CHANDRA: One of the best parts about the post-show conversations is when people feel compelled to share their own stories. In this clip, Ashley shares what it’s like for her as a Black female traveling through the Dominican Republic.
ASHLEY: One of the things that really resonated with me was the dynamic with race in other cultures. As a Black individual I’ve had the experience to go live in the Dominican Republic and there’s this racial dynamic between Haitians and Dominicans and oftentimes I was cussed out in four languages, by Haitians – they were telling me I’m denying my Haitian roots. The Dominican family I lived with, they had problems with my braids because those were identified as Haitian. Especially as a Black American you go on these journeys to really figure out who you are because you DO have so many people trying to tell you who you are – or what it means to be Black, or what it means to be this and, you think – well I had the perception that if I go overseas, I’ll be able to connect more, and I’ll be able to just be me, and it won’t have to be about race or how dark I am or how I sound and, just hearing that my experience wasn’t the only experience like that. That it really didn’t matter, like I didn’t find that oneness, that wholeness that I was expecting to find. I found more divisions. And hearing that in the story, it was sad.
Because I’m actually a Youth Pastor at an all-White church (laughs). At an all-White church. I never share that story. I always kind of tread on light water because I always have this feeling that…I know that my being here is a great thing, but it ruffles some feathers as well. And it’s like you never know when you’re put in these environments how you’re supposed to be. What’s uncomfortable? What’s not comfortable enough? What’s too, what’s saying too much? How bold can I be? Our congregation is older, white individuals, it’s a highly conservative church and things that are just uncomfortable? We don’t really do.
PATTI: And that’s the show. Like, if it’s uncomfortable…
ASHLEY: You just gotta deal with it yourself. You’re uncomfortable within yourself because you can’t find any comfort talking about it. But, with this show I appreciate it because you realize how many people have similar stories. Even if it’s just a little part of her story resonates with someone else, you realize that, OK. I’m not uncomfortable by myself. People ARE talking about this. And…one story DOES make a difference. The stories are never the same but the themes are always recurring. It’s human nature.
ARTIVISTS!!! That’s YOU! What’s up you all? How was your week? How are your goals going? What did you accomplish? I’m for real – I really mean it when I ask you this, like, leave a comment, make a video, tell us what’s going on – really – what did you get done this week towards your Artivism?
We did it! We booked a new show! So we don’t have all the details, we don’t have the date yet, but a good friend from Pasadena City College checked in on availability and it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen! So Pasadena City College – we did it! Go ‘head, Lilah. We also are talking to someone in Ottawa, Canada at Carleton University about bringing the show, and Cambridge – bringing it back to Cambridge for a special event. I’m not gonna tell you quite yet, but I promise I will as soon as details get a little bit closer. So YEAH! Bookings! Good stuff, good week, we got a lot done this week for One Drop, and that was fantastic.
Who saw the Black Panthers documentary on PBS this week? Great documentary – I thought it was a great documentary – now the director is Stanley Nelson, and a woman named Elaine Brown came out with a really strong critique of the film and I’m…ohhhh…how are you feeling about it? ‘Cause I’m torn because I feel like the documentary is really important. I feel like it tells us a lot of history that we didn’t know. It certainly helps us see the role of the government in suppressing radical movements and suppressing something that really was very positive and really, like, all they were doing for the most part – not everybody – but just like there are good and bad people in all groups, but for the most part around especially carrying the guns they were like, “Look, this is our legal right and we’re protecting ourselves.” NRA people should be happy about that. I don’t know – watch for yourself. I say it’s all important. I say context is important and one person’s truth is somebody else’s different perception of the truth, but it is important. It’s all good we’re talking about it – that’s beautiful.
OK a couple friends my friend Leilani, who has a theater troupe called TeAda Productions – I’m going to put information about it there. My friend Leilani and Carol Banker we went to go see Criers for Hire at East West Players here in LA. So they do the show in Tagalog, which is the main language of the Philippines. The show is in Tagalog and then they either translate within their dialogue or they also and they add subtitles, or super titles, to the wall with projections and BIG UPS to East West players for doing this show because we need to hear these stories – especially those of us who are not Filipino – although I also loved feeling in the audience the Filipino folks who understood the Tagalog before they translated into English. And it’s funny – the show is hilarious, so if you’re in LA, go check out the show, support East West Players; they do really important work.
