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[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, and welcome to the Drama Book Show! My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia. In this episode, we explore collaboration, accountability, and care in theatrical spaces, and how artists and organizations can reimagine the way creative processes function. We're joined by Nicole Brewer, theatre director, educator, and originator of the internationally recognized Antiracist Theatre, or ART model, and author of Antiracist Theatre. Rooted in the principles of transformative justice, Brewer's book combines memoir, self-exploration, and practical tools to examine position, power, privilege, harm, accountability, and care in the performing arts. Brewer is acting faculty at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and has more than 18 years of teaching experience.

Her work developing antiracist and anti-oppressive training methodologies has been featured at institutions and conferences across the United States, Canada, and the UK, including workshops with Shakespeare's Globe and the University of Cambridge. Her theatre directing work has been seen in Long Wharf Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, and Folger Theatre. Joining the conversation is Ann James, an intimacy and sensitivity specialist and the first Black intimacy coordinator on Broadway for Passover. James has worked extensively across Broadway, Off-Broadway, and touring productions, and is the founder of Intimacy Coordinators of Color. Here are Nicole Brewer and Ann James, live at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:41] Ann James: Okay, so we are gathered here. I'm just going to open us up a little bit for those that are going to be listening to this for infinity, because that's where we are. Hi, everyone, and welcome. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight at the Drama Bookshop, a room that has held more theatre history, more late-night arguments about craft, and more first drafts of brave ideas than almost any other room in this city. My name is Ann James, and I have the honor of sitting down tonight with someone whose work has fundamentally changed how I think about my own practice as a producer, a director, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about care and accountability in rehearsal rooms. Thank you.

Nicole Brewer is the originator of the internationally recognized antiracist theatre model. Faculty at Geffen, at Yale, all of these things you know. So just pull up a chair if you're there listening, or do dishes, whatever you're doing, and take a breath with us, because we're actually going to start with one. Nicole, welcome. I'm so glad you're here.

[2:59] Nicole Brewer: Thank you. I'm like reminding me to breathe. It's probably going to need to happen a lot tonight. One, I want to just say before we get started, I love that everybody who is in this space and room, and I heard they had to add chairs, but I want to shout out the W Trust Fund, which made it possible for me to even have a book tour and be here with you all tonight. So Nisi motherfuckin' Aya. That is my mentor, y'all. Yes. Nisi motherfuckin' Aya. And that's how I wanted in the transcripts of your drama bookshop too. Yeah. It's really important to support artists. I definitely appreciate you talking about the view of the book. There's so much that I'm learning about what it means to publish in this world right now and where the funds are to be able to go out and have these types of brave conversations with folks.

A lot of gratitude. A lot of gratitude, Wendy, hiding in the back there. So yeah, let's get even deeper into this. Let's get into it. We've already been relational. We had to speak to our people. Yeah, we did. Okay. We got water here to catch any like... There's an eclipse tonight. And so we have brought in all the goodness and we're also holding space for things to change. That's why the water is here. And also if you have water, hydrate, if you have something to drink, don't forget to hydrate. I will now. And I brought my journal. And so if anybody else is like me where writing helps you with your thoughts, I'll be taking notes as we go as well. Okay. All right. We're ready? Yeah.

[4:44] Nicole Brewer: So about that breath, can we just ground ourselves if we're able on the floor, just have those that are able to put their feet on the floor? Let's start with the breath. It's woven through the whole book. What it is about breath and theatrical training that makes it foundational to this work and not just a nice add-on. So let's breathe together. Just three breaths in and then out. Ready? Breathe in and breathe out. And let it out with a sigh. Thank you for that. Talk to me a little bit about breath and your work and really breath and Black artists specifically. What is different about the relationship to breath within the Black community of artists? I know in terms of my experience, because I don't want to get in trouble in that diaspora, Blackness is so vast and so wide, but I will say in spaces that are held inside a community, breath is free.

