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[0:00] Leah Walsh: Hi, and welcome to The Compass, the podcast documenting the struggles of life as an artist.

[0:04] Leah Walsh: I'm Leah Walsh.

[0:06] Leah Walsh: I have a mini episode for you today.

[0:08] Leah Walsh: I'm out of town visiting Montreal and wasn't able to get together with a guest.

[0:12] Leah Walsh: I'm going to be showcasing an event which happened in July, the Empower Hour, hosted by Three Day Hangover.

[0:19] Leah Walsh: They hosted it to help establish a conversation in our community about positivity and action in the face of increasingly common violence around the world and of course in our own country.

[0:29] Leah Walsh: If that sounds of interest to you, please continue listening.

[0:32] Leah Walsh: If not, check back next week for a new full episode of The Compass.

[0:49] Leah Walsh: He had a huge heart.

[0:51] Leah Walsh: He founded the Signature Theater in New York City, and he took over as the head of the drama division at Juilliard in 2006, which was my second year of grad school there.

[1:01] Leah Walsh: He was a change maker, a creator of great community, an open-hearted friend, mentor, and family man, and he will be missed by many, many, many people.

[1:11] Leah Walsh: He inspired me in so many ways over the years to be an artist citizen engaged in the world.

[1:17] Leah Walsh: He gave me my first job out of grad school, welcoming me into the signature family, which I will always cherish.

[1:23] Leah Walsh: I'm sending all my love to Jim's family, and please, if you're not familiar with his work, look him up.

[1:28] Leah Walsh: He is a pillar of the American theater, and his legacy will always be with us.

[1:32] Leah Walsh: Uh, to read just a small excerpt from his New York Times obituary, they quote Tony Kushner.

[1:40] Leah Walsh: I don't think there was anyone in the theater community more beloved than Jim, the playwright Tony Kushner, whose work was featured in Signature's 2010 to 2011 season, wrote in an email.

[1:52] Leah Walsh: He had a great soul and a grand capacity for friendship and love.

[1:56] Leah Walsh: He was smart and passionate.

[1:59] Leah Walsh: He built his singular legacy founded on his devotion to playwrights' work and to playwrights themselves, with a uniquely sweet, generous spirit, with unflagging optimism and with grace.

[2:37] Leah Walsh: And I wanted to share a little bit of what that event was with those of you who weren't able to attend.

[2:42] Leah Walsh: Lori Walter Hudson, who was featured on episode 9, David Hudson and Beth Gardner run the company, and they decided to hold an event they named the Empower Hour in response to the quick succession of horrific violent events around the world and especially in our own country that have been happening over and over this summer.

[3:02] Leah Walsh: Something to build community and face-to-face conversation instead of isolation.

[3:07] Leah Walsh: And they partnered with Chad Goodridge, who was featured on episode 32 in producing it.

[3:13] Leah Walsh: I'm going to play a little snippet that I impulsively recorded at the event, but first, here's how they described it.

[3:20] Leah Walsh: The violence, senselessness, rage, inequality, and inhumanity overflowing our news feeds and filling our daily life is overwhelming.

[3:29] Leah Walsh: With a wall of hate standing so tall before us, how can we even start to tear it down?

[3:34] Leah Walsh: Three Day Hangover has decided to respond by doing what we're good at gathering our community and making something positive happen.

[3:42] Leah Walsh: We're reimagining the power hour by presenting Three Day Hangover's Empower Hour.

[3:49] Leah Walsh: 60 minutes packed with thoughtful expressions of strength, hope, and compassion that answer the question, what empowers you?

[3:57] Leah Walsh: On Monday, July 25th, we're going to gather together to raise a glass and celebrate all the things we're sure about.

[4:03] Leah Walsh: Community, creativity, bravery, and especially love as the strongest force for change we've got.

[4:10] Leah Walsh: We're going to harness the power of storytelling, artistic expression, and honest to goodness face-to-face conversation to remember what makes us strong.

[4:18] Leah Walsh: An amazing lineup of performers will come at you hard with magical moments to connect us, inform us, delight us, and remind us of the best angels of our nature.

[4:28] Leah Walsh: We'll share resources for those interested in getting educated and getting involved, and all evening we'll be raising funds for a number of organizations that advocate for social justice and gun control.

[4:38] Leah Walsh: We won't solve all the problems we're facing in a night, but we'll envision together what steps we can take to start to make the world a better place.

[4:45] Leah Walsh: Remember, each of us is a powerful force for positive change, and we're even stronger when we stand together.

[4:51] Leah Walsh: We hope you'll join us.

[4:53] Leah Walsh: Money from Pay What You Can Tickets, Donations, and Raffle tickets, as well as a portion of the bar sales, all went to organizations such as the Urban Justice Center, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Cure Violence, and others.

[5:08] Leah Walsh: So during the event, I was extremely moved.

[5:11] Leah Walsh: And at one point I impulsively pulled out my phone and made a voice memo recording of a small section of the night.

[5:17] Leah Walsh: Maybe I just knew that I was feeling so full of emotion and connection to others that I might want to try and share it with you guys.

[5:24] Leah Walsh: So, with the blessing of the company and of the two performers you're about to hear, Rob Karma Robinson and V Chat Chan, uh, V Chat was featured on episode six.

[5:34] Leah Walsh: Again, this is an iPhone recording in a crowded room, but I hope that you can hear their beautiful words.