OK so I told you that I was hired to be an Assistant Director at the Boston Court Theatre and I have had to turn that job down. I know that I told you last week I’m not teaching ESL anymore and now I’m telling you that I’m not doing the Assistant Director job and it is all because there’s this new potential job that I should be hearing about and having confirmation on any day now and as soon as I do I will let you know. But it is certainly in line with the goals that I have in life and so I’ll just leave it at that. But I will say this interestingly that within the negotiations of the contract, at some point a person within these negotiations told me that I was being paranoid for requesting clarity and this is so common for Women and for People of Color to be told that we’re being paranoid when we’re displaying behavior that by another person would be considered good business sense, would be considered protecting your interests, but when we do it we’re called paranoid so that’s not cool and we’re not gonna put up with it, so yeah I will still keep demanding clarity for my job.
Oh! I love this. My high school in Cambridge is doing an event for Black History Month where they’re having alumni make videos talking about how they are innovative in their work, so I was very honored I just made my video for them and once they show it, I’ll put it on this channel. But I just love that – what a beautiful idea to have folks come on and hopefully inspire the young people – and as I told them on the video actually young people inspire me – they’re the reason that I keep doing what I do.
OK that’s kind of it. It was a quick update this week.
What are YOU up to Artivists? What are your goals? What did you accomplish this week? What are you planning on accomplishing? How are YOU going to change the world with your art? Let me know. Make a video response, tweet @fanshen@onedropoflove
If you like the t-shirt Oh! We’ve got t-shirt on the web site – I’ll put a link. And also subscribe to the videos – please subscribe to the channel.
Alright you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. I hope to have some clarity and information for you next week. Bye bye. Keep up the great work.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey…What’s up, Artivists? How’s it going? What’s going on with your goals? Have you reached any of them? I didn’t get the goal of getting a new show booking last week, but that’s OK. But some amazing things happened this week – really wonderful, positive stuff, good stuff for storytelling, good stuff for Artivism, for the stories I want to tell so I’ll fill you in a little bit on those things.
OK. Beyonce’s #Formation video came out last week just before the Superbowl and that song in the Superbowl and there was a lot of conversation about LOTS of things in the video, but something that was really important to me was the conversations about #colorism and #shadeism, especially in Louisiana, there are people called Creoles and what I didn’t know is that Creole does not mean ‘light-skinned’ and that was the idea that I had, but a woman named Yaba Blay wrote an article about living in Louisiana and having some really painful moments around shadeism and colorism and I was really moved by her piece and so I posted about it, and then some other folks from the Mixed and Creole community came on a were like, “Wait a minute – her analysis is lacking the fact that there are lots of Creole people who are ‘dark-skinned’ and it has to do with the geographical area you’re in and so it was really a great conversation – so shout out to Carolyn Battle Cochran, Joahana Workman, to Senta Burke for sharing your very personal story on our thread and I thank you so much. I just want to keep talking about things and I know I’m going to get things wrong, especially when it’s something I have zero context on – so I just appreciate the conversation and let’s keep that going.
On Tuesday I went to #KPCC, which is our local #NPR station – one of our local NPR stations here in LA and had an interview with Leslie Berestein Rojas – she’s doing a story about #multiracial identity in Los Angeles and so that’s coming out on Monday. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk a little bit about One Drop and talk about my experiences being a Mixed person growing up and how I’ve evolved around that and how my focus more is on justice – so we had a great conversation and I’ll put a link once that comes out and I’ll talk about it more next week.
While I was at KPCC, I met Liz Garbus, so anyway I hugged her and said thank you for her documentary – What Happened, Miss Simone if you didn’t see it, I believe it’s still on Netflix. It’s really powerful – speaking of shadeism and colorism – it is very, very clear in this movie, so check out that documentary.