It is freer. Right? And I think there is a rhythm and a pacing to how we are with each other that allows more creativity to be present in how we're moving. And what I noticed for myself as a Black body that went to a historic Black college and then I went to a white institution for grad school is I noticed the restriction of breath. And then when I was in theaters and spaces first as an actor, it was the same. This restriction. And especially, I was just horrible at auditioning. What kind of actor am I? I just could not figure it out. But my breath would be so constricted inside of those spaces and right before I went into the room and so on and so forth. I think what I never did was connect the restriction and oppression of my breath to any sort of racism or structural oppression.

It seems like, duh, now inside of this conversation, but I hadn't before. Leslie Ishii, who I cite often, who is the artistic director of Perseverance Theater in Juneau, is a voice coach herself and actor, often talks about breathing in your own rhythms. And I just took that nugget from Leslie and ran with it because it felt like a spell. A remembrance of how vast and wide my breath can be. Even just breathing in this space with all of you all, feeling each one. And I love theater folks because we're so fucking woo woo. Let's breathe. Okay. Ready. But feeling me release a lot of tension that was held in points from the day. So I can be a little more present in this moment. So I appreciate you starting us off in that way.

Wonderful. Thank you for that. And one of your mantras here is being free and what it means to be free. How have you found, how have you found freedom in the work that you do? What release do you get from doing the work that you do?

[8:39] Nicole Brewer: And not in front of company, because the real answer, oh, Elena, I see you boo. There'll be more and more of this as we go on and I start to see people, but I'm not free. Right. And I think it's important to say that. And to be really honest about my inner critic and to be honest about the way that I see or feel about myself inside the work. I am practicing for the release that I know is coming and hopefully will come before I draw my last breath, but I'm not there. I'm not. And so it's when people tell me about the impact that the care inside of how I thought about the container, how I worked to use the power that I had to diminish the impact of fuckery in these spaces is afterwards that I'm like, oh, okay.

Right. Finding the courage and the bravery to continue because the real truth of it is, there is a lot of like unstated backlash that happens when you're moving against the system. I'm with my people. Yeah. With my people. I didn't, I didn't hear you. And so I fight with that. I fight with why am I not further along in my career? I fight with what, why can't I, why can't I be considered for this thing? I fight with a lot of that stuff and wish that there on some days, right? Thank God, lesser and lesser. Why can't I just shut the fuck up and let myself be oppressed so that I can not have to worry about how I'm going to pay my bills or if I have health insurance or any of these other tensions that come from speaking freely.

Yeah. Freer. Freer. Yeah. Because if I really, this is what I said about writing the book. I was like, when I, the first draft of this book and we're like 40 drafts in at this point, it was just like, fuck white supremacy. The end. Publishers like you got 49,000 more words in your contract, not the end. Right.

[11:06] Ann James: So yeah, I love it. I love that. Okay. So in the book, how many of, oh, you can't have read it because you're going to get assigned it. Has anyone read the book? Totally. Yeah. So the book is designed in such a way that there are times to have exercises and times to journal and times to reflect on what you have read because there's some diamonds in there and there are places where you have to take a moment and polarity is a place where I would like to take us next. I want to look at the structure of American theater for a moment. The foundation of the tapestry really is what the birth of Broadway, which is minstrelsy taught us. So where we are now is where we were then in for all intents and purposes.

And something specific and recent that I keep thinking about head to head race with the Tony's between Cats, the Jellicle Ball on one side and Ragtime on the other side. On the one hand, you have the ecstasy of pure Black queer trans joy. On the other, the glorification of judicial and social unaliving of two Black main characters with racial slurs thrown in there that not only the company had to endure, but that the audience takes back out into the world with them. Can you expand on your theory on the David and Goliath of it all when it comes to Black people and people of color in this industry and the commercialization of racial trauma?

[12:52] Nicole Brewer: Just a little bit. Ann! Motherfucking put some respect on my name, James, okay?

[13:02] Ann James: I will, there's only one little part of that I think I can get into, which is...

