B.A.: I’ve known Fanshen since I was too young to admit, and I’ve been a supporter and a fosterer of her storytelling for a while – particularly around One Drop.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE ONE DROP CHARACTER?
B.A.: The father – because I find it really interesting the complicated relationships we have with our fathers – and fathers with daughters. I have two daughters and it’s been new ground for me. I find that really fascinating because it’s a fraught story and it’s not easy.
B.A.: The urgency and the need to have difficult conversations – and that most of us, even those of us who consider ourselves to be, like, “Hey, I’m a good person. I think of everyone as the same. I’m liberal and enlightened and so on – we all need to force ourselves into uncomfortable places to have uncomfortable conversations.”
WHAT IS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE CAREER MOMENT?
B.A.: When I got a part in an independent movie called “Dark Side of the Street” [Dark End of the Street] when I was 7 years old.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
B.A.: The project that I’m currently working on, you see behind you, is a movie called “Live by Night,” and it’s starring me and Zoe Saldana and Sienna Miller and all kinds of awesome actors.
One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class and gender – and in search of justice and LOVE. www.onedropoflove.com
Please SUBSCRIBE to support our work and to get updates on our channel
Sign up for the One Drop of Love newsletter and see our upcoming appearances: http://bit.ly/1OQHy86
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
00:00:31,779 –> 00:00:38,550
born a racist or homophobic. It’s
how their community raises them
00:00:38,550 –> 00:00:41,830
that way, and they learned that and
they know nothing but that. So do you try
00:00:41,830 –> 00:00:45,980
to show your shows in these
environments, in these communities to
00:00:45,980 –> 00:00:52,440
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
00:01:16,900 –> 00:01:20,950
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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00:00:00,000 –> 00:00:05,650
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!?”
5
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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
8
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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.
What’s your One Drop role?
I am the Production Manager.
What race or races did you choose on the 2010 Census?
Black and White.
Who’s your favorite One Drop character?
Fanshen’s dad’s my favorite character because in the end, he is willing to reconcile and kind of rebuild the relationship over something that maybe he didn’t know was the reason for the mess up; and he was willing to really work on it again –
so I really admire him for that.
What’s your biggest takeaway from One Drop?
One of my favorite takeaways is Mama Trudy’s being in the box – in the chicken box – and I have to remind myself sometimes I put myself in a box; and I need to break out of that box.
What is your most memorable career moment?
I’m still kind of in awe that I got this thing called a PhD last year. So. That’s weird to me (laughs).
What are you currently working on?
Always lots and lots of projects. I’m working on some research and some papers with Dr. Kelly Jackson…I’m working on some Mixed Roots Stories, exciting, fun things…always working on One Drop, so that’s really fun. I’ve got some book ideas in the works, so…lots of fun things!
What’s your favorite storytelling method?
I like to tell stories, in lots of different ways, but dance is
probably my favorite. I think it is underrepresented and underutilized as a storytelling method.
Who inspires you?
Oh! Lots of people. Lots of strong women…mostly…probably a few men in there, but…mostly women. Fanshen, Dr. Kelly Jackson, Jacquie Lawton…lots and lots of women.
(Fanshen) Cool!
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.
Alright this is gonna be so far from perfect or what I wanted it to be and that’s cool. So this is mostly for myself because I used to keep a diary when I was young and it’s been so valuable to have those. Anyway I decided to just try to force myself to make these videos because other things that I’m posting are things that we’ve planned, and really thought a lot about – and so I want to force myself to also try storytelling in this way as well.
So anyway I want to talk about this incredible journey that I have been on, where I’m finally actually getting paid to be an actor, which is amazing, like I can say that I am a professional actor and after so many years of working towards that, that’s just incredible. So anyway here’s what I did this week:
First of all I spent a lot of time especially today doing social media posts. I posted throughout the year once a month or once every couple of months the new Q&A video that we just posted which is “Tell your own damn story.” Then I also posted about the Mesa show which is next month, which is really cool because the last time we were in Mesa there were probably three people in the audience from the afternoon or morning show, and that included people who work for the theater. And it was a blow to the ego for sure. I was heartbroken by that and I just was thinking, “Gosh maybe this show isn’t good”…and, and they brought us back! And so I’m really excited – so that’s coming up so I posted about that.
Also we have all these great videos and so one of them that’s coming out is this brilliant idea by Chandra Crudup, my Production Manager, who you’ll meet – you’ll hear about her a lot – and she suggested that we do Team One Drop videos to introduce people to all the freaking amazing people behind the show – because I don’t do it alone by any means. I have an incredible amount of help. So I’ve been working with Alex Regalado who was one of the editors of the long version of the film and we’ve been working together – she’s been cutting these Team One Drop videos together and sending me notes and I give her notes and I’m really excited about that.
