30 minute read
You Have to Get the Stories Out
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN LEAH C. GARDINER + ROBERT O'HARA
Late last September, Leah C. Gardiner and Robert O’Hara logged onto their respective Zoom screens for a conversation about the theme of this issue: “How have we changed?” That conversation took place two days after the long-delayed 74th annual Tony Award ceremony was finally held to celebrate the COVID-19-abbreviated season. And during that ceremony, Jeremy O. Harris’s SLAVE PLAY, which Robert directed, and which had received 12 nominations—the most nominations ever for a single play—was shut out in all categories. Not surprisingly, the awards were the first thing Leah and Robert discussed—but hardly the last. In a powerful and expansive conversation, the two longtime friends and collaborators shared their thoughts about changing the narrative, creating a pipeline, and navigating the new.
LEAH C. GARDINER is an Obie Award-winning director known for the “incisive clarity” (New York Times) of her work with physicality and text. Her work has been seen across the US, in Europe, and Japan. She recently returned from stints on two TV shows, and is in development on two new musicals.
ROBERT O’HARA is the Tony-nominated director of SLAVE PLAY and is currently working on several film, television, and theatre projects. He’s a two-time Obie Award and two-time NAACP Award winner whose work has been seen around the country.
LEAH C. GARDINER | After the 12 Tony snubs, I thought to myself, “How have we changed?” Well, after those snubs it’s clear we are right back where we were before all this talk about “change”—where we have to write our narrative, make space for ourselves, and not expect the old guard to do more than invite us in, as guests in their house. They invite us to sit at the table, but if the other guests who come don’t like our food, they dismiss us and tell us we’re not good enough. Unless we can figure out how to change the narrative, we are going to be right here…right here…again. I do want to recognize that we have more allies now, which is of course an important change. But it’s going to take more than a few allies to get things past this toxic environment where SLAVE PLAY is nominated for 12 Tonys and doesn’t get one award.
ROBERT O’HARA | We got no Obies, no Drama Desks, no Lortels, no Outer or Inner Critics Circle. We got Nuthing. And this is the same pool of voters that vote on the Tonys. So while I was happy for the recognition, I never expected us to get a bunch of awards.
LEAH | That’s what’s so sad. The truth of the matter is that the narrative is not changing, as much as we would all like to believe it is—or, let’s say, not changing fast enough. And it won’t change until those at the heads of the tables become educated and more open to change. But change is hard when you have the power. Our generation does not think about hierarchy in the same way the older generation does. There are so many shifts that are occurring, and the older generation isn’t moving as swiftly, because they don’t have to—because, inevitably, they still have the power. I think replacing people who are in positions of power as artistic directors with folks who look like you and me is one thing, but what do their boards look like? And who leads their boards? It’s the same thing in the commercial theatre world. You and I are dealing with it all the time, which is why I’ve spent the last year working on my television career.
ROBERT | Yeah, me too.
Paul Alexander Nolan + Antoinette Crowe-Legacy in SLAVE PLAY on Broadway, directed by Robert O’Hara
PHOTO Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
LEAH | I love the theatre, and I love so much about it. When I first went to Yale Drama, I actually went because I planned to learn how to work with actors and then move into TV and film. But here I am, 20-plus years later, loving the American theatre as much as I do and have. The importance of trying to make space for voices like yours and mine has kept me here. And when I’m in the rehearsal room, where I do have the power to create a space of shared understanding and respect with my collaborators, it’s magical. My decision to broaden my opportunities into screen work isn’t to abandon theatre forever—I love it too much—but I have learned to lean into where my voice is appreciated unconditionally.
ROBERT | Racism has taught me not to expect anything based on merit, not to expect anything based on my humor or my intelligence. In a way, this has kept my heart safe, to not go into places and believe that somehow things are going to come my way simply because I have talent. I think that being in the theatre requires a constant evaluation as to why we are still in the theatre. So much theatre is made up of small kingdoms, people who are hanging on to power by the seat of their pants, and now everybody’s hoping that they can get their budget back again, hoping they can get their audiences back again. We’ve always been trying to get new audiences, been trying to get bigger budgets. For the director, the moment you get a gig, the next word is no and then no and—
LEAH | And then no again.