[13:06] Nicole Brewer: Do what you can.

[13:08] Ann James: Do all my best. That trauma aspect that you talked about in terms of the audience, in terms of the collaborators, I think about this a lot in my own directorial practice of audience as the last theatrical element. And so, in any of the work that I do, I don't think about them later. I think about them just in the beginning. They're just as important as when I'm calling people and being like, Are you available? Will you cast us, please? Or are you available for your stunning designer craftsmanship to be a part of this production, to casting it? So I think about the audience. And it's because I start with this question of like, How is the thing that I've been asked to facilitate and to lead medicinal?

And for whom? So those two questions for me already activate me around the somatic experience that has to be present for a story to be told, right? The space is not the thing that is holding it. It is our bodies. Because the space isn't alive. And so, I think some of my points of curiosity inside of commercial ventures is around the thoughtlessness and the bodies that have to hold and process this story that you're telling. And why. And the lack of accountability inside of people who are telling these stories to think more vastly about that, right? So I'm excited if Broadway ever has a version of itself that starts to be centered around how humans move through processes. And not dollars and cents, right? So, there's that.

[15:01] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, I'm going to leave that there.

[15:03] Ann James: That's good. That's really good. I think it's really interesting to think about. I had the most fortunate experience of working on both shows as sensitivity specialist. And so I worked on Cast the Jellicle Ball. And then I also worked on Ragtime. And what we were able to find in the cast of Ragtime was a process that allowed everyone, from wherever they were coming from on the story and through the story, to connect with one another about being storytellers. So the foundation of the work was let's have the conversation. And let's also be kind to one another through the process. And to be honest about the things we know and the things we don't know. But not to ask questions of the people in the room.

Google. Find the baseline information that you would like to ask another person about their identity. And find a scope and scale for what the answer might do to the person answering the question. And how it might land on them mentally, physically, spiritually. Because we have to do a show tonight. And I have to walk out into Miss New York and not get hit by a cab because I'm thinking about something that happened. Or a question that you've asked. My cast member who I care for and who we make this thing happen every night. But I need to be able to de-roll from this process in a way that allows me to start fresh at the top of every show. Cast the Jellicle Ball was a little different. We were asking people who were not theater trained to come into Broadway.

Which was a huge leap and a huge jump. And I will say honestly that the work that could have been done was not done. And there was resistance from the top. No, let's do the show. Let's have this person do 10 death drops a night. Which ends up being 80 a week. Or 80 a week because doubles. And not have the PT available to support that. And pushing against that and asking. No, we only have this much. And so that took a toll on morale. And when you don't have people who are basically traumatized by the ideology that we have. You know, let's just do the show. Come on, let's get it. We got it. Yell out things that you've heard. Come on. Show must go on. Somebody else will do the job. Somebody else will do it if you don't. You better keep your job. That kind of oppression from the top is definitely something that we have to unpack. We need to start unpacking that. And soon.

[18:21] Nicole Brewer: I like that you bring that up though because I'm thinking about the polarity. And to think about experiences that I have been in where actor is commodity. Actor is not human. So I don't actually have to consider your humanity when I'm asking these questions. Because I bought you. Aren't I paying for you? I remember one of these institutions I was working at. And it was actually a black one. The actors were so fatigued. And they knew their lines. But this was one of these rehearsals where nobody knew their lines. But they had just known them the night before. And so I was like, I think it's better if you all just go and rest. And I remember being cornered by the person who told me they wrote the checks.

And they decided whether these people worked or not. And they thought it was better for them to do a line speed through or whatever. And required them to come back into rehearsal. And so I just bring that up because that's one example of I paid for you. And when we're talking about oppression. I'm not a historian. I don't want to go into all of that. But it's not hard for us to draw the parallels around this sense of ownership. That happens also in our non-profits. This ownership of your time. Of your response. Of you doing extra stuff that is not written in your job description. The lack of job description so they can get away with telling you to do more. And those polarities of whatever brought you there in the first place.