OK so, I have been an ESLTeacher for the majority of my life at this point – I started teaching ESL after I joined the…when I joined the Peace Corps right after college. I lived in West Africa and I taught ESL and I coordinated the English Department in the Cape Verdean Islands, West Africa and I’ve been teaching ESL pretty steadily ever since then everywhere. In New York City, in a high school in the South Bronx, I taught 5th grade for one year – a bilingual 5th grade class. I then taught in a few schools in Los Angeles including CalAmerica, where I met my husband Diego and…oh my gosh, maybe I’m going to cry. After that I taught at East LA College for a long time and then for the last 8 years or so I’ve been teaching at Glendale Community College, where the majority of the students are Armenian, we’ve recently had a lot of Syrian students come in and still there are also Latin American students mostly Guatemalan and Mexican and Salvadorian and Thursday was my last day teaching. And so I’m – whooo – I’m making a transition I can talk about the transition probably in next week’s video, but teaching ESL has been such a wonderful, wonderful, part of my life for the last 20 years and I will miss it so much. I’ll miss my students. I will certainly infuse my new job with everything. All the incredible tools that I learned and I’ll also maintain my relationships with the communities that motivated me to be grateful for everything that I have and to be grounded and to really understand what things are important in life – and that those are not material things – and they are not about money and power, they are about community, they are about family, they are about LOVE. And so I’m saying goodbye to ESL teaching, but not to my life as an Educator and to my life as a person who’s committed to justice and equity for everyone. So I want to say thank you – if you’re one of my students – I will miss you so much and you have made my life wonderful and THANK YOU for that. And you have my email address, so email me any time, and I’ll remind you how to use ‘Be’ verb correctly and ‘what is a noun’ and ‘what is a subject pronoun’ – I’ll remind you of all of that, so I am still your friend forever.
I am so proud, I have to say, of the students at CalState LA. So I went to CalState LA for my MFA and the students there have made a list of demands to the President of CalState LA. I’m going to put the link so that you can read. And they got it! They got the things that they were asking for – including divesting from private prisons, money to support their work – it’s so exciting. I’m so proud. And congratulations, keep up the amazing work you’re doing.
And shoutouts to everybody who’s been watching these videos! Thank you for watching them, thank you for your ‘likes’ on the videos. Please subscribe if you haven’t and also interact with me. I’m sorry I know this is a lot of just talking at you, but I don’t mean it to be, what I mean it to be is to hear from you your thoughts and questions. Let’s talk about Shadeism, ESL students if you’re watching you can ask me questions about grammar, and Artivists – what’s going on for you this week? What are your goals? What are you planning on getting done? What did you get done last week? Let me know. Let’s talk about it. What do you need support on? Have you got projects going that you need support on? Alright everybody have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful week. I’ll have great, amazing news for you that I can share next week. And until then: Bye Bye!
At what age should you speak to young people about race, class, gender and justice? Diego has the perfect answer.
TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:21,400 –> 00:00:31,779 DIEGO: I think the main thing that comes with
racism is basically a child isn’t
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born a racist or homophobic. It’s
how their community raises them
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that way, and they learned that and
they know nothing but that. So do you try
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to show your shows in these
environments, in these communities to
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try to inform young people or anyone? FANSHEN: Yeah. Thank you.That’s such a great
00:00:52,440 –> 00:01:02,059
question. What school do you go to? (laughs) DIEGO: LACHSA. FANSHEN: Hey I know LACHSA. That’s at CalState LA!
00:01:02,059 –> 00:01:08,750
We’ll come! Yeah, absolutely. I’m
curious what you all think because people ask me
00:01:08,750 –> 00:01:13,460
what age range, and you see how I
grew up with my Mama Trudy – I could’ve watched
00:01:13,460 –> 00:01:16,900
the show when I was three, you know?
But I know that some of the
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themes are difficult. So what age do you
think would be appropriate for the show?
00:01:20,950 –> 00:01:25,540 DIEGO: I think there’s not really a starting age
to be informed, and I think anyone needs
00:01:25,540 –> 00:01:26,320
to know this stuff.
For Jan 2015 footage:
Direction by Carol Banker
Q&A Host Patti Lewis
Camera by Katie Walker http://bit.ly/1FSOtea
Music by Carol Doom
Editing and logo graphics by Alex Regalado http://bit.ly/1Lh73wE in association with SarafinaProductions http://bit.ly/1OkzzQD
The One Drop of Love logo was designed by Zerflin http://zerflin.com/
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Alright. Remember a couple weeks ago when I told
you that my best friend – one of my very
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best friends in the world – was applying
for a PhD in Philosophy and she sent me
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her application essay? Well: she got she
got IN! She got into her first choice school. I’m screaming because I’m so excited.
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Got into her first choice school with money –
funding to help her do it and I’m like,
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Black woman getting a PhD in Philosophy
and a Black woman getting a PhD in
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Philosophy who wants to talk about race
and racism within that. I’m SO excited. So anyway – shout out – I’m not
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gonna say your name out loud because you
may not want me to, but I’m so proud of
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you and I love you so much!
