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[0:00] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's theater podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes on Broadway, off Broadway, and around the country. I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:12] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Nicole Brewer, the anti-racist theater consultant, director, actor, and educator. She's written about racism and equity for outlets like American Theater and HowlRound, and as an educator and teaching artist, she facilitates anti-racist theater training around the world. As black theater makers are now reminding us once again of the systemic racism they've experienced and keep experiencing, and as Broadway and the theater industry at large struggles to hold itself accountable, Brewer and her work can give theater people a glimpse of what's required to make lasting change. She's in the virtual studio with me to talk about carrying the momentum of right now forward into our day to day. Hi, Nicole. Thanks for joining me.

[1:01] Nicole Brewer: Hi, Gordon. Thank you for the invitation.

[1:04] Gordon Cox: So to start out, just tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you do.

[1:08] Nicole Brewer: Great. Thank you for that. So for your listenership, my name is Nicole Brewer, and my pronouns are she, her, hers. And I'm calling you today from the ancestral lands of the Yamase and the Muscogee people, also known as Savannah, Georgia, which is where I've been quarantining for the last three months with my parents. But I am an anti-racist theater maker, and that just kind of breaks down into I direct, I act, I'm a writer, activist, and I'm an educator who is actually based out of Washington, D.C. Yeah, so some of the other kind of identities that show up for me is I'm a board member of PAL, which stands for the Parent Artist Advocacy League, which is an organization that is set up to kind of bring caregivers into this theatrical conversation in the theater industrial complex.

And I'm one of the five female-identified producing collective that organically happened when COVID hit that created a website called freelanceartistresource.com, and it is this website that supports artists, freelance artists, providing resources like mutual aid and health and all these other types of aspects that were being dropped or not attended to. Yeah, so.

[2:32] Gordon Cox: And anti-racist theater training has been one of your focuses for a long time now, but tell us about sort of when that became a focus for you and what prompted your sort of move into, you know, pushing for that.

[2:38] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, racism. Yeah, so really just going, what happened, Gordon, is that I tried to do everything that I was told that I needed to do in order to have a career in the theater. I got those degrees, so I have a BFA in acting, I have an MFA in acting. And what I found pretty quickly on was that the education that I received, so my BFA was special because it came from Howard University, which is a historic black college. And I didn't understand the racism that was percolating within my education because I was surrounded by blackness. And so when I got to graduate school and the stories that they were telling about like what it took to succeed and these ideas of like culture of exhaustion and things like that really began to bump up against that Howard education, that theater history that dove, didn't start with the Greeks and went much further back.

So yeah, I began to kind of go, what is this? Why am I not feeling welcomed? Why don't I have this sense of belonging? Why do I have to deny a vast part of who I am in order to work with having like an effect on my health and some other things? And so when I graduated from my MFA program, you know, being back into the professional world, I got pigeonholed in terms of like only being called for the black show to audition. And I can't sing, right? It's like, I can't do the musical. So it's like even less work. And then being the particular dark skin and beautifully melanated black woman that I am, that opened up a whole nother like sense of prejudice and biased around anti-blackness, being as tall as I am.

So there was just a lot of issues, but I like to tell people that I had a bit of Stockholm syndrome with theater because it's been so abusive to me, but I just can't quit it. So it's like, you know, trying to find how I belong, what that welcoming is. And because I tried to do all of the steps that I was told to do in order to be successful and I failed, I had nothing to risk when I decided to begin to experiment and to begin to ask questions about how could this be more inclusive? How can this be anti-oppressive? Because I didn't start with anti-racism. I started with equity, diversity, and inclusion. And then saw pretty quickly that that was just performative in itself. Then I went to decolonize. That phrase in itself, right?

[5:32] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. The value statements. And behind closed doors, you would have that BIPOC community, black, indigenous, and POC people, right? Speaking openly about the trauma, the terror, the pain, the suffering that they were experiencing in the theater industrial complex. So these two things don't go together, right? And wanting to find that bridge where those private conversations that are being shared in trust and in community could be shared with white people because I do believe our collective liberations are tied to one another, right? So we have to find our way back to one another. Yeah.

[6:10] Gordon Cox: And how before George Floyd and the protests, how many theaters and theater makers were having this conversation? How many people were interested in it?