Because I don't want to pretend that we all love the theater for the same reasons. It has touched us in different ways. And shaped us in different ways. And we have to start honoring that. We have to start piecing through the nuance of what it means to be tithing your time, talent, and artistry into this particular, sacred, embodied art form.

[20:15] Ann James: Most definitely.

[20:19] Nicole Brewer: You define art, anti-racist theater, as a framework for black liberation through anti-racist possibility. Designed to motivate people to engage the healing technology of anti-racism in every aspect of theater. From grant writing to closing night. Even if you are not black, centering black liberation is beneficial for you too. Because anti-blackness is the root logic of the racial caste system in the United States. Can you share your epiphany moments when anti-racist theater was actually born in you? How did this come to and through and out of you? Mentor Nisi Aya. Does any of that sound familiar? It should. It should. Inspired by people like Nisi who just boldly declare who Nisi is when Nisi is in a room.

With zero apologies. It's a superpower. And I love you for it. Right? Modeling that it's a survivable event to be who we are is something I never get tired of seeing. And in terms of root logic, I even start processes by saying there's going to be misogynoir that's happening here. And so before it even gets two shades to the left, let's just say it's in the room. And then let's talk about the conditions of engagement so we can address it and be accountable to it when it happens. But back to this offering to there is an actor and teacher by the name of Forrest McClendon, who?

[22:11] Ann James: Oh, yeah. Forrest, speak the boo-boo into the space.

[22:15] Nicole Brewer: I'm even taking on Forrest's tone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And Forrest talks about spells. And I first met Forrest on the campus of the National Theater Institute at the O'Neill. And Forrest loves to grab you and look you dead in your eyes and just see everything about you and then speak life over you. And I remember that I was back home in D.C. and all of a sudden I said, anti-racist. I'm not even joking. Anti-racist theater. Oh, it's a spell. And then I think I text Forrest immediately or something like that. I just cast my own spell and which Forrest was like, yes, yes, yes. So I know in terms of that terminology, it came off of hitting in those ways. But in terms of coming to what I wrote there, it's shaped by Nisi.

Right. It's shaped by Victor and the conversations. Oh, yeah, boo-boo. And the conversations that we had about casting. Right. It's shaped by watching Deidre. It's shaped by Queen. Yeah. Sophia Skiles, who's in the space here, whose analysis can just rip you to shreds while still smiling at you very nicely. Right. Melissa Kieveman, whose boldness and in her creativity. It's also in these relationships. Melissa Kieveman is a white woman. You hear M.K.? There's my boo. I don't really fuck with white women. I think I have to say that I've been hurt so many times by white women saying they want liberation and justice for all. And using that as the platform to get the power that they secretly always wanted.

And then they don't know who the hell you are anymore. And the women who I have relationships with and who that trust has been built, they exist to me. Almost like what James Baldwin said of the white teacher that he had of the hope and possibility of the future that I'm talking about, that we can see each other's humanity, that we can hold each other up. So I'm shaped by that. Right. And that I never, ever want to lose hope. And there are times when I do. And I'm just like in my sunken place. And all of those kind of baser level feelings come in jealousy. Why does this person get to have this or do that or all these other types of things? But I just realized that is a two way street. Do you know what I mean?

In terms of and also I can't get out of it. And so trying to stop that voice inside of my head, trying to pour love into people who I seemingly am like, want whatever that is that they are presenting, but they're probably suffering inside of all of that. You know, these side conversations and what I really want to swap what they have just for more acclaim or shine. Now, I do want money. I do like to pay my bills and on time. But I don't want to be in more situations where I am continuing to sacrifice my health and years off my life for somebody else who are strangers whose opinions of me don't matter for them to quote unquote want what I have. So I feel like I've gone left. Let's get back to where you are.

[25:24] Ann James: No, you're right on time because my next question is for the white folks in the room tonight. How does this book call people in to anti-racist theory, adoption and implementation? I don't know. I don't. I really don't.

