I'm just talking about the Puritan movements in England or the very stringent movements in Spain or even in the New World where folks who were enslaved or indentured weren't allowed to practice the storytelling or song-making. It still happened. It still comes to fruition, in a way, and it's because it is so human and a part of what it means to be human that there's no way to really take it from anybody.

I was discussing this the other day. We often use the very sad but vital story of how in concentration camps, folks still put on shows for each other, still music, there was still art-making, and it's a blessing to have that. To me, it's one of the ways, and very specifically to me, I always say it's how I know God, because it's everywhere. Even when we try to pretend like it's, "Oh, well, your way is different than my way, and that way is better," sure, but it's there.

[00:07:09] Host: I know you were talking about these institutions that we've built in theater. Because of these institutions, there is a stigma to it. Is there a barrier to a point of entry? I'm not just talking about the cost of the ticket. Is there a supposed intellectual or emotional openness or some emotional intelligence that's needed to be able to freely enter into these spaces?

[00:07:45] Tarell: You're asking me very tough questions, maybe not very tough, but I don't have an answer to that. I've encountered few people who cannot engage their imagination. There are folks, of course, in the world who have limited capacity to stimuli or to their imagination or are stimulated in different ways or triggered in different ways or utterly abled, for sure, but even then, we do know how to create theater that connects to folks on different learning spectrums. Any barrier that is there is created. We made it. Yes, and it's always been true.

Sure, there are forms. There are different forms that-- I think—There's a book called Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, that I try to get my students to engage as much as possible. In it, one of the core things that I take away from it and I often try to engage my students' curiosity, because I don't think that there should be any tome we hand out that says, this is the way to do it, but one of the things that he talks about very succinctly is that craft is the audience's expectation. That's really what it is. It's when the audience goes in going, "Okay, I know how this works, because this is how our stories work."

It's a cultural expectation that happens, and every culture has different expectations of a story. Some stories are like, where is the narrative? Where is the plot? It needs to be driven by it. Some are like, "What is the character doing? I just come here to see the really cool characters and hear the songs that they sing." Or, "No, somebody didn't do that dance. It wasn't in sync with that other person. They're supposed to be exactly in sync for this part of the show. That's just how it's supposed to be."

You build that craft and those expectations with your audience, and you go back and forth until you figure out what are the ways in which you all enjoy the craft of storytelling and the suspension of belief. The suspension of belief has to happen in these ways in order for us to get the most out of it. That's just a conversation. I don't think there is something that happens inside of you that then can't connect, because I've seen folks who've seen ballets for the first time in their life. We openly ask folks who have seen a shaman tell a story in a park in a different language than the person was speaking and become deeply engaged and almost a believer out of what they're--

It's very few times that I've witnessed someone just not having the capacity. Now, they may not want to, now that's a whole thing, but the capacity is, I think, there in a lot of ways, and I think we absolutely build barriers of entry. We absolutely put things in front of people and say, "You can't experience that," or "You have to be this thing to experience that.' We do that all the time. We don't just do that with theater, we do that with groceries, we do that with food, we do that with everything. It's just a part of our stupid nature that gets in the way of those things.

I will say that there is something rather interesting about the ways in which we quickly think or quickly make folks think that there is some barrier of entry. We often talk about it. We talk about it to the point where it becomes a truth, and it's just not. We say that's for highfalutin folks or folks at a certain area. That's the stush thing or that's art and that's not art. This is low art. You wouldn't understand that. We do a lot of that.

What has happened-- a lot of theater practitioners I know have talked about this-- is that that ability to believe and go to other places and stretch the imagination is not being tried as rigorously as it used to be in the past. Therefore, people believe things so easily now. I'm dealing with folks in my own family or in my own community, I should say, not necessarily my family, but I think of them as my family, who we're trying to talk about this very powerful hurricane that is headed towards my hometown to my home, where I still have a home, and the things that we should do to be safe.

There are people who absolutely believe that this storm was created by one portion of the political spectrum. I can't shake that belief. I'm like, if true, because anything is possible, sure, but if it's true that the left has created a hurricane to thwart the voting process of those on the right, why'd they wait so-- This seems like bad-- Talk about bad imagination. You'd wait till now. This doesn't seem plausible or doesn't even seem-- You know what I mean? If you have that capability, why waste it on voting machine?

Because we have shirked the responsibility of really stretching and using imagination to hold more things true than one, folks really get locked into one way of thinking and feel like that is the norm, when it's not. The whole point of having art in our lives is to help us to realize the complexity of it and to be okay with it, or to laugh at it, or to mourn it a little bit, but to be able to hold it, that two things can be true at once, that we absolutely deserve freedom while at the same time wanting some focus and guide route.

