This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: My name is Tonya Pinkins, and you are listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:27] Tonya Pinkins: I do these podcasts few and far between these days. But when there's someone who's really exciting to me, I'm like, I gotta get back in there and have a conversation with them. And this artist, writer, uh, activist, artivist, I like that word, uh, I first saw in a production that was produced by Mac Wellman. And his solo performance that was a kind of satire of Lena Dunham's work was so brilliant and striking to me that I said, I have to be this man's friend. And I went up to him and fangirled all over him. And then I think we had a pajama party uh together shortly after that. And we've just been fast friends ever since. So please join me in welcoming James Scruggs. What's up, James?

[1:23] James Scruggs: Hey, Tonya. Thank you for having me here on your uh podcast. We hadn't talked in a while, and we were talking uh about a week ago about the work that you're doing. One of the things that has been um that I've found so fascinating and been so inspiring to me about you and what you do is that you create your work and you are not in Actors Equity or any of the unions, but you have a really beautiful life that you have created from generating your own work. It's all uh self-written, invented, you get the grants, you build the projects. Can you talk about how that happened in your life?

[2:05] James Scruggs: Yeah. Um, short story. Um, I was uh working in corporate America, making almost three hundred thousand dollars a year. I'm like, okay, you know. And that was a long time ago, so it was really a lot of money. That was in uh 2000. So, you know, it was a lot of money. I had I made more money than anybody I knew, you know. And I was working as uh um the technical director at Windows on the World, you know, on the 106th and 107th floors of the World Trade Center. And in uh 2001, um my lover at the time kept backing up our vacation because he couldn't do this, he couldn't do that, he couldn't do this. So he backed it up finally till we went on vacation in September. And as I was um talking to the guy I worked for, um, I decided I w you know, I want two extra days.

I've been working really hard. I was supposed to come back on September 10th, 2001. But I um argued that, you know, I wanted two extra days, so I was gonna come back on September twelfth. And I remember that conversation, and I, you know, trust me, I am not clever enough to trick fate, you know. I was just being a greedy bitch, basically. Um, but um I went on vacation and September eleventh happened. We all know what happened on September eleventh. Um, I lost seventy-four co-workers. I lost four men in my department, um, some of whom I hired. Um, one as young as twenty-seven. Um, and um the iconic falling man image is uh Johnny from my department. And when they said, you know, that when that image came out, it would somebody called me and said, James, that's Johnny.

I'm like, I couldn't even look at it. I'm like, how can you say that? You know. Anyway, years have gone by, um, documentaries have been done, the family has been uh enlisted, and they don't dispute it. I don't know. But um anyway, that's that was my launch into uh out of corporate America. So I just bought a house. I was making almost three hundred thousand dollars a year, and I'm like, holy shit. Can I say shit?

[4:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, you can say whatever you want to say.

[4:22] James Scruggs: So I was like, fuck, what am I I just bought a house and um at the time, you know, there's a real outpouring of support for anybody who was connected to 9-11. I could have gotten a job anywhere. But what I decided to do was to follow what was in my heart. I, you know, I've always been an artist in my mind and in my heart. But I, you know, starving artists loomed large in my head, you know. I grew up, I was the first one to go to college in my family. I got a degree in film, and I was like, Yeah. And that degree qualified me to sweep the floor in any production company in New York City. Uh hindsight being 2020, that was a real opportunity. I didn't see that as an opportunity because I had just graduated from college.

I was the first one to graduate, so fuck that. So anyway, I got it I I started working in corporate America. Um, but when that happened, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take a chance. So I decided to take a chance and follow what was in my heart and become an artist. And they told me you gotta apply for all kinds of stuff. You ain't gonna get it, but you gotta apply for all kinds. I applied for a ton of stuff. I got a residency, I got a grant, a little grant, and I ended up at Hero Arts Center uh I was doing a piece called Disposable Men, which is about Hollywood monsters and African American men and how we get killed in these crazy unusual ways. It was a solo theater piece. At the end, it was right around the time that Amadou Diallo was killed.

And I was just I just could not understand how this man attracted 41 bullets. One of the policemen actually reloaded. It just like baffled, I just couldn't and he was unarmed. So um the piece, um, I gave uh the audience members 41 laser pointer guns. We had fog in the room, and we went through the Amadou shooting, and I invited the audience to shoot at me. And on nights when it really worked, there was fog in the room, and it was a line going from my body to the actual audience member's gun. Um, people um participated, not everybody participated, but you knew if you had gun number 34, you knew what you were supposed to do. And some people, you know, couldn't do it, some people could not wait to shoot me, you know.