[25:43] Nicole Brewer: I'm just like, look, the epiphany with Forrest and The Spell and the other people who have touched me was about healing. And that D-E-I-A, it was these nice little bullet point lessons for white folks. It was like this word, you are doing these things. Stop doing these things. And that really was the conversations that white people were having. Oh, I have to stop. It's taking up so much space. I will now let you speak. I used to call it D-I-E, not D-I-E, not the die. I was so excited about it when I first heard about it. Like in 2010, coming out of the corn was where I went to graduate school. I do not name that place except for to call it the corn. And I was like, oh, yes, okay. And because it was born of movement work, it lived inside of me as possibility, right?

There's possibility here for us. It wasn't until years later that I was like, oh, oh, oh. And that's from all the conversations that we're having where white people would get hostile or angry, take up space. They'd be like, I have a question. And then they list all the black people who they thought loved them as the shield for why they weren't racist at all. So what I would say about the invitation to white folks is I'm not censoring you, but the invitation to your healing is the same for all of us. The theater industrial complex, people have heard, who have taken my workshop, they've heard me say it. It is racist. Racism is a form of abuse. Abuse causes harm. That's not just for black, indigenous people of color.

That's for white people too. It has literally corrupted your imagination. And I don't know any greater harm. So inside of that, the invitation is for you to be curious about who you could be. And in terms of my community that has helped me to see that healing doesn't exist on just this plane. You can go back and heal some stuff from the ancestors of yours who need some healing wherever their energy exists. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The work starts with you is what I say. The work begins in this group of cells that have at one time, billions and billions of years ago, were stardust. And what we can do in these bodies with these minds and these spirits is create change within ourselves.

[28:24] Ann James: I have a question that it kind of piggybacks on that because a lot of people, and I'm not just saying any particular group of people, but a lot of people think that they might get it wrong. So they don't do anything. They're frozen.

[28:36] Nicole Brewer: That's just the white people. I'll say it. It's just the white people and got to work. Like a lot of scared. They're scared of getting it wrong. Scared of being called out, scared of saying the wrong thing. Should there be a place for people that feel that way? And I'm going to say white folks that feel that way because some white folks don't feel that way. They are a part of the abolition. They are part of the revolution. They are part of change. But for those that are still fearful, how do we create or hold space or suggest something for them to do to shake them up and change their perspective?

[29:19] Nicole Brewer: Get a friend. Get a friend who's already further along in this work, right? I think it's just an opinion thing for me. And I would say my opinion is what works best for me is people modeling that things are survivable events. If you really want to be in authentic relationship, if you really want to figure out those points of you that you don't have access to anymore, that fear is a kind of a healthy indicator because you have strategies for survival like we all do, right? And so to move outside of those boundaries is a scary thing because what happens when I do? But I have found at least for myself that the relationships that I've been able to have with other people has come from me being terrified and afraid of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing and being cast out of relationship, which is exactly how this system and society that we live in works, right?

When you mess up, what happens, right? So in terms of the U.S., there is not a lot of modeling of what it means to stay tethered to people. And that's why I talk about anti-blackness being the root logic because we were disposable. And that corruption of imagination, that lack of seeing us as human also affects white people, right? And so this kind of afraidness of if I'm wrong, where do I go? And then also I think for some there is a fear of their legacy being erased, right? If they admit to those wrong doings that were allowed at the time, still wrong, but allowed. So I don't know. I'm wrong every day. God, that's what having kids is, people. I tell people all the time my kids won't let me be great. You know what I mean? And I'm still here. And I'm still here.

[31:18] Ann James: You are still here.

[31:19] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. So it's okay. Truly it is. Thank you very much. And I was recently interviewed and asked about a statement that I made comparing the theater industry to the industrial revolution and what was happening at that time. And I can see it in the faces of the people that I work with when I'm in these rooms of, oh, we're on an assembly line. At some point, I'm going to be replaced. And this is my one shot and I better do a good job and I better be a good person and I better follow the rules or my time to shine will be diminished because there's somebody right behind me that's ready to take my place.