[6:18] Nicole Brewer: Specifically this phrase, anti-racist theater, right? That is something that not a lot of people were using or saying. And people would come to sessions or things like that that I was hosting out of curiosity. What is anti-racist theater? What is this? How does that show up? I know that we need it, but I don't know what you're talking about. So I was out there working real hard trying to make it a thing, trying to make it trendy in the sense, not that it was being co-opt, but in a sense that people could find themselves in this movement and find their own agency around the work, right? So I would say very little, but that there were a lot of conversations happening with theaters across. So I work in the United States. I also work in the UK. And I'm an anti-racist theater consultant for folks over there as well. So it was the beginnings of it, but I think if COVID hadn't hit, it was still very much in a slower, it was happening slower.

[7:28] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And as you mentioned, you do these anti-racist workshops, theater workshops. What are those? How do they describe what that experience will be like for people?

[7:35] Nicole Brewer: Cool. So how I define anti-racist theater, since it wasn't a thing once I went from equity, diversity, inclusion to decolonizing theater, and I moved away from decolonizing theater to anti-racist theater, specific because for me, decolonizing theater is important, but it's around the return of the sovereignty and the indigeneity of the land. And I am not indigenous to Turtle Island, right? The United States and the North American continent. So I am an ally for that. I'm an accomplice for that, but I was like, okay, that still doesn't allow for how I show up. And so the work of anti-racist theater, I just have to tell you, Gordon, it's just going back a little bit, is that I have read and been involved in various social movements for social justice.

And I took that information and applied it to the theater industrial complex. So anti-racist theater, what I teach is defined as practices and policies that actively acknowledge, that's really important, and interrogate racism, generating dynamic anti-racist values and policies that counter the oppression of any people in any aspect of education or the production of theater, right? And so because I've got all these degrees in theater, because I like to be in my body and moving, and because I'm constantly thinking about the different modalities of healing, in my workshops, we engage in creating ashes, which are sound circles, and we get together, and we're seated in a way in which people can see one another, but we also, because these conversations are really tender, and they're really difficult, and the roots of racism are so pernicious, they're so deep, that we don't have like face-to-face conversations, right?

We have conversations with post-its, and we have conversations by breaking out into smaller groups, and just breaking down how it shows up in the industry, and also what we can do to counter it, so that people can always expect to leave a workshop or a session with an action plan about how they can show up, that doesn't like, this is me with my little protest sign, doesn't require to be like activated with their protest sign, but they can be activated towards an anti-oppression, anti-racist culture, that feels like their heart's work, feels like they're in service to their beloved community. And this is for everyone from performers to administrators to anyone in the theater industry, is that right?

[10:22] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, I work in the theater industrial complex period, so theaters have hired me, I have a private consultation service, I work individually with folks, and then educational institutions have hired me to come in and do workshops with them as well.

[10:34] Gordon Cox: Right, and are these a series of workshops, or a single workshop, or does it vary based on?

[10:38] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, it varies based on their budget, right? And their support, and like where they are on the spectrum of beginning to turn and face their own racism, because I can't say this enough, Broadway and the theater industrial complex is racist, and I just, for my work, I want people to go, who am I, if I can have that thought without also attaching it to, that makes me a horrible person, or that makes me a bad person, or that, you know, this completely sucks me into inaction, to go, I can have that thought, I can lift that up, and then I can say, what are the ways in which I can counter this racist system, structures, ideas, with an anti-racist practice or protocol, you know, so really trying to get people to get away from, oh, this is taboo, or, oh, this is, I'm non-racist, which isn't a thing, to going, okay, how am I thinking about social location?

How am I thinking about how I even think that something is excellent? How am I thinking about funding? How am I thinking about the words and credibility to be able to talk to certain people or to be invited to do things? How am I thinking about those people who aren't around and beginning to activate your own agency to do something different?

[12:01] Gordon Cox: Yeah, and it sounds like a big part of this is learning to recognize it in yourself and all over the, and all around you, right, is sort of identifying it.

[12:07] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, exactly.

[12:10] Gordon Cox: And then there, I imagine there are different strategies for confronting something that happens in the moment versus recognizing a sort of a larger, you know, broader organizational systemic kind of racism that is then, has to be confronted in an entirely different way, I imagine. Am I right about that?

