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[0:01] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:21] Mo Brady: Hosted by the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Broadway for Black Lives Matter Again is a three-day forum for the Broadway community to heal, listen, and hold itself accountable to its history of white supremacy. Day 3, a day of accountability, was a space to begin examining accountability with the Broadway industry, rooted in its history of individual and systemic racism. This was a time to collectively manifest an anti-racist theatrical landscape while exploring the steps toward realizing that dream. Here to tell us more about it is BAC co-founder Christian Dante White.

[1:08] Christian Dante White: I am still wrapping my head around day three. What an epic, epic, epic day of accountability. We started the program, again, with our fearless leader, Britton Smith, in discussing gratitude for change. He made us all take a deep breath and a moment of gratitude and, again, set up a safe place for us to come together and listen and hear facts, assess, and take what we need to move into this world to bring about real change. Something that he said that was awesome was, how do we shift beyond this moment and allow for change? That was a call to action to producers, creative staff, crew, co-stars to support Black brothers and sisters to be themselves.

[2:00] Christian Dante White: Next, we were so blessed with Zaylin and Adrian facilitating to have Aja McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and LaChanze speak on different tactics about how we can tackle this deconstruction of Broadway and build anew. Something that I really love that Stokes says is that we're passing the torch around and sharing it because we need all hands on deck. It was very important that we realize that we are not a monolith. We all have different viewpoints and different ways of attacking this. Something that Audra brought up that really stuck with me is a family member from George Floyd said, we need diversity in tactics.

[2:44] Christian Dante White: Next, we went to Richard Gray, Tanya Pinkins, and Cynthia Erivo. Tanya came in and said, word medicine is powerful and budgets are moral documents. Other things that Tanya said, she spits so much knowledge out. I just couldn't keep up with my notes even now that white people have to get uncomfortable. Black people are anti-fragile. Cynthia brought up such a great point in our educational systems that she heard that students saying that they are being told that they are not good enough from teachers and academic institutions need to help build and understand who we are. I love when Tanya said, people celebrate me, not tolerate me. Cynthia left us with, you don't have to have accolades to know who you are. Stand in your truth.

[4:01] Christian Dante White: The next thing that we went to, we had Susan and Richard Gray. Susan from Columbia told us that window dressings are not enough and that we need to be here for the long haul and find ways to equip people to lead these efforts. Diversity tactics, not diversity as in solution using different tactics and strategies. We went on to talk of collective liberation with Jonathan, Victor, and Danae, and Jonathan made the most amazing gift saying that we are liberators, not actors. That really resonated with the whole crowd. Danae spoke about being a token with zero power in different situations, working as an actor. Do we want to work within an industry standards or imagine them anew? How do I build a new industry standard? Is it possible to decolonize the rehearsal space? All questions and promptings that they gave us to think about and take away from as we are assessing what we think this new standard can be.

[5:28] Christian Dante White: Again, so many gems that were given to us tonight. I just, my notes are like endless. I really encourage those who are listening to this, especially people of color to realize what this new standard is going to be for you. What does it look like? It's time to really manifest that and really for the first time I feel have hope to know that we can really move the needle to get there. I really love that moment when we were all together manifesting that. Next, we moved on to building steps of accountability with Ben and Alejo. Theater has been locking up black creativity. Something so poignant that he said is that our prison systems lock up black bodies. Our theater locks up black creativity. That resonated with me beyond and someone even brought up to the point we don't even know our capabilities because we have been locked within these small boxes for so long. It's now that we break the top of that box off and start realizing our full potential without limits. That was so liberating, so liberating.

[6:51] Christian Dante White: Ben read a letter of accountability and encouraged us to send them info so we can build a BAC to build a database of other organizations doing this same work because we need all hands on deck like I said before. We have then had the awesome Janine Tesori come in and read the accountability pledge for our listeners which was so awesome. We got the pledge put online for people to download and put on social media and sign. We challenged everyone to join us to make a public pledge, not just sitting at home by yourself, but a public declaration just to hold you accountable.

[7:51] Christian Dante White: Day three was beyond anything I could ever imagine. I'm still, like I said, processing. Tonight I carefully wanted to not give away too many things because I want people to go back and really listen and really do the work and really take notes and take away from things that were said tonight. A great learning tool that I think BAC does is that we give the information and you take it as you need it and apply it to yourself and give people challenges. It's such an incredible thing that they have put together, that we have put together this week and I'm so excited for what the conversations will be like moving forward. We had 800 the first day, close to 5,000 yesterday and I think around 4,500 today. That is a lot of opportunities to get so much information and go into your own communities, your theaters and families and institutions and really start to shift the needle.

[8:46] Christian Dante White: I felt everyone in the room was there, focused in this awesome community, really hungry for knowledge, hungry for change, hungry for something more, hungry for steps. And I still, as a Black actor, I'm still assessing what those steps are, but it felt so great to come together as a community. We have been separated for so long and I think that this is one of the first times that I felt a part of my community again. And not only that, I feel like we're all on the same page, that we don't want to go back to the way that it was. We want to somehow move forward and shut everything down as it already is and build it anew. And again I ask, as I leave this podcast, thanks to the Ensemblist, thank you Mo, to continue to manifest what that new standard looks like. Manifest it, get specific, dream big, because now the ceiling, the roof has been let out and now it's time to go to infinity and beyond.

[9:54] Christian Dante White: So I challenge you to manifest, hold yourself accountable, and please follow us, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, on all social media platforms. Our website has some great resources. Follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram. We got some great stuff going and I thank everyone who was able to come and be with us, share with us, open their hearts with us, and learn from us. Even more exciting is to see what's to come of this, because lots of seeds were planted. It's now time to see them grow.

[10:31] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Christian Dante White for speaking with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping the Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash the Ensemblist. Please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or our home of Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.