ROBERT | The problem is that people like you and I have had to make “no” work. And then people begin to believe that “no” actually works. That you don’t need all these resources because, look, you made it work without them. You made a bunch of “no’s” work. That’s the irony of it all. Because we have made a career and we have made stuff work, people have looked at us and said, “Oh, see, ‘No’ can work. They did it.”
LEAH | That’s right. “They made ‘no’ work, and so we will continue to perpetuate the system so that others who look like them can do it that way too.”
I do not think the change in the American theatre has been as extreme as some would like for us to believe—because of what we have had to navigate and how we have had to navigate as artists throughout this pandemic. But navigating roadblocks and extremes is nothing new for folks who look like us.
ROBERT | Oh, this is just Tuesday. Only people who’ve never had to have this conversation think it’s difficult. To me, this is just a Tuesday conversation about race and gender and sexuality and making a safe space.
It’s very important that we are conscious of what we bring into a space. We all have to be conscious of the level of toxicity, even in the minute toxicity that we all bring into a space—our biases, our prejudices, our favoritisms. All those things that we, as human beings, bring into any space, now we have to be hyper-aware. But when I see, especially white artistic directors or white people tell me, “Well, now we have to do this because we’re now focused on this,” I’m like, “Well, I’ve been focused on that my entire career. You don’t have talk to me about diversity.”
Rachael Holmes, Tim Daly + Orlagh Cassidy in THE RUINS OF CIVILIZATION at Manhattan Theatre Club, directed by Leah C. Gardiner
PHOTO Joan Marcus
LEAH | Change and approaches to change are generational. How we examine our own biases is learned behavior over time. Recalibrating and rethinking where we are—as an industry—is a necessity, more than just the individual implicit bias work we’re all doing and being asked to do. It’s a much deeper systemic problem that has to be cracked open. Unfortunately, because the change is much slower than in other industries, it makes people like you and me, and colleagues of ours who will remain nameless, flee. As much as we’re keeping our foot in, as much as we love it and will continue to do theatre, we’re also thinking about other paths—out of necessity. We still have to ask ourselves, on every level, how can we re-navigate our own livelihood so that we can survive? What is it that we can do? How can my brand serve me artistically but also financially?
I am encouraged that a lot of us—especially the younger generation of theatre artists of color—have been thinking more about this. I did a master class for Anne Bogart at Columbia a couple of days ago. I explained to the students that for our generation, and for me as a Black woman coming up, there was Seret Scott and then there was me. I realized very early on, after having told an artistic director I would love one designer of color for a show I was working on, and finding that I couldn’t have any, because “they only really use people who know their theatre.” I realized then, “Wow, so this is what it’s going to be like...I’ll work when they need someone to do ‘The February Play.’ So…I’m going to have to figure out other ways to survive if I’m going to be a theatre artist in this country.” Thank God the company that my husband and I started has done well. There’s a scarcity mentality in this industry to begin with, but especially for people like you and me. The talent of BIPOC artists should be cultivated as much as our white allies. But as you said earlier, we’ve been focused on race, gender, and sexuality our entire careers—hell, our entire lives. It’s really unfortunate that this discrepancy exists and we’re not really addressing the heart of it.
Thaddeus Fitzpatrick, Kim Fischer + Joe Goldammer in MACBETH at DCPA Theatre Company, directed by Robert O’Hara
PHOTO Adams VisCom
ROBERT | In terms of being a person of color, we can never just be mediocre. White people can be mediocre and succeed and succeed over and over and over again. For the most part, people of color don’t have that luxury of succeeding AND being mediocre. We see constant examples where a white director can direct a show that was a flop. No one saw it. It got horrible reviews. And yet this director has nine more shows lined up. You know what I mean? Not only that, they’re directing plays by Black people, plays by other people of color, plays by women, plays by white people. So there seems to be a pipeline for white directors but not so much for directors of color.
LEAH | That’s right. That’s right. I have producers calling my agents and they’ll say, “Well, we know she’s booked until….But we’d love to see if she’s available for….” It’s like, “Finally.” How many years has that taken? How many years has it taken for me to be booked two and three years in advance? It’s taken a very long time. And it’s taken a long time for me to say, “No, I’m not going to do this project. You know what? This project with a different director would better serve this play.”
ROBERT | I don’t have to direct every play that’s offered to me. So many directing gigs in our early career are treated as if we should be lucky that they offered us a job.