It's fascinating to me that we keep selling ourselves this idea that there's a barrier to art and to art education and to engaging art, when in truth it is the best barometer on how a society can accept the hardships that is our life, that there are so few things that we can count on to happen always, and those things aren't always joy-bringing. We can continue, that time will continue to come. We know that death will happen to us and we know that it will happen to those we love.

Art has a way of helping us hold all of that. The more we don't allow that in our young people's lives or in the lives of any of us, then they will glom on to beliefs and hold onto those beliefs because that is easier than holding onto the thing that art is supposed to help us understand, which is that life is multiple things at once. Life is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. You can just see it, you can see when there hasn't been enough of that engagement in a person's life. They've got no exercise, no room to think about more than one thing at once. They've only had to think, "Well, this is the way of the world," and if it doesn't look like that, then something must be terribly wrong.

[00:15:37] Host: How does live theater compete with these little devices in our pockets that hold a wealth of entertainment? This shortening of attention span, and obviously, it's a generational thing, but how does live theater compete, especially with the younger audience, to bring them in? With the partnership that Geffen has with UCLA, how do you reach beyond theater majors and humanity majors to bring in new audience to theater?

[00:16:11] Tarell: I don't think we compete, because that feels like a fool's errand to me to compete. You just can't. We're not meant to. I think learning and knowing what our technology does is really great and we should do that. We need to always know how it is affecting us. Studies are just coming out with the first online native communities in the world for students who have just grown up in front of iPads or screens. It'll be even more interesting for the first wave of pandemic babies who are entering school for the first time.

There are middle schoolers who are entering high school who've been in mostly COVID lockdown for the past two years on and off. They've done some hybridity. Now they'll be in high school without any of that. What does that mean and how does that affect the ways of teaching and learning? I don't think the live event need try to compete with what our phones and computers can do. I think that's just not going to make any sense.

It's similar to the ways in which for a long time when I was in my early years of working as a 10-year-old, 9-year-old people were just talking about the ways television and film were in competition with the live theaters. We spent so long battling that, that we've come away with this thought process of “the theater has to fight against all of you.” I'm like, it really isn't, because if we really dig deep into what these forms do and what they can do, they do different things. Again, there's just so much room for all of it. You talk about attention spans which I think is a great way of talking about this because we often think, "Oh, no one can sit and pay attention to something this long."

I have seen people watching this podcast or watching their favorite influencer talk about nothing for 45 minutes plus commercial breaks, just headphones, head down on the bus to work. There's no competing with that. People need that and must engage in those ways. What we have been called to do is different, and it will wax and wane. There will be times where people love it and need it and there will be times that people feel like they want it less or want the newest thing more. What we do is different. I'll try not to bore you because I try not to make these things sound so hot, as if they are highbrow because they're not.

All we really do is want to get people in a room or in a space together knowing that they're together and imagining other things together. That is not what film does. Film, through its ocular proof, can make you believe that you are in another place. Have you ever watched a great film and walked out of the theater and been like, "Shit, I forgot where I parked. Excuse my language.

[00:19:19] Host: That's fine. Absolutely.

[00:19:21] Tarell: That's what a great film-- You don't even remember, like, "What theater did I see that in? I don't even remember." That's not necessarily what we've been called to do. What we've been called to do is similar to what happens when you go see a great concert. You remember the person left and right of you. You remember that you were singing that song right with the person on stage. You were screaming it, you were looking up and the sea of other people were witnessing with you and feeling the same thing.

You remember when that prince song came on and then everybody held up the light at the same time. That live event thing isn't going anywhere. We need that as human being. We need it. We have some need of being together in experiencing a thing. Only when we lean into that will we find our way into interrupt. We have. Again, these students, as much as shit as we give our young people, they are the ones who are lining up for the concerts. They are the ones who are lining up for the escape rooms. They are the ones who are lining up for the magic shows, for the haunted houses, and for the lifetime events, for the Jellicle Ball that happened just a couple months ago in New York, where they took cats and turned it into a drag ball. They are lining up for those things still.

The more we put ourselves in competition with that, with the TikTok, which is, again, amazing and wonderful for its platform, we're going to get in trouble because we're not paying attention to what we do. We're not minding our own business. We know that people still want to get into-- despite the fact that they could still even get sick. No one has forgotten the fact that they can get sick. They know it. Some people still come out in masks, but despite that, there's a need. That need is still there, and how do we make sure that that's there readily available and feeling like it's alive?