[32:04] Nicole Brewer: Same thing with injuries and health care and mental health. I've got to pretend that I'm not this or this because if somebody sees the cracks, they're going to come find me, seek me out, fire me, and then I'll be back doing whatever I was doing before this opportunity came. And I feel that runs not only for people who are on the stage, but it's also IOTC folk. It's union folk. It's people who are under the grueling pressure of what was started with when the industrial revolution came to us and how the work ethic, the nine to five, the 40 hours a week, it's all based on that. Our schedule is based on that. We weren't 10 out of 12s until someone stood up because so many people in the unions were having car wrecks because they were exhausted trying to get home an hour and a half away because they could not afford to live close to the theaters anymore.

But something changed. And I don't want this to happen again. We have to create a moment where we're saying we're in a renaissance. Let's do something new. Let's rebirth this thing in a way that we can value because we're not in the 19th century. We're in the 21st damn century. And not much has changed. So being able to step out, being able to say, hey, this is something that we can change if we want to. And the big operative words are if we want to, I think will be valuable for us moving forward. If we want to. Because we can. We can do it. Yeah. Moving on. Y'all having a good time. Okay. Your book invites the global majority readers that pick it up in one way and calls in the white theater makers and creators and people in another way. So you know the book is two books. It's two books. Why did it matter to you to write two different to two different audiences at once in the same book?

[34:21] Nicole Brewer: So the reality is I've read a lot of books on race a lot. And at the particular time that I came up in the industry, there wasn't a lot that I could find about the kind of systems of oppression that were impacting me inside the industry as an actor because all of my degrees were in acting. And so I'm reading Dr. Cornell West's books. I'm reading just Angela Davis. I'm reading anything. I could just be like, it's not you. It's the system. And so I read the older generation, James Baldwin's, I read their stuff, the Audre Lorde's, all that. Right. And then I moved to the new generation of race books. So I would say a new generation of race books for me includes Tim Wise. I was a white like me, something like that.

I'm just thinking about all the folks that have come since then. Of course, Robin D'Angelo's work and all this other kind of stuff. Right. And then the black people who were writing new race books. And I began to realize that the black people writing these race books, they would have a whole sections that were written to white people. And I'm in my book. It's not for me, but I can't miss anything. So I keep reading it. But you're clearly not talking to me, even though the book was marketed as it was for all of us. And so that was one thing that was in my mind. I was like, I don't know how I can write a book inclusive of white people and not perpetrate the same kind of situation. And so what I'm saying about the book now is like, listen, we're all talking about systems of oppression, but we ain't all having the same conversation.

And so that's why I was like, we need to have, I need to do this. But as I was saying at another one of these events, I what I didn't realize in the theory of that is how trained I am to white people to appease them. So I wrote the book, bam, wrote the global majority side of the book first. And there would and then I wrote the white side. And there would be times when I finished writing and I'd read my chapter for the global majority side, and I had written to white people. And I was like, fuck, start again. I did, right? Because both sides of the book, they're not set up. It's the same framework, but it's not set up the same. So it's not like I was like, just put that over there for later, right?

It really was trash. And that happened multiple times. And I'd be sitting at my computer, like sobbing and shit. Why? Why is this happening? But I think ultimately, it just became a learning for me that there's still so much deeper that I, Nicole Brewer have to go and releasing, releasing this need, possibly to hold them in my spirit in any way. But or anybody, what does it really mean to love ourselves, not as some self help wellness bullshit, because I'm just trying to practice it one second a day. Do you know what I mean? But to truly find freedom inside of what I was given, and how I was formed and how I was shaped. As I move through the space.

[37:47] Ann James: I love that. And what it says to me is that living in an authentic life and living with authenticity is ritual. It's waking up every day. It's realizing the person you're looking at in the mirror is not perfect and not finished and not living in the greater sense of the world of I've got to be anything today. I just have to put one foot in front of the other and tell the truth. And that's very that's terrifying. A lot of the times because if we really told the truth, sometimes people might not like what we have to say. But it's important that we try.