I had a major artistic director look at me and say, “I heard that you took this job for the money.” And I felt like, “Well, hell, what do you do your goddamn job for? A bouquet of flowers? A pocketful of roses?” Yes, I took this goddamn job for money. Why do I have to do it for the love of the art? They make you feel like, “Oh, you should just be grateful that we allowed you in the building.” I’m like, “No, you should be grateful that I’m here, because I add value to you. I’m the artist. This is just a room with raked seats.”
LEAH | “And if you can’t see the importance of making a safe space for everyone, valuing me as an artist, we need to have a different conversation.”
I’m packing to fly out to work on a TV show tomorrow and I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to go up to storage to get the big bags because our apartment is so small, my closets can only fit carry-ons.” I’m excited to do this, but it brought back really painful memories of my mid years in the theatre—after I got past doing only the “February plays” and started getting asked to do Shakespeare, British world premieres, musicals—how I would repeat the cycle of coming home on Sunday after having opened a show on Saturday, repacked on Monday, and was on the road again that day for another Tuesday morning, 10 a.m. start…and so on and so on. It was constant and consistent, and I was grateful because we could eat, but that way of life took a toll on my body. It took a toll on my family. And it took a toll on our financial life. As a mother, I would lose money doing shows—bringing babysitters with me or having them come daily to the apartment to help my husband when he was at home with the baby. Being a mother in the theatre was hard. And to find the theatres who supported directors who were mothers made all the difference. But to walk into some toxic institutions where my being a mother was seen as an irritation, to not be allowed to have more than one designer of color, to be treated by leadership and staff both in ways no white man would ever be treated…? Thank God we have made some progress.
I often go back to what George [George C. Wolfe, Producer of The Public Theater, 1993– 2004, where Leah was Director-in-Residence and Robert was an Associate Artist] told us when we were younger: nobody can take your ability to tell stories away from you. Nobody, no matter how hard they try. You have to get the stories out. If there’s one thing we can say to the younger people, it’s that.
Ato Blankson-Wood, Bill Camp, Jason Bowen + Elizabeth Marvel in Audible Theater’s LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT at Minetta Lane Theatre, directed by Robert O’Hara
PHOTO Joan Marcus
ROBERT | We both were witness to the first African American, openly gay artistic director of one of the biggest institutions in the world. What I love about George is that he is a very interesting character and a very interesting mentor. Everyone would ask, “Well, how was it working with him?” I’m like, “This was not a patting-on-the-back and a ‘let me lead you down the aisle of my knowledge.’” You had to get what you could get, as much as you could get it, because he was going to be him 100 percent of the day. And if you got caught in that vortex, you got it that day.
Something about that kept me on point in a way. He was not going to pretend that there was no stress in this job, that there was no racism or homophobia in this job, or that he was perfect, and that everybody would be treated with kid gloves and told their worth. There was a lot of stuff that I would see. I would go, “I have to learn from this, because there is a time where I’m going to be tested as he was being tested.” That was quite exciting. He was brutally honest to me.
LEAH | You were not alone. He was brutally honest to me too! He still is!
ROBERT | I value that tough love. I didn’t want to go out into the real theatre world with rose-colored glasses. I think a lot of institutions, especially acting institutions, teach kids that everybody’s going to be equal, you’re going to get as many opportunities as the next person, and you’re going to be doing Shakespeare, you’re going to be doing Wilson, you’re going to be doing Edward Albee, you’re going to be doing Suzan-Lori Parks and all these amazing people. You get out there and you just see a barrage of rejection and “no” and “no,” and then—guess what?—“no” again. Teaching someone how to make “no” into an everyday relationship is important, and how to contextualize that so that the toxicity inside “no” doesn’t fully poison you to the profession. That’s something that we have to do: it’s an everyday struggle still for me to make “no” into a relationship that I can go to bed with.
LEAH | As you know, I’m married to an actor and we got together around 10 years into his career. He would go out and audition for something, and when he came home, he would rip up the sides. That was his metaphorical way of saying, “It’s over. Whether I get it or not, it’s done.” It was a beautiful lesson for me, as we continued to grow in our own relationship—artistically but also as a couple—about what it means to deal with rejection and how they don’t have to have the power when they tell you “no.” That’s one thing about George that I love implicitly, that he worked so hard and continues to this day to teach us they don’t have to have the power. They cannot take your power from you. That is the greatest lesson, as a mentor and as a teacher, he has ever given me.