One of the things we did at the Geffen just now and when we did my play, The Brother Size, we made sure that it was in the round. Everybody was like, "Why are you doing this, Tarell? Nobody wants to sit in the round. It's just hard on the actors. It's hard on everybody." I said, "Well, because first of all, there's no set on the stage. Secondly, you have to see the person across from you experiencing this play at the same time for it really to resonate. Meaning you came in thinking one thing and now you're both thinking something else because this actor is in the space talking to you. You're not somewhere else. You're in a room on the UCLA campus engaging this play about Black people who were formerly incarcerated. That's where you are.

Still there's an ability for you to feel the world around you differently, and you can walk out-- You'll never forget that experience, hopefully, if we're doing our jobs right. That's what's on offer. If that's not what's on offer, then, again, we're trucking in somebody else's experience.

[00:22:21] Host: That connects to where I wanted to go next. I wanted to talk about the value of this newer concept of Black Out Nights and this idea of community, and the value that it holds for not just the audience but for the performers as well. If you wouldn't mind discussing what that is and how you've seen that with your productions at the Geffen.

[00:22:49] Tarell: Sure. [laughs] It's so interesting. Black Out Nights have been coined new, but they've been happening all along, especially for plays that are engaging a particular part of the community or cultural story.

There are nights where the affinity group of that piece are called in to experience the piece in a "affirming environment." That's been in every theater that I've ever seen, including theaters that are "Black theaters." I use quotes because I don't know that the National Theater of Harlem would call itself a "Black theater," or would call itself the Black theater in the way in which it engages, but I don't know that it has a Black Out Night-specific. I think they can be very important and very impactful.

They can also silo the audience so that they think that there's only one time to come to your theater to see a play. It's very important that the message around those nights be porous. Meaning, yes, we want to uplift the community in which this story comes from. Every piece that we're programming here at the Geffen has some way of enriching the audience culturally. You don't have to feel like, "Oh, I'm only invited here at Black Out Nights," or "I'm only invited here at Asian American Pacific Islander Appreciation Night or the Queer Nights that we've had." It does feel good to be invited specifically when sometimes you are told that you're not welcome in other places.

We had a show. I don't remember what month it is. I'm sorry. Time has just become really, really compressed. [laughs] But we had a show, I believe it was in the summer. Helder Guimarães did a solo magic show, which he's done for the theater before, but wanted to do it in Spanish, which we, again, really, really appreciate when the artists are looking at ways in which, how do they invite folks in? They did, I think, three performances, if not more, in Spanish. Those nights were incredible. The engagement was incredible.

My job then, after that, as the artistic vision provider or strategic vision provider here, is to say, "Hey, how do I make sure that those folks who came in can come into almost any play, but also have specific things in the season that say, "We don't just want you to come one time." This is a part of your nourishment as a community member, so we want to make sure you can come multiple times to other things. What can we do to make sure that that happens?

The easiest answer is to be like, "Yes, have another Spanish-speaking night." "Well, okay. That's great. Is that sustainable? Are you going to now make sure that a person who only speaks Spanish can come to this theater all the time? Can we do that? Is it possible?" The answers are all then really asking, again, craft is the negotiation between you and the audience about expectations, so what are they coming to expect and where can we meet expectations? Where can we surpass them? Where can we make sure that we know, "Hey, that's great, but we don't do that here," or "We can't do that like that here. What we can do is this. Here's where we can meet you at that expectation." It's been really important to me to make sure that we have the Affinity Nights for our theater, but that we also make sure that we don't tell those people to only show up when someone who looks like them is on the poster.

[00:26:57] Host: Let's dive into the Theater as a Lens for Justice Initiative. I'd love for you to tell us about its inception and also how it was received at the Geffen Playhouse.

[00:27:10] Tarell: The Theater as a Lens for Justice is fairly new. It's brand new. It came about through conversations with the staff about how we engage our community members who might not be able to afford a ticket, but also want to find economic ways to stave off recidivism. Meaning, we were coming into work and we were seeing system impacted persons around our space, curious about our space, but there were few working in our space and there were few who had actually been into the space to see a play.

My hope with starting the Theater as a Lens for Justice was to, again, make sure people know that the stories of our community, unfortunately, this community and many like it, are impacted by incarceration. We just are. With the numbers being what they are, the amount of folks and the families that are affected by incarceration, to me, it's a wonder that more stories or plays don't have it in them.

I think it would surprise most people to hear, as I stand outside the theater, so many folks coming out from various different walks of life going, "I got a cousin, my sister, my brother, I'm dealing with that right now.” One poor guy was a med student at UCLA. I think he was a med student. Certainly was a student. Crying his eyes out going, "I'm dealing with this with my brother right now." To the president of the United States. All dealing with system-impacted persons or persons who have been in the system in some way, shape, or form affected by the system.