[12:32] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, I mean, I guess it just depends on the organization and the people and like what their goals are, because that brings us back to being performative, right? So we can see in the last week, there has been an onslaught of statements from theaters to...

[12:50] Nicole Brewer: Education institutions to target. So many people speaking out about this particular injustice that was just the right time of people being quarantined, but also that particular video of that officer's face, and just that inability for that person to hear another human being asking for breath, right? This very, even when I'm teaching, I talk about the breath and the sacredness of breath, because when we think about it, right, it's like, when you come into this world, you're birthed into this world, that's one of the first things they check for. Are you breathing? And when you exit this world, it's one of the first things they check for. Are you breathing? So I want to speak to that performative nature of the value statements that came out that don't have the action behind it.

But I also want to name, in terms of anti-racist theater, there are three guiding principles. They're harm reduction, harm prevention, and relationship repair. So when we're looking at that, these statements that come out and looking at those guiding principles, does that fit under relationship repair? Hey, we've got work to do. We see the ways in which we have been a part of your oppression, and we are working to disengage ourselves and disentangle ourselves from that so that we can move forward in a liberated capacity, knowing that we're going to make mistakes, so that we can be in right relationship with one another. Or is it about not wanting to be called out, right, on platforms and then having to hire a PR person to backtrack and prove to the world how non-racist, I'm doing these air quotes, so your leadership, your leadership, your air quotes, how non-racist they are, right?

[14:40] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, those statements that you mentioned, they came late in many cases. They were criticized for coming so slowly and often for, as you mentioned, being sort of softened or sometimes perceived as mealy-mouthed and not really sounding like they were committed to change. And, you know, there were people questioning, you know, why did this take so long? Why is this language so soft? And I feel like any of us who have worked in the theater understand sort of exactly how that happened, because there's this whole infrastructure of, well, it has to go through the board of directors and this entire executive team, or these protectors of a brand or something like this, and all these people that are sort of, this structure that is built around sort of self-preservation in terms of preserving a fan base or a funding base and things like that. That strikes me as exactly the system that we are talking about when we talk about systemic racism. Am I right about that?

[15:44] Nicole Brewer: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely one of them. Organizations aren't nimble. Yeah, right. They're not nimble. And then there's always this cost attached to doing the thing instead of doing the thing that is right. And the thing is right is to get the theater industry's collective knee off of the throats and off of the bodies of Black, Indigenous, and POC people. And it can't be through these diversity initiatives. Diversity is not equal to anti-racist, right? And so one of those things, like when I'm working with people, some of the things that White people share with me are around like feeling that they don't actually have a role in this movement, that they got to step outside of it. And part of my work is helping people to understand that everybody, White people, Black people, Indigenous people, POC people, we all have privileges.

We just have to figure out where they are and we have to activate ourselves to use those privileges against the myths that we believe around speaking up, around scarcity, around that zero-sum mentality, right? So that if I step out of my leadership and put, let's just use Black because I'm Black, a Black person in that space, that that's the way it works instead of looking at what does expansive leadership look like? What does multiple people in a leadership position look like? What do these structures that are so entangled around protecting money look like when they actually center human needs, right? And that's good for everybody. That's the part that I try to help people understand is that you don't have to like huff and puff and blow this house down by yourself.

You just got to do your part and your part might be supplying the materials and then someone else's part is to make sure that the people who need the materials get the materials and someone else is the actual physical labor. Someone else is the architect of the new house, right? So it's like figuring out where we are and using that instead of cowering and, oh my God, I'm obsolete and I'm unnecessary or all my White guilt or fragility to just kind of step up and go, you know, here I am practicing building my shame resilience. Here I am being accountable and here I am pushing for things to be different.

[18:01] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Nicole right after the break.

[18:12] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with the theater artist and anti-racist educator, Nicole Brewer. You mentioned the ability to speak up in the moment and in general. What, for people who are scared of doing that on, of any race, what, how do you build that, how do you build that tolerance? Do you just, you build it by doing it? Is that how it works?

[18:35] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. I like to tell people it's a survivable event.

[18:38] Gordon Cox: Right.

