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This Week as an Artivist 1/16/16: #OscarssoWhite

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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.

Meet Team One Drop: Dr. Chandra Crudup

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TRANSCRIPT:

(Many people talking at once)

What’s your name?
Chandra

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!

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This Week as an Artivist 1/9/16: Interesting Faces

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TRANSCRIPT:

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.

Ok. Bye!