[38:35] Nicole Brewer: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to talk about the Antiracist Theatre model and the work that we're doing.

[39:05] Ann James: Absolutely, Nicole. It's such an important conversation to have, especially in the current climate of the theater industry.

[39:35] Nicole Brewer: Yes, and I think one of the key aspects of the Antiracist Theatre model is about reimagining how we collaborate as artists. It's about creating spaces where everyone feels valued and heard.

[40:05] Ann James: That's so crucial. Can you share a bit about what inspired you to develop this model?

[40:35] Nicole Brewer: Definitely. My journey began with my own experiences in theater, where I often felt marginalized. I realized that many of us have stories that need to be told, and I wanted to create a framework that allows for those stories to be shared in a meaningful way.

[41:05] Ann James: That's powerful. How do you see the role of accountability in this process?

[41:15] Nicole Brewer: Accountability is essential. It means recognizing our own privileges and biases and being willing to address them. It's about creating a culture where we can hold each other accountable in a constructive way.

[41:25] Ann James: And that requires a lot of vulnerability, doesn't it?

[41:35] Nicole Brewer: Absolutely. Vulnerability is key to building trust among collaborators. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we open the door for deeper connections and more honest conversations.

[41:45] Ann James: I love that. Can you talk about some practical tools that you include in your book?

[41:55] Nicole Brewer: Sure! The book includes exercises that encourage self-reflection and group discussions. These tools help artists explore their own identities and how those identities impact their work.

[42:05] Ann James: That's fantastic. It sounds like a great resource for both new and experienced artists.

[42:15] Nicole Brewer: Yes, I hope it serves as a guide for anyone looking to create more inclusive and equitable spaces in theater.

[42:25] Ann James: Speaking of inclusivity, how do you address the issue of power dynamics in the rehearsal room?

[42:35] Nicole Brewer: Power dynamics are a huge part of the conversation. It's important to acknowledge who holds power in a given situation and to actively work to redistribute that power among all participants.

[42:45] Ann James: That sounds like a challenging but necessary process.

[42:55] Nicole Brewer: It can be challenging, but it's also incredibly rewarding. When everyone feels empowered, the creative process becomes richer and more dynamic.

[43:05] Ann James: I can see how that would lead to more innovative work.

[43:15] Nicole Brewer: Exactly! When we create an environment where everyone can contribute their ideas, we often end up with something truly unique.

[43:25] Ann James: And what about the audience? How do you think they fit into this model?

[43:35] Nicole Brewer: The audience is a vital part of the equation. We need to consider how our work impacts them and how we can engage them in the conversation around race and equity.

[43:45] Ann James: That's a great point. Engaging the audience can help foster a deeper understanding of the themes we explore in our work.

[43:55] Nicole Brewer: Yes, and it can also challenge them to reflect on their own biases and assumptions.

[44:05] Ann James: I love that. It's all about creating a dialogue, isn't it?

[44:15] Nicole Brewer: Absolutely. Dialogue is essential for growth, both for artists and audiences alike.

[44:25] Ann James: So, what do you hope readers take away from your book?

[44:35] Nicole Brewer: I hope they feel inspired to take action in their own communities and to challenge the status quo in their artistic practices.

[44:45] Ann James: That's a powerful message, Nicole. Thank you for sharing your insights with us today.

[44:55] Nicole Brewer: Thank you for having me, Ann. It's been a pleasure to discuss these important topics with you.

[45:05] Ann James: Likewise! I look forward to seeing how the Antiracist Theatre model continues to evolve.

[45:15] Nicole Brewer: Me too! It's an exciting time for theater, and I'm hopeful for the future.

[45:25] Ann James: Thank you to everyone for joining us today. We hope you found this conversation as enlightening as we did.

[45:35] Nicole Brewer: Yes, thank you all! Let's keep the conversation going.