Some people would, you know, uh went for my eyes. It was really crazy. See, anyway, I did that piece, but I did it at Hero Art Center. I was the only black person in the residency program, and I'm doing this piece about lynching and historical uh atrocities perpetrated against African American men, and I felt like this is the wrong place to do it. But actually, it turned out to be the a good place 'cause I was really angry, and I got I asked the artistic director to direct me, and I I was brand new out of the box, but somebody told me they said, You don't ask the artistic director to direct your first piece. What are you and I'm like, what's she gonna do? She ain't gonna kick my ass. So I asked her and she directed it.

And she's uh Kristen Martin, she's a white woman and she turned out to be a really good uh director for the piece 'cause I was really angry. And she was a white woman. She's like, Well James, you you said this um twice. Do you need to say it two more times? Yes. She helped me shape this piece. Anyway, so that was my launch into so that it could be palatable to the very white audience that is here arts. Yeah, or just just any you know like it's it's like a rant is hard to hear from anybody. And that's that's that was what was on my mind. What what else is white comedy? White male comics are just rants. Come on.

[8:02] Tonya Pinkins: You're right, you're right, but black rant is different. You can't be black ranting anyway, but that I did it and that was a launch into um into into theater. Um and um I haven't left. And so from the jump your theater has been in your face radical immersive social justice work from the jump.

[8:26] James Scruggs: Yeah, 'cause I mean I I I um I don't know I I don't I I wasn't taught how to write a well-made play, but um I got a lot of shit in me. I got, you know, I I got um a a lot of passion and um and I'm not afraid to put it out there 'cause it's frightening. It's really, I mean, if there's any artists out there, showing work in progress is one of the bravest things you can do. You know, you know. Because you show work and you're like, no no, no, no, no. But when it's when it's done, there's gonna be mermaids in the background, it's gonna be lighting. I'm gonna float and you know, all of this stuff, you know. My the guys in my department were in a room called the Pinnacle Suite, which faced uptown.

One of them, at least one of them was in that room, and I know that they saw that plane approaching the building through floor to ceiling windows. So when I get nervous, when I get scared, I think about John Puckett and John Briley and Alan LaFrance and Sean Singh, who were trapped in that building with smoke, thick black smoke coming up and no way out. That's scary. So, you know, it's not like that. I was saying at one point I was fearless, and that's not true. But I do not uh when I get when I get a little nervous, when I get afraid, and it's hard to pitch a project to somebody, you know, out of your crazy little head. I'm like, I want to do something, and you know, you're pitching this project, and people gonna judge you.

When I get nervous, why didn't you go the audition route? Why didn't you just start auditioning, pick up backstage and look for black parts and audition for them? I didn't even know that was, you know, I I didn't know that was a thing. I wasn't an actor, Tonya. To be honest, I wrote this play, Disposable Men, expecting the director to tell me at some point we got to get a real actor to do it, you know. And the opening night, I was thinking of the little rascals, you know, where they they get you get on stage and you get the guy couldn't beat because he had stage fright. My my opening night, somebody came up to me and told me, Damn, the New York Times is here. And I told my director, I'm like, okay, the New York Times is just so I'm should I do it different?

And she was like, who told you that? And I'm like, because I thought, you know, in the New York Times, you got to do it a little different or better or something, you know. I was brand new out the box, you know. Wow. I didn't I didn't even know that that was a a viable possibility for myself because I didn't see myself as an actor. Um, and I fully expected at one point, you know, they were gonna say, we need to get a real actor to play this game. Okay, it's nice. You know, you're playing this shit, but you know, we're gonna do it for real. Was it like I I'm gonna say this and uh it's an inside joke for you and I was it like crack when you got on that stage and that audience responded.

[11:19] Tonya Pinkins: She's talking about my background, she's trying to out me in front of everybody, you know. Good thing I don't embarrass easy. You can't you can't embarrass me. No, but I feel like sometimes performing is like that. It is performing is like it's an addiction, it's a drug.

[11:32] James Scruggs: Absolutely. And I got you know, I got an active criminal record, and maybe we'll talk about that later. But, you know, because I was arrested for crack twice in 88. But I'm clean now. June 21st, 1989 was the last time I had a drink or a drug in my body. It is my proudest achievement. But yeah, I mean, I when when and it's funny because with Disposable Men, I was like looking forward to standing there clapping, having the people clapping, me taking my or my bow. And my video designer made a suggestion that he said, we shouldn't have a curtain call. And I'm like, Motherfucker, what? You know. Because you're dead, because they killed you. It really made sense because the piece ended with me drawing white chalk outline of bodies on the floor and uh having the audience call out dead black men's names.

And the last thing I did was to hand the chalk to an audience member and just stand there with the hope that they would get up and draw a chalk outline. And every night they did. And the thing is, my my director was saying, James, you're not gonna have they're not gonna be calling out dead black men's names. They're not gonna, they're not gonna uh, they're not gonna, you know, draw the chalk outline. They may not draw the chalk outline, but because I wasn't a trained actor, I did not know what could not be done. So I found that when you approach an audience with the with the with uh uh attitude like this is what's gonna happen, you know. And I'm 6'4, and I would just stand there and hand them the chalk, and they took it.