[18:40] Nicole Brewer: So yeah, you, you build it by doing it. And again, this like people that were slow to respond, I have questions around whether or not they had an anti-racist lens to begin with, with how their structure was centered and were they human centered? Because if you're human centered, there were other issues that needed addressing. And you would have found, oh, that bureaucracy or that slowness of response means I can't actually attend to the need that's in front of me right now. So yeah. But anyway, in terms of like building that resilience and doing it, you're going to figure out what speaking out looks for you. And that was like hard for me, Gordon, because in the beginning, because I was reading social justice books and I mean, like, this is what I was reading decades ago to just get through being in the theater, because my experience in the theater was so gaslit.

It's like, just work harder, just lose weight. Just make sure that you don't do anything to your hair that can't, a wig can't fix. Make all the right relationships with people, like sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, right? Isn't that what the theater trains you to do is to say yes to everything but yourself?

[19:54] Gordon Cox: Yeah. So, you know, it's really around going, what's the human need here? Are these structures actually necessary to create performance and stories? How are we honoring our designers who get shitted on all the time? How are we honoring playwrights? How are we honoring working right together? Yeah. And how do you, if all this work is incremental, and it's going to be full of, as you mentioned, mistakes along the way, how do you measure success in terms of having an understanding of something that is working for you or for your organization or whatever, versus something that is maybe less effective and you need to try something else?

[20:39] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. I would say, you know, if I'm losing weight, if I'm like, I've picked up a workout plan and I'm measuring myself across that to see, am I losing weight? Am I losing fat? Am I gaining muscle mass? Right? There are things that I do to give me the data necessary to either continue on in that way or stop. Right. And it's the same in terms of this work. What we have to begin to look at in terms of harm prevention is going, oh, okay, I'm going to commit harm. And this is me, right? I'm speaking as a Black, cis-gendered woman, right? My foot is constantly in my mouth and it doesn't feel good when people call me in for something that I have done that has caused them harm. Like I'm not absolved from that, but what I have found is if I can pause, take a breath, listen, right?

Ask them, what do you need? How can I get back into right relationship with you? Right? That is a way that I can at least begin to build trust with that person or these people. But before I used to be like, I'm this, how could I have possibly hurt you? Right. I think organizations need to look at that, that if you've created a statement, what are the ways in which you are in conversation with these communities to build relationships that inform how you show up in the community so that people feel welcome? Because I think a large part of the theater industrial complex is in a habit of practicing unwelcome and they don't even realize that they're doing it.

[22:23] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah. Do you, one of the biggest divides in the theater world is the kind of non-profit institutional theater and the commercial theater, which is, you know, very focused on Broadway in many cases. What do you, is the work the same for them or is there, what, how, how is, how is the work of anti-racism similar and or different for those two worlds as you see it?

[22:48] Nicole Brewer: Both of those worlds are rooted in extractive practices. Right. And so both of these worlds have work to do and looking at how they use uncompensated or undercompensated labor in order to produce something. Yeah. Um, and that's one of the things that, and that's the human focus that you were talking about before. It's like, I'm looking at that, right. Yeah. That's just kind of like interns who don't get paid. There's a whole teaming of, sure. I was one of those back in the day. Yeah. Right. We all were one of those too. Right. Um, but then, but also what's really important is to then add that anti-racist lens to that. So when I look at what it costs, a Black, Indigenous and POC person to be uncompensated, knowing where these glass ceilings exist in the theater world.

And then I look at what it costs for a White person to also do that, knowing where these ceilings list, but also like where these doors are opening for them. It helps me to go, Oh, okay. I, maybe I should pay these people, which benefits the White person, but, but also looking at how I can stop this idea that people have to earn the ability to earn income or money or living, or be treated with dignity or whose ideas, um, which are the seedlings for our next iteration of theater being ignored or co-opted. Um, and, and how we are putting all of this kind of like shine on all of the things that people were able to accumulate to prove that they deserve to be in the room with these White executives and leaders. So in terms of, um, Broadway, that's for-profit and nonprofit sector, they're very similar in the way in which they, um, they use people, um, to, you know, for whatever, whatever the gain is.

[24:44] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah. One of the things that strikes me as being so difficult about, uh, sort of ensuring this work happens is that it is as much, uh, personal as it is kind of professional and out, or like you can, you know, you can assign maybe an employee to read white fragility or how to be an anti-racist or something like that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they've read it much less taken the time to sort of think about it and how it relates to sort of their own actions and their organization's actions. How do you, is there, what is your, what is your, uh, advice on, uh, making sure that everyone kind of buys into this, to the personal obligation as well as the professional obligation?