How do we make sure that we are still family to them? How do we engage them? How do we make sure that they have a community to come into that is somehow restorative? We clearly haven't figured that out. We clearly haven't. Again, I just do believe that theater is the place where we have to work some of those things out. Our beliefs, our emotional space, our room for those people. We have to get in a room and try it out, challenge ourselves to think about this differently so that we then, hopefully, can come out with some action behind it, some movement behind it.

Again, I run into people all the time who say theater saves my life for theater. While I have certainly alluded to that, I don't really believe that theater, in some amorphous way, saved my life. It was people providing me the opportunity to be engaged in the tools of theater and the people in the theater who gave me a platform in which to survive. I think that that's an important place for a person starting their life or restarting their life. I think it's an important place that people be able to see themselves and see other parts of themselves, and engage different parts of themselves, but then also have the tools themselves to build that engagement.

We really want to provide a place for them to see how theater works and can work, to give them the opportunity to gain skills in that, in producing, in production, in making the theater, and providing when we can, the platform for them to do that. [UCLA’s] The Center for Justice, later this year we'll allow them to use our space for rehearsals, but more importantly, will platform them to have their own workshop production of a piece that they're doing here in Westwood. Also, we're trying to make sure that we can find a way to give people training in things like production, training in things like building and carpentry, so that they have an economic resource to build their lives.

[00:31:17] Host: You’re also, bringing or planning to bring whatever your production's into a federal prison.

[00:31:23] Tarell: That's right. I'm hoping to take a slimmed down version of Waiting for Godot, which is on our main stage, to a facility in California, but that's just the first one, because Waiting for Godot is all-male, we want to make sure that we can try to do the same thing for Furlough's Paradise, which is an all women-led project. The complications of that know no bounds.

Again, it's really about trying to make sure folks have a way to engage a play that really says it's, as you said, "For them." To show them that just because we're doing this at the Geffen doesn't mean that when we do it at your facility, you won't be able to engage it. You absolutely will. Again, they're in it. As long as you have the capability or the want to engage in belief for a moment, you with the folks next to you can see different. That seeing, that real ability to look at and dream, Furlough's Paradise is a lot about dreaming, and Waiting for Godot is a lot about asking questions. If we allow people to be able to do that, then they find other choices for themselves.

They don't feel like there's only one path and one path only, because the majority of those folks getting out will hear, as my brother did, as many folks did, "Oh, you'll be back." We're hoping to continue to ignite that thing that is in all of us, which is to question that. To hold true to things that are pluralistic. Meaning that, yes, a lot of people do come back, but some don't, and that there are opportunities out here. Not easy, by any stretch of the imagination.

It's not just for those folks, it's also for the people who are watching them watch the play. It's to remind them that, "Do you see this person who is engaging in this form, in this live call and response? They are a person. So are you, and so that if you can feel something, and they can feel something, then there might be more connectivity there, more ways towards restoration than previously imagined."

[00:33:35] Host: Right. I'm going to end. We're going to just play with your imagination, what does a society without incarceration, without a carceral system look like? What is an America without that form of punitive justice?

[00:33:59] Tarell: I don't know, but I'm really excited to find out. I think it means that if I did know, to be very frank, I wouldn't do the work that I do. You know what I mean? If I knew within the shadow of a doubt that this is what the world looked like without it, I would work either towards or away from that. Towards that vision of what the world could be if I just knew concretely. As an artist, I feel like-- that's how I know I'm an artist, because I come up with more questions than I do have answers.

[00:34:30] Host: Right. Always.

[00:34:32] Tarell: I do know that the answer comes in questioning together. No one's going to sit in their room and piece this out by themselves. We've seen what comes of that, when just a few gather together to figure out a problem that is cultural and societal. When a few people do that, we get not great answers. We get the answers we have right now. We get the system-led things that's so narrow, it works for so few, that it's now a burden on us socially, politically, and economically.

I know and really believe that it's in our reasoning together, our pushing and pull together that we will figure it out, but we got to get in the room to do it, and we got to get real great people, real exciting people, real smart people to give us some different ways of invitation to that room. We all keep being invited in to just sit around and gripe about the ways in which incarceration are burdensome, then we're not going to get there.

If we get folks like a.k. Payne, like Ta-Nehisi Coates to get us in a room, like Ketanji Brown Jackson, to really get us in a room to think differently about some things, to dream a little bit, to laugh, to cry, to stretch our being, we will really find some solutions. I believe that. I believe that wholeheartedly.

[00:36:09] Host: We want to thank Tarell Alvin McCraney and the Geffen Playhouse. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward, and made possible with support from Chapman University, and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.