And it was an interactive piece. At one point, um I was dealing with the tension that lives between black men and white women, and I handed three white women rings, and the rings were tied to a rope that went a string that went to my crotch. I unzipped my zipper and pulled out a dildo uh dildo, the color of my penis, and was talking about how when um uh historically, when a black man has been alone with a white woman and she screams, that black man goes down. And it was images of white women screaming on the screen and everything, but I had to get three white women to hold this string.

[13:42] James Scruggs: And you know, I and when I pulled out my zipper and and and I and I uh exposed the the the dildo and the screaming went on and it just dropped and then the piece went on. But every night these women held on to the string was funny. But my director was saying, these women may not take the string, they took the string every night. Literally because I did not know that the audience may not do what you wanted to do. I didn't, you know, I figured, you know, if I ask you to do it, you're gonna do it. So I think there's a real there's a real benefit in ignorance. And I embrace, I embrace my my ignorance that helps me. I love it. I love how radical and in your face your work is. Let's talk about three fifths.

[14:20] James Scruggs: Yeah. Um I was working at um three LD Art and Technology Center and I got a I got a creative capital grant, thank God, because we ended up having to pay for some of it with the grant to do uh a piece, and I was um working with this really crazy white man, Kevin Cunningham. He told me, he said, James, don't do the piece that you think you can get away with. Do the piece that's in your heart. And I'm like, how do you tell somebody that that you paying for? Oh, I love it. You know, and I'm like he paying for I'm like, Wow. So, you know, he was like no shorts. So I'm like, Okay, cool, you know. So we had five theatrical spaces. We had uh um a guy um performing I'm doing air quotes for y'all that don't have video, performing incarceration outside um for the duration of the play for the four weeks um twenty-four seven, we had a guy outside the theater performing incarceration.

You could go out there and look at him at three o'clock in the morning and look at a video uh that um couched the the horrific data about mass incarceration and see this man sleeping or reading or looking at you.

[15:25] James Scruggs: And in the other spaces were um there was an indoctrination, there was a w a woman that um uh wearing a uh Confederate gown that um introduced the audience and and told them that, you know, in this piece we we it it we herald white supremacy and um for the um the black um folks who work in supremacy Land, and that's the name of the place, we called them what you call them at home, niggers. Um, and all the um actors in the atrocity chronicle, which was the space that you went into, had a name tag, and it said simply nigger, which was a big giant fight with me and my my my um um designers. Are you sure you want to do that? And I'm like, I'm not trying to be flip or clever, but you know, there was a time when if I walked in the room, somebody from across the room would say, Who's that nigga? You know? So all of the the employees wore, all the actors wore name tag that said nigger. And I remember you could choose to go through the show as a white person or a black person too, right?

[16:27] James Scruggs: Yeah. You could decide at the door uh whether you're gonna be black or white, black people got two supremacy land dollars, white people got five, and you were treated to different experiences. Um some experiences as a black identified audience member you could not go to. Well, my favorite one of my favorite stories is my director, Taylor Wooder, which she's so fair. Um, she she insisted that the actors push the people deeper into the piece no matter what. And there was a woman who was playing uh a uh Ku Klux Klan woman, and they had uh um the the um the this uh burning cross. It was actually just a a tower. You hit a hammer on the on the thing, and the the little thing goes up and then arms come out and it lights up and you realize it's a flaming cross.

She puts a white birthday hat on you with a little square mask with eyes cut out, and sing this little cute little Ku Klux Klan song, Ku Klux Klan song, and she spins the audience member around to the audience, they're singing this rousing Ku Klux Klan song. This is like this is, you know, this is lefty liberal in New York City. The woman was horrified. She started crying, and my actor who was instructed to push them deeper into the experience, this woman was crying because she realized that she was being placed into the role of a Ku Klux planner person. And my actor said, Yeah, I know just how you feel. I felt the same way when I first joined.

[17:56] James Scruggs: And the woman was obsessed. She said, Well, you know, you should go get a uh a fragility nurse. We had some fragility nurses for people for white folks who got, you know, their fragility kicked up. But basically, you just got headphones and you heard um this Bach piece. Got a silly little dance and a voiceover saying, um, you are supreme, you are where you belong. Herald in your white supremacy just push you deeper into the experience. It was just it it was it was kind of sadistic. But I mean, the thing was, the thing was we were really interested in in keeping people engaged in the experience. Every single night, Tanya, every single night, I had a white person come up to me and say, I'm so uncomfortable.

As if they've never been uncomfortable before. And I realized that largely, and this is an ignorant comment because it's not true of everyone, but I feel like largely if you are a white person, and anything that comes after you are a white person is both, really. But I mean, largely if you're a white person and you're uncomfortable, there's usually a way out of it. I I've been uncomfortable all my life, you know, and there's usually no quick way out of it. Every night somebody came up, oh, I'm so uncomfortable. And I would be like, Oh, you should go see a fragility nurse, you know. But um, yeah, we had we had fun.

