOEVER DID THESE, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM. [LAUGHTER] >> YES, THAT IS CARHART CREATIVE. YOU CAN FIND THEM ON THE WEB. YES, WE ARE GETTING VERY SOLID CLEAR VISUALS, THESE WILL LIVE WITH US. SO YES, THIS WILL BE AVAILABLE AS WELL. YEAH. >> I JUST HEARD A RUMOR THAT PERHAPS TOMORROW'S PANEL WILL BE ON -- ONLINE. IF IT IS POSSIBLE FOR US TO GET ON IT. >> THE RESIDENCY IS HAPPENING THIS WEEK. THERE WERE A FEW THINGS THAT WERE LABELED AS CLASSES THAT WERE NOT PUT UP TO THE PUBLIC. NOW WE ARE POTENTIALLY FIGURING THEM OUT -- OUTCOME OF THAT ONE OF THE PANEL DISCUSSIONS MIGHT BE ONLINE. WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE OFFICIAL CALL. IT WILL HAPPEN. WE ALL KNOW THAT. YES. BU.EDU/ARTS, A RTS, OUR MAIN WEBPAGE HAS ACCESS RIGHT ON THE FRONT. CLICK -- CLICK THAT, SARAH OR I WILL UPDATE WITH ALL OF THE RELEVANT INFORMATION AND ANY LINKS YOU NEED. THANK YOU. ENJOY THE BEVERAGES. [LAUGHTER]