[5:39] Leah Walsh: We start just barely into the beginning of Rob reading the Atheist Love Poem by Brian Dykstra.

[5:47] Leah Walsh: I'll read the beginning of the poem into where he begins it.

[5:50] Leah Walsh: And then V Chat reads a piece he wrote himself.

[5:54] Leah Walsh: The Atheist Love Poem by Brian Dykstra.

[5:57] Leah Walsh: I love you evolutionary.

[6:00] Leah Walsh: I love you evolved.

[6:02] Leah Walsh: I love you with a living, breathing reality that was and continues to be paramount in keeping the species in existence.

[6:10] Leah Walsh: I love you with the love that evolved so that people would bond, so that families might fight and die for each other so that the entirety of humankind could not only continue, but be possible.

[6:27] Leah Walsh: With the love that saved not only lives but our species.

[6:53] Leah Walsh: It works better because it evolved.

[6:56] Leah Walsh: It is not some spiritual creation that is given to us.

[6:59] Leah Walsh: It doesn't happen to us, it has grown in us.

[7:03] Leah Walsh: We've grown it to make our lives better, to make each other better.

[7:09] Leah Walsh: I love you because loving you, my life is better.

[7:13] Leah Walsh: No.

[7:16] Leah Walsh: Better even than that.

[7:20] Leah Walsh: It makes my life possible.

[7:24] Leah Walsh: I love you because loving you, our life is possible.

[7:29] Leah Walsh: Not because it was prescribed by a deed, but because it was forged in our history and our DNA and what it is that makes us human.

[7:38] Leah Walsh: I love you better than any religious magic that was bestowed by a loving caring God creating us in his image.

[7:44] Leah Walsh: I love you better than that.

[7:46] Leah Walsh: I love you from the march of prehistory handed down through the ages, carried within the images of people like us.

[7:53] Leah Walsh: Leading back through branches and family trees and evolutionary ladders and refined like brain waves, like speech, like blood cells, like music, like fingerprints, like spinal flu.

[8:06] Leah Walsh: I love you evolved.

[8:10] Leah Walsh: I love you evolutionary.

[8:13] Leah Walsh: I love you like only a sentient being can.

[8:17] Leah Walsh: Without God in the way, without booting, without some spiritual recipe we prescribe and manufacture and give away to a deity we rely on because we can't take credit for loving each other this much.

[8:31] Leah Walsh: Because for some reason we keep believing that there is no way we're worth it.

[8:37] Leah Walsh: That's what everybody tells us.

[8:40] Leah Walsh: We're not worthy.

[8:44] Leah Walsh: Not without some God handing out this otherwise unknowable gift.

[8:48] Leah Walsh: Well, fuck that!

[8:52] Leah Walsh: I got this gift from my ancestors, and I thank them for it.

[8:58] Leah Walsh: And it's mine.

[9:00] Leah Walsh: Like this is my hand.

[9:01] Leah Walsh: And I extend my hand and I offer my love.

[9:09] Leah Walsh: Because it is something to be reckoned with.

[9:12] Leah Walsh: Not something simply to cherish, but to combine it with yours to use to move mountains.

[9:17] Peter Chum: Because without it, we're never got here. We never existed. We never evolved. Thank you. Woo!

[9:45] Peter Chum: So next up we've got P Chum. Hello everyone. I am Peter Chum. I am an actor and a writer. Oh, everyone's everywhere. Okay, so I wrote this letter to my future child. I don't know. We'll see how this goes. Dear future chum. I speak to you from 2016. A year in where in which lots of crazy fucked up things have gone down. In this year, people can be seen walking into light holes in search of Pokemon. Guns can be pretty much purchased by a banana. And we are watching the ascension of an orange-faced umbaloomba whose platform is fuck actually everyone. These are bizarro times. But let's not fool ourselves and believe that this is altogether different from years past. The difference is now we can, for better or for worse, share our awfulness at hyperspeed.

And then we can share it and share it and share it until we've forgotten about it, or we can move on to the next. What's up from 2016? Future China. I'm actually writing to you because some friends and colleagues asked me to swim by a bar to talk to some people about what empowers me. Immediately I remember the first moment I really stumbled upon James Baldwin's words at a bookshelf in Vermont. It was a letter he had written to his nephew. It is brimming with complicated candor and familial love that I simply could not shake. Baldwin outlines what the world will be like for his nephew as a black man. And in the face of so much adversity, Baldwin encourages his nephew to keep going. That you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieve an unassailable and monumental dignity.

So I write to you, future chum, in hopes that this will actually empower me to feel proud of the life that I have lived thus far, in the time that I have lived. Your grandparents immigrated from Cambodia, which is a fucking long way away from here, because something really bad happened against the world. That ended. They made their way to Thailand, made their way to the Philippines, made their way to Texas and Virginia, settled in cowboy country, and gave birth to two kiddos whose stories began way before they were born into the world. But isn't that true about everyone? Isn't that true about the story of this country? It begins long before we can imagine. But sometimes you will see that many people will try to persuade you that history has no place at the table.

They will say history is history. And we should get along. Some people may say that we should let go of the past and keep pushing forward. And something may stir inside you because it doesn't feel altogether right. You may wonder if they actually see you or hear you. But the moment you say something, some people might say, that's not true. That's your defensiveness.

[13:06] ⚠ About 5 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.