[19:18] James Scruggs: And they're saying they're uncomfortable in a place that they paid and chose to come to. They can leave. Absolutely. And people did. People came, you know, every night. I I think I I I saw it every night. At least three black folks came and looked in the space and like, oh hell no. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. I you know, because they could they could see, you know, the make a news spoo and ask a black man and the scene of the crowd, all of this stuff, and they'd be like, no, no, no. So I'm gonna be angry. So they just left. But um, yeah, the thing is it it was a really incredible opportunity uh to be able to do that piece. Uh it took a really brave, you know, uh theater to do it. And the funny thing is, I'm like, I don't even think about you know, like, we're gonna get reviewed until like the night before we opened.

I'm like, we're gonna get slammed, you know. And actually we didn't, you know. Um what did happen was we didn't have um in place um real um therapeutic help for the actors, and it was really um um difficult um for the actors to do this every single night. You know, one of one of the guys um had to perform uh the mascot of the piece, Jim Crow. Um, and he told nigger jokes and um to the audience, and we had a plant who came in, a white guy who came in with the rest of the audience, and he volunteered to tell a nigger joke. And the aud that's when the piece went. It got really dangerous because this white guy came in with everybody else. And he's like, I got a nigga joke. And you know nigger jokes, you know, I think in in black black folks talk about nigger jokes.

I mean, some of them are funny. They're really inappropriate. I told the nigger joke even that night. I think it did. You did. I remember. I'm like, oh, that's fine. But I mean, but it you're a black woman, so it's different. But this white guy, he's part of the piece. You know, he told us, he started telling these nigger jokes. And my cousin was there one night. She punched him in the leg. It's like, shut down, you know. Um, he said, every night, James, I fully expect to get punched in the face. We had to get a security guard to walk him to walk him out because the audience didn't know whether he was a part of the piece or not. And as a uh uh uh a white audience member, um I don't know that you have the permission to tell nigger jokes, you know.

So, but you know, but that's what the piece was was um playing with. And then at some point the audience um was separated. All the black folks went somewhere and all the white folks stayed there. And I learned, you know, after they went up that it just went on a little too long, but you know, it was you know, how long is too long? I just never know. I mean, we've been going through it for over 400 years, so how long is too long? Yeah, yeah. But I'm I'm I'm grateful to to have done that. We got four stars in timeout timeouts.

[22:20] James Scruggs: Oh, because they love all that stuff too, you know. Yeah, at a certain point, it's just is like there's a kind of flagellation that I think white people enjoy. They enjoy it's almost a sexual thrill out of being uh, you know, thrown in their face, except if you're from Florida and Texas, true and South Carolina. Literally timeouts that it is the most uncomfortable you will ever feel in a theater, and then we sold out, which is kind of counterintuitive. I'm like, okay, that's weird. No, no, no, no, no, no. Experiences, what I'm told now is that people want to buy experiences. I remember when Michael Douglas had that movie The Game. Mm-hmm. And I hated that movie because I was like, oh, you have to pay someone to give you experiences that for the average person, it is there every day, and you're paying for that so you can feel alive. Yeah, it made me mad. I hear you. I hear you. Um so what's your new piece?

[23:23] James Scruggs: Um Well, I decided, um, I've been doing stuff since Disposable Men was in 2003, we it went up in 2005. And since then I've been doing um creating theatrical work um uh dealing with uh history um of basically look what they have done to people who look like me. And I'm shifting into what can I do about it. And um this um uh a new piece, like I got uh um a grant from uh National Performance Network. I've been pitching work for a long time, and I pitched it to three theaters, and before I finished the pitch for all three theaters, they said, James, we're we're we want to do this. And I'm like, I did a lot of work. I sold cars, so I you know, I know from experience when somebody says yes, you shut the fuck up, you know. So I was like, okay. So Art Emerson, the center at West Park in New York, uh, and Art to Action in Tampa, Florida are on board to um support and commission this work called off the record acts of restorative justice.

[24:27] James Scruggs: And what the piece is is exploring is the um oppressive um and intentional nature of the criminal justice system and over policing and mass incarceration, and as you um alluded to earlier, uh you know with your little crack comment you know um I was arrested twice in nineteen eighty eight for possession of crack I had five dollars worth of crack which they tried to make it turn it into distribution I'm like I don't know anything about crack how you gonna distribute five dollars worth of crack they dropped it to just possession and I I paid twenty eight dollars and I went online and and looked at my my record and it is still there and it is two felony counts. Now I'm a I'm a performer. I'm a uh I'm an artist so it's giving me street cred, you know, but um I I got a job at Deutsche Bank in ninety two and they said um you know we're gonna ask you if you have um ever been convicted of a crime and if you have please tell us it's okay.