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Congratulations. Last weekend Mama Trudy
and I went to go see this great play
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adopted experience. And the play starts
off when Susan is meeting her
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birth mother for the first time. So
already there’s all this tension at the
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top of the play – and I’m like,”I understand that – what it feels like to have
tension in the top of your play. So – do
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you do this when you’re watching another
performer at the top of a play – you’re just
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feeling like all the feels – everything
they’re going through at that moment – so
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much pressure but that’s how she starts the
show and then she takes us on the
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journey of finding her birth mother and
it’s so moving and touching. So if it
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comes near you anywhere, I’ll put a link to her website and her information – go
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see it. It was lovely. OK so I think I told
you about Lilah Greenberg who has come
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on to help us book One Drop of Love and
she’s amazing. I can’t believe the amount
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of work she’s done so she’s helping me
fulfill all of those goals that I talked
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about in each video. She has sent out a bunch
of emails both to new places to kind of
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pitch the show and also doing outreach
to people in Mesa. And I got tickets for her
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to come to Mesa. So she’s gonna come to
Mesa. Chandra’s
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already in Phoenix so we’re all gonna
hang out together – hopefully
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we’ll have a little bit of time to do a
little One Drop retreat session and do
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some strategic planning. I’m really
excited to have her there and I think
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it’s going to be a great way to incorporate her into the show
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and she can see how things go in
different cities because she saw it in
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Cambridge which is like where we get so
much support and love and amazing but
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to see it in another city is just it’s a
whole different experience.
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Chandra booked the show in high school
so in a high school – THANK YOU CHANDRA! In Tempe, Arizona so
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I’ll give you details on that. I just – I
want to say how much I love working with
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women. I love men and there a lot of
men that I really really love and I
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respect and I think are great but I just –
I guess there’s something incredible and
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moving about working with women because
I think we are not always expected to
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take charge especially in the business sense
and then really make things happen and
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seeing how much these two women
are working on behalf of the show – which
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also means working on behalf of social
justice, on behalf of encouraging people
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to share their stories and melding
history, historical context, all together
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with sharing your story it’s just amazing and
I feel so grateful to have them and to
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be working with them. So: shout out to
WOMEN! Work with women if you haven’t, I
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highly recommend it. Alright I wanna talk to
you about your Day Job. So if you
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don’t know, if you’re not an artivist or an
actor or performer a lot of us obviously we
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have to pay the bills and you will
without question when you’re starting
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off and for a very long time and perhaps
forever you will have to do something
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that is not directly acting related in
order to survive. And so a lot of actors
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I know work in restaurants,
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they’re bartenders, hosts and I’ve done
some of that too, but I also have to say
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that I probably have well I’m biased but
I think one of the best possible Day
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Jobs for an actor which is that I teach
ESL. I teach at a community college
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nearby and it is so incredibly rewarding.
My students are from all over. The area
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where I teach is predominantly Armenian,
so a lot of them are Armenian; we also recently
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have a huge influx of Syrian students
and working with them makes me
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constantly grateful for the life that I
have and the life that I’m able to
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choose knowing what they are coming from
and knowing what they’ve experienced in
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their countries and their reasons behind
needing to come here. Also I love that
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they don’t give a crap about Hollywood.
And as much as I will admit that there
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are – in many ways I am driven by
getting validation from this system that
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on sometimes I hate and sometimes I
want to be a part of because I want to
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change it, I love that when I walk into
that classroom and I say something like,
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Did anybody hear about this “OscarsSoWhite” and they’re like, “We don’t
know. We don’t care. We need to feed our
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children. It’s refreshing to be reminded
that there are more important things
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than just being considered for an Oscar
much more important things. They’re just
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beautiful people not to mention by the
way I highly recommend this job – so I teach
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English as a Second Language. It is a
perfect job for theater actors because
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first of all my classes 55 students so I
have to project. It’s a huge class.
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I have to protect my voice. I also am
performing for – the class is three hours
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in this session – three and a half hours in the
longer sessions, and so I am performing
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the whole time – which means I have to make the class entertaining. So
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I’m using my skills of being
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an entertaining energetic
person to get this lesson across and I
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have to say there is no question in my
mind that that has been incredibly
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helpful for me thinking about how to
keep the audience interested how to have
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the audience interact within the play
and feel like they are part of this
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journey that were going on. So I’m so
grateful for that job. It’s really
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truly I feel so incredibly fortunate for
that to be my “Day Job.”
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OK whooo here’s the hard thing about being an artivist – we talked about
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marketing which is really hard
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the other thing is being a
businessperson. Somebody told me once –
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a therapist – told me, “All is fair in
business.” Ugh. And it was such a hard lesson to learn
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because I’ve worked with folks who
didn’t have integrity in business
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dealings – and that just hurt my heart
so much and I was like, “How can this be?”