I think I told you my father died recently. We had his memorial over the weekend and my eldest brother said, “Dad, you were an amazing father. If I could only be half the father you were.” His statement made me think about how we can serve as mentors for the next generation, thinking about which assistants and associates we’re going to bring into the rooms with us and how we are going to empower and educate in the way that George did with us. It makes being at this place in our lives and careers very profound.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson talks a lot about navigating the system to make certain that we can go in and say, “I want to make sure that my designers have an associate of color. Let’s build the pipeline, because you all are clearly not going to build it for us.” He’s right. We’re going to need to build this pipeline. I think that’s an encouraging part of how this narrative has shifted and changed. It’s about that empowerment. About recognizing our own power, even if—especially if—others don’t.
ROBERT | No one wanted me to be a writer AND a director. The only person I saw doing that was George C. Wolfe. Theatres just want to know exactly who you are so they can put you in this box and say, “Oh, that’s what you do? We don’t need that right now. We’re going to wait until we need that. Then we’ll call you.” It’s really important, I think, especially for young people, to know that you can’t allow someone to take away your joy, just because they said you can’t participate in their playpen.
LEAH | I think part of what you’re talking about is the historical relationship America has had to the codification of its people in order for a certain sector to maintain power. The American theatre is an exhibit of this great experiment. They are so used to having us historically coming in through the back door. Like paying us less. Of course, they’re not going to tell us where that door, that other door is…that we could use…no. Because they’re used to us going through the back door.
ROBERT | And making it look like it’s the front door.
LEAH | Right. You talk about the different hats that you wear in the American theatre. In my case, I’ve produced film, I’ve acted in film, I’m writing. I’m going to continue to tell the stories. If you’re going to tell me that I have to continue going in through the back door, I don’t need that kind of toxicity. Because that’s not where, as an artist, I plan to live. I’ll find another house, with a bigger table.
ROBERT | Asking us to create from toxicity is difficult. I remember having to jump through so many hoops to get the damn job that when I got in the room I was already exhausted. It takes much more labor than other people, who are welcomed and ask to simply create from their imagination and respect.
IF PRETTY HURTS UGLY MUST BE A MUHFUCKA at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Leah C. Gardiner
PHOTO Joan Marcus
LEAH | Yes! Because they can, because they’re not given the same kind of ugly that we are given. It is real. “How have we changed?” It’s clear how you and I have changed. “How has American theatre changed?”…
How are we communicating in rehearsal halls now? Now that we’re moving from a less hierarchical way of working into more of what people call a collaborative way of working? Ironically, that’s how I have worked for a long time and people have judged it, doubted my leadership or ability because of the openness of my process. I know a lot of my fellow women directors have experienced the same. It’s just a different approach to how you run a hall. There again, it’s the interesting inbetween: where we were, where we are, what will change…What are the expectations of us, and the expectations that we’re bringing into a room?
We see it on our streets AND our stages. It’s happening everywhere. America is really facing a generational reckoning that is painful.
ROBERT | I see also a lot of people of color and women being held responsible for what white men have institutionalized. In the last decade or so, a lot of women have taken over institutions. Now, in this day of reckoning, some of us have begun to believe that certain female leaders are the problem, because of what white men have gotten away with at their institutions and that women now have to clean it up or deal with it or justify it. Many women have been thrown under the bus of white supremacy that had been left to run amok for decades of toxic male leadership.
LEAH | It’s like being a Black woman Democrat. That’s exactly what you’re describing.
ROBERT | Every problem, every misstep is now a reason for your cancellation. There’s no nuance. There’s no irony. Some people should be brought into the light and shown their problems. But there also needs to be a sense of grace, a sense of honoring the sacred space of a room and also being able to fail, to make a mistake, to say the wrong thing, to get it wrong. And where we can all collectively give a moment of grace to the people who are making the mistake and making the wrong step and saying the wrong thing and having them acknowledge it, be accountable for it and move forward.
LEAH | It’s become very individualistic. How does a collaborative art with a very individualistic and self-motivated group of people come together and make art? There’s a shift. It’s a kind of ambition. There’s a difference between making art for art’s sake, for those who just love it, and then those who are making it for the sake of ambition. “I will do whatever it is that I need to do in order to make sure that I get enough followers, to get the check mark next to my name.”
INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY at The Public Theater, written + directed by Robert O’Hara
PHOTO Michal Daniel
ROBERT | And who is taking care of the director? Because the director somehow has to be responsible for everybody in the room, everybody backstage, and everybody in the audience. Take SLAVE PLAY, for example. I had a young person ask me, “How do you feel about the harm that you’ve done to people in the audience?” I’m like, I can’t take care of everyone. I walk through life as a queer man of color and ain’t nobody taking care of me. I can’t take care of every single living individual that walks into a space in which I’ve created. I have this motto I’ve been using for decades: “Everybody Is Welcome, No One Is Safe.”
Because we’ve begun to equate safe with comfortable. And my work makes people uncomfortable. My body makes people uncomfortable. And just by being alive and 51 years old and a homosexual and Black. I can’t make you comfortable with that. And because you are uncomfortable somehow you believe I’ve harmed you. But in the case of SLAVE PLAY I refused to make the audience comfortable. There is nothing comfortable about slavery and it shouldn’t be. Therefore some folks took that to mean the play is harmful.
And this whole idea of triggering—that’s part of my job as a director, to embed little triggers around, to make you laugh, to make you cry, to make you scared, to make you repulsed, to make you angry, to make you want to fight, to make you want to jump up and protect or denounce or snap your fingers or simply shout. Those little triggers are part of the job of taking you on the ride. Triggers are part of directing. Comfort is not. I want every person I work with to feel safe. But if we’re dealing with uncomfortable issues, I don’t want to make those issues comfortable for an audience. It should cost the audience something, just as it cost me something to direct it and it cost everyone creating it something to create it.
LEAH | Exactly. We’re storytellers, and we tell the stories from a sacred, artistic space and bring others along with us to collectively make change. Really, that’s why we signed on. But I think that what you’re saying about “who is taking care of the director” [is important], especially now that there are a number of conversations happening about looking at a less hierarchical system. At the Union, we can say to directors, “Take this implicit bias course, and understand what your own explicit and implicit biases are to help better educate you when you get into the room.” But then we’re going to get into the room with people who maybe haven’t taken the courses, don’t have the awareness, or don’t understand what that is. When someone asks you about harming them, and you say, “By asking me that, you just harmed me”—in some ways that’s necessary in order for both of you to get to the next step. But if there isn’t a conversation about it, then we’re in trouble. There are how many theatres in this country? How many theatres in New York? I don’t care how many DEI folks there are in this country—there are not enough to be in every one of these rooms. This is America. The work is hard. Making this country work is hard. And making art here is hard, especially when we’re carrying and leaning into our historical trauma.
We have intimacy choreographers coming in now, which is fantastic. It seems like a new microcosm of how we might look at what it means to reassess the idea of hierarchy. How do we navigate safety and identity and trauma in the room? Who leads the conversations and processes? What does that mean for the role of the director and their need to ensure the whole picture still comes together in a way that’s inclusive, and also cohesive? And then, at the end of the day, who’s helping the director navigate all of this “new”? Is the producer? Has the producer been educated? Well, if the producer is working from a lens of white supremacy—or if we’re talking about gender, race, ageism, you name it—have they been educated? Are they the person that we go to call on?
Sheldon Best in THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER at Atlantic Theater Company, directed by Leah C. Gardiner
PHOTO Ahron Foster
ROBERT | Part of the job, the real big job, of the director is to bring the people in the room that can create the space that you want to create. People always say to me, “Well, did you do that or did the choreographer or did the intimacy director or did the designer?” I’m like, “Well, I brought them into the room.” That is directing. Bringing them into the room and giving them agency is directing. I don’t have to direct your every moment and footstep of where to go. I brought you in here to do your job, and that’s part of directing. So its important to get people in there that you actually trust and that are engaged and that inspire you. I try to make a very loose and very fun and exciting room. We tell jokes, we rib each other. That sort of thing is necessary for me, especially when we’re dealing with very difficult subject matter.
LEAH | Let me ask you a question: the kind of jokes or ribbing or play—what we see as play, and do so successfully in our rehearsal halls, and we both agree one needs to create a sandbox environment in order to play—what is that going to be now?