It's okay. But if you lie, you're gonna get fired. And I was thinking that I was sitting there thinking and I was like in real time I'm like there's no world where Deutsche Bank is gonna hire a former crack addict. It's just I just don't I you know I'm like yeah I was arrested for crack, you know. They'd be like, thank you very much. So I lied. Three weeks later they marched my black ass off that job with two security guards, you know. So I know what it feels like to um have an active criminal record. Um it doesn't affect me so much now and again like I said it's almost like street cred. I got um um the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers uh gave me the adding justice through the arts award which gave me a plaque and and uh I I got to present uh short thing in front of two hundred and fifty criminal defense attorneys, which is great for this piece because what I want to do with off the record acts of restorative justice is to examine the criminal justice system and actually expunge and seal criminal records.

For real. And I thought I could expunge criminal records in New York, but New York doesn't have expungement as a option. The best you can do in New York is to have your record sealed. And um I have since learned that if you get your record sealed and you can only get it sealed, and I believe it has to be a certain length of time, maybe like ten years old, it can be it can't be a violent crime. And if you get your record sealed and you do anything illegal, your record becomes visible to everyone out to uh out there. Um I'm working with a couple of organizations to um to pass uh clean slate legislation which would um expunge criminal records after a period of time. But just to get a record sealed is daunting. You have to, you know, get your wrap sheet, which is thirteen dollars that you have to mail a money order to.

[27:27] James Scruggs: And who got money orders now or checks? I mean, who mails anyway? You have to pay to get your rap sheet, you have to pay to get fingerprints, you have to pay to get a disposition, all these things. So what I'm striving to do right now is to get all the people in a room together, and this is not radical, it's been done before. There's been record sealing and expungement clinics done before, but it's daunting because you have to get a battery of attorneys, you have to get some prosecutors, you have to have a judge, you have to have fingerprinting access, you have to have access to a rap sheet, you have to have someone to do a certificate of disposition. And all in a room all together. I went to one in Burlington, New Jersey.

It was great. At a mega church, I walked in, they had a line full of church ladies. They weren't wearing hats, but I just I put hats on them in my mind, you know. And they're like, here, honey, can go get I had a number 81, go in there and get yourself something to eat. And I went into the other room and they were selling Chick-fil-A. I know. I'm a homosexual, you know, so I'm like, oh God, and Chick-fil-A is not exactly homosexual friendly. But honey, I went and got my Chick-fil-A. I was a self-loathing homosexual eating my Chick-fil-A, because it was free. But I had to, I had to, I'm at a little my Chick-fil-A, and they sat me in front of a lawyer, and 20 minutes later they told me that I was eligible for clean slate.

Because I was talking to an attorney, they emailed the prosecutors across the room, and they went back and forth and they told me that because my record was over 10 years old and was a nonviolent crime, I was good for clean slate, and it is literally in the process. And I was like, this is great. So I'm in the process of getting that done. I'm working with a couple of organizations in New York to do a record sealing clinic, and not everybody's gonna be able to have their record sealed, but if you have an active criminal record and you go to a record sealing clinic, at least you'll be able to see what other people see about you. And I think that one of the really oppressive nature of this criminal justice system is that you know, Walmart, if I go to Walmart, it's gonna know a lot more about me than I know is on my record, you know.

But if you come to the criminal record sealing clinic, the hope is that you'll be able to be presented with what your rap sheet says. Hopefully you can get your record sealed, you get a certificate of disposition, and you can move on with your life. If you cannot get your record sealed, then at this clinic, you can be, you know, have a conversation with an attorney about what other option you have. And it's real it's pretty, I mean, to be a barber, you cannot be a barber if you have a felony because you need a license. But there's paperwork to get around it, and all of these things that you can't do. And people forget, or they selectively forget that when enslavement ended, they made this catch that if we can convict you of a crime, we can enslave you.

And so that is what they have been doing. So, in truth, slavery never ended in America because the mass incarceration is slavery, according to the 13th Amendment, and they criminalize black women for being stay-at-home wives. That was illegal in some states. It was illegal for a black person to not have a job. They would criminalize you for loitering, they called it, sitting on your porch. So they just criminalized existence as black people. And there's all this talk today about epigenetics and what gets passed down epigenetically from our ancestors. And I think this manufactured fear and disdain for blackness is epigenetically present in anyone who has been raised in America, as we see by what happened to Tyree Nichols, that we are educated and bathed in white supremacy by virtue of everything we see on television, everything we're educated in here in America.

We are all bathed in white supremacy, and it is difficult to, you know, decolonize one's mind because everything about the United States is anti-black. Absolutely. I mean, you know, and it's ironic is not the right word, but I mean the police were invented as slave catchers. And it's like it hasn't really changed that much. It's like the police are pointed at black folk. This is what you do, collect black folks and put them in jail. And they're still doing it. But that was even a strategy because what was happening was the newly freed slaves and the poor whites were, you know, they were there were free blacks in America even during enslavement. And so those free blacks and the poor whites began to band together to try to get rights for themselves because they couldn't compete against enslavers.