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and she said, “Look, if
you’re interested in being in business –
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profit business – because yes I would like
to make money from my art, which
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sustains me to continue to do what I
think is important in the world. But: All
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is fair in that – and I thought, “OK, so I
can still be committed to maintaining my
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integrity and being fair with other
people, but I also have to accept that
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there are lots and lots of folks out
there who are not going to be fair and
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who don’t care about advancing justice
for other people and so
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so…all to say that I worked on accounting
this week and it was it’s not fun so I
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have to do W9s and 10199s for folks that
worked on One Drop this year – and I am so
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proud that I was able to pay some people
some money for working on the show, but
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it’s a lot of work and I guess I
would just encourage you to learn how to
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do all of that, up front, and be really
organized about who you pay and when and
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for what. That’s what I’m doing that will be
in my goals for 2016 because I did ok with
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it, but I could have done a lot better. I
applied to two more Film Festivals this
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keep you posted on those. I also heard from
one film festival the DC
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Independent Film Festival – we didn’t get
into that. It’s all good. It’s ALL good. We’ll just keep waiting to see
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how things go. I got asked to potentially
Assistant Direct a show at the Boston
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00:09:08,110 –> 00:09:12,390 Court Theatre. I read the script, I’m gonna
meet with the Director this weekend – and
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I’ll let you know how that goes. OK oh my
gosh. Tonight. Tonight
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Mama Trudy, Carol Banker and I are going to
see Sarah Jones in #SellBuyDate. Sarah Jones. You probably know who she is
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if you’re following this channel. She was a huge
inspiration for One Drop. I’ll put links
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to her incredible TED Talk and other work
of hers. She’s…I want to learn from her
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and so if I if there’s any way I can
even just shake her hand tonight, I
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will . But we’re going to see her tonight
and I’ll let you know how that goes next
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week. She is a true artivist. She tells
it like it is. She tells true stories and
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her goal is always to make positive
change
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and that’s what I want to
do, so I cannot wait. I can’t wait!
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OK goals this week. This week I wanna
have at least one new venue booked for
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One Drop so I’ll let you know how that
goes. What are your goals? What are you
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going to accomplish this week? Write in
the comments or make a video, tag me in
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the video
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whatever but also as I said at the top, what is
your day job? Let’s talk about what we
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all do and do we love it? And if we don’t love
it, let’s talk about other things we can
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do so we are enjoying life until we can
sustain ourselves as artivists.
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Shout outs to Chrystelyn and Kathryn new
subscribers to the channel. Thank you for
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subscribing. Kathryn and I were great
friends at University of Michigan and
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something that makes me so so happy is
when folks that I’ve done theater with
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long ago are still doing it. She’s an actor,
she’s done lots of TV. Check out her reel
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and her clips at her YouTube channel. Homegirl is working. She’s a
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working actor. OK so let’s work together,
let’s make things happen you all. Keep me
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posted. I’ll keep you posted. Have a
wonderful, wonderful week. Kicked butt.
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Work with women work. I am saying WORK WITH WOMEN. I’ll talk to you next week! Bye bye.
FANSHEN: Recently I asked my friends when was the first time that they heard about the one-drop rule. And their answers were really incredible, so we’re sharing them here and we’d like to hear yours. So send us an email (onedropoflove(at)gmail, tweet us, anything, and let us know: when was the first time that YOU learned about the one-drop rule?
MARK: I self-identify as mixed, but I am politically Black. In our family we never talked about race or the one-drop rule – anything. And so basically I just intuited that there was a one-drop rule because I was defined as Black growing up as far as my experiences.
My dearest friend, growing up, would call me “contraband” because he learned about the phrase – he read something about slavery and that a slave that was seeking freedom, if they were caught they were considered ‘contraband’ and he thought that was funny. I had no knowledge, so he was calling me contraband and it hurt like hell and I had no ability to defend myself or to articulate a different argument.
So it really wasn’t until I graduated from high school, I was in the Marine Corps, I came across an interesting story in the New York Times about a woman who was suing the State of Louisiana because her birth certificate said that she was ‘Colored.’ She was raised White, she self-identified as White. And she fought her case all the way up to the Supreme Court and lost because according to state law, in 1970 if you were just any – any trace of Black, you were Colored to 1/32 Black, you were Colored. And she had 3/32s – they even went so far as to hire a genealogist. And so that fascinated me – it really resonated with me. I couldn’t articulate why, but I just found it a fascinating story.