Okay I had an audition this week – a commercial audition – for – and this is really good for me – that the age was 40, and I was like, “Cool.” It’s crazy to me because I know that would make most women in Hollywood freak out and I feel such a sense of relief that I’m actually going out for things that are close to my age. I would just always get so stressed when I was going up for something a lot younger and I didn’t book. But I love this. I wanted to read to you the description so, “Matilda (it’s a commercial for a bank) Matilda is beautiful, casual, curious about the world, little makeup (YES I was like, YES! when I read that!), interesting faces. It’s me – ‘interesting faces.’ I’m cool with that, I feel like I can do that – I can do all of those things.
So I have to get my flights for Mesa that is exciting and coming up and it’s time to get the flights for that and I’ma do that this week.
I applied to the United Solo Theatre Festival. I got an email that they extended their deadline and I was like, “I just have to do this!” It takes place on theatre row in New York City, so why not? Why the freak not? So I applied to that.
We did two shows at the Museum of Tolerance with Heather Oliver as my Production Manager and they were both amazing. Monday’s show there were definitely more Black folks in the audience and the reason I know that is because they were doing call-and-response with me, which I really appreciate and when I wrote the show I had that in my head, and so it was just really nice. It’s always nice to have an audience that actually interacts during the show. On Wednesday they didn’t necessarily interact, but it’s so interesting to me too because I play this – do you do this? I’ll bet you do this, like I play this awful mind game with myself during the show where I’m like, “Oh they hate it” and I know, I know, a better actor would not do that, but it’s part of what’s going through my head – and I hope to evolve in it and not be so anymore – but yeah I was thinking that, and then afterwards there was an outpouring of love and support and so they really enjoyed it; they just took it in very differently than that Black group and for all I know the Black folks might have hated it! And shout out to those teachers in Sacramento who then went on the Facebook page and gave us a whole bunch of new ‘likes’ and it was really lovely – just a great time at the Museum of Tolerance; I’m so grateful to have that gig and hope I’ll be there are a lot more.
My husband and I – Diego and I – watched “Making a Murderer” on Netflix and it’s freaking amazing if you haven’t seen it – although it will also make you infuriated because I’ve listened to all of “Serial” about Adnan Sayed – the first one – and “Undisclosed Podcast” and this will just continue to make you so frustrated about the criminal justice system. We have to do better. But it’s important to see these because you have an understanding of the ways police departments and lawyers and judges manipulate the system. So watch that if you haven’t seen it, it is freaking amazing.
Ok: I introduced some women to this incredible filmmaking group that I’m in.
I returned some emails about an exhibit in LA that I hopefully will be a part of.
I got cast in a reading of a play called “Luck of the Irish” that I’m doing next week, so I’ll take some video about that.
I got tickets for my mom to come to LA and she’s coming in an hour and I gotta go pick her up from the airport.
And finally I’m so excited because my best friend is studying philosophy – which is just amazing in and of itself – and she’s a Black woman and she is looking at race within philosophy and so she sent me…can I…I’ll just say she sent me a paper to read and I, like, the little bit that I understood was so on point with what I believe in and just the representation of her as a Black woman doing philosophy – a PhD is what she’s gonna be going for – is just so exciting to me. It was a beautiful way to end this week of artivism.
So thanks for watching and thanks Mama Trudy for watching, because I know you are. And I’ll see you (Mama Trudy) in an hour and I’ll see you all next week. I’ll try to add one of these once a week.
MARLEY (audience member): This is a one woman show and it was so, I’m assuming, difficult to produce. Why a one woman show and not an entire group of people?
FANSHEN: Freaking Hollywood. Because, you know, I’ve been out here for a long time and wanted to be an actor and especially when I first got out here my agent would say, “Oh you got an audition,” and I’d have to ask, “Well is it for Black or White?” Because then I’d decide how I’d wear my hair…and I finally was like, “I need to tell my own damn story.” Because nobody else is going to do it for me, nor should they because they can’t – and so that was a big reason for it. If I’m going to tell this story, I’m going to do justice for myself. I’m going to do some self-care and get to play myself.
And I encourage everyone, particularly women, particularly folks whose stories you don’t get to see: write your own damn story. I’m tired of the system. I’m TIRED of the system. And we don’t have to work within it anymore. We have access to so many different…I mean that’s why I was so determined to have women on this shoot. We can DO this. We can do this. So tell your story, Girl! TELL it.