So they created these patty rollers to separate this sort of growing almost unionization between free blacks and poor whites. And they said, well, you know what? We ain't gonna give you your union, but we'll give you this job where if you go and collect black people and maybe sell them back into slavery, you will get paid for that. How about that? It's like the criminal justice is aimed and pointed at people who look like me. I walk around feeling like, and for y'all who can't see me, I'm certifiably dark skinned. I feel like I'm being dark skinned at people, you know, and you know, colorism is real, you know, even in the black community. And it's I grow weary, you know, of being dark skinned at people, you know.

But yeah, I'm like I'm really grateful that I have an outlet to create work. But this piece off the record, I'm really excited about it because it can move the needle just a tiny bit. Like and the goal is to get to do an expungement, do a record sealing clinic in New York and an expungement clinic in Massachusetts and Florida, and because I'm arrogant, I would like to figure out how to rubber stamp it all across the country. And just to be clear, expungement clinics and record sealing clinics are being done, but they're not like an annual thing, and it's not like something that everybody knows about, and it's not something that happens regularly, it's irregular. I am not inventing this, I am not that smart.

But what I am interested in doing is making it easy and annual, you know, for folks to get away. And will there be a performance aspect to this to the clinic? Absolutely. There'll be the off the record acts of restorative justice is two parts. One will be the record sealing and expungement clinics, and another will be a theatrical presentation at the three theaters, Arch Emerson and in Boston, the center at West Park in New York, and Art to Action in Tampa, Florida, and that is yet to be determined. I am discovering, and it's surprising to me that the legislative process of the intentional oppression that exists just inherently in the criminal system is very dramatic. I was arrested in 1988 for crack.

Tanya, I had to pay a $40 violent crime fee, and I asked them for crack. How what do you why do I have to pay a violent crime fee? Because it was a violent act against yourself is what they told me. But I mean, it's all of these glom fees, and it's all aimed at people who are the most vulnerable. And so I'm not sure. Like what the beauty of this grant from National Performance Network is they've given me the opportunity to figure it out. I get to decide what it is. And I'm really excited about you know, like figuring it out and what story I want to tell. And that has yet to be revealed to me. That sounds so arrogant. God's sake. But I'm figuring out what story I want to tell theatrically. But it will be in these three theaters in 2024, 2025.

Cool. Now, we were talking the other day about this need to create our own work, because that's one of the things that I've been doing. You've been doing it all along. I mean, I really was inspired by you to do it. Because this the waiting to be picked, the waiting to be, you know, anointed is really kind of soul murdering. Yeah, and I think that's another reason why I really didn't go the actor route because I just didn't have it to, you know, to stand in front of, you know, three or four people and have them just look at me and go, hmm, no. No. And I mean, as an actor, you have to have people look at you and just look at you and say, no, you're wrong for the job. And as an actor doing auditions, you can't internalize that shit, you know.

So I didn't have that, so I chose another route, and I decided a long time ago that, you know, I got a lot of ideas in my crazy head. And I decided for as long as I can get people to produce my work, I will generate work. There are people who self-produce and I'm not mad at them. I just don't have the funds myself or the wherewithal. And I've become a pretty good grant writer. And I've decided, well, can you write some grants for me? I could actually. I've turned it to, you know, I have to hate writing grants, but now I kinda enjoy it. Last year I got three. Really? What is there that you enjoy? I use chat GPT whenever I have to write any kind of formal query for anything, because it's a kind of talk that is just like it's inhuman, it's unnatural.

That chat GPT knows to put all that brown nose bullshit language into shit. And I'm like, great chat GBT. It's repetitive, redundant. Oh, I can't stand it. You know, I was watching a Stephen King series from 1998 just yesterday called The Storm of the Century, and in it it said, Hell is repetition. And I was like, Hell is repetition. That's what grant writing is to me. It's odd because I mean I've got grant writing chops now, you know. Sounds arrogant. I'm very arrogant. I'm 66 years old, black and gay and still alive and making work and you know, and vibrant with an active libido for y'all who are 30, you know, thinking 66 is dead, 66 ain't necessarily dead. But you know, I kinda oddly enjoy it.

Because what it does is it makes me think about as I see it, grant applications are largely like they're asking the question, what do you want to do? Why are you the person to do it? Why is now the right time? And who would want to see this shit? You know. So in writing the grant application, it makes me think about the piece that I want to do in ways that I wouldn't naturally think about because it's you know, I get caught up in like you know, pretty pictures. I just want to make something pretty, you know, or something, or whatever. But during a grant application, I'm forced to, you know, get down in the granular level and talk about what it is, why I'm the right person and all that. It's like presenting an argument.