[25:28] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. So what comes to my mind when you say that is around, like the way that I engage people in the work in anti-racist theater training. So one question that I.

[25:39] Nicole Brewer: Always make room to ask people, what is your anti-racist theater ethos? So ethos meaning what are your guiding values, your guiding beliefs? What is yours? Because yours, Gordon, is going to inform how you do this podcast, right? Mine is going to inform how I show up if I'm being hired as a director, as an educator, as a writer, activist, right? And that takes it away from an institutional thing to a very individual thing. So restoring individual agency to make choices instead of us getting on this conveyor belt and letting things happen to us, we are being focused and intentional about how we're showing up. And it's not a novel, right? Your anti-racist theater ethos, I think, should be a sentence or two because that's actionable.

The other thing isn't. The other thing is like, that's performative for me. Right. Yeah. So we've seen the Me Too movement have lasting change in the entertainment industry sort of overall, but it never quite felt like theater had its kind of foundation-shaking moment of coming to terms with that. Are you worried the same thing might happen with this moment now in theater? Well, there's something really interesting happening right now. So there are a lot of people who are speaking up that have never spoken up before, who are calling out institutions and people specifically that have never done it before. And what's interesting for me, I don't know if this is true, but in terms of like the time, people aren't working.

So they can disassociate themselves from the fear that first of all, they're not working and they're surviving. Right. Also a survivable event, right? A survivable event, right? And I mean that in the loosest terms because I don't want to negate anyone who is struggling right now to make ends meet. But I do want to say that because that pressing fear of working at that institution isn't there, it feels like it's opened up a pathway for people to be able to begin to vocalize and share these stories of trauma and pain and racism. The question is around, is it being heard or is it more of the news cycle fodder, right? These things that are happening to make people feel good or feel like you're listening.

And I guess what I want to say is that this change that can happen, that can turn the theater industrial complex into anti-racist theater, that then has impacts on anti-racist television and anti-racist film, right? Is around saying, okay, if we are going to find our footsteps, it cannot be on the backs of all of our labor field. But more importantly, how is every decision that we make centered in blackness, right? Like centering black people, even if that's not your target audience, even if that's not the people that work in your organization. Because when I center the lowest among us, when I center the most vulnerable amongst us, that then has the rippling effect of affecting everybody, right? Towards the work that we're doing.

[29:08] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah. And what's your advice to people, including me, who worry that six months from now, the urgency will be gone and it sort of tapers off? What does commitment to change look like six months from now, for instance?

[29:23] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. The urgency may be gone and that's fine because everything happens in cycles, right? So I don't need the urgency in order for me to be rooted in my anti-racist theater ethos. As you brought up, I was doing this years before this became trendy, right? And the work that I did allowed me to continue to work because those people would then recommend me to other people, recommend me to other people. And I continued to do the work. I didn't sit back. I'm still reading books, right? I'm still attending things to help myself understand. So I have a much stronger analysis around the disabled community. I have a much stronger analysis around white feminism and these other things that kind of show up.

I have a much stronger analysis around when I say something. In some instances, it gets more credibility than someone else who is my elder, whose work and whose sacrifice I am standing on their shoulders, said it decades ago and was ignored, right? But then I have this platform where people are listening. So we don't need the tide of urgency to continue to do the work. What we need is our own anti-racist theater ethos that just guides everything that we do. And that when you change and when you model for people that it's a survivable event, other people begin to breathe a little easier and go, oh, I guess I could do that. I could show up in that way, right? And the things that they can't do, there are other people to do. In a garden, I don't need to be all things. I could just be the pollen. You could be the flower. Kyle, who's helping you out on this podcast, can be the sunshine.

[31:11] Nicole Brewer: And a lot of what you see online right now, it's about resources like reading lists and action points to do right now. Do you personally have preferred sort of resources or organizations that you tell people, specifically theater people, to look to?

[31:24] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. That's like two ways for me. So it's kind of interesting in terms of going, my analysis around reading lists and how that shows up for people is that what I like to read might not be what you like to read. And I pass you my top 10 and you hate all of them. So it's really about exploring these questions in communities with people who you identify with first, right? So there may be people in your listenership who are listening to this and then they think to themselves, I'm going to write to my black colleague and go, have you been oppressed? Has racism been happening? And I would say, please don't do that. Please don't go ask people to then confirm that you have been accountable to being racist or working at a racist organization or whatever, right?