Ten years later I was attending school at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland and I learned about the one-drop rule. And that’s where I learned about slavery, I learned about Manifest Destiny, etc. etc. etc. And I learned about the one-drop rule and I learned how pernicious and ridiculous it is and how hard we work to create a caste system and what really saddened me was defining Black as a negative – that if you had any part Black in you, that was not a good thing. And that’s…that’s heartbreaking. Nobody should ever have that experience and it will end because of people like Fanshen, who are creating this space for us to talk about elements of racism such as the one-drop rule and I’m very appreciative and have much gratitude for allowing me to share my story of how I learned about the one-drop rule.
CHANDRA CRUDUP: Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to keep up with the latest One Drop news and other videos. Do you have ideas for more video content? Tell us what you’d like to see. We’ll see you next time to share more drops of love. Be sure to tell us by commenting here and on Twitter and Facebook, how YOU are spreading drops of love.
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OK so Mama Trudy and I went to the Baldwin Hills Overlook and it was really really
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cool, so here’s a little video of the
time that we spent.
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Three-quarters, three-quarters of the way
up. Alright. LAST LEG! LAST LEG! LAST LEG! YAYYY!!!
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Down at the bottom we finished. Mama Trudy: I said, “Aren’t we gonna do it another time!?”
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Fanshen: That’s my Mama. THAT is my Mama Trudy. And I said, “No. Hell. No.”
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OK. Let’s see I want to tell you about Friendship, Networking and Support that happened this week.
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So. Remember last week I told you about that play that I did? And I was saying the name of the author
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and I was like, “Keersten Greenidge”
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Well, it turns out – so today I was on Facebook and a friend of mine posted that, who I thought was “Keersten”
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but it’s actually “Kirsten” Greenidge, her play was chosen to be produced somewhere
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and she was saying congratulations, and I was like, “How cool . I just learned about this
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playwright last week. Well then another
friend of mine posted, “My cousin is doing this play, congratulations to my cousin!”
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So it turns out that she is actually the cousin, a family member of a good friend of
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mine that I grew up with so shout out to
the Greenidges of Cambridge, MA. Particularly
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Chip Greenidge – George Greenidge – that is so
cool and I’m so sorry that I mangled
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her name in the last video and also that
I didn’t learn more about her and didn’t
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put the connections together. I also had
lunch with a couple of wonderful women
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in my life. I had lunch with my friend
Sarah who is an editor and director
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and a producer, and she does
documentary film and she also has a
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distribution company. I’ll put links to her
company in the Description box. But she
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pitched me a couple of ideas for films
that she wants to do. One that she’s
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already definitely doing with a friend
and I was like, “I want to be involved.” So I’ll
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tell you more about it as soon as I
confirm that I’m actually going to be
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involved, and find out if it’s okay to
talk about it. I also had lunch with Mama
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Trudy and my good friend Katherine
today and we went
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for a long walk in Venice and that was really nice. And it’s always good to kind of just get my
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mind off of social media and get my mind
off of work and just go spend time with
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friends and that was lovely so – what do you do
when you need to get a break from social
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media? What are the ways that you get
away?
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Ok. A rant. So Jimmy Kimmel did this disgusting, racist,
bullshit, “sketch” today and I don’t even
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understand how you – now at this moment –
with all of the information that we have
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available to us, can possibly think that
something like this
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sketch would be funny to anybody who has
been oppressed by and hurt by this
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system that constantly ignores – willfully
ignores – the pain that Black and Brown and
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Native and Asian people are
expressing about not being represented
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in the media. I don’t know I
don’t even understand it, so I was
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incensed by that. Ok so now I want to talk
about the way that you can do this
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right – so first of all, Stephen Colbert
had DeRay McKesson on his show this
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week. This was another I think good step
in the right direction – like they
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actually openly talk about white
privilege. He switched seats with DeRay
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and and really let DeRay talk about
solutions he’s working on. Solutions
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about police brutality and that was
awesome. We still have so far to go, but
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description and I’m encouraging you,
Sister: make that reel! We’re gonna make that
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reel happen, OK? And Peter: thank you for
commenting. I had some great comments
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from folks who were representing the
Latin American voice and I really
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appreciate that. I want us to exchange from
a wide variety of opinions. I may not agree
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with you and I may
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tell you I don’t agree with you,
but that’s cool that’s why we’re doing
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this – so keep those coming. Irvienne: you are always there. Thank YOU so much for watching the
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videos and commenting and continuing to
support my work. Please tell me how I can
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support you. Annnnd…Mama Trudy:
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’cause I know you’re watching my videos. Thank you so much for watching the videos Mama. OK! NEW GOALS! Alright for this week so first
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of all, now that I know we’ve got a list
of the places we want to take the show
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now it’s a matter of getting specific
about venues that are in those places
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and then creating emails to the people
that can help bring the shows – there so
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I’ll let you know how that goes. Oh!