Tanya, y'all can't see time. She's like shaking her head there. No, I really want to learn. I mean, I did a chat GPT query for something. I've actually texted you, and the chat GPT query got me the in-person interview. All right. And I'm going to the second interview in April, where it isn't quite yet the grant application. It is they want me to present an in-writing proposal for what I need to set up my company and what the money I'm looking for for them to do with my company. And then they said then they take that to their funders, and if the funders accept that, then I have to write the grant. Yeah. So I'm having to learn. I mean, I like it's just all you talk about being a newbie coming in performing.

I'm a newbie coming into because yeah, the work that I want to do is I want to create a company that allows young artists to tell stories predominantly film, but also in theater that still the American arts industry really tells stories if we're centering some white story, you know. What did we get? Fat Ham, that's Hamlet. Black Odyssey, that's the Odyssey. We have to center whiteness in some way. We have to be doing get out, white people with black actors, black skin, or there's some sort of denigration and degradation of us in it. We aren't even allowed to tell stories that celebrate us.

[41:05] James Scruggs: And as my mentor says, really for film, I think is easier than theater. Film just takes, you know, the equipment, the people, the food, and some love. And the internet has allowed us to find audiences that previously weren't available to us. So I want to have a company that makes it possible for us to keep telling these stories, keep turning out these films, going on places like Deshunas Spencer's Quelly TV or Tubi and telling stories that the major show business industry is never gonna celebrate. We can just look at Woman King, made for very little money. That film was brilliant in every way, you know, ignored. I was really shocked when people who were Grammy voters talked about the fact that they just weren't gonna vote for Beyonce because she was black and she didn't need no more awards.

I was like, okay, I think they do that at the Oscars and everywhere else. So I don't even think it's something to aspire to. And so that's why I have such an admiration for you that you made your own path and you are like living out loud creatively, and I came into the business via a teacher mentor who took me in in the traditional path. So I really didn't know there was another way until I really met you and started seeing the good life that you had doing your own thing. And that's kind of all I want to do now going forward. And feel like, you know, I'm 60 years old and I am in the top of my power. Like I know how to do this shit. I can do it in my sleep. I'm like, if a corporation hires me, they're gonna be mad at me because I see all the places you wasting money, wasting time.

I will come in and do this stuff so quickly, so effortlessly that you will make a lot of money and people will be mad at me because they won't be having all that overtime and all that shit. I'll be like, oh no, no, no, we don't have to spend after that. Right, right. I know how to do that thing. You know, and that's no small thing. It's daunting, you know. I have so much respect for, you know, artists and the thing I was watching the academy, the officers, and you know, we get pitted against one another, and it's just, it's kind of surreal. Because I mean, how do you, you know, judge like how, you know, how do you judge art against other art? And I always appreciate it when artists get up there and they get the award and they say what I think is the obvious that everybody who got to this point of nomination is worthy to get this award.

And everybody, yes, that we are all worthy, and the fact that I got this award was the luck of the draw. I've been in a room when, you know, with grant grants were being adjudicated, if that's the right word. But I mean, and I get it. It's like, you know, once you get in the it, once you get to the final part, you're there, and it's all about like like Beyonce was there. But somebody decided, or several somebodies said, bitch got too much awards, you know, she don't need another one, you know. But you know, it's all this settler colonial capitalism that you even have to the need for this award. I think one of the things I saw during the pandemic getting on TikTok and Insta Reels and all of that is the plethora of talent in the world.

I mean, so much. But capitalism doesn't want that because capitalism is always selling scarcity. Yeah, yeah. And they're picking, you know, somebody that they can commodify and duplicate and make sound alike and this alike. And so the fact that the universe is just, you know, there is no repetition in the divine. Every snowflake is different, every raindrop is different. And capitalism is antithetical to nature itself. So the very idea of an award for something that really you didn't do, the divine is expressing in through and as you, everybody should get an award. Yeah, yeah. Or something. Yeah, but that ain't a part of it. I'm really in touch with the fact that, you know, like this is a, it's fucked up to say, but it's a good time for artists of color.

I mean, it's a good, I mean, last year was my best year ever as an artist. And I'm very well, I'm in touch with the fact that for black folks here in America, the needle does not move until something is like, is forced in folks' face, whipped Peter, his back, you know, brought attention to slavery, Emmett Till, Mamie Till's brave act of like, no, I want to show what they did to my son that moved the needle for the civil rights era and George Floyd dying, not live on TV, but nine minutes seeing that move the needle in a big way. And I feel like because for the longest time my work has been viewed by a lot of theaters as like too incendiary or like we don't do topical work, and now all of a sudden everybody's interested in work about social justice and stuff like that.