Tending to these gatekeeping ways that you can just Google on your own and begin to go down the pathways that are interesting to you. Because some people like podcasts, you know, some people like zines, all kinds of things. I kind of tend to stay away from pushing anything on anybody else. I will say who's been instrumental for me in graduate school. I read 10 Whys. I read all of Dr. Cornel West's books in graduate school just so I could try to figure my life out. You know, James Baldwin, How We Get Free. So that's a black feminist book. I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass now. So it's like I've already done Dr. Robin D'Angelo's series of essays and books. So people can find their way into the work.

But without any of that, really sitting down and, you know, saying, what is my anti-racist theater ethos? Editing it down to a sentence or two and then beginning to, you know, figure out how that shows up in your decisions and how you show up and what you say yes to is going to get them far. Farther than like going to just check, because that feels like a checkoff for me. Like, oh, I can read five books and say, I read these books. And then you're done. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I can post them to social media and go, look at me. I read these books. What about you? Or I bought these books really is what you're showing us. Right. I bought the I went to the library. I got. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[34:05] Gordon Cox: And, you know, my next question was going to be what your specific action items are for people. And it sounds like that's it. Writing your anti-racist ethos. That's the main action item that you have for people.

[34:12] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. Right. Yeah. My main action item for people is that my main action item is like you have a place in this movement. My I would say when black, indigenous and POC people tell you about their experience, listen to them, believe them. Don't say anything to push up against their truth. And then after you have spent some time with that discomfort that comes up when you hear that you're someone who you care about or respect has been suffering, what are you willing to do? What can you do through your own analysis, through your privileges and social location? Can you do to make some change?

[34:46] Gordon Cox: Are there theater people or theater organizations that you feel like people can look to who are starting to do this work in ways that might be models of a sort or at least pointers?

[34:55] Nicole Brewer: Yeah. Thank you for that because I think it's really important that we amplify versus replicate. One of the things in terms of white supremacy culture is this idea that, oh my God, this thing has been happening and I'm the one who has to shift it and change it. And I'm going to build it from the ground up versus having longer memories and going, oh my God, who's been doing this work? Who can I amplify the work that they have been doing? Who can I try to be in community with? And that's one of those ideals that bucks against individualism versus collectivism. It also requires people to be humble. And so looking at these long legacies of Barbara Ann Teer's work and what she was able to accomplish in New York City is phenomenal.

Looking at the black rep in St. Louis under the direction of Ron Himes and what he was able to do for decades on end. And then going, let's look at some of these newer theaters under leadership, such as Baltimore Center Stage and artistic director Stephanie Ibarra, who is leading with radically looking at money, radically centering people in budgets. Looking at Maria Goyanas at Woolly Mammoth who wrote it on the wall. There's no going back. If you walk into that lobby, it's big as day. We are this. And so it's a system of accountability around, okay, you said it, you wrote it. Let's see how that shows up. And I have to say in the work that I saw at Woolly Mammoth last season, in the fall particularly, they were leading with those values.

But I also want to name they were also making mistakes and not afraid to say we made a mistake. And we learned some things here. We're going to pivot and adjust ourselves so that we're reducing the amount of harm until we can get to this place of being fully anti-racist and how we show up for our community, right? Which is always that goal, that thing that you're trying to attain.

[37:19] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Great. Well, this is something that I think we're all going to be talking about for a long time. So thank you for your insight. Where can people find you online if people want to get in touch with you or find out more?

[37:30] Nicole Brewer: Great. Yeah. My website is nicolembrewer.com. They can also visit freelanceartistresource.com and learn more about the work that we're doing there to support freelance artists.

[37:42] Gordon Cox: Great. Yeah.

[37:43] Gordon Cox: Great. Well, thank you, Nicole. It was great talking to you about this. I appreciate it.

[37:47] Nicole Brewer: Thank you so much, Gordon. I appreciate the invitation.

[37:57] Gordon Cox: That was Nicole Brewer, the anti-racist theater consultant, director, actor, artist, and educator. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of StageCraft, you can rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe and find past episodes there and on all the other pod places, including Spotify and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. I'll be back next week with another new episode. Thanks for listening and see you soon.