Occidental College – remember
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I said about Oxy last week?
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Well, I didn’t do that goal. But I got to talk
to my writing partner who is coming on
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board for the Social Justice Theatre and Media
channel and we said it’s ok; we’re gonna
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be ok with ourselves that we’re moving a
little slowly with that, but I’m gonna add
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Oxy College to this week’s goal ’cause I didn’t get
it done and I want to get it done. And so I’ll share more on that with you
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this week. And finally I’m going to spend
a total of four hours transcribing and
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making notes on past Q&A videos that we
have for One Drop of Love because I want to
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put together kind of like a best of all
the Q&A videos that we’ve done because I
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think those are a really good way to show
people the kinds of dialogue of a kinds
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of conversations and even hopefully
actions that people are propelled to
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take after seeing the show.
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Alright. Thank you again so much for
watching. Please add your thoughts and
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comments and let’s keep working hard
as ARTIVISTS. Let’s put our creativity out
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there in the world.
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Let’s put our activism out there in the
world and let’s just keep making things
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better for as many people as we can.
TRANSCRIPT
So did anybody see that La Guardia Cross video this week? It…ahm…has toddler in it. This man having a conversation with his toddler. I’m gonna put a link in the description box. It’s freaking amazing and so first of all his graphic skills are incredible. His editing skills are incredible. So I’m gonna use him as a model – use his videos as a model. Also just
his baby is so amazing.
So I started looking at some earlier videos he did and he started off on Youtube – one of his first videos was saying, “I’ve always wanted to be a musician and I promise you that in a year from now I will have had success. It’s really really cool. So I got inspired by that and actually at the end of this video today I’m gonna tell you my goals for next week. So I’m not exactly going with the year approach – although in my head I have what I want to do in a year – but with these videos I’ll try to end with my goals for the upcoming week and then we can see if I actually did them or not.
Okay see? My camera’s trying to make this hard for me today and told you I have these goals; one of them is to do these videos once a week and it’s already proving to be a little bit hard, but I’m going to do it anyway! So I just recorded the whole video and then I went back and only half of it was recorded because I didn’t have enough space. So now there is a whole different lighting and all of that.
Anyway, ANYWAY it’s not about the lighting is it? It’s about this week as an ARTIVIST. Alright so I’m gonna get back into it.
Sunday evening I got called – I think I told you last week – I got called to replace an actor for a reading and the reading is at a local theater and it was in consideration of doing this play there. And I loved the piece. So it’s called “The Luck of the Irish” by Kirsten I think it’s (Kuhr-stin) might be (Keehr-stin) Greenidge Kirsten Greenidge and takes place in the 1950s and today. Back in the 1950s this Black couple, wealthy Black couple, gets this poor Irish couple to buy their house for them because they were going to be discriminated against – they we’re going to be able to get it so the Black couple pays the Irish couple some money and then the Irish couple goes, gets the deed. Once the deed is done, it’s their house and you know their neighbors have to deal with that then, but at least they own the house. Well in present-day, the grand daughter of – one of the granddaughters – of that Black couple is living in the house, raising her family there and the old woman now of that Irish couple shows up and says, “We never signed the deed over to you. The house actually still belongs to us. Now that your grandmother died, grandparents died, we want my house back. It’s a really powerful peace and I was happy to be a part of it. Of course it’s the work that I do. I love doing work that really makes us think and talk about and hopefully take action around race and racism and discrimination. So this was really, really cool and I was very proud to be part of that. OK.
Golden Globes and Academy Awards. The Golden Globes took place this week and the Academy Award nominations came out this weekend. I mean I have very little to say other than I am so tired of a system that does not value and support and even acknowledge the stories of anybody who is not White – and also the people who are making those stories are anyone but White men and I’m tired of it. And I’m working on some solutions because I think that’s important. I also think it’s important to complain. I have a lot of friends – because I’m vocal about it on social and I have a lot of
friends who are like, “You just always talk about it.” And I’m like, “No. I also do things, but
talking about it is important as well. See they say that to you so you won’t talk about it; you won’t complain about it. And they get to just hang out and be like, “Everything’s cool. I don’t hear any complaints about it.” Oh no. We need to get loud about it and we need to take action. So I can talk about some of the action I’m taking. I can’t talk about all of it, but when I can, believe me I will. Certainly like one of the things I do is directly call out the folks that I know that are in positions of power that can do something about this I call them
out and I also speak to them personally and say, “What are you going to do about
this?” and “Here are some suggestions” So this whole award thing is frustrating because I have chosen profession that in some ways needs some kind of validation from that in order to move forward, in order to make a living at this. At the same time I am, you know, more and more getting to the point where I’m like, “Let me find ways to work outside the system because the system is not meant for folks like me.”