ROBERT | I’m hoping that people who want to work with me, or think of working with me, do their research. I can only work at the level that I can work at. Because if I’m not engaged, then why am I here? If I’m here to be disengaged, I can do that at home. I can just turn on Netflix. But if I’m going to be engaged, there has to be a level of tension, an idea of getting into “good trouble” in the room that’s exciting for us to navigate and create a world, because that’s what we want in the play. I say often that I’m not interested in healthy characters. Who wants to sit around and watch folks who have their shit together and making every right choice and living their best life? I like getting into the nitty-gritty messiness of life. And maybe that’s just me. There are plenty of people invested in providing audiences with joy. I am not. I don’t even know what that looks like. I live my life investing in my joy. But I try to provide an audience with truth. And the truth is oftentimes stone-cold ugly. Sometimes it’s painful and laughable at the same time. Most times the truth is absolutely batshit crazy.
The relationship that you have to creating a play is the relationship that the audience will have to watching it. If you sit at a table talking for four and a half weeks and discussing every book and watching every documentary, then your production is going to look like that experience. Sometimes, you have to disrupt, as Anne Bogart says, the narrative in how you are creating, so that you can actually illuminate something that you didn’t even know was there.
LEAH | You and I and Anne Bogart and George Wolfe are familiar with that disruption, so that kind of shift in many ways is familiar. Pre-COVID-19, we were beginning to make a shift, and now post-COVID-19, what does that mean? Does that mean we have a conversation first, and say, “Now I am about to ask you to try this,” in a very gentle and kind way? “Are you okay with trying this?” Or, as you’re saying, when you’re in it and you’re excited by it and it’s thrilling and you go to an actor and you say, “Okay, do me a favor. Just try this. Let’s just play. Let’s just try this. Are you good with that?” Those are two very different ways of approaching a moment now.
ROBERT | That’s why I think it’s important that you have the conversation at the beginning of it, even in the audition, that you allow them to understand the type of experience that you’re hoping to have. If this experience is not something that one wants, that’s totally okay.
LEAH | That’s right. After all, one hopes we have gotten to a point where actors can tell their agents, “I’d rather not take this job.”
ROBERT | You don’t have to participate, because this is also my audition. You’re auditioning me to see if I’m the person that you want to spend four and a half weeks with. I did a show where I knew it was going to be outrageous and crazy and people were going to be creating their own movements, with a ton of men and lot of sexuality. [The all-male production was of Shakespeare’s MACBETH at the Denver Center Theatre Company in 2017.] At the callbacks, I said, “Look, this is the ‘get out’ conversation. I’m going to lay out all this madness that we’re going to be doing here. You should feel free, at the end of this, to say, ‘You know what? I’m getting out.’ But those who do want to take the journey, you can come back after the break.”
I want everyone to live inside that space where this may be uncomfortable, because it should be. That’s what we’re saying about this moment. This reckoning is uncomfortable and it SHOULD BE. That’s a conversation that we have to have as directors.
LEAH | I think it’s slightly different now. It’s important to periodically come back to the conversation to check in and just remind our collaborators that this is the conversation that we had at the beginning. Now that we’re moving into our [third] week, it’s going to get deep and it’s going to get harder. Let’s just reactivate that conversation so we’re reminded that we were all aware this is where we were going. Because there’s a reason so many people can’t communicate well, because people are afraid. There’s fear. They’re afraid to tell stories. We’ve taken on a profession that is basically, in many ways, the result of a paradoxical need to tell stories while possessing the fear to tell the stories. Hopefully we’re able, over the course of years, to learn how to not let that fear be the thing that drives you. But that’s not always the case with everyone who gets in the room with you. And you don’t learn that until you’re in the room.
ROBERT | I love that idea of always going back and making sure that the conversation is still being had, because the conversation is going to change and grow.
LEAH | That’s right. It’s going to change as you create and as you grow, but it must begin somewhere just like the grain of the mustard seed. There is a reason why the Bible talks about that grain of a mustard seed. Because that’s what it is at the end of the day: to plant that small seed each time we make art, in order to effect change and grow.
Elain Graham, Michael Rogers, Heather Alicia Simms (seated on floor) + Crystal A. Dickinson in BORN BAD at Soho Rep, directed by Leah C. Gardiner
PHOTO Carol Rosegg