But I mean, it's literally like we don't want to, it's like there's a disconnect. Like personally, I don't need to see these snuff films, and I'm really tired of them. I'm really tired of seeing black folks killed live on TV. Because you never see white folks. I'm like, they blur it or something when you were just like and you don't see dogs and cats getting killed live on TV, you know. And you see, over and over and over and over, you know, and I'm like, uh, and it's like it's a there's a sexualization in it. I am convinced that it is an erotic, erotic thing for them. It's a snuff film. You know, it's stuff films that are illegal, but for whatever reason we can sh and it's just it's but that said, you know, we have to rub society's face in it.

You know, you have to see George Floyd. We needed to see, and not needed, but we the fact that George Floyd died and we saw it in nine minutes of video, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, wow. Police oppression, that's our. But then we get numb. Yeah. Then we get numb, and you, you know, 33 people, children mostly, and Uvaldi are killed, and we don't see it. And that was a case where I want them to put on the news images of the spatter that is left from a child when they are killed with one of these assault references. Yeah, we need a man. They know that if they saw that, that would be the end of assault rifles. And I mean, like, you have to know that the stringency around making sure that none of those images get out.

It's militaristic because you know somebody's got one of those images, and they are making sure we never see that, because that would be the end of assault rifles. I want to see one of those images. We need a Mamie Till moment with these. They're not gonna let us have one. They're not gonna let us have one because we don't like violent people, you know. No, no, I think that that's what this control of the web and images, like if it gets through, they let it through. I mean, even on the slap on the Oscars, the Oscars are on a delay. Okay, maybe the people live in the room could have seen that, but they could have stopped that from going out across the world. Okay, none of those live feeds are ever live just because of things like that.

But they wanted that to be seen. Yeah, I'm convinced that, you know, the I think I know you're right. That if there was a chill moment with assault rifle rifle, and what it does to a human body is daunting. It's literally, it just disintegrates organs. It's like vapor race vaporizes them. And it to the point where these children in Uvalde, their parent could not even recognize them. They had to, you know, like they had to recon they had to identify them with dental records. But but again, like George Floyd, like Mamie Till and Emmett Till, like with Peter, we need to see that in order to make a change. And you're right. You're absolutely right. If they somebody had the wherewithal to show one of these children with their body eviscerated.

I never used that word. I sound smart, don't I? But I mean just to to show the the what that rifle does to a human body then people will draw the line to like well why do we need those guns again? That would be the end of them period. That would be the end of them. If we got to see one real image of that it would be over. Yeah yeah and they know that well you know the NRA ain't all that powerful anymore but somebody you know somebody's keeping it because I mean those images are out there and like other stuff gets leaked but you never I be looking for them. Okay that is an image I have looked for I can't find it. I mean it must be in the most private red rooms out there because I have not been able to find them.

Yeah yeah they're holding that shit tight because that's going to be real change. So yeah that's you know I'm really you know I'm down for real change you know and I'm really well I don't see it happening in my lifetime. Well, I mean, little I'm you know, I'm doing I I I am I am I I'm down for real change in in in in small and and tiny ways that I can do it because I'm tired of griping. I've been in rooms where you know with you know with other you know black artists and you know and it turned into a little gripe session and there's just not enough there is absolutely not enough opportunities available. There isn't. There just is not. But I'm trying to make a way and and I'm putting one foot in front of the other, and I've been really fortunate in finding folks to support my work.

And with this new piece, I'm hoping I'm hoping I am going to do record ceiling clinic in New York. I know I'm I'm so happy for you because your work is is out loud and in your face and all about change and social justice. I still for myself just feel like even though there were so many opportunities and so much money sent out during the pandemic where in a in the response to George Floyd, I still am of the opinion that it was band-aid work. It was we're uncomfortable. What do we do to not be uncomfortable? To not be uncomfortable. I'm sure there are organizations that have this, but on a national level, I have not seen a vision espoused in enough places that is of a new world that has never existed ever, ever, except pre Western civilization, maybe somewhere that I don't know about, but a world that really works for more people that is not caste based, that is not based on some mudsills at the bottom.

I have not seen anybody putting forth that vision and and working towards it. And that means that there, I mean, I really do believe there should not be billionaires. There should not be a need for charity in a in a world as rich with resources as the one we live in. There's no reason that there should be unhoused people, people who have fallen on hard times and are treated worse than people who we have convicted of crimes. So that's the change I'm looking for. A real change where, but right now people are so controlled by fear. And the bread and circuses, baby, the bread and circuses work, and these things in our hands really allow the bread and circuses to be delivered to us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

So something radical has to happen for the world to shift on its axis. Yeah, and it's so easy to be distracted because TikTok is so pretty. Look at all look at this. It is.com, and that's S-C-R-U-G-G-S.

[53:58] Tonya Pinkins: Um his new work off the record will be coming to us soon. And he's always doing amazing things. So whenever he is around, find him. And again, you're listening to Tonya Pinkins. You can't say that, the show where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network. Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show Where You Can. I'm Tonya Pinkins. And you can't SAY THAT is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Sea, with music by Kat Dale. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast highly wherever you stream. Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Tonya Pinkins.