Monday I applied to a screening series that will take place in Brooklyn. Applied with the One Drop of Love live theater show that we filmed and I’m really proud of it. And we had ninety percent women working on the set. And our Editors and pretty much everyone who worked on it is a woman and it looks good. It looks good. My friend Carol was the director and I’m just really proud of it. So wish us luck and I’ll keep you posted on that.
Tuesday night I watched “The Danish Girl” and let me tell you one thing that I can watch is marginalized White people. Because even though on one hand here’s this White man who identifies as a woman – and what she did was amazing in terms of being like, “This is who I am,” – but at the same time, it’s not lost on me that when you look like that, you are able to… it’s easier for you than it is for other folks who don’t look White and don’t present to the world as White – it is easier for you to say, “Hey, I was born a man – what the world calls a man – but that’s not who I am. And it’s amazing, so I am down with watching movies about marginalized White people. That’s why I liked “Room” too. If you saw “Room” – same thing. Like, “Ok, I can watch this.”
OK so I got some good news and some bad news.
One of the shows in Mesa got canceled due to low sales and I told you already the last time there was practically no one in the audience – and this time they are keeping two of the shows: a morning and night show on Friday, but they did cancel the Saturday show and the good news is: this time I’m not blaming myself. I’m not blaming the show. I know I have a good show I’m confident about the show.
And also I am ending the relationship with my agents. I’ve been represented by one of the top agencies in LA – well, not ‘I’ – the SHOW – has been represented by one of the top agencies in LA for about two and a half years and I am so grateful to them. It’s
been great, but I am hopeful and feel really good and confident about working without them, too. So, we’ll see. It was definitely an ego blow. Like you feel rejected, you feel like, obviously there’s something about this and maybe about me that is not working out with you, but at the same time I feel like this is an opportunity to show me and my team what we can accomplish together without this powerful agency behind us and I feel like we are gonna be able to do it.
OK here’s the not-fun part about being an artivist is you do have to market yourself and your projects because nobody else is gonna do it for you, and there’s no budget for it to be done. So I released a One Drop video – Team One Drop – with Dr. Chandra Crudup – released that on Wednesday and then and I scheduled it to go out many, many times on Twitter, on Facebook, on Pinterest, on Tumblr. I’m learning through watching YouTube videos watching other you to people – that’s what you have to do to get people to watch the videos and if people watch the videos you go higher up on the rank on Youtube so then if somebody types in racism or gender questions, they’ll say, Hey you should watch this video.” So it’s all…not my favorite part of being an artivist but, it is an important part and I’m ok with doing it.
Inspired by La Guardia Cross and his incredible toddler, I am going to make goals – not for the whole year like La Guardia Cross did – but for the next week. So next week when I check in I’ll let you know how I did in terms of meeting these goals. So I am going to get
nice and organized now that I am my own agent, and now that I have Lilah
working as a Booking Consultant, we’re gonna get organized and make a calendar for
2016 that will include places that have already requested the show and some date
potentials for those as well as: what are our dream places? where do we want
to see the show go? We’re going to get those ideas down so I’m gonna have a list
by next week of like my BIG dream places to take the show and then the following
weeks…well I’m not going to say the following weeks because I want to make this goal realistic and doable so we’re gonna do that. And for the Social Justice Theater and Media channel, I’m going to finish my script for Occidental College which I’ll explain when you see the video, but Oxy College, so ask me next week, “Did you do your script for Oxy College?” because I’ve got to make that happen.
OK. What are your goals this week? Do you have goals as an Artivist? What are the ways that you’re going to advance social justice out there in the world and also nurture yourself as a creative person, as an artist. What are you doing this week? Tell me in the comments. Ask a question.
Make a video – and tell me and I’ll put it in the playlist and have a great, great, great week.
Strength. Courage. Justice. We GOT this you all. We GOT this. Alright. Talk to you next week